Little Town On The Prairie (9 page)

“'Sing a song of sixpence—”' said Ma.

Laura went on from there, and so did Carrie and Mary and even Grace.

"A pocket full of rye,

Four and twenty blackbirds,

Baked in a pie!

When the pie was opened,

The birds began to sing.

Was not that a dainty dish

To set before the king?"

“Well, I'll be switched!” said Pa. He cut into the pie's crust with a big spoon, and turned over a big chunk of it onto a plate. The underside was steamed and fluffy. Over it he poured spoonfuls of thin brown gravy, and beside it he laid half a blackbird, browned, and so tender that the meat was slipping from the bones. He handed that first plate across the table to Ma.

The scent of that opened pie was making all their mouths water so that they had to swallow again and again while they waited for their portions, and under the table the kitty curved against their legs, her hungry purring running into anxious miows.

“The pan held twelve birds,” said Ma. “Just two apiece, but one is all that Grace can possibly eat, so that leaves three for you, Charles.”

“It takes you to think up a chicken pie, a year before there's chickens to make it with,” Pa said. He ate a mouthful and said, “This beats a chicken pie all hollow.”

They all agreed that blackbird pie was even better than chicken pie. There were, besides, new potatoes and peas, and sliced cucumbers, and young boiled carrots that Ma had thinned from the rows, and creamy cottage cheese. And the day was not even Sunday. As long as the blackbirds lasted, and the garden was green, they could eat like this every day.

Laura thought, “Ma is right, there is always something to be thankful for.” Still, her heart was heavy.

The oats and the corn crop were gone. She did not know how Mary could go to college now. The beautiful new dress, the two other new dresses, and the pretty underwear, must be laid away until next year. It was a cruel disappointment to Mary.

Pa ate the last spoonful of pink, sugary cream from his saucer of tomatoes, and drank his tea. Dinner was over. He got up and took his hat from its nail and he said to Ma, “Tomorrow's Saturday. If you'll plan to go to town with me, we can pick out Mary's trunk.”

Mary gasped. Laura cried out, “Is Mary going to college?”

Pa was astonished. He asked, “What's the matter with you, Laura?”

“How can she?” Laura asked him. “There isn't any corn, or any oats.”

“I didn't realize you're old enough to be worrying,”

said Pa. “I'm going to sell the heifer calf.”

Mary cried out, “Oh no! Not the heifer!”

In another year the heifer would be a cow. Then they would have had two cows. The n they would have had milk and butter all the year around. Now, if Pa sold the heifer, they would have to wait two more years for the little calf to grow up.

“Selling her will help out,” said Pa. “I ought to get all of fifteen dollars for her.”

“Don't worry about it, girls,” said Ma. “We must cut our coat to fit the cloth.”

“Oh, Pa, it sets you back a whole year,” Mary mourned.

“Never mind, Mary,” said Pa. “It's time you were going to college, and now we've made up our minds you're going. A flock of pesky blackbirds can't stop us.”

The last day came. Tomorrow Mary was going away.

Pa and Ma had brought home her new

trunk. It was covered outside with bright tin, pressed into little bumps that made a pattern. Strips of shiny varnished wood were riveted around its middle and up its corners, and three strips ran lengthwise of its curved lid. Short pieces of iron were screwed onto the corners, to protect the wooden strips. When the lid was shut down, two iron tongues fitted into two small iron pockets, and two pairs of iron rings came together so that the trunk could be locked with padlocks.

“It's a good, solid trunk,” Pa said. "And I got fifty feet of stout new rope to rope it with."

Mary's face shone while she felt it over carefully with her sensitive fingers and Laura told her about the bright tin and shiny yellow wood. Ma said, “It is the very newest style in trunks, Mary, and it should last you a lifetime.”

Inside, the trunk was smooth-polished wood. Ma lined it carefully with newspapers, and packed tightly into it all Mary's belongings. Every corner she crammed with wadded newspapers, so firmly that nothing could move during the rough journey on the train. She put in many layers of newspapers, too, for she feared that Mary did not have enough clothes to fill the trunk. But when everything was in and cram-jammed down as tightly as possible, the paper-covered mound rose up high enough to fill the curved lid, and Ma sat on it to hold it down while Pa snapped the padlocks.

Then, rolling the trunk end over end, and over and over, Pa tugged and strained loops of the new rope around it, and Laura helped hold the rope tight while he drew the knots fast.

“There,” he said finally. “That's one job well done.”

As long as they were busy, they could keep pushed deep down inside them the knowledge that Mary was going away. Now everything was done. It was not yet supper time, and the time was empty, for thinking.

Pa cleared his throat and went out of the house. Ma brought her darning basket, but she set it on the table and stood looking out of the window. Grace begged,

“Don't go away, Mary, why? Don't go away, tell me a story.”

This was the last time that Mary would hold Grace in her lap and tell the story of Grandpa and the pan-ther in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. Grace would be a big girl before Mary came back.

“No, Grace, you must not tease,” Ma said, when the story was finished. “What would you like for supper, Mary?” It would be Mary's last supper at home.

“Anything you put on the table is good, Ma,” Mary answered.

“It is so hot,” Ma said. “I believe I will have cottage cheese balls with onions in them, and the cold creamed peas. Suppose you bring in some lettuce and tomatoes from the garden, Laura.”

Suddenly Mary asked, “Could I come with you? I would like a little walk.”

“You needn't hurry,” Ma told them. “There is plenty of time before supper.”

The y went walking past the stable and up the low hill beyond. The sun was sinking to rest, like a king, Laura thought, drawing the gorgeous curtains of his great bed around him. But Mary was not pleased by such fancies. So Laura said, " The sun is sinking, Mary, into white downy clouds that spread to the edge of the world. All the tops of them are crimson, and streaming down from the top of the sky are great gorgeous curtains of rose and gold with pearly edges.

They are a great canopy over the whole prairie. The little streaks of sky between them are clear, pure green."

Mary stood still. “I'll miss our walks,” she said, her voice trembling a little.

“So will I.” Laura swallowed, and said, “but only think, you are going to college.”

“I couldn't have, without you,” Mary said. “You have always helped me to study, and you gave Ma your nine dollars for me.”

“It wasn't much,” said Laura. “It wasn't anything like I wish I—”

“It was, too!” Mary contradicted. “It was a lot.”

Laura's throat choked up. She winked her eyelids hard and took a deep breath but her voice quivered.

“I hope you like college, Mary.”

“Oh, I will. I will!” Mary breathed. “Think of being able to study and learn—Oh, everything! Even to play the organ. I do owe it partly to you, Laura. Even if you aren't teaching school yet, you have helped me to go.”

“I am going to teach school as soon as I am old enough,” said Laura. “ The n I can help more.”

“I wish you didn't have to,” Mary said.

“Well, I do have to,” Laura replied. "But I can't, till I'm sixteen. That's the law, a teacher has to be sixteen years old."

“I won't be here then,” said Mary. The n suddenly they felt as if she were going away forever. The years ahead of them were empty and frightening.

“Oh, Laura, I never have been away from home before. I don't know what I'll do,” Mary confessed. She was trembling all over.

“It will be all right,” Laura told her stoutly. “Ma and Pa are going with you, and I know you can pass the examinations. Don't be scared.”

“I'm not scared. I won't be scared,” Mary insisted.

“I'll be lonesome. But that can't be helped.”

“No,” Laura said. After a minute she cleared her throat and told Mary, " The sun has gone through the white clouds. It is a huge, pulsing ball of liquid fire.

The clouds above it are scarlet and crimson and gold and purple, and the great sweeps of cloud over the whole sky are burning flames."

“It seems to me I can feel their light on my face,”

Mary said. “I wonder if the sky and the sunsets are different in Iowa?”

Laura did not know. The y came slowly down the low hill. This was the end of their last walk together, or at least, their last walk for such a long time that it seemed forever.

“I am sure I can pass the examinations, because you helped me so much,” Mary said. "You went over every word of your lessons with me, until I do know everything in the school books. But Laura, what will you do? Pa is spending so much for me—the trunk, and a new coat, a new pair of shoes, the railroad fares, and all—it worries me. How can he ever manage school books and clothes for you and Carrie?"

“Never mind, Pa and Ma will manage,” said Laura.

“You know they always do.”

Early next morning, even before Laura was dressed, Ma was scalding and plucking the blackbirds that Pa had killed. She fried them after breakfast, and as soon as they were cool she packed in a shoe box the lunch to take on the train.

Pa and Ma and Mary had bathed the night before.

Now Mary put on her best old calico dress and her second-best shoes. Ma dressed in her summer challis, and Pa put on his Sunday suit. A neighbor boy had agreed to drive them to the depot. Pa and Ma would be gone a week, and when they came home without Mary they could walk from town.

The wagon came. The freckled boy, with red hair sticking through a rent in his straw hat, helped Pa load Mary's trunk into the wagon. The sun was shining hot and the wind was blowing.

“Now, Carrie and Grace, be good girls and mind Laura,” Ma said. "Remember to keep the chickens'

water pan filled, Laura, and look out for hawks, and scald and sun the milk pans every day."

“Yes, Ma,” they all answered.

“Good-by,” Mary said. "Good-by Laura. And Carrie.

And Grace."

“Good-by,” Laura and Carrie managed to say. Grace only stared round-eyed. Pa helped Mary to climb up the wagonwheel to sit with Ma and the boy on the wagon seat. He took his seat on the trunk.

“All right, let's go,” he said to the boy. “Good-by, girls.”

The wagon started. Grace's mouth opened wide and she bawled.

“For shame, Grace! For shame! a big girl like you, crying!” Laura choked out. Her throat was swelling so that it hurt. Carrie looked as though she might cry in a moment. “Shame on you!” Laura said again, and Grace gulped down a last sob.

Pa and Ma and Mary did not look back. The y had to go. The wagon taking them away left silence behind it. Laura had never felt such a stillness. It was not the happy stillness of the prairie. She felt it in the very pit of her stomach.

“Come,” she said. “We'll go into the house.”

That silence had settled into the house. It was so still that Laura felt she must whisper. Grace smothered a whimpering. The y stood there in their own house and felt nothing around them but silence and emptiness. Mary was gone.

Grace began to cry again and two large tears stood in Carrie's eyes. This would never do. Right now, and for a whole week, everything was in Laura's charge, and Ma must be able to depend on her.

“Listen to me, Carrie and Grace,” she said briskly.

“We are going to clean this house from top to bottom, and we'll begin right now! So when Ma comes home, she'll find the fall housecleaning done.”

There had never been such a busy time in all Laura's life. The work was hard, too. She had not realized how heavy a quilt is, to lift soaked and dripping from a tub, and to wring out, and to hang on a line. She had not known how hard it would be, sometimes, never to be cross with Grace who was always trying to help and only making more work. It was amazing, too, how dirty they all got, while cleaning a house that had seemed quite clean. The harder they worked, the dirtier everything became.

The worst day of all was very hot. The y had tugged and lugged the straw ticks outdoors, and emptied them and washed them, and when they were dry they had filled them with sweet fresh hay. The y had got the bed springs off the bedsteads and leaned them against the walls, and Laura had jammed her finger.

Now they were pulling the bedsteads apart. Laura jerked at one corner and Carrie jerked at the other.

The corners came apart, and suddenly the headboard came down on Laura's head so that she saw stars.

“Oh, Laura! did it hurt you?” Carrie cried.

“Well, not very much,” Laura said. She pushed the headboard against the wall, and it slid down softly and hit her anklebone. “Ouch!” she couldn't help yelling.

Then she added, “Let it lie there if it wants to!”

“We have to scrub the floor,” Carrie pointed out.

“I know we have to,” Laura said grimly. She sat on the floor, gripping her ankle. Her straggling hair stuck to her sweating neck. Her dress was damp and hot and dirty, and her fingernails were positively black. Carrie's face was smudged with dust and sweat and there were bits of hay in her hair.

“We ought to have a bath,” Laura murmured. Suddenly she cried out, “Where's Grace?”

They had not thought of Grace for some time.

Grace had once been lost on the prairie. Two children at Brookins, lost on the prairie, had died before they could be found.

“Here I yam,” Grace answered sweetly, coming in.

“It's raining.”

“No!” Laura exclaimed. Indeed, a shadow was over the house. A few large drops were falling. At that moment, thunder crashed. Laura screamed, “Carrie! The straw ticks ! The bedding !”

They ran. The straw ticks were not very heavy, but they were stuffed fat with hay. The y were hard to hold on to. The edge kept slipping out of Laura's grasp or Carrie's. When they got one to the house, they had to hold it up edgewise to get it through the doorway.