As Lambs to His Fold, Page 9

CHAPTER EIGHT

  Though Deep’ning Trials Come Your Way....

  “Lee’triss, do you think Jesus can play the piano?”

  “Shoot, yes! He can play the piano, an’ the accordion, an’ the violin, an’ the saxophone, an’ any instrument there is!”

  “I wonder who gave Him lessons.”

  __________

  We had named another of Grandpa’s animals — the cow that supplied us with milk. She was not the pet that the sheep and the rabbits were; but we had named her anyway: Mooey Moocher.

  Where had we gotten the strange name? From Uncle Jack. He didn’t know about it, but he had given us the idea. Uncle Jack had gone on a mission for the Church, down to southern California, and had come back speaking some Spanish. He liked to use it — given the opportunity — and would say, perhaps, “Ma, I certainly like this pie!” Then, he would add, “Mooey Moocher!”

  At least, that’s what it sounded like to us. It was so funny in our ears, we would giggle every time we heard him say it. We had named the cow Mooey Moocher. How could we know that rotten, old Mooey Moocher would get us into trouble? and then, later, more, and worse, trouble?

  __________

  It was a hot day. We had decided to get into our bathing suits and cool off with the hose in Leatrice’s back yard. We ran around, and yelled, and squirted each other until we were thoroughly wet and tired of the game.

  We flopped down on the grass. Just then, we saw Dorajean’s ugly cat — ol’ black, an’ white, an’ orange Titty-Poo. He crept past us stalking a bird. Well, we couldn’t let him get away with that, could we? I shooed the bird off its perch, and Leatrice caught ol’ Titty-Poo by the tail and gave him a toss into the bushes.

  Dorajean just happened to be looking down from a second story window, and saw Leatrice give Titty-Poo the heave-ho. She screamed at us to stop torturing her cat. It was no use explaining to her that we hadn’t been torturing ol’ Titty-Poo, just saving a bird.

  After that, we went back in the house and got into our clothes. But we had forgotten to turn off the hose. Water poured into the basement and soaked some things Aunt Mabel was fond of. Aunt Mabel wasn’t small and shy like Mamma. She was large and assertive; and she liked to wear gold earrings and high heels, even around the house. Earrings swinging and high heels punching holes in the lawn, she swooped down and turned off the hose.

  We tried to make amends by mopping up the basement. But it was too late to save some of the boxes of things Aunt Mabel valued. We got a real scolding.

  Could anything worse happen that day? It could, and did.

  Leatrice and I decided to go down to Grandma’s and seek comfort in milk and cookies. But when we arrived, Grandma said apologetically, “I’m so sorry, girls, but I haven’t had time to bake any cookies. This is my day to entertain the Ladies’ Literary Club.”

  Disappointed, we shuffled off across the back porch.

  “I wish I was a grownup,” I complained. “Then maybe I’d get treated better.”

  “Not me,” declared Leatrice. “Grownups never have any fun.”

  “Why d’you s’pose they don’t?”

  “I guess it’s against the law.”

  We strolled down by the irrigation ditch and made some milkweed babies. We stripped back the pods to reveal the pearly-white babies in their little, green beds. We rocked them, cooed over them, gave them names; then we callously threw our children in the ditch and watched them float away.

  As we walked back toward the house, we saw ladies arriving for the book review. That didn’t interest us; but we rather hoped we might stick around for the refreshments.

  Approaching in her electric car came Great-Aunt Salina May Roundtree Gillis.

  Great-Aunt Salina May Roundtree Gillis was a mighty interesting old lady. She was forthright, and she was rich. Her husband, Uncle Gideon Golden Rule Gillis, before he went to heaven, had made a lot of money in railroad investments.

  She wasn’t really our aunt, but a cousin of Grandma’s. However, the title “great-aunt” suited her. She was the image of the bossy, interfering, endearing, elderly relative. We were in awe of her and always called her by her full title.

  She drove herself everywhere in her electric car, which she called “Beelzebub.” We once asked her why she called her car by that name, and she laughed uproariously and said, “Because when I get ‘er wound up, she goes like the devil!”

  Mamma thought that sounded sacrilegious.

  In appearance, Great-Aunt Salina May Roundtree Gillis was tall and large-boned, with gingery-gray hair. Her hips were curiously sprung, making her appear to have legs like a Chippendale chair. Today she was wearing a purple dress and a hat like a purple tower covered with velvet pansies — straight out of the Edwardian Era.

  As she walked, she supported herself on The Brigham Young Temple Cane.

  She had once stopped us and, impaling us with her sharp eyes, had demanded, “D’you know the importance of this cane?” To us, it looked like just an ordinary, wooden cane.

  “This cane was the one Brigham Young was carrying when he took a walk around the Salt Lake Valley to get the feel of things.

  “He stopped, and dug a hole in the ground with the tip of this cane, and he said, ‘This is where we’ll build the temple’.

  “Yes! And that’s where the Salt Lake Temple stands today. My father was a good friend of Brigham Young’s — did him favors aplenty; so he gave him this cane and told him always to remember its importance.”

  We stared in fascination; and always after that we thought of it as The Brigham Young Temple Cane.

  Our mothers, wearing their best dresses, arrived for the book review. When they saw us, Mamma started to tap her foot, Aunt Mabel’s mouth became a straight line, and they both gave us The Look that said we’d better scoot.

  “Let’s go look at Mooey Moocher’s calf,” I suggested to Leatrice.

  We strolled back to the pasture where Mooey Moocher and her newborn were confined behind a fence. I climbed on the fence rail to reach over and pet the calf, a sweet little thing, black and white, with twitching ears and a frisky tail, eyes like cups of chocolate, and a nose that felt like the satin cover on Grandma’s footstool.

  Mooey Moocher stood there switching flies, chewing her cud, and looking a little bit stupid. I moved down the fence rail a little to see better. Leatrice shoved me irritably.

  “I can’t see! You’re taking all the room!”

  “Let’s open the gate a little bit. Then we can both pet it.”

  We pushed back the bar and swung the gate toward us. As we were about to slip through, the calf skipped past us to freedom.

  “Stop the calf!” I shouted.

  Leatrice dashed after the runaway, whooping and waving her arms. I swung the gate a little wider to make it easier to get the calf back in. As I did so, a large, determined form shoved past me and almost knocked me down. It was Mooey Moocher going after her child. Leatrice was trying to turn the calf forcibly by its ears. I gave a shriek. Mooey Moocher had her head down and was pawing the ground. Too late, I remembered Grandpa’s warning: “Don’t go near the cow when she has a calf. She gets mean.”

  Mooey Moocher didn’t have long, nasty horns, thank goodness. Grandpa had sawed them off. But she had a wicked look in her eye, and she could knock you down and kick you. With Mooey Moocher after us, we turned and fled past the orchard, the barn, the chicken coop, across the yard, up the back steps of the house, across the porch, and pounded on the door.

  Lillian Humphrey was helping Grandma in the kitchen. Lillian, before her marriage, had been a waitress at the Swallow Cafe, where a sign showed a bird in flight. Folks had long ago tired of jokes about the name and now simply pointed with pride to the faded sign in the window that announced that Duncan Hines had eaten there. Nowadays, Lillian hired out to help at parties. She was a plump young woman, and her plump was swiftly turning to fat. When she hurried, Lillian looked dangerously top heavy.

  Upon seeing us, she said irritably, �
��Go away, girls. I’m making jelly roll for your Grandma; and that’s trouble enough without you two bothering me.”

  “But, Mooey Moocher is after us!”

  Lillian blinked. “Huh?”

  We knew it was no use explaining the joke to Lillian. She had almost no sense of humor. We opened our mouths to say, “The cow,” but Lillian had already slammed the door. We looked behind us fearfully. Mooey Moocher had given up the chase and was now in Grandma’s vegetable garden teaching her child how to steal the lettuce.

  We crept around the house, ran for the front door, and were sneaking past the parlor, ready to tiptoe upstairs, when Mamma spied us. “Girls! Outside! At once!” There seemed to be no safety for us anywhere. With feet dragging, we shuffled out onto the front porch. Our enemy was nowhere in sight, so we sat down in the porch swing to wait.

  The afternoon was warm; a fly buzzed around us. The creaking of the swing was soothing. I dozed. Faintly, I could hear Sister Shipton giving her review of The Good Earth.

  Suddenly, I come wide-awake at the sound of a piercing yell. Leatrice gives a start and sits up. The yell is repeated. It seems to come from the side of the house. We jump up, run to the corner, and peer around.

  That terrible, old Mooey Moocher has left her baby and strolled up to the parlor window. Seeing something that looks good to eat, she has stretched out her neck and taken a large bite. What we see, peeking around the corner, is Mooey Moocher chewing on the remains of Great-Aunt Salina May Roundtree Gillis’s purple pansy hat. The old lady is leaning out the window and beating Mooey Moocher over the head with The Brigham Young Temple Cane, while she shouts, “You confounded beast!” Whack! “Get away from here!” Whack! “Give me back my hat!” Whack! Whack! Whack!

  A look of surprise creeps over Mooey Moocher’s stupid, bovine face. She opens her mouth, lets the hat drop, and gallops off in the direction of the pasture. We pick up the hat, dust it off, and hand it back — what is left of it — to Great-Aunt Salina May Roundtree Gillis. She jams it back on her head and turns her attention once more to a flustered Sister Shipton, who is trying to get back to the book review.

  Wow, I’m thinking, Great-Aunt Salina May Roundtree Gillis is one brave, old lady to beat up on Mooey Moocher like that.

  All we have to do now, it appears, is to go back to the pasture and make sure the cow and her calf are safely shut in. We are stopped by another scream, a collective one from a number of the ladies. We bound up the porch steps and stick our heads in the front door.

  __________

  Pieced together later, events seemed to have gone like this:

  Lillian had left the back door open while she went to the milk house to fetch some cream for whipping. The calf wandered in, looking for its mother, trotted across the kitchen, through the dining room, and into the front hall.

  Peeking through the front door, we see about a dozen ladies crowding into the parlor doorway and giving little yips and shrieks as they watch a fencing display. Great-Aunt Salina May Roundtree Gillis is doing a regular dance, prodding the calf with The Brigham Young Temple Cane.

  Grandma looks shocked.

  The poor, confused calf backs up and almost topples the grandfather clock, whirls, charges into the dining room, banks off the china cabinet, leaps into the bay window — where it does considerable damage to Grandma’s plants — and then makes a beeline for the kitchen.

  The next scream we hear is Lillian’s. She has just come through the door with a bowl of cream. The calf tries to dodge past her. There is a terrible crash as Lillian, the bowl of cream, the table, and all the plates of jelly-roll land on the floor.

  Grandpa’s hired man comes from the orchard and leads the calf back to the pasture and its mother.

  The meeting breaks up without dessert. Our sweet little grandmother stands on the porch wringing her handkerchief as she bids the ladies goodbye and tries to make apologies. Our mothers look grim. We are in deep trouble. All we can think of is to crawl behind the bridal wreath bush and hide.

  Great-Aunt Salina May Roundtree Gillis, wearing her ruined hat at a jaunty angle, spies us and prods us out with the end of The Brigham Young Temple Cane.

  “Come on out,” she orders. “No one’s going to sell you to the Gypsies — at least, not right away.” As we creep out, she is laughing.

  “Best entertainment I’ve had in a long time,” she chuckles. “If they give you holy ginger, come up and see me.” She goes off chuckling and shaking her head; and I think I hear her say, “Sheep are supposed to be the Lord’s favorites; but I’ve always had a sneaking admiration for the goats!”

  We help Lillian, as best we can, to clean up the mess in the kitchen. We say we’re sorry. But we can’t undo the damage we’ve caused. Grandma doesn’t scold us; but she wears that sad look that is worse than a scolding.

  The only one who seems to have thought the disaster at all funny is Great-Aunt Salina May Roundtree Gillis.

  I wonder, “Does God ever laugh?”