by Ann Gabhart
31
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The dreams tormented Victor. He’d given up years ago thinking they’d fade away. He’d always had bad dreams. Even before the war. His mother used to tell him to quit reading the far-fetched stories he loved, that reading all those fantastic and impossible imaginings planted strange seeds in his brain that took root and gave flower to scary monsters that jumped out at him when he went to sleep.
But he didn’t dream about men from Mars or three-headed monsters or one-eyed Cyclops. He dreamed about water swallowing him up. About dead eyes staring at him. About gray hands reaching for him to pull him into the world of the dead. And then came the war with hundreds more reasons for nightmares. The mud and the water mixed, pulled him down into a soupy muck he couldn’t escape.
His father told him he could—with self-control. Aunt Hattie told him he could—with prayer. Nadine told him he could—with love. And the love had worked for a while. He’d had the dreams, but he’d also had Nadine. Now he felt as if he were losing her. As if he wasn’t man enough to keep her. He couldn’t even be man enough to help a little child in need. Or his own daughter. He’d let the siren call of the alcohol lure him away from the ones who needed him to be strong for them.
His weakness disgusted him. Out in the barn, he’d stared at the bottle in his hand and hated it while at the same time wishing it held more whiskey. Enough to make him numb to the pain of his failings. He thought about using his belt to hang himself from one of the barn rafters. Had gone so far as to pull his belt off. He sat in the hayloft and stared at the leather belt a long time. The leather was worn white where the buckle hit.
Kate will find you. The words whispered through his head. In his mind’s eye he could see Kate coming to the barn after the sun came up in the morning to tell him breakfast was ready. She would try to rescue him even though it would be hours too late. He’d pass the nightmares on to her. He couldn’t do that to Kate.
He stood up and put the belt back on. He needed to get it out of his hands. Away from his neck. He didn’t really want to die. He wanted to live. He just needed to figure out how.
He spotted the bottle there in the chaff of the hay beside him. It wasn’t completely empty. He could tip it all the way up and get that one last swallow his tongue could taste just looking at it. He picked the bottle up and threw it against the far wall. It shattered and fell into the hay. He’d have to pick up the pieces of glass tomorrow to keep the girls from getting cut. Victoria and Lorena liked to play with the kittens in the loft.
The thought made Victor sad. Lorena wouldn’t be there tomorrow to play. His father had decreed they couldn’t invite the child into their hearts. His father said she couldn’t be a Merritt. But then wasn’t that what his father had always said about him too? And wasn’t he a Merritt in spite of it?
His father was wrong about Lorena too. She was already snuggled down in their hearts. Nothing Preston Merritt did was going to change that now.
Victor stumbled to the house. Where else could he go? His home. His family. The door hadn’t been bolted against him as yet. The bedroom door perhaps, but not the door to the house.
He was relieved when Kate didn’t come out to help him. He sat down on the couch and thought about taking off his shoes, but what difference did it really make? He was tired. Bone weary. And tomorrow he had to shape more iron. Tomorrow he had to find a way to be strong.
The dream had come to mock him. To show him he wasn’t strong. That the mud and water were going to pull him down and under and he’d never be free of it. When he cried out, he half woke. At first he thought he was imagining the touch of Nadine’s hand on his head. As if he’d gone back in time to when things were easier between the two of them, to when she thought she could carry him past the dreams. When they both thought their love would be enough. Before hard times made him swallow his pride and ask his father for credit at the store. His girls had to eat.
He kept pushing his breath in and out slow and steady, as though he were still asleep, but every nerve in his body was awake to her touch. He wasn’t dreaming. She was there behind him. Her fragrance settled around him, and it was all he could do to keep from reaching up and taking her hand in his. He wanted to hold her, to feel her body against his, to know without a doubt that she loved him.
She lifted her hand away from his hair, and he heard the whisper of her bare feet against the floor as she went back into her bedroom. Their bedroom.
He opened his eyes and stared out at the dark air in front of him. He wanted to follow her. More than he wanted to breathe, he wanted to follow her, but he stayed on the couch. He was afraid. What if she slammed the door in his face and locked it for all time? Yet she had laid her hand on his hair. She had caressed his head. She didn’t want a drunken husband, but she did still want him. He saw that in her eyes, heard it in her voice. She wanted them to have the closeness they’d shared when the girls were young, before the years had worn away at him. Before he’d surrendered to the drink.
You can quit. The words were there in his head. For her, you can do anything. You smashed the bottle in the barn. You can smash the other bottles. Not just for her. For the girls. For yourself.
He had planned to quit every week for months. But then the bottle would be before him, and his resolve would weaken. He couldn’t bear the pain without the booze. It would be too hard to live without the drink. He didn’t know how to quit. He was afraid.
Be strong and of good courage. The voice was speaking in his head again. That was Scripture. He didn’t know the Bible the way Nadine did, but he did know that. Perhaps a psalm penned by King David as he remembered how the Lord had given him courage and strength against Goliath. Victor didn’t know where in the Bible the words were, but he knew they were words he needed. He could be strong and have courage. He’d proved that during the war. He’d been afraid but he’d beaten down the fear and fought the enemy.
He could do the same with this enemy that threatened to destroy him now. But he couldn’t do it alone. He needed help. He sat up on the couch and tried to pray. Every word that he pushed up toward the Lord felt weak and wrong. It was as if the ceiling above his head was a barrier bouncing his puny attempts at praying back at him.
Nadine knew how to pray. Hadn’t he depended on her prayers while he was in France? Didn’t he know she prayed for him still, even though he defied those prayers? Suddenly he knew it wasn’t the barrier over his head making his prayers weak. The barrier he needed to knock down was between him and Nadine.
Be strong and of good courage. He stood up. For a minute he was frozen there in the grainy dark of the night. Maybe he should go wash the smell of liquor off him before he went to Nadine. But he was afraid that if he went out the back door, he wouldn’t find the courage to come back inside no matter how much the Scripture words echoed in his head.
He didn’t knock on the bedroom door. It wasn’t closed, so he just stepped through into the room. He stood inside the door and breathed in her fragrance. His heart was doing a funny skip inside his chest, and his hands felt sweaty. He thought about trying to pray again, but he had no words. Perhaps the Scripture running through his head would be prayer enough.
She wasn’t in the bed. Instead she sat by the window, her head in her arms on the windowsill. Her white nightgown and the scarf she used to tie back her hair while she slept showed up plainly in the dim light drifting through the window. For a moment he thought she might be asleep, but then she sat up. She didn’t turn to look at him, but she knew he was there.
He made himself move across the floor even though he sensed no welcome in the air. He went right over to stand behind her and put his hands gently on her shoulders. Her body felt stiff under his touch. “Nadine,” he said. “I need your help.”
“Oh?” Her voice was only a whisper in the dark. “You mean to get Kate to bed? I told her she could sleep on the porch.”
“No, not Kate. Me. I need you to help me.” It was hard for him to say the words. To ad
mit he was weak, even though he knew he was. A man was supposed to be strong for his wife.
Her shoulders stayed stiff as she stared out the window. Her silence beat against his eardrums. His hands turned to rock on her shoulders. He shouldn’t have come in here. He’d made a mistake. He had in fact surely been dreaming when he’d felt her hand stroking his head. And now they would no longer be able to pretend that things might someday get better. The barrier that had built up between them was too thick to penetrate.
He moistened his lips and pushed out the words. “I’m sorry. I had no right to ask for your help. I don’t deserve your help or prayers after the way I’ve let you down. Let everybody down.” Sorrow mashed down on him and made it hard to breathe as he lifted his hands off her shoulders and turned away.
“Wait,” she said.
He stopped. His heart started pounding as if he’d just had to back a fractious horse into the corner of the fence to nail his shoes on. It took all his strength to stand there and wait for her next words.
“Do you love me?” She turned half around in her chair to look toward him.
Her face was only a shadow in the dark, but he heard her heart’s longing in her words. And her fear. He knelt beside her and found her hands in her lap. He grasped them and peered at her face. “I told you once that I loved you more than life itself and that if I lost my life, my love would live on in your heart forever. Nothing has changed. Nothing could ever change that. I do love you, Nadine Reece Merritt. With my whole heart, with every fiber in my being.”
“Then why do you drink?” Her voice was stiff, but she didn’t try to pull her hands away from him.
“Because the demons chase me and I am weak.” He hesitated for a moment but made himself go on and say it all. “Because I fear you no longer love me.”
“Oh, Victor, I could never stop loving you. You are my life. You and our girls.” She did pull a hand free then, to lay against his cheek. “And you aren’t weak. You are the strength of my heart. Even when you’re drinking.”
“No one could love me then. Not even the Lord.”
“That’s not true.” Her voice was gentle, yet sure of what she was saying. “The Lord always loves us no matter what we do. He’ll help you. You just have to ask.”
“I tried to pray, but I couldn’t come up with the right words. I thought if you prayed for me—”
She jumped in front of his words. “I do pray for you, Victor.”
“Your prayers haven’t kept me from drinking.”
“No, but they always brought you home.”
“I’m home now,” Victor said. “I want to stay here. Pray that I won’t fail you again, Nadine.”
“All right. If you will pray the same for me, for I have surely failed you as often as you have me.”
“No,” he started to protest, but she put her finger over his lips.
Then she put both hands on his head. “Here we are, Lord, two sinners standing in the need of prayer. Help us. Amen.”
So simple, but he felt the prayer rise up out of her heart and his. “Amen,” he echoed.
For a few minutes they stayed motionless in the dark of the night. She in her chair, with him still on his knees beside her. No lightning bolts flashed in the dark. No trumpets sounded, but somehow Victor felt different. It took him a minute to understand why. He felt loved. By Nadine. By the Lord.
Nadine stood up and took his hand to pull him up beside her. “The night has cooled. Let’s go to bed.”
Victor felt all atremble, the way he had years ago when he’d been a young man following Nadine up the stairs to Maudie McElroy’s attic room.
32
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The pink fingers of dawn nudged Kate awake. For a few seconds she didn’t know why she was in the swing on the porch. The swing chains bounced against their hooks as she sat up and leaned her head to one side and then the other to get the crick out of her neck. She was stiff all over and her left arm was asleep from where it had been mashed up against the back of the swing. She shook it to start it tingling awake.
Her brain came awake too as everything that had happened the day before slammed back into her head. Grandfather Merritt taking Lorena and giving her to the Baxters as if she were no more than a stray kitten. Kate touched the scrape on her forehead. She didn’t really care about that. She’d had lots of bumps and bruises. It was the empty ache inside her that made her want to walk down the porch steps and off into the woods to get lost in the trees.
Not that that would solve anything.
And she couldn’t really go off walking in the woods in her nightdress. People would be talking about her the way they did Fern. It was bad enough Kate was standing on the porch in broad daylight in her old gown worn so thin a person could see right through it. Who knew when a car might go by out on the road or a neighbor might take a shortcut through the yard on his way to the store?
She picked up the pillow off the swing and held it in front of her as she backed toward the door. Lorena would be laughing her head off at Kate if she were there. Lorena liked to laugh. Kate wished she could believe Lorena would have a reason to laugh this morning at Ella Baxter’s house, but she couldn’t.
Kate paused before she went in the front door to look up the road in the direction of the Baxters’ house. She couldn’t see even a bit of its roof, but she knew it was there. She knew Lorena was there. “Your name is Lorena Birdsong,” Kate said very softly.
The sun was pushing more rosy light into the sky in the east, but it wasn’t up. The tree frogs and katydids hadn’t hushed their night songs. Behind her in the house, there was absolutely no noise of anyone stirring. She could go see Lorena before breakfast.
Her father wasn’t on the couch, so maybe she was wrong about nobody being up. She peeked toward her mother’s bedroom. The door wasn’t quite closed, and through the crack Kate could see her mother curled against her father. They were both sound asleep.
They looked right lying there together, so right that a thankful prayer almost took wing in Kate’s heart before she remembered that she didn’t believe praying did any good anymore. If it did, Lorena would be in the other bedroom waking up beside Tori.
Kate tried to dress as quietly as possible, but Tori opened her eyes before Kate finished buttoning up the back of her dress.
“Go back to sleep,” Kate whispered. “It’s too early to get up. Mama and Daddy aren’t up yet.”
“You’re up.” Tori raised up on her elbow to look at Kate. She was still in Evie and Kate’s bed instead of her own.
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean you have to be.”
“We could go fishing. They might bite this early.”
“Not today.” Kate ran her fingers through her hair.
“I guess it would be too sad. Without Lorena.” Tori’s mouth turned down. “Do you think Mrs. Baxter will let her go fishing with us sometime?”
“I doubt it. She probably doesn’t think little girls should go fishing.”
Evie groaned beside Tori. “Good gosh. Will you two hush up?” She squinted open one of her eyes and peeked toward the window. “The sun’s not even up yet.”
“Sorry,” Kate said. “I was trying to be quiet.”
Evie groaned again and pulled her pillow up around her head to cover her ears. “Then go be quiet somewhere else, for Pete’s sake.”
“Right,” Kate whispered. She picked up her shoes and then put them back down. She was used to going barefoot. She didn’t need shoes.
“Where are you going, Kate?” Tori asked.
“For a walk.”
“Can I go too? I can get dressed fast.” She swung her feet over the side of the bed.
“Not this morning.” Kate kissed the top of Tori’s head and pushed her back down on the pillow. “Tell Mama not to save any breakfast for me, but that I’ll be back in time to wash the dishes.”
Kate was almost to the bedroom door when Evie dropped her pillow away from her ears and whispered, “Give her a hug for u
s too.”
The sun was just beginning to pop up over the horizon when Kate got to the Baxter house. She didn’t go up to the front door. It was way too early for visiting, and she didn’t want to visit the Baxters. She just wanted to see Lorena.
Kate settled down cross-legged behind the big forsythia bush in Ella Baxter’s backyard. From where she sat, she had a good view of the outhouse but nobody could see her. She was beginning to feel more and more like Fern, out sneaking around in the early morning before anybody else was awake. Kate touched her hair. She hadn’t even taken time to properly comb her hair. Fern didn’t worry much with combs either. All Kate needed was a little axe.
Shivers tickled Kate’s back. She looked over her shoulder, almost expecting to see Fern behind her, but no one was there. Kate was alone. With each minute that ticked by, she felt even more alone until she thought she might not mind Fern showing up to sit beside her.
Mr. Baxter came out the back door and made his way to the outhouse. Kate held her breath and sat perfectly still. He didn’t look right or left, but kept his eyes on the ground as he walked the worn path. The hinges on the door creaked as he opened it and disappeared inside. Kate let out her breath and scooted around to the other side of the bush where she was sure he wouldn’t spot her when he came out of the outhouse. While Joseph Baxter never seemed to have much to say, Kate was afraid he might say plenty if he caught her hiding in his yard spying on his outhouse.
Kate breathed easier when she heard the outhouse door creak open and shut again and then a few minutes later the house door slam. On the air she caught the smell of bacon frying. That was good. Lorena liked bacon.
Ella Baxter was the next one out the back door, but she didn’t come up the path toward the outhouse. She was carrying a chamber pot that she emptied at the back fence. Again Kate eased around the bush to stay out of sight. Spying on someone from behind a bush wasn’t as easy as Kate had thought it would be. She should have paid more attention to how Fern did it. Except that Fern was so good at it that most of the time Kate never knew she was there. Or maybe she wasn’t. Who could be sure?