Kind-Hearted Woman

by Spaeth, Janet

  Colin stood up and carried his dish to the sink. “I have the feeling that this is a family-only conversation, and I think I’ll leave the three of you to sort it out.”

  “Do you know what’s going on?” She took the bowl from him and rinsed it in the sink.

  “No, I don’t, and I undoubtedly don’t need to know. I’ll just head out and read for a while.”

  He left the kitchen, and when the screen door slammed and the sound of his whistling his way across the yard to the old house carried over the night air and through the open windows, she turned to her brothers.

  “I don’t want to hear this, do I?” she asked, as a feeling of dread clutched her stomach.

  “No, you don’t,” Bud said, standing up and stretching, “which is why I’m going to take that walk.”

  “Sit.” George seized Bud’s belt and pulled his brother back into his chair. “Talk.”

  “Do I have to?” Bud wheedled. “I don’t want to ruin a perfectly good dinner and a perfectly good evening with a perfectly horrible story.”

  “Ruin it.” George glared at him.

  “Well,” Bud began, “it all started when I needed a blanket.”

  “A blanket? In this weather?” Lolly frowned at her brother. Had he totally lost his mind?

  “I didn’t need a blanket. But Floyd did.”

  “Floyd. Ah. That explains it. Who’s Floyd?” This conver-sation was getting weirder by the minute, and from the grim expression on George’s face and the worry on Bud’s, she knew it wasn’t going to get better.

  “Floyd B. Olson.”

  “The governor of Minnesota needed a blanket from us?” Lolly put her face in her hands. This had to be a dream.

  “No, silly. Floyd is the new rooster.” Bud picked up a leftover roll and began to shred it.

  “You named the rooster after the governor? Why would you do that?” she asked from between her fingers.

  “Well, it would have been impolite to name him after the president. So I couldn’t call him Franklin.”

  “Of course not.” She had a terrible urge to laugh, but she didn’t dare. This conversation was not headed in a humorous direction.

  “Get on with the story,” George growled.

  “All right. I wanted a blanket for Floyd. He’d had a bit of a run-in with the old rooster, and he had a big scratch on his—”

  “Bud!” George’s voice was stern. “Watch it!”

  “Well,” Bud continued, his fingers still toying with the roll, “Floyd wouldn’t be too comfortable sitting on the straw, so I had to get him something softer, and I knew there was one in your bedroom closet, and—”

  She knew where this was going.

  She flew out of her chair. “You did not! Tell me now that you did not read it!”

  Bud made dough balls out of the now-destroyed roll. “Sure, I’ll tell you that. I didn’t read it.”

  “Bud,” George growled warningly, “you can’t run from this.”

  Her younger brother looked down and crumpled the rest of the roll. “Well, maybe I did.”

  She wanted to cry. Her beautiful dream story. Her escape from the financial mess the country was in and this hot, hot farm. Her window, however imaginary, out of a life that offered her no choices, no chances. It was gone, all gone.

  Her brother had taken the beauty from her life as surely as if he’d gone after it with scissors and knives.

  She took off her apron and then put it back on again. Everything was so mixed up now. She began to gather the remaining dishes from the table, so calm that it seemed as if something had died inside of her. Her life was flat. “I give up.”

  “Lolly, no.” George’s forehead crinkled.

  “Well, why shouldn’t I? I tried one little thing, one tiny little nothing thing. It didn’t hurt anyone. It didn’t do any-thing. But now, it’s been taken from me.”

  “You can have it back,” he said. “I put it in your room this afternoon.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” She leaned across the table, picking up the empty stew tureen and cradling it to her chest.

  She sank back into her chair, putting the tureen in front of her. “That notebook was mine. Mine. It was the only thing I have that was mine. And now, you’ve destroyed it.”

  “I’m sorry, Lolly.”

  She didn’t say anything. Her beautiful story, her one shining bit of beauty that she had created, was now tarnished. The anger that boiled inside her began to mourn the loss of her privacy. But Bud looked so miserable her heart began to relent. “I guess it could be worse,” she said at last.

  George touched her hand. “Sis, it can. Bud, finish the story.”

  “She’s not near any knives, is she?” Bud asked.

  “Not funny. Finish the story.” George wrapped his hand around hers. “Lolly, in advance, I’m sorry. You did not deserve this.”

  The room was silent until at last Bud put the remaining bits of the roll down and stared at the crumbs.

  “I told some people, and some other people were there, and I think they told some other people.”

  Lolly didn’t need for him to tell her who they were. She already knew. She could sense the hands of Hildegard Hopper and Amelia Kramer in this.

  God, this would be a good time to take me Home.

  “I need to leave,” she said. “Please excuse me.”

  George tightened his grip on her hand. “I hate to tell you this, but there’s more. Bud, please continue.”

  “I might have sort of led these people to think that maybe there could be, well—I implied a little bit that Colin is your mail-order groom.”

  seven

  The river twists and turns back onto itself, a golden ribbon in the fading summer sun. Soon the trees will be bare, and the leaves will float down the river, away from where they began and flourished. Winter’s hoary head will claim even the river, then. He holds my hand one last time and promises me that tomorrow the sun will shine, the stars will twinkle, and the moon will glow. But we will not be together.

  Lolly sat on her bed. All the lights were extinguished, and she sat in the darkness and talked to God.

  We’ve been through a lot together, You and I, and I’ve trusted You—and I still do. I don’t understand why things happen the way they do. My parents should have lived longer. I miss them so much. Every day is a struggle to keep the family together. And now, this. I’m not asking You to explain it to me—although if You’d like to, I’m willing to listen—but I would like some guidance here. What do I do?

  In the clear night, she could hear a dog barking from a neighboring farmstead, and Bruno’s baying response. Beyond them, another dog howled. They were just like the rumor network in Valley Junction, she thought. From one dog to another, the story got spread.

  Mail-order groom!

  She hadn’t been able to look at her brothers after Bud had told her the horrible news. She hadn’t even done the dishes, but she’d heard her brothers in the kitchen taking care of cleaning up. Tomorrow she’d probably have to redo the dishes, or, she thought with some meanness, she could make Bud eat out of the dirty ones.

  Had they said anything to Colin? What was his reaction? She groaned as she realized that not only did she have the townspeople to deal with, she had him, too.

  Mail-order groom!

  What had she said in the notebook that had led to it? Anything? Or had it been all Bud’s overactive imagination?

  She stood up and crossed the room to check in her closet. In the dark, she felt around the top shelf where the blanket had been, and her fingers found nothing.

  The notebook was missing, but at this stage, it was all water under the bridge or whatever the appropriate metaphor was.

  The notebook was gone, and with it, her reputation.

  No wonder the women at the grocery store had been
eyeing her with amusement. The druggist. The clerk at the clothing store. Even Ruth. To them she was a woman so desperate for love that she’d sent for a man to marry!

  Hildegard and Amelia had probably taken the story and embroidered it even more. She didn’t want to think what they might have done with it.

  But her mind wouldn’t let the fact rest and batted it around fruitlessly, like a cat playing with a toy mouse. A mail-order groom!

  Her own brother had told the story, too, lending a great degree of credibility to it. So even if Colin were right, when he’d said earlier that the people of Valley Junction would simply dismiss Hildegard and Amelia’s story as silly gossip, it circled back to that. Bud had started the story.

  Plus, what would Colin think of the story? It would probably drive him out of town, away from her forever. She thought of Colin at the stewpot, then twirling her around with the lure of Eau de Beef Stew making them rich.

  It was silly, so silly that it made her laugh through her heartache. Eau de Beef Stew!

  They’d stood together, right there in the kitchen, his arms around her waist. She’d thought he was going to kiss her.

  Even now, reliving it, she was amazed at how much she wanted him to.

  She’d gone all these years without being kissed, except, of course, by her parents, and that one time behind the school when she was thirteen. It had been a quick, experimental peck on the cheek, given by a boy who had long ago moved away from Valley Junction, and whose name she’d forgotten.

  But a real kiss—that was the stuff that she’d never let herself even dream of, except in her notebook. And at that moment in the kitchen, it had seemed like her creation and real life might actually meet.

  No. It hadn’t happened, and that told her everything. They had both been caught up in the moment—a dangerous thing, that—and it was better that it hadn’t gone further.

  Still, Eau de Beef Stew. It made her smile.

  But like a drumbeat of a dirge, under the memory was this new twist, and it stripped away all of the sweetness and replaced it with a sour, spoiled taste.

  She’d come so close to love, so close, and now it was slipping out of her grasp.

  ❧

  Colin had spent most of the night awake, trying to first of all, figure out what had happened, and second, how to deal with it. George had filled him in, feeling that it was only fair that he was aware what the situation was.

  Here he’d worried about being a burden on the family economically, but this came out of nowhere and caught him off guard. Now his very presence had put Lolly in a socially precarious spot.

  He was angry at Bud. Angry that he’d put Lolly in this position, angry he’d put him in it. Bud’s impulsiveness was part of his charm, but there was nothing charming about what he had done.

  Through the dark hours he’d tossed and turned, searching for a cool spot in the August heat and talking alternately to himself and to God.

  He still wasn’t totally accustomed to being this familiar with God—he was used to the formal tone of his church in the city, where the language of prayer employed Thou and Thee and, of course, hast and shalt. His time with the Prescott family, however, had made God more real to him, and he knew that no matter what words he used, God understood him, even if he didn’t totally understand God.

  It wasn’t one of those electric moments, when the light came on and all things spiritual were clear. That would be nice, he had to acknowledge, but it didn’t happen that way.

  Instead, bit by bit he began to move, to edge, to creep into the light of the truth. And always, God was there, listening to him. Now it was time to listen to God.

  The situation with Bud was dire. What was he to do about it? Something? Anything? Nothing?

  Forgive. That was the only solution he could come up with, and it wasn’t going to be easy. These wounds cut deep.

  Forgiving seemed a lot easier in principle than it was in action. Bud was the kind of person who bumbled and blurted his way through life, and Colin was sure this wasn’t the first time he’d done something hurtful to his family. But this one was possibly the most virulent blunder he’d made.

  Maybe the best idea wasn’t to forgive Bud, at least not right away. He certainly needed to understand how much his actions had hurt his sister. Bud needed to squirm under the hot light of his own shame.

  Even as he thought it, he realized the herculean task ahead of him.

  It was easy to be the forgiven one, but much more difficult to be the forgiver.

  How do You do it, God? How do You forgive, and yet lead us to know better?

  He turned the question around in his mind, but still it made no more sense than it had initially.

  The sun had begun its rosy climb over the horizon before he’d finally drifted off into an exhausted but fretful sleep.

  Breakfast was a somber meal, with all of them eating in silence. Colin furtively watched the siblings as they bent over their food. No one really ate anything, and clearly appetites had suffered after the prior evening’s disclosure.

  Bud finally burst out, “All right! I am horrible! I am terrible! Hate me! I deserve it!” and ran from the kitchen.

  Lolly moved as if to follow after him, but George stopped her. “Let him go.”

  “George, did you hear what he said? I can’t let him—”

  “Lolly, you have to let him feel the wrong. If you don’t, he’ll find a way to justify it, and he won’t have learned anything. He’d probably do it again.”

  She sighed and rubbed her forehead. “This isn’t easy,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  If only life were written in pencil, Colin thought, he could take an eraser and undo all the missteps.

  “George,” she said to him, “there’s something else. The notebook isn’t in my room. He said he put it in there, but it’s not on the shelf and not on my dresser.”

  “You know how he is,” her brother said. “He gets mentally waylaid easily. He must have meant to put it in there, but I saw it on the floor next to his hat. And yes, I know his hat isn’t supposed to be on the floor, and that’s how I saw the notebook, when I was picking up his hat. I put it in your room on the chair.”

  “It wasn’t there. You don’t suppose he took it again, do you? Did he have it with him when he went to town?”

  George grimaced. “He had it, of course. He, well, Lolly, he read some of it out loud in the bank.”

  She put her face in her hands and groaned.

  “But he brought it home. That’s when I saw it. It’s here somewhere. You’ll find it. Maybe you just picked it up without realizing it.”

  Lolly shrugged, and Colin’s heart twisted at the hopeless-ness in the gesture. “It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.”

  He started to move toward her, but George interrupted him.

  “Colin, let’s go work on that shed. I’d like to have it finished by supper.” George stood up, and Colin followed suit.

  Outside, George looked around. “I’ll bet Bud went to the river.”

  “He’ll be okay, won’t he?” Colin couldn’t keep the alarm out of his voice.

  “Oh, I’m sure he will be. This isn’t the first time he’s done something goofy, as you might have guessed. It’s just that this is probably the messiest.”

  They walked to the shed, neither one of them speaking much, as Bruno, mindless of the drama at play, chased insects through the grass.

  George handed Colin a hammer, and they both began to dismantle the shed.

  “I’m really sorry that Bud got you involved in this,” George said at last. “It was bad enough that he did what he did to Lolly, but to haul you into it, too, well, that was really too much. Mail-order groom, indeed.”

  Colin smacked the plank over the window and then pried the nails out carefully before dropping them in the can that George ha
d for that purpose. “I’ve been called worse,” he said at last.

  George swung his head slowly from side to side. “Maybe. But how on earth he came up with that story about you being a mail-order groom is beyond me.”

  “What, you don’t think somebody would send away for me?” Colin grinned.

  They laughed.

  “I’m a bit concerned that the notebook is missing. Are you sure you moved it to her room?” Colin asked as he carefully removed a bent nail from the window frame.

  “I’m sure of it. I put it on the chair in Lolly’s room. I figured enough of this tomfoolery had gone on, so let’s just get this thing out of circulation.”

  “Smart. Well, she’s sure to find it soon.” Colin wiped sweat off his forehead. “I can’t believe it’s so hot this early. Doesn’t bode well for the afternoon.”

  “We’ll probably be baked alive. Since the shed is in the sunlight, let’s work on this until noon, and then we can find something else to do in the afternoon.”

  “Do you ever think about just sitting under a tree and, oh, reading some afternoon?” Colin asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you when you’re not doing something here.”

  “Time is all I’ve got,” George replied somewhat cryptically.

  Bruno bounded over to them, a treasure of some kind in his jaws that he dropped at George’s feet.

  The black-and-white furry creature lifted its tail, identified itself, and ran back into the underbrush.

  “It isn’t! Please tell me it isn’t what I think it is?” Colin drew back as the smell hit him.

  “I’m sorry, but it is.” George clapped his handkerchief over his nose. “I don’t think either of us got that stink on us, do you?”

  “I can’t tell,” Colin said. The smell seemed to permeate everything.

  “Hold onto Bruno,” George said. “I’ll be right back.”

  The smell was overpowering, and Bruno put his head down and wiped his snout across the scrubby grass, making high-pitched moaning sounds as he did.

  “I sure don’t blame you, dog,” Colin said, trying to breathe as shallowly as possible. “That’s nasty.”