The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig Read Free Book Online Page B

downstrokes that brought water gushing. She and I hefted the full washtub onto the stove to heat, then went back out to fill the rinse tub. As she worked the pump handle, our new upholder of upkeep said only loud enough for me to hear:
    "Mind you, this is merely a suggestion. But wash day could include Houdini."
    "Doesn't work," I told her crossly, still out of sorts from lack of food. "You can't get him within a mile of a washtub."
    "Didn't I see a pond?" The pothole pond Father called the Lake District was in the field between our place and Aunt
Eunice's. "Perhaps if a stick were tossed in it by the right person, Houdini would give himself a bath." The lilting way she said it, it sounded like a rare adventure. She gave me a look with a hint of conspiracy in it. "Toby might even volunteer for the chore, do you suppose?"
    "I'll get him on it after school," I conceded, although I never liked being maneuvered.
    My mind was mainly on breakfast, and as soon as we had the wash water going, I tore into my bowl of oatmeal, which by then was turning gluey. As I spooned the stuff into me and Father slapped together cheese sandwiches for our lunch at school, Rose swooped through time after time, either half buried under a mound of our bedding in her arms or hefting a heaped dirty-clothes basket on a practiced hip. Toby was upstairs in pursuit of his shoes, but Damon, I could tell, was awaiting his chance for something. When Rose disappeared again in search of any more fabric to wash, he whispered urgently across the kitchen: "Aren't you going to ask her?"
    Startled, but not so much so he didn't remember to keep to a whisper in answering, Father fired back "Young man, I would like to handle this my own way, if you don't mind. When I think the time is right, naturally I'll put it to her about the cooking—"
    "No, no, the milking!"
    "Ah, that. Clever of you to think of it, Damon."
    When Rose sailed into the room again under another billow of sheets to be washed, Father began laying out to her the logical connection between the churn and the origin of the milk, therefore—
    "I rather thought this might come up," Rose interrupted him. "It's been a while, but I can milk a cow." She studied Father for a moment. "Are there any other duties that come under the Montana definition of housekeeping?"
    Father brightened. "Actually, there's another skill allied to all your domestic ones we had hoped to call on. We could even add a bit to your wages if absolutely necessary. It would help like everything, Rose, if you could handle the kitchen—"
    "—scraps for the chickens," Rose concluded with a knowing wag of her head. "Inevitable. Poultry are not my favorite creatures and a slop bucket is never pretty, but all right, I can feed the chickens for you and I suppose gather the eggs while I'm at it." Now she peered at Father with mortal seriousness. The top of her head only reached the tip of his chin, but we were to find that there was no shortage of stature in Rose's tone when she spoke up like this. "Oliver, I must tell you—I take exception to pigs."
    "Put your mind at rest, we're hog-free," Father said with an expulsion of breath. He noticed the riveted audience of the three of us. "Don't you have a schoolhouse waiting for you?"
    "We're going, we're going," I said, reluctant to tear myself away. Damon grabbed up the schoolbooks he had brought home but of course had not opened, Toby pecked Father on the cheek as the other two of us manfully watched the daily goodbye kiss we had outgrown, we chorused a parting to Rose, and off we went.
    That October sky was as deceptively clear as this one. Across the crisp grass of autumn, Toby and Damon and I spurred our horses with a verve we hadn't had since before Mother left our lives. Great gains came seldom, in our experience, but we could already count ours up since Rose's arousing knock on the door a mere hour ago. Damon was liberated from the milk pail. I no longer had to ferry our every