Excerpt: The Round Robin

Ruth shook the drops of water from her hands and dried them on her already sodden apron. The day was proving to be another scorcher and she sighed as she brushed the hair back from her forehead. Her children were quiet, which was a sure sign that they were making some mischief somewhere. Was it worth it to head them off now or just enjoy the peace and deal with the aftermath later? And how was it that she, Ruth Simmons Walker, ended up in such a preposterous position as to be out on a farm in the middle of nowhere, hoping for a couple of minutes of peace before the next onslaught of work hit?

Once she was the darling of the Simmons family. Not spoiled exactly, but secure certainly. The work she had to perform was more of the decorative sort expected of young women of her station: delicate embroidery, painting fragile china, learning to pour tea in a practiced and friendly manner. If she ever knew what was going on below the drawing room, in the hot kitchen, or the wash house, it slipped from her brain almost the instant it entered. Would it have mattered? If she had intimate knowledge of how her father’s home was run, would it have helped her out here in no man’s land? Probably not, she admitted wryly to herself. Probably not. But this life might not have been such a shock if she had such forewarning.

With that, the silence ended and so did Ruth’s reverie. Two young boys, grimy from head to toe scrambled around the corner of the house followed by their equally filthy little sister who was brandishing a stick almost as long as she was tall. Their impromptu race was punctuated by screams of rage from the girl and loud guffaws from her brothers. Eventually their laughing caught up with them and little Lillian applied the stick with brutal efficiency on their prone bodies. The air was rent with screams of “Ma! Get ‘er off!” and “Stop it, Lil!” while Ruth counted to ten, heaved a deep sigh, and headed out into the light and heat.

The music was slow, stately, and utterly boring. Genevieve stifled a yawn with a closed fist. It had been a long day and this concert was surely putting her to sleep. She fidgeted in the crushed velvet seat, alerting her companion to her discomfort. He smiled at her and raised an inquiring eyebrow. She smiled warmly, then snuggled back into her warm cape. Perhaps she wasn’t quite ready to leave the concert hall and to deal with the situations to come.

Dr. Sarah Conley growled with frustration. Coming back to her parents’ house from her tiny apartment in the city was not all she had hoped it would be. It was a wonderful break for her to have someone else tend to her needs: her meals, her clothes, her schedule. But she did not remember that here she was “Sissy”, the freckled, frowsy youngest sister of 7. Here she would never be the adult that she was in the city. Here she was treated as brainless…worse than brainless: spineless, desireless, less than a true person. And it was driving her perfectly mad. But here she was and for an entire two week period while the offices were moved. Although she had asked to help, begged really, they insisted that a woman with her credentials did not move files and furniture. She was a lady, even if she was a professional, and she was not thought to be useful at all with regard to manual labor. So she sat in her old bedroom, surrounded by discarded mementoes of her girlhood and fumed, planning what to do, if anything, to escape the ennui.

Hazel stopped to gaze up at Hiram. He had stopped while they were walking through the park, mercifully without his children this time. She stepped to the side to put his head and large hat between her and the sunlight. Hiram countered her with another step that allowed the sun to spill directly into her eyes. She shaded them instead with her hand and watched him as he fumbled with his words. “What is it that you are trying to say, Mr. Watson?” she asked politely.

“Well, Miss Sweeney, I uh,” he stammered on.

Hazel Sweeney blinked her weary eyes and drew a quiet but deep breath which allowed her to become very still. Her very stillness seemed to rivet the middle-aged man in front of her and to cause him to look at her very closely. Hazel Sweeney was not accustomed to people, especially men, looking at her with any interest whatsoever. It made her feel vaguely uncomfortable and she averted her gaze from his. Taking a half-step back to the path, she murmured, “Perhaps we should…”

“Miss Sweeney, would you see your way clear to marrying me?” the tall man managed to stutter. “I know I’m no catch, being so much older than you are, but I can offer you a good home, already furnished, and the opportunity to be the queen of the household.”

Hazel caught her breath inaudibly and thought of the household. Five children, ranging in age from a hostile 13-year-old girl to a naughty and perpetually troublesome 6-year-old boy. Queen of the household, indeed. A good home, readily furnished! Furnished, yes, but not at all to her tastes, with all the frou frou curtains and knick knacks littering every available surface. What that castle needed was a good cleaning from top to bottom and most of the mess carted out and burned. Or given to the poor, or whatever one did with perfectly useless ornamental do-dads.

“I must have been too presumptuous, Miss Sweeney, please forgive me,” Hiram Watson interrupted her reverie. “It cannot have escaped your attention that I have been spending more time with you of late.” He stopped to clear his throat and continued, “I did not think that it would come as too much of a surprise to someone like you that I would propose after a time of getting to know one another.”

Hazel’s brain suddenly burst into flame as his words soaked into it like kerosene. “Someone like her” indeed! What did he mean by this? Someone who was educated or a homely young woman with no prospects before her other than corralling spoiled young women into their dormitories at the evening bell. Someone like her. Someone like her should be grateful for the opportunity to trade one set of back-breaking chores for another one. Someone like her should be grateful for the chance to be “wanted” by a man, even if it appeared it was only to care for his motherless brood of youngsters. Queen of his home indeed. Indeed.

Susan glared into the camera. She hated being photographed. She never came out looking like she felt inside. Of course, with her irritation clearly visible, this time she would.

Maud ventured a tiny smile. Surely she could pull it off this time. Her image burned onto the film at that time was a memoir of her escapade forever more.

Delia acquiesced to sit on the steps with the other young women of the class. She was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to sleep peacefully in a soft bed for days, weeks maybe. She merely hoped that she would remain awake long enough to make it safely home tonight.

Genevieve snatched the hats off two of the boys immediately before the photographer asked them all to please be still for a couple of minutes. One she perched atop her impeccable hairdo, slightly smashing it down. The other she popped atop the head of the perpetually gloomy girl sitting on her right. Millie accepted the hat with resignation. Genevieve rested her elbow on her knee and assumed a combative contemplative pose. Hiram and Eldred attempted to wipe the snarls of irritation from their faces before the art, the magic, the sorcery of photography recorded them there forevermore.

Julia and Frances, ever the sisters of the heart, tilted their heads together at the same moment, and wrapped their arms around the waist of the other. Julia smiled slightly, sweetly as she imagined showing the finished product to her grandmother. Grandmother Rachel did not understand how she could be friends with a Gentile, after all that the family had been through. Perhaps when she saw the transparent love and goodness of Frances’ face, she could understand how the bonds were so easily formed. Perhaps she could approve of the friendships that Julia found so stimulating amongst the girls of the school.

Frances, for her part, was grateful that she had worn her best shirtwaist to school that day. Although her skirt was nothing remarkable and certainly not the match of Sarah’s or even Molly’s, it was clean and it was what was available that morning when she woke late to get ready for school. First, of course, she had to do her chores for her Aunt Sylvia, who was yet again “in the family way” and found it difficult to get breakfast on for the huddled masses of her little brood. She stacked the dirty dishes in the dishpan and promised the green and heaving Sylvia that she would do them when she came back this afternoon from school. Avoiding any other encroaching tentacles of duty, she scampered out of the house to walk the brisk streets for two miles before reaching the hallowed halls of Gall High School, Washington, D.C.

Catherine surreptitiously pulled her hand out of hiding from her voluminous white skirt. The ring that George had placed upon it last evening peeked from its alcove between her skirt and her neighbor’s. By the time the photograph had been processed and distributed, her secret would long be out, but for now, she shared it with the photographer, a thin, harried man who had no idea that she was trusting him with her deepest secret to date.

“Young lady!” the photographer wheedled, “You can’t have that animal on your lap in this photograph.” The young woman slowly ran her hand down the spine of the cat resting comfortably in her lap. She then raised her eyes to challenge the photographer’s assertion. After a short time, he backed down and Sarah’s pet cat, Tom Thumb, was a part of the class photograph forever.

As the photographer harangued her neighbor, Bonny’s arms raised to her hips in a note of challenge to him. At that point, his attention shifted from the nefarious cat to the extensive work on her leg o’ mutton sleeves. “Kindly retain your position, Miss,” the photographer wheedled. Bonny acceded, mostly because she had no idea why in the world he said this and Mr. Hannigan disappeared beneath his dark cover and snapped his photograph.

Waiting patiently in the warm sun, Ruth and Sophia were resigned to missing yet another course of Greek. They muttered to each other through lips pressed as closed as possible while the fussy little photographer uttered useless imprecations to Sarah. Knowing Sarah as they did, they knew that that cat would be on her lap until the Lord came again, so the photography man had better just take his photo and move on. Who would see such a little thing in the mass of humanity that they represented anyway? When Bonny was cajoled to keep her hands on her hips, they knew that the time was here. No more whispers, no more murmuring. Although both girls attempted to keep still so the exposure would be clear, Ruth was unable to control her impatience for enough time. She was here to study, not to take silly photos.

The scene was blurry to Maudine’s eyes. She squinted just a bit to bring the photographer into focus. “Oh no!” she thought, too late. “He’s under the cloth covering!” The photograph captured her forever in the squint of near-sightedness. While her classmates would remember her as a warm and loving friend, she was forever captured by one group photo as looking stern and stiff. It was no consolation to her that Consuela, beside her, suffered the same unjust fate. None of the girls save Hazel wore glasses. And no one wanted to be Hazel.

The photographer came out from under the scratchy woolen cover and announced that he was finished. He handed his business card to the principal, a corpulent, sweating man who had been waiting to his left while the students fussed and fluttered. “The sample photograph will be ready in a week. I will take orders then. The copies are generally a dollar per, if the students or their parents are interested.” The principal nodded, thanked him, and began the process of shooing the students into the building. He did not have to work hard at it, for which he was truly grateful. The warming sun in which picture had been taken for maximum clarity had driven them all back in much more quickly than he could have anticipated. He spared not a glance for the photographer, who was busily putting away his equipment. He walked in the cool but slightly odiferous halls of Gall High School.

Once inside the building, Hiram stopped beside Genevieve and silently held out his hand. Millie hurriedly placed a hat into it and Hiram passed it on to Eldred who took it and walked on to his class in geometry. “Miss Lodge, if I may?” he quietly asked. Genevieve raised one delicate eyebrow, then plucked the object from her mounds of fair hair and dropped it into his hand from about six inches, as if the object as well as Hiram himself were beneath her ability to acknowledge. She turned with a swish of her skirts. Hiram glared toward her retreating form. Genevieve walked, back straight, almost saucily compared to the other girls, particularly long-suffering Millie who looked as though the starch had been removed from her bones long ago. Clapping the hat to his head, Hiram stalked heavily toward the staircase which would transport him to his ancient history class. His figure attracted the attention of Principal Harriman, who whipped the hat from his head and gave him a punishment of five demerits for wearing a hat inside the building. Hiram nodded swiftly, acknowledging the reprimand and silently swearing an oath that would have earned him ten more had it been heard by Mr. Harriman. Now he would have to miss practice this afternoon and do some inane bit of work for the office staff. Genevieve Lodge was a thorn in his side, to be sure.

At first, Ruth worked through the symptoms. A farm wife could not afford to be sick in bed. She sniffled, she sneezed, she cooked and cleaned and did laundry. Even when her back and legs commenced to aching, she worked, albeit slower than usual. Then the children began to fall ill. They coughed, sniffled, and ran high fevers, so high that Ruth became concerned and mentioned to Hiram that they should have the doctor out. “Kids get sick, Ruth,” he replied. “We can’t be calling the doctor out for every little thing. We don’t have the money.” Had Ruth felt better at the time, she might have insisted, but she lacked the energy. She merely turned to the wet sink, pumped out some water into a bucket, and returned to her job of sponging the children in their delirium. Hiram walked out to the barn, where the animals awaited him and the building did not smell of sickness and an encroachment which as of yet had no name.

He was not there when Ruth, tired and sick herself, pitched over onto Lillian’s bed, knocking over the pail of water. It soaked into her long skirt, but her relief was as short-lived as her consciousness. One moment she was sponging off her daughter, the next, she was draped across Lillian, who cried that she was hot and needed the covers taken away. The boys, in a stupor of their own nearby, saw nothing, heard nothing.

Hiram walked in on the scene. There was no supper cooking on the stove, as there usually was this time of day. The smell in the room was well nigh impossible to cope with. He dragged Ruth to their bed, loosened her bodice, took off her shoes, and left her there. Rummaging around in the pantry, he found some bread, only half stale, and a piece of pie left over from before the children became very ill. Picking up the pie plate, he carried it all outside, where the air was cleaner, although the bugs would insist on plaguing him.

Ruth’s chickens walked up to him expectantly. Shooing them away, he grumbled, “I bet she didn’t feed them this morning, nor picked up the eggs.” Other inarticulate mutterings accompanied his standing and lumbering over to the chicken house where he sprinkled out some feed and picked up their watering contraption. Filling it with water and returning it, he visually searched the nests for eggs, not wanting to disturb the hens that he knew would peck at him when he reached in beneath them. He found a few eggs and was cheered. A man could not live on bread alone. A fried egg sounded right tasty at this moment.

As Hiram clattered around the kitchen, frying his eggs, his family did not stir. Only when the tasty scent of bacon fat and egg drifted across the room did any of them react. Ruth attempted to lift her head and failing that said, “Hi,” in a weak and quiet voice. Hiram pulled the pan off the burner and placed it on another part of the stove, wiping his hands on a towel he found lying on the table. “Ruth?” he answered. “Did you want something?”

“Water,” she said faintly and he returned to the sink to pump out a cupful for his wife. At their bedside, he sat her up and almost winced at the heat radiating from her skin. “Mercy, Ruth, you’re burning up!” Her reply was a low moan and an almost incoherent, “Hurts,” before he placed the glass on her lower lip. Tipping it up to pour some of the water into her mouth, Hiram misjudged and gave Ruth more than she was ready for. Most of the water dripped from her mouth but a red, seeking tongue garnered what it could before she succumbed once more to the fever. Hiram sat her down, placed the cup on the window sill nearest their bed, and returned to his supper. Although he was tired and a little achy himself, he was hungry, and still had animals to care for. He made a kind of open-faced sandwich with the egg and the last slice of bread and took it to the barn.

The air did not stir inside the house. Flies came in and settled on the protesting faces of the children and their mother. Although they were in fever stupors, the skin on their faces and arms twitched involuntarily when a fly lit upon them. A barn cat wandered in through the door which was not fully shut and began chasing the pests, leaping high into the air to smack them out of the air. Occasionally she landed on a prone human body but quickly skittered to the floor. She knew she was not supposed to be in here and feared that any moment one of the tormenters would wake up and chase her to her hiding place in the barn. But the tormenters did not budge. The feeder did not move. The flies were the only things moving so the cat proceeded to play unanticipated games in the farm house.

Hiram ended up falling asleep in the barn. His head pounding, he sat down in the hay to rest after watering the livestock. Fortunately for them, he did not secure the door and it blew open in the wind that accompanied the thunderstorm that evening. They were able to leave and to forage for grass when it became apparent to them that the feeder was not going to feed them. Hiram, however, had a worse time of it. With Ruth and the children sick in the house, he was not missed outside. He shivered and shook in the chills that accompanied his fever. He burrowed deeper into the haystack, attempting perhaps to warm himself. Perhaps he thought he was in his own bedding, boring deeply into the bedclothes. By the time his nose began to spout clots of blood, he was pretty well vanished in the haystack. And it did not serve to keep him warm.

The thunderstorm woke the children up a bit. The chill rain from the storm raced through the open windows and doors, soaking Ruth but sparing the children, as their beds were further from the openings. Fresh air raced in alongside, dispelling the funk that seemed to have settled deeply around the beds and their inhabitants. Lillian was the first to wake up from her stupor. She felt as though she was walking through a dark cave, toward some unknown doorway. As long as she got to the doorway, she would be safe. As she walked, the dense black air became charcoal, then a lighter grey. Her eyes felt sticky, gummed together, but she persevered and suddenly the light pierced her field of vision. Momentarily blinded, she closed her eyes, then rubbed them. Upon opening them again, she noticed that it was not noon, as she had earlier supposed, but closer to dawn. Her eyes had been so tightly closed for so long that even the faintest of lights seemed bright. Struggling to push herself up with arms that seemed much too weak, she wondered why Mama was not making breakfast. Blinking her eyes again, she saw her brothers across the room, motionless in their beds. That was all she could handle for the moment and she fell back into her mattress, soaked in sweat, to sleep a more healing sleep.

Simmons, the older of the two boys was also aroused by the noise and light of the thunderstorm. Upon awaking, he sat suddenly bolt upright in his bed, wondering at the rushing of cool air through the small house. Without warning, his nose began to drip, then a gush proceeded out. Simmons pulled his hand away from his face and was horrified to discover that great clouts of blood mixed with clots were coming away from him. Before he succumbed to unconsciousness again, he tried to find something to staunch the flow, succeeding only in finding his pillow.

Ernest, the younger brother, did not awaken from his fever stupor. The winds whipped around him and he dreamed that his mother was washing him down with well water, as indeed she had been doing earlier in the week. He squirmed weakly away from his dream but it pursued him as persistently as his mother had. The thunderstorm probably served to save his life because it cooled him down at a time when his mother was unable to do so. His fever broke and he also slept.

As day broke over the Walker farm, the cattle were the first to emerge from the barn. Accustomed to Hiram’s ministrations early in the morning, they appeared confused by his absence. With the nonchalance of their breed, they soon moved into the barnyard and phlegmatically began eating grass. Next to appear were the draft horses. They followed the lead of their bovine neighbors and cropped grass in the barnyard. Soon, though, they figured that the grass was greener over the fence. Neatly leaping into the pasture, they made inroads into Ruth’s kitchen garden, then settled in for breakfast in a nearby pasture where Hiram had staked them before.

The chickens, never having been given the freedom of the entire evening outside, took advantage of this to fly around, pecking in the dooryard of the house. One adventuresome hen sidled into the kitchen through the open door. After a quick peck around, she decided that the pickings were much better outdoors in the light and dampness of the morning and she rejoined her girlfriends picking up grasshoppers and earthworms outside. A few of the hens took advantage of Ruth’s inattention to their egg-laying to sit on their own nests full of eggs for possibly the first time in their simple lives. The rooster stalked warily around the farmyard, on the lookout for varmints that wanted to harm his harem.

The thrill-seeking horses, having once bolted from their accustomed locale, decided to wander farther afield in their quest for fresh greens. After a few hours, they had wandered to the edge of the Walker land. It took them two days to saunter anywhere close to where people could take notice of them. When they did that, the horses had wandered aimlessly to the farm of a family about five miles away. The son of the family saw the horses and brought them into the barn with the enticement of oats in a pail. After getting them settled into the barn, young Samuel continued into the house to get his own supper. Being a taciturn fellow, he did not see it as necessary to mention the two extra horses in the barn. He ate in silence, filling up on the beans and cornbread that his mother was famous for. Following supper, his father moseyed over to the barn to check that the stock were secure for the night before retiring himself. Samuel disappeared over the hill west of the farmhouse for some checking of his own. It wasn’t long before his father came to the double door of the barn and hollered, “Samuel!”

The mother of the family came out to the porch with a plate and the towel she was using to dry it to reply that Samuel had taken off toward the creek, “probably to watch those blessed frogs again.”

“Looks like we got boarders,” was the reply of the laconic farmer. The apple did not fall far from the tree in this family.

“How’s that, Bill?” asked his wife, a tiny woman with wind-blown brown hair and a pleasant look on her face.

“Walker’s horses are in the barn,” was the answer.

“Hiram Walker?” At her husband’s slow nod, she wondered aloud, “How did Hiram’s horses get this far from home?”

Silent Will shrugged and began to walk back into the barn. “Are ye gonna take ‘em back tomorrow?” his wife’s query to his back.

“Yeah,” he answered before walking back through the doors of his barn.

Matilda Sawyer’s head was creased in thought as she walked back into the kitchen to finish cleaning up after dinner. “What’s wrong, Mama?” queried her oldest child, 16-year-old Martha.

“Walker’s horses wandered over here and Sam forgot to tell Papa.” Her forehead became flat again as she pondered the phenomenon of her 8-year-old son. “What’s going to become of that boy, I surely don’t know,” she continued.

Martha flashed a saucy grin at her mother and said, “Guess he’ll have to find him a wife like Papa did, to keep him on track.”

With that, Matilda flicked Martha with the wet towel and gestured at the window. “Let’s get finished here, sister, the sun’s almost down.”

That evening, Ruth came to for a brief period of time. The sun was just about to slip down over the horizon and its coppery rays highlighted the tin cup of water that Hiram had left on the window sill. Though it had somehow survived being unceremoniously tumped over in the storm, it was warm and dusty. It looked like ambrosial mead to the exhausted and thirsty Ruth. She stretched out her arm toward the cup but it shook so that she realized she could not simply grasp it, drink, then set it down as she normally would have done. After resting, she began to drag herself to the head of the bed, wet and malodorous with sweat. Grimacing slightly, she continued to inch until she was almost sitting right next to the window sill. Extending first her right hand, then both shaking hands toward the prize, she slowly encircled the cylinder with her hands. Ever so slowly, she picked up the cup and brought it to her lips. Finally she drank. The water was warm and dirty. It was the best water she had ever tasted in her life.