When Ray and Jay were boys, she had sent Aaron for a switch several times to “tan their behinds” for disobeying the commands of the house. The boys soon learned to avoid her presence except in the most benign of circumstances. Sometimes Ray wished he could lay his head in his mother’s lap, the way the girls did, but he had long since concluded that the accompanying lecture on the rightness of God’s teachings was too high a price.
As Ray and Jay ambled away from the Presbyterian church that Sunday to investigate several Model As parked under a pair of cottonwood trees, Ray wondered why Jay had such a streak of orneriness in him. It was Jay who always wanted to sneak out of church during their father’s sermon. It was Jay who always got them in trouble. When they were younger, their father would warn the boys to sit down in the hay wagon in case the horses became skittish. Jay always stood up. Or he would wait beside the road, pretending to be preoccupied with a flower until the team was moving, and then he would run and jump on the wagon. It was just such a move that gave Jay his slightly sinister physical appearance in later life. He had jumped for the wagon, misjudged the speed of the horses, and hit the ground, cutting a deep gash on his chin.
“I hear they hired Margaret Chambers to be the new schoolteacher,” Jay said. “She was just behind us in school.” Ray didn’t respond.
“Three or four years,” Jay continued. “I’m twenty-two and you’re twenty-four. She can’t be more than eighteen. Not much of a job anyway.” Ray was quiet.
“She’s a college girl now,” Jay said, letting the scorn sound in his voice. College was too expensive, too far away, and too frivolous for serious people. Hard work provides the currency of life, and college was a detour, even a dodge from the reality of raising a family, life’s most important endeavor. That’s why so many girls around Nickerly started their families with a marriage at age thirteen or fourteen, hopefully to a young man about to take over his father’s farm. It was not unusual for the boys of Nickerly to turn thirty-five, still unmarried, still working on their father’s farm, and probably still virginal as well.
“You know, Ray, I think it’s time for me to leave the farm,” Jay said, switching subjects. “I don’t like it. You’re the farmer in the family. And Dad’s got four girls to marry off. I’m going to Salina and get a job . . . maybe not ’til after the summer.”
But Ray was still focused on Jay’s earlier comments. “Well, I may just call on Margaret Chambers,” he said quietly.
Jay was startled and stole a questioning look at his brother.
“Go ahead,” Jay said, “but just remember her mother.”
“What about her mother?”
“I hear that Margaret is hard to get along with,” Jay said. “Independent. She once talked back to Judd Sexton. Refused to step aside for him in the general store, and then announced that she was first in line.”
“What about her mother?” Ray asked again.
“Something happened over at the Haney place during their shivaree,” Jay said. “You weren’t there. Must have been ten years ago.”
“What happened?” Ray asked. “I’m sure I was there.”
“No, you weren’t there, or you would remember,” Jay said.
“Nobody ever talked about it afterward, but I remember. While we were standing out in the yard, waiting for the Haneys to come out, Mary Chambers was in the bushes with Johnny Harwood. I don’t know what they were doing. But Mary was married to John Chambers. And John Chambers caught them, grabbed Mary by the arm, and marched her right out of there. I was sort of hanging back in the crowd, beating my dishpan with that big ladling spoon Mom has, when the Chambers came charging through the dark. I saw Johnny Harwood head into the shrubs down by the barn, and I figured he hightailed it for home. He was just lucky that it was a wedding celebration and John Chambers didn’t have a gun.”
“I never heard that story before,” Ray said.
Everyone liked a shivaree because it was a little daring, and one of the few community events with sexual overtones, not that they were ever talked about, of course. Ray didn’t really know how shivarees got started, or what set of traditions they were based on. But the rituals were prescribed, and seldom varied, making a community shivaree almost as anticipated as the wedding itself.
Usually, the shivaree occurred within weeks of the wedding, when the marital experience was still fresh enough that most couples were assumed to be spending every night in sexual exploration. The arrangements were always the same: the community would gather around the newlyweds’ home about nine o’clock, after it was dark and most couples were in bed. Then everyone would charge onto the porch, yelling and beating on pots and pans. The newlyweds would be caught in bed, traipse downstairs in their nightgowns, open the door to check on the commotion, and be surprised by all their neighbors.
Of course, they weren’t really surprised, because the shivaree was as much a part of any farm wedding ceremony as the cake itself. And it had to be endured. Indeed, one young couple refused to come downstairs for their shivaree, preferring to stay hidden under their covers until their neighbors grew tired of beating on their pans, and their kids started crying because nobody came out of the house. After about an hour of grumbling about bad sports, the neighbors left, but the newlyweds were never treated the same again. Years later when the farmer in question became ill and couldn’t put up his hay crop, a couple of neighbors suggested that the community come to their aid. A date was set for the haying, and no one showed up, not one soul, even the two farmers who first proposed the help. No shivaree, no help. People did not forget or forgive easily in Nickerly County.
At the Haneys’ shivaree, the young couple fulfilled all their obligations. First the young husband brought a wheelbarrow out from behind the porch, where he had stashed it for this very purpose, helped his wife into it, still in her nightgown, and led a procession of all the visiting neighbors around the farmyard. It was a wonderful celebration, with everyone laughing and shouting, the men being the most excited because the young bride’s nightgown exposed more of her throat than they had ever seen, and at least the faintest outlines of her breasts, unsupported by the rigid corsets of the day. No one ever spoke of this sexual aspect of the ritual, but it was evident to all that a certain titillation was the key to a great shivaree, especially the second traditional event: the washing of feet.
After the bride was helped from the wheelbarrow, she was carried by the groom to the front porch, where a small tub of water had been set up by the neighbors. She sat on the top step with her feet in the water, while the blushing groom knelt in front of the tub and washed her feet, massaging his new wife’s ankles and toes, in what for many farmers might have been the most provocative public act they would ever see. Certainly, it was unlikely that Mrs. Haney would ever again show her ankles to such an assemblage. It apparently was at this point that Mary Chambers was overcome by the advances of Johnny Harwood. Johnny had put his arms around Mary’s waist and was about to kiss her throat, when John Chambers came upon them. It’s not clear that anyone actually saw this encounter take place, but the word spread quickly when the Chambers left the shivaree in such a hurry. The story was embellished over the years until everyone in Nickerly thought Mary Chambers and Johnny Harwood were having an affair in those bushes.
For the rest of their lives, John and Mary Chambers seldom appeared at social gatherings. They seemed to lock their shame in the most remote corner of their existence. It was often pointed out, for example, that the Chambers were nice people, but they didn’t go to church. In fact, building the local school was the only positive point on the credit side of their community ledger.
“How come I never heard this story before?” Ray asked.
“Because no one talks about this sort of thing,” Jay said, rolling his eyes at Ray’s naïveté. “We only talk in public about sin. Not the