The Regrets of Cyrus Dodd
Page 20
“He didn’t,” Cyrus said. “I named him Thomas. It’s written on his box, the same as Matthew’s.”
“You never said anything.”
“You were hurting and so very sick, I thought it would be better if I didn’t talk about it. I thought if you could put it out of your mind for a little while, you might start to get well.”
“Losing a baby is something a mama never puts out of her mind,” Ruth said. “Matthew and Thomas were creations of our love, and love doesn’t die just because a body does.”
That afternoon they climbed to the high ridge. Ruth hoped to find the two small elderberry bushes that marked the spots where the babies had been buried.
She found the ridge covered with flowering bushes.
Over the years the bushes Cyrus planted had spread and now covered the whole plateau. Some stood taller than a man and others, newly formed, were not yet a foot high. On the far side, where the plateau overlooked the brook, two bushes had grown into trees that were already heavy with fruit.
Ruth knew that’s where their babies were buried.
She sat on the ground with Cyrus beside her and they said a prayer for the babies, calling each by name. Beyond the words of the prayer they heard the babbling of the brook and felt the passage of time in their souls.
After they’d climbed down from the plateau, they spent the afternoon walking around the property as they did in the weeks before they left. Each spot brought back memories, some sweet, some painful.
The meadow that was once a field of tall corn was now a wasteland of weeds and brambles. One thing grew over another in twists and tangles that seemed impossible to separate. To clear it again would take weeks, maybe months of work.
Cyrus stood at the edge of the field shading his eyes from the late day sun. In the distance he saw the brook flowing as it did before the feud began.
“I don’t understand it,” he said. “Once we were gone, I thought Virgil would have bought the land or laid claim to it. This was a good farm and now…” His words fell away but left a trail of sorrow behind.
Ruth slid her hand into his. “If Virgil didn’t claim the land, maybe it was never sold. Why don’t we go into town and ask?”
“It’s too late,” Cyrus said. “The county clerk’s office would be closed by the time we got there.”
“We could stay in town overnight. It’s too late to start back to Wyattsville anyway, so we’d have to stay somewhere.”
Cyrus wrapped his arm around her waist, hugged her to his side and chuckled.
“Now if we had that quilt of your mama’s, we could sleep outside in the grass like we did that last night.”
“Cyrus Dodd!” Ruth gave a feigned look of indignation. “I was a lot younger then and a lot more foolish! You’re going to have to take me into town, buy me dinner and find me a bed to sleep in.”
“Woman,” he said laughingly, “you’ll drive me to the poorhouse with your demands.”
* * *
It was after six when they arrived in town, and only a few of the landmarks Cyrus remembered were unchanged. The Feed Store was now the Rural King Supply Company, a store with wheelbarrows and power saws displayed in the front window. At the far end of the street, the rooming house now had a sign that boasted “Clean Rooms & Cheap Rates.”
Cyrus parked the car in the empty lot behind the building; then he and Ruth walked around to the front. He clanked the knocker, and the woman who answered appeared to be in her mid-forties but vaguely familiar.
“We’d like a room for the night,” Cyrus said.
She pulled the door back. “Is it just the two of you?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
She motioned for them to follow her in. “It’s four dollars for one with dinner and breakfast and two dollars more for the extra person.”
“Fine.” Cyrus reached into his pocket, pulled out a five-dollar bill and a single then handed it to her.
She took the money and smiled; that’s when he recognized the face.
“Rose Thompson?”
She guffawed. “You trying to say I look old as my mama?”
Cyrus stumbled through an apology. “No, no, not at all. I haven’t seen Rose for God knows how long; she was young as you the last time I saw her.”
“Lordy me, that was a long time ago. Mama’s been dead for more’n ten years.”
One word led to another, and before long Cyrus was telling her how the town was the last time he’d been there.
“You were just a kid,” he said, “and your mama worked lunchtime, waiting tables at Blue’s.”
“Blue’s is gone now. He died too.”
That evening the roomers gathered around the supper table, and Dixie Sue served fried chicken with mashed potatoes and peas. In addition to the Dodds, there was a middle-aged woman who taught at the school and three old timers who remembered bits and pieces of almost everything. It didn’t take long for the conversation to circle around to the Jackson family.
“We used to have the farm across from Virgil Jackson,” Cyrus said.
“You the ones he run off?” one old timer asked.
Cyrus gave a cynical nod. “Yeah, that’s us.”
“He done you a favor,” the other grumbled.
“A favor? How?”
“Things was bad out there. Virgil’s oldest boy, the mean one, he killed a man and run off before the law could get him. I ain’t heard the whole story, but everybody in town knew there was some real ugly goings on.”
“They sent their girl to live in Richmond,” the teacher added, “and she never did come back. She was here for a little while after her mama died but hasn’t been back since—”
“Bethany Jackson died?” Ruth exclaimed.
The teacher nodded. “Her and the youngest boy, both of them the same year.”
A look of sadness settled on Ruth’s face. “What happened?”
“Influenza,” the teacher replied.
The first old timer, a man with boney hands and a face that looked sorrowful even when it wasn’t, knew more than the others. He told of how Virgil had farmed the land for a few years then lost everything the year of Cooper’s murder.
“Nobody’d work out there,” he said. “They were scared that oldest boy would come back.”
Long after their plates were cleaned, everyone remained around the supper table. Cyrus told of how it used to be, and the others pieced together a story of how it had come to be as it was now.
The Secret Gift
The following morning when Cyrus and Ruth joined the other roomers at the breakfast table, he told her he had some unfinished business to take care of.
“I’d like to go back and revisit the farm,” he said. After a few moments he added, “And there’s also another stop I’d like to make.”
A shiver ran down Ruth’s spine, but her face remained expressionless. Over the years she’d come to realize that when Cyrus had a troubling thought in his head, she had to give him room to work it out himself. He’d almost always made the right decision; she could only pray he would do so this time.
Once they pushed back from the table, Ruth returned to the room to pack their things into the overnight bag. As she gathered the toothpaste and cosmetics from the bathroom counter, Cyrus disappeared out the door claiming he had an errand to run.
He left the hotel, returned to the Rural King Supply store and bought a fifty-foot length of rope, a bucket, a shovel and two heavy burlap bags. By the time he got back and loaded everything into the trunk of the car, Ruth was ready to leave. On the drive to the farm they talked about the many changes that had taken place.
“Over all these years I’ve pictured the town as it was when we left,” Ruth said.
Cyrus nodded. “I did too. I thought a place like Elk Bend would never change.”
A smile lit his face, and Ruth could see the younger version of her husband: happy and without the old regrets or melancholy clinging to him. It was good to see him this way, something she’d spent
many years wishing for.
They passed the grove of apple trees; when Cyrus reached the clearing he slid the gearshift into park, climbed out of the car and began unloading the trunk.
“What’s all this?” Ruth asked.
He gave a mischievous grin. “The bucket and rope are so we can pull up a drink of water from the well. For thirty years I’ve been thinking about how good this water tasted. Do you remember it the way I do?”
She smiled and gave a nod. “Yes, I do.”
Although there was not a day of their life together she would have changed, there were also good memories of this place. Ruth knew that if Cyrus truly wanted to stay here, she would do it. He had spent most of his years working to make her happy; she would do the same for him.
When he headed back toward the well, she followed along.
The crank handle was missing so Cyrus tied one end of the rope to the bucket and lowered it into well. The coil of rope unwound and ran through his hands quickly. After only a few seconds they heard a splash.
His mouth stretched into a wide grin. “We’ve still got water.”
He hauled the bucket up; then, cupping his hands, he scooped the water and drank.
“Sweet as ever,” he proclaimed. He scooped another handful of water and held it to Ruth’s mouth.
After only a few sips she agreed. With droplets of water splashing against her nose and chin she laughed as she’d laughed in the early days. Before the babies; before the brook went dry.
“It feels good to be back here, doesn’t it?” Cyrus asked.
She gave him a soft smile and nodded. “The town of Elk Bend has changed a lot, but this place hasn’t. In its own way, it’s still beautiful.”
Cyrus glanced across the weeded field. “Not really. It’s just that we remember the beauty of what it once was.” He picked up the shovel and said, “Now it’s time to get to work.”
“Work?” A puzzled look settled on Ruth’s face. “What kind of work?”
“I’m gonna dig up a few of those elderberry bushes and take them home.”
“Home?” she said.
He nodded and turned toward the pathway that led to the ridge. “There’s a garden in back of the Wyattsville Arms; they’d be perfect there.”
Ruth eyes grew teary.
“Oh, Cyrus,” she said with a sigh of relief. “I was so worried that after you saw this place you’d want to come back and live here again.”
He turned back, wrapped his arm around her waist and they walked together.
“You once told me things are never the same when you go back,” he said. “At the time I didn’t believe it. I kept thinking our life would be perfect if we could come back here.” He stopped and turned her to face him. “I was wrong, and you were right.”
He brushed a kiss across her forehead then continued along the path, their stride slow but evenly matched step for step, his hip brushing against hers, his hand strong against her back.
“This farm is still part of me,” Cyrus said, “and I guess it always will be, but it belongs in the past. Wyattsville is our future.”
When they left the farm they took only the sweet memories they would carry with them for the rest of their lives and two small elderberry bushes. Cyrus had dug them from the ground, wrapped the root balls in wet newspapers and tied them into the burlap sacks. They passed the apple trees, but instead of turning toward Route 60 Cyrus crossed over Creek Road and headed for the Jackson place.
“There’s one last place I need to stop before we leave Elk Bend,” he said.
* * *
When they returned to the Wyattsville Arms, Cyrus planted the bushes in the small garden in back of the building. Those first two weeks he checked the plants every day, and each morning he’d find a pile of leaves lying on the ground. He began to worry that something taken from West Virginia couldn’t be transplanted and survive; then in early June buds appeared on the branches. Days later there were blossoms.
That same summer Ruth plucked a handful of berries from the bushes and brewed a pot of elderberry tea for the ladies of the Brookside Library Committee. They declared it the best tea they’d ever tasted and insisted she tell them the story of how she came about it.
Ruth did. She told them of the farm, the babies she’d lost and how Cyrus had marked each grave with an elderberry bush. When she finished the tale there was not a dry eye in the group.
Months later a brass plaque mysteriously came to be planted in the ground alongside the elderberry bushes. It read “In Memory of Matthew and Thomas Dodd.”
No one ever took credit for putting it there.
When Ruth asked Cyrus if he’d done it, he gave a sly grin and shook his head. Clara said she knew nothing about it, as did Olivia Doyle and several other ladies of the Brookside Library Committee.
Ruth never did learn where the plaque came from, but each year she brewed elderberry tea for the luncheon and retold the story of the brass plaque’s magical appearance.
Cyrus Dodd
There was a time when I would have rejoiced at the thought of Virgil Jackson’s misfortune, but no more. The man’s got heartache enough. He doesn’t need me gloating over his sorrows.
When I stopped by his farm, he was out back in a field planted with half beans and half corn, neither crop big enough to take to market. At first he didn’t recognize me, and to be perfectly honest I probably wouldn’t have known him were he not in his own backyard. I said my name then walked over and stuck out my hand.
I’ve come to apologize and offer my condolences on the loss of Bethany and your boy, I told him.
Of course Virgil being Virgil, he said I was a bit late in getting there.
We talked for a long while, and when I said I was wrong to steal that pig out of his pen Virgil admitted that he knew all along it was my pig.
“You wasn’t wrong to take it back,” he said, “but you sure as hell rankled me bragging on Flossie being a better sow than Myrtle.”
I told him I’d never said Flossie was better, I just said she had nine piglets and not one of them was stillborn.
Of course some things never change, so we stood there and argued about that for several minutes before I caught on to what I was doing and backed off, agreeing that I shouldn’t have done all that bragging.
After a while I turned to leave. When I was halfway across the yard he called out, “Hey, Cyrus, you ever regret leaving here?”
I stopped and thought about it for a few seconds then answered, “I did for a long while, but no more.”
“That’s good,” Virgil said. “Having regrets ain’t good for the soul.”
As he turned and walked away I saw the sorrow in his eyes, and I knew I hadn’t been the only one carrying around regrets. Virgil Jackson had also. Except his were irreversible.
That’s when I knew Ruth was right. The “regrets” I’d been carrying around weren’t really regrets after all. Those times things went wrong were just life’s heartaches. If I had to look back and make those decisions, I would make the same ones over again.
It took the woman I love and the man I hate to make me see the difference.
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The Regrets of Cyrus Dodd is Book Four in the Wyattsville Series.
Other books in this series include:
SPARE CHANGE
Book One in the Wyattsville Series
Click Here to download a free sample or buy the book.
JUBILEE’S JOURNEY
Book Two in the Wyattsville Series
Click Here to download a free sample or buy the book.
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br /> PASSING THROUGH PERFECT
Book Three in the Wyattsville Series
Click Here to download a free sample or buy the book.
~Turn page~
Other Books by
Bette Lee Crosby
For more heartwarming stories check out these books:
The Memory House Series
MEMORY HOUSE
Book One
THE LOFT
Book Two
WHAT THE HEART REMEMBERS
Book Three
BABY GIRL
Book Four
The Serendipity Series
THE TWELFTH CHILD
Book One
PREVIOUSLY LOVED TREASURES
Book Two
WISHING FOR WONDERFUL
Book Three
Stand Alone Stories
CRACKS IN THE SIDEWALK
WHAT MATTERS MOST
BLUEBERRY HILL