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Page 16 text:
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By Ruth Meeker First Prize T HE morning was exceedingly warm, the summer had come and scarcely a b reath of wind blew across the fields where the men were working. At the house everything was quiet, A woman of about fifty years of age was scrub¬ bing the porch. Her face was lined and wrinkled, and her lips were compressed into hard lines. Finally she stopped working and, pushing her hair back, stared sourly at the golden sunshine. “Land sakes,” she muttered, “this here weather makes me so tired of workin’. Here I’ve jest done the same old work year after year for ’bout twenty years and I haven’t had a single holiday. I’m jest that tired. Hi¬ ram is so sot on gittin’ money, he can’t think of nothin’ else. I’m jest sick to death of it all. I guess maybe I’m goin’ crazy but I would like to go fishin’.” She sighed and went on with her work but her mind was elsewhere. Soon she stopped and said, “I’m an old fool I s’pose, but I have got a notion to go fishin’ and that’s jest what I’m agoin’ to do. I aint goin’ to tell Hiram ’bout it either.” A sparkle came in¬ to the woman’s eyes as she bent over her work. At noon, Hiram came wearily in to dinner. He was a tall, lanky man with a good-humored looking face. As he sat down he seemed to notice, for the first time, the lines in his wife’s face. Her eyes, too, looked dull and tired. “Mandy,” he said, “hadn’t you better drive into town or somewhere this afternoon? You’ve been lookin’ kind of peaked lately. A drive would do you good.” Mandy shook her head silent¬ ly; she couldn’t think of giving up her fishing trip. As she was tying on her bonnet, after dinner, she said again, “Mandy Harris, you’re certainly an old idiot but you’re jest bound to go fishin’. aint you? Yoiu.’d oughter be ashamed of yourself.” Nevertheless, she dug out her husband’s fishing rod (which was quite old and rotten) and started forth. When she got to the creek, the cool, fresh air, and the water gurgling lazily along, soothed her temper and she al¬ most pitied her husband laboring in the hot field. She soon ( 12 )
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Page 17 text:
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caught several fish; the excitement brought a flush to her cheeks and the dullness faded from her eyes. She pushed courageously through the brush and paid no attention to her torn dress. She finally emerged from the brush into a se¬ cluded spot to which the slum could not penetrate through the leaves of the trees. Mandv felt instinctively that there would be many fish in the pool before her. The waters were very clear and extended down to unknown depths. In this place she landed many large trout. Back in the hot field, Hiram toiled industriously. Strange to say, he too, was thinking of his life. “Here we’ve been,” he thought, workin ’ our heads off month after month and year after year and when you come to figure it all out what does it amount to after all? First we had to pay off that there mortgage and after we done that we wanted to buy that forty acre lot over there and that meant more hard work. Never any good times at all. I wish Mandy wasn’t such a nail-driver to work. She don’t like it at all if I want to do anything but hard work all the time. Work, work, work, that’s all I hear. Now, I’d give anything to go fisliin’ this afternoon. It’s jest the right sort of weather, too. I s’pose Mandy’d have a fit if I’d go. I’ve got a notion to go anyhow, that’s what I’ll do. I can sneak up to the house and get my rod and Mandy won’t see me.” Smiting the action to the word, Hiram slipped softly into the house. Long and quietly he hunted for his rod but it was of no use. At last he procured a stout willow pole and set forth. Strange to sa , he could catch hardly any fish and he knew that there were many in that creek. Mandy, meanwhile, had moved further down the creek. She had plenty of time for reflection. She considered her affair pro and con and finally became convinced that it was not wholly Hiram’s fault that they had no rest from work. Fish were scarce along here and Mandv soon wandered into the woods bordering the creek. The spell of summer was on her and a restful feeling came over her as she sat down at the foot of a huge oak. Tim birds singing in the trees, the fragrant odors of the flowers and the feeling that for’ the time being, she was free, all combined to soothe her to sleep. Hiram decided that some one had gone ahead of him and caught all the fish. Every now and then on the brush he saw pieces of calico that looked vaguely familiar though he could (13)
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