“I saw it.”
“Well, what do I do? If you would let me rough him up a little. But you’re too soft”
“I guess I am.” Rod looked thoughtfully at a slab of slate erected in the village square. It read:
To the Memory Of
ULYSSES GRANT COWPER,
First Mayor
who died for his city
The carving was not good; Rod had done it.
“Grant told me once,” he added, “that government was the art of getting along with people you don’t like.”
“Well, I sure don’t like Bruce and Theo!”
“Neither do I. But Grant would have figured out a way to keep them in line without getting rough.”
“You figure it out, I can’t. Roddie, you should never have let Bruce come back. That was bad enough. But when he married that little . . . well!”
“They were made for each other,” Rod answered. “Nobody else would have married either of them.”
“It’s no joke. It’s almost Hope! Quit teasing Grantie!” She bounced up.
Miss Hope Roberta Baxter, sixteen months, and Master Grant Roderick Throxton, thirteen months, stopped what they were doing, which was, respectively, slapping and crying. Both were naked and very dirty. It was “clean” dirt; each child had been bathed by Caroline an hour earlier, and both were fat and healthy.
Hope turned up a beaming face. “‘Ood babee!” she asserted.
“I saw you.” Caroline upended her, gave her a spat that would not squash a fly, then picked up Grant Throxton.
“Give her to me,” Rod said.
“You’re welcome to her,” Caroline said. She sat down with the boy in her lap and rocked him. “Poor baby! Show Auntie Carol where it hurts.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that. You’ll make a sissy of him.”
“Look who’s talking! WishyWashy Walker.”
Hope threw her arms around Rod, part way, and cooed, “Woddie!” adding a muddy kiss. He returned it. He considered her deplorably spoiled; nevertheless he contributed more than his share of spoiling.
“Sure,” agreed Carol. “Everybody loves Uncle Roddie. He hands out the medals and Aunt Carol does the dirty work.”
“Carol, I’ve been thinking.”
“Warm day. Don’t strain any delicate parts.”
“About Bruce and Theo. I’ll talk to them.”
“Talk!”
“The only real punishment is one we never use and I hope we never have to. Kicking people out, I mean. The McGowans do as they please because they don’t think we would. But I would love to give them the old heaveho. . . and if it comes to it, I’ll make an issue of it before the town either kick them out or I quit.”
“They’d back you. Why, I bet he hasn’t taken a bath this week!”
“I don’t care whether they back me or not. I’ve ridden out seven confidence votes; someday I’ll be lucky and retire. But the problem is to convince Bruce that I am willing to face the issue, for then I won’t have to. Nobody is going to chance being turned out in the woods, not when they’ve got it soft here. But he’s got to be convinced.”
“Uh, maybe if he thought you were carrying a grudge about that slice in the ribs he gave you?”
“And maybe I am. But I can’t let it be personal, Carol; I’m too stinkin’ proud.”
“Uh . . . Turn it around. Convince him that the town is chompin’ at the bit which isn’t far wrong and you are trying to restrain them.”
“Um, that’s closer. Yes, I think Grant would have gone for that. I’ll think it over.”
“Do that.” She stood up. “I’m going to give these children another bath. I declare I don’t know where they find so much dirt.”
She swung away with a child on each hip, heading for the shower sheds. Rod watched her lazily. She was wearing a leather bandeau and a Maori grass skirt, long leaves scraped in a pattern, curled, and dried. It was a style much favored and Caroline wore it around town, although when she treated herself to a day’s hunting she wore a leather breechclout such as the men wore.
The same leaf fibre could be retted and crushed, combed and spun, but the cloth as yet possessed by the colony was not even enough for baby clothes. Bill Kennedy had whittled a loom for Sue and it worked, but neither well nor fast and the width of cloth was under a half meter. Still, Rod mused, it was progress, it was civilization. They had come a long way.