A short story in three parts.
The month is November, the year 1939, in the next month she will be thirteen.
The girl wakes under many blankets, there is no heat in the room, she rises and dresses quickly, silently. She hears her little sister drawing and letting small slow breaths evenly, as she sleeps. There is a sweetness. A boy, the middle child sleeps in another room. His mind is not right and no one knows what to do for him. So they let him be.
It is before dawn, the house is still except she knows her mother is already up, she is always first and making breakfast. Such as it is. A quick peek out the window into the grey blue reveals little. There is thick frost on the sill. She goes down the stairs in darkness, stepping on the ends of the treads. She likes to outsmart them.
Her mother moves in the work which has no beginning and no end. Breakfast is ready, coffee and thick slices of toasted bread slathered with bacon fat, and a bowl of hot applesauce. They have no butter and no eggs. They have no meat. Today the girl will hunt.
As children, her parents immigrated from Sweden with their families. They later met in Boston, married and moved to this small town in New Hampshire near the lakes. Then the Great Depression hit. As hard as farm life was, their people in the city had it worse.
Her father sleeps, she can hear his muffled snoring. She has suffered her father’s cold fire, his powerful hands, his fumy breath. His desperate need for control. But there is only the day and another and what it takes to get through them, there is no control.
The old farm house on the west face of Cotton Mountain barely holds together. The foundation is solid though, of blocks of granite and will last forever as the old cellar holes in the woods attest. There is a still in the cellar, a big copper kettle over a fire box, a coil of copper tubing springs from the top. It smells of mildew and ashes and alcohol down there.
Winter is near, the brilliant colors of fall are gone. It is cold and grey, the weather wet and thick, the trees are bare except the oak and beech, their leaves will stay on, rustle in the wind all winter. There is no snow, and she wishes for snow. It will make tracking easier.
In the kitchen the stove burns wood, it is warm and snug, the floor is covered with linoleum with holes worn in it. Oil lamps are lit. It is her job to clean the chimneys and trim the wicks and fill the tanks. She likes the smell of kerosene.
The table is rickety, wide pine boards in the round top are contraband from a King’s Pine, oilcloth thumb tacked around hides them. Long ago, those boards might have put the man who cut them in prison. The legs are rotted from years sitting under the maple tree so the table got moved in. Sitting at the table under the tree shucking corn the bees would come for the sweet juice and crawl all over their hands. Let alone, they would not sting.
Eating her breakfast she thinks about this and studies the tops of the tacks, bright red, yellow, blue and green. They are like the gum drops in the covered glass dish on the table but without the sugar crust. She likes gum drops, pink Canada mints are her father’s favorite. Bees are not much interested in candy but ants are. Her mother softly whistles a few bars from a tune over and over again. No one, including her mother knows what the tune is.
The dirt yard between the house and barn is perfectly level. Her father has spent hours, days, years grading it, all with a wheel barrow shovel and iron rake. That it is level means something to him. She looks out at it and wonders what this could be. Perhaps it is having one orderly space. The barn is falling in on itself. Rain and snow fall through holes in the roof. You can see the sky. It smells of oil and grease and manure and hay. Machinery rusts, much of it broken down has sat for years. Except for feathers stuck here and there the chicken coop is empty, quiet.
Fields surround the house, the garden did well and is finished for the year. Parsnips have been left to freeze in the soil. Home canned green beans, corn, sweet relish and pickles line shelves in the cellar. There are potatoes and carrots and winter squashes and apples in wood boxes. The girl packed the apples in dry maple leaves. They will keep longer this way. There are glass gallon bottles of corn whiskey. “Pap, what are you making?” She asked one day as her father tended the still. “Headaches.” He said, perfunctory as a stone in a wall. The bottles glitter translucent light green. The girl has snuck tastes, and felt the burn and the strange lightness.
Her red felt hat with the flaps down conceals light blonde hair. The red buffalo plaid wool jacket and pants, all hand me downs are all too big. Her gum soled leather boots are her own, a Christmas present purposely bought too big the year before from Beans, they are well oiled with neatsfoot. Her mother hugs her and kisses her forehead. She is out just as dawn comes through the grey.
Gordon Bunker
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