by Leisha Kelly
“Don’t even start,” he warned me. “Don’t you be throwin’ them preachin’ words at me. I can’t help it, Franky. I got me one boy missin’ an’ another one hurt. There ain’t a soul in here to blame me. I ain’t even had to buy a drink since I come in. They understand, that’s what it is. They ’preciate what me an’ my boys is goin’ through.”
“What about your girls?” Ben asked him. “And the boys at home? Are you and your buddies thinking about them?”
Pa didn’t answer. He just picked up his glass and drained the rest of it down. “What do you wanna be here for?” he said suddenly. “This ain’t no kinda place for you.”
“Lizbeth worries,” Ben went on. “She’s afraid you’re going to get so beside yourself one of these days that you don’t get home. That’s why I came. To set her mind at ease.”
“Tell her she’s got enough to think about, with you an’ that Mary Jane. What’s she gonna do if they start callin’ up men with young’uns? They’d take you over Sam, on account a’ he’s got five already. Liable to be another’n on the way ’fore the year’s out too. Makes ’em right tiring to be around, what with the babies cryin’ and all the other racket all the time—”
“Dad Hammond,” Ben said with a sigh. “I’m thinking to send Frank home with the horses. I think I’ll just sit here till you get tired of this, and then drive you home. Maybe that’s the surest way.”
“Horse knows the way home,” Pa growled in response.
“I suppose so,” Ben told him. “But Lizbeth’d feel better about it just the same.”
I wasn’t expecting that from Ben, but he was serious. With a hug and a word of assurance, he sent me home with Tulip and Star and promised me that he’d stay. “If I don’t get him home tonight, he’ll be at our house,” he promised. “You just let the rest know not to worry for him, and that we’re praying for William. It’ll be all right, Frank. And we appreciate you taking care of things like you do.”
I hardly knew what to say about Ben being so helpful. There wasn’t anything more to do but thank him and head for home. Not having to deal with Pa by myself was something I hadn’t expected. It was better this way. Pa wasn’t so likely to cuss Ben as he was me. An’ he wasn’t so likely to bust him out of his way, neither.
I rode Star comin’ home because he was the stronger of the two horses and he liked to get a move on when I wanted him to. Tulip just wanted to mosey most of the time, and I was hardly ever in a moseyin’ mood.
My head was full of all kinds of things. Mostly William. Fearless, reckless, carefree William half a world away and hurt somehow when we didn’t know how bad. I prayed it weren’t near so bad as what it sounded like with Robert, and then I prayed for Robert again too.
I thought about them over there, still almost wishin’ I could have been there too. Maybe I’d have been wounded too if I was. Maybe I’d be dead by now. Or maybe I wouldn’t be hurt at all, and they’d let me stay with William and Robert, right by their sides, to pray and give ’em words of comfort.
I thought of Lester and prayed for him too because he was sufferin’ for his country and my sister cared so much about him. I prayed he’d be all right. I prayed he’d come to know the Lord. But I didn’t pray they’d go ahead and get married according to their plan. I wasn’t so sure about that.
Kirk seemed to be doing all right, and I prayed it would stay that way. He was facin’ a different kind of battle where he was, and it was hard not to worry a little. And then my thoughts turned to Joe again, and that was still the hardest of all. I knew by now that if he wasn’t dead, he must be captured or hurt so bad that they didn’t know who he was and he couldn’t tell them. It was hard to swallow down that kind of thing, and I still wouldn’t speak it out to anybody except Sarah Jean. I kept hopin’ everybody else could just believe it was all some kind of mix-up.
It had been goin’ around in my head for quite a while to wonder why God lets this kind of thing be in the world. All the pain and hate and killin’. None of it made much sense to me, especially since God is good. I knew he was good, and there was no way my heart could doubt that. But my mind was strugglin’ over all the bad in his creation. Why was that? He’s God, after all. He knew what was gonna be. He knew what people were gonna turn out like. Why did he put up with it?
I guessed the pastor would say that God puts up with the world because he loves us so much. He wants to give us a chance to reach our hearts to him so we can be with him when we finally enter eternity. Pastor’d probably even say we can understand God better when there’s trials in life because otherwise we wouldn’t know what it was like to need him, and to be rescued, comforted, and healed. Everythin’ that happens shows us somethin’ else about the love and the good of God, if we know how to see it. I guess I knew all that, but it was still hard to take the bad things.
I stopped for a minute in the timber when I saw Mama’s grave in the growing moonlight. I wondered what she’d do in times like these. Try as hard as I might, I couldn’t remember so much ’bout her anymore, and that made me sad. It wasn’t right that anybody oughta be even partly forgotten.
“I love you, Mama,” I whispered into the wind, hopin’ the Lord in heaven would relay the message for me. And then I was suddenly picturin’ Joe being with her again, and I had to shake that thought away because it made me angry.
Lord, it ain’t always easy to keep my thoughts straight. I don’t even know anymore which way faith oughta be reachin’ sometimes. Is it all right to wish somebody was in heaven? Because in some ways I think that’d be better than thinkin’ of ’em sufferin’ awful at the hands of an enemy. But at the same time, I wanna believe the best. I wanna believe that there’s nothing so awful, and my brother’ll be comin’ home.
I took a deep breath, thinkin’ I better get ahold of myself better than this before I got home. I’d let my thinkin’ move me almost into tears again, but I knew that wasn’t going to do any of the rest of them any good. They sure didn’t need me mulligrubbing around like the world had come to an end. I had to think hopeful, to help them be hopeful. I didn’t want ’em worryin’ too much about Willy, or Joe.
I wondered if Sarah Jean would still be there. Probably not. I’d asked her to stay just till Rorey got home after all, and since her father would be bringin’ Rorey on his way home from work, I figured Sarah would just go ahead and ride home with him.
But I was glad she’d been there when she was. She was good for Emmie, and Bert too. She was a lot like her mama, strong to handle the things that come up, and quick to lend a hand. I appreciated that a lot more than I’d told her, and I thought maybe I oughta make a point of tellin’ her more plain.
But maybe not. Maybe it would bother her for me to say how much I appreciated her. I sure didn’t want to do anythin’ to make her uncomfortable. She was a good friend. And I needed that. Ben and Lizbeth were real good too. They always had been. But they weren’t so easy to talk to as Sarah. I didn’t know why.
For some reason I thought of her and Rorey and Katie runnin’ around when they were little, pickin’ flowers to give to Mr. and Mrs. Wortham and even my pa once or twice. They didn’t seem to have changed all that much. Katie was still quiet, and never, ever did anything to get in trouble. Rorey was still a little loud, sure to want her own way if she could get the chance. And Sarah was still cute as any of the flowers she could pick, and quick as anythin’ to try an’ make somebody smile.
I turned Star and Tulip through the last bit of timber before home, wonderin’ how my thinking could have got off on that kind of track. Sarah was my sister’s best friend. I was her dad’s partner at wood-working. It was uncommon strange for me to be thinking about her run-nin’ around pickin’ flowers. She’d never paid me any particular mind back then, except to be just as nice to me as she was to anybody else.
And now, she was her parents’ daughter. She was a Wortham helping Hammonds, just like they were always doin’. I felt kind of bad about that, to keep askin’ it of any of them. But
at least till we got through this, at least till we knew for sure about Willy and Joe and they all got home, we were gonna need them sometimes. But maybe we could help them too. I’d been tryin’. I’d been doin’ all the work I could at the Wortham place because I figured we owed ’em, and because I wanted to lighten the load with Robert gone and Mr. Wortham working in town. I hoped I’d been a blessing. I prayed to be a blessing.
I smelled the wood smoke before I saw the house. Coming through the trees, I hoped they had supper and homework done and were all ready to turn in. I was so tired I didn’t think I could eat or talk or anything. Rorey was probably sittin’ at the table again, or up on her bed, writin’ another one of her endless stream of letters to Lester. Emmie probably did most of the cleanup after supper. She usually did. I thought of Sarah again. She might be leavin’ one of these days for the teacher’s college where her father wanted her to go. I wasn’t anxious for that, but I knew it was a good thing. Sarah was smart enough, even if she didn’t think so. But more than that, she was good with kids. Real good. She’d make a real fine teacher, or a mother, one day.
I put up the horses, gave them feed, and checked to make sure all the stock had water. I didn’t check on the milkin’ because I knew Harry wouldn’t shirk it if I asked him. He used to be that way, but not since William left. The moon was shinin’ bright enough to see my shadow on the way back to the house, and I stopped for a minute and looked way across the field, wishin’ I could see all the way to where my brothers were.
It’s a great big world you’ve made, God, I prayed. An’ just this piece is too big for me to handle without help. I’m glad your hands is big enough. I’m glad you’re holdin’ Willy and Joe and Robert. I’m glad you’re holdin’ all of us because if it wasn’t for you, maybe I’d be falling apart. Maybe I’d be worse than Pa right now. Help him. Sometimes he don’t even seem to want you, but that’s when he needs you most of all.
I could hear Bert coughing before I even put my hand on the door. Too bad he wasn’t over there with Mrs. Wortham, I considered. She’d know just what to do.
I wasn’t expectin’ to see Sarah Jean when I opened the door. But she was sittin’ at the table with Emmie, and Emmie’s schoolbooks was spread out in front of them. She looked up at me and smiled. “Emmie remembers almost as well as you do,” she told me right away. “She just has trouble reading so much as the teacher assigns and getting all the homework written down.”
It was such a strange picture that I had to swallow down somethin’ that rose up in my throat all of a sudden. We’d been over to Worthams so many times, and Sarah’d helped Emmie with her homework before, over there. But I didn’t think she’d ever stayed here before, past supper and without her parents. She rose up all of a sudden and grabbed the teapot off the stove.
“I’m making Berty some hot tonic before he goes to bed so maybe he can sleep better tonight. And I told Dad maybe I ought to stay over and help Emmie a while because the teacher wants to quiz her again tomorrow on the things she missed.”
I nodded my head. “That makes sense,” I told her. “It’s mighty nice of you.”
“You must be awful hungry.”
Before I could answer her, Bert asked where Pa was, and Harry dropped down the loft ladder, skipping all but two of the rungs the way he usually did.
“He’s with Ben,” I told them, knowin’ they’d be at ease over that. “He might be home in a while, or else he’ll stay with them the night. So there’s nothin’ to worry over.”
Emmie smiled a little. “Oh, good. I was afraid he’d be drunk again.”
I just sat down. I didn’t have the heart to tell her nothin’ more.
“Want some soup?” Sarah asked me. “Emmie made some really good potato soup, and we still have a little of the chicken left too.”
“I guess I might could try. Rorey upstairs?”
Sarah nodded. I could tell by her eyes that somethin’ about that concerned her a little, but she didn’t explain whatever it was, and I didn’t think I oughta ask. Rorey was pretty carried away lately with thoughts of Lester, and it’d been a while since she and Sarah had talked so much as they used to anyway. Since the fire, I remembered. Since I’d started talkin’ to Sarah.
Sarah stirred a generous spoonful of honey into whatever the tonic was she’d made and set it in front of Bert, who looked at me like I might rescue him from havin’ to try it.
“Drink it up,” I told him. “Time you got feelin’ better.”
He gave me a funny look but picked up the cup and managed a sip. Apparently the honey wasn’t enough to cover whatever taste he objected to, because Bert sure made a face. He drank some more, though, and I was glad.
“What is it?” I asked Sarah.
“Just comfrey and horehound. I’m glad you had some in the house.”
“I think your mama left it at Christmastime when Emmie had a scratchy throat, remember?”
She nodded.
“Got any more? I was feelin’ a little chilled.”
“Sure.” She hurried up and poured me a cup and didn’t put half the honey in that she had for Bert. Maybe because he was younger. Then she set a steamy bowl of potato soup in front of me, and a biscuit.
“Sarah made the biscuits,” Emmie volunteered.
“Looks like you girls is a good team.”
It was awful strange having Sarah there. I thought Rorey ought to come down, because they were friends and close to the same age, and girls and all. But Rorey didn’t come down. I asked Harry what she was doin’, and he said she was already asleep. He helped himself to another big bowl of soup and sat down beside me.
“I’m glad they’re in Hawaii,” he said to me. “That’s U.S. soil. At least we know they’s taken care of, and they’re gonna be okay now.”
“That’s right,” I agreed, but I saw Sarah lookin’ at me with worry for her brother plain in her eyes. Four bullets, I thought then. Lord God, no wonder she’s worried. Help him, please. “Robert’s gonna be okay,” I tried to assure her. “He’s in God’s hands, and I just know it’s gonna be all right.”
Ben brought Pa home in the morning. He didn’t want to come. That bothered me, and Ben said it had bothered Lizbeth too. Like maybe Pa just wanted to shut down from everything. He didn’t want to see us kids, nor talk about Willy. He didn’t want to come home or get any of the work done that was waitin’. The worries were wrap-pin’ him in a fog of contrariness, and he didn’t even want to hear encouraging words. He just kept expectin’ the worst, thinkin’ it was just a matter of time before his whole life came apart.
Lizbeth said he’d talked about walkin’ to Marion, where he was born, or maybe to Frankfurt where he knew a man who made liquor from pears off his backyard tree. And when he was drunk last night, he’d talked a lot about Mama. He talked about seein’ her in her favorite striped dress and wishin’ he could walk right up and twirl her around like they used to do at a barn dance.
“She’s waitin’ for me,” Pa’d told Ben and Lizbeth last night. “She’s knowin’ it hadn’t oughta be long.”
Ben wanted me to know all that because he knew we needed to be careful for him. But Pa went straight to his room, and I didn’t tell any of the rest of the kids any details at all. I figured I’d talk to Mr. Wortham about it, because he’d been my Pa’s friend such a long time, and he’d done more’n anybody to keep him from fallin’ apart before this. But when Mr. Wortham came with Kate to pick up Rorey for work again, I couldn’t bring myself to say anythin’ about it ’cause I wasn’t sure the girls ought to hear. Mr. Wortham offered to drop Sarah off by home before they went on to Dearing, but she turned him down.
“Tell Mom I’m going to stay some of the morning,” she said. “That way I can doctor Bert again and review Emmie on her lessons before she leaves for school. Then I’ll clean a little and walk home.”
I hardly knew what to think of her. We needed all she said, sure. I couldn’t help Emmie with her lessons very well because so much of it was straight
from her books. And Harry and Bert didn’t like to take the time. I didn’t know the things to do for Berty’s nasty cough and fever as well as Sarah’d learned from her mother. And nobody ’round here had taken much thought to cleanin’ lately. Still, it felt odd to have Sarah staying and doing for us. I wasn’t sure what to say to her.
“It’ll be all right about William,” Mr. Wortham told me. “I’m going to be speaking to Mr. Winnows of the war department again today, and we’ll find out what we can about him. Just believe the best. We’re all praying for him.”
I thought they were brave words from Mr. Wortham with what we knew of Robert. I appreciated it a lot. And I prayed too, through morning chores, knowing Sarah was heatin’ Bert the rest of the chicken soup and quizzing Emmie on her lessons at the same time. I wished Pa had taken what we’d seen from the Worthams a little more to heart over the years. I figured all us kids had, and we was all better off because of their example. And Pa had seemed all right sometimes too. Most of the time, I guess. Till the war. Then maybe worryin’ for his boys had turned his mind somehow. I didn’t know how else to explain it.
Bert had tried to convince me he was feelin’ better—so much better after Sarah’s tonic that he wouldn’t never need another one, not ever again. But he still felt feverish to me, so I didn’t think he ought to go back to school just yet. Harry’d brought his lessons for him, and he could do them at home, and then maybe go back tomorrow. I told him I thought he oughta drink another tonic, for the benefit. I’d drink some with him. I didn’t think it was that bad to the taste. But then, I’d been drinkin’ coffee strong and black for a while now too, which Berty thought smelled too bad to even bother to taste.
Harry and Emmie left for school. Bert cozied into a sittin’ room chair with a blanket over him and his schoolbooks on his lap. I knew the books’d occupy him practically all day, and he’d prob’ly end up ahead of where he was needin’ to be with his assignments. Bert was like that.