Curtis, part thirty-four

For twenty minutes, Leta stood near the open doorway, waiting. The timing was crucial, and she was anxious that her daughter would not arrive in time. Her husband Curtis had taken the truck to town right after lunch. She set his oldest girl to ironing the sheets that they had finished washing that morning, sheets from her stepchildren’s beds that had not been washed in weeks. They wreaked of old perspiration and ammonia, and she spent hours scrubbing the multitudinous stains as best as she could on the washboard and boiling them until they were fresh. There were five beds total for 12 children and two parents, so the girl would be occupied for several hours. The two youngest children were tucked away for naps, and Leta had kept them as active as she could throughout the morning to guarantee they would sleep long and hard. The other children would not arrive home until later in the afternoon. This gave her only a small window of opportunity, but one that she would have to utilize to the best of her ability.

Five minutes after Curtis left, she removed her apron and put on her coat and hat. With her pocketbook in hand, she quietly walked out the front door and down the street. Initially, she walked briskly, but once she felt more secure in her mission, she relaxed her pace, still keeping it steady. At any moment, her husband or one of his older sons passing by her could foil her plan.

Her destination was the adjacent farm, owned by Mr. Warren Wilcox, an older unmarried gentleman she had met during the week when he retrieved his automobile from Curtis. During their courtship, Curtis drove the Buick, and she appropriately presumed it was his own. This was just one of many presumptions that she held until after she married him and learned often abruptly otherwise. She also was surprised to learn that Curtis was viciously jealous. He interrupted that first meeting with Mr. Wilcox, more concerned that she was being tempted to stray from her marriage than to apologize for misleading her about the car.

At church on Sunday, she saw Mr. Wilcox again. They nodded to each other respectfully, which caught her husband’s eye, and again resulted in a fury she would not have believed Curtis capable of had he not unleashed it at her. As they left the church to return to their truck, he grabbed her wrist hard and railed against the sinful weaknesses of women and her, in particular, throughout the drive back to their farm. The only positive of that experience was that none of the children heard him. They were all bundled in the back of the truck.

As she saw the dilapidated farmhouse, the equally rickety barn and chicken coop and the new lopsided chicken barn as they approached, her heart sank. Curtis continued to speak, but all she could hear was the rush of regret at her decision to marry the temperamental and brutish chicken farmer. From that moment on, she lived in a different perspective. While she would continue to perform her chores around the house and take care of the children, she would at the next opportunity leave this ill-chosen life.

But first she needed to find a telephone to call her daughter Vivian to rescue her. After Monday morning’s milking, she shared with her increasingly disagreeable husband that she had managed to reserve a canister of milk from the two cows that he could sell to the milk collector. She had done so by slightly watering down what she drew on Sunday evening and that morning. Her husband’s always-hungry brood failed to notice.

“Remarkable!” he exclaimed. “That’ll fetch a few pennies.”

“But you must telephone the milk collector this morning, or it will spoil,” she insisted.

“Telephone?” he repeated.

“How else will you let him know?” she asked. “He doesn’t stop by regularly, and you don’t want the milk to spoil.”

“No, no, of course not,” he agreed. “It’s just the nearest telephone is at Wilcox’s, and I can’t spare one of the boys to run down there.”

“Oh dear,” Leta said with concern. “Well, I suppose I could just let it sour and turn it into smearcase, although I am not sure I know how to do that. Still, that would be a treat for the children.”

“That would be a waste,” Curtis said, his mind on the few pennies he would make from selling the milk. “Have you heard the driver pass by yet?”

“I don’t think so,” Leta answered.

“Then let’s have Roscoe stand out front and wave him down.”

“You don’t need the boy to help you this morning?”

“I can manage,” Curtis said.

By this time, Leta felt no concern at all about the milk. She had learned what she needed, that the nearest phone was three-quarters of a mile down the road at the Wilcox farm.

To be continued.