He stepped back. He swung his arms apart, taking in the parking lot, the funeral home, the whole street.
“They ain’t yours,” I said. “Ain’t your kin.”
He started to speak, licked his lips, and started again. “You think I’m the kind of a man, I can’t love them if they’re not my blood? You ain’t my blood—you think I don’t love you?” His face was all creases. “I was in that fire before I give a thought to it, Bertie. I’d do it again.”
“I know,” I said. “But—”
“Fuck,” he muttered.
Shock run up and down me. “You think I done wrong by Trouble.”
He sighed and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “You never meant nothing bad to happen.”
“You don’t want me no more, how could you?” I said, my voice rising. I was shaking. My throat and my eyes was burning. I couldn’t stop the words. “You just feel sorry for me. You’d just as soon . . .”
Now he dropped his hands and looked me square in the eye and didn’t say one word.
I lost all the breath that was in me, but I managed to turn away and start running to the front of the building. I jumped in the car and started it up. I waited for a minute, but he never followed me. I ground the car into reverse and drove off. I never knowed where I was going. I never had no tears, only an ache that run along my jaw and down in my throat.
Just west of Browntown I passed the old Sutherland place. In the next section there was a filling station all by itself. Wasn’t nothing to see in the field but bushes scattered around, and burnt wheat stubble. Looked like the farmer was late getting it disced if he was going to put in winter wheat. Pretty soon I come upon a raggedy line of trees. Looked like a tree row that had been let go.
These things passed by me, and I seen them and took notice, but I was in a whole other world. It wasn’t that I was thinking about this other world, or remembering it from the past—I was in it, and old happenings was happening all over again. I was back there on the morning Mama died, and don’t you do this to me come out of the walls, and I was back there singing “Jimmy Crack Corn” with Will cold in my arms as I set on the stone wall at the Whiteside place, singing and cackling, and I was laying on the kitchen floor with my war baby flooding out of me before its time, two black dots among the bloody tissue, and then the other babies, each one of them, and the last one, in the chair in Opal’s shop, and the strips of yellow sunlight on the wall through the blinds in the hospital. And then I was sleepy, so sleepy, my head snapping, setting on the quilt next to Mama at the hog killing, and I was in Mama’s room the next morning, hearing her wail outside, knowing Timmy was dead and it was my fault, and then I was lying to Mama and Daddy, blaming Timmy himself. And then I throwed Will on the floor, that horrible thump, and Mama and Dacia was playing cards and Mama was eating rat poison little by little, as if she had ever right to, and then I was swinging the pickle spoon, hitting Dacia on the neck, seeing the red welt I’d raised there, and Sam was waking me up, saying get up, get up, I can’t find Dacia nowhere on the place.
And then I blinked, and I was back in the actual world, driving along a sand road, I never knowed where, just a road like ever other road in the county. I didn’t recognize nothing. The car was drifting to the right, and then the passenger side wheels slid off the road and onto the edge of an alfalfa field. I put on the brake, skidded a bit, eased off the brake, brought the car to a stop, and killed the engine. I must’ve scared up a covey of quail—the birds exploded upward, whistling and chittering and crying, starting low and then climbing and dissolving in the pale-gold autumn afternoon sunlight.
And in a rush the words come to me that I’d been running away from, seemed like, all of my life: It’s no wonder the Lord never seen fit to give you no children.
There it was, like it was wrote on my forehead. You know you ain’t no fit mother, you got no right to love them children no matter how much you need to.
The raw green smell of alfalfa rose up and come through the open window next to me. I felt wild. I licked my lips to stop drool from coming out. I had a bright, strange taste in my mouth.
I recollected how I used to picture cocking Daddy’s pistol, shooting myself in my forehead, my ears, my eyes. I looked around. I wondered, what would happen if I got the car going fast and drove smack into a tree? How fast would I have to go for it to kill me on the first try? Or would I have to back it up and slam that tree over and over, and what if my arm was broke and I couldn’t get it in reverse? It was absurd, what I was thinking, but I had to be sure it would kill me, and how could I be certain sure? I wondered, did Mama go through this, not knowing from day to day which dose would finally kill her?
Then it come to me—if I done this, I’d be doing the same thing to them children that Mama done to me, and Jesus Christ, I was the only mother they had. For another day, year, or their whole life, for better or worse, I was their mama.
Then I heard a sigh or a moan inside the car, and then, strangest thing, I felt breath on my neck, warm and then cool. For an instant it felt like I was dreaming, and at the same time, I was in the dream. Then it vanished, that dream, like they does, and I couldn’t snatch it back. I put my hand on the back of my neck, and sweat gathered on my fingers.
I looked outside again, and I seen it was coming up a bad cloud, like it will sometimes in the fall, like winter wants to come early and fall don’t want to let go yet. You feel a breeze through your sweater, mild, but there’s a chill inside it as it passes between your shoulder blades. You know it might snow the next day—one time, I remember, we got snow on Halloween. The Flint Hills is like to have them kind of storms ever little bit, blowing in huge black clouds you can see coming miles away.
This seemed like it was going to be one of them storms. The air itself looked green, which portended hail, and the bushes was shaking and swirling, and the tree branches was swaying. I scooted up in the seat and clung tight to the steering wheel. I leaned my forehead against it and closed my eyes. For a moment I felt so empty, I felt like if I let go, I would whirl away like chaff.
Then I heard that sigh again, and I looked up, and everthing in the car, ever single thing, was sparkling. The knobs, the rims on the gauges, the levers, the edge of the window glass, all of it sparkling. The wood trim on the dashboard was sparkling, the steering wheel, the gear shift. The tips of my own trembling fingers. Sparkling.
Ever hair on me stood on end.
Now I knowed there wasn’t nothing in that car—no sighing and no sparkling—that couldn’t be explained by the gathering wind and by sheet lightning in the distance, flickering at the windows and silvering the edges of things.
But what I couldn’t explain was the feeling I had, like I’d just took the first deep breath of my life. Like it was the first time I ever filled my lungs clear up to the shoulders. Like I was breathing in air through my skin, my hair, my fingernails, my eyelids. Like I myself was made out of breath, like I was breath itself. But now, instead of feeling empty, I felt light. Light was shining on me and in me, it was filling me and lifting me. I felt like I didn’t deserve nothing, but, somehow, I had everthing.
Out loud I said, “Is this what grace is?”
Nobody answered me. I never expected them to. And anyhow I knowed the answer. By the grace of God, I knowed what it was. Grace wasn’t hard, like Mama taught me, though it was strong.
And I knowed I had what it took, whatever it was, to do whatever needed doing, and whatever I done would be blessed, and I had everthing I ever needed or hoped for, beyond my desire, beyond my ken.
* * *
I started up the car and turned around and headed back to town. Before long it started hailing, the stones banging and clattering on the car roof inches over my head, and after a bit it changed into tinny raindrops. I found my way to the funeral home, and I was soaked head to toe before I reached the front door.
I smelled my wet hair in the stifling room, and I run my hands through it to loosen it off my scalp. I seen Sam was setting a
nd playing the piano. I didn’t know the name of the song, but it was slow and sorrowful, tired. I flicked my hands to rid them of the cold water, and I walked up behind him and put them on his shoulders. He jumped a little bit and pulled his hands back from the keys, straightening his back.
“Sam,” I said. “I’ve been so wrong, about so many things. I hope—”
His shoulders buckled then, he blowed out air, and he reached up and took aholt of my cold hands and kissed each one. Then he rose and turned and held me, and the two of us stood there swaying together for a long time, waiting for the storm to let up so we could go home.
* * *
They brought the piano Monday evening, two men in a tall truck. The driver, he looked doubtful he was at the right place. Sam walked out and said something to him, and he pulled up to the porch. Then him and a taller man and Sam, the three of them carried in the piano and set it against the wall.
Now Trouble, soon’s he’d seen the strange truck, he’d ran out to his fort and hid. We hadn’t told him the piano was coming, though it’s hard to know if it would’ve made any difference.
After they got everthing set up, the taller man started playing the new piano. Sam got out his fiddle, and him and the piano man went back and forth, playing notes any which way, seemed like, trying to get the piano and the fiddle to agree, and then pop! in through the door come Trouble. The look on his face—he never smiled, but his eyes lit up. He stood in the doorway staring.
“Look what we got!” Sarah hollered at him. “What should we name it?”
Directly Sam started in playing “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home.” The man picked up on it, and Sarah squealed with delight. “I heard that song! I know that song!”
“I heard that song!” Trouble yelled. “I know that song!”
I took in a breath so sharp it seemed to cut me. I reminded myself that just because he made sense, it didn’t mean he knowed what he was saying—but I rejoiced just the same.
As the men was leaving, why, Hiram come in the back door from chores. He was washing up when Trouble set down and started playing. I expect Hiram hadn’t never heard a piano before. When he turned around, wiping his hands on a dishtowel, and seen Trouble playing, you should have saw his face. He’d heard tell that Trouble could play, but hearing him play, that was a whole nother thing.
“He making that music, or the machine?” he asked me.
“Him.”
I don’t remember what song Trouble was playing, but it come to an end, and then he started playing “Whispering Hope.” I swallowed hard. Where had he even heard it? Then I reckoned Sam’d played it on the fiddle sometime.
“How’s he doing that?” Hiram said.
I shook my head. “Don’t know.”
“Beats anything.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Beats anything.”
I wiped my nose, too, and I reached over and took Hiram’s hand. Pretty soon Sam come over. He put his arm around me and poked Hiram in the ribs with his elbow, like a man will. Hiram smiled.
That piano did look comical in our front room, sure enough. But when I looked at it, I didn’t see the piano exactly—I seen the music inside it waiting to come out. No telling what kind or how beautiful it might be, or if it would make you laugh, cry, sing, or get up and dance. I reckoned that was the beauty of it.
Chapter 27
The place where they had the court was in an office next to the jail, plain but for a picture of President Coolidge and the American and Kansas flags in the corners. The floors creaked as we walked in. We settled into the front row of folding chairs. The lawyer was already there, and Sam set down next to him. Then come me, Sarah—she crawled onto my lap, and her four year old—and then Trouble and then Hiram. Opal set in the second row. The lawyer, Jim Nevins, he was trading with Sam for pulling tree stumps. He was a farmer and done law on the side. I’d thought about inviting Alta Bea, but I didn’t.
The judge set at a table reading papers. The ceiling fan rotated, making shadows that traveled along the walls, around and around. Even with the fan, it was hot in there. I’d already sweat through my Sunday dress.
Directly the judge lifted his face and took off his eyeglasses. You could see that the bridge of his nose was red where the glasses pinched him.
Our lawyer stood up and said, “Your honor, this here’s Sam Frownfelter and his wife, and these three are the children in question.”
The judge nodded. “Sam Frownfelter,” he said, “is it your intention and desire to support these children here present until they reach their majority?”
“Here present,” Trouble said. “Here present.” Evidently he thought he was going to get a present. I slipped him a piece of penny candy, and thank the Lord he started sucking on it and quieted down.
Sam said, “It is.” His voice trailed off. He told me later he started to say, “Your Majesty.” He knowed that wasn’t the proper thing to call the judge, but he couldn’t remember what was.
“So ordered,” the judge said. He picked up an ink pen and signed his name.
The lawyer leaned over and whispered to Sam, “That’s it.”
I swallowed. That was it? That was it? We picked up and scurried out of there like we was breaking out of jail, at least it felt like it. Before we headed home we stopped and got our picture took, all five of us together, plus Opal. That’s my favorite picture I have.
That night, as me and Sam was getting ready for bed, he turned to me. “If you’re gonna be running around town with a bunch of children, we can’t have folks thinking you’re a trollop.” He took my hand and put a gold ring in it.
I was flabbergasted. “Good Lord.”
He smiled and run a finger up and down my arm. “Like it?”
“We can’t afford this.” I put it on my finger. It glowed in the lamp light.
“Got it anyhow.” He leaned over and kissed me a good one.
I couldn’t stop looking at that ring. I never had any earthly treasure so beautiful.
We went to bed and settled in back-to-back.
“Big day,” he said.
It was quiet for a moment, and then I said, “You reckon we’ll ever see Dacia again?” I’m human, I picked at my scabs to see would they bleed.
“You still afraid she’ll come back for them?”
“Might,” I said. “I keep dreaming about it.” Then I asked him, “Do you think I was too hard on her when she was coming up? Me and her didn’t hardly get along.”
“She wasn’t easy to get along with.”
“First thing she said after Mama died, I remember, ‘You ain’t my mama, you ain’t gonna be my mama, I ain’t gonna do what you say.’ And she never did.”
“Losing your mama’s hard on anybody,” he said then. “You and her both.”
“But she—”
“You and her both.” He sighed. “I sure hate to think of what she had to go through, to get to wherever she’s at now.” His voice was so soft I could barely hear him. Unless I was mistaken, there was tears in it.
It wasn’t like we hadn’t talked about all this before. We had. But things wasn’t the same since that day at the funeral home.
He spoke again. “It’s the ones like Dacia—the ones that are hard to love—” I heard him swallow. “They’re the ones need it the most. Mom used to say that.”
“Mine too.” I reached back far into my memory, and for the first time in years, I was able to picture Mama young, back home, in all her glory, her back bent over the table, her hands dipping into the flour sack like a natural-born woman.
I lost my breath, and I had to suck in air.
“Seems like there’s one like Dacia in ever family,” Sam said.
Now I seen Dacia in my mind’s eye. “Lord knows, she never got no love from me. From nobody really, except Mama, but then Mama . . .” I felt pity for Dacia then, deep-down pity, not strained no more with my own pain and grief and shame.
Now he turned over to face me, and he run his finger along my cheek
. “Don’t you reckon she sent them here because she knowed you would, though? Love them? Look after them?”
I nodded, and tears sprung to my eyes. I laid my hand against his. “And because she figured you would be here to daddy them.”
We laid there like that for a long time. Finally he kissed me and turned back over, and I rubbed his back till I heard him snore.
My muscles felt like jelly. I was so grateful for him, I felt like I could float up to the ceiling. If it hadn’t been for the children, I felt like I would gladly have gone to be with the Lord at that very moment.
Then I got to thinking, what name did we put on the court papers—Trouble or Travis? And where did I put the scissors after I used them yesterday? And what did we have in the house for breakfast in the morning, was we out of bread? Did me and Sarah remember to close up the chickens for the night? Did Sam have a clean shirt for work? I was thinking so hard I almost forgot to say my prayer. It was a prayer of joy, sure enough, a prayer of thanksgiving for the good things the day had brought, and all the blessings the Lord seen fit to bestow on me, a sinner saved by grace.
Then I thought, tomorrow I should start writing it all down. The time’s going to come when Sarah’s going to want to know about her mama.
Acknowledgments
A former working title for this novel was I Done My Best, a nod to the young girls of the misty past whose early needlework often bore this humble apologia. Perhaps a better title would have been We Done Our Best, in recognition of the contributions of the many people who helped me during the writing.
All the Forgivenesses was inspired by the stories of life in the early twentieth-century oil fields told me by my mother, Sybol Frans Hudson, and her sisters: Eva Mae Barnes, Dorothy Hatfield, and Roxie Olmstead. The voice of this novel is my recollection of the speech of my maternal grandmother, Elizabeth (Lizzie) Murphy Frans, and grandfather, John Madison Frans, without whom so much would not have been possible, although the story itself is fiction. Special thanks go to my aunt Roxie, who generously shared her own written recollections and images of that time and place.
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