'WIDE MEADOWS': THE WEALTH OF THE WORLD (A CONTINUING SERIES)

Editor's note: This is an excerpt of a chapter from Jean Bell Mosley's book "Wide Meadows" that was first published in 1960.

"Lonnie," Mama explained to Mrs. Britt, "I've done an awful thing and I want to use your phone."

"It's out of order, Myrtle."

"Out of order!" Mama wailed -- as if they weren't almost half the time.

"What is it, Myrtle? What have you done?" Lonnie asked, alarmed, looking around at our tear-stained faces.

Mom explained while Mrs. Britt shook her head commiseratingly.

"I know just how it is, Myrtle," she sympathized. "Once I let a salesman talk me into buying a carpet sweeper and you know I haven't had a carpet in my whole life. She laughed ruefully.

"Oh, it isn't as if I don't want the books, Lonnie," Mom said. "It's just that I should have known we couldn't pay for them. I'll just have to drive back and get my five dollars back and cancel the order."

So we flew back to town as fast as old Maude could go. But we were too late. The man had already left town on the noon train.

"You wouldn't have gotten your money back anyway, Myrtle," Aunt Grace said, accusingly. "Didn't you read the contract? It said if for any reason it was canceled, the down payment remained the property of the company."

Even old Maude's ears drooped on our way back home and her rump swayed dejectedly.

Lonnie Britt was waiting out by her gate to see how things came out.

"We were too late," Mom reported.

"Aw, now, ain't that too bad," Mrs. Britt said, wrapping her arms in her big white apron and clucking her tongue. It was good to have Lonnie Britt on your side in time of trouble.

"Well, now don't you worry none, Myrtle. Ain't no sense in worrying over that. Now, if it was cholera in the hogs or the river floodin' out the crops, it would be different. But, pshaw, this ain't nothin'!"

Dad and Grandma and Grandpa never said one word when Mama confessed at the supper table. That was the awful part of it. Dad just kept evening up his knife and fork with the edge of the table, starting to say something and then not saying it. Grandma passed the spoon holder around three times and Grandpa started to put his usual two spoonfuls of sugar in his coffee, but thinking better of it he dumped the second one back in the bowl.

"I'll just write them a letter and tell them not to send the books," Mama concluded after days of worry.

"Oh, let em come," Grandma said. "At least we can look at them and then send them back."

"Yeah," Lou and I pleaded. "How long was that aardvark's nose anyway?"

I wondered if this wouldn't be a good time to cash in some of the AT&T.

The books were so long in coming we were half hopeful they wouldn't. By the time they did arrive, which was the very day when the neighbors were over helping with the threshing, news had spread through the community of Mama's great indiscretion.

"Gonna educate 'em all up, are you, Miz Bell?" Tom Alexander joked. And Jim Stacey said, "Now if I'd knowed you was hankering for books, we wouldn't have used up that old Sears catalog."

Mama couldn't come back at them for, of course, she didn't actually know how she was going to pay for the books.

"Don't you pay them no mind now, Myrtle," Lonnie Britt said, cutting huge squares of corn bread. She'd come over to help with the cooking. "Do you all good if you did a little more book reading," she railed out at the menfolk. "And you, Tom, how about that time you bought the fiddle without no strings nor a bow? You, Jim, you still got the stereoscope that salesman sold you without any pictures for it?"

Jim and Tom looked a bit sheepish, shuffled their feet under the table, and asked for more potatoes and beans.

"Now I tell you what we're going to do," Lonnie said, decisively. "We're all going to buy those books. And we're all going to use 'em. Now, Tom, you fork over a couple of dollars and take the A' book. Let Bells keep the B' book. Crawfords will take the C' book. Keeping 'em alphabetical, we'll know where they are most of the time." Lonnie warmed to her plan. "And where there's two B's' like me and Bells, we'll have one take a letter that isn't in the community, like G.' You keep the G' book anyway, Myrtle. You've already got five dollars in it and are entitled to two books."

Well, that's the way it was in spite of Mama's protestations. Like I said, it was good to have Lonnie on your side in time of trouble.

We did the "A" book from Aachen, a city in western Germany, to azurite, a colored mineral, then took it back to Alexanders. We studied our own "B" book from Alexander Graham Bell, some of our kinfolk, we hoped, to the Byzantine Empire.

It wasn't altogether satisfactory, though, because just as sure as you wanted one particular book to look up something in, it was five miles down the river, and when you got down there it had been loaned to someone five miles back up the river. And sometimes people wouldn't let you keep a book until it was thoroughly digested -- a thing we liked to do, but we didn't feel in a position to argue about it, for the whole system was set up more or less for our benefit. Then, too, folks got the idea that Lou and I were just the proper legs for this circulating library. Down to Ritters with this book. Up to McFarlands with that. Over to Staceys with another.

"We can't complain," Mom said, "but I wish we could have kept them all."

That first year, in addition to our own "B" and "G" books, we got as far down as the "H" book. But it was the "B" and "G" we knew by heart.

Someone suggested once that the books be gathered up and taken over to the school, but there were too many against that for everyone was proud to have an encyclopedia on the parlor table by the Bible. So proud, in fact, that they quit teasing Mom. There was some new joke by this time anyway. It had to do with Archie McDowell's buying one of the new electric radios with electricity still five miles down the river, too.

This was what they were all laughing about when we were at the Fourth of July picnic the next summer when I tried to get them all quiet.

It wasn't long after we'd spread our picnic lunch when I came running up with my news. Lonnie Britt was folding up the tablecloths. Elsie Crawford was feeding her baby. Mom was putting away remnants of a cake. Some of the menfolks were clearing a place for horseshoes and laughing at Archie and his radio.

"Come on. Come on," I yelled to them all, trying to make them hear me.

"What is it, Jeanie?" Mama looked alarmed, hastily untying her apron.

"Just come on. Everybody." I turned and ran and motioned for them to follow, looking back over my shoulder to see that they did. And they did. Just like I was the gingerbread man, and them all strung out behind me. I got so far ahead I had to stop at the merry-go-round to make sure they saw which way I turned, and again at the Ferris wheel. But they kept coming, Mama's hair falling loose, Grandma clutching her old pocketbook, Tom Alexander picking up one of the little ones and carrying him along, Elsie Crawford with her baby crying, Archie McDowell holding onto a broken suspender, Cabe Ashton with a horseshoe in his hand.

Right up onto the wooden platform I ran while they all came up running and stopped short and breathless down below.

The announcer was saying, "Here's the little lass who wants to try it. Remember, folks. If she can get all the way through without a mistake, we will give a dollar for every word. There's been fifteen try it already but so far no one has made it. Are you ready?"

I nodded that I was. How many words did the thing have, anyway? What would I get with all that money? I'd buy all the books back anyway. Bless the dear "G" book. Or get another set. I looked at Lonnie Britt standing down below, looking up at me so proudly. I'd get Lonnie a carpet to go with her carpet sweeper if it was only a couple of throw rugs. That was for sure. I almost stumbled and missed a word when I thought about the strings and bow for Tom's fiddle and pictures for Jim's stereoscope. Maybe I could even get electricity brought up to the community for Archie's radio. That was it! I'd bring electricity up the valley for it was too dark to read in the old kitchen, and there was a hole already bored over the table for the fixture. Did electric bills run big, I wondered, but kept on.

How triumphant Mama looked. I saw her lips moving and it looked as if she was saying, "They are the treasured wealth of the world." Lou was repeating the thing silently with me. Dad was counting on his fingers, but he finally had to give that up. A hush had fallen over the whole crowd. Even the Ferris wheel and merry-go-round had stopped. Elsie Crawford's baby wasn't making a sound.

A locust in the tree above me shrilled down to a dead stop and I wound up magnificently, "... that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."