Julia's Hope

by Leisha Kelly

  I just stood there with my back against Charlie Hunter’s car, knowing there was no use trying to get away. Four or five more of the frowning type had crowded in, and Hazel Sharpe had gotten herself into the middle of them.

  Emma looked up from the front seat, where she’d been sitting and talking to a clear-eyed woman and the girl with the yellow ruffles. She saw my plight and turned her sights on the man in front of me. “Eldon Henley, don’t you go stickin’ yer nose in where it don’t belong!”

  “Now, Emma,” Hazel spoke up, her face tense.

  “Don’t even try to shush me,” Emma said immediately. “You got no right gettin’ yourselves in Samuel’s face! He’s a good man, and m’ guest to boot. You all just leave him alone, or he’ll be thinkin’ I got me a church full a’ heathens.”

  “We got every right bein’ concerned for one a’ our own!” Miss Hazel insisted. “We can’t just be lettin’ folks come in and hornswoggle you outa—”

  “Just a minute!” Emma said, stopping her cold. “You don’t know nothin’ ’bout m’ business at all! These is fine folks that ain’t took nary a cent! They’re m’ friends, and they been better to me already than you ever been.”

  Hazel stepped back as if she’d been slapped. “I—I just don’t know how you can say such a thing. You’ve knowed me so long—and you know Eldon was meanin’ well too. We all love ya s’ much—”

  “You got a funny way a’ showin’ it, Hazel Sharpe,” Emma declared. “Tellin’ tales on m’ friends without even waitin’ long enough to see if you got matters straight, which you don’t, a’ course.” She took a look around at the crowd. “Go home to Sund’y dinner, all a’ you. You never thought much on me while I was up to Belle Rive, so it hadn’t ought to bother you much nows I’m home.”

  “Never thought on you?” Hazel exclaimed. “I can’t picture how you could say such a thing! When we been like sisters!”

  I looked from one to the other, surprised by the sharpness of Emma’s words, even though she’d promised to defend me.

  “Hazel,” Emma sighed, “a blue moon brung you up to see me. And then you done nothin’ but complain. And it was the same way with some of the rest of you. Delores Pratt and Bonnie Gray, now they was good to come regular ’nough with a smile on their face, but they’ve gone home a’ ready to feed their grandbabies. And I’m goin’ over to Louise Post’s now. I’ll be seein’ you all, Lord willin’, come next Sund’y. I love every one of ya, but I’d thank ya to see the matter straight with me ’fore you run your mouth. These is good folks, and that’s all there is to it! Now, where’s Charlie?”

  One of the frowners broke into a smile, shook Emma’s hand, and wished her a good day. Charlie left a pretty young lady standing by an evergreen bush to come in our direction, and I called for Robert and Sarah.

  Eldon Henley quietly said good day to Emma and started to turn away, but Miss Hazel wouldn’t let the matter rest. Turning to Julia and me, she said, “You ain’t gonna get by with this, turnin’ her agin’ her own friends thataway! Worst case a’ hoodwinked I ever seen! But it ain’t gonna be! I’ll have you found out and run off her place yet! You just wait!”

  She stormed off, and everyone near us just stood for a minute, struck by the woman’s furious outburst.

  “Never mind her, now,” Emma said. “Shoot, you all be praying for her. That’s Hazel. But she’ll come ’round.”

  Emma went right on talking to yet another friend while the kids climbed in the car behind her. But I watched Miss Sharpe’s stooped shoulders getting farther and farther down the dusty street. And my stomach twisted into a knot.

  Emma had once said that the woman was all bark. But somehow I knew she’d made no idle threat. She was convinced of our guilt, though I wasn’t quite sure why. And she had a plan to save Emma from herself and get rid of us. I was sure of this, but there was no way to prove it. We’d just have to wait, like she’d said. Wait and see.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Julia

  Oh, what a lovely day it was! I was so relieved that Emma felt better; it almost seemed as if last night had never happened, she was so full of pep. Hers was a beautiful church, so homey and quaint, with some very sweet people to talk to. Of course, a few folks were a bit sour, but you get that anywhere. And it was mostly Miss Hazel’s doing. That’s Hazel, like Emma said.

  I felt like I’d known Juanita Jones, the pastor’s wife, for years. We talked and laughed like old friends, and I was already anxious for next week, when we could accept her invitation to dinner. Her husband’s sermon about the Good Samaritan was good too. I heard Emma afterward telling the couple behind us that Sam was rather like the foreigner in that story—good-hearted whether he was trusted or not.

  Pretty soon Charlie was driving us along in the sunshine. Emma must have been feeling as good as I was, because she started singing hymns again. And, oh, I was feeling blessed. I saw some more borage not far from the road and thought I ought to do my best to find some more at home. Vervain too. “Good for what ails you,” Grandma had once said. At least it wouldn’t do Emma any harm.

  I knew Samuel had come to terms with Emma, even the idea of her getting sick. And we were going to stay. Praise the living Lord for that! We’d been planted, just like Emma had said.

  It hardly seemed like any time had passed at all when we approached the Posts’ farm. I was hoping the schoolteacher and her husband would be there, and I wasn’t disappointed. Mr. Post was standing outside when we pulled in, and the first thing he told us was that his brother and Elvira were there for dinner too.

  The Posts had a pretty place, white and cheerful with a rosebush out front to greet us. Everything was in order and looked freshly painted or brand new. Charlie helped Sam get Emma inside, but he couldn’t be persuaded to stay. “Have a dinner date of my own back in town,” he said and then winked.

  Almost right away, we heard barking from the backyard.

  “A dog!” Sarah proclaimed. “Mommy, they got a dog! Oh, can we see?”

  “That’s just the thing to do,” Barrett Post said with a gleam in his eye. “I got me somethin’ better ’n candy back there.”

  He looked to Sam, who gave a reluctant nod, and our children followed Mr. Post toward the sound.

  Louise, who had come out to the porch to meet us with a towel in her hands, shook her head at her husband and then took my hand. “You’ll have to forgive him. He loves Princess well enough, but there’s just no way we can keep her eight puppies. Trying to pawn some off on you, that’s what he’s doing. But you don’t have to feel obligated, if you got no way to feed ’em. Your youngsters are welcome to visit ’em here.”

  She asked us in, where Emma was already in lively conversation with Elvira. So I went in to meet the teacher while Sam followed the others around the back to see the puppies that were sure to warm Sarah’s heart. She loved anything with fur and a great many things without it.

  Louise Post had a lovely sitting room with oak furniture and yellow seat cushions. But I felt strange in there talking while she worked in the kitchen, so after awhile I excused myself to see if she could use some help. Before long, I was peeling boiled potatoes for the potato salad.

  “Don’t like to buy no potatoes,” Louise told me. “But we’ll have to, till the crop comes in. Got a box of ’em the size of a hog wagon down in the root cellar, but every one of ’em’s gone to sprouts as long as your arm.” She spooned mayonnaise and a dollop of mustard into the bottom of a bowl. “Cut your pieces right in on top,” she said. “That’s the way I do it.”

  I smiled at her upside down way of doing things and asked if they grew their own potatoes every year.

  “’Cept the year Howard was born,” Louise answered with a far-off look. “Barrett broke his arm. And me with a newborn, we didn’t get much garden in. How ’bout you? You planting much?”

  “Not as much as I’d like. We have a little corn and beans, lettuce and such.”

  “Potatoes?”

  “No, not yet,
” I admitted and saw the smile spread quickly across her face.

  “How would you like some of the mess I’ve got? They’re good for nothing ’cept to plant, and we don’t have the room for all of ’em. We could send you home with a box or two. Emma’d probably laugh me to scorn, though, seein’ sprouts so long.”

  An answered prayer, sure as I was standing there. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Post, but I doubt Emma would laugh. She just might kiss you, as much as she loves a garden.”

  “She does that. You’re right.”

  I rose to the counter to get a serving spoon just in time to see my children out the kitchen window. Rolling in the grass, both of them, with puppies all over the place. And Samuel, sensible as he usually was, stood there with a pup in his arms, staring it in the face. “They are surely going to have to wash up now.” I sighed, thinking how the children would beg to take a puppy home when it came time to leave.

  “You’ll be lucky not to go home with a dog in your lap,” Louise said with a laugh. “’Course, if you think on it, they’re good to have around. Keeps the coons out of the corn. And fox away from the chickens too. You got chickens?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Emma has.”

  “Emma’s such a sweet thing, letting you stay with her. And it’s good of you too. Barrett told me all about it, and it’s a decent arrangement. A little different, but what’s that? These days, folks need to work together.”

  “Thank you. Not everybody sees it that way.”

  Louise shook her head. “I expect not. We heard some things. But I just tell folks to mind their own business. Or go and talk to Emma, like Barrett did.”

  We set the table and called everyone to a dinner fit for royalty. Louise Post could certainly cook, even if she did things upside down or backward, like putting forks on the right and gravy underneath the meat on her plate. And it was a real treat to have fresh-churned butter with her homemade bread. And a cherry pie.

  Elvira Post did most of the talking during dinner. She asked Robert all kinds of questions, and then would think of some more for Samuel or me. Pretty soon, she knew more about us than most people find out, or care to, in weeks.

  “Helps me teach,” she claimed. “To know how my students live and think things through. Believe me, you ain’t the only ones.”

  “That’s sure true,” her husband, Clement, confirmed. “Can’t go no place without her pesterin’ folks right and left over stuff that wouldn’t interest me in the least.”

  “You oughta be interested,” Elvira told him. “Nothing in this world’s more interesting than the people around you.”

  “Wish you’d take more notice of church, then,” Emma gently admonished. “How better to know all them folks that goes, Elvira? Especially them that’s your kids. They oughta see the schoolteacher in church more than Christmas, you know, if it weren’t for nothin’ but the example. And that goes for all a’ you.”

  The table was silent for a moment as the Posts turned to their food. Finally, Elvira managed to speak.

  “You’re right, Emma. I know it. I oughta go more. For an example, like you said. Tell you the truth, I been lucky not to have parents complainin’ at me over it. Teacher before me was there every Sund’y. But church was right at the school then, and she only lived ’bout two skips away.”

  “Dearing ain’t so far,” Emma maintained. “Not for somethin’ so good as church. It’d do you good too, Barrett.”

  Mr. Post set his fork down with some emotion. “You know I ain’t been since my pappy died, and I ain’t goin’. We all respect you ’round here, Emma, but you’re gonna hafta leave me ’lone about that.”

  After another moment of silence, Louise started talking about what a year it was going to be for berry picking and wasn’t the rhubarb coming up nice. Elvira invited our family out to the schoolhouse to see what it was like, and Clement said that if we hurried we could catch Sparky and Tubs on the radio after dinner. Robert cleaned his plate real fast after that. Pretty soon, we were all in a half circle around the blue, table-type metal radio that stood in the corner of the room Louise called her parlor.

  I enjoyed hearing the radio again, even though the volume was too loud. Mr. Post had broken one of the knobs off, and it sat on top of the radio, next to a vase of grape hyacinths.

  One program was just not enough. Sparky and Tubs ran for a half hour, and Robert and Sarah couldn’t have been pried off that floor with crowbars until they found out what came on next. I’d never heard KMOX out of St. Louis before, but it had the same jingle for Wheaties cereal that I remembered hearing in Harrisburg. “Won’t you try Wheaties? Wheat is the best food of man . . .”

  Emma sat back with her eyes closed, a big smile on her face. I wondered if she’d been here many times before, listening with the Posts to one radio show or another.

  To Robert’s delight, a Western came on next, one with wild galloping noises and a blaze of gunshots. He would have liked more, but Mrs. Post ushered us outside as soon as the show was over, in order to show off her garden. But she promised the kids she’d have us over sometime on a weeknight to listen to Jack Armstrong and Little Orphan Annie.

  Her asparagus was fat and enticing, and she had parsley, basil, and apple mint clustered along the east side of the well. They had a beautiful yard and a garden worthy of envy. I began to imagine what Emma’s might have looked like once, and what it could be again. What wonders could be done with a little land!

  I envisioned grapes growing on an arbor fence, and dill, sage, and a hundred other herbs surrounding the house. We could stretch the daylilies from the front ditch clear to the other edge of the property and plant tulips to lighten the place come spring.

  I could have gone on and on with such a fancy, but Sammy put his arm around me and asked if I didn’t want to be leaving. Emma was looking tired.

  Emma was ready to go home, but she was far from admitting to being tired. “We have to make sure old Lula Bell has water,” she said. “And milk her besides.”

  Of course, the kids were not nearly so anxious to leave a place with a radio and puppies. They’d found their way to the woodshed again, where Princess kept her litter. I could see the longing on their faces as they reluctantly set down the pups they’d been cradling and watched them tumble over one another on their way back to their mother.

  But they didn’t say a word. Robert went and sat by Mr. Post’s truck, and Sarah took hold of my hand, her eyes checking to see if I’d noticed what precious little creatures the puppies were. They were good dogs, all of them looking like their golden labrador mother, but I didn’t say anything either.

  It was Samuel who finally took pity on the kids and asked Emma if she wouldn’t mind bringing home a dog one of these days. I felt glad inside when she said she’d be tickled. A farm ought to have a dog, after all. But it worried me, just a little, to think of feeding it. We had a couple of weeks to consider that, though, before any of them were ready to leave their mother.

  On the way home I wondered what had come over Samuel, favoring a puppy like he had, when just last night he was ready to pick up and leave. But I didn’t have to ask him. In the back of Mr. Post’s pickup, he slid his arm around me and whispered that he was going to try to live the life God gave us and not stew and fret for something else.

  “Maybe we’re supposed to do this,” he whispered to me. “Maybe God looked down on Emma and sent us to her on purpose.”

  I nodded, looking through the back window glass at the coiled gray braid resting just above Emma’s lacy collar. “She needs her farm, Sammy. And she’s claiming us like family.”

  “But she’s got family already,” he said. “Some, at least. And they’ve got rights when she’s gone. That’s the way it needs to be. She offered me the deed this morning, but I can’t take it, honey. We’ll just be blessed doing what she wants as long as she’s living.” He kissed my cheek and was quiet several minutes.

  Knowing what he was saying, I hoped Emma would live forever, but I couldn’t help but th
ink of that solitary grave on the hill. Willard Graham. Waiting.

  In my heart I knew that Emma wouldn’t do a thing to put off her date with heaven, that she’d come home to die as much as to live. Such an understanding made me feel all jumbled up inside, sad and happy all at the same time.

  “I hope she’s with us a long while,” Sam finally said. “But when God calls her home, we’ll find a way someplace else. Just as good. I promise.”

  I sat there with my head on his shoulder, thinking of Mr. Henley outside the church, and Hazel Sharpe, and anyone else who could think my husband capable of swindling an old lady. Understanding the choice Sam had made put a new fire in me. How dare anyone think for one minute that Sam Wortham has an ounce of cheat in him! Let them say such a thing again, and I might have to set them down a notch or two myself!

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Samuel

  Julia had asked to see the school, so Mr. Post drove us past there before taking us home. The school was set back on a side road and almost hidden by trees, so it would have been hard to find on our own. The old building looked more like a church than a school, and it even had a steeple tower where the morning bell hung ready to ring. There was an outhouse on each side of the building and two separate wells, each with a bucket and a tin cup hanging from a post.

  I could imagine boys playing ball on the patchy lawn, but there was nothing else in the schoolyard but a hitching bar. Apparently some of the students came to school on the back of a horse or mule. Robert seemed to like the looks of the place, and I was glad about that. He’d be anxious to start in the morning. But Sarah liked it too, especially the paper flowers in the windows. She whined a little that Elvira had said she couldn’t come till fall.

  “Don’t let it trouble ya none, little missy,” Mr. Post told her. “They ain’t got even a month left a’ this year, anyhow. And your mama’ll need you at home that long.”