by Lynn Austin
Frank tried fighting back at first, landing a few blows to Matthew’s jaw, but the boy wrapped his hands around Frank’s throat and wrestled him to the ground, choking the life from him. Frank’s eyes bulged and his face turned red, then blue, as Matthew straddled him, pounding his head against the floor. I believe Matthew would have killed him then and there if Sam hadn’t rushed into the barn just in time. He grabbed his brother from behind, breaking his grip, and pulled him off their father.
But rage still fueled Matthew’s strength. He wouldn’t quit. He tossed his brother backward into the hay, then scooped up the buggy whip and lashed Frank mercilessly with it, just as Frank had scourged him.
‘‘You sorry excuse for a man!’’ Matthew shouted. ‘‘This is for all the years you tortured me with your cursed strap! How does it feel to be helpless? How does it feel? I was a child! I couldn’t defend myself against you back then, but I swear you’ll pay for everything you did to me all those years!’’
The whip shredded Frank’s shirt into rags and sliced his face and arms with bloody gashes as he tried to defend himself. Again, Sam came up from behind and seized his brother.
‘‘Stop it, Matthew! Stop it! Don’t kill him! He isn’t worth hanging for!’’
‘‘I’d rather hang than grow up to be like him! I hate you!’’ he cried as he spit in Frank’s face. Matthew wrestled to free himself from Sam’s grip so he could finish Frank off. ‘‘I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to kill you! How many times I’ve wished to God you weren’t my father!’’
‘‘He isn’t!’’ Lydia screamed. ‘‘He isn’t your real father, Matthew! You won’t ever be like him because Frank isn’t your real father!’’ She was desperate to stop Matthew from killing him.
Her words finally penetrated Matthew’s murderous rage. He stopped struggling long enough for Sam to wrest the whip from him. Sam shoved him backward into the hay, away from Frank, then planted himself between the two men, pleading with Matthew as tears streamed down his face.
‘‘Don’t kill him, Matt,’’ he begged. ‘‘I hate his guts as much as you do, but I don’t want you to hang for giving him what he deserves.’’
Matthew turned to his mother, his chest heaving. His handsome face twisted with the force of his hatred. ‘‘Is it true? What you just said?’’
‘‘It’s true,’’ she wept. ‘‘I should have told you the truth years ago. Frank isn’t your father. I deceived him because I was already pregnant with you and your real father was married to someone else.’’
‘‘My realfather?’’ he murmured. ‘‘You mean this worthless piece of...dirtis no relation to me?’’ He swung his boot at Frank, kicking straw and manure on top of him. Frank lay prone, breathless and bleeding, unable to raise himself with a broken wrist and three cracked ribs.
‘‘He’s no relation, Matthew,’’ Lydia said soothingly. ‘‘Leave him be. You’ve paid him back enough, already.’’
Matthew looked like a man who has suddenly awakened to find that his long nightmare was simply a dream. He laughed out loud. ‘‘You mean—you mean there’s not one drop of his stinking blood in my veins?’’
‘‘No, Matthew. Not one drop. You’ll never be like him. You couldn’t be.’’
But then his smile faded as the full meaning of what his mother had done also sank in. He shook his head in bewilderment, a wounded child who has been cruelly betrayed. ‘‘But...but if he isn’t my father, then why? Why did you let him beat me all those years when he had no right to? I thought you loved me....’’
Lydia swayed when she realized what she had just done. ‘‘I do love you, Matthew...Ido,’’ she cried. ‘‘But a fatherless child would have nothing, he would be nothing. I wanted the very best for you. I wanted you to have all of this.’’
‘‘So...so you let him beat me? You thought thatwas best for me?’’
I saw what was happening and I quickly wrapped my arms around Lydia to hold her up. I was terrified for her—and for Matthew. She had confessed the truth to save her son, to prevent him from committing murder, but she had lost him all the same. I had to get Matthew away from both his parents so I could reason with him.
‘‘Come with me, Matthew, come in the house with me,’’ I said, releasing Lydia and gently taking his arm. ‘‘You’re bleeding. I’ll fix your cuts.’’
‘‘Not my house!’’ Frank wheezed. My heart froze at the hatred in his voice. ‘‘That boy will never step one foot in my house again!’’ Frank winced in pain as he propped himself up with his uninjured arm. His eyes met Lydia’s and stabbed through her. ‘‘What you did...lying to me all these years...Is unforgivable! You thought you could steal my orchard from me? Well, your son will never own so much as a clod of dirt from my land! I’ll see John Wakefield tomorrow morning and I’ll write your bastard out of my will! Now get him out of my sight and off my land...Tonight! I don’t ever want to see his face again!’’
I quickly hustled Matthew out of the barn while he was too numb to resist. Lydia followed and so did Sam, but I turned to Sam as we reached the door and stopped him. ‘‘Go back and help your father,’’ I told him.
He shook his head. ‘‘No. I hate him, too!’’
‘‘I know, Sam. But you’re all he has left. He’ll treat you differently from now on, you’ll see.’’
‘‘I don’t care! I want to go away with Matthew!’’
‘‘You can’t, son,’’ I said gently. ‘‘Your father needs you. Drive him into town now. Tell the doctor...Tell him Frank got trampled by one of the horses...Tell him the reins lashed him.’’ Sam reluctantly did as he was told.
I built a fire as soon as Lydia, Matthew, and I reached my house. All three of us were shivering. I made a pot of coffee and urged Matthew to sit down and drink some, to let me wash his cuts, to eat something, but he paced the floor as shock and hatred pumped through his veins.
‘‘Please don’t hate me,’’ Lydia begged. ‘‘Please, Matthew!’’ He wouldn’t look at her.
‘‘I’m leaving here,’’ he said, raking his fingers through his hair. ‘‘I’ve got to get out of here tonight.’’
‘‘Now wait a minute, Toots,’’ I soothed. ‘‘You need to think this through. Don’t go off half-cocked without any plans and no money in your pockets. You can stay here with me for a while.’’
‘‘I do have plans. I’m going to enlist in the army. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time now.’’
‘‘That’s a terrible idea,’’ I said. ‘‘It’s only a matter of time before the United States gets pulled into that awful war that’s going on over in Europe, and if you enlist now you’ll be one of the first ones sent over there. You don’t want to die that badly, do you?’’
He didn’t answer, but as I watched him pace, I wondered if maybe enlisting in the army was the best solution. Matthew had stored up a lifetime of rage, and maybe the battlefield was the best place to vent it. Maybe then he would come back to us emptied of hate.
‘‘I need my clothes and things,’’ he finally said, stopping in front of me. ‘‘Will you go get them for me, Aunt Betty?’’
I sighed in resignation. ‘‘I’ll go see if Sam and your fa—if Sam took Frank into town to see the doctor yet. Once they’re gone you can gather your things yourself.’’
And that’s what he did. Lydia and I cried as hard as we had at Willie’s funeral as we watched him stuff his belongings into a worn satchel. His leaving was another death in our family, another loss. When he kissed us good-bye, we both wondered if we’d ever see him again.
‘‘Promise you’ll write to me, Toots,’’ I said as I pushed a Bible and two twenty-dollar bills into his hand. ‘‘Let us know where you are and if you’re all right.’’
‘‘Please forgive me, Matthew,’’ Lydia said as she clung to him for the last time. ‘‘I lied because I love you! I didn’t want to lose you!’’
He simply nodded, unable to speak. Then Matthew freed himself from her grasp and left us.
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I tried to convince Lydia to divorce Frank. She refused. ‘‘I deserve whatever he does to me,’’ she insisted. ‘‘I lied to him.’’
Surprisingly, Frank didn’t publicly expose her shame and kick her out. At first I wondered why, but then I realized that Frank didn’t want the outside world to know that his little kingdom had flaws. The scandal of a divorce would taint Wyatt Orchards’ name and injure Frank’s reputation. Much better to hide their dirty little secret and pretend that nothing was wrong inside the big white house on the hill. Matthew had simply gone off to do his patriotic duty, that’s all.
More than a year passed before we heard a single word from Matthew. Then in early March of 1918, he sent a letter to Lydia in care of my address. He wrote from somewhere in France to say that he had forgiven his mother. The war had changed him, he said. It had shown him the destructive power of unchecked hatred. He was tired of killing. Tired of all the desolation. He wanted to feel the rich soil beneath his fingers again, to nurture life and tend things and watch them grow. He wanted to come home but he knew that he never could. Wyatt Orchards was no longer his home. It would belong to Sam someday—Frank Wyatt’s real son.
‘‘Did Frank have his will changed to Sam’s name?’’ I asked Lydia after she showed me Matthew’s letter.
‘‘Of course,’’ she replied. ‘‘As banged up and sore as he was, he rode into town to see his lawyer first thing in the morning. I found the old will crumpled up in the garbage the day after Matthew left.’’
An eerie stillness began creeping over Lydia then, like a killing frost. As she stared into space, my sister begin slipping away from me. I struggled to find a way to pull her back.
‘‘Listen, Lydia, why don’t we write a letter to Matthew right now. I have some money saved up and I’ll be glad to loan it to him. He can buy his own farm and settle down somewhere— maybe he can even find a place nearby that’s for sale, and we can visit him. I’ll ask John Wakefield to keep his eye open for a nice piece of land, okay?’’
Lydia nodded and finished her coffee, but she didn’t write the letter. I watched her put on her coat and walk up the hill to her house, and I wondered if she’d even heard a word I’d said.
That night I was down in my cottage typing a manuscript when my front door suddenly opened and Lydia walked in. She wore no coat or boots even though a light dusting of snow covered the ground. She floated across the room toward me as if sleepwalking, her eyes wide open, staring at me, through me. Her hands looked darker than her arms, and I thought at first that she wore gloves. But as she handed me the letter she had received from Matthew that morning I saw crimson fingerprints on the envelope and realized that Lydia’s hands were covered with blood. Dark streaks of it stained the front of her calico dress and apron.
‘‘Lydia, what’s wrong? You’re bleeding! Where are you hurt?’’ I grabbed her hands, thinking she might have slit her wrists, but I couldn’t find any wounds.
‘‘Write to Matthew for me,’’ she said. ‘‘Tell him he can come home now. Tell him I fixed everything for him.’’
‘‘What do you mean? What are you talking about? Lydia, sit down and let me see where all this blood is coming from.’’
‘‘It isn’t mine,’’ she said, smiling slightly. ‘‘It’s his.’’
‘‘Whose?’’ She didn’t answer. I’d never seen her this far removed from reality before. I gripped her shoulders, terrified for her. ‘‘Lydia, tell me what you’ve done!’’
‘‘I killed Frank.’’
I released her, backing away. ‘‘No...Oh, please, no!’’
I left her standing in the living room of my cottage and raced up the hill in the dark. As much as I hated Frank Wyatt, I didn’t want my sister to hang for his murder.
‘‘Frank!’’ I yelled as I banged their kitchen door open. ‘‘Frank, where are you?’’ I tore through the house, calling his name, until I found him curled in a pool of blood on the floor of his study. I knelt beside him. He turned his head and looked at me, his eyes filled with horror, his mouth working soundlessly. He was still alive!
A bloody butcher knife lay on the floor beside him. He clutched his gut with both hands as the blood poured out of him. I ran to the kitchen and grabbed some towels, then knelt beside him again and wadded them into the wound in his stomach. He moaned as I pressed hard to stem the bleeding. His eyes rolled back.
‘‘No, don’t black out on me, Frank! Stay awake! Stay with me!’’ I looked around the room for something to splash on his face to revive him, but the coffee cup on his desk was empty. I slapped his cheeks until his eyes opened again. ‘‘Where’s Sam? Frank, I need Sam to go get help! Where is he?’’
He mouthed the word ‘‘barn.’’
‘‘Hold this tight against the wound Frank, and don’t black out on me! I’ll be right back!’’
I found Sam in the barn with the horses. His eyes went wide when he saw the wild look on my face, the blood all over my hands and dress.
‘‘Your father’s been hurt. He needs a doctor. Get into town as fast as you can and bring Dr. Gilbert back with you!’’
Sam leaped onto the horse’s back without bothering to saddle him, and raced off into the night. By the time I heard the doctor’s carriage outside I had a blanket over Frank and I’d managed to slow his bleeding. He was still conscious, though he hadn’t spoken. His eyes followed my movements as I picked the bloody knife off the floor and hid it in his desk drawer. Moments later the doctor walked into the room, shrugging off his coat.
‘‘What happened here, Betty? How is he?’’ I didn’t answer as I moved aside to let Dr. Gilbert examine him. ‘‘You kept him from going into shock...That’s good. This looks like a pretty nasty stab wound, though. What happened?’’
‘‘I don’t know,’’ I said calmly. ‘‘Lydia came down to my house and told me he’d had an accident. I sent Sam for help and tried to stop the bleeding.’’
‘‘You had an accident, Frank?’’
I saw him hesitate for just a moment, then nod.
‘‘I could use some boiling water, Betty, and as many towels as you can spare. What happened, Frank?’’ I heard the doctor ask again as I left to fetch them. ‘‘Can you tell me what happened?’’ I didn’t hear Frank’s answer.
‘‘Where’s Lydia?’’ Dr. Gilbert asked when I returned to the study a few minutes later. ‘‘I need to find out what caused this wound so I know what I’m looking at.’’
I remembered Lydia’s strange, disquieting state and I was suddenly afraid for her. ‘‘I...Idon’t know. I left her at my cottage. I’ll go find her.’’
I raced down the hill again, wondering how I could have been so stupid. I’d left Lydia alone!
My cottage door stood open but Lydia was gone. I wandered around in the dark for several minutes, calling her name, shivering with cold and fear before I thought of grabbing a light and looking for her footprints in the fresh snow. I followed them across the yard toward the pond with dread clutching my heart.
Her trail led out onto the thin ice, out to the black, gaping hole Lydia had fallen through. Only her apron floated on the inky surface.
I sank down in the soft snow at the edge of the pond and wept.
Wyatt Orchards
Fall 1931
‘‘That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the
first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn,
and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will send grass in thy fields
for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full.’’
DEUT.11:14–15
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Of course, Dr. Gilbert was nobody’s fool,’’ Aunt Batty said as she finished her story. ‘‘He insisted that it looked like an attempted murder and a suicide—and he was right. He and Frank had a terrible falling-out because of it. The editor of the Deer Springs Newswas about to print the doctor’s speculations on the front page of the paper when Frank found out and threa
tened to sue him for libel. The paper had no proof to back up those accusations, Frank said. No murder weapon was ever found, no suicide note—and they had Frank’s sworn testimony about what had really happened.’’
‘‘So did he print the story?’’ I asked. Aunt Batty and I sat on one of the narrow wooden bunks in the pickers’ quarters, with the clean straw still piled in the wheelbarrow in front of us. Neither of us had gotten any work done as she’d told the tragic tale.
‘‘No, the newspaper backed down rather than face a lawsuit it couldn’t win. The official story will always be that Frank Wyatt accidentally stabbed himself while sharpening an auger. When his distraught wife went for help she lost her bearings in the dark and fell through the thin ice and drowned in the pond.’’
I tried to figure out what all this meant for me and my kids, but I couldn’t think clearly after learning the horrible secrets that were hidden in this family’s past. The tiny picker cabin felt stifling, so I stood on the bunk and shoved one of the windows open to let in a little air.
‘‘Do you think Lydia altered Frank’s will before she tried to kill him?’’ I asked as I sat down beside Aunt Batty again.
‘‘Well, if Frank’s will gives everything to Matthew—then yes, I think she must have swapped the two. Lydia told me she’d found the old one in the garbage. That must have been what she meant when she said she’d fixed it so Matthew could come home again.’’
‘‘But why didn’t Frank ever notice the switch?’’
Aunt Batty shrugged. ‘‘How often does anybody dig through his records and reread his own will? As far as Frank knew, the old one went into the trash and the new one went into effect. He thought Sam would inherit everything.’’