"Wild Plums"
By GRACE STONE COATES
(From The Frontier )
I KNEW about wild plums twice before I tasted any.
The first time was when the Sunday school women were
going plumming; Father hunched his shoulders and laughed
without making any sound. He said wild plums were small and
inferior, and told us of fruits he had eaten in Italy.
Mother and father were surprised that Mrs. Guare and the
school teacher would go with Mrs. Slump to gather plums. I
knew it was not nice to go plumming, but I didn’t know why.
I wanted to go once, so that I would understand. The women
stopped at the house to invite mother. She explained that we
did not care for wild plums; but father said we feared to taste
the sacred seed lest we be constrained to dwell forever in the
nether regions.
Mrs. Slump said, “Huh? You don’t eat the pits. You spit
’em out,” and father hunched his shoulders and laughed the
noiseless laugh that bothered mother.
When father talked to people he didn’t like he sorted his words,
and used only the smooth, best ones. Mother explained to me
it was because he had spoken only German when he was little.
After the women had gone mother and father quarreled.
They spoke low so I would not hear them. Just before mother
sent me out to play she said that even wild plums might give
savor to the dry bread of monotony.
The second time I knew about plums was at Mrs. Slump’s
house when she was making plum butter. She said she couldn’t
ask us in because the floor was dirty from stirring jam. The
Slumps didn’t use chairs. They had boxes to sit on, and the
children sat on the floor with the dogs. They were the only
people I knew who had hounds. I wanted to go in. We never
had visited them. We were at their house now because father
needed to take home a plow they had borrowed. Father didn’t
like to have his machinery stand outdoors. He had a shed
where he kept plows when he was not using them, but the Slumps
left theirs where they unhitched.
Mrs. Slump was standing in the door with her back toward us
when we drove up. She was fat, and wore wrappers. Her
wrapper was torn down the back.
Mr. Slump came out, and father talked to him. He was tall
and lean. Mrs. Slump came and stood by the buggy, too.
Mother and father sat on the front seat of the buggy, and Teressa
and I on the back seat. Teressa was older than I, and had
longer legs. When she stretched her feet straight out she could
touch the front seat with her toes, and I couldn’t. She bumped
the seat behind mother, and mother turned around and told her
to stop. My feet didn’t touch father’s seat, so I wasn’t doing
anything and didn’t have to stop it. Teressa pinched me.
I climbed out of the buggy without asking if I might. Teressa
started to tell mother I was getting out, but waited to see what
I intended to do. I was going to walk around behind Mrs. Slump.
She had no stockings on, and the Sunday school women said she
didn’t wear underclothes. I wanted to see if this was so.
Mother called me back. Sometimes mother knew what I was
thinking about without asking me. She took hold of my arm,
hard, as I climbed onto the buggy step, and said under her breath,
“I’d be ashamed! I’d be ashamed!” Her face was twisted be¬
cause she tried not to stop smiling at Mrs. Slump while she shook
my arm. I kept trying to explain, but she wouldn’t let me. Her
stopping me made me want to say the thing she thought I was
going to, but I didn’t dare.
Mr. Slump said he would bring the plow back in the morn¬
ing. Father wanted to take it home himself, then; but Mr.
Slump said he wouldn’t hear to it, being as how he had borrowed
it and all. He would bring it behind the lumber wagon the next
day, and leave it in the road. They were going after more plums
and would be passing the house anyway.
The next morning after breakfast, father, mother, and I were
in the kitchen. Teressa had scraped the plates and gone to feed
the chickens. She did not like to sit still while people talked.
She liked to do things that made her move around. Mother and
father were talking, and I was looking out of the window. If I
looked at the sun and then away, it made enormous morning-
glories float over the yard. Father had told me they were in my
eyes and not in the air, so I didn’t call him to look at them.
While I was watching them, Clubby Slump came up the lane
in the middle of a lavender one. Clubby was bigger than I, and
stupider. When any one spoke to him, he stood with his mouth
open and didn’t answer. His hair needed combing, and he didn’t
use a handkerchief. Mother said good morning to him. He
pointed to a wagon at the end of the lane. He said, “Plums!”
and ran back down the path.
Mother and father started toward the road, and I went ahead
of them. The wagon had stopped at the foot of the cotton¬
wood lane. Mr. Slump sat on the high board seat, holding the
reins. Mrs. Slump was beside him, with the baby on her lap.
Liney Slump was between them. On the seat behind were Mrs.
Guare and two women I didn’t know. The rest of the wagon
was full of children. Mr. Slump had forgotten the plow.
“All you’uns pile in,” Mrs. Slump called to us. “We’re goin’
plummin’ on the Niniscaw and stay all night. The younguns
can go wadin’. There ain’t no work drivin’ you this time a’
year, so just pile in. We got beddin’ for everybody.”
Mr. Slump sat looking at the horses’ ears. Whenever Mrs.
Slump stopped talking he would say, “I tole you they’all wouldn’t
go, but you would stop,” and Mrs. Slump would answer, “There
now, Paw, you hush!”
I had not known one could live so long without breathing as I
lived while Mrs. Slump was asking us to go. I could see my
heart-beats shaking my collar — a lace collar that was hanging by
one end down my chest; I had forgotten to put it on right.
I waited for mother to lift her foot and plant it on the wagon
hub, ready for “pilin’ in”; for father to take her elbow, and lift.
Every one would laugh a little, and talk loud. They always
did when women got into wagons. I had never seen mother
climb into a wagon, but I knew how it would be. I wondered if
father would jump in without tossing me up first. Father got
into wagons quick, without laughing or joking. I wondered if
he would forget me. The children would see me, and lean over
the end-board, and dangle me up by one arm. I thought fran¬
tically of Teressa.
Then father was speaking, and my breath came back.
He was saying, ‘‘If you happen on a plum thicket, an outcome
highly unlikely, you still face the uncertainty of finding plums.
The season has been too dry. And should you find them, they
will prove acrid and unfit for human consumption.”
My collar hung limp and motionless. My heart was dead.
Father was spoiling things again.
Mrs. Slump said, “They make fine jell,” and Mr. Slump re¬
peated, “I tole you they-all wouldn’t go, but you would stop.”
He was gathering up the lines.
I hated to see mother’s face, feeling the stricken look it would
have. But I knew I must smile at her not to care. Strangely
enough, she had a polite look on her face. It was the look that
made my fingers think of glass. My mind slipped off from it
without knowing what it meant. She was smiling.
“Really, it isn’t possible for us to go with you to-day,” she
said. “It was kind of you to ask us. I hope you will have a
lovely outing, and find lots of plums.”
As she spoke she glanced at me. She moved closer, and took
my hand. Mrs. Slump looked down at me, too, and said, “Can’t
the kid go? Kids like bein’ out.”
Mother’s hand closed firmly on mine. “I’m afraid not, without
me. Besides,” with a severe look at my collar, “she isn’t properly
dressed.”
“Oh, we kin wait while she takes off that purty dress,” Mrs.
Slump suggested comfortably; but mother flushed and shook her
head.
Mr. Slump was twitching at the lines and clucking to the
horses. His last “I tole you” was drowned in shouted good-bys,
and the wagon clattered down the road.
Mother walked back to the house still holding my hand. Once
inside, she turned to me. “Would you really have gone with
those — ” She hesitated, and finished, “with those persons?”
“They were going to sleep outdoors all night,” I said.
Mother shuddered. “Would you have gone with them?”
“Mrs. Guare was with them,1” I parried, knowing all she did
not say.”
“Would you have gone?”
“Yes.”
She stood for a long time looking out of the window at the
prairie horizon, then searched my face curiously. “It might have
been as well,” she said. “It might be as well,” and turning, she
began to clear the breakfast table.
The next day I played in the road. Usually I spent the
afternoons under the box-elder trees, or by the ditch behind the
machine-sheds, where dragon-flies and pale blue moths circled
just out of reach. But this day I spent beside the road. Mother
called me to the house to bring cobs, and called me again to
gather eggs in the middle of the afternoon. She called me a
third time. Her face looked uncomfortable.
She said, “If the Slumps go by, do not ask them for any
plums.”
Mother knew I would not ask.
“If they offer any, do not take them.”
“What shall I say?”
“Say we do not care for them.”
“If they make me take them?”
“Refuse them.”
When the Slumps came in sight the horses were walking. The
Niniscaw was fifteen miles away, and the team was tired. I
thought I could talk to the children as the wagon passed, but
just before it reached me, Mr. Slump hit the horses twice with a
willow branch. They trotted, and the wagon rattled by.
The children on the last seat were facing toward me. They
laughed and waved their arms. Clubby leaned backward and
caught up a handful of plums. The wagon bed must have been
half filled. He flung them toward me ; and then another handful.
They fell, scattering, in the thick dust, which curled around them
in little eddies, almost hiding them before I could catch them up.
The plums were small and red. They felt warm to my fingers.
I wiped them on the front of my dress, and dropped them in
my apron. I waited only for one secret rite, before I ran, heart
pounding, to tell my mother what I had discovered.
She interrupted me, “Did they see you picking them up?”
I thought of myself standing like Clubby Slump, mouth open,
without moving. I laughed till two plums rolled out of my apron.
“Oh, yes! I had them picked up almost before the dust stopped
wriggling. I called, ‘Thank you.’ ”
Still mother was not pleased. “Throw them away,” she said.
“Surely you would not care to eat something flung to you in the
road.”
It was hard to speak. I moved close to her and whispered,
“Can’t I keep them?”
Mother left the room. It seemed long before she came back.
She put her arm around me and said, “Take them to the pump
and wash them thoroughly. Eat them slowly, and do not swallow
the skins. You will not want many of them, for you will find
them bitter and not fit to eat.”
I went out quietly, knowing I would never tell her that they
were strange on my tongue as wild honey, holding the warmth
of sand that sun had fingered, and the mystery of water under
leaning boughs.
For I had eaten one at the road.
Loved this!