Bartle Clunes - Chapter 35

Rose and Ruth get a visitor

Oct 15, 2022

Rose and Ruth - Riles Crossing 1952

All they wanted was a normal life, they had no extraordinary plans or dreams. They didn’t seek accomplishment or praise. Adventure was something they’d never thought of. They lived together as they always had, in a farm house at the end of a dirt road about a mile south of Riles Crossing. They walked up the hill to the general store once a week for their exercise and their groceries. They often stopped along the way to drop off an applesauce cake or a jar of home-made pickles to a neighbor. The twins were well-known by the people of The Crossing, though they didn’t socialize all that much. Mostly they stayed home and kept their house and garden in order. It was a good, safe place and that is where they wanted to be.

Rose and Ruth were both very plain girls, some would say homely, and maybe they’d be right. They were a little on the roly-poly side, well-padded in a comfortable sort of way. They both had slightly crooked teeth. They’d always cut each other’s hair in a slightly out-of-date style, curling it with wave-set and bobby pins. The concept of fashion had never really occurred to these two. Even now, at the precarious age of twenty-nine, their hand-me-down clothing still came in boxes from a more fortunate old auntie in a distant city. “Ooooh. That’s a nice sweater,” Rose would say. “Lots of wear left in that.”

“Why did the chicken cross the road?” Rose asked Ruth this morning.

Ruth said, “I don’t know.”

Rose told her it was for some fowl reason, and they both giggled as they had when they were young.

“Well... why did the goose cross the road? asked Ruth.

“Oh, tell me! I forget!”

“It was the chicken’s day off.”

Well, yes, they were silly sometimes but they were not ignorant, not entirely uneducated. They had both graduated high school, and they went down to the lethargic little metropolis of Placerville on the bus a couple of times a month to continue their learning at the public library. They had deep thoughts, these ladies, they had questions and they worked on them together, sorting out what was important to know, what was right and what was not.

They were sitting on the porch this morning when it happened. Ruth was busy pulling out two inches of knitting, going back six rows to pick up one dropped stitch.

“Darn it!” she whispered. “Darn it... ” She had promised Louvina Clunes she would make a wooly neck scarf in time for her husband’s birthday and frankly, she was a little behind. The way it was going, it might have to be Christmas present.

Rose had been quietly studying Jepson’s ‘Guide to the Trees of California’, but had lost her strand of concentration. Looking up and away from her book, she was gazing out at nothing, really, when a movement over in the south field caught her eye. She watched for a few minutes, squinting, shading her eyes with her hand.

“Ruthie?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you walk with me for a few minutes? I want to go out in the field.”

“Yep,” Ruth said. Standing up, she laid her knitting carefully on the bench, found her shoes and slipped them on. “Why are we going out in the field?” she asked.

“I am not sure.”

They went out the wobbly gate, leaving it standing open on its one rusty hinge. Crossing the road, they jumped over the ditch and stepped down into the field. They wound their way through the waist high yellow mustard. Cockle burrs stuck to their sweaters and socks. They quietly crossed two rough acres which once were planted with turnips and corn by their father, but now they belonged to someone else and were just tall weeds.

“Where are we going, Rose?” whispered Ruth.

“We are going over to the trees,” she answered, pointing to a stand of gnarled crab-apples near the fence line. They stopped, and from a distance they could see what appeared to be a moving pile of rags.

“That looks like an old colored man,” said Ruth. “What’s he doing? Is he praying?”

“Yoo hoo!” called Rose. The man turned and waved, but he didn’t get up.

“What are you doing out here in this field? Can we help you, sir? Are you lost?

“I am not lost,” he said.

“My name is Rose and this is my sister, Ruth. We live just there across the road. You need some help?”

“Twisted my doggone ankle,” he grunted. “My foot went down in a gopher hole. I can’t get up.”

“Well, we’ll just help you.” The women approached, got on either side of him and raised him to his feet. Rose handed him his bag. “Let’s get you on over to the house”, she said.

“Well...I sure do thank you. I was just about to start crawling out to the road.”

“Oh no, you don’t need to do that, Mr…? What’s your name?”

“The name is Stump, Rollie Stump.”

The darkening afternoon sky was trying to gather up a bit of rain from a few ragged clouds as the women struggled to half-carry the limping Mr. Stump across the field.

After a somewhat rough and stumbly trek, they finally got Rollie up the steps and into their house. They set him down on a chair at their kitchen table.

He had a slightly sorry look about him. A dented brown cap and a tweed jacket. One torn pocket flopped out like a dog’s tongue on an August afternoon. His trousers were a couple of inches too long for him and frayed at the cuff. He wore rough, heavy shoes that were old, but appeared to have been recently polished. Ruth thought his frizzled gray hair looked as if it had been cut with a lawn mower.

“Will you have a cup of coffee, Mr. Stump, and a bite of cornbread maybe?”

“Folks just call me Rollie. Coffee and corn bread would be very welcome, miss, I am sure.”

“You’d better let me see to that ankle. It may be swelling up,” said Rose.

Without any semblance of shyness, Rollie rolled up his pant leg and let Rose doctor his injury with some sort of foul-smelling paste and a bandage that she wrapped around his foot and ankle about a thousand times. “There you go. That should do it. Now, after you have your coffee, you should lie down for a spell, Rollie, and put that foot up on a pillow.”

“Well, you girls is awful kind.”

“Yes. We are kind to everybody.” said Ruth.

“Why wouldn’t we be?” said Rose. “Our mother taught us we are here to be of service to others, and we don’t forget that.”

Ruth, bringing the cornbread, butter and honey to the table, said, “She also taught us not to turn away strangers, as the very next stranger might be an angel in disguise.” She set the food on the table and turned to get the coffee.

Rollie laughed, “Well, that is as may be, and I hate to shatter your hopes on that score right off, but I am no angel.”

“What makes you say that?” asked Ruth, sitting down in the chair opposite him.

“Well, for one, I just got released from the county jail two days ago.” Rose and Ruth looked at each other, a little startled.

“Oh, you don’t need to worry none … am not a murderer or anything like that. I just had me a lapse of good judgement. You see, a friend of mine had four large barrels of nails. He wanted me to sell them for him and said he’d give me half of the profit. Shoot, I knew at the time they was probably stolen, but I was broke so I just did it. Six months I served for selling stolen nails.”

“I see,” said Rose. “Seems those nails may have cost you far more than they were worth.”

“Yep. Right you are. That was the longest six months in my life, I can tell you. And I don’t aim to go back there ever again.”

“Where is it you’re headed now, Mr. Stump, if you don’t mind my asking? What caused you to be out in the field today?”

“I was just taking a short-cut. I am walking up to Riles Crossing. I have an old friend there that I have not seen for many a year. I worked for his father in the mine back in the ‘30s. His name is Griggs, Eizer Griggs. You know him?”

“Well, we sure do. For a long time. He’s been here in Riles Crossing long as we can remember, hasn’t he Rose?”

“Since about the Neolithic Age, I’d say,” said Rose. “He has a sweet little grandson now, name of Eli. They seem to be getting along right well.”

“A grandson? I didn’t know Eizer was ever married?”

“Oh no, he’s not married. He always lived alone after his father died and then this little boy came along and he adopted him. They have done a world of good for each other.”

“Well, I’ll be. Imagine that – Eizer Griggs a grandpa.”

When Rollie had finished his meal, the girls showed him to the cot on the sun porch and told him to lie down and Ruth brought some ice for his ankle. He slept two or three hours under a patchwork quilt the girls had made out of cut-up neckties.

LEAVES

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