“Well, of course. Why on earth would I call you if I didn’t want you to go now?” Ma nodded toward the table where a dime sat waiting. “There’s the money to pay her. And don’t dawdle.”
I looked grudgingly at the dime. “But Gracie is coming over,” I said.
Ma crossed her arms over her chest and gave me a long, hard look. “Well then,” she said at last, “you go on out to the field and tell your father that I need him to go get me some eggs because you’re just too busy to do it for me.”
“I’m going,” I grumbled. I walked past her to get the dime, cringing because she still had her arms folded, and that cross look was hovering on her face.
I let the screen door bang behind me, its wooden clatter setting up a rhythm that went on in my head after the door had come to a wobbling halt. Crossing the yard, I kicked the heads off some dandelions and stomped on a scurrying ant.
I’d just rounded the shed when I saw Gracie running toward the house, her hair rising and falling as her feet pounded dust up from the path. Just a little ways beyond her, Raedine was following, a basket swinging from one hand.
“Gracie!” I shouted. “I’m over here!”
She turned, shielding her eyes with a sort of salute, and scanned the yard until she spied me. Her arm shot up in a wave and a smile burst onto her face.
“I brought my mom with me,” she yelled.
I ran to meet Gracie and walked to the house with her, just a little ahead of Raedine. Ma scowled slightly at my reappearance but hid it when she saw that we had company.
“Gracie and her mom are here,” I said.
“Well, what a nice surprise,” Ma said with a smile. “Come on in, Raedine.”
She remembered the eggs then and asked Raedine if it would be all right for Gracie to go with me to get them. Raedine said it was fine and Gracie and I were out the door and running across the yard in a flash.
It was a long way to the Taits’ house if you went by the road, but only about a mile if you cut through the spring barley fields. We followed the path I always took, making our way along the edges of the crops.
There was a slight breeze, the dancing kind that makes a prairie crop ripple, like shimmering green waves racing over the heads of the grain. Without warning, Gracie stopped, staring at them, transfixed.
She said nothing. Her breath slowed and deepened until I became aware of it to the exclusion of all other sounds. A small hand rose from her side and travelled across the space between us, found mine and took hold of it as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
I’d never held hands with a girl before. Once the shock wore off I realized it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. And besides, no one could see us out there in the field, which is why I decided not to pull my hand away.
I snuck a few cautious glances at Gracie’s face, mostly focusing on her eyes, which were full and shining as she stared out over the field. Her head began to move ever so slightly, following the sway of the grain. Within a moment or two her body was moving to and fro as well, and then she tugged her hand free and stretched it out in a motion that looked, for all the world, as though she was stroking the top of the field.
“Do you think,” she said suddenly, “that the field is green where they buried my daddy?”
“Sure,” I said. “They always bury people in green fields. I think it’s some kind of a rule.”
She nodded. “I don’t quite seem to know why my daddy died in the war,” she said.
“I guess his time had come,” I told her wisely. I’d heard Pastor Lockhart say that at funerals for some of the Junction men who had gone off to fight and not returned.
Gracie didn’t speak for a moment. I was searching through my head, trying to find something on the subject that might be helpful, but when she spoke again, all she said was, “I guess we better go get those eggs for your mother.”
Chapter Five
We headed off again, and by and by we reached Carmella’s house. Strains of a song I couldn’t identify met us as we reached the door and knocked. The singing stopped long enough for Carmella to tell us to come in and then picked right back up and finished out a couple more lines before coming to a halt. Carmella clasped a hand over her bosom at the end, the blade of her knife pressing into the flowered fabric of her housedress.
“You’ll just have to excuse me,” she said. “Those songs about Canaan always seem to clutch tight onto my heart. But what’s this? I see you’ve brought along a friend.”
“Yes’m,” I said quickly. “This here’s Gracie Moor. She just moved to Junction, right next door to my place.”
“Is that right? Well, bless your heart, Gracie. I’m Carmella Tait. You can just call me Carmella.”
“Hi,” Gracie said. “What’s a Canaan?”
“Canaan? Why, it’s the land of milk and honey, of course. Don’t you go to Sunday School?”
Gracie frowned, not in a cross way, but the way you do when you’re thinking hard about something. “I guess I don’t need to,” she said at last.
“Don’t need to! Child, everybody needs to know the Good Lord, and Sunday School is a fine place to make His acquaintance.”
“Is that where God lives?” Gracie wanted to know.
“Well, no. God is everywhere.”
“Then why do I need to go to church to meet Him?”
Carmella paused. The strip of skin hanging from the potato she was peeling stopped growing. She shook her head a little and then lifted it to meet Gracie’s eyes. “It’s not my place to tell someone else’s child what to do.”
“Okay,” Gracie said.
“Anyway,” Carmella’s smile reappeared, “welcome to Junction. I remember it like it was yesterday—the day I first came here. I was so excited!”
“How long have you lived here?” Gracie asked.
“Matter of fact,” Carmella told her, “I’ve been here exactly the same length of time Luke has.”
“Eleven years?” I asked.
“Be twelve years come October 15,” she said.
“That’s my birthday!” I said.
“I know that’s your birthday, child. Why else would I say that I’ve been here exactly the same time as you? The day you were born is the very day I came to Junction, a new bride.” Carmella turned to Gracie.
“It raised a bit of a stir when we stepped off that train, let me tell you. I don’t think the people around here were quite ready to see a white man—and one of their own at that—married to a coloured woman. And I imagine we made a sight all right, Mr. Tait as thin as a pin and so frail looking, hobbling around on that wooden leg, with his new bride—a round young darkie. Him, past forty while I was barely into my twenties.”
This startled me, mostly because Ma had told me it wasn’t polite to say “darkie” or “negro,” only “coloured.” I decided it must be all right for Carmella to say, since she was talking about herself.
“There were a few things said outright, but mostly folks judged quietly behind their smiles. I could see it in their faces. Only I didn’t mind. I was just happy to have a home of my own at last.”
“Where’d you live before you came here?” Gracie asked.
“Nebraska. Lived there from the time I was a little girl. My mother and father—John and Bella Quartermaine—both died before I was nine, and I stayed with my brother and his wife and their children for the next five years. I’m grateful that they took me in, but it wasn’t a happy time.
“When I was fourteen I went to work for the Hammonds, a well-to-do family in Gosper County. I worked there for three years, until one day they accused me of stealing from them and let me go.”
“Did you steal from them?” Gracie asked, wide-eyed at the thought.
“Land alive, of course I didn’t! It was their oldest boy. Gone bad, that one.”
“Didn’t you tell them it was really him?” Gracie’s hands had flown to her hips and her face was full of indignation.
“You think they’d be taking my side o
ver their own flesh and blood? I just packed up my things and moved along. Got myself a job working in the laundry at the county hospital and found a room in a boarding house. I shared it with another coloured gal, an older woman named Dorothy Fuggins. She had a weakness for bourbon, though if you knew her story you’d find it hard to condemn her. Overall, I don’t suppose it was too bad, those years of living at the boarding house.”
Carmella paused, as she often did when she was telling a story. I was used to waiting but Gracie wasn’t inclined toward a lot of patience. I doubt a full minute had gone by before she burst out saying, “Well, go on! What happened then?”
Carmella looked a mite startled, but then she chuckled and patted Gracie’s hand and continued with her account. “Then Mr. Tait came along. It was his cousin who ran the boarding house, and he had stopped in for a few days on his way back from visiting his brother in Missouri.
“One night I was hanging some washing out back where the lines were and Mr. Tait was out there, sitting and enjoying his pipe. We got to talking and then he asked me to sit with him for a spell. And somehow, the next few evenings we found ourselves sitting and talking—and then on the fourth night he asked me would I like to marry an older man with one leg and go to live in Canada, and I said I sure enough would.”
Carmella paused and cleared her throat. “So Mr. Tait delayed his return for a few days and we found a preacher who would marry us. Then we came straight on up here.”
“Do you have any children?” Gracie asked, looking around as though Carmella’s offspring might materialize just from being mentioned.
“No, child, there are just the two of us rattling around in this big old house. That’s my cross to bear,” Carmella sighed heavily. “It cheers my heart when Luke here comes to visit, and I hope you’ll do the same—with or without him.”
And then, rather to my surprise, Gracie launched herself forward, threw her arms around Carmella’s broad shoulders, and hugged her with a fierce passion.
PART TWO
The Calm Before the Storm
Most people think that tornados come with some kind of warning—hail, lightning, certain patterns of rain, or even complete silence. The truth is, tornados are trickier than that. Sometimes one or more of those things comes along beforehand and gives you a hint, but other times there’s no clue at all. You’re just going about your normal routine, and then, without warning, wham!
Chapter Six
Summer is my favourite time of year. I love it when the sun hangs high overhead and the hours unfold like a lazy Sunday drive on a prairie road.
I had chores, of course. That started from the time I was big enough to walk. I did lots of things, like bringing in armloads of kindling for the stove, scattering feed about for the chickens, and running errands for Ma.
This still left the vast majority of my time for me to fill as best I could, and as an only child (a rare thing in Junction) I was left to find ways to amuse myself. Aside from the odd day spent at Keane Dempsey’s place, I mostly just kicked around by myself. Until, that is, Gracie moved in next door. All of a sudden, I went from spending a lot of time alone to having a nearly constant companion.
Our mothers were clearly happy about the idea of us spending time together. Apparently, there’s a certain amount of worry involved when you have a kid wandering alone in the fields all summer long. Not that there was much danger—the odd rattlesnake would be about the worst and they were far from common.
For Ma, the biggest concern was that I’d twist an ankle or break a leg. “Mind you watch and don’t step in any holes,” she’d tell me. “You crack a bone and you’ll be sitting out there hurting something dreadful—under the blazing sun too, until the buzzards get you. Be nothing but bleached bones by the time anyone happens to find you.”
“Oh, Alice, don’t be telling the boy such nonsense,” Pa would say if he happened to be around. It was one of the few things my parents ever argued about, at least when I was in hearing range. My father didn’t want my mother turning me into some kind of sissy while my mother hoped for my father’s sake that he’d never have to know the grief of finding out she’d been right all along.
“I’ll be careful,” I’d promise her, though the truth was, once I got out there, wandering and exploring, I never gave a thought to watching where I was going. There were lots of times when I stumbled and went sprawling over rocks or prairie dog holes. Now and then I hurt myself bad enough that I’d have cried if I’d been a girl, but never to the point where I got any kind of fright out of it.
Ma would dab Mercurochrome on any scrapes I brought home and it surprised me how readily she believed I’d scratched myself on a bush when the injury was clearly caused by a fall. I wondered about that some, but I’ve never had much luck figuring my mother out.
Anyway, after Raedine and Gracie moved into the house on the next property, there was someone to prowl about the fields with. It was a relief to Ma to know I had someone with me who could come fetch her when I broke my leg and was sitting out there waiting for the buzzards to arrive.
Raedine had been having trouble finding a sitter to watch Gracie while she was at work all day and Ma told her there was no need of that; Gracie could come over to our place for Raedine’s shifts for the rest of the summer. Raedine insisted she would pay, but Ma said she wouldn’t hear of it and if a person couldn’t be allowed to do something neighbourly, she didn’t know what the world was coming to. Raedine cried a little and that seemed to settle it.
After that, Gracie would show up at our place every morning about nine o’clock. Raedine’s shift at the Prairie Inn started at ten, so she’d set out walking into town around the time Gracie came over. Most days someone would stop and give her a lift.
Gracie almost always wore skirts with pockets large enough to hold the waxed-paper-wrapped sandwich she brought along for lunch, even though Ma kept telling her that wasn’t necessary and land sakes we could certainly give her a sandwich.
I’d pack a lunch up too and we’d head out, with Ma in the background telling us to mind we didn’t both step in a hole at once.
There’s a special kind of joy in having a warm summer day stretching out ahead of you. It feels endless and full of promise. And the strange thing is that even if nothing happens all day it leaves you feeling totally satisfied.
I had many such days before Gracie came along, but they were spent quite differently from those we shared that summer. I’d never been a particularly imaginative kid, and I’d generally just amble about, wandering the fields or wooded groves in a sort of aimless exploration.
I could spend whole days examining clusters of anthills, offering the ants crumbs from my overall pockets, where I frequently carried a biscuit or the heel from a loaf of bread to eat during my travels. These snacks often ended up crumbled from being squashed against me when I climbed trees or lay out flat on the ground to watch the activity of some bug or animal I’d spied.
Other times I might start some ambitious project, like the days I spent working on building a rock fort. Hours and hours were devoted to lugging the biggest stones I could carry and arranging them in a relatively straight row until I had erected the eight-inch high beginning of a single wall. By then, my enthusiasm for the fort was spent.
Still, a boy with a pile of rocks is rarely without a plan, and after several other failed projects, I’d built something that vaguely resembled a chair.
Gracie laughed the first time she saw it. “Did you make that?” she asked, as though there was a chance it might have just happened on its own.
I mumbled something and hoped she’d drop it.
Not Gracie. “It’s all wrong!” she said.
“It looks okay to me,” I grumbled. It was hard to stay cross, though. Gracie was standing next to me, leaning toward the rock chair, and the breeze was blowing the soft curls of her hair against my arm.
“Is it supposed to be a throne?” she asked, sounding doubtful.
“No, a chair,” I said.
The words weren’t even all the way out of my mouth when I wished I’d lied. A throne sounded so much better.
“A chair?” Gracie repeated. It was clear from her tone that she couldn’t possibly have been less impressed.
“I was making a wall at the start,” I told her.
“A wall?” she echoed, her voice even more incredulous.
“Why?”
“I just wanted to make something.”
“A wall in a field,” she said. She seemed unable to grasp the idea.
“Well, it was going to be a fort,” I explained. “That was just the first wall.”
“Oh, a fort.” That seemed to make more sense to her. At least, she nodded and stopped looking as though I was a rabid gopher or something. “Well, you don’t have enough for that.”
“So? What would you have made?” I asked. I wasn’t really interested in her ideas. I just doubted she’d come up with anything that was any good, and then I could make fun of her the way she’d done with me.
Gracie pondered. She stared at the rocks, frowning while she thought. Then her face lit up and she shouted, “A Circle of Truth!”
“A what?”
“A circle where you can only tell the truth, no matter what. But you’re never, ever allowed to tell anybody else anything you hear in there.”
I was still turning the idea over in my head when Gracie started pulling rocks out of place, taking down the chair. I jumped in, doing the same, yanking hard on them so she’d see that I could handle the task better than some scrawny girl.
“I’ll get the big ones,” I told her.
“There are no big ones,” she answered.
“Well, I couldn’t find any really big ones,” I said. “But some of ’em are heavier than they look.”
Gracie shrugged and went back to what she was doing. For a few moments the only sounds were those of the rocks clacking together as we dismantled the stone chair.
“My best friend’s name is Karly,” Gracie blurted suddenly. “Karly Grasse. Only, I don’t know if I’ll get to see her again, since she still lives…in my old town, and I live here now.”
The Glory Wind Page 3