Unbroken
Page 15
“How do you know?”
“I ain’t a fool, and I made Andy Vesper tell me!”
It crossed my mind that Truman might be lying. He might be telling me what I wanted to hear. But no, I could so easily check with Dr. Vesper, and anyway, it sounded right. It sounded exactly like Mother.
But just because it sounded right didn’t mean it was right. Mother was an adult, with more sides to her than I’d ever seen. She was young, and the man she loved was going to die soon. She could have been pregnant when they married. I felt stupid now for thinking it so easily, for not thinking of other explanations, but it could still have been true, and it didn’t matter.
“It was Sarah set you on that track, wa’n’t it?” Truman said. “Nothing else’d start a young girl countin’ on her fingers like a darned old maid, about her own mother! Well, Sarah, I’ve let you go your length, but you get a piece of my mind before you’re too many minutes older!” He swung away from the fence.
“No!”
He looked back at me. His eyes blazed, and for the first time I could envision Truman going into battle. But not now. Not against Aunt Sarah, whom he’d loved, one way and another, all her life.
“It’s my fight,” I said. “I’ll handle it. Anyway, I already didn’t care, even before you told me. I think—” It was too complicated to say; my mind and heart were too full. “I don’t care,” I said again.
“I care!”
“Thank you,” I said. “But I’ll handle it.”
Our eyes locked on each other for several more seconds. Then Truman turned away and kicked a pebble, hard. It hit the side of the barn and ricocheted off. “All right! Have it your way! By golly, Harry, you get stubborn from both sides of the family, don’t you?”
“I suppose.”
Truman ducked his head and laughed shortly. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t recommend gettin’ dragged by a horse. But it seems to have served you well.”
“Served me right!”
“We all make mistakes,” Truman said. He let out a sharp sigh that seemed to carry off the rest of his anger. “You know, if you’ll let him, Clayton’ll take your youngster in hand. He ain’t what you’d call masterful, but Clayt can get a horse to see things his way. And I hear there’s no hurry now.”
“No.”
He shook his head in a wondering way, leaned his elbows on the rail again, and gazed off at the pasture and the blue hills.
The colt nudged him and, getting no response, wandered downhill, snatching a bite of grass here and there. All at once he bucked and squealed and galloped menacingly at a cow.
“Well,” Truman said, “long as you’re all right, Harry.”
“Truman!” Aunt Sarah called from the front step. “Supper’s about ready, and I want Harriet to rest!”
“Course, your troubles ain’t over,” Truman said as we turned toward the house. “You’re closer’n two spoons right now, but she’ll always know what’s best, Sarah will. Unless you plan on cavin’ in to her, sometimes you’ll have to fight.”
“I know.”
“Next time it comes up,” he said, “I think you ought to tell her.”
“You mean …?”
“What I just told you. And it’ll come up again, make no mistake. Sarah never quits, and she never uses a pop-gun if she’s got a cannon handy. When she throws that at you again, you ought to tell her the truth. Can’t hurt Walter anymore, and I think you owe it to her, Harry. She ought to start thinkin’ better of ’em. She ought to have that comfort.”
It was like starting over as a baby, eating supper with no hands, except as a baby I probably didn’t mind helplessness and things dribbling down my chin. Aunt Sarah was deft, and when needed, she chased the dribbles rapidly with a spoon, the way mothers do. It made me cross, though, and it would be this way for at least a week. Dr. Vesper insisted on absolute cleanliness, and he’d swaddled my hands so I couldn’t be tempted to use them.
“I’ll start hayin’ the homeplace tomorrow,” Uncle Clayton remarked over his tea. He glanced out the window at a tiny puff of cloud, golden with the last rays of sun. “Guess you won’t be able to help us, Harry.”
“Ride over and visit anyway,” Truman said.
“Tomorrow I have to churn,” I said. “I can still churn.”
“Tomorrow you have to rest,” Aunt Sarah said, wiping my chin with a damp cloth. I glanced at Truman and away, before the sparkle in his eyes could make me smile. I would churn. I’d sit in the rocker before she even poured the cream, and she’d say, “All right, a few minutes then,” and I’d have my own way. I did know how to get around Aunt Sarah.
A wide yawn interrupted my thoughts. Without hands I couldn’t hide it, and a moment later I yawned again. “Better say good-night,” Aunt Sarah said. “I’ll be up in a minute to help you change your clothes.”
I climbed the stairs. There was time, before Aunt Sarah followed, to put Mother and Father’s picture away. I was about to, but I paused, looking at them, and as I heard her step on the stairs, I decided to leave them where they were. No time like the present!
Aunt Sarah brought a candle and set it on the bedside table. It threw a soft glow directly onto the windowsill, touching the edge of the picture. She didn’t glance that way. She was looking around the room. “It’s awful hot up here!” It was true. The stale heat lingered in the corners of the room, like the remnants of a fever. “It must have been terrible during that hot weather. Why didn’t you mention it, Harriet?”
She crossed the room and pushed the bureau aside with her hip. The murky mirror shuddered. She opened the door beyond, and after a moment cool air began to flow through my window, moving toward the next room.
Aunt Sarah paused in the doorway. “I’ll move you over here tomorrow,” she said. “That way you won’t get the heat from the kitchen,” She stood looking into that bare room for a moment. I leaned over and nudged the candle, so the warm glow lit Mother’s face. Aunt Sarah turned and came toward me, the nightgown draped over her arm. I saw her see the picture.
She stood looking for a moment, and then she reached across the candle flame and picked up the picture. My heart beat harder: Mother and Aunt Sarah, face to face. She gazed and gazed, her eyes dark and wide.
“He was sick,” she said finally, as if to herself. “I didn’t realize …”
Then she seemed to remember that I was there. She looked down at me, huge in the twilit room, the photograph small in her hand. The candle lit the underside of it, lit the date in Mother’s handwriting, lit the sudden glitter in Aunt Sarah’s eyes.
“You’ll want a frame for this,” she said, “so you can have it on your table.” Gently she propped the picture back in the window, a little farther over than I’d had it, so the candlelight fell only on Father’s face, but never mind that for now.
“Stand up,” she said, “and let me help you into your nightgown.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This story was inspired by the real-life story of Helen Watts Chase, who was orphaned under different circumstances in 1889. Like Harry, Helen had lived with an indulgent mother and was left to the care of an aunt with different ideas about raising children. Her story is included in Roxana’s Children: The Biography of a Nineteenth-Century Vermont Family, by Lynn A. Bonfield and Mary C. Morrison, published in 1995 by the University of Massachusetts Press.
Harry is not Helen but came into existence because of her.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1999 by Jessie Haas
Cover d
esign by Jessie Hayes
ISBN: 978-1-4976-6261-2
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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