“Isn’t she a little heroine, though?” said Aunty Em. “All the way from St. Louis by herself.”
“I’d say it was an epic journey,” said Etta, giving Dorothy a little shake, and spoke to her alone. “And it’s not over yet. You’ve still got to get to Zeandale.”
“Oh, you know Henry and I regard ourselves as Manhattanites!” Aunty Em corrected her with a chuckle.
Uncle Henry came backward through the door, pulling the trunk. Toto began to bark again and harassed Henry’s heels.
“Gone’n brought her dog,” muttered Henry.
“I can see that, Henry,” said Aunty Em, voice low, her eyes avoiding Etta. Her hair was raked back tightly into a bun, and her hands pulled at it. There was a row of curls across her forehead.
“Zeandale’s nice too,” murmured Etta. Toto whimpered, circling Dorothy’s heels. Everything was confusion.
“Can . . . can we give you a lift up the hill, Etta?”
“Very kind of you, Mrs. Gulch, but I have my uncle’s pony and trap.”
“You musn’t overtax your strength, dear.”
“I won’t,” promised Etta.
“Well, then,” sighed Aunty Em, as if everything had been delightful. Her smile returned as gray as a cloudy day. “We must be on our way. Do remind me to your dear Aunt Ellen. And
may
I drop into Goodnow House next time I’m in town? I would so love to see you all.”
“Of course,” said Etta.
“And thank you so much. Say thank you, Dorothy.”
“Thank you, Etta.”
“Thank you
Miss Parkerson
,” Aunty Em corrected her.
“Thank
you
, Dorothy,” said Etta quickly. Then she kissed Dorothy on the forehead again. Dorothy could feel it, as if it glowed. For a moment she felt as though nothing could hurt her.
Dorothy sat on the trunk in the back. She looked backward as the station, the town, disappeared in trees.
“Well I must say, Dorothy,” said Aunty Em. “You do make your acquaintances from the top social drawer!”
The wagon wheels thrilled over the surface of a stone bridge across the river and into shade. Overhead there was a high bank of clouds.
“Believe it’s going to rain at last,” said Uncle Henry.
“Hallelujah,” said Aunty Em, her eyes fixed on the clouds. Then she turned and tapped Dorothy on the knee. “Out of the wagon while we go up the hill, Dorothy. Spare poor old Calliope.”
Dorothy didn’t understand.
“Calliope is our mule, Dorothy, and it’s not fair to make her haul us up hills. So we’ll have a nice walk.”
The road had been baked into ruts. Aunty Em took her hand, and they walked in twilight into trees. “You should have been here in spring,” said Aunty Em, “and seen the sweet William.” Her face went faraway.
“I can remember going up this road for the first time myself,” she said. “I was sixteen and your mama was nine, and we walked through here. It was just a track then. We walked all the way to Papa’s plot of land. Through these beautiful trees. And then we saw the valley, like you will soon, all grass and river, and we camped there. And we slept under the stars by a fire, looking up at the stars. Did your mama ever talk to you about that, Dorothy?”
“No,” said Dorothy. “No, Ma’am.” Her mother had never spoken about Manhattan.
“Did she talk about your Grandfather Matthew? How he came here and built a house?”
Dorothy thought she better answer yes.
“Your grandfather came out here just like Etta’s uncles, for the same reason. To keep Kansas a free state. And he worked on Manhattan’s first newspaper, and then for the
Independent
with Mr. Josiah Pillsbury. We are educated people, Dorothy. We are not just farmers.”
None of it made sense. Everything was so strange. It was like a dream. Dorothy knew that she would never wake up from it.
“There,” said Aunty Em, at the top of the hill.
More shadows, more trees, fields.
“Isn’t it pretty? Prime river-bottom land. They talk about pioneer hardships. Well, we must have been lucky. What we had, Dorothy, was pioneer beauty.”
What Dorothy saw on the other side of the hill was flat, open land. There would be no secret places in Zeandale like there had been in St. Louis, no nooks and crannies, no sheltering alleyways. Even the trees were small, in planted rows, except on some of the farther hills, and they looked dim and gray. White, spare houses stretched away at regular intervals between harvested fields. Dorothy could see a woman hanging up sheets. She could see children chasing each other around a barn. The soil that was gray on top was black where broken open.
“We’ll get you back home and give you a nice, hot bath, first thing,” said Aunty Em. She was still thinking about the Dip.
It took another hour to get to Zeandale. They turned right at a schoolhouse and went down a hard, narrow lane. The wagon pitched from side to side. Its old gray timber threatened slivers. Dorothy pushed with her feet to stay seated on the trunk as it was bumped and jostled.
Ahead there was a hill, mostly bald, with a few patches of scrub. To the right of that, more wooded hills folded themselves down into the valley. The lane bore them around to the right toward the hills. The sky was slate gray now; everything was dim. As the wagon turned, Dorothy saw something move beside the lane. Had it stood up? Its sleeved flapped. As it walked toward them, Dorothy saw it was a boy. He was whipping his wrist with a long dry blade of grass. As he neared the wagon, he doffed a floppy, shapeless hat.
“Good evening, Mrs. Gulch, Mr. Gulch.”
“Good evening, Wilbur,” said Aunty Em.
“Mother saw you leaving this afternoon, so I thought I’d just set by the road till you came back along so I could hear the news.”
“I brought the news with me,” said Aunty Em. “Wilbur, this is my little niece, Dorothy, come all the way from St. Louis to live with us. Isn’t she the prettiest little thing?”
“Sure is,” said Wilbur. He had a long, slightly misshapen face, like someone had hit him, and he had a front tooth missing.
“This is Wilbur F. Jewell, Dorothy, one of our neighbor’s boys.”
“Hello,” said Dorothy. Across the fields, there was a white house, with two windows, and an extension. “Is that your house?”
“Yes indeed.”
“It’s lopsided,” said Dorothy.
“Dorothy, this is Kansas, and in Kansas we take account of manners. The Jewells came here like your Grandfather Matthew and built that house themselves.”
“We should have built a new one by now,” said Wilbur quietly.
There was more chat. Some long-term trouble was spoken of: banks and payments. The smoke from Wilbur’s house was blue and hung in the air like fog.
“Tell your mother I’ll be along as soon as I can,” said Aunty Em, sounding worried. The neighbors parted. Wilbur walked backward, waving his hat.
“Let’s hope the rain don’t wash the crops away,” called Uncle Henry from the wagon.
“Goodbye, Will!” called Dorothy. She liked the way he was put together, like a bundle of sticks.
Aunty Em sat straight and still for a while, and then seemed to blow out as though she had been holding her breath. “Well!” she exclaimed. “Boy his age with nothing better to do than sit all day by the road like a scarecrow on Sunday! What is his father thinking of?”
“I reckon old Bob Jewell’s giving up,” said Uncle Henry. His voice went lower and quieter. “The land can break a man, Em.”
“Depends on the man,” sniffed Aunty Em. She was pulling her hair again.
Home came slowly toward them. Home was small and gray, a tiny box of even, unpainted planks of wood, with a large stone chimney and no porch, just steps. It nestled between two hills that reached from opposite directions into the valley. Dark twisted woodland reared up behind it. The barn sagged. Dorothy took account of manners and was silent. Toto began to bark over and over.
Aunty Em covered her ears. “Dorothy, try to still your dog, could you?”
“Ssh, Toto,” said Dorothy. Deep in his throat, teeth slightly bared, Toto kept growling.
There were fields, but tall marsh grass grew up among them, even in the drought.
“Dorothy,” said Aunty Em. “See that grass there? That marks a wallow. Now you must be careful of the wallows, whenever you see them. They’re quicksand. Children disappear into them. There was a little girl who got swallowed up in the buffalo wallows and was never found again. So when you play, you go up those hills there.”
Dorothy believed in death. “Yes, Ma’am,” she said very solemnly.
Toto still growled.
Hens ran away from the wagon as it pulled into the yard. Toto snarled as if worrying something in his mouth and then scrabbled over the running boards. “Wow wow wow wow!” he said, haring after the hens.
The hens seemed to explode, running off in all directions. Aunty Em jumped down from the wagon, gathering up her gray skirts. She ran after Toto into the barn, long flat feet and skinny black ankles pumping across the hard ground.
“That’s going to get your aunt into a powerful rage,” said Uncle Henry, taking the mule’s lead.
Inside the barn there were cries like rusty hinges and the fluttering of wings. Hens scattered back out of it, dust rising behind them like smoke, pursued by Toto. Aunty Em followed with a broom made of twigs.
“Shoo! Shoo!” she said in a high voice.
“He won’t hurt them, Aunty Em!” said Dorothy.
Aunty Em brought the broom down on Toto with a crackling of twigs. He yelped and rolled over. She whupped him again, and he kicked up dust and shot under the house.
“Henry, get a rope,” said Aunty Em.
“Got to take care of the mule, Em.”
The house rested about a foot off the ground on thick beams. Toto peered out from between them, quivering. Dorothy saw his eyes.
Aunty Em sighed and caught an escaping wisp of hair. “Dorothy,” she said, sounding somewhat more kindly. “Your dog is going to have to learn to stay away from the hens. Now let’s get you inside.”
Aunty Em held up her arms and lifted Dorothy down. She walked back to the house, holding Dorothy’s hand. “We’re going to have to tie Toto up, Dorothy. Just for a while. He can’t go inside, or we’ll never keep things clean, and he’ll just have to learn not to worry the livestock.” Aunty Em lifted Dorothy up to the level of the front door, and then looked into her eyes. “Do you understand, Dorothy?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” murmured Dorothy, scowling, confused.
“Well, in you go,” said Aunty Em, giving Dorothy’s hand a rousing shake. “Let’s have some food and get you cleaned up. Henry, please see to the dog.”
Then Dorothy saw inside the house. “Oh no!” she grizzled. It wasn’t nice. There was only one room, and it was dark, with only one window with no curtains.
“Guess it isn’t St. Louis,” said Auntie Em. She flung open the door of an iron stove, red with rust, and lit two tallow candles. Immediately there was a smell of burned fat.
In the flickering light, Dorothy saw that inside, the walls were made of thick raw logs. There was a worn throw rug over a wooden floor, and a bare table and bare chairs; there was a wardrobe and a table with a chipped china basin and long handles on which towels hung. The chimney and fireplace occupied one entire side of the room, but were empty and cold. There was a bed crammed into one corner, and a blanket hung across the room. On the other side of it was a pile of straw.
Dorothy thought of Toto, who was still under the house. She felt disloyal being here. She wanted to hide, too, under the house.
Aunty Em took a deep breath and then sighed, a long, high, showy kind of sigh that she meant Dorothy to hear. She had decided to be nice.
“Well,” she said, animated. “What have we got here but some nice stew! I think there’s probably a little child somewhere who has had a very long day. Maybe she’d like something to eat.
Dorothy was not hungry, but she said, “Yes please, Ma’am.”
“What a nicely brought up little child she is,” said Aunty Em, still piping.
“Can Toto have some too?”
Aunty Em managed to chuckle. “Heh,” she said. “This is people stew, Dorothy. We got special food for dogs.”
Aunty Em passed her the stew. It was brown, in a brown cracked bowl. Aunty Em leaned over to peer, grinning, into Dorothy’s face as she took a spoonful.
“There!” Aunty Em said, soothing.
The meat was hard and dry in the middle and very, very salty and there were bubbles of salty fat in the gravy, and there were no vegetables with the meat. Dorothy’s mother had always eaten lots of crisp vegetables, lots of fresh fruit, like she could never get enough of it. Dorothy was going to ask for some, but looked around, and saw there was no fruit or vegetables. Dorothy chewed and swallowed. But she couldn’t lie. She couldn’t say it was nice.
“It’s greasy,” she whispered. If this was what they fed people in Kansas, what did they feed dogs?
Aunty Em tried to be nice. “Well,” she said, with another drawn-out sigh. “How about some nice hot cornbread to soak it up? Fresh-made this morning.” She didn’t want to wait for an answer. She turned away smartly, and began to saw away at the bread. Dorothy could see she was still mad. Aunty Em dropped the bread on her plate from high up. The bread was bright yellow.