Authors: L.S. Young
Chapter 11
Acorns and Squirrel Stew
Summer clung to life with sweaty fingers and humid days, chasing away cool weather far into October. In mid-November, true autumn came, with misty mornings leading to soft-lit days and early darkness. Lily sat near the fire as often as she could, her spare form wrapped from head to toe in a quilt. “You know in the city they got furnaces what can heat a whole house?” she’d say, shivering. “I can’t imagine havin’ more than one part of my body warm at a time, I’m so used to turning different sides to the fire.”
As for me, I was beguiled by the season, as I had been every year of my life. I felt somehow that I belonged to it, my fair skin and chestnut hair in tune with the red leaves and colorless sky. I would slip on an old pair of Eric’s work boots and my twice-turned coat, wrap a knitted scarf about my neck, and go out to pump water or gather wood, only to find myself entranced, looking up at the spare, leafless branches of the pecans, the gray clouds, the chill air cutting through my clothes, my errand forgotten.
One morning, when walking back from milking the cows, I lingered, looking at the hoarfrost that limned the clover on the ground. When I reached the chopping block, the crunch of footsteps alerted me to someone’s presence and I spun around, expecting to see a hired hand, but finding Will instead.
I gasped. “What are you doing here?”
He caught me in an embrace, and we kissed. “Someone will see!” I hissed as we parted.
“I dreamt of you and woke up thinking of you,” he whispered, “and I couldn’t rest, so I did my early chores and walked here.”
I laughed. “Don’t you ever work?”
“Why would I do that when I can sneak up on you to steal a kiss?” he joked, pulling me toward him again.
I resisted his embrace, tugging on his hand as I leaned toward the house. “As you’re here, you may as well come in for breakfast. It’s powerful cold out!”
“That was my true object,” he said, following me inside.
The scent of bacon, coffee, and warm biscuits greeted us as we entered the kitchen. Everyone was just sitting down to eat, and the younger children were helping themselves. Daddy was still outside in the barn, and Colleen barely batted an eye at the sight of Will, except to throw a blanket over herself and the baby. She was nursing at the breakfast table, a feat she’d never have attempted in her early twenties, but experience had taught her necessity.
“Will has come for breakfast,” I said. “He finished his early chores.”
“He’s welcome to stay,” she said, smiling distractedly, “but someone must take Granny a basket.” Her eyes stayed on the baby.
“Lily?” I ventured.
Lily shook her head, her black curls bouncing. “I went last time,” she said firmly, slathering a biscuit with butter and jelly.
“Very well,” I sighed. “I’ll go.”
I scooped a spoonful of grits onto a plate, topped it with a pat of butter, and placed it in front of Ezra with a slice of bacon. Will took Eric’s empty chair and helped himself to the food.
“I’ll accompany you,” he said softly as I poured him coffee.
“You needn’t,” I replied, sitting down next to him. “Surely you have
something
to do today.” I splashed cream into my own coffee and stirred it then spooned an over easy egg into a puddle of grits on my plate, salt and peppered it, and broke the yolk with my fork. “Esther, mind your braids!” I cried, looking up just in time to see Esther’s long plait about to sweep into her hominy as she tousled with Ephraim over the syrup pitcher.
“Neither one of you needs biscuits swimming in cane syrup,” I continued, as Colleen ignored their misbehavior. At last, I stood up and neatly hooked my finger into the handle of the syrup pitcher, taking it out of their reach. Just then, Ezra knocked over his little tin cup of milk, soaking the tablecloth. I groaned, throwing up my hands in exasperation.
“I’ll get it,” said Lily reluctantly. “Edith, take your nose out of that book and help for once, and finish eating! You’ll be late for school.” Edith looked up, blinking as if entering bright sunlight from a dark room.
I looked at Will. “Perhaps you
should
accompany me. I could use the walk after this meal.”
When the washing was done, I donned my wool shawl and looped the basket filled with goods for Granny over my arm. Will and I walked the footpath through the long leaf pines in companionable silence, and my thoughts turned to the overcast sky, the crunch of dead leaves and needles, and the chill wind. Granny often said my love of autumn was more proof I’d been born a witch and had been saved only by the blood of Christ.
“Ya ought to turn your heart toward green things in spring, plants come to life, lambs being born. Your love o’dead thangs will lead you to the grave.”
I always scoffed at her words, but they were dark ones to say to a girl of only twenty. Had I been older, I might have taken them to heart.
At four months, the baby was bright eyed, cooing, and chubby, and she was christened Effie, a name chosen perhaps for its impermanence more than anything else. Colleen had recovered from her lying-in, so Daddy sent them to Massachusetts to visit her family. I thought it an expense we could not possibly afford, what with the poor corn crop and having lost three calves to foot and mouth, but Daddy set such store by Colleen, I don’t think he could have said no to her if his life depended on it.
Ezra seemed forlorn in her absence. Having been supplanted as the baby in the family since Effie’s birth, he had done nothing but follow me from room to room, clutching at my skirts and crying to be held when he was tired. I spanked him when he did this, informing him it was nonsense for a boy of four. Lily and I did what we could to occupy him, but he wore on our nerves and received many a scolding for his constant whining, an experience both new and traumatic to a child who had been so coddled. Colleen’s many warnings that he learn to be independent before the baby came had finally rung true, but at twenty I did not see how fair it was for her to leave Lily and me to care for him while she was off gadding with her family for two months.
The first frosty morning getting into winter, a month after Colleen left, we woke to find one of the hogs missing from their pen. After much confusion, it was discovered that Ephraim had been responsible for putting them away but had improperly latched the gate, making it possible for the animals to escape. Gaining this knowledge, Daddy sent him to search, calling, “Suuuuey! Pig! Pig! Pig!” while the rest of us breakfasted.
At last they were all present and accounted for, save one. Ephraim returned with news that, judging by her footprints, the sow had wandered into the warm mud of the swamp and gone down in quicksand. Daddy took him behind the woodshed and spanked him so soundly his shrieks reached me where I was hanging wet dishtowels on the line and made me wince.
When his whipping was over, he limped past me with his head low. I found him horizontal on the rag rug in front of the kitchen stove, sobbing. I let him cry as I washed the breakfast dishes then nudged him gently with my foot.
“That’s enough,” I said. “Get up and wash your face. I’ll give you something good to eat.”
He got up and stumbled to the sink without looking at me. When his face and hands were moderately clean, I lifted him around the waist, seated him at the table, and placed half a cold sausage link, a piece of cornbread, and a tin of milk in front of him. “Last pork you’re likely to get for a while. Don’t tell Daddy. You’re not being rewarded, only fed.”
“He said I’d killed us all,” said Ephraim quietly. “We’ll starve this winter.”
Esther looked up from the potholder she was knitting with round eyes. “Is that true?”
“Not in the least. Daddy is prone to be dramatic when he’s angry. But the corn was short and wormy, and we lost those calves in the spring, and now you’ve let some of our bacon go and drown in the swamp. I’d have licked you myself if he hadn’t.”
“What’ll we do?” asked Esther.
“Use your heads. The cellar is all stocked with preserves and roots and canned goods. What else do we have a’plenty?”
“People.”
“Something we can use, you goose! Something on the farm.”
“Pecans!” said Ephraim.
“Yes, and we’ll have money from those. The yield was all decent this year, but we’ve the profit to split with the pickers. What else?”
Esther shrugged. “Dirt.”
“Lovely, we’re going to eat
dirt
. Haven’t you stood out under the oaks when the wind blows? Acorns fall by the dozen. You can’t walk for crushing them.” I took two empty flour sacks from the cupboard and gave one to each twin. “Both of you go outside and fill these with pecans. Ezra!”
Ezra jumped out from the corner where he’d been stacking his wooden blocks and scampered over, putting his hands up for me to lift him. I put an empty coffee can in them. “Fill it with acorns, baby. Now listen to me, all three of you. Do not come back in the house until you’ve filled those sacks and that can, and I better not find a single rotten nut in the bunch. Mind your work. No one has time to sort them twice.”
They departed, Ezra beaming with his newfound responsibility. When they were gone, Lily and I turned to one another. “What will we do, really?” she asked, her face quiet with despair.
“I won’t pretend a few acorns and pecans will make much difference,” I sighed, “but at least it will keep them busy while we figure something out.”
“We’ll be eating bark before winter’s end.”
“Don’t make useless suggestions,” I scolded, frowning. “We’re not destitute by any means. There’ll be the money from the late cotton, yet. Let’s take the preserves we rationed for fall and put them in the root cellar. We’ll hold off eating them as long as we can.”
“We can dig the rest of the sweet potatoes from the garden and store them too. There aren’t many, but they’ll keep.”
“Yes, and let’s hang the onions we picked yesterday to dry in the attic. There are the apples drying as well. Two pounds of flour left. If only we had our own wheat . . . and Daddy hadn’t wasted money sending Colleen away.”
Hanging the onions took the better part of the morning. When that was done, we set to work blanching the last of the acre peas and canning them. Daddy came in as we were working and gave us a weary smile.
“My tried and true girls.” He kissed Lily’s thin cheek. “We’ll have to give you our extras this winter, Pretty,” he said. “Least Landra’s got some meat on her bones.”
“That’s because I tuck it away like you taught me, and she eats like a bird as she learned from your wife,” I said.
“Beauty before pleasure,” said Lily.
“Survival before beauty,” I retorted.
“Don’t quarrel now, girls. Can’t have that. I’m going to salvage what I can of the corn. Landra?”
I removed my apron, hung it on its nail in the corner, and followed Daddy to the field. I was stronger than Lily, and with Eric gone, it fell to me to help in the fields. I surveyed my hands and fingers ruefully, red around the cuticles from washing dishes, but shapely and lovely still, they’d be cut and torn to pieces before day’s end.
I came in from the field around lunchtime, joined by the children. Lily gave them sandwiches made of leftover grits between slices of cornbread, slathered with cane syrup. Esther and Ephraim had filled their flour sacks with pecans and helped Ezra fill his coffee can to overflowing with acorns.
“What’ll we do with the acerns?” asked Ephraim, his mouth full. The morsel I’d given him after his whipping hadn’t done the trick, and he was stuffing himself as if the world were ending.
“Eat them, of course.”
“I thought only squirrels could do that!”
“No, the Indians do.”
“Is dey nice to eat?” asked Ezra. This was his favorite question regarding anything small enough to fit in his mouth.
“
Are they,
not
is dey.
And not very, but roasted or mashed with molasses, they’re tolerable.”
“How will we get them open?” asked Esther. “They’re so small and sound. Not like pecans.”
I took an acorn from Ezra’s coffee can and found a crack in the shell, prying it open with my fingernails. “See?” I showed them the orange meat inside and broke it apart for them to try. Ezra spat his out, and Esther shook her head, but Ephraim chewed and swallowed his, looking thoughtful. I smiled at him.
“After lunch, I want you to go down to the spring, Ephraim, and gather a mess of wild cabbage. We’re going to have a swamp cabbage stew for supper tonight.”
“He might drown!” cried Esther. This was the argument Colleen and I always presented to keep the children from going to the swamp.
“I know he goes swimming there against your mama’s wishes all the time,” I said. “If he does fall in, so much the better. One less mouth to feed. Take the dog, he’ll know where is safe to walk. Stay near the edges, look out for quicksand, and don’t step anywhere she doesn’t step.”
“Yes’m.” Ephraim knew better than to argue over a chore that gave him permission to go to the swamp.
“And when you get back, Edith’s going to teach you and Esther how to shoot squirrels.”
Ephraim gaped at my words. He was forbidden to touch a gun, but I figured this was as good a time as any for him to learn to shoot. It would mean I could count on him to bring home coons, fowl, and rabbits during a scarce winter. As for teaching Esther, unpromising as she might seem, I had been a decent shot at her age. When quiet Edith’s turn came, she shocked us all by being the best shot in the family. Her aim and eyesight were perfect, and Daddy likened her to sharpshooters he’d known in the Confederate army.
Sensing his impending importance, Ephraim wolfed down the last of his cornbread and took off, yelling for Ebenezer as soon as he was out the door. The two of them returned three hours later, covered in mud and bearing the mess of cabbage I’d ordered. I stopped him on his way to the breezeway.