Horse of a Different Color (21 page)

In his drive for perfection Nick always had me up before daylight, and sometimes he wouldn’t quit until nearly midnight. In trying to match his pace and endurance I found myself constantly running out of steam on my salmon, sauerkraut, and gluten bread diet. After four days of nearly starving, I ate a breakfast of half a dozen hot biscuits, a big heap of fried potatoes, a pound of steak, and a pint of coffee with cream and sugar.

With a belly full of meat, potatoes, and biscuits, I had no trouble in keeping pace with Nick, and abandoned my diet completely. I couldn’t help feeling guilty about it, though, so mailed Dr. DeMay a specimen at the end of the week. On Tuesday I received a postal card from him with only five words on it: “Good specimen. Sugar slightly down.”

The next morning I changed our menu a little: we had pancakes with our steak and potatoes instead of hot biscuits. For the rest of the summer and fall that was about as much as our meals ever varied, but I didn’t send any more specimens to Dr. DeMay.

From the day I’d bought my hogs the market had been moving up steadily, at an average daily rate of about ten cents a hundred. As mid-July approached I began avoiding George a bit for fear he’d tell me that if he were in my boots he’d ship his excess hogs. With the market still going up, I dropped over for a visit with him on the evening of the twentieth, but he didn’t mention hogs or the market, so I didn’t either.

On Monday, the twenty-fifth, the special fixtures arrived from the German machinist, the white butchers’ coats and aprons came from Sears Roebuck, and that day’s mail brought a letter from Mr. Donovan. He wrote that he’d come to Cedar Bluffs on Friday, the twenty-ninth, and that if my facilities passed inspection, I should be prepared to make my initial delivery on the thirty-first.

From then until midnight on the twenty-seventh I was too busy to think about hogs or pay any attention to what the market was doing. By that time our building job was finished and we were ready to go into the butchering business. Nick had converted the old Maxwell into a dust-tight little delivery truck by cutting away the body behind the front seat and replacing it with what looked like a large canvas-covered cupboard. We’d lined the refrigerator with galvanized iron sheeting—every joint soldered airtight—and I’d had two tons of ice hauled to fill the cribs. We’d given every inch of the house, inside and out, at least one coat of white paint, had screened every door and window, installed all the equipment, and finished up by scrubbing every floor with scalding water and lye soap.

Next morning we slept until six o’clock, and right after breakfast George dropped over. As he came up from the creek he called out cheerily, “Don’t know if it’s women folks’ gossip, but Irene tells me the chief cook and bottle washer for the railroad will be here for inspection tomorrow. Reckoned I’d mosey over to see if I could be of help anywheres along the line.”

Thursday was the last day I could order cars for shipping hogs on Saturday, so I had an idea that George’s visit was an invitation for me to ask his advice about selling, but I didn’t want to appear too anxious, so called back, “This time the women made a good guess, but we’re as ready for him as I know how to get. Come on inside and take a look at the place.”

When George saw that we’d scrubbed the floors until they were bleached almost white he wouldn’t step a foot inside without pulling off his boots. As we padded around in our stockings he reminded me of a little boy at a circus, and when I’d shown him through the workroom, refrigerator, and slaughterhouse, he told me, “By jiggers, the Lord must be lookin’ after somebody besides fools and drunkards this season, elseways He’d never have led you to that boy Nick. Was I you, I’d be danged careful I didn’t lose him till this whole shenanigan was all wound up and over with. It looks to me like you’ve got a heap of kettles on the fire and all of ’em comin’ to a boil at the same time.”

“Then you think I’d better sell whatever hogs I won’t be needing for the railroad contract?” I asked.

“Well now,” he said slowly, “I wouldn’t say you’d better. Nobody could say that without he knew if the market was going down, and I don’t know that. Don’t know at all that I’d ship this next Saturday if I was you . . . and your age. Hog market is still movin’ right along, steady as a trottin’ horse, up a dime to fifteen cents every day.”

“What would you do if these hogs were yours and you were your age?” I asked.

“I’d sell ’em,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. “Cycle or no cycle, pork’s gettin’ mighty high alongside the price of prime beef and veal and chicken, and the bosses at the stockyard auctions are the women folks that buy meat in the butcher shops all over this country. If they switch away from pork the price can’t help but go down. By ginger, I’d best to get on home before Irene comes huntin’ me with a broom handle, but don’t you go and ship just because I would, son. You know I’m gettin’ old and cautious; kind of like an old saddle pony that’s been wire cut a few times.”

As he started off toward the creek I called after him, “Come over Saturday morning, will you, and bring old Jack along.” Jack was the best dog in Beaver Valley for rounding up and sorting hogs, so I didn’t need to tell George that I was going to ship my excess.

He was certainly right about my having a heap of kettles coming to a boil all at the same time. To have meat chilled firm enough for band-saw slicing by Saturday, we’d have to butcher right away, but I’d had no time to buy cattle. Then too, I’d need hay for them, and the buried corn must be nearly gone after 561 hogs had lived on it for three weeks. Before the day was over I’d have to order cars, line up thirty wagons for hauling hogs on Saturday, pick up my shipment of spices and stale bread at the McCook express office, and buy cattle, hay, corn, and wrapping materials.

As soon as George had gone Nick and I rounded up a couple of the best bacon hogs in the pasture for him to slaughter and dress while I went to get some of the other kettles off the fire. The latest Kansas City radio quotation on top grade grass-fat heifers was six fifty a hundredweight, making their local value five dollars. I could well afford to pay that much if most of my beef leftovers could be sold at fifteen cents a pound, and I believed they could be if the quality was high. As insurance against a rising market, I decided to buy enough top grade heifers to fill my contract for at least a month.

Since I’d bought the larger part of my hogs from valley farmers, it seemed only fair to give the divide farmers first chance to sell the heifers. There was no corn to be had in Beaver Valley, but the tenants on the divide never had enough stock to clean up their nubbins. They’d make good feed for my pasture hogs, and I could pay the full price in cash because the bank receiver had written off all nubbin piles as worthless. Then too, the poorer of the tenant farmers up there had only a couple or three hogs to sell when I’d been buying, but every one of them had promised to haul a full load to Oberlin when I shipped, and several had come down to help us with the building.

Most of the farmers on the divide seemed to feel that I’d done them a favor by not shipping until they’d finished their harvesting, and I had no trouble in finding plenty of hog haulers. If a wheat farmer had a few grass-fat heifers to sell I looked them over and dickered for any that were top quality, but held the corn and hay business back for the poorer tenants who had no wheat to harvest and no fat cattle to sell. By noon I’d bought twenty-seven excellent heifers, ten tons of good prairie hay, and fifty tons of nubbins.

From the divide I drove to Oberlin, ordered cars for Saturday, and bought wrapping paper, twine, and order pads with carbon, so I’d be able to keep track of credit sales. I hadn’t expected to be in town more than fifteen minutes, but so many people wanted to congratulate me on getting the railroad contract—or try to pump me about the price I’d bid to get it—that I didn’t get away for more than an hour.

22

Effie to the Rescue

I
HADN’T
planned to stop in Cedar Bluffs on my way home, but as I was passing the telephone office Effie flung the screen door open, looking as ruffled as a setting hen that’s just been tossed off her nest. “Where in the name of common sense have you been at for the last couple of hours?” she called irritably. “I’ve been wearin’ out the wires hunting you all over Beaver Township.”

“Oberlin,” I called back as I braked the Maxwell to a stop in a cloud of dust.

“Well, come in here!” she demanded, went back inside, and slammed the door behind her.

I climbed out of the Maxwell, followed her inside, and asked, “What’s all the shooting about, Honeybunch?”

“Don’t you honeybunch me!” she flared. “I’ll swear to goodness the women folks in this township have like to drove me out my head with questions I couldn’t answer about your butcher business. The gossip’s out that you’re aimin’ to sell meat on credit and will take your pay in nubbin corn. Have you gone clean out of your senses?”

“Maybe so,” I said, “but anybody in the township can have a charge account with me if he’ll agree to settle no later than Thanksgiving in livestock, corn, or cash. I’ll take nubbins only from the tenant farmers on the divide.”

Effie cooled down a little before I’d finished, sniffed, and asked, “What kind of sausage did you give the folks that sold you hogs the last time you shipped?”

“The kind my mother used to make when I was a kid,” I told her.

“Aim to make any of it to sell?”

“As much as anybody’ll buy,” I answered.

“What prices you goin’ to charge for your stuff: sausage and pork chops and beefsteak and the likes?”

For a moment I didn’t know what to say. I’d hoped to get fifteen cents a pound for the best of my leftovers, and I’d given Bivans my word that I wouldn’t sell anything but by-products for less than a dime. But it occurred to me that, regardless of price, getting rid of my leftovers would depend on how much line-call help I got from Effie, and that she’d be more enthusiastic if she had some part in the planning and felt that I was holding nothing back from her. I’d never asked her what details of my contract she’d learned when she listened in on the conversation between Mr. Frickey and the bank receiver, and she’d never told me. But, gossip monger that she was, she’d never told anyone else, or people wouldn’t still be trying to pump me for information, so I decided to talk freely.

“I’ve been too busy to think much about prices,” I told her, “and I wish you’d help me with it. I suppose you know that the railroad asked for bids on nothing but beefsteak, pork chops, and pork sausage. For that reason all the butchers who bid less than twenty cents a pound were going to use the cheapest old cows and worn-out brood sows they could buy, and to sell their leftovers to the farm trade for whatever they could get. George and I thought they were making a mistake, because there would be more than a ton of leftovers a day, most of it so rank and tough you’d be ashamed to throw it out to the coyotes. We figured that if pork cutlets could be substituted for chops the job could be done better and cheaper by using top grade heifers and bacon hogs, because there wouldn’t be a quarter as much leftovers and it would all be good tender meat.”

Effie had forgotten her peevishness, and asked, “Is that why you shipped your hogs to Omaha and went along with ’em?”

“That’s right,” I told her. “I wouldn’t have stood a chance of getting the contract unless I’d been where I could find out what substitutions could be made and how low I’d have to bid. To get some other terms I needed, I had to cut my price to fifteen cents a pound, straight across the board, but I got pork cutlets and lard compound included in the contract, and the kind of sausage I gave the folks here. The price is awfully low for beefsteak and pork chops, but it’s okay for cutlets and high for that kind of sausage and lard compound, so they’ll average out fairly well. I should make a good profit on the contract if I can sell all my leftovers and get reasonable prices for them.”

“What if you can’t?” Effie asked.

I grinned, shrugged my shoulders, and told her, “It might be better for me than all the doctors in the world; I’d be so deep in debt that I’d need a long lifetime to dig my way out.”

“Don’t talk nonsense!” she snapped. “I’ll sell the stuff for you if the price is reasonable. What’ll you have to get?”

“I’d like to average twelve and a half cents a pound,” I told her. “If I could get fifteen cents for stew beef, hamburger, sidemeat, and leaf lard, I could afford to sell short ribs, sausage, and lard compound as low as a dime. What would you think about that?”

She turned down the corners of her mouth and told me, “I’d think the loco weed had got to you! Lard compound’s eighty-five cents for a five-pound bucket in all the stores over to McCook, and why in heaven’s name would you sell sausage for a dime a pound when folks are hollerin’ to get it without askin’ the price?”

“I wouldn’t like the word to get out,” I said, “but the kind of sausage I’m going to make—the kind I gave the folks when I went to Omaha—is mostly hog fatback and beef trimmings, and my compound will be all fatback and beef suet rendered together. The suet wouldn’t bring a dollar a ton in any other way, and Rudy Schneider told me a man would be lucky to get a nickel a pound for as much hog fatback as would be left over from the railroad contract. My aim is to get rid of my fatback by pricing compound and sausage low enough that I’ll sell a lot of them.”

“Hmfff!” Effie sniffed. “You aim like a drunken harvest hand! For the past three or four hours I’ve been pestered to death by folks with the notion that your sausage is the best they every tasted, and them that’s got the price would pay two bits a pound for it with no questions asked. But if you go and price it at a dime you wouldn’t sell enough to wad a shotgun, and I couldn’t sell it for you, ’cause everybody’d know there was something wrong with it. And it would be the same way with your lard compound.”

“Well,” I said, “as near as I can figure, leftover fatback is going to make all the difference between a good profit and a big loss on this railroad contract, and unless I can find some way to get rid of mine at a reasonable price I’ll be licked.”

“All you got to do is use your head,” she told me. “Why on this green earth do you reckon farmer women buy lard compound at eight-five cents for a five pound bucket when they can get straight leaf lard for sixteen cents a pound?”

“Irene Miner says it’s because the bucket comes in handy.”

“Of course it is, you ninny,” Effie told me, “but them buckets ain’t worth a nickel apiece; they’re too flimsy for anything besides a school lunch bucket, and not big enough for anything else. What farm women want is a good stout galvanized bucket; one that’s big enough for gatherin’ the eggs or milkin’ a cow, but not so big it’ll be too heavy to lug when it’s full. Unless a woman’s got a cream separator—and there’s precious few in this township that’s got ’em—she has to set her milk in pans to raise the cream for butter. What them women like best is a pan about three times as wide across the top as it is deep, made out of bright tin that won’t rust easy, and that’s thick enough the bottom won’t buckle every time she lifts a panful.

“If I was you I’d put the stuff I wanted to sell the most of into pans and buckets. Most of the women in these parts set their milk in gallon and half-gallon pans, but I’d put my sausage in two-and-a-half-quart and five-quart pans. That way they’d hold five or ten pounds apiece, ’cause a pint’s a pound the world around. Then I’d put my lard compound and short ribs and stuff like that in ten-quart buckets, so’s to sell ’em twenty pounds at a crack.”

“I wouldn’t think there’d be many people who’d want to buy as much as ten pounds of sausage or twenty pounds of shortening at a time,” I said.

“Didn’t you say you aimed to leave ’em have credit?” she asked.

“That’s right,” I said.

“Then I guess you don’t know farm women as good as a butcher had ought to,” she said. “What with thrashing season commencin’ any day now, and the fall plowing and sowing to be done, and the corn to be shucked as soon as frost hits, there’ll be a heap of hired hands to feed between now and Thanksgivin’ time, and these women folks’ll buy whatever they have to to get a pan that catches their eye or a good milk bucket the right size—that is, they will if they think the bucket or the pan is free and they don’t have to pay cash for the stuff they buy.”

“How much would you charge for sausage you sold in pans, and lard compound by the bucket?” I asked.

“Different prices only make it harder for women folks to make up their minds,” she told me. “The more of a thing I wanted to sell the better the pan or bucket or dish I’d put it into, but I wouldn’t have more than two prices: one for steak and chops and roasts, and another for everything else.”

“Then I’ll have only one price,” I said, “because with a contract like mine I won’t have any steaks or chops or roasts to sell.”

“Don’t be a jackass!” Effie scolded. “You’re not fool enough to think these folks will come to you for the stuff you want to get rid of when they have to drive to McCook or Oberlin for the rest of their meat, do you? If you want their trade you’ll have to sell ’em the stuff they want right along with the stuff you want to get shut of.”

“I can see what you mean,” I told her, “but I can’t see where it would do me any good. A hog is less than one quarter ham steaks and chops, and for every pound of those I sell I’ll be stuck with two pounds of fatback to get rid . . . ”

“Oh, fiddlesticks!” she broke in. “If you butcher top grade bacon hogs, like you said you was going to, the backs’ll be lean enough that most farmer folks will buy ’em for sidemeat, and if you charge twenty cents a pound for steak and chops and the likes you’ll head the folks off from buyin’ too much of them things.”

“Don’t you think twenty cents is pretty high, considering that I’m going to get only fifteen from the railroad?” I asked.

“The folks couldn’t do no better in McCook or Oberlin, could they?” she asked in reply.

“Well, maybe not for the same grade of meat,” I said, “but . . . ”

“Buttin’s for billy goats!” she snapped. “Now skedaddle out of here and see what kind of milk buckets and pans you can find in McCook that look real nice but don’t cost too much. Get leastways ten dozen pans of both sizes and five dozen buckets; I’ve got a hunch we’re goin’ to need ’em. I won’t put out line calls till you get back, so don’t stop to tell no long stories.”

That “we’re goin’ to need ’em” took a lot of worry off my mind, and I headed for McCook as fast as the old Maxwell would go.

In the department store I found sturdy, brightly tinned 2½- and 5-quart pans, and 10-quart galvanized buckets that were light in weight but not flimsy, with good stout bails. Rubber stamped in purple ink on the bottom of the larger pans was a big 25¢, on the smaller ones 15¢, and on the buckets 40¢. After a little haggling the store manager agreed to give me a 25 per cent discount if I’d take two gross of pans and half a gross of buckets. Then he gave me the same discount on a dozen galvanized wash tubs we needed for storing cut meat, sausage, and hamburger in the refrigerator.

By the time I’d picked up my shipment of spices and stale bread at the express office the old Maxwell was loaded so full there was barely room for me to squeeze in behind the wheel, and I had to drive slowly on the way home. I stopped there just long enough to unload, then took a bucket and a pan of each size up to show Effie. As I pulled to a stop in front of her office she stepped into the doorway and called, “Land sakes alive, what took you so long? These women folks haven’t let up on me for a blessed minute. What luck did you have?”

“Pretty good,” I called back, and held up a bucket so she’d be sure to see the 40¢ mark on the bottom.

“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” she exclaimed. “Have you took leave of your senses altogether? You can’t afford that kind of stuff in place of paper and twine.”

“Sure I can,” I said, holding up the pans with the price marks toward her. “I bought six dozen buckets and twenty-four dozen pans like these.”

“You didn’t go and pay fifteen cents and a quarter apiece for them pans, did you?” she demanded. “Good lands, I’d ought to had better sense than to leave you go alone. Well, fetch ’em in here so’s’t I can see how bad you got stuck. I’ll swear to goodness every line on the switchboard has been buzzin’ like a bee in a bottle ever since you left.”

When I went into the little office every light on the switchboard was blinking, a sure sign that impatient women were jiggling receivers on every line in the township, and with each blink of a light a buzzer stuttered and whined. Effie had plugged the cord of her headset into one of the line jacks and was saying irritably, “Yes, Matty, I know he’s back from McCook, but there’s nothin’ I can tell you yet. Soon as ever there is I’ll put out line calls, like I’ve been sayin’ for the past two hours.”

She broke the connection with a yank of the cord, stripped off her headset, and told me, “A body can’t hardly hear herself think with all this racket goin’ on. Pull the switch on that battery, will you, Bud, so’s’t we can get down to business in peace.”

The whole Beaver Township telephone system was powered by a single brine battery, so when I pulled the switch the lights on the switchboard stopped blinking and the buzzers became mute. Effie blew out her breath in a long “whissssht” and mopped the sweat off her forehead. “Well,” she said, “I hope there don’t nobody’s buildin’s catch afire while I’ve got them lines killed, but if I’d had to of listened to that hullabaloo for another five minutes it would have drove me stark starin’ crazy. Now let me have a look at them buckets and pans you bought.”

After she’d examined each piece thoroughly and tested its weight by bouncing it on her hand, she looked up at me and said, “They’re mighty nice stuff, all right, and I wouldn’t mind havin’ a set of ’em my own self, but they’re a lot too costive to give away with sausage and lard compound and the likes of that.”

“No, they’re not,” I told her. “I got a 25 per cent discount by taking them in gross and half-gross lots, so the buckets were only thirty cents apiece, and that’s just a cent and a half a pound on twenty pounds of shortening.”