The Hired Man. Lynna Banning
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She hesitated. “A man who can not only bake a pie and dance a Virginia reel but repair barn roofs is certainly rare in my book.”
Cord thought about her remark all the rest of that day. Rare, huh? He’d been called a lot of things in his life, but “rare” wasn’t one of them. Still, he thought with a smile, a man liked a compliment now and then, didn’t he?
* * *
It was Saturday, Danny’s School Night. All day the boy moped around the yard with such a long face Eleanor wondered if he was sick. Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer and set aside the basket of green peas she was shelling and stood up on the back porch step. “Danny, are you feeling all right?”
“Sure, Ma. I guess so. Got something flutterin’ around in my belly is all.”
Cord looked up from the chicken house, where he was nailing a new roost in place. “Butterflies, huh?”
“Guess so,” the boy muttered.
“You have to give a speech or something? That can make a man plenty nervous.”
Danny perked up at the word man and sent her hired man a pained look. “Yeah. I gotta recite the Bill of Rights from memory and give a speech about it.”
“Hey, just yesterday you wanted to be ‘all growed up’ so your ma would let you ride a horse,” Cord reminded him. “Part of gettin’ there—” he shot Eleanor a look “—is, uh, standing up to those things that are hard.”
“Like giving a speech?” Danny muttered.
“Yeah, like giving a speech.”
Eleanor sat back down on the step and again started shelling peas. Cord made a good deal of sense at times.
And then her hired man opened his mouth and spoiled it. “Believe me,” Cord called from the chicken house, “you’re gonna find ridin’ a horse easy after makin’ a speech in public.”
Her son’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Cord said.
“No,” Eleanor countered. “No horse-riding. Not yet.”
Cord pounded another nail into the chicken roost, tossed the hammer to Danny and strode across the yard toward her. But instead of starting an argument with her, he asked about her daughter. “Where’s Molly?”
“She’s in the barn, playing with those kittens.”
“She’s not near the horse stalls, is she? Or up in the loft?”
“She is not allowed up in the loft, Cord. I don’t want her falling off that narrow little ladder. And she’s scared to death of horses.”
“But you trust her, right? She’s sensible enough not to get hurt.”
“Well, yes. But...”
“Ma,” Danny called, his voice plaintive. “Do I really have to go to School Night?”
“Yes,” both she and Cord said together. “You really do. Now, go find Molly and both of you wash up for supper.”
Thankfully, Cord kept his mouth shut about horses and riding all through her supper of creamed peas on biscuits. When she shooed the children upstairs to put on clean clothes, Cord went out to the barn to hitch up the wagon.
Upstairs in her bedroom, Eleanor quickly sponged off her face and neck and donned her blue gingham day dress. She was the last to descend the front porch steps.
She felt as nervous as Danny. All her life she had disliked public gatherings. Her mother had criticized her for being shy, but Eleanor knew better. She was not just shy; she was frightened of people, especially crowds of people. Somehow she felt she never “measured up,” in her mother’s words.
Cord took one look at her, jumped down from the driver’s seat and lifted her onto the wagon bench beside him. Before he picked up the reins he leaned sideways and spoke near her ear.
“You all right, Eleanor? You look white as milk.”
“I’m fine,” she said shortly. “Just a little scared.”
“Scared about what?”
She twisted her hands in her lap and looked everywhere but at him, but she didn’t answer. Finally he laid down the reins and turned to face her. “Scared about what?”
“About all those people,” she admitted. “About... I guess I’m worried about Danny. It’s so hard to be on display.”
“Yeah.” He raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Instead he picked up the traces and they started off.
Danny clambered down to shut the gate behind them, then climbed back into the back. He looked so preoccupied Cord had to chuckle. Probably rehearsing his speech in his head.
The schoolhouse was lit up like a Christmas tree with kerosene lamps and candle sconces along the walls. Children milled about in the schoolyard, and as Cord maneuvered the wagon into an available space he heard Danny let out a groan.
“I don’t wanna do this!” he moaned.
“I don’t want to do this, either!” Eleanor murmured.
Molly stood up in the wagon, propped her hands at the waist of her starched pinafore, and at the top of her voice screeched, “Well, I do! I do wanna do this!”
All the way into the schoolhouse Cord chuckled about Fearless Molly in a family of Nervous Nellies. Danny disappeared into the cloakroom, and he followed Eleanor to an uncomfortable-looking wooden bench near the back. He lifted Molly onto his lap, careful not to squash the ruffles on her clean pinafore, and then looked around.
He recognized Carl Ness, the mercantile owner, with a thin-faced woman he took to be Carl’s wife, flanked by two young girls. He recognized Edith, the girl who had painted the mercantile front pink; the other girl looked exactly like her so that must be Edith’s twin sister.
Ike Bruhn, the owner of the sawmill, sat with two women, one with a baby in her arms and the other tying a bow on a young girl’s braids. Then a very beautiful young woman with a bun of dark hair caught at her neck with a ribbon stepped to the front of the room and clapped her hands.
That must be Danny’s teacher. At the clapped signal, a humming sound began at the door behind him, and all at once he heard singing.
Twenty or so students, ranging in age from about six or seven to a strapping blond boy of maybe fourteen, marched in two by two, singing “My Country ’tis of Thee.” A chill went up Cord’s spine.
Danny was the seventh in the line, walking next to a small blonde girl in a pink gingham dress. The boy looked like he wanted to sink through the floor.
The teacher, Mrs. Christina Panovsky, arranged them in rows against the front wall and turned to the audience. “Welcome, everyone. This is an extraordinary class of extraordinary young people—your sons and daughters. We want to share with you what we have been learning this school year.”
What followed was impressive. Four students acted out a scene from a play about Robin Hood they had written themselves. Then a small choir sang “Comin’ Through the Rye” in three-part harmony and a larger choir presented a “spoken word” song, a clever recitation of geographical names chanted in complicated rhythms. “Ar-gen-tin-a. Smoke Riv-er. Clacka-mas Coun-ty. Mex-i-co Ci-ty.”
Molly loved it; she bounced up and down on his lap in time with the words.
Finally Danny stepped forward to deliver his speech.
Molly sat up straight and craned her neck to see. Eleanor clutched Cord’s arm. He felt a tightening in his chest.
“Ladies and gentlemen...” The boy’s voice shook slightly, but as he progressed through his speech it grew stronger, and when he finished with, “We are one people, one nation... We are Americans,” his words rang with assurance.