Unsettled Chapter 16: "Saturday Night"

The ride home the night mom put the automatic transmission in reverse at 50 MPH was the kind of quiet that makes you think twice before speaking. First of all, we were exhausted after all it took to sink the sixth crock. It was in many ways the most fatiguing day since we'd begun digging the well--even harder than the days we dug through clay. Partly because it came so near the end of being done. Projects that take nearly two months to do, and yet on the surface look pretty much the same each week, require a special kind of strength and perseverance, and about the time of the sixth crock this was true.

For me the day had begun with delivering the Detroit News, while Mom baked a banana cake. But from sunrise ‘til sunset, Dad and Paul and Dave had been digging and pulling and turning hundreds of buckets of wet dirt. Then there was that man who came through the woods and scoffed, “Tell your ol’ man he’s wasting his time—salt water’s all he’s gunna get.” Then Mom in the barn with her Bible verses about water. Then Dad pulling that tire from the bend in the creek. Then the avalanche inside the well and Dad screaming for us to pull him out. Dave’s torn and bleeding callus on his palm. Knowing we'd have to pull all that pea gravel out one bucket at a time the next Saturday. And then...after that long day... Mom drove slowly down the drive with the flashers on. Ruined transmission. Dad too exhausted to prolong his anger. Mom’s arms bleeding from her nervous habit of picking...

It had been quite a day and, as I said, the ride home was understandably quiet. A few miles down 23 Mile Road, Mom mumbled, “This is where it happened,” then shrugged as if to say but who wants to talk about it. And no one did.

Supper that night was left-over coleslaw and baked frozen fish sticks. They were crumby—literally crumby. The cookie sheet was covered in orange crumbs that fell from the long limp rectangles of fish-like “bars” that we gobbled up as if they were good. We slicked down the coleslaw, too. It was Grandma Spencer’s recipe and had a shelf life of three or four weeks. Lots of vinegar. Good stuff.

And then, starting with Dad, one by one, we took quick baths and got ready for bed. I’m not sure that I’ve mentioned it before but Dad thought showers were a waste of water. He preferred that we all took baths instead. [Eventually, showers became common and baths a rare treat.]

When we were younger, the three of us boys would get in the tub together, but we had outgrown that years before and begun taking baths--Saturday night baths anyway--in order from oldest to youngest, which meant I was always the last one to get in the tub. By then, the tub had more rings than Saturn and some evidence of Uranus, as I used to tell my brother Dave. [Sorry, Ladies, but "boy humor" is just different than "girl humor."]

The bathtub rings and the fact that the hot water was only warm by the time I was filling the tub were the down side of bathing last, but the upside was I could stay in as long as I wanted.

I was fourteen but still short enough to lie outstretched from head to heel against the bottom of the tub with only my face above the surface of the water. Perfectly still so no ripple would reach my slightly open mouth, I'd sometimes rest like that for ten or fifteen minutes, suspended in time and space, lost in thoughts of who knows what, reliving the day or looking ahead to what the coming week might hold. About the time the water started getting cold, I knew I was clean.

Typically, by the time I got out of the tub, everyone else but Mom was in bed. Mom was usually still rattling around in the kitchen or digging through clothes in the laundry room to make sure we all had something to wear to church the next morning or cleaning the tub to her satisfaction. Seems always when the night was otherwise quiet, Mom was still looking for places to put the loose ends of her day. I don't recall a time when she was not the shadow who turned out the last light and whispered "G'night" at each door.