My Children Are More Precious Than Gold (9 page)

“
Nannie, hunt some towels
and a bar of lye soap. These boys have decided to take a bath down
at the creak.”

“
Mercy sakes, this time of
night? That means I’m goen to have to wash towels again before bath
day or there won’t be enough to go around,” Nannie grumbled, going
back into the house.

“
Oh, Pap, that creak is
cold,” complained Lue.

“
Yer not comen back in the
house smellen like that. What were ya boys up to anyways? There was
enough noise comen from that there barn to wake the dead, not to
mention those of us who were in our beds where ever one of y'all
ought to be,” Jacob scolded, surveying the bowed heads. “Oh, never
mind. I'll leave the lantern so ya can see so get to the creak and
take that bath. Make sure ya use plenty of lye soap. We'll talk
about this in the mornen.” Jacob sniffed then pulled up his shirt
tail and smelled. “By the way, what was that awful smellen stuff ya
threw on me?”

“
Genon Mitt's haunt scaren
powder,” Lue sheepishly informed his father.

“
By golly, that stinky
stuff ought to do the trick,” Jacob commented dryly. “Providen
y'all get the right haunt. I don't know who to give my piece of
mind to first. Doak for starting this, or Genon for encouraging
y'all, or ya boys for being so gullible. Nannie, ya better fetch a
towel fer me, too,” he growled as he took the towels she handed
him.

Chapter 6

Geese -- Baked Or Stewed

On a day in early May, Bess and Lillie
were headed the two miles home from an overnight visit at Grandma
and Grandpa Bowers. The girls walked along the narrow, rocky, clay
cow path that trailed among the tall broomsede weeds bordering
Little River.

Holding onto the handles of a bushel
basket of cornmeal that Grandpa Bowers ground at his mill, the
girls were taking the meal home for Nannie to use to bake bread.
When they were short of coffee or sugar, cornmeal could be used to
trade at the store for what Nannie needed, because there was very
little money to spend. The price of coffee at that time was fifteen
cents, sugar was four cents and the price of a dozen of eggs was
fourteen cents.

Bess and Lillie liked to visit their
grandparents so the day before they willingly shelled enough corn
to fill the bushel basket and carried it the two miles to the grist
mill. The children enjoyed going down to the grist mill with
Grandpa Bower to watch the corn ground into meal under two large
stones rolling together by power of a water mill. A big wooden box
connected to a dammed up area in the river filled with water then
flowed over a big wheel that turned the stones.

Payment was usually one gallon of meal
for grinding the bushel basket full, but Grandma insisted that
Grandpa didn’t want payment. She liked to help her daughter in
whatever way she could, because she knew that it was hard to put
food on the table for all those children.

Thing was Jacob’s pride usually got in
the way if the girls came home with too much so Grandma had to be
careful not to send more than Jacob might object to. Grandma Bower
need not have worried. Nannie thought more about taking care of her
children then she did Jacob’s pride. If Jacob wasn’t around when
the children arrived home from her parents bearing gifts, she
quietly put away whatever was given and used it without Jacob
realizing where it came from.

Two folded flour sacks made of cotton
material with red and white checks and a bouquet of small blue
roses scattered among the check lay on top of the meal. Grandma
saved all her extra sacks from flour, sugar, salt, tobacco, coffee,
feed, seed and fertilizer to send Nannie to use to make dresses and
shirts for the children. Sometimes Nannie made dishtowels or aprons
for her and the girls. With the smaller scraps, she sewed doll
clothes for Christmas presents or used them in a quilt
top.

When the basket grew heavy, the girls
stopped to rest. Bess kicked an embedded, glittering, quarts rock
loose with the toe of her handmade, cowhide leather shoe. She
cleared her brown bangs out of her eyes as she bent to pick up the
rock. She gave it a toss over the weeds and watched it disappear
beyond the river bank. For a moment, the girls stood still,
listening for the plunk the rock made when it hit the swiftly
moving currant.

“
Ya know ya ought not to
kick rocks with yer new shoes, Bess. They won't last ya through the
year that way.” Standing with her hands on her hips, Lillie's long,
brown pigtails waved back and forth over her shoulders as she shook
her head in disapproval.

Pap like most men in those days was a
jack of all trades. One of the things he did was make everyone in
the family their one pair of shoes when they wore out or outgrew
the pain they had. The problem was Jacob made the girls’ shoes with
the same low tops as the boys which made the girls unhappy, but
they had no choice if they wanted a pair of shoes to
wear.

He’d take cow and horse hides to a
tanning yard not too far from the farm to be tanned. The hides were
immersed in water and oak bark in a big tank and kept pressed down
until the hair loosened. Then the hides were hung up to dry, and
the hair scraped off.

“
I knowed I shouldn’t kick
rocks, but I hate these ugly shoes so I don't care. Why does Pap
keep maken shoes for us offen the same pattern he uses for the
boys?” Bess looked down in disgust at her feet as she walked down
the narrow path.

“
Ya know very well, it's
cause the one pattern's all he's ------. Look out, Bess!” Ashen
faced, Lillie gripped her handle of the basket tighter and pulled
it and Bess backward down the path.

“
What's ailen ya?” Bess
gasped, crossly.

“
Ya got to start watchen
ahead of yerself better. Look!” Lillie pointed a trembling finger
at where they had been.

Stretched motionless across the cow
path, a copperhead snake, his light brown skin speckled with dark
brown blotches, lay camouflaged among the rocks. The snake's
bronze, triangular head lifted to let his beady, black eyes focus
on what had disturbed his slumber. The girls, well aware of the
snake's quick, deadly striking ability, stood very still, staring
at him. The slow, bobbing motion of his head kept them in suspense
as the copperhead looked around for the unsuspecting mouse or bird
he thought had awakened him. Not seeing anything close by that
looked like a tasty meal, he slithered slowly into the weeds toward
the river.

The girls, looking at each other,
sighed together in relief.

“
Think it’s safe to go
now?” Whispered Bess.

“
Let's throw some rocks in
the weeds after him. Maybe that will hurry the rascal on his way,”
said Lillie.

“
Oh, now it's all right to
throw rocks!” Grumped Bess.

“
Sure,” Lillie said with a
grin. “Jest don't kick em with yer shoes first.”

The little girls pelted the weeds with
the rocks, then darted passed the place on the path where the snake
had been. They didn't stop running until they reached their
pasture's split rail fence.

Bess balanced herself on the fence as
she bent over to lift up on her end of the basket and then balanced
it on the fence until Lillie climbed over. Pulling the basket of
cornmeal off the fence, they carried it up a steep hill through
grazed short grass, and broomsede. The stench of the bitter weed
patches Bess and Lillie walked through caused the them to wrinkle
up their noses. They felt like a sneeze coming on after they
stirred up those stinky plants covered with small, white daisy-like
flowers.

Standing at the top of the pasture
hill, the girls looked down on their log home and outbuildings
nestled in the hollow between ridges. It seemed unusually quiet for
midday, considering the number of people who lived
there.

“
I don't see anyone
about,” observed Bess.

“
The boys are probably
hepen Pap in the field, but ya would think some of the girls would
be playen outside,” said Lillie. They started down the
hill.

Quietly stepping through the kitchen
screen door, the girls set the basket of cornmeal just inside the
door. They knew something was definitely wrong when they saw Nannie
standing in front of the ironing board near the cookstove. She
lifted her now cooled iron and plopped it noisily on the stove to
reheat. Then she removed the handle and stuck it on the heated flat
iron. After observing the stiffness of her back and the square set
of her broad shoulders as she picked a wadded up, dampened dress
out of the wicker laundry basket, shook it with more fervor than
necessary and began to iron, the girls decided to slide quietly
past her. They climbed lightly up the narrow stairs to their
bedroom, carefully avoiding the steps that would creak.

Entering their bedroom, they found
Cass and Veder sitting on one of the two joint-willow beds. Cass, a
small pail of green beans in her lap, rethreaded a darning needle
with the grocery cord Nannie had rolled into a ball, saved from the
ends of sacks. Placing the ball of cord back on the bed beside her,
Cass ran the needle through each of the slender, green vegetables
one at a time to string them. Each piece of cord filled with green
beans would be scalded in hot water for a few minutes and hung up
to dry on a forked pole behind the cookstove. When Nannie wanted to
prepare the dried green beans, she’d take some of them she’d stored
in bags off the cord and soak them overnight in a pan of lukewarm
water then boil them with salt pork.

Veder was knitting socks from some of
Nannie's recently spun wool yarn, lavender this time. That was an
endless job with so many feet in the Bishop family to keep
covered.

“
What's Mama so riled up
fer?” Bess whispered when she sat down on the bed across from Cass
and Veder. Lillie sat down beside her.

“
Ya didn't talk to her
before ya came up here?” Veder asked in a lowered voice, looking up
from her needles.

“
Nope, we seed her bang an
iron down on the stove, and we slipped right on by. We could seed
she was mad about somethin,” answered Lillie.

“
Say where's everybody
else at? It sure is quiet around here,” asked Bess.

“
They's hid out, too,”
Cass informed her. “The boys all went with Pap to the field. Mama
sent Alma to the garden to pick turnips for supper, and Lydia's
layen down. She told Veder and me to come up here out of her way.
Handed me this here pail of beans, and Veder the yarn to keep us
busy.”

“
But, what's she so riled
up about?” Persisted Lillie.

“
She's real upset about
her geese. After y'all left for Grandpa Bower's yesterday, the boys
went to do chores and came back holleren fer Mama to come look at
her geese. They was all dead.” Veder laid her needles down on the
bed.

“
All thirty of em?” Gasped
Lillie.

“
All thirty of em,” Veder
confirmed in a matter of fact tone.

“
But what happened to all
of em at once?” Asked Bess, aghasted.

“
We don't rightly know.
Mama couldn't find anythin wrong with em,” Cass related. “They was
layen scattered around down by the pig pen where they usually
roost. Mama sure hated losen all of em after she took such good
care of em. She told us to pick all the feathers offen em so she
could at least have em to stuff pillows. She had the boys carry the
carcasses up to the ridge timber for the coyotes to carry
off.”

The whole family had looked forward to
the treat of baked goose on special occasions. The girls could
understand why Nannie would be so upset at the loss of the geese.
Nannie had been pleased with the good hatch the year before. She
took special care of those big birds with the thought that there
would be plenty of goose to eat for special occasions. She made
sure the geese had plenty to eat and turned a deaf ear to the boys’
complaints that some of the ganders had turned mean.

Nannie would have had a fit for sure
if she knew how often one of the ganders had attacked the boys. For
revenge, the boys tackled the squawking bird, and held his large
flapping wings down while they tied his beak shut with a piece of
twine. Luckily for the boys and the goose, the twine always slid
off before the goose starved to death, or Nannie had a chance to
see what had taken place.

Suddenly, the girls heard Nannie's
raised, excited voice from the kitchen below them proclaim, “Mercy
sakes, those poor sick things!”

Then came the hollow bang of the
screen door, and after that, the sounds of loud, squeaky honks and
hisses from the direction of the ridge behind the house. The girls
ran to look out the bedroom window. Coming out of the underbrush,
one by one, was a parade of featherless geese. Slowly waddling over
the rocky ground, the large birds treated each rock as a big
boulder to climb as they tripped and fell over them. Laboriously,
they picked themselves up, staggering two steps forward then one
back. Headed for their favorite spot by the pig pen, their heads
drooped at the end of their long arched, necks which almost touched
the ground while they staggered along. It seemed as though they had
trouble seeing the path with their bulging, black eyes so they
needed to get as close a look as they could. Loud honks and hisses
emitted from the geese between labored gasps for breath to announce
they were home.