Chapter 12

Olive Augusta Radley, 1909

Just the menfolk went to town. The women gave them a list of what they needed and the menfolk bought it.

—Joe M. Grayson, 1937. Indian-Pioneer Papers Collection, interview by Grace Kelley.

He ain't a mean man, the Good Woman's mister. Don't know if he's a nice man, either. I ain't figured him out yet. I was scared that soon's he had a look at me he'd decide I was a stray and run me off, or worse. But all he saw was a little girl in good clothes, with mannerly ways.

That's what I am to the Good Woman and her man. He's Mr. Grube, and she's Mrs. Grube. And that's how they call each other, too. I don't know anybody's first name except the baby, Beau. I don't aim to be around long enough to find out, but I can't leave till I get my calico pony back.

Mr. Grube's been tracking old Skedee since yesterday. Said he heard from a freight wagoner that there was a rangy Texas pony running loose around here, still wearing a pack saddle, halter, and dragging a broke-off lead rope. Poor thing had blood trails down both flanks, where a panther tried to get him. If somebody didn't catch the pony soon, it'd either end up as food, or snag the halter on a tree and break its neck trying to get free.

That's how I know Mr. Grube ain't a bad man, even if he does have a temper. Big as he is, he could break an axe handle in two, but he doesn't want that pony to die. Especially now that he knows who it belongs to.

"We get him in the mornin' now, ja?" he says while we sit with the night lamps burning. Mr. Grube talks like the German who shod the Lockridges' saddle horses, but I think he's something else, not German.

"Yes, sir. We will." I stack blocks on the braided scrap-cloth rug for Baby Beau to knock over, and I try not to think about Nessa. The best I could do for her was to sneak away with a few of the lunch scraps while the Grubes worked in their crop fields. I tied the scraps up in my flour-sack poke and put it where Tula and Nessa would spot it when they came hunting for me. "That naughty calico pony will find the bait food and hay you left out, Mr. Grube, and we'll have him caught. All I need is to get close to him. He knows to come to me."

"Ja. Dat is good." Mr. Grube goes back to rocking in his chair and smoking his pipe. I hope those hoofprints at the creek were from him tracking Skedee, and I hope that while I'm out hunting Skedee, nobody's out hunting kids.

But Nessa and me need that pony and the goods in those packs. It's worth any chance I have to take, even leaving Nessa in the woods without me.

"I do wish I could go along to help," Mrs. Grube says. "I cared for the horses in my father's stable when I was a girl. I loved them so."

"You got the baby to be tendin'. You are his ma, ja?"

Mrs. Grube's face goes red and blotchy. I already figured out she ain't that baby's mother. She told me she just married this past fall. She must've got a husband and a baby all at once, because that baby looks like him.

She goes back to knitting with fine mohair yarn. She's making socks. She's got a basketful by her chair already. Don't know how they'd need so many socks, but if she ain't busy with farm chores or the baby, she's reading or knitting. Mrs. Grube ain't a idle woman.

Mr. Grube likes that about her. He watches what she does sometimes and nods to hisself.

"I only wish to help, Mr. Grube." She's getting peevish now.

"You got the cow, and the chicken, and eggs, and the hoein' in garden, and the onions for picking."

"My goodness, such important things. Heaven forbid they wait a day or two." Her hands and the knitting drop to her lap.

"Wife…" Mr. Grube slaps his chair. "Nee. We'll speak no more of dat."

Baby Beau goes to fussing and I hop up real quick, because I want out of there. "I can get him in a fresh diaper and put him down for the night. I'm good at babies. I'd be pleasured if y'all would let me do it." I pick up that rolling-fat boy and cuddle his head under my chin. "I surely would. And I believe I'll turn in myself, if that's all right. I'm wore out after that good meal."

"Certainly," Mrs. Grube answers. "Yes, that will be fine. And thank you."

"Oh, it's me who's thankful to y'all…for all the trouble over me. You folks are surely helpin' out a stranger in a fix. The good Lord will mightily bless you for it. Yes, he will."

I sweep Baby Beau away to the small closed-in porch off the back of the house, where his cradle is. Mrs. Grube has set me up on a little rope-tie bed in there. With the warmth coming off the back of the stone fireplace, I should be snug as a speckled pup, but Nessa's on my mind, so it'll be hard to sleep.

Baby Beau doesn't fuss when I lay him in the cradle to rock him and sing the lullaby songs my mama sung to me when I was a little girl in Kansas City, and Daddy was gone soldiering. I like to think of her the way she was then, not how she is now, pale skin laid like sheer cloth over bones, her eyes so far away most days they don't even see you.

When Beau nods off, I blow out the lamp and sit on the rope bed, my head rested against the warm stone wall.

"…the most wonderful letter from Everly Waters," Mrs. Grube is saying. "You remember—I've told you of her, I'm certain? Everly was my dearest friend back home in Oklahoma City. We were at St.Joseph's Academy together, before my father suffered his terrible difficulties."

"I think you said dat, Mrs. Grube, ja. Everly…a strange name, dat is."

"It was a family name, I do believe."

"What does dat letter say, Mrs. Grube?"

"Well…the most exciting news, and…" There's a quiet spell, while Mr. Grube's chair groans and the iron poker stirs the fire logs right behind my back. Mrs. Grube waits till he's done before she goes on. "Why, it's news that has implications from here to Oklahoma City and beyond."

"Dat so?"

"Indeed. The Oklahoma ladies have won acceptance into the General Federation of Women's Clubs, and come May, it will be official. National recognition for the ladies of our fledgling state! Isn't that quite something?"

"Dat so?"

"Yes." Mrs. Grube goes on about the women's clubs, and how there's women's magazine clubs, and women's literary societies, and women's charitable circles that'll now become part of the international organization, and powerful, too! Her voice gets louder while she talks about all these women who felt the inner stirrings of their underdeveloped powers, and now they'll have a means to chart those seas together and follow the call to a more enlightened and educated womanhood.

She chatters and chatters while Mr. Grube says, "Dat so?" or, "Ja." He ain't listening, of course. I can't blame him a whole lot, because she talks up a storm about how federated women believe in charitable work for the poor, and how they have speakers come to give education lectures for better minds, and how they're sponsoring a horse wagon library to go to the tiny towns where there's hardly a book in any home.

She sounds like the ladies at Mrs. Lockridge's tea circles. That's the kind of things they yammered about on the wicker porch chairs in their pretty dresses and fancy hats with colored feathers and flowers and ribbons. Mrs. Grube ought to be at the Lockridges' house instead of out here in the woods, taking care of a baby that's not hers and a man who doesn't listen.

I wonder if he's nodded off by the time Mrs. Grube says, "And Everly informed me a club is to be chartered right in Talihina! Can you imagine? Genuine advancements in culture and refinement, even in this far-off corner of the world? Only three days from now, they'll hold an official ceremony in Talihina. It's to be quite the to-do, with a visit from the Oklahoma Federation's mobile library and a political speech by none other than Miss Kate Barnard. She is an extraordinary speaker and making quite a name for herself as the state commissioner of charities and corrections. Do you know of her?"

"Ja." So, Mr. Grube is still awake, after all. "The Good Angel of Oklahoma, dat is how she is named by the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen. We voted her to office for the first state legislature. She fights for workers, for the better life." He's more stirred up about that than I've ever heard him.

"Yes, indeed. I knew Kate Barnard as a young teacher. Now I wish I'd come to know her better. Who could imagine a woman elected to such a powerful position, and when women have no vote? It is simply magnificent." Mrs. Grube's voice goes loud enough to stir the baby, and I rock him with my foot while I listen. "I thought perhaps to go to Talihina for the festivities and reacquaint myself with her."

"Nee, Mrs. Grube. I have only one day before I am away on trains again for seven."

Baby Beau makes a whimper, and she stops to listen at him before she answers. "Good heavens, Mr. Grube, I've lost count of my days. They're all the same out here. But it is no matter; I can easily hitch up the horse and go on my own. And we've some supplies to purchase for the summer garden."

"Alone to Talihina?"

"The supplies will come at less expense there than in Albion, making it well worth the trip, and—"

"Nee, Mrs. Grube."

"Mr. Grube, I cannot sit endlessly on this patch of ground, with chickens and cows for company, and naught to occupy my mind or—"

"We'll speak n'more of it." His chair squeaks, and he gets up so fast it snaps back and hits the wall. I rock the baby harder. "These bein' just the sort of misthinkings dat comes of women gathering for prattle when they best be tending to the home and children."

"Did you not, moments ago, speak with admiration of Miss Kate Barnard, a woman elected to statewide office?"

"Dat Miss Kate bein' only a maid woman. Past thirty, and with no husband, Mrs. Grube. You bein' a married woman, the place for you is at home. I'll speak n'more of it!" He moves through the house like a bull, and a minute later their bedroom door slams shut.

Mrs. Grube sits up for a long time, her chair going back and forth, back and forth. When it finally stops, I slip under my quilt and pretend I'm asleep. She opens the door and stands there like she's thinking to bed down with Beau and me. I'm glad when she finally leaves, and the house goes quiet for the night.

Come morning, loud voices and pots banging around the cookstove waken me. First light has broke outside the window, and Baby Beau is gone from his cradle, so I must've slept deeper than I thought. The door's slivered open, and a blade of flicking lamp glow cuts across the room.

"Something must be done, Mr. Grube," she's saying. "Even you must admit that. Children cannot simply be left to fend for themselves in the wild. And there are more and more of them all the time. Children, off on their own. In the woods, following the train tracks, on the road, along the river."

"You'll niet feed them, Mrs. Grube. And I'll niet have them steal from us. Eggshells, I found near the creek. They have been in my henhouse."

"I threw the eggshells out for the birds and the raccoons, Mr. Grube, and the animals carried them off, no doubt."

"You'll niet give the children cause to linger. The railroad wouldn't like it, and the railroad is our livin' and our home."

"Yes, you've told me…in no uncertain terms—the railroad does not want them begging at the water stops and stealing from families in the railroad section houses. But one cannot expect children to graze on the grass and sleep in the field like wild deer. Perhaps if someone would investigate the problem of all these feral little ones, we could solve it at its source."

"Gather the thieves, and take them to the workhouses and orphan asylums. 'Tis right dat a man protect what is his own."

"And more little wanderers will come until we discover why this problem has grown so quickly. If I attend Kate Barnard's speech, Mr. Grube, I might speak with her and raise her awareness of the issue."

"The Indians will niet farm the land allotments to feed the families proper, and so dat is the trouble."

"Surely the Indians have for centuries had children and raised them quite admirably, or there would be no more Indians, Mr. Grube. It is also quite evident the Choctaw people, and indeed all the five tribes, have made a success of themselves here since being removed to Indian Territory. What has changed recently? That is the question."

"Many children must work for bread, Mrs. Grube. You work, you eat. No shame in it. The mines, and the mills, and the laundries have need of able hands."

"The mines, and the mills, and the laundries and factories are a scourge. I saw it myself in Oklahoma City after Papa's financial misfortunes lowered our standing. In the parts of town where the working class lives, the call whistles blow before daylight, beckoning the youngsters to their stations. Bone-thin waifs dragging their feet through the streets, toiling from dawn's breath to dusk's sigh. Everly reports that despite the state's new child labor laws, the employers often lie about the children's ages, or send them down south to states that still allow little ones to toil. I'd sooner see children live in the wild."

"Better there than on land of mine."

"Surely in this modern age we have the means to sort out the orphan problem without such cruelty. Everly writes that the clubwomen…"

A chair scuffs across the floorboards. I hurry and stick my feet in my boots because I'm afraid Mr. Grube will go off after Skedee and leave me behind.

He's already out the door by the time I skitter from the bedroom, blinking and rubbing my eyes so Mrs. Grube will think I slept through their fight.

"Sit down for some breakfast," she says, and tries to smile at me. "He can wait."

"Oh, no, ma'am, but thank you, ma'am. I'll just take a biscuit and a bit of ham and get along. That rotten ol' pony might go after our bait food anytime this mornin'. I didn't mean to sleep so long, but that bed and quilt was just so comfortable. I thank you for your kindness." I stop at the table for a swig of milk from the cup that's been set at my place. "It's more charity than a careless girl like me deserves. You got a real big heart, Mrs. Grube."

"Take the sweater by the door. It's cold this morning." Turning her back, she rests her hands on either side of the sink. Her head sags between her shoulders, and I pretend I don't hear her sniffle. Instead, I tease the baby into a giggle and stuff my pockets with dewberry muffins, which I'll drop at the meeting place for Tula if I can. Then I put on the sweater and hurry to the barn.

Mr. Grube is already mounted on his horse and waiting. He reaches down and swings me up behind the saddle without saying a word. As we plod off through the mud, I think on what he said about getting the kids off his land. If Tula, and Pinti, and Koi stay around here much longer, he'll hunt them down for stealing eggs they traded for, fair and square. They can't keep living at Twin Sisters Tree.

The poke sack is gone from the hiding place where I left it, at least. A short piece of twine from Tula's dress hangs there to show that they made it back from the creek yesterday. I pull the dewberry muffins from my pocket and drop them into the cedar bush when Mr.Grube ain't looking.

While we wind through the brush and briar patches in the morning cool, I start thinking about how to get away from here with Nessa once I have Skedee in hand. I'll need to go on down the road a piece, then circle back somehow. I can't let the Grubes see me. Mr. Grube doesn't strike me as the kind of man you cross.

I'm still pondering that when he points to the spring pool where the bait food and hay was laid out. There's Skedee, regular as you please, helping himself. He's beat up, with scabby claw marks over the white patches on his flanks. The pack saddle hangs sideways, but it's in one piece, and so is my pony, and that's a wonder. He snorts and raises his head on catching wind of us, but perks his ears when I call his name. I guess Skedee knows he has got himself in a fix and needs help, because no sooner do I slide down from Mr. Grube's saddle than that calico pony limps over and puts his head against my chest to have his ears scratched.

"You old rascal," I whisper, resting my cheek against his forelock. "Don't you ever do that again, you listenin' at me?"

Today is your lucky day, Ollie,I say to myself.

But soon as I try to lead that pony out of the creek, I know I'm not quite so lucky as I thought. He's so stove-up from the panther fight and from being in the pack saddle all that time he can hardly walk. The trip back to the Grube place is slow, and it's plain enough that my pony won't be carrying any packs till those saddle sores get salved up and have some time to heal.

I can't stay here, but I can't leave, either.

It's a muddle, and I don't know what to do about it, but the muddle works itself out, as muddles sometimes will if you give them their own time.

With the pony caught, Mr. Grube decides he's tired of putting up with Mrs. Grube's mad, so he leaves out early to go catch the train for work. Once he's gone, Mrs. Grube says to me, "I've been thinking, Hazel, and given a day or so to rest and recover, that horse of yours should be well enough to make the walk to Talihina…if he weren't carrying the pack load, that is. What I mean to say is, if the pack load were carried in the wagon. Then once you've finished your business in town, and with an extra blanket to pad the pack harness, your pony would be fit for duty."

"But…how would the wagon get…" I don't even finish before I look at how her eyes are fixed on that wagon by the barn, and I know what she's got in mind. She's going to that meeting, whether her husband says she can or not. I ain't sure it's a good idea for her, but I say, "Yes, ma'am. That is so. And since you can drive that wagon on your own, that's a right fine idea."

"Indeed." Mrs. Grube's eyes sparkle, and her crooked teeth make a big ol' smile. "I do believe it is the best idea. We'll depart day after tomorrow in the morning once we've fed all the animals and stocked up the hay and water and milked the cow. She has a calf on, so if she's not milked daily, it's no matter. We'll have a picnic at the old stone chimneys where Prairie Creek runs out of the Potato Hills, then cross the river at the ford, and travel on. I'll pack for a wagon camp in Talihina, as Mr. Grube and I often do. Then I'll return home after attending a women's club event that's to be hosted on the meeting grounds. It's to be quite the exciting gathering, Hazel. Not to be missed."

"Yes ma'am…if you're sure of it."

"I am."

"Right fine, then." I feel bad for the trouble I might be helping her into, but every mile toward Talihina is one mile farther away from Tesco Peele. And the next thing after Talihina is the Winding Stair Mountains, and home.

Only problem now is how to get Nessa on that wagon with me.

And Tula and Pinti and Koi, too.

Because none of us can be here when Mr. Grube gets back.