We’re back at the feed store. Blizzards leave a lot of time for thinking, and Almanzo spends his days doing just that — not cracking jokes or even seeming to notice his chores as he does them. Even more shocking, he sits back and lets Royal make the pancakes. Sacre bleu!
I love the brotherly discourse here. When Manzo finally offers up his thoughts to Royal, Royal quips that “It ought to be something worthwhile, the time you’ve been spending on it.”
Almanzo goes on to tally up the people in town, the mouths each household has to feed, and the dwindled food supplies. He uses Pa as his first example. That family is starving, Almanzo deduces. So, Royal says, you selling your wheat? Not on your tintype, Almanzo replies. (I’ve never heard that expression elsewhere — have you?) He continues to deduce, concluding that if the blizzards stop in March, the townspeople are going to starve unless he sells his wheat. If the blizzards don’t stop until April — the way the Indian predicted — they’ll starve even if they have eaten his wheat.
And the point? Royal prods. Almanzo’s point is that someone has to go get the wheat south of town.
You get the sense, here, that Almanzo is happy with the decision he’s made. And the decision is that he will go. Royal is not. Almanzo quotes Father Wilder to Royal (“Be sure you’re right, then go ahead”), and Royal shoots back a favorite saying of their mother’s (“Better be safe than sorry”). Almanzo still seems cheerful. He’s a man making a grown-up decision that he’s thought about and thought about, and his big brother can’t make him change his mind. Royal plays the parental card, wanting to know what he’s supposed to tell their parents when Almanzo gets lost in a blizzard, as he’s bound to on this fool trip. Almanzo advises him to just say he had nothing to do with it.
In my favorite line of the chapter, “Don’t go off half-cocked, Manzo,” Royal says. Almanzo assures him that he’s not.
Then it’s Royal’s turn to think, chewing his pancakes. Finally he lays down his knife and pushes back his plate. FINE! He’ll go with Almanzo.
This gets Almanzo’s dander up: “See here! We can’t both of us go!”
Thus ends the chapter. I’ve always wondered about this chapter’s end. It’s not an odd way to end a chapter, but it’s an odd way for Laura to do so. By Little House standards, it feels unfinished. Do any of you get the feeling that this chapter has Rose’s fingerprints all over it?