John Dalmas - The Bavarian Gate

Growing to Fit

Washington County, Indiana

Curtis Macurdy gazed out the window of the truck at a field plowed and disked. Near the far end, someone, presumably his father, was walking behind the horse-drawn spike-tooth, readying the ground for planting. Beyond stood the house Curtis had grown up in, the barn nearby, sheds, corncrib, and the ancient white oak that spread across the front yard.

"That's the place," he told the driver. "Just drop me off at the corner." He felt uncomfortable about his homecoming; had since he'd gotten off the train at Volinia.

The driver slowed, turning west on the township road. "Might as lief take you to your door," he said. "Ain't no trouble." Along the roads, the maples, tulip trees, elms had all been tinged with the fresh pale green of opening buds, but the yard oak, bare as February, showed no sign yet of wakening. The driver pulled into the driveway and stopped. "My thanks," Macurdy said, and taking the coin purse from his pocket, removed a fifty-cent piece.

The man waved it off. "That's half a day's pay, and this ain't been more'n a couple miles out of my way."

Macurdy nodded, put the coin back, and shook the man's hand. "Thanks," he said. "I'm obliged to you. " Taking his suitcase from the seat, he got out, slammed the door, and waved as the driver left. Then he walked to the house. Place needs paint, he told himself. Hard times.

He opened the back door without knocking, took off his jacket and hung it on one of the back hall hooks. "Charley?" his mother's voice called.

"Nope." He stepped into the kitchen. The rawboned woman had turned from the big black kitchen stove. Seeing him, her eyes widened, her mouth half opening. For a moment he thought she might fall down, or worse, weep, but she recovered herself.

"Curtis!" she cried. "Blessed Jesus! It's you!" They embraced, then talked, she asking how he was, how long he planned to stay, her questioning marked more by what she didn't ask than what she did, as if fearing what he might tell her. His answers were brief. He had no plans yet, he said. If needed, he might stay the summer, and maybe through harvest.

His own questions were simply to catch up on the state of the family. Nothing had greatly changed, she told him, except that the price of everything had fallen, both for what they sold and what they bought. Max and Julie were still farming, and Frank had got promoted to shop foreman at Dellmon's Chevrolet, though they paid him less than when he'd started there as a mechanic, four years earlier.

And Charley had hired a man to help with the farming. "Your dad's not as young as he was," she added.

After a few minutes, Curtis put his jacket back on and went out to the field. Charley Macurdy saw him, and stopping the team, walked over, both his aura and his face showing a difficult mix of emotions-mainly joy and uncertainty, Curtis thought. And worry. Curtis was just now realizing what it was like for his parents, this return of a youngest son, who'd left with his bride, bought a farm in Illinois, then abruptly dropped out of sight, never writing for three years.

"Curtis!" Charley said, and reached out a hard-callused hand. "Good God! It's so good to see you again, son!" Then, startling Curtis, his father hugged him, hard arms clasping him against a hard chest. Perhaps, Curtis thought, he didn't want him to see the moisture in his eyes.

For a while they stood talking in the chill late-April breeze, his father as careful in his questioning as his mother had been. Like Edna, Charley feared the answers; most questions could wait till they'd got used to each other again. Curtis was welcome to stay as long as he'd like, Charley told him, but there wouldn't be much money in it. "Especially not while I'm paying a hand," he said, adding ruefully: "Not that I pay Ferris much; not what he's worth. He's been with us three years now, and it wouldn't be right to just cut him loose all of a sudden."

He looked questioningly at his son. "You are going to stay, aren't you? This place can be yours when I can't keep up with it anymore. Maybe sooner, if you want."

Initially Curtis had planned to stay, farm with his father, but the closer he'd gotten to home, the less real it had seemed. After where he'd been, and the life he'd lived there, it likely wouldn't work out. If nothing else, there'd be too many questions without answers-and sooner or later the question of age. Best to start new, someplace where he wasn't known.

"I'll stay till the spring work is done," he replied. "Harvest at the latest. Then I'll need to move on."

Charley nodded, looking at the ground, then brightened a little. "A few weeks ago, some folks stopped by and asked after you," he said. "A woman and two men. Moneyed folks; drove up in a big Packard. The woman did the talking. Seemed real disappointed you weren't here; thought you might have come back. Said they had a job for you. Didn't say what."

He paused, noting his son's frown. "She called herself Louise," he went on. "Kin to Varia, all three of them; I'd bet on it. Same eyes, same build. Hair not so red though. You know them?"

Louise? Not hardly, Curtis thought. No Christian name like that. Idri maybe, with her long, unforgiving memory. "I'm not sure," he answered. "Varia had lots of kin, but I never knew a Louise. Most that I did know, I didn't greatly care for."

Both of his parents needed to hear something that made sense to them, which meant lying. He'd foreseen the problem and knew what he had to say, but didn't like it.

He'd been out of the country, he told them at supper. Varia's family was foreigners; he didn't say where from. She'd gone back to the old country with them; they'd insisted. He'd followed, had farmed there and even done some soldiering. Then Varia had drowned, he went on, had fallen through the ice on horseback, and the current had carried her beneath it. He'd recovered her body at a rapids downstream.

He lied, of course-wrong wife-but Charley and Edna believed him. They felt bad about it, but at least he hadn't abandoned her.

As the weeks passed, Curtis became more comfortable with the idea of leaving. Ferris Gibbs, the hired man, was a good hand-a self-starter who noticed things and knew what to do about them. He'd had a farm of his own, but lost it to the bank in '31, when he couldn't make the mortgage payments. "A casualty of the Hard Times," Ferris called himself, without apparent rancor. On Saturdays he left right after supper, and came back late Sunday. As Charley saw it, Ferris would leave when times got better-he'd want a place of his own again but Frank's boy already liked to work with his Grampa Macurdy on the farm, when school let out in Salem. Said he wanted to be a farmer.

The first Sunday, Curtis went to church with his parents. He'd have preferred not to, but he knew it would please his mother. Folks looked askingly at him, but after the service they simply shook his hand, commenting on how good he looked. Pastor Fleming asked how old he was now, and told him he looked as young and strong as he ever had. The young part was ridiculous, Curtis told himself, considering the reverend had known him since he was fourteen.

As young as ever. A foretaste of problems to come.

Max and Julie and their kids came for dinner after church that day, and Julie, being Julie, asked questions his parents never would have, like "what country was it?", meaning where Varia came from. He thought of answering "Hungary"-that would do it-but he was tired of lying. "Yuulith," he told her instead, adding "that's their name for it." She'd look it up when she got home, he knew, and not finding it, would probably let be. Macurdies, even Julie, were pretty good at letting be.

He got more and more settled in, and stayed longer than he'd thought he might until one day Bob Hammond, who farmed Will's old place on shares, decided to sell his sheep. Said he "couldn't face another week of Baaaah! Baaaah! twenty-four hours a day." He hired Curtis to help him haul them to the railroad in Salem, unfinished lambs and all, and load them onto a car. It took all day-three trips-and when they'd finished, Hammond took his wallet out of his overalls to pay him. Curtis knew the man couldn't afford the two dollars he'd promised, so he said he'd just take one, and eat supper with them that evening: likely boiled potatoes and stuff from the cellar-home-canned beef, green beans, maybe fruit pie-a good twenty-five-cent meal.