My Children Are More Precious Than Gold

by Risner, Fay

  “It's been a while since Pap left. Shouldn't he be back by now?” Sid asked his mother as he jumped Lue’s last checker. He listened to the moaning wind whip around the house. Visibility had to be poor so he worried about his father being out in the storm alone.

  “Yep,” agreed Lue. “I think his hour must be up, Mama.”

  “Supposen we should go see what's keepen him?” Don was uncomfortable on the hard floor. Besides, he wanted any excuse he could think of to stop the domino game, because he was losing.

  “Just wait a bit. Ya have to go out in this awful storm soon enough to do chores. I hate to see you out there too soon. Maybe yer pap will be back by chore time.” Nannie spoke calmly though her forehead wrinkled with worry creases.

  More time passed. The storm moved on, and still Jacob wasn’t back.

  “Mama, we better go hunt fer Pap. He should have been back afore now,” Sid insisted as he looked out the window. “The storm's let up now, and still no sign of him comen down the pasture hill with the milk cow.”

  “Spect yer right. Don and Lue, ya all go hunt fer Pap. Sid, ya and Tom go start the chores. They need to be done. It'll be dark soon,” suggested Nannie.

  “Sure, Mama,” the boys cried in unison as they rushed for the row of coats.

  When Lue reached for his coat, his hand caught on something on Jacob's empty nail. “What's this here?”

  “Looks like yarn,” said Don.

  “Sure enough does. Ain't this the color of Pap's scarf?” Lue ran his fingers along the yarn to where it was caught under the door. “Pap must have caught his scarf on the nail, and it's comen undone.” Lue opened the door, and lifted up on the brown yarn to pop it from under the snow drift on the porch. He came back in and untwisted the end hooked on Jacob's coat nail. The string was so long, Lue rolled the yarn into a ball. “Don, let's follow this here string. Maybe it will lead us to Pap.”

  “That could be a hopeless thing to do. As long as Pap's scarf is, he could have gone the whole length of the Blue Ridge Mountains afore that scarf would come undone enough he’d notice it was missen from his neck and head.” Don giggled at the thought as he stepped out on the porch behind Lue.

  Wood smoke hung heavily in the air, caught in a down draft created by the north wind coming over the roof. Lue and Don walked through the smoky, snow drifted yard, down the lane, and up the pasture hill.

  Once in a while the overcast sky spit a few lacy flakes at them as a last reminder of the storm. They trod toward the blue gray horizon. The only sound breaking the silence was the rhythmic crunch underfoot as the boys struggled through the deep, crusted snow.

  Rolling the ball of icy yarn while he walked, Lue gently pulled to lift it from under the snow so he wouldn’t break it. This yarn was the only trace of Jacob, because the blowing snow had long ago filled his tracks.

  At the base of the hill's backside, the boys found the Christmas tree laying where Jacob dropped it. A flock of sparrows fluttered off the branches and flew away, disturbed from their popcorn feast by the boys noisy approach.

  Lue cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, “Pap, Pap!”

  The echo, P-A-A-P, P-A-A-P, bounced back at them from the distant ridge over the wind’s eerie moan. The wind whistled through the frosted, white pines and the leafless trees blanketed in snow.

  “Look! There's the cows over yonder by the creek.” Lue pointed in the livestock's direction and felt the cold air sting the tip of his chilled, blue finger, sticking out of the hole in his wool glove. “Maybe Pap's over there.”

  “Maybe he did go to see if the creek's froze over. He'd have to break the ice so the cattle could drink ifen it was,” Don puffed, sending small clouds of steam floating away in front of his face.

  At the top of the knoll, the boys spotted at the same time a brown hump moving in the snow some distance from them.

  “Pap!” Lue and Don yelled together as they staggered along through the deep snow.

  Lue stopped rolling the yarn and stuck the ball in his coat pocket. The rest of the yarn trailed behind him, leaving a small groove in the snow as it popped to the surface.

  The boys heard a groan escaped Jacob's blue lips when they reached his snow covered form. “Pap, what happened?” Lue panted, dropping to his knees beside his father. “What's wrong with ya?”

  Jacob’s face contorted with pain as he struggled to speak. “I -- I tripped on an icy rock hidden in the snow. I -- I think I broke my leg.”

  “Hold on. We'll get ya home,” Lue assured him. “Don, break off some branches on that old, snaggled tree over yonder to make a splint. I'll roll up the rest of this yarn.”

  “Why bother with that old yarn now?” Don puzzled. “We done found Pap with it.”

  “We need it to hold a splint on his broken leg. Now hurry up afore Pap freezes to death.” Lou heard his father's teeth chattering behind his trembling, blue lips. He knew they had to work fast.

  Don laid the sticks down around Jacob's leg, and gently lifted it. Jacob moaned softly as the movement caused his pain to increase. As fast as he could, Lue ran the yarn ball around and up and down the splint to hold the sticks tightly to the leg until the ball was gone.

  “Pap, we’re ready to start toten ya home now. Don, hep me lift him.” Lue lifted under Jacob’s arms. Don picked up his father's legs. Jacob felt the pain sear through him. He cried out and fainted. “Pap's better off not feelen this,” Lue comment, struggling to keep his balance in the snow. “He's heavy to tote in this deep snow so we’re not gonen to be able to move fast.”

  Soon exhausted, the boys gently laid the unconscious man down in the snow and sat down beside him to rest.

  “Kin we make it home with Pap afore dark?” panted Don.

  “Sure we kin. Just rest a minute.” Lue had to be optimistic for Don’s sake even though he knew it would too soon be dark.

  “I don't know. I'm pooped,” Don complained.

  “I sure do wish we had a cart to carry Pap,” Lue wished, trying to get his brother on another subject besides himself.

  Moo -- oo! Just then the jersey cow, Daisy, greeted them as she climbed the hill on her way to the barn for the nightly milking. A creature of habit, instinct told her where the cow path was even when it lay buried deep beneath the snow.

  “Don!” Lue grabbed his brother's arm. “There's our cart comen now.”

  “Ya've gone crazy from the cold. That's Daisy, but we do need to get her to the barn to be milk,” Don said.

  “I know that. Stop her, and we'll put Pap on her,” Lue said in a hopeful voice.

  “Think we kin?” Don said, brightening up.

  “Sure. She lets the younguns ride her to the barn all the time, don't she?” Lue reasoned.

  “Yep, but Pap is heavier than the younguns, and he cain't sit up,” Don reasoned.

  “So we'll hold him on. Go catch her,” Lue ordered.

  Don met the family's tawny milk cow and walked along side her toward Lue and Pap. Calmly, she watched him with her large, dark brown eyes while she tromped up the hill. As soon as the cow and Don were even with Jacob, he put his arms around her neck to stop her. “Lue, undo what's left of that scarf around Pap's neck and hand it to me. I'll put it around Daisy's neck for a halter to hep lead her.

  “Here it is.” Lue tossed Don the scarf. “Now hold on to Daisy.”

  Lue put his hands under Jacob's arms, straining to lift his father's limp body. Don, with his free hand, grabbed the seat of Jacob's pants to help boost him, but Daisy's ice covered, broad back was slick. So were Jacob's snow covered clothes. Add to that the fact their fingers were numb from the cold. The boys couldn’t keep their grip on the heavy man’s clothes. Jacob slid head first over the other side of the cow and sank into the deep snow. Fluffy flakes billowed around him, dusting him with a new layer of snow. He lay in a motionless, frosted heap with his brown yarn covered, splinted leg sticking up in the air like a fence post.

  “Don, y'all shouldn't have pushed so hard,” Lue accused r
unning around the cow.

  “Me push hard! I only had one hand to use. I'm holden the cow with the other one. Y'all was supposed to hold onto Pap!” Don argued in his defense, trying to hold Daisy still. She nervously sidestepped to see what had happened beside her.

  Once again, Lue lifted Pap. Don grabbed hold of the seat of his pants. Together, they boosted him slowly onto Daisy's back.

  With a better grip this time, Lue held his father in place. “Don, get Daisy moven.”

  “Come on, Daisy. Head fer the barn,” Don coaxed, tugging on the scarf around the cow's neck.

  The dusky, afternoon light rapidly faded into dusk. Standing in the barn door, Sid and Tom strained to see through the twilight, watching for Daisy. They spotted their brothers wading the snow on the pasture hill, leading the milk cow. When Lue and Don were close enough for Sid and Tom to make out that Daisy had a burden on her back, the boys burst from the barn door to meet the cow.

  Don led the cow close to the porch and held her as Sid helped Lue remove Jacob. Tom held the door open while the boys carried their father in and laid him by the fireplace.

  Cass and Bess hurried to the cookstove to get Lue and Don a cup of coffee while the cold boys dropped down close to the fire, sticking their numb hands toward the warmth.

  Alma and Veder scurried off to bring quilts to cover the boys to stop their shivering. Nannie knelt down beside Jacob to see what she needed to do for him.

  “We'll need to set his leg afore he wakes up, Mama. It's broke,” Lue said as he wrapped his cold fingers around the steaming cup Bess handed him. “He tripped on a rock hidden by the snow in the pasture.”

  “Boys, after I get this splint cut away, hep me get his pants offen him,” Nannie said.

  Sid and Tom removed Jacob’s jeans. Nannie rolled his red long john leg up to inspect the white indented spot on his right leg shin.

  “Sid, Tom, Lue and Don hold him still while I pull on his leg to set it. I got to get this done afore his leg starts to swell now that he’s in here where its warm,” Nannie instructed.

  The boys took a tight grip on each side of Jacob. With a pained expression on their faces, they turned their heads away so they wouldn’t have to watch. Nannie jerked hard on the leg. The grating crunch sounded loud as bone ground against bone when the two pieces popped back into place.

  “Dillard, bring me some of the longer pieces of kindling from the wood box. Alma, get some strips of cloth out of the medicine box. Sid and Tom get back at those chores now. That cow needs to be milked. Might as well get ‘em all over with,” Nannie ordered.

  “We’s about done cept fer milken Daisy, Mama. She’s still standen in the yard. I’ll take her to the barn,” said Sid, putting on his coat.

  With Cass and Bess holding Jacob's leg between the sticks, Nannie wrapped the cloth strips tightly around the kindling. “Now, younguns, get busy rubben Pap's hands and feet. He may have frostbite. We don't want him to lose his fingers and toes. Lue and Don, y'all ought to get back over by the fire and warm up. Ya look most froze to death.”

  Jacob groaned softly. The family stopped what they were doing and quickly gathered around him He opened his eyes and turned his head from side to side as he focused on the concerned faces leaning over him.

  “Lay still, Pap. Ya're home now,” Lue assured him, patting his father's shoulder.

  “How ya feelen?” Asked Don.

  “My leg throbs somethin awful. I know it's broke and should hurt, but fer some reason, I have one heck of a headache, too,” he said, rubbing the top of his head.

  Nannie caught the look that passed between Lue and Don. She decided this was no time to find out what they knew about Jacob's headache. It could be he hit his head when he fell. Maybe he just didn’t remember it, but she made a mental note that later she should get the boys alone. She'd like to find out the details of Jacob's rescue.

  “The boys found ya and brought y'all home, Jacob. Yer goen to be okay so jest rest easy.” Nannie stroked her husband's shoulder, relieved that Jacob seemed to be alert.

  “Thank ya, boys,” Jacob whispered weakly. “I don't know how y'all found me so fast, but I'm glad that ya did afore I froze to death.”

  “We are, too,” Don agreed.

  “It was easy to find ya, Pap,” Lue said with a grinned. “That scarf Bess made led us to ya.”

  “My scarf?” Pap looked as if he hadn't heard right.

  For proof, Don held the much shorter, brown scarf up for Jacob to see. Bess's Christmas gift had loops showing all along one end with a piece of yarn dangling and ready to release a new row. “The scarf was coming unraveled from your coat nail when you left so we followed the yarn to you.”

  A weak smile spread across Jacob's face. “I hope all of y'all hold Bess's gift in a new light after this.”

  “Yep, we sure do. It helped keep y'all warm, and saved yer life, too,” Don said.

  Wanting to contribute something to the scarf's praise, Dillard piped up with, “It sure made a great lead rope for Daisy.”

  Everyone burst out laughing. Bess looked over at her mother. Nannie was watching her for a reaction, because Nannie knew how sensitive Bess had been about that scarf. Her mother shouldn’t have worried. Bess laughed right along with everyone else. She could see the humor of their milk cow wearing Pap's brown woolen scarf around her neck.

  Chapter 2

  February Ice Storm

  On Valentine's Day, a tempestuous ice storm set in. To the Bishop children it felt like another miserable winter day to be cooped up in the cabin rather than a holiday.

  In the front yard, the mulberry tree's branches hung to the ground, encased in the same thick coating of glassy ice as every other object outside.

  Standing at the window, Jacob watched his boys slip and slide to the barn on the slick ground to do the morning chores. He chewed on his lower lip as he silently yearned to be helping them.

  Jacob prayed his leg mended fast. He couldn’t afford to be laid up in the spring when it was time to plant fields on his seventy acre ridge farm. His sons could do only so much without him to show them how.

  It would soon be time to plant corn and tobacco. It took the whole family to plant the fields by hand. Jacob and the boys had broadcaster wheat, rye and flax and harrowed over the seed last fall. He expected to see green plants shining in those fields in the spring, moistened by the snow cover melt.

  Carefully turning, he hopped on his left foot to the wood cook stove, using a sassafras walking stick for support. Turning the latch below the large letters -- MAJESTIC -- painted on the white enamel door of the warming shelf, Jacob opened it. He stuck a finger in a grease blackened bread pan filled with shelled corn to see if the yellow kernels had warmed up enough to feed the chickens.

  After Jacob shut the warming oven door, he poured himself a second cup of coffee out of the large, blue granite coffee pot sizzling on the back of the stove. He set the pot down next to the steaming tea kettle, blackened around the bottom from years the cook stove.

  Hearing the soothing tone of Nannie's voice, Jacob turned, letting the cook stove's heat penetrate his backside while he watched Nannie try to spoon feed Lydia. Their youngest had been sickly for the better part of a month with what Nannie thought was the grip. Nannie made her a pallet on the floor next to the fireplace, trying to keep her warm. The little girl's hacking cough had let up some, and Lydia seemed cooler to the touch, but she stayed weak. It didn't help any that she refused to eat more that a few bites at a time.

  Finally, Nannie gave up, dropped the spoon into the blue speckled, granite bowl of stewed rabbit broth and crumbled cornbread. She gently lowered Lydia's head back onto her plump, goose down pillow.

  After she placed the bowl on the work counter, Nannie joined Jacob by the stove. Glancing in Lydia's direction to make sure she wasn't listening, Nannie spoke in a lowered voice, “Jacob, when this storm lets up we need to send Sid for Doc Jensen in Christensenburg. Lydia’s been sick fer too long, and she don’t seem to be
getten any better.”

  Jacob frowned.“I can see that. Wish I could go myself. That's a fer piece for a youngun to go alone in weather like this.”

  “Well, y'all cain't so do it so jest be patient. Yer leg's about mended, but it ain’t that good yet that ya could go gallivanten around,” scolded Nannie.

  “How well I know. It itches clean to the bone,” Jacob complained as he glanced down at his dingy cloth covered splint, partly hidden by his split jean leg. He wished he could figure out a way to scratch the deep itch that was driving him crazy.

  The next morning, the sun rose over the east ridge, bouncing rays off the glistening ice covered surroundings. Soon the rise in temperature began to thaw the ice. Chunks turned loose, shattering nosily like broken glass when hunks hit the ground.

  After breakfast, Nannie spoke to Sid. “Son, think y'all could make it to Christensenburg for Doc Jensen? We need him to take a look at Lydia.”

  “Sure, Mama,” Sid agreed. He was proud to be picked for a job he knew Pap would have done if it hadn’t been for his broken leg.

  “Let me go,” pleaded Tom.

  “No, Sid's the oldest, besides ya need to stay here to help the younger boys do the evening chores. Y'all may get yer turn soon enough, youngun, if we all catch what Lydia's got.” Nannie glanced worriedly over at the youngest of her children. She seemed to be peacefully napping. “I cain't figure out why none of the rest of us has caught the grip from Lydia.”

  “It’s best to let Doc take a look at her and tell us what ails her,” agreed Jacob. Sitting at the table, he vigorously rubbed the splint on his leg as though he could stopped the itch underneath.

  On good days, the trip to town down brush lined, narrow, rocky roads, was a long journey for anyone riding bareback. When old Major, one of the Bishop work horses, had to pick carefully where he walked, the going was very slow indeed. At least with the chunks of ice strewed about on the ground that had fallen from the trees and brush, the ice roughened road wasn’t so slick under the horse's hooves.