by Lynn Austin
‘‘What’s the matter?’’ Sam asked when he saw me weeping over Jimmy that first night.
‘‘I guess I’m scared, too,’’ I admitted. ‘‘Being a mother is hard for me because I grew up without one.’’
Sam sat down on the bed beside me, a puzzled look on his face. ‘‘But I thought you said your whole family died in the influenza epidemic?’’
He’d caught me in a lie! I panicked. ‘‘Um...no...That was my step-mother,’’ I said quickly. ‘‘And she was never much of a mother to me.’’ I needed to change the subject, fast. I lifted Jimmy and handed him to Sam before he could protest. ‘‘Here...you hold him.’’
Jimmy squirmed, then settled into his father’s strong arms. He was awake, and he looked up at Sam as if memorizing his face. Sam’s eyes filled with tears. ‘‘My goodness...my goodness...’’ he whispered. ‘‘He’s so small. And I don’t know how to be a good father. I’m so afraid I’ll...’’
I’d lived with Frank Wyatt long enough by then to understand why Sam was so scared. I thought of the advice Aunt Peanut had once given my father.
‘‘You don’t have to be scared, Sam,’’ I told him. ‘‘Just be the daddy you always wished you’d had. If you wished your daddy had tucked you into bed at night, then tuck little Jimmy in. If you wished your daddy had taken you fishing, then take him fishing. That’s all you have to do.’’
‘‘Really?’’ he whispered.
‘‘Yes. That’s all there is to it.’’
From the day the children were born, Sam loved each of them with his whole heart. He never said the words out loud, probably because he’d never heard them from his own father and didn’t know how, but I could see how much he loved them. If he lost patience with one of them he’d quietly walk away rather than lose his temper, and I admired him for that. He never once laid a hand on any of them in anger. When Becky Jean was born he just stared and stared at her with tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘‘A girl...a beautiful little girl!’’ he murmured. ‘‘She doesn’t look real, Eliza. She looks like...like a little angel laying there!’’
I felt the same love and fear that Sam did. I would go into my kids’ rooms at night and watch them sleep, marveling at the fact that my children were part of me, yet they weren’t. It terrified me to know how much they needed me, depended on me. I was so afraid that I’d disappoint them, maybe even fail them. Sometimes I’d remember how my daddy used to look at me with fear in his eyes and I wondered if it was for that very same reason.
Once, I came real close to telling Sam the truth about my past.
Jimmy had just turned four and Luke was two when I learned that a competitor’s circus was coming to the county fairgrounds. I was so excited to think that Sam and I could sit in the bleachers together watching the circus with our two boys—just like all the families I used to envy. I’d planned to wait until I was curled up beside Sam in bed at night, then tell him how this would all be a dream come true for me. But before I had a chance to confess, an advance man for the circus came through Deer Springs and knocked on our kitchen door just as we sat down to lunch.
‘‘Good afternoon, folks. I’m with the Gentry Brothers’ Circus and we’ll be performing over at the county fairgrounds next month. I’d like to offer some free passes for your entire family if you’ll let us post a bill on your barn out there.’’
Frank flew into a terrible rage, bellowing about how circus performers strutted around with hardly any clothes on, how they all lived such immoral lifestyles, and how disgraceful it was for Christian people to even consider attending a circus. He yelled so loud he made little Luke cry. I watched my father-in-law toss that poor man out on his ear and I knew that I could never breathe one word about growing up in the circus. Nor would my children ever get the chance to see one as long as their grandfather was alive.
My husband worked his entire life to please his father—an impossible task since Frank Wyatt was impossible to please. Sam never really did feel his father’s love or approval, even as he lay dying. And he never should have gotten sick in the first place.
It started out as just a simple cut on his foot—a nail or something that had poked through the worn-out sole of his boot and sliced into him. His foot hurt him, but he kept right on working, limping around the barn as he shoveled out manure and milked the cows.
‘‘Guess I need a new pair of boots,’’ he said that night, showing me the hole in his sole. I doctored the cut on his foot but neither one of us thought much about it. It was September, a busy time of year in the orchard, and Sam kept on limping around, wearing those same boots because there wasn’t any time to run into Deer Springs for a new pair.
A few days later he woke up with a low-grade fever. He complained of a stiff jaw and sore neck, and said he ached all over. We both thought he had the flu. I could tell Sam felt miserable, but he dragged himself outside to do a full day’s work, fever or no fever, because his father expected him to. He got worse and worse.
One night Sam’s moaning woke me up. His fever wasn’t all that high but he was sweating so much he’d soaked all the bed sheets. His heart raced a mile a minute.
‘‘Sam, what’s the matter? What’s wrong?’’
He couldn’t answer. The muscles in his neck and jaw went into such a horrible spasm that it distorted his face and froze his jaw. I leaped out of bed and began to dress. ‘‘I’m going for the doctor.’’
‘‘No...’’ he moaned.
‘‘Why not? Sam, I’m scared! What if...?’’ It terrified me to think that it might be lockjaw, but I didn’t want to say it out loud and upset Sam. ‘‘Listen, if I go get Dr. Gilbert in Deer Springs I can be back in half an hour.’’
‘‘My father...won’t allow...’’ he finally managed to say.
I didn’t know what to do. All my instincts urged me to go get help but every time I mentioned going for the doctor it seemed to upset Sam even more.
He was no better in the morning. As soon as I heard my father-in-law stirring I ran downstairs to confront him.
‘‘Where’s my breakfast?’’ Frank asked when he saw me. ‘‘And where’s Sam?’’
‘‘He can’t get out of bed.’’ My voice shook with fear. ‘‘He’s sick—terribly, horribly sick. He needs a doctor.’’
‘‘Sick! The cows have to be milked! And I need him in the orchard!’’ He glared at me as if Sam’s illness was all my fault.
‘‘He can’t work. Go upstairs and see for yourself.’’
Frank grunted in disgust as if I was a silly, hysterical woman, then turned away. ‘‘He’s a strong boy. He’ll be fine in a day or two.’’
‘‘He’s not fine!’’ I yelled. ‘‘Go look at him! You have to send for a doctor!’’
Frank’s eyes flashed in anger as he whirled around, wagging his finger in my face. ‘‘Don’t you evertell me what to do!’’ He slammed the kitchen door on his way out.
I had my own chores to finish and meals to fix and kids to tend to, but every time I checked on Sam that day his condition was worse. The muscle spasms spread to his abdomen and legs and back, and they were so violent and so painful that his body went stiff as a board and his back arched clear off the bed. Sam was awake and alert—and in agony.
I watched for my father-in-law all afternoon, planning to confront him again the moment I saw him, but he stayed out in the orchard all day and didn’t come back to the house until suppertime. I would have loaded up the kids and gone for help long before I did but Frank had the team of horses with him, and I didn’t know how to drive the truck.
I waited until Frank said grace at supper time, then told him as calmly as I could, ‘‘Sam needs a doctor. I...Ithink he has lockjaw.’’
Frank reached for the mashed potatoes without even looking up at me. ‘‘I suppose you’re a medical expert now?’’
‘‘No...but it doesn’t take an expert to see how sick he is.’’ I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cry but I couldn’t stop my tears. ‘‘Please, Mr. Wyatt, he�
�s in so much pain. I can’t stand to watch him suffering.’’
Frank continued to eat in silence.
‘‘Please,’’ I begged. ‘‘Please let me drive into town and fetch the doctor.’’
He raised his head and his voice. ‘‘You will not touch my truck or my horses! My son does not need a doctor!’’
I knew then what I had to do. As soon as I’d tucked my kids in bed that night, I quietly left the house through the front door and ran all the way into Deer Springs. I was so distraught, shaking from head to toe with exhaustion and rage and fear, that it took me several minutes to convince Dr. Gilbert that I wasn’t the one who needed medical care.
‘‘No, please, Dr. Gilbert. It’s my husband, Sam, who needs your help, not me.’’
‘‘Sam Wyatt?’’
‘‘Yes. I think he has lockjaw. I think he’s dying. Pleasecome.’’
He asked me to describe Sam’s symptoms and I knew by the grim look on his face as I told him, that I had cause for concern. He opened his cupboard and began packing things into his medical bag as he questioned me.
‘‘Does Frank Wyatt know you’re here?’’ he asked me when he’d finished.
‘‘No. He refused to let me get help. I had to walk all the way here. He wouldn’t even go upstairs and see how sick Sam was.’’
Dr. Gilbert shook his head. His clamped lips and angry eyes told me that he was furious. ‘‘Frank may not let me through the door, you know.’’
‘‘You have to try, Dr. Gilbert. Please don’t let Sam die!’’ I was nearly hysterical.
He gripped my shoulders, and his firm hold reassured me. ‘‘I’ll do my best, Mrs. Wyatt. Listen, perhaps you should have some brandy before we go.’’
‘‘I’ll be fine. Just hurry.’’
It took no time at all to drive there in Dr. Gilbert’s car. I convinced him to park on the road so my father-in-law wouldn’t hear us, and we walked up the driveway in the dark. Frank’s bedroom was right off the kitchen, so I sneaked Dr. Gilbert in through the front door and hurried him up the stairs.
Sam looked even worse than when I’d left him. He turned to us as we came into the bedroom and I saw the panic in his eyes, then his back arched horribly. ‘‘Help me!’’ he slurred as his jaw locked in a grimace of pain.
Dr. Gilbert examined him gently, but the slightest touch sent Sam’s muscles into violent spasms. I stood beside the bed, wringing my hands, then nearly jumped out of my skin when I suddenly heard Frank’s booming voice behind me.
‘‘What are you doing in my house, Gilbert?’’
Dr. Gilbert slowly turned to face him. ‘‘I’m treating your son—’’
‘‘No, you’re not! We don’t need you here! Get out!’’
‘‘Frank, your son has tetanus,’’ he said quietly. ‘‘He’s very ill. I’m going to give him an injection of antitoxin and—’’
My scream interrupted him. Sam had started going into convulsions. His skin turned a horrible bluish gray as he struggled to breathe.
‘‘He’s having a seizure,’’ Dr. Gilbert said. ‘‘It’s cutting off his oxygen.’’ He grasped Sam’s shoulders to hold him down.
I’d never felt so scared or so helpless in my life. When the seizure finally ended, Dr. Gilbert quickly prepared a hypodermic needle.
‘‘I’m going to give you some tetanus antitoxin, Sam. Then something to help relax your muscles.’’
I glanced over my shoulder, worried that Frank would try to stop him, but my father-in-law had left the room.
Dr. Gilbert did everything he could for Sam that night. He even showed me how to make a poultice and apply it to the cut on Sam’s foot. But I could tell by the way the doctor gripped my shoulders again to steady me when it was time for him to leave, that he was just as worried about Sam as I was.
‘‘I have to be honest with you, Mrs. Wyatt, and tell you that your husband is a very sick man. Tetanus antitoxin is most effective when it’s given as soon as the symptoms appear, but...well, that decision was taken out of our hands.’’ He sighed, then picked up his medical bag. ‘‘I’ll be back first thing in the morning.’’
My husband’s illness was too far gone for the antitoxin to work. Dr. Gilbert couldn’t do a thing for him and neither could I. Sam died a horrible, painful death as the seizures finally became so violent he stopped breathing. Yet he was awake and aware of everything that was happening to him until the very end. The last words he heard me say were, ‘‘I love you, Sam.’’
The day he died I was so distraught I raged at my father-in-law in front of my kids. ‘‘It’s all your fault!’’ I screamed. ‘‘Sam died because you wouldn’t go for help! You killed your own son! If you had gone for a doctor sooner and Sam had gotten the antitoxin, he never would have died!’’
Frank didn’t respond to my outburst. He stared right through me with haunted eyes, and I had to wonder if he’d even heard a word I’d said. The hateful, manipulative Frank Wyatt I’d lived with these past years died with his son, leaving a broken, embittered old man in his place. What good was his orchard and everything he’d built without a son to inherit it? Still, I didn’t feel one shred of pity for Frank. He’d reaped what he’d sown.
My father-in-law had hardly seemed to notice my kids before Sam died. I always figured he hated them because he hated me. But as he stood beside the graves of his wife and two sons he slowly looked up and saw Jimmy and Luke clinging to me, their faces pale with grief. He looked at his grandsons, really looked at them, for the very first time and I think he suddenly realized they were all he had left.
‘‘Oh, dear God...’’ he whispered.
Frank seemed different after Sam died—not any kinder, and certainly not any warmer or more loving toward me or the kids. But he was a broken man, and he and I both knew it. We lived together like strangers in a boardinghouse, rarely talking, seeing each other only at mealtimes.
Then one cold November day a year later, Jimmy found his grandfather sprawled on the floor of the barn. I hurried outside when I heard my son’s frantic yells, but the moment I looked into the cold, vacant eyes of the man I’d hated, I knew he was dead. I didn’t feel one bit sorry. In fact, I found myself wishing he had suffered twice as much as poor Sam had suffered. I was about to turn my back on him when I noticed that Frank’s hands were empty. They lay open, palms up, and there was nothing in them. He had grasped and controlled and manipulated with those hands all his life to get his own way, and now they were empty. Frank Wyatt’s orchard and everything he had worked for had been left behind for someone else.
Wyatt Orchards
Winter 1931– 1932
‘‘While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest,
and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night
shall not cease.’’
GENESIS 8:22
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Aunt Batty and I sat at the kitchen table as the sun rose that morning. The cows needed to be milked, the horses had to be fed and watered, and the boys had to eat breakfast and get ready for school. But I felt too weary to move. Telling my story after all those years left me feeling empty and drained. My mama had left me and Sam had left me, and now Gabe had gone off and left me, too. What was wrong with me that made everybody turn their back and walk away from me?
‘‘You were very blessed to have had parents who loved you so much,’’ Aunt Batty said quietly.
‘‘Are you crazy?’’ I asked. ‘‘Weren’t you listening to me? Daddy never once told me he loved me, and Mama said it all the time and then she abandoned me!’’
‘‘You’re standing too close to see it, Toots. Your father showed you how much he loved you in a hundred different ways.’’
‘‘How? Name one!’’
‘‘He guided your decisions, raised you by the Good Book, took you to church. He made sure you didn’t grow up to become a circus oddity, but instead a warm, loving woman who could become the person God intended you to be. Most of all, he let you go wh
en the time came. He did everything a good parent should do. That’s why you’re such a wonderful parent yourself. You learned how to love from your daddy.’’
‘‘But he lied to me about my mama!’’
‘‘Are you sure that’s the way it was?’’ she asked gently.
When I thought about it, I had to admit that Daddy had never exactly said Mama was dead. I slowly pulled myself to my feet and opened one of the stove lids to put another stick of wood on the fire. ‘‘Well, I’m sure that my mother abandoned me,’’ I said, closing the lid again.
Aunt Batty stood, too, and opened the dish cupboard, talking to me as she set the table for breakfast. ‘‘It looks to me like your mama knew she couldn’t take proper care of you, and she loved you enough to give you to someone who could. My sister gave up her own chance at happiness for her child’s sake, too. You know all about that kind of mother-love, don’t you, Eliza? Just look at how hard you’ve been working to hang on to this orchard and provide for your kids. Your mother didn’t abandon you, Toots. She made the greatest sacrifice a mother could make.’’
I watched Aunt Batty putting plates around the table and saw that she had taken out one too many. She started placing it where Gabe always sat, then caught herself.
‘‘Gabe abandoned me,’’ I said, fighting tears.
‘‘Well, it looks that way right now,’’ she said. ‘‘But Gabe loved all of us. Maybe he had a good reason for what he did. Maybe he made a sacrifice for the people he loved, too.’’
‘‘Ha! I doubt that! From what Sheriff Foster said, it looks to me like Gabe was trying to save his own skin and keep from getting arrested.’’
Aunt Batty didn’t reply. She put silverware by all the places and poured milk in the kids’ glasses while I got out the frying pan and started cracking eggs into a bowl to scramble them. When I realized that I’d added enough eggs for Gabe, miscounting just like Aunt Batty had, I covered my face.