Patrick Henry and the Frigate’s Keel: And Other Stories of a Young Nation (17 page)

“Ma!”

“Yes?”

“Here's Lucy.”

“Yes?”

“Driving in with some young feller I never seen before. Never seen that old Ford either.”

“Maybe someone drove her up from the station,” Ma said lamely.

“Ain't but one hack at the station. That ain't Tod Elman:”

Ma braced herself, tightened her lips, and walked over to Pa. “I got something to say to you,” she told him, “and I got to say it fast. Before they come in here. Amos Todd, that man's your son-in-law, Lucy's husband.”

Pa just stared at her.

“Now you heard me, Amos Todd. Don't stare so.”

“Lucy's husband,” Pa said.

“Now Amos Todd,” Ma begged him, “just hold on to the ground. What's done is done, and there ain't the man living who can saw sawdust. Lucy's married, and that's all that's to it. Nice boy too, setting up to be a farmer. Went to college and got himself a diploma, which is more than any Todd ever done.”

“Went to college,” Pa nodded. He walked around the kitchen, sat himself in a chair, and rubbed his mustache. His eyes had what Ma called the Todd vinegar look, and I wouldn't have changed places with Lucy's Tom for anything in the world.

Right then, the door opened and Lucy came in, all flushed and smiling, looking prettier and happier than I had ever seen her look before. But underneath there was a good deal of doubt, and I saw that doubt when she looked at Pa, sitting there in a corner and rubbing his mustache.

And behind her, in the doorway, was her husband, Tom Patterson. He was an awful nice-looking boy; he was tall, and he looked as if there was muscle under his coat. But Lucy must have told him about Pa.

Ma threw her arms around Lucy, and I sort of sidled over to be kissed, but Pa didn't move.

Then Lucy went over and kissed Pa on the forehead, but he still didn't move. “This is my husband, Tom Patterson,” Lucy said.

Ma didn't hesitate; she smiled and took Tom's hand, and he kissed her. “I'm proud of any man my Lucy picked,” Ma said.

“I'm not,” Pa said.

“I don't know what you've got against me, sir,” Tom said. “If it was wrong for Lucy and me to have gotten married up in Omaha, then I'm ready to beg your forgiveness.”

“I got plenty against you,” Pa said.

“Then won't you give me a chance to prove you're wrong?”

“I guess I know when I'm right and when I'm wrong,” Pa snapped. “I guess I don't need any young Nebraska whippersnapper to come down here to tell me.”

“I didn't mean that, sir.”

“Please, Pa,” Lucy said.

“And I don't want none of your sass,” Pa said. “It's your Aunt Effie all over again.”

“Now wait a minute, Amos Todd,” Ma cried. “Twenty-seven years I been married to you, for better and for worse. I took your vinegar for twenty-seven years. I seen how you acted with Effie, and how you tried to wreck her life. But you ain't doing the same with Lucy. Lucy's married and she's going to be happy. You can take that or leave it.”

Pa didn't say a word. He got up and went upstairs. Lucy began to cry, and Tom put his arms around her. Ma just shook her head and tried to soothe Lucy.

Then Pa came downstairs. He had a pillow in one arm and two blankets in the other.

“Where are you going?” Ma demanded.

“Out to the barn—to sleep. I'll be there until those two leave my house.” And with that, he stalked out.

Lucy would have gone after him, but Ma held her back. “It's no use,” Ma said. “The man don't live who can change Amos Todd's mind once it's made up.”

“I'm afraid this is all my fault, Mrs. Todd,” Tom said miserably.

“It ain't nobody's fault. And don't call me Mrs. Todd. Call me Ma.”

“But what are we going to do?” Lucy wanted to know.

“We're going to eat supper. Now come along and eat before everything's cold.”

After supper, Ma fixed a plate of ham and apple pie and milk, and had me take them out to Pa. I sat by and held the lantern while Pa ate.

“Nobody can make a ham taste like your Ma makes it taste,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Apple pie, too.”

I nodded.

“Them two still there?”

“Lucy's helping Ma with the dishes.”

“Well, see you're up early for the chores,” he muttered.

Well, things went on like that for about a week, Pa sleeping in the barn, and Ma sending me out with fixings for him three times a day. Lucy and Tom would have gone, but Ma wouldn't have it. She said that until they had a home of their own, they would stay with her. She said that no Todd was going to drive her daughter out of her home.

Lucy had planned for Tom to come and work the farm with Pa. But now that was out of the question, and they had to look around for something else.

Finally, they hit on the Krandall place, a half section adjoining our east acreage. It had a reputation for being unlucky, and it had been in and out of the bank's hands half a dozen times in the past twenty years. As a matter of fact, a hill sloped up and over away from our property, and for some reason the drainage was all toward us. We could raise a high crop of corn when the corn on the Krandall place was like straggling weeds for want of water. Old man Krandall was just aching to sell when Tom and Lucy made him an offer.

Tom had been working before he went to college and summers while he was at college. Both his folks were dead, but they had left him about nine hundred dollars, which he had managed to keep intact. And Ma had two hundred and fifty dollars in the bank for Lucy. That was enough to buy the Krandall place, along with its mortgage, its rusty tools and its ramshackle, run-down house.

Ma knew that the Krandall place was a stone around the neck of anyone who tried to make it pay, but it was an awful temptation to have Lucy near her. She was afraid that if Lucy and Tom went far away, the same thing would happen that had happened between Pa and Aunt Effie. And Tom insisted that with what he had learnt about new methods of soil restoration and dust control and irrigation, he could make it pay.

So Ma gave in, and after a week, Tom and Lucy moved into the Krandall house. Ma had me running back and forth for three days, carrying things over for Lucy to use, but every time I set foot in that old shack Mr. Krandall had called a house, I got more and more worried.

Although he saw all the commotion, Pa never let on that he knew what was going on. But once, when I came to the barn with his supper, he put it straight to me.

“What's going on out there?”

“Lucy's fixing to move.”

“Where?”

“Up to the old Krandall place. Tom bought it.”

Pa whistled. “You don't say—” He was thoughtful over his food for a while, and then he began to chuckle. He chuckled until he could hardly eat. “The Krandall place,” he said. “My land, he'll never take a good crop out of that if he sweats his skin right off his back. That Nebraska man sure got what was coming to him.”

“It won't be so nice for Lucy either,” I said. “You ought to see the old shack of a house she's going to live in.”

“That ain't my doing!” Pa snapped. “I never told her to go up to Effie's in the first place. I knew no good would ever come out of that. It's your Ma's doing.”

When I told Ma, she said: “He's stubborn and sinful as an old goat. I must have been either a saint or a fool for twenty-seven years.”

Pa came back into the house on the same day that Tom and Lucy moved up to the Krandall place. The old shack wasn't really ready for them, but Ma said she couldn't stand to see Pa living out in the barn with the horses and the cows and the pigs, mean and stubborn as he was. She said that when you're married to a man as long as she was married to Pa, he gets to be a habit with you, even if it's a bad habit. She said to me:

“You go get your pa, and tell him to take a bath and change his clothes before he sits on any of my furniture.”

And that night, Pa was back at his old place at the table, eating meat and potatoes with the air of a man who knows he is right. Ma said that maybe it was all for the best.

Even Pa had to admit that Tom wasn't afraid of work. He worked like a demon from before sunrise until after sunset. So did Lucy. Ma used to come back from visiting them clicking her tongue and shaking her head.

“Not human for a man to work like that,” she said.

Tom was planning to show Pa how wrong he had been. For all that Ma and Lucy tore Pa down, calling him a stubborn goat, Tom took his part. He said that Pa was one of those men who had to be shown; and he was willing to bet anything that he could show Pa and bring him around to his way of thinking.

Ma took me over there with her one day. Tom had just finished putting a coat of fresh white paint onto the house. He had patched up the porch and the roof, and set new glass in the windows. Lucy had hung chintz curtains and re-covered most of the old furniture. The place was beginning to look like a home instead of an old shack.

“How do you like it?” Tom wanted to know. He was proud as a peacock.

“It's pretty,” Ma admitted.

“I was hoping you'd bring Pa along with you,” Lucy said.

Ma snorted.

“He'll change his mind soon,” Tom grinned. “We're neighbors now.”

“You don't know Pa.”

“Well, soon as I take my first corn out, I'm going over to make a deal with him for two of his brood sows. Lucy says he has the finest brood sows in the country. Even if he doesn't like me, he can't refuse to sell.”

“Can't he?” Ma said. And then she added worriedly: “You know, Tom, I have my misgivings about letting you take this place. Nobody ever did take a pay crop out of this land.”

“I will,” Tom grinned.

For all Tom's work, he couldn't make anything of the Krandall place. Maybe if he had money, it would have been different. Irrigation costs money and so does soil restoration. Tom worked like a slave, but his corn was hardly worth the trouble of shucking.

And Pa just chuckled. He had known all along; he was getting a mighty lot of satisfaction out of the whole thing. Ma said to him:

“How you can be so ornery, Amos Todd, I don't know.”

“It wasn't me that sent Lucy up to Effie's,” Pa replied.

It was a dry year, and Tom wasn't the only farmer in the country who suffered. The drought hit Pa too, but Pa had something to fall back on. Tom didn't. Tom went into debt, and once when I went over there, I saw that Lucy could hardly hold the tears back.

Tom came around to talk about the brood sows with Pa. Pa listened quietly enough, stroking his mustache all the time. I had thought that maybe he wouldn't speak to Tom at all, but he was ready enough to listen and talk.

“Got cash?” he finally asked Tom.

“Well, I was hoping for some credit—”

“This is a bad year. A man sells for cash, or he don't sell.”

“Good heavens,” Tom said, “there's my farm, right over the hill yonder. It's not like I'm asking you to trust a stranger, even leaving out the fact that Lucy's your daughter.”

“Seems you're a stranger to me,” Pa said calmly.

“I see,” Tom said shortly. Without another word, he turned and walked away.

I guess neither Lucy nor Tom told Ma about that, because Ma never mentioned the incident to Pa. Most of the time now she was very quiet, keeping her lips good and tight.

That was a hard winter for Tom and Lucy, but somehow they managed to pull through. And before spring. Lucy had a boy whom they called Amos. Pa didn't go to the christening.

“Pity it wasn't a girl, so they could call her Effie,” Pa said.

One day, early that spring, two men in a long open car drove up the dirt road from the slab and pulled into our yard. “Mr. Todd around?” they asked me.

I ran for Pa, and when he came back the two men were standing near the car, studying our land. One of them was an elderly, gray-haired man in a blue suit. The other was younger and wore whipcord pants and laced-up boots.

“What can I do for you?” Pa asked them.

“My name's Allen,” the older one said. “This is Mr. McCloud. We're interested in your land.”

“Don't see what's different in my land from all the other land hereabouts.”

“We think it is,” Allen smiled. “Ever think of selling?”

“Nope.”

“Suppose you got a good offer, a mighty fine offer?” McCloud asked.

“There ain't no offer that could make me sell,” Pa said. “I been on this land nigh to thirty years. I aim to keep it.”

“I see there's not much point arguing with you, Mr. Todd,” the older man said.

“Pa never changed his mind yet,” I put in.

“What are you so set on my land for?” Pa demanded.

“We'll come to that,” Mr. Allen said. “Suppose we talk about a lease. Would you be willing to lease to us?”

“I'm no landlord,” Pa said shortly. “Never was, never will be. Always worked the land myself and always mean to.”

“Not in that sense,” Mr. Allen said. “We don't want your land to farm it. We want what's underneath.”

“Underneath?” Pa said. Then he grinned. “Oil, you mean. Well, you can get that idea right out of your head. There ain't oil under my land and there never was.”

“Mr. McCloud here thinks there is. He's a geologist, and he's never guessed wrong yet. I'm willing to finance the borings, and all you have to do is to give us a lease. We pay for the option, so even if there's only sand and water down there, you don't lose anything. And if she runs oil, you stand to make a fortune on your percentage.”

“There ain't oil down there and there never was,” Pa said.

“But that's our risk, Mr. Todd. If we're willing to pay you well for the option and drill with our own resources, what do you stand to lose?”