by Leisha Kelly
I hadn’t realized she’d had time to talk to the Porter boy while getting her little brothers some lemonade on the Fourth. But I was glad for what was surely a God-given opportunity.
“You’re going to try for it, aren’t you?”
“Ben said I should.”
“I agree with him.”
She smiled. “I knew you would. But I didn’t tell Pa yet. Don’t think he’d want me gone.”
“He’d get used to it,” I assured her. “Everybody’d manage just fine. Don’t let that stop you.”
“It’ll be hard. But the test’s not till next spring. I have time.” She looked out over the wide yard, her smile getting bigger. “Mrs. Wortham, it’s like having a sweet little dream all to myself.”
I smiled too, glad for the ambition that would surely move Lizbeth to good things in her life. She looked up at the sky and out over the yard, quiet for a few moments. The clouds had left, and it was getting really dark now.
“Guess we’d better get the kids to bed,” she told me with a sigh.
I nodded, thinking that she sounded more grown up than ever. “Bedtime!” I called, knowing it was late and eyelids would be getting droopy.
Sitting on the porch was so peaceful that I wondered why in the world Samuel had decided to run himself all over the yard with the kids. But they loved it, every last one of them. It was hard, rounding them up for bed. We’d have the whole bunch sleeping on the sitting room floor again, and I wondered if Katie felt overwhelmed, having such a crew here.
I hoped Franky was doing all right. I missed him, because out of all of the kids, he would be the most likely to sit on the porch with Lizbeth and me and say something unexpected or profound about dreams of his own. And I thought about George. Maybe he just didn’t know how to take Franky. Maybe that was his problem. His son was the only nine-year-old we knew who couldn’t read. And the only person under twenty to understand half of what the preacher talked about. No wonder George was confused.
Lizbeth’s thoughts right then must have been similar. “I hope Pa’s keepin’ quiet,” she said. “And I hope Franky’s doin’ okay. I’m sure glad Pastor got a chance to talk to him like that. He oughta know what goes on inside Franky’s head. Do you reckon he’ll be a preacher one day?”
“I don’t know, Lizbeth. Seems to me he could be.”
Little Harry had run up to us on the porch. “Does we have to go to bed so soon?” he complained.
“It isn’t soon,” I told him. “It’s already late. And we have plenty to do in the morning.”
“Like what?” he questioned, his eyes shining bright in the moonlight.
“Same chores we do every day, silly,” Lizbeth told him. “You don’t have enough of ’em, that’s your problem.”
“I wanna catch me a turtle,” the little boy said. “Joe finished cookin’ that one, an’ it was yummy.”
“Well, I wish you would. We could stand another one. But we got to finish the regular stuff first.”
“You mean I can go?” Harry asked with enthusiasm.
“Not tonight,” Lizbeth said with a sigh. “Sometime. But you gotta take somebody with you.”
Harry smiled, nodded his head, and marched in the house. I was just thinking how easy this was compared to the struggle he usually put up, when I heard Sarah yelling, “No! No! Mommy don’t like you doing that!”
I rushed in to find Harry standing on the kitchen table, about to take a flying leap into the middle of the room. Before I could say anything, Samuel whisked him off and plopped him onto the floor.
“We don’t do that,” he said sternly. “Not any time, for any reason. Jump off the stump in the yard tomorrow if you want to.”
“Okay,” Harry laughed.
“How come you didn’t play with us, Mommy?” Sarah asked.
“I was enjoying just watching this time, honey. Sometimes I like to look at all of you having fun together. That was fun for me.”
“It’s not hard if you want to learn it next time,” Katie told me. “I’d help you.”
I smiled. “Thank you. That’s very kind.”
“She already knows how!” Rorey burst out. “Me an’ Willy teached her a long time ago!”
Katie kept looking at me. “You’re not scared, are you?”
“’Course she’s not!” Rorey roared. “There ain’t no real ghosts.”
But I had a feeling Katie was talking about something else considerably more than a childish game. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew what I should say. “No, honey, I’m not. And you don’t need to be either.”
She looked over at Samuel and smiled.
Could she be his sister? That would certainly explain the resemblance. But could it be?
“How long’s this girl gonna stay with you, anyway?” Rorey asked, just as rude as could be.
“I don’t know,” I answered her. “But she’ll always be welcome. Time to hush and get yourself ready for bed now.”
We spread covers all over the sitting room for the kids to lie on top of. Berty and Emma Grace were already asleep. Katie got her paper dolls to set by her pillow, and Sarah snuggled in beside her.
“I wanna be by the window,” Rorey complained. “Come on, Sarah, let’s go by the window.”
But Sarah and her dolly were already settled next to Katie’s paper family. “No, I want to stay here.”
“Humph,” Rorey answered and plopped herself just as close to the window as she could go.
“I’ll be by you,” Harry said. “Let’s pertend we’s wolves. See the big ol’ moon out there?”
Rorey and Harry both took to howling like mad, and I had to shush them quick for fear they’d wake the baby.
“You two be still,” Lizbeth scolded. “If you be real nice, maybe Mr. Wortham’ll tell you a story.”
“Okay!” Harry exclaimed immediately. I could tell that Willy and Kirk were less than thrilled, but they didn’t say anything.
“Will you tell us a story, Daddy?” Sarah begged. “Please?” Turning to Katie, she whispered, “Don’t you want Daddy to tell us a story?”
I winced just a little, wondering how the girl would react. She sniffed just a little, her eyes on the little paper figures. “I would like a story,” she said quietly. “If it’s a real good story.”
“All Daddy’s stories are good stories,” Sarah bragged. “He has the bestest stories of anybody. An’ I know, ’cause our teacher told us one and it wasn’t near as good. An’ she’s the teacher.”
“They’re just made up things,” Samuel said. “Not much of anything. But if you all lie down and get quiet, I’ll tell another one.”
All the younger Hammonds lay down obediently, along with Robert and Sarah, even though I knew Robert and the boys his age or older didn’t feel the same about bedtime stories as the littler ones did. Sam and Lizbeth, the oldest Hammond kids, walked back into the kitchen together, and I could tell they were discussing their day tomorrow, just what needed done by whom with their pa and Franky gone. And whether anybody ought to go along when young Sam rode into Mcleansboro. I sure hoped Franky would be well enough to come home soon. Three weeks they’d said he ought to be in that hospital bed, and then more time in bed at home.
“Tell a scary story this time,” Harry was begging Samuel.
“Well,” he said, sitting down in the middle of the floor. “I don’t know if I know any scary stories.”
“I bet you do too!” Harry argued. “Ain’t nothin’ scary ever happened to you?”
Almost my heart skipped a beat when Samuel didn’t answer right away. I wished I knew more about his relationship with his father. I wished he’d talked about it all a little more.
“Tell you what,” he suddenly said. “I think I just might be able to tell a story like that. Just a little bit scary, at least. Not too bad.”
“Good!” Harry proclaimed.
Katie was dead silent.
“Once upon a time there was a rabbit who—”
“A rabbit!�
� Rorey immediately interrupted. “Rabbits aren’t scary.”
“Sshh!” Sarah scolded. “Maybe the rabbit got scared.” By the light of the oil lamp I could see her reach over and grasp Katie’s hand.
Samuel waited a minute, just to make sure they all were quiet. “This rabbit got scared a lot. Almost every day, in fact. And especially at night. So much that everybody thought that he was scared of everything. The poor little rabbit couldn’t even go outside without being afraid of a bird flying by, or a branch swinging in the breeze, or even of his own shadow.”
“That’s a silly rabbit,” Sarah whispered.
“Yeah!” Harry proclaimed. “There’s nothin’ scary ’bout those things!”
“But one day a very big bear came to town,” Samuel told them. “Very, very big. Tall as eighteen or twenty rabbits, with the biggest teeth they’d ever seen. And every night he went prowling around, marking trees with his giant bear paws and growling really loud.”
“Did he eat rabbits?” Rorey asked.
“Well, the rabbits weren’t sure,” Samuel continued. “But they were all very scared. And nobody could sleep because the bear made such an awful lot of noise going around scratching on tree trunks and growling all night. So they had a meeting and decided that somebody had better ask that bear to be quiet or move a little farther away.”
“I bet he got real mad about that,” Harry said.
“Shhh,” Sarah warned.
Kirk snickered. “Kids,” he whispered to Joe.
“Did the bear get mad?” Rorey asked.
“Maybe he ate ’em all up,” Harry suggested.
“How’s he gonna finish the story if you don’t hush up?” Robert asked them.
“It’s all right,” Samuel said. “I don’t mind a few comments. The problem those rabbits had was that none of them wanted to be the one to go and tell that bear. So they cut a whole pile of straws, all the same length. Except one. And they decided that every single rabbit had to take one, and whoever got the short one would have to go and ask that bear to be quiet or move.”
Samuel stopped for a second and looked over at me. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing in his eyes. I couldn’t help thinking about his words: “What if he’s out there somewhere, still wreaking havoc?”
“Bear paws,” I whispered.
Samuel looked at the floor for a moment. “Yes. This bear had big paws.” He glanced over at me and shook his head. “It had the biggest footprints any of them had ever seen. Nobody wanted to go talk to that bear. But they all drew a straw. And guess who got the short one?”
“The most scared rabbit?” Sarah asked.
“That’s right. He thought he was going to fall over right there, just faint dead away. He thought there was just no way he could do it, he was so scared. But all of his friends were counting on him. They were all so tired and so sad and scared—”
“Did the bear eat him?” Harry asked quickly.
It was Joe that answered. “No, Harry. Just listen.”
“He thought the bear would eat him,” Samuel said, his voice a little slower. “But he went hopping away anyway, to do what he had to do. He hopped and he hopped, looking for that bear, and he was still looking when it began to get dark.”
None of the children said a word. Samuel paused, looking around at all of them and at me for just a second.
“What happened?” Sarah said, sounding a little nervous.
“At first he didn’t find anything at all. And then he began to hear, way off in the distance, that big bear growl, sounding really mad and mean. He wanted to just turn around and run. He thought he should, but he couldn’t get his little hopping legs to move. So he just stayed right there, saying, ‘Please be quiet, please be quiet,’ over and over again.”
“And then what?” Rorey asked.
“The bear came closer and closer. Closer and closer. The little rabbit could hear those awfully sharp big bear claws tearing at the trees. And that growl sounded so awful fierce, he could just scream with fright. The bear came closer and closer and closer, and the rabbit got more and more scared. He couldn’t even twitch his nose, he was so scared, and just when the bear came bursting through the trees near him and he thought he just couldn’t stand it anymore, he opened his little mouth and he screamed—”
Samuel stopped. Nobody breathed a word; nobody moved. “Do you know what he screamed?” he asked.
“Nope,” Sarah said timidly.
“‘Please be quiet!’” Samuel said, making a whisper sound huge. “He said it so loud that he startled himself. He fell over backward, and he was just about to run away when he heard something very strange.”
“What?” Harry asked.
“Yeah, what?” Rorey echoed.
“It was the bear. At least he thought it was. On the other side of a big tree. The rabbit went just a little closer, and he could hardly believe that he saw that great big bear sitting there shaking and crying his eyes out. The rabbit was so stunned he almost forgot to say anything, but then he remembered his tongue and said, ‘Why are you crying?’ The big bear nearly jumped clear out of his skin. ‘Don’t hurt me,’ the bear said. ‘Don’t hurt me.’”
Harry laughed. “What a dummy bear!”
“Why was the big bear scared?” Sarah asked.
“That’s what the rabbit wondered. He even asked him. He sat down beside him and promised not to hurt him and told him all about the rabbits and the straws and how scared he’d been. And that bear admitted something that he’d never told anybody else. He was afraid of the dark. He went roaring through the woods every night making all kinds of noise because he was really afraid that if he just lay down and went to sleep in the dark, somebody would sneak up on him and scare him awake. So he kept everybody else too scared to come close. Until the rabbit startled him so much it made him cry.”
The room was quiet for a moment. “How do you think of stuff like that?” Joe finally asked.
“It’s not hard,” Samuel said. “I don’t even really try.”
“It’s kinda dumb for a bear to be so scared,” Harry observed. “A bear could beat up anythin’.”
“But that bear didn’t think so. He didn’t feel strong at all. But the rabbits helped him. They let him sleep every night with a circle of rabbits around him so he would feel safer. And then all the rabbits could sleep too.”
“That might be your strangest story ever, Dad,” Robert said.
“Maybe so,” Samuel admitted. “But it might also be the truest.”
“What do you mean?”
“People can be like that. Some people act the roughest and toughest when they’re really scared inside and don’t want anybody to know. And some people who think they’re too scared to do anything are the bravest and most daring of all when a real problem happens.”
“Really?” Sarah asked.
“Sounds strange. But it’s true.”
“Are bullies really scared inside?” she asked.
“Probably. And sad and mixed-up too.”
“You mean like Uncle Edward?” Robert asked.
Samuel got quiet. “Yeah. I guess.”
“So maybe I’m brave,” Katie said in a tiny voice.
And at that moment, I wanted to keep her. Whoever she was, whatever the truth came out to be, she belonged with us. She fit. With Sarah. With the whole bunch of kids. But especially with Samuel, no matter what anybody said. There was something more alike about them than the dark hair and dark eyes. They were family. They had to be. They’d survived the cruel legacy of Samuel’s past, lived through Edward’s assaults, and understood human nature better because of it.
“Time to sleep,” I said quietly, not sure anyone even heard.
“Time to sleep,” Samuel echoed. “No bears here, scared or otherwise. Close your eyes. Thank the Lord for this home, and his peace—”
“We oughta pray for Franky,” Sarah said. “I think he’s very brave. Even if he don’t act scared.”
I had to smile. Samuel prayed fo
r Franky. And Sarah, Robert, and Joe said amen.
Soon they were all asleep, and Lizbeth and young Sam were done talking and ready to lie down too.
“We think Pa’ll want to come home tomorrow,” Lizbeth told us. “But I prob’ly oughta stay with the little ones like he said, so if he comes back, Sam’s gonna stay. We don’t want Franky to be up there alone.”
“Thank you,” I told them. “That’s good of you both.”
The house got very quiet after that. Samuel and I lay down together in the bedroom, and at first neither of us said anything. He was so still beside me. I wondered what he was thinking. When I laid my head down on his shoulder, he didn’t even move.
“Can I call you Sammy again?” I whispered.
He took me in his arms and kissed the top of my head. “I was just upset. You can call me anything you want. But it sounds different, coming from Edward.”
“Everything sounds different from him. Like it gets dipped in spite before it comes out of his mouth.”
“Probably does. I should’ve been writing to him. I should’ve been better—”
“None of them wanted anything from you,” I told him. “Your mother doesn’t even answer your letters. It’s nothing to beat yourself up over.”
He sighed. “I don’t know how Edward’s going to react, you know. About Katie’s daddy having a bird on his arm. I guess Trudy Vale never told him that.”
“Maybe he’ll never know about it. He might not come back.”
“He will. I don’t know why. But I think he will.”
“Do you want to go to Dearing tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. I hate to go asking Barrett for the truck again. And they’re using the wagon. Sometimes it seems like I ought to stay home till I can make a better way for myself.”
“Samuel . . .”
He rolled slightly, taking me with him.
“I don’t know what I want. I’m not sure what to think. I don’t even know for sure about what Katie was telling me, how much is real and how much is a dream.”
“Or maybe both?”
He was quiet.
“I think it’s both with you, Samuel. I don’t understand all of it. But I’d like to. Tell me more about bear paws.”