Pa thought for a moment.
“And what about you? You think you’ll be happy with her being your step-ma?”
“I don’t know, Pa,” I answered. “It has been kinda hard for me to get used to, I suppose. But I want you to be happy and do what you think’s best. And anyhow, like Katie said, I’m getting older and I won’t be around that much longer.”
“What makes you say that?”
Suddenly I realized I’d said too much. I felt my face redden, but I couldn’t take back the words.
“I heard you and Katie talking last night, after I was in bed. I’m sorry for listening, Pa. I couldn’t help it.”
“What’d you hear?”
“Oh, about her thinking I oughta get married pretty soon, before I got too old and turned into a spinster, I suppose.”
Pa shifted his weight uneasily. I could tell he was embarrassed that I’d eavesdropped.
“She had no call to be saying those kinds of things, and I straightened her out too, I want you to know.”
“I do know, Pa,” I said. “I want to thank you for those nice things you said. I felt so proud that you thought that about me. I didn’t know you knew me so well—you know, about the writing and teaching and things I want to do.”
“I ain’t such a dense ol’ goat as I look, Corrie Belle!” Pa laughed. “And I’ve had a talk or two about you with that Parrish woman too. She thinks mighty highly of you.”
I nodded. Pa bringing up Mrs. Parrish just complicated everything in my mind.
We were both quiet for a minute. Pa left the saddle he’d been leaning against, and walked over toward a bale of straw. He looked like he was going to sit down, but then he just gave it a kick and shuffled along farther.
“I don’t know, Corrie,” he finally said. “There’s just something wrong.”
He let out a big breath I could hear clear over where I was halfway across the barn. Then he turned and walked slowly back, kicking at the loose straw with his boot on the wood floor. “You know what I mean, Corrie? You can just feel when things ain’t quite right. She’s a nice enough young woman, and I doubt a fella’d do better writin’ off blind like I done. But I can’t help thinkin’ of Aggie. And Miss Kathryn just ain’t ever gonna be like a ‘mother’ to my kids. She’s more like Nick—like a younger sister or something. I just don’t know that I can ever get so I love her the same as your ma.”
I knew now wasn’t the time for me to say anything. Pa wasn’t a talkative man as a rule, but when stuff started coming out of him, like I’d only seen it do a time or two before, it came out like a river instead of a trickle! I was glad Pa felt he could be that downright honest with me.
“I know a marriage can be a good one without all that being in love sort of thing. It ain’t that I’m expecting anybody to be my wife like your ma was. But when I look in Miss Kathryn’s eyes, there just ain’t nothing there that pulls me and says ‘This here’s the woman I want to be like a new ma to my kids.’ Nick and she do okay together, though they can squabble too . . .”
Pa paced to the window of the barn and looked out.
“There they are now, walking down to the creek, Nick helping her with that second pail of water.”
He turned back toward me.
“You see what I mean, Corrie. It’s different with me. Sometimes I think Nick oughta get himself a woman like that. He’s always needed someone to hog-tie him and keep him outta trouble. But I want a woman who knows what she’s about and keeps her distance a mite more’n Miss Kathryn seems to be able to.”
He stopped, then looked up at me, almost as if he was wondering if I was still there or if he’d just imagined me and had been talking to himself all this time.
I smiled. “Couldn’t you—couldn’t you maybe talk to her again, Pa? Or do you think maybe it’s . . .” I fumbled for words. I didn’t know what I was trying to say. I didn’t know what Pa wanted me to say. My words just kind of ended in the middle of nothing.
But Pa just kept on going. “That’s it, don’t you see? There just ain’t much I can do. I’m a man of my word. Besides that, I figure I’m probably blamed lucky to find a woman like Miss Kathryn who’s willing and able to throw in with an ol’ gold miner with nothing but a big cabin already full of kids and kin. What else is a man my age gonna do, anyway?” He stopped suddenly and gazed out the window again.
“Well, you remember what Rev. Rutledge said about trees crossing our path,” I said.
“Yeah, I remember, Corrie,” he said slowly after a long thoughtful pause. “Matter of fact, the Reverend was making a lot of sense to me that day. Half the time I can’t make heads or tails of what he’s talking about. But I did understand what he said about the trees.”
“Me too,” I said. “I guess we both got trees falling in our way.”
“Maybe it’s the same tree,” said Pa with a sly smile.
I laughed. Quickly his face sobered up again.
“The one thing the minister didn’t say, though,” he added, “is what you’re supposed to do when the tree falls and you can’t go no farther. Sometimes after the tree has blocked one path, it takes a while tramping around in the brush to find the new one! You understand what I’m driving at?”
I smiled again. “I think I do, Pa.”
He looked into my eyes like he had when I’d first come into the barn, then he looked me over from head to toe.
“I meant what you heard me say last night. You ain’t an ordinary young woman by a long stretch!”
“Thank you, Pa.” I knew my eyes were getting wet, but if you can’t cry at a time like that, what’s the use of tears, anyhow?
“No, sir. And I love you, Corrie, love you a lot.”
I put my arms around his waist and hugged him. It felt so good to have his arms reach around and hug me back.
Chapter 32
Alone With Thoreau
Pa’d been having me take one of the small wagons into town with Snowball every morning to get us all to school, so he wouldn’t have to take us in and come back. We left Snowball and the wagon with Marcus Weber for the day, then he’d have her all hitched and ready for us when school was out.
The day after my talk with Pa, about halfway up the hill toward home, a rider on horseback flew past us. Then just as we were driving up to the cabin, back he came toward town.
“Who was that, Pa?” Zack asked as we got down, glancing back along the dust just settling back down onto the road.
“Friend of your uncle’s,” said Pa.
“What’d he want that he didn’t want to hang around for?”
“Oh, nothing. He just thought he seen one of them polecats Nick fleeced in that poker game back in the fall.”
“That fella Hatch?” said Zack.
“No, no, it weren’t Hatch,” said Pa. “Who was it Hammond thought he seen in town?”
“Barton,” said Uncle Nick, sauntering toward us.
I looked at Zack and shivered. I remembered that name!
“But even if it was Barton,” Uncle Nick went on, “I didn’t wind up with any of his money. He ain’t got no call to have a grudge against me.”
“Yeah, but them kind o’ lowlifes stick together,” said Pa. “I think Hammond’s right. You oughta lay outta sight for a few days. Them kind never forget.”
“Naw, what could Barton have against me?”
“Hatch mighta sent him.”
“Hatch ain’t got the brains to think o’ something that clever!” said Uncle Nick, glancing at Zack with a smile and a wink, enjoying his own wit.
“And I ain’t sure you got the brains to keep outta trouble when it comes looking for ya!” shot back Pa. “Where’d Hammond say he saw him?”
“East of town, out by the church building, kinda hanging around that new livery of Markham’s.”
Pa thought for a moment. “Well, I don’t like it. You lay low and keep away from town. We’ll keep a good eye out for ol’ Hatch for a few days. Like I say, you get varmints like that together and y
ou can never tell what kinda mischief they’ll pull.”
When we went inside, we were kinda quiet—all except for Uncle Nick, who kept joking and making light of the whole affair. Pretty soon Pa and Nick headed back up to the mine. Katie was working at cutting up some potatoes.
I wanted to be alone, so I fetched my book and went back outside and wandered along the stream. After Mr. Hammond’s visit I wasn’t exactly of a mind to go for a long walk in the woods, but I did want to get out and away from everybody, even just a little away.
So I went up past the mine, waved to Pa, walked across the board Pa’d put down across the creek, and went just a little farther up, not quite out of sight of where Pa was working. I felt safe there, but alone at the same time.
I’d brought my journal and pen with me. I don’t reckon I’ll ever think of my journal writing again without thinking of Mr. Thoreau. His Walden was just about the finest piece of journal writing I could imagine. He’s a fine writer, and what he thought of to write about! He must have had some active imagination. I hadn’t read much of it at all yet, but I found myself opening it to different parts, and wherever my eyes fell, on any page, whatever he was talking about was so interesting to read!
To write like that—what a dream that would be! I wanted to start right then making everything I put down in my journal better and better.
But it’s not just the writing, it’s how Mr. Thoreau taught himself to watch and listen and observe all the stuff going on around him. Most folks are too busy, and their lives are too noisy, ever to see the little tiny things. But Thoreau watched bugs, listened to grass growing, heard the sounds of the sky, and paid attention to every little thing. Yet from those little things he seemed to know so much more about life’s big things too—as if the little things held secrets to big things!
When I read in Walden a quietness and an aloneness came over me. More than the fact that Mr. Thoreau was alone when he wrote it, I felt quieter and still just from reading it.
Most folks seem to like lots of noise all the time—they want to be talking and laughing and doing things. But sometimes I wanted to be still, to be quiet, to think, to be alone. I wanted to see the world more like Thoreau saw it. Most of the time I figured other people didn’t understand that. They thought I was in a sad mood or didn’t like talking to them. Every once in a while, when we were having a recess or before or after school when there was some time, I liked to wander off to that little fir woods where Becky had been the other day. I liked all the other kids, but there were some moods that I couldn’t share with other folks, and I just had to think and walk and listen to the woods and the water and the sky and the animals to make it all come out right. Reading Mr. Thoreau’s book satisfied that part of me that needed aloneness every once in a while.
In one place he talked about a tree he’d planted:
The sumach grew luxuriantly about the house, pushing up through the embankment which I had made, and growing five or six feet the first season. Its broad pinnate tropical leaf was pleasant though strange to look on. The large buds, suddenly pushing out late in the spring from dry sticks which had seemed to be dead, developed themselves as by magic into graceful green and tender boughs, an inch in diameter. . . .
I didn’t even know what the word pinnate meant, but I liked how he described watching that tree grow. I really sensed from his telling about it that the tree was alive.
We’d planted some of the seeds Katie had brought us already, south of the house where Pa said we could start a little fruit orchard. So after I read this, I determined to pay attention to every detail as those trees grew from seeds to seedlings to trees, watching them bud and flower and bear fruit in the springtime, then go dormant in the fall.
In another chapter of his book, a chapter Mr. Thoreau call “Solitude,” he said:
I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude . . . I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome . . . I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go among men than when we stay in our rooms. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. . . . Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable. . . . We live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. . . . The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.
I guess I don’t understand all of what Mr. Thoreau says, and I don’t agree with all that about being alone, because I like people and I like to talk and be with them. I certainly don’t fancy the idea of going off to live alone for two years! But still I like what he says, and I don’t want to forget it. The danger seems to me being altogether one way or the other, so you can’t be learning in different directions in your life.
Maybe that’s another reason I liked his book, because I wanted to grow in lots of ways—not just as a teacher or a writer or a woman or a Christian, but in all those things, and lots of other ways besides.
Thoreau wrote more in Walden about being alone, but also about how much he loved nature and the world:
I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house. . . . The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature—of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter—such health, such cheer, they afford forever! And such sympathy have they ever with our race.
But the favorite passage I discovered those first days of reading in Walden was about ice forming on Walden Lake. Maybe I was drawn by the intricate detail of the things he noticed. Once we get slowed down, and get our minds so they’re paying attention, a whole new world is suddenly there to discover that most folks never see. But God made that little world as part of the world of men and women. And I can’t help wondering if we can’t understand all God wants us to if we only see the big things.
When I read this passage, I couldn’t help thinking of Mr. Thoreau himself. I could hardly believe a grown-up man being so still, so quiet, having so much time just to watch and listen, to see how thick the ice is, to lie down flat on the ice—it must have been cold!—and just stare through the water. Just thinking of him doing it made me laugh, but I’m glad he did, because his writing about it showed me a little of how I ought to look at the world.
I tried to imagine knowing the world like Thoreau knew that pond, or knowing another person that well. Or myself! What would it be like to be able to look inside my own thoughts and feelings like he did that frozen lake?
That’s how I want to know God someday too—the little things about Him as well as the fact that He holds all the power in the universe. The same God that designed water to skim over with something hard and shiny called ice when it gets to just the right coldness, is the God who makes a thousand thunderstorms. The same God who made the little bug and the sand he scoots on, is the God who made me. And I don’t want only to know the thunderstorm God, I also want to know the God who cared enough to make bugs.
Here’s what Mr. Thoreau wrote about the ice:
The pond had in the meanwhile skimmed over in the shadiest and shallowest coves, some days or even weeks before the general freezing. The first ice is especially interesting and perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the best opportunity that ever offers for examining the bott
om where it is shallow; for you can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a skater insect on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your leisure, only two or three inches distant, like a picture behind a glass, and the water is necessarily always smooth then. There are many furrows in the sand where some creature has travelled about and doubled on its tracks. . . . But the ice itself is the object of most interest, though you must improve the earliest opportunity to study it. If you examine it closely the morning after it freezes, you find that the greater part of the bubbles, which at first appeared to be within it, are against its under surface, and that more are continually rising from the bottom; while the ice is as yet comparatively solid and dark, that is, you see the water through it. These bubbles are from an eightieth to an eighth of an inch in diameter, very clear and beautiful, and you see your face reflected in them through the ice. There may be thirty or forty of them to the square inch. There are also already within the ice narrow oblong perpendicular bubbles about half an inch long, sharp cones with the apex upward; or oftener, if the ice is quite fresh, minute spherical bubbles one directly above another, like a string of beads. But those within the ice are not so numerous nor obvious as those beneath.
I like Thoreau’s way of observing and describing. He went on to tell what happened when the ice got thicker and harder to see through, and how he’d break it to see what would happen, and what happened to all the different kinds of bubbles when the ice got thicker. The first thing that comes to my mind now when I think of him or of Walden is a picture of Mr. Thoreau stretched out on that freezing cold ice!
On that particular afternoon when I’d been reading in his book and writing down some of these favorite passages in my own journal, thinking about how I could be more observant and a better writer, I finally got tired of reading and writing and put the books down. I stood up and stretched my arms and legs, sucked in a deep breath, and looked around me.
There wasn’t any ice, and there wasn’t likely to be any for a long spell. But I thought to myself maybe I could still do what Mr. Thoreau did and see some other tiny things that God had put around me.
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