Days
of YouthDays
of Youth
"C'n I help, Momma?" the 8-year-old hand of Louise Boggs, reached out for the jar that her mother used to cut biscuits.
Mary Louise batted her oldest daughter's hand playfully, "Alright, but
you go wash these
dirty paws first."
The sun was just lazing toward the horizon; Louise's father had not come home for the day, and her mother was on task, as always, trying to prepare a full dinner before her two youngest children were able get bored enough to be a handful. The bright-eyed girl giggled, scooped some water into the washbasin and did as she was told.
"Now, dry them well, and I'll let you cut while I pat." Mary Louise never rolled out her biscuits, but preferred to pat the dough flat, just as her own mother had taught her.
"I want some flour on my hands too."
"But, honey you won't need it, you're just cutting." As soon as she said it, however, she changed her mind, and made dime-sized pile of flour on the tabletop, "Well, it couldn't hurt."
Louise smiled and rubbed her hands in the flour, rubbed them together, and even rubbed the back of her hands in order to make her hands nearly as white as her mothers. It was the flour, she believed, that made her mother's hands so soft.
"OK, now, dip the top of the jar in the flour a little ways, and we'll use that to cut. . . Wait, wait. Not right in the middle, Louise, start at the side, so you can get as many as possible." Her mother guided her hand for the first few biscuits, showing her exactly where to place them, and watched as her daughter methodically placed and cut out two, three, and then four more on her own.
Louise turned and grinned in triumph. Mary Louise grabbed her daughter's hands and knelt in front of her "You did so well, honey. Those biscuits are going to be delicious. Maybe next week I'll teach you how to make the dough."
"Really?" Louise was delighted at the prospect, she loved the attention she received from her mother, and found the encouragement she needed in pleasing her. Things were not so easy with her father, however.
"Why sure, it's not too hard. I started making the biscuit dough and cutting them out all by myself when I was just about your age. Look here," she said standing and turning toward the table, "There's a part of dough left over on the edge here, we can probably push that together a little bit to make room for another bis-"
The door opened with a clack, and the woman started just enough for Louise
to notice it.
Peter Boggs, stood in the entrance and measured up the scene before him. "Mary
Louise," he said coolly, "I've told you before that I don't want you
to get the girl too interested in these sorts of things."
Louise looked to her mother, confused.
"Of course, Peter." She then smiled for her daughter's sake, "I was just showing her how I cut biscuits, that's all."
The lean-faced man, seemed to accept this response, but did not smile in return.
"Louise, go put on your britches and come outside with me."
"Yes, sir." She replied, scurrying into the loft where she and her two-year old brother, Jeremiah now slept. His former sleeping place near their parents was now inhabited by a 4-month old little sister, Theresa, who was now fussing for some attention.
"What are we gonna do today, Pa?" She asked, her short legs working frantically to keep her in step with her father, as they made their way toward the barn. "C'n we just ride. Please?"
"No, we rode enough yesterday."
The girl knew better than to ask again, and followed silently, wondering what today's lessons would be. Louise enjoyed tasks with her mother and fed on the smiles and praise she received. She looked for the same from her father in the time she spent with him; but she never seemed to earn it. She did everything she could, "I just don't know how to do better." She often told herself.
Mary Louise had long ago given up on protesting about what she considered her daughter's "boy training." Her concerns about their daughter's safety and identity as a little girl seemed lost on her husband, who had been certain that Louise was to be a Louis, every day right up till her birth. In the beginning, Louise loved the time she spent with her father, she liked the adventure and excitement of trying new things, but she had grown to dislike, and at times, dread it. It was the fact that she never knew if she was doing well enough that made her unhappy with the outings.
"We're going hunting."
As long as she could remember, Louise's days were filled with riding, caring
for her father's two fine horses and learning about his various firearms. While
she was mildly proficient with a pistol, she did not at all enjoy using her
father's rifle. As she was a slight thing, firing the guns set her back on her
heels and always hurt her shoulder. She could load the handguns as well as a
rifle in her sleep, and everytime she did so, she could hear his voice directing
her through the steps "ball, powder, wad, tamper, Percussion cap."
The first time she shot the muzzleloader she stumbled back badly, and she accidentally
jabbed the end of the barrel into the ground to keep from falling.
"Girl, damn it. What did I tell you?!"
She grabbed the stock of the rifle higher to lift the gun from the ground. "Sorry,
Pa." She flinched slightly, anticipating a slap that never arrived.
Hunting. Her father had often taken her out to shoot prairie dogs and ground
squirrels. "Target practice." He called it; he had also taken her
out the previous winter to shoot rabbits. She watched him decapitate the rabbit
she had shot by twisting it's head from its body, still twitching in reflex,
even in death. She hadn't forgotten the sight, even as she ate the fried rabbit
for dinner. Something though, in his voice told Louise that this was different.
They were going hunting. He had never used that word before to describe any
of their outings.
Peter strapped on a rifle sheath and handed another to his daughter for her to attach to her own smaller saddle. He handed the girl a rifle, and she automatically checked to see whether it was loaded and ready. She had heard the same command dozens of times if she had heard it once.
"Always make sure your arms are prepared when you go out, Louise. They're no good to you if they're not loaded and ready to go."
She reached up and slid the hefty gun into the sheath and mounted the little bay she had come to love so well. She called him Eagle and she secretly hoped that the extra special care she took of the horse would one day convince her father to give her the horse.
"Let's go." He summoned, and she dutifully followed him into the oncoming dusk.
They rode two or three miles west toward an area known as Yellowjacket. It was a lightly thicketed ridge, and when they arrived, the smooth dull light of the ending day was nestled on scrub brush and each patch of thick grasses. Not a word passed between them, but Louise noticed her father's attention directed to their left to several young bucks and a couple of does, scattered along a small rise in the earth. Peter slid softly off his roan mare, and Louise did the same. They walked their mounts to a heavy oak brush and loosely wrapped the reins around separate branches. Louise struggled to remove the rifle from the sheath, after having watching her father do the same with seemingly no effort at all.
For the next fifteen minutes, they crept slowly toward the animals, and Louise wondered if by the time they could take a shot it would be too dark to see clearly. The silence they crept along in was typical. Whenever she and her father went out there was rarely a word passed from one to the other. Sometimes Louise would ask a question about an animal or a track they had passed and Peter would answer in as few words as it took to answer her question. Nothing was ever offered to her in addition to her own queries. Also, it tired Louise to try and find something to say to her father, so she had finally chosen to sink deeply into the tasks he found for her without thinking too much about them, without feeling. Otherwise, she could only be disappointed when she did not receive the praise she desired.
Louise watched her father intently, watching for any cue for what she should do next. He lead the girl ever so quietly across the stretch of land dividing them from the quiet deer. Finally, when they were within nearly 60 yards of the animals, closer than Louise ever thought they'd get, he sat back on the balls of his feet in the prairie grass. She crouched beside him.
"The smaller doe on the right. That one."
Louise looked at him, questioningly, but receiving no reply, resigned herself to the task at hand.
She sat down on her backside and brought the butt of the rifle to her shoulder. She knew she would have to take the shot quickly, as the gun always seemed to weigh more with each second that passed. Suddenly she felt outside of herself, the rifle seemed to fit, and the ball sight at the end of the barrel almost seemed to click into place with the one closer up the barrel. She placed only a hair's breadth over the neck of one of the does and squeezed off the shot as if she were in a dream. The sound cracked and reverberated in her ears, and her shoulder and upper body jolted back. Louise's eyes, however, were totally fixed on the deer as its front legs crumpled slowly and it stumbled front-end-first into the ground. Her breath caught and she lowered the gun to stare at the now empty horizon in front of her. She didn't know how long she sat there, but she realized that her father was standing near her.
"You're my daughter. That was a fine shot, Louise."
She couldn't remember ever having received such a compliment from him, and she trembled not only from what she had just done, taking the life of an animal bigger than herself, but at the pride she felt at her father's words.
He stood and began walking toward the dead animal, and Louise followed, wondering if she was wrong to do so before reloading the gun. She was never quite sure what was the right thing to do when it came to her father. With barely enough light to see, Louise's father handed her a heavy, serrated knife, and showed her how to cut open the deer's soft belly right up to the joining of the ribs. He took the knife from her and worked the knife through the ribs, and then finished working the knife around the body cavity.
"Watch me girl. This is good to know."
She watched with a morbid interest as he cut the membrane around the entrails and internal organs and removed them, bloodying his shirt.
"Can you find the liver and heart?"
She pointed hesitantly toward a large heavy purple organ and at a smaller redder one.
"Those."
"Pick them up and put them back in the deer. They'll keep there until we get home."
Louise swallowed and picked each still-warm organ and placed them, with distaste, into the deer's empty abdomen.
"Stay here, I'll fetch the horses."
Louise nearly protested-a child frightened to stay with the animal she had killed as night fell, but held her tongue. She was relieved as she saw her father leading the two animals closer and closer just several minutes later.
"Tie her behind Eagle." Peter commanded his daughter, and handed her a length of thin rope.
Louise felt very, very tired, but crossed the hind legs of the doe and slipped a half-hitch around them, and dallied the other end of the rope around the saddle horn of the anxious horse. She comforted both herself and the beautiful animal by stroking his neck over and over again. She finally hugged him firmly around his thick neck, a source of comfort from the unanticipated stress of the evening. She hugged him for as long as she thought her father would permit, and then some. When she was mounted, her father asked, "You're really fond of that horse, aren't you, girl?"
She almost gasped. Here it was, her time to make a play for the gift.
"Yes, Pa. I love Eagle lots."
He nodded his head stoically a couple of times and tapped his heels into his mare's sides.
A mile into their return home, one of the doe's hooves slipped from the knot, and the taciturn man called his daughter's attention to it.
"Louise, look what's happened."
She was awakened from the numb, dreamy feeling she had felt since watching the doe dive into the ground, and looked behind her.
"Take care of it."
"Please, pa. Could you get it?"
He didn't move, however, and Louise slid dumbly from her saddle and began working again on the knot. Suddenly, she recognized her father beside her, guiding her through the process.
"Cross the legs tighter, draw that loop lower, just over that joint. . ."
When she finished she knew that the knot was surer than the previous one, and she was relieved that she wouldn't have to do it yet again. She had to wonder if her father was disappointed in her, and she wished desperately that she could see his face more clearly as he spoke to her.
"Always remember Louise, to take care of yourself. Never become dependant on anyone else. If you do, you're likely to be in tough straits when push comes to shove. But I've taught you to be able to do for yourself, and I hope you'll do that, do for yourself and for others who depend on you. You can't afford to be needful of others. Your mother's never understood that. . . Do you understand me girl?"
Louise nodded gravely, not sure that she really did understand.
"Answer me."
"Yes, sir."
"Good then, don't forget what I've said. Let's head back."
That night, Louise and Jeremiah lay on their straw mattress in the loft with their mother who was trying her best to settle them in for the night while shooshing a howling Theresa. Louise thought about the deer hanging up out back in the lean-to shed. Of her mother placing the liver and the heart in a large bowl of water to soak for the night. She could picture the little doe standing just a short ways from another, and how it had stopped chewing and raised its head as Louise waited for the shot. As hard as she tried, however, she could not recapture the moment that the doe lost her hold on live and plummeted into the grassy prairie.
Upon their return home, Louise was ashamed for some reason for her mother to know what she had done. Killing the deer seemed like such a large event, and she recognized something like sadness in the woman's eyes as her father blandly recounted the events of the evening. Before bed though, Mary had kissed and hugged the girl while sending her and her brother upstairs to get into their night clothes.
Louise kicked the cover away and scooted as far from Jeremiah as she possibly could, as the evening had not yet cooled to her liking; she clutched her doll Anabelle Mumblepuss in the crook of her arm. It was one of the only concessions Louise's father made to her girlhood, and that only after the tearful insistence of her mother.
The evening, such as it was, was not an uncommon one. Several men were gathered on the main floor of the Boggs' home talking, smoking, and drinking and laughing raucously. Later, Louise knew, they would all become quiet, and spend the night in low conversation. The men gathered several times a month, but to Louise, it seemed to occur every other night. She desperately hoped that Theresa would cease her racket soon, or else her father's booming voice would holler,
"Mary Louise, shut that brat up!" only making her mother, and the baby in turn, more uptight.
Louise had tried several times in the past to understand parts of the men's
conversation, but they were lost on her. The only thing she understood was that
their arrival upset her mother greatly, and made for a tense night.
"Louise and Jeremiah, what would you like for a story tonight?" What
story would you like to hear tonight?
"I'm not sleepy, Momma. I wanna go downstairs!" complained the boy.
"Absolutely not." His mother hissed over her youngest daughter's cries.
"We'll stay up here. You just pick a story."
With that, she thrust the book of children's Bible stories at Louise, and opened
her shirtwaist to nurse Theresa. Hoping that would buy some quiet.
After some bickering, the children had narrowed their choices to "Balaam
and the Donkey" "Daniel and the Lions" and "The Birth of
Jesus."
"Well, now, those are fine. I'll read you the ones about Balaam and Jesus."
The children settled in a bit further into their nighttime positions, and Mary
Louise began to read, fighting to hold the book open on the floor in front of
her and hold Theresa in position at the same time.
Louise fought to listen to the story. She allowed her eyes to close and tried
to imagine the story in her head, but soon her mother's voice began to fade
in and out, punctuated by a loud word or snippets of an argument from the men
below.
She couldn't quite understand where she was when she struggled to open her eyes
later that night. She could hear grey, stony voices mumbling up from below and
realized that her mother had nestled down next to her with Theresa asleep between
her bosoms. Louise turned slowly and deliberately so as to not awaken anyone
next to her. On her elbows, she pulled herself toward the edge of the mattress
as deliberately as she could to peek through the floorboards at what was happening
beneath them. Five men were seated randomly throughout the lower room. Her father
clearly commanding their attention.
"That'll take months, Pete. You ready to leave your family for that?"
Peter Boggs made no indication of even having heard the comment.
"Who's in?" He asked. "If you're coming, you're coming for good,
until it's set up. I've only got a week left to get this ready. The first shipment
of weapons will be in soon. Tell me now, it's your only chance I'm giving any
of you for this."
A couple of the men shifted slightly where they were seated, but eventually,
the four other men agreed to whatever was being asked of them.
"Fine then. We'll meet in three days up Hay Flats. Bring what you'll need."
The rest of the men, recognizing this as a dismissal, bid farewell to one another and left into the inky night.
Louise crawled back to her place in the mattress. It was colder than when she left it, and she snuggled up against Jeremiah to share his warmth. The words jangled in her head, and she wondered what was in store for them.
It was a fitful night for the young girl. She forever had difficulty in sleeping when anything was going on around her, and early the next morning, an hour before daylight, she again heard voices rising from below her.
"Peter. Where are you going?"
"It's business, Mary. I may not be back for a long time. . . "Louise can help you, she can do near everything you need. I'm doing this to make it better for our family. I've found a way to make a better life for us, but you'll have to wait."
"I don't understand. Peter?" Her voice was taking on an edge of panic. "What do you expect us to do?"
"I've left enough in the bank to see you through. I told Kipp to give you what you need from the account. If you need help, Ty Gates'll see to anything else."
He shrugged on his coat with finality and turned to his wife. He saw an utterly lost expression on her face, but leaned in to kiss her briefly. "You'll be fine. I'll make all this up to you."
"Peter, what are you doing? This can't be honest. If you leave, don't come back." She said it with none of the passion or emotion of her previous utterance. It was a calm statement of fact."
"It'll be alright, Mary."
And with that, he left the house.
Mary slumped down onto the one good chair and dropped her head into her hands. She couldn't understand what had happened. The man she had married was a good man, one who seemed to be the settling-down type. He wanted children, and had courted her decently. Her own mother had approved of the match; her father had died several years before. After the birth of their first child, though, he changed. She no longer recognized the man who shared her table or bed, and she relentlessly demanded of herself what could have brought about this change. *He rarely hit her, and she decided she could put up with it for the sake of her children. She was unaware of the intermittent cuffs Louise also received when her progress was not to his liking. She had given up trying to understand her husband today. Mary Louise relented and accepted what fate had dealt her. Her husband, the father of her children was dead, and this hideous scarecrow was left in his place.
From the loft her daughter then understood what her father had been trying to prepare her for, and the weight of it fell upon her heavily. She tried to understand that now she was going to be responsible for the 'big chores' as her father called them. The hunting, dragging the animals home. She had always done it with his help. She wasn't yet strong enough to do most of the things that her father had expected, and she felt keenly that she wasn't emotionally able to do many of them either. Her family didn't have many friends, things would be up to her.
A half an hour later, Louise was able to make her way down the stairs and face her mother.
Mary did not rise, but looked solemnly at her daughter "Honey, I want you to get your dresses and the rest of your clothes, and Theresa's and Jeremiah's, and help me pack, we're going on a trip."
"Where are we going, Momma?"
"We don't need to talk about that right now, just get the things together, please," she said simply.
"Is pa going with us?" She asked innocently.
Mary knew that her daughter had heard the exchange between herself and her husband. The girl was smart, and she often listened in on things that didn't concern her; little ever escaped her. The look that crossed the woman's face betrayed this truth to Louise, and she felt ashamed.
"Do what I asked, Louise"
Louise nodded, tears coming to her eyes, "Yes, ma'am."
After packing most of her clothes and gathering those of her little brother and sister a sudden idea struck her. Louise bolted from the house, ran toward the barn, and threw her weight into the door. Her heart sank when she saw that both horse stalls were empty. She walked slowly but resolutely toward Eagle's stall. And leaned her head upon the stall gate, fighting off a sob. All of the effort she had put into trying to please her father had come to nothing. She had never been good enough, and her father didn't care about her at all. She slumped to the barn floor, and broke into a choked cry. Mary entered the barn a few minutes later and knelt in front of her sobbing child. Holding her and rocking her, Mary reassured her that she had been a very good girl, and that she was very proud of her daughter, and that she was sorry for her that the man she called a father was gone.
"Sweetie," she said, kissing the puffy cheeks of her daughter. "It's gonna be ok. I love you and Jeremiah and Theresa very much. We're going to be fine. Now, I'm going to see to your brother and sister, and you come in and I'll have breakfast going in a little while, then we'll go on our trip. Alright."
Louise forced half a smile, and nodded.
"Good girl."
Only after her mother left the barn did Louise notice a note nailed up to a post of the horse's stall. With trembling hands, she took it.
"My Louise,
I'm sorry about the horse. I needed it. I'll make it up to you someday. Take care of yourself and your Mother and brother and sister while I'm gone, I know you can do it.
Your Pa"
Later that same morning, Mary Louise packed her children and her family's most valuable belongings into a rough wagon, hitched to an aging mule and headed toward nowhere.
Louise kept the note until her wedding day when she tore it up--when she realized that true families take care of one another.
Author's note: Please, PLEASE note that I abhor any type of violence
toward women, and I firmly believe that one instance of abuse is a prediction
of further violence both toward a woman and her children and should not be tolerated
for "the children's sake" or anyone else's sake.
