The Sparrow Found A House (Sparrow Stories #1)

by Jason McIntire

  Chapter 28

  Exam Time

  Secretly, the family had hoped that Nana and Katie would beat the snow home, but Grandma wouldn’t. Unfortunately for them, the opposite occurred. Knowing the roads well – and correctly gauging the storm as much more severe than forecast – Mrs. Scroggins simply would not risk Katie’s safety by trying to push through to the farm that night. Instead, after calling the Sparrows, she and Katie settled in for another night at the hotel.

  Mrs. Stortz was another story. Not knowing the roads and not caring about the weather or safety, Grandma started early in her four-wheel-drive SUV and made it into Salem Farm just as the highway became impassable. The Sparrows’ suspicions regarding her motivation had been quite right. Faced with a few days off from school, Mrs. Stortz could think of nothing better to do than pop a surprise visit on her erring youngest daughter and that evil husband of hers. The snow and flu only made it better, as the partners in crime would be too tired and preoccupied to organize the children against her. There might be six of them and only one of me, she thought to herself, but I’ve faced thirty-to-one odds in high school classrooms all my life!

  Grandma had not been terribly discouraged after her first two attempts to intervene with Social Services failed. What did discourage her was the attitude of the local office out in this county, whom she’d lost no time in calling after the second “raid” fell flat. The supervisor told her, essentially, that the department was busy enough with real problems like drug tribes, domestic violence, and alcoholic single parents. Unless Mrs. Stortz could be a bit more specific about what was wrong in the Sparrow home, they would not be able to find a place for that “problem” on the list.

  Mrs. Stortz could not be more specific. She had too much self-respect to blatantly make things up, but didn’t possess enough real firsthand information to hang anything in particular on Sergeant Sparrow or his wife. She had been counting on the Social Services people themselves to uncover the dirt that must be there, when they paid their visit. “If I have to do your job,” she had told the lady irately, “I will.”

  And so here she was, clumping through the snow toward the Sparrows’ newly-occupied farmhouse. What a dump in the snowbound wilderness! What madness to move here! What further proof could be needed that her son-in-law was dangerously insane?

  The bell wasn’t answered for what seemed like a long time. Finally the door cracked open, and a very tired Crystal Sparrow appeared behind it. “I see you made it, Mother,” she said with a polite smile. “I’m glad you’re safe. Please come in. I’ll be right with you as soon as I finish washing these sheets.”

  Mrs. Stortz walked into a cold and darkened house. “Don’t you even have electricity?”

  “We did until four o’clock this morning,” her daughter replied with a helpless shrug. In the middle of the kitchen floor was a metal washtub, in which she was hand-scrubbing a set of sheets.

  “Well, I never....” Mrs. Stortz was truly horrified. “I hope you see now where your husband has gotten you,” she lectured. “You’ve gone from a comfortable, normal life in the city, to being a washer-woman in a great drafty farmhouse in the middle of nowhere! Don’t you see how he’s using you to fulfill his fantasies of being Douglas MacArthur and Daniel Boone rolled into one? I don’t see him down here helping you scrub those sheets – no indeed.”

  “Glenn is upstairs cleaning up the bathroom.” Mrs. Sparrow’s tone was the same as if her mother had politely inquired on the family’s whereabouts. “Chris and Ben are cutting wood for the stove – we didn’t have time to lay in a supply before the storm. Jessie and Izzie are still a bit out of their heads from the fever, and Moe is throwing up pretty much on the hour.”

  “Well, it’s all The Sergeant’s doing,” reiterated Mrs. Stortz hatefully, “and I hope he’s proud of himself.” Unanswered, all the accusations wobbled awkwardly in the air. Arguing was so difficult when the other person was too tired to resist. Suddenly Mrs. Stortz caught sight of herself in the hall mirror, waving an angry finger at her youngest daughter as Crystal hunched wearily over a washtub. In some ridiculous way it looked like an illustration from Cinderella. Mrs. Stortz suddenly felt quite foolish, and not at all like the mother she was supposed to be.

  “You’re tired, dear.”

  The gearshift was so abrupt that Mrs. Sparrow blinked in confusion, but didn’t resist as her mother suggested that she go take a rest “and let me finish this.”

  When the Sergeant returned from cleanup detail a few minutes later, he was shocked to find his belligerent mother-in-law scrubbing sheets in the middle of the kitchen, with the former laundress gratefully napping on the living room couch.

  “Maybe next year you’ll get your flu shots,” was her only remark.

  “Thank you for your help, Mrs. Stortz,” he said sincerely. “We can really use it.”

  “I imagine,” she retorted primly. “Just don’t take it the wrong way, that’s all.”

  “If you’ll let me finish the sheets,” suggested the Sergeant, “someone needs to see about the girls. They should have some breakfast, if they can eat it.”

  Mrs. Stortz dried her hands, wondering if there was any way the Sergeant could have overheard her remark about his non-sheet-washing indolence. She paused in the doorway and looked back as he took her place at the washtub. The man was tired. This was not the exercise of someone proving a point.

  Making toast on a wood stove is not an undertaking for the novice – but then, Mrs. Stortz wasn’t a novice at much of anything (except perhaps kindness and understanding). To several pieces of dry toast she added two cups of sugar-free Jell-o, then took the tray upstairs to the sick ward.

  Izzie was still knocked out and not inclined to rouse when Grandma walked in, but Jessie was sitting up in bed already. “Hello, Grandma,” she said sweetly. “I had a dream about you.”

  “Did you, dear.” Mrs. Stortz tried with her tone – and a piece of toast – to discourage further elaboration, but Jessie was intent.

  “It was just before I woke up,” she continued after nibbling a bit of breakfast. “I dreamed that you and Mom and Daddy Moses and all of us were on a picnic, and you hugged Mom, and Daddy played the guitar, and we all danced in a circle. Then it was the Sergeant playing the guitar, and you didn’t want to dance. But Daddy Moses walked over to you and said, ‘Please dance with us, Suegrita.’ I remember he called you that in real life. It’s Spanish for mother-in-law, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a term of endearment.” Grandma’s eyes almost misted over for a moment. “What happened then?”

  “I don’t know,” Jessie said, spooning into the Jell-o. “I woke up.”

  “Jessie,” asked her grandmother abruptly, “tell me why you changed your mind about school. Did your parents make you feel pressured?”

  “Not at all,” Jessie answered. “I just knew that I wanted what they had. And it was here, at home, not at school. Oh, and I’m learning a lot in homeschool too, Grandma – more than I ever did in public school.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, lots of things. Like history. Do you know, last time we talked I didn’t even know what Pearl Harbor was – but I know now. We studied the story of a serviceman who died at Pearl Harbor, and read the goodbye letter he wrote to his family from the hospital.”

  “Oh.” The information did not seem to give Grandma much pleasure – or maybe it was the memory of their last conversation. “Jessie, about last time, I may have said or implied a few things I didn’t mean. You must understand; I was upset.”

  “I understand,” Jessie smiled. “Thank you for breakfast. If you’ll leave the Jell-o here, I’ll give it to Izzie when she wakes up.”

  Grandma left, questioning with herself if she would ever find something on which to nail the pestilential Sergeant Sparrow. Certainly it couldn’t be the character of his stepchildren.

  The storm – which the weather service had belatedly dubbed a “major snow event” – had dumped fifteen inches of we
t stuff on the county by that night, and it was clear that both Grandma and Izzie would be staying on at least another day or two. Fortunately the flu bug was of the fast and furious variety, and spent itself within the first day. By dinnertime that night, Izzie was hungry and Moe wanted to get out of bed – both very good signs.

  The more Grandma stayed with them, the more she found her animosity fading. After sharing a pleasant firelit dinner, she and the Sparrows sat up late that night. Jessie, feeling much better, resisted the temptation to eavesdrop again, but there was nothing very interesting or important to hear anyway. They just talked about their own lives and about the children, until they were all too tired to talk anymore.

  The next afternoon, Grandma heard Moe loudly asking for something to do – “Even schoolwork!” Since his mother was busy taking a snack to the boys at Camp Paranoid Quarantine (as the guest house had been temporarily named) Grandma herself decided to entertain him. She rummaged through the school totes and found a little spelling game of Moe’s, which she took to him in his room.

  Moe looked surprised to see Grandma coming when he’d called for Mom, but submitted to a quiz on some simple words. “Nothing,” Grandma called out. Moe spelled it, and she moved his token. “Realistic.” Again, correct. “Enemy.” On that last word she paused and looked at Moe, who was peering back at her nervously. Suddenly she realized what he was thinking. “Moe,” she asked slowly, “do you think I am your enemy?”

  He looked down and didn’t answer.

  She lifted his chin in an unfamiliar affectionate gesture. “Are you scared of me, dear?”

  “No, ma’am,” he finally said. “Daddy says we shouldn’t be scared of you. He says we should pray for you. Even though you tried to have us arrested and stuff.”

  Grandma wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at that assessment.

  “And I do,” added Moe in hurried embarrassment. “Every night.”

  “Why?” she asked gently. “Just because the Sergeant tells you to?”

  “That...,” Moe admitted. “And ‘cause I love you.” With childlike perception, he noted her surprise. “I couldn’t not,” he explained awkwardly. “You’re Mom’s mom.” To him, that settled it.

  Grandma sniffed back what was dangerously close to a tear and cleared her throat. “Spell ‘relief,’” she read from the list. And again, Moe spelled it right.