A Year Down Yonder (2 page)

“I’ve brought this girl to be enrolled.” Grandma indicated me with a thumb. She didn’t say I was her granddaughter. She never told more than the minimum.

I stood there, fifteen, trying to die of shame. Grandma didn’t understand about high school. She was trying to get the janitor to enroll me.

But I had it all wrong. They’d fired the janitor when times got hard. August—Mr. Fluke—
was
the principal, which made him the coach too. And he taught shop to the boys. And swept up.

“Well, Mrs. Dowdel,” the principal said, “can this girl read and cipher?” Even I saw he was pulling Grandma’s leg, which never worked.

“Good enough to get by in a school like this,” she replied.

Mr. Fluke turned to me. “Mary Alice, is it? Down from Chicago?” Everybody in this town knew everything about you. They knew things that hadn’t even happened yet. “What grade did they have you in up there?”

“Would have been tenth,” I mumbled. “Sophomore.”

“Let’s call that junior year down here,” Mr. Fluke said. “It don’t matter, and there’s plenty of room for you. High school’s getting to be a luxury in times like these. So many boys have dropped out entirely, I don’t know where I’ll find five to play basketball, come winter, or to field the Christmas program.”

The thought of winter—Christmas—here chilled my heart.

“Oh, we’ll pull a couple of the farm boys back after they get the last of the hay in,” Mr. Fluke went on. “But some of ’em won’t drift back to school till that last ear of corn is picked in November. You know boys.”

Grandma nodded. “Boys is bad business,” she said, quite agreeable for her. “Though girls is worse.”

But Grandma never had time to waste visiting. Shortly Mr. Fluke was sending us up to Miss Butler’s classroom. It was at the top of some rickety stairs. At the front of the room, Miss Butler was reading aloud:
Oh woe. Shakespeare even here. My heart sank to my shoes. But it sounded like they were coming to the end.

From out in the hall Grandma and I saw that the students sat two-by-two in old-timey double desks. One girl sat alone. Grandma nudged me. “See that big girl with the dirty hair?”

You couldn’t miss her. “Who is she?”

“One of the Burdick girls. Mildred, I think. They’re kin of the Eubankses. Steer clear of her if you can. Watch your back if you can’t.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s a Burdick.”

But then Grandma was pushing me forward. Somehow she’d taken Bootsie and the radio out of my hands. My hands were like ice. I teetered on the threshold. When Grandma loomed up behind me, all three boys in the classroom threw up their hands and hollered out, “Don’t shoot! We give up!”

Which is a boy’s idea of trying to be funny. I personally thought they ought to show more respect for an old lady, even if it was Grandma.

Miss Butler saw us and clapped a hand against her straight bosom. “Oh hark,” she said. “It’s Mrs. Dowdel, and...”

“Mary Alice Dowdel,” I said in a wobbly voice. “I’m enrolled.”

“Well, how... nice,” Miss Butler said, avoiding Grandma’s eye. “Boys and girls, this is Mary Alice Dowdel, come down to us from Chicago. I guess times are hard up there too.”

There was absolutely no privacy in a town this size. I saw how hard Grandma had to work to keep people’s noses out of her business. I looked back at her and she was gone.

“Mary Alice, honey,” Miss Butler was saying, “you can share with Mildred Burdick until we find you some schoolbooks. Mildred, move over and make Mary Alice welcome.”

The day went straight downhill from there.

Mildred Burdick took up more than her share of the seat. And she didn’t look any better up close. While Miss Butler bustled at the blackboard, Mildred looked me over, and she didn’t like what she saw. She started with the top of my head. Mother had given me a finger wave, and it was real tight from a center parting.

Mildred’s lip curled.

For traveling, I had on my second-best summer cotton, the one with the puff sleeves and the three big celluloid buttons off one of Mother’s dresses. Mildred looked at my puff sleeves like they ought to come off. Then she dipped down for a look at my feet. I had on my Easter shoes with the open toes, and bobby socks.

Mildred made a little buzz-saw sound in her throat that would have worried anybody. I didn’t want to stare at what she was wearing. It seemed to be a lumberjack shirt. She smelled real warm. I felt eyes on me from all over the room. Everybody was watching.

“I’ll make ya welcome,” Mildred rasped. She made a big fist and showed it to me, under the desk. “Rich Chicago girl.”

I sighed. “If I was rich, I wouldn’t be here.”

Now Mildred was in my face. She had one blue eye and one green. Burdicks did, but I didn’t know that then, and it was distracting. “Where’d ya get that dress?” Her breath took mine away.

“Mother made it,” I said. “From a Butterick pattern.”

“You wear a thing like that to school up in Chicago?”

I nodded, helpless.

“How big is that school up in Chicago?”

“I don’t know. About a thousand kids.” I wondered if Miss Butler was ever going to turn around from the blackboard.

Mildred’s eerie eyes widened. “Liar,” she said. “Ya owe me a dollar, rich Chicago girl.”

Now somebody tapped my arm, just below that puff sleeve. A starved-looking girl with big eyes was leaning across from her desk. I didn’t know her, of course, but she turned out to be Ina-Rae Gage. Her lips were in my ear.

“Don’t mess with Mildred,” she said moistly. “She ate my lunch.”

“She wants a dollar,” I whispered back.

“Don’t cross her. Better settle with her,” Ina-Rae whispered in return. “She’ll foller you home. She does that.”

Mildred jabbed me. Her arms were big, but her elbow was sharp. “Ya owe me a buck,” she reminded. “And I ain’t afraid of your grandma. Ya oughtta see mine. Mine drinks straight from the bottle and wears tar all over to keep off the fleas. And my paw’s meaner than a snake. He’s tougher than any of them Chicago gangsters. He’s worse than Pretty Boy Floyd, and lots uglier.”

I didn’t doubt it.

At last, Miss Butler turned around. “Take out your history books, boys and girls,” she trilled. “Hop to it like bedbugs!”

“I thought this was English class,” I whispered across to Ina-Rae. “Wasn’t that Shakespeare?”

“Who?” Ina-Rae said.

But I was to learn that we had English and history and geography from Miss Butler. Then we went across the hall and had math and science from Mr. Herkimer. He taught the boys Ag. and Miss Butler taught Home Ec. to the girls. We were back and forth. And this wasn’t the junior class. It was half the school. Ina-Rae was a freshman. What Mildred was, nobody knew. I sighed all afternoon.

When school finally let out, Mildred marched me over to the hitching rail. All twenty-five of the students in high school milled in the yard. The boys were pegging out a game of horseshoes. But there was no help in sight for me. Everybody looked the other way.

Somehow Mildred seemed even bigger outdoors. She wore overalls under a snagged skirt because she rode a horse to school. It was the big gray with the twitching tail that had interested Grandma. And I have to say, Mildred’s horse was better-looking than she was.

For a terrible moment I thought she was going to make me ride up behind her. That horse looked sky high. But she said, briefly, “I ride. You walk.”

Right through the town we went, me in the dust of the road, ahead of the slobbering horse, Mildred riding astride like a bounty hunter.

Grandma lived at the other end of town in the last house. She was sitting out in the swing on her back porch, though as a rule she kept busier than that. It almost looked like she was waiting for us.

I came dragging into the side yard with Mildred’s horse behind me. And Mildred. I guess I was glad to see Grandma there on the porch. I don’t know. I was pretty near the end of my rope.

Mildred dropped down and tied her horse to a tree. Grandma was on her feet now. The swing swayed behind her. At the foot of the porch steps I stared at the ground and said, “Mildred says I owe her a dollar.”

“Do tell.” Grandma stroked her big cheek. She looked down at me over her spectacles. “You run up quite a big bill for your first day. A buck’s a week’s wages around here. Two weeks’ for a Burdick.”

Mildred stood her ground behind me. I could feel her breath on my neck. She was tough. Not too bright, but tough.

“Well, come on in the house,” Grandma said. “We’ll talk it over.” She turned back to the screen door. “Get them boots off.” She pointed to Mildred’s. “They’re caked with something I don’t want on my kitchen floor.”

Mildred’s eyes flashed two colors. But Grandma was bigger than she was. She squatted to unlace her boots. Then she stood them by the back door.

We went inside. Without her boots, Mildred had lost some steam. Her socks were more hole than cotton. This may have been the first clean kitchen of her experience. She looked around, wary. But not wary enough.

“How about a glass of buttermilk to wet your whistles?” Grandma had been making cottage cheese. A big cloth sack of clabber dripped into a bowl. She waved us into chairs.

I could take buttermilk or leave it. Mildred guzzled hers. It left her with a white mustache, and a little more of her authority slipped away. Grandma cut us two big squares of cold corn bread out of a pan.

“How’s your Grandma Idella?” Grandma said to Mildred, friendly as anything. “I hear she’s had the dropsy and she’s too puny to get off the bed.”

“She’s poorly,” Mildred admitted. “She’s pinin’ and fixin’ to give out.”

“Poor old soul,” Grandma said. “I’ll get a jar of my huckleberry jam out of the cellar for her. I expect she can keep that down.”

Grandma’s spectacled gaze grazed me as she sailed out the back door. She was up to something. She didn’t have to go outdoors to go down her cellar. The cellar door was right behind my chair.

Mildred wolfed the corn bread, though she’d eaten Ina-Rae’s lunch.

Grandma was soon back, without the huckleberry jam. I don’t remember her ever making huckleberry jam.

“And is your paw still in the penitentiary?” she asked Mildred.

“He was framed,” Mildred mumbled, sulky.

“Oh, I guess them sheep off the Bowman farm found their own way into your pen.” Grandma stood at her ease before the black iron range. It was her usual spot. The linoleum there was worn to the floorboards.

“Mildred’s paw’s a famous horse trader in these parts,” Grandma explained to me, “when he’s not in the clink. People still talk about how he sold that half-dead nag to Old Man Nyquist. Mildred’s paw fed a live eel down that plug horse’s throat. It was lively as a young colt for the time it took to sell it to Nyquist. Of course, when the eel died, that old crowbait nag lost all its get-up-an’-go. Nyquist had to send it to the scavenger.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about that,” said Mildred with her mouth full.

But I was suddenly arrested by a sight that only Grandma and I saw. Mildred couldn’t see it. Her back was to the door. Her big gray horse was trotting away, past the porch, free as air. Tied around its neck were Mildred’s boots. I nearly fell off the chair in surprise. But Grandma gazed into space, seeming to count the cadavers on her flypaper strip.

Presently she said to Mildred, “We’ll talk about that dollar another time. You better get on your way. You’ve got five miles of bad road ahead of you. You won’t be home till pretty nearly midnight.”

Mildred looked up. Whatever she saw in Grandma’s eyes brought her out of her chair. It tipped over behind her. Mildred pounded sock-footed out onto the back porch. The horse was gone. When she grabbed for her boots, they were gone too. She tore off the porch, heading for the road, looking both ways. But the horse was out of sight. Grandma latched the screen door behind her.

I’d never budged. Grandma righted Mildred’s chair and sat down, to take the weight off her feet. Her thoughts seemed to wander, and she was using a toothpick. Grandma carried a toothpick hidden in her mouth. She could flip it forward with her tongue to pick her teeth.

At last she said, “Them Burdicks isn’t worth the powder and shot to blow them up. They’re like a pack of hound dogs. They’ll chase livestock, suck eggs, and lick the skillet. And steal? They’d steal a hot stove and come back for the smoke.”

“Grandma,” I said, “you’ll get me killed. She wants a dollar off me. Instead, you untied her horse and slung her boots around its neck and she has to walk home.”

“Barefoot,” Grandma said.

“Grandma, tomorrow at school she’ll take it out of my hide.”

“She won’t be in school tomorrow,” Grandma said.

“I don’t see why not. She’ll ride to school tomorrow just to skin me alive.”

“No, she won’t,” Grandma said. “That horse went home. I know that horse. It belongs to the Sensenbaughs. They live seven miles in the other direction, way over there past Milmine. A horse’ll go home if it gets the chance.”

“You mean—”

“Mildred’s paw stole every horse he ever had. And he won’t steal another till he gets out of the penitentiary. I don’t picture Mildred walkin’ five miles both ways for an education.”

“... Barefoot,” I said.

“Barefoot,” Grandma said. “I can’t fight all your battles for you, but I can give you a level start.”

A silence fell while I thought that over. Then I said, “And you acted real nice to her too, Grandma. You gave her buttermilk and that big slab of corn bread.”

“Oh well.” Grandma waved herself away. “Didn’t want to send her off hungry. I knew she had a long walk ahead of her.”

We sat there at the kitchen table, Grandma and I, while the shadows crept across the linoleum.

In this busy day I hadn’t had time to be homesick. But I thought about my brother. Joey. Always before, he’d come down here to Grandma’s with me, and stuck up for me. Now he was out west, planting trees, living in a tent. I thought about Joey, and Grandma was thinking about him too. I could tell.