“Maybe I could. I’m glad I’ve had each one of you kids.”
“Even if we’ve done bad?”
Charlie was talking about the knife. And maybe some other things Grant hadn’t caught the boy at. “The funny thing is I seem to love the one who’s going through the hardest time the most.”
Charlie sat up straight. He and Grant studied each other. Grant didn’t want to force a confession out of the boy. Instead, to make it easier, Grant said, “I saw the knife. If you give it to me and tell me where you got it, I’ll slip it back. No one needs to know it was stolen.”
Charlie sat silently for a long time. Grant gave him as long as he needed.
Finally the boy fished into his pocket and handed the knife to Grant, then reached in again and brought out a handful of coins. “I took it from the Stroben’s Mercantile. Some money, too.”
Grant nodded. “Things stuck to my fingers when I was young. It’s not right. But when you live like we lived, sin starts to look like the only way to survive.”
Grant patted the boy on the back, careful to be gentle. “I look back now at the food I took and the clothes and other things and I know it was wrong, but I know I’d do it again to live.”
This time Charlie allowed the touch.
“But you don’t need to do that anymore, Charlie. I don’t have a lot of money for a knife and to give you young’uns spending money. But you’ll never go hungry. You’ll never be cold. And I think, if you asked, they sometimes hire help at the mercantile, delivering supplies in town. You could earn the money for this knife if you really want it.”
Charlie slouched again. “No one’s gonna give me a job. I’ve tried that before.”
“You might be surprised. Harold’s a good man. He’d make you work hard, but he’d pay you fair.”
Charlie’s eyes lit up in the flickering fire. “You think so?”
“I could ask him for you. Or, if you felt brave enough, you could take this knife back to him, tell him what you did, and ask permission to work off the cost. I think Harold would respect that. I know God would.”
“Why do you suppose God lets children live on the streets? Cold, hungry, hurt?”
Grant sighed. The exact question he had been wrestling with for years. He knew the truth. It just wasn’t easy to accept. “I think, Charlie, that God doesn’t really care that much about our bodies.”
“What?” Charlie seemed upset.
Grant tried to explain himself. “Oh, He does care. He loves every one of us so much. He knows the numbers of hairs on our heads. But I think God sees inside us, and what’s in there is more important than food or clothes or good health. God cares about souls. He cares about us, one soul at a time. If a child dies, cold on the street, but he knows the Lord, then there is rejoicing in heaven. And a lot of street kids do have a beautiful, childlike faith in God.”
“A lot don’t.”
“A lot of warm, well-fed people don’t, either. God loves people one soul at a time. And His truth is written in all their hearts so every child has a chance to believe.” Then Grant added, as much to himself as to Charlie, “I can only help the children God puts in my path, and I’ve done that. If God wants me to have more children, He’ll send them. All those years ago, Will didn’t try to pick my pocket by accident. He and his friends were sent into my path by God. It wasn’t an accident that little Benny got put on an orphan train at such a young age. He was mine and God got him here. Marilyn didn’t just happen to show herself at the exact instant I took a shortcut through an alley. It’s not a coincidence Mrs. Norris broke all the rules for Libby by letting her join the other orphans. I know each of you children was meant to be mine. That includes you.”
“And any other children that are meant to be yours will be sent here.” Charlie was clearly visible by the now-roaring firelight. The crackling wood, the comforting smell, and the soft whoosh of heat coming from the hearth seemed to mute the howling wind outside, or maybe the wind had died. Or, Grant thought, maybe Satan had been vanquished, at least for tonight.
Charlie yawned.
“You’d better get yourself to bed, boy. Morning comes almighty early around this house.”
Charlie nodded. “It’s long past time for rest, and that’s a fact. Uh. . . Pa?”
“Yes?”
“I think God wants you to let the girls dress you up. I think this is something you should do for them and not fight it. Your reasons not to spend money on yourself. . . I understand them, but now and then it’s okay to have a new pair of boots if your feet are really cold.”
Grant nodded. “I reckon that’s a fact.”
“If you’ll give me back the knife and money, I’ll go have a talk with Mr. Stroben tomorrow after school.”
“I’ll come with you if you want.”
Charlie was silent for a long time. Grant though he saw the boy’s shoulders trembling. At last he said, “Yeah, I guess you’d better, in case he calls the sheriff.”
Grant gave Charlie a gentle squeeze on the back of his neck. “He won’t. I’ll come by the school and walk over with you.”
“Thanks.” Charlie climbed back up the ladder.
Grant lay awake until he heard soft snoring coming from overhead.
Sadie braced him about the boots first thing in the morning.
Grant promised he’d go in and order a pair from Zeb. He meant to ride in along with his family when they were heading to school, but a cow had delivered her baby out of season and needed to be driven into the barn before the calf ended up as food for the coyotes.
Grant told the children to go on ahead.
“Pa, you’re just trying to get out of buying new boots.” Marilyn crossed her arms and refused to get in the buckboard.
“No, I’ll order ’em. I promise.”
“Today?” Sadie asked, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Marilyn.
“Yes, today.”
His older daughters, suddenly a bossy pair of mother hens, climbed into the wagon. After she was perched on the wagon seat next to Joshua, Sadie hollered, “Make sure and wear your new clothes to town. You’re shamin’ the whole family wearing those rags.”
Grant would have felt worse about shaming them if Sadie had been able to keep the smile off her face. “Scat, all of you. Get down the road to school, or I’m turning you all over my knee.”
He could hear them laughing until they were out of sight. Handing out punishment had never been his strong suit.
Grant rode out to round up the cow and her calf. The cow seemed bent on killing Grant for messing with her baby. And the calf, wobbly and shivering, needed tending. Grant’s shorn neck froze him the whole time. With one thing and another, he didn’t get back to the cabin until well past noon.
When he came in, he saw his new shirt and pants all folded neat as a pin on the kitchen table. Resting on top was Joshua’s new Stetson. Grant wondered if this was a hint for him to buy a new one, or if Joshua was offering Grant the hat.
Too tired to worry about it, Grant shed his only pair of pants and noticed his old clothes were not only rags, they were filthy rags. Oh, the girls kept other things washed up nice and tidy, but Grant only had one pair of clothes. How was he supposed to have his clothes washed if he was wearing them? Once in a great while, he’d shed his things and get along in an even older pair he’d kept, but those had holes that were next-thing-to-indecent, so he usually just hung on to his pants and shirt and shooed the girls away to clean someone else up. After a morning dodging slashing horns and flailing hooves, he was coated in dirt and sweat. He’d also ripped a couple of new holes in his rags.
Maybe God had stepped in last night, knowing what a fierce mama cow could do to fabric so rotten sharp words could shred it. Grant thought about his talk with Charlie last night. The talk had brought a considerable new peace in Grant’s heart. He accepted that God had sent children who needed him into his path. How had that orphan train picked the little town of Sour Springs as the last stop?
For that
matter, how had he happened to be in Houston all those years ago? He was hunting for the War. Why had he thought he’d find it in Houston? It’d made sense to him at the time. And if Grant was honest with himself, he knew Houston wasn’t a huge impersonal city like New York. The good folks there wouldn’t leave six children on the street. People would have stepped in and found them homes—well, maybe not Sadie and Joshua. There could have been trouble there. Grant’s heart rebelled at the thought that Sadie and Joshua would have been turned over to some slaver for the remaining years of the War. It didn’t sit well to trust God to bring children to him, but Grant knew it was right.
Grant turned his attention to the wreckage of his old clothes. Imagining how the girls would fuss if he dirtied up his new clothes the first time he wore ’em, he took a quick bath, even washing what was left of his hair—a blamed nuisance in the middle of the day.
He found a nasty bruise on his stomach where the cow had landed a hoof. A scrape ran from his hip to his knee where she’d hooked him with her spread of horns. He’d worn his chaps or that cranky old cow would’ve poked a hole right into his leg. Shaking his head at his battered body, he dried off and dressed. Then he noticed his old clothes, piled beside the tub. They really were rags. Not even fit to save for scrubbing the floor. He knew Sadie was teasing him some, but he probably was shaming his young’uns by wearing them.
With a resigned sigh, he did what he had to do. He tossed his old rags onto the fire and grinned to think of telling the girls he wanted another set of clothes right away so he’d have one for good and one for work.
It was midafternoon before he headed for town. He brought along an extra horse so Charlie could stay in town with him.
Stopping first at Zeb’s, he found out it’d take a week to get his boots. With some grumbling about highway robbery, Grant paid for them. Then he went to the mercantile and warned Harold and Mabel about the coming talk with Charlie, just to give them a little time to decide how they wanted things handled. Grant bought himself a new hat while he was there and went to pick up his light-fingered son. His children came flooding out the schoolhouse door and embarrassed him half to death with their fussing over his clothes and hat.
They went together to Ian’s blacksmith shop, and Grant visited with his grown-up son while the two of them hitched up Grant’s team that boarded at Ian’s during the school day. Before he was done, Joshua, even with his tender ribs and gimpy arm, was beside them helping out.
“Pa, most of the other parents have been in to school helping with little things.” Joshua glanced uncertainly at Ian, one of Joshua’s many older brothers.
“True enough,” Ian said. “Megan did some sewing for costumes. I like her staying close to home, with the baby on the way, but if I bring her the material she’s able to sew.”
“Yeah,” Josh went on. “And Ella Johnson and Agnes Mackey, along with a lot of other mothers, are bringing cookies and cider for a party afterward. Mr. Mackey fashioned a cross. He and Mr. Harrison brought it in and we’re using it for the play. Almost everyone has come by and offered to help.”
“Well, it sounds like she’s got everything handled already. Don’t reckon she needs me underfoot.” Grant buckled the leathers across the broad backs of his horses.
“Ian donated some lumber so she can knock together a little set of steps for us to stand on.” Joshua passed a strap under one of the horses, and Grant caught it and fastened it. “But I don’t think she’s got anyone to help her build ’em.”
“I’ll go do it for her.” Ian started leading the team outside to hook it up to the buckboard. A horse shifted and snorted in a back stall of Ian’s shop. It drew all their attention. “No, I’ve got to finish shoeing a horse. I told Zeb I’d have it ready tomorrow morning. Well, I’ll shoe the horse now, and maybe I can get Miss Cartwright’s carpentering done tonight.”
“You shouldn’t leave Megan alone, not with the baby so close.” Grant fell silent, knowing what he needed to do.
Joshua looked Grant straight on. “I can do it, Pa. I still ache some but I’m up to it. But since you haven’t done anything, and you’ve got the most kids of anyone in the school, and the main reason she has to build the steps—she calls ’em risers—is because there are so many of us, I think it’s the right thing for you to offer.”
Grant’s temper started heating up to hear his son reminding him of his responsibilities. Grant was a fair enough man to know he wasn’t really mad at Joshua. He was embarrassed not to have helped. But that didn’t stop him from doing a slow burn. And mixed up with his mad was a sharp ache to see Hannah. She could hurt herself trying to build things. For heaven’s sake, she’d near burned herself to death trying to pour coffee. Anything could happen if she was turned loose with a hammer. Grant knew for sure the little woman didn’t have the skills a body needed to build risers, whatever they were.
Grabbing the crown of his hat to clamp it as firm as iron on his head, he said, “I’ll do it. First, Charlie and I need to go to Stroben’s Mercantile. Then I’ll send him on home. He won’t be long, Josh, so travel slow so he can catch you. I don’t like any of you on the trail alone these days. You leave the evening chores for me. I don’t want you reinjuring yourself.”
Harold arranged for Charlie to work for him after school for the next month to earn the knife. Grant sent Charlie home and headed for the schoolhouse like it was his own doom.
When he got inside, he found the priggish little teacher eyeball-deep in a mess. . . as usual. She knelt at the front of the classroom, wrestling with a long piece of board. Several nails were clamped tight between her lips, and she had a hammer tucked under her arm.
Joshua’s polite scolding burned in his ears as he strode to the front of the room. She turned, a pleasant smile on her nail-holding lips as she heard him approach. And then she saw him, and that smile shrank off her face like wool washed in boiling hot water.
“Let me do that.” Grant pulled the board out of her hand.
She stared at him, acting as mute as Libby.
He held out his hand. “And get those nails out’a your mouth before you stab yourself to death with ’em.”
She removed the nails and laid them in his hand.
Now that her mouth wasn’t occupied, Grant moved to stop her before she could start yapping at him. “Joshua said you needed help. What do you want me to do in here?”
TWENTY-THREE
What was he doing in here?
Feeling a little like she’d swallowed the nails, she tore her gaze from Grant and looked at the pile of wood in front of her.
“Hannah?” Grant’s sharp voice jerked her out of her daze.
She looked at him. His face was red as a beet, his jaw clenched until he bared his teeth when he talked. He looked furious.
“What did I do now?”
Grant blinked. Startled into relaxing his jaw a bit, he said, “You didn’t do anything.”
“Then why are you so mad at me?”
“I’m not mad. I’m here to help build this riser Joshua said you needed for your pageant. What is it, anyway?”
“Well, you look mad clear to the bone, Grant Cooper. And if you’re going to come in here and be unpleasant, I’d just as soon do it myself.”
Grant’s eyes narrowed. She felt like she stared straight at a gunslinger at high noon. “My name isn’t Grant Cooper.”
Hannah stood and walked straight up to his cranky face. “Your name is Grant Cooper, and I’ve listed all your children, except for Sadie, with the last name of Cooper, and listed Grant Cooper, you”—she jabbed him in his chest with her index finger—“as their father. Since you’re too stubborn to name yourself, I did it for you.”
The red in Grant’s face turned an alarming shade of purple.
“Fine.” He could have dissolved the nails with the acid in his voice.
Hannah was glad he didn’t have them in his mouth because she needed them.
With a choppy slash of his hand, he said, “Call ’em whate
ver you want.”
“I will.” Hannah gave her chin a little jerk.
“But just remember, I came in here offering to help and you started right in calling me names.”
“What names?”
“Stubborn and unpleasant.”
“I wasn’t insulting you.”
“Yes, you were.”
“I was asking you why you were being so stubborn and unpleasant.”
“I’m not stubborn and unpleasant.”
“Well, that’s my point exactly. If you were stubborn and unpleasant, and you came in here acting like this, I’d just think, ‘There goes Grant being himself.’ But since you aren’t those things, I had to wonder what set you off.”
Grant dragged his hat off his head as if he had to keep his hands busy so he wouldn’t strangle her.
Hannah was distracted from his temper by his haircut. The man looked purely civilized.
“So, the thanks I get for offering to help is to be braced with more of your insults?”
Hannah clapped her mouth shut from defending herself. She’d give him this one point to end the quarrel he’d started. Besides, just because something was true didn’t mean it wasn’t insulting to point it out. And anyway, she did need help with the risers.
Inhaling long and slow to get her pounding heart to settle into a normal rhythm, she said, “You’re right. I just thought after last time you were here, you might. . . ” She stopped. What crazy impulse had made her bring up his last visit? Maybe the same impulse that kept her remembering, day and night, how much she’d enjoyed kissing him. And how badly she’d wanted to do him violence when she’d seen him holding Prudence in his arms. She’d heard the gossip, too. Grant was definitely sparking the seamstress. They’d walked arm-in-arm down the street. Behaving that way in public was nearly an engagement announcement.
Trying to move on, she said, “I’d be grateful for your help. Here’s what I planned to do.” She described her idea for risers. She’d seen such a thing at a church in Omaha one time and heard them called such, but she couldn’t figure out how they’d made them.
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