The Ruby. Leland Nichols
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passed by. “Ya missed breakfast. Didn’t know if you’d already left or jes’ overslept.”
Dorian raised a hand in greeting and continued toward the barn, the huge double doors swung wide open. At the doorway, he met two small children struggling with a large bucket filled with foaming white milk, the frothy bubbles giving off a warm fragrance. Dorian was hungry and the smell of the fresh milk whetted his appetite. As they passed him, he admired the bubbly foam floating on top, whipped to froth.
The strong smell of dry hay and decaying grain filled the air as he entered the barn. There were several small children in the barn trying to help out the family in any way they could. A small boy just starting to walk laboriously shuffled toward him, encumbered by a large barn cat. The youngster put the cat down beside Dorian and stood with a self-satisfied smile, feeling proud for having brought the animal to him. Dorian knelt on one knee, picked up the cat, laid it across his lap and stroked its fur. He could tell the cat had seldom been shown any affection or handled in such a fashion.
Inside the barn, Billie was seated on a three-legged stool milking a cow. Dorian walked over beside her and sat on the ground, watching and listening to the rhythmic pinging of milk squirting into the bucket.
“Did ya like goin’ coon huntin’ last night?” Billie asked with a glance in his direction.
“To be honest, I wouldn’t care if I ever went again.”
“You probably won’t. Coon hides don’t bring much in the spring, after they lose their winter fur.”
“He sells the hides?”
“A winter fur is ’bout five dollars, but them spring hides are lucky to bring three. He takes ’em on into town once they’re cured. But Pa says they’re ’bout hunted out.”
Outside, the chatter of the Model T engine was heard as the old automobile rumbled up.
“What the hell took so long? ‘Bout time you got back,” Clyde yelled.
Billie and Dorian peeked out the side of the barn to look. They saw Sonny get out of the truck, retrieving a horse collar from the pickup bed. He had his injured hand wrapped in an old dishtowel.
“How long does it take to drive over to the Sullivan place?” Clyde said, tapping his thigh with a fist.
“You said ta take it easy with the truck, Pa.”
“It ain’t but half a mile. You been gone nearly two hours.”
“Well, Greta got to talkin’. She wants us to come over tomorrow evenin’. A barn dance or something.”
“Good, it’ll give me a chance to peddle some ‘shine,” Clyde said.
Billie sat back down and started milking again. “Effen ya help Pa with the chores, he might let ya stay a few days.”
“I’m afraid I won’t be of much help. I don’t know anything about farming, aside from what I’ve read.”
“You learn quick, I can tell,” she said with a spreading grin.
Billie heard Clyde yelling at her outside. “Billie, ain’t you done milkin’ yet?”
“Just a minute, Pa,” Billie yelled back. She picked up the bucket of milk and turned to Dorian. “Pa says the tractor needs a new axle. Can ya help ’im?”
“I know something about machines in general, but not much about tractors, but I’ll do what I can.”
An impatient Clyde yelled again from outside, his voice more angry. “Billie, git out here!”
Billie sat the bucket down and took Dorian’s hand, pulling him into a stall, out of sight. She stood on her toes to look around to see if anyone is watching, just in case, then surprised Dorian with a quick kiss on the lips. Dorian was shot with a flood of emotions, among those, embarrassment. Stooping, she picked up the milk, “I have to go,” she said, hurrying out the door, leaving Dorian red-faced.
She walked past Clyde and Sonny without stopping and said, “Dorian is going to stay a few days to help us out.”
“Good. We can use extra hands while Sonny mends up,” Clyde said.
Later that evening, Clyde got up from the supper table, going into the living room to sit in his easy chair. The evening air was cool, and the warmth of the pot-belly stove was quite relaxing. It was not a roaring fire, only a few hot coals simmered, just enough to break the chill. He sat in the armchair, his sad eyes exhausted from a hard day’s labor in the fields. Two small children joined him, sitting on the wood-box near the stove. Dorian entered the room holding Billie’s hand. Ma handed Dorian a bundle of clean clothes to put on for the dance tomorrow night. Thanking her, and whispering a good night to Billie, he took the clothes and left the house through the back door.
Clyde slumped into the arm-chair, pulling a linen bag of tobacco from his bibs. He reached for his pipe on the table next to his chair, filling the bowl with the tobacco, lighting it with a match. He pulled the yellow string on the tobacco sack with his teeth.
Dorian had done well enough that day, he thought. He was stronger than he looked and eager to work. Clyde had even enjoyed his company at times too, partly because Dorian’s callowness gave him some easy amusement.
The next evening, Clyde loaded the kids into the truck, and Billie hitched up a horse to the old buggy. Ma got in the truck, after setting a wooden box of canned goods in the back. There were wide-mouthed jars of vegetables that she and Billie had canned last summer: green beans cooked with potatoes and stewed with bacon stripes, and some smaller jars of tomatoes.
The trip to the Sullivan place was only a half-mile down the road. A few minutes later, as the sun went out of sight below the far hillside, they turned off the road and followed a beaten path through the pasture to the barn behind the Sullivan house. There were a few automobiles and several buggies parked haphazardly in an open field along with riding horses beside a well-lit barn. The horses, some hitched to buggies, stamped and swished their tails at flies in the shade. From a distance, the evening songs of the bobwhite and the whippoorwill were almost drowned out by the sound of music and joyful exuberance and merriment radiating from the barn.
Along with the family, Dorian walked toward the barn where he saw several young fellows at the entrance talking to some girls. Occasionally, one would take a nip from a pint-size mason jar, then pass the jar to the next. All of them appeared to be under the influence of drink. Some teenage boys had cooked a pig in the ground, so there was plenty of meat. Just outside the entrance of the barn was a row of tables filled with home-baked bread, mounds of mashed potatoes and green vegetables. There were lots of desserts: cakes, cookies with hickory nuts, and apple pies reeking of cinnamon. There were not enough tables, so some planks had to be set up on sawhorses to provide improvised accommodations.
Unlike the bread lines and soup kitchens of the big cities, here country folk usually did not suffer overly much from hunger, as long as the harvest was good. They had little to lose before the depression; they, like so many others, were already broke when the banks failed.
The sound of laughter filled the air along with fiddle and guitar music. Here were people who did not like living near anyone but enjoyed each other’s company at a barn dance with a good fiddler and a traditional square-dance caller. People came from miles around. Most of the boys were eager to meet girls. Most of the young ladies would show up at this sort of gathering to collect a husband. A young man and woman sometimes left the barn together, trying to be discreet as they stole a few private moments together.
Inside the barn, the band was set up on a platform, and the people were dancing on the dirt floor in the center section of the outbuilding. Greta Sullivan danced with her husband, Raymond, both in their mid-thirties, the hosts of the party. Sonny went to cut in and dance with Greta. Off to one side,