From the Relief Society Magazine, August 1966 –

Run Away Home

By Jody Shields

I don’t remember now what caused the hurt feelings. It was the summer before I started school and I had just turned six. The day was gloomy and rain dropped steadily from low-hanging, black clouds. Perhaps the dreariness of the weather was partly responsible. (Rainy days are rough when you have to stay indoors and there are five children between the ages of twelve and six.)

What I do remember is that I was absolutely certain that no one loved me and that no one wanted me anymore. So I put on my coat and stormed out of the house into the rain.

I walked along the side of the house, vowing in my heart that I would never set foot inside the door again. (Well, maybe. Long years from now I would return, a beautiful, rich princess. Like Joseph in the Bible story, I would forgive everyone for driving me out into the rain so long ago.)

I opened the gate that separated the yard from the pasture. This was hard for me to do because of my limited size and strength. While I was working on the gate, I heard Mother shout at me from the back door. She had interrupted her housework long enough to follow me.

“If you stay out in that rain until you catch a cold, I’ll punish you.”

But I was running away for good. She didn’t need to worry if I caught cold or anything. In fact, she needn’t worry about me ever again.

I walked on through the pasture, past the granary, and across the canal bridge. The path was well worn as we made at least four trips daily going to and from the barn for milking.

The gate to the barnyard was something I had not yet been able to master, so I climbed the rail fence and crossed the stackyard. When I reached the barn, I paused and leaned against its rough, gray siding. I stood there, well out of sight of the house, should anyone be searching for me through a window, and contemplated my future.

It was obvious that I had to have some place to go — and soon. My hair was already beginning to hang in wet strands against my cheeks, and I could feel rain dripping from the ends.

First thing, I must have shelter. I considered the barn, then rejected it and the granary and the calf pens, too, because they were all too close to the house. Then I remembered the little house my sister and I had built between the hills at the far side of the farm.

We five children had been herding the cows on the hills and had decided we needed something to shade us from the hot sun. The boys built a lean-to with poles which they lashed together with rope and fence wire. They covered it with leaf-filled branches and wove them in and out to make a dense canopy of shade.

We little girls had thought it was beautiful, but, with the natural contrariness of young manhood, they refused to let us inside. In fact, they sent us off to turn the cows while they basked in the shade, talking and whittling with their pocket knives.

We grumbled briefly, then Marcia said, “Let’s make our own house and leave them to herd the cows.”

“Where would we find any poles, or rope, or wire?” I wanted to know.

“Over there,” she said, pointing to a row of trees growing along the fence that separated our farm from the neighbors.
“We should be able to find everything we need,” she stated confidently.

We turned the cows and trudged back to the lean-to. “Since you won’t let us have any shade,” Marcia told the boys, “we’re going to do something about it.”

Then we circled the hills so the boys would really think we had gone and wouldn’t come and make us turn the cows anymore.

The hollow she had pointed out was almost choked with weeds and dead branches that scratched our bare legs as we searched along the tree line. We found no poles, but we did find a limb that had broken from one of the trees. It had caught in the forks several feet above the ground. The branches of the limb spread out across the ground, their leaves still green and fresh.

“We’ll use this,” Marcia announced.

We parted the branches closest to the trunk and looked around. It looked just fine to me. Of course we would need to break off some branches that hung down inside, but it was practically a ready-made house as it stood.

We set to work and soon had cleared out the excess twigs. These we wove into the remaining branches, imitating as nearly as we could the way we had seen our brothers weave their roof.

We had to gather a few branches from the other trees to finish it. That was hard work for two little girls without even a knife; but at last our shelter was finished. More, I think, as a result of exhaustion than from actually having assumed the status of lean-to. But, at least, it was shady, and it was ours. We spent the rest of the afternoon there, talking and dreaming about when we would be grown up, while magpies chattered and screeched above our heads.

Thinking of the little house now, with the rain soaking through my old coat, I decided it would be just the place to go while I plotted my next move.

I jumped down from the top rail and walked along the side of the pond. I passed the calf pens and tool sheds and walked across the end of the calf pasture to the first hill. This was the highest hill on a farm that was about all hills and hollows dotted with four ponds. There were a few acres of tillable land on the place.

At the top of the hill, I paused and looked as far as I could see in every direction. I recalled a conversation Wayne had started last school year about a man named Columbus proving that the world was round. I had asked if he meant round like a pancake and he had said, “No, round like a ball.”

Now, standing on this highest hill, with my world spread out before me, everything looked basically flat. There stood the mountains far away in the distant purple west, and behind me the Wasatch Range rose towering in the east. Nothing that I could see indicated any sloping sides like a ball. It seemed to me those big old mountains would slide off if they were perched on the side of a ball, so I concluded as I walked down the other side of the hill that he must have been mixed up. He probably meant round like a pancake, after all.

I would remember to ask my teacher about it when I went to school this fall. Then I realized that I probably wouldn’t be able to go to school, having run away from home and all.

That was what my mother would have called “Cutting off my nose to spite my face.” I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that, but thinking of her made me almost feel sad that I had run away for good. “She’ll probably miss me,” I told myself.

My coat caught on the barbs as I climbed through the fence to the hay field. I tore it loose and clapped my hand over my mouth as I thought of what Mom would say when she saw the holes that were made.

I knew Father would punish me if I crossed through his lucerne this near to mowing time, so I skirted the hay field to reach the irrigation ditch that ran along the foot of the next hill.

There I had to decide if I should try to jump the ditch or follow it to where a plank bridge crossed it. I was beginning to feel rather cold, so decided to jump. There was just a little water in the bottom, but it was a deep ditch and its sides were steep. I half slid, half fell into the water.

The water was cold and it soaked me through. I stood up carefully, half fearing that I had broken an arm or leg, or something. I climbed up the bank, slipping once or twice in the soft mud.

Just over the hill and across the hollow and I would be “home.” Thinking of the cozy, green-thatched little house revived my spirits and I trudged on up the hill.

From the top I could see the hollow and the trees, and I tried to pick out the one where my run-away home nestled at the bottom of its trunk.

Being this near, I began to think about other things which I would need. My wet clothes were growing increasingly uncomfortable, and I began to realize I would need more to wear than what I had on.

I planned to wait until dark. After everyone had gone to sleep I would sneak back to the house and get the rest of my clothes. I might even get a box to keep them in. And food. I would have to have food. I wouldn’t take much, though. I knew we weren’t very rich and Mom couldn’t spare much food to feed a little runaway child. Just some crackers and a jar of jelly, I decided, as I reached the weed-filled hollow.

I was tired and my legs were beginning to ache with the cold. I began to chant, “Not much farther . . . We’re almost there . . . Not much farther . . . We’re almost there,” as mother often had us do, when we got tired walking to Sunday School.

I reached the broken branch lean-to and found, to my dismay, that the leaves were withered

and dead. Most of the branches had sagged or caved to the ground. Inside was a rubble of dead leaves and twigs. I set right to work, clearing out the inside and removing all the dead and wilted branches and leaves.

Then I began to tear new branches from other trees to mend the roof. It was harder working by myself and not nearly as much fun. I began to wish I had asked Marcia to run away with me. It wouldn’t be nearly as lonesome out here if she were along.

I was tired and cold, and my arms and legs were aching so I sat down inside my hut to rest. It was then I began to think of some of the things I hadn’t considered before. Like the coyotes we heard howling on the hills after dark, and the dog packs daddy and the boys talked about that roamed the fields at night.

“In a pack like that,” daddy had once said, “those dogs will do almost anything.” I shivered, wondering if they would eat little hermit girls.

I remembered the mosquitoes. We had slept out in the back yard one night when it was too hot inside and had about been eaten up with bites. Daddy said they breed in the ponds and there was a pond right over the hill.

Wayne had said one night when he was camping with the scouts, he woke up and heard two of them talking. One said, “Shall we eat him here or take him home with us?*’ and the other had replied, “Let’s eat him here. If we take him home, the big ones will take him away from us.”

We had all laughed, knowing it was a joke, but somehow, thinking about it now, it didn’t seem funny.

Before I quite realized what I was doing, and without actually deciding to do it, I found myself returning along the trail I had taken earlier. Only this time I went across the planks instead of through the ditch; and I went through the hay field instead of around it; and I crawled under the barbed wire fence instead of through it. I ran across the calf pasture to the barnyard. There, in the shelter of the tool shed, was my brother Fred, waiting for me.

”Where have you been?” he asked.

”Out walking,” I answered, trying to sound casual, and not at all cold.

“Oh, sure, well. Mom is mad at you.”

That scared me. I guessed maybe I had been right in the first place. She really didn’t want me, after all. I mean … if she was just mad and not at all worried. . . .

“Then I won’t go in.” I shrugged, trying not to show how I felt.

“You want me to tell her that?” he asked, sounding as if he didn’t care, either.

“No!” I exclaimed “Just tell her you didn’t even see me.”

He shrugged and started back to the house. I leaned against the wall of the shed and thought about drowning myself in the pond or canal. Instead, I started to follow Fred. I stayed what I felt to be a safe distance behind. I didn’t know if he would tell on me and yet in a way, I wished he would. If I could have thought of a way to go in and still save face, I would have followed him right into the house. But, I was stuck. I crawled into a sheltered place between the chicken coop and the granary to wait and think.

It wasn’t long before I heard the door slam, and around the comer of the house came mother. She was buttoning her coat as she walked and her head was bare. That was unusual, because Mom never went out into the rain without a scarf.

My heart began to beat faster. I was afraid she was coming after me, but as she drew nearer, I could see the worry lines creasing her forehead. I started to call out to her, then some impulse stopped me. She walked right past me toward the barnyard.

I crept along the side of the granary until I could see her again. I watched her walk along the canal bank outside the barnyard fence toward the tool shed.

So, he did tell on me, I thought. But, then, instead of stopping by the calf pens or at the tool shed, she went on across the pasture.

I watched her as she moved rapidly across the wet grass and up the sage-covered hill. I watched her until she was out of sight and then watched her in my mind as she climbed the barbed wire fence. I saw her as she skirted the hayfield, followed the ditch, crossed the plank bridge, climbed over the other hills. I could see her searching the hollows and around the reed-choked pond. In my mind, I could see her as she returned across the farm that wasn’t much good for farming, but was a good place to rear children.

When I did see her again, her head was bowed and her shoulders drooped tiredly. I wished and wished that I had called out and had taken a scolding or whatever she might have done to punish me.

I thought of her hair getting wet and stringy and of her old coat, warn and threadbare, and not keeping out the cold. I knew, then, that no matter what else, I loved her. I wanted to be good to her and never to hurt her or cause her discomfort or worry again.

Suddenly, I realized what I should have known all along . . . what I should never have doubted. My mother loved me. I knew, also, that for the rest of my life, no matter if I couldn’t always agree with what she said, or things she did, we would always have this love between us.

I left my hiding place and walked slowly out to meet her.