Kits

Sitting cross legged on the hard ground, I was twiddling with a tear in my dress. The single pocket was dangling, nearly torn off, leaving a gaping hole big enough for me to slid my finger in the hole to scratch my chigger bites. 

I stretched my left foot out to scratch my scraped bare toes before resuming my cross legged position.

Before me was our biggest kitchen dishpan, one side warped, the results of being heated over an open fire. The dish pan was cradled between two big stones with barely a twig fire underneath. I guess Moma didn’t want me to burn completely up or at least not catch fire and have to be wrapped in Grandma’s quilt to squelch the flames on my body. I thought to myself everyone would rush out and stare at me and try to figure out what salve would best heal me up. Moma would carry me inside the cool house and let me lie on the linoleum floor until my wounds were better and I was no longer sobbing. 

Moma’s voice jarred me from this lovely reverie of a burned body and the attention I would get while being laid up. “ Hurry up with those jars and stop that daydreaming!”

I turned my attention back to the warm water in the dish pan, Moma had bought a special boxed soap for washing dishes and canning jars but I dare not put anymore than a little fist full in the water because that would be wasteful. Daydreaming AND wasting soap would be a lethal combination for a wistful child. 

Dust and pale green mold coated the pint jars, the quart jars were worse as they had been stored on the dirt floor of the cellar. Moma said to wash the rims of the jars first, they had to be spotless or the jars would not seal and a whole summer’s worth of canning would be ruined. I dipped the washrag in the warm sudsy water, knotted it up to expel the excess water and started scrubbing the rim, my small hand slid down the inside of the jar easily, round and round I swirled finishing with up and down motion on the outside of the jar. The big wash tub was filled to the top with cold spring water for rinsing the jars.

After a good scrub and rinse the clean jars were lined up on an old oil tablecloth to dry. 

I was thinking about paper dolls inside folders with shiny covers and dolls with pink, yellow and blue dresses to cut out. I was hoping if I got the jars super clean, my oldest sister might bring me a paper doll from the JJ Newberry store. She had a job there selling perfumes, lotions, dusting powder and creams to the town ladies and most likely to my aunts, Willie and Gladys, who always had a cardboard container of dusting powder on their dresser. The white dusting powder billowed white puffs over the entire top of the dresser. 

My sister never said much about the ladies that shopped at Newberry’s. It was a five and dime store, fancy ladies probably went over to The Fair Store. I didn’t know one thing about that store, and I couldn't have cared less, they didn’t carry paper dolls or movies star magazines or comic books. Who on earth would want to go there?

Anyway, my sister told me about a drunk man that came to Newberry’s to buy Bay Rum. He didn’t splash it on his shaven cheeks, he swilled it almost daily to get drunk. I pondered and pondered about “drunk”, trying to sort it out. Somehow my overactive imagination conjured up an ornery looking man with crazed eyes that ate little kids after he had swilled Bay Rum. I was trying to figure out how to get to the paper dolls at the JJ Newberry store without being grabbed and eaten by a drunken Bay Rum drinking devil when Daddy came across the yard. He had been in the back fields mowing hay all morning. I hurried my hands across the rim of a quart jar knowing we would soon be having our noon meal. No one paid much attention to me so when Daddy spoke it startled me. “Don’t go walking back toward the fox den.” Pause.

“That mama fox has a litter of kits.” 

Pause. “You need to leave her alone.” 

I had never heard the word “kits” but I felt quite smug in knowing that only a silly girl would go near baby kittens, the mama cat would be sure to move them and then it would take a half day or more to find them again. I knew that for sure, I was always trying to find the nest after I had played with the baby kittens, newly born, and ever so soft to touch. Baby mice stay put even if you played with them every single day. 

Daddy walked over toward the smokehouse and I wiggled around a bit to watch and see if he offered any more clues about kits. He didn’t say another word and mom hollered to get inside and eat before she threw the food out to the other dogs! We headed into the kitchen together. 

The cornbread was so hot I nearly burnt my shriveled fingers. I couldn’t decide whether to smush my cornbread in the pinto beans or slather it with butter. I slathered the cornbread in butter, it lasts longer that way. 

The afternoon hummed along, the jars were washed and I helped pack the broken up green beans tightly in the jars. Moma told me to measure one teaspoon of salt in each jar. Moma had a teakettle of boiling water to fill up each jar, then she screwed the bands and lids on as tight as she could. She removed my dishpan from the smoldering fire, threw on a few logs and poked up a big roaring fire. She gently placed twelve jars in the big blue galvanized canning pot, covered the jars with water and eased the canner onto the fire for the final process of canning beans that would feed us through winter. She didn’t scold me for one jar not being clean, so I wandered off across the field to the cow barn. I thought about climbing in the hay loft and smelling the new hay before I slid down through a hole in the loft floor to try to land on a cow’s back. 

I never had much luck with landing on the cow and if I got cow manure on my feet I would need to walk to the spring by Sam Mounce’s old house to get my feet clean. I decided, against my daddy’s warning, to go straight to the fox den. The field beyond the barn was stubbly and poked my bare feet something fierce. I walked around the upper edge of the fox den until I reached the thicket of cedars where the den was hidden. The den was under a rock ledge jutting out about 3 feet or so. A tangle of blackberry briars and scrub bushes concealed the opening.

I stood there above the den with my heart pounding a mile a minute when a hawk squawked in the big oaks a few yards away. It flew directly over my head into the cloudless sky.

One thing is true in this world, certain things happen to make other things happen or to keep things from happening. I had an epiphany on that summer day. I turned back toward the hickory nut tree and sat down on a smooth gray rock. Nothing came to my mind not even paper dolls or being a movie star. I scratched my legs, covered in mosquito bites, picking on them until they nearly bled. I strained to hear the sound of the kits that might be playing outside their den but all I could hear, off in the distance, were the crows in the cornfield. 

I felt a yearning. 

I wanted something that was shiny and glittering but I knew right then, in that place, my soul was safe.