Читать книгу A White Bird Flying - Bess Streeter Aldrich - Страница 6

Table of Contents

When Allen Rinemiller left Katherine Buchanan's home, he drove around by the Conden cottage and dated Verna to go down to Weeping Water to a show in the evening. Verna was pretty in a wind-blown fashion, with fly-away hair upon which a beret was usually perilously perched. She was gay and noisy, conscious always of her own vivacity. Her eyes were hard and bright, her generous mouth too scarlet.

"Landed a job yet?"

No, Verna had not landed a job. She guessed she'd just have to go in some one's kitchen. Maybe it ought to be her own kitchen. She believed maybe she'd advertise for a man. Her hard bright eyes laughed at Allen. Allen liked her--he liked her a lot--but whenever she talked that provocative way it made him uncomfortable.

When he left her and started home, driving the little truck fast over the graveled roads, he gave her no more thought. In fact he was thinking of the home in which he had just been. He wished their own house looked like the Buchanans'. There was something about it that you just absorbed into your system,--it was so satisfying. Several of the members of his old High School class had some homes similar,--all low-shaded lights and cushions and book-ends and rugs that were soft as Turkish towels. He believed he'd talk to his mother about getting some new things.

His drive on the highway was very short, only a half mile beyond the town limits. But there was another quarter of mile drive on their own land, for the Rinemiller house sat back so far that one approached it down a long private lane bordered by walnut trees. The house itself was plain, a white box so symmetrical that, save for the narrow porch across the front, it looked like a child's huge cubic-shaped block set down in the exact center of the Rinemillers' holdings. Old Gus Reinmueller, dead these many years, had come over sixty years before into the young state with Christine, "his woman," driving oxen hitched to a rowboat on wheels with a dingy cover over it.

They had been part of that great general movement in settling Nebraska. Bison herds, bands of Indians and wild fowl had held complete possession of the land until the first isolated settlements, clinging to the banks of the sluggish Missouri, made their advent. Indian trails then became trails for adventurers, Mormons, gold hunters, freighters. These were followed by the settlers with the homing instinct of so many birds of passage. Covered wagons jolted over the old trails and made new ones through the prairie grass. Many of these homesteaders were of the old stock of corn farmers from Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin. Many more were of foreign blood. These latter, because of their common language and background, tended to group themselves in the same regions. Thus, Kearney County became predominately Danish; Phelps County, Swedish. The Mennonites grouped in Fairbury, the Bohemians in Saline and Butler Counties, the Hollanders in southern Lancaster. All were highly efficient farming people. But everywhere came the Germans, equally efficient and thrifty. Of these were Gus and Christine Reinmueller, Allen's grandparents. And a far cry it now seemed from old Gus and Christine to young Allen with his finer sensitiveness, his clear-eyed modern viewpoint, his flexibility toward all the modes of the times.

In those old days Gus and Christine had built a dugout at the end of a ravine by digging into the low hillside, setting sturdy tree trunks a short way from the opening and covering the top with poles cut from the branches of the few trees growing along the creek bed, across which they packed a solid roofing of sod. Into this, with only the hard dirt floor and the one opening, they had moved from their wagon. For several years they lived there with their babies, like so many rabbits in a hutch.

Gus and Christine worked early and late; Christine in the field by the side of Gus, staying away from her man's work only when her babies were born, proud of the small number of days she took off for those events. They bought almost nothing. Clothes were handed down from child to child. They ate what they raised. They suffered with the rest of the pioneers through all the long hardships of drouth, grasshoppers, blizzards, crop failures. They suffered with the other early settlers, it is true, but with one difference,--their hardships were all physical. There was no suffering of the spirit, like that which came to the Lutzes and the Deals. They were stolid, inured to poverty, cared nothing that they were deprived of food for the mind, thought being able to write one's name on a receipt the only necessity for schooling. When money came in they hoarded it. They thought only of one thing. Land. Before Gus had quite finished paying for the first eighty acres of land he was contracting to go in debt for another. To enlarge their holdings became a fetish with them. Two eighties now.

"That's like paying for a dead horse," Will Deal, his neighbor, had once told him.

"Ya--dead horse." Gus had shrugged his shoulders. "But purty soon already . . . that dead mare she come to life. Ya?"

The dugout gave place in time to a small cheap two-roomed frame house in which they all huddled. They were up at four o'clock in the morning, routing out the children, too. The little boys husked corn with half frozen hands. Three eighties. Four eighties. Later they added two more rooms. The girls could husk now. Five eighties--six eighties.

They bought Abbie Deal's land. Seven eighties. It was across the road on this eighty that they built the white house as it now stood, large, cubic-shaped, as long as wide and as high as long, a cheap narrow porch across the front, four square rooms downstairs and four square rooms up. They bought more land of Oscar Lutz. Oscar was living in town now, merely holding his land for investment. Eight eighties. Some of the boys could work away now, the girls take places in town, and all bring home their wages. Nine eighties. There were no conveniences in the house; water was carried from the well in buckets. Small kerosene lamps made glow-worm lighting in the rooms when, indeed, lighting became necessary. It was extravagant to sit up and use kerosene. "Get to bed, all of you. To-morrow yet the husking begins."

They kept the two front rooms closed. Too much fuel to have them open. "Keep hustling . . . all of you. If you're cold already yet . . . work faster some more. Get out at that milking." Oscar Lutz still owned two eighties. Gus and Christine could not stand it to see the black loam across their barbed-wire fence; could not bear to see Oscar Lutz's tenant plowing up close to their own holdings. They made Oscar an offer. "Too much he wants. For himself he say he keep two eighties. To come back from California summers and see some of his own land yet he wants. I no more ask him," Gus had said. But Christine's mind had harried her with land gluttony; her little eyes glinted with the thought of the ownership of the mellow soil. "Du narr . . . Some more you ask." She had urged Gus. "A little more you offer. Go on . . . qvick."

And finally Oscar Lutz had sold. Ten eighties. Eleven eighties. No one in this end of the county owned so much. Only one boy was left at home at that time,--the youngest, Herman. For some unknown reason, Gus and Christine had been a little more lenient with Herman. There had been a bit more leisure for Herman, not quite so much "Get to work . . . you" for the youngest. Herman had gone into town almost every day to school, riding his pony and carrying rye bread and sausage in a tin pail. They had only required him to stay out at husking time and for plowing. Herman had gone clear through the eighth grade, had even gone on into High School for one year, but Gus and Christine had put an end to that foolishness. "For what good you think them Latins is?" Christine wanted to know. And Gus had laughed, "Ya, Herman . . . that Latin make you pick more corn faster and bring you in more pigs . . . huh?"

So Herman had dropped the subject of going on through High School and had cut alfalfa all that first day when his class entered as sophomores. But as time went on, there had been something in Herman that would not prostrate itself so thoroughly before the god of Work. He had labored hard enough, when he was at it. But he had done other things too. He had taken farm papers. He had put a tin bathtub in one of the empty upstairs rooms, fixed it with a plug to let the water run out even though he had to carry the water up to it, had "slicked up" and gone to all the town doings, left the church of his fathers for an English-speaking one, had begun going with gentle Lucy Steele without a drop of German blood in her veins. About this last procedure, Gus and Christine had made a great many caustic comments.

"Why don't you get yourself a German girl?" Gus had wanted to know. And "Ya!" Christine had snorted. "A stark . . . strong one mit some harte muskeln--muscles."

And then, while Herman was still going steadily with the pretty and refined Lucy Steele, old Gus had suddenly died.

Death played old Gus a mean trick by slipping up on him unawares, with no more advance notice than the scratch of a shingle nail. Herman, looking at the red wound, had wanted his father to go right over to town to the doctor. But Gus and Christine had said no, the doctors just took your money whether you needed any treatment or not and they would put plenty of fat pork on it to draw out the poison. But the drawing qualities of the butchered hog had failed to materialize, and quite suddenly old Gus was dead. "At the seedin' time, too," Christine had wailed. "Mit the calves comin' in . . . and all. How ve get along already? Mein Gott!"

Surprisingly, old Gus had made a will. John Deal had drawn it up. It had been signed by Gus and duly witnessed,--signed with a cross and a notary public's affidavit that the cross was the signature of one Gus Reinmueller. The land was left to Christine to do with as she wished. Gus had realized that Christine was the more crafty of the two.

And old Christine had land then. Old Christine had her life's desire. Lots of land. The boys were all on the various eighties. Heinie here, Fritz there, Ed on another, Emil farming two quarters, the girls' husbands on others. All had bought more land of their own. All but Herman were getting toward middle age. They were hard working, well-to-do. Their homes were beginning to have conveniences, and they were sending their children on through High School. Christine deeded over an eighty to each of six, but gave two, including the home eighty, to Herman. Three adjoining ones she kept for herself.

Then Herman married the soft-voiced Lucy who had gone through High School and taught a year, and brought her home to the cubic-block of a house, up the long road by the walnut trees.

Old Christine had said a great many things about it. She had gone over to her neighbor, Abbie Deal, many times in her grief and distress.

"Ach . . . Gott!" She had wrung her hard hands in distress. "Sale carpets on de two front rooms . . . mit green roses every t'ree or four feet already. Curtains by de vindows . . . mit ribbons tied back. Närrish . . . voolish."

"But, Christine, that's nice." Abbie Deal had comforted her. "You ought to be glad. You ought to be happy because Herman is happy with such a nice wife and that she is fixing it up so comfortably."

But Christine could not be comforted. She had waddled in disgust back down the lane road at the Deals', her blue calico dress gathered at the waistline, angrily switching the dusty jimson weeds. Each time she had gone over to the Deals' there was more distressing news to convey,--the advent of a piano and a piece of furniture in the dining room she thought they called a "boardside." But of them all, nothing seemed to irritate her so thoroughly as the carpet "mit de green roses every t'ree or four feet," as though the multiplicity of flowers added insult to the general prodigal expenditure.

Old Christine had lived with Herman and Lucy the greater part of a year. And then Herman, seeing that his beloved Lucy was ill and nervous, and that Christine was making her more so, quite firmly had moved his mother to a small tenant cottage across the road, and had seen her comfortably settled there in the little house where the wastefulness of fuel and the lavish squandering of money for kerosene need not distress her. That was the year--eighteen years before--that Herman and Lucy's only child had been born,--Allen.

That was also the year that Emil and Fritz and Ed and Herman and all the rest of the Reinmuellers met together and decided to drop the superfluous letters from their name. Their young folks were marrying here and there, some were changing their memberships to English churches, several going away to school. The young folks preferred the English spelling.

The Reinmuellers had become Rinemillers.

At home now, Allen put the truck under the shed and went into the house, looking about him with the eye of a critic. He saw the shining oak chairs and sideboard, the scrubbed oilcloth, the rope portieres hanging between the rooms, the axminster rugs which had long since replaced the carpet that had so distressed his grandmother. He knew nothing was right. You couldn't just get something new and put in as he had planned on the way home. It wouldn't improve things a rat-i-tat--that was a cinch, he said to himself. The only way to go about it was to ditch everything out and start new. Even then,--and he made himself imagine the square rooms divested of furnishings,--even then nothing was right; the shape of the rooms, the windows, the floors, the ceiling. Oh well,--this was kind of a silly thought, but if he ever had a home of his own,--it was going to be just right, like the Buchanans'.

His mother came in with her egg-basket: "You back, Allen?" She was sweet faced and pleasant looking--a plump little lady with neat light brown hair and wide humorous blue eyes. Allen resembled her but he had his father's physique. "Eighty-six. I think the White Wyandottes are the best breed I've ever had. Was the wood all right?"

"Yep--and gee, Mother, you ought to see the bride's house. Looks like the pictures in your women's magazines."

"Yes, I can just imagine it. I hope the Woman's Club will meet there so I--oh, Allen," she broke off with a girlish squeal of excitement. "How could I forget? Your letters! Papa brought in the mail when you were gone." She picked them up from the oak sideboard and held them out,--two square white envelopes, almost similar in size and texture.

Allen tore into one. "A University fraternity party card," he said in an awe-struck voice, "--the Xi Kappas."

He tore open the other. "Another one," his voice shook a little, "--the Pi Taus. The Pi Taus." He repeated it with reverential disbelief.

For a moment, with eyes glued to the white card, he had a fleeting vision of driving past an aristocratic looking building up at Lincoln the night after a basket-ball game at the University Coliseum. It had great cathedral-like pillars in front, and was brightly lighted on three floors. Cars were drawn up at the curb and fellows in dress suits were getting in and out of them. There were girls in velvet evening wraps--.

He raised his head and spoke eloquently: "Oh, my good gosh!"