The Ballad of Lucy Whipple Read Online Free PDF

joke or snort in irritation.
    "Spit it out, California." Mama stirred the beans once more and put them into the oven of the cookstove.
    "That's it, Mama. California. I don't want to be called California. California is a place, not a person. I want to be called Lucy."
    Mama stopped in the middle of licking the molasses spoon. "What are you talking about?"
    I could feel my cheeks grow hot as the cookstove. "About me, Mama. I want to be called Lucy, not California."
    "Lucy? Where did you come up with a name like that?"
    "In a book. But it doesn't matter—"
    "A book! I should have known. That's what makes you so notional, those books!"
    "Mama, please!"
    Mama looked at me twisting my hands in my apron and trying hard not to cry. She sighed. "After twelve years of calling you California, I don't see how I can suddenly say Lucy any more than I could Bossie or Nelly or Lady Jane."
    "Will you try, Mama?"
    "We'll see. Now go do something useful."
    I straightened my apron and took a deep breath. "I will go write some letters."
    "You will gather wood for the cookstove, beat the dust out of the bed quilts, put the sheets on to boil, rub salt and vinegar into the ink stains on your aprons and lay them in the sun, and set the table for supper. Then you can write some letters," said Mama, and that was that.
     
Dear Gram and Grampop,
Well, I told Mama about me being Lucy instead of California, and now she just calls me missy or chickie or sis
or nothing at all. To her I'm not Lucy yet but I'm not California either, and that sits just fine with me. If I were the gambling sort, I'd bet a penny she will call me Lucy before too long. I think she'd be embarrassed to stand outside the tent and shout, "Oh chickie, come home and start supper." I will keep you informed.
     
    I liked writing letters. There wasn't much else to do for fun in Lucky Diggins if you didn't dig or drink. At first I wrote on pink writing paper, a going-away gift from Aunt Beulah, but was finally reduced to using the scraps of greasy paper that came wrapped around the bacon and cheese and lard from Mr. Scatter's store.
     
Dear Cousin Batty,
Do not let your father bring you here, for you would not like it and would most likely die. At the least you would get your hands dirty and mud on your pretty white shoes.
I do not like it, and I do not mind mud nearly as much as you do.
It is lonely here. I even almost miss you.
Regards from your cousin who now calls herself

Lucy
     
    It was a lot easier to write what I thought or felt than to say it out loud. I could write things I'd never say to someone's face, especially since I didn't quite believe those letters would ever get all the way around to Massachusetts. Snowshoe Ballou, who had the biggest feet in the Sierra, carried letters to San Francisco for mailing and brought mail back, for a dollar a letter. He walked up and down the mountains and valleys, on a trail when there was a trail or navigating by trees and peaks or stars when there wasn't. Lucky Diggins was all in a dither each month when Snowshoe Ballou showed up, bringing the promise of a letter or newspaper or a package from some faraway exotic place or, even better, from home.
     
Dear Gram and Grampop,
If ever you write, please enclose money so I can pay Snowshoe Ballou and continue to write you letters. Gold would he best, but I believe dollars would do.
I am still selling a few pies, so I have been making a little money each day for my pickle crock, but most of the miners don't seem to care for pie much, preferring to spend their money on beans, whiskey, and tobacco. Mr. Scatter says all miners are vagabonds, scoundrels, and assassins, but that he's not leaving until he has "enough money to burn a wet mule." The miners, on the other hand, think Mr. Scatter is the scoundrel, taking all their precious gold to pay for flour and salt. "Hard as Scatters heart" is heard around here near as often as "pay dirt," "humbug," and "more whiskey, dang it.
"
     
    Snowshoe Ballou