Millicent Get Your Gun

Spinster teacher Millicent is alone on the farm — her parents away at the 1912 Republican convention — when a well-featured salesman appears at the door — and, instantaneously, she hatches a plan!

Whiiiii-eee-oooooo!!! agk! agk! Chaaaaaaagk!!!

Instantaneously awake and alert, Millicent, sideways from her pillow, focused on her father’s loaded twenty-gauge shotgun, leaning against the nightstand, where she had placed it the previous evening with deadly intent.

Whiiiii-eee-oooooo!!! agk! agk! Chaaaaaaagk!!!

Rising from her bed, she grabbed the weapon and cocked its trigger. She was not about to allow one obnoxiously loud, errant bird of unknown species, to ruin her school vacation tradition, of not arising until after ten from her bed," set for the summer in the breezy space between the two opened windows of her second floor corner bedroom.

Whiiiii-eee-oooooo!!! agk! agk! Chaaaaaaagk!!!

Extending her upper self out of the south facing window, Millicent entered the verdant realm of the big ash tree -- which had grown into a virtual appendage of the ‘house that had been her home’ for all of her thirty two years.

BOOM!

Millicent just caught a glimpse of the grayish bird-creature as it flapped madly away amidst an expanding plume of shredded leaf matter.

“Just keep on a going and you’ll be up to Canada, no time flat!” she shouted after it.

Because her parents were in Chicago -- her father being an Iowan delegate to the 1912 Republican Party National Convention -- there had been little hesitation on her part in deciding to take up arms in her endeavor to bring an end to her, now, week-long ordeal.

Millicent laid the gun on the floor and took a seat by her writing table, upon which were stacked the thirty-six new grammar textbooks she would be using the coming fall semester --as well as her broach watch, which read half past seven.

“Well, I suppose there’s no going back to bed now,” she thought.

Then something caught her eye out of her west facing window.

“What on earth?” she muttered.

A half mile away, across her father’s fields of wheat and alfalfa, an automobile was stopped along the farm’s property line. Beside it stood a tall step ladder, upon which, stood a tall, hatless man. She wondered if he might be a surveyor from the county land office. But, that made no sense.

Quickly, Millicent rummaged through her ‘catch all’ dresser drawer and located the mother-of-pearl opera glasses her younger sister -- now a married mother of three -- had presented to her one Christmas, long ago. Then, she got on her bed, leaned against the window sill, and commenced to spy upon the mysterious man," and his mysterious activities.

For a time, he fiddled with a large, square something or other, the size of a lady’s hat box, sitting atop the ‘A’ shaped ladder. Then, he took a flat, dark object from the ‘hat box,’ got down from the ladder and put it into the automobile. This was followed by the man’s removal and packing away of the box, and the folding up, and strapping onto the vehicle’s roof, of the ladder. Finally, trailed by a faint cloud of dust, the man drove the automobile away, to disappear from Millicent’s sight.

Half an hour later, at the kitchen table, Millicent grumpily breakfasted on cold bacon, cornbread and peaches. It was not the bird anymore, though, that was agitating her, it was the not knowing what the hatless man had been up to doing out there on the ladder. It was akin to the way she felt when her eighth grade boys would suddenly burst out together in laughter at some private joke (Once, she had embarrassed herself by screaming back at them, “Do you take me for a fool?”).

If only she could get herself to town, she thought, she could ask around about the stranger. But that would mean an hour long buggy ride. And, besides, she was not sure she knew how to hitch up the horse, as her father had always taken care of that for her.

Then! -- four knocks from the door!

Millicent’s immediate instinct was to head upstairs, to her room, as she would generally do when there were callers. But she was the only one home.

She moved to the front parlor where, through the lace curtains, she could see that in front of the house was a horseless carriage -- with a ladder strapped to its top!

Involuntarily, she opened the door.

“Good morning, Madam. I’m wondering if, perhaps, your husband might be about.”

After a short think, Millicent responded, “No.”

The man, in his mid thirties, was tall, over six feet. Grayish blue summer suit. Brown shoes, in need of a polish. Short, light hair, receding some. Boyish, self-effacing smile.

“I see. Well, perhaps I …”

“Are you a drummer?” interrupted Millicent.

“I suppose, of a sort, yes. I …”

“You want to sell us a ladder with a hat box on top?” inquisitioned Millicent.

“No, I … ”

“I’m not married. This house belongs to my father … and to my mother.”

The man nodded.

“My father is with the Republicans, in Chicago. He’d like to see Roosevelt back on the job, but he doubts that’s going to happen … Taft’s men are too much in control of the party, nowadays. He’s taken rooms, with my mother, at the Palmer House.”

“It’s a fine hotel,” said the man. “I had lunch, there, once. My company’s headquarters are in Chicago, you see.”

"Well, personally, I’ve never been to the Windy City. They say it’s pretty noisy ... and smelly, too, with all them … I mean those … stockyards.”

“It can be, yes, especially in the summer,” responded the thoroughly polite and agreeable man.

“Wider spaces seem more suitable for human habitation,” propounded Millicent.

“I would say that I, too, prefer life in the country.”

Millicent now became aware of an internal pang -- making its way from her stomach up to her throat. With some effort, she pulled her eyes away from the hatless man’s face -- but when he continued speaking, she was back fixedly gazing upon his well formed and kindly features.

“My name is John Burdett. I’m a farm photographer.”

“A what?” she said, successfully removing the exclamative edge from the utterance at the last split second.

“I’m with the Rememberland Picture Company. We make quality photographic images of agricultural lands … for farmers … and their posterity.”

“Why?” asked Millicent, praying that she was sounding conversational.

“Would you not find it appealing, perhaps, to one day be able to show your grandchildren your father’s …”

“I told you, I’m not married,” she cut him off, aggression creeping back into her voice.

“I … of course … was … ah … speaking in the abstract. I, myself, too, am not married … in point of fact,” intoned the man, kindly. 

Millicent felt a side ache developing.

John Burdett pulled a card from his inside coat pocket and handed it to Millicent.

“When your father returns, would you mind giving him this? I’ll be back through your area in the fall, at harvest time. If he is interested in our services, he can contact the Chicago office, and they will get word to me. Thank you for your time, Miss …”

“Flewellen,” said Millicent.

“… Miss Flewellen.”

As John Burdett turned and headed for his automobile, Millicent very nearly commanded him to “Stop!” -- in the same manner she might have addressed an out of line child on the playground; but, instead, she said, with all the politeness she could muster, “Excuse me, Mr. Burdett … what were you doing, this morning, out yonder there, by the fence line?”

“Your neighbor, Mr. Pratt ... he wants pictures of each of his sixteen quarter-sections. I made the last one, this morning.”

“Yes. Pratt. Well, I see. That would make sense, then.”

As the visage of John Burdett’s automobile receded in a faint cloud of dust, Millicent sensed a certain life force within her draining away -- and the thought flashed through her mind that a solitary existence would most certainly be her fate.

Then, as if in response the thought -- from some other, deeper place -- there arose within her a massive and definitive “No!”

On the porch, just a few feet away from the door -- inside a painted chest that also served as a seat -- was her mother’s six-shooter, that she sometimes used for killing chickens.

After she had fired three pistol shots into the air, equally spaced two seconds apart -- Millicent noticed the grayish bird-creature flying off from the tool shed rooftop.

John Burdett’s motor, on the other hand, now a hundred yards distant, did not respond at all, and continued on its way.

Once again, she raised the gun: 

Bang!   Bang!   Bang!

Shading her eyes with her free hand, and squinting, Millicent watched the automobile come to a stop, and John Burdett get out and look back in her direction. She let the gun fall to the ground and began waving with both arms in a manner she hoped would communicate the message that he should come back.

A few minutes later, Millicent stepped forward as the car slowed to a stop before her.

“Oh … Mr. Burdett … it’s … well … it’s good to see you again … and, I just wanted to let you know that, after some reflection … and thought … it has occurred to me that it might be possible … for me … my father’s daughter to … in his absence, act as his proxy … which is to say … by proxy, I could … ah … it’s not complicated, I can assure you … I’ve got a Miriam Webster’s inside and I could look it up lickety-split, so that …”

“No need for that, Miss Flewellen. I understand your meaning,” said John Burdett.

“Oh, good. I’m glad of that.”

“I promised Mrs. Pratt I’d join them for a late breakfast, at nine … that’s in fifteen minutes. Then, at eleven, I’m scheduled for a livery stable tableau, in town.”

“Lunch!” blurted out Millicent. “If you were to come for that, then … maybe over a meal I could listen to your proposal … I mean proposition … ah … whatever it is that you salesmen call it … and, then, naturally, give it all due consideration … after weighing the facts, of course.”

As she once again stood watching the automobile disappear, Millicent sensed tears on her cheek. “What’s this?” she wondered. The last time she had really cried was probably when she was ten, just about as long ago, probably, as when she had last fired a gun.

Crossing the threshold back into the house, Millicent’s enigmatic tears transmuted into tears of dread -- and she cried out, in a rising panic, “Lunch!?!?”

Millicent did not cook, she had never cooked. Before her parents had departed for the Republican National Convention in Chicago, her mother had stocked the larder with enough cooked bacon and cornbread to sustain her daughter during their absence. Millicent’s peaches, she harvested from her father’s small orchard, along with the odd carrot from the vegetable garden.

She tried to imagine what a carrot and bacon crumble salad might be like, and decided it wouldn’t do at all. Mr. Burdett, being a man, would require a hardy midday meal. She considered the notion of shooting a chicken and setting it atop a campfire, as she had not a clue as to how to operate the kitchen stove.

Ham! Her father generally kept a ham in her granddad’s old smokehouse -- that he would snack on from time to time while working. He had always asserted that there was no better tasting meat than a ham which had been salted, smoked and aged for over a year.

Fifteen minutes later, Millicent set a four pound, white-ish, green-ish, crusty molded mass down upon her mother’s butcher block. Well, it will no doubt be flavorful, she thought, as it certainly had an interesting smell about it, not altogether horrible.

One additional component, she figured, and the meal would be complete. “Spicy beans! Perfect!” she epiphanized. There were some cans in the pantry. Ham, cornbread and spicy beans would make for a square meal if there ever was one -- which she could surely warm up in a skillet held over some lighted candles. As for dessert? -- sugar sprinkled peaches would certainly qualify.

Half an hour later, after an extensive and unsuccessful search, high and low, for her mother’s can opener -- and one botched can opening attempt involving her father’s hatchet, resulting in her having to change her blouse --Millicent sat on the painted chest on the porch pointing the six-shooter at the can of spicy beans, lying on its side atop of the hitching post. Out of the corner of her eye, she spied the grayish bird-creature alight on the well house, but resisted the temptation to change her target.

Bang!

After they were married, John Burdett built Millicent a home in town, just a short walk from her school. He also established the community’s first photography studio, which thrived for many years -- which allowed them the luxury of hiring a cook for their ever expanding family.