by Leisha Kelly
Julia gave a little smile. “It’s not been too easy for them. But they don’t complain much.”
“They’re good youngsters, then. You musta taught ’em right.” I looked at her a long time, and she turned her eyes away without saying nothin’ more.
I took a look out to the old willow tree and thought of Willard’s grave on the rise north of the pond. I’d been wantin’ to go back there ever since comin’ here, even though Rita was one of m’ dearest friends. People had told me to sell, plenty of times, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t even think on it for wantin’ to go home again. But it wasn’t gonna happen. And the good Lord well knew it was time I faced up to that. No matter what Willard mighta thought.
Looking at the quiet young mother sittin’ in front of me, I knew I was gonna have to tell her something. They needed a home more’n I did. And I had no right under God’s blue sky to be selfish. But a knot rose up in my stomach anyhow, so tight I could hardly breathe. It weren’t easy to let go.
Mrs. Wortham was lookin’ at me funny. “Are you all right, Mrs. Graham?”
“You got any family can help you?” I asked.
“I was an only child. My parents and grandparents are dead. Sam has his mother and brother in New York, but we can’t go there. They can’t help.”
“Why’s that?”
She bowed her head. “Edgar’s in the penitentiary, Mrs. Graham. And Samuel’s mother married a man who wouldn’t have us coming around.”
“Why not? What’s wrong with ya?”
“Well, nothing as far as I can see,” she answered without hesitation. “But it’s been this way since we got married. I think because Sam’s different now. He’s—he’s a Christian, like me.”
“Well, there’s hardly harm in that! But they won’t help ya?”
“I don’t think they could, even if they wanted to. They’re not much better off than we are. We were on our way to Sam’s cousin, but he lost his job too.”
I lifted up m’ needle, but set it right down again. I’d wanted to die still owning the farm, having that hope of going home again. I could feel m’ tears tryin’ to come, but I wasn’t gonna let ’em, not in front of Julia Wortham’s notice.
You don’t need that farm no more, I told myself. I’m fine where I’m at, and they got nothin’. What’s a Christian to do?
It took me one deep breath to decide. “I’ll tell you what,” I said to her. “A family’s gotta have a home. You stay there and fix on it, like you said. I’ll have some friends check about you now and then. We’ll give it a year or so. An’ if you do right by the place, you can have it.”
Mrs. Wortham’s mouth opened up slow, and then closed again. But then the tears come like somebody opened a gate for ’em.
“Mrs. Graham . . . oh, Mrs. Graham, are you sure?”
“Don’t go tryin’ to change m’ mind, now!” I told her real stern. I had to be stern, or I’d start bawlin’ m’self, and I sure didn’t want that to happen.
“Mrs. Graham, I–I don’t know what to say! I expected to tenant and pay you something when we could—”
“I’d like some apples off the tree, come fall.”
She looked at me and then come bustin’ forward with a hug. “Yes. Oh yes! But isn’t there anything else?”
I couldn’t hold it together no longer, even for the trying. “You can’t have all the land,” I said, struggling somethin’ fierce with the words. “I’ll need ’bout six feet of it. You have t’ put me in the groun’ next to m’ husband.” And then my tears come out too, and Mrs. Wortham hugged me tighter, tellin’ me I didn’t have to be so kind.
I had to push her away, had to get my sternness back. “I’ve made up m’ mind, now! You do right by the place! I’ll make sure and check! You let that George Hammond keep farmin’ the field, if you ain’t got the means. You do right by him too, you hear? He needs all he can gain from it to feed that family a’ his.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mrs. Wortham said, looking like she was in some kinda shock.
“Where’s that husband a’ yours? You’re gonna hafta bring him so’s I can meet him an’ the kids if they’re gonna be out to m’ place.”
Mrs. Wortham nodded, her tears still falling. “They’re outside, Mrs. Graham. We were going to move on if you said no.”
“Well, go get ’em, girl!” I scolded, tryin’ m’ best not to cry no more. “Get them youngsters in here!”
ELEVEN
Julia
I would never have expected the reaction I got from Sam. He sat right down by the side of the road and cried.
“I can’t,” he said. “We can’t let her—”
“Sammy, come and meet her at least, or she’ll be mad as the dickens about me not coming back in.”
“I don’t know a thing about farming! I didn’t figure you had the chance of a butterfly in a snowstorm . . .”
The kids didn’t know what to think of their dad, sitting in tears in the dirt. And they didn’t know what to think of me either, running out the way I did, hollering for them.
“Mom, who is she?” Robert asked.
“A wonderful lady,” I said. “C’mon, Sam.”
Sam pulled himself to his feet and wiped his whole face with the handkerchief from his back pocket. “We can’t let her do this,” he said again. “Suppose there’s family?”
“You can ask her about that,” I assured him.
“I need to work and provide,” he protested. “Not just be handed—”
“Sam,” I said, taking hold of his arm, “you’ll have to work, all right. She said she’d check to make sure we were fixing on the place. And she means some fixing, I’m sure.”
“But—”
“We can do it! Really we can!”
He looked down at Sarah, who hadn’t said a single word. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered. “God Almighty, this would never have happened in Harrisburg.”
“It wouldn’t happen anywhere without God’s design,” I said just as the front door of the boardinghouse opened.
Mrs. Rita McPiery, the owner, stood looking out at us. “Mrs. Wortham!” she called. “Emma told me to ask if your young’uns would want some buttermilk and a ginger cookie. She’s a’waitin’!”
“Ooooh, can we?” Sarah said, looking at her father, not at me.
He nodded weakly, wiping at his face again. “Better at least meet her, I guess. Since she’s wanting to meet us.”
I took his hand and felt like I could float clear up to the sky. God bless Emma Graham! Oh, Lord, bless that woman!
“I knew we should live there,” Robert said in a tone I’d never heard from him before. “It was just home, you know.”
TWELVE
Samuel
Nothing seemed real, going back through Dearing that day. And back to the farm with Emma Graham’s blessing. I tried to tell her no, but she wouldn’t hear it. I tried to tell her George Hammond wanted the ground, but she said he had the use of it and that was good enough—he wouldn’t keep the place up like she was hoping I would. She wanted the farm to be nice again, she said, the way Willard had it when they were young.
Mrs. McPiery sent us back with a sack of her cookies and three dry ears of table corn for seed. She took us aside as we were leaving and said to come back in a week with flowers for Mrs. Graham, and she’d give us seed for lettuce, turnips, and pumpkins too.
Julia was like a new colt, prancing around. “Oh, Sammy,” she said. “We’ve got to get tools.”
I just shook my head, thinking it would be good while it lasted, having a place to call home. But there was no way we could do the things Mrs. Graham wanted with no money. Paint the house? Fix that old barn? Put in a garden and see that there were flowers clear to the road? We were biting off far more than we could chew.
Mrs. Graham had only laughed at me, saying I’d make it just fine. Trust in the Lord, and I’d find a way. And then she said the thing that surprised me most. Everything on the place, even in that upstairs room in the house, was
ours to use as we saw fit, so long as we didn’t sell a piece of it till after she was dead.
Julia bought us a can of peaches in Dearing, and the first thing she did when we got through the door was start a fire in the oven. I’d never had cobbler like what she made that day, from nothing but flour and baking powder and peaches. Baked in the old iron skillet with the syrup from the can poured on top, the cobbler was fare for celebration.
And then we started looking around. Julia got out some of her paper and started writing down everything we had and everything we’d need. The sky was clouding up again, so we searched the barn and the shed first.
In the barn we found a rake and a pitchfork that was missing a tine. There was an old wagon with one wheel off, and a couple of milking pails. Julia was thrilled when we opened the shed.
“It’s like Christmas!” she said. Two hoes, a post digger, a spade, and a double-sided axe. There also was a roll of chicken wire, a box of hand tools, plus more hanging on the wall, and a couple of metal things Juli said were wedges for splitting firewood. I just shook my head, feeling out of place. When she said we’d need a splitting maul to use with the wedges, I didn’t even know what she was talking about.
I was used to coal. Oil. Even electricity. But we had none of that here. And Juli said this was no problem; there were probably plenty of neighbors that had never had those things and never would. But I was overwhelmed, picturing myself chopping wood all winter long and still trying to figure out how. And where would the food come from? Surely we couldn’t grow enough corn and turnips from Mrs. McPiery’s seed to last a whole year.
“Don’t worry,” Julia kept saying. “Don’t worry. The Lord will show us how.”
Emma had told us the dimensions of her land, and we walked over a lot of it, even going to Willard Graham’s grave. Julia picked a bundle of spring beauties to leave there, and we prayed together, thanking the Lord for what he’d done.
There was a pond we hadn’t seen before, just down the hill from the little stone marker. It had two boards sticking out to meet a post set in the water—the ricketiest dock I’d ever seen, but one it might be all right to fish from if you didn’t wiggle too much.
The timber where we’d hunted mushrooms was Emma’s too, though if we went on far enough past the stream, she had said, we’d come to the Hammonds’ place. She always gave them equal claim to the blackberries and whatever else there was to find in the timber.
Maybe the Hammonds were mushroom hunting too, Robert suggested, and that was why we didn’t find very many. I started to wonder if they would resent all the favor we’d been shown. Maybe they stood in need too. No doubt I’d have to visit George Hammond.
I was glad for the rain when it started. I was exhausted, but Julia was still bouncing around, talking about getting the ground ready for garden. I hadn’t seen anything at all when we were at the farm before. But now, everywhere I looked, I saw something to do.
We went inside with a bowl of water, and Julia put in some of our beans to soak. Then we went upstairs and brought down one box. One box only, because it was almost dark and we had all of tomorrow ahead of us.
Coming back down those stairs, Robert took the steps by twos and Sarah hopped down them one at a time, singing a song she made up as she went along. They were so happy, and I had to admit it seemed right to stay now. But that didn’t change the fact that I was scared beyond words. What if I can’t make this work? What if I fail again? Juli and the kids and even Mrs. Graham were all on my shoulders, and I didn’t want to let them down.
I set the box down on the sitting room floor and both kids took hold of the piece of twine wrapped around it.
“Now just a minute,” Julia told them. “It’s your father’s job to open that box.”
“How come?” Sarah asked, and I was wondering the same thing.
“Because he’s not as excited as you are.”
Robert looked up in surprise.
“These are Mrs. Graham’s things,” she continued. “And they’re special to her. We have to treat each item with respect.”
So it is with this whole farm, I thought. God help me be equal to the task.
THIRTEEN
Julia
It was late and the kids were asleep between blankets on the floor. Sam was sitting up, just as unable to sleep as I was. Around us lay the contents of one box. Just one little part of Emma Graham’s life.
There were a set of lace doilies and at least a dozen embroidered dish towels. Candlesticks and linen napkins and a little book of pictures drawn by a child, almost surely Emma’s son.
“Oh, Sammy,” I whispered. “Maybe you were right. Maybe we can’t really do this. This house has been her whole life.”
I picked up a candle and reached for his hand. I wanted to see more. I had to know, before the kids were up again, if I could really handle such a total, and personal, gift. I hadn’t thought through just what she was giving us. She knew of course. It wasn’t just the house. It was every memory that went with it.
We went up the stairs slowly, each of us with a candle, feeling like we were entering something sacred. The first box I touched had a wedding picture on top with a folded quilt beneath it. Sam opened a box that held gardening gloves and a pair of trowels nestled into a straw hat.
I looked at him, knowing I wouldn’t be able to stop the tears. “She kept all this, hoping she could come home. That’s all she really wants. And she gave it up for us.”
Sam closed his box before getting to the bottom. “It’s not right, Juli,” he told me. “I feel like we’re stealing, even more than when she knew nothing about us.”
“I know what you mean. What are we going to do?”
We walked down the stairs and sat down on the first landing, where the moonlight shone through the window. “If we could only give her something,” he said. “I’d feel a lot better about it. But there’s nothing half as good as what she’s given us.”
We sat in silence for a long time, and I thought of Emma downstairs, quilting by the fire, or out on the hill beside her husband’s grave. “There is one thing,” I ventured, barely daring to speak it. “The only thing she really wants.”
“You mean—”
“We could bring her home, Sammy! She could have the lower bedroom so she wouldn’t have to climb these stairs! We could take care of her, and she’d be right here where she could tell us just the way she wants things to be! I bet she knows how to do everything! And she knows the people around here too, in case we need help with anything.”
Sam stood up, took about three steps down, and stopped. He turned and looked at me but still didn’t say a word.
“It wouldn’t be any trouble!” I pressed. “We have a lot to do, and I’d feel better about it if she were here to share in it! Sammy, I don’t want to think about her sitting over there, homesick. It’s too awful sad.”
He ran his finger along the carved edge of the stair rail and shook his head. Then he went all the way down to the front door and shook his head again.
“It’s not such a strange thing to do!” I declared. “I feel like I know her. And she’s a Christian.”
Finally he looked up at me again, and even in the dim light I could see the twinkle in his eye. “We can’t go tomorrow for her,” he announced. “We’ve got a lot to do, like you said. This place should look at least a little like home for her first.”
I flew down those stairs and into Sam’s arms, loving him so much at that minute that I could hardly stand it. “Thank you, Sam,” I told him in the middle of my hug. “Thank you so much!”
The next day I washed the floors while Sam pulled weeds out of the drive and pounded a leg back on the sitting room chair. We dragged out the mattress from the downstairs bedroom to air in the sun and opened every window we could to get rid of the musty smell. Sam took out one of the upstairs windows and put it in the downstairs bedroom, so Emma would have sunlight to sew by. I was picking yellow woodsorrel to put in the beans, and Sam was trying to chop
a fallen tree limb when George Hammond came riding up in his wagon.
“Say, there, you folks move pretty fast,” he said, an uneasy frown working on his face. “Never heard of such a quick sale.”
Sam set the axe aside and moved to greet our guest. “There wasn’t any sale,” he said. “We’re fixing the place for Mrs. Graham to come home.”
George Hammond was more than a little surprised. “She’s not well, I understand. You folks plan to stay and do for her?”
“We will, if she’ll have it so.”
“If? You mean, you ain’t settled it with her yet? What are you doin’ here, then?”
“She told us to stay. But we’ll feel better about it if she can come home.”
“Well,” Mr. Hammond said. “That’s a thing for considerin’. Are you gonna plant the field, then?”
“She wants you to keep at it,” Sam told him. “We got no way right now.”
George took a good look around at the little farm, then turned his full attention on Sam. “Should’ve got you a horse, mister. You’ll be needin’ the work help, not to mention the transportation. Unless you got you one of those trucks.”
“No, sir. Neither one.”
George scratched his head and looked at me. “No cow, neither?”
“No.”
“Chickens?”
“Not yet.”
“You got no pigs. I’d have smelled ’em. You hunt right well, I take it?”
“Never been.”
“Well, how’re you figurin’ to feed them little ones, then? I ain’t never heard such a thing! You gotta have stock on a farm or you’ll starve. Ain’t nobody told you that? You thinkin’ to get goats, maybe? Or sheep? We got pigs for sale.”
“No money for any of it right now,” Sam told him. “But I would welcome some advice.”
George noticed for the first time that I was gathering plants, and he whistled real slow. “You folks is flat broke, ain’t you?”