A Part of the Sky

  “You’re quite welcome.” She paused. “At school, we teachers are aware of your father’s death, and that now you’re working the farm. We salute your resolution.”

  “Well, I’m giving it a go.”

  “Please don’t drop out of school. We need you there. You need us. The poem that you handed in …”

  “No good?”

  “On the contrary. I thought it outstanding. I’m going to copy it and save it at home, in a very special box where I keep important papers. I can’t remember all of it, only the last four lines …

  A farmer’s heart is rabbit soft.

  And farmer eyes are blue.

  But farmers’ eyes are eagle fierce,

  To look a man right through.”

  “The farmer was my father.”

  “Yes, I guessed as much.” Miss Malcolm’s face turned serious. “Why, when you have talent, did you waste your school time, last October, playing that prank on the shop teacher, Mr. Orr?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You ought to be.” Miss Malcolm stamped her foot. “You and that Jacob Henry deserved a scolding or a spanking, and possibly both. The pair of you are more slippery than wet seeds.”

  Looking down at my dirty bare feet, I asked, “How did you find out we did it?”

  “Word,” said Miss Malcolm, “gets around. Wherever did you boys get that,” she paused, “… that publication?”

  “From out of the trash can. You know, in the alley behind Rocco’s Barbershop.”

  “I hardly spend much time there. Nor do I ever review Mr. Rocco’s reading material.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.”

  Miss Malcolm pointed a finger at me. “Well, a trash can is exactly where those … those shocking girlie-girlie magazines belong. Bad enough that you and Jacob even bothered to flip through them. But no, you two sneaked one to school. Then, on that downpour of a rainy day, you hid it inside old Mr. Orr’s umbrella.”

  “What happened wasn’t really part of the joke.”

  “I know what happened! I was there, standing with Miss Johnson and Miss Wickersham in front of the school waiting for the rain to stop. And poor Mr. Orr opened his umbrella. Out that girlie book tumbled, to reveal that … that photography.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Miss Wickersham is very straitlaced. And I thought she would either scream or faint. She was gasping.”

  “Yes’m. I’m sorry. We didn’t count on blushing any of the lady teachers. Honest. Only Mr. Orr.” I scratched myself. “How did he know who did it?”

  “Mr. Orr may be aging and deaf, but I assure you, he didn’t need Sherlock Holmes to finger the culprits, because earlier, he had threatened to thrash both you and the Henry boy, and you know why.”

  I nodded. “Oh, that was sort of in fun. During woodshop, we nailed his glove, from the inside, to the plank of his workbench.”

  “He caught you doing it?”

  “Not exactly. But when Pop Orr … excuse me, I meant Mr. Orr … couldn’t pick up his glove and cussed, the other boys all laughed and looked at Jacob and me.”

  Right then, I was praying that Miss Malcolm wouldn’t blame either Jacob or me for what three of the high school guys did. Late one night, they painted a sign, and then hung it over Pop Orr’s front door. The letters were bright red.

  ORR HOUSE

  Miss Malcolm stared at me. “I’d dread to imagine what goes on inside that brain of yours.”

  “Thoughts I don’t write down.”

  “Robert, perhaps you should write them.” “Yes’m.”

  Entering her beat-up car, Miss Malcolm looked at me from behind the wheel. “Write another poem.” She winked at me with a nod of her gray hair.

  “I will, Miss Malcolm.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Oh, one more thing. Learn to dance.”

  I made a face. “How did you know I couldn’t? I get it. You must’ve served at the Grange Hall that evening, as one of the Percherons.”

  “I believe,” said my teacher, “the correct word is chaperone. A Percheron is a big heavy horse with hairy ankles.”

  I covered my mouth and my giggle.

  “Robert, not one word.” She paused. “You never saw me at the Grange; you were too entranced with Miss Tate. By the way, I met her earlier. She’s going to come out here this afternoon.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, according to Becky, a lot of the other kids are vacationing. Having fun. She knows you’ve been working seven days a week. So she’s taking you somewhere.”

  I gulped. “Where?”

  “On a picnic. I suggest you bathe.”

  Miss Malcolm drove away. But I couldn’t make a move. My toes seemed to be rooted into mud, and manure. One inhale told me that I’d best search for soap. At the outdoor pump, I stripped and lathered and washed, rubbing myself to raw. Then I splashed on some of Aunt Carrie’s lilac water and dabbed a lick of Papa’s pomade to my hair. I was wearing only a towel when Mama spied me, come close, and her nose took a breath of my flowery scent.

  “My,” she said, “I didn’t aware it was Saturday night.”

  “Becky’s coming.”

  “Who said?”

  “Miss Malcolm. I passed English and all else. She stopped by to warn me about Becky Lee.”

  “To warn you? Becky’s hardly a storm.”

  “At least for this time,” I told Mama, “I won’t have to do dancing. Does my hair look respectful? It won’t part.”

  “Here,” she said, taking the comb. “Begin by slicking it all forward. Like this. Now we’ll divide it right down the middle.” She groomed me. “There.”

  “Do I look all right?”

  “Sharp as a new pin. And handsome. People might mistake you for that knight gentleman you were telling me about. You know, in that book.”

  “Ivanhoe.”

  “I believe that’s his name.”

  “Do I really look as good as he does?”

  Wiping her hands on her apron, Mama said, “Seeing as I haven’t run into Mr. Ivanhoe lately, I couldn’t say certain. But he couldn’t scrub up any cleaner.”

  In the house, I pulled on a fresh shirt and pants. June was too sunny for shoes. Barefoot, I ran outside just in time to see a Ford motorcar out by the dirt road. It stopped. Out popped Becky Lee Tate, wearing a pretty white dress and toting a wicker basket. Mr. Tate waved and chugged off toward town.

  “Howdy,” I said, going to meet Becky as she was skipping my way.

  “I’m taking you on a picnic, Rob.”

  “Hey, great.”

  “Where’ll we go? Someplace private.”

  I knew a perfect spot. Down along the crickbed there was a grassy place under a stand of slender white birch trees. Holding the basket with one hand, and Becky’s hand with the other, I took her there.

  The crick gurgled shallow over a quilt of smooth pebbles all shades of fawn, and I knew the cool water here tasted clear and sweet. Cracking open the basket, Becky pulled out a red-and-white checkerboard cloth and then covered it with cold chicken, apples, egg sandwiches, pickles, a slab of cheese, pie, and wedges of raw cabbage. Plus two chocolate cupcakes. She’d even squeezed lemonade.

  While I ate, Becky sat there looking more delicious than dessert and listened to me chew. She only ate part of a sandwich. That left three and a half for me. Add to that seven pickles and both apples. Becky Lee sipped lemonade as I licked chocolate off my fingers.

  “Try a napkin,” she said, tossing one at me.

  “No need. Be a shame to waste chocolate on cloth.”

  “Please use it. I want your mouth tidy.”

  I kept licking. “How come?”

  “Because today is a very special day.” Becky smiled softly. “It’s my birthday. I’m thirteen.”

  “Well,” I said, “happy birthday, Becky.” I grinned at her. “Maybe I ought to give you thirteen spanks.”

  “Don’t you dare.” She lowered her ey
es. “Besides, that is not the kind of present that I wanted from you. You’ll have to guess.”

  I stopped licking the cupcake chocolate. “Golly, I didn’t suspect it was your birthday. I don’t have a present.”

  “Yes, you do. It can be the gift you forgot to give me when the dance was over. I bet I was the only girl who went home empty.”

  Was she talking about food? Perhaps so, because after the dance ended, some of the kids skipped across the road to the diner for ice cream. But I had no money for frills. I was hoping Becky would realize, and understand.

  Maybe she did. Yet, for certain, I really didn’t begin to understand her. Because now she was leaning closer to me with her eyes shut. It didn’t appear as though she was still waiting for ice cream.

  “Rob,” she whispered, “please kiss me. And do it sudden quick, before you lose your nerve.”

  Hearing her say it pleased me like pudding. So I bent close and kissed her on the cheek, and did it softer than a Sunday prayer. I had to dodge her mouth to do it.

  “Now,” she said, “do it right. I want you to kiss me that same way, but not on my cheek. Kiss my lips.”

  I did. And she kissed me back. We sort of took turns at kissing each other. Believe me, not the best chocolate cupcake in the world tasted half as savory as Becky Lee Tate.

  Becky looked in my eyes, smiling, and then whispered to me like a summer song.

  “As you like it.”

  Chapter

  9

  We made our July mortgage due. Yet in the Learning area, there wasn’t a single farmer that had been blessed by July.

  It didn’t rain. Overhead, the heavens clouded over, but the moisture seemed to pass by. At this rate, there’d be no second cutting of hay. My corn was up, but it refused to make or stay green. Ben Tanner’s corn looked near as puny.

  I went to Ben’s for advice.

  Stooping, he touched the brown corn leaves. So did I. They felt parched and brittle. Ben’s hand plucked one. As he stood, he fingered the leaf slowly and sadly.

  “Dry,” he said. “Dryer than a nun’s bun. And there’s naught we can do to help.”

  Mr. Tanner had planted far more acres than had I. My loss would be nothing compared with his.

  I hurried home, where our outside yard pump had already coughed out to dead dry. Mama and Carrie were in the kitchen dusting out canning jars for August. It could be a waste of work.

  “We can save the crop,” I said.

  Mama looked surprised. “How?”

  “If the three of us are willing to burden buckets of water up from the crick, we’ll water by hand. We only got two corn acres.”

  Mama looked at her elder sister. “Can you help?”

  With a set jaw, Aunt Carrie nodded. “If need be,” she said. “Right now, with only a spoon of water, Lucy, I could charge Hell.”

  In our barn we grabbed three buckets. They were enough. From the crick, and uphill every step, I carried two buckets of water, while my mother and aunt shared one between them.

  It took a whole bucket of water to soak one corn plant. That was the first trip. Again and again we returned to a low crick to refill our pails.

  Above, the July sun was merciless; in no shade the heat was hitting us like a hammer. At the crick, I made Mama and Carrie remove their aprons (which they almost always wore) and I soaked them, then wrapped the wet aprons around their sweating, sunburnt heads. Their gray hair was already damp.

  All day we worked. Three buckets at a trip. Even though I was lugging four times the weight they each carried, I felt hardy enough to hack it.

  I made both of them rest under an elm while I returned to the barn for rags. The bucket handles were hurting our hands. And inside the house I found their two white bonnets. Rags helped. But not much.

  Out yonder, on the dirt road, a car stopped. People got out to watch us. The car looked the fancy type. City folks. One of them pointed at us, as though we were fools. Another fetched out a camera and took our picture. We didn’t pose, or smile and wave friendly. Instead, we kept on a-going in the heat, crossing and recrossing the awnless anvil under a hammering sun.

  “They know what we’re doing, Mama.”

  Wiping her face, my mother let out a huff. “Them tourist people don’t know beans.” She looked at me slow. “Or corn.”

  I wanted to shout, to tell them to move along on, knowing that it’d be a waste of work. Spent air.

  Mama studied the sky. “No pity, Carrie. That old sun’s got no soul. Not even for sinners like us.”

  “Let’s keep going,” I said, “and remember what Papa taught me about working a chore. A man don’t quit at tired. He only quits at done.”

  “Lucy,” said my aunt, “let’s haul water.”

  We kept doing. How, I don’t know, because my hands felt as though knuckles would rub earth. My arms stretched to eight foot long.

  I’d lost count.

  When we’d commenced, I’d begun to number our trips; uphill at full, and then returning to the crickbed empty. Now the late afternoon and evening had blended into endless effort. None of the three of us wanted to be the first to beg a halt.

  “One more,” I’d say again, and often. “Just one more carry, and maybe we’ll call it a day.”

  Yet we refused to surrender. No drought could beat us down or dry. During usual times, our neighbors and friends and some other Shakers might have come to help us. But no. Because each of their properties had a thirst of its own.

  The sun sank.

  “We’re done,” I told them. “There’s no moon, and we can’t no longer see. Best we hang up our buckets until morning.”

  There was no argument.

  Mama merely said, “Rob, whatever you deem right.”

  We ate a cold supper.

  While we’d been working, hauling water, the kitchen stove had gone out. I didn’t care a bit of a bother. Neither did they. We just sat at the table, grateful that the big black Acme American stove was cold, and ate. Cold beans and some stale bread topped with our last jar of blackberry jam from last season.

  “Stars,” said Mama. “We forgot blessing.”

  We bowed. My mother spoke in a frail voice. “There’s others,” she said quietly, “that don’t sit to near fancy as this. Please bless ’em, Lord. Amen.”

  Never in my life had I felt so grateful.

  Following supper, by a feeble lantern, I had to lift up Aunt Carrie and burden her to bed. She was olden, and, in my arms, not much more than a wore-out ragdoll. Returning to the kitchen, I saw Mama sitting at the table, eyes closed. Going to her, I wrapped both arms around her and realized my wealth.

  “Robert,” she said to me in a whisper, “are we going to make do?” She paused. “Please don’t ask me for thinking. I’m an old shoe that’s wore out to the stocking.”

  I couldn’t say a word.

  “Haven,” my mother said, “come back.”

  Patting her shoulder, still damp from the labor, I said, “He’s gone. But if’n he was here, he’d be rightful proud of you, and of Carrie.”

  “Do you figure we saved our corn?”

  Pushing aside all my doubts, I told her, “Yes. We rescued it for today. Tomorrow, I just bet it’ll rain. We’ll listen up thunder. The skies will turn to pure purple, and all them little raindrops will shower our fields. Every inch. You wait and see, Mama. It’s going to soak us enough to spook Noah.”

  She looked at me. “Please,” she said, “go fetch The Book.”

  I did as she’d asked.

  Upstairs, underneath the bed my parents had slept in, they kept a Bible box. In it, the most precious thing we owned. I brought The Book that my parents could never read but knew so well.

  “Read,” she said. “I ache to hear it. Please let it wash me clean, like the feet of His Twelve.”

  “Which part, Mama?”

  “Genesis. But you’re tired as I, so read me one rainy verse, and that shall sustain me until sleep.”

  Turning to the sevent
h chapter of Genesis, I read to my mother; verse twelve, the place she had spoken: “And the rain was upon the earth … forty days and forty nights.”

  I closed The Book.

  “Good,” she said. “I’m so thankful that you can read what’s written, so long ago, and on this night so neighborly.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “you ought to go upstairs.”

  “In a moment. For now, sit with me, Robert. You’re my one surviving son. Charles and Edward were taken from us, buried in our little orchard among the four apple trees. Your sisters have departed to far places, with husbands and kinder of their own. Of my brood, all I have left is you, Robert. You are my last. Yet never let it be uttered that you be least.”

  Smiling, I said, “I’m certain the most used up.”

  “And I.”

  “Mama, we Pecks aren’t the only family that got burnt by the dry spell. It hit everyone. Rich and poor alike. Mr. Tanner’s corn is wilted near to dust.”

  My mother touched my hand. “I know. Many’s the time I’ve climbed up that ridge to view the Tanner farm. All their fine barns and buildings. And stock. But I wouldn’t trade for all of it.”

  It made me grin. “Mama, right about now I’d swap myself in for half a bag of potatoes.”

  “Being tired does that, son. Some days, you can’t feel to be more than a empty bucket.”

  “We emptied them today.”

  Mama nodded. “Multitudes.”

  Her head sagged. Eyelids at half mast, as though the fire within her had blowed out. Grayed to ashes.

  “Bedtime,” I said to her.

  “Indeed so.”

  “Upstairs I left a lantern burning, so you won’t stumble around up yonder.”

  Mama stood. “When I snuff it, even before the light fails, I’ll be dreaming.”

  “Dream good things.”

  “I will, son.”

  She refused my offer to help her up the stairs. One by each, my mother made it all the way. From the kitchen, I heard the rustle of her tick and knew she was safe abed. Nothing left to do except supper dishes. Those I washed in a breath. We’d saved enough pump water.

  Before going to my tick, I went outdoors to whisper a good-night to the moon. Stars were out. The sky was a dark meadow of fireflies. It made me wonder if a certain girl was sleeping.