My Children Are More Precious Than Gold (6 page)

Pap and the boys left early for the
field to plant corn. Bess and Lillie helped Nannie in the house.
Cass carried a hoe down to the garden. She planned to lay off rows
to plant turnips and potato eyes. Dillard played dominoes Lydia on
the porch.

Squatted in the grass in the shade of
the mulberry tree, Veder carefully poured spring water from a rust
speckled, tin cup onto the fine, red clay Lillie mounded and shaped
between her hands. As the stream of cold water trickled over the
clay and through Lillie’s fingers, she molded it into the shape of
a mud pie. Suddenly, Lillie dropped the clay pie, jumped to her
feet, and sprinted across the yard.

“
Where ya think yer goen
in such a hurry?” Veder shouted after her.

“
The outhouse! After
feelen that water run through my fingers, I cain’t wait any
longer,” Lillie yelled over her shoulder. In her hurry, her
pigtails bounced off her back as she trotted away.

“
Wait for me.” Hurrying to
catch up, Veder followed her sister toward the small, weathered
building that stood near the pig pen.

They had just passed the barn yard
when a small black and white blur, running close to the ground,
came toward the little girls.

“
Run faster, Veder!
Pecker’s seen us!” Lillie turned the latch and held the door open
until Veder got there. Both girls stepped in, slamming the door
behind them. They climbed up on the two hole seat, leaning forward
to look out the half moon opening in the door to see where the
rooster was at.

Pecker, a black and white speckled,
bantam rooster, halted at the door. He cocked his head to one side,
watching the outhouse while he tried to figure out how he was going
to get to the girls inside. Angrily, he shook his ruffled feathers,
stomped one foot and stiffly drooped one wing to touch the ground
while he strutted around in a circle, warning the girls he was
going to guard the outhouse until they came out.

Suddenly, a large, brown grasshopper
rattled to a stop in front of Pecker, distracting him. The rooster
stretched his neck to strike at the insect just as the grasshopper
fluttered off. Not wanting to let a tasty meal get away, Pecker
chased after the low flying bug.

The girls saw the rooster take off and
thought he had forgotten about them. That seemed like a good time
to sneak back to the yard, but the door's rusty hinges squeaked
loudly when Veder opened it. Pecker heard the noise behind him, and
looked back. Then he looked in the direction of the grasshopper and
saw that the insect had picked up speed and disappeared. Not
wanting to let the girls escape too, he raced back toward the
outhouse.

Screaming, the girls retreated back
inside just as Pecker got there. They yelled for help, hoping that
someone would hear them.

“
Who's doen all that
hollerin'?” Don yelled, coming out of the barn.

“
We are. Here in the
outhouse. Pecker has us trapped, and he won't let us out,” Lillie
called back.

“
Come hep us, Don,” Veder
cried. “We don't want to stay in here forever.”

“
Ya two afeared of a
little rooster?” Don taunted as he walked toward them.

“
He hurts when he pecks
us,” defended Lillie.

“
Shoo!,” Don said, walking
up to Pecker. The rooster, guarding the outhouse door, ruffled up
at Don to defend his position. “Shoo, Pecker! Get back to yer hens!
Go on now!” Don clapped his hands. Wisely, Pecker decided he had
met his match, turned and retreated back to the barn yard. “Y'lla
can come out now, scaredy cats.”

“
Will ya walk with us back
to the yard so Pecker won't get us?” asked Lillie.

“
I reckon, but hurry up.
I'm supposed to be hepen plant corn now that I’ve finished the
chores,” Don said as he escorted the girls past Pecker.

The rooster was busy clucking for his
hens to gather them to help him catch the bugs he'd scratched out
from under a cow pile. Pecker stopped long enough to wistfully
watch Don and the girls walk by him. He’d keep on guard, and
sometime there would be another chase. That was for
certain.

Leaving the girls inside the yard
fence, Don turned in the direction of the cornfield.

“
Don, Don!” Lillie called
after him.

“
Now what do y'all want?”
Don growled as he stopped to look back at them.

“
Can ya come back and walk
with us to the outhouse again?”

“
Lillie, ya jest came from
there,” Don snapped.

“
I know, but we got so
scared when Pecker chased us, we forgot why we was in there,”
explained Veder.

“
Sisters!” Don expelled
under his breath, rolling his eyes skyward as he turned back toward
the girls.

Veder and Lillie had just picked up
where they left off with the mud pie when Nannie came to the screen
door. “Girls, will ya please go to the cellar and get me a mess of
turnips to cook for dinner. Anyway I think there was a mess left
the last time I looked.”

“
Yes, Mama,” agreed Veder.
Standing up, she rubbed her hands together to brush off the wet red
clay. “Come on, Lillie. You heard Mama.”

“
All right,” said Lillie,
reluctantly putting down the tin cup.

The girls walking out of the fenced in
yard and stayed close to the waddle fence until they reached the
back of the cabin. A few yards away, the ground sloped up to start
the ridge. The cellar, a hole dug in the ground, had been hollowed
out in the slope to store food. In those days, the temperature in
the winter in Virginia never went down enough to freeze hard so a
cellar was like having a refrigerator.

Lillie pulled up on the medal ring in
the cellar’s heavy, wooden door to open it. A cool musky odor
rushed out of the dark hole. The girls stepped into the hole then
had to let their eyes adjust to the dimness. Emptied baskets and
pails were scattered about on the floor.

One basket held the last of the
potatoes, shriveled and laying tangled in long, white sprouts.
Thinking about planting a crop of potatoes, Nannie saved the
sprouts when she peeled potatoes by cutting a piece of the peel
around the indented areas called eyes where the sprouts were
attached. The sprouts were laid aside and dried to
plant.

Another basket held the last of the
white and purple turnips, now shrunk to half their size. Spongy to
the touch after a winter of storage, the turnips were hard to peel.
Nannie and the girls managed to boil a mess after soaking them in
cold water for a brief time. Though the taste of these vegetables
were never the same as when they were fresh out of the garden, the
family had no choice but to survive on what food they could
raise.

Lillie held her apron tail up for
Veder to fill with the turnips, then she walked outside. She waited
for Veder to let the door back down. On their way back to the
house, the girls heard a horse approaching, coming from the
direction of the cornfield. Jacob was leading Major, the work
horse. Favoring one front hoof, Major moved along
slowly.

The girls hurried up their pace to get
to the kitchen. They rushed through the screen door and tried to
talk at the same time.

“
For lands sake, hold on a
minute. One at a time,” Nannie said and laughed at the excited
girls.

“
Mama, Pap’s comen. He’s
leading Major. Looks like he’s limpen,” said Lillie.

“
Mercy sakes, yer Pap is
limpen?” Nannie gasped.

“
No, Mama,” Veder
explained. “The horse is limpen.”

“
Oh,” Nannie said with
relief in her eyes. She didn’t want to think about what life on
their farm would be like if Pap were to get hurt again with all the
spring work needed to be done.

In the past, Nannie went to the field
with the rest of the family to help plant corn, but the boys, older
now, could help Pap. Following Jacob who guided the horse across
the field laying off the rows, Nannie used to drop two or three
kernels of corn in a spot in the row. The children came along
behind Nannie, covering the grain with hoes. Frankly, that spring
Nannie just didn't feel up to planting corn.

Following her children across the
yard, Nannie waited for Jacob to get closer before she spoke.
“What’s the matter with Major?”

“
He threw a shoe in the
corn field. I left the boys to work with the other horse while I
brought this one in to put a new shoe on him. Bess, ya want to run
the billows fer me?” Pap asked. He headed for his blacksmith shop
under the shade of a grove of oak trees. The shop was actually a
shed which was a few poles covered on three sides with corrugated
tin.

Bess followed along, dreading the hot
job ahead but knowing she had no choice. Being a blacksmith was
part of farming, and she had helped Pap before. Jacob started a
fire in a small open bowl on three legs called a forge. Beside the
forge sat an iron anvil, weighing about fifty pounds. It was
attached to an oak block to make the anvil tall enough to keep
Jacob from having to bend over. A small quenching tub sat close so
that he could dunk the hot metal in water to cool it.

As soon as the red coals in the forge
needed air to revive them, Bess counted slowly with each turn of
the crank on the blower attached to the forge. The blacksmith shed
had a unique blend of smells: scorching of hot coals and metal
mixed with the scents of leather harness, and sweaty
horses.

Pap would hold onto the iron with a
tong, wait until it was glowing red then bring it around to an
anvil and beat it into the shape he wanted with a hammer. The
hammer striking against the medal rang in Bess’s ears long after
Pap finished. In her memory forever would be the sight of her
father’s sweat glowing skin, his wet shirt plastered to his back,
and the bulge of his upper arm muscles when he put out the effort
it took to shape the hot horseshoe.

While she cranked, Bess looked around
the shed at the tools Pap had made hanging on nails, and some he
had repaired, leaning against the walls. Hoe blades, plow shares,
axes, and a mattocks, which had a blade with one end wide and the
other end a pick. For the tool handles, Pap used hickory wood as
well as for the wagon spokes and sled runners to put on the wagons
and sleds he’d made for farming.

In between cranking, Bess would run to
the spring and bring back Jacob a cup of cold water. While she was
at it, she'd get herself a drink as well. In Bess opinion, it
wasn't a fun job helping Jacob in the blacksmith shop, but she'd
already learned that work wasn't supposed to be fun.

Chapter 5

Haunt Dawson

Later that same morning,
Nannie paused, held her flour covered hands above the biscuit dough
she was kneading, and listened intently.
Who is doen all that hammeren in the barn?
She wondered as she walked to the screen
door.

She looked passed the wash stand and
the corn broom turned upside down, leaning against the porch wall
to where Dillard was playing dominoes with Alma and Lydia on the
porch. Nannie smiled to herself as she listened to Lydia giggle
when she won a game. The child’s health had improved somewhat. It
was a relief to Nannie to see Lydia put on a few pounds, and her
hair growing back.

Lillie and Veder were making mud pies
in the sand pile under the mulberry tree. Nannie shook her head as
she imagined what their dresses were going to look like when they
were through. The slick haired, tan coonhound, Jasper, lay curled
up at the base of the mulberry tree, sleeping the day away so he’d
be rested for a night in the timber if the boys didn’t think to tie
him up.

She’d sent Cass and Bess to the garden
to pick green beans and greens for the meal, and Jacob and the
older boys were in the cornfield, laying the corn by.

At the moment, she didn’t hear any
more hammering, and Nannie knew if she was going to get the
biscuits baked by noon she’d better get back to kneading the
biscuit dough. The boys always called their mother’s biscuits
slugs, because Nannie made her biscuits larger than anyone else.
Thinking about that made Nannie smile as she punched and rolled the
dough.

About an hour later, Nannie heard
laughter and talking on the porch as the family lined up at the
wash stand, cleaning up for lunch. Nannie stepped out on the porch,
took the towel off its nail and offered it to Jacob. He shook his
dripping hands above the chipped, white, granite wash pan with a
red rim that had been on that wash stand since before he was born
then took the towel from Nannie.

“
Food's ready as if y'all
didn't know,” quipped Nannie. With her hands on her hips, she
watched her brood file in and sit down at the table. When they
quieted down and joined hands, Nannie nodded at Jacob to say grace.
Then they began to pass the bowls of food.

“
By the way, what was all
that hammeren about in the barn I heared in the middle of the
mornen?” Asked Nannie.

The four older boys looked at each
other blankly and shrugged their shoulders.

“
We were all in the
cornfield this mornen,” said Lue and looked at the other boys.
“Wasn’t us?”