On the Way Home (Little House 10)

We are passing through the Memphis fruit farms, 1,500 acres, part of the way on both sides of the road. It is a young orchard, rows upon rows of little trees, apple and peach, curving over the plowed hills.

Some covered wagons came up behind us and we came up behind some ahead, all the teams going slowly, holding back down hill and pulling up hill. At 11:30 we came into Mansfield in a long line of 10 emigrant wagons.

Mansfield is a good town of 300 or 400 inhabitants in a good central location where it should grow fast. The railroad runs on one side of the square and two stagecoach lines go from the depot, one south to the County seat of Douglas County, the other north to the County seat of Wright County. There is everything here already that one could want though we must do our worshipping without a Congregational church. There is a Methodist church and a Presbyterian. There is a good school. Around the Square, two general stores, two drug stores, the bank, a Boston Racket store, livery stable, blacksmith shop near. There are several nice large houses in big yards with trees. South of the tracks is as good as north of them; two or three big houses, and a flour mill is there by a mill pond.

Camped in the woods in the western edge of town and this afternoon Manly looked over one place for sale but was not exactly suited.

? On the Way Home ?

3

Here my mother’s record ends. Fifty years later I began casually to speak of our camp in those vanished woods and she stopped the words in my mouth with a fierce, “I don’t want to think of it!”

I do not remember how many days my father spent hunting for land that the secret hundred dollar bill would buy. Every morning he rode away with some land agent to limp up and down the hills and to come back at evening, nothing found yet.

Paul and George and I were joyous. After the long boredom of so many dull days that we hardly remembered De Smet, now every day was Sunday without Sunday’s clean clothes and staid behavior. The camp was a Sunday camp; the Cooleys’ wagons on one side, ours on the other; in the grove between them the table and chairs were set and the hammock hung in the shade. The camp stove stood a little way apart over cooling ashes. Farther away the horses were tied under the trees, and behind the wagons were screened places for our Saturday baths.

We must stay within sight or at least within hearing if our mothers called us, but as soon as morning tasks were done we were free to play in the woods. All day we climbed trees, picked berries, ate unripe walnuts and hazelnuts, cracked between two stones. We startled rabbits that we must not chase far; we watched squirrels and birds, beetles and anthills. The hot air was full of good smells of rotting logs, dusty weeds, damp underneaths of mats of last year’s oakleaves. Dandelion stems curled bitter on my tongue’s tip and the green curls wilted over my ears.

Sharp flat stones were thick underfoot; we stubbed our toes on them and all our big toes were wrapped in rags. Stone-bruises on our summer-callused heels didn’t stop our running. We found toadstools and mosses like teeny-tiniest forests, flat greenish-gray lichen on rocks, little perfect skins of locusts, empty, thin and brittle, clinging with tiny claws to the bark of trees.

We picked up strange stones. When I showed my father a thin triangular one, wavy all over and sharp-pointed, he said it was an Indian arrowhead. We collected dozens of them and Paul found a stone axhead.

One day I had to stay in camp with Mrs. Cooley, I must mind her and not go out of her sight. My father had found a place, my mother was going with him to see it, and they wanted no worry about me while they were gone. There never had been such a long morning. I was embarrassed and so was Mrs. Cooley. When at last I saw the team coming, my father and mother coming back, I felt like exploding; I could hardly be still and not speak until spoken to.

My father was glowing and my mother shining. She never had talked so fast. Just what they wanted, she told Mrs. Cooley, so much, much more than they’d hoped for. A year-round spring of the best water you ever drank, a snug log house, in woods, on a hill, only a mile and a half from town so Rose could walk to school, and to cap all, just think! four hundred young apple trees, heeled in, all ready to set out when the land was cleared. They’d bought it, as soon as dinner was over they were going to the bank to sign the papers. We were moving out that afternoon.

When he was excited my father always held himself quiet and steady, moving and speaking with deliberation. Sometimes my quick mother flew out at him, but this day she was soft and warm. She left him eating at the camp table, told me to clear it and wash the dishes when he was through, and went into the screened place to get ready to meet the banker.

I perched on a stump and watched her brush out her hair and braid it. She had beautiful hair, roan-brown, very fine and thick.

Unbraided, it shimmered down to her heels; it was so long that when it was tightly braided she could sit on the braids. Usually it hung down her back in one wide braid but when she dressed up she must put up her hair and endure the headache.

Now she wound the braid around and around into a big mass on the back of her head, and fastened it with her tortoise-shell pins. She fluffed her bangs into a soft little mat in front, watching her comb in the small looking glass fastened to a tree, and suddenly I realized that she was whistling; I remembered that I hadn’t heard her whistling lately.

“Whistling girls and crowing hens always come to some bad ends,” she’d say gaily. She was whistling always. She whistled like a bird whistling a tune, clear and soft, clear and sweet, trilling, chirping, or dropping notes one by one as a meadow lark drops them from the sky. I was pleased to hear her whistling again.

Whistling, she buttoned up her new shoes with the buttonhook. She took off her calico dress and folded it neatly. Standing in her bleached muslin petticoats and corset cover trimmed with crocheted lace, she took her best dress, her black cloth wedding dress, out of the box in which it had traveled from Dakota. Whistling, Oh Susanna, don’t you cry for me, she put on the skirt and smoothed the placket. I was sorry that the skirt hid her new shoes. She coaxed her arms into the basque’s tight sleeves and carefully buttoned all the glittery jet buttons up its front to her chin. With her gold pin she pinned the fold of ribbon, robin’s-egg blue, to the front of the stand-up collar. Then, the very last thing

, the climax: she pinned on her black sailor hat with the blue ribbon around the crown and the spray of wheat standing straight up at one side. The braids in back tilted the hat forward just a little; in front, the narrow brim rested on the mat of bangs.

She looked lovely; she was beautiful. You could see my father think so, when she came out and he looked at her.

She told him to hurry or they’d be late, but she spoke as if she were singing, not cross at all. He went into the screened place to change his shirt and comb his hair and mustache, and put on his new hat. To me my mother said that I could clear the table now, be sure to wash every dish while they were gone and, as usual, she told me to be careful not to break one. I never had broken a dish.

I remember all this so clearly because of what happened. I had taken away the dishes and wiped the table. My mother put down on it her clean handkerchief and her little red cloth pocketbook with the mother-of-pearl sides; she was wearing her kid gloves. Carefully she brought the writing desk and set it on the table. She laid back its slanted upper half and lifted out the narrow wooden tray that held the pen and the inkwell.

The hundred dollar bill was gone.

There was a shock, like stepping in the dark on a top step that isn’t there. But it could not be true. It was true; the place in the desk was empty. Everything changed. In the tight strangeness my father and mother were not like them; I did not feel like me.

They asked, Had I told someone? No. Had I never said anything to anyone, ever, about that money? No. Had I seen a stranger near the wagon when they were not there? No. Or in camp? No.

My mother said it wasn’t possible; not the Cooleys. My father agreed, no, not them. It must be there. My mother had seen it last in Kansas.

They took every sheet of writing paper out of the desk and shook it; they took each letter out of its envelope, unfolded it, looked into the empty envelope. They turned the desk upside down and shook it, the felt-covered inside lids flapping. My mother said they were losing their senses. Suddenly she thought, hoped, asked, Had I taken it myself, to play with?

NO! I felt scalded. She asked, Was I sure? I hadn’t just opened the desk sometime, for fun? My throat swelled shut; I shook my head, no. “Don’t cry,” she said automatically. I wouldn’t cry, I never cried, I was angry, insulted, miserable, I was not a baby who’d play with money or open that desk for fun, I was going on eight years old. I was little, alone, and scared. My father and mother sat there, still. In the long stillness I sank slowly into nothing but terror, pure terror without cause or object, a nightmare terror.