Chapt Thirteen- Little Lies That Bind

Chapter 13

Little Lies That Bind

Laura Ingalls Wilder was a fortuitous combination of poet and pioneer. Ninety years after her appearance on the best seller list, her name is still a spire among Twentieth Century American authors, shoulder to shoulder with Twain and Hemingway. Part of the reason was that she observed receptively and lovingly, and she listened astutely. This winsome listening enabled her to sequester the delight of the prairie bird's morning song, or the gravity of the most intimate conversations between her family members, and eventually the advice of her daughter on how to finish her manuscripts into master works. Begun on cheap Red Chief school tablets, they morphed into lasting children's literature, worthy of Harper and Brothers, one of the most prestigious publishers in the world. Laura listened as well as she wrote.

You might say she listened for sixty years and wrote for ten. Not a bad formula for most aspiring writers. She lacked formal education, or exposure to classic western culture, and her life experience was essentially the constant moving around on the frontier with her family, at least nine moves in seven states, in her first twenty-seven years, reading whatever she might scrounge up in country schools along the way. Kansas City was probably the largest city she had ever seen. She had never visited a foreign country, or a major port, or an art museum. And from all appearances, she did not suffer from the want of these things. Perhaps she actually gained an advantage, by deeply listening, deeply knowing a region and its people, and thus feeling and expressing herself with greater authority.

This authority came naturally. Even as a very young adult, Laura was generally recognized among her community as a local luminary. She had grown up fast when her older sister became blind, and she became her eyes, doing her chores, taking care of many of her needs. She was recruited as a private teacher when just thirteen years old. She was teaching barely halter-broken youth bigger and older than she was. Already she was a rare beauty, making her a head-turner on the frontier. So jealous was the wife of the family she worked for, that the situation was turning violent, and she finished her term and never returned. Her first attempt at creative writing showed the promise of a talented writer, prompting mistaken assumptions by her incredulous teacher.

Curiously, Laura was no teacher's pet. She always seemed to be number two, which gave her a wonderful axe to grind. She was also something of a master of mischief, once flavoring her teacher's pointer with cayenne pepper, knowing he loved to stick it into his mouth; Sliding with her sister across the lake ice, in the moonlight... without skates; Seducing the town girls into the pond, knowing they would be instantly covered with leaches. She relished in snowball fights with the boys, contemptuous of girls who got into it and then whined about the roughness. She was glad to “give as good as she got.” Laura had a feisty streak. This trait is often described as “killer instinct.”

In fact, according to her, she was a natural tomboy and there was only one boy who could outrun her. She worked as a substitute in the public school when just fifteen and she was hired as a teacher in the public schools when just sixteen. She had not even graduated from High School. But she was considered an exemplary student, a stellar person of the highest integrity. Laura was a catch.

Almanzo was a typical western bachelor

Perhaps the meanest thing she ever did was to let Almanzo Wilder, who had romantic designs on her, transport her back and forth to her school-teaching job for weeks in the winter snow, and then finally told him that she did not really like him and he was wasting his time. But even then Laura understood what she was doing was bad, and still she was a good judge of inner character. When he just smiled and continued, madly devoted regardless of her rejection, she must have reconsidered. She later explained in her autobiography, “After all we had been through blizzards, near murder and danger of death together and those things do create a 'tie that binds,' more or less.” She began to call him “Manly” and soon they were married and joined the growing multitudes struggling to survive on the Great Plains.

Still, even as a very young woman, she had the eyes and ears of a poet; saw the beauty in the heavens, in nature. She learned to sing to her cow, to get more milk. How to twist hay to make slow-burning bundles in place of firewood. How to make a light out of a rag and axle grease. She learned how to clean and dress blackbirds and how to fry them up.

Not surprisingly, she married Almanzo, the biggest, handsomest bachelor in DeSmet, North Dakota, who had built his own home, even his own sleigh, and even more importantly, an impeccable reputation, according to frontier standards. She handled him like everyone else, as a benign dictator.

That confidence and authority, which effortlessly translated into authenticity, was and is the backbone of any author. Laura did not know it, and her daughter saw it, but she had all the framework of a good writer, and even to Rose's surprise, a great author. Their collaboration will go down in history as one of the greatest mother-daughter teams known to American literature. For all their disagreements, Rose had always been an unabashed admirer of her parents. In a magazine profile about her, Rose claimed “My mother loves courage and beauty and books; my father loves nature, birds and trees and curious stones, and both of them love the land, the stubborn, grudging, beautiful earth that wears out human lives year by year. They gave me something of all these loves...”

And more importantly, they gave Rose the gift of love itself. And one day she gave it back, in spades. It is impossible to estimate what would have happened if Rose had not encouraged and managed her mother into a writing career. But any other path would have been lackluster to say the least.

In order for history to be fulfilled, Laura's humility and station in life would require a miracle, and she got it; a savvy daughter, a writer herself, who not only saw her ability, but her great commercial potential, and who put aside any professional jealousy and acted on it. If not for Rose, Laura Ingalls Wilder would have been just another small-town columnist, writing about the perfection of farm chores, who occasionally got something printed in a regional or statewide magazine publication... and was grateful for the opportunity. Instead she was contending for Newberys. Under Rose's vision and expertise, Laura wrote eight books in what came to be known as the “Little House” series. Her books became bestsellers and won many Newbery honors.

But Laura was first and foremost a wife and mother. Her writing career had been the exciting yet fleeting icing on the cake after a happy life with Manly in the Ozarks. And it was less a triumph to her than her precious Rose becoming a devoted fan and guardian of the Wilder family story. They were two formidable people, who were finally able to put aside their differences and learn to enjoy one another, and become so professionally interdependent as to become a single literary legacy.

A lot is made by writers about Rose's impatience with her parents and their ways, and that is partly because she was a very effective writer and often opined about her miserable childhood, one she loved to hate. But it was a devoted relationship, and was motivated by love and respect. Rose left few private thoughts to be imagined, and her writing tended to lean to the dark side. She indulged in deprecation of all kinds, and especially towards herself. Her largely unwitting and truly admirable parents were often collateral victims of Rose Wilder Lane's sometimes judgmental and competently wicked tongue. So the true relationship between this feisty daughter and her commanding mother has to be judged by their choices and actions, not their choice of words, which they sharpened on one another like daggers. 

 The two fought, yes, and fumed and yet always gravitated back like two halves of a whole. Both had an “alpha” personality, and thus could only stand so much of the other. But on the same side of that token, no other person in the world understood them as well as they did each other. When you remove the war of words, which was a strange but effective way of flexing and training their growing literary minds, there is an undeniable trail of encouragement, support and generous enabling. The mutual magnetism of these two writers wrote a story of its own:

A pioneer girl lives a challenging but fulfilling life on the American frontier; Her rebellious daughter embraces those pioneer values of hard work and resilience and becomes a popular journalist and biographer. The daughter shares her success with her mother, who in time learns to follow in her daughter's footsteps. The two write over a dozen novels and scores of articles, and become American icons in literature, politics, and even television; their works translated and published in several languages and distributed all over the world; each merely sharing that which she had been generously given by the other; A legacy of family unity and enduring love, spread and magnified geometrically.

(a digital compilation)

That's the potential of intellectual freedom, the power of a supportive family. And it is given flight by the omnipotence of a mother's love.

                                //"//

“This is not for you.” The old woman, wrapped in a crocheted shawl, informs the Yorkshire terrier begging at her feet. Barely disappointed, he lays flat in hopes she might drop a crumb or two. It is a scene for a Christmas card, the woman sitting by a fire in her rocking chair, with her coffee and muffin, her faithful companion looking intently into her eyes. Ice crystals forming on the window panes, the wood stove making ominous huffing and puffing noises as the wood smoke forces its way into the winter winds hammering the roof above.

“Mama Bess- you are spilling your coffee...” The little white-haired lady chuckles and blots the coffee stain on her knee, looking sheepish, but too far from youth to really be embarrassed.

“I knew my knees were feeling warm!” Laura, known to loved ones as “Mama Bess” confesses. “Hate to spill it, it's good coffee!”

“That's because I bought it. It's not that nasty Hill's coffee you or Daddy always buy, cause it is on sale! Tastes like sawdust...” Rose sits down with her own steaming cup, rattling on a saucer, as a wave of coffee escapes and lands on her own knee. She blurts out laughing, frantically wiping.

“That's what you get for making fun of me!” Laura says laughingly.

“Mama I wasn't making fun, I thought you would want to know...”

“I know. But you should know by now that I will always be the mother...”

“And I will always be the little girl.”

“That's right.” Laura quips, satisfied as she leans back in her rocking chair. “I know, I have too much pride.”

Rose takes a sip, she is not going to touch that one. At least she knows. And she detects a vulnerable spot in her mom's armor. She stares across the room, peeking just above her cup, studying Laura's face. There is a hint of tenderness.

“Mama Bess, why did you and Daddy move out of the house?” Rose bites her lip, she cannot believe she finally let that out. She is an old woman herself, and she knows how much she hates being questioned. But she feels a great relief, and she takes a casual sip as she waits to see what wrath she has unleashed.

But there is silence.

So Rose decides to get it all out. “I mean, everything we did, I ran it past you.” Rose had been waiting for years to tackle this mystery, why her mother and her father chose to move out of a new home, custom built, with all the modern conveniences and built-ins... and then moved back into the older, smaller house they came out of. Rose had given them a dream home to match her esteem for them... and ultimately it was not pleasing to them. It may have been the biggest miscalculation of her life. And there had never been a satisfactory explanation.

Still, no answer.

Something falls inside the wood stove, probably wood chunks collapsing into the coals. The dog smarts and watches the stove as if something was about to come out of it. Laura wears a strange smile. It is a mother's smile, made from love and wisdom and patience... and masterful control.

Rose waits it out. She has put it out there and she is not going to reel it back in. She has nothing but time.

“I just don't understand, if you didn't want the house, if you were not going to live in it, why did we go through all of that?” The dog lays his head down and closes his eyes, it is time for a mid-morning nap. Some cardinals flit around outside, looking for protective shelter. All that can be heard is their deet-deet.... deet-deet.

Both of the women sit in their own daydream, remembering. Laura remembering how happy she was when they moved back into her little farm house, built with their own hands, with their own rocks... their own lumber... with the porches situated just so. Porches!

Rose recalls the designing, the hiring of contractors, the painting and the furnishing, the paying...

“Well?”

Laura looks deeply into her daughter, estimating which explanation can best end this inquisition. Does she want facts or feelings? Rose was usually more interested in facts. Lunch will have to wait today. She stands up and sets her coffee down on the coffee table, overloaded with magazines and newspapers, and reaches for a block of firewood.

“MamaBess, let me do that!” Rose leans forward, but too late.

“I can do it just fine.” She opens the cast iron door of the low black wood stove and tosses the wood into a beautiful miniature Hades. She peers into the fire, checking to see if the one chunk will be enough until lunchtime, when she fires up the wood burning stove in the kitchen. Maybe it will last. For a second, the florescent coals, alive and yet timeless, take her back to the little house on the prairie. The dog watches, as if something good to eat might come out. The door is slammed with a ringing sound, hot metal against metal, just like the two powerful women who are once again jousting, iron sharpening iron. She turns towards her daughter, she knows she has to say something. Her hands dust off each other gently as she looks across at Rose.

“Rose, I haven't thought about it for a long time. That was decades ago...” She glances to see if Rose is satisfied, but not expecting that she will be. “I don't know, it just didn't feel like home. It was a wonderful house. Your father and I often beamed with pride at what you had done for us. Even after we moved out!” She chuckles unashamedly.

Fragile silence fills the room once again, as if her explanation has used up all of the oxygen. Rose sits staring at her mother. She cannot find any words. Now there are even more questions, and Mama Bess has not answered the first questions. Maybe she should just drop it. It wasn't worth it to pursue it anymore. It did not matter.

“We knew you would probably not understand...” Laura confesses as she looks down at her beloved dog. He has become her proxy since Manly, her husband passed away.

“But I wanted to... Maybe we could have fixed whatever was wrong...” Rose responds too quickly, for there is more about to pour.

Laura closes her eyes and grimaces as if in pain. Rose discerns that she should give it a rest. But Laura comes and sits down in a sofa chair next to Rose. “My dear precious Rose...” She puts her little wrinkled hand, still elegant and expressive, on Rose's knee.

“Here we go...” Rose interjects, smiling nervously.

“You were still pretty young when we built this house. You were off playing or reading... and that was what we both wanted... you did not really share in the construction of it... but you may not know, it was one of the great moments of our marriage.” Rose sees her mother suddenly grow two inches as she sits up straight and begins a pioneer story...

“Your father overcoming his disability- and to go and scrounge up the stone and wood we needed, and making lumber right out of the trees on this property...

“Because that was what I wanted. Because that was what would make me happy.

“He was half crippled, limping around, took him twice as long as a real carpenter, but every board, every stone was placed for me, for you... for us. I saw his sweat and his cuts on his hands... his pride in building it, it was Manly providing for his family... the way he could... It was smallish... primitive... but it made him feel like a man...

“When we moved out of it, neither of us realized what was happening. It's silly I know. But the new house was like saying that his efforts had not been good enough...

“That he was just a gimpy old horsetrader, and his daughter had to put a roof over our heads. It really got him down, after we tried living there. And it went on for years.. and he never let on. But it still came up in little ways. He began to drag around like a homesick hound... One day I told him that what he did was more than enough, that it had always made me happy, and I would prove it to him, and I grabbed my bedspread and pillow and started walking over to this house. And he grabbed his pillow and followed me. I know, it's all so silly.

“But Rose, men are just little boys... break their ego and you have to scoop them up with a shovel... at the honky-tonks or whatever... sometimes for the remainder of their lives. Of course I thought my doing that would bring him around to seeing how silly it all was... And once we moved back...

“Rose, it felt so... nice. We were a young couple again. Our lives... our dreams still before us.”

Then I knew that his feelings... his self-image, were more important than the new house. In fact it always felt strange to me, like we were visiting someone's guest house. It's not your fault, it just wasn't home... You should have been proud... We lived there almost a decade!”

Rose sits, looking out of the window through the ice crystals into the frozen empty haze. “Not even Eight years...” Outside it looked just like she felt inside, at that moment. “But who's counting? No matter...”

Silence again, as the fire perks up and the flames flutter loudly.

“Well, I asked!” She laughs. “And I appreciate your candor, it helps me to let go if it...

Finally. Thirty years and eleven thousand dollars later...”

“Eleven? You told us it was going to only cost four thousand!”

“You know Mama... the best laid plans o' mice and men...” Rose smiles. “It was a long time ago... it did not matter... I wanted you guys to have it.”

“Lord! And RIGHT before the Stock Market crashed!” Laura stands up and saunters to the front door, the dog right by her side. “Do you need to go pee pee?” She asks in a high pitched voice, as if that is the frequency most effective for a dog. She lets him out and stares out at the winter landscape, so slushy and cold and uninviting.

Light snow is swirling about, as if trying to delay landing, as the dog disappears into the gray. Laura indulges in a mini-daydream, tuning out Rose as she watches her intrepid father dissolve into a blinding blizzard, following a rope tied to the house, which will lead him to the barn, to do his daily chores. Without it he might get disoriented and get lost and freeze to death. We all need a lifeline like that, even when we do not realize it. The first pioneer who got lost and froze solid just fifty feet from his home did not realize it. Risk takers like Rose never realize it. And what was life but a series of blinding storms?

Rose puts the final nail in the coffin of their impasse. “I knew it was crazy... told my friends as much. Another of my life-wasting mistakes...” She is ready to move on. “It's so ugly outside, I get so tired of winter about now. Would you like another cup?” She tries to change the subject, now that this difficult truth has intruded into her mind. It's going to require some rearrangement of her convictions. She needs to think about it before she launches into any more questions.

“No, thank you.” Laura sits down with a grave expression on her face. It is time to get it all out. She smooths her dress, pushing all the wrinkles out, as if she is about to be interviewed and wants to be perfect. Rose comes back into the room with a fresh cup and stands over her. She can tell her mama wants something... probably better not to sit down. She takes a sip.

“That is good coffee!”

“Rose, now I want to ask you something. Since we are airing out our feelings. Please sit down.”

“This is going to be good, I can tell!” Rose sits, unafraid, ready for anything. A pleasant Mona Lisa smile masks her curiosity. They have been through so many hard discussions over the years. How bad could it be? She suddenly feels a freezing draft on her neck. She glances over at a tiny crack in the window where the glazing compound has fallen out, allowing a startling sliver of frozen fresh air to rush in. She pulls up the collar on her cardigan sweater. “Need to put some chewing gum in that window!” She adds, trying to provide some levity.

Laura stares at the wood stove, as she forms her question. She is in no hurry. She reaches down and pulls a book out of her sewing basket by her chair. She opens it to a place where she had placed a marker, actually an outdated detergent coupon.

“Rose, you know how much I appreciate everything you have done. It goes without being said... perhaps too much... but I just read our latest creation...

And it's not that anything is wrong... They say it will sell well... it doesn't change anything but...”

“Say it Mama.” Rose is getting impatient. She wraps her sweater even tighter and lunges back into her sofa chair, she is suddenly fourteen years old again.

“Well don't be angry with me...”

“I'm not! Say it!”

Laura blots tears with an already crumpled tissue. Still forming her thoughts.

“Rosie, I've been reading the book, and found some places where you didn't just edit or rearrange things- but you added a significant amount of material.” Glancing back and forth between the pages of the book and Rose, Laura states her case, as if she is speaking before a jury. “And I had never really taken notice of these things, in fact I never would have known about them had someone... a well-meaning person had not remarked to me about it.. and I could not remember things in my own book!”

“Like what?”

“Well it's pointless to go into it...”

“What are we talking about?... I'm sure...”

“No- we are not going to discuss them... it is done. I told you to do whatever... you know that I have trusted you impeccably, always, and you have done a marvelous job of transforming my manuscripts. But...”

“But!” Rose blurts with indignation.

“Rose don't get mad.” Laura says softly. Almost sweetly... “We won't talk about it if it upsets you. I am not upset...”

“Then what is it, for Christ's sake?”

“You know I don't like it when you do that.”

“WHAT IS IT!?”

“When you take the Lord's name...”

“No. I mean what is it that made you bring all of this up? Jesus Christ!”

“I know it doesn't mean anything to you... I know you are a “deist” or something... and that even adds to the confusion...”

“Mama!”

Rose's voice is now reverberating throughout the house, and suddenly the small living room even seems to have warmed up. The stovepipe transmits the huffing and rumbling of changing winds above, and the dog scratches on the door. He has been waiting patiently.

“It's too late now. I shouldn't have brought it up...” Rose slumps back in frustration. Laura gets up and lets the cold dog in, and holds him at the doorway as he shakes off the melting sleet.

“Here, you lie down on the door mat until you dry off! Whew! You need a bath!” Laura chuckles as she slowly makes her way back to her chair. She stops and throws another slab of oak into the wood stove.

“There. Enough said. I'm glad I got that off of my chest...”

“Mama Bess, you know that anything that I ever did was to help the cause... so that you and Daddy could have a decent income... I never put my name on it anywhere.”

“I suppose.”

“It worked like gangbusters!”

“I know.”

“So what is the problem?” Rose imagines that she is back in control of the moment. A long silent moment.

The dog scratches furiously as the fleas thaw and start moving on him.

“What is that noise?” Rose realizes that there has been a background noise, quite feint, but has suddenly become a major distraction. She stands up.

“It's just the refrigerator. It's probably time to get a new one.” Rose sits back down. That's not in her job description.

“Sounds much worse in the summer. It's a Kelvinator. I keep putting it off, thinking it will probably outlast me.” Laura snags some sympathy, she is after all, an old, lonely woman, with little time left. And a worn out refrigerator.

“Mama...” Rose wears a frowning smile. “So....”

“Rosie, I know... I'm already regretting bringing this up. I know how much you have tried, and how you have meant well. It's just that it was really embarrassing. I told this woman that she had my book confused with someone else's! The words she was praising sounded wonderful but they were not mine. The ideas were foreign to me. It never occurred to me...”

“So you never read the final manuscript... you just signed off on it...”

Laura's eyes begin to well up... “It was all so... awkward.. so painful.” She wipes a tear. “I hated the editing, but I knew it was the only way... I remember nearly begging you to do anything- anything, just fix the damn stuff! But it hurt my pride... and I did trust you... you are a great writer.”

“As are you!” Rose announces, as if to a jury. “But there just wasn't time! We could have spent several years bringing you up to speed, training you... and probably messing you up, and that would have meant half as many books... half as much income, half as much fame, half as many Newberys...”

“I know. And I HAD put it all out of my mind...” Then Laura pulls out another book. As soon as Rose sees it her heart leaps. It is her own book, Free Land. She realizes that Mama Bess has just played her ace, and she is about to lose control of this exchange...

“When I first read this, I really tried to hold back my surprise... and disappointment.” Laura's lips begin to tremble, oh so slightly. “Then when I could not recognize myself in my own book.... and yet here in your book... This whole book is just my Pioneer Girl, spruced up!”

“Mama we have already gone over this.” Rose blows defensively. “Back when the Saturday Evening Post wanted a serial based on Pioneer Girl... we agreed that you would write juveniles and I would stick to adult novels. That way we were not competing with one another... and your way won in the end! You could never, should never have written Free Land or anything like it. Artists have to choose... they have to pick a genre.”

“Well it wasn't fair. And so Pioneer Girl was never published! Perhaps without so much meddling, it would have been...and it seems to me that with such similar material out there, people would think...”

“Think what?”

“People would say that I was just copying you... just mimicking my daughter... It's another pride thing”

“Or maybe I was copying my mother!” Rose laughs it off. “It does not matter. We were both making good products for a receptive market, and paid well... most writers can never say as much... Let them talk! We had the best of both worlds!” Rose has put another “Wilderfire” out.

“So what was the woman talking about... I love that she liked something of mine..”

“I wonder sometimes what strange ethics you live by, Rose?” Laura confesses.

“It's simple Mama, they are just words... well arranged thoughts... and we don't own them. They are not mine, not yours. God gives them to us... it is almost our God-given duty to share them... So tell me, what was the lady asking about?”

“I don't remember... but anyway I found this copy of Little Town on the Prairie... thought I would scan it, see if anything jumped out...”

“Well?”

“In fact something did. It's quite nice... it's really extraordinary...” Her voice begins to crack. She puts her finger on the page. “God is America's king! I absolutely love that...”

Rose grins.

“But I never wrote it!” Laura begins to sob with sorrowful, self-pitying sniffles. The dog strolls over, tail wagging pensively, and lays down next to her. “Like I said, I knew I would regret bringing this up...” her involuntary chuckles and sobs are muffled under the soggy tissue.

“Well I'm glad you did!” Rose is bright, victorious. She springs up and sprightly trots over to her shrinking little mother. “It's about the nicest thank you that I have ever received... Mama Bess, you may never have said those words... but you lived them. You- and God put them in me!”

Laura finally recovers. “I know I have too much pride... It's just finally come to me. What an amazing thing... a wonderful thing... the two of us have done. In spite of me! And I could never have done it without you!”

“Nor me without you!” As usual, Rose always gets in the last word; one of the privileges of being right most of the time, no matter how annoying that is.

The two old ladies hug by the fire, as it pops and sizzles... It is momentarily 1898... they have just nestled into the home of their pioneer dreams. The one Almanzo built. Rose lays her head on top of her mother's, and holds it and kisses her white waves. She pushes back a tear of her own. The dog stands up and gets in on the action, leaping into Laura's lap. He is the only witness to one of the greatest literary secrets in America.