Rita Will_Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser Read online

  Dad would buy flesh on the hoof for his market. He would show up at the various judging exhibitions and then buy the animals that appealed to him based on what he felt the quality of the meat would be. Dad couldn’t slaughter the animals. He’d slaughtered one bull when he was a young man and swore he would never do that again. But he would dress the carcasses.

  I hoped he’d show up for the Herefords but he didn’t, so after the judging I skipped back to the tractors. Mom had given me fifty cents (oh the wealth), so I stopped to buy a candy apple.

  I found my cousin Kenny sitting on a big John Deere row-crop tractor. Mom, Cheryl and Eileen were looking at other tractors. I started to climb up, which wasn’t easy, but Kenny put his foot on my head.

  “Girls can’t drive tractors.”

  “You’re soft as a grape.”

  Wade agreed with me. He and I usually agreed on most things anyway. He said it didn’t matter about being a girl.

  Kenny, lording it over us, grew belligerent.

  I vaulted up by stepping on the PTO, the rotating part that sticks out of the back of the tractor, and Kenny swung around in the seat to swat me down. I crowned him with my candy apple. Those things are hard.

  Kenny saw stars; then he saw red, sticky red in his hair.

  We fought over the seat. Mother heard the commotion but so did Violet, a leading light in the 4-H Club and a two-ton Tessie if ever there was one. She waddled over to reprove me just as Kenny kicked me off the seat. I landed on the hind back wheel.

  Wade crawled up on the other side of the tractor. One fight is as good as another. It was king of the hill played out on a spanking-new green and yellow John Deere, the Rolls-Royce of tractors.

  Violet pulled me off the hind wheel.

  “That’s no way for a lady to behave.”

  “None of your business,” I saucily replied.

  “You’re Jack Young all over again.” She pointed her finger at me.

  Jack Young was my natural maternal grandfather, a power in the Republican Party and a county commissioner to boot. He was not universally admired, but then, what politician is?

  “You’re a sow all over again.” I whacked at her with my candy apple, besmirching her floral-print dress.

  Mother arrived, grabbed the candy apple and smacked my butt hard. “Apologize!”

  “But I’m not sorry.”

  “You’ll be good and sorry in a skinny minute.” She raised her hand to me.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Mother wanted to give Violet money to clean her dress, but she refused it. She felt compelled to inform Mother as to the future I could expect if I stayed a “rowdy hoyden,” then she flounced off.

  Mother, embarrassed, punished me. “You can’t go with Aunt Mimi to the grandstand tonight.”

  A shot to the heart. “He started it!”

  “Did not.”

  “Did too.”

  Kenny prudently remained in the driver’s seat, fearing another sock if he climbed down.

  “She hit me on the head with her candy apple.” He bent over so the red goo could be seen in his white-blond hair.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Mother sternly reproached me.

  “He said girls can’t drive tractors.”

  “Why do you listen to that stuff? You can drive a tractor when you’re big enough.”

  She was right. I’d seen farm women drive tractors.

  “He made me mad.”

  “Then it’s your fault for letting him get under your skin.”

  Cheryl, not a speck of dirt on her dress, watched silently. I was in jeans, of course. I glared at her, wondering how she could be so perfect and how it was I was always landing in hot water.

  “Yes, ma’am. Am I really not going to the grandstand show?”

  “Correct.”

  Kenny swelled with satisfaction, waiting for the tears to fall. They didn’t.

  “And why did you hit Violet?”

  “She pulled Reets off the tractor wheel,” Wade said.

  “And she said I was Jack Young all over again.”

  “That bitch!” Mother forgot herself. “I’d wring her fat neck except I can’t get my hands around it.”

  I giggled. I knew who my natural mother was. It wasn’t a big deal. I couldn’t remember when I’d been told who she was. I didn’t have a clue about my natural father except that the summer before, Mom had taken me to see Richmond, Mount Vernon, Montpelier and Monticello. I remember only three things from this tour, which as I recall was to take a break from Mother Brown, who was on the warpath about something. I remember mule-drawn carts at the C&O station at Charlottesville, Dolley Madison’s pretty grave and Mother’s commenting, “Your father’s people are from here. One of your relatives founded Hampden-Sydney College.”

  I don’t remember another thing. And I knew not to ask about my natural father. Somehow I just knew.

  Well, Violet’s jab about Jack Young didn’t bother me as much as it bothered Mother. Neither one of us much liked Juliann’s father. As to Juliann, she rarely returned to visit her father, and if he treated her the way he treated me, small wonder.

  Mother fumed at Violet’s barb. Eileen laughed because Mother’s bursts of temper, so long as they weren’t directed at you, were funny.

  Seeing my chance, I said, “I am sorry, Mom, but she was wrong.”

  “You bet she was.” More expletives followed.

  “Will you forgive me and let me go to the grandstand with Aunt Mimi?”

  “No. You’re too clever by half. You had no business climbing up on this tractor and picking a fight. If I have to, kid, I will beat good manners into your skin.”

  Being denied the big show was both punishment and incentive. I would develop self-control if it killed me.

  That night Dad woke me up. He must have heard the whole story but he didn’t say anything. He put the big blue stuffed horse next to me in bed.

  10

  Silks and Sons of Bitches

  Although banned from attending the grandstand show, I was allowed to spend all day Saturday at the fair so long as I stuck with Mother.

  While I had seen the backstretch before, foxhunts before, Christmas pageants before, I was now able to put them in the order of seasons. I could also recall other people clearly.

  I knew I had a past, that there had been life before I arrived, and that life was being played out around me. I wanted to know everything. Language came so easily to me that I could speak and read beyond my years.

  I was learning from other people. This was a good thing because Mom put me to work.

  The York Fair’s track brought in horsemen from Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, even a few other states. Harness racing was big in those days.

  The last generation born before the automobile took over was at this time gliding toward late middle age. The real old-timers harked back to the 1870s, when your carriage, cart or wagon displayed your place in society. They remembered when the arrival of a coach in four meant someone violently rich was about to cross their threshold. A light, graceful phaeton meant summer elegance, and the horses who pulled these works of art were works of art themselves. Harness racing grew out of the day when one swell drove up next to another and said, “Bet my trotter is faster than yours.”

  Harness racing, like steeplechasing, springs from the country as naturally as alfalfa and red-bud clover.

  Hanover Shoe Farm bred the best Standardbreds in America. Standardbreds are pacers and trotters and pull behind them a cart called a sulky. Many of the horses racing at the York Fair had been bred a few miles away at the stud. Naturally, any horse from Kentucky raised our competitive spirits to a fever pitch.

  It wasn’t that we didn’t love Thoroughbred racing. We did. But the nearest good track was every bit of forty miles away. Forty miles over two-lane highways took forever.

  Betting wasn’t allowed at the county fair. That didn’t stop anyone.

  Children could watch the races from the grandsta
nd. Mother said that was no way to learn about horses. I needed to prowl the backstretch and the shedrow barns.

  She threw a burlap rag over my shoulder, took me by the hand and sashayed by the guard. (Rubbing a horse with burlap brings up a satiny sheen to the coat.)

  “Julia.” He nodded. He didn’t blink an eye as I walked through.

  The air was golden as only September light can make it. The smell of harness leather, sweat, hoof dressing and liniment filled my nostrils. The perfume of happiness.

  People waved to Mom. A man driving by in blistering red silks nodded to her, his whip jiggling with each step.

  She pointed out various horses to me. “That one has a kind eye. That one has an offset knee.”

  I’d ask what she meant and she patiently explained. Mother would have made a fine teacher because she was clear and organized. Actually, she could have been an army general in charge of logistics. Daddy said she had a “figuring” mind.

  At the last set of barns Mom stopped at a set of stalls whose stable colors were yellow and brown. A wiry man, not much bigger than myself, was wiping down a dark bay. Mother knew him. Shanks was his nickname. She asked if he’d watch me for five minutes while she went to church. That meant she was placing a bet.

  So I sat on an overturned bucket and quietly watched him. He asked if I liked horses and I said better than anything except for cats. I asked him if he was a driver and he said, “Used to be. I’m a trainer now. I can train more horses than I can drive.”

  “What’s your best horse?”

  “Come on, honey. I’ll show you.”

  He picked me up and held me so I could look in the stall of another bay mare. She didn’t look like much but I said she was beautiful.

  “Pretty is as pretty does. That’s the first thing you should know about horses. She won her heat earlier.”

  He named a time but it didn’t mean anything to me. She was running later in the big race and he knew she was going to win it.

  Mom returned, walking me to the lovely wooden building where the contestants were checked out before they went onto the track. This equine backstage made me so excited I couldn’t move. I wanted to drink in every single color, sound and face.

  I whispered to her that the bay mare was going to win the big race. Shanks had told me.

  “Find out anything else?”

  “No.”

  “That’s pretty good for starters.”

  She placed a bet later that day on the horse, and sure enough, the mare cleaned up and so did Mom.

  Haunting the backstretch became something we did together as long as Mom lived—that and going to pickup fights, some of them bare-knuckle.

  Three sports Mother knew forward and backward: racing, boxing (especially the middleweight and heavyweight divisions) and baseball.

  I liked being useful to Mother. It shaved the edge off when she’d call me “Ill.” She was furious at Violet for casting up my origins, yet she’d do it herself whenever I annoyed her. It was confusing. I wasn’t about to tell her this was unfair, however, because I knew what could happen. Once, when I was three or four. Mother and I were downtown in York. It was cold. I must have been acting muley and she must have been cold and tired because she hauled me off to the reform school, which was surrounded by an iron fence with decorative arrows on top of it. She told me that was where bad kids were dumped and if I didn’t shape up she’d drag me right up those steps and fling me inside. She scared me that time.

  But even if I hadn’t felt I had to earn my way, not be a burden, I still would have wanted to be useful. It’s in my nature, just as gambling was in Mother’s nature.

  She wasn’t a fool about it. True gambling operates on the premise that greed can be satisfied by luck. For Juts, gambling was a flash of excitement, a challenge to see if she could pick the winner. She never bet more than she could afford to lose. She rattled off sums wagered as she rattled off batting averages. She won more than she lost and on this occasion she won twenty dollars. She gave me five dollars, the most money I’d ever held in my hand.

  “I can buy my paint box.”

  “You will not.” She glared at me.

  “But it’s my money.”

  “You’re putting that money in a savings account, which we’ll open Monday, and that’s the end of it.”

  There was something about the flush of red in her face that warned me this concerned more than saving money. Even if I had to put the five dollars in a savings account, I felt rich and that felt good.

  The magic of that lush fall swirls in my memory like the spun candy of the fair. It was one of the happiest times of my life.

  11

  The Virgin Mary Pays a Call

  Virginia, Aunt Mimi’s elder daughter, gave birth to a third son, Terry. Tiny, resembling his mother in facial structure and his father in coloring, he became the center of attention.

  Kenny and Wade and I ignored him. He was a pretty baby but he was boring. We found there wasn’t much you could do with a baby except change his diapers. Dad said he’d be big in no time and then we’d have another player for our baseball team. We weren’t convinced.

  After the birth Aunt Ginny couldn’t put weight back on. Usually women blow up like a poisoned dog when they’re pregnant but she wore down.

  I don’t know when they knew for certain that Virginia, at age thirty-three, was dying of cancer. Maybe the boys knew before I did.

  You could see her wasting away, but she fought back. She didn’t want to take to her bed. Julia Ellen, her younger sister, was away at school, the Immaculate Heart of Mary. When she came home even though it wasn’t vacation time, that’s when I knew it was bad.

  Two occurrences stick in my mind from that time. Dad had me in the car when he drove to Aunt Mimi’s. He parked in front of the house. Mother was staying with Sis around the clock. He told me to stay in the car. It was cold. An eon passed, and I got antsy. So I walked home, a few miles away.

  One of our neighbors, Helen Stambaugh, saw me walk up the driveway. She called Dad. He came home frantic. I’d never seen Dad lose his temper, and a man that strong ought not to lose his temper. Shaking, he spanked me up every step to the upstairs. I didn’t utter a peep. I was too terrified.

  I had scared him half to death. The poor fellow, exhausted and sad, had come out from his sister-in-law’s house to find an empty car. Had I been kidnapped? Had I been run over on the road? He must have felt as if someone had ripped his stomach out.

  The other event happened at Ginny’s farm out in Shiloh. A thunderstorm rose up even though it was cold out. Kenny, Wade and I were playing outside because it was too depressing to be in the house. The storm rolled over, and then behind the house appeared a rainbow of startling color. I thought Jesus would slide down that rainbow. We ran in the house to get the adults. They came out on the porch and clapped their hands.

  That was the last time I saw Virginia stand on her feet.

  Ginny was a quiet, warmhearted woman who was some kind of saint. I mean it. There was only goodness in her. People felt it. She lived for her husband, Ken, and the kids. Ken had survived the front lines at Okinawa, being wounded, coming home to more hard times, having to eke out an existence. Things had just begun to pick up for him at the farm, and now he was losing his wife and would be left with three sons to care for, one of them six months old.

  Virginia died at Aunt Mimi’s. Cheerful, no matter how searing the pain, loving in the face of her approaching death, that woman taught me courage. You could smell the cancer. It ate through to the surface of her skin. The sickly sweet odor of rot clung to her, and even though Mom, Aunt Mimi and Julia Ellen changed her bandages regularly, the fluids and blood kept seeping through.

  Despite the grimness, no one minded being in Ginny’s presence. She shared with each of us everything she had: her heart and her unshakable faith in the goodness, mercy and wisdom of God.

  As I watched her suffer I felt the reverse. God was a bully. How could he allow Ginny to suffer
from breast cancer? I could think of a few kids and adults that I’d have liked to see in her place and I prayed for him to give them her affliction. God didn’t see things my way.

  Just before Virginia died she sat up in the bed and said she saw the Virgin Mary. The Blessed Virgin Mother was coming to take her from this life. Radiance shone over her face. She closed her eyes, surrendering to this new adventure.

  I cried. I cried until I had a headache and was sick to my stomach. While the women prepared the body, I cried and cried. Dad cried, too. Ken was so distraught we didn’t see him. I don’t know who was taking care of him. Kenny, Wadie and I didn’t know what had hit us.

  Many people came to Ginny’s funeral. Flowers filled the church and a large satin ribbon with Mother embroidered on it was on the huge floral blanket covering the casket. Ken Bowers, a powerfully built man, shrank before my eyes. I saw the savagery of grief, but I also saw the power of love. No man looks like that or cries like that if he hasn’t loved a woman with his body, his mind, his heart and his soul.

  I didn’t understand that love but I saw it.

  After the funeral we went back to the farm in Shiloh. The adults hovered in the kitchen. Ken wanted the boys with him. I went to find them.

  I walked up the narrow wooden steps to their bedroom. Kenny and Wade lay on their beds, and behind them on the wall was the embroidered ribbon that read Mother. I had never felt so desolate, helpless, useless. I kissed them and went downstairs.

  On the surface, Ken eventually recovered. Some years later he married the woman he’d hired as his housekeeper. I don’t think he ever really got over Virginia’s death, though. At the end of his life, when he was dying of lung cancer, he visited Aunt Mimi and Mom and cried over Virginia. He cried for the times he’d been mean to her. He cried for the stupid things he’d done, for his hair-trigger temper, for the times he’d hit her, which weren’t many but it only takes one. He wanted forgiveness and the Buckingham sisters did forgive him, although Aunt Mimi couldn’t let slip the opportunity to tell him only God could really forgive him.