“I’ve been making pancakes,” Katherine wailed. “I’ve been making them so much we’re about out of flour. For the past two weeks I’ve been making pancakes so thin they only have one side to them.”
By the time it had grown cooler and hog-killing weather rolled around, Katherine should have butchered the old sow, but she just couldn’t do it. Somehow, that old sow was the last connection she had to better days. Killing her would, in Katherine’s eyes, be like throwing in the towel.
As long as that old sow is here
, she told herself,
I’ll get by.
One thing bothered Katherine more than their dire circumstances, and that was being approached for courting. Now, Katherine was no prude, but she wasn’t desperate either, not by any means, at least when it came to men.
Better to be alone than in bad company,
was her motto, and she considered the undesirable men around the county as bad company. “Honest to Betsy! Some of these men are so old they creak.” Fanny had laughed at that, and Katherine went on to add, “I swear that old Gideon Hamilton smells like mothballs.”
Fanny hooted with laughter. “He probably packs it away for the winter.”
“Packs what?” asked Katherine.
“Never mind,” Fanny said. “Wait until you’re married.”
“Humph!” said Katherine. “By that time,
I’ll
be packed away in mothballs.”
Whenever Katherine was asked out by a man, she wasted no time in setting him straight. Being a spinster was fine and dandy, sugar candy, as far as she was concerned. When that decrepit Jacob Atterby asked if she liked ice cream socials, Katherine responded by saying, “Was there any particular reason for your wanting to know?”
When Jacob replied, “I thought I’d ask you to the one next Sunday afternoon,” Katherine responded, “Don’t.”
Karin too was being courted by the inevitable, a man old enough to be her father who was reported to have plenty of money. But unlike Katherine, she didn’t send them packing with a few harsh words.
“Who did you say she was seeing?” Fanny asked one morning when she rode into town in the wagon with Katherine.
“Ben Witherspoon.”
“Ben Witherspoon! Why, that old fool is older than dirt.”
“Yes, but he’s got money.”
“A lot of good that’ll do Karin.”
“I’m afraid that may be true.” Katherine sighed and yanked the reins, pulling Clovis back from his hasty trot that was rough as all get out, to a smoother, slower-paced walk. “I heard he was a bit frugal.”
“Frugal, my eye! He used to pay court to Laura Lavender a few years back, and she said he was so tight he breathed through his nose to keep from wearing out his false teeth.”
The last pork butchered had amazingly lasted over three months, and in spite of wondering where their next meal would be coming from, Katherine could have gobbled up the last bite of it like she hadn’t tasted pork in years, so happy she was to see the end of it.
“I suppose I can stop selling all the eggs and butter,” Katherine said to Karin over the last bit of boiled pork.
“What can you make out of eggs and butter? We don’t have a staple in the house.”
“I’ll think of something.”
“I don’t know what, except scrambled eggs, and I’m sick of them,” Karin said, then stood. “I need to get changed. Ben is coming by at eight.”
Katherine cleaned the parlor with care and steeped a pot of tea, having virtually nothing else to offer Ben Witherspoon when he came to call on Karin. But the pains she took went unnoticed; Ben couldn’t tolerate tea, “breaks me out in hives,” he said. As for the clean parlor, Ben took no notice of that either, his hungry eyes fastening upon Karin like a starved wolf eyeing a chop.
Katherine had grown weary of Ben Witherspoon and rose to excuse herself.
“Got anything to offer besides tea?” Ben inquired.
Katherine debated her answer. Should she lie in order to keep their dire straits a secret?
Why should you? Maybe you should tell him. Maybe he’ll offer to give you a few scraps from his overstocked table
. She opted for the truth.
“I see. Well, maybe I can help out a little,” Ben said. “I’ll bring you gals a little something to tide you over next time I come to call.”
“Why, thank you, Ben,” Karin said, scooting to the edge of her chair and giving him a bright smile.
Please God, let that be soon
, thought Katherine.
“I can’t rightly sit back and watch two purty little things like you starve in a pile, now can I? Things have been going good for me and it’s only right that I share a few of my blessings with the less fortunate. That new well I dug last year saved the day for me. I’ve got sacks of dried fruit and my root cellar is full of vegetables. And you know I always butcher a cow as soon as my beef runs low. I’ve always been a beef man myself. Never could tolerate pork. No sirree! Give me a juicy slab of beef any day over a bowl of greasy boiled pork.” Ben stopped to think a spell, his eyes still devouring Karin’s small frame. “I’ll have to give it some thought—just what I can bring you. I know how you gals have never been ones to raise much beef, so I reckon I could furnish you with a little…”
Mary, Jesus, and Joseph, please don’t let it be pork,
prayed Katherine
. How I would love to sink my teeth into a nice beef roast! Or even the leg of a nice fat goose!
“…pork,” Ben finished a minute later.
“I can’t believe it,” Katherine said.
“Now don’t be thanking me,” Ben said. “I know how this must touch you, but the truth is, I can’t bear to see anyone starve, and if I can do something to see it doesn’t happen, I’ll do it. Lucky for you, it’s still cooler weather and pork should keep for quite a spell. I’ve heard tell that folks who watch themselves can stretch a fat old sow out four, maybe even five months.”
Karin groaned.
Katherine couldn’t make a sound, so close she was to clapping her hand over her mouth and rushing from the room. The thought of what Karin must be putting herself through to sell herself to this shriveled old man was almost as close to gagging her as the thought of a kitchen full of the sickening smell of steamy boiled pork. Of course she couldn’t express her feelings—to do so would have been humiliating to Karin, and Karin had a right to sell her soul to whatever devil she chose.
However, she did not have to stay in this room a minute longer, so she bid her goodbyes to Ben Witherspoon and hastily kissed her sister on the cheek, quitting the room as quickly as she could, short of a bolting run.
That winter things were as harsh and hard as the previous summer. Fanny’s husband died and the bank foreclosed on the mortgage. Fanny, who wasn’t called Bright for nothing, had seen it coming, and shortly after her husband’s funeral, had enlisted Katherine’s help in moving everything edible to the Simon place, and as much of her farm equipment and livestock as she could get away with and time—since they had to do these things in the dead of night—would allow.
Two weeks after the funeral, Fanny was ordered out of her house, and without giving it a thought, Katherine insisted she move in with them. Karin, who had been stuffing herself on Fanny’s staples for two weeks, could hardly voice a complaint.
The rest of that bitter winter passed, and while not exactly plentiful or pleasant, they hadn’t starved as they fully expected they would, for truly, the death of Fanny’s husband had been, at least for Katherine and Karin, a godsend. And not only because it put food in their mouths, for Fanny not only paid her way, but she lightened the load in two ways: by putting her back to the chores that Katherine had always undertaken by herself, and by her good-natured ways and sense of humor which kept optimism high and spirits light.
Spring came and Fanny and Katherine busied themselves with the breeding of their few animals and the plowing and planting of much-needed crops and a garden. Indeed, things did look promising. At least until the Sunday the minister preached a sermon he called, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”
Four days later Katherine stood on the back porch and watched as the white billowing clouds began to grow taller and taller, building over the green fields until a dark curtain of rain closed in. As the wind increased, whipping her skirts about her legs and driving the hard, pelting rain against her face, she remembered how for weeks and weeks last summer she had stood in this same spot and watched helplessly as the sun and wind sucked every bit of moisture from the earth, while praying endlessly for rain.
“It must have been an omen,” Katherine said later, as she sat at the kitchen table with Fanny and reflected on how the sermon had almost been a warning. In a way it had, for everything that had looked so promising had suddenly been taken away.
For that was the year the summer drought and the bitter winter were followed by spring rains. It rained. And it rained. And it rained. It was the year the saturated skies opened up and beat the earth below with torrential sheets until the creek overflowed its banks and flooded the fields, ruining the crops.
When it was all over, Karin and Katherine and Fanny hitched up their skirts and walked through the knee-deep mud to survey the damage. They had only two cows and both of those were gone. They were found later, miles down the creek, their bodies stiff and bloated with death and the calves they would never have. The chicken coop and all the chickens were missing. The coop was located, caught in a tangle of brush half a mile from where it stood, but no trace of the chickens could be found. The garden was washed away, and the storm cellar was a good foot under water. But that didn’t matter much now. The food stored there would be rotted by the time the water soaked in enough for them to get down the steps.
“Well,” Karin said, while extracting her heavy boots from the oozing muck, “at least I have my job.”
But the following Monday the flood had taken that as well, for a tearful Mary Mahoney confessed the rains had wiped her husband out and he was bent on giving up on farming. “We’re going back to Kentucky,” she said. “We’ve lost everything.”
“But you still have your shop,” Karin said.
“Yes, but no one around has anything. Times have been hard, but they’ll be even harder now. The last thing anyone will spend money on is a new dress or hat. I’m sorry, Karin. You had such good ideas. The business had really been showing promise since you came.” Seeing the hopeless look on Karin’s face, she asked, “What will you do now? I know you and your sister didn’t fare any better than the rest of us.”
“I don’t know,” Karin said. “Nothing seems very certain now.”
Mary looked at Karin, who looked radiant in crisp yellow dimity, in spite of the gloom that hung over the tiny town like another rain cloud. “I have a distant cousin…you may have heard me speak of her…she lives in Waco.”
“Yes, I’ve heard you mention her,” Karin said, her mind on what she was going to do. “She runs a boardinghouse, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, ever since her husband died. She’s often said she would love to have a shop such as mine, and…” Mary sighed, tears coming into her eyes as she looked around her neat little shop. “As much as I hate to part with everything, Josh says we can’t possibly haul it back to Kentucky with us. He’s going to drive me over to Waco on Sunday. I’m going to let Georgia have everything for whatever she can afford to give me. If she wants to buy me out, I’ll tell her about you. That is, if you’d like.”
“Thank you,” Karin said. “I’d be mighty beholden to you for that, Mary.”
Mary took Karin’s hand. “It’s the least I can do for you, Karin. You’ve been a good worker.”
And a good customer
, Karin was thinking. For the first time she could remember, she was regretting spending so much on clothes.
If I had saved more money, I would have enough to make Mary an offer
. But then it registered on her just what Mary had said. Waco. Dear Lord above! Waco. If Mary’s cousin Georgia bought her out and wanted Karin to work for her, and Karin prayed she would, then she would have a job and a place to live in Georgia’s boardinghouse, and in Waco. There were men in Waco. Rich men.
Karin was so happy she couldn’t wait for her ride home, and set out walking. She wasn’t even tired when she reached the house and found Fanny and Katherine encased in mud, as they dug around in the muddy remains of the garden pulling up a few onions, carrots, turnips, and potatoes that had remained buried.
“Mary’s husband is wiped out and they’re going back to Kentucky. She’s selling her business and I’ve lost my job,” Karin said. She picked her way daintily through the mud and went into the house. Katherine and Fanny watched her go, and when she disappeared inside the house, Fanny looked at Katherine, her hands on her hips as she shook her head. “That girl is past strange,” she said, before bending over to root out another potato. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was happy about the whole thing.”
Of course Karin explained everything that night over a bowl of boiled vegetables. “If it works out that I get the job, you and Fanny could come too,” she said to Karin. “I’m sure you could find jobs in Waco.”
“You talk like Waco is the Mecca of the world,” Fanny said. “It ain’t.”
“It’s better than staying here and starving to death.”
“You’re right about that,” Katherine said.
“Then you’ll come?”
“Let’s see if you get the job, first,” Katherine said.
Karin got the job. Mary dropped by the farm the following Monday to tell her. After Mary left, Karin hurried to find Fanny and Katherine, who were harnessing Clovis to the wagon. “I’ve got the job! I’ve got the job!”
“That’s wonderful,” Katherine said. “When do you start?”
“Mary said Josh will be moving everything to Waco this week. Georgia, who is Mary’s cousin, is making the front room of her boardinghouse into a shop, just until she clears enough to rent a bigger place. She wants me to come a week from Monday to manage the business. I’ll get a percentage of the sales and free room and board.” Karin kept her distance, because of Clovis. “You’re coming, aren’t you?”
“I don’t think so,” Katherine said. “Fanny and I have talked it over…”