GRANDMA'S ATTIC SERIES (5 page)

Unfortunately, Ma was wrong. By morning her cold, and the storm, had worsened. When she decided to stay in bed, I realized that she was sicker than I had ever known her to be.

Pa and the boys were glad to have the rope when they went to milk and feed the animals, but they knew there was no chance of getting farther than the barn.

"As soon as the storm lets up, I'll go and get the doctor for Ma," Pa told us. "I guess you'll all have to help me keep things going until she's well."

Since everyone had to stay in the house, Pa didn't worry about the outside. His biggest problem seemed to be getting the meals.

"This always looks easy when Ma does it," he said to us the next morning. "Ask her how many cups of baking powder to put in the pancakes."

"Cups!" Ma croaked when I asked her. "Mercy on us! He kill us all with indigestion! Tell him two tablespoons to three cups of flour."

I was kept busy running between the kitchen and the bedroom for instructions. Finally, Ma suggested that he stick to things like meat and potatoes and other vegetables that didn't require mixing. "I'll be up right away to make bread she said. "I don't think you'll run out before tomorrow."

We didn't run out of bread, but Ma was not up the next day. Pa was worried. He stood at the window and watched the snow swirl around the porch. The barn was not visible from the house.

"I don't know how we'll get the doctor if this doesn't stop," he said. "We'll have to ask the Lord to take care of Ma until the storm is over."

"We could ask Him to tell the doctor to come," I suggested. "Then you wouldn't have to go after him."

"Yes," Pa said. "We could do that all right. God could certainly send the doctor here if that's His will."

That night, just as we were ready to go to bed, we were startled by a loud banging on the door. When Pa opened it, I here, surrounded by snow and wind, stood the doctor!

"Thank the Lord!" Pa said as he pulled him into the kitchen. "We prayed that you would come!"

"What do you mean you prayed that I would come?" the doctor exclaimed. "You didn't even call for me! I was trying to get home from the Gibbs's place, and I was beginning to think I wouldn't make it anywhere when I saw your light."

"Anyway," Pa said, "the Lord sent you, and we're grateful." '

The doctor took care of Ma and stayed until the following day. When the wind stopped blowing, the men and the boys were able to dig through the drifts. Soon everything was back to normal. That was certainly some storm; probably the worst I can remember.

"After that, I guess you believed your pa could smell a storm, didn't you?" I asked.

"Yes," Grandma laughed. "We didn't doubt him again. But I lived many more years in the country, and I don't think I was ever good at sniffing out the weather."

I returned to the window to watch the snow and wish I could be snowbound, just once.

The year I was in the second grade, I stayed with Grandma in her old home on the farm for several months.

"We will have to get you in school next week," Grandma said. "We'll go into town and talk to the principal tomorrow."

I was disappointed. "I thought maybe I wouldn't have to go to school since we'll only be here until Christmas. Couldn't you teach me at home? You were a schoolteacher once."

Grandma laughed. "The state doesn't think much of children not being in school. You wouldn't want the truant officers coming to ask about you, would you?"

I agreed that I wouldn't. Suddenly a new idea occurred to me. "Will I go to school in the same place you did, Grandma? I'd really like that!"

"I'm afraid not. You won't even go to the school your mother attended. There's a big new school in town now. I think you'll like it."

I wasn't at all sure about that, but I knew that as soon as summer ended, I would be in school. I went out in the yard to swing on the old tire Uncle Roy had fixed for me, and tried to forget about the future.

A little while later, Grandma called me. "Come here and see what I've found. I thought this might be in the attic. You won't use it in school as I did, but you might like to play with it here at home."

The object she held in her hand was about nine inches wide and twelve inches long. It had a wooden frame around it and looked like a piece of blackboard.

"What is it, Grandma?" I asked.

"It's a slate," Grandma replied. "This is what we used to write our lessons on. We would do our arithmetic problems on here, then when the teacher had checked them, we rubbed them off and wrote our spelling words or writing lesson. It never wore out or had to be thrown away like paper does. A slate was as important to us as our books."

I took the slate and turned it over. There at the top were the letters of the alphabet and the numbers from 0 through 9. Underneath them was a short poem:

God made the little birds to sing, And flit from tree to tree;

'Tis He who sends them in the spring To sing for you and me.

"This was really yours?" I asked. "Where is the chalk and eraser to go with it?"

Grandma laughed. "We didn't have chalk then. We used a slate pencil to write with, and we brought an old piece of flannel from home to clean it off. I'm afraid the pencil has been lost long ago, but chalk works very well on it. I'm sure we have some of that around."

Grandma found a piece of chalk, and I sat down to copy the little poem on the slate. Just as I had finished and was going to show Grandma, Uncle Roy came into the kitchen where I sat. He stopped at the table and looked at the slate.

"Well, well," he said. "If that isn't my old slate! Wherever did your grandma find it?"

"Your slate," I said in surprise. "Grandma said it was her slate."

Uncle Roy chuckled. "She's right too. Did she tell you how she managed to get it?"

Grandma came into the kitchen. "No, I didn't. Are you sure you want me to tell her that?"

Uncle Roy's eyes twinkled, and he replied, "Guess you'll have to now. I already told her it was mine. I'll just listen to be sure you have the story straight."

He sat down at the table with a cup of coffee and cookie, and Grandma began.

"Roy is right. The slate did belong to him, and he was very proud of it. As I remember, it was ordered from the catalog when Roy started school. He was two years ahead of me, but I couldn't see any reason why he should have a nice slate like that if I couldn't. Ma tried to explain that I would have one of my own when I started school, but naturally that was longer than I wanted to wait. Roy knew how eager I was to use that slate, and he liked to tease me about it.

' "You're too young to have a slate, Mabel," he would say. "You'd probably break the pencil. Anyway, you can't write yet."

"I can try," I would say. "And I'll be careful. I won't hurt it a bit."

But Roy kept his slate out of my reach in spite of all my pleading. One evening after supper, the boys were doing their lessons at the kitchen table when Pa looked up from his reading.

"Roy, did you put the goat in the barn as I asked you to?" "Oh, no, Pa. I forgot. I'll do it as soon as I finish my lessons."

"Be sure you do," Pa said. "It's going to be cold tonight. She shouldn't be left out."

Pa went into the other room to read to Ma as she sewed, and Roy looked over at me where I sat by the stove playing with my doll.

"Say, Mabel. How would you like to write on my slate?"

I dropped the doll and came over to the table. "Could I, Roy? Could I?'

"Sure you can. If you go out and put the goat in the barn."

Roy knew that I would not so much as step onto the back porch after dark, let alone go clear out to the barn. I shook my head. "Pa told you to go."

"I know, but I'm busy. There's nothing out there to get you.

I continued to shake my head. Finally, Roy said, "What if I give you the slate?"

"Give it to me? Really give it to me all for myself?"

"That's right. It's all yours if you go out and put the goat in the barn."

I considered this carefully. I wanted that slate more than anything. On the other hand, there was a lot of blackness between the house and the barn. Did I dare do it?

"Will you leave the kitchen door open?" I asked fearfully. "Sure," Roy replied. "Why, I'll even put a lantern on the steps. It won't take you but a minute."

If Ma or Pa had been in the room, he would never have suggested such a thing. But he did love to tease me.

Somehow I found enough courage to race out to to the barn, shove the goat inside, and race back. Breathlessly dropped into my rocking chair. When I could speak again I reminded Roy of his promise.

"Oh," he said. "I told you I'd give you the slate, but I meant when you were old enough to go to school. You're too little to use it now."

I looked at him in disbelief. As the enormity of what I had done began to sink in, I opened my mouth and howled I cried louder than I ever had before, or since, I guess. The noise brought Ma running from the other room.

"What in the world is going on here? Mabel, are you hurt? What happened?"

I was crying too hard to answer. Big tears were running down my face and onto my dress. Roy was too astonished at the turn of events to be able to explain, so Reuben told Ma what had happened. When he finished, Ma took me in her lap and smoothed my hair back.

"Don't cry, Mabel. There's nothing to cry about. The slate is yours right now."

"Right now!" Roy yelped. "I have to have it for school. She can't have it right now!"

"I think she can," Ma replied quietly. "We'll find an old piece of slate for you to use. Give it to her, please." '

Reluctantly, Roy handed over the slate. He certainly hadn't intended the joke to go this far. I clutched it to me and ran out to show Pa. Roy went back to his lessons, a smarter boy than he had been a few minutes earlier.

"Isn't that how it happened?" Grandma said to Uncle Roy.

"It certainly was," he replied. "I carried an old broken piece of slate to school all the rest of that year. I should have learned my lesson about teasing right then, shouldn't I?'

"Yes," Grandma laughed. "But you didn't."

Grandma turned to me. "Just watch out he doesn't get that slate away from you."

"Oh, I wouldn't do that," Uncle Roy replied. "But while I'm working I'll think of some tricks your grandma pulled that were as bad. Then it will be my turn to tell a story."

Your surprise package came in the mail this morning," Grandma said to me as I came home for lunch.

"Oh, goody! Where is it?" I asked.

"Here on the table. Now don't be too disappointed if it isn't all you thought it would be."

I had ordered a "mystery box" from a magazine ad, imagining all sorts of lovely things that might be inside.

"I guess you had twenty-five cents' worth of pleasure waiting for it," Grandma said when she saw the flimsy little toy the box contained.

"Next time I'll just spend my quarter at the store where I can see what I'm getting," I said. "I wouldn't have paid a nickel for this."

"That's what's called, 'buying a pig in a poke.' You aren't the first one to do that."

"A pig in a poke! What does that mean?"

"A poke is an old word that means a 'sack,' " Grandma replied. "If you buy a pig in a poke, you pay for it without looking at it first; then you have to take what you get. It's not the smartest way to do business, but you may learn a lesson from it."

"Have you ever bought a pig in a poke, Grandma?"

"No, I didn't, but my brothers did. One of our neighbors sold his farm and was ready to move to another state. The day before he left, the boys went over to say good-bye."

That night at the supper table, Reuben asked Pa,

' "Could we use Nellie and the wagon in the morning? There's something we want to bring home from the Shaves' barn."

"What kind of something? We have several somethings in our own barn that could stand hauling off."

Reuben and Roy exchanged worried looks.

"Well," Reuben explained, "it's an old trunk. Mr. Shaw said we could have it, and whatever is in it, for just fifty cents."

"So, we put our money together and bought it," Roy added.

Pa put his fork down and looked at the boys. "Fifty cents! You mean you paid for the thing and didn't even look inside to see what you were getting?"

Reuben looked embarrassed. "We tried to," he mumbled, "but we couldn't get it open. Mr. Shaw said it hadn't been opened for fifty years or more, because no one could find the key."

"What in the world do you plan to do with a trunk full of who-knows-what that you can't even get into?" Pa asked. "Couldn't you think of a better way to spend your money?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Reuben explained. "We thought we'd get it open some way, and it might be something really valuable."

"Very likely!" Pa snorted. "A trunk that has been sitting in the barn for fifty years is bound to be a real prize!" "Can we take the wagon, then?" Reuben asked.

"Yes," Pa replied, "go ahead and take it. I hope for your sakes it's worth your time and effort."

The boys were sure it would be, and they spent the rest of the evening talking about the treasure they would have.

"If there's anything you like, we'll give it to you," Roy said to Ma. "There might even be a doll or something for Mabel."

"Thank you," Ma said. "That's generous of you. I just hope there's something in there you'll like."

Ma and I were at the window when the wagon pulled up the next morning, and we ran out to the porch. The boys looked delighted with themselves as they jumped down.

"Come and look, Ma," Roy called. "Can we bring it in the kitchen?"

"Mercy, no! You're not bringing fifty years of barn dirt into my kitchen. Put it up here on the porch."

"But what if it rains?" Roy said anxiously.

Ma eyed the rusty old hinges and scuffed-up leather.

"One more good rain couldn't do anything but improve it." So, groaning and puffing, the boys tugged it up the steps.