Monday was always wash day. Vera’s forehead glistened with sweat as she fed the heavy wet cotton sheets and pillowcases through the wringer-rollers. Her mother had proudly purchased the Maytag washing machine in 1929 from Sears, Roebuck and Company. Now it was more than twenty years old and Vera was ready to get rid of it.
When Vera was seven years old, her straight brown hair had come dangerously close to being yanked from her scalp by the powerful set of wooden rollers that squeezed water from the cloth. I told you to get away from there! Vera could still hear the screams from her mother.
For now, Vera was stuck with the old machine. She dropped her wrung-out bedclothes into the large wicker basket. It was her first wash load that morning.
The old clothesline stood on the west side of the farm house. Vera’s father had built it from scraps of iron pipe that he welded together and painted silver. He built it to last, and it had survived many Wisconsin winters, still upright and sturdy.
Vera caressed the cool grass with her bare toes. She draped one sheet over the line, then the other. Next the two pillowcases. She grabbed a handful of wooden clothespins from the clothespin bag that hung from one of the lines. She liked the spring-loaded clothespins better than the plain wooden pegs. Pinch one open, snap it over the cloth. Pinch, snap, repeat.
Vera watched as the damp pillowcases billowed in the gentle summer breeze. Her pillowcases hung empty—unlike the pillowcases of her modest English mother who used to hide her smalls inside the pillowcases before hanging them out on the clothesline. A decent woman’s underpants should not be out for the world to see.
The day was shaping up to be one of those glorious June days in central Wisconsin. The laundry would dry fast and smell fresh.
Vera carried the empty basket back to the house to start the next wash load. She stopped to listen to the sound of an approaching tractor and watched the Klompert boy barrel past on his dad’s John Deere. The dirt road spewed a huge cloud of gray dust in the direction of her freshly-washed bedding.
That kid has got the sense of a turnip! And throttled up like he’s goin’ somewhere important. The next time I see Elmer, I’ll tell him a thing or two about his reckless son.
She went to inspect the damage. Every single thing would have to be washed again.
She would call Elmer now.
Vera shared a telephone party line with five neighboring farms in the township. She knew the different rings assigned to each—Elmer’s number was two long rings followed by one short ring—but in any case, all calls had to be routed through the operator.
She removed the black telephone earpiece from its cradle and held it to her left ear, listening for a few seconds to make sure no one was talking on the line. A busybody lived down the road and loved to eavesdrop on her neighbors’ phone calls. Vera turned the hand-crank of the oak telephone box.
In 1947, her parents were the first farmers in the area to get a telephone. Neighbors in Bear Creek came by afterwards to take a look at the new apparatus. The telephone was still mounted on Vera’s kitchen wall exactly where her father had installed it six years ago.
Vera cranked the handle three times to summon the operator.
“Hello Central? Elmer Klompert, please.”
She listened to the two long rings and one short, and heard Elmer come on the line.
“Elmer. It’s Vera.”
“Hello, Vera. How’re you doin’ this fine morning?”
“Not fine, Elmer. Not fine at all. Your son just tore past here on your new John Deere. In sixth gear, I bet. Showing off. Going way too fast for a road that has ruts and potholes. Which shoulda been common sense. My hung-out washing is now covered in dust. What d’you have to say about that, Elmer?”
“I’m sorry about that, Vera. I’ll talk to Terrence. He knows better.”
Vera heard Elmer clear his throat, preparing to spit. Apparently, his tobacco chewing started early in the morning.
“Just to remind you, Vera, my John Deere’s not new anymore. You remember I bought it from old man Hesselbarth when he sold his farm.”
Vera heard Elmer’s gob land in a metal spittoon.
“New tractor or old makes no difference. Your boy dirtied my wash load. I have to take down my sheets and wash ‘em again. Being a widower, you well know that washing sheets in an old wringer washer is hard work.”
“I know, Vera. I’m sorry.” Elmer spit another gob in the pot. “How’s your strawberry crop this year?”
“I’ve picked about 10 quarts so far.”
“Well, I can send Terrence over to pick some for you. To make up for your spoiled washing.”
A breeze wafted through the screen door, brushing warmth over Vera’s face.
“Well, I’d appreciate that, Elmer. I’ll let you know when to send him over.”
* * *
Technically, Elmer wasn’t a widower. It’s just that he never heard from his wife again after the morning seven years ago when he woke up and found her gone. Angie never came back.
On top of Elmer’s bedroom dresser, a farewell letter was folded inside a crumpled Northern States Power envelope. A delicate porcelain bowl sat on top of the dusty envelope. Inside the bowl, a lone bobby pin gathered dust. A bobby pin that had once restrained Angie’s blonde curls.
When Elmer found the letter, he read it one time and never looked at it again. No need to. The last four sentences were like a branding iron that seared a hole in his heart.
I’m sorry, El. I can’t live here no more. I love our son. Please take care of him.
Angie might still be alive. Or maybe dead. Elmer had no way of knowing. A lot happens in seven years.
* * *
Vera went outside to pull down the spoiled washing. Brownie ran up wagging his tail, looking mischievous.
“Damn, dog! I see you’re rolling in fresh scat again!”
Catching Brownie was a battle. Hosing him off, even worse. He hated getting wet and clearly enjoyed wearing the stink.
Probably from that damn fox that’s been comin’ around. Nothing’s clean on this godforsaken farm.
Vera looked at her apron streaked with rubbed-off excrement. The stains would have to be soaked in Clorox. Maybe she was supposed to suffer.
* * *
On Friday, Elmer drove Terrence over to Vera’s place. Terrence would spend the day picking strawberries for his penance. There were new peas to bag and rhubarb stalks to cut, too. Vera also had a few extra eggs and fresh flowers to sell that weekend.
On Saturday mornings, customers stopped at Vera’s farmstand starting around seven. By early afternoon, everything was bought up. The farmstand put extra money in Vera’s pocket.
Terrence was sixteen and didn’t say much to anyone.
“What year do you graduate high school?” Vera asked him. She was crouched on her hands and knees in the tool shed, pulling out a stack of cardboard trays from the storage bin.
“C-c-class of ’54, ma’am.”
“Huh. Just one more year to go.”
“Yup.”
She handed him the trays and a stack of green cardboard punnets.
“Here you go. I’ve only got the quart punnets. Ran out of the pints.” She pointed in the direction of the strawberry patch. “Strawberries are there. The pea patch is over there by the chicken coop.”
She saved the lecture about speeding a tractor on a dirt road. He’ll have learned his lesson after some hours on his hands and knees in the sun.
* * *
Elmer pulled into Vera’s driveway at four o’clock. He could see that Terrence was tired, sprawled on the rough wooden bench next to the house, his faded white t-shirt stained with splotches of red juice.
“How did it go today, son?” Elmer asked on their way home.
“F-fine. Beats p-pickin’ rock all day.”
Terrence had a habit of absentmindedly tapping his fingers on his knees. When he felt anxious, the tapping sped up. Tap, tap, tap.
“Sh-she’s kind of an odd lady.”
“Oh?” Elmer looked over at his son sitting in the passenger seat.
“Outta the blue she asks did I ever want a b-brother or s-sister. Sh-she knows ma took off, right?”
“She’s probably lonely livin’ there by herself all these years since her folks passed. I wouldn’t give it a second thought.”
“Nah.”
Terrence stared at a small hole in the floorboard beneath his feet. He could see the dirt road passing by inches below, as if the road itself was moving and the car standing still.
“Sh-she said next time she’d p-pay me to pick her strawberries. Five cents a quart.”
“Well, we’ll see. As long as you get your chores done at home, first.”
* * *
Each night, Vera ate her supper alone in the kitchen and listened to AM radio tuned to station WOSH for the 6 o’clock news. The news stories came mostly from Oshkosh, Wausau, and Green Bay.
That night, a public service warning was put out by the Waupaca County extension office. An elderly farmer in the area had been trampled to death—his chest crushed flat—by a rampaging bull. Vera knew that bulls could be dangerous and unpredictable. After her mother got sick, her father sold off their small herd of Holstein cows and the bull. It was too risky to have a mean 2,000-pound beast around an elderly woman who tended to wander.
A listener in Bear Creek called in to the station asking to commemorate an event back in 1944. It was when the Hesselbarth boy, an Army sergeant, came back from the war in a casket. Although Vera was a few years older than the kid, she remembered him from high school.
She had worn her only black dress to the young soldier’s funeral. Old man Hesselbarth had made a scene trying to open the casket to make sure it was his boy inside. Vera remembered that his wife put a stop to it.
The Hesselbarth funeral was the third time Vera had worn her black rayon dress. She wore it twice the previous year when her mother and father passed, a month apart.
* * *
After supper, Vera went outside and filled the watering can. It bumped and splashed against her bare leg as she carried it toward the tool shed. Out of sight behind the building, the patch of Gypsophila would be thirsty. The delicate white flowers attracted bees—signs of life that Vera found reassuring.
She splashed water over the flowers and poured the last few drops on the dust-speckled stone that nestled in the center of the tiny garden. In April, after the last snow melted, she had freshened the stone with a coat of new white paint. Seven winters of severe weathering had taken a toll.
Dusk was the calm part of the day when the chickens retreated to the henhouse to roost. The golden light of sunset warmed Vera’s face as she walked back to the house.
What dress had she worn the day she left home ten years ago? Vera’s mother told her to wear the dusty-rose cotton print with the embroidered collar. Because it wasn’t every day that her only daughter was going up to Duluth to study nursing.
The rose dress with the flower-shaped buttons was a favorite of Vera’s. To embroider some prettiness around the edge of the dress’s plain white collar, her mother had tried to teach her the herringbone stitch and the maltese cross-stitch. Her stitches were not pretty and she remembered how her mother ended up finishing the collar. That dress was long gone.
Duluth had been overwhelming to Vera when she arrived to enroll in junior college. Away from her parents and the farm, she had rarely ventured off campus. But, taking her nursing studies seriously was not a hardship. She wanted to learn everything there was to know about taking care of patients.
She occasionally thought about taking up nursing again. Working at the Duluth hospital after graduation had been deeply rewarding. To use her training to help sick and injured people felt like her true calling—her plan for life.
Her mother’s sudden stroke was a shock that changed everything.
The week before Christmas that year, Vera was summoned home to help her father take care of her mother, now helpless.
How long did it take before she removed her nursing graduation ring from her finger? She couldn’t remember exactly. The ring never left her keepsake box after that, although she took out her nursing diploma one time when she was feeling bitter. Her transition from nurse to farmer had been gradual and inevitable.
* * *
The June issue of the Wisconsin Agriculturist lay unopened on Vera’s kitchen table. She padded to the living room in her slippers, carrying her evening cup of green tea and a sheet of scratch paper. The Burpee Seed Catalog lay open on the davenport where she’d left it the night before. Two pages filled with images of tomatoes. To study all the varieties was exciting. She needed to start planning her seed order for next spring. Strawberry plants, tomatoes, peas, green beans, cucumbers, sweet corn, and squash. Flower seeds, too, including white Baby’s Breath. She found the Latin name Gypsophila elegans listed in the catalog index.
The Burpee Company sometimes ran out of the seeds she wanted. Next January, as soon as the new catalog arrived in her mailbox, she would have her seed order ready to fill in the new order form and mail in.
* * *
After a light rain overnight, the morning air smelled fresh. Vera carried the dilapidated wooden chair that she kept on her front porch to the farmstand. Someday the raggedy cane seat was going to split right apart. She plopped the chair next to the stand.
As farmers, Vera’s parents had always welcomed the rain. Her father used to say, “Sometimes it rains just enough to keep the farmers from complaining.”
When Vera’s mother passed in early 1943, area newspapers were filled with the calamities and heroism of the Second World War. Vera had driven north to Clintonville to place her mother’s obituary in the Tribune-Gazette. At the funeral, the church organist had played Battle Hymn of the Republic. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord … the slow and mournful notes hung in the air, like a dirge.
One month later, her father fell down dead on the kitchen floor. He couldn’t cope, Vera said. After her parents’ years together and the death of her mother, her father felt like he had lost a limb.
At the farmstand, Vera wiped stranded raindrops off the oil-cloth tacked onto the wooden shelves. She had just started putting out the strawberries when the first customer pulled up and parked on the side of the road. It was Irene from over on the highway.
“Hi, Vera. What good things have you got for me this morning?” Irene was always chatty and had a toothy grin.
“Everything’s good today, Irene. As always.” Vera pointed to the punnets filled with red-ripe berries. “Especially these beauties. Fresh-picked yesterday by Elmer’s kid.”
Irene helped herself to some of everything. She worked at the J.C. Penney store in Clintonville and didn’t have time to grow her own garden.
“Looks like you got some rain here last night. Funny, isn’t it. We only live a mile away and didn’t get a drop.”
“The rain has to stop somewhere.” Vera withdrew the pencil she kept tucked behind her ear and tallied up Irene’s total on a paper bag.
“Speaking of Elmer, he came into the store the other day,” Irene said. “Looking for new work boots. I wonder whatever happened to his wife. It’s like she disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“I don’t know what happened to Angie,” Vera said. “I don’t talk with Elmer much.”
Irene placed the paper bags with her farmstand produce into the trunk of her car.
“Of course, I won’t ask him. Anyway, Vera, see you next week.” She waved good-bye and drove off.
* * *
Angie was crowned Miss Clintonville in 1936 when she was 17 years old. The life Angie had planned for herself was one of glamor and possibly fame. But her life went in a different direction, and one year later she found herself hitched to Elmer Klompert. The baby, Terrence, arrived soon after.
The Klomperts mostly kept to themselves during those years. The Klompert farm was just a mile down the road and over the hill from Vera’s place, yet she saw Elmer, Angie, and their boy only occasionally, usually in church. So after eight years, Vera was surprised one evening to see Angie standing outside her screen door on the porch.
“Please, Vera. I need your help.”
Vera was listening to the news reports on the radio announcing Japan’s surrender. World War II was finally over. From east coast to west, the whole country was celebrating V-J Day. The date was August 15, 1945.
But Angie had not come to Vera’s place that night to celebrate the end of the war.
Vera swatted away the brown moths swarming the porch light and invited Angie to come inside. She saw right away the distress in Angie’s eyes.
They talked into the night about a plan to do something illegal, but necessary and urgent.
“I’ve thought long and hard, Vera. This is not easy for me. I have my reasons. I can’t talk with anyone else about it.”
What Vera knew after Angie left that night was that Angie was desperate, her situation excruciatingly personal. That if Vera wouldn’t do what she wanted done, Angie would do it herself and likely bleed to death.
Please don’t do that, Vera had pleaded.
It was midnight when Angie left Vera’s and went home. She knew that Vera believed her and would help her.
* * *
Temperatures were above-average during all of July. By the end of the month, the sweet corn was taller than Vera and ripe for picking. She called Elmer. Could Terrence come early the next morning to pick corn for the farmstand? Her customers would grab as many ears as she put out. She was sure of that.
Having grown lankier since the beginning of summer, Terrence easily reached the cobs with the darkest silk and twisted them off the stalks. He filled a bushel basket with corn in no time.
“Take some ears home for you and your dad for supper tonight,” Vera told him.
Throughout that summer, Terrence helped Vera with garden and farm chores a couple days a week. Now and again, she gave him a dollar and they got to know each other better.
One day, Vera got a telephone call from the Bear Creek post office that her mail order of live chicks from the Wausau hatchery had arrived. She should come and pick up her little brood of Rhode Island Reds. Vera asked Terrence to drive her the four miles into town to get the chicks. She wanted to observe him behind the wheel. Vera would make sure they kept to the back roads.
Terrence was signed up to compete in the tractor pull contest at the county fair in September. He also needed a 4-H project to show at the fair. Vera suggested he raise one of the new chicks.
“While you’re at it, you may as well look after the whole brood until they get old enough to join the rest of the flock.”
Together they set up a brooder pen for the chicks to keep them separated from the hens, but close enough for them to see each other. Vera ran an electrical cord with a 60-watt light bulb from the coop to hang over the chicks for extra warmth at night.
“We have to do something about the fox that comes around here in the wee hours. He’ll be looking for a meal.”
Terrence made a sturdy gate latch for the pen that would keep predators from getting at the chicks. As an enthusiastic member of Future Farmers of America, he excelled in high school shop class when it came to farm-related projects like building fences and gates.
* * *
On Fridays, the Clintonville Tribune-Gazette landed in Vera’s mailbox. She started to scan the weekly Help Wanted column and noticed that hospital jobs were rarely listed. Anyway, how would she manage to keep a nursing job when she had a farm to run? She had made a promise.
The day after Vera’s mother passed, her father made her promise to never sell the farm. It had been in his family for several generations. Vera had promised and now she felt trapped. She would grow old while raising chickens and selling eggs and vegetables.
When it’s overwhelming to deal with big things, turn to smaller things.
Summer peaches. The friendly grocer in Bear Creek had not received his delivery of peaches. So, Vera drove to Clintonville to buy two crates of the juicy freestone ones from Colorado. They were perfectly ripe for canning.
Vera was slicing peaches the day Terrence broke the John Deere. Slamming the tractor into sixth gear, he lost control on a steep slope in his dad’s north pasture and tipped it over, breaking the front axle.
Elmer—furious—called Vera to ask if she could fix up the gashes on his son’s head and arms.
“Reckless kid coulda been crushed,” Elmer told her. “He’s damn lucky to be alive.”
“I guess you won’t be competing in the tractor pull,” Vera said when Terrence showed up bloodied. She cleaned the wounds and applied mercurochrome from her medicine cabinet.
“I’ll need to wrap bandages around those arms,” she said. “I can’t bandage the cuts on your head though, so keep them clean.”
“Yes, ma’am. Pa’s m-madder ‘n hell about the t-tractor.”
“Well, you could’ve been killed,” Vera scolded. “Slow down for crying out loud! What’s your hurry? You’re only sixteen. Don’t race through your life. The end comes soon enough.”
Terrence clenched his jaw and looked away from Vera.
“Sometimes, like t-today, I’m really mad that m-ma left. I know she’s never c-comin’ back.”
“It was what, seven years ago?”
“Yup. I was n-nine. I don’t know what we ever did to make her run away.”
“I’m sorry, Terrence. I’m sure your childhood hasn’t been easy without your mother. I’m sure it’s been hard on your dad, too, raising you alone.”
Terrence stared at the kitchen floor and said he was going outside to check on the chicks.
Vera kept an eye on the gauge of the pressure cooker and let her thoughts wander. Skinned peach slices steamed plump inside the canning jars. She would have some fruit to get through the winter.
* * *
What makes people do the things they do? Seven years ago, Angie up and left her family. Just like that. Running away from something, or running toward a dream—who could know. She and Angie hadn’t talked much during the months after Vera helped her. Now and again at church they exchanged smiles and a quick hug.
And then, Angie was gone.
Vera’s mother was gone now, too. So was her father.
After the stroke, Vera’s mother drifted in a fog. Her odd behavior became a daily occurrence. The doctors wondered if she might have a brain tumor.
One Sunday morning, Vera had found her mother wandering in the front yard without a stitch of clothing.
“I’m going to church to be re-born,” she told Vera.
It never got easier with her mother’s condition, even when it was obvious the end was coming.
* * *
Terrence came back to the house. “I gave the chicks fresh water. They were panting in the heat.”
He pulled three baseball trading cards from his back pocket. “Look at these new cards I cut from the cereal box.”
He lined them up on Vera’s kitchen table. Stan Musial. Jackie Robinson. Mickey Mantle.
“These are all top players,” he told her.
“Do you trade them with other kids?”
“No. I just keep them in a shoe box under my bed.” He smiled.
Terrence was coming to Vera’s farm four or five days a week now. They had started sharing more personal—even confidential—parts of their lives.
“I have photos of my mom that I keep in the shoe box with my baseball cards,” he told her. “Pa doesn’t know I have them. He threw out most of ma’s stuff.”
Vera saw Elmer pull into the driveway.
“Your dad’s here. Thanks for showing me your baseball cards. And keep those cuts on your head clean.”
“Yup.”
“See you tomorrow? We have tomatoes, beans, and sweet corn to pick.”
“Yup.”
* * *
Under Terrence’s care, the chicks had grown—with none lost to the fox. By Thanksgiving, they would be hens and Vera would have even more eggs to sell during the winter months.
One day in late August, Vera asked Terrence to help her clean up the flower bed behind the shed. Ragweed was crowding out the Gypsophila.
“Why did you plant flowers back here where nobody can see them?” he asked.
“My mother just loved Baby’s Breath.”
They pulled out the weeds and watered the flowers while honeybees landed for nectar and buzzed off again.
“What are you planning to do after you graduate from high school?” Vera asked, as they walked back to the house.
“I wanna work on a farm. But, I don’t know where. A lot of times, Pa and me don’t see eye to eye. Next spring, I’ll ask around if somebody’s lookin’ for a hired hand.”
* * *
The Waupaca County Fair was held during the first week in September. For his 4-H project, Terrence brought Ethel, his favorite Rhode Island Red, to show. He had given Ethel a bath before the judging so that her feathers were clean and shiny. Unfortunately, he did not notice the small sore on the bottom of one of her feet. The judge suspected it was a sign of infection.
“Looks like bumblefoot,” he said. The judge sent Terrence and Ethel home with a consolation ribbon for participation.
Terrence’s unexpected award, though, was the blue ribbon he held up to show Vera.
“What’s that for?” she asked him.
“I entered the contest for public speaking. I did speech exercises in my room to get ready. I didn’t tell anybody. Not even pa. I guess I did okay.” He looked slightly embarrassed, but happy.
“You did more than okay! You did great!” Vera patted him on the back and gave him a half hug. She had been quietly noticing that Terrence rarely stuttered anymore.
* * *
In mid-September after Terrence started his senior year, Vera asked if he would keep helping with the farmstand for the weekends that remained. He said he would.
Terrence showed up early on Saturday morning to set out acorn squash, bunches of carrots, and paper bags full of potatoes. As usual, Irene was the first customer to arrive.
As Vera hadn’t come outside yet, Terrence tallied up the order and helped Irene load the vegetables into the cardboard box in the trunk of her car. He tossed Irene’s money into the farmstand’s quart jar. Brownie sat nearby and watched everything. He decided long ago that Terrence could be trusted, but still shadowed him everywhere for company.
By mid-morning, Terrence had served several customers when Vera finally came out of the house. She carried the Burpee seed catalog and placed it open on the farmstand to show the pages with tomatoes to Terrence.
“I’m thinking of ordering these Early Girls for next year. What do you think?”
“Yup. I like those tomatoes. Those are good. I could plant more Baby’s Breath, too.”
Vera made notes in the margins as they paged through the catalog together, discussing her seed order for next spring.
“By the way …” Vera paused. She looked straight at Terrence and smiled. “I made two telephone calls this morning. First, I invited your dad to come after supper tonight. I promised him home-churned vanilla ice cream with canned peaches. I want to talk about an idea. It involves you.”
“Oh.”
“I have eighty acres lying fallow on the north end. If you are interested and your dad agrees, I could rent out the land to you next spring. You could plant and harvest a crop there. Farm it like it was your own. Maybe put in corn or alfalfa.”
Terrence grinned but didn’t say a word.
“Second, I called Clintonville Hospital this morning about a Help Wanted ad I saw in the Tribune-Gazette. For a part-time nursing assistant. They want me to come next week for an interview.”
Seeing the tears that welled in Vera’s eyes, Terrence held out his hand to her.
“That is really good news, Vera.”
* * *
It wasn’t long before it was time to dismantle the farmstand. Vera didn’t like leaving it outside all winter. And now that September was almost over, the first snowfall might be just a few weeks away.
Terrence came to help Vera store the dismantled pieces in the tool shed. She showed him the ring she had taken from her keepsake box and was now wearing.
“It’s my nursing graduation ring.”
“It’s nice. And I have something to show you.” He pulled a folded envelope from his back pocket. “It’s from California. It’s a letter from my ma.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yup. I haven’t told pa.”
The two stood silent while the moment passed.
“Well, I’ll soon be taking care of sick people again, so I better get my garden tools cleaned and oiled and hang up my hoe and rake for the winter.”
“Well, I need to start checking around for a used corn planter to buy. Pa said he would pay for it and I could pay him back.”
“I think it’s all going to work out fine.”
The days shortened and the air, now crisp, stung Vera’s skin. She looked forward to the changes that were coming. She hoped that those who had abandoned others had forgiven themselves. And that those who were abandoned, would forgive.
THE END
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