University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 1991 Four days in blue earth David F. Johnson The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Johnson, David F., "Four days in blue earth" (1991). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 2392. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/2392 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Maureen and Mike MANSFIELD LIBRARY Copying allowed as provided under provisions of the Fair Use Section of the U.S. COPYRIGHT LAW, 1976. Any copying for commercial purposes or financial gain may be undertaken only with the author's written consent. UniversityMontana of Four Days in Blue Earth by David F. Johnson B.A., Reed College, 1984 Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts University of Montana 1991 Approved by: Chairman, Board of examiners Dean, Graduate School UMI Number: EP33909 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent on the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI' DisMftaiien Publishing UMI EP33909 Copyright 2012 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Table of Contents Mrs. Rutledge 1 Earl Tuggle 40 Pia 79 Jesse 116 Mrs. Rutledge The first thing would be her mother's hand, chapped and gentle, shaking her awake in time to a low and still young voice in song: Maria, Maria, rise and shine, last one up gets a paddled behind. Maria's younger sisters Elsie and Alice stir slightly as Maria slides from under the quilt to the feel of the cool hardpacked floor underfoot, the swept dirt warmer than the air, to the weight of her everyday dress over her head and shoulders. She sees Jarred, the youngest, still in his crib. She sees her father in his bed at the far end of the cabin's single room. He is caught in lamplight, his mouth soft and open in the round astonishment of sleep. Her mother would hand her the pail. Hot water wash for the rubbery fingers of the jersey's udder. Then the sound of steaming milk hitting the metal bucket. The smell of heat and fat in raw milk. The warm cowhide against Maria's forehead tempting sleep again. At the barn door the dawn the color of blood, as if day might come to the world heart first. 2 Later her father tries to sneak fresh top cream and foam into his bowl of coffee. Mother says without turning from the smoked smell of home-raised bacon and eggs: Eli Appleman, you'll leave some for my butter or pay a mean piper. Look there, Maria says. Outside through the window the sky wakes rust colored to the east and cobalt in the west, and everywhere swallows dark and quick in s ilhouette. Eighty years later Maria Appleman Rutledge opened her eyes and told herself, that's how light came to the Blue River country in those days. She looked to her window. That's the way light still comes. She sat up, and her bare feet brushed the worn wood floor. The world is an old place. She touched her face, which was softer now than on her wedding day. She turned to say something about the wedding to Abe, but his bed stood eleven years empty and dark in the corner. Bowing her head she began her day then, praying for her sons and daughters and their sons and daughters, and theirs, present and future. She prayed for the souls of her dead husband, and father, and even her mother, though in her opinion her mother really needed no such intercession. She prayed most and hardest for the baby she'd lost, a baby born and dead without any name more than sixty years ago. Finally she prayed for this place and day and then was done. 3 She turned on the bedside light and took her prescriptions. There were five medicine pills, but two she threw out. She told that to the Health Service doctor, a young man obviously of good people and very polite to her until he sat down next to her in the otherwise empty waiting room and spoke slowly. "Mrs. Rutledge. You understand I wouldn't prescribe these if they weren't the best medicine to help you?" "Help me what? Live longer?" He blinked. "Yes ma'am." "Well, you'll have to do better than that." "You don't want to live longer?" Mrs. Rutledge saw this was going to be more difficult than she'd thought. She waited a moment, watching her own hands still in her lap, then said, "No." "Excuse me. No which?" "Why?" "Why what, Mrs. Rutledge?" "Why d'ye ask, and no and why both." The doctor looked at her eyes. "Follow my finger if you would for a second." He moved it back and forth. "Are you feeling okay?" She slapped his hand away from her face. "Never better. Modern medicine has helped me so much." The young man sighed. "That's our problem, Mrs. Rutledge. We can't help you if you don't take your medicine." 4 "You can't help me til you answer m'question. Why?" "Mrs. Rutledge, if it's going to be like this, I don't see the point of continuing our discussion, do you? Should I call your son and talk with him instead?" "Young man. You know very well we could keep talking just as we are." "But it's not really getting us anywhere, is it?" "You mean you choose to stop talking when talking isn't doing you any good?" "Mrs. Rutledge--" "Yes or no will do, Tommy Harmon." "I'll call your son and have him pick you up." "You'll do no such thing, young man. Never threaten a person with her own blood if ye ever hope t'live right. You expect me to answer to you but never you to me. We're not even talkin whether that's doctrin'. We're talkin' whether that's a right way t' be. What d'ye think?" "All right. I choose not to carry on pointless conversations. Is that better?" "You bet. Means you believe you have free will. Now then. You think it's just you, or everybody has free will?" "Okay, but--" "Mind the pan you're cookin in and not the ones on the wall. You believe other people have free will?" "I guess." 5 "You guess. Listen doctor: I had a young man in 1917 and they took him in '18 and he died in France. For two months after I got letters from a dead man. So I married a better man I didn't at first love, for which I hope to be forgiven. Bore him children in 1921, '22, '24, and '25, the last born dead. Lost my oldest in '41, my husband in '77. I'm eighty-seven years old and on good days I can remember things. But on days I take your pills, I vomit instead. Now, I don't see as that does me any good. Memory is how you know you're not other people. I got no time and no reason and no desire or right, even, to lose myself in any way but by dying." "All right." He was looking at his shoes. "But there are other treatments." He went to his desk and began to write a new prescription. "Why didn't you just tell me about the vomitting in the first place?" "Maybe I'm senile." He smiled and gave her the prescription. "Try this. If you have trouble with it, let me know. If I have reason to believe you don't voluntarily go through with treatment, it would be my duty to see that someone helped you remember. That's if I have reason to believe it. Okay?" She got up to leave. "If you haven't yet, Mrs. Rutledge, you ought to think about arranging things with your family." 6 "I expect." She reached out her hand and rolled it palm down so two of her pills dropped into her bedroom wastebasket. From the corner of the room came a loud snort, and Bones, Mrs. Rutledge's English Bulldog, stepped out of his cutaway cardboard box bed, stretched, and sat before her. She scratched his ears. Bones wasn't the only thing Abe had bought for her, and wasn't as bad as the underground sprinkler system or the trip to California or the time he got her shares in a fake beaver farm for Christmas. The dog weighed eighty-five pounds and his head was bigger around than his shoulder was high. He was fat and happy, two characteristics which rendered him worthless for any work or purpose Mrs.