‘ GRANDMA LILA'S BUTTON HOOK ’
BY
SUE PACEY

 

For as long as I could remember, Grandma Lila had been old, her face the colour of the earth, leathery and wrinkled, baked by the hot Yukon sun. That’s what comes of working in the fields from dawn till dusk to try and exist in this unforgiving land.

The summer of 1865 was hot and oppressive and when the wind blew, it turned the plains to dust that stung your eyes so you could barely see. That year our crops failed and not for the first time, we went hungry.

Grandma Lila’s best possession was a shiny silver hook that she used for doing up her boots, which she kept hanging on a nail by the fireplace. Whenever shafts of light from the setting sun came glinting through the casement, they caught it sending twinkling patterns all around the room. How as a little critter it fascinated me and I could never take my eyes away from it.

Grandma Lila would sit by the fire of an evening and taking it down from its nail, would unbutton her boots, coughing and wheezing as she did so. She would puff on her pipe between violent bouts of coughing, which invariably ended with an almighty heave as she spat into the fire, making the wood crackle and hiss. I could never quite decide what fascinated me the most, that shiny hook or the contents of Grandma’s ‘innards.’

It was on my sixteenth birthday that she gave it to me, all done up in pink crinkled paper that looked as though it had come from some fancy city store. I thought that surely I was the luckiest girl in the whole Wild West to be given such a prize. I kept it locked away safely in my little wooden box of treasures under the bed, waiting for the day when I too would have boots of my own, just like Grandma’s.

I got those boots a year later. They struck gold in Yukon County and with it came new prosperity like I’d never known. Our little town grew and grew and when Pa staked his claim, we had money to buy things.

I had new clothes for the first time in my life, not hand-me-downs, and a pretty linen bodice and drawers for Sundays. And boots, my beautiful brown leather boots to use my buttonhook on, but only for church and special occasions mind you!

One night, Pa got himself shoulder-shot in a bar room brawl and they carried him home bleedin’, cursin’ and hollerin.’ Doc Jones was attending a birth over in Jesmond fifty miles away and so, being a resourceful gal, I knew straight away that bullet just had to come out.

While the farmhands held him still, I ran to get my buttonhook and taking a deep breath (and with a quick prayer to the Lord) dipped it in rye whisky and plunged it into the jagged hole. After probing around for a moment, I managed to hook out the bullet with a flick of my wrist.

What a useful little thing to have! I got to thinking.

With new wealth the town became more lawless and I took to carrying the buttonhook in my petticoats whenever I went out alone. Let me tell you I had to use it on more than one occasion, for when those prospectors got liquor inside them, suffice to say that their thought turned to more than gold when they saw a woman.

For the most time, I managed to dissuade them with the sharp point of my buttonhook, until I met my Jed and then no longer cared to use it in my defence.

Five years later we had five kids, and come the Fall, on my twenty-third birthday, it was clear that once again, I was ‘with child.’

That man was as fertile as a rutting ram! I decided there and then that enough was enough and I would not suffer those terrible birthing pains again.

Now I’d never been much for book learning, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t learned a thing or two along the way. So that night, when Jed had gone out drinking and the kids were in bed, I fetched my buttonhook down from its place by the fireside.

With a little push and a gentle twist (carefully though) the job was done quickly enough.

Three times more in the next couple of years this had to be done, until it seemed that my body got the right idea and the babies stopped coming. With great ceremony the hook was carefully washed and polished on each occasion, with due deference to Grandma Lila.

What a useful little thing to have around!

In time, I got known for helping out the saloon girls when they found themselves in trouble, but never did I take money. That would have not been right!

Now I’m just an old lady myself, sat on the front porch in my rocking chair. My face is leathery and wrinkled, just like Grandma Lila’s was, baked by the hot Yukon sun these past eighty years or so.

As I put back my head to take a nap, the buttonhook slipped from between gnarled old fingers and before I can stop it, falls down a crack between the boards of the old porch. I strained my old eyes to see where it went, but by now it was deep under the house never to be found again.

There are no regrets as I settle back and smile to myself. Where I’m going soon, I guess you just won’t need a buttonhook, so maybe it’s better laid to rest in the earth too, keeping all its memories to itself.

 

© Sue Pacey 2007

 

 

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