Anna Was Here

by Jane Kurtz

  I was changing my plan.

  1. Help Cousin Caroline not lose the farm.

  2. See if Dad could grow back his old self—like a salamander limb.

  3. Have a great time. It served Dad right.

  At least there were three of us now—not counting the great-aunts and emus and chickens and dogs.

  CHAPTER 34

  Saving the Farm

  After supper Dad brought my suitcase to the farm. I hid behind the azalea bushes until he was driving away, and when it was too late, I jumped out and hollered, “Come back!” as loud as I could. I was glad he couldn’t hear. My ancestors had faced sword, rope, fire, and water. I could face a few nights without my sleeping bag and cat.

  When I was lying on the hard cot listening to the scrabbling of dogs’ claws on the boards above me, though, I had to pretend I was in my cozy Colorado tent.

  The truth was this basement was a very safe place with its Screamer and all.

  The truth was it was way better than a pink bedroom.

  The truth was . . . I missed my cat.

  When I got to the kitchen the next morning, Morgan and Cousin Caroline were already eating. “Cracked wheat hot cereal,” Cousin Caroline said, spooning some into a bowl for me. “You’ll need a sweater today. About time we had normal April weather.”

  I glanced at the calendar on her wall.

  April 27.

  One month until my birthday.

  As I ate, I wondered how fast Grandpa might get well. What was Mom learning in her latest research? Were Grandma hugs making Isabella feel better?

  Before school, Cousin Caroline sent us over to the great-aunts’ side of the farm to check on the lavender plants. We stood on the hillside with TJ and Bob-Silver crowding around us for ear rubs, and I imagined snow blotting out the sun. “Do you think the teacher of Hope and Faith and Charity hated that she let them go?” I asked Morgan.

  “She thought they’d freeze if they stayed in the school.”

  “I know.” Shiverydee. “Some people have terrible choices.”

  “Would you rather be boiled in oil or pulled apart by wild animals?” Morgan asked. She picked a bud to take back for Cousin Caroline’s inspection.

  “What about neither?”

  “Our martyr ancestors had to choose,” Morgan said. “What if the king said you had to be a martyr or renounce God?”

  Pretty unsavory. What happened if you renounced God but had your fingers crossed behind your back?

  I dodged away from a bee that floated crazily up. My fingertips were full of lavender oil, and my brain was all curiosity. When your mom was a girl, did she pretend sticks were guns and did our peacemaker ancestors grab them away? Are your mom and dad divorced?

  I kept the words from flapping out because sometimes Morgan was like the salamander that hid in leaf litter and preferred a secretive life.

  We made our way down the hill and back through the trees. I put my game face on and asked, “Do you think cicadas bite?”

  “They don’t attack people.” Even in this shady, spottled place, I could see Morgan’s expression wasn’t mocking. “If you held one for a long time and it thought you were a tree branch, it might try to feed, but Mom said that would feel like a pin stuck you.”

  So. I predicted Morgan had asked Cousin Caroline the same thing. It made me wish I were brave enough to show her the Safety Notebook. “I know what you should do if you’re being persecuted for your faith and you got thrown to the lions,” I said.

  “You do?”

  Her voice was sincerely interested, so I told her the plan:

  1. Don’t quail.

  2. Take off any animal skin your captors put on you because it’s supposed to make you look and smell like prey.

  3. Grab a whip or shield from the weakest-looking handler.

  4. If a lion charges, yell as loud as you can.

  “Why?” Morgan asked.

  “Lions hate loud noises. But don’t try to hide.” Jericho had said in Safety Club that people were tempted to dive for the wooden doors around the floor of the arena. Unluckily, those led to more wild animals. And you’d give up your chance to be seen as a hero. “Heroes sometimes won a pardon,” I told Morgan.

  “Our ancestors didn’t want a pardon. They wanted to be martyrs for their faith.”

  Maybe that was the problem. Dad couldn’t be his funny, guitar-playing self here where he could feel his ancestors in his bones.

  I kept thinking all the way to the house. “Thanks for taking in this stray,” Dad would say at Christmas, flinging his arms around Grandpa and Grandma Campbell. I thought he felt perfectly scooped in to Mom’s family. But maybe he always missed his true family.

  Maybe he liked a place where everybody knew everything about him.

  I didn’t.

  “I don’t actually want to go back to Sunday School,” I said. “The boys will be full of comments about how I ran away and got everyone in an uproar.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Morgan said. “We’ll think of something. It can’t be that hard.”

  Morgan + Anna = team! Score!

  CHAPTER 35

  Mystery and Frustration

  Morgan and I soon had our routine down. Morning chores started in the chicken house. After we found all the isolated eggs, we gently lifted the hens that were roosting, took those eggs, and put the hens carefully back.

  I now knew exactly how a smooth brown egg felt in my hand.

  Back at the house we made the washing water ten degrees warmer than the eggs to push the dirt away from the pores. When the eggs were clean, they went in cartons.

  In the afternoon we did it again. And egg gathering was only one of the chores. Farming was hard work, which luckily didn’t leave much time for missing things.

  I saved up interesting tidbits to tell Mom on the phone—things like “TJ chose his own name. When Cousin Caroline first took the puppies for food and supplies, he kept insisting on going into TJ Maxx until she gave up and named him TJ” or “Did you know people have made jewelry from emu toenails?”

  On Saturday we got to wait until nine in the morning to start chores. TJ looked dignified and disgusted when Bob-Silver ran ahead of us, barking. “If you bug the chickens, it’s the goat pen for you,” Morgan called.

  I was learning the chickens’ personalities. Penelope was a graceful jumper. Gwendolyn turned her head and listened to us. Pinky was the escape artist, who might lay her eggs anywhere, and sometimes we stepped on them.

  “You know what I wish?” I said as we started our egg hunt. “I wish nobody but evil and insincere people had to suffer. Like Simon.”

  “Wow.” Morgan looked up. She had straw in her hair. “I didn’t expect you to be on the Great-aunt Dorcas team about Simon. And where are all the eggs?”

  I flushed. “He attacked me.”

  Morgan stood up. “Gwendolyn is hoarding eggs again. We need some decoy eggs. Go tell Mom.”

  “What does that even mean?” I asked.

  “She likes to sit on eggs that she wants to hatch. Once we found her hiding fifteen! And she’ll fight us if we try to take them. But we can fool her with wooden decoy eggs.”

  I trotted off and was almost to the house when a car drove up to the parking area behind me. I stood on the steps and watched.

  The passenger door opened. A leg stuck out. It gave me a bad feeling. Then the boy got out.

  Simon!

  Morgan must have known he was coming even when I was talking about him.

  I watched his grandmother come around from the other side and take his arm as they walked to the chicken house. Why did Simon have to come out to the farm?

  It’s not like I owned Lavender Fields Forever, I reminded myself.

  My brain was all suspicion, though. Had Morgan got rid of me on purpose? Did she only want to hang around with Simon and his bullyboy tricks? I watched as Morgan gave a carton of eggs to Simon and his grandma. I watched as Simon’s grandma put the carton in her car and started off
toward the great-aunts’ house.

  Go with her, I ordered Simon in my brain. Get completely away from me.

  Instead, Morgan and Simon walked together toward the trees.

  Did Simon know I was here at the farm? Was he storing up more mean ideas? Would Morgan stick up for me or not?

  I waited, but all I saw was waving leaves on the trees.

  The tree house! Why Simon and not me?

  “I saw a bear,” I wanted to run and tell Morgan. “I didn’t even scream.”

  Had Simon ever seen a bear?

  While I was stomping around and flinging rocks toward the corn plants, Cousin Caroline came out. “How come Simon gets to see Morgan’s tree house?” I asked.

  Cousin Caroline was all brisk face. “Maybe Simon needs to see it.”

  That made no sense. Why would anyone need to see a tree house?

  I pulled out my whistle and blew it as loud as I could.

  After a minute Cousin Caroline put her arm around my waist. “Simon’s dad was my cousin,” she said. “He and your dad and I played together here.”

  When Dad and I stood by the wooden horse, was Dad thinking about being a kid, running in the fields with Simon’s dad?

  “When everyone else was saying this farming idea was impossible,” Cousin Caroline said, “he was the one who found me a used tractor. I said, ‘I was born to drive that tractor.’ He said, ‘The rest of us had to practice driving a tractor.’ He helped with my mistakes.”

  What was it like to die from lightning? In one second did the universe seem lit up and full of the glory of God? “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “He and Simon helped build the emu pens, too.” Cousin Caroline tugged me. “Let’s make lunch.”

  I wasn’t ready to go all soft on Simon, who would only take advantage if I did, but I wished I at least had some allowance to give Cousin Caroline to help pay farm bills. I wished I could promise her she would never be defeated.

  Who was I kidding, though? I couldn’t even fix my own family.

  I was like Hansel and Gretel with all the bread crumbs eaten and no path back.

  CHAPTER 36

  Let My People Go

  On Sunday, Morgan kept her word. At the steps to the Sunday School room, she whispered, “Hide! Then run back to your house. Oakwood people either go to church or stay inside, so I don’t think anyone will see you. I’ll tell Mrs. Miller you feel smallpox coming on.”

  She grinned to show me she was kidding.

  I hid in the sanctuary—no one there except the person up in the front practicing hymns. When everyone was in Sunday School, I dashed outside and down Cole Street.

  The field was a mass of bluebells, and luckily, the house still wasn’t locked. I flung myself on the rug by Midnight H. Cat and scooped her up. We rolled around together, all dizzy with love, until it was time for me to go back.

  While I listened to the opening music, I watched Dad’s foot poking out from behind the pulpit. How long had it been since I waltzed around on that shoe? Slurpee hung backward in her pew, giving me two-finger waves until Dad stood up. I squeaked my shoes on the floor, but Dad was concentrating too hard to notice.

  “Sorry the sanctuary is chilly today,” he said. “Love your neighbor next to you.” That made people chuckle. “Or”—he smiled—“make peace with them fast.”

  I glanced shyly at Cousin Caroline and Morgan, and they both gave me good-neighbor grins, which gave me a warm spot in my stomach and almost made me forget the missing tooth gaps where Mom and Isabella should be.

  Dad said, “We think of our hearts as pure and kind, which they often pretty much are. Until someone wounds us. Or until we remember hard things and pain bubbles up.”

  I could hear people breathing as if their old wounds were hurting.

  “This church’s struggles of today go back to its yesterdays,” Dad said. “Sometimes we choose anger rather than pain.”

  He was talking about Simon. Throwing that rock.

  “Luckily . . .” Dad paused. “Luckily, there are gifts in suffering.”

  Some people nodded. Some looked grumpy as grit.

  “Wounds can make us softer,” Dad said. “After all, chickens eat spiders and other insects and turn them into golden sunrise yolks.”

  My dad used to preach about Martin Luther King and Gandhi. Now he was preaching about egg yolks?

  Dad finished by saying it was hard to be pure of heart if our inner lives were a jumble of grudges. When we stood up, Great-aunt Dorcas was supposed to say, “Peace be with you,” but I heard her say that she hoped Dad had the good sense not to do “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

  At the benediction Dad raised his arms. “Life is short, and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who travel with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind.”

  It’s terrible when your dad is perfect.

  On the way home I reported what Great-aunt Dorcas had said about “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

  “Those have been fighting words around here—and for centuries, for our ancestors.” Cousin Caroline pointed her arm like a sword. “You owe everything to your ruler!”

  Morgan shook her fist. “You owe everything to God. The Bible says, ‘Love your enemies.’”

  I was watching another play.

  Cousin Caroline frowned. “How can you refuse to fight your country’s enemies? Be a patriot!”

  “No,” Morgan hollered. “Be a peacemaker!”

  “During World War One, the discussion got mean,” Cousin Caroline said. “The church burned. People still argue over whether it was a fireworks accident or dynamite.”

  Poor Dad.

  “At least tar and feathers are out of fashion.” Cousin Caroline winked at me in the mirror. “Try not to worry about your dad. He’s got pretty big shoulders.”

  That afternoon I explained on the phone to Mom about the church sign. “Are you getting time to write your journal article?” I asked.

  “Definitely,” she said. “I’ve been doing more research about Kansas pioneers. People wrote that in those dry years the air seemed thirsty and the wind seemed to shrivel the skin. People needed their relatives to send them supplies by train. Only the most stubborn stuck it out.”

  So Dad was born to stubborn ancestors. “It’s May now,” I said.

  She laughed and said, “Yes, Anna. Stampeding buffaloes wouldn’t make me forget your birthday.”

  That meant Grandpa was truly getting better and Mom would soon be back. Right then I felt a snap, click, rattle of joy as powerful as the Kansas wind.

  CHAPTER 37

  Watching

  Tips for Rattlesnake Safety

  1. Encourage harmless snakes to hang around; they discourage rattlesnakes.

  2. Don’t hike in snake country wearing sandals or no shoes.

  3. Step on logs and rocks and not over them.

  4. If you get a rattlesnake bite, squirm until the location of the bite is below your heart.

  5. If you try to suck out the venom, you could get poison in a tooth cavity or a gum sore, so don’t.

  For the next three weeks I watched Dad for changes. Dad watched the congregation for changes. Great-aunt Dorcas and her friends watched the sign out on the corner beside the church.

  First, Dad put up BLESSED ARE THE MEEK.

  Meek was basically the opposite of Great-aunt Dorcas, frowning at baby bean plants in the garden Morgan planted by the side of the church lawn. I went over before Sunday School and said, “I don’t see what you have against vegetables.”

  “Beauty of the lilies,” Great-aunt Dorcas said.

  I listened to her friends complain. They had always planted flowers from pioneer gardens here. Each flower had a hand-lettered sign that educated the younger generation.

  They didn’t sound meek.

  Next came BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO MOURN, which I was pretty sure meant Dad was miserable without us, and then BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL, which made me think: Have mercy on my cat!


  Every Sunday I stuck to my plan and spent half an hour with Midnight H. Cat in the empty house on Cole Street. Mom’s books stayed in their alphabetical order, and when I touched one, my fingers and thumb left five small holes in the dust. Dad’s guitar case was dusty, too. The house was pretty much like the abandoned aquarium before the tiger salamander came to live in it.

  I was always careful to be back at church on time. Even so, I waited for Mrs. Miller to tell Dad, but every week, when Dad came out to the farm for supper, he didn’t say anything about Sunday School. Maybe Morgan had confessed our plan to Mrs. Miller, and she was having mercy on me.

  Dad told me Midnight H. Cat was missing me and that a pot of bean soup lasted way too long with one person. It didn’t surprise me that he was cooking bean soup even with all those casseroles in the house because he always claimed bean soup was the most comforting taste in the world, even though I disagreed. “You know you miss my bean soup,” he said.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Right.”

  “Want to talk about what I did to upset you so much that day?”

  It wasn’t only one day.

  “Change your mind?” he asked every time.

  “Change your mind?” I asked.

  I wasn’t about to say, “I’m homesick.” Was it homesick for Colorado . . . or for Mom or Isabella or Midnight H. Cat? Was it homesick for Dad’s rhinoceros laugh? I got to hear it one time: when he got ready to leave and the goat was standing on top of his car.

  Luckily, I had important work to distract me.

  As soon as the morning dew dried, Morgan and Cousin Caroline and I used grass shears to trim the young lavender. It was noisy with the bees vibrating their bodies to make pollen fall onto them—so they could carry it back to their hive—and the plants whispering sweet, sweet, sweet. We and the bees tried to stay out of one another’s way.

  When the day got hot and the oil crawled back to the roots, we did school and emu work. Sometimes, when I watched Cousin Caroline pulling a plow behind the tractor, I felt a wild pain as if something had plowed a big hole through the middle of my heart. But mostly I could only think about eggs and grass shears and shovels and taking one more step with a big bag of emu feed. I even had blisters on my hands and heels.