Green Valley. Katharine Yirsa Reynolds
ground over at Uncle Tony's gossip factory and is Mert Hagley as big a tightwad as ever and is it true that Billy Evans married a red-headed girl from Bloomingdale and started a livery barn, and has Green Valley got a minister yet that's suitable to you and Uncle Roger Allan? I'll have to stop and run out to the mail box with this. The nearest one is twenty-five miles away but that's near in this country and now for pity's sake, Grandma, don't forget … "
She didn't forget a thing. The messages were all delivered, the seeds sent off and every question fully answered. Grandma did more than that. She had Nanny Ainslee take pictures of the various Green Valley institutions while going full blast. How Tommy laughed at the familiar faces in Uncle Tony's armchairs and at Hank Lolly leaning up against the livery barn, and how homesick he grew as he looked at the crowd getting off at the station, and the school children playing in the old school yard where he used to play. The picture of Grandma Wentworth and Carrie standing on Grandma's front porch hurt his throat and shook him strangely. That was Tommy Dudley.
And there was Susie Melton. Grandma saved and remade Susie that time she went to New York to see the world. Susie had taught a country school for twenty years, ever since she was sixteen, and that trip to New York was her first vacation. Susie was an innocent soul and the very second day in the great city some heartless thief took everything out of her purse but a two-cent stamp. Susie was panic-stricken and the only thing she could think of was Grandma Wentworth's face. So she took that stamp and sent a letter to Green Valley and it was Grandma Wentworth who really managed that vacation though to this day nobody but she herself knows how and she won't tell. Susie came back so rejuvenated, with such color in her cheeks, such brightness in her eyes, and so much snap and spunk in her system that Jake Tuttle up and married her two months after she came home. And he's been happy ever since for in spite of her school-teaching handicap Susie has turned out to be a born cook and housewife. And as if to make up to her those twenty colorless years Providence sent Susie twin boys at the end of her first year and twin girls at the end of the third.
This blossoming out of little drab Susie Melton was a shock to Green Valley. But Grandma Wentworth wasn't a mite surprised and said she knew that Susie would come into her own some day. As for Jake, he is so in love with his rosy little wife and his four good-looking children that he just goes on raising bumper crops without hardly knowing how he does it. And he says he doesn't hanker much after heaven; that home is plenty good enough for him. And when he goes to town Jake takes care to tie his team in front of Billy Evans' place instead of the hotel.
"Not that I can't take a drink or two and stop," he explained to Billy, "but I have good cider and buttermilk and Susie's grape juice to home and the smartest of us ain't any too wise while we stand beside a bar. And I'd ruther go home dead than go back to Susie and the children the least bit silly with liquor. When the Almighty sends a man like me a family like mine He's got something in His mind and I ain't agoing to spoil things just for a drink or two of slops."
So on rainy days Billy's office is the gathering place for such men as find the atmosphere in the hotel and blacksmith shop a little too fragrantly spirited for their eventual domestic happiness.
Not that Billy is a teetotaler. No, indeed. He has his drink whenever he wants it. And he good-naturedly permits such staggering wretches as the hotel refuses to accommodate to sleep it off in his barns. And he is the only man in Green Valley who ever seriously hired Hank Lolly and kept him sober twelve hours at a stretch. The other business men make considerable fun of Billy's hired help; the trifling boys he hires, boys that everybody else has tried and sent packing. Billy says nothing though he did explain fully to Grandma Wentworth once.
"You see it's like this, Grandma. I ain't fixed to pay fancy wages just yet and those kids that everybody runs down ought to be off the streets doing something. Of course some of them are trifling. But I ain't such a stickler for sharp-edged goodness myself nor in any way at all virtuous. I'm terrible easy-going myself and I know just how kids like Charlie Pinley feel working for a man, a careful, exact man like Mr. James D. Austin. By gosh! if I had to work a whole week for Mr. Austin I'd kill myself. Never could stand too much neatness and worrying about time being money and human nature too full of meanness. No, sir—I can't live like that. I guess maybe it's because I'm kind of no-account myself that I understand these kids and they understand me. They all like horses same as me and I pay them all I can afford and will do more for them when things pick up and grow.
"Now there's people as laugh about me hiring Hank Lolly. I guess it's the first time Hank has ever held a job longer than a week. But I tell you, Grandma, I like Hank and I understand him. And I don't ever think I'm fit enough myself to be forever preaching at him about reforming. I figure that what a man eats and drinks is none of my business in a way. But I did explain to Hank that if he would come and work for me I'd furnish him with so many drinks every day and meals and a comfortable place to sleep. I showed him that it was better to be sure of a few drinks every day than to get blind drunk on a week's wages and then go weeks maybe without a decent spree, without decent meals, maybe without underwear and an overcoat. And Hank saw the sense of that. He gets his meals up at the house. My old woman (Billy's wife was a pretty girl of twenty-three and still a bride) sides in with what I'm doing and she sets Hank down every day to three square meals. And a man just can't hold so much liquor on a comfortably filled stomach. Anyhow, Hank is doing fine and I'm putting a few dollars in the bank unbeknownst for him. I can't trust him just yet with any noticeable amount of cash. But I'm never down on him for his drinking. No, sir! Every time he feels that he must get drunk or die why he just comes up and tells me and I get him whatever he thinks he needs for his jag and let him get full right here where I can watch him. Why—Grandma, Hank has an easier life than I have. He doesn't need to worry about anything and he knows it. And I'll be goshed if I don't think he's improving. He don't need a jag near so often as he used to and I can trust him now with any kind of work. Why, only last week I gave him a moving job, a big one, and sent him off twenty miles with my two best teams. And he brought those loads of furniture back O. K., dry and without a scratch, though I couldn't sleep all night listening to the buckets of rain dashing against the house and thinking of Hank drunk out there in it with the furniture and wagons in splinters and the horses dead maybe. And honest, when I saw him pull up into the barns, I just hauled him off that seat and—well—I just said things, told him what I thought of him and how I appreciated what he'd done. 'And now, Hank,' I says, 'you can have the greatest old jag you've ever planned on for this.'
"And I'm goshed if he didn't laugh out kind of funny and says he, 'Billy, I'm so goldarned wet right now that I couldn't stand another drop of wetness anywhere. But all these five hours that the rain was a-sloshing me I kept thinking of them there apple dumplings with cream that Mrs. Evans makes (Hank always calls the old woman Mrs. Evans). So, Billy, if it's all the same to you and I could get full on them there apple dumplings, why, them's my choice.'
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