[FIRST DRAFT – corrections and further edits probable]
Ida swung gently in the double swing suspended at the bend of the porch. The sweet scent of lavender soap her mother Grace had washed with that morning drifted with in from the south. Looking up, Ida waved as Grace walked up the steps to the screen door. A small spring creaked as it opened, then pulled it shut with a bang.
“Ida-bye, where’s your sister?” Grace looked down the slope she had just come up, bluegrass shimmering in the May sun. “I don’t see her out here.”
Ida pointed to the newly plowed field out back. “Said she found an arrowhead. Wanted more.”
Grace’s father, Robert McKenzie, had come to Iowa and built a simple wooden farmhouse on the fertile bluff lands above the Missouri in western Iowa. His McKenzie Farm Company grew prosperous from pear, apple and cherry orchards, and from vegetables grown in the front field, summer and winter, under a massive glass roof. The invention of refrigerated rail cars in the 1880’s brought an end to his winter season, and the front yard, even after the blue grass had grown in, still hid small fragments of glass the girls had to watch out for if they ran barefoot outside.
“And your father?” Grace asked.
Ida pointed inside. Above the porch, the massive Victorian house featured four bedrooms, each with a fireplace, and ten-foot tall ceilings. Once his farm business had taken off, Robert erected a mansion for his family and furnished it with sturdy oak and walnut furniture direct from Boston. His wife gone now, he still lived in the northeast corner room, while Ida’s father, Shirley Brooks Prouty, lived in the northwest room. Downstairs, a large parlor had been converted to his office, where the light oak sofa and chairs competed with his roll top desk and two long tables, where sat his typewriter and Grace’s sewing machine.
“And where is Weeda?” Grace wondered.
Ida’s older sister Gretchen had answered a similar question from Grace several years earlier. Just learning to talk, “Weeda” came out instead of the “Way down there” she intended, pointing down the front hill to where her grandfather was resting.
Ida knew this story, and was old enough to answer, “Way down there,” as she pointed towards the cindered road heading up from the turkey farm next door.
Grace froze, muttering, “That old fool.” Then, louder, “Stay here. No, get your father, tell him to bring his bag.”
Shirley – SB to most – had retired from his medical practice after a sojourn in Casa Grande Arizona had failed to cure his tuberculosis. The slower pace of a gentleman farmer had calmed the disease, and allowed him the leisure time to not only open a photography studio, but also dabble in pamphleteering, protesting the recent imposition of the income tax.
Ida waddled into the house, thinking of the evening before. She and Gretchen had sat giggling with Weeda on the sofa by the downstairs fireplace. He cuddled with them for a while, then said, “Girls. What’s the holiday we have next week?”
Gretchen, already in school, said, “Memorial Day.”
“And why do we celebrate Memorial Day?”
“Teacher said it’s for the soldiers who died.”
“Well, yes, that’s why it’s called ‘Memorial Day’. But I want you to remember the mothers and fathers who came here, the ones who crossed an ocean and half a continent, braved the new land. Made this place for us, so we could be – so you could be – Americans.”
Ida watched Weeda’s long white beard bobbing and swaying as he said this. When he put them down on the rug, he smelled of smoke and brandy.
Weeda filled her world with smells and and sights and words unlike anyone else in the big house. Her mother Grace felt soft and warm, her voice more song than speech. Her father sometimes growled, but mostly stayed silent when she was around. Unlike Weeda, he had no beard, and the hair on his head was slick and flat. He always wore a suit coat, even when going outside to supervise the farmhands, a scratchy suit of woolen armor to keep the world away. Weeda’s clothes, soft and wrinkled, welcomed her in to his arms.
Though the door to the parlor was always open, she knew enough at age three to knock quietly on the stub of sliding door protruding from the frame. Standing just outside SB’s sanctum, she waited.
He coughed, sighed, and put down his quill. He took off his reading glasses, wiping each lens before putting them carefully to one side before he turned around.
“Ida,” he announced. “I’m working.”
“Mama says…”
With a slight narrowing of his eyebrows, he grunted, “Mama says?”
“She’s going after Weeda down the road. She said bring your bag.”
Rolling his chair back as he stood up, he said almost so softly she couldn’t hear, “Whats that old man…” Then louder, “All right. Grab my bag, out we go”
Without waiting for her to catch up, SB strode out and down the porch steps. Ida followed, lugging the black pebbled bag with its two straps. The mysterious clanking of instruments inside shot a tremor through her. Poppa never took his bag unless someone was sick or hurt.
Grace and Weeda had paused by the elm tree shading the spot where the path to the house started up the hill from the road. He was holding his chest, his shoulders risng and falling with the effort of breathing.
“All right what is it?” SB demanded.
Grace looked from her father to her husband, eyes pleading for security. Weeda’s right hand touched his chest, then stroked down his left arm three times.
“It hurts there, Robert?”Weeda nodded, took three breaths, short and uneven, then crumpled to the ground.