I wrote the following short story on a whim one Saturday this spring to enter in the Bess Streeter Aldrich Foundation's Short Story Contest. Aldrich wrote A Lantern in Her Hand, a "heart book" for me. I submitted it at literally the very last minute and sent it to only a couple of people certain to be charitable. You can imagine my shock, incredulity, and delight when I received an email a month later informing me that I'd won the adult division!
Inspired by stories I've heard from my grandparents and those of my husband, I give you first (and only) short story...
Laughter
The cool of the crisp gray sky penetrated the rows of corn stalks above her. From where she landed on her back in between the rows, she looked up into it and couldn’t believe she was here. The baby kicked inside her, whether in protest or delight she wasn’t sure. And then it all struck Dorothy as funny, and she laughed. With her laugh escaped emotions that had been held captive but building in number and strength in the depths of her soul over the last 15 months.
She and Ed had loved each other as long as she could remember. When she was only 4 and her parents had moved to the homestead, Ed’s family had come to be part of the barn raising that introduced the newly arrived Wallace family to the community. Ed, being the dashing and capable 6.5 year old he was, had earnestly helped the men and watched them work, soaking in so much that he would need to know in the future. But when the dinner bell rang and the platters heaped with food covered the table, Ed disappeared.
A short time later he reappeared with a purple crocus in hand. Where he’d found the flower that chilly early spring day, Dorothy never knew. But as he handed it to her and silently walked away, she felt her innocent, tender heart follow him, and there it had always been - with him.
In the one room schoolhouse, they never really talked to each other though there was a kind of silent appreciation, each for the other, between the two. By the sixth grade Ed could out run in speed or distance any of the 8th graders, and he excelled at arithmetic. Dorothy was a friend to all the girls, jumping rope, playing cat’s cradle, and first in her class at spelling and writing.
By Thanksgiving of his 8th grade year, Ed was the head of his class. But his father was building the Frank family a new house and needed Ed’s help to get it finished before spring planting. Ed traded his slate and chalk for a hammer and nails, but was no less adept at his new occupation. The walls were perfectly square, the trim perfectly finished, and the house ready just ahead of planting. Dorothy missed watching Ed from a distance at school. None of the other boys were as interesting or handsome to her eyes.
They’d loved each other all their short lives, and when they were old enough nothing would keep Ed from courting Dorothy. Nothing except the spring rains and the muddy river of a road that passed for the Wallace’s driveway. The spring of Dorothy’s 16th year, the rains were so incessant and the ground so reluctant to soak away the deluge that the Wallaces simply couldn’t get off their homestead. When the half-mile drive was finally passable in the early days of June, Ed came courting every Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. At 18 years of age, he was tall, handsome, confident, and ready to claim his bride.
But economics got in the way of their marriage. Ed’s help on his family’s farm was essential just then in his 18th year. His father’s broken leg in April and slow recovery had made Ed the man of the Frank family and head of the farm for this season. His two sisters, ages 15 and 12, couldn’t take over the heavy labor of the farm. And his two youngest siblings, twin boys age 8, were good help, but far too young to run things. The quarter of farm ground near the river that his dad had promised Ed to help him get his start sat untouched all spring and summer.
But young true love finds a way. So one sunny Saturday morning that fall, Ed picked Dorothy up in the old Model-T he’d bought the year before. Under the guise of a picnic with friends from a nearby town, the two drove away through the golden fields almost ready for picking to secretly start their future together. It took them three hours to get to the courthouse where Ed had made arrangements with a justice of the peace to legally marry them. In the shade of a giant cottonwood tree by the river, they celebrated their nuptials over the picnic lunch Dorothy had packed. Then they drove the three hours back to the Wallace homestead where Ed walked Dorothy to the door, shook her father’s hand, smiled at her mother, and thanked them for the pleasure of spending the day with their daughter. Cheeks still flushed just from the picnic in the warm sunshine, or so her parents thought, Dorothy uttered not a word of their adventure to her parents. Ed quietly returned to his parents’ home, giving nothing away to his family.
The letter and newspaper clipping that came in the mail 2 weeks later to Ed’s parents from their second cousins who lived just a few hours west revealed all. With congratulations to the happy couple and the newspaper’s record that Ed and Dorothy had purchased a marriage license, the newlyweds’ cover was blown. Ed still had to help with the family’s harvest before he could begin building the simple two-room house on the land down by the river that would be theirs.
That fall was full of hopes and dreams for Dorothy and the hard work of bringing dreams to reality for Ed. A mere three months after their legal marriage in September, Ed and Dorothy finally moved into the cozy little cottage nestled in the grove of cedars and cottonwoods along the river.
They were on their own, living their dream together. All their lives, they would remember that first Christmas together as one of their favorites. They had no money to buy each other gifts. Every penny they found had gone to purchase necessities for the winter or to pay for the building supplies for their home. The windows were bare of any curtains, but the winter’s frost and the cover of the grove gave privacy. The wood floor had only one small rag rug by the bed, but the wood floor was a luxury over dirt. They had food and supplies enough for the winter, and they had each other. That was all they really wanted.
One blizzard followed another late that winter, and the sun took its time melting the drifts and warming the earth. The day he finally finished the spring planting, Ed came into the cottage to find Dorothy not herself. She’d prepared supper for him but couldn’t eat any herself, and by the next morning, she was ill and unable to get out of bed. After two days of no improvement, Ed called the doctor. The examination revealed that the illness wasn’t an illness at all. Dorothy was pregnant. The baby would arrive early in January. Shock, disbelief, fear, and joy flashed across Ed’s face before finally settling into excitement at the doctor’s announcement. A baby!
One of Dorothy’s younger sisters tramped a path the 3 miles along the river between her parent’s home and her sister’s during those early days of pregnancy. She helped Dorothy with the cooking and cleaning as often as she was able, and it was that help that kept the growing family in the little cottage afloat. By the time of the Annual Independence Day Celebration in town, Dorothy had finally returned to herself and was able to shoulder her share of the responsibilities again.
“Knee high by the 4th of July,” for corn they said, but that year only a few fields had reached such heights. Ed surveyed his crops with a look of consternation and concern. What would he do if the snow came early this year? Dorothy set her jaw and held her tongue about her own concerns. No sense adding to the weight already on Ed’s shoulders. Besides, worrying wouldn’t speed the corn’s growth or stop the snow.
A long Indian Summer stretched throughout the fall so that by Thanksgiving the crops were finally ready for picking. Dorothy felt almost ripe too, ready to hold the fruits of her labors in her arms. Just 6 more weeks until the baby was due to arrive.
Just 6 more weeks, but there was so much to do on the small farm with the cottage in the grove by the river. Final preparations for the baby’s arrival had to be made, but first and foremost, the crops had to be harvested. And as the entire community shared the necessity of the late harvest, everyone took to their fields. Everyone including Ed and Dorothy.
The crisp gray sky spread above them, cloudy but not the kind of clouds that threaten rain or snow. The coolness of the day wasn’t sharp enough to penetrate sturdy wool clothing on working bodies. The cornstalks stood at orderly attention awaiting their undressing.
As they started, Ed took 6 rows, giving the very pregnant Dorothy just 2 to harvest. Dorothy’s competitive nature dared her swollen belly to slow her. She would keep up with Ed, even beat him to the other end of their assigned rows, she silently vowed to herself. They moved through the field pitching the ears of corn into the wagon pulled by Bess, the old plow horse.
On the first pass, Dorothy kept pace with Ed, not beating him to the end of the rows, but tossing her last ear into the wagon just as he stripped the final ears from his rows. But with each pass through the field, Dorothy’s belly felt heavier and more in the way, her steps slowed, and her pitches became less accurate. Ed glanced over at her as he bent to pick up yet another of her bad tosses. Dorothy’s brows furrowed as she turned away from him in frustration. It was frustration at herself and her inability to make her body do what she needed it to. She suggested a break for water and the morning’s snack she had brought for them. As they sat on the wagon’s tongue and ate, she again vowed to herself that she would keep up.
But the next pass through the field was the worst one yet. Ed was picking his six rows, plus almost an entire one of hers. Dorothy’s frustration mounted as she watched Ed creep farther ahead and pick more and more of “her” rows. That was it. She’d had it. She plucked a particularly fat ear off of the stalk beside her, wound up, and hurled the thing not at the wagon, but at Ed’s back. She put such focus and force into throwing the ear of corn that she missed her next step, lost her balance, and tottered backwards before falling, flat on her back, in between the rows of corn.
The ear clipped Ed’s heel and he turned to see what had happened. He found his wife, marooned on her back, bulging belly pointing to the sky, like a turtle turned upside down, unable to get up. Her hard facade cracked, but instead of tears, her laughter rang out through the field. He grinned as he took a step toward her. Then he began to laugh too, and once he’d started, the two of them couldn’t stop. He reached for her hand to pull her up, but instead, she pulled him down into the row beside her, and they laughed.
They laughed away the years of waiting to spend forever with each other, the nerves of sneaking away to be married, the anticipation of being together in their own home, the weight of being penniless, the excitement of a new baby’s coming, and the anxiousness of the late harvest. They laughed for the past they had shared and for the future they looked forward to.
Ed and Dorothy lay under the cool blanket of the crisp gray sky that penetrated the rows of cornstalks, and they said together, in a way that no words can, that they forgave the hard things of the past and looked forward to the future that they would build together on this little piece of land with the cottage in the grove by the river.
