After the official burial and the not-so-official-exhumation and oil drum re-burial of the recently deceased, Mose takes over Grandfather Schrude’s only chore: tasting the soil in each field. In the spring, Father Schrute gives him a one week crash course in the different flavors of each PH level. This mostly involves mouthfuls of dirt and an enthusiastic thumbs up or a thumbs down accompanied by a wrinkled nose. It’s an easy repertoire to master for a boy the family thinks is mentally deficient.
A stray dog, a foundling like Mose, often joins him in the South Field. He chases the voles and looks like he’s trying really hard to understand when Mose speaks to him, which is more effort than most people make. Mose names him Ukko the Second and Ukko the Second is always happy to see him. He expects nothing from Mose but a well thrown stick and the occasional leftover piece of bacon, offering his unconditional devotion in return. Together they roam the morning fields, friends.
Sometimes in the afternoon, a few women will appear in the house and he joins them around the kitchen table. They pull up a stool and let him help with peeling apples for pie and beets for everything else. His fingernails are almost always stained dark pink, but he likes to be useful and there are is never a shortage of beets that need peeling. He listens carefully to their speech, gleaning bits of English vocabulary here and there. When the oven really gets going, Ukko the Second waits outside the kitchen door with a strand of drool decorating his jowls like an icicle dripping in the spring thaw. Mose often slips him bacon quiche and chicken pie when no one is looking. His apprenticeship in the kitchen progresses and soon he is commonly regarding as the best cook in the house. This, of course, adds to his work load.Things are quiet for a while; constant. Mose spends his mornings in the fields with Ukko. His afternoons are filled with baking and any other task that needs doing. Evenings are spent reading, either German poetry with Grandmutter Mannhein or on his own with a book about elves and some creature called a hobbit stolen from Dwight’s bookshelf. The margins are filled with notations and question marks in Dwight’s handwriting, as well as an occasional sheet of paper with a scribbled story about the characters outside the scope of the book. Unfortunately, this is the only English book in the house and the family’s opinion of Mose’s mental prowess is diminished significantly by his frequent use of appalling prose and his questions about their relative distance from Mordor. They shush him and show him some new chore like properly stacking the glass jars in the pantry. Many nights he returns to his attic space and adds to his list “Ways To Prepare a Beet.” Under wine and cake he carefully writes pickled.
The calm does not last and the strange happiness he’d found on the farm begins to slip away. There’s the incident with Ukko the second, Mose’s famous cream pie and Dwight’s shot gun. Dwight has his weapon taken away, but it’s small comfort now that his canine friend is gone. He has another list for that, too. Mother, Father, Ukko, Grandmother Scrude, Grandfather Schrude. His hand shakes as Ukko the Second appears under the tip of his pen.
The autumn is a difficult season for Mose in 1986. Dwight starts going to school full time, so Mose has very little company during the day now that Ukko the Second is dead. The October of that year also brings Mose’s first shunning. He’s not clear on how exactly it happened. Something to do with his engineering skills and a possible insult to humor? Anyway, no one will speak to him, not even for the purpose of scolding. It’s not a big deviation from the usual ignorance of his existence, but somehow there’s a painful difference between neglect and intentional silence.
Dwight, having been shunned himself at a young age, can appreciate the hardship, the desire to talk to anyone, no matter how unlikely. On Mose’s fourth day of shunning for the unappreciated act of table-making genius, Dwight comes home from school red-faced and wet eyed. He grabs Mose by the sleeve and leads him outside.
Instead of stopping at the barn to play ninja farmer or the pond to throw rocks at frogs for target practice, Dwight continues towards the mountains, further than Mose has ever dared to wander for fear of being eaten by a bear or a wolf or something called a Tasmanian Devil. Dwight had assured him on more than one occasion that it is by far the most dangerous animal in the Pennsylvania woods and related the horrifying tale of a man named Rabbit who was eternally bedeviled by such a creature. The only way to stop a Tasmanian Devil, Mose learns, is to bury him in cold earth or help him find his true love. Of course, this had all been communicated by wild hand gestures and some cartoon drawings of the parties involved, so it’s possible something is lost in the translation.
Cousin Dwight leads the way north, unafraid of any devil or demon. They meet up with a narrow creek. Dwight points to it and says “Schrude” so that Mose will understand they are still on the family land. The water winds its way into a grove of trees with autumn leaves of gold and crimson. Every so often one of the massive trunks is adorned with a rusted tap, the spout crusted with amber crystals. Mose will ask Grandmutter Mannheim about it during their evening chess game, if he isn’t being led to his death. He daren’t ask Dwight for fear of being ridiculed.
They meander through the woods, kicking stumps and startling late migrating Yellow Legs with accurately thrown sticks. Dwight teaches Mose a few new games; King of the Castle is fun, since Mose has more upper body strength than his cousin and elicits “Uncle!” almost every time; Hide and Seek is not, since Dwight makes him count to one thousand (necessarily in Finnish) and leaves him stranded in the grove with no idea how to get home. As the sun descends, Mose makes his way south and finds the creek that led them there, following it the whole way. When he reaches the armoire shed at the outskirts of the farmstead, Dwight it waiting for him with a slow clap and an expression of grudging approval.
Mose beams with delight and tries to hug Dwight. Dwight stiffly receives the gesture for a few moments, then swats Mose to the ground before spinning on his heel and heading back to the house. Mose trails behind, brimming with the warmth of acceptance.
*
Winter is a quiet time on the farm. Mose has very few chores and Grandmutter Mannheim’s arthritis often prevents her from leaving her bed, so he rarely has an evening companion. Most of his time is spent locked in the attic learning German from the dusty bookshelf nailed to the foot of his bed (as if they suspect he will somehow steal whatever is not bolted down). The pages crackle when turned; the German illustrations are helpful in their explicit description of the text, if a little disturbing. November brings a healthy respect for not being a picky eater, sucking his thumb in front of a tailor, and playing with matches while wearing scarlet shoes – all unlikely occurrences that he will nevertheless be on guard for in the future. Grandmutter Mannheim lets him practice while they play chess up in her room under the conditions that Mose always brings her a stein of beet cider and promises not to hug her. They play and talk until the cider goes to her head and she starts confusing King with Pawn. Mose declares her the winner, always, then makes sure her lantern has stopped burning before returning to his room.
In the hall that leads back to his tiny set of stairs the words ay oh whey oh walk like an Egyptian are blaring from Dwight’s room. When the floorboards squeak under Mose’s feet the song instantly switches to whooah, we’re halfway there! Livin’ on a prayer! which Dwight punctuates loudly with Yeah! Awesome! Hopefully Dwight won’t listen to his pop music too late. There’ll be an early sap tapping in morning and Mose wants to be the first Schrute to reach the grove with his maple bucket.
*
The next two years tumble by quickly. Mose’s beet farming experience grows and his expertise in soil tasting surpasses all expectations. He’s not completely unhappy, for a time. His best friend is a feisty old Nazi and no one will let him go to school, but he can’t really say that he’s abused, either. He has a safe place to sleep, all the food he can cook and sometimes Dwight lets him keep their blue ribbons from the county fair for a day or two before they are burned in a demonstration of the Schrute disdain for public appreciation and conformity.
It’s only when Grandmutter Mannheim dies suddenly in January of 1989, or at least as suddenly as death can be for someone who is one hundred and one years old, that Mose sort of loses his hope for life on the farm. There’s a stillness to the common areas that he can’t remember ever noticing before.
Mose adds her name to the list and only cries when no one will see.
