Page 8 of The Magic of Ordinary Days

Ray came out dressed in his better slacks and a clean plaid shirt. He had washed his hair and combed it over the thinning area on top, but obviously hadn’t checked the back of his head. Open to the air, his biggest bald spot shined like an Easter egg in the grasses.

Finally ready, Ray and I slid into the truck. As he started the engine, Ray looked my way. “Onions are ready. This’ll be the last chance to get out for a long time coming.”

The trip took us nearly twenty minutes of travel down rutted dirt roads, over wooden bridges without railings, and past wind-mills that creaked around in silent currents of air. As we passed by some spare green plants I hadn’t seen before, I asked Ray, “Are those tomatoes?”

“No. Those are potatoes.”

“Oh.”

“They get grown mostly down in the San Luis Valley.” He glanced over at me once, then continued. “But some farmers around here grow a few fields, then send the harvest straight off to the potato chip makers.”

“I see.”

We kept the windows down for needed cooling, letting the air whip in.

I could feel the output of plants landing heavily on my skin.

And as we arrived, I could tell my efforts to stay neat had done little good.

Dust covered the sleeves and bodice of my dress, and I could feel tangles twisted in my hair.

Martha and Hank greeted us with smiles and handshakes, as if dropping by unexpected weren’t unexpected at all.

Their farm could have been a replica of ours.

Inside the house, which had had a second story added for more bedrooms, they introduced me to their children.

Sixteen-year-old Ruth wore a big shirt over denims, and her hair swung behind her in a long, rusty-colored pony-tail.

Her eyes grew large as she looked me over. “Is that dress ready-made?” she asked.

It hadn’t occurred to me until then, but of course store-bought clothes might still be considered quite extraordinary out here.

During the Depression, farm wives and children were still wearing chicken-feed-sack dresses and flour-sack underwear.

I nodded to Ruth and said, “It’s my favorite,” but then I wondered if perhaps I should have worn something simpler.

“Oh, I can see why,” she replied, still looking me up and down.

Ruth’s thirteen-year-old sister Wanda rose from reading a book to be introduced to me.

She had copper-colored hair the same shade as her freckles and thick, straight hawk brows that must have spent a lot of time in thought.

The two boys, Hank Jr. and Chester, looked more like twins than brothers.

“They’re only a year apart,” Martha explained.

As I shook their hands, I noticed they had the same shade of brown eyes that ran in the blood of this family—lighter than mine—the color of brown eggshells.

After a polite exchange of how-do-you-do‘s, the boys headed back upstairs to finish a game of cards until dinner was served.

Wanda took herself back between pages, but Ruth never left my side.

Over dinner and dessert, she stared at me.

She asked about the fabric of my dress, and later she asked to try on the opal ring I wore on my right hand, a gift from my mother.

In the kitchen, Martha started pulling out pots and pans, ladles and spoons, jars of spices.

Ruth and I offered to help her, but she assigned us nothing but the table to set, and working together, we finished it in minutes.

As we sat to fold the napkins, Martha kept moving about her kitchen with a certain ease of movement and steady purpose that let everyone around her know she had everything under control.

Ray and Hank discussed farming business endlessly, and I overheard words and terms I’d never heard before, letting me know for certain just how out of my own element I was.

Beet pullers and feedlots. Fresnos and slips.

At last, Martha took a rest. She sat with me at the kitchen table while dinner baked in the oven.

Ruth stayed with us, too, her chair scooted up flush with mine.

When I told Martha I was not a cook, she offered to loan me recipe cards she kept in an old oak box, and she told me she knew a secret for perfect piecrust, if ever I wanted to know it.

And she offered to pass on her “starter” for baking bread.

I thanked her but didn’t say I had no wish to spend my one evening out wasting it in talk of nothing but the kitchen.

“How did your ancestors arrive here?” I asked her instead.

“Oh, well, that’s a story,” she said as she knotted her hands together on the tabletop. “Our grandfather came out here in 1870, one of the first to homestead in these parts. He was only nineteen at the time.”

Already she had me hooked. “Where did he come from? Why did he do it?”

Martha looked puzzled. “I guess I don’t truthfully know for certain why he did it.

Most likely it was the lure of free land.

For poor folks, owning land was the only way to get respectable,” she said with a smile.

“Anyway, he came out from New York City’s Lower East Side, traveling by rail and by steamship and then by rail again all the way to Granada.

From there he loaded a wagon and followed the Arkansas. ”

“And he was alone?”

“At the beginning of the journey, yes.” She smiled and gazed as though remembering something pleasant.

“I heard the story many times as a young girl. He met our grandmother, a pretty little thing of only seventeen, on the steamship and convinced her father that he would be a good husband. He was quite the smooth talker, I heard. They were married by the ship’s captain, and she finished the journey along with him. ”

Martha went on to tell me that through tough times and often disappointing farming, her grandparents had built crude homes, then other homes, and stayed on. Martha had a gift for story-telling, like that of my mother. If only her brother shared the same gift.

“In the earliest days,” she told me, “farming wasn’t very successful without irrigation.

They had to try to raise crops just on rainwater, which isn’t much.

Then, beginning in the 1870s, the irrigation companies put in canals off the river, but the farmer still had to dig out his own ditches.

” She sat back in her chair and pulled at a loose thread on the tablecloth.

“I doubt any of us could work that hard nowadays.”

She studied my face now, but without a hint of hardness. “I keep a box of old photographs and papers in the attic. If you ever want to take a look, you’re most welcome.”

I nodded. “I have to say I find the history of the farm more interesting than present-day operations.”

Martha smiled; then, after a period of silence, she glanced over toward the divan at her brother.

“When Daniel joined up, Ray decided to stay behind and run the farm.” She looked down at her hands.

“It’s funny. They never fought over anything.

And they never spoke of dividing up the land between them, either.

Most brothers would have done that, you know.

” She caught my eye for a moment, then looked back at her hands.

“They always planned on running the farm together. When Daniel returned.”

Ruth was still right beside me, but now she looked away.

I said the useless words, “I’m sorry,” to Martha, although after my mother’s death, while I was still walking pure grief, those words had done nothing for me.

I had wanted people to do something bold, take action, shout and rage, anything to express the magnitude of my loss.

But I said the words, “I’m sorry,” to Martha because I was incapable of creating anything else.

Martha took a long breath. “Now that he’s gone ...” But by then, her air was gone, too.

I finished saying it for her. “Of the Singletons, now only the two of you remain.”

She looked up at me. “No longer.”

I puzzled, and then she smiled. “Now we have you.”

Later the two boys joined us at the table.

They wanted to know everything about living in Denver.

Did I go often to the cinema, was the capitol building really made of gold, what card games were played at the USO, and had I ever met the governor?

When Martha excused herself, the oldest boy, Hank Jr., moved to my side.

After he checked to make sure his father wasn’t listening, he whispered, “I want to tell you something, but it’s a secret. ”

I crossed my heart. “Promise not to tell.”

“When I grow up, I don’t want to be a farmer. I want to live in the city like you did, and I want to work in one of those factories that make ships for the Navy.”

I touched his shoulder. This youngest generation had known nothing of a world without war. “Let’s hope the Navy doesn’t need warships by then.”

After dinner, Martha took me outside and showed me the new porch swing they had recently hung. “Let’s sit, Livvy,” she said.

But Ruth slipped down on the seat beside me before Martha had a chance.

The boys stood across from me and thought up more questions for me to answer.

As I continued to chat about the city life, Ruth inched her way closer to me.

I could feel her studying the movements of my face, and I could feel her breath land on my shoulder, soft, like warm air without wind.

In the middle of our conversation, Ruth blurted out to her mother, “I want to cut off my hair.” Then she touched one of the curls resting on my shoulder. “I want a bob, just like Livvy’s.”

And after that, I couldn’t make myself meet Martha’s eyes.