Authors: Donna Mabry
With his father no longer the sheriff, Bud’s hijinks
weren’t tolerated as well as they had been. When he
and another boy from the town got drunk and drove
the boy’s car into the front of a vacant store, the judge
suggested they might be better off in the army. I was
glad he went easy on them, but I knew it was partly
because of George’s popularity and partly because the
town didn’t have funds to keep them in jail.
So, in 1937, Bud joined the army and left town.
It’s sad to say, but I was relieved to get him out of my
hair. He wasn’t any more energetic than his father and
was considerably more worry for me. It was an
embarrassment to have a child that got into one scrape
after another and wouldn’t attend church. We all drove
with Bud to the bus stop and waved as he left. When I
returned home, I felt as if a burden had been lifted from
me.
George spent the afternoon puttering around the
barn. When he came in for dinner, his eyes were red
and puffy. I didn’t say anything. I knew Bud was the
apple of his eye.
Gene was seventeen that spring and growing
taller by the minute. He’d already passed six feet.
Once my sturdy baby, he’d thinned out, and I worried
about him not having enough meat on his bones. I
urged him to eat more and fussed over him in a way I
didn’t with any of the other children. I’m afraid it was
plain to see by everyone who knew us that Gene was
my favorite. He sat next to me at church. In public I
might brush his hair off his face or straighten the collar
of his shirt. As he grew older, it embarrassed him, but
he didn’t complain about my attentions. He was as
devoted to me as I was to him, drawing the water from
the well for me, milking the cow, feeding the chickens,
doing everything he could to lighten my workload. He
looked like my daddy, who he was named after, with
the same shade of brown hair and dark eyes.
He’d graduated from school and looked for
work, but there was none to be had, even for a young
man who’d shown considerably more ambition than
his father or older brother ever had.
The Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC, was
set up in 1933 to give work to young men who were
unemployed and whose families were having a hard
time of it. President Roosevelt had just changed the
age minimum for the Corps and Gene joined up to go
off on what he expected to be a great adventure,
rebuilding the roads, bridges, and forests of America.
I hated to let him go, but I realized it was the only
opportunity open to him. I examined the clothes he
would wear to make sure the buttons were all attached
and there weren’t any rips on them. I packed one extra
outfit, his best. The Corps would provide him with two
new sets of work clothes, so he didn’t need to take
more than that. I made him a big box lunch to eat on
the bus for St. Louis.
We drove him to the bus stop and waited with
him. I hugged him goodbye without a tear and waved
cheerfully as the bus pulled away. Betty Sue and Paul
hung on to me and cried. George stood behind them,
his face not showing his pain.
I kept quiet on the drive home, and when we got
to the house, I went up to the bedroom and shut the
door. George said could hear me crying for a long time.
He left me to my grief, giving Betty Sue two pennies
to take Paul for a walk to the store in town and buy
some candy. He said he sat on the back porch and
talked to the dogs, his own way of dealing with the
absence of both his boys.
To me, the only good thing about it was that I
knew Gene would always have a place to sleep and a
good meal, and he would be paid one dollar a day.
Part of Roosevelt’s New Deal, the CCC hired
over two million young men from 1933 to 1942 and
put them to work planting forests, building dams, and
protecting America’s natural resources. Roosevelt was
a hero to me. I never voted Republican again.
The house seemed empty without Gene in it. I
asked God to provide an angel to keep him safe while
he was away from me. I didn’t give much thought to
Bud, but my heart ached with missing Gene. I
comforted myself with knowing that what he was
doing was good for the country and good for himself.
I thought of him every day, prayed for him every night,
and missed him every minute. It felt to me as if a part
of who I was had left.
Almost ten, Paul went to school but didn’t do
well. He pretended to be sick more often than not, and
George pampered him and let him stay home. He told
his father the other children picked on him. Like Bud,
he was the image of his father, already tall and lanky,
but he didn’t have his father’s charm. He claimed the
teachers didn’t like him, and I think he was right. I
don’t think anyone liked him. He was rude and lazy
and made no effort to be nice to anyone.
George worked a day here and there as a laborer
and made no attempt to help with the chores, even
when he didn’t have work. He spent his time puttering
around the house and barn, whistling a tuneless song.
It irritated me more and more, and I found that as time
went on, I sometimes wanted to smack him.
Betty Sue was my comfort. She was usually
sweet and helpful, but every now and then, showed a
temper that would surprise me. It came out of
nowhere. Betty Sue would play with a doll for hours,
and then, vexed over some imagined bad behavior,
whirl the doll over her head and smash it into the wall.
At those times I swore I could see George’s mother in
my little girl. I learned early on that only rag dolls were
good playmates for my quick-tempered daughter. I
prayed about it at night, asking God to look after her.
George came home from town one day and sat me
down at the kitchen table. I could tell by the look on
his face he was about to give me bad news, and I
braced myself. George had never been much of a talker
when the subject was serious, and I could see he was
searching for the right words. Finally, he cleared his
throat and said, “Maude, I went to the bank today, and
it was closed. They say it just ran out of money and
shut the doors. They don’t know when it will open
again, or if it ever will. Even if it does open, there’s no
guarantee that our money will still be there.”
My heart raced with panic. I’d given up hope of
George finding a real job. Men who’d shown a lifetime
of ambition were out of work. No one would hire
George. They all liked him and smiled when they saw
him coming, but he wasn’t what they were looking for
in a worker.
“What are we going to do, George?”
“I’ve been thinking that the only thing we can do
is sell out here and go stay with Bessie and John in
Detroit. John writes that I can get plenty of work
there.”
I just nodded, but my heart filled with a black
heaviness. The thought of leaving my home was
frightening. Detroit was frightening. Caruthersville
was the largest town I’d ever seen. How could I
survive in a city that had buildings like the Penobscot
office building I’d read about, 47 stories high. It must
reach to the clouds.
“What about the house? Are we just going to
leave it?”
“I don’t know what else we can do. There’s no
one to buy it. I can’t pay the taxes. Even if the bank
never asks for it, the government will take it. If we stay
here, we could starve to death. We don’t have any
choice, Maude.”
I crossed my arms and jutted out my chin. “I’m
not leaving my home.”
George threw his hands in the air and slumped
back in his chair. “All right, Maude. We’re not leaving.
How are we going to live?”
“I’ll take in sewing and laundry, like I did when
James died. I made my way for almost ten years all on
my own before you came along.”
“Maude, for one thing, you didn’t make it on
your own. You lived on Mrs. Connor’s property, and
you didn’t pay rent. You ate at her house as often as
you ate at your own, and you only had Lulu to think
about. You must know there’s not one person in this
town who can afford to hire you. Didn’t you hear what
I said? The bank is closed. We lost a few hundred
dollars. Some folks lost thousands, everything they
saved over a lifetime.”
Tears welled up in my eyes. What he said was
true. There wasn’t anyone now who could afford to
hire me to do the kind of work they could do
themselves.
I thought about the long drive to Detroit. “How
are we going to get the money to get there? Are we
going to sell the car and take the train? Are we going
to try to drive?”
“We have to drive, Maude. We’ll need a car.”
“How much money do we have, George?”
“I have about twenty dollars, but I can raise
more.”
“How can you raise more?”
“I’ll sell as many of our things as I can. We won’t
get anything near what they’re worth with everyone
broke, but it’ll raise enough money to buy our gas and
oil and feed us on the trip. If we get some extra, maybe
we can stay in one of those motor lodges. That would
be better than sleeping in the car. We have to take only
what we need, Maude--our clothes, maybe a few
household things, whatever we can fit in the car and
still have room for the children to sit.”
“When do you want to leave, George?”
“Next Wednesday, I guess. We can have the sale
Monday and Tuesday, then get going early the next
morning. What we don’t sell, we’ll just leave here.”
I wrote to Gene and Bud and gave them Bessie’s
address so they’d know how to reach us, and then
wrote to my sister Helen, and told her about our plan.
I promised we’d stop to visit. George wrote to Bessie
and told her when we would leave Kennett.
Sunday morning, I told the preacher of our plan.
At the end of the service he called me and the children
forward and the members came, shaking my hand in
the last gesture of fellowship. It was a ceremony the
dwindling church had performed often in the last few
years. Afterwards, Clara clutched both my hands in
hers, and the two of us talked with tears running down
our faces, promising we would see one another again
someday. George drove off from the church with me
twisted around in the seat, looking back after Clara
until she was out of sight.
George put up posters around town advertising a
two-part sale. We sold most of the furniture and
household things the first day, leaving the mattresses,
the kitchen stove, and the table and chairs. George sold
them, but with the understanding that they’d be picked
up the morning of the day we left.
I took the clothes out of the bureaus and packed
them in cardboard boxes, labeling them neatly so I
could find what I wanted when we got to where we
were going. The parlor and the dining room were
emptied.
Fourteen-year-old Betty Sue clutched my arm
and cried when they carried out the things from her
bedroom. She couldn’t believe what was happening. I
tried to comfort her, telling her that when we got to our
new home she would have all new furniture. Paul was
nearly ten. He watched like he didn’t care, studying us
the whole time as if we were strange beings. More than
once, I’d overheard someone say, “That boy ain’t
right.”
The second day, men came to look over the
things in the barn. One of them gave George ten
dollars for the wagon that had brought me and Lulu to
Missouri from Tennessee. Various tools brought a
nickel or a dime. George put the chickens into pens
that he’d nailed together with wood and wire from the
fence, and sold them by the half-dozen. He joked and
laughed with his customers the way he’d always done.
I watched from the upstairs window, and I hated him
for it, for being able to make jokes as if our lives
weren’t falling apart.
Late in the afternoon, the people were all gone
but one. George walked with him to the door of the
barn and waved goodbye. The man left carrying
Pawnee’s saddle and tack, the stirrups hooked over the
saddle horn. George had kept it clean and oiled all this
time, and the leather glistened in the setting sun.
George watched as it was carried down the path
and thrown on the back of a truck. He turned his back
to the house and propped himself against the barn door.
I could see his shoulders shaking, and my heart
softened toward him. I hadn’t thought of his grief at
all, only my own. I realized he was leaving the home
his grandfather and mother had given him and
everything and everyone he’d ever known.
He didn’t come back to the house for supper. I
was only dozing when he finally came to bed. He
slipped under the covers as quietly as he could.
I asked, “How much money do we have now,
George?”
“I think it will be enough.”
“How much, George?”
He turned his back to me and sighed. “Almost
two hundred dollars. I got the best price for the
saddle.” His voice choked when he said it, and I didn’t
ask anything else. I hoped the two of us could get some
sleep. Tomorrow would not be an easy day.
I’d almost drifted off when he said, “I made a
mess of everything. Being sheriff was the best job in
town. People looked up to me, and I lost it. This house
has been in my family for three generations, and I’ve
lost it, too. I always had in the back of my mind that
I’d buy one of Pawnee’s kin and I would get to use that
saddle again, and now, it’s gone too.” His voice broke
and I could tell he was crying again. “Now, I don’t
even have that to remember him by.”
I put my hand on his arm, hoping he would turn
to me for comfort, but he lay as he was. I needed
comforting, too, but my pride wouldn’t let me ask for
it. I didn’t get much sleep, and I don’t think George did
either. I heard him crying off and on during the night.
Early in the morning, George and I loaded up the
car, tying the boxes to the roof and covering them with
a canvas tarp to keep any rain from soaking them. He
put some of the smaller things on the center of the back
seat, leaving just enough room for Betty Sue and Paul
to sit. I put my sewing box on the floor by my feet,
next to the box of food and water I’d fixed for the trip.
There wasn’t enough room for everything, and
George carried some of the boxes of household things
back to the kitchen, saying that maybe we could send
for them later. I was just getting in the car when Paul
started screaming, pointing to the little wagon on the
back porch. George went and got it and tied it to the
back of the car. Paul quieted down and sat staring out
the car window.
We drove past the house and onto the road.
Neither one of us looked back as we headed out of
town, but my thoughts were behind me with the place
where I’d borne four of my children, the curtains I’d
sewn, and the wallpaper Clara and I put up. I knew
George must be thinking about his father’s home, and
his mother, and Pawnee.
When we passed the cemetery, my eyes searched
for the little headstone on Lulu’s grave, but I couldn’t
catch sight of it, and we didn’t stop. We crossed the
Mississippi River at the same place we had before. The
old raft had been replaced by a new, larger one.
George agreed to stop by my hometown so we
could say goodbye to my sister Helen. We’d always
intended to visit one another, but circumstances hadn’t
allowed. Helen made us supper, and we spent the
night. George and I slept on the bed that was Faith’s
before she married and moved to Memphis. Betty Sue
and Paul slept on pallets on the floor next to us.
Helen’s house had been wired for electricity, and
I marveled at it. There were white pipes that held the
wires running across the ceiling and down the walls
leading from the fixtures to the switches. She could
flip the switch, and the whole room lit up. Tommy had
running water installed and the well covered. An
electric pump ran the motor, and all Helen had to do
was turn a faucet. Tommy put a bathtub in the wash
room and a toilet right in the house. To me, next to the
toilet, the best thing was the water heater. Helen ran
me a tub full of hot water, and I had my first richwoman’s bath. I couldn’t believe it.
I bragged on all of it to Helen. I couldn’t help but
think how I would have loved to have had all that for
my own home. I’d asked George about getting
electricity and running water many times, and he’d
told me we would get around to it someday. Now we
didn’t even have a home.
In the morning, we set out again with a full
picnic basket that Helen packed for us. There were
tearful goodbyes and promises to write more often. As
we drove away, I realized that, as much as I loved my
sister, I was much closer to Clara now than I had ever
been to Helen. I wondered if I’d ever see either one of
them again.
George kept the car moving at an even pace,
about 30 to 35 miles an hour when the road allowed.
We headed to Nashville and reached the outskirts just
as the sun was going down. George found a motor
lodge, and we paid $3 for a room big enough for the
four of us. There were four bunk beds, two on each
side. George and I took the lower beds and the children
slept on the top. We ate our supper on picnic tables set
out under the trees, visited the community bathroom
that was at the end of the row of cabins, and went to
bed.
We slept sound, and when we came out in the
morning, the boxes that had been tied to the roof of our
car were gone. For a moment I panicked, trying to
remember what had been in them, my bedding, the
quilts I’d stitched so carefully, and some of our
clothes. The little wagon was still there. It was so old
it hadn’t been worth stealing. George checked the car.
The thieves hadn’t taken the trouble to break in, and
the thing that was most important to me, my sewing
box, was untouched. Among the items in it were the
little purse with my secret money, the nightgown I’d
worn on my wedding night to James, and the family
pictures. The other things could be replaced.
We loaded up again and headed for downtown
Nashville. George had been there before, but the
children and I were amazed at the size of the city. In
the back seat, Betty Sue and Paul kept their noses
pressed against the windows and o-o-oh-ed and a-h-hed over what they saw. I could scarcely believe it when
George told me that Detroit was larger than Nashville.
We drove through the city and turned north toward
Kentucky. It was beautiful, but the hills were steeper
than the soft rolling hills of home, and it took two days
to get to Cincinnati. North of there, the road flattened
out, and we made better time for a while.
We were about twenty miles from the city when
I heard loud popping noises, and George had to
struggle to keep control of the car. He managed to get
it over to the side of the road safely. He got out of the
car and walked around it, looking for the problem.
Both tires on the passenger side were flat. They were
sliced right open. George looked back in the road and
saw a scrap of metal. He’d driven right over it. He put
the spare on the front wheel, then jacked up the back
of the car and took off the wheel. He leaned in the
window to tell me, “I have to go buy another tire. We
passed a service station a few miles back. Stay with
the car. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He picked up the wheel, crossed the road, and
started walking back in the direction we’d come,
stopping and sticking out his thumb whenever a car
went by.
After a while, a truck pulled up and George
jumped down and took the new tire off the back.
“Thanks, Bobby,” he yelled, and he waved after
the driver as the truck made a U-turn and roared off
down the highway. He put the wheel on the car and we
were on our way again. George stopped a few miles
down the road and got a new tire for the spare, just in
case. It took twenty dollars from our purse to pay for
the tires.
We stopped at another motor lodge for the night,
but when we did, we took everything out of the car and
in the room with us. What things we still had were too
important to risk losing.
Our money was running out on us fast. Gasoline
for the car, two new tires, and food for four people
were all expensive. When the box of food I’d packed
and the picnic basket from Helen were empty, I had
George stop at a service station with a grocery, and I
bought a loaf of sliced bread and a jar of peanut butter.
It would feed us for the day. We refilled our bottles
with water from the sink in the rest room. Betty Sue
and Paul complained about the sandwiches but we all
ate them, and drank enough water to wash them down.
The next day I bought another loaf of bread and
another jar of peanut butter and two apples for the
children.