Christmas Under Western Skies

by Anna Schmidt

  “That could be years, Glory. You read the papers. The railroad might not reach us until the next decade. I’d never ask Nathan to wait so long—anything could happen.”

  “Then go west with him. There’s nothing keeping you here—not really.”

  Julianne wrapped her arms around her friend’s thin shoulders. “Only you and Sam and our friends, and this place that I promised—”

  Glory wheeled around so that the two women were eye to eye. “Now you listen to me, Julianne, Big Luke would never have wanted you to sacrifice your chance at real happiness for this piece of land. The promise I expect he’d hold you to is the one I heard him ask of you that last night—the one to promise him that you would remarry and make a real home for the twins and yourself.”

  “He was thinking about here in Homestead, Glory.

  You know what this place meant to him—and to me,” she hastened to add.

  “What I know is that living in the past is a pure waste of time and an affront to God Almighty. How many signs do you need, girl?” Glory shook her gently.

  Julianne pulled away and turned back to stirring the batter for the wishing cake. “He’s asked me about my coming to California with him, but—”

  “And you said what?”

  “I turned him down. I can’t leave and he can’t stay, so let’s just enjoy this time we have—especially this wonderful Christmas that will be filled with enough memories to sustain us all for years to come.”

  “Don’t know why you’d want to live on memories when you could just as easily have the real thing, but it’s Christmas and you’re right. Now is not the time to debate the point—we’ve got all winter for that.”

  Julianne sighed, knowing her friend would not give up, and nothing she could say would change that. She was relieved to hear the stamping of boots and the giggles of the children outside the front door.

  The small, four-foot tree leaned a bit to the left, but it was full and fragrant. Julianne thought she had never seen a more beautiful sight than Nathan standing in the doorway, his arms filled with the branches and snow blowing around his feet, and the twins tugging at his coat as they gave instructions about the trees placement.

  “There by the window,” Laura said.

  “No. Over there,” Luke argued, pointing to a spot in the corner. “That way we can see it when we wake up.”

  “The table,” Julianne said quietly. “We’re having our main meal tomorrow with Glory and Sam—we can work around it until then.”

  “Yeah, the table,” Luke agreed. “Plenty of room for putting presents under those lower branches if we sit it on the table.”

  “Table it is,” Nathan agreed. “Looks a little bare, don’t you think?”

  “Wait,” Laura said, and ran to get the strings of wild berries she’d been working on and the colorful chain made of scraps of fabric that Glory had insisted she had no use for.

  Everyone gathered around the table and dressed the tree. Twice Nathan’s fingers touched Julianne’s as he handed her part of the berry chain. Twice her fingers lingered on his a beat longer than was absolutely necessary.

  “You did a fine job making these trimmings, Laura,” Nathan said, and the girl beamed with pride.

  “I made something for the tree, too,” Luke said shyly. “It’s pretty rough but…” He pulled a roughly whittled wooden star out from under his bed covers. “I’ll do better next year,” he assured them.

  Julianne felt tears fill her eyes. “You will do no such thing,” she said. “This is our star. It’s perfectly wonderful.” She hugged both children to her while Nathan worked the star into the top branches, anchoring it with a small box he took from his pocket.

  Sam blew his nose and Glory sniffed loudly. “Come on, old man,” she ordered. “It’s past time we were getting along back. That turkey’s not going to cook itself.” She kissed the children on their cheeks and squeezed Julianne’s hand. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Reluctantly, Nathan followed them to the door, then glanced back at Julianne. “Merry Christmas.”

  She swallowed around the lump in her throat and rejected the impulse to ask him to stay. “Merry Christmas, Nathan,” she managed. “Thanks to you, it’s going to be a wonderful Christmas.”

  After Nathan and the Fosters left, Julianne busied herself getting the children ready for bed. She told them stories until they finally nodded off, then she tiptoed to the wardrobe and pulled down the gifts she’d bought for them and set them under the little tree. While she’d been busy banking the fire for the night, the children had left some gifts on the table as well. One crudely wrapped and misshapen package was addressed “To my sister, from your brother.”

  Julianne smiled. Next to it were two more gifts, more artistic in their wrapping. Laura had drawn pictures on the plain paper. One gift was for Luke and the other was addressed “To Mama, Love me and Luke.” This time she didn’t even try to stop the tears, because they were tears of happiness and relief and gratitude for the fact that they had all made it through this long, sorrowful year. Thanks to neighbors who had heard about the plan to turn the farm into an orchard, the deep window ledges were crowded with tin cans filled with dirt and unseen apple seeds that she hoped would blossom into saplings in time for spring planting. Thanks to Glory and Sam, she had managed on her own for a year now. And thanks to Nathan, she had rediscovered her heart.

  “Thank you, God,” she whispered as she fingered a branch of the tree, setting free its heady perfume. “Thank you for sustaining us through this time of sorrow and for the love of Glory and Sam and for sending Nathan to us.”

  She paused in her prayer and considered what Captain Nathan Cook had meant to all of them. He had come from five long years of war and despair, and yet his spirit remained positive and strong, so filled with the certainty of better times to come.

  “I wish…”

  She stopped, horrified at what she’d been about to ask. How many times had she told the twins that prayers were not to be used as substitute for wishes?

  She buried her face in her hands. “I love him so,” she whispered.

  “He would stay if you asked,” Jacob had said, and perhaps he would. But was asking him to stay at the expense of reuniting with his brother really love? Wasn’t it more a mark of how much she had come to love him that she was willing to let him go? She brushed her tears away with the hem of her apron. “Thy will be done, Lord,” she murmured, as she trimmed the wick on the lamp and went to check on the twins.

  She had just put on her nightgown and gotten into bed when she noticed the small box nestled at the very top of the tree anchoring Luke’s star. It was tied with a green ribbon and there was a small card she had not noticed before. Drawn to the package, she climbed out of bed, wrapping herself in a quilt. She reached up and removed the box, careful not to disturb Luke’s star.

  “For Julianne…whatever happens, you have won my heart. Nathan”

  She untied the thin satin ribbon and opened the box. Inside was a small wooden heart strung on another piece of the green satin ribbon—the perfect length for tying around her neck. She started to put it on but then stopped. She wanted Nathan to tie it around her neck that first time.

  “Tomorrow,” she whispered, as she placed the small carved heart back in its box. “On Christmas.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Nathan was like a child who couldn’t sleep on Christmas Eve. He tossed and turned through the long night. Had she seen his gift? Had she opened it? Would she know it was meant to say so much more than the words he’d finally written on the note?

  He slipped out of his bed and dressed in the dark cold of the Fosters’ upper loft. As he climbed down the ladder to the main room of the cabin, he could hear Glory and Sam breathing steadily as they slept behind the curtain Glory had devised to give them—and him—privacy. He tiptoed to the door where he pulled on his boots and his coat and hat.

  Outside it was still dark, but it had snowed overnight and the white-covered
fields gave off a luminescent light. In an hour it would be dawn. By the time he saddled Salt and rode over to her place, Julianne would probably be up and out tending to the morning chores. He checked his pockets for the presents he planned to give the twins, then mounted Salt and rode off across the fields that he had come to know as well as he’d known the way to his father’s home back in Virginia.

  Home.

  It was all that had kept him going those long years of the war. And then he had returned to the place of his youth and found it all gone—the plantation in ruins, his family in disarray and the girl he’d thought would wait for him forever married to his best friend.

  But Nathan had gotten through the horror of the war believing one thing—that God had His reasons for everything that happened, and that having faith meant accepting that in time His reasons would become clear. In the meantime, life was short, as he had discovered numerous times on the battlefield, and it was surely a sin not to live out the days given in an attitude of joy and gratitude.

  By the time he rode the distance that separated the two homesteads, the sun was starting to rise. It promised to be a splendid day—clear and cold. Nathan saw the curl of smoke before he and Salt topped the ridge and saw the cabin.

  As he had imagined, she was out in the yard, scattering feed in a space young Luke had cleared for the chickens. She was wearing the same blue wool dress she’d worn that first Sunday he’d taken the pulpit. She’d covered her head and shoulders with the plaid, woolen shawl that hung with the children’s coats next to an empty hook near the door.

  That empty hook had held her husband’s coat, he was certain, but recently, and without thinking he had taken to hanging his outer jacket there whenever he entered the house.

  He heard the squeals of the children as they threw open the front door waving wrapping paper and the gifts she had left for them. Young Luke proudly modeled the wide-brimmed hat. Nathan couldn’t see what Laura was holding, but her smile told him she was just as pleased with the art supplies as her brother was with the hat.

  He tapped Salt’s haunches with his heels and the horse trotted down the ridge toward the cabin.

  “Merry Christmas,” he called, and the twins turned at the sound and began running to meet him. Julianne did not run with them, but she stopped scattering feed and waited for him to admire the children’s gifts.

  He dropped the reins and let Luke lead Salt to the hitching post, while he pulled Laura up into the saddle with him. She proudly showed him her collections of brushes and paints. “And there’s paper as well,” she said. “Mama said we would make it into a sketchbook. All real artists have sketchbooks that they carry with them everywhere,” she assured him.

  They had reached the cabin and he lifted Laura to the ground then dismounted himself. “Good morning,” he said, tipping his hat and scanning Julianne’s throat for any sign of the heart he’d carved for her.

  “You’re out early,” she replied, and he wanted to believe that the pink on her cheekbones was shyness because she was sorting through her feelings for him and not the cold. “Come in. We’re just about to have some breakfast.”

  “There are more presents,” Luke announced leading the way.

  Inside, over bowls of hot barley with milk, the twins exchanged their gifts for each other. With Julianne’s, help Laura had knitted Luke a pair of mittens and Luke had carved her name into a rough board. “It’s to be the cover of your sketchbook,” he explained. “Mama suggested it.”

  “It’s wonderful,” Laura gushed, and hugged her brother.

  The boy cleared his throat and reached for the last package under the tree. “We got this for you, Mama,” he said. “Laura wrapped it, but I helped.”

  “What could it be,” Julianne said, carefully untying the ribbons and folding back the paper that Nathan was certain she would keep as a treasured memory of this Christmas. She held up a wooden spoon and a small bag.

  “I carved that for you,” Luke told her, “and Laura collected the seeds and made the bag. The captain got me the wood and Laura the fabric.”

  Julianne peeked inside the bag. “There are so many,” she gasped slowly pouring them into an empty bowl. “Wherever did you get so many?”

  “When we were peeling the apples and making the apple butter I saved them all,” Laura explained, “and so did Glory and our teacher and our friends at school. Everyone helped.”

  “Now you’ve got seeds enough to plant apple trees from here to forever,” Luke assured her. “And the spoon’s for stirring the applesauce and butter that you’re gonna make and Laura and I are gonna sell to Mr. Putnam at the mercantile. We’re going to be rich,” he assured her solemnly, “just like Papa dreamed we would be.”

  “Oh, children,” Julianne managed through her tears as she gathered them to her for a hug, “we’re already rich beyond Papa’s wildest imagination.”

  As the children buried their faces against her shoulders, she looked up at Nathan. “There’s one more present,” she said softly. “I found it last night and now that the captain is here I hope he will do the honors.”

  Nathan took down the small box from the top of the tree, noticing that the ribbon had been retied. “So you peeked,” he teased, laughing with joy when Julianne blushed and nodded.

  “What is it, Mama?” Laura asked at the same time that Luke admonished her for peeking. “You told us that wasn’t allowed.”

  Julianne held out her hand to receive the box from Nathan, but instead of giving it to her he opened the lid and took out the necklace.

  “Oh, Mama, it’s so delicate,” Laura cooed, moving in for a closer look.

  “You carved this?” Luke asked. “I don’t think I could ever do anything so tiny.”

  “It’ll take practice,” Nathan said, and reached into his pocket. “This might help.” He handed Luke a small pocketknife. “Merry Christmas, Luke. Oh, and Miss Laura, I didn’t forget you.” He reached inside another pocket and handed her a small china doll.

  “She’s so tiny, but look, Mama,” Laura exclaimed, “she has real silk hair and eyes that open and close and—”

  “What do you say to the captain, children?”

  “Thank you,” they chorused, hugging Nathan’s waist before running to their beds to examine their new gifts.

  Nathan held up the necklace. “May I?” he asked.

  “I waited for you,” she replied, and immediately understood the double meaning of that statement. As he tied the ribbon around her throat and then rested his hands on her shoulders, she covered his hands with hers crossed over her heart. “I will wait for you,” she murmured. “If you want. In spring, go west and find Jake, then come back to us. We’ll be here waiting.”

  He thought his heart would beat right out of his chest, it hammered so hard against the bindings of bone and muscle. “Don’t promise what you can’t know to be true,” he murmured against her hair.

  She turned and stared up at him. “Nathan, I don’t know why that girl you left behind during the war did not wait. What I do know is that her love was not strong enough. Luke and I defied family and friends to come west—we both knew what we were leaving behind, what we were giving up. I know true love when I have it, and I know that I love you with all my heart. God willing, you return that depth of feeling and will come back to us. In the meantime…”

  He kissed her then and she kissed him back, until she became aware of the children’s muffled giggles and tried to pull away. “The children,” she whispered.

  “…are going to have to get used to it,” he replied and kissed her again before releasing her. “Now then, Master Luke, how about putting on your jacket and that fine new hat and helping me hitch up the wagon. By the time we go by and pick up Mrs. Foster and get to the schoolhouse, it’ll be time for services.” He didn’t have to add that Sam Foster was already at the little schoolhouse getting a fire started and making sure the benches were in place for an overflow crowd.

  “What did you give the captain, Mama?”
Laura asked when they were all settled in the wagon and on their way to pick up Glory.

  “I…” In her excitement over the necklace he’d carved for her, Julianne had completely forgotten to give Nathan the gift she’d made for him. She’d stayed up late for several nights in a row spinning the fine merino wool she’d bartered from Elton Hanson two years earlier, and then never used because Luke had fallen ill. After his death there had seemed no purpose for such fine wool.

  But even in spring, Nathan would need the warmth of a scarf, and she hoped that such a fine one would remind him of her—would eventually bring him back to her.

  “You said you were making him something from all of us,” Laura reminded her. “You didn’t forget, did you?”

  “No. I… Oh, Nathan, I do apologize. Your gift is back at the cabin.”

  “No matter,” he replied cheerfully. “Gives me a good reason to come calling later this evening. Besides—” he winked at Laura “—I’m still hoping to get that wishing coin in my piece of cake today. That would sure enough be a fine present, especially if I get my wish.”

  “Don’t tell,” Luke warned.

  “He knows that,” Laura said. “There’s Mrs. Foster,” she cried, waving wildly. “I can’t wait to show her my doll.”

  Suddenly it occurred to Julianne how Glory would view the necklace that Nathan had given her. She fingered the small carved heart and considered tucking it beneath the high collar of her dress.

  But then she saw Nathan watching her and knew that he had read her thoughts. He had given her far more than a token that morning. The man had offered her his heart, and regardless of what anyone thought, she wasn’t about to hide it. She straightened the necklace so that the heart was perfectly centered—and perfectly obvious to everyone. And she couldn’t help noticing that a breath of relief preceded the smile Nathan gave her as she scooted closer to him to make room for Glory.

  Nathan had worked for nearly two weeks on his sermon for the Christmas service. He wanted to give the people of Homestead a sense of what they meant to him, of how they had taken in this stranger and made a place for him in their community and their hearts. How they had trusted him to lead them in worship and how they had rewarded him by asking him to stay—even though they knew he could not.