CHAPTER SIX
The fallow fields flowed west, right up to Chilton’s town boundary then suddenly stopped at a row of modest two bedroom homes that defined the fringe of town. Connie and Carl quickly dropped their speed to a crawl, the sun still in their eyes but lower now, just off the tree tops, as they pulled into town, turned right on Park Street, and then drove a few blocks to Main Street. They coasted two more blocks to get to Ruby and Henry’s home on the left, where Connie had grown up. Carl made a u-turn right after he passed the house and pulled up to the curb, centering the car on the walkway leading to the front door of the house.
Ruby was Connie’s mom, a cherubic being who was loved by everyone. Henry had married Ruby a year after Connie’s father had died in 1926 from a heart attack one morning while he was changing a tire on his 1925 Ford Model T Torpedo. His name was John Ortlieb. Ruby found him collapsed and surely dead, only a few minutes after she had seen him from the kitchen window, walking around the car, admiring the curved fenders and a hood that was longer than the standard Model T. This four-door convertible was a step above most of Chilton’s cars, and John Ortlieb was the envy of his friends with his ragtop, but moments later all envy disappeared. Nobody would want to be in his shoes again.
Ruby, a strong woman who had seen a lot in life, could barely hold herself together long enough to ask the neighbors to carry him into the house and set him on his bed. Father O’Reilly from St. Mary’s was summoned to comfort her while they waited for the truck from Keller Mortuary. Connie was only five years old at the time, seven years younger than her sister, Virginia. Both girls knelt at his bedside, one on each side of Ruby, with Connie close to the foot of the bed. Her mama was kneeling, with tears pouring down her face, her elbows on the bed, both hands on John’s arm, and a rosary intertwined in the trembling fingers of both hands.
Connie was afraid to look at the stillness that was her father. Connie didn’t think it really looked like him. Something was really different, but death was beyond her young grasp. She hoped no one would make her touch him; she couldn’t have done that. Instead, she prayed with all her might that he was just sleeping and that God would wake him up. She was told that he was in God’s hands, so maybe God would give him back. He didn’t wake up, and the people from Keller’s took him. Connie didn’t go to the funeral. That was her last memory of her father.
When she was growing up, someone had called her memories of her father “little things,” but they were big things to her; they were who he was to her, like the way he smelled when he smoked his cigars, and how his face felt scratchy against her neck when he pretended he was trying to bite her ear off, and how animated he became when he was telling funny stories at the dinner table, or when he laughed so hard that tears streamed down his cheeks. He played with her a lot when he was home. They especially liked to play outside in the warm days of spring and summer. Papa would chase her around the yard, playing monster with a funny walk, his arms outstretched while calling out loud oozy noises—all of which had been absolutely terrifying, even though nothing but hugs and kisses ever happened when he caught up with her.
Once when they were playing, she fell out of one of the apple trees in the backyard and landed right at his feet. He was telling her to reach a little farther for the apple he wanted, when suddenly a branch snapped, and she fell through a couple of the lower limbs and dropped the final five feet or so onto her back, which knocked the wind out of her little frame. Stunned and wanting to be picked up and soothed, Papa just stood over her and smiled. She waited for him to bend over, for him to pick her up and hug her. He smiled and just stood there, looking down at her, as if they were both frozen in time.
She remembered that moment so well, and always would. After a long minute, he said to her, and these are the exact words, which she never forgot: “Connie, you took a nasty fall. I’m sure it hurts. Sometimes you’ve got to pick yourself up, yep, and just get on with what you were doing.” She stood up on her own, just as he was reminding her that he was still thinking about that apple. All those things about him weren’t little things to her; those were the things that kept her father alive in her heart. She loved him dearly, of course, and would always miss him.
A little more than a year after her father had died, a man named Henry Steenport married Ruby and moved into their house. Connie had come to love Henry too because he loved her, her sister, and her mother so much. Connie was sorry that God didn’t let her father come back, but He did give her Henry, who would be a good father—she just knew it. She’d call him Henry—not Dad or Papa—just Henry, like everyone else did. He wanted it that way. Those were some of her earliest memories.
When the car pulled to a stop at the curbside, perfectly lined up with the walkway to Ruby and Henry’s front door, Connie snapped out of her drift into childhood memories and collected herself. Carl honked once with a quick punch of his palm on the steering column and then jumped out of the car and ran around the front end—he always chose the front—to get to Connie’s door to open it for her. He was the perfect gentleman. By the time Connie put her foot out of the car, Ruby and Henry were coming out to greet them, smiling and waving as if they hadn’t seen each other in months, when in fact, Connie and Carl had spent the last weekend with them and had slept over in the extra bedroom, the one that had been Connie and Virginia’s when they were growing up.
I stayed in that second bedroom as a kid when I visited Ruby and Henry for two weeks each summer. I called them Grandma and Grandpa, and I loved them and they loved me. When I was big enough to go to the shallow creek that was the property line in the field out back, Grandpa would take me there to show me how to catch crayfish. Some were pretty big, as big as my little hand, and kind of scary because they could pinch pretty hard if I put my finger in front of a claw—enough to make me yelp.
One summer, the crayfish were especially thick. There were so many, and they were so easy to catch that I must have had at least twenty-five mason jars of water by the back steps, each holding one big crayfish or a couple of small ones. It was my private collection for the duration of my visit. I wanted to donate my collection to the Smithsonian, but Grandma made me put them back in the creek when it was time for me to leave Chilton and go back home to Milwaukee.
If you don’t know how to catch a crayfish, you should. It’s good to learn new things, and it’s pretty easy. First, you’ve got to find one, of course. They’re usually hiding under the shelter of a rock in a shallow, quiet pool of water or sometimes in the space between two adjacent rocks. You keep sliding one rock off another, just an inch or two at a time, searching carefully until you spot one. Then, slowly get into position, which means get right over them with a big straddle. Do it too fast, and they skitter away, spooked by the movement. But if you do it just right, they won’t move. Then go slowly into the water with an open jar or a can in one hand and place it behind the chosen one so that the open end is just behind its tail. Then slowly, with the other hand, the one holding a stick, put the end of stick in front of it, right in front of its claws, right up to the tips of its antenna, which is close enough to scare it. When crayfish are scared, they try to escape by propelling themselves backwards with a couple of flips of their tail, in this case, right into the opening of your jar or can. It was easy to catch them that way.
I remember Grandpa asking me what I had learned from that, and later that same day, I told my mom what I had learned. She said that Henry had taught her the same thing when she was little. That was his way, and we both remembered the lesson: sometimes when you’re afraid, it’s not a good thing to back up.
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