by Leisha Kelly
“Got everything you need?” Samuel asked.
“I think so. If you’ll let me the nails.”
“Don’t have many small ones, but you can use what’s there.” Samuel shoveled a bite of eggs into his mouth and glanced at the cuckoo clock on the wall. “Be careful sawing,” he told Franky. “Especially if anybody comes in the shop to look.”
“Yes, sir.”
Samuel took a last drink of coffee and got up from the table. “I’ll be back before long, one way or another, Juli.”
“Samuel . . .”
He barely glanced my way. “What?”
I didn’t know what to say. Not in front of the children. “I love you.”
He only stopped for a moment. “Thanks. That’s quite a gift.”
Then he was gone. And after looking at poor Katie’s face, I found myself almost hoping Barrett couldn’t part with the truck. It would be wrenching for her if Samuel had to just leave her in town, but the sheriff might suggest it. Maybe he knew a place for children in a situation like this. But would that be the right thing?
I sat for a moment, looking at the door.
“Where’d Mr. Wortham’s brother go?” Franky asked out of the blue.
“I don’t know. He just had to go.”
“They don’t seem much alike.”
“No.” I sighed. “They don’t.”
“Think me an’ Willy’s that differ’nt?”
“Oh, Franky, I don’t know. It’s not the same thing.”
“We’re born differ’nt,” he said. “But then we choose differ’nt too.”
I just looked at him. Thank God Samuel had chosen different. Thank God.
“Guess I better get started,” Franky said cheerfully. “I wanna have somethin’ to show by the time Mr. Wortham gets back.” He stood up with a grin, reached his hat from a hook by the door, and then tipped it to Katie. “Was good t’ meet ya,” he said. “But I gotta get busy.”
“Bye,” she whispered, looking down at the dishes in front of her.
Sarah was picking hers up to carry to the dishpan. “Mommy, can we make ice cream today?”
“Oh, honey, we haven’t the ice or near enough salt.”
“Maybe Daddy could get some.”
“No. Your daddy has too many other things to do.” I never told her we couldn’t afford such a luxury, even homemade. Robert would have understood that. But even he didn’t know we were penniless.
“Blackberries is good too,” she said. “Can we pick blackberries?”
“They’re not quite ready yet, honey, but it’ll be soon. There may be a few more raspberries, but I don’t know if we’ll get to them today. Let’s get everything else done.”
“Like what? What are we gonna do?”
“I’ve got plenty of garden work. And wash to do. Thank goodness I got the bread in the oven before the worst heat.”
“I gotta play with this new girl,” Sarah told me, as if it were a solemn duty.
“I understand that. But you can both help me. It’ll be more fun that way.”
“I like washin’ in the summertime,” she told Katie. “’Cause it’s okay to get wet, an’ you don’t get cold.”
Katie didn’t answer her.
With Sarah’s help, I cleared the rest of the dishes and washed them with some of the water I’d left on the stove to heat. The kitchen was already so warm I thought I’d let the fire go out and cook dinner and supper outside.
When the other dishes were done, I spread the leftover mush in a loaf pan to set. It would be good fried with the little bit of canned sausage we had left on the pantry shelf. For a moment, thoughts of those sparse shelves pinched my insides a little, but I shook away the worry. The Lord will provide. He always has before. That’s in his hands, and I’ve got other things to think about.
I wasn’t sure I should put Katie to working right along with us, but I knew no other way to do but just carry on with what was at hand. So I lugged the two big tubs out around the side of the house and got Franky to help me carry some of the water, because the buckets were too heavy for the little girls. I brought out warm water from the stove inside and let Franky draw from the well for the rinse. Then he went back to his woodwork, and I grated some of Alberta Mueller’s lye soap and started dunking clothes in the tub.
Katie tried her best on the scrub board after watching Sarah and me. She seemed to like Emma’s turn-crank ringer. We did all the dirty clothes I could find. Even Katie’s. I put her in a jumper of Sarah’s, since Edward had gotten off with her change of clothes as well as her dolls.
I let them run and play in the yard while I hung everything on the clothesline. It was a peaceful day, bright and sunny. I prayed that Samuel was peaceful too.
George came in his wagon before I had all the wash up. He had young Sam with him, and they went in the barn without a word to me. Samuel hadn’t told me anything, but I surmised they were here to look at Lula Bell. I knew she’d been eating less. And hadn’t given us milk for some time. Would George want to butcher? Surely not at this time of year. But she was already thinner, and by fall, there might be nothing left.
He came up from the barn with his slow steps. “She don’t look good, that’s sure,” he said. “Samuel here?”
“He’s not back yet from the Posts’.”
“You tell him I was here and there ain’t much we can do for that cow. May as well put her down, hot as it is. I’ll ask Post if he can come one day next week to give us a hand. Lizbeth can help you do some cannin’. That way, there’ll be some gain at least.”
I hated the thought of losing Lula Bell. And using the meat was far from appealing, but George was practical about such things. We had to use what we could. His pantry was getting as bare as ours, and I knew he was right.
“I’ll tell him.”
“I’ll be to the north field, if he gets time to work ’longside us today. But I’ll unnerstand if he don’t.”
He was walking away toward the well, where Sarah had stopped to get a drink. Katie was standing there with her when he came up. He turned his eyes to her, and she backed up a step.
“What’s your name, little girl?”
“Katie Wortham.”
George glanced over at me for a second with a strange look on his face. “That so? Well, you’re a purty little girl. Enjoy your visit.”
He didn’t say anything else, just turned back toward his team and wagon and went on his way.
I hadn’t known Katie’s last name was Wortham. I’d just assumed it would be Vale, like her mother. Was she just saying that now, because she was still trying to claim Samuel? Of course, people would think she was Edward’s child, because of the name and because he’d brought her. And the poor girl might not really have a clue who she was.
I finished hanging what I could on our clothesline and draped one bedsheet over a bush. I wondered if Lizbeth had managed to get her washing done. The Hammonds always had so much, with ten kids and one of them a baby. Of course, I did some of theirs here, but there was still an awful lot on Lizbeth. I thought maybe I should walk over there later in the day and see if she could use some help.
Sarah and Katie agreed to help me pick the first green beans, so I got three bowls and we started in. Katie was so quiet as we worked. Maybe she didn’t like the work but was too polite to say so. If she thought me hard, making her lend a hand, maybe she wouldn’t want to stay here after all.
But what was keeping Samuel? He’d had more than enough time to walk back from Posts by now if he couldn’t use the truck. Maybe Barrett had hired his help with something extra. I could hope. It had been months since that had happened.
Before we were done picking, though, Samuel came up the lane, truck and all. “He had hay for Joe Porter,” he explained. “I helped him load and haul it to get the job done quicker.”
Katie stood very still, trying hard not to cry.
I took her hand. “Samuel, this is going to be hard for her. Facing strangers again, for one thing.”<
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He nodded. “Maybe I wouldn’t go today, except she might have a grandma or somebody somewhere worried sick not knowing where she is. We’ve got to think about that too. Even if her mother’s walked away, there might be someone else.”
I knew he was right. But poor Katie. She must feel like both her mother and her father were rejecting her. She sat on the porch step quiet as a daisy while I packed the leftover muffins and a few fresh carrots in a brown paper sack for them to take along. Samuel was ready to go, to get this over with, but I made him wait a minute longer as I ran in our bedroom to get the three little yarn dolls Katie had left on our pillow.
When I came back out, she was still just sitting there. Sarah had come and put her arm around her shoulders.
I sat at Katie’s other side and placed the little dolls in her hand. “You can keep these,” I told her. “We have more.”
She looked up at me and sniffed. “I don’t wanna go.”
“It’ll be all right. All you have to do is talk to Mr. Law, answer his questions the best that you can, and then do what he says. You can do that, can’t you?”
She nodded. “Will I see you again?”
“I don’t know, sweetie. The Lord knows.”
Samuel walked away from us to the truck. I knew he felt bad. But it wasn’t his fault. He was right. She might have worried kin someplace. And if she did, we had to find a way to get them together.
“Maybe Daddy could decide to be her daddy too,” Sarah whispered. “I wouldn’t mind to have a sister.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Sarah liked everybody. But we couldn’t just claim Katie. Something like that wouldn’t be as easy as Sarah made it sound.
I took Katie’s hand and gently led her away from the porch. “Right now, it’s time to get to town and get business taken care of. Sarah, run and get Katie’s clothes off the line. They’ll dry quick enough in the truck if they’re not already.”
Katie was sitting on the truck seat, clutching those yarn dolls and staring back at me when they drove away. I felt cold and cruel inside. She’d come all the way from Albany, New York, thinking she had a new home. But now she had nothing at all except Sarah’s jumper and the “real family” of yarn dolls she was holding in her hand. Maybe I should have told Samuel to bring her back if they couldn’t find her someone like the grandma I’d had to make everything all right again.
SIX
Samuel
Katie didn’t cry, didn’t move at all. For the whole ride to town, she sat and stared straight ahead, not saying a word. A couple of times I tried to assure her that the sheriff was a nice man and she didn’t need to be scared. But I knew that wasn’t her worry. What would happen after we talked to the sheriff? Even I didn’t know that.
In Dearing, we stopped in front of what had been the dry goods store a few months ago. Now it was boarded up like so many other businesses in town. Ben Law kept his office across the street, right next to the bank, which was also closed. On the rest of the block, only Blume’s Milk Station and the Feed and Seed were still open.
Down the street I could see Herman Meyer’s car in front of his aunt Hazel Sharpe’s house. I hoped she was napping. It had never been particularly pleasant to encounter her on a trip to town.
I helped Katie out of the truck. She was still holding those yarn dolls so tightly that her knuckles were white. But she didn’t say anything. I held her other hand as we crossed the street.
Sheriff Law had a cowbell tied to his doorknob, but he didn’t look up despite its clank. He was reading the Mt. Vernon newspaper, and after several minutes, he finally glanced our way over a headline saying something about candidate Roosevelt.
“Well, good morning,” he smiled. “You’re Wortham, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered, not surprised that he would know me. Hazel Sharpe had approached him when we first came here, telling him we were trying to trick Emma Graham out of her possessions. Emma herself had set all that straight.
“What can I do for you today?” He set the paper down, and before I could answer, he was asking another question. “This your little girl?”
“No, sir. That’s why I’ve come.”
I did my best to relate the whole story to him. Everything Edward had said, and everything Katie had told us. The sheriff just sat, eyeing the girl and nodding.
When I finished and asked him if there wasn’t a way he could find her relatives, he leaned back in his chair and smiled. “I never heard you deny bein’ from Pennsylvania.”
“I am. At least we lived there a while. Harrisburg. But—”
He rocked forward. “Now, if your own brother was convinced, and the mother of the child—”
“Sheriff Law, if she was telling the truth, there has to be another Samuel Wortham.”
He laughed. “And the spittin’ image of ya, to boot.”
“I don’t know about that . . .” I could feel a surge of heat down my spine. He didn’t believe me. How could I get him to understand?
He sighed. “Well, Wortham. I wouldn’t a’ thought faced with somethin’ head on, you’d still be buckin’, but some folks are like that.”
I could feel my shoulders tighten, the heat rising in me. “I told you the truth, Sheriff. I never met the woman.”
“No doubt you never met her kin, I’ll grant you that.” He shook his head. “You’re in a spot, I know, already havin’ kids to raise and this being sprung on you sudden. I’ll do what I can to find a relative of the mother, but only ’cause I agree with you that they might not know what she’s gone off and done. If it was my granddaughter hauled across the countryside, I’d want somebody to tell me.”
He turned his face to Katie, who stood quietly beside me, watching him. “Tell me, sugar. This Mr. Wortham, here. He been treatin’ you all right?”
Almost I said something, but I knew it wouldn’t help my case any in his eyes.
Katie nodded her head and reached her little hand to mine again. “He’s nice. And Mrs. Wortham is nice too. I like ’em plenty good.”
“Well. I’m relieved to hear that. Right decent of the missus, especially. Wouldn’t you say so, Samuel?”
It chafed me, what I saw in his eyes. Convinced of my guilt, he was taking me for a scoundrel. But I couldn’t argue. If he truly searched the matter, he’d find out I was telling the truth, I was sure of it. “Julia’s a wonderful woman, Sheriff Law,” I agreed. “I’m blessed to have her.”
“Well, then, I won’t need to be concerned over leaving the child in your care. Your brother brung her to you, and the way I see it, she’s your responsibility, ’less some other kin comes forward askin’ for her.”
“Sheriff Law—”
He held up his hand. “I don’t see no reason to use the gas to get her to the orphanage, nor for them spending the upkeep when she’s got a decent arrangement with kin.” He turned to Katie. “You been told this man’s kin, ain’t that so?”
Katie nodded.
“See what I mean? These things happen, Samuel. Ain’t an action in this world that don’t bear consequences.”
I took a deep breath. “I don’t object to keeping her. She’s already spent one night, and it might be easier for her not to spend the next one with a whole new set of strangers. If we can help for a while, that’s fine. But let me describe my brother to you, in the chance you might see him. Maybe he could tell us something more. Maybe Miss Vale might have told him something about her family—”
“Didn’t she tell you anything?”
I swallowed hard, careful to restrain the fire I was feeling. “No, sir. I’ve never spoken to her.”
He smiled. “This is interesting.”
He asked Katie some more questions—about me, my brother, her mother, and anyone else she could remember. There was a grandmother, we found out. Trudy Vale’s mother. But Katie only recalled seeing her once when she was very little, and they’d been in so many towns since then that she didn’t know where the woman lived.
S
heriff Law wrote a few things down. Then he lifted his eyes to me. “What about your mother?”
The question took me completely by surprise. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, is she still living? Would she take in this little girl if you and your wife decide that you . . . uh . . . just can’t deal with it?”
I could feel a fiery rush of protest flooding my insides. How could he suggest such a thing? “She has nothing to do with this, and I wouldn’t send a child to her home, anyway.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Why not? What’s the matter with her?”
I took a breath. I wished he hadn’t asked. But I might as well tell him the truth. “The last I knew, Sheriff, she was drunk every chance she got. Her husband, my stepfather, owns a speakeasy in Albany. The liquor flowed through there like a river before the prohibition, and he bragged to me once that he knew sources the government didn’t and his business would never be dry.”
“You told the local officials about this?”
“No. I didn’t have any proof, and the government was already watching him. Almost shut him down, but he was serving food and setting up entertainment and they couldn’t find any liquor on the place. I don’t know what he does with it.” Quick as a jumping flame, it occurred to me that Edward might have met Trudy Vale right there in the speakeasy. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Maybe Mother and Jimmy knew her.
The sheriff was looking me over pretty straight. “Would’ve figured you to come from a Christian home, Wortham. But you’re saying your mother’s a drunk and your father’s a cheat.”
“My stepfather. My father’s dead.”
“Think I should have run you out of town when you first come?”
“You didn’t have reason.”
He smiled. “Well, you don’t fly off the handle at me, anyway. Got to give you credit for that.”
I told him where my stepfather’s establishment was, and where he and my mother lived, in case they could tell us anything about Trudy Vale. But I wondered if it had done much good to come. The sheriff had almost nothing to go on in his search. And he thought me pretty ignorant and calloused, I’m sure, as though I were trying to lie my way out of an obligation.