2018.08.21

It's Tuesday.

Firelight flickered in the dusky house and Ma was getting supper, but Laura and Mary silently watched from the window. They saw the colors fade from everything. The lands was shadowy and the sky was clear, pale gray. All the time that sound came from the creek bottoms, louder and louder, faster and faster. And Laura’s heat beat faster and louder. How she shouted when she heard the wagon! She ran to the door and jumped up and down, but she couldn’t unbar it. Ma wouldn’t let her go out.  Ma went out, to help Pa bring in the bundles. He came in with his arms full, and Laura and Mary clung to his sleeves and jumped on his feet. Pa laughed his jolly big laugh. He laughed to ask them not to upset him. And he asked them what they thought he was and if he was a tree to climb. He dropped the bundles on the table, he hugged Laura in a big bear hug, and tossed her and hugged her again. Then he hugged Mary snugly in his other arm. Laura asked him to listen to the Indians and asked him why they were making that funny noise. Pa answered that they were having some kind of jamboree. He told them that he had heard them when he had crossed the creek bottoms. Then he went out to unhitch the horses and bring in the rest of bundles. He had got the plow; he left it in the stable, but he brought all the seeds into the house for safety. He had sugar, not any white sugar this time, but brown. White sugar cost too much. But he had brought a little white flour. There were cornmeal and salt and coffee and all the seeds they needed. Pa had even got seed potatoes. Laura wished they might eat the potatoes but they must be saved to plant. Then Pa’s face beamed and he opened a small paper sack. It was full of crackers. He set it on the table, and he unwrapped and set beside it a glass jar full of little green cucumber pickles.