3. The Stage ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

Just then, Robert heard his father whistling as he opened the screen door to the east porch. Robert ran to help Joe put the round white filter in the special galvanized funnel that perfectly fit the opening in the top of the tall milk can. “Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s home from work we go,” Joe whistled, while he lifted the white enameled milk bucket with its red rim and poured the morning’s fragrant milk into the funnel. Robert heard the merry pinging of the filtered liquid dripping and splashing within the can.

Rubbing his sleepy eyes, Charles stood in the kitchen doorway and yawned.

“Let’s sit down to breakfast,” Ida said.

Tumblers of fresh milk with a layer of yellow cream having risen to the top were arranged around the table. Halves of pink grapefruits rested in bowls at each place around the table. Mounds of sugar on top of the grapefruits were slowly turning a pale gray as the juice mingled with the granules. While Joe, Robert, and Charles spooned out the pink segments, Ida fried eggs until the edges of the whites were crispy brown. As the toaster popped with a pleasant “ker-ching” sound, she quickly slathered homemade butter on the slices and distributed the hot toast to each person.

“Joe, I’m worried about the cows,” Ida said. “If they get out, they’ll fall in that hole.”

A deep hole ….

“There’s nothing to worry about,” said Joe. “They’re not going to get out. If they were going to break through the pasture fence, it wouldn’t be there. It’d be where that old panel is by the hog lot.”

By this time, Robert was walking well wherever and whenever he wanted. He was talking much more often and fluently. He had practically forgotten the fact that, only two years earlier, his parents had to carry him everywhere while his feet ached. He had indeed forgotten his preliminary reluctance to speak.

As Charles had begun to attend first grade at the school across the road from home, Robert wanted to go to school, but his mother said he couldn’t.

“You’re only four. You have to wait another year,” she said, repeatedly.

Every afternoon, Robert stood in the window in his parents’ bedroom and watched for his brother to come home from school. The window in that room commanded the best view of the long sidewalk that ran to the southwest door of the school from a point across the highway from the driveway where Joe’s 1950 Chevrolet was parked, and it permitted Robert to see Charles striding past the automobile in the driveway to the gate through their white-board fence into the yard, thence along a narrow sidewalk to the porch east of the kitchen. Robert could hear the new Zenith television airing a telecast from its position atop a green Formica table with silvery tubular legs in the kitchen corner.

The television had not yet entirely replaced the dark brown 1949 Philco Bakelite radio standing amid the strands of white pop beads on Ida’s dresser, but the newfangled “TV” had certainly captured the family’s attention.

While Robert pulled back the white gauzy curtains to wait for Charles to appear, he wondered what Charles was learning that day and why he, Robert, was not allowed to learn the lessons at the same time. He felt miffed that he had to stay home through the long mornings and the boring afternoons while Charles got to participate in what must surely be the pleasures of schooling.

Then Robert would see Charles walking down the driveway, and envious thoughts were shoved aside by eager anticipation of playing until suppertime. Robert would run around the foot of the bed, through the kitchen, to the porch to greet Charles as he came through the screen door.

On this day, Robert scurried to welcome Charles home from school.

“What do you want to do until it’s time for chores?” Robert asked.

“What did you learn at school today?” Ida asked.

Charles smiled while he unzipped his gray jacket and hung it up. “We learned to subtract, but then, I already knew how to do that,” he replied to his mother.

Ida, who had taught elementary school, cast a worried glance at Robert. “Maybe I’m teaching you too much at home,” she said.

Robert tried to get his brother’s attention. “But what do you want to do?” he prompted.

“We’ll make a stage out of Tinkertoys,” Charles finally answered.

While Charles changed from his school clothes to his everyday clothes, Robert poured the Tinkertoys from their cans onto the rug in the living room.

“We’ll need a way to hang curtains on both sides of the stage,” Charles said, as he began to place green sticks in plain wooden disks. Robert handed the stage-maker whatever parts he needed as he called for them.

In a short time, a representative proscenium arch and stage stood before them, although they did not yet know the term “proscenium arch.” It was rather unstable but functional.

Robert and Charles were familiar with stages because their parents had taken them for lessons at Allen’s Dance Studio across from the Journal and Courier newspaper office in Lafayette.

Charles brought two plastic toy cows from the shelves where the toys were piled, and he held one in each hand on the stage. To Robert’s delight, he made them dance.

“Now we need curtains,” Charles said. “Mom,” he called, as he strode into the kitchen, “we need curtains for our stage.”

Ida was up to her elbows in suds while doing dishes. She turned and smiled at her son while wiping her hands on a towel. She returned to the living room and admired the stage before going to her room to pull material from a basket. She cut the curtains from leftover lightweight cotton and showed Charles how to pleat it while Robert looked on. Next, she used a knitting needle to pull a string through the pleats of both curtains. When she held up the curtains by the string, both boys were enchanted.

Charles carefully tied the string to both sides of the proscenium arch. He and Robert gently pulled the curtains closed and applauded their work. Obeying Charles’ instructions, Robert pulled the curtains open while Charles held the dancing cows on the stage. The effect was dramatic! They could hardly wait to show their father when he came in to get them for the evening chores.

Joe was generous in his praise of the stage. He kindly sat through a matinee performance of the dancing bovines. Then he announced that it was time to feed the real cows. Robert thought that maybe, when all human beings were out of sight, the real cows danced.