2
One evening Early Ann, Peter and Gus got out the croquet set for a dashing game on the front lawn. Stanley and Sarah brought out their rockers to furnish a gallery. A catbird who thought he was a bobolink was singing in the topmost branches of the poplar tree.
"I get the red ball and mallet," Early Ann announced.
"They're mine," cried Peter. "I always use the red ones."
"Try and get 'em," Early Ann taunted. Swinging the mallet menacingly she dashed behind the lilac bushes and out again, encircled the mail box and the big oak tree, and, laughing and screeching came to grips with Peter on an open strip of lawn. He tried to wrench the mallet from her hands and was surprised at her strength.
"Just try," Early Ann panted. She fought with a desperation which amazed the boy. Her hair came tumbling down and her eyes flashed fire. Suddenly she let go of the mallet and tore into Peter with small hard fists and flying feet. Stud was laughing until his sides hurt. Gus was rolling on the ground with mirth. While Sarah, seeing that the struggle was getting rough, cried out in consternation, "Children, children!"
"I hate you," Early Ann whispered passionately. "I'll scratch your eyes out."
"Don't hurt yourself," Peter advised with a superior, mocking note in his voice. He had her firmly by the arms now in a grip which he knew was hurting, but she did not flinch.
In another moment she was laughing and straightening her hair, but she recovered and kept the red ball and mallet.
The game began in the fighting atmosphere of technical pride, and deadly serious rivalry, which had marked the pioneer stump-pullings and sod-breakings of an earlier day, and which lived on in mortal golfing and bridge frays of the 1920's. Gus and Peter handled their striped wooden balls on the smooth green lawn with an accuracy which would have done credit to an expert of the cue driving the ivories about a billiard table. Gus was known for miles around as the croquet fiend who had scored all the hoops in one turn at a Sunday School picnic, while Peter could often run a hoop from a most disadvantageous angle.
Early Ann made up in temperament what she lacked in technical skill, and, whenever she had a chance to roquet on Peter's ball, sent him flying off into the deep grass.
"If Taft had played croquet instead of that sissy game golf, he'd still be president," Stud said. "If he'd pitched a good game of horseshoes he could've been king."
"Think of them White House lawns," sighed Gus. "Gee whiz! If I was president I'd make me the gol darndest croquet court you ever did see."
"Why don't we play like we used to, Stanley?" Sarah asked.
"The kids are too good for me," Stud admitted. "But I'll tell you what I'll do...."
"Tomorrow?"
"You bet! I'll challenge you to a game for our twentieth wedding anniversary, Sarah."
They touched hands for a moment, shyly, hoping the others would not see.
Playing grimly and consistently well, Peter overtook Gus and sent that doleful individual into loud and vituperative lament by driving the farm hand's ball under the distant front porch. He made his next hoop, roqueted on Early Ann, and continued his run to win the game.
He couldn't help comparing Early Ann Sherman to Maxine Larabee as they began their second game in the heat of bitter competition.
"Early Ann's all right for croquet, or swimming, or a tussle on the lawn. But she's not much of a lady," he decided, "and nothing at all like Maxine Larabee."
He shouldn't have let himself think of them in the same breath. Early Ann was nothing but a she wild-cat, and a tomboy. Once she had pushed Gus over the wood box; and she said "damn" when she got mad; and Gus had even seen her trying to smoke a cigarette.
Maxine would never do anything like that. Maxine would be ashamed to tussle or swear or even raise her voice. Maxine was a lady in every sense of the word. She looked just like the beautiful women in the magazines, with her picture hats and delicate motoring veils.
Peter bet if he could only have a new White Steamer she would notice him again as she had that night at the church supper. She might even let him take her for a ride way down the river road where they could have a weenie roast and sing songs together. She might go to Janesville with him for a movie and a midnight supper. Except that Maxine wasn't the kind of a girl who would eat a midnight supper with any boy. One of the fellows had told Peter that she was that kind of a girl and Peter had blackened both his eyes and made him eat dirt and yell "enough." It made him fighting mad when any other boy even mentioned her name casually.
He always felt like saying, "You leave her name out of this," the way men did in stories. But he was afraid it might sound silly.
The way she walked! Just wheeling along as though all her joints had ball-bearings. She was one girl who didn't need to practice with a book on her head to get a perfect carriage. And her golden hair, done up a new way every day. And such lovely white hands and pretty nails. No, Early Ann just wasn't in Maxine's class.
"Your turn," Gus shouted at Peter. "Better stop dreaming about your girl and try to learn croquet. I've got you down for the count this time around."
"Listen, hayseed," Peter said, "you better crawl into your cellar because this trip I'm going to blow down your shanty."
He took careful aim allowing for a little rise he knew in the lawn, curved gracefully and improbably through the distant hoop, roqueted on the astounded hired man's ball, drove him into a tangle of raspberry bushes, and made two more hoops before missing.
"Nothing but a greenhorn's luck," Gus complained. He fished his ball out of the thorns, brought it to within a mallet's-length of the court, and promised himself sweet vengeance with plays of prodigious technical brilliance when next it came his turn.
The summer dusk came down about them sweet and still. Far away over the hills they could hear the church bell calling the faithful to Thursday night prayer meeting in Brailsford Junction. The chimney swifts and martins filled the evening sky with their graceful, airy geometry, and the nighthawks swooped so low above them that one might see the pale oval underneath each wing. Far down the lake in some deep tangle of woods the whip-poor-will began.
Sarah hurried off to the ice house to fetch the half freezer of homemade ice cream left from supper, and with it a bowl of sugared strawberries. The game over, Early Ann went in for soup bowls and table-spoons. And together on the lawn, under stars so large, soft, and near they seemed almost to be caught in the upper branches of the oak tree, they ate such a dish for the gods as one may never find in these later years in distant cities.
The frogs began in the marshes along the lake. The crickets shrilled. Silence was all about them like a song.
After they had eaten, Peter and Early Ann pulled up the hoops and pegs, gathered the balls and mallets in their arms. They walked down the dusty driveway to the wagon shed carrying the set, and stopped at the milk house for a long cold drink from the pump.
They were too quiet, too delightfully tired and calm to wish to talk. Their struggle was forgotten, and there was no upsetting emotion of love or hate to keep them from kicking in comradely fashion through the dust.
Then something altogether out of keeping with their mood shattered the evening. The horses in the barn yard whinnied in fright; there were startled hoof-beats; a cow mooed anxiously.
"Don't go," Early Ann pleaded, holding to the boy. "It might be...."
Gus and Stud came running.
"Someone after the stock, you think?" Gus asked.
They hurried in a straggling group down to the barnyard gate, saw a shadowy figure jump the far fence and disappear into the dusky brush lot, crashing through the branches.
"Tried to get in from the back road," Stud decided, "came up the lane and found himself in the barnyard. Just a tramp, I guess."
But Early Ann had her own opinion.