Family Lessons

by Allie Pleiter

  Mason watched Miss Ward’s eyes narrow at the question. She believed those boys naturally bad, but she wouldn’t go so far as to utter such an unChristian thought in the church parlor. She hadn’t been shy about voicing that opinion in his office earlier, though, and if he knew Beatrice, her scorn would resurface with the first step past the church’s door. His inspection of her house had, of course, turned up nothing to indicate foul play regarding her gate.

  “I’ve had just the same thought, Miss Sterling, and I believe I may have a solution.” Mayor Evans spread her hands on the table. “What if we formed the boys into a chore crew, and assigned them to help folks with repairs the loans have funded? It’s lots of activity, and there are dozens of homes and stores and such that still need work. They could lend a hand for a few hours after school each day.”

  Holly clearly loved the idea. “They’d feel useful, they’d get to work with people, and they’d have someplace positive to put all that energy.”

  “Liam’s been more than eager to help out at my office,” Mason added. “These boys aren’t afraid of hard work. That lad shows up and asks for something to do every moment he can get away. I think it would work.”

  “They’d need constant supervision,” Miss Ward warned.

  “I’m sure Wyatt Reed and his folks could use a hand on the ranch. Dick and Peggy Carson still haven’t replaced their front steps.” Reverend Turner sighed. “With Marcus gone, I was hoping they’d come to the placement meeting.” Marcus Carson’s death had been one of the hardest to stomach. The raging waters had pulled the teen off his feet and bashed his head against a stone—with Dick and Peggy looking helplessly on. Mason would remember the torture of hauling Marcus’s lifeless body out of the creek for the rest of his days. Where was the grace and forgiveness that day? Why hadn’t a boundless Heavenly love spared that life?

  “Marcus wasn’t much older than these boys,” Holly offered. “Maybe it was just too hard then. But they could use the help and I’m sure one of these families might make a connection.”

  “It’s a splendid idea, Mayor Evans,” Curtis Brooks agreed. “Everyone gains. I commend you.”

  Pauline’s smiles were few and far between these days, but the woman managed a terse, strained one at the compliment. Mason had to agree. She’d earned it with some mighty creative thinking. She really was doing Robert’s memory proud.

  “I think we may have our solution, then.” Miss Sterling smiled. “Pastor, can you and Mayor Evans work up a list of suitable jobs and families?”

  “I went over the loan applications last night, and I’ve got four or five in mind already.” Pauline pulled a list from her pocket. Mason decided he’d make sure Pauline’s name made it onto that list. Her house had taken some damage and with Robert gone, she wasn’t able to get the work done herself. She wasn’t one to take help quickly, but this was an ideal circumstance to give her a hand without wounding her pride.

  “Sheriff, I trust you’ll see to the supervision?” It never ceased to amaze Mason how Miss Ward managed to look down on him when he was far taller than she. “We’ll need strong men to keep those orphans in line.” Did she have to take every opportunity to refer to them as “orphans?”

  Mason tried to think of a way out of saying yes, but Holly’s pleading eyes stole his resolve. He’d never wanted to run from anything more and yet been so completely unable to do so. “I’ll see to them. They’ll be no trouble,” he choked out, sure that wouldn’t be an easy promise to keep.

  Miss Sterling steepled her hands. “And then there is the issue of Heidi. She’s very handy with a needle and thread, but I don’t think a chore crew is the place for her.”

  “I think I can line up some mending jobs for her. Or cooking and cleaning help.” Holly laid her hands on the table. “But there’s more. I have something about Heidi I need to discuss.” When Miss Sterling gestured for her to go on, she took a deep breath. Whatever it was, the subject was emotional for Holly. Mason wished he were anywhere but in the room watching concern furrow her brow in that tender way she had. “Heidi’s confided to me that she deliberately separated herself from her brother at the train’s last stop. Up until then, he’d sabotaged every chance at a placement that didn’t include her. She felt he’d be better off without her, so she tricked him with the help of some of the other children so that he could be placed.”

  “That’s terrible!” Pauline gasped.

  “She believes her scars keep anyone from wanting her. She feels she’s too ugly to be wanted by a family. To bear that much rejection, and then give up her brother...” Holly’s eyes teared up and Mason found himself hoping the ground would just rise up and pull him under.

  “This is the kind of scorn these children suffer. Really, is it any wonder that some of them act out in the way they do?” Miss Sterling looked around the table, catching everyone’s gaze. “Can’t we do whatever is possible to keep these boys and Heidi from the end of the line?”

  Miss Ward took off her spectacles and laid them on the table. “These children are in desperate need of moral guidance. We’ll have to be absolutely scrupulous in terms of who is supervising them. It can’t be just anyone.”

  “I’ll be glad to see to Heidi’s tasks,” Holly offered.

  “I think it’s best I see to that myself,” Rebecca declared. “She’s obviously very troubled by her situation; I’ll want to keep her close.” With that settled, the meeting soon drew to a close. Mason watched as Holly headed to the door as soon as the closing prayer reached its “Amen.” He watched her go, wondering how it was possible that as awful as it was to be near her, it hurt even more to watch her walk away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Two days later, as Mason was coming out of the general store with a new set of door hinges for the chore crew, he stopped in his tracks. Liam was coming out of Doc Simpson’s office. Holly Sanders had her arm around the boy’s shoulder and his right hand was wrapped in white gauze. Liam was putting on a brave face, but it was clear the boy was shaken. Liam had been hurt? It didn’t take two seconds for Mason to ditch his “steer clear of Holly” policy and trot up to the pair.

  “What happened?” he asked, bending down to peer at the injury.

  “Tom can’t work a saw for nothing,” the boy growled. “I told ’em not to put him on the other end of that thing. He’s not strong enough and he keeps coughing.”

  Mason looked up at Holly for a further explanation. That was a mistake. The worry in her eyes made his stomach do flips, reminding him why he’d made the “steer clear of Holly” policy in the first place.

  “They were cutting fence posts at the Martin place and the saw...slipped.”

  Liam held up the wounded hand. “I got twelve stitches. What’s Tom got for his trouble?”

  “Tom feels terrible about what happened, Liam. You know that.” Holly’s hand rested firmly on the boy’s shoulder.

  Liam rolled his eyes. “He fainted. Fell right over on account of all the blood.”

  It was then that Mason noticed the bloody smudges all over Liam’s pants and a few on Holly’s skirts. That poor woman’s clothes wouldn’t last a fortnight at this rate. “Miss Sanders here, she just stayed cool as a cucumber and tore up Mrs. Martin’s apron to wrap around my hand. Mr. Arlington woulda said she was ‘battle-tough’ if he’d have seen it.” He nudged Mason with the shoulder on his good side. “It was gruesome. I thought Mrs. Martin was going to faint herself.”

  “She was a bit shaken by the whole thing,” Holly offered. “It was an awful mess, but Mr. McLoughlin still has all his fingers.”

  “No thanks to Tom,” Liam interjected.

  “Any day you get to keep your fingers is a good day.” Mason peered at the bandage. “So you’ve got some whopper stitches under there, huh?”

  “Huge.” Liam bugged his eyes wide. “I haven’t cussed like that since—”

  “You cussed in front of Miss Sanders?” Mason cut in, his eyebrows creasing in disapproval. “You know better than th
at.”

  “I left the room,” Holly conceded.

  Mason stood up, hands on his hips. “You cussed so bad Miss Sanders had to leave the room?” He nearly growled the question.

  “No, she had to leave because she’d used up all her battle-tough and was feeling wheezy.”

  Mason raised an eyebrow at the teacher.

  “Woozy,” she corrected. “I do have my limits. And in Liam’s defense, it was an awfully big needle.”

  “Huge,” Liam emphasized. “Like I said, I haven’t cussed like that since—”

  “I get the picture.” It had become clear Liam was over his pain and ready to milk his injuries for all the pity he could get—especially from Miss Sanders. He’d come to know Liam well enough to see where this was heading. “I guess you’ll have to stay after school and study some more while the boys hold up the chore team without you.”

  Liam looked ready to argue the point, but it was the schoolteacher who spoke up next. “We’ve thought about that,” Miss Sanders offered in a tone that told Mason she’d already come to the same conclusion he had. Evidently even before he had, for Liam seemed sure of gaining extra time at the sheriff’s office already. The notion of Liam and Holly in cahoots behind his back was unsettling indeed.

  “You get to deputize me for real, just like you said before.” Liam looked delighted. Mason swallowed hard.

  There were a dozen reasons why Mason didn’t have time for this, but the boy’s eyes and Holly’s apologetic smile wound their way around the last of Mason’s resistance. “I was hoping you could take Liam on. An apprenticeship of sorts since he can’t be part of a chore team now.” Holly clasped her hands behind her back, uneasy around him. Good. It was best if she stayed that way.

  “It was my idea,” Liam offered, chest puffing up as if ready for a silver star to find its home there.

  Mason settled his hat farther back on his head and raised an eyebrow at Holly. “Was it, now?” Holly surely knew Liam’s fondness for the sheriff’s office; even Mason had begrudgingly come to enjoy the company, unproductive as it was. The “apprenticeship” had other benefits, too: If Beatrice was going to persist in her criminal theories, what better place to sequester the potential ringleader than under the sheriff’s thumb? Mason looked at Holly, looked at Liam, and tried to remember why he ought to be irritated at becoming a babysitter.

  Glory, but I’m getting soft.

  Another glance at the boy only made it worse. No one that young should feel like they were being traded around like livestock. “What if I tell you it was my idea?” he said to Liam. “What you don’t know is that I’d asked Miss Sanders and Miss Sterling to release you into my custody even before you went and got yourself hurt.” It wasn’t true, but Mason couldn’t help feeling the boy needed to feel as though someone wanted him. Liam had spent the last two days being pawned off to the next available supervisor.

  Liam turned and looked at the teacher. “Can I go now?”

  “Now?” Mason was thinking this would start tomorrow, not immediately.

  Holly turned Liam toward her. “Sheriff Wright may not be ready for a deputy just now.” Mason hated how every time Holly said “Sheriff Wright,” his mind cast back to that startling moment where she’d called him “Mason” for the first time.

  “No, it’s fine.” He cocked his head in the direction of the Martin place. “We’ll deliver these hinges to the other boys and then you and I need to check out a crime scene.”

  “A crime scene?” Liam looked as if that were the most exciting invitation he’d been issued in years.

  “The Gavins’ wheelbarrow went missing the other night.”

  Holly frowned, exchanging a quick glance of concern with Mason. “Something else?”

  “Swiped it right off their back stoop while they slept.” He turned to Liam, just in case a flash of nervous guilt crossed the boy’s face. It didn’t, and Mason wasn’t surprised. He couldn’t prove anything at this point, but his gut—and maybe just a little of his heart—told him Liam was innocent. “Crafty types, these bandits.”

  “Not crafty, just crazy,” Liam offered. “They don’t take anything worth taking. You can’t fence a wheelbarrow. You can’t fence a fence gate, either, now that I think about it.” The boy thought he was being clever, but he’d just incriminated himself by admitting he knew how thieves worked. It was a good thing Beatrice wasn’t here. She’d have ordered him locked up on suspicion alone. Holly had the same thought, her eyes darting up the street in the direction of Beatrice’s house and her now gateless front fence.

  Mason peered down. “And just how would a young man such as yourself know about fencing stolen property?”

  “You hear things.” Liam was smart enough to catch on to what he’d just done, snapping his mouth shut so fast, Mason though he heard the boy’s teeth rattle against each other.

  Holly’s frown deepened. Mason cocked his head in the direction of his office. “I think we’d best start right now. You can tell me all you’ve heard as we walk.” He tipped his hat in Holly’s direction. “You thank Miss Sanders for her good care of you now and we’ll be on our way.”

  “Obliged, ma’am.” The boy had a way of sounding like an eleven-year-old and a fifty-year-old at the same time. Hang it all if that didn’t make Mason like him that much more.

  * * *

  Mason kept things quiet with Liam on their walk back to his office. The silence gave the boy—and himself—time to think. After Mason pulled the door shut behind them, he motioned for Liam to take the chair in front of his desk. Mason noticed the wary look Liam gave the pair of prison cells behind them. It was no accident the person sitting for questioning in Mason’s office faced those cells—they were mighty effective incentives.

  Mason hung his hat on the peg by the door, unholstered his gun, and sat on top of his desk facing Liam. He towered over the boy in that position, his knees level with Liam’s skinny shoulders. “How’s about you tell me what you’re up to.” He tried to make his words firm but kind.

  Liam’s chin jutted out. “I ain’t up to nothing.”

  “You are. Don’t take me for a fool, son. I could be your best friend or your worst enemy in all this, so you’d best choose wisely. Now what are you up to?”

  Liam’s eyes darted around the room before a quiet “Okay” slipped from his lips. Mason crossed his arms over his chest, waiting. “I did fix it so’s Tom would nick me, only I didn’t figure he’d be such a klutz and near cut off my thumb like he did.”

  “Why’d you go and do a thing like that?”

  “I hate being with those boys. Patrick’s nothin’ but a big bully, Tom’s always whining, and Friedrich—I can’t hardly understand him when he does speak, which he doesn’t ever anyways.” Boys that age could be rough and cruel; the way Liam sank into the chair spoke more about that kind of pain than his hand. “At least in the schoolhouse they couldn’t get at each other—and me. I’m glad to be outside, but it’s worse in lots of ways.”

  “So you fixed it so you couldn’t work with them, then made sure Miss Sanders remembered how much you like it here, is that it?”

  The boy shrugged his shoulders. “Seemed as good a plan as any.” Liam wanted to be with him. The way Liam found a reason to show up here nearly every day, was it that much of a surprise? The notion wiggled its way under Mason’s ribs to settle there with an uncomfortable warmth.

  “That was until Tom nearly cut off your thumb.” Mason held out his hand to inspect the bandage. Liam’s purple swollen thumb barely peeked out of a neat nest of white gauze. “Can you wiggle it?”

  Liam did, but winced. “Miss Sanders said I should thank God for sparing my thumb when I say my prayers tonight.”

  “Miss Sanders is right.” The image of those feisty boys all lined up on their knees at their beds almost made Mason laugh. “You say prayers before you go to bed?”

  “Well, Mr. Arlington had different ones than Miss Sterling, but it’s much the same thing. I’m not much for that
sort of thing, but I go along. Ma’am says we ought to pray for Mr. Arlington’s soul, and I figure I owe him that much.” He wiggled the thumb and winced again. “Miss Sanders, she told me she prays every morning and every night. Seems a bit much to me, but she’s so nice and all.” He looked up at Mason. “Do you say prayers before you go to bed?”

  Now there was an enormous question—one with an answer that had grown more complicated in the past few days. Mason shrugged, shifting his weight. “Did a while back. My life was different before I came here. Made more sense then than it does now.” Was that still true? Mason tried not to ponder that.

  “What changed?”

  Mason grunted. “The way I see it, this conversation is supposed to be about why you got yourself off the chore team, not the state of my soul.”

  “They’re connected.” Liam settled himself in the chair as if he were about to have a man-to-man talk.

  Mason didn’t even welcome the boy-to-man version of this conversation. “And how is that?” As the words left his mouth, he realized his comment would only invite more conversation from Liam. He should have stuck with a declarative “No, they’re not,” but the boy had a way of connecting life that hijacked Mason’s curiosity.

  “Miss Sterling always said if ever I was upset about something, that I should talk to God about it. Mr. Arlington and Miss Sanders said pretty much the same thing.”

  “That’s good advice.” It felt disingenuous to be counseling the lad to prayer when he’d barely spoken a handful of words to God in almost a decade, but this wasn’t about him.

  “It didn’t seem so to me. I mean, what’s God gonna do about a bunch of orphans way out here?” Liam slumped in his chair, finally looking like an eleven-year-old rather than a sad old man. “He’s got more important stuff to fret about than how many times Patrick stuck his tongue out at me when Mr. Martin had his back turned.”

  So Patrick was taunting him. Just based on how the two boys talked to each other, Mason had already wondered if Patrick’s “tough guy” act had started to dissolve into outright bullying. Unless the boy felt more wanted, and soon, it was a distinct possibility. Especially under Martin’s watch. The farmer was an upstanding man but not God’s brightest mind.