Sarah's Promise

by Leisha Kelly

  I found out all he needed was a ride to Clayton, the very next town down the road. I was glad I’d stopped. He directed me to the café right across from the square and offered to buy me a cup of coffee for my trouble. But I was keen aware how close I was to Camp Point and I didn’t want another stop to give me a chance at being delayed again. So I just let him out and went on. Only six more miles. Man, oh, man, it was going to be a relief to be there.

  I was feeling the cold pretty fierce that last stretch of road, but I was feeling satisfied too. Maybe I was two days late, but I’d done it. Camp Point in the moonlight was a pretty sight to me because a’ that. And even in the dark it wasn’t hard to find Pickinpaugh Motors, nor Sam’s house. And they must a’ been watching. Just as soon as I killed the engine, I heard a squeal from somebody little, and Sam come running out to meet me with four of his six young’uns. It was good.

  9

  Sarah

  I lay awake that night sorting through everything Frank had told me in his call. Two different families would have been in desperate straits if he hadn’t happened along. I had to accept that the Lord was working good in this trip, even though I didn’t like it. And I prayed Frank was in a warm bed now.

  What else do you have in store for us, Lord? What are you trying to tell me?

  I couldn’t stop thinking about those hurting people. Frank knew what it was like to have little, and to be in pain. He’d known what to do, and he’d done it well. I shouldn’t have let myself fret so much for him, but I didn’t know how to help it. I’d probably stay fretting, at least a little, until he was safe back home.

  Now I was anxious to get tomorrow’s assurance that he’d truly gotten to Camp Point. I prayed to never again have to feel so scared for him. Thoughts of his return trip tried to cloud my mind, but I shoved them aside. He is in the Lord’s hands. Everything will be all right.

  I lay a long while listening to some unknown dog barking again. It must have been very late when I finally got to sleep. And then I dreamed of snow, acres and piles of it, interrupting our June wedding.

  In the morning I was in a hurry to get through chores so we could leave for town. Dressing quick and then pulling on coat and boots, I rushed out to gather the eggs for breakfast. But as I got close to the chicken house, I saw a new shadow. Something big with an awkward gait was coming around the corner near the fence. I froze, but it kept on coming. A dog. Every bit as big as the one I’d had to shoot three days ago. But this one was brown and mottled gray, mangy and skinny with a huge smashed-in-looking face. It saw me and stopped in its tracks.

  Not again! I felt all trembly. Is it mad? And here I am without Robert’s rifle!

  I tried to think fast, wondering if I could get into the chicken house before this beast would have a chance to get hold of me. It was the ugliest dog I’d ever seen in my life, with a bowed leg in front and huge slobbery jaws. We just stood and stared at each other for a moment. Dad was in the barn. Would he hear me if I called?

  But this dog hadn’t bared its teeth. Its neck hairs weren’t ruffled. Maybe it wasn’t dangerous. It was just staring at me, as if it were trying to figure out what to do the same as I was.

  “Go away,” I told it. “Go home. Leave us and our chickens alone.”

  But it seemed pretty plain that this dog didn’t have a home. It was in poor shape, looking half starved or more. It cocked its head at me and plunked down in the snow as if it were too weary to stand up anymore. I wasn’t afraid then, but I still felt a little uncomfortable with those big brown eyes staring at me.

  “You are ugly,” I told it. “And uninvited. Where’d you come from?”

  Another strange dog! I wondered if there might not be a pack of wild dogs around here close. But this one didn’t act wild. At least I didn’t think so at the moment. And we’d had strays wander through before. Just not within two days of each other.

  “Did you know that big monster that was here the other day?” I asked the dog in front of me, even though I knew I was being silly. The dog cocked its head again and then laid the big bulk of it down across its forepaws and gazed up at me as if it were waiting for something special.

  “My folks might not want to feed something as big as you,” I said. “Doubtful you’d earn your keep.”

  He only watched me, and I sighed. “Will you let me get in the chicken house? Just stay right there if you’re not going to go away. Leave me alone and let me do my chores.”

  He did. That big dog stayed exactly in that spot till I’d finished gathering the eggs and had given the chickens their feed. And when I was ready to go back to the house, he got up to follow me.

  “Oh no, you don’t.”

  But there was no preventing him, much as I tried. He followed me all the way to the house and even up onto the porch. He would have come inside except that I managed to get the door shut quick enough. He surely was persistent. Thank God he wasn’t threatening.

  Katie said we should shoo him away, but she didn’t open the door to try it. Mom peeked out, looked at the creature, and was immediately sympathetic.

  “It’s so thin. Probably hoping we’ll spare a bite.”

  “Are you going to feed it?” I asked, not sure how I felt about that. It might stick around if we fed it. And I usually liked dogs, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about this one.

  Mom shook her head. “Your father will be in from the barn soon enough. We’ll see what he says.”

  Katie waited anxiously for Dad to come in from milking. She was not keen on that dog, I could tell. But she usually liked animals almost as well as I did. Having such a close call with that other big dog might have had even more effect on her than I knew.

  Dad was awhile coming in from the porch. He was talking to the dog, just like I’d done. He came in and set the milk on the table. “Well, at least we know what’s been keeping us up at night.”

  “He’s huge,” Katie said immediately. “What if he was running with the other one?”

  Dad went to the washbowl and soaped up his hands. “He seems friendly enough. But at this point, I guess there’s no way to tell.”

  “There’s no sign of disease, is there?” Mom asked.

  “No. But I don’t want you girls close around him much till I get to know him a little better. Maybe he’ll wander off on his own.”

  “If he doesn’t,” Katie protested, “how do we keep from being close to him if he’s right on our porch?”

  Dad nodded. “He wants company, all right. Was glad to greet me. Would have been happy to come in.” He wiped his hands and then sat in the nearest chair. “I’ll have to think about that pretty soon if he doesn’t wander off.”

  I thought the big dog would surely mosey away after a while, since we hadn’t fed him. But Dad and I were almost ready to go into town, and he was still in the same spot, right outside the door.

  Dad sighed and turned to Mom. “Give me the scrap bucket, Julia, and throw a crust of bread and the leftover scrambled eggs into it. I’ll put him in a barn stall and tell it around that he’s here. Maybe somebody’ll claim him.”

  “What if they don’t?” Katie asked with concern.

  Dad had a ready answer. “I’ll keep him in the barn and watch for a couple of weeks, just to make sure he’s all right. If he is, then he can start getting used to the place if he wants to. It’d be all right with me to have a dog around again. So long as he leaves the chickens alone.”

  Katie wasn’t thrilled, but she didn’t argue. She just gave me a letter she’d written to her beau, Dave Kliner, and asked me to mail it for her while we were out. It was a little strange for her not to go in to work for so long, but the five-and-dime was closed for some changes to the building, and Katie was using as much of the time as she could to work on a quilt for the Ladies’ Society benefit at our church.

  I was supposed to be helping, but I hadn’t done at all well lately with my mind elsewhere, mostly on Frank. Mom and I had cut out the pieces for my wedding dress, but we hadn’t starte
d sewing it yet. Mom said winter was the time for handwork, when there wasn’t so much work with fields and the garden and all. But other than Katie’s tea towels, I hadn’t gotten very far with anything. I probably had “marrying nerves,” as our neighbor Mrs. Post would say. She’d asked me before Christmas if I was feeling them yet. It’d hit her six months early, she’d said, and she could hardly do anything the whole time but stew.

  I didn’t think I was that bad off, just more of a worrier than usual because of Frank’s trip. I got my coat on again and tried not to think about it.

  I promise to trust you, Lord, I prayed. And I promise to trust Frank, no matter what comes. Even if I do have “marrying nerves.”

  The weather was warmer today, and Dad and I were quiet driving into town. I couldn’t help thinking again about the people Frank had met. His willingness to help strangers reminded me of the conversation I’d had with our pastor not long ago. He always talked to both parties when a marriage was decided upon. But what he’d had to say to me was surely not typical.

  “Frank is a special young man, and I’ve always thought it would take a special girl to be his wife. There’s more in Frank’s future than his woodwork. He has a heart for people, Sarah. A rare caring that is the very best qualification for ministry.”

  He’d asked me if I thought I could handle it all right if someday Frank was called to preach. And I’d told him it couldn’t possibly bother me. I loved Frank, and no kind of calling would change that. Besides, I already had a brother who had started preaching, so it was not such a strange thought to me.

  But now I knew that at the time I’d given that assurance I hadn’t really thought it through. Of course I still believed my answer was the right one. But how would I feel if Frank told me he wanted to go to the mission field like Robert? I’d never thought such a thing could happen. I’d always been sure Frank was a homebody like me. But no one knows what the years may hold. At this point, I wasn’t even sure about tomorrow.

  Frank called right on time, and I was thrilled there’d been no more trouble. They were starting the moving that very day, and they would try to get as much done as they could before Sam began his new job next week.

  “Maybe moving won’t take as long as they thought,” I suggested.

  “Maybe not,” Frank answered. “But Sam wants me to put a stair rail in at their new house, plus fix a couple of other things. He’ll keep me busy awhile, no doubt about that.”

  I wanted to ask if he’d met Thelma’s Uncle Milton yet, but I couldn’t. The thought made me feel a little green inside. We knew nobody in Camp Point except Sam and his family, and they wouldn’t be there after they finished moving. There was no reason even to think about the place.

  At least it was a relief to picture Frank safe and sound at Sam’s house. We went by to see Frank’s older sister Lizbeth before we went home and told her all about his trip. She was glad to hear. Apparently she’d been fretting as badly as I was, but her little girl, Mary Jane, was down sick with bronchitis so they hadn’t been able to come and inquire.

  “We should have known,” she told me, “that if Frank met up with any trouble it would be somebody else’s. He had plenty of faith for that drive.”

  Of course she was right. And I knew she hadn’t meant those words as any kind of rebuke, but I took them to heart anyway. I should be able to have as much confidence in him as he had in himself. Even more. And it should be easy. He’d never given me reason to doubt.

  Dad and I were home by noon, and Katie’d made so much progress on her quilt that instead of helping her then, I got out the pieces to my wedding dress after lunch and began sewing the bodice. Oh, it was going to be beautiful. I decided I’d better sew up the dress shirt for Frank to wear too, and add a bit of my lace at the collar and cuffs if he’d let me. I’d seen that done before. Anna Leapley’d been very proud of the way she and her husband matched so beautifully at their wedding.

  But Frank didn’t want a big deal made over things like that. Just us and the preacher at our wedding would be all right with him. But it wouldn’t be right not to have my family and his brothers and sisters. And our church family. And that’s a crowd already, so what’s a few more? We’d be inviting over seventy people by the time we were done.

  “Hitched in style,” that’s what Anna Leapley called a big church wedding. And that’d be all right with Frank too, he’d told me once, so long as we were joined by God.

  Katie admired the start I’d made on the wedding dress and promised to help me when the benefit quilt was done. As usual she went to check the mail. And when she came back she had a letter for me amidst the stack, from Donald Mueller. I threw it away without reading it. She looked at me oddly, but I didn’t even try to explain.

  10

  Frank

  It was nice to see Camp Point in the daylight. Sam said he thought I’d really like the store, and since that was figuring in my mind more than anything, I was glad to take a look at it.

  Pratt’s Heating and Lighting. The building was two story and on the main business street, with an awning over the front door and a back door leading out to a dirt alley. It shared walls with a restaurant on one side and a dry goods store on the other. Just like the name might indicate, it held little more than stoves, furnaces, and a big variety of lamps, mostly electric.

  Sam explained that Thelma’s uncle paid him a regular wage to run the store, on the condition that Sam would make the bank payments and eventually own the place, but “Uncle Milty” would continue to reap from the sales until the property was paid off. I thought that strange and asked why Uncle Milty didn’t sell it to him outright and walk away from the business of it, if he intended it to change hands anyway.

  “He don’t want to walk away just yet,” Sam told me. “He likes to come in and talk to folks as the owner when he feels like it. Lot of people don’t even know I was supposed to be buying it. He says by the time the note’s paid, he’ll be full ready to retire. Just not quite yet. But he only comes in two or three days a week. An’ he’s never been hard to deal with.”

  I looked forward to meeting Milton Pratt, but I told Sam I wasn’t sure I could make the same agreement he had. He nodded his head in understanding.

  “I just need somebody to take up those payments,” he explained. “You and him can come to your own terms.”

  “But who’s legal owner?”

  “Both of us, I guess. Till the bank’s paid. Then it was going to all come to me.”

  I thought on that as I looked around a little more. Sam had told me he’d liked the steady wage, that he was making more here than he had in Dearing. The arrangement had worked out fine for him while he needed it. But I didn’t think I could do things the same way. If I was gonna buy and run a store, especially with my own crafted pieces, I’d want to straight-out be the boss, no questions asked. I’d have to buy the place outright or it might get awful complicated with him looking at what was my profit and what was his.

  Most of the ground floor was storefront with just a small room in the back. The upstairs was empty except for storage. Sam suggested that I could live up there. He said Mr. Pratt used to before he bought his house, but it didn’t look like it’d been lived in for a long time. There were only two rooms.

  I didn’t tell Sarah Jean much about the place when it came time to call, and she didn’t ask. I thought it best to talk to Mr. Pratt before I went into much detail. Sarah and I made an appointment to talk again in a few days, and then Sam said he’d show me more of the town. But I couldn’t get my mind off the store. It might work, depending on the terms Mr. Pratt would want. But the back room was a much smaller workshop than I wanted. The store area in front seemed big because I’d never had anything like that to show my work in. But it was almost full already with goods I didn’t care about. The two rooms upstairs would be all right for just me, but I’d still have to think about a house for Sarah. If I was to agree to this. And that was a very big if.

  Sam and I drove slowly down
the street in my truck, with him pointing out the different businesses, especially the ones run by folks he’d come to know. He was having a great time, and I knew he was hoping I’d get excited about the store, but I couldn’t help feeling disappointed. I guess I’d wanted it to stick out to me as special, like a place that was just the right fit for me, and that hadn’t happened. But why was I wanting something to work out clear up here? No wonder Sarah wondered at me.

  Why Sam wanted it, I well understood. It was a way to keep peace with his uncle, who was accusing him of leaving him in a lurch. And a way he could tell himself he was giving me a great opportunity too.

  He took me pretty much all over town, starting with the businesses. The railroad track ran through the middle of town with Railroad Park, a piece of ground on both sides of the tracks, for a town square. Most of the businesses sat facing each other on opposite sides of it. The depot was toward the west end.

  He showed me houses south of the tracks first and told me part of the southwest area was called “little Dublin” because of the Irish immigrants who, often as not, had worked for the railroad. Most of the biggest houses were north of the tracks, especially on Ohio Avenue.

  There was a sizable park clear at the north edge of town, but we couldn’t drive into it because of the snow. Sam said it was called Bailey Park and it’d be nice come spring. The pond reminded him of our pond back home. And they had a big boulder hauled in that all the kids liked to climb on, including his Georgie.

  Fine, I was thinking. It’s an all right place to live. But Mr. Pratt’ll have to have some mighty pretty words to keep me interested in that store of his. Seems like I’d do as well or better back in Mcleansboro.

  I decided to straight-out ask what Sam hadn’t told me yet. “So when am I gonna meet Mr. Pratt, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. He’s eccentric sometimes. Hasn’t told us when he’s coming over, but he knows you’re here. Maybe he’ll show up about suppertime. He’ll prob’ly wanna talk business first thing, but don’t worry. I’ll walk you through everything step-by-step and then make sure you understand any papers ’fore you sign ’em.”