The Whistling Season Page 4

  Rose went, took him by a wrist, and led him to us.

  "Mr. Milliron, Toby, Damon, Paul," she counted off as if we were a select regiment, "may I present my brother, Morris Morgan."

  "I'm sorry to intrude on the tableau," the newcomer articulated melodiously. "But I fear it's what comes of an attachment to Rose." My ears and Damon's and possibly Toby's perked up in interest at his cultured way with words. This was like hearing Father meet up with himself.

  "Such luck!" Rose said as if it was an explanation for his presence. "That Morrie was able to accompany me."

  "Are you also relocating to Montana?" Father inquired pleasantly enough over a handshake he obviously had never expected to make. Morris Morgan appeared not to hear that, instead glancing nervously aside.

  "Rose? My chapeau? The ransom, remember?"

  Rose's hand flew to her mouth and she whirled toward the train again. There the heavy-set conductor stood waiting, railway cap highly officious, while he twirled a nice new kangaroo-brown Stetson hat on an indicative forefinger.

  "A terrible misunderstanding," Rose rushed to tell us in a low but musical voice. "We were under the impression that our tickets would take us all the way to here. But when we had to climb onto this"—she waved a disparaging hand at the branch-line train—"and that man came around demanding fresh tickets, goodness gracious, we had only enough for my fare. And so he grabbed—"

  "—confiscated as collateral—" Morris Morgan interpolated, as if interested in the philosophy of it.

  "—my poor brother's hat. Mr. Milliron, I hate like everything to ask. But might I draw ahead a trifle more on my wage? Just enough to cover Morris's fare?"

  Now it was Father and Damon and I who looked around nervously, to make sure no one was overhearing this. He had soundly counseled the pair of us not to mention to anyone the outlay for a housekeeper we had never laid eyes on, while Toby had got it into his head that sending money to her saved her the trouble of stealing it from us, satisfying Aunt Eunice's warning.

  You can't leave a man hatless in the middle of Montana. But Father did say, "If this keeps on, Mrs. Llewellyn, you'll have the house and we'll be in your employ." He counted out the exact fare and handed it to Rose.

  Notably, she did not hand the money onward to her brother, but marched over to the conductor and liberated the Stetson herself.

  "Now that that's settled," Father was determined to take charge, "Mrs. Llewellyn will ride out with us," nodding in the general direction of Marias Coulee, then inclining civilly but definitively toward the unforeseen brother, "and you we can drop at the hotel." He paused as the newly hatted figure drew himself up straighter yet and pulled out a pocket watch, one of those extravagant ones the size of a turnip, at the end of the gold chain.

  Looking at Father instead of the time, Morris Morgan asked: "Does Westwater boast a pawn shop?"

  "Not yet," Father was forced to admit.

  "Oh dear," said Rose.

  I was the one who came up with:

  "George and Rae have that attic room."

  Even I cannot fashion the kind of extreme dream Rose and Morrie, as we were calling him before long, must have felt themselves caught up in as our wagon wheeled away from a clapboard depot that slumbered back into the prairie twenty-three and a half hours of each day. Westwater then was one of the newest spots on earth, and possibly the most far-flung. A solitary substantial building, the brick hotel, towered three stories over the downtown intersection where buffalo had been the only traffic not many years before. Saloons had been shooed into one section of street north of the railroad tracks. Newcomers could follow their noses, in any of three directions, to the rival livery stables known as the White Barn, the Green Barn, and the Red Barn. But otherwise, the raw town rising out of the open plain seemed to be a mirage missing many of its vapors. Streets as long and open as boulevards arrowed off through the grassland, with only a sporadic house in evidence on each thoroughfare of dirt and weeds. The impression of civic scatter continued out to the flatland horizon, where isolated homestead shanties sat like potted plants. A few dabs of Westwater still lay here and there around us when Father smacked the horses into a mild trot, but pretty plainly our wagon had long since passed the city limits of our passengers' imaginations.

  Bang! went something. Rose and Morrie both jumped an inch out of their Minneapolis hides.

  Even from behind, the three of us relegated to sitting on sacks of coal and oats in the back of the wagon could tell Father was starting to relish this. Grownups had games of their own, Damon and I already knew and Toby would catch on to in his own good time. "Westwater does boast a shoe emporium," Father was saying past Rose to her disconcerted brother. "If you happen to be equine." With that he threw a wave to Alf Morrissey in his blacksmith shop, and Alf lifted his hammer in salute before tonging a red-hot horseshoe to a new angle on his anvil and giving it another thunderous bang!

  The road to Marias Coulee put the railroad to shame for straight intent, and by the time Father had clipped off the first mile by giving the horses their head and his captive audience the benefit of his wisdom on several Montana matters, Toby had bounced from sack to sack until he was sitting practically on the coattails of the adults. From that close range, he could not resist. When Father stopped to draw a breath, Toby had his question ready for Rose:

  "How'd you get so many pretty names?"

  Swift as anything, she looked at him over her shoulder. "So many?"

  "Uh huh. Rose and Lou and Ellen."

  When all of us but Toby had had our laugh, Rose—smiling that effective smile once again—turned half around to him. "My poor husband always said Llewellyn is the Welsh way to spell Jones, there were so many with his same last name. Here, I'll write it into your hand. That way you'll always carry it with you."

  Toby blushed with pleasure as she recited each letter and traced it with her finger into the palm of his small hand. I could tell Damon had been itching to ask something, too. But he simply nodded to himself as if Toby had taken care of it all.

  "Now shut your eyes, say kafoozalum, and close your hand tight."

  Toby did as she instructed.

  "There," Rose proclaimed. "You won't ever forget me now."

  "You're going to have an admirer there, Mrs. Llewellyn," Father said with a wink at Toby.

  "Oh, could you make it 'Rose,' please, sir. I try not to use the other, it's just too—" She let that trail off to wherever things too sad to talk about end up.

  I watched Morris Morgan fasten a considering look onto her, then give her a pat as though he was remembering her travail.

  "Rose it is, then, if you'll denominate me Oliver," Father concurred. "While we're at it we may as well make it unanimous." He shifted the reins to his left hand and thrust his right toward Morrie for a confirming shake. I see them yet, each settling back on the seat of the wagon after that handclasp performed under the warm gaze of Rose. Father's weather-tanned face, with its work wrinkles running down his cheeks, like a copper coin a bit melted. Morrie smoothing his mighty mustache as if it was newly found. Neither of them possessing any notion of all they were being introduced to with those first names.

  Maybe it was the loosening of address, like a necktie tugged free of its knot. Maybe it was Morrie's way of listening with monkish attention as though comparing the vocabulary of the next monastery over with his own. Maybe it was utter relief that at last we had a housekeeper, at least aboard the wagon. Or all of the above. Whatever was brimming in him, Father was expansive as he now speculated, "Morrie, I suppose you're traveling on through, once Rose gets established? I hear things are booming on the Coast."

  "Actually, I thought I might seek something here."

  "Ah?" said Father, clearly thrown. Homesteaders came in every shape and size, but Rose's tailored brother plainly was the exact opposite of agrarian. "What are you good at?"

  "Intriguing question, Oliver," Morrie commended as if it had never occurred to him to undergo such self-examination. In a
thoughtful tone he proceeded to do so for us now. "Whist. Identification of birds. A passable reciting voice, I'm told. Latin declensions. A bit rusty on Greek, but—"

  "Oliver surely means your recent field of work," Rose took over. "The leather trade," she identified it as if Morrie's own job description might elude him.

  Quick as a whip, though, he put in: "I handled the kid glove end of things, didn't I, Rose."

  "Our family enterprise," she said sadly, "it—" She gave her head that little shake. "After my poor husband—" This time she drew a chest-heaving breath. "Everything went."

  Morrie rapidly followed that with:

  "Oliver? You have provided for Rose most generously." Drawing a breath of the same dramatic dimension as hers—could something like that run in the family?—he went on: "We were hoping you could be of assistance in my depleted situation, too. I am not afraid of work."

  Father waited warily, to see if the ancient tagline might be coming: "I can lie right down by it and go to sleep." But Morrie seemed to mean what he had just vowed.

  Finally, doubtless feeling the eyes of the audience in the back of the wagon on him, Father said only as much as seemed prudent: "I'll ask around." But the next thing we knew, here came his laugh by way of his nose. My brothers and I recognized one of his moments of inspiration. "On second thought," we heard him say. "I happen to know someone who needs a few cords of wood cut to see her through the winter."

  "Oh," Rose exulted enough for both her and Morrie, "just the thing!"

  Damon nudged me. Aunt Eunice and her woodpile both: Morrie was going to need his courage in the face of that work.

  Shadows were growing long by the time we crossed the Westwater plain and came into sight of our homestead and the Schrickers'. Whether or not Rose and Morrie took it as a greeting, Houdini came out to meet us at the road, barking so hard he staggered in circles.

  ***

  "UPKEEP," ROSE DECLARED AS SHE CAST AN EYE OVER OUR lodgings first thing the next morning. "That's every secret of a pleasant household, regular upkeep."

  The bunch of us, Father in the lead, trailed her from room to room. She had shown up before we set off for school or Father made his way out to the horse barn—truth be told, before Toby had his shoes on or Father had his first dosage of coffee in him or Damon had the sleep wiped from his eyes or I had pulled myself together after a dream involving an eternal wait at a depot. The surprise knock on the door that early in the day froze the four of us until we remembered we now had a new standard of life, waiting to be let in. And everywhere Rose's gaze of inspection alit, ours following hers a bit apprehensively, some shortfall of housekeeping stood revealed like a museum exhibit of bachelor habits. Underfoot: we swept occasionally, but mopped never. Overhead: spider webs and soot clouded together in a way Shakespeare could have made something of. The upstairs bedroom, where Damon and I shared the big bed and Toby nestled in his corner bunk, displayed the individual clutter of each of us. If anything, we practiced downkeep. Damons sports scrapbooks lay around open when he was working on them, and he was always working on them. Over in his nook, Toby had a growing assortment of bones from the buffalo jump we had discovered, secretly hoping, I suspect, that he could accumulate a buffalo. My books already threatened to take over my part of the room and keep on going. Mother's old ones, subscription sets Father had not been able to resist, coverless winnowings from the schoolhouse shelf—whatever cargoes of words I could lay my hands on I gave safe harbor. All three of us had arrowhead collections; Rose must have divined instantly that it wasn't safe to put a finger down on any surface without a good, close look first.

  Still, people on Lowry Hill in Minneapolis must have had their own dusty corners and scatterings of things, mustn't they? Filing after Rose on her march through the house upstairs and then back down, we waited hopefully for her to say something such as "I have seen worse." She didn't say it.

  Instead, as her quick brown eyes took everything in, we could tell she was building a mental fist of some length. But nowhere on it, so far, was the one chore in the one room of the house that would do us some instant good. Maybe my stomach rumbled at me, or maybe I was merely determined to find out whether Can't Cook But Doesn't Bite meant what it sounded like or not. Maybe I did it to head off Damon, who tended to come awake like a bear out of hibernation, hungry and cranky. Or maybe I figured Toby deserved some morsel of reward for his overflowing adoration of Rose. In any event, after Rose pinned down Father on how long it had been since the chimney flue in the parlor was last cleaned, I was the one who said brightly, "The kitchen gets pretty hard use from us, doesn't it, Father."

  He sent me a warning frown, but too late. "It's right in here," Toby said as he charged to the doorway and eagerly looked back over his shoulder for Rose. She said, "Then let's have a look," as if we were all going to the zoo.

  Functional clutter is perhaps the best description of how Father managed in the kitchen. Provisions such as bags of flour and sugar and an arsenal of canned goods stood on the counter so he would always know where things were. Likewise certain frequently used pots, pans, butcher knives, large spoons, and dishes. The table showed only a passing acquaintance with meals; one entire end of it was permanently stacked with Toby's crayon drawings, Father's archive of newspapers except for the ones Damon had eviscerated for his baseball and football and boxing scrapbooks, even more of my books, and the like. As a person looked around, it was clear that culinary skills were not our strongest point as a family. In point of fact, the main ingredient of our mealtimes was disarray. Father had many knacks, but when by necessity he turned his hand to the cookstove, always running late, never versed in preparations, his results almost invariably came out boiled, soupy, lumpy, or tough as shoe leather. We truly dined only on those Sundays at Rae's table; otherwise we subsisted. Surely Rose would read our condition and be moved to say "I can fry up some eggs and bacon and hotcakes in a jiffy," wouldn't she? Damon and I waited tensely and Toby plopped down at his place at the table as if the issue was already resolved. Hopes soared as Rose hesitated in the middle of the room, then stepped toward the cookstove.

  "Does the reservoir hold good hot water?" she inquired of Father, and, studiously not looking our way, he said he guessed so.

  Hot water! We were capable of that ourselves. Rose glided on past every foodstuff and utensil we possessed with no more than a glance, seeming to be an absolute tourist in this part of the house. The one item she did pause over lay stretched beside the kitchen stove.

  "Houdini, if I recall. Whose claim to fame is—?"

  Turning in that direction, Father asked in a confidential tone, "Houdini, what do you think of William Howard Taft as president?"

  The dog's ears went up. He pushed himself up by his front legs, let out a howl, then rolled over and played dead.

  "Quite the performance," Rose had to admit, though still eyeing him with the professional housekeeper's suspicion of a sizable hair-shedding animal.

  "Wait till you see him catch a jackrabbit," Toby told her.

  "Father?" By now the clock was in my favor, and I used it ruthlessly. "Look at the time. Hadn't we better think about something to eat?"

  "Ah." Plainly he had not anticipated dealing with this issue this soon. But even more plainly, the rest of us were voting with our stomachs. Taking a deep breath, he squared around to Rose and began: "We haven't had breakfast yet and wondered if—"

  "Oh, I never touch it, thanks very much anyway" With that she disappeared out to the roughed-in front porch known as the mud room to continue her assessment of the household.

  Damon called despairingly to her departing back, "Around here, it's always mush."

  Father gave us a defensive look and turned to the cookstove. He fired up his coffee first, then began boiling up oatmeal as we glumly watched. Rose soon was back in from whatever she had been in search of. "Wash day," she said decisively, donning an apron as deftly as a magician wielding a cape. "That would be a start."

  "Paul's you
r man when it comes to water," Father informed her, not without a glint of retribution as he set aside my oatmeal bowl and nodded me toward the pump in the yard. Indeed I was in charge of the water bucket, doing the dishes, and Saturday-night baths. With a groan, I got up from the table to help Rose with the wash water.

  I showed her the trick of operating the pump by wetting the leather piston with a couple of quick half strokes, then the long downstrokes that brought water gushing. She and I hefted the full washtub onto the stove to heat, then went back out to fill the rinse tub. As she worked the pump handle, our new upholder of upkeep said only loud enough for me to hear:

  "Mind you, this is merely a suggestion. But wash day could include Houdini."

  "Doesn't work," I told her crossly, still out of sorts from lack of food. "You can't get him within a mile of a washtub."

  "Didn't I see a pond?" The pothole pond Father called the Lake District was in the field between our place and Aunt Eunice's. "Perhaps if a stick were tossed in it by the right person, Houdini would give himself a bath." The lilting way she said it, it sounded like a rare adventure. She gave me a look with a hint of conspiracy in it. "Toby might even volunteer for the chore, do you suppose?"

  "I'll get him on it after school," I conceded, although I never liked being maneuvered.

  My mind was mainly on breakfast, and as soon as we had the wash water going, I tore into my bowl of oatmeal, which by then was turning gluey. As I spooned the stuff into me and Father slapped together cheese sandwiches for our lunch at school, Rose swooped through time after time, either half buried under a mound of our bedding in her arms or hefting a heaped dirty-clothes basket on a practiced hip. Toby was upstairs in pursuit of his shoes, but Damon, I could tell, was awaiting his chance for something. When Rose disappeared again in search of any more fabric to wash, he whispered urgently across the kitchen: "Aren't you going to ask her?"

  Startled, but not so much so he didn't remember to keep to a whisper in answering, Father fired back "Young man, I would like to handle this my own way, if you don't mind. When I think the time is right, naturally I'll put it to her about the cooking—"