Man of the Family (22 page)

No king ever had a better dinner than we did that Christmas. Before Mother put the goose on to roast, she scrubbed it all over with a stiff brush and soap and water. That way, most of the fat drained out while he was roasting and the meat wasn't a bit greasy. We had sweet potatoes and white potatoes, and all sorts of vegetables—even celery. And mince pie and pumpkin pie and nuts and raisins.

None of us went out of the house all day—except when I had to do my chores—and nobody came to call. After dinner, Mother read us two chapters from the new book that Lucy Jordan sent her for Christmas. In the evening we popped corn, and she read us the whole of
Christmas Carol
, as she always used to on the ranch.

24

Skating and Skimming

I
F THE
weather man had known about our skates, he couldn't have done a better job. Right after Christmas it turned sharp and clear. By New Year's Eve there was a foot of ice on the river, and the hose-company boys were getting the wide bend behind the gristmill ready for a New Year's skating party. They flooded the ice so it was as slick as a sheet of wet glass.

Grace didn't have to tell me she wanted to go. And she didn't have to tell Mother, either. As soon as I came home and told them about the skating party, Grace went up to her room. When she came down, she had her hair done up on at least fifty paper curlers.

I was in the kitchen when Grace came down. At first, Mother looked at her sort of curiously; then she raised one corner of an eyebrow at me. “Why don't you and Gracie go to the skating party tonight?” she asked. “Father and I used to go to them before we were married, and we always had loads of fun.”

Grace stuck her head up. “Hmff,” she said, “who wants to go skating with their brother? And, besides, Ralph can't skate.”

“Well, what makes you think you can?” I asked her. “You've never tried, have you?”

“Well, I can walk better on . . .” That's as far as Mother let her go.

“Now, now!” she said. “Let's not have any bickering. I think you'd both have a lovely time. Oh, by the way, I won't be wearing that plaid skirt any more. Maybe we could fix it over into a skating dress.”

Grace tried to look smug again, but she couldn't. Her eyes were shining too bright. Mother raised her eyebrow at me again, and asked why I didn't take the younger children and go fishing through the ice. We never got many fish, but we always liked to try. Before we went, Mother let me go down to Mr. Shellabarger's and get a pound of wieners, so we could cook our own lunch over a campfire.

We didn't come home from fishing till nearly dark. Mother and Grace were still sewing, and Grace wanted me to keep the children out at the barn while I did my chores. When we came in for supper, the only signs of sewing were a few plaid scraps around the machine. Grace was trying to act as if it were just another day, but her cheeks were red and every move she made was a quick one. After supper, I told her I'd help Muriel with the dishes if she wanted to go and take the curl papers out of her hair.

Mother let Muriel, Philip, and Hal sit up to see Grace's new dress. And they had a long wait. It was more than an hour before she came downstairs. When she did, she looked the prettiest I ever saw her. She and Mother had made a whole new outfit from the old skirt. The plaid was green with red lines through it. There was a pointed cap that Grace wore cocked over a bit to one side—with curls looping up all around it—a little jacket that was more like a vest with sleeves, and a short skirt with dozens of pleats in it. She looked as though she might have just come down from the Scotch Highlands, instead of from her own bedroom.

I didn't want Lady to stand out in the cold, so Grace and I walked down to the party. The easiest way would have been to follow the path along the mill ditch, but Grace wanted to walk clear around by Rapp Avenue. Cold as it was, she just put her heavy coat over her shoulders, and left the whole front unbuttoned.

It seemed as though half the people in Littleton were down at the river. There were bonfires all along both banks, and dozens of skaters on the ice. Some of the older people could skate better than the kids, but the hose-company boys were the best of all.

Ed Bemis was cutting figure eights backwards when we got there. Skip Nutting was holding a pair of skates with his hands, and Ralph Thompson had him by the legs and was pushing him around as if he'd been a wheelbarrow. They were going faster than a horse could run.

Grace and I found a dry log on the bank where we could put on our skates. Grace's were easy. Girls' skates had counters in the back, and straps to buckle around the insteps. Boys' skates just had clamps in the back; so mine didn't work very well, because my heels were worn lopsided.

While I was fussing with my heel clamps, I told Grace, “Once you know the trick of it, there isn't much to skating. I've watched the fellows two or three times. You just point the toe of one skate out a little, and push with it so you'll slide along on the other one.”

When I looked up, Grace wasn't paying a bit of attention to me. She'd taken off her heavy coat and was watching Ed Bemis like a coyote watching a field mouse. I think Ed knew she was watching him. He began cutting all kinds of fancy didos right out in front of us. As I straightened up from the last clamp, Ed spun around a dozen times on the point of one skate, and Grace clapped her hands.

“Hey!” I told her, “you'd better be careful. Katherine Prescott will snatch you baldheaded. Ed's her regular beau.”

Grace knew about Ed and Katherine just as well as I did, but she clapped again when Ed spun around on his other skate.

Katherine was the prettiest senior in Littleton High School. She'd been Ed's girl ever since we'd moved to town, and I didn't want Grace to make a monkey of herself, so I stood up and said, “Come on, let me show you how to skate.”

All I heard Grace say was, “Hmff.”

My skates didn't work the way I expected them to. The second I stepped on the ice, they both flew out from under me. For about a tenth of a second, I was sitting in mid-air. Then I came down on all four corners. I was sure I'd cracked my tail bone, both elbows, and the back of my head. I hadn't, but I couldn't get up. Every time I tried to step on one of my skates, it would scoot out from under me, and I'd go down again. One of my skates pulled off, and when I turned to crawl back to the bank, Grace was gone. There was nothing but her heavy coat on our log.

While I was getting my skate clamped back on, the hose-company boys started promenading around the ice with their girls. Skip Nutting went by me with Katherine Prescott's sister, Edith. Ralph Thompson had Louise Sittser. And then came Ed Bemis and Grace.

Grace wasn't really skating at all, but you'd have had to look close to notice it. Ed was as big as two of her; they were holding hands with their arms crossed; and Ed was almost carrying Grace along. I could see that she wasn't pushing a bit with her skates, but she was sliding on first one of them and then the other so that it looked pretty good.

I spent most of the evening picking myself up and putting my skates back on. And every time I'd look out on the ice, Grace would be going by with Ed Bemis. The moon was so bright it was almost daylight. And Grace's face was even brighter.

Once, when I was getting up from a spill, they went within three feet of me, but neither of them saw me. It's a wonder they didn't run into the bank. By that time, Grace was really skating. She was in front of Ed. He had his hands on her hips and was looking down and talking to her. Grace had taken off her mittens, and had her hands clamped tight over Ed's fingers. They were swinging along as if they were on rockers, and Grace had her face turned up toward Ed's. In the moonlight, her teeth glistened like fresh snow.

I didn't have a very good time skating. The clamps kept pulling off my shoe heels, and I had trouble making both skates go in the same direction. About the third time I fell down, somebody shouted, “Get a horse!” at me, and by midnight, everybody was shouting it—even Grace.

After the New Year's whistles blew, Ed took Grace and me home in his top buggy, but I might just as well have walked. All the way, Ed was telling Grace what a good skater she was going to be, and she was telling him how wonderful he already was. At our front gate, he cramped his wheels way around, and handed Grace down by the elbow—as if she'd been a grown-up lady. She did act like one. “Good night, Mr. Bemis,” she said as she went up the steps, “and thank you for a lovely evening.”

Mother made us hot cambric tea before we went to bed. Every other word Grace said was about “Mr. Bemis,” and she held her little finger way out when she lifted her teacup.

Mother and Grace were getting from forty to fifty pairs of lace curtains to do every week for the Brown Palace Hotel. That gave us enough to pay our rent and Mr. Shellabarger's bills, and to buy whatever clothes the other children needed. Philip and I bought our own, and put the rest of the money we earned into the bank. The rabbits made enough to buy whatever grain we needed for Lady, Ducklegs, and the hens, and I always had enough fryers to trade for the meat.

The curtains made all the difference in the world with Mother. From the time she knew that the Brown Palace liked her work and we gave up the cookery route, she began to look better. She didn't have any more dizzy spells and her back stopped aching. Our evenings were fun again—just as they had been on the ranch. We hooked two big rugs that winter, but we didn't hurry on them, and Mother always read to us as she ripped or sewed the rug rags. Before Easter, she'd finished reading
The Shuttle, Lady in White, Ramona, Ben Hur
, and
Ivanhoe
. And her cheeks were round again.

The last Friday of Easter vacation was rainy. We couldn't do much outside, and there were too many of us in the house. Mother sent Grace and me down to clean the fruit cellar. Our cellar wasn't under the house, but was built like a cave in the back yard. There was a bulkhead door at the top of the steps, and the floor was hard adobe.

It got pretty cold down there in the winter, but nothing ever froze. And always, in the spring, the cellar had to be cleaned out before warm weather came. The fall before, Mother had re-used all the jar rubbers she thought were any good. And she'd used a few that she shouldn't have. Half a dozen jars of raspberries and a couple of jars of strawberries had spoiled. The berries had bunched up at the top of the jars, and the bottom two-thirds was clear red juice.

Grace and I started on the leftover vegetables. She'd scoop them up and put them in a bucket, and I'd carry them out to the henyard. When I came back from the second trip, Grace was looking at a spoiled jar of raspberries. “Did you ever see anything as pretty as that in your life?” she asked me. Then she held the jar up in the doorway so I could look through it against the light. The juice was just as clear as the balls of red medicine in Mr. Hill's drugstore windows. And our fingers, through the jar, looked like big red bananas.

“I'll bet it would taste as good as it looks,” I told her. “It's a shame to throw it away. Let's open a jar and try it.”

I opened the jar while Grace went to the house for a soup-spoon so we could skim the berries out. They skimmed off as easy as cream from overnight milk, and the juice was just a little bit syrupy. Grace wanted me to taste it first, and I did. It was good. There was a funny little tang to it. And it sort of tickled the end of my tongue. But it was sweet, and it made the inside of my chest feel warm as it slid down. I only took two or three swallows; then I passed the jar to Grace.

She liked it, too. After she'd taken one taste, she ran her tongue out over her lips and said, “It really is good; I think it's better than ice-cream soda. We'd be crazy to throw it away.”

First Grace took a few swallows, and then I took some. And then the jar of raspberry juice was empty, so we opened a jar of strawberries. That juice was better than the raspberry. It made a little more tickle on our tongues.

I think it was Grace who threw the first cantaloupe—though she's always said I did it. Anyway, we threw some cantaloupes at each other; and I think some apples, too. Grace got laughing so loud I was afraid Mother would hear her. I know I shut the bulkhead door. And then I don't remember what we threw.

After that, I don't really remember anything very well till Mother came down and woke us up. We were awfully dirty, and neither of us could keep our balance very well, but Mother didn't get cross with us. She just said something about wine playing the infidel, and took us upstairs to bed. I guess Philip did the chores that night, but I'm not sure.