by Amy Sorrells
“Wait—did you say you wanted to sing on Sunday? Together? You haven’t sung since—”
“I know. I haven’t sung, not really, since Mama died.”
Noble turned thoughtful and studied her. “You sure you want to? Did you tell your dad? What’d he say?”
Color pinked her cheeks. “He doesn’t know.”
Noble sat back so he could get a good look at her. “That’s a pretty big step. You sure you’re ready for that? There’ll probably be more folks there than usual, being the last service and all.”
“I thought about that. Then I thought about Dad. I thought about what Mama’d say if she were still here, how she’d handle the church closing and all. I think she’d try to make it a special day. Bonnie and I have been working on putting together a couple of scrapbooks with the last few years of bulletins, photos from events, newspaper clippings folks have collected, past sermons. There were a bunch of pictures of me singing . . . and of you and me singing together, too.”
“Yeah?” He raised his eyebrows, pulled off his ball cap, and ran his fingers through his hair. “How did I look?”
She elbowed him. “You are so full of it, Noble Burden. You looked just fine.”
He watched her face fall. He could see her chin begin to tremble even as she turned her head away from him.
“After Mama died . . . This is so awful . . .” She covered her face with her hands. “I hated God. Noble . . .”
“It’s alright. I don’t think you’re the first person who’s felt that way. ’Sides, I think he’s big enough to handle it.” Noble hoped this was true, since he’d experienced the same thing himself when Dad left.
“But I’ve loved God my whole life, and then all of a sudden I hate him. It feels so awful.”
Noble put his cap back on, unsure how to respond to that.
“I’m so mad. I mean, why’d he have to take her from me? From Dad? I didn’t want to have anything to do with God or church or who I was before the accident.”
Noble wanted to tell her it was alright, to put his arm around her, to fix her pain. Trouble was, he asked God the same questions himself. All the time. He didn’t know how to pour into someone else what he didn’t have himself.
“Dad always says at funerals that God’s close to the brokenhearted, that God saves those whose spirits are crushed, but I haven’t felt any of that. I can’t feel him. But when I saw all those pictures, started looking over all the baptisms and funerals and weddings Dad had officiated at, read pieces of his sermons, I began to see all the good things God’s done—not only for me, but for Dad and Mama and the church over the years, for Sycamore. Even though I can’t see where he is in my life, I started to see that he has been here, with other folks, anyway. Does that make sense?”
Noble nodded, although in many ways he wasn’t sure at all. He looked out at the young cows who’d gone back to grazing and spread themselves out across the field, their curiosity about him and Shelby evidently satisfied.
“I think I’m realizing God’s been wanting to comfort me, but that he can’t if I don’t let him. If all I’m doing is running from him, I ain’t gonna find him because I’m looking in the wrong direction.”
“Nothing can ever separate us from God’s love . . .”
It was a Bible verse Mama or a vacation Bible school teacher or someone had made him memorize when he was young. “Maybe I don’t think of God as someone who’d chase after me, since all my own dad ever did was run away.”
Shelby met Noble’s eyes. “So I’m running from God, and you think God’s running from you. We’re a real mess, aren’t we?”
“So maybe we oughta stop running from each other and figure it all out.” Noble couldn’t help himself any longer. He leaned in and felt Shelby’s breath against the side of his face, then ran his hands down her arms where he knew the bruises he’d seen were still healing. He pushed stray hairs off her forehead and brought his mouth close enough to hers to brush against the softness of her lips and held himself there, savoring the faint smell of coconut sunscreen and the energy that’d been dormant between them, until finally he kissed her.
“Does that mean you’ll sing with me?” she whispered.
They both jumped at the sound of a car door closing hard behind them.
Shelby’s face turned pale and no sound came from her mouth as she formed the word “No . . .”
Cade’s jacked-up truck idled on the road, and he hotfooted, both hands clenched in fists, toward Shelby and Noble. He homed in on Shelby. “What are you doin’ here?”
“Cade, wait—”
“Wait for what? For you to sleep with this piece of farm trash?” He motioned toward Noble.
“It’s not like that, I swear!” Shelby scrambled to her feet.
Noble set his guitar aside and stood up to step between them. “You’re on my property, Cade. Either mind your manners or go on your way. You ain’t got no business here.”
Cade, militant, pointed his finger at Shelby. “She’s my business. And I ain’t going anywhere unless she comes with me.”
“You’ll not be taking Shelby anywhere, Cade.” Laurie marched toward them from across the lawn.
Noble couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Mama move so sure and strong.
Cade, who clearly hadn’t expected to see Laurie there, sucked in a breath and clenched his fists tighter.
“Mama, I can handle this.” Noble shot her a look of warning.
“Now, Mrs. Burden, I wouldn’t want you tangled up in this. Shelby was just leaving with me. Weren’t you, Shelby?” Cade approached Shelby and put a hand on her shoulder.
Noble could see he was squeezing her a little too tight, but she didn’t show signs of resisting. Could she want to go with him? Didn’t the last few minutes they’d shared mean anything to her?
“Shelby, you don’t have to go with him.” Laurie’s shoulders had slackened and her voice sounded pleading, weak. Noble remembered she’d sounded that way when Dad got riled up.
“Why don’t you let her decide.” Cade shifted his grip on Shelby’s shoulder to her upper arm.
“Shelby—” Noble stepped toward her.
“Noble.” Shelby looked at him and then at Laurie, color fading from her face. “I have to do this.”
Noble used every bit of willpower he had to keep himself from climbing on top of Cade’s truck and beating the lights and windshield out with a bat. But something in the way Shelby had looked at him made him think he should trust her, give her whatever space she seemed to indicate she needed. Still, as Shelby climbed into the front seat of Cade’s truck, Noble felt like she was taking part of him with her that he’d never get back.
Cade revved the three-ton engine and tore off down the road, dust and gravel spewing out, creating plumes of dust, and somewhere in the pasture behind them a cow mooed, sad and long.
31
Roiling with fury and concern, Noble took his guitar back into the house, then threw himself into chores he’d fallen behind on while in Nashville. The cows would need to be milked in a couple hours, and so he took the time to mow and trim, fill water troughs and feed buckets, and spread a fresh layer of straw in the pole and calf barns. The skies darkened along with his mood, and he noticed the milker cows standing together near the old oak—the only shelter from sun or weather in the pasture—on the slope of land that dipped before rising toward the barn and silos. Their tails swished, beating back incessant flies and gnats. The air felt like a furnace, and even from this distance he heard the window units on the house struggle and chug. Branches of the nearby silver maple groaned, the pale-white underbellies of the leaves blowing upside down.
The still-sunny eastern sky intensified the threatening gray and billowing white of the cumulonimbus clouds moving in from the west. Bolts of lightning flashed along the horizon. Within an hour, black clouds covered the sky, and it felt more like nightfall than midafternoon. Strange patterns played in the clouds. Great sections swirled and dipped and licke
d toward the ground. Noble didn’t need a meteorologist to tell him conditions were right for tornadoes. They’d be fine if one came close. The cellar would offer them protection, but the barn and the cows might not be so lucky. The same storm that shut down Whitmore’s power had spawned a tornado that destroyed a beef farm down the road, the winds heaving a dozen cows plumb off their hooves, nine of them never accounted for and three of them landing upright and very much alive in Viola Dean’s backyard.
Noble rushed into the house and found Eustace with his nose pressed to the window in Mama’s sewing room. He was already flapping his arms with worry. Mama, lost in her work, continued to push fabric through the determined needle of her machine.
“C’mon, you two. We gotta get to the cellar.”
Mama paused the machine and looked up at him over the rim of her reading glasses. She glanced at the window where Eustace stood. “My land, I didn’t even realize—”
She stood so fast the metal folding chair fell over.
“Stay close to me, ’kay, Eustace?”
In order to get to the cellar, connected to the side of the back porch, they had to leave the house. As Mama opened the back door, the wind snatched Eustace’s white ball cap off his head, and he left Noble’s side to chase it across the yard. The wind tossed the hat every which way. Each time Eustace grabbed at it, the hat blew out of his reach.
“Leave it!” Mama hollered.
The sides of the old metal silos near the barn creaked. The screen door smacked back and forth, worn spring hinges not strong enough to hold it closed. Lightning cracked and a transformer popped a few miles in the distance.
“Lord, have mercy,” Mama prayed.
Noble tried to assure himself lightning wouldn’t strike, now that he’d gotten Frank Whitmore’s herd settled. The cows of his they’d brought over had quickly learned the electric fence and would be safe from that standpoint as long as the power stayed on. Even if the power went out, he knew their own Jersey cows would respect the wire and stay well within its borders. More worrisome was if the power stayed out and threatened the milking.
“Wait here while I get the doors open!” Noble called over his shoulder as he ran to the cellar alongside the house. He fumbled with the latch, then fought to pull the doors open as the rain and wind pelted him.
He smelled electricity in the air. Everything appeared tinged with green. The wind roared and the siding rattled. Marble-size hail and giant raindrops splatted sparsely before ushering in cascades of rain that looked like curtains of water billowing across the yard and fields beyond. Eustace pulled his hat—which he’d finally caught—back on his head and scrambled back to the porch, crouching against the gusting wind.
“Let’s go!” Mama grabbed Eustace’s arm and pulled him toward the cellar. Noble braced the doors as they climbed in, then followed behind them into the dark hole that smelled of earth and must. He closed the doors and latched them, and the coolness of the underground surrounded them.
Laurie pulled the chain on the one lightbulb on the ceiling, illuminating rusty cans of paint and empty shelving once used for storing root vegetables. One shelf had a case of bottled water, a box with a lighter and candles, and a couple of old wool Army blankets belonging to their dad when he’d been in the service. They didn’t use the cellar hardly at all but for occasions like this.
“We can’t lose power,” Noble said.
“I know it.” Mama shook her head. She sat on a long-abandoned, bright-orange plastic milk crate and wrapped her arms around Eustace’s shoulders. He sat on the floor next to her and rocked back and forth. With his fist he rubbed the calloused spot behind his ear. It was the third time they’d used the cellar that summer. Noble began to wonder if the storms might be worse than the three previous years of drought.
Thunder crashed and the lightbulb above them flickered.
Eustace rocked harder, and Laurie moaned a little. Noble noticed she was weeping.
“Mama?”
“I’m so sorry, Noble.”
“Sorry for what?”
“Sorry for this.” She nodded at the cellar and the house above them. “I never meant for you to grow up and be so burdened with this. I didn’t want farming for you and Eustace. Didn’t want the uncertainty and vain life that it is, us hemmed in behind these fences right along with the cows. I wish I could do it all myself. I wish I could be less selfish about this whole Nashville thing and tell you that you don’t have to be a hero for us . . . that we could sell and leave all this behind.”
Noble hesitated, then figured there wasn’t any use in hiding anything from her. “Are there times I wonder and wish about getting out of here? ’Course there are. Anyone with half a brain in this town wonders that. But taking care of you and Eustace ain’t a chore.”
He needed to tell her about his decision about Nashville, but not in the middle of all this.
Another crack of thunder sounded like it hit right above their heads.
Thunder pealed and rolled.
The lightbulb above them sparked and blew.
32
Power’s out, we need help.
James read the text from Noble and scurried to pull on his old jeans. The storm had passed, a fast-moving squall that lit up the radar on his phone’s weather app, triggered the storm sirens, and sent him to crouch in the basement, which he rarely went into but was grateful for, especially with the number of storms they’d had this summer. He’d wondered how the Burdens had fared, and he was grateful Noble thought to ask him for help. James wasn’t sure he would have a month ago.
When James arrived at the Burdens’ barn, he found the three of them, along with Brock, already working in the milking parlor. Sunlight streamed through the filmy windows, making the fast-moving storm seem like a bad dream. The room was strangely quiet, except for a rhythmic whoosh-whoosh of milk hitting the bottoms of the large plastic feed buckets.
“Grab a bucket.” Laurie nodded toward several lined against the far wall.
Each of the stanchions held a cow in place; each of the people sat on a bucket and began milking by hand.
James’s cow was named Harriet, and he jumped—nearly falling off his bucket—as she stomped her back leg.
“Careful there, Rev.” Noble grinned from around the end of the cow named Lucy.
James nodded back nervously, then began milking Harriet again. When Noble was in Nashville, they’d used the machines, so it took him a few tries before he remembered how to hold the teat, pull and squeeze, pull and squeeze, until a stream of milk sprayed into the bottom of the pail.
“How do you know when to stop?” he asked.
“When the udders are soft,” Laurie replied.
“How long is that?”
Laurie chuckled. “What’s wrong, James, your arms hurtin’ already?”
“No—I just—” He thought it better to focus on the milking. After about fifteen minutes, he felt the udders, which were noticeably softer and less full.
“Most will give a couple of gallons, if that helps,” Noble offered.
Eustace finished milking his cow and began cleaning her udders and throwing hay into the trough before releasing the stanchions of the cows as they were done being milked. He released Harriet and Lucy, then Roseanne.
James wiped his hands on a towel he’d tucked in the side of his pants. “How many do you have again? Sixty-some?”
“Yep,” Noble said. “Should be quite an evening.”
“I spoke to Sheriff Tate on the way here,” James said, his hands moving in an even rhythm now as he milked his second cow, Daisy. “He said it was a tornado. Plus over three inches of rain in less than an hour. Power’s out all over Sycamore, in town and out here. Our house, too. Rivers were already swollen from all the other rain we’ve had. Flash flood warnings everywhere.”
Laurie sighed. “We’ll lose every penny from this milking, and every one after this until the power comes back on. No way to keep it as cool as it needs to be with the tank not running.�
�
The muscles in James’s forearms tensed, and he knew they’d be cramping and burning by the time they got all the cows milked. If the power wasn’t on by morning, they’d have to do it all over again, and again that next evening. No wonder Frank Whitmore had succumbed to despair.
“Did you happen to check how long the power company said it’d be?” Noble hollered at James from beneath the great belly of Opal.
“I called . . . got a recording that listed the outage areas and said they’re working to restore power as soon as possible. No time frame.”
They milked and milked and poured bucket after bucket down the drain in the cooling room. During one break, James took a moment to step outside.
“Hank?” he said into his cell phone. “Hey there. I need some help out here at the Burden dairy.”
He didn’t ask Laurie before calling Hank. With himself and Brock already there, he doubted she would’ve approved, but they couldn’t do this by themselves. Besides that, they’d have to figure out a plan for the morning, too, if the power stayed out, and Hank was great at organizing people. Hank said he’d be there within the hour, and James went back into the barn and resumed his spot under the next cow in line, Ethel. Eustace tossed a bunch of hay in front of her nose. Suddenly James realized that if Eustace was back from work, Shelby should’ve been home, too. “Did Shelby come home before the storm?”
Noble emerged from beneath Gidget in the next stall. “She brought Eustace home early. Cade came by and—”
“She was out with Cade in the middle of that storm?” James felt himself pale, a feeling of panic shooting through him.
The tornado had barely touched the ground, but the flash floods—the storm had dumped inches. Even Cade’s big truck could be swept off balance.
James had lost Molly on a sunny day. He’d crumpled to his knees when Tate came and told him, and again when he’d first seen Shelby in the emergency room with only a few cuts and bruises, but irreparable wounds to her soul. He imagined himself doing the same again, tears spilling from Tate’s reddened eyes again, the way Tate turned his hat in his hands, fumbling, stuttering, trying to find the words to tell James he’d lost his baby girl . . .