Fair Weather (5 page)

In fancy letters the poster read:

Granddad’s old eyes traced the colonel’s every detail: the fringe on his buckskin coat, the elegant curve of his longhorn moustaches, and the tilt of his hat. Granddad was lost in admiration.

But when he sensed us there, he snorted. “That wasn’t in no way how we dressed when we was settlin’ this part of the country. All we had to wear was denim britches put together with rivets. And—”

“We was happy to have them,” we all chanted under our breath.

But Granddad could hardly tear his eyes away from the poster, though he was ready for home. We walked a good long way to where he’d tied Lillian to a shade tree. Granddad didn’t deign to remark on all our parcels. You were never sure what he noticed. But he saw the black cloud hanging over Buster.

After he’d turned the horse in the street, he called back to him. “Boy, climb up here and ride shotgun for me and Tip.”

So Buster tramped past us and hauled himself up between Granddad and Tip. We were in open country when we heard Granddad say, “What’s got stuck in your craw?”

Sulky, Buster said, “They’ve tricked me out like a circus pony. They want me to wear a thing around my neck like a girl’s.”

Granddad looked down at Buster over his specs. “Women,” he said.

“I ain’t going to wear any of it,” Buster declared.

Granddad considered. “Well, boy, you can’t go nekkid in Chicago. The wind comes right off the lake.”

Then he handed Buster the reins, and Lillian Russell took us home, jaunty all the way under the blue dome of heaven.

F
or a week we worked like beavers to make up for the time we’d be away. We put up peas and beans. We cooked down enough berry preserves and strained enough jelly to see us through to the Second Coming. The sticker scratches glowed on my arms.

A pan of melting wax was always at the back of the stove, for sealing the jam jars. We’d have pickled peaches if we could have talked them into ripening in time.

We were still at it by lamplight every night. Then Wednesday came around, and Mama wanted us out of the kitchen before Everett came to call on Lottie. He was never invited over the threshold, but Mama was particular about us clearing out of the kitchen. It was hard to
fathom her thoughts. Maybe she didn’t want him to think we were spying on him.

I was in the porch swing when Lottie came out wearing her new white shoes under the fresh apron she always put on for Everett. She said she was breaking in the shoes. She was showing them off to see if he’d notice.

Then right away there he came, all over the road, so I went on in the house. As I made my way through the darkened front room, I fell over Mama.

“Hush,” she whispered. She was bent to the window, watching Everett trying to turn the wagon into the lane. She was spying, if you ask me. If Buster was under the porch, we made quite a crowd.

“Did you notice how pale and spindly he was earlier in the summer before the sun got to him?” Mama said in my ear.

Even in the evening at a distance he had a better color. And he was looking broader across the shoulders from heavy work. He was not bad-looking, though I didn’t point this out to Mama.

“I have an idea he’s been in jail,” she whispered. “That’s why he was so pale. They get that way.”

My land, I thought.

“But he’s a talker,” Mama murmured. That was true. We didn’t know what they found to talk about. But we could hear the mumble of their voices every Wednesday night, and he did more than his share. He’d bring a book sometimes and read it to Lottie.

“I hope it’s not the Bible,” Mama remarked, “because I have a feeling he’s not a Methodist.”

But I didn’t think it was a revival meeting Lottie and Everett were conducting out there on the porch.

Mama muttered, not for the first time, “We don’t know a thing about him.”

“I guess we could ask,” I said, being pert.

“I’d sooner nip this in the bud,” said Mama.

*  *  *

On the night before we were to leave, Lottie and I sat upright in the bed like birds on a branch. Our new getups were laid out around the room. We were to wear them to make a good impression on Aunt Euterpe, if such a thing was possible. At the foot of the bed were two egg crates packed with the rest. We had nothing resembling valises.

We were all set to go. We were cocked and primed. But something fearful was coming over me. I had some shyness in me that may have come from Mama. Of course, at that age I didn’t know
what
I was, because I had a history of spunkiness too. And a scrap or two in the schoolyard to prove it, in years past. I’d even gone on the stage once, for a minute.

They were having a school program where the families came. Lottie had tricked me out in a costume and made me memorize a song. I couldn’t have been more than six, and too dumb to fight her about it. They pushed me onto the stage, and I held out my skirts and sang:

That was all of the song I could remember, so I naturally burst into tears and had to be led off. It would be many a year before I sang another solo.

Now I wondered if that school program had marked me for life, because flouncing off to Chicago liked to scare me out of my skin. Staying tucked in right here at home, safe from a world full of complete strangers, began to look good.

The lamp burned beside Lottie, and she was staring into space. We supposed we were too tired to sleep. In fact, we were worried to death.
I
was.

Even so, I couldn’t leave Lottie be for long. I began to pluck the petals off an imaginary daisy, chanting:

“Be quiet, Rosie,” Lottie said.

“What do you and Everett find to talk about?” I inquired.

“This and that,” she said. “Nothing to concern you.”

“Mama says Everett’s very probably been in jail.”

“He says he feels like he has been,” Lottie answered unexpectedly.

“Mama says she wants to nip—”

The door to the hall moved. We thought of Buster. It opened, and Mama slipped into the room, barefoot in her nightdress. Though it wasn’t but nine o’clock, she put a finger to her lips as if the world was asleep. Her hair was loose around her face. You hardly saw the streak of white. She drew nigh us, throwing her shadow on the wall. Then she edged onto the bed, my side. We gazed at her, waiting.

She cleared her throat. “. . . Your aunt Euterpe was always particular, you know,” she said, speaking low. We listened for more.

“. . . And she’s kind of prissy, there’s no doubt about it. She always carried a long-stemmed rose in her teeth to the privy, to cut the smell.”

We stared.

“And she can be stiff-necked,” Mama said. “You’re to play by her rules. Remember, she never had children, so you’re all apt to come as a shock to her.”

“Mama, don’t tell us we’re to spend the whole time up in Chicago trying to keep track of Buster,” Lottie said.

“I don’t worry so much about Buster as I do about you two,” Mama answered. “Give me boys anytime. You know where you stand with boys.”

“Well, Mama,” says Lottie, “if we step out of line, you can jerk knots in our tails.”

A silence dropped on us. Quieter than before Mama said, “No, I can’t. I’m not going.”

*  *  *

My heart stopped. Time stopped. Lottie nearly nudged a hole in me. She’d known right along. Our two new straw hats with the grosgrain bands, mannish but ladylike, hung from the rocker. Where would we wear them now? Suddenly I wanted to go, like anything.

“I sent my ticket back to Euterpe and told her to meet the three of you at the station up there without fail,” Mama said.

We were going by ourselves? I liked to have fainted.

“Mama!” Lottie slapped the sheet. “You’re sending us off on our own?”

“I don’t like to.” Mama looked away at the wall. “I won’t draw an easy breath till I get you back.”

“Does Dad want you home?” Lottie demanded.

“He wants me to go with you,” Mama said, whisper quiet.

“Then, Mama,” I said, “why don’t you?”

“Oh, mercy. How could I get away at this time of year?” she said. “Can you picture your granddad playing milkmaid? He’d spill the cream and break the churn. You go on to Chicago and see the fair, then come back and tell me all about it.”

She said no more, so I spoke up. “Mama, are you scared to go?”

Lottie grabbed my hand and squeezed it to shut me up, though Mama could see. Then, very soft for her, Lottie said, “Mama, we’ll look at everything twice, once for you.”

Mama turned away with her chin tucked down. Then she was gone. We didn’t think we’d sleep a wink. We slept like logs.

*  *  *

Then, as in a storybook, it was tomorrow. In the dazzling morning we were on the train, perched at the edge of the slick wicker seats in the chair car. The awful roar of the locomotive pulling into the depot had silenced our good-byes, which was just as well.

Our picnic hamper was at our feet. Our hearts were in our mouths. We gazed out at Mama and Dad alone down there on the platform. The window was half open, but we couldn’t think of anything to say. We sensed the locomotive pawing the track, mad to move on.

At the last moment Buster sprang from his seat and swarmed up the aisle. As the conductor lifted the metal step, Buster leaned out the door of our car and flung his sailor hat. The locomotive released steam, carrying the hat down the platform. I hoped Mama would get it and return it to the store.

With an awful jolt we were off. Mama and Dad slid away from the window. Dad’s arm reached around Mama’s shoulders.

I’d never gone faster than a horse gallops. We braced ourselves for speed as the town fell away. But before Lottie got Buster settled in the seat opposite, the train was shuddering to a halt. The brakes squealed, and so did we. This must be the Bulldog Crossing, but then the train lit out running and flung itself down the tracks.

Soot billowed in the window, and we caught a familiar smell. A farmer was dragging a creosote-soaked log around a wheat field to repel the army worms. That was our last whiff of home.

To save our skirts Lottie and I had brought tea towels hemmed out of feed sacks to sit on. As Mama said, you didn’t know who’d sat down there before you. We skidded on the slippery seat, scared we’d disgrace ourselves by sliding onto the floor. We jiggled, and I happened to notice that Buster’s pocket jumped.

We knew to keep our tickets handy for the conductor to punch. The door at the end of our car opened, and I held up my ticket to show I knew how to act. But the man staggering through the door wasn’t the conductor. It was another man entirely, in a once-cream-colored suit, badly creased, and a curly-brimmed Panama hat, a high celluloid collar, and a silk cravat. A bachelor button hung in his lapel. Lottie gasped. I skidded off the seat and she caught me in midair.

The old geezer scanned the car over his pushed-down spectacles. His crepy neck hung down in dewlaps over
the unfamiliar collar. His knobby old hands clutched the chair backs as he worked his way along the car, ducking the kerosene lamps swinging overhead.

“Hey, it’s Granddad!” Buster sang out, turning to see.

Lottie and I slumped.