“They could be runners bringin’ a load of whiskey down from Canada,” Harry said. “Pa thinks it’s a meetin’ place.”
“I’d rather it be hoboes than whiskey runners.”
“Pa heard that Oscar Phillips was haulin’ whiskey in and sellin’ it to bootleggers.”
“No! What’ll become of his kids if he’s caught?”
“Ma figures he’s thinkin’ you’ll take care of them, Letty,” Harry teased.
“He’d better think again,” Letty said staunchly, straightening her aching back, and glaring at him.
“As soon as Clara was put in the ground he come courtin’, didn’t he? We heard he brought ya a couple cottontails the other day.”
“How did you know? Oh, forget it. Everybody knows everything around here. I told him to take the rabbits home to his kids.” Letty cast a glance down the tracks. “I can see the siding. We’ll get almost a half a wagonload.”
This was the third time they had picked up coal spilled from the freight train. Now that the war was over, the country was in a transitional period: Nebraska had been hit hard by the influenza epidemic. Men had come home from the war to find their mothers and fathers gone, their families scattered. Letty didn’t know whether things were as bad all over the country, but here the epidemic had taken a heavy toll. Almost every family had been hit. She was thankful that Grandpa and Patrick had been spared. Financially they were better off than most of their neighbors even though they had very little cash.
Jacob loved to barter and usually came out ahead. He traded two of his hogs to the grocer for flour, their monthly allotment of two pounds of sugar each, and coffee and tea. He and Letty butchered two hogs, smoked the meat, and rendered the lard. Two more were traded to the Watkinses for promised field work in the spring.
Two years ago when the eldest Pierce girl married and moved away and the school board couldn’t find anyone else, Letty had taken the job of teaching the ten pupils at the rural school. This year the board had run out of money and couldn’t pay her for the remaining months. She had continued to teach the remainder of the term because she felt an obligation to her students. She worried constantly about what the school board would do if they found out that she was an unwed mother.
Jacob had fussed about her before-dawn trips to the tracks. But they needed the coal to supplement their woodpile. He had slowed down considerably of late, and his weather-beaten face showed every one of his more than sixty years. After Grandma died, Letty hadn’t been sure that Grandpa would ever come out of his depression. Then Patrick was born. Two days after she had given birth, a Watkins boy had come down with the measles and Mrs. Watkins, who had been taking care of Letty, returned home to her brood. Grandpa had to take over tending Letty and the baby which he did with surprising skill according to Doctor Hakes.
Grandpa had taken to Patrick like a duck takes to water. Now the two were thicker than thieves. Letty smiled thinking about it although her face was so cold she thought it would crack. In six weeks her son would be five years old. This last summer he had asked her if he had a papa like Jimmy Watkins. She had told Patrick his papa was dead and, as far as she was concerned, he was.
It was on her son’s first birthday that hope for Mike’s return had died in Letty’s heart. She had waited and grieved long enough. It was time to put the past behind her. What had meant so much to her had evidently meant so little to Mike that he had not even written to tell her he had changed his mind. Therefore she never had the opportunity to tell him that he had a son. Patrick was hers and hers alone. She prayed to God he’d never have to know that he had been conceived out of wedlock or that his father had been nothing but an irresponsible boy.
Something else in Letty died that spring—her youth, her dreams of a love such as the one shared by her grandparents. Twice she had been deserted; first by her family, then by the man she loved. She vowed that never again would she lay her heart down to be trampled upon. She had Grandpa and her son. That Patrick resembled his father had become an unwanted reminder for Letty. The child had the same dark hair, the same inky black eyes, and at times the impish grin on his little face was amazingly like Mike’s. Except for those fleeting moments when the resemblance startled her, all thoughts of Mike were banished from her mind. She had cut him out of her life completely.
As Letty carried a large chunk of coal to the wagon, she saw the flicker of a large bonfire through the trees.
“Let’s go, Harry. We don’t know how many men are up there.”
“I’ve got the old double barrel under the wagon seat. I’ll take care of you and Irene.”
“I know you will, but it’s foolish to flirt with trouble.”
Harry had not gone to war as had the two older Watkins boys because one of his forearms was noticeably shorter than the other. The handicap didn’t seem to bother him in the least as far as work was concerned. Letty was sure, however, that he was sensitive about it. One of his brothers had been killed in the battle of Argonne; the other had stayed in the Navy when the war was over. During the last few years Letty and Harry had become good friends. He was a year younger than she was and desperately in love with sixteen-year-old Oleta Pierce, but unless he was lucky enough to find a job, there was no hope of his marrying her any time soon. He told Letty it wouldn’t be fair to Oleta to marry her and take her home to a house already crowded with a family of eight.
When Harry climbed up on the wagon seat and turned the team toward home, Letty and Irene perched on the tailgate with their backs to the wind. Letty squinted up at the gray sky. The clouds were thickening, lowering. It could snow again by nightfall.
By the time half the coal was unloaded at the Fletcher farm, it was almost noon.
“Keep an eye peeled, Letty,” Harry cautioned. “Pa’s seen some rowdies round here lately. I don’t think you’d be bothered in broad daylight, but ya can never tell.”
“Does he think they’re bootleggers?”
“Yeah. He thinks someone’s got a still hidden around here and is supplyin’ ’em. Anythin’ to make a quick dollar.”
“Grandpa heard in town that the boozers are drinking whatever they can get their hands on, even Bay Rum hair tonic and cooking extract.”
“Pa says some folks make home-brew. The guzzlers drink denatured alcohol and get jake-leg ’n’ pickled brains. Glad I ain’t a drinking man. Well, we got to get goin’.”
After Harry and Irene left for home, Letty headed for the house, then paused to wait as a big gander squeezed out from under the porch and came toward her.
“Hello, John Pershing. You’d better get back under the porch and take care of your ladies. We’re in for some bad weather. If they stray off and get lost, you’ll not have anyone to boss. Brigham Young’ll not put up with you messing around his hens. That rooster will be all over you like a swarm of bees.”
The gander honked, stretched out his long thick neck, and flapped his wings. With his head held high, his tail feathers pointing up, he eyed her arrogantly and marched on by.
“You’re a silly goose, John Pershing,” she called. “Did you know that?”
Patrick threw open the kitchen door the minute Letty stepped up onto the back porch. He gave her an assessing look, concern on his serious little face.
“Are you awful cold, Mama?”
“Not really. What have you and Grandpa been doing?”
Letty came into the warm kitchen and closed the door. She looked pale and weary; her dark-brown hair was pulled back from her face and twisted in a knot on the back of her head. Some of it had come loose from the pins when she jerked off the knit cap. Lord, she was tired, but it wouldn’t do to let Patrick know. He had become overprotective of late. Letty was sure it was due to the many stories he had heard about people dying of influenza. She wished she could do something to lift the worry from the child’s mind.
After shrugging off her old sheepskin coat and hanging it on the peg beside the back door, she went up to her room to take off Grandpa’s overalls a
nd put on a heavy wool skirt.
“What in the world are you two doing?” she asked when she returned to the kitchen. Her button box was upended and buttons were scattered all over the table.
“Me and Grandpa’s been makin’ a snooterbuzz.”
“A what?”
“Snooterbuzz. Show ’er, Grandpa.”
“You show ’er,” Jacob said from the padded chair beside the fireplace. “You know how to do it. C’mere, I’ll loop the string on your fingers.”
The child stood between Jacob’s spread legs and held up his hands while the string that ran through the eyes on a big black button was tied to make a loop, then hooked over his middle fingers.
“Whirl the button till it’s twisted good, then pull back ’n’ forth. The button’ll spin.”
Patrick tried several times but he didn’t get the results he wanted.
“Damn thing!”
“Patrick! You know better than to swear.” Letty shot a glance at her grandpa before he turned and hid his grin while pretending to kick at a log on the grate.
“Grandpa does,” the child said stubbornly.
“Grandpa is not a little boy.”
“You said damn once when you burned your finger on the flatiron.”
Letty threw up her hands. “So I did, but I shouldn’t have.”
“Looky, Mama. It’s workin’.” The button whirled as Patrick’s hands went in and out. “Grandpa’s goin’ to make me one that’ll sing.”
“That’s just dandy. You can play your snooterbuzz and I’ll play the piano. Think you could keep time to ‘Skip To M’Lou’?”
“Yeah.” Patrick shouted. “And ‘John Henry’ ’n’ ‘Little Brown Jug’ ’n’ ‘Crawdad Hole.’ ”
“We’ll give them all a try later on.”
The clock on the mantel struck the noon hour. Letty glanced at it, then looked about the familiar room. It was much the same as the first time she had seen it except that a cowhide lay on the floor in front of the fireplace instead of Grandma’s braided rag rug. Grandpa had dropped a bucket of coals and burned a hole in the center. Letty loved this room and everything in it. She felt safe here.
“We need to get dinner over with. Doctor Hakes is coming this afternoon.”
“He’s bringin’ her, ain’t he?” Patrick stopped his hands and jerked the string off his fingers.
“Yes, he is. I told you last week that he was bringing her on Saturday so that she can go to school on Monday.”
“I ain’t goin’ to like ’er. I won’t play with her.” Patrick’s face was set in mule-stubborn lines.
“Well, now. Isn’t that a highhanded attitude for you to take.” Letty pushed the hair off her forehead with the back of her hand. “Maybe she won’t like you. Ten-year-old girls don’t often want to play with spoiled little boys.”
“I am not little. I’m not spoiled. I’m almost five and Grandpa says I’m smart. So there!”
“Grandpa is going to get in a heap of trouble one of these days,” Letty mumbled under her breath.
“Grandpa won’t like her either. He likes me.”
“Well, I should hope so. You’re his great-grandson. But that doesn’t mean he can’t like a poor little girl who doesn’t have a mama. Now clear off the table so I can set it for dinner.”
“I’m not poor even if I ain’t got no papa. I got a mama and I got a grandpa.” Patrick stood stiff as a poker, his expression mutinous.
Letty hurt because Patrick was hurting, but she didn’t know what to do about it. Lately, he had become possessive and jealous of her and his grandpa. For his own good he needed to have to share their attention with another child.
When Doctor Hakes first told them that the county would pay them five dollars a month cash money if they would take in an orphan girl, Jacob had been dead set against it. Letty argued that it would be good for Patrick. He spent too much time with adults, especially in the winter. Doctor Hakes promised that if they would keep her until school was out, he would find another home for her or send her to an orphanage. The girl’s mother and two smaller children had died of the influenza; her father was in jail for bootlegging. Jacob relented, not because of the child, but because having her here would be good for Patrick.
Letty understood her grandfather’s concern. Shortly after she had given birth to Patrick, he had told her that her mother was not his natural daughter, but one he and her grandma had taken in. Mable’s unmarried mother had given birth to her and left her in Boley. After spending the first six years of her life in an orphanage, she had been brought by Doctor Whittier to the Fletchers. To them she had become as much a daughter as if she had been born to them. They lavished her with love and with all they could afford. She repaid them by running away with Albert Pringle, an itinerant preacher, and ignoring them for the next twenty-five years except for one visit and three letters. Mable had not even replied to the letter telling of her foster mother’s death.
At first Letty was terribly disappointed to learn that Grandma and Grandpa were not her real grandparents. She wanted so desperately to belong to them and have them belong to her. She had opened her heart to them as they had opened their home and their hearts to her. Gradually, she had come to realize that being blood kin was not all that important. Her own family had turned their backs on her when she needed them most. Now Grandpa needed her and Patrick as much as they needed him. They would stay with him for as long as he lived and try to make up for her mother’s neglect.
Woodrow began to bark as they sat down at the table. The shaggy mongrel, who Letty had said could be meaner than a stepped-on snake when he wanted to be, or gentle as a lamb when it suited him, was named for President Wilson by Jacob, who thought the man had about as much sense as a pup or he’d have kept the country out of the war.
“It’s Doctor Hakes,” Letty said, peering out the window.
“Hope Woodrow bites ’er,” Patrick mumbled.
“What did you say, young man?”
“Nothin’.”
“Harumpt,” Jacob snorted.
“Grandpa! You promised.”
“A man’s got to clear his throat, ain’t he?” Jacob winked at Patrick.
“Yeah, Mama. A man’s got to clear his throat.”
“Hush up, you two, and behave.” Letty opened the door.
“Hello, Doctor. You’re in time for dinner. Come in. It’ll take me just a minute to set two more places at the table.”
Doctor Hakes pushed a little girl into the kitchen ahead of him, closed the door, and took off his steam-fogged eye-glasses.
“I’ll not take the time, Mrs. Graham. I’ve got a call to make and there’s a storm brewing in the northwest. This is Helen Weaver.”
“Hello, Helen,” Letty said to the top of the child’s head because her chin rested on the top button of her worn coat.
“Ma’am.”
The doctor knelt beside the child. “Helen, I told you that Mrs. Graham was a nice lady and that you’d like it here. She’s the school teacher too.” Helen continued to look at the floor. Doctor Hakes looked helplessly up at Letty then back at the child. “Mrs. Graham plays the piano,” he said hopefully, tilting Helen’s face up so she had to look at him.
“She won’t like it here.” Patrick’s voice boomed in the quiet room. Letty gave him a quelling look and he hung his head.
“It’ll take a little while for us to get acquainted, Helen. Let me take your coat and cap.”
The child’s hair was so dirty that Letty immediately thought of lice. The dress under the coat was several sizes too small for her thin, small-boned body. Black stockings sagged over the tops of ankle-high shoes laced with broken string knotted in several places.
“I have to leave now, Helen.” The child looked quickly up at the doctor. “I don’t want to get caught out in a blizzard.”
Helen’s blue eyes quickly filled with tears and her lips trembled. Letty put her arms around the child. The poor little homeless waif was all alone and scared.
&n
bsp; “You know, Helen, I’ve always wanted a little girl to teach to cook and sew. I know how to crochet a doll—”
“I don’t want to know how to sew,” Patrick shouted. “I don’t want no old doll, either! I can plow ’n’ fix the wagon ’n’ hunt rabbits.” He jumped up from the table and ran into the parlor.
Letty’s eyes followed her son, then glanced back to find the young doctor staring at her. He raised his brows in question. Letty lifted her chin and shook her head.
“Don’t worry, Doctor. Helen and I will get along just fine. Did you bring her things?”
“They’re on the porch.” Doctor Hakes went out. Letty followed and spoke as soon as the door was closed.
“Why is she so scared? Is it because this is a strange place?”
“The child has been in a number of strange places the last few months and some of them were not pleasant. That’s why I brought her to you.”
“What about her father? How long will he be in jail?”
“Not long enough to suit me. He’ll probably be out in a month. The County Health Board was all for sending her straight to the orphan’s home. I talked Mrs. Knight and the sheriff into letting her spend some time with you. If anyone can help a troubled little girl, you can.”
“Thank you. I’ll do my best, but right now I’ve got my hands full with Patrick.”
“He’s jealous, isn’t he? He’s never had to share you with anyone.”
“Patrick has just realized that he doesn’t have a father. It’s made him cling to me and his grandpa. He’ll get over his jealousy after Helen has been here for awhile. You’d better get back to town, Doctor. I’m afraid we’re in for a spring blizzard.”
“I’ve known you for five years, Letty. Can’t you bring yourself to call me Wallace?”
Letty looked into the thin, serious face of the dedicated doctor who had aged ten years since she first met him. He had been a true friend, one of the few she had made during the time she had been here.
“Why . . . well, I hadn’t even thought about it.” She reached for the small cardboard box that contained Helen’s possessions.
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