***
Jonas had never in his life felt so miserable and so happy at the same time. In fact, if somebody had told him it was possible to feel such opposing emotions in the same moment, almost with the same breath, he'd have called that person a liar. Yet, here he was on a bright, hot September morning, dressing for the first day of school with the knowledge that he would, from now on, be going to school each and every day, and that knowledge rendered him practically speechless with joy. But his Ma, who had made Jonas's education possible by extracting the promise from his Pa—his Ma was dying. The promise was made and would be kept because it was a promise made to a dying wife. Jonas knew, though, that the promise would be kept only because his Pa no longer was burdened by having to try to be a farmer: He now was a business man, owning, as he did, two stores in the burgeoning town of Carrie's Crossing, situated at the crossroads of Belle City Road and Thatcher Farm Road, so called because Zeb's farm—former farm—bordered the road. Zeb bought the two buildings in the town with money that came to him when his brother, Carney, died, and it soon became apparent that Zeb was a much better businessman than he was a farmer.
Zeb recognized immediately the possibilities presented by the farming community of Carrie's Crossing shedding its overalls and brogans and becoming a town, and he didn't hesitate to spend practically every dime of Carney's money buying the two buildings. One became a general store, the other a bar, though his Ma liked referring to it as a pub, reminding her, she said, of Scotland. Of course Jonas had never seen a pub, but he imagined that they were elegant places where important men gathered to discuss important matters, in which case, the place his father owned couldn't have been less pub-like. It was long, narrow and dark even in the brightest sunlight, and always smoke-filled. It was called ZEB'S and Jonas disliked it and the people who frequented it. The store, on the other hand, called THATCHER'S GENERAL STORE, was bright and clean and orderly, due primarily to the fact that his mother had organized it before she became too ill to get out of bed. She had overseen the building of the shelves and the hanging of shutters and the white-washing of walls and the stocking of the place with things "that people always need: Flour, sugar, salt, jars for preserving food, needles, thread and cloth, dried beans, rice. You keep these things in the store, Zeb, and people will always come to buy."
Jonas tiptoed into his mother's bedroom, hoping that she was awake but being careful not to wake her in case she was sleeping. He wanted her to see him dressed for the first day of school, wanted to hear her tell him how tall he was getting and how handsome he looked, but she was asleep, as she almost always was these days, and it frightened Jonas because she looked dead. He stood beside the bed and looked down at her. She looked like a child, tiny and thin. Jonas felt that invisible strap tighten around his chest that he always felt when he thought how his freedom to attend school had come at the price of his mother's life. Yes, she'd always been sickly, that was true, but it was the flu sickness she'd caught from Uncle Carney that destroyed her lungs. Doc Gray swore that she'd already be dead if she weren't waiting for the younger Zeb to come home from the war.
"You look like a preacher," Pa said to him when he entered the kitchen.
Jonas looked down at himself, at his pants with the shirt tucked in that he'd begged and pleaded with his sister to iron for him, and his shined shoes. He didn't have on anything black; why did Pa think he looked like a preacher? Maybe because of the shirt buttoned all the way to the top? He undid the top button.
"You ridin' that hoss to the school?"
They now had two horses, one for each of them, and Jonas was so proud of his that he rode almost everywhere, even into the woods to meet Silas and Ruthie to practice their reading. "Yessir," he said.
"Reason I asked, I want you to come to the store after school and help me some more with them figures. I can't seem to make them numbers add up right for nothin'." He shook his head in disgust and began mumbling and muttering about the failure of the numbers to properly add themselves the same way he once railed at his pitiful cotton crop for failing to grow.
For his part, Jonas was pleased to be asked to help, though going to his father's store after school meant that he wouldn't be able to share the day's lessons with Ruthie as promised. Jonas and numbers were a natural fit despite his stated intention to be a be a famous writer like Mark Twain or Charles Dickens, but he understood that until his mother got well (and she would) he'd have to keep the books because his Pa could not read or write at all, and his figuring was as pitiful as his farming.
As he rode into the school yard, Jonas tried to remember when he'd last attended school and he could not. The best he could recall, it had been around Easter time, and he felt like a total stranger. He knew that a second room had been added to the one-room school building, and he knew that it had been painted and that there was a new teacher, but he wasn't prepared for the fact that the new part was a brick building, or that a foundation already was laid on the other side of the original structure for another new wing. The door of what had been the one-room school house had been painted a bright red and there was a hand-carved sign above it: CARRIE'S CROSSING SCHOOL.
Jonas got off his horse and looked for a hitch to tie it to and a water trough. When he could find neither, he finally took a good look around and felt not only like a stranger, but he felt strange as well: He, apparently, was the only one to have come to school on a horse, and he also was the only boy wearing long pants, a shirt with a collar, and shined shoes.
"You a preacher?" somebody asked him, while several others snickered.
"No, I ain't a preacher," he said, noticing, again with new eyes, that the boy who'd asked the question, and the other children—both boys and girls—were smaller and younger, and he had a moment of pure panic: Had he missed the opportunity to be educated? Was he too old?
A bell clanged and suddenly children were swarming—little ones and, thankfully, bigger ones as well. A woman whom Jonas did not recognize was standing in the schoolhouse doorway ringing the bell and smiling. The new teacher, he thought, as he hurriedly tied his horse to a pine tree, grateful that the changes that had come to the school in his six-month absence hadn't included chopping down all the trees. He'd figure out what to do about water at lunch time.
"Younger children in here," the new teacher said, "older children over to the new building."
Jonas followed directions and found himself in a room with eight other boys and girls of his approximate age, with desks for half a dozen more. He recognized one of the girls and one of the boys, though he couldn't remember their names until the girl smiled at him: Lucy Fordham and her brother, Tom. He hadn't seen her since the last time he was at school and...well...she surely didn't look like a little girl anymore.
"Take your seats, children. I'm Miss Carter," she said and turned to write her name on the blackboard that stretched across the front of the room. Jonas thought she looked too young to be a teacher, especially compared to Mrs. Moore, who was the only teacher in the school when it had but one room. It made sense, though: Two rooms, two teachers. "I just moved here from Spencerville."
"Spencerville. That's a long ways from here, ain't it?" This from a tall, skinny boy at the back of the room that Jonas hadn't seen before.
"Isn't it," Miss Carter said, "and it's just 'way,' not 'ways.' And I think grammar will be a good place to begin after we take the roll. So: I want each one of you to stand up and tell me your full name and date of birth and something about yourself."
"Something like what?" Lucy Fordham asked.
"Like what you want to be when you grow up, or what's your favorite book," the teacher said, and Jonas felt happier than at any other time in his life—somebody wanted to know that he wanted to be a writer—and it was a feeling he'd always be grateful for because by month's end, it had been submerged in a sea of grief, anger, pain and sadness.
It was just three weeks later that Jonas rode his horse to THATCHER'S GENERAL STORE after school, prepared to do the e
nd-of-the-month bookkeeping. He was thinking about an ice cold Red Rock Cola when he opened the door to see not his father behind the counter, but his brother-in-law, Rachel's husband, Cory. "What're you doing here?"
"Your Pa said for you to hurry up home."
That's when Jonas knew something was wrong—knew that he should have known as soon as he saw Cory behind the counter. "Wha...Ma. Is it my Ma?"
Cory sighed deeply. "Just go on home, Jonas."
He should have galloped the horse, but he didn't. He took his time, let the horse follow his own way home through the woods. No point in hurrying now, Jonas thought. If Pa was at home at this time of the day, if Cory had been sent for to mind the store, that meant Rachel and Esther already were there and Ma already wasn't. Jonas sat astride the horse, not holding the reins, not looking where he was going, his entire being focused on trying to feel himself—his life—without his mother. "My Ma is dead," he said to himself, at first only in his mind, but then, out loud, so he could hear what it sounded like, feel what it felt like. What he felt was empty, hollow, as if he'd been gutted like a fish or a deer. Except he knew he hadn't been because his heart was thudding and pounding in his chest like it was trying to break out of his rib cage.
Coming out of the woods into the yard beside his house was still a little startling to Jonas; he'd not yet gotten accustomed to the freshly painted house with grass and flowers in the yard, or the brick walkway leading to the front door, nor had he accustomed himself to the vast, empty field where once there had been the uneven rows of cotton and the falling-down barn and the other rickety outbuildings that had given the place such a wretched look. Now there was a new horse barn behind the house with four stalls and a water trough in front. Jonas put his horse away, fed him, and walked slowly toward the front of the house. The sight of the motorcar was confirmation of his worse fear: Doc Gray was the only person they knew who had an automobile and if the doctor was here, surely his mother was dead.
"It ain't fair. It ain't right. It ain't fair. It ain't right." His Pa was sitting in the middle of the walkway in front of the house, crying and screaming, sometimes looking up at the sky, as if talking to God.
Jonas went into the house. Both his sisters were there, as was Esther's husband, Clem, and the doctor. "Ma's dead, ain't she?"
Rachel and Esther who clearly had been crying, began weeping again and Clem tried to get his arms around both of them. Doc Gray walked over and put a hand on his shoulder. "She is now, Jonas, yes. Your ma's gone."
Jonas looked at him. Something was odd about what he just said, but he didn't know what it was. "She stopped breathing like you said she would?"
The doctor shook his head. "She had a heart attack, Jonas, when she heard about Zeb."
Now Jonas was confused. "Zeb?"
"Your brother. He's not coming home, Jonas. He was killed. In the war. In France."
Jonas felt his heart thudding again but for a totally different reason: He had forgotten about Zeb. His own brother, fighting a war on the other side of the world and Jonas hadn't given him a single thought in...he didn't know how long. Probably not since last Christmas when they drove over to Belle City to the Army office to figure out how to send Zeb a Christmas package. Since neither of the Zebs could read or write, nobody expected letters, so they didn't hear from Zeb, didn't know anything about him. And now he was dead. And so was his ma. He wanted to howl and cry like Pa: This wasn't right or fair. Instead he ran from the room, out of the house, and into the woods. He ran until he couldn't breathe, then he collapsed and lay face down in the leaves and cried so hard that he gave himself the hiccups.
When he finally sat up to blow his nose, he found Ruthie looking at him. She gave him her red, yellow and green scarf to wipe his face with and then she sat looking at him until he was able to speak. "My Ma is dead. So is my brother."
She was so still and quiet that she could have been dead, too. She sat cross-legged on the ground, her back against a tree, and she looked at him so hard he thought she probably could see how empty he was inside. "That's the worst news I ever heard, Jonas."
He nodded. "Me, too."
"Where 'bouts was your brother?"
"In France."
Now Ruthie's heart began to thud against her rib cage. "My brothers are in France too. In some forest. I don't remember the name."
Jonas stopped hurting long enough to process what he'd just heard. "You know where your brothers are? How you know, Ruthie?"
"From letters. Didn't your brother write letters, tell y'all how he was doing?"
"Zeb can't write. Read, neither."
"Beau and Eubie can't neither, but some of the educated soldiers write letters home for them who can't read and write, and then some of the people from the college read the letters to us, 'cause most of us can't read, neither."
Jonas was puzzled: What was she talking about, what people at what college. "Ruthie—?"
"Over in Belle City," she said, sounding like a ma or an auntie talking to a little child. "'Member I told you we had colleges in Belle City? Well, they read letters to us and the newspapers and explain all about the war."
"They tell you why we fightin' France?"
"We ain't fightin' France, we fightin' Germany, but—"
"My brother got killed in France."
"I know," she said, feeling almost as miserable he sounded. "The war is a mess. That's what the college professors told us, and I don't understand a lot of what they said 'cept that a lot of our boys is gettin' killed and dyin' in France and...and...I don't remember all them other places."
"You didn't tell me you been to Belle City."
Ruthie was shaking her head. She'd made a big mistake. "I wasn't s'posed to tell you."
"Why?"
"'Cause of your pa, him and all the other white folks. You know y'all hate us and don't want us doin' things like goin' to Belle City and learnin'."
"We ain't all like that, Ruthie Thatcher. Me and my Ma ain't like that...I forgot. Just that quick I forgot my Ma was dead. It ain't right. It ain't fair." He was crying again, but this time his tears were for himself, for how unfair things were.
Ruthie held her tears in check until she ran into the kitchen and into her mother's arms. Then she wailed, "Jonas's mother is dead and his brother too. He won't never see his Ma again. His brother won't never come home from the war."
Nellie had to work to keep her own tears from falling. This child of hers—the youngest, the only girl, the wildest and freest child she'd ever seen—was so much a part of herself that she literally shared the girl's pain and felt the fear that fueled it. As hard as she had to work to keep from crying, she had to work harder to find the right words to say, words that would be calming and comforting, and also that would be true. She had no time or space for anger over the girl's forbidden meeting with Jonas Thatcher; those would be wasted words anyway. How many times had she been warned to keep away from him? Nellie also knew better than to make promises relating to matters over which she had no control: Promising that she would live for a specific length of time or that Beau and Eubie would return from the war would be more wasted words. No mortal could know the time or circumstances of another's passing away.
"Didn't you tell me, Ruthie, that Jonas's mother was sickly?"
Ruthie nodded her head against her mother's shoulder. "She got that flu from his uncle who came home and died, and she didn't ever get well."
A shudder coursed through Nellie powerful enough that Ruthie felt it. She stepped away from her mother, but not out of her embrace. "You cold, Ma?"
"No." Nellie shook her head but could not dispel the anger that rose within her. "You got to start mindin' us, Ruthie. 'Spose you had got sick from that boy? 'Spose you had brought that sickness here to this house and Uncle Will had got sick and died? Or your Pa? Or me?"
Nellie watched realization birthed in her daughter's eyes, followed by remorse, and she pulled the girl close again with a sigh of thanksgiving: One lesson learned. "Anyway, Ruthie, y
ou know I ain't sickly, don't you? You know I'm strong and full of life, don't you?"
"Yes, Ma."
"And we all read them last letters from Beau and Eubie..."
"And they was scared, Ma. They said the war was something awful."
"And they promised to be careful, didn't they? And to come home soon?" She felt Ruthie nod against her. "Then we just have trust them, don't we? And hope and pray they'll be safe."
"I don't want you to die, Ma, and I don't want my brothers to die in France."
"And I don't want you, Ruthie Girl, thinkin' and worryin' 'bout people dyin'."
"'Cause worryin' don't put no fish on the hook nor cornbread in the oven."
Belle City Page 8