by Leisha Kelly
I figured she’d run for the house, or maybe all the way home. It was a stupid, stupid, horrible thing to do. I started back for the barn. But she surprised me. She took my arm before I could get any farther away. “Franky, it’s all right.”
I turned and looked at her again. Maybe she wasn’t quite herself either.
“We ought to go in and get that cocoa.”
I just stared, not sure how to respond.
“It is getting cold,” she prompted.
“You’re not mad?”
“No. Are you mad that I’m not?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. I wasn’t sure how she could even turn her thinkin’ around enough to wonder about me being mad at her. “Sarah Jean, you’re a puzzle sometimes.”
“I know. I puzzle over myself probably more than anyone else can think to. I wonder all kinds of things. Like why God made time, and why we’re here. And why I’m myself and not Rorey or somebody else. And why God made us with the brains to wonder things we can’t get the answers to.”
I took a deep breath. “Maybe we can ask him sometime.” “I’d like to ask him about war too. And why somebody like Joe should die so young.” She bowed her head.
I quick fetched my kerchief out of my pocket and handed it to her. “Please don’t cry out here, Sarah. I’m afraid your tears’ll freeze.”
“I’ll be all right,” she answered. “But I came outside because I was wondering about you.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. Not if it’s gonna keep you in the cold.”
“Are you doing all right?”
I could hardly believe she was still worried about me. I’d kissed her, for goodness sake. It was a wonder she hadn’t slapped me. “Yeah. I’ll be okay,” I managed to answer. “I guess sometimes I just need to put my head back together. I guess I knew this was comin’. But there’s no way to stop the hurt.”
She took my hand. “Remember what you told me. You can picture Joe already with Jesus. We know he’s all right. And someday God will answer the questions and we’ll all be together. I can see you hugging Joe and catching up on old times. He’ll want you not to mourn him too bad. He’ll want to know that you went on with all the things that make you happy, and kept on blessing God through everything the way you did earlier tonight.”
For a moment, there was nothing I could say. Sarah Jean stood in front of me like some kind of angel giving me words that could only be inspired by God himself. She looked so pretty in the moonlight. Almost like she had a light of her own. “You’re right,” I told her. “I know you are. Seems like my heart tells me the same thing.” She smiled. “Does it tell you we’re ready for cocoa?” I managed to nod my head at her. “Yeah, I guess it does. If you’ll sit by the fire and let me get yours for you. I don’t want to be responsible for you bein’ half froze.” We went inside then, and I made her sit by the fire like I’d said. I took off her coat and wrapped her in Mama’s patchwork quilt. Lizbeth was rockin’ Mary Jane and I didn’t want to disturb her, so I made the cocoa myself, but she watched me all the while.
It was hard to get to sleep that night, but Lizbeth made sure everybody was bedded down comfortable where they could at least try. She put Sarah on Emmie’s bed, right next to Rorey, but the girls’ side of the loft room wasn’t all that far from me and from Bert and Harry, and I lay awake a long time, still wonderin’ why she hadn’t got upset over my foolish kiss.
Finally I dropped off to sleep, dreamin’ things like Sarah’d told me. Of huggin’ Joe and tellin’ him all the things that were happenin’. And him tellin’ me not to be upset. He really was all right. But sometime in the middle of the night, I heard a noise. A voice, I thought. Lizbeth and Ben and Mary Jane were all downstairs, spread out on a pile of bedding by the sitting room fireplace. Maybe they’d woke up for something and were talkin’ a little. Maybe Mary Jane had woke up, and they were tryin’ to get her back to sleep.
I tried to get back to sleep too. I felt better about Joe than I had before. The worst part now was gonna be helpin’ everybody to see that we could be glad he wasn’t suffering, and he wouldn’t want us to be all upset for his sake.
But behind that peace, there was something, a dark kind of worry that wouldn’t let me alone enough to sleep again. What could it be? It didn’t make any sense. Pa was home. Everybody was calm. Everything was gonna be all right.
But I couldn’t push it out of my mind, for all my tryin’. Something, somehow, was dreadful wrong. Finally I got out of bed and eased down the ladder, hoping I wouldn’t be disturbin’ Lizbeth over nothing but foolish fears.
“Who’s that comin’ down?” she whispered.
“It’s me. Everythin’ okay?”
“Yes. Sorry if we woke you. Pa’s just gone out to the outhouse.”
Those words—that everyday, anytime part of life— struck at me with a force of blackness. I went straight for my coat and boots.
“Franky,” Lizbeth called, getting up. “He said he’d be right back in. He didn’t even take a coat.”
I swallowed down hard the awful lump in my throat. “He wouldn’t care for nothin’ in this world if he had his coat right now,” I told her. “Nor his boots. Nor the nose on his face.”
I run outside. The moon was lower than it had been before, but I could still see at least in the yard where it was clear. I moved as fast as I could to the outhouse, praying I’d get a cussing for followin’ him at a time like this. The door was shut.
“Pa?”
No answer. I went and banged. “Pa?”
The door swung open. There weren’t nobody inside. No! No, Lord! Why would you give me peace before? Why would you let me sleep, and then let Pa, like a sly old fox, get up and take off when no one’s the wiser? Oh, God, where is he?
“Pa!”
I could hear Mary Jane suddenly crying in the house, and somebody—Ben—came runnin’ out behind me.
“Did you find him?”
“No! How long since he left the house? Where could he have gone?”
“Not far. It’s not been more than ten minutes, I don’t think. Come on.” He ran to his car. He pulled out some-thin’ I didn’t know he had. A battery light. Flashlight, he called it. He trained the light back and forth across the yard, but I knew he wouldn’t find anything. If my pa was determined to go, he wouldn’t take no time at the outhouse or anywhere else close in the yard first. He could cover a lot of ground in ten minutes if he wanted to. And he knew this farm and the timber like his own hand. He could have gone any direction at all.
We checked the outbuildings and didn’t see no sign. With the snow gone, there were no tracks to make things easier. My heart was heavy, knowing that Pa’d seen his chance and he’d taken it.
Ben seemed to know what I was thinkin’. “I’ll tell Liz-beth. Which way do you think we ought to look?”
“I’ll go afoot toward Fraley’s,” I told him. “You get Harry up and go toward Worthams’. See if he’s gone to get one of the horses from there. If that’s where he went, maybe you can get there first. But if he ain’t there, get Mr. Wortham up. You an’ him check the roads. Harry can take a horse and circle the timber.”
I didn’t wait for his answer. I just started off, as quick as I could go. With my head bare and the wind whistlin’ past my ears, I ran in the direction of Buck Fraley’s tavern, not wanting nothin’ else but to find my pa, sober or not, so long as he was still in one piece.
I don’t know how far I ran. The trees were all like barren spikes sticking up out of the cold darkness. I didn’t hear nothin’ but a hooty owl, and I almost screamed at it when I heard it. Stop mocking me! Devil, get your hands off! Get your hands off my pa!
My leg got to hurtin’ like it does when I’ve pushed too much, but I wouldn’t let up. I couldn’t quit. My fingers were getting numb because I hadn’t put on my gloves. But I didn’t care. “Pa! Darn it all! Why would you go?”
There was nothin’ to answer me. I glanced at the ground some as I moved, wishin’ there was an
y snow left at all, just to give me some kind of sign in the darkness, but there was only frozen, weedy grass crusted with ice. In the dimness I couldn’t see my own tracks behind me, let alone anyone else’s.
For a minute I thought my pa could be any place, even behind the tree I’d just run past, waitin’ real quiet till I moved on. Feelin’ stupid, I checked, but there was nothin’ there. He was like a specter true. In the darkness now, someplace in the timber or on his way out of it, making sure I didn’t find him this time.
For a minute I stopped. He didn’t want to be found. He didn’t want to be run after. He wanted to be left alone. Had I done the wrong thing in the first place, not letting him go in the daylight, when at least I’d known the direction he was headed and had his word that he wouldn’t be out all night? Maybe he would have just had a few drinks and then come on home on his own.
But I knew I couldn’t count on his word. I knew there’d been no guarantees then that we’d have seen him again, just like there were no guarantees now.
Fool! I railed at myself. He ain’t never run off this way before! He just gets drunk as an idiot and then he finds his way home! You drove him off! Makin’ him feel like a baby bein’ watched over! You drove him off!
I had to stop myself. It wasn’t wrong for me to watch out for him like I’d done. Mr. Wortham had told me once when we were workin’ alone in the wood shop how Pa had been after losing our mama. I’d wanted to know the part us kids didn’t see, and he’d answered me honest like he would a grown man, even though I was only sixteen then.
“I found him with a rope,” Mr. Wortham told me. “I had to wrestle him. He was in a bad way, Franky. He’d have hanged himself sure.”
The knowing of that was tearin’ at my insides now, and I prayed. Oh, why hadn’t I been smart enough to check and see if he’d taken any rope? Where would he go?
He hadn’t been in the machine shed. Or the barn, or anyplace else we’d looked. He’d left the farm, I knew that. And he was thinkin’ of us kids, at least a little bit. He planned to leave us, I was sure of that now after the way he’d made sure to tell me he loved us. He wouldn’t want us to find him. If he was gonna do somethin’, he’d want to go someplace else, where it wouldn’t be his kin to find him first.
I fell. Right there in the timber I sunk on the ground bawlin’ like a baby. What could I do? Where should I go?
I got myself up. There wasn’t anythin’ else to do. Pa’d said the folks at Fraley’s didn’t blame him none. He’d said they understood. I didn’t even know what time it was.
I didn’t know if there’d be much crowd left there. But I had to keep on, in case he was headed that way. If he got as tired as I was, maybe he’d stop and take a break up ahead. If I kept on, maybe I could catch up before he ever got out of these woods. It was the only thing I knew to do. And Ben would make sure they were checkin’ other places. Maybe we’d find him. We had to try.
It seemed like forever before I ever broke through the trees. Fraley’s tavern was outside of Dearing, where the hard road met the county road that went out to Curtis Creek. I was glad I’d told Ben to check the roads because Pa might have gone that way even though it was longer.
I could see the lights of the buildin’ up ahead. Somebody was there, but I saw only one car. I hurried forward, suddenly almost staggering. My leg hurt, but that wasn’t the only thing anymore.
The door wouldn’t budge when I pulled on the handle, but I wasn’t about to give up with that. I pounded with all the strength I could, and my hands were so cold the impact felt more like a bunch of needles hittin’ them than one solid whack. When nobody came to the door right away, I started yellin’ and pounded some more.
Buck Fraley finally came to the door lookin’ sleepy like I’d pulled him out of bed. I’d heard he slept at the tavern a lot, and it sure looked like he’d been sleepin’ then.
“Go away,” he told me. “Closed two hours ago. It’s four a.m.”
“Open up!” I yelled at him. “Have you seen my pa?”
“Your pa?” He scrunched close to the window and looked out at me, his head tilted and only one eye open. But he unlocked the door. “You that Hammond boy that was in here the other night?”
“Yes, sir. Have you seen my pa? He left home a little while ago. He didn’t have no horse or nothin’ else with him.” Not even a coat, I remembered Lizbeth saying. Oh, Lord. Where would he go without his coat? If he was still someplace home, and I was actin’ the fool, he’d sure laugh at me in the morning. But I knew he hadn’t been home when I left. He hadn’t gone back in the house, nor anywhere else that we could tell. “Has he been here?” I asked the man.
“No. Not tonight. Are you kidding? All this way without his horse? Don’t you live out there by the Curtis Creek school?” He craned his neck out the door and looked around.
“Yes, sir. Not too far from there.”
“Land sakes, boy. What’d you do, walk?”
“I run most the way, sir.”
“Looking for your pa? Son, he must know someplace open later’n I care to be. He’s having a rough time. Let him get his drinkin’ done. He’ll come home.”
I took a deep breath and leaned up against his wall for a minute, I was so awful exhausted. “You don’t understand. We’re not sure he will come home. Pa’s not well. I mean, he just don’t manage the way he oughta. He . . . he might be anywhere.”
“Boy, you need to sit down.”
I shook my head. “I gotta go. I gotta find him.”
“Can I get you a drink first?”
I shook my head.
“Coffee, I mean. I got coffee. Warm your insides. Sit and think a minute. You can’t be running like a dog chasing its tail. There must be somewhere you can figure he might go.”
The words made sense, and I was tired and cold enough that I let him usher me inside for a cup of his coffee while I caught my breath and tried to think what to do next. Where would he go?
The school? He’d gone there once before, thinkin’ I wouldn’t find him, and I hadn’t thought he’d do it again because I knew of the hiding place now. But he was clever sometimes. He might know I’d not expect that. And at least he’d be out of the wind. I should have thought of it before.
I swallowed what hot coffee I could and got up to head for the door.
“You done already?” Mr. Fraley asked me. “Why don’t you let me take you home? Don’t fret so much. I’m sure your pa’ll be all right. I understand him. Lost my little boy when he was just a baby. Never had a well day in his life. Born with a bad heart. It’s a hard thing, worrying over one of your kids. An’ your pa’s got three to be fearin’ for. He’ll prob’ly drown in a bottle tonight like he did last night. Sure is gettin’ a late start, but he’ll be home some time tomorrow. Surely he will.”
“Mr. Fraley,” I told him. “I don’t want a ride home. But if you’re serious in your offer, I’d take a ride to the schoolhouse.”
He was serious. He didn’t understand me, but he was willin’ not to have me leaving to go so far again on foot. And when we stopped on the lane by the school, I thought he’d turn around and just leave me there, but he waited.
“You sure he’d think to come here?”
“No, sir. But he did once before. I have to be sure.”
The building was dark. It stood ominous against the fading moonlight. I tried to tell if there was a window open again, but I couldn’t see until I got close.
The first window to the right of the door was broken. Somebody or something had bashed it in. “Pa?”
I was scared, real deep scared of what I’d find. I’d been a long time goin’ all the way to Fraley’s. And nobody else would think to come here. Pa’d already been a long time alone. And there was a rope in the schoolroom. The teacher used it sometimes to hang a curtain down from ceiling hooks when she wanted to divide the room. But right now it was plaguing my thinking, and I hoped Pa hadn’t been mindful of it being there.
“Pa?” The silence was ripping m
e up inside. I didn’t want to go in, but I couldn’t stand not knowin’. He hadn’t answered me when he was here before. He could be in there.
With Buck Fraley watching, wonderin’ what I could be thinking, I boosted myself up and climbed through the broken window. Somebody’d done it before me. Most of the glass was busted and scattered across the floor inside.
“Pa?” I called again. With my heart aching, I looked around and didn’t see anythin’ at all I could identify as a person. But it was so dark in there. I went to the teacher’s desk again for the matches. I lit one and even found the candle in the inkwell right where I’d left it. Its little light spread across the room, but there was nothin’ there. I looked by the stove. I looked in the coatroom. Nothin’ was different, not even the ceiling hooks. It was almost a breath of relief, and yet at the same time I knew I still had nothin’. Where could I look now?
I was about to leave when I saw somethin’ I’d missed before. Somethin’ definitely out of place. An overturned bottle lay on the floor beside a student desk. I picked it up. The smell was unmistakable. And it was empty. I hadn’t seen him leave one here before. Did he bring it with him, drain it here, and then carelessly drop it before movin’ on?
I took it with me when I climbed back outside. “Is this the stuff my pa drinks?” I asked Mr. Fraley.
He gave me a funny look. “It is one of his favorites. But I told you, he wasn’t in tonight.”
“I know. He wouldn’t have had time to get there and back here without his horse. But did he ever take any with him? The whole bottle like this?”
“Sure. Sometimes. He said he liked to keep one set back for a stash. Hidden, you know. Where he could grab a guzzle if he needed to without his kids knowin’.”
It seemed incredible. Would Pa have a hidden bottle someplace and then carry it with him all the way back to the school to drink it down? He wouldn’t have had to leave home for that! He could just hole up in the machine shed or somethin’ and have his fill.
But he wouldn’t want me to find him at it. He didn’t want to stay home. And maybe this bottle had never been there. Maybe he’d had it with him the night I found him here. Maybe he’d hid it from me, and then come back for it after all this time.