THE NIGHT BEFORE I LEFT, I TOLD KATIE I’D STAY to help get the cows milked before leaving in the morning. But she said she wanted to try to do it all herself. She might have to learn sometime, she said, and she wanted to see if she could do it. At first I’d had my doubts. But then I realized she was probably right. The more she could do for herself, the better, in case someday something happened to me.
After I left the next morning, Katie had gone to the barn first thing to get started. It took her a lot longer than it did me, two hours to get them all milked. But she did it, and I think she was proud of herself.
Then she opened the gate and led the cows out onto the road and into the pasture where we were taking them for grazing. Once cows learn a routine of doing something, they keep doing it over and over. Those cows knew to follow along right behind her out to whichever of the grazing pastures she led them. When they were in the field, she closed the gate behind them and walked back to the house. I can just imagine that she had a smile on her face too. She was all alone at Rosewood—well, Emma was still back in the house, but alone without me—and she was taking care of things!
She said she was already a little tired from the milking. So she took off her milking boots and went into the kitchen to have some breakfast bread and milk. She built a fire in the cook stove, then boiled some water and made a batch of corn mush for herself and Emma, who was up with William by then.
After they had cleaned William up and Emma had fed him and eaten her own breakfast, Katie then set about the morning’s chores that she and I usually did ourselves. She went back out to the barn, got oats for the horses, then brought water in a bucket to mix with the dried oats and corn to make mush in the pig trough. Stirring up the pig mush was always hard. The pigs were always so anxious, snorting and crowding around and sticking their snouts in and even stepping in the trough while you were trying to mix it up, so you couldn’t get it all stirred before they were all over the place making a terrible mess of it. Sometimes you had to rap them over the head or in the nose to make them get back. They’d squeal and make such a fuss but would come right back and start all over. I can’t hardly imagine how Katie managed it, but she did.
After that she brought several loads of firewood and kindling into the kitchen, collected the eggs from the chicken coop, then cleaned up her breakfast things. She wasn’t going to do any butter churning or any of the bigger things we had to do regularly when I was gone. And so that was about all there was for her to do for a while in the way of morning chores.
Once all that was done she started to get a little lonely, and then a little scared. She said it wasn’t the same with me gone. Even though Emma was there, it was like being alone, because she knew if anything happened she’d have to take care of it herself. And that was her main worry—what to do if someone came. But there wasn’t any way to know if someone would, or how to plan for it. She’d already decided that if somebody came that she knew, like Mrs. Hammond or Mr. Thurston or the iceman or somebody like that, then she would just put Emma in the cellar and hide herself until they went away, then answer questions later. But she wanted to have a fire burning and laundry on the line so everything would look normal, just like we’d planned.
If people she didn’t know came, she didn’t know what she’d do.
But nobody came and the day wore on. She tried to keep herself busy, and with Emma following her about fretting and talking, it wasn’t too hard. But by early afternoon she was starting to look down the road quite a bit, hoping she’d see me coming. When I still hadn’t come by late afternoon, she was getting nervous. But there wasn’t anything she could do about it. So she went out and led the cows back home again and took care of the evening milking.
By the time that was over, she was really tired and getting more and more worried about why I wasn’t back. She washed up and fixed herself and Emma something to eat, though she said she hardly had enough energy to, then played the piano to try to cheer herself up.
She said it didn’t work. Even with Emma chattering away, it just reminded her all the more that I wasn’t there.
Finally it started to get dark. And I still hadn’t come home. She didn’t have any choice in the end but to get Emma and William settled for the night, though William wouldn’t sleep all the way till morning, and then get ready for bed herself. She sat down in a chair and kept listening for sounds, hoping she’d hear the horse and me. But she didn’t, and the crickets and other night sounds made the waiting all the worse.
Finally she dozed off, then woke up again.
Since I still wasn’t back, she got under her blankets and went to bed for real. Since she was still sleepy from just waking up, it made it easier not to worry, though she kept the kerosene lamp burning bright all night so she wouldn’t be afraid of being alone in the dark.