THE HOMEPLACE

by Gilbert, Morris

  “I was just trying to dodge a bump.”

  “I don’t like to be shifted around like that. You go straight on.

  Don’t jostle me, you hear?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I think my daddy told me you went to Oregon in a covered wagon,” Lanie said.

  “Of course I did! There wasn’t no other way to get there!”

  “How old were you?”

  “Fifteen and just married.”

  “Why, that’s a year younger than I am! Were you afraid?”

  “Afraid? Of course I was afraid! Who wouldn’t be afraid with a bunch of wild Indians out to get your scalp and people dyin’ of cholera right and left?”

  “What was your husband like?”

  “My first husband was named Jediah Smith. He was a farmer in Georgia. He come through our town and courted me and I married him. Three days after we married, we started for Oregon.” She contemplated the memory. “That was a hard life. All those big trees had to be cut down and cleared.”

  “Did you and your husband have children?”

  “Two. Lost ’em both to diphtheria.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lanie said. “That must have been hard.”

  “Life’s hard, girl. Well, after that Jediah died, and I moved to Texas, married Calvin Butterworth.”

  “Was he a farmer?”

  “No, he weren’t no farmer. He was a peace officer.”

  “Really! Did you ever meet any of those famous outlaws?”

  “I met Hickok and Calamity Jane, and I met Cody once too.”

  “Buffalo Bill Cody?”

  “They ain’t no other one, is they?”

  “My youngest brother is called Cody.”

  “Well, he’d better hope that’s all they got in common. I never knew when Calvin was gonna turn up dead, and he did finally one day. Killed by Bat Masterson.”

  “I thought Masterson was a peace officer,” Dr. Merritt said.

  “He was a dirty rotten crook! No better than Jesse James or any of the rest of that trash! Shot my husband in the back. Stepped out of an alley and shot him. Claimed it was self-defense. I’d a kilt that man myself, but he left town ’fore I got my chance.” She went on for some time about the wild and woolly West before announcing, “And then I married Wilbur Pettigrew, a dentist.”

  “What was he like?”

  “He was the most boring man I ever knew. Hit’s a wonder I didn’t die of boredom married to that man! He took me to Sallisaw, the most boring town in Oklahoma, and it’s the most boring state I was ever in.”

  “I take it you weren’t happy with Mr. Pettigrew.”

  “Every day was misery. He took him a woman, a red-headed hussy, and planned to run off with her. He gave almost all our money to her.

  The rest he gambled on some stocks and lost. All I got left is the stuff you promised to come back and get, Merritt.”

  She fell silent after that. Dr. Merritt said gently, “I guess you’re getting tired, Mrs. Pettigrew.”

  “I’ve been tired a long time, Merritt. I ain’t as old as Methuselah, but I don’t feel much younger either.” She turned to Lanie, and her eyes twinkled. “Wouldn’t it be somethin’ if you went to all this trouble to get me there jist in time to save that passel of brothers and sisters of yours—wouldn’t it be somethin’ if I jist up and died when we got there?” She cackled. “That’d be a joke on you, wouldn’t it?” Lanie laughed. “Don’t do that, please, Aunt Kezia. We need you.”

  Kezia Pearl Pettigrew did not speak for a time, and then finally she whispered, “Well, I ain’t been needed in a long spell.”

  As they pulled into the yard, the Freeman kids came boiling out of the house. Lanie got out and said quickly, “Now back off! Aunt Kezia is tired, and you don’t want to be pestering her.”

  “Is she going to stay here and keep us from gettin’ adopted?” Cody demanded.

  “Yes, she’s going to stay here. Now, you be respectful.”

  Dr. Merritt helped the old lady down from the car. She had managed the trip marvelously well and began examining the children. “This is Davis,” Lanie explained, “and this is Cody—and Maeva—and this is Corliss. Everyone, this is our Aunt Kezia.”

  “They look healthy.” Aunt Kezia sniffed. “They’s enough of them, ain’t they?”

  “Come on in the house. It’s cold out here.”

  “I’ll get the baggage,” Dr. Merritt said. “You take your aunt inside.”

  Lanie took her aunt by the arm and discovered that she was at least two inches taller than the old lady. The old woman seemed unexpectedly frail. “I know you’re tired. We’ll get you settled in your room right away.”

  Aunt Kezia did not answer, and climbing the steps seemed to take most of her strength.

  Cody opened the door, staring at his newfound aunt with avid curiosity. Davis said, “We’ve got a nice, warm fire. You want to warm yourself, lady?”

  “Don’t call me lady. Call me Aunt Kezia.” She looked around. “I’m a mite tired now, so I want to go to my room, and I don’t want nobody botherin’ me. Don’t come whinin’ to me with your problems.”

  “We fixed up the best room for you,” Maeva said. “Can I show it to you, Aunt?”

  Kezia faced Maeva. Something about the girl attracted her. Maeva stood still as the old woman’s dark eyes went over every aspect of her face. Finally she demanded, “Are you a hellion, Maeva?”

  Maeva laughed with delight. “I sure ’nuff am, Aunt Kezia!”

  Kezia cackled. “Well, so was I when I was your age—still am when I feel up to it! Now, you take me up to my room, and you young’uns keep quiet. I don’t sleep sound.”

  “I’ll keep them all quiet, Aunt Kezia,” Davis said. “Don’t worry.”

  As Maeva and Lanie walked up the stairs, one on each side of the old lady, Kezia said, “I hope you fix a decent dinner. I can’t eat much because of my weak stomach.”

  “We’ll fix whatever you want, Aunt Kezia,” Lanie said.

  Aunt Kezia slept like a rock, and she ate like a field hand! She devoured everything that was put before her, and Maeva whispered to Davis, “I swear, I don’t see why she ain’t as big as an elephant! She looks like a little old skinny thing, but she must be stout. I like her.”

  Once the children discovered that their aunt had traveled the Oregon Trail and been married to a real gun-fighting sheriff in Texas, they fired questions at her right and left.

  Lanie, despite her aunt’s protests, could tell that the old woman liked being the center of attention. Lanie had fixed the best meal she knew how, and she was happy to see her aunt eat well.

  After supper, Orrin Pierce and Owen Merritt came by, and when Lanie introduced Orrin as a lawyer, Aunt Kezia glowered at him. “I never met an honest lawyer or an honest judge in my life. Most of ’em need to be taken out and shot.”

  Orrin could not help grinning. “You’re pretty hard on us, Mrs. Pettigrew, but I’m doin’ the best I can to help your family. I’ve come over to ask you a question. Don’t be offended.”

  “I’ll be offended if I take a notion!” Aunt Kezia reached over and got her purse. She pulled out a pistol, and a gasp went around the room.

  “Hey, Aunt Kezia, that’s a pistol!” Cody yelped.

  “You’re mighty right it’s a pistol! It’s a thirty-eight, and I know how to use it too. My second husband carried it while he was lawin’. I keep it with me all the time, even at church.”

  “Why would you need it at church?” Maeva said, grinning. “Would you shoot the preacher if he preached a bad sermon?”

  “I’ve heered some sermons that men ought to have been shot for preachin’, but I ain’t shot one yet.” She stared at Pierce, then laughed and put the gun back. “What do you want, lawyer?”

  “Would it be possible for you to take your maiden name again?”

  Aunt Kezia stared at the lawyer. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “It would help our case with the State. If they heard that
the children’s aunt, Miss Kezia Pearl Freeman, was staying here, that would have a better sound than the name of Pettigrew. There’s nothing wrong with the name of Pettigrew, of course.”

  “They’s plenty wrong with it! Never liked hit to begin with. Makes me think of that worthless third husband of mine. Why, shore, I’d be glad to be a Freeman again.”

  “That’s wonderful, Miss Freeman,” Orrin said. “I think we can take it from here.”

  As the two left the house, Dr. Merritt said, “Do you think it’s going to work?”

  “I don’t see why not. It meets all the conditions of the law. You know,” he said thoughtfully, “it seems like the whole town has been pulled together by the Freeman family’s troubles.”

  “That’s what a town’s for, Orrin.”

  “Why, Mr. Gamble. Come in, won’t you?”

  Lanie Freeman’s cheerful welcome caught the social services agent off guard. He had come to give her warning that the final papers were being drawn up. He took off his hat. “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you—”

  “Oh, I want you to meet someone. Please come in.”

  Mystified, Gamble followed the girl into the living room. An older woman sat in front of the fire, knitting. When Lanie introduced the two, she said, “How do you do, sir?”

  “Your name is Freeman?”

  “Certainly it is. I’m the aunt of these children. The great-aunt, of course, but I’m a Freeman all the same.” She cackled. “Does that throw a monkey wrench in your plan to break this family up, Mr. Gamble?”

  Gamble’s mind went blank for a moment, and then he swallowed and recovered. “It does change things.”

  “You reckon it does. I don’t guess we’ll be meeting again. So goodbye, Mr. Gamble,” Aunt Kezia said. Lanie showed him to the door and returned to her aunt.

  “I got my gun here,” Aunt Kezia said. “I was fixin’ to shoot that scamp if he pulled anything funny.”

  Lanie kissed her aunt’s withered but firm cheek. “That would’ve been all right with me, Aunt Kezia, but I’m glad you didn’t have to.”

  “What do you mean they’ve got a relative staying with them?”

  Millard Gamble looked at Otis Langley. “They found this old lady, and sure enough she’s their father’s aunt, and it meets the law. She’s a relative, and she’s staying in the house with them, so there’s no reason to send the children away.”

  “Get out of here! I don’t want to hear anymore about this,” Langley said. He was aware of the town laughing at him. Almost everyone knew what he had tried to do, and it delighted them that he had failed.

  Aunt Kezia settled in quickly, her list of conditions posted on the wall in a prominent place. In truth, her conditions turned out to be less severe than they sounded. Two weeks after her arrival, Lanie said, “I hope you’re happy living with us, Aunt Kezia. We love having you.”

  “You don’t mind my sharp tongue then?”

  “No, we don’t mind it at all. We know your bark’s worse than your bite.”

  “I reckon most folks would rather be bit once than barked at all the time. But it’s better than that crazy house in Sallisaw.”

  Lanie smiled, for she knew the old woman had trouble saying anything sweet. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m a little bit worried though.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, the note’s due again, and we’ve worked hard, but we don’t have enough money to pay it.”

  “We can sell some of my things.”

  “No, we’re not going to do that. We’ll find a way.”

  Lanie took her aunt to her room and went downstairs. Maeva was sitting at the kitchen table, staring into space. “What are you thinking about so serious?”

  “Where we going to get the money to pay that note?”

  “I don’t know, but God will send it.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Maeva said.

  “He sent us an aunt, didn’t He, that kept us from getting farmed out.”

  “This is different. We’ve got to meet this note every month, Lanie. I don’t know if we can do it.”

  The twenty-ninth of November came, the day the note was due. Breakfast was a subdued affair, and Aunt Kezia demanded, “What’s the matter? The cat got your tongues?”

  “I guess we’re all worried about how to pay the bank,” Cody said.

  “Why, that ain’t nothin’ to worry about,” Aunt Kezia said. She had eaten three eggs with great gusto. “I don’t mind if I have one more of those eggs. It would go down right good, Lanie.”

  “I’ll fix it for you.”

  Beau barked outside. “What’s he barkin’ at?” Cody said.

  “Go see,” Lanie said. “Could be one of those pesky coons gettin’ into the trash again.”

  Cody left, but he returned almost at once. “Looky here! Looky here!”

  “What is it, Cody?” Lanie asked. She saw he was holding up a glass Mason jar.

  “It’s money! It’s the angel again!”

  All the kids gathered around Lanie as she opened the jar and counted out the wrinkled bills and the change. “It’s twenty-six dollars and fifty cents. Just what we needed.”

  “It’s the angel,” Cody said. “That’s what it is.”

  “What angel? What are you talking about?” Aunt Kezia said.

  Lanie explained that on several occasions when they just had to have money, it had appeared in this fashion in a Mason jar on the front porch.

  “It ain’t no angel,” Maeva said. “It’s somebody. Dogs don’t bark at angels.”

  “Why wouldn’t they bark at an angel?” Aunt Kezia said. “They’re pretty scary creatures. Every time one of them appears in the Scripture, the first thing they say is, ‘Now don’t be afraid.’” She held up the jar. Then she looked at the bank notes. “I didn’t know they used bank notes in heaven.” A smile touched her withered lips and her eyes sparkled. “I’d like to meet this here angel. I’ve got a few matters I’d like to take up with him. Maybe you could set a bear trap out there and catch him.”

  The kids all found this hilarious, and Lanie leaned over and hugged her aunt. “I don’t think you catch angels in bear traps, Aunt Kezia.”

  “I’d mighty like to see one of them angel critters,” Aunt Kezia said. “Now that’d be right interesting.”

  Lanie smiled. “I guess it would—and I think one of them might look just like you!”

  PART FIVE

  The Woman

  CHAPTER 26

  A chilling blast of wind cut through Forrest Freeman’s thin shirt, paralyzing him for a moment. His ax half-raised, a shiver went through him. He lowered the ax and buttoned the top button of his denim jacket. He saw that Oscar Beecham, one of the other inmates, was staring at the ground and his body was shaking violently. Glancing toward the guard, Forrest said, “Mr. Thornby, Oscar’s about to fall over. You got to get him out of this weather.”

  Bent Thornby, warmly dressed in a fleece-lined jacket and a cap with flaps that buttoned under his chin, carried a shotgun loosely in the crook of his right arm. “You do look pretty bad, Oscar. You two come on to the fire and have your dinner. Maybe that’ll help.”

  “He needs to be in the hospital, Mr. Thornby,” Forrest said. His lips were so numb he had to frame the words carefully. The wind swept across the flat delta country. In the summer the blistering sun beat down on the inmates as they planted and hoed and picked cotton, and in the winter they cleared new land in icy blasts that seemed more typical of Canada than Arkansas.

  Mr. Thornby nodded, moved to the back of a pickup, and jerked a sack out. “Hey, Ray, get the guys in! It’s time for dinner.”

  The shivering inmates came quickly, taking the cold pork sandwiches and more willingly the steaming cups of coffee dished out by the guards. They moved in close to the fire that snapped and crackled, throwing its heat out. Forrest glanced around and wondered if he looked as bad as everyone else.

  Taking his friend’s sandwich and coffee, he said, “
Here, sit down, Oscar. Eat.”

  “I ain’t hungry.”

  “You got to eat something, and here, drink some of this coffee. It’ll thaw your innards out.” In his sixties, Oscar was a lifer. Freeman suspected that he had TB. He watched as Oscar listlessly took a bite of his sandwich, then broke into a fit of coughing as he tried to swallow it. He slapped the older man gently on the back until Beecham recovered. “Here, sip this coffee. It’ll be good for you.”

  The two huddled close with the other inmates, all of them slumped down on the frozen earth. The guards, Freeman thought, didn’t need shotguns. None of these convicts were capable of escaping. It was late in the afternoon, and the gray skies threatened snow and more cold.

  “How’s them young’uns of yours, Forrest?” Mr. Thornby looked down at him. The guard was a thick-set, red-faced man, and he sipped his coffee cautiously.

  “They’re doin’ pretty fine, sir. That oldest girl of mine writes every week, and the rest of the kids add a few sentences to her letters. She won’t talk about how hard things are, but I know they are.”

  “Things are hard everywhere,” Mr. Thornby said. He studied For-rest and said, “I guess you feel bad you’re not out there to help ’em.”

  “Really bad, Mr. Thornby.”

  Forrest nursed his sandwich and drank another cup of coffee, and too soon Mr. Thornby said, “Okay, get them axes.”

  “Mr. Thornby, Oscar really ought to be in the hospital. You know it just like I do.”

  “They’d just send him out again.” Thornby sipped his own coffee and considered Forrest for a moment. “The warden be needin’ him a man to take care of his horse and bloodhounds. You know anything about horses and dogs?”

  “Don’t like to brag, but I don’t reckon that you got anybody in this place that knows more.”

  “I like a man that knows his worth. Reckon you can get along with them?”

  “Yes, sir, I can.”

  “All right.” Mr. Thornby got up. “I’ll speak to the warden ’bout you. You’ll be a trustee if he assigns you, and you’ll have to be eating up at the big house where he lives. I reckon that’ll put some meat on your bones.”