Fields Of Gold by Marie Bostwick Page B

my own. Most of the money went into a bank account I’d started for Morgan. I tried to give some to Papa and Mama to help with expenses, but they wouldn’t accept a dime. Instead, I was doing some little things to treat them. I’d bought a new pair of boots for Papa, and now I was taking Mama to town for an ice-cream sundae and a movie. It wasn’t much, but I wanted them to know how much I appreciated all they’d done for me and Morgan.
    It was pleasant sitting at the drugstore counter with Mama and watching her eat ice cream, delicately spooning the last swirls of chocolate out of her parfait dish without even a clink of spoon on glass. I thought of how she’d lived all her life without any little luxuries, and now here we were, fine as anybody in town. Two months before I hadn’t had five dollars to call my own and now, all at once, I was practically rich.
    â€œEva,” Mama said, interrupting my daydream, “it’s almost time for the picture to start and you’ve hardly touched your sundae. Better hurry up before we’re late.” She relished a last dribble of chocolate syrup. “My, that was delicious! Thank you, Eva.”
    â€œMama, out of my next quilt money I’m going to buy you a dress. I bet you never had a store-bought dress in your whole life.”
    â€œNo, I haven’t,” she confessed, “but then again, I never really needed one—still don’t. You save your money for little Morgan; you might need it someday. Things look fine now, but that can change in a moment; crops fail, doctors’ bills come due. You’ve got to be ready for everything.”
    â€œOh, Mama. Don’t be so pessimistic! I saw in the paper where Oklahoma and Kansas are some of the best areas in the country for business,” I lectured between gulps of strawberry ice cream. “New people moving in all the time, and more and more land being bought up for farms. There’s four hundred times more wheat being produced here than there was just ten years ago.”
    â€œI’m not a pessimist, Eva. I’m a realist. Are you finished? Let’s go. I don’t want to be late for the picture show.”
    We hustled over to the theater, and I bought a bag of popcorn for us to share. The theater was small and lacked the elegance of the movie house I’d seen on our trip to Oklahoma City years before. There was no balcony, no gilt angels peering down from the proscenium, but it was pretty fancy for Dillon, with seats upholstered in red plush and armrests of polished oak. As it was Saturday night, the theater was full, and we saw several people we knew. One or two acknowledged Mama with a surreptitious incline of the head, though most pointedly ignored us. I was still considered a disgrace by most people in town. Their obvious contempt made me feel ashamed, and I sank a bit lower in my seat. However, for every inch I retreated, Mama rose up two, her face looking as determinedly proud as I’d ever seen it. I was relieved when it was time for the show to start, the red velvet curtain pulling back to reveal a gauzy white scrim. As usual, the projector started playing while the scrim was still closed, showing images behind that looked slightly fuzzy and dreamlike.
    The cartoon and the newsreel were shown before the feature. Mrs. Poole, whose husband owned the theater, sat at a nearly in-tune upright piano, banging out marches, or rags, or dirges depending on the mood of what was being projected on the screen. Mama and I sat in the darkness munching on popcorn and laughing at the cartoon. When the newsreel began, I couldn’t help but lean forward in my seat. It seemed like all the news was about aviation that day, at least that’s all that I remember of it.
    The first story was about two Frenchmen, Nungesser and Colli, who had set off for New York from Paris, attempting to be the first men to fly across the Atlantic nonstop to win fame and the