Mrs. Nesbitt and I cruise through Wellsford with Henry and Marie, the backseat full of supplies: chicken scratch from the feed store; Borax, coffee, evaporated milk, cornmeal, ink, and Wrigley’s Gum from Fly’s Dry Goods; my silent purchase; and a tank of propane for the range. We have an hour before we pick up Dr. Nesbitt at his office.
Mrs. Nesbitt looks regal in her earrings and embroidered coat. She waves at two little farm boys on the curb. “We need some climbing roses like those,” she says over the engine noise, motioning with crumpled fingers toward a brilliant red trellis the color of her jacket. The owner of the roses swings her watering can at us. Marie yaps hello.
Dr. Nesbitt knows everybody here—inside and out. But I wonder what people think of the three of us “ladies” out on the town without him. I steer past the Presbyterian Church and cemetery and away from the busy Saturday morning streets.
I am truly not nervous driving. In fact, it beats riding any day. I keep the church steeple in sight as we slide past farmhouses under a lace coverlet of cottonwood shadows. Out of the corner of my eye even the purple hollyhocks—privy flowers—bunched around a lonesome outhouse look royal. We pass a spiny brown ridge that reminds me of Marie’s back when she first arrived, scrubby and starved. The wind explores the morning, fills my sleeves, twirls up my skirt, ruffles the robins, then switches destinations, and so do we.
As we crest a hill I feel the earth release us, then hug us tight going down. Emerald corn fields rustle under the scalloped telephone wires. I hear rivers of clover hum the same soft pink note. Everything is moving, talking, touching above and rooted below. I slow to let a garden snake show off his swivel dance across the dusty road. Mrs. Nesbitt pats my arm.
Something brand-new hums in me too. I think it is joy.
“Thank you. Thank you… I love you,” I tell the mailbox. “Finally, a real, private letter from Leroy!” I squeeze the envelope. It’s fat, at least two pages. My name looks gorgeous written with his pen. I scout around for a private place to read, and decide on Morris’s bench.
June 25, 1926
Dear Iris,
Be glad you’re not in dull, boring Atchison. My big excitement is watching the goldfish my little sister got for her birthday. She named it Wanda Juanita—because it sounds “watery.”
The two older ones mostly act stupid, drooling over Motion Picture Magazine and dreaming up questions to ask me about you? ? ? ? ?
But guess what? Last week my boss assigned me the railroad repair crew ice route—100 guys living in rail cars. We delivered 5,000 pounds to the cooler in their cook car and got to stay overnight. What a crew! They eat right and know how to make fun out of nothing—talking about girls, playing poker, swapping stories.
News travels down the rails like telephone lines. It’s mostly bad—strike threats, cars stalled on the tracks, even a poor old guy struck by lightning.
Besides the ice, I got another job loading dry cement sacks at the docks. I hate it. With me, it’s a life of lifting dead weight, whether it’s frozen hard or dry as dust. Guess I should have stuck with the piano. Ha!
How’d they talk you into taking over the chicken house? Oh, I know—Mrs. Nesbitt kept pecking at you and you couldn’t say no! Please don’t tell me you volunteered. Here’s your chicken quiz:
Will every egg be a chick if you don’t eat it first?
Where are a chicken’s teeth?
Which came first: the egg or the dinosaur?
I can see you cruising around cows in Dr. Nesbitt’s car.
And you’re right—loving to drive is one good thing you inherited from your dad. So finally you found something. Congratulations.
Carl told me he talked to him last week. I really really hope you already know what I’m about to say—your dad told Carl that he and Celeste decided to get married in October and live in Kansas City. Please, please tell me your father already told you. Will they expect you to just pick up and move there in September?
I’ll be delivering ice to the crews up by Wellsford real soon. Don’t be surprised if I knock on your front door. Maybe you can take me for a ride, if it’s okay with Dr. Nesbitt. He sounds real nice.
I remain very truly yours,
Leroy Patterson—ice and cement wrestler
P.S. I haven’t talked about you to the crew,
but I want to.
So there.
I sit on the bench, the letter shaking in both hands. “Well, no, Leroy,” I bark at the paper, “of course I did not know already. Why would that… suede salesman bother to tell me anything?”
I stomp across the driveway and into the chicken house, avoiding Dot, who is stationed at the clothesline. The sharp manure smell shoots up my nose and tears roll down my cheeks. The chickens get blurry. So does my mind. I wipe my face, try to hold my breath, and fumble six eggs into my basket. I shoo a crazy hen pecking her own eggs. “Stop that!” I yell. I feel like ringing her scrawny neck! The coop gets blurry again. My father. He does this to me every time. Every single time.
I exit the chicken house.
Dot watches me stuff the letter in my apron pocket.
She glances at Mrs. Nesbitt’s bedroom window, glowers at me, and half barks, half whispers, “You just work for Dr. Nesbitt. You ain’t his daughter. Why’d he teach you to drive? He feels sorry for you.” Dot turns her chubby rear to me, stretches on tiptoe to pin the corner of a bath towel to the line. “Why didn’t your own daddy teach you? Oh…” she turns, puts a finger to her chin, and says in a singsong voice, “that’s right… he sent you away, didn’t he? Well, my daddy likes me around all the time. He even had me quit school after Mama passed. Your daddy don’t want you, he acts like you’re an orphan.”
My fingers tighten around the handle of the egg basket. My mouth tastes of chicken grit. Dot’s eyes flicker over me. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she had just read Leroy’s letter.
She jabs a clothespin at me, lowers her voice. “Plus, where have you got to go in that car, anyhow? You ain’t got friends or family. Oh, I know, it’s so’s you can haul Mrs. Snob”—Dot nods toward the window—“to the asylum for nasty old crippled witches who are gonna be dead pretty soon their own selves. Miz Nesbitt already talks to the dead. I’ve seen her pacin’ the porch, chattering to her kilt boy like he was answering back.” Dot looks at me, mean and confidential. “My daddy says they’s queer.” She scratches her belly. “He’d never leave me off with them like happened to you!”
Dot puts her hands around her throat and bugs her eyes. “And I heard your mama’s been dead so long”—she lolls her head like someone hanging from a noose—“if you talked to her, she’d never answer. She’s just a bag of double moldy bones.”
I open my mouth then snap it shut.
“You’re nothin’ to no one, Iris Baldwin.”
I take a deep breath, bite my lip.
Dot turns back to her laundry. I watch the crimson target of her fuzzy hair bob against the row of sheets and towels. My fingers search the basket, curl around an egg.
In a flash it explodes off the back of Dot’s head.
She jerks forward. Plants her feet. Growls. Squeezes her fists. It’s deathly quiet except for the drum of my heart. I brace against the fence. She’s going to kill me. But, odd as can be, she doesn’t turn around. She just swipes her hands on her sack dress and finishes hanging the towel.
A chicken struts herky-jerky between us. It cocks its head and ruffles its tail at the bits of shell and egg innards dangling from Dot’s red frizz like tinsel in the sun.
My chest heaves. I turn and burst into the house. The shotgun propped by the door slides down and clatters on the floor. Mrs. Nesbitt will be out of her bedroom any minute. I watch Dot from the window. She drops her apron full of clothespins in the dirt, spits, and ambles off toward home, leaving a pile of wet sheets in the basket.
I scurry past Mrs. Nesbitt’s bedroom door and hide out in my room. I grab Rosie and hug her until I stop shaking. On the dresser is the letter I started to my father and Celeste yesterday. I had tried to write them something newsy that would help Celeste get to know me a little bit, like Mrs. Nesbitt hinted maybe I should do. Well, that’ll be a trick, because until today I had never met the Iris who threw that egg.
Dear Father and Celeste,
I told the Nesbitts of your engagement.
They send congratulations.
How is the store progressing? Someday I will see the results of all your hard window-dressing work. I am now in charge of the chicken house—a spot that definitely needed attention. It’s not exactly a high-style shoe store, but the birds are finally getting used to me and their day-to-day routine.
In answer to your question, Dr. Nesbitt drives a Ford Model T Tudor Sedan. It’s black. He taught me to drive, which I took right to. I think I inherited a love of driving from you. Who’d have thought we had that in common? How do you like your Cadillac?
Do you talk with Carl? I miss him and the store.…
The letter makes me sick. In every sentence I am pushing the pen uphill. I rip it up. Phony. Phony. It sounds like Celeste helped me write it. Me trying to add her into our “family” has made what there was of it disappear.
I scrape my pen across a fresh sheet of paper. It’s not a push this time. That egg-throw feeling still pulses through my arm.
July 2, 1926
Dear Father,
I am aware of your engagement news.
Dr. Nesbitt drives a Model T.
I didn’t recieve a letter from you regarding your wedding date in Octorber and your decision to stay in Kansas City. Did you mean to write or call me but just forgot?
Iris
I misspell the words on purpose. It’ll drive him crazy. My handwriting looks wobbly, but I fold the letter into an envelope and walk it straight down the driveway to the mailbox. I leave pennies for postage. I hope it hits him as hard as a dozen eggs, but I know it won’t. It’s like throwing rocks at God.
I sit on the side of the ditch, hidden by corn and cattails. I hold my stomach, which feels like a coiled snake squeezing my organs to death. Grasshoppers leap on me, ticking and buzzing. The mailbox flag rattles when a truck rumbles by. When I was little I believed that grasshoppers spit real tobacco juice. How dumb was that? As dumb as believing I ever had a real home in Atchison to go back to. As stupid as wasting an egg on Dot. When I tell the Nesbitts what I did they’ll fire me. What else can they do? The Deets were here first, they live here. Mrs. Nesbitt still feels so guilty about Pansy leaving, she’s got to take Dot’s side.
I hear Marie trot down the driveway. She sniffs me out, then sits—not a comfortable, resting type of sit, but alert and protective. Her tail stub thumps the dirt.
I hug her. “I guess you know as well as anybody how this feels,” I say, “being a hobo just sitting in a ditch.”