by Leisha Kelly
He kissed my cheek when he got out of the truck. Katie sat there looking at me, like she was fearful of what I might say. “You can see him in her face,” Edward had said. I shook the thought away.
“I’m glad you brought her back,” I told Samuel. “I didn’t know what they’d do, and I’ve heard that some children’s homes are not very pleasant.”
“The sheriff didn’t leave me much choice. I guess he believed Edward’s words better than mine. That’s what can happen when you judge on appearances.”
He was studying me so close, almost as though he could read my thoughts, and I felt pricked to the heart. Oh, Samuel! God help me not to doubt you!
“Are you all right?”
Franky was coming up from the barn. He’d tell all. I knew he would. At least all he’d seen. “Sammy, Edward came back. He . . . he left Katie’s bag.”
“Is that all? What’s the matter?”
Samuel was upset already. I didn’t want to make it worse. “I fed him. He wasn’t here long.”
“Where is my bag?” Katie asked.
“In the kitchen, honey.”
“Can I get it?” She hadn’t moved. Not an inch.
“Of course. I’m sure Sarah would love to see your paper dolls.”
She climbed down from the truck seat and headed for the house. But Samuel just stood there, watching me.
“I don’t think your brother was very nice,” Franky suddenly spoke up. “Looked like he was arguin’ or somethin’ with Mrs. Wortham over by the well, and he grabbed her. She throwed water right in his face. I was proud.”
I saw the color drain from Samuel’s face. “Juli . . .”
“Now, it wasn’t really that bad. He didn’t really grab me. Just touched my arm.”
“I shouldn’t have left you here.”
“How were we to know? He didn’t do any harm. You can’t just stop what you’re doing or do something different just because he might come around again. He might and he might not. I’m not going to let it affect me one way or another.”
He reached his hand out. The warmth of it touched me just below the shoulder. I should have let him hug me. I should have been glad for his waiting arms just then, but I turned away. I marched myself into the barn, just to have another place to go. I’d check on Lula Bell. Poor old cow. She’d been so good to us.
I heard Samuel before he got to me, first the creak of the barn door and then the rhythmic sound of his boots on the straw-strewn floor. He came up behind me. He didn’t touch me this time, just stood there, waiting.
“I think you’re right,” I managed to tell him. “Lula Bell’s just getting worse.” She turned her head to look at me, and I leaned over the rail to put my hand on her side.
“Honey . . .” he said.
“Sammy, I told you already, he didn’t do any harm.”
“What did he do?”
“Insulted you. Laughed at me for believing you. Ridiculed Franky for standing there with a hammer in his hand.” I smiled. “You should’ve seen him. Edward didn’t know what to think, this bold little boy . . .”
Gently, slowly, Samuel pulled me away from Lula Bell’s stall to face him. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve known he might—”
“You did.” Those two words just hung in the air, and I was immediately sorry I’d said them. I wasn’t trying to blame him for anything. The encounter with Edward was my own fault. I could’ve listened. I could’ve gone to town like Samuel had suggested.
Samuel encircled me in his arms, and I felt strangely cold. What was wrong with me? He was the same warm, tender man.
“I’m not sure I know him anymore,” Samuel said. “I don’t know what to expect from him.” He was looking at me so closely, trying to read what I wasn’t saying. “Did he threaten you, Juli? I need to know what happened.”
“It wasn’t really a threat. More like he was testing me, just to see what sort of reaction he’d get. Telling me that Katie’s mother had described you, and that you were living a lie.”
Samuel didn’t say anything at first, only looked down at my hands still straight at my sides. Why wasn’t I hugging him back the way I usually did? Oh, why was I being this way?
“What do you think, Juli? Is it too much to believe me?” He took my hand in his for just a moment. “You might as well know that Katie knew my name before she met Edward. I don’t know how it’s possible, but she says her mother told her, well before that, and even showed her a picture.”
I could feel my hands shaking. “How?”
“Juli, I don’t know. I just don’t know.” He turned away. “There’s a lot to think about. But I thought . . . you said you thought there must be some other man, with my name.” He turned his face to me again, hopeful, wanting me to affirm my stand.
“Maybe so,” I told him. “It’s possible.”
But he knew my words were different. I saw the change in him; his eyes grew stormy, his face drawn. He looked more like Edward. Lost. And alone.
“Samuel—”
“Please just tell me why he touched you. If he meant you any harm, I’ll tell the sheriff—”
“No. I—I don’t think he did. He—he doesn’t know us either. He doesn’t know how a God-fearing person acts. Maybe he thought I would scorn you. I don’t know.”
“It won’t happen again. I won’t leave you alone.”
“You can’t let him dictate—”
But he was turning away. “I have to watch for my family.”
I wanted to stop him. I wanted to tell him it was all okay, that I didn’t doubt him for a second. I should have. But he was walking away, back toward the house, with his shoulders bowed.
We tried to have a normal rest of the day, as much as possible. Lunch first. Turnips and green beans without the fish Robert had hoped to bring home. Afterward, Samuel went to work field with George because he’d promised, and maybe because he didn’t know what else to do. But he left Robert home and told me to send Franky running to the field if Edward showed up again. I didn’t expect him, maybe ever. He didn’t have anything to return this time.
I let the girls play most of the afternoon. Sarah loved Katie’s paper dolls, just like I’d thought. Of course, she’d seen some before, but these were torn from a magazine and it made her want to get some the same way.
“Don’t we have a magazine, Mommy?” she asked.
“No, honey. I might could find you a catalog—”
“But, Mommy, they needs to be in color.”
“Then I can’t help you. Maybe Louise Post would have a magazine. I’ve seen them over there before.” I shouldn’t have said even that much.
“Can we go ask her?”
“Not now. Why don’t you get your Crayolas and make your own?”
Sarah wasn’t too enthused with that idea, but Katie was, and it occupied them for quite a while as I weeded the lettuce, thinned the beets, and then started looking around the yard for something to put with the beet tops for supper. I was picking yellow dock and lamb’s-quarter when Franky came out of the barn.
“I got it done. You wanna see?”
“The chair? Already?”
“Yeah, it’s just a little one.”
Robert stopped chopping kindling and went with me to look. It was a little chair, very little, but just about right for a fourteen-month-old baby sister. It even had arms and a curved top in back.
“That’s very nice, Franky,” I said.
“Yeah,” Robert agreed. “Good job.”
I was so glad for Robert’s compliment. It was a rare thing for Franky to get much but ridicule from other boys. And he was fairly beaming. “You think Mr. Wortham’ll like it?”
“’Course he’ll like it,” Robert said immediately. “Why wouldn’t he like it?”
But Franky’s question bothered me a little. Was he also wondering what his father would think? He didn’t ask that. “I think your pa will be proud,” I told him, hoping he’d believe me.
Franky only shrugged. “Won’t
give him cause to complain, at least. ’Long as I sand the edges smooth. Wouldn’t want Emmie gettin’ no slivers.”
Did George really complain so much? Not at everybody, I guessed, but unfortunately more with Franky. “He’s painful clumsy,” George had told me once. “Sometimes it’s better not t’ have him underfoot.”
Lizbeth had told me nearly the same once, that if any of them tipped a bucket or spilled a dish of something, it was likely to be Franky. Yet he never seemed to be that way here.
“You think this design’d work for big chairs too?” Franky was asking Robert with all seriousness.
“I don’t know. You try any weight on it?”
“Not yet.”
Robert put his foot in the seat of Franky’s chair, and I held my breath, not wanting to see the careful project smashed to pieces. But the little chair held up under the weight Robert gave it, and both boys smiled. “I think it’d work,” Robert said.
“Good. I still think me’n Mr. Wortham oughta make more stuff and set by the road to sell. Or in Dearing someplace, if somebody’d let us. We could make money at it.”
“I don’t know about that,” Robert said. “If other people buy like us, we wouldn’t sell nothin’.”
“I wanna make some more, anyhow,” Franky announced. “Wanna help?”
Even though Robert was older, he wasn’t adverse to the suggestion. He seemed caught in the middle sometimes. Best friends with the often thoughtless Willy, and yet in the right moments, he could relate to Franky better than all the rest.
I left them alone and went back out to gather greens. They cooked down so much that I’d need three times more than it looked like I should. All the family was used to them by now too, we’d had them so much.
George let Franky stay the night, I guess because he was already here. But he sent Rorey over too, because when she heard there was another girl about her age, she just couldn’t be contained. But Samuel came home quiet, sweaty and tired and not saying much. After supper he sat and played checkers with Robert, but more than once I saw him watching the girls playing in the corner. I knew he was concerned for Katie in this strange situation, and it was no more than right. None of this was her fault, after all.
Franky helped me with the supper dishes, and just about the time we got done, thunder was rumbling outside. We’d have a storm, like as not, and I was glad. Maybe it would cure the heat a little. And we could use the rain.
When it was bedtime, Sarah didn’t want to go upstairs. She was always like that in a storm. She wanted to stay as close to her parents as possible. And Katie was just as nervous, maybe more. So Samuel said they could all camp downstairs if they wanted to, and he helped me spread the blankets and pillows.
I knew the storm didn’t bother either of the boys, or Rorey either, so far as I could tell, but they all liked the idea of being in the sitting room. Robert and Franky plopped right down, but the little girls took the time to carefully position all the yarn dolls and paper dolls and Rorey and Sarah’s cloth dolls beside their pillows. I hoped they felt rich.
“Where’s your folks?” Rorey asked Katie, much to my dismay.
“I don’t know,” the little girl answered quickly. “Do you got a real family?”
“Sure,” Rorey declared. “We got Pa at home. We’re missin’ Mama, though, ’cause she died.”
“Oh. That’s partly a real family.”
“We just visits over here,” Rorey said. “All the time.”
“We’re kinda like two families smacked together in one,” Sarah explained. “I like it that way.”
“It’s time to lie down, girls,” I told them, hoping they’d go to sleep quickly, despite the threat of storm. I wanted some time with Samuel. He hadn’t said much to me since he got back home.
It wasn’t raining, but the wind was picking up; there were dancing flashes of light in the sky, and the thunder was rumbling louder than before. The girls did as they were told and lay very still. But even in the dim light, I knew their eyes were open. Katie was staring up at the ceiling, the tiny glint of a tear just glazing her cheek. She wiped it away, but I knew Samuel must have seen it too.
“Would you like a story?” he asked them.
“Yeah!” Sarah answered with enthusiasm.
“You go on if you want,” he whispered to me. “Get some sleep.” Then he sat cross-legged on the floor next to an outspread blanket.
I sat down too, wanting to hear. It was so like Samuel to ease the children into sleep in a new place or whenever there was something different to think about. He’d done it for our two, for the Hammonds, and now for Katie.
“What about you?” Samuel was gently asking the girl. “Want to hear a story?”
She turned her head just a little, and I thought of her tears last night. May there be peace this night, I prayed. For Samuel too.
“Once there was a princess,” Samuel began.
“A princess?” Rorey asked abruptly. “I thought all your stories had animals.”
“Shush,” Sarah whispered. “I like princesses.”
“You don’t know if it’s an animal or not,” Franky added from across the room. “He didn’t say what kind of princess.”
“It should be a princess bee,” Katie whispered. “Because they have queens.”
I took a breath, wondering how Samuel could tell this story at all, with so much help. But it didn’t seem to bother him.
“Okay. A princess bee.” He glanced in my direction, but I couldn’t be sure what I was seeing in his expression. “One day the princess bee went flying around her hive on a very lovely day, and she wasn’t sure how it happened, but she got very, very lost.”
“Do bees get lost?” Rorey interrupted again.
“This one did,” Samuel maintained. “She was pretty little, and she went a very long way.”
“Well, the queen should have gone with her, then,” Rorey declared.
“Queens don’t leave the hive,” Franky told her. “Except to swarm, and that ain’t what the story’s about.”
“Right,” Samuel went on. “Anyway, the little princess bee was all alone and far from home, and she didn’t know what to do.”
“Did she cry?” Sarah asked.
“A little bit. But she was very brave. She flew right down into a perfect patch of flowers and sat on the very prettiest little daisy, because she knew that some other bees would come sometime and find those flowers too.”
I wondered if this was the story Samuel’d had in mind at first, or if he’d started with any idea at all. Maybe he just let a story happen, the way Grandma Pearl had made vegetable soup with whatever came up at the moment.
“She waited there a long time,” Samuel went on. “It started to rain, but the princess bee didn’t move very far. She just slid under the daisy petals and waited some more, all alone.”
I heard Katie sniff. Maybe she knew how that felt.
“Finally, after a long time, the sun came out again, and some other bees were flying around, looking for the best flowers they could find to make honey with. And they found the little princess, sitting on a daisy petal and drying out in the sun.”
“Were they her bees?” Sarah asked. “From her own hive?”
“No. But they were very friendly. They took her home and fed her honeycomb, and she took a nice long nap cuddled up in one of the little bee rooms.”
“How’d she get home?” Rorey asked.
“Just a minute,” Samuel told her. “I’m getting to that. It got to be night, and all the other bees were buzzing around, trying to figure out where the little princess came from. But when she woke up, she couldn’t tell them. She didn’t even know which direction she’d flown, because she’d turned so many times and gone so far.”
He glanced at me again, and I heard him sigh. Dear Samuel. He had so much on his shoulders.
“Every day for many days, the queen of that hive sent her workers out in all directions, looking for the hive that the princess had come from. And every
day the princess’s own hive sent out workers too, just to look for her. Finally one day, at the top of a giant sunflower, two little bees bumped into each other and asked what the other one was doing there. ‘I’m up here high looking for the princess’s beehive,’ said the first one. ‘Well, I’m looking for the princess,’ said the other. ‘Because she hasn’t come home.’ And then they both knew that they’d found what they were looking for. They flew all the way to the hive where the princess was playing with other little bees just her size. And the bee that was looking for her took her all the way home.”
He glanced at Franky, who was up on his elbows, and at Katie, who was staring at the ceiling again. “But they didn’t go alone,” he went on. “Half the bees from the new hive went with them, just to visit. And every summer after that, bees from both hives went back and forth, because they stayed friends forever. So much that the littlest bees weren’t always sure which bees belonged to which hive. And when the princess bee became a queen, she swarmed right over to the pretty flower patch so she could see those daisies right outside.”
“Why’d she want to see the daisies?” Rorey wanted to know.
“Because she met her first new friend there. When she’d been really alone, God sent bees that she didn’t even know about before, and she ended up with twice as many friends that really cared about her.”
“That’s kind of like our families,” Sarah said. “Only we wasn’t alone in the flowers.”
I could see Franky looking at Katie, and I knew he was thinking. Katie’d been pretty misplaced, like the bee. I was surprised at Samuel for making such a direct reference to it.
“I bet the queen bee was glad to see the princess,” Rorey said.
Oh, this was awkward. How would Katie feel? What if she thought of her own mother, who might not be so glad to see her?
Katie didn’t look at any of us. She just kept staring up at the ceiling, not moving at all. “Do bees have daddies?” she finally asked.
Samuel sat silent for a moment. Looking at the floor and then at the little girl in front of him. “I guess they must.”
“They don’t know ’em, though,” Franky added. “They only know the queen. There’s boys that’s the fathers, but they don’t know which ones. We learned that at school.”