Jerusha Spends the Night

By Hazel K. Todd

(previous chapter)

Chapter 2

Synopsis: Jerusha has been invited by the Wilsons’ young son Dennis to spend the night when her car breaks down near their home in Utah. She finds the home in charge of the young teen-aged daughter since the death of the mother. There are Paul (the father), Dennis, Suzey, Joe, the eldest who resents Jerusha’s presence from the first moment, and little Amy who will not associate with anyone outside the family.

Pancakes seemed to be a long neglected treat at the Wilson breakfast table. Jerusha was barely able to keep up with the rapidly disappearing hot goodies. She naturally left her own plate empty trying to keep the others’ filled. She sensed this was of concern to Paul, but she flashed him a smile. “In a few minutes my turn will come,” she assured him.

“These are sure good,” Dennis said, pouring syrup on his seventh. “Why don’t you stay with us a week, Jerusha? Suzey never makes pancakes.”

Joe spoke up quickly. “Don’t be silly, Den. I’m sure our guest needs to be on her way wherever she’s going.”

“But she’s not going anywhere,” Dennis insisted. “She told me she lived two thousand miles away, and she was tired of being there. Anyway, her car’s worn out. We pushed it down in the sunflowers.”

Joe’s eyes flashed. “Oh, why don’t you cool it, Den!”

“Never mind, Joe,” Mr. Wilson broke in, looking strangely at the guest. “Let’s see what Jerusha has to say.” He put down his fork, with his eyes steadfastly on her face – a kind of peculiarly solicitous look. “We don’t have much to offer, and we don’t expect you to work all the time, but we’d like to have you stay on with us for a while.”

“Why, thank you, Mr. Wilson,” Jerusha said, smiling and sitting down in front of her plate. “I’ll be right happy to.”

Through the corner of her eye she caught the glimpse of a scowl on Joe’s face, but he got up and left the table, and at the same time another wheel began turning in her mental machine.

So the week passed, and nobody said anything about Jerusha’s leaving. She and Suzey cleaned the junk out of the small back room that had been used for storage, hung up some pink striped curtains at the window and moved in her suitcase. She set Dennis to painting up the old iron bedstead leaning in the corner, and Paul brought home a set of new springs and a mattress.

“There,” she said, eyeing the new quarters with satisfaction. “It’s almost too elegant for an old highway tramp. When I braid a rug for the floor, you’ll all want to trade with me.”

The second week passed, and to most of the Wilsons it had already begun to seem as though there were only two times to remember, once when there was a real wife and mother, and once when there was Jerusha. It was just a matter of course when the holes disappeared in the knees of Dennis’s overalls and neat patches took their places, and the safety pins became substituted on Amy’s playsuit for a pair of bunny rabbit buttons. Suzey came out wearing a new dress stitched from some cloth Jerusha found in a drawer.

Things began to happen to the house, too. No one knew for sure when the curtains in the living room window took on new life, but one day as Paul drove up the lane on his way home from town, he suddenly realized they were fresh and alive. He drove into the yard and sat for a minute looking. Then he got out of the car and started to the house. It was then he saw Jerusha and Dennis fussing with the ragged flowers along the fence. Jerusha was decked out in an old slat sunbonnet and one of his worn-out shirts she must have found in a closet. It was big enough to put two Jerushas in. She had a spade and was going after the earth in dead earnest.

“I ought to have my camera,” Paul laughed. “I’ll bet I could win a prize with your picture.”

Jerusha stuck the spade into the ground and pushed the bonnet back on her neck. The damp gray curls twisted about her face like corkscrews. “Well,” she said, quite unembarrassed at her appearance, “these bachelor’s-buttons needed some unbuttoning, and this was the best I could find to keep the sun from drying me up completely.”

His face grew suddenly sober. “I think you look wonderful, Jerusha – just like the window curtains. They look wonderful, too.”

She turned and eyed the window. “I guess they do look a little fresher, don’t they?”

“Everything is better around here since you came. I – I don’t know how to thank you.” He paused and gazed at her, his fine masculine features filled with emotion. “I guess I’ve been afraid to mention it to you before for fear that you might tell me you were leaving.”

“Never said anything about leaving,” Jerusha said casually.

A quick light leaped into his eyes. he cleared his throat. “Do – do you mean we could make some sort of arrangement for you to stay on? Maybe I couldn’t compete with wages where you came from, but I’m sure I could arrange for a comfortable …”

She stopped him with a wave of her hand. “You ought to know by the looks of me I’m not a money-making institution,” she said. “Just enough to buy me a yard or two of cloth for an apron once in a while and a few hairpins to keep my hair out of my eyes.” She looked out across the fields. “I like this country air. Maybe it’s even better than West Virginia’s.” Then her eyes traveled up his stature to his face. “And I’ll be hanged if I don’t like you, too, son.”

He stood a moment staring mutely down at her. “It’s been a long time,” he said, “since I had a mother to call me that.”

Dennis had been sitting on the ground digging in the dirt with a stick. Skeeter was lying nearby roasting in the sun, and Dennis kept piling dirt onto the dog to watch him shake it off. Now he looked up at Jerusha excitedly. “You mean you’re going to stay and live with us?” he asked exuberantly.

“Why, of course I am,” Jerusha said. “Here, shake hands with your new foreman.” They shook hands, and she added, with a wink, “So you’d better get your dandelion digger oiled up!”

“Yeow!” Dennis shouted, “golly, goody!” and he made three somersaults across the flower patch.

It was ironical that she should look up and see Joe standing by the corner of the house just at that moment. He was staring fixedly, his forehead creased into a scowl, but, as she looked, he turned and disappeared around the house.

“What about Joe?” she asked, with her hand on Skeeter rubbing against her legs.

Paul looked at her with a quiet smile. “Joe has a much nicer side you haven’t met. You’ll think of something,” he said.

For a minute she was silent, then she spoke musingly, “Maybe.” She patted the dog’s head. “But he’s a tough one.” Then she walked over and picked up the pliers she had waiting under a rosebush. She held them out to him. “Don’t you think that gate’s getting tired leaning on one foot?” she asked. “And after that, Dennis needs his hair clipped. It’s just about long enough to hang a cat with.”

Paul smiled again and took the pliers. “Guess I just needed you to bring it to my attention. I’ll get right at them both.” And he started toward the gate.

Jerusha looked toward the corner where Joe had disappeared. “Now, if I could just get Joe to paint the house and fence,” she said half aloud, “maybe …”

The first Sunday had been a new experience for Jerusha. She had never found a church that interested her enough to do much about it, even though she had attended several and even had been affiliated with one for a short time. But when the family showed signs that Sunday was a special day, she pricked up her ears to see what she could do to help. She heard Paul and Joe in a serious discussion. It seemed Joe had some excuse for not going to church which Paul was not willing to accept. Then she saw Joe with the ironing board up in the kitchen. He was doing a white shirt.

“I’d be glad to iron that, if you’d like me to,” Jerusha said impulsively and immediately wished she hadn’t offered, for Joe was not about to let her iron his shirt any more than he was about to let her break down his wall any other way.

“No, thanks,” he said crisply, “I’ll do all right by myself.”

Jerusha let the rebuff slide off as though he’d just given her a fine compliment, and turned to more fruitful fields. Suzey was fussing with a dress in the living room and looked very frustrated. Jerusha happened over and sat down beside her. “Zippers are miserable things,” she said, with her eyes on the metal contraption Suzey was working on with a pair of pliers.

The girl dropped the dress dejectedly. “I just can’t fix it,” she said, almost in tears, “and I have to have it to wear to Sunday School.”

Jerusha picked up the dress and looked at it critically. “Oh,” she said enthusiastically, “it’s still in workable order. You hold it and give me the pliers. We’ll have it sliding like it had never thought of getting stuck.”

So, with a few tugs in the right place, the zipper glided up and down as if it were charmed. Suzey gave Jerusha a grateful smile. “Thank you,” she said. But Jerusha was momentarily oblivious to the gratitude. She was appraising the long-lashed brown eyes, the chestnut hair, and the gangly legs for a certain colored new dress that would do wonders for a fast-growing young lady.

Then Paul came through the house spruced up in a suit and tie. He paused, standing there tall and comely. He’s right handsome, she said to herself, still fit for the races.

“Joe and I are going to priesthood meeting,” he said to Jerusha. “I’ll be back for the family in about an hour. We’d be glad to have you go with us.”

Jerusha looked at him curiously. “Might as well,” she said. Then, as he started to the door, she stopped him. “Just which church is this I’m about to be initiated into? I’ve tried several, you know. Maybe yours is different.”

He smiled. “Yes,” he said, “I think you will find ours is different. We’re Mormons.”

She looked at him shrewdly. “I should have known this was Mormon country,” she said, and went to see what she had to wear that would be fitting for a church where you prayed for broken-down cars and a house guest that barged into your home as a highway tramp.

She emerged presently, her trim little person clad in a plain dark suit, a little outmoded but neat, and her pancake hat. Amy, dressed in a ruffly hand-me-down probably from some neighbor, as it was too big, was sitting on the stool while Suzey brushed her shining curls.

Jerusha caught her breath, an impulsive desire in her to get her hands in the glistening luster. “Oh, please let me do it!” she exclaimed.

But Amy drew away, and Suzey looked at Jerusha apologetically. “She just won’t let anybody but us be around her.”

“Just a slippery little fairy elf,” the older woman smiled musingly, “but some day I’ll catch her.”

Jerusha came home from Sunday School, her unruffled religious inclinations vaguely disturbed. She hadn’t expected to find some deep-seated emotion inside her behaving in such a manner. True, there was a special warm atmosphere of friendliness, but there was something else, too. When Paul asked her later how she had enjoyed the services, she eyed him strangely and remarked, “Let me think about that one a while before I answer.”

And now there had been two Sundays of meetings, and she found herself looking forward to the next one. Also, some good soul had invited her to another affair where you made quilts and one thing or another – “homemaking meeting,” she called it. She had even offered to pick her up on Tuesday morning to spend the day. Jerusha had quickly agreed.

But Tuesday morning came along with some unforeseen events.

“I’m going to homemaking meeting with a Mrs. Johnson,” Jerusha told Suzey while they got breakfast on the table. “I’m sure you can make out all right again. There’s pie left. Your father says there is some green corn ready that you could get Dennis to bring in, and maybe you’d like to cook some hamburgers.”

Suzey was very willing. To get dinner for a day now and then was quite different from having to do it every day with no time to spend with friends or on other youthful pastimes.

Before Paul left for the field, Jerusha had heard him telling Dennis to put the new calf in the pasture. “I think it is too young to give much trouble,” he said, “but if you wait a day or two until he finds what his legs are for, he’ll run away from you.” Dennis was confiscating crumbs from the kitchen table for the birdhouse he had finished last Primary day and nailed in the sprawling willow tree at the back of the house. “Sure,” he said, “I’ll twist its tail if it tries to get away. If you do that, they can’t get away from you.”

What an interesting new life! Jerusha thought – calves and birdhouses and homemaking meetings. “I saved some corn bread for your birdhouse,” she said, taking a paper bag out from under the sink a little later. “Birds ought to like that.”

“Golly, thanks, Jerusha,” Dennis said with pleasureful eyes on the bag. “I wonder if it’ll be a robin or a wren or just a plain old sparrow that lives in my house.”

“I’ll bet all the birds in the neighborhood have a fight over it, and you have to hire a lawyer,” Jerusha said, as Dennis took the sack and started to the door. “Don’t get so excited about the lease on your property you forget about the calf.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I’d better do it right now, ’fore I forget.” He set the sack down and started to the barn.

She had just decked herself out in a white blouse and a straight gray skirt and was pinning hairpins into her hair, when she heard a hubbub outside. Gazing through the window, she chuckled in amusement to see Dennis clinging to the tail of the red and white calf as it raced up and down along the pasture fence. “Looks to me as if it already knows what its legs are for,” she said to nobody in particular. “I’d better see if I can help. Four hands on a tail ought to be better than two.”

But only a mere ninety-eight pounds of inexperienced woman didn’t seem to amount to much to a new calf that had just discovered the power in a set of fresh legs. Through some maneuvering, she did manage to grab hold, but only to find herself suddenly jerked off her feet into the weeds and dirt, wet from the water seeping under the pasture fence. After floundering about on the slipper grass and weeds, she managed to sit up just in time to see the calf, with Dennis still intact, dart through the gate amid loud bellowing from the calf and equally loud whoops from the tail twister.

“Well, hurrah for you,” Jerusha said dryly as Dennis let go of the tail and grabbed the gate quickly before the racing young bovine made his returning lap around the pasture.

“I got him!” Dennis exclaimed triumphantly, oblivious to her plight as she extricated herself from the earth and stood scooping the weeds and mud from her clothes.

“Golly, you’re all messed up, Jerusha. How you going to homemaking meeting?”

“Now that’s a good question,” she remarked, as the car drove up and stopped by the newly repaired gate.

“I’m so glad to have you go with me,” Mrs. Johnson called, getting out of the car, and then she stopped short as she beheld her disheveled guest.

“Nothing serious,” Jerusha hurried to explain. “I just wasn’t as tough as I thought I was. Couldn’t even hang onto a calf’s tail. If you’ll just wait a minute, I’ll see if I can find something else to wear.”

Homemaking meeting turned out to be most interesting. Jerusha had never quilted before, but she had done a great deal of other sewing, so that she mastered the technique quickly, and found it very delightful. There was such a warm friendly feeling around the quilt, she found herself entering freely into the conversation. She even gave a vivid description of her morning’s escapade with Dennis and the calf, which brought peals of laughter.

On the way home Jerusha asked abruptly, “How is it Paul Wilson never got himself a housekeeper before?”