The Egg and I (21 page)

Of course, Aunty Vida was an idiot anyway, but our other guests weren't. They were Bob's immediate family and my immediate family and other charming intelligent people, but they all had the same idea. "Beautiful scenery, magnificent mountains, heavenly food, you fortunate people!" they said as they waddled away from the table. They neglected to note that while they lay in slothful slumber breathing in great draughts of invigorating, smokeless, fumeless, clean, appetite-producing mountain air, Bob and I were cleaning and picking chickens, cleaning clams, burying clam and crab shells, washing dishes, packing eggs, shelling peas and finally dragging to bed at twelve or half past.

"Oh, I just love to wash at an old-fashioned sink," they said. I don't mind washing at an old-fashioned sink, either, when someone else has got up and made an old-fashioned fire and carried and heated some old-fashioned water, and I know that in a day or so I will go back to town and wash off the country grime in an old-fashioned bathtub.

When my family came out to visit for the first time, they were more interested in meeting the Kettles than in exploring our ranch. I took them to call, but poor Mrs. Kettle was overcome with shyness and made us all sit in the parlor and tried so hard to be "reefined" that she only began two sentences with Key-rist. When one of my sisters admired the decorations hanging from the mantel, she said, "Aw I didn't want all that goddamned cr-er-trash hanging there, but the girls insisted." Then she subsided in an agony of embarrassment. I asked her where she had bought the linoleum because I was anxious to get some for my kitchen. She said, "A feller come by about ten years ago and he had samples as pretty as you please and I picked out the pattrun I wanted but when the Jeezly stuff come it weren't the right color and when that feller come back the next year I told him where he—where he . . . where he-e-e-e—" and Mrs. Kettle turned crimson and left the sentence dangling like the flypaper that hung from the lamp hook.

When introduced to the guests, Elwin closed his eyes tight and he didn't open them until we were leaving. Paw alone retained his savoir faire. He came clumping up onto the back porch exuding barnyard odors and good will, and after a few hearty stamps to loosen any loosely caked mud or manure he came charging into the parlor and shook hands heartily with everyone. "Glad to thee you, glad to thee you," he beamed as he settled himself full length on the shiny leather couch. Mother said to Mrs. Kettle, "Do you mind if I smoke?" "Not at all, not at ALL," boomed Paw. "Thmoke A WHOLE CARTOON if you have a mind to. Anyone want a THIGAR?" and he laughed uproariously as he proffered a much-chewed cigar end.

By the time we had the house ready for guests, Gammy had gone to visit her sisters in Colorado, so we were deprived of her reaction to our ranch. However, after the cougar episode I doubt if we could have persuaded her to visit us, even if she had been violently enthusiastic previously, as she had not.

Bob's dress-designing sister and her artist husband came for a week that second summer and they were delightful guests. I clung to them like the smell of frying in an effort to breathe in some of their aura of bright sophistication.

Geoduck Swensen, the angel, preceded their arrival by a few minutes with a gunny sack of Dungeness crabs, a water bucket of Little Neck clams and a bucket of butter clams.

I made the butter clams into fritters for breakfast, staying up until midnight cutting them out of their shells, removing the black part of the neck and the stomach, grinding them and wondering what to do with the shells which smelled so horrible after just a few hours in the sun. I used Mrs. Hicks' recipe for the fritters, which was just an ordinary fritter recipe except that where the recipe asked for two eggs I used either six or twelve depending on the number of people I intended to feed. I also used twice as many ground clams as batter and threw in at the last a handful of fine chopped parsley. For anyone whose only experience with clam fritters has been the big doughy blobs with three specks of clam per blob, which most restaurants serve, I would suggest getting hold of some clams immediately and making yourself a batch. Served with dawn-picked strawberries, strong coffee and Mrs. Hicks' thick yellow cream (which we learned we could buy as whipping cream), clam fritters were not easily forgotten. In fact, thanks to the natural resources of that country, all of the meals were notable. My guests even liked the moonshine which was Maxwell Ford Jefferson's best, and that was good because Jeff was the best moonshiner in our country, having come from a long line of Kentucky moonshine people. Jeff never drank himself, testing his whiskey by the feel of it. He said that the gallon he gave Bob just before our guests arrived felt good and didn't smell too bad.

With all the good food and smooth whiskey Bob's brother-in-law heard the coyotes howl dismally all night; he felt the heavy forbidding nearness of the mountains; he saw the majesty in the unbroken miles and miles and miles of trees, but he saw also the loneliness of such a vista. He reveled in the crystalline beauty of the summer dawn, but he helped me light the fires; he thought the spring water sweet and satisfying, but he helped me carry it; he examined Bob's egg records and was impressed by our hens' performance, by Bob's excellent management, but he said, "The thing that defeats me about a hen is its unresponsiveness. You can pour your heart's blood into their upbringing and all you can hope for is a squawk. You can stroke cats, pet dogs and ride horses, but the only thing you can do with a hen is eat it." Jerry said also, "I think this is an ideal spot to do penance in, but a hell of a place to live."

Bob's sister said, "But, Jerry, this moonlight, the mountains, the quiet and the food! It's like something you dream about."

Jerry said, "Uh, huh, but we'd rather have a peanut butter sandwich in Grand Central Station, wouldn't we, Betty?" He also insisted on seeing all of my sketches and said that my water colors had great strength and I must keep on with my painting. I tried to think of something just this side of human sacrifice to show my appreciation.

Bob had always treated my painting as a sort of recurring illness like malaria, and I glanced at him quickly to see what his reaction to Jerry's opinion would be. Bob wasn't even listening—he was reading about round worms in the
Washington Poultryman
.

We took a wonderful trip while Bob's sister and brother-in-law were there. We drove down to Discovery Bay, then up to Port Angeles, then on to Lakes Crescent and Sutherland. It was a trip to prove that occasionally fulfillment exceeds anticipation. We left the baby with Mrs. Hicks, and arranged with Mr. Hicks to gather the eggs and feed the chickens, pig, calf, etc., and were on our way by nine o'clock. It turned out to be a day to treasure, to bring out once in a while to fondle and remember. To begin with, the Discovery Bay road, instead of leaping and twisting around the mountains trying to scare its customers to death as most mountain roads do, took us firmly by the hands, led us between banks of rhododendrons and rows of great cedars and firs, up a gradual slope and around well-banked curves until we reached the top of a mountain and a stoutly fenced lookout point called the Crow's Nest but large enough for trucks to back and turn.

Here all obstructions had been sheared away, and we got out and stood on the brink with nothing but the yellow highway fence between us and the Bay hundreds and hundreds of feet straight down.

We were up so high and the day was so clear that we could see the Straits of Juan de Fuca and Victoria, B. C. I had a strong feeling that if I had brought my glasses I could have spotted London Bridge and the Arc de Triomphe. This bay was named by Captain Vancouver who sailed into its calm waters in 1792 to repair his ship the
Discovery
and, as a reward, named the bay Port Discovery and the small island, which sits sturdily at the entrance, fending off storms and high seas, Protection Island.

The bay is horseshoe-shaped, peacock-blue and beautifully trimmed with white shores and black forests. At the head we watched a tiny lumber train dump its load of matches and go snuffing up the hill again. Sharp and clear came the whistle punk's signals for a skidder somewhere in the mountains back of us. Directly below we could make out infinitesimal beach houses, and a more perilous location I cannot imagine because one pebble carelessly kicked off the top edge could work up enough fury on the way down to smash in a roof. Occasionally on the face of the bluff a brave tree, with toes dug in, leaned against the wind, her hair blowing out straight toward the sea.

After leaving the lookout point the road thoughtfully put up its trees again to shield us from the scarier aspects and before we knew it, we were coasting across tideflats on a bridge. The road didn't leave the water until we had passed Dungeness, the famous crab catchery, and reached the flats of Sequim, a very rich dairy country. We bowled along between well-kept fences, herds of sleek Guernseys, and spacious barns until we reached the top of a long hill and the outskirts of a town. The first thing we knew there was a large
Penny's
sign and we were in Port Angeles. Port Angeles, quite evidently supported by pulp mills and their bad smells, is located on the Straits of Juan de Fuca facing Vancouver Island. It is a beautiful town with all of the streets ending at the water's edge, a long spit extending into the Sound like a reaching arm, homes and gardens perched on hills that sweep up steeply from the business district, then obligingly flatten out into plateaus commanding a view embracing Victoria, B. C., the Olympic Mountains and the passing freighters in the deep blue Sound. We had lunch at the best restaurant, which was a regulation chop house with starched white tablecloths and a high-class clientele. Bob, dressed in slacks and sport jacket, looked so devastatingly unfamiliar in the booth beside me that I could hardly eat.

It was almost dusk when we got back to Discovery Bay, but Bob insisted that we stop at the "mansion," a decaying and deserted old estate sprawled along a bluff overlooking Discovery Bay and facing the Crow's Nest. It seems that years and years ago a lumber king for some strange masculine reason thought this spot would be a fine place to bring his young South American bride; but she (and I don't blame her) stayed two months, said to hell with the good neighbor policy and ran home as fast as her little South American legs would carry her. The lumber king, hurt and bewildered closed up the estate and never came back.

The main house, a Victorian grande dame, was prickly with cupolas, little balconies and chimneys. The sagging porches and paneless windows gave it a wrinkled toothless look. Crouching at the back was a huddled mass of servants' quarters with caretakers' cottages, barns and farm buildings across the driveway on the other side. Buildings, orchards and gardens were strung along the edge of the bluff, but so obliterated by second growth, firs, blackberry vines and salal that only by stumbling on broken bits of fence were we able to guess what had been where.

It was quite dark by the time we started through the main house, and the creaking boards, bits of falling plaster and sudden bats kept us hushed and goosefleshy, until Bob, who had stayed behind to examine an old plow, came stamping in, slamming doors and commenting on things in a loud hearty voice. We stepped into a ballroom dappled with shadows and oozing atmosphere and romance, and Bob began pounding on the walls to locate the studs. "With just a little fixing up you could probably house three or four hundred chickens in here," remarked his sister coldly. Bob laughed good-naturedly. "There are some wonderful timbers in this old house," he said. "If I could get it cheap enough it would pay me to tear it down and haul the timbers up to the ranch for a new chicken house." This created such a furor of protest that he stopped being volubly commercial, but while I gazed at the little raised stage at one end of the ballroom and pictured South American musicians playing hot-blooded South American music for the homesick bride, Bob was, I could tell by his face, mentally putting in roosts and nests below the windows.

Upstairs there were endless hallways and about twenty bedrooms, but only one very slender bathroom, with high-stepping gray marble fixtures. The master bedroom across the front of the house had a balcony leaning yearningly toward the water far below. By the time we had reached the second floor the moonlight was pointing up broken steps, spidery corners and cavernous closets and Sister and I were anxious for hot coffee; but Bob, still bold and hearty, made us step out onto the rickety balcony and peer down at the phosphorescent hull of an old sailing vessel lying at the bottom of the bay.

Clutching the fragile railing and crawling with cobwebs and gooseflesh, I expected any moment to feel a hairy hand on my shoulder and to turn around and find Boris Karloff.

Home seemed very cozy with cold fried chicken, hot coffee and all of the buildings one-storied and melting down into the ground.

As our back door closed on each departing guest it closed also on dinner-table conversation and the incentive to arrange flowers and wear nail polish. When the Sister and Brother-in-law left, I laid my sketches beside my first corsage and, grimly shouldering my new pressure cooker, I dropped back into the old groove.

Fancywork Versus the Printed Word

W
ith my usual bad management, when I moved to the ranch I took with me a box of old school and children's books instead of my own books. At first in loneliness and desperation I read
The Five Little Peppers
, Alden's
Encyclopedia
and
The Way of All Flesh
, separately, together, and alternately over and over. I also read magazines, the newspapers and any and all catalogues. I couldn't borrow books because my neighbors never read. Reading was a sign of laziness, boastfulness and general degradation.

Mountain farm women did fancywork. They embroidered their dishtowels and then bleached them so that they always looked mended. They embroidered their pillowcases with hard, scratchy knots and flowers. They embroidered every stitch their babies wore, and they embroidered, tatted, crocheted and otherwise disfigured their own underclothing, handkerchiefs, doilies, bureau scarves, bedspreads, sheets and napkins. They called it "emboidrying" and said, "I'm going to emboidry me some pillow slips." They were at it from infancy to the grave, but as I don't like embroidery in any form, I resolved that they could cross-stitch me to the cross and I would not learn. I'm the type of female the pioneers were tickled pink to give to the Indians as a hostage.