Authors: Nancy E. Turner
Quieter? Are the children getting up at night? Are they noisy?
Savannah blushed nearly crimson. It isn’t the children. It’s them. In the room over us, she whispered. It is their honeymoon, after all.
Oh, Lord, I said. And I turned my own face away.
She said, It’s just that the children are on the same floor.
Oh, Savannah. Oh, oh, was all I could say. I’ll have to have a reason. I’ll say, maybe, that it’ll be easier for Felicity not to have to climb extra stairs, she’ll like that. How will that be honey?
Let’s go get those turkeys started, I said. I need some coffee extra strong to get me going on all this cooking ahead.
Savannah and I hugged each other and went to the kitchen. She is sure the finest friend and sister I could ever have, and suddenly I thought, maybe next to her I am not giving Felicity a fair shake, so I decided I will just try again to see her in a better light.
We had almost an hour together in pure quiet, working, before the little ones came toddling down the stairs. The boys were having a bed-wrestling match and someone fell, then we heard tears and wailing, then just more laughing. Whatever it was, they must have made amends.
You know, I said to Savannah, as we watched Suzy and her three smallest ones working at their oatmeal, I think your Mary Pearl resembles Ulyssa.
Oh, said Savannah. Not really? Do you think so? I hoped.
See her bright eyes, the way they turn up a bit at the corners? That sweet child has more than her fair share of beauty already. She is Ulyssa Lawrence’s niece for sure.
Savannah smiled and petted her little head gently. How’s my little Pearl? Is that good oatmeal? Then she turned to me. Why, Sarah, I believe you’re right. She does indeed. Oh, I’m so thankful. It won’t even be prideful to have her portrait made to send to Ulyssa in the sanitarium to show her.
By the time we got the big ones fed and the men, the house again was a roar of voices. The boys went out to find a stick big enough to hit a ball Charlie had wound up with string and rawhide, and play a game of Baseball. Then Albert, who had somehow got his buttons done, splint and all, presented them with an India rubber ball, but they hit it so well they nearly took out a window, so I made them go to the back and get out by the shed.
As noon approached, I suddenly noticed how tired I was, and after Mama scolded me for working so hard, I went upstairs intending to rest for an hour. All the women at the kitchen table purely fussed at me and promised they would tend to everything and Thanksgiving dinner would be ready at two, so I had plenty of time. As I went up the last stairs to our room, I passed Ernest and Felicity, coming down for the first time today.
Felicity asked me what had I fixed for breakfast, and would I mind bringing it to her?
In that instant all my aggravation at her came back just like the tick of a clock had brought it on. Just as I was about to open my mouth to say something I’m sure I would regret, I heard a terrible wail from the back of the house. Downstairs, I found Gilbert and Clover and Joshua all bearing Charlie like he was a sacrificial ram into the kitchen. Charlie was fussing at them to leave him be, though was surely in some kind of distress. Charlie’s arm was hanging down, and he was doing his level best not to cry, but he was about to let go. Jack and Albert and Rudolfo rushed up also, and with everyone trying to get a look at Charlie at once, it made me dizzy and I leaned on his chair for my own support.
We have put aside all the cooking to take him to see the doctor. Mama and Celia, and of course Felicity, stayed behind to mind the turkeys, and the whole rank and file of our family waited in front of the doctor’s house for Charlie to come out with a splint. Charlie’s arm is broken, in the very same place as his Uncle Albert’s. It seems the boys all went to catch the ball at once as it was coming down out of the sun overhead, and the four oldest ones crashed together without even seeing each other.
There has been no rest today, and after Thanksgiving supper, which was purely wonderful and noisy and which we ate again as if we were sitting at a trough instead of the fancy dining table, Jack insisted almost gruffly that I had to lie down. But I didn’t want to miss anything and Charlie said his arm hurt him terribly, so I convinced them all that I would rest and put my feet up in the parlor, and Charlie could sit by me. Before long, though, I was asleep and when I awoke the dishes were all clean and the house was quiet with all the family outside visiting. Charlie was asleep next to me with his poor splinted arm resting on my lap. That is how I happened to have some time to write this journal today amidst the commotion.
It is a rare thing to see that boy not moving. Even in his sleep his body seems to be quivering, trying to grow as fast as it can. He eats about five meals a day, and he is just a child. He has got a big scratch across his nose and cheek from Lord knows what. And freckles, and rambling, wavy hair like his Papa’s. His hands look too big for his arms, and his nails are all broken and ragged on calloused fingers with a wart or two on nearly every knuckle.
I was sitting there trying to think how I could get up without bothering his arm, when Gilbert tiptoed into the room. Mama, are you awake? he says.
Yes. Come here, son, I whispered.
Look what I made you, Mama, he said. Uncle Ernest showed me how to whittle and gave me this here knife. He showed me a pocket folding knife and at the same time produced a long, thin, sharp twig he had peeled and put a point on.
Well, look there, I said. That is a fine thing, son, and I know what I will do with it. Next time I make a cake and need to run something around the edge to get it out of the pan, I will have a good tool for it and the knives won’t go dull or scrape ashes from the pan. Just smooth wood; it will be a fine tool.
Gilbert was glowing with pride.
You know, I told him, if you could find a good sized stick that had a kind of hook in it, and smooth it pretty good and round off the ends, I could use that to pull a cake pan out of the oven. His eyes lit up and he folded up the knife, handed me his gift, and went out the back door to hunt for a stick.
Charlie looked over at me, and said, It’s just an old stick, Mama.
It’s a gift from my boy, I told him. A kitchen tool. Then I saw him looking kind of glum. See, I told him, You run faster and throw better than anyone in the school. You have a real hand for riding and roping, which you took to faster than any child I ever saw. And your brother is littler and not as quick to do those things. But he likes fine work with his hands. What’s Gilbert going to ever do that he can claim as his own? He can’t be you. He’s got to find himself a talent, and maybe this is just the start of some fine whittling.
Whittling ain’t nothing but a waste of time, he said.
Isn’t.
Isn’t. It’s just a stick.
Well, you’ll know it isn’t just a stick when your own boy hands you a thing he made with his hands. Then we went outside on the porch with the others until the sun set.
November 28, 1892
Albert and Savannah and the children went home yesterday with Mama. The Maldonados and Mason left the day before. For four days now I have tried every way I know to be kind to Mrs. Ernest Prine but I am purely out of patience. This morning I found Felicity counting the silverware, and she asked me since Ernest told her he gave me some of it did I plan to give it back now that they were married.
That woman has not lifted so much as a finger to contribute to the work around here. I have flatly refused to do her washing and ironing as she asked, and that caused an hour long fit of wailing and crying. She wants to take a bath every blessed day even though she has done nothing to break a sweat all day, and she spends hours at a time in the bathroom so that all of us have more than once had to make use of the outhouse behind the shed because of her and it is too blessed cold to think that is no small sacrifice. She lies around and Ernest totes things to her, then she complains about them and he brings something else.
Not only that, but I have discovered because one day she was careless and forgot to do up the way she usually does, that those black, black eyebrows are painted on. That woman is a hussy if ever there was one. The one time I got her to lend a hand in the kitchen, she dished up supper and made sure the biggest piece of steak was on the bottom and started the plate around so it came to her last. Same with the biscuits. The biggest, lightest ones seem to make it to her plate every meal. Any time she thinks she is alone with Jack, she finds a way to bump against him or touch him. He has taken to following me from room to room, even if he is reading a book, just so he doesn’t take the chance of being left alone where she can use him as a scratching post. All the while my brother Ernest just moons over her and eyes her like a calf looking at a teat.
Ernest, I said, we have a passel of company. There have been upwards of twenty-three people in this house and more than half of them under the age of twelve. I have cooked and cleaned for this army for days. There is washing to do, and children to tend, and floors to sweep and furniture to dust. There are lamps to clean and stoves to watch. If she needs company, she will have to come downstairs. She is not sick, and she ought to be lending a hand, not whining about her nerves.
This morning we are leaving in just a bit for the ranch. It will be a slow ride as Jack is taking me in the buggy so it is not too bumpy. My back is hurting so badly I cannot ride the wagon and certainly not on a horse. Well, we don’t have an extra team for Ernest to ride Felicity in the wagon, and Jack went to get loan of some stock from the fort so Ernest and Gilbert could ride, but Charlie shouldn’t because of his arm, so he will hold Suzy in the back for me and be smashed up next to fat Felicity the whole way. Poor boy.
That woman grinds my grits, and that’s a fact.
November 29, 1892
This visit to the ranch may just be the very best thing I ever did. Felicity just could not say enough about our house in town, and when she found out how many hundreds of acres I have bought, and that Jack lets me run the whole thing, and how many cattle there are, she was just full of questions like how much do cattle sell for, and how fast do they have calves, and how much money did I think the whole place was worth. I asked her right out did she have in mind to buy the place out, but she said, Oh, no, it was just interesting to her.
There are always lots of chores to do and she was certainly interested in anything that had to do with making money, particularly how much money Jack and I had, not necessarily what she could lend a hand at. She asked more questions than I had answers for, and finally I got to saying, I don’t even know how much land there really is, and I leave it to the hired men to count the cattle. She kept saying she would like to own a spread herself, and she and Ernest could work it, or she could buy into my place on credit, and work here and pay off the loan from us, while taking part in the profits also, as we have certainly managed to live fine in that big house in Tucson, although of course, she just couldn’t do without a couple of maids and a cook. I just didn’t know what to say, but luckily Jack said right out that credit was something we didn’t deal in, and had no plans to.
Last night as I had just got the children to bed, Felicity let out a scream that would have split a rock. It was only an old tarantula crawled into her room from the open window, and she was cursing the fact that there was no screen on it like in town. I picked up the little hairy fellow in a newspaper and set him carefully down outside and she screamed at me to Smash it, smash it!
And I said, I will certainly not, as those nice tarantulas keep the scorpions down, and eat several of them at night. That’s probably what he was doing in your room, looking for supper. Then my true meanness came out for all my family to see, because I added, Besides, if you’ve got tarantulas, you know you don’t have rattlers, because they’d eat ’em.
Well, I have never actually seen a conniption before, until now. Ernest looked at me real mad for saying that and started to explain to her that I was just being touchy, but before long he was backed into a corner and quiet. That woman went beside herself, all dressed in the biggest, most ruffled and fluffy night dress I ever saw, with her hair up in rags, her eyebrows down to normal size, and ranting around the room like a wet hen.
Ernest fell to saying, Now, Sweetie, Now Honey, now, now, until I wanted to box his head. He was standing up in the corner of the room repeating it when I just walked out and shut the door.
December 1, 1892
Savannah’s house was no escape for me. Felicity insisted on walking with me and taking the air on the way from my house. Gilbert asked me why she needs so much air, and is it because she is so pillowy? I just laughed and clapped my hand on his mouth and told him not to say things like that out loud, even if he thinks it.
December 3, 1892
We are headed back to town. Ernest and Felicity are both mad and silent and pickley looking.
She said yesterday she had figured out that if she just had a screen on her window and a bucket under each post of her bed so nothing could crawl up the legs, she was real happy staying there. In fact, between the house in town and the ranch, she said, she could just feel like staying forever, it was so homey. And so nice for a winter, as she had never seen a winter without several feet of snow in Pennsylvania. Well, by then, I knew for a fact that my brother Ernest had been shooting off his mouth to her about this ranch, claiming that he owned a share of it and the pecan farm too, and that our family was going to be the wealthiest family in Arizona Territory before long. He flat out told me that he had bragged to her before they got married, too. Not a word of that is true; this ranch was Jimmy’s and now it is mine and Jack’s. Yesterday, just before Felicity’s sudden change of mood, she had pestered him to make Albert buy out for cash Ernest’s share of the farm, and he was going to try. And he wanted me to consider her good offer of buying a share of this ranch on credit so she could help out and they would own some of it, also.