The Whistling Season (37 page)

"There's going to be trouble," I predicted, not bothering to keep my voice down.

Rose froze in mid-slide into her chair, shooting a wide-eyed look of question across at me.

"H
E'S NOT GONNA COME, IS HE
?"

The earsphtting wail from Toby in the upstairs bedroom hung in the air of the house like a stuck echo, then was chased by loud sobs.

"There it is now," I said.

Rose raced out of the kitchen and I followed. There was a clatter in Father's bedroom, and he charged into the hallway trying to tuck in his shirttad and slick back his hair at the same time. He pulled up short at the sight of Rose, and gave her the full-of-sap smile a fiance gives a fiancee with two weeks to go before the wedding.

"Good morning, my dear. It sounds as if we have a crisis with our impatient patient. Come on up; you may as well get in practice for this sort of thing. You too, Paul; we may need all the troops."

When we reached there, Damon had floundered over to Toby's bed, dragging most of the bedclothes from his and mine on the journey, and was sitting with his arm draped around Toby blearily reciting, "What's the matter, Tobe? Tobe, what's the matter?" although the reason was right out the window.

"T
HE DOCTOR
!" Indignantly Toby managed to break off crying long enough to loose another blast at the sight of Father and Rose and me and point to the grayed-over window by his bunk. "I
T'S GONNA RAIN, AND HE WON'T COME
! W
HY COULDN'T IT RAIN A COUPLE OF DAYS AGO
?"

Toby's agony was justifiable. This was the day set for his last looking-over by the doctor, but if it wasn't a case of life and death, no physician in his right mind would dare to launch a Model T onto Marias Coulee's roads ahead of a deluge. Henry Ford's pride and joy was no match for our mud. Like the rest of us, Toby had seen too many fledgling automobiles in the ditch to hold any
hope for a traveler arriving when the clouds were practically dragging the ground out there. A pang for him went through me. After all his weeks as a patient, from the look of things Toby was going to have to keep right on lugging his foot around as if it were made of glass, and he howled again at the prospect.

"It just isn't fair, is it," Rose at once pitched in, kneeling to dab away his tears with her handkerchief, a stylish monogramed
RL
one, I noticed, rather than the old yellowed thing Aunt Eunice had always put to the same purpose. "But the doctor will come the first minute he can, I know he will."

I was not going to bawl about it, but I was almost as desperate as my little brother in hoping she was right. As my passenger to school every morning, Toby had nearly worn the skin off my back and middle with his wiggle-worm restlessness behind the saddle. Damon now woke up enough to look just as dismayed at any more days of hauling our whirling dervish home behind him. Wall to wall, there was not a being in our household, probably including Houdini, who was not more than ready for Toby to be certified as mended.

Father, however, was in a predicament. Here he was, a farmer who madly wanted it to rain and rain some more, but the parent of a terminally disappointed boy marooned by the prospect of mud. Covertly, I watched him gauge back and forth from the gray, swollen clouds outside to Toby's stormy little face and make up his mind.

"Tobe, my man, we'll go to him," he reached the valiant decision. "The team and surrey will take the mud all right, if the weather does cut loose. I'll throw on a vulcanized tarp to keep us dry. We'll get you to that doctor in royal style."

"R-r-really?" Toby's sobs ebbed away at the prospect of a trip to town. He got busy wiping his nose with the back of his
hand, Rose determinedly substituting the handkerchief every swipe she could. Blinking away last tears, he peered at her in adoration. "Rose, can you come too?"

She looked up at Father. "If it would help—?"

I'd love to have your company," Father shook his head, "but you'd better hold down things at this end. Get your clothes on, Tobe. Damon, you could stand some, too."

I had hopes myself on the matter of town, but as soon as Father and Rose and I were back downstairs he made it clear other duties beckoned me. "Barn chores," he ratded off, his mind mostly elsewhere, "you and Damon, need I say more?"

Then, strangely, he drew quite a breath and turned so he was facing Rose square on. Determination was in his expression, and inquiry in hers. Whatever this was about, I started to edge to the kitchen to leave the two of them alone, but Father crooked a finger at me.

"I have another task for everybody. Florence's things"—his gaze shifted from Rose's face to include me—"Mother's things-need going through."

"Oh, Oliver. I couldn't." Rose, who had never met a chore she couldn't prevail over, appeared flustered. A closet of clothes every stitch of which would remind me of Mother did not appeal to me, either.

"It needs doing," Father said in both our directions. "I haven't been able to face it myself, and besides, I'm no expert on women's garments. I'd ask Rae to come over and help you, but Tobe and I should try to beat the weather to town." He looked more resolved than ever. He put his hands squarely on Rose's shoulders. "You're to have anything you can make use of," he made clear to her, "and Paul can set aside anything in the way of keepsakes, and the rest we give away."

Rose and I glanced at one another. That was all it took. If we had to do it, we had to.

Father was heading for his yellow slicker coat, to go and harness the horses to the surrey, when he thought to say over his shoulder to me:

"Get Damon in on it. Maybe it'll get some of the excavating out of his system."

 

From taffeta to gingham, Damon and I peered in confound-ment at our mother's wardrobe in one end of the closet in the downstairs bedroom when Rose had finished her other chores for the day. I won't say we all put off the task, but none of us was eager for it. Already I had the feeling I would see these garments again, in many a dream.

Lucky for us, Rose saw she had to take charge. She took the first few things at hand from where they were hanging and carefully laid them out on Father's big bed for sorting. "Your mother had some pretty things."

True, but on the other hand she had not been nearly the clotheshorse Rose was. Mother's everyday dresses, faded in that bleached-out-all-over way ones from the catalog do, instantly were as familiar to me as days of the week. The few more elaborate frocks, the ones Father meant when he would say "Put on a pinafore, Flo, we're going dancing at the schoolhouse," on the other hand looked good as new.

I could see why this was too much for Father. Mindful of his instructions, Damon and I tried time and again to give something to Rose, but she only thanked us warmly and declined to take any of it, not even an apron. Eventually she hesitated over a fox fur muff when Damon reached it down from the closet shelf.

"It's from when we lived back east in Wisconsin," he recognized it soberly.

I was awkward about it, but I felt the offer should be made one more time. "Don't you think you should have this, Rose? It can get cold here, winters, honest."

Diplomatically or honestly or even both, she replied, "It's lovely. I'd be honored to have it." When Damon presented it to her, she stroked the fur and smiled at us. "I'll save it for occasions."

The cleaning out went quicker after that. We dispensed and disposed, this for the missionary society bundle, that for the rag bag. A nice patterned dress that Rose thought would suit Rae was carefully set aside. Things flew along that way until Damon reached in way at the back of the closet and pulled out what proved to be Mother's wedding gown.

He and I goggled at it, afraid to say anything. Rose once more stepped into the breach. "We'll want to keep this and put it away for your father. Here, I'll wrap it and find a drawer for it."

I believe that turned the last corner for all three of us. While Rose busied herself carrying the wedding gown over to lay it out for folding, Damon keenly dug into the dresser drawer where Mother had kept handkerchiefs and sachets and such. In my case, enough load was off my mind that my thoughts started to roam. They marched into that timeless procession of men and women coming down the aisle together—in my view of history, from Rome on down. "
Nuptiae primae.
Sorry. Your first wedding, I was thinking about, Rose. I bet you had a spiffy gown like that, too, didn't you?"

Rose happened to be passing the mirror on the dresser, and at my words, she drew to a halt and held Mother's gown up to her shoulders as she looked at herself reminiscently. "It was magical. I had the nicest white satin one," she said dreamily, "and Casper always looked his best in—"

Silence came down on us like an eclipse.

The back of my neck prickled. First I sent an inquiring look toward Damon, but he was staring at Rose in the mirror. She had put her hand to her mouth.

The question leapt out of Damon. "
Casper
Llewellyn was your mister? The Capper?"

He whirled around to face Rose, and I blindly took a couple of steps toward her, too. She had gone as pale as the gown she was holding. "Really, now," she tried, "couldn't there be more than one Casper Llewellyn in the world?"

"He was! I can tell he was!" Damon's eyes went to the size of turkey eggs. My own probably were no smaller. "Rose, why didn't you ever—"

The answer hit us both at once.

"The long walk off a short pier," Damon went on relentlessly. "Rose, did they—were you—"

"Tell us."

That voice was mine, although I scarcely recognized it. Rose appeared to be as overwhelmed as I sounded. Hastily she laid the wedding gown onto the bed and backed away.

"The 'leather trade'?" I pressed.

Cornered and knowing it, Rose was oddly prim in defending her choice of words. She adjusted her sleeves at the wrists, much in the manner of Morrie, as she stipulated, "Casper traded punches with the best of them on his way up to champion. You could call it a bit of a fib if you want, but—"

Damon still was working his mouth, but nothing was coming out now. I had to be the one to say it. "You're on the run."

"Paul, Damon, please, it's not like that." She drew herself up, then slumped. "Well, it is and it isn't. Some people were after me, or at least the betting money they thought I had, and it just seemed best to, what shall I say, evaporate from that
situation and come out here and—Paul?" She broke off fearfully, seeing the look on my face. "What is it?"

"Where does Morrie stand in all this?"

A tiny shade of relief passed over Rose, I saw, to have someone else brought into this besides her and her fight-fixing spouse. She pressed her lips together in quick thought. "Morrie, oh well," she gestured a little as if that would help with what she was saying, "Morrie is in the clear, never fear. He was just a, what would he call it, a general factotum. A hanger-on, the fight crowd would say. The thrown fight was something Casper and his manager cooked up."

As if realizing that sounded too pat, she took some blame onto herself. "Naturally Casper let me in on it," she said tiredly. Rose sat down on the edge of the bed, fingering the lace of the wedding gown as though gathering something from it. "He knew I always could read him like a book, so when he came to me and said, 'Rose, boxing is a tough way to make a living but I know how we can make a killing,' I shouldn't have but I went along with it. When you think about it, didn't it serve the gamblers right for—" Listening to herself say this, she gave up.

"Father is not going to like this," Damon supplied.

He could say that again. There was a side of Father—maybe any man—that did not like to be made a fool of, even in his own best interest. If the sum of Rose's fibs upset him (and why wouldn't it?) and he felt compelled to go to the cemetery for another conversation with Mother's grave, he readily enough could come back with the opposite conclusion from last time, we all knew.

Whatever Capper Llewellyn had been, Rose was a fighter who did not quit. Appalled as I was at the catastrophic story she had just owned up to, I had to admire the combative light that
came into her eyes as she looked squarely at me and then at Damon, and at me again. "Conference? In the kitchen?"

Wordlessly the three of us filed downstairs and to the waiting table.

Having seen Rose at this before, I planted my elbows as if anchoring myself into the tabletop. Damon was restless in his chair. Together we looked across at the woman ready to be our prized new mother five minutes ago, sitting there now with her past spilled all over her.

Rose scrubbed a thumb on a windmill in the oilcloth while collecting her thoughts. A serious indent took place between her eyes. Damon and I waited, skeptical, apprehensive, everything.

When she had her words lined up, her voice dropped to the vicinity of the whisper she and I always used.

"Damon is all too right. This would not look good to your father at this late date. But when would it ever have? 'Housekeeper On the Run Seeks Hideyhole'? That kind of advertisement doesn't inspire much confidence, does it? Then once I was here, it never seemed to make any sense to tell on myself. And Morrie." Her hand came up from the table in a helpless little tossing gesture. "Paul, Damon, really, truly, I didn't set out to get your father to marry me, it wasn't like that at all. I'd had enough husband. But your father and I grew on each other and—" There was the helpless gesture again. "He is beloved to me, please believe me. I wouldn't hurt him for all the world."

"Rose, can't you see?" I said numbly. "You can love Father to pieces, and there's still a problem here. Isn't the law after you?"

"Of course it isn't," the prim defense again. "The gamblers were the only ones who ever figured out the fixed fight"—she fanned the air dismissively as if shooing those off—"and that was only because they were stupid enough to guess right."

Hard as that was to follow, somehow it put a different light on things. Drumming in my head ever since the words
the betting money
came into this conversation was Aunt Eunices prophecy that household help always stole. But that had no way of coming true any further in this case, did it? Whatever temptation had done to her in the days of fight-fixing perdition, no one as clever as Rose could possibly be out to swipe a dryland homestead. Something else grappled in me. If Rose hadn't had one slip of the tongue, Damon and I and Toby—Toby!—would have gone right on prizing her to take Mother's place, and Father would never have need to doubt that he had given his heart to the right woman. Were all our fives supposed to trip over that? Honesty maybe was the best policy but was it ever costly.