Tallgrass Page 12

  Miss Ord said, “Rennie must be awfully brave to take on three girls who are big enough to whip her.” She cocked her head and ran her tongue over her teeth as she studied Edna. “Especially after one of you knocked her against the slide and she banged her head.”

  Edna gave the teacher a self-righteous look. “My dad says we have to protect ourselves against people who are un-American. My dad’s on the school board.” Her sash had come loose, and she yanked at the two ends, pulled them straight, and retied the sash behind her back. But she did it the wrong way, and the bow was vertical. She took her coat from Marjorie and put it on. The sleeve was folded in on itself, and she pushed to get her arm through it. There was a ripping sound.

  “I know he’s on the school board,” Miss Ord said. “Doesn’t that mean you ought to be an example for others?” She smiled.

  “No such thing. I don’t have to do anything,” Edna said, pouting.

  Miss Ord turned starchy. “Go to your classroom, Edna, and take your friends with you. If I see any one of you picking on a younger girl again, I’ll report you to the principal. Rennie, you come with me.”

  As Miss Ord turned away, Edna stuck out her tongue at me and said, “Now you’re going to get it.” She turned to Marjorie and Ardis. “Come on, girls. We don’t want to have anything to do with her.”

  I followed Miss Ord to the fence that surrounded the school yard, where she stopped and turned, her hand resting on the mangled wire. She was too pretty to be a teacher. She had a figure like a pinup, wore her blond hair in a peekaboo style, and her gray eyes sparkled in the sunlight like polished silver. “Your father hired some boys from the camp to help with the beets, didn’t he?” Miss Ord asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I figured she’d pick up where Edna had let off.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “It’s okay.” I didn’t want to discuss it with her. It was bad enough taking on a stupid girl like Edna. If I argued with a teacher, I’d get detention for sure. Still, I wouldn’t let her put down my dad, and I was ready to talk back if I had to.

  “I’m from California. I grew up with Japanese boys and girls. They’re hard workers.”

  I nodded, running my hand along the wire fence, stopping to test a broken end with my thumb. I wondered whether I was being set up.

  “They’ll do a good job for your father, and because of that, other farmers will hire them. I understand a few have already.”

  I looked up at her. She was standing with her back to the sun, and I had to squint to make out her face. “Don’t you think he’s aiding the enemy?” I asked.

  “Why no. Do you?”

  I shaded my eyes as I took a good look at Miss Ord. She was the only teacher I’d ever seen who wore lipstick and rouge. “No, ma’am. You’re about the first one who doesn’t.”

  “Mr. Stroud’s a fine man. If there were more like him in Ellis, we wouldn’t have such acrimony. Do you know what that word means?”

  I didn’t, but I nodded. Later when I asked Dad, he replied, “It rhymes with matrimony.” He grinned at Mom, who swatted him. I didn’t think it had anything to do with matrimony.

  Miss Ord thought for a minute. Then she said, “Here’s what I want to tell you: Your father’s stood up to a good bit of criticism lately. Do you know that several men have called him names?” I nodded. “He’s taken it without resorting to striking them, although I have an idea he’s pretty good with his fists. You will hinder his good work if you fight with bullies like Edna Elliot.”

  I looked over to where a little boy had grabbed hold of one of the rings hanging on chains from a circular apparatus that looked like a backyard clothesline. He made it to the second, then the third, and finally the fourth ring before he fell onto the dirt. I rooted for him to get up and try again, but he didn’t. I turned back to Miss Ord. “I didn’t start it.”

  “I know that. I was watching. And I understand why you grabbed Edna’s hair. I was hoping you wouldn’t, but I probably would have done the same thing. In fact, I’ve been tempted to do something similar with a few of the teachers here.” She smiled when I gaped. I couldn’t believe that teachers fought. “Now, can you understand, Rennie, that you will be much more effective if you just walk away?”

  “Kids will think I’m yellow.”

  “They’ll think you have principles. They might even respect you. You and your dad.” Miss Ord thought that over and laughed a little. “No, that’s saying too much. A few might respect you, but not all of them. Still, I believe you’ll have less trouble if you just keep your chin up and don’t get lured into fighting everybody who calls your father names. Nobody’s thought the less of him because he’s refused to fight. I believe he would not want you to fight, either. Am I right?”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t sorry I had pulled Edna’s hair, but I was glad now I hadn’t socked her.

  “I thought you’d agree.”

  The first bell rang, and kids started for the building, but both Miss Ord and I ignored it. “Why do you care?” I asked.

  I thought she would tell me then that she wanted what was best for all little boys and girls, or that it was her job to mold future citizens, the kind of thing teachers always said. Instead, she replied, “Oh, someday, I’ll tell you a little secret.” She smiled. “Someday, when the war is over. For now, I want you to understand that there are people in Ellis who are on your father’s side—and on yours. I count myself among them.”

  I smiled to show Miss Ord that I appreciated what she’d said. Then I told her, “It probably doesn’t matter. Dad says people will get over the evacuees pretty quick now.”

  BUT FOLKS DIDN’T GET over the Japanese. Late one night, a couple of weeks after my fight with Edna Elliot, the traffic on the Tallgrass Road woke me up. I was used to cars and trucks driving along the road at all hours, but this was more traffic than usual. I went to the window, but I couldn’t see anything on the road, although I could smell the dust the tires sent up and hear the engine noise. When I realized the cars were driving without their lights on, I started to go downstairs to tell Dad.

  He was already awake. His voice came through the register in the floor of my room. “I tell you, Hen, it seems like twenty or thirty cars have come past here in the last ten minutes, and you know each one’s got three or four men in it. I don’t know for sure they’re stopping at the camp, but this time of night, driving with their lights out, they’re up to no good. What’s that?” Dad paused. “Of course Tallgrass has got guards. You know that. But they’re just young boys. Halleck and Tappan are both in Denver. I saw them at the depot this morning and told them right there that with the way the town is all riled up, they ought not to leave at the same time. I think it’d be a good idea if you came out. The camp jurisdiction just goes to the fence. You’re the law on the road.” He listened a moment. “I appreciate that. I’ll take the shotgun and cut across the field to meet you there.” Dad was silent, then said, “No, don’t call Reddick. He’s most likely in on it. And, Hen, my womenfolk are all asleep, so don’t turn on the siren.” He pronounced the word si-reen.

  I knew if I asked Dad to let me go along, he’d say no, so without a sound, I dressed in the dark. After Dad left the house, I sneaked downstairs and started off after him, keeping far enough behind him that I could barely see his dark bulk. Halfway across the field, I stumbled over a clod of dirt and went tumbling into a gully; our farm was sliced with them. Dad turned and looked around, but I lay still, so in a minute, he started up again. I followed a little farther back now, because I could see him easily in the light coming from the camp’s floodlights.

  I saw the cars now, too, maybe two dozen of them, parked on either side of the road. There really had been no reason for the drivers to keep their lights off when they drove to the camp, because we could see the cars as plain as day—and the men, too. They were getting out of the cars and gathering in the middle of the road in front of the entrance to Tallgrass. A car door slammed, and somebody said, “Damn!” and
a man called, “You hush up back there.”

  They didn’t hush. Instead, the men talked in low voices, sounding like bees swarming. There was the sound of broken glass, and an angry voice said, “Now see what you’ve gone and done. You’ve made me break it.”

  “Here’s you another bottle, then,” a second voice said.

  “Hell, Frank, this stuff’s sour. You saving the good stuff for the high school kids?”

  “The good stuff goes to them that pays.”

  “Anybody got a cigarette?” a man asked. “I can’t think without I got a cigarette.”

  “Moocher.” The men laughed.

  A voice said, “Take this smoke and shut up. We ain’t at the pool hall.”

  Dad had stopped inside the fence across from the gate, his shotgun in the crook of his arm. I slid down beside a fence post, where he couldn’t see me. Nobody saw Dad, either, which was a good thing. Dad could fight one or two or even three men, but he couldn’t stand off half the male population of Ellis. When I looked up at the guard towers and saw faces peering out of the windows, I realized Dad wasn’t alone. But there weren’t enough guards to take on all the men in the road.

  The men quieted down then. They began talking together in voices so low that I couldn’t hear them. I wondered if they had a plan, or if coming to Tallgrass was just whiskey talk. Maybe somebody had started talking big at the pool hall and they’d all piled into cars and driven out to the camp. Whoever it was might have known that both Mr. Halleck and Mr. Tappan were away, and he’d made the rounds of the pool hall and Jay Dee’s, gathering up men. They milled around the cars now, not sure what to do.

  At last, someone in the crowd called up to the guards. “You send out the boy that killed the Reddick girl.”

  “Which one’s that?” a guard yelled. His voice sounded young and high-pitched and scared.

  The men talked for a few minutes, and one called back. “I guess you better figure that out right quick.”

  “We don’t want to hurt you up there, boy,” added a man who sounded like Mr. Jack. “There’s more of us than you.

  “You’re responsible for the women and children in there. Any one of them gets hurt, it’s on your head,” called a man who wore a white cowboy hat. I knew that hat. It belonged to Mr. Elliot.

  “We got reinforcements coming,” a guard yelled. “You men go about your business.”

  “Protecting our families against the Japs is our business,” a man yelled back.

  “Just ask Reddick here,” Mr. Jack added.

  Dad moved a little closer to the fence. I wondered what would happen if one of the men shot a guard. Would Dad shoot him? I didn’t like Mr. Jack, but he was our neighbor, and I’d never heard of anybody shooting a neighbor. Dad wasn’t scared of anything, but I couldn’t see that he’d shoot a man, no matter the circumstances.

  “I guess we better go on in there and look around for ourselves,” a man said. There was a murmur of voices and the sound of shells being chambered. Then the whole group started toward the gate.

  “You men stand aside,” a voice yelled down from the guard tower. “We’ll shoot if we have to.” I doubted that. I’d seen the guards in town, young men mostly, not much older than Bud. They hung out at the drugstores and the pool hall and probably knew the men who were swarming toward the gate.

  Dad straightened up and took his gun in his hands, and I guessed he’d figured out what he was going to do. But before he could take a step, a voice called, “Yoo-hoo, Mr. Davidson. How’s Doris doing? Is she over the flu yet?”

  The men stopped, and one of them—Mr. Davidson, it had to be—turned around and asked in an incredulous voice, “How’s that?”

  “I asked how Doris is getting along. I meant to take her a cake, but the time got away from me.” Mom’s voice trembled a little, but she stood firm, her hands out to her sides as she stood alone in the field. The men turned to stare at her.

  “Why, Mr. Smith, hello there. I just saw Bird at Quilters. My, that woman can sew!” Mom sounded as calm then as if she were calling to friends after church.

  “Uh, yeah,” Mr. Smith said, shaking his head, bewildered.

  “You give her my regards,” Mom said. “And Mr. Reddick, oughten you to be home with Opal? I know she doesn’t like to be by herself in the house at night.”

  Mr. Reddick put his hands on his head and didn’t reply.

  Mom called to half a dozen men, naming each one, as if it were the most normal thing in the world for her to be standing in a field in the middle of the night, her hair in pin curls, a coat over her nightgown.

  “You better get back home, Miz Stroud,” a man told her.

  “This is my home,” Mom said firmly. “These are my fields. I came out to see what the ruckus was all about. I wouldn’t like anything bad happening here.”

  The men looked at one another. Some kicked at the dirt with their shoes. “Why doesn’t she git?” a man muttered.

  “You get her out of here,” another man told him.

  Then someone ejected the shells from his shotgun.

  “Ah hell, let’s go,” one of the men growled at last. He left the group and went to a car, then started the engine.

  “Wait up,” someone called, hurrying off and climbing into the passenger seat. Slowly, the men went to their cars, grumbling and slamming doors. They turned on the engines and the lights. One of the cars went on past the camp and pulled off at the Reddick farm, but the others turned around and headed back toward town.

  Both Mom and Dad stayed where they were—and so did I— until the troublemakers were gone and a man emerged from the darkness. “That was mighty fine, Mrs. Stroud,” Sheriff Watrous said. “I wasn’t sure myself just how we was going to diffuse the situation. I guess you took it in your own hands.”

  Now that the men were gone, Mom looked unsteady, and Dad hurried over and put his arm around her. “Whatever made you do that, Mary?” he asked.

  Mom gave a queer little laugh. “I don’t know myself. I heard you on the phone, so I just came out to see what was going on. It hit me that if I named them, they might be ashamed enough to leave. Men in packs are one thing. But they aren’t so brave when they have to stand by themselves.”

  “You’re right about that,” the sheriff told her. “I guess there are some young boys up there in those guard towers that are awful glad you came along. I’ll give you folks a ride back to the house. I’m parked just down the road a little,” the sheriff said. I shivered, thinking I’d have to walk back across the fields by myself and sneak into the house.

  “We’d appreciate that,” Dad told him. He put his arm around Mom and started toward the fence. But Mom stopped and looked around, and then she held out her hand to me. Dad looked startled when he saw me, and Mom said, “If I hadn’t heard Rennie leave the house behind you, Loyal, I might not have come.”

  DAD WAS PLEASED WITH the way the boys took over the planting. He said that all he’d had to do was explain how to prepare the fields, and the boys had gone to work and done it—and done it better than any hired hands he’d ever had. They didn’t loaf when he wasn’t around. If he went to town and came back two hours later, they’d put in two hours’ work.

  Each morning, Dad and the boys planned the day as they drank coffee at the kitchen table. They always bowed to Granny when they came in and asked about her health. Carl explained to us that the Japanese honored their old people. Granny didn’t always know who the boys were, but she beamed whenever they said “Good morning, Miss Evelina.” Sometimes they talked about the war news or asked if we’d heard from Bud, who’d gotten shipped off to Europe not long after Christmas. We hadn’t been happy when he wrote to us about it, because we’d hoped he’d manage to stay in the States. But at least Bud hadn’t gone to the South Pacific. Dad didn’t have to say how much that would have complicated things at home. I wondered if he would have hired the boys if Bud had gone to fight the Japanese.

  Although the boys sometimes talked about the hostility at Tallg
rass, they spoke mostly of everyday things, such as how people were adjusting to their close quarters or what craft classes were offered at the school. They never talked about Susan’s death, which Dad said must have had a big impact on the camp, or the Ellis men who’d gathered at Tallgrass that night. If they knew Mom had scared away the men, the boys didn’t mention it. And although we knew that some of the Japanese men at Tallgrass who were considered troublemakers had been sent off to one of the tougher internment camps in California, the boys never said anything about that, either. We didn’t find out until long afterward that Emory’s father was one of them.

  They did talk about the evacuees who had joined the army, however. Harry said once that he sure would like to join, maybe after the beet harvest, but Emory asked why he’d want to fight for a country that took away his rights. “We’re second-class citizens, and no mistake,” Emory said. Carl told him to shut up.

  One morning, Dad was explaining how he wanted the boys to operate the beet drill. “We’ll plant four pounds of seed per acre. That means you have to keep your speed right at two and a hall miles per hour,” he said.

  “Mr. Gardner says he plants six pounds at three miles,” Carl said. Then he explained, “My cousin works for him.”

  “Some like to make time, but I find this works best for me,” Dad said.

  Harry asked how they could tell the speed of Dad’s old beet drill.

  “You walk alongside the drill for twenty seconds. Make your strides long, thirty-five inches. You count how many you take in that twenty seconds, then divide by ten. That gives you your speed.”

  “We better let Carl do the walking. He’s got the biggest feet,” Emory said, and he pounded Carl on the back.

  “And you do the talking, because you got the biggest mouth,” Carl replied.

  Mom laughed along with the boys, then got up to get the coffeepot. She sat back down suddenly, her hand on her chest. “Loyal.” She took a deep breath. “Help me to my bed, Loyal. It’s my heart,” she gasped.

  Dad grabbed her before she could slide to the floor, then half led, half carried her into the bedroom.