by Leisha Kelly
Mom and Dad spent what they had to for the train to St. Louis to meet Robert’s airplane. We knew by then that he wasn’t walking, that he wasn’t expected to walk for months yet, and he was coming home more because he’d insisted on it than that they were really ready to let him go. But there wasn’t much to be done except to let the healing progress and to work what muscles he could, so they let him go. We were still worried for him but excited that he’d be home.
Rachel wanted to go to St. Louis with my parents. She could hardly wait to see Robert again. The strain had been awful for her. I could tell that, despite the calm she tried to maintain on the outside. But her father made her wait. He said they weren’t engaged, and it wasn’t right her being there when Robert’s parents ought to be able to joy in their son first.
So she waited at home with us. She cried just thinking about what Robert had been through and how he might react to all that had happened at home. But I think mostly she cried because Robert was alive. We’d come closer to losing him than any of us wanted to think about, and now at last he’d be with us again. Rachel was hopeful, I knew she was, that Robert still felt the same way about her as he had when he left. That he’d look at her the same, and not be so changed that he didn’t want to be together.
The day they were due to be home, Frank drove us all to the train station and we waited, all of us so anxious that we could hardly speak. It would be so good to have Robert home. To see Willy safe and sound. But things were still hard for the Hammonds with grieving that seemed to never stop. And I fretted for Robert’s struggles. I worried about the challenges he would face. Would he have to be in bed a lot? Could he get up at all?
The train was fifteen minutes late, but it seemed like an eternity. Emmie started crying. I took her hand, only to realize that Frank had reached for her other one.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“Rorey’s not here,” she said in a solemn voice, and then the tears got worse. “Nor Pa and Joe.”
“Rorey’s gonna sow her oats till she can get things settled in her heart,” Frank answered quietly. “But Pa and Joe are with us. They always will be, Emmie. You remember that.”
Rachel joined us, her gloved hands nervously crumpling a wrapped package for Robert. The train thundered into the station. Rachel wiped away tears. Oh Lord, I prayed. Let Robert be Robert. Let him be all right, and look at Rachel the way he did when they were dancing. Bring their hearts together. He needs her right now. They need each other.
I felt almost weak with the anticipation. Two people we didn’t know got off the train and met the Clarkson family that lived east of town. But it was a while before anyone else got off. We just stood, nobody daring to ask anything, everybody just standing, just waiting as long as it took. Finally Mom came to the platform. She was smiling, but I could see the strain in her face, some of the worry still in her eyes. Behind her, slowly, came Dad and then Willy bringing Robert with them in a wheeled chair that was a little bit like the one Daddy had put together for Emma Graham so long ago.
Robert looked so fine in his uniform. So handsome. Even strong. But far, far, thinner, with something different in his eyes that I had no way to describe. Rachel stood for a moment, a bright smile and new tears meeting her face at the same time. And then she hurried forward as Dad and Willy lifted Robert down. We all gathered around.
This much closer, I could see the weariness in Robert. I knew the trip had exhausted him, and he was far weaker than he was willing to let on.
“Looks like you’ve all grown up,” he said.
Emmie hugged on Willy, and I leaned forward to hug Robert a little, gently, not sure how much he could take. But he grabbed me and gave me a squeeze.
“Don’t be afraid of me, Sis. Are you all right?”
I nodded, amazed that he would ask me that. Everybody hugged him, and Willy too. Except Rachel. She’d moved to the side just a little to give our whole family room. But I reached for her hand and drew her close again.
Rachel couldn’t seem to say anything. She only stood with the package in her hands, all dressed up the prettiest I’d ever seen her, with hope and maybe a little fear mixed up in her eyes. Finally she managed to put her bundle in Robert’s hands. He looked at her as though for him too, words had failed. And then she leaned forward and gave him a little kiss on the cheek. She took his hand and kissed that too. But she didn’t let go. Even though neither of them spoke, she stayed beside him all the way to the truck as Daddy and now Frank maneuvered the chair down steps and over the rough ground to where we were parked.
I felt like singing, I wasn’t sure why. It was still a sad time, despite the happiness. I took a deep breath, with a hymn already circling my mind, and with a faltering voice I did my best to try to sing. Katie joined me, and her beautiful voice seemed to make it all right. Mom hugged us both and then joined in too. Pretty soon Emmie was singing, and even Bert. And beside the truck, Rachel finally found her voice.
“I love you, Robby. I thank God you’re home.”
He hugged her. And then my big brother cried. We all just waited there in the parking lot while he held her. I cried too. So did Mom.
Ask her to marry you, I urged Robert in my mind. Right here and right now.
But he didn’t. For some reason he probably couldn’t. He pulled away a little from the embrace and said he was tired. He was ready to go home.
“Can I come and see you?” Rachel asked him.
He nodded his head, but he didn’t say anything else. Daddy lifted him into the front seat of the truck and put the unwieldy chair with us in the back. Rachel went to her father’s car, and then Robert sat in the front of our truck and cried. What’s wrong? I wanted to ask him. Oh, please, Robert. Please be all right.
Willy told us that they’d been sent into the jungle around Henderson Field on Guadalcanal to search for any Japanese holdouts in the area. He and Robert and Lester and two other men were separated by not more than a few yards from the rest of their troop. They didn’t see the Japanese soldiers hiding in the underbrush until it was too late. Machine guns did their grisly work, and all five men had been hit before the remaining Americans opened fire and killed every one of the Japanese assailants.
It was a horrible story, and I hated hearing it, even while I was glad to know what had really happened. I worried about Robert. I worried once we got home that the farm would be hard for him. Things were too different.
The Hammond kids were with us even more than they had been, because even though their farm was still theirs and they could stay there because Frank was an adult, we pretty much took them all in as ours. They ate here a lot, slept here a lot, because it was just easier that way. But their presence made the loss very clear to Robert. And he couldn’t move around very well on his own, even when he felt like it. There were steps to the house in the front and back, and no real sidewalks. His old room was upstairs, so Mom and Dad gave him theirs, but he didn’t like that. I know he didn’t.
He had to sleep a lot. He had to rest a lot even when he wasn’t sleeping. Sometimes he had to go into the hospital with Dad to see the doctor again. Sometimes the doctor came to us, and his words were always encouraging.
“He’s doing amazingly well. He’s coming along fine.”
Sometimes one of us helped him pull up out of the chair and lean into a pair of crutches. Robert practiced on the crutches every day. But he didn’t do very well, and he got mad about it every time.
Rachel came over. Again and again. But he didn’t talk to her very much or seem to want her to stay very long. When that hadn’t changed even after Willy went back, she finally pulled me aside tearfully to ask me what was wrong.
“I don’t know what to do, Sarah. I don’t even know if he wants me here.”
Peace, Lord. Strength. I prayed that way a lot now. Just one word or two at a time, knowing I’d prayed her prayer so often that the good Lord knew exactly what I meant.
Even now, with Robert with us, he still seemed to be apa
rt from us. And he and Rachel were apart somehow in ways we couldn’t understand. Help, Lord. If Robert needs your healing on the inside, touch him. Help him open up again and let Rachel into his heart.
I went to talk to him. Spring was just beginning to warm the world around us, and Mom and Katie had gotten Robert situated on the porch with a cup of tea, hoping the fresh air would do him good. He’d been sitting there when Rachel left, but he wouldn’t even watch her go.
“Robert, you need to tell me what’s wrong.”
I could see the angry look in his eyes, but he didn’t let his voice reflect it. “I guess I’m not patient enough, Sis. They say things are supposed to get better.”
I sighed and moved a chair so I could sit down in front of him. “Robert, Rachel loves you.”
He looked away.
“I know you love her too. What’s wrong? You told me you were going to propose to her when you got back. Don’t you know she still wants that? She wants to be with you.”
He shook his head. “I know,” he said so quietly. “I just wish it wasn’t that way.”
“Why? I know you love her.”
“Sarah, I had plans. Farming. Working. Even dancing with her again. I can’t do that. I don’t know when I will. Even when things are better, I might still need the crutches, that’s what they say. Or at least a cane. And I don’t know how long before I can get a job. I can’t do for her, Sis. I wish she’d see that and go someplace else.”
“I’m glad she left,” I said with a sigh. “I wouldn’t want her to hear that. You’d just make her cry.”
“I know! But I can’t help it! I do love her! That’s why I don’t think it’s right—”
“To let her be so strong and steady that she doesn’t care whether you can dance or not?”
He looked at me.
“Robby, she’s got faith stronger than wondering when you’ll have a job, or what kind it’ll be. She loves you like she’s married already, trying to be what you need for better or for worse even before you’ve asked her. You can’t push her away. Because she won’t be able to take her heart someplace else.”
He took a deep breath. “You really think it’s fair?”
“No,” I told him. “The whole war isn’t fair. For you to get hurt, and Joe—oh, Robby, none of that’s fair, but it wouldn’t be right for you to act like Rachel shouldn’t be with you. You’re not doing either one of you any favors.”
I took his hand. He just held it, and we sat quiet for a long time. “Thanks,” he said finally.
I smiled. “Are you gonna propose?”
“Sarah, if I do, at least act like I can make it a surprise.”
He truly did. And it was just three days later, on the fourteenth of March, when Rachel had come over bringing him a batch of brownies. He’d picked that day to wear the shirt she’d made him. For the first time. She nearly cried when she saw that he had it on.
“Put me on the floor,” he suddenly told Harry, who was across the room cleaning ashes out of the fireplace.
“What?”
“Help me get down on the floor,” Robert repeated impatiently, though nobody knew at that moment what he had in mind.
Harry helped him. I did too, and then he motioned us away, but he couldn’t wait till I was all the way out of earshot before saying what he had to say.
“I can’t kneel,” his quiet voice was telling Rachel. “Not yet. So this’ll have to be good enough. If you think you can handle all of my ways plus an ugly chair and some crutches, would you be my wife?”
I ran to get Mom. She got there in time to see them hugging on the floor and thought maybe Robert had fallen. But she knew soon enough that it was happy news that had Rachel crying in his arms. Robert and Rachel were getting married. June first, they decided immediately, which didn’t give anyone very much time, especially Robert.
“I’m going to walk in,” he said. “I’m going to marry you standing up.”
In the days that followed, he worked and he worked with the crutches. He got mad. He got tired. But then he worked some more.
Sam and Thelma packed all their things and moved up to the town of Camp Point late in April, promising they’d be back for the wedding. We sent word several times to Rorey about it, but she wouldn’t promise a thing.
When the day came, Robert, in his spiffy marine uniform, maneuvered our church in Dearing on his crutches. Even the steps outside. He sat for a while because he had to rest, but when it was time for the wedding to start, he stood up front with only one crutch to support him, so he’d have one hand free for Rachel.
They moved into what had been Sam and Thelma’s house in Dearing. But we were there several times a week. Robert got so he wouldn’t use his chair at all, but there’d been so much damage to his back and one leg that it wore him out, even months later, to be on his feet very long. He got a job at the bank, and they were glad to have him, but he wasn’t satisfied with that. He wanted to help with the farm work, but much of it was too tiring for him, and that didn’t satisfy him either.
In the summer of the next year, Ben was called into service overseas. While he was gone, Lizbeth and Mary Jane moved out to the farm to be closer to the rest of us.
We didn’t see Kirk for the duration of the war, but he kept on writing whenever he could and we wrote to him. Katie kept writing to his friend Dave too. She liked to be the one checking the mailbox, and her eyes would always look so perky bright whenever a letter came from him. His family was in Brachett, Wisconsin, but he promised that when he got back to the states, he would come and meet her.
Frank kept busy constantly, insisting on helping with our farm, even though he had so much work on theirs. And he kept up with the wood shop too. He was always making something, even when Dad didn’t have time to help. He made a beautiful oak bed for Robert and Rachel with a dove carved into the headboard. Rachel loved it, and I think that was what prompted Robert to try his hand again at carving too. He’d done a few things with Frank when they were younger, especially Christmas presents for the other boys. And now Robert started doing woodwork for the shop when he wasn’t busy at the bank.
The Hammond kids seemed to be adjusting all right. Emmie was improving in her schoolwork, though it was still an awful struggle. Harry was a lot of help on the farm, and Bert too, when he wasn’t writing. The Mcleansboro paper hired Bert regular even though he was so young, and he kept up a column every week.
I never forgot Frank’s kiss. Neither did he, because I caught him looking at me funny a few times, and acting odd once in a while, like he thought he had to be careful not to put himself in that position again. But he was my friend, just as much as ever. I didn’t go to the teacher’s college because I wanted to stay close where I could help everybody. I spent a lot of time with Robert and Rachel, or babysitting Mary Jane when Lizbeth got a part-time job. And I got a job too, without even trying, when I stopped in the McCoy Library in Mcleansboro to ask about borrowing a book or two for Frank. He wanted to hear more Shakespeare. And Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens.
One of the ladies thought it was me who knew so much about books, and she told me they had an opening and I ought to apply. I did, never expecting to get the job. But I got it, and Frank loved it because it wasn’t in Dearing, where Dad and Kate worked. He had to take me to Mcleansboro in Ben and Lizbeth’s car, and I read to him all the way there and all the way back.
Once when Frank was driving me home from work, the car quit and we were stuck alongside the road. He got out and started tinkering. He didn’t seem quite so skinny anymore, his hair was nice cut, and I considered it pleasant to be out on a pretty, sunny day, even if we were stuck two or three miles from home.
“Do you have to fix it?” I asked him.
He looked at me like I’d left my senses back in Mcleansboro. “You wanna walk home?”
“No. I just want to sit a minute in the grass and read you the next chapter of The Merchant of Venice.”
He smiled.
“Do you e
ven like that story?” I asked him then. “Because I don’t.”
He really gave me a funny look. “Well, what in the world do you wanna read it for then?”
“Because it’s a beautiful day. And I like the way your eyes look when you’re far off in a story. Like you’re almost part of it, feeling what’s going on.”
He turned his face back to the car engine. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re peculiar, Sarah Jean?”
“A time or two. I guess I’ve known it all my life.”
“Well, I don’t like that story as much as some,” he admitted. “But I like listenin’, because you make it seem real.”
I scoffed. “I trip over half the words. That must be frustrating to listen to.”
“No,” Frank told me. “You do real well. An’ I like it when you trip a little. That’s part of what makes it real.”
He turned to look at me with his silvery eyes almost seeming to dance in the bright sunlight. I felt something tingle clear down my spine. He had a grease smudge on his cheek and an oil can in his hand, but he looked more handsome to me than if he was all dressed up for a party.
I swallowed, feeling flustered. “Frank . . . I think maybe . . .” I had to stop. His merry eyes held me, and I couldn’t say another word.
“I’m gonna get a truck of my own when the war’s over,” he said. “Maybe move the shop to town and get a house when Kirk and Willy get back, if they wanna take the farm on. An’ I think Kirk will. He misses it awful bad. ’Specially the horses. He’s always loved horses.”
“I think I’ll just work at the library. I like it. I like getting you books.”
He leaned closer, and my heart skipped a beat. I thought sure he was going to kiss me again. And he did, but it was just a teeny peck on the cheek. “You’re real nice to me, Sarah Jean. The best friend I ever had. But I don’t think I better linger too long on the grass out here. I got milking to do. And I promised Mary Jane a story when I got home. Could you just read to me while I finish this up? If it’s still nice when we get back, maybe we can pull a blanket outside and sit out then. Okay?”