The Misadventures of Maude March Read online

  “I'm sorry, miss,” the man said, “but the bank can't wait any longer.”

  “Where are we supposed to go?” Maude wailed.

  “See your minister,” the man said, looking ashamed of himself. Then he whipped up his horse and raced away.

  I checked the front door. Padlocked, of course.

  I walked around to the back and found that door had not been padlocked, but we had locked it ourselves the night before.

  “What are you up to, Sallie?” Maude asked me, her face gone pale. She didn't look much more lively than Aunt Ruthie had that morning at the funeral parlor.

  “I'm going in,” I said.

  “You heard the man,” Maude said weakly. “It isn't our house anymore.”

  “Our stuff is in there.” The pantry window had a crack in it, but we hadn't yet replaced the pane.

  “Oh, Sallie, don't do that,” Maude cried as I picked up a rock.

  “I am not leaving my dime novels and my one dress with some color in it and my good boots behind.”

  Most of the glass fell when the rock hit, but I pounded another rock all around the frame to get rid of the last jagged edges. If we got so much as a scratch climbing through, I knew I would never hear the end of it.

  THE FAMILIAR SIGHT OF AUNT RUTHIE'S POLISHED-TO-A- gloss canning jars cheered me some.

  They were brim-filled with sweet corn, pickled beets, bright green snap beans, damson plum jam and prune butter, and strawberry sauce for pancakes.

  Not that my mind was on the food stores. I went straight to my room and tied my dimers into a thick packet with Aunt Ruthie's saved-up string. I put my clothes into a carpetbag. Three dresses still hung in the wardrobe when I finished, all of them made for Maude by our mother's own hands, and long since outgrown by both of us. I still kept them, not because they held memories but because my eyes could never be tired of the blue gingham, the rose-figured cotton, the green calico.

  I found myself staring hungrily at them, reluctant to leave them behind. But there was no room for them in my bag. I went into Aunt Ruthie's room, once our mother's room, and found the sewing scissors. I went back to the dresses and cut big patches out of the skirts, folded those, and stuffed them into my bag.

  Maude looked in as I shut the wardrobe. “I heard you in Aunt Ruthie's room. Saying your good-byes?”

  I blinked. I hadn't even thought of it. For that moment that I stood in Aunt Ruthie's room, it was almost as if nothing had changed for us. Yes, I was cutting patches out of our dresses because we were leaving, but there was still a part of my mind that believed I had to put Aunt Ruthie's scissors back where I'd found them. As if she might come looking for them again.

  I dropped the scissors into my carpetbag and said, “If you like, we can say our good-byes together.”

  “This is the only house we've ever lived in,” Maude said as we stood in Aunt Ruthie's room. “We were both born in that bed.”

  I didn't remember that. I only remembered that Aunt Ruthie barely disturbed it when she slept there. Even when she threw the covers off herself in the morning, the greater part of the bed remained made up. Maude tried again, saying, “Momma used to read to you in that bed. With the curtains open and the sunshine falling on your heads.”

  That memory wasn't mine. I had tried time and again to remember our momma and daddy, but my mind always drew a blank. Maude's words called to something held deep inside me, but it didn't seem to have a thing to do with this bed.

  What I noticed now, Maude had taken the quilt and woolen blanket from Aunt Ruthie's bed and stacked them with ours, ready to go. Wherever we ended up, we would not be going to sleep under somebody's old, thin blankets.

  We went all around the house, with Maude touching things in each room. This was the great difference between Maude and me. She had sentimental values. I didn't have them much. I had this in common with Aunt Ruthie.

  “You could take some of this stuff,” I said. “Not something as big as the rocking chair, maybe, but that china cat on the hearth.” Or the fancy candleholder that looked like a frog on a lily pad. I had always admired that.

  She shook her head. “It won't mean anything once we take it away,” she said.

  “It would still be ours,” I said. “It won't be ours for long if we leave it here.”

  We went back to Aunt Ruthie's room and Maude took the Bible. “This belonged to Momma,” she said. “And there's something else.”

  She opened the secretary at which Aunt Ruthie wrote out her bills. She pushed some papers out of the way, pulled out a packet of letters, and set them aside so that she could feel around at the upper back corner. She yanked a panel out, exposing a secret compartment. I saw then it had a little cloth tab for a kind of handle. I had never known it was there.

  I glanced at the letters. I couldn't picture Aunt Ruthie being much of a letter writer, but it appeared that someone had taken time to write to her. But then Maude pulled out a thin stack of bills, and I watched as she counted them.

  She finished, saying, “Twenty-four dollars, that's all. Too bad Aunt Ruthie did pay the bank. If she hadn't, we'd have more of a bankroll to see us through.”

  “To see us through what?”

  “I don't know yet,” Maude said. “We're going to have to live somewhere if no one takes us in. This won't carry us for long.”

  “Mrs. Golightly would probably take us in,” I said.

  My thought was, she probably needed us as much as we needed her. Maude shot me a look that said she thought Mrs. Golightly was not suitable even as a last resort. I shot her a look back that said beggars can't be choosers.

  Maude said, “Mrs. Golightly is too old. One bad winter cold will see her out. We would soon be back in the same boat.”

  To this I had no reply.

  “There's the egg money,” I said, and headed for the kitchen. The egg money was kept in a cracked sugar bowl. That came to something under three dollars.

  “This and the two dollars I had saved up, that's all we have in the world,” Maude said in a flat voice.

  “We have each other,” I said, but it sounded a little weak, even to me. I wished I was a saver, but I wasn't, and that was a fact. I spent all my money on dimers.

  “This is the only house we've ever lived in,” Maude said again. “It's going to seem strange to call any other house our home.”

  “People do it, though,” I said as we left through the back door. “They leave one place behind and make their home in another all the time. They like it fine.”

  “People do it,” Maude said. “I'm not sure it's fine.”

  I didn't argue with her. But I couldn't help the way I felt. A little sad that Aunt Ruthie couldn't come along, but I was excited too. Like a new life was starting for us. Like we were embarking on an adventure.

  SEEING OUR MINISTER TURNED OUT TO BE A GOOD suggestion. It was not a suggestion that Aunt Ruthie would have made, or followed up on either. Aunt Ruthie often said that in hard times family helped family. What she meant was, don't even ask anybody else.

  However, we were fresh out of family.

  It was not even a suggestion Maude wanted to follow, which surprised me some. “He already dumped us on Mrs. Golightly's doorstep. Where do you think he's going to set us down now?”

  I didn't argue. Maude could take a notion, and once taken, her notions tended to be unshakable. Reverend Peasley had slid in her eyes, and he might just as well have tried to climb a glass hill. But he made a better showing the second time around.

  “Miss Maude, and Sallie, dear, I am shocked to my marrow,” Reverend Peasley said as we finished telling him about the man from the bank.

  I liked Reverend Peasley somewhat, considering I hardly ever saw him except on Sundays. He looked fatherly to me, and he was, in fact, a father several times over. Most times, although not as we sat there telling him our story, he was a smiling sort of man.

  I liked smiles, and I liked to think that someday my life would have more of his smiling sort of people
in it.

  “You will simply have to stay here with Mrs. Peasley and myself until we get your business affairs settled,” he added, and won my heart entirely.

  Maude broke down and cried pitiful tears. She had cried before, of course, but she had not been so broken in spirit until that man from the bank got finished with us.

  Mrs. Peasley and I patted Maude's hands and soothed her and made her lie down with a cold cloth on her forehead. But all the time, in the back of my mind, I heard the reverend's voice saying, “—until we get your business affairs settled.”

  Something deep inside me stood up and cheered at the notion of myself having business affairs. That they were a complete mess bothered me not at all. I had come to this house a homeless waif, and I was not here for half an hour before I was a woman of means. More or less.

  The next afternoon, after Aunt Ruthie's funeral, we sat in the Peasleys' parlor and allowed the church ladies to make us feel better with such remarks as, “I am saddened to hear that your Aunt Ruthie was in such dire straits. I never suspected for a moment.”

  And, “I suppose you girls could hire out. You know everything there is to know about running a house. Lord knows, I could use a hand. Of course, I couldn't afford to pay you. I have too many mouths to feed as it is.”

  “Did you hear that the man who shot off that gun and killed your Aunt Ruthie claims it was an accident?” And then to the gathering at large, “He's not a local. Name of Joe Harden.”

  At that, my heart rose into my throat. Joe Harden! I pinched Maude at the back of her arm, hard. She yelped and jumped up off the settee like it was a hot stovetop.

  “Now, Maude, I never meant to upset you,” one of the church ladies said. “I just thought you should know the name of the terrible man—” Maude ran from the room, brushing past Mrs. Peasley, who had been coming and going with little cakes and fresh pots of tea. The lid on the teapot rattled and a spoon fell to the floor, but Maude did not turn back to pick it up. “—who shot your poor aunt down like a rabid dog.”

  “I reckon we're feeling much better now,” I said, and stood up, inviting the ladies to do the same. We'd buried our aunt that morning, and it had saddened me more than I had believed it would. These women were not Aunt Ruthie's friends in life. Aunt Ruthie didn't have a good word to say for most people; she'd just as soon shut the door in their faces as say hello to visitors. This had often troubled me, but not just at that moment.

  “Maude and I can't thank you ladies enough for spending the day with us.” They rose somewhat uncertainly, but I only let my chin jut out as I walked to the door and opened it.

  “Aunt Ruthie would have thanked you,” I said, and it was probably true. She would have thanked them to leave. We had done our duty by the church ladies and if they did nothing else for us, they dropped that word about Joe Harden.

  I had a man to see. I was nearly happy as I shut the door.

  ISTOOD AT THE BACK OF THE JAIL AND SHOUTED OUT HIS name. “Mr. Joe Harden!”

  A face appeared in one barred window. The most I could make out was, it was a bearded face, and hairless on top, like maybe he'd gotten himself scalped in one of those frontier fights.

  After he'd taken his time to look me over too, he said, “Who wants him?”

  I held up a dime novel. “Are you this Joe Harden?”

  “What if I am?”

  I put my arm down. What if he was? He was still the man who shot and killed Aunt Ruthie. I couldn't be here to shake his hand. “Are they going to hang you?”

  He went away from the window but came back again after only a moment. “If this doesn't just turn a man's stomach, I don't know what will,” he said. “Shouldn't a girl your age be at home playing with her dolls?”

  This struck me to the quick. “I don't have a doll.”

  I had not had a doll since I was eight years old, when one day a dog grabbed it and ran off. Aunt Ruthie wiped my tears and said matter-of-factly, “You're too old for such things anyway.”

  “Well, don't you have anything better to do than hope for hangings?”

  I said, “You shot my aunt. She was my only kin, but for my sister, Maude.”

  For a moment I thought he would leave the window again. He said, “I'm sorry, girlie, I truly am.”

  I stood there, not knowing quite what I wanted from him. I didn't know what I expected, but not this fellow with whiskers.

  He said, “If I could undo it, I would.”

  “You can't, I know that,” I said, and walked away. I was sorry I'd come.

  THE REVEREND HAD BROUGHT AUNT RUTHIE'S EGG layers and her little brown cow over to his own place. This was necessary, since we couldn't very well expect these animals to take care of themselves.

  He also cleared Aunt Ruthie's pantry on Maude's say-so. On a laundry day, he took the older children with him and brought a wagonload of canned goods and flour and sugar, in addition to hams and part of a side of beef. There was an atmosphere of quiet good cheer about the family as we all helped to fill Mrs. Peasley's pantry to overflowing.

  Maude acted as if she'd never seen these things before, as if her hands had never tightened the caps on these jars or helped to salt the ham. She made several trips between the wagon and the pantry without a word said to anyone, causing Reverend Peasley to comment, “Good worker.”

  If there was one thing the Peasleys could be said to need, it was another pair of hands. What with five children, all younger than me, I guess it would be fair to say Reverend Peasley and his wife were overworked at the get-go.

  But there was far more than daily cooking and housework and wood chopping to be done. The church floor had to be swept twice a week, the pews needed a coat of wax, and wax took a lot of rubbing to make it shine. Two extra pairs of hands could not complain if they were put right to work.

  Children were underfoot at every turn, running through the sweepings, dipping their fingers into whatever they were told to stay away from. Mrs. Peasley did not run what Aunt Ruthie would have called “a tight ship.”

  Maude's voice was deep, which scares small children sometimes, and besides that, Maude tended toward swatting people when they annoyed her severely. I had taken my fair share of swats and stood immune, but the Peasley children had never dealt with the likes of Maude, and in a week's time, they all stood afraid of my sister.

  My voice was also deep, but I had the good sense to make it higher when I spoke to little ones, which made me seem friendlier, even if I was scolding. Also, the two oldest were boys, six and eight, and all I had to do to get them to go along with me was to promise to read them a dimer later on. Joe Harden was their favorite hero, and they had both of them concocted an ending for the dimer that quits just as Joe sights a cave where a wounded killer has no doubt taken shelter.

  Because she was judged to have little patience with small children, and because Mrs. Peasley was growing round with her next baby, Maude took on the work that needed hours of standing up. She baked cakes and pies for ladies' meetings, for the sick or elderly, and for Tuesday night box suppers.

  Mrs. Peasley had gotten a good start on collecting clothing for the poor, and much of that needed ironing, if not a good wash as well. There were socks to be mended and sizes to be sorted. Finally I tied things together with bristly twine as full sets of clothing for the needy.

  Just in time to begin the canning.

  I worked mostly at preparing the vegetables. I was only grateful I was too short to stand at the stove. That fell to Maude. When she wasn't baking, she was lifting steaming jars from the canning pots. It made me feel bad to leave her with all the work when I went back to school in September.

  Maude didn't go, but I had to. A new teacher had been found to take Aunt Ruthie's place. It wasn't that I expected Aunt Ruthie to show up there. I hadn't really thought about it, not out loud in my mind like, but somewhere inside myself I did think her classroom would stand empty, like our house.

  I never mentioned it to Maude, who went on baking cakes and pies and doi
ng the wash. If that room stood empty in her mind, that was fine by me. But if I hoped to spare her sentimental values, that was not to be. Once I went back to school, it fell to Maude to tie up the old-clothing parcels.

  Aunt Ruthie's clothes made their way into the pile of giveaways. It had given Maude quite a jolt to find one of Aunt Ruthie's few dresses there. She had tied it into the middle of a bundle to hide this fact from me, but I was the one sent to get the clothes when Mrs. Peasley was all set to ride out on an errand of mercy. I spotted the fabric, Aunt Ruthie's practical brown cotton, as I put the bundles in the buggy.

  “I see she's given away Aunt Ruthie's clothes,” I said to Maude, so she would know the secret was out. “I guess it's too bad for her that Aunt Ruthie wasn't partial to pretty calicoes or tartans.”

  “Don't bother about it, Sallie,” was Maude's reply. But her mouth was held tight in the way she had copied from Aunt Ruthie.

  Mrs. Peasley told us how fortunate she believed herself to be to have all this help with her duties. She said this as she wrote a list of things to be done by Maude and me, and another list of people who needed the balm of her visits to them.

  As the days wore on, I wanted something more than a thank-you. It was not that I was not grateful to be taken in, but it did seem to me that we were also taken for granted.

  It made me angry that Reverend Peasley would turn a smile on me as I helped to scrub his floors, or wiped up after feeding his youngest child, or peeled the potatoes he would be getting for his supper, and yet he did not think to help.

  But he was not the one making up daily lists. I said to Maude, “That Mrs. Peasley doesn't know when to say whoa.”

  “I know, I know,” Maude agreed. “But at least you get away some of the time. If Reverend Peasley calls me an 'answer to a prayer' one more time, I'm going to hit him on the head.”

  I didn't think this would improve matters much.

  I said, “Don't you think we ought to just tell them it's not right to work us from morning till night? Even Aunt Ruthie let us play a game in the evenings. She let us pop corn and read by the fire. We got to visit with the other girls for an hour after Sunday service, instead of rushing back to the kitchen work.”