Little Britches (32 page)

Bessie and Mrs. Aultland came to stay with Mother that night, and we youngsters stayed where the note had told us to. My mind was sort of numb during the days between Father's death and the funeral. Things that happened still seem unreal. I do remember that I got a new blue serge suit—the first suit I'd ever had that Mother didn't make—but I don't remember where it came from.

All our old neighbors from the ranch were at Father's funeral, and I never knew till then how much they really cared for him. After the services, Dr. Browne glanced at Mother's red-streaked hand and said, "Mrs. Moody, that is surgeon's blood-poisoning. If you're ever to raise Charlie's children, you must come home with me at once."

Everybody was shocked except Mother. She was a small woman, and Doctor Browne was a very large man. She looked up into his face and said, "Yes, Doctor, I know. I believe I have no choice in the matter."

All our neighbors, both from the ranch and from Littleton, pressed around, offering to take us youngsters in. Cousin Phil said something about writing our other relatives in New England. For just one moment, Mother's eyes flashed; then she was calm again. "No, Phil, I am sure Charlie wants us all to be together."

Then she parceled us out to near neighbors; being sure that Hal went where there was a good cow, and that Muriel went to a motherly woman without too many youngsters of her own. At the end she said to me, "Son, I want you to stay with Laura Pease, where you will be near home and can take care of Lady and the hens."

"Tomorrow you take Babe over to Mr. Hockaday and tell him Father would have wanted him to have her. He needs a good horse, and he's a fine, honest man. He'll pay us all she's worth."

Then she thanked our neighbors and kissed us all around, leaving me till the last. I remember how my lip trembled, wondering if I were the least. She didn't cry until she put her hand on my head, and said, "You are my man now; I shall depend on you. Mother will be home in two weeks."

It was not two weeks, but four. At the end of the first week, before Doctor Browne was sure he wouldn't have to amputate the arm, Mother sent for Grace and me. Grace had her thirteenth birthday two days after Father died. We harnessed Lady to the spring wagon and drove to Denver, stopping by the river to gather a bouquet of pussy willows.

At Doctor Browne's big house on Capitol Hill we were only allowed to see Mother for a few minutes. She was so thin we hardly knew her. Her eyes were deep in their sockets, with black circles around them; and for the first time I noticed white in her hair. Her voice was very low, almost a whisper. She put her good hand out to us and smiled. "Mother is going to be all right," she said. "I have talked to the Lord a lot about it. He knows you need me, and with Him and Doctor Browne, I shall be all right."

Doctor Browne started to lead us from the room. When we had reached the door, Mother called me back. She took my hand and said, "The peas should have been planted on Saint Patrick's Day. You know where the seeds are in the barn loft. Soak them overnight, and put plenty of hen manure deep in the trench." I don't know why that made me cry when I hadn't before. But from that moment I was sure she was coming home.

It was late in the afternoon of a pleasant mid-April day when they brought Mother home. Cousin Phil drove her out in his first automobile—a two-cylinder Buick with shiny brass rods to support the windshield. Doctor Browne and a nurse came with them. They carried Mother into the house and put her to bed downstairs in the parlor. When I came in she was saying to the nurse, "I am perfectly all right now; all I need is my children." As quickly as I could get out, I harnessed Lady to the spring wagon and started the collection of brothers and sisters.

Mother could be quite persuasive if necessary. She must have been so with Doctor Browne because, just as we turned into the lane, the Buick was pulling away from our house. Doctor Browne and the nurse waved to us from the back seat as they went by.

I was the last one into the house, because I had to unhitch Lady. Most of the tears were shed before I got there, and Mother was propped up in bed with Hal still sobbing and trying to bury his nose in her side. Her right hand was heavily bandaged.

When I came in she organized the first meeting of the clan of Moody. "Now let's not be sorry for ourselves any more," she said; "we've got lots of other things to do. First, we must get Mother's hand well. All it will take is good food and good care. I can't think of anything that would be better for it right now than a good chicken stew."

"Ralph, suppose you dress that big fat Buff Orpington hen that didn't lay last winter. Philip, you get Grace two or three armfuls of wood and some shavings, so she can start a fire in the cookstove. And Muriel, do you think you could get the new tablecloth out of the dresser drawer, and set us a table right here by my bed? When you get the fire going, Grace, put on the big iron pot with some fat in it so it will be good and hot when the hen is ready. And, Hal, would you get Mother a drink of water? I can't think of a thing that would taste so good as a nice cool dipper of water, right from our own well."

That first supper was the most memorable meal of my life. The big yellow mixing bowl sat in the middle of the table, filled to the brim with well-browned pieces of chicken, stewed until it was almost ready to fall off the bones, whole potatoes, and carrots—with big puffy dumplings, mixed at the bedside, floating on top.

Father had always said grace before meals; always the same twenty-five words, and the ritual was always the same. Mother would look around the table to see that everything was in readiness; then she would nod to Father. That night she nodded to me, and I became a man.

Ralph Owen Moody was born December 16, 1898, in Rochester, N. H. His father was a farmer whose illness forced the family to move to Colorado when Ralph was eight years old. The family's life in the new surroundings is told from the point of view of the boy himself in
Little Britches
.

The farm failed and the family moved into Littleton, Colorado, when Ralph was about eleven. Soon after, the elder Moody died of pneumonia, leaving Ralph as the oldest boy, the man of the family. After a year or so—described in
Man of the Family
and
The Home Ranch
—Mrs. Moody brought her three sons and three daughters back to Medford, Mass., where Ralph completed his formal education through the eighth grade of grammar school. This is the period of
Mary Emma & Company
. Later, Ralph joined his maternal grandfather on his farm in Maine—the period covered in
The Fields of Home
.

A new series of books, about Ralph's experiences as a young man, starts with
Shaking The Nickel Bush
.

In spite of his farming experience, Ralph Moody was not destined to be a farmer. He abandoned the land because his wife was determined to raise her family (they have three children) in the city.

"When I was twenty-one," he writes, "I got a diary as a birthday present and I wrote in it that I was going to work as hard as I could, save fifty thousand dollars by the time I was fifty, and then start writing." True to his word, he did start writing on the night of his fiftieth birthday.

Mr. Moody now lives in Burlingame, California.