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Brown Barn Books
A division of Pictures of Record, Inc.
119 Kettle Creek Road, Weston, CT 06883
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ALMOST LOST, NEARLY FOUND:

A Novel of Sisters and Secrets

Original paperback edition

This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, other than historical, is purely coincidental.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010932839

ISBN: 978-0-9798824-8-7

Hammerslough, Nancy

Almost Lost, Nearly Found: A Novel of Sisters and Secrets

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Please write Permissions Dept., Brown Barn Books, 119 Kettle Creek Road, Weston, Connecticut 06883.

Printed in the United States of America

For John

Acknowledgements

For encouragement, advice, and kind words above and beyond all reason, John Hammerslough, Jane Hammerslough, Devon Pfeifer, Phyllis McGrath (no relation to the venerable Phyllis the Cat), Carol Carpenter, and with pleasure and gratitude to all the wonderful authors with whom I’ve worked.

Abe Lincoln got it wrong when he said you can’t fool all the people all the time. I did it for years, probably most of my life. Well, maybe not all the people. Maybe not my sister Peggy and Annie May—at least not all the time. And in the end, not even my mother, I guess. But a lot has happened to us.

PEGGY

July 7, 1944

Oh boy, things are awful!!

This is why.

Today when Frances and I rode our bikes past Mr. Ferguson’s Victory Garden, we saw the vegetables were all standing up in straight rows, with tomatoes on bushes held up in little cages made out of sticks tied together at the top like a teepee. Frances stopped, wiped the sweat off her face with her sleeve, looked back, and said, “Let’s do it.” I shook my head, my hair sticking to the back of my neck the way it always does when it’s hot.

She said, “Oh, come on. Don’t be such a scaredy cat.”

I said, “It’s for the War Effort. We might get caught.”

“Yeah,” Frances said, “but just think about chomping into a juicy tomato.” I should tell you she’s my best friend, so I pretty much go along with her most of the time.

The tomato plants smelled warm and spicy, and the three tomatoes I picked were ripe and delicious. Then we went on to another row. I didn’t know what they were, but Frances pulled one up, and the root was a round green thing, like a big green radish. “This is a rutabaga,” Frances said. “You should try it.”

She brushed off the dirt with her shirttail and bit it. “This is great!”

Frances said to pull off the green tops of all the plants and put them back in the dirt so Mr. Ferguson wouldn’t know. But all of them were now wilted and droopy. We’d also accidentally pulled some of the tomato vines out of their cages and were trying to poke them back when we heard Mr. Ferguson yell, “What do you kids think you’re doing?” We were too scared to say anything, and when Frances slowly stood up, she had some dirt around her mouth and a couple of tomato seeds and some juice down the front of her blouse. She was so scared her freckles stood out on her face even through her tan.

Mr. Ferguson said to me, “You’re the Rubinson girl, aren’t you? And you’re Judge Cassiday’s girl?” he asked Frances. “Wait’ll I tell your dads I caught the two of you stealing. They’ll whale the daylights out of you. I’ve got a mind to call the police. Now get out of here!”

We raced out of the garden (Frances can run a lot faster than me because she’s skinny), got on our bikes and pedaled fast toward home. But the closer we got, the slower we rode. I dropped Frances off at her house and headed home. Through our back screen door I saw Annie May, trying to make herself little or even invisible even though she’s quite big. Dad hung up the phone with a bang. He looked like a thundercloud, and Mother was looking nervous.

He shouted at me, “What the hell do you mean, stealing Ferguson’s vegetables? He just called me to complain about you and Frances. He asked if I wasn’t feeding you at home. You’re lucky he didn’t call the police.”

He looked at me. “You sure look like you get enough food at home. You’re fat enough! Look at your blouse! Get up to your room. I don’t want to see you down here tonight.”

I scooted upstairs to my room and flopped on my bed. I could hear Dad yelling at my mother after I heard her say, “For heaven’s sake, Sam, she’s just a child.” When I pulled my pillow around my ears, I got the pillowcase dirty with Mr. Ferguson’s damned Victory Garden dirt. My stomach started hurting, and it got worse and worse. All those tomatoes, and maybe that rutabaga, too.

My sister Janice came in after dinner and sat down on my bed next to me. “Poor Boo. Dad really was mean to you. You’re not fat…you’re plump. You look very pretty when your face is clean.” I laughed weepily.

“I’m sure glad Mr. Ferguson didn’t call the police,” I said. “Dad would have killed me.”

“Of course he wouldn’t. Don’t worry about it,” she said. “He’ll forget all about it tomorrow.”

By now it must be about eleven. Everyone’s gone to bed, and my stomach feels better. Janice calls me Boo because she used to play peek-a-boo with me when I was a baby. I think the first word I ever said was boo. Even back then our parents got things sort of wrong because they told Janice she was going to have a new baby instead of saying Mother was going to have a baby, like any reasonable parents would. I guess Janice was disappointed when she found out I wasn’t her baby after all—I was our mother’s.

Most of the time I wish I was grown up—maybe twenty or so. I probably wouldn’t even think of doing things like stealing vegetables from anybody’s stupid Victory Garden.

My name would be Maggie or Margaret, not a dumb name like Peggy, and I’d be tall and thin and look like a movie star or maybe even be one and live in a beautiful apartment in a skyscraper in Hollywood or New York. But then I’d remember about Mr. Ferguson’s Victory Garden and Dad yelling at me as if I’d broken some damned Commandment or something.

I’m glad I make her feel better. But why does Peggy always get caught? By the way, that’s the first lie Mother told me that I remember—about the baby, I mean. The second was when I asked her if I was two girls—a good one and a bad one. She said, “Of course not. You’re always a good girl, dear. We’d just send the bad girl away.”

July 8, 1944

I got this notebook last fall for school, but I didn’t need it so I’ve been saving it till now to write in it, sort of like a diary. I have to stay in my room all day and I can’t even listen to the radio, so I might as well write all this down.

Mother said I’ll remember this time as the best years of my life (hah!) and that I should keep a journal (that’s a diary) so I’ll remember the details when I’m grown up, which unfortunately is going to be quite a long time from now.

I guess I’ll talk about my town, Waynesville, Indiana. Nothing much happens here, but we have four movie theatres. Three of them have double features, but I can only go to two of them (the one that doesn’t have double features and another one that does) because the other ones are in a bad part of town.

I’ll be in the 7th grade at James Madison School this fall. My sister Janice goes to Central High, which has the best football team. The University is here, too. It has a gold dome covered with tons of genuine gold leaf that you can see from miles and miles away.

We swim at the Indiana Club in the summer. We also sometimes go to the Lake, which isn’t far from Waynesville. My sister Janice plays tennis at the Club, and she’s good. I take tennis lessons and try hard, but I’m not good at it at all. Just before we start the lesson, Dave, the tennis pro, says, “Okay, Peggy, today we’re going to keep our eye on the ball. And get our racquet back.” I don’t know why he says “we.” He always keeps his eye on the ball and gets his racquet back. When the lesson is over, Dave says, “Keep trying, Peggy. You’ve almost got it.” Janice plays in Club matches and wins a lot of tennis trophies.

My mother has lunch and plays bridge at the Indiana Club on Wednesday afternoons, and we eat dinner there most Thursdays when Annie May has the day off. Except for Janice, Annie May is the nicest person in our house. As I said, she’s quite large and has a beautiful round brown face and sparkling brown eyes. She wears uniforms my mother buys for her downtown, but they’re always a little too small for her. When she goes out on her day off, she looks beautiful, and her clothes fit her just fine.

August 19, 1944

Dad’s taking a vacation from the plant and has gone to Michigan for the fishing trip he goes on every year. Annie May has the week off to visit her sister in Alabama.

This is a great week. Of course, getting Dad off was as awful as it usually is. First, all of us had to look for his fishing hat. Janice found it in her beach bag. She borrowed it when she went to Dunes Beach, and it was smeared with the baby oil and iodine that Janice covers herself with when she goes to the beach. Since it was Janice, he just passed it off. He said, “You teenagers.” Believe me, if it had been me, it would have been a different story.

After the hat went into his fishing box and while Mother was packing his fishing clothes in his bag, he wrote lists of jobs for all of us to do while he was away. I’m supposed to cut the grass, and Janice is watering the garden. Mother is supposed to find someone to point the bricks on our house, whatever that is. We’re all supposed to behave ourselves.

We’ve been going to the movies and eating dinner at Wimpy’s or the Philadelphia Restaurant nearly every night. At least Mother and I have. Janice mostly has dates at night.

This is what Janice is like. She’s sixteen—five years older than I am. She has a million friends and lots of dates, and Mother and Dad are proud of her, even though Mother sometimes nags her to do stuff like go out with the right boys and be nice to Mrs. Baker, who’s Jimmy Baker’s mother.

Janice is thin but also has curves in the right places. She’s just right. She has long dark blonde hair that curls under. Her hair has light blonde streaks in it because she puts lemon juice on it when she sits in the sun. She’s short enough so that when she dances with almost any boy, even if he’s pretty short, she can push out her behind and look up at him and her hair hangs down her back. I’m taller than she is now, and by the time I’m her age, I’ll probably be six feet two and no boy will ever ask me for a date. Mother keeps saying I’ll be tall and willowy after I lose my baby fat, but so far, I’m still wearing Junior Miss clothes. Mother doesn’t often say it out loud when she sees me eating Fig Newtons or when I’m arguing with Dad, but I know that she’s wishing that I was more like Janice. She does brag about my grades to her friends, but what she really wants is for me to be popular like Janice when I get to high school.

To tell you the truth, even though everybody thinks Janice is perfect, she still is the nicest person in our whole family. She and Annie May both tell me not to argue so much with our parents. Janice says I should think before I talk and just try to keep my feelings to myself like she does. I didn’t know she did that. Then she sighs and says, “Boo, you’re just going to be yourself, no matter what I say.”

But once she surprised me by saying “I wish I was more like you. I might get to stop smiling for a change.” I always thought she wanted to be the way she is. I sure would like to be like her if I only could.

Peggy, you’ve got it all wrong. Surprising, kind of, because you’re so smart. But I’ve fooled you too, just like the rest of them. I’m always surprised even really smart people like you and Annie May can’t see right through me. Don’t they know there isn’t really a Janice? There’s only a someone who always does the right thing and looks nice and is scared everyone will find out that there’s no one home. Actually, there is someone. She hates almost everything.

August 25, 1944

Tonight Janice let me watch her while she was getting dressed for a date with Jimmy Baker. At least that’s who she told Mother she was going out with. Jimmy is on Mother’s good side, but personally, I can’t stand him. He’s really pretty snotty if you come right down to it.

Jimmy’s grandfather started Steffings, the biggest factory in Waynesville, and his father is head of it. They live in Burlingame Park, and Mrs. Baker often has her picture on the Society page of the Waynesville Tribune, pouring tea or heading up a committee or being a Red Cross Gray Lady at the hospital and delivering flowers to somebody. Mother’s a Red Cross volunteer too, because that’s what ladies do here, but I don’t think her heart’s in it.

Yesterday I heard Janice on the phone making a date with Bud Happ, who is definitely not on Mother’s good side. Bud graduated from Central in June and is going in the Army soon. I think Mother should be more patriotic about a boy who’s going in the Army, but that doesn’t make any difference to her. What does make a difference is that Bud’s father drinks and his mother always wears housedresses and shoes that are run over at the heels. They live on the west side of town and the grass in their front yard isn’t cut.

Mother would have a fit if she knew Janice was going out with Bud Happ. It would ruin her reputation if other people knew. Janice almost never fights with Mother or Dad, but when Mother says something really awful she says sort of disgustedly, “Oh, Mother,” and Mother sometimes stops. But Janice doesn’t argue the way I do. I don’t mean she’s exactly sneaky, but she usually manages to do what she wants, even things our parents specifically don’t want her to. Janice just makes sure they don’t find out.

I was watching her get dressed for her date, and while she put on her white sundress, I looked around her room. I don’t go in there very often (she has a sign on her door that says “Private. Do not disturb when I’m not here!”), because when I was much younger, I accidentally spilled a bottle of her Evening in Paris cologne all over the white rug. Even with the yellow stain on the rug, Janice’s room is beautiful. She has pink wallpaper with roses on it and a dressing table with a ruffled white skirt. Around her mirror are about a million pictures of Janice and different boys with their arms draped over her shoulders, Janice holding a tennis trophy, Janice and a bunch of girls laughing at a pajama party. You know what I mean.

My mirror has pictures of me and Barney, our old Labrador who died two years ago. There’s another picture of Marvin Fleming and me, playing in our sandbox when we were about five years old. His big brother George is standing next to the sandbox with his bicycle. George is in the Marine Corps in the Pacific. Marvin lives just across the street and is one of my best friends, but that’s not the kind of pictures Janice has.

We heard an automobile horn toot outside, and Janice jumped up from her dressing table. “My gosh,” she said, “I better get down before Mother sees him.” She went clattering down the stairs in her high heels.

When I went downstairs Mother came out of the den and said, “Oh, did Janice go? I sorry Jimmy didn’t come in. I wanted to tell him I saw his mother at the Indiana Club yesterday.”

I just nodded. Jimmy Baker’s conceited and acts like he’s smarter and better than everybody else. So of course I didn’t say one word about Bud Happ and Janice having a date with him.

This is a nice week with the Grouch away fishing.

August 26, 1944

This didn’t turn out to be such a great week after all. Late last night I woke up when a car stopped outside our house. I heard Mother’s bedroom door open and her slippers slapping down the stairs, and then I heard the front door open. Naturally I went out to the hall to see what was going on.

My mother was saying, “It’s about time you got in, young lady. Do you know what time it is?” There was a pause. “Good Lord, what’s happened to you?”

I heard Janice kind of mumbling and I peeked through the banister at the top of the stairs to see what was happening in the front hall. Janice looked awful. Her beautiful blonde hair was messed up, one of the straps of her sundress was hanging off her shoulder, and her lipstick was smeared.

Mother said, “You’ve been drinking, haven’t you? You’ve been drinking. I can tell. You smell like a brewery, for heaven’s sake. How could you?”

Janice slurred, “Oh Mother, it’s not the end of the world… I had a couple of beers.”

“I thought you were going to the Indiana Club. You can’t get liquor there. You’re under eighteen. Were you there?”

Janice said, “Oh, come on, Mother. It’s not a big deal.” She took off her shoes and started wobbling up the stairs.

“You’re drunk, Janice! I can’t believe it. Look at your dress. Look at your hair. Did anyone see you?”

Janice turned and looked down at her. “No, Mother,” she said politely. “Nobody you know saw me.”

“Where were you then?”

“At the Birches, if you want to know. Now I have to go throw up.”

Mother didn’t say a word.

Nice girls don’t go to the Birches. It’s about five miles out of town on the Berry Springs road. Everybody says high school boys and the guys who work in the plant call it the Bitches because some girls go there without dates and go all the way for money with guys they don’t even know, or sometimes even if they just like a guy who buys a bottle of beer for them or asks them to dance. There’s a jukebox there, and they serve liquor to kids under 18. Every once in a while the Waynesville Tribune has a story about a fight at the Birches and the police picking up guys for disturbing the peace.

Janice went up the stairs, hanging on to the banister. She went into the bathroom, and we heard her throwing up.

Mother looked like she was about to cry when she looked upstairs and saw me in the hall. She said, “You get back into bed right now. You’re not to say one word about this. To anyone.”

Sometimes Janice is a pain in the neck because she never gets into trouble, but I felt bad she was going to have Mother being mean to her all day tomorrow. I don’t even want to think about what Mother’ll say about Janice’s losing her reputation going to the Birches at all (“What if someone saw you, although it’s not likely that anyone we know would be caught dead in that place.”). If she knew Janice went there with Bud Happ, she would be speechless, I guess. I sure wasn’t going to tell on Janice and say that Jimmy Baker wasn’t anywhere near the Birches, at least not with Janice.

God, I’m hung over. I don’t remember much of last night, but I think I had a good time. Bud Happ isn’t anybody’s dream, but at least he doesn’t belong to the Club. And he isn’t Jimmy Baker or anyone else that Mother approves of. But it was really dumb of me to let Mother catch me. I kind of like Bud Happ, at least I like him more than I do most of the boys who ask me for dates. I don’t have to be Miss Goody Two-Shoes with Bud if I don’t want to. I don’t even have to laugh at his jokes if I don’t feel like it. And he doesn’t make passes at me—we’re just friends. Well, I’d better get dressed and go down to face Mother. And then I’ll go back to being Really Good.

August 28, 1944

Dad got back from his fishing trip, and except for him bringing back some bony fish that we had to eat and say was delicious, it was okay having him home again. He was a lot less grouchy than he was before he went. Maybe he just wanted to get away from us for a while. I wouldn’t mind doing that sometimes myself.

Although it was nice to have him go fishing, Mother thinks he should play golf. When he got home, she said to him, “You should think about taking up golf, dear. It’s a nice thing to do on Saturday afternoons at the Club. There’s that whole lovely golf course you don’t even use. The nicest people play golf. I’ve seen Dr. Miller play there, and so does Jim Baker. “

“I like fishing,” Dad said.

Nobody told on Janice for getting drunk at the Birches, and Mother never found out she wasn’t out with Jimmy Baker that night. I guess she wouldn’t want to bring it up with Jimmy’s mother.

Of course no one told Dad we didn’t do much about the jobs we were supposed to do while he was gone. Mother had forgotten to call someone to fix the bricks until the day before Dad was coming back, Janice watered the flowers for the first time that morning, and I cut the grass that afternoon. My, we were busy and sweaty. But by the time he got home in time for dinner, we were all cleaned up. I even put some of Mother’s perfumed talcum powder on me—and mopped up the bathroom floor where I spilled a little.

I was surprised when Dad looked at me at dinner and said, “How about going to the woods for breakfast tomorrow morning? It’s Sunday.”

I said, “Me?”

He said, “Sure. How about you too, Janice? Or are you too much of a lady these days to fry an egg over a wood fire?” Janice hesitated and looked at Mother.

“She can’t possibly go, Sam,” Mother said. “She’s playing tennis at ten at the Club with James Junior.”

Dad asked, “Is this a tournament? They don’t usually play off until Labor Day.”

“No,” Janice said. “We’re just playing.”

“What time do I have to get you there?” Dad asked resignedly.

“Oh, you don’t have to take me,” Janice said. “Jimmy’s picking me up.” Janice glanced at my mother again and then started poking in her baked potato.

“Jimmy Baker? Jim Baker’s boy? Isn’t he that guy with the hair that sticks up? The one who acts like he’s doing you a favor just by talking with you? They sure don’t teach him tennis at that fancy boarding school he goes to. I’ve seen him play. You’ll have to get all his backhand shots for him. It doesn’t seem worth giving up breakfast in the woods to play tennis with him.”

“He plays better than when you saw him,” Janice said.

“Well, I guess you think the old man can’t give you as good a game as the Baker kid these days, Janice,” Dad said jovially. He looked at me. “We’ll have a nice time, Peggy. You bet we will. I guess it’s Janice’s business if she wants to do all the running in mixed doubles.”

“Oh, Dad,” Janice said.

Mother turned to me. “Peggy, will you please not hang on to your milk glass when you’re not drinking your milk? It won’t go away. Please wipe your mouth.”

Dad finished his coffee and stood up. “Well, that’s settled. We’ll go out tomorrow around 7, Peggy. Seven sharp.”

Thank God I don’t have to go with them this time. Poor Peggy’s going to have to work just to keep him happy, the way I do with him. She’s not very good at it. She just can’t manage to be Cute.

August 29, 1944

I could barely sleep last night. I was excited, and I sure didn’t want to be late. And I didn’t know what to talk about with Dad. Janice’s magazines had a lot of articles about how to talk to a boy, but I didn’t think I could ask my father what sports he liked or what baseball team he was rooting for. I knew what team he was rooting for—the Chicago Cubs. He listened to their games on the radio every Sunday afternoon in the summer. Maybe I could ask him how the Cubs were doing.

I woke up around six and put on some shorts I got at the beginning of the summer. By now they were pretty tight. In fact, I had a hard time buttoning them over my stomach, and then the button popped off. I went into Janice’s room to find a safety pin. She was still sleeping, neat and compact. I wished for the millionth time I was more like her. I found a pin and fixed my shorts with it, knowing that Dad, who was probably the neatest man in the world, would notice it. The shorts were also kind of tight in the crotch and too short. (Mother’s friends are always saying to her, “My, hasn’t Peggy grown this summer? She’s only eleven?”)

Wouldn’t you think people would figure people hated other people talking about them as if they couldn’t hear them, even when they were standing next to them?

A lot of worries hit me as I was tying my sneakers. If the laces broke again, there were so many knots in them already that I couldn’t get them through the eyelets any more. Then there was the poorhouse. And I had to remember not to push my glasses, which kept sliding down my nose, back into place by screwing up my whole face. That always annoyed Dad. Then there was that pin holding my shorts together. But most of all, what was I going to talk about with him for the next couple of hours?

I went thumping downstairs two at a time and nearly knocked into the grill Dad was taking out to the car. He said, “All set to go, Peggy? Glad you got down here in time. Just put the eggs in the box. It’s in the kitchen. For God’s sake, don’t break them.”

As we started, I searched for something to talk about as I watched the flat green fields flow by outside the car. I hated baseball, and I didn’t want to hear about it if I didn’t have to. I knew he wouldn’t be interested in talking about Gone With the Wind, which I’d just finished reading again, or the movie star Rosalind Russell, whom I’m planning to look like. One of my daydreams is that a movie director who is staying at the LaSalle Hotel in town sees me drinking a coke at Walgreen’s and says to George at the fountain, “Who is that lovely girl? She looks like a young Rosalind Russell.”

George says, “Oh, that’s Peggy Rubinson. She’s already had a screen test, but her father says she has to wait till she’s fifteen to go to Hollywood.”

“Of course we’d have to change her name,” the director says. “Maybe Maggie Rubens. I think I can talk her father around. Peggy Rubinson, is that it?”

I sighed. I couldn’t tell my father about that. I couldn’t even tell Frances. She’d just laugh at me.

There was President Roosevelt, but all I knew about him was that he was ruining everybody with his taxes but he was running the war okay. There was fishing, but I didn’t know anything about that, and my father wouldn’t feel like talking about it anyway. I sighed. “How are the Cubs doing, Dad?”

Just then, I could see the County Farm down the road. The main building of the farm was red brick with a big white porch with peeling paint. On the porch were rows and rows of white rocking chairs, mostly empty early Sunday morning. A couple of people sat on the verandah, rocking and fanning themselves, but they waved to us as we drove by. Just like he always did when we passed the County Farm, Dad said, “That’s where we’re going if you girls and your mother don’t stop spending money like water. That’s if Roosevelt doesn’t send us there first.”

I’d been inside the County Farm. Last Christmas my class went out there to sing Christmas carols to the old people. We were all scared when we first went in because it smelled funny. Frances poked me and stared at an old man in a wheelchair who was talking to himself very loudly. We started giggling until Miss Brewer, our music teacher, glared at us like she was going to kill us. Then she turned around and smiled at the people, who were sitting in folding chairs, and said, “Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you’ll enjoy our little concert of Christmas carols. The children have been practicing, and I hope they’ll bring some joy to your Christmas season. Please sing along with us.”

She blew a note on her little silver pipe and we started singing “Good King Wenceslas Looked Out.” Some of the men and ladies sang along with us, though a few just sat there staring into space, and some waved their arms in time to the music. A couple of them sang, but they sang different songs from the ones we were singing. Frances and I got the giggles again and set the whole class off when right in the middle of “O Come all Ye Faithful” an old man stood up on his chair and began loudly singing “Hinky Dinky Parley Voo.”

“O Come All Ye Faithful” trailed off while Miss Brewer, purple, glared at us and the man wildly, happily conducted a big imaginary chorus in three dirty verses of “Hinky Dinky Parley Voo,” until a large grim woman got him down from the chair and led him away.

Once we started giggling, we couldn’t stop. Everything was hilarious—the pieces of tinsel hung over the doorways, the skinny Christmas tree in the corner, the old lady with the red bow in her hair, the boxes piled high with the tatty wool socks and scarves our mothers had knitted for the vaguely smiling, bewildered people who watched us double over in hysteria.

We finally calmed down, and when we were finished singing, the lady in charge of the place gave us some cookies and red Kool-Aid, which I love. My mother wouldn’t let us have Kool-Aid in the house. When we started to leave, some of the old ladies cried. I felt awful about laughing like that, and I hoped they’d have a Merry Christmas.

After we drove by the County Farm, I said, “Dad, do they have to go to that place?”

He said, “Most of them probably don’t want to go, but when they’re old and don’t have any money or anybody to take care of them, they have to go there. So do some young ones who are crazy and can’t work.”

He glanced out of the window. “So do a lot of slackers who just won’t work, I hear. They’ve got it soft, living off the County.”

I thought that over, a little relieved. I could rake leaves and weed and wash dishes.

“How old do you have to be before you can work?” I asked Dad.

“Oh, about sixteen.” He looked at me. “Why?”

“I was just wondering.”

“You planning on getting a job?” he asked.

“I just don’t want us to go to the poorhouse. I could make some money and help out.” Before I thought, I screwed up my face to push my glasses back.

“Now wait a minute,” he said. “Who said anything about going to the poorhouse?”

“You did, yesterday. After Mother said we need a new rug. You said she was driving us to the poorhouse. But I don’t think we’d have to go to the poorhouse if I could work.”

“I think I’m capable of taking care of this family, Peggy. I’m not that decrepit yet. You and your sister might think so, but I’m not. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“But you did say it,” I insisted, knowing I should keep quiet, watching the muscle in his jaw start to knot.

“It was just a way of talking. Now let’s forget about it,” he said in an angry, final way.

I sat back and looked out the window. Actually, it hadn’t started off too badly, even though he was a little mad about that last thing. I was pretty sure that if I was very, very careful and paid attention to things and didn’t argue, it might work out all right.

Neither of us said anything more until my father turned the car on to the shoulder of the road next to Thorley’s field.

“Okay,” Dad said. “I’ll get the stuff in the trunk and you bring the hamper in the back seat. You better roll up the windows and lock your side. I’ve got a new rod back there I haven’t even tried yet.”

The fishing rod lay on the floor of the back seat. It was slim and elegant, with delicate silver eyelets for the line. I touched it reverently, seeing it lash through the air, then arch down to a bright silver fish, just the way it showed in the short subjects at the Palace Theatre.

I took the hamper out and closed the door carefully. As we cut across the field to the woods beyond, grasshoppers leaped up in front of us. The grass felt crisp and dry and scratchy against my legs. Even though it was still early in the morning, the dew had already dried up. The woods were quieter than the pasture, because the crickets and the grasshoppers weren’t so busy in the shade. I followed Dad along the spongy, barely marked path, pretending I was an Indian. Once in a while he would say over his shoulder, “Mind that poison ivy,” or “Look, there’s a deer.” I looked just in time to see what might have been a white tail disappearing in the brush to our right. Then I tripped noisily over a root, and Dad looked back, annoyed.

Even though the woods were cool, or at least cooler than the pasture, I was hot and tired by the time we got to the clearing where we always had breakfast. I started to follow my father across the small brook to pick up firewood, but then I decided to lie down on the dry leaves next to the brook, listening to him snap through the woods, hearing the water ripple over the stones and looking at a little tuft of fuzzy moss right in front of my eyes. I touched it gently. It didn’t feel fuzzy, just cool and smooth.

From under a little log next to me, a tiny green frog watched me. His silky sides went in and out as he breathed. I watched him for a while. I hadn’t forgotten about the poorhouse, but I felt better about it. If he said I didn’t have to worry about it, I probably didn’t.

By the time I opened my eyes, the frog was gone, and Dad had the fire started on the other side of the brook. He was crouched down frying eggs and bacon in the black iron pan he kept for camping. I stepped carefully on a stone in the brook to go over to him. He looked up at me and then looked around at the woods and breathed deeply. He said, “I guess Janice will be sorry she missed this when you tell her how nice it was here. But she had to play tennis today. With Jimmy Baker, for God’s sake.”

He turned the eggs neatly in the black iron pan, and I was suddenly so hungry I could have taken them off the fire with my bare hands. When they were finally done, he put them and the bacon on paper plates and handed one to me. I squatted down beside him and started gobbling.

“My God, what an appetite,” Dad said. He started on his eggs. “They’re pretty good, though. If you think this is good, you should try the trout in the north woods. You pull ’em out of the water, clean ’em and toss ’em in a pan for breakfast.”

“Sounds great,” I said, popping the bread I had been using to mop up the eggs into my mouth.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” I swallowed. He went on. “It’s so cold August mornings you can see your breath. You sit under the pines eating that trout and warming your hands on your coffee cup and the wood fire and smell the pines and just live.”

“I’d love to go there sometime,” I said. I pushed up my glasses with my hand.

“In a way it’s a shame it’s too rough up there for women.” He put his plate in the fire, pulled out a package of Camels and lighted one, then leaned back, his hands around his knees. “I’ll tell you what. Maybe I’ll take you up to Sapphire Lake sometime. It’s not too far, and it will give me a chance to try out that new rod before I go north again. Yes, maybe I will take you up there with me next week sometime.”

I sat there very still, afraid to move.

“You’ve been improving, Peggy, I’ll say that for you. Who knows, you might even turn out to be a good fisherman. That is, if you don’t take up tennis tournaments like your sister.”

“Oh, I won’t, Dad,” I said. “I promise.”

He squinted at me through the cigarette smoke. “As a matter of fact, you probably should play more tennis. God knows you’ve had enough expensive lessons. You might run off some of that baby fat so you won’t have to keep your clothes together with pins.”

I crossed my arms at the waist, putting a hand over the safety pin on my shorts, and then I thought about all those awful hours at the Club with the tennis pro.

My father picked up my paper plate and put it in the fire. “Well, it’s time we headed for home,” he said. He collected the stuff we had brought, and I filled the coffeepot with water from the brook to pour on the fire.

“I didn’t tell you, Peggy,” he said as the ashes hissed, “it was nice of you to want to help us out. Getting a job, that is. It was a damned nice offer.”

He put his hand on my shoulder, hesitated, and then said, “I know I can be hard on you sometimes. Maybe I expect too much of you. Well, let’s try and get along better, okay? “

I nodded, afraid to say anything.

“We’d better get going, kid. Think you can carry the thermos?”

“Sure I can, Dad,” I said, taking the heavy jug from him and squeezing it tight to my chest.

“Careful with that now,” he said. “It’s got a glass lining.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said and following him slowly, praying that for once I wouldn’t trip over anything, not the trailing vine, the stick on the path, the rock I wouldn’t notice.

After about a hundred and fifty years crossing the hot, noisy pasture, I reached the car safely. I sighed unbelievingly and put down the jug next to the car. The air around the car was so hot it trembled. After he unlocked the car doors, my father had to wrap a paper napkin around the handle of the trunk to open it. I opened all the doors to cool off the inside of the car and to get rid of the smell of hot metal. I carefully put the thermos jug in the back seat. I didn’t notice that I moved the new fishing rod an inch or two, into the hinge side of the open rear door. Just as my father came around to where I was, I slammed the door.

The noise of the crickets and grasshoppers was very loud in the awful silence as my father slowly bent down to pick up the pencil-size end of the rod. Without looking at me he said, “You might as well get in.”

The seat was burning hot, but I tried not to squirm when he got in. “I’m awfully sorry. I didn’t mean to do it, Dad.” His knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

“I’m sure you didn’t, Peggy,” he said, looking straight ahead. “It’s just—Jesus Christ—I don’t know what to do with you. God knows I try.” He put the key in the ignition. “It’s just hopeless, for Christ’s sake.”