by Leisha Kelly
“Run him off?”
“He just . . . he just took off into the woods. Sarah followed him.”
Pastor looked awfully stricken as he got out of the car. “Do you think I should follow them?”
“Yes . . . no. I don’t know. I think they’ll come back. I think it’ll be all right.”
Juanita came up beside me and took my hand. “How is Samuel?”
I wasn’t going to cry. Not a bit of it. But it suddenly came pouring out of me like somebody’d opened a gate for it. Juanita put her arms around me, and I tried to stop. “He’s . . . he’s all right. We might have lost him, but Dr. Hall says he’ll be all right.”
“What can we do?” Pastor asked me. “Tell me what you need first.”
“A . . . a prayer. Please. Just a prayer that everything comes out all right.”
He obliged me, right on the spot. Holding my hand and Juanita’s, he prayed low and fervent, and I felt a little better. “Thank you,” I whispered when he was finished. “Thank you so much for coming.”
“Do you think I should try to find Franky?”
I shook my head. “He’ll come back. He and Sarah both. It might do more good for you to talk to George.”
I told him everything that had happened, about the baby coming and the injuries in the fire and the accusations against Franky. He listened grimly without a word.
“Many are the afflictions of the righteous,” Juanita said. “But the Lord delivereth him from them all.”
I knew she was quoting Scripture, and it made me think of Franky in Samuel’s room such a short time ago, quoting that beautiful psalm and giving me peace. Lord, help him. Help his father see that it can do no good to cast blame.
“Where is George?” Pastor asked.
“Still in the barn, I think.”
He started in that direction, and Juanita walked me to the house with her arm around my shoulder. “Is it a good time to see Samuel?” she asked.
“I—I think he’s gone back to sleep, but you can come and see.”
“Have you managed to get any rest?”
I stopped and looked at her. I wanted to tell her I had, but I didn’t really think she’d believe me. So I said nothing at all.
“I didn’t think so. Julia, I think you need to have a seat and put your feet up. This has all been too much.”
“No,” I said, not even knowing why I was arguing with her. “It has not been too much. The Lord said he would never give us more than we can bear. I remember your husband told us that in a sermon once.”
“You’re right. The good Lord doesn’t. But that old devil sure tries to. And he was hittin’ hard out here last night and today too. You’re going to have to rest, Juli. I don’t know when I’ve seen you so worn down.”
Again I didn’t even try to answer her. I hadn’t expected that she’d say anything at all about me.
We went on walking, up the porch steps and into the house, through the kitchen and to Samuel’s side.
“The Lord has his hand on Samuel,” Juanita said quietly. “He had his hand on this whole situation. That no one was killed, Juli, it’s a blessing of God.”
Of course I knew she was right. One part of me did. But still I bristled inside at those words. This has nothing to do with the hand of God, another part of me said. If his hand was with us, then why did it have to happen at all?
Tears filled my eyes. I didn’t want to be so ungrateful. Without the Lord’s protection, things might have been so much worse. I knew that. I knew how much of a miracle it was to have Samuel still with me. I knew we were blessed. Thank you, Jesus, I said in my mind. Thank you for Samuel, and Berty, and everyone else being safe and sound. Help me be more grateful. Help me to rejoice.
Juanita handed me her handkerchief. I hadn’t even noticed that my cheeks were wet. “I don’t understand,” I struggled to say. “Samuel is such a good man. Why did this have to happen to him?”
“I don’t think anyone has the answer to that question,” she said. “Much as we’d like to. But you know, he showed a real Christlike heart risking himself for Bert that way. And you said he’d be all right. We’ll just believe that.”
I nodded. I reached and took Samuel’s hand. I was glad for Juanita to be here, because in front of her I didn’t feel a need to try to hide the tears.
“He looks peaceful,” she said.
I had to agree. Even with the bandage on his head and all the hidden bruises, Samuel looked peaceful, lying there sleeping so quietly. But it didn’t last for long.
Something in his face changed. He rolled just a little, and I saw the pain in his features, even though he didn’t open his eyes.
“Samuel?” I whispered. “Are you all right?”
“M-mother?”
Suddenly my throat was constricting. Didn’t he know me? Even with his eyes closed? Juanita came up closer. She held my hand as I held Samuel’s.
“Samuel, it’s me,” I said. “Julia.”
Slowly he opened his eyes. He looked up at me, but he seemed uncertain. “Is . . . Mother . . . all right?”
I couldn’t imagine why he was asking that, what he was thinking. I swallowed down a nasty lump of something. “I—I don’t know. It’s been months since we talked to her. But she was fine then.”
“I must’ve been dreaming.”
I took a breath, feeling the relief in me as though it were pushing aside a weight. “Maybe so,” I told him. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
He frowned and looked so thoughtful. “Not sure I can. I was just . . . just worried about my mother.”
“She’d be worried about you if she knew what happened.”
His deep eyes looked at me in question. “You think so?”
“How could she not, Sammy? She’s your mother.”
He seemed less than convinced. “Yeah. I know. But you know my mother.”
Indeed I did. And she had not exactly been an easy person to deal with. Certainly not easy for Samuel to live with when he was young. Still, she would care about something like this, surely. I wondered that I hadn’t thought more about that. Perhaps I should try to get word to her. “Do you want me to have someone drive to Dearing and call her?” I asked.
“No. No, I’ll call her. When I get to town.”
I had to smile at that. When I get to town. Just like a normal day. Samuel, in his own mind, would be up and at ’em before any of us needed to take time to send word in his stead. Thank God.
“All right,” I told him. “Are you hungry?”
“No.” He turned his eyes to Juanita for a moment and smiled. “Mrs. Jones. Good of you to come. Is your husband here?”
“Talking to George,” I started to say, but my words were interrupted by a giant crash in the kitchen, followed by a chain reaction of smaller thumping crashes, one after another.
“Boomie!” came little Georgie’s merry toddler voice. “Boomie!”
“Excuse me,” I said to Juanita.
I leaned to kiss Samuel’s cheek quickly and went for the kitchen. But Delores had gotten to the little fellow before I could.
“So sorry, Julia,” she said. “He got plum out of my sight. Did he wake Samuel?”
“No, he was already awake. And I should’ve tied that cupboard shut long ago. Georgie and I have dealt with this before.”
The little fellow laughed up at me. “Boomie,” he whispered and melted into giggles.
“Yes, indeed,” I said. “Time to put the boomie baking pans back into the cupboard, though, Georgie. You want to help?”
“We’ll get it, Julia,” Delores assured me. “And Georgie sure enough will help, won’t you, Georgie?”
Pans were scattered across the floor clear to the table. The two of them made an awful lot of noise putting everything back again, which of course was a delight to Georgie. That boy loved noise. Maybe he’d work on a train someday. Or play percussion for a symphony.
I left them and went back to Samuel’s room. Willy and Robert had gone to bring Dolly and her cal
f to our pasture. A mercy that George had a surviving milk cow. And a calf. I supposed he’d lost the other three. He wouldn’t be selling milk to the Posts and the Wainwrights for a while, unfortunately.
When Samuel saw me come back in, he asked if I’d help him sit up. “I’m not sure,” I told him. “The doctor said you weren’t to be moving around.”
“I won’t go anywhere,” he promised. “Just up a little.”
I felt good that he wanted to. That he was confident and feeling well enough. I used my pillow and a rolled blanket to set on top of his pillow to prop him up. Still, I could tell the moving was painful for him. He didn’t say anything, but it was plain on his face.
“Did you get any sleep?” he asked me.
“No. Too many people here. Too much to do. I can’t sleep in the daytime anyway.”
He shook his head. “But here I am.”
“Sammy, that’s different. You’re supposed to rest.”
“Doesn’t mean I like it.”
Juanita smiled.
“I ought to be helping George sift through the rubble and getting things cleaned up over there,” he continued. “Don’t you even think it,” I blurted out. “George isn’t even considering that yet. They’ll get to it soon enough, but that’s not your job.”
He mumbled something low about helping his neighbor, and I shook my head. “You’ve done more for George than any of us could count. It’s somebody else’s turn this time around.”
I knew he had a perfect answer to that. I could tell by the way he looked at me. But he didn’t speak it. He just leaned his head back into the pillows and closed his eyes for a second.
“Hurting?” I asked him.
“My ribs. Maybe Dr. Hall was right about them.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be sitting up.”
“Feels better for my head though.” He took my hand. “It was throbbing kind of crazy lying flat.”
All the words the doctor had said about swelling in the brain rolled through my mind, tearing away at the relief I’d felt. I tried to push the thoughts away, but they wouldn’t go, and suddenly I was feeling queasy inside. Juanita must have noticed.
“Julia, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I told them. Glancing out the window, I could see the pastor with George walking in the yard. Maybe he was talking some sense into him. But maybe I should still go after Sarah and Franky. Weren’t they back yet?
Emma Grace came looking for me to ask if she could get the Crayolas down from the cupboard to make a picture. I told her she could and went to fetch her some paper. Thelma was napping on the old davenport in the sitting room. Sam Hammond was sitting over by the window with Bert, his infant daughter nestled in the crook of one arm. Little Georgie had left the kitchen to try peeking at them from the stairway rails, but nobody seemed to be paying him much mind.
“Want to color a picture?” I asked him.
Merrily, he nodded. “Color!” he sang out, jumping down from the stairs with more daring than a two-year-old should muster.
“Settle down,” his father told him. “Or you’ll wake your mama.”
Georgie knew that was no invitation. I could see the understanding behind his impish little grin as he stood stock-still turning it over in his mind. But then he went racing on toward the davenport like it was the greatest idea he’d had all day. I had no doubt that he would have jumped his boisterous little self on Thelma full and hard if I hadn’t grabbed hold of him just in time.
“Oh no, you don’t,” I scolded. “You let your mama rest. It’s hard work birthing a baby.”
He shrugged his little shoulders. “Dat baby don’t do nothin’.”
“She will. Just give her time.”
I took his little hand and led him to the kitchen table, where Emma Grace was already sorting the Crayolas into what she called rainbow order. “Teacher showed us at the school,” she said proudly.
“That’s very bright of you to remember,” I replied, meaning every word.
Delores was peeling a washbowl full of potatoes, and Katie was beside her, cutting what few carrots we had left into sticks. I wondered why they’d bother. Surely nobody would want any dinner. Not any time soon, at least. We’d barely finished the rounds of breakfast, and I couldn’t picture any of us having much appetite anyway.
“Better to keep the hands busy,” Delores told me. “Besides, I’m gonna make a tater casserole with these, an’ that’ll take a while bakin’. Didn’t want you havin’ to think on food for this bunch.”
I almost told her that Louise Post was making something. But I didn’t. Delores was just trying to help. I didn’t know how long she’d be here, or Sam and Thelma either, but I figured I’d let her do what she thought we needed as long as she was around.
I set Georgie down in the chair next to Emmie and gave them both some paper. “Share the Crayolas,” I told the eager little boy. “Be careful with them, and no chewing on them. All right?”
His little head pumped up and down as he made a fist around one Crayola and started marking the page with long, deliberate black streaks.
Emmie started with green, drawing little stems and leaves at the base of her paper. I started to leave them, but then my eye caught the door of the baking pan cupboard, open just a crack. A real temptation, I knew, and Georgie was never at one thing for very long. I took an old apron, poked it through the cupboard handle and the one next to it, and tied them securely together. Georgie was too busy making giant black swirls across his paper to notice.
Ben and Lizbeth came pulling up in their old car before I got myself out of the kitchen. They were terribly worried for all of us, that was plain right away. From the doorway, I could see Lizbeth rush to give her father a hug, and then she started toward me. Sarah was over by the garden again, and I was glad to see her. I hoped Franky had come back too.
“Oh, Mrs. Wortham,” Lizbeth called, and for the first time since she’d gotten married, I didn’t feel all that glad to see her. All the Hammonds, all the people, were suddenly an unwelcome distraction. Maybe I’d feel better about things if everybody left us alone for a while. Just Samuel and me and our kids, until he was up on his feet again and I knew for sure he was really fine.
Lizbeth didn’t hug me right away, even though it wouldn’t have been that unusual for her. She seemed to know I was feeling a little numb. She took both my hands and squeezed them tight.
“Mrs. Wortham, I’m sorry for what all happened. How is Mr. Wortham?”
“He’s . . . he’s all right. Restless to get up, and that’s a good sign, I expect.”
“Yes, that’s good. Is there anything we can do?”
Take your family, I felt like telling her. Take every one of them home with you, or else to their house to fix whatever needs fixing. Just get them away for a while.
But I didn’t say a word of it. I didn’t even answer her question.
“You look exhausted,” she went on. “Come in and sit down. I bet you didn’t get a wink of sleep.”
She led me in. Ben stayed outside talking to Kirk. Pastor started for the woodshop, so I figured Franky must have come back and gone straight in there. George should be going with the pastor to apologize, or at least to say something civil. But he didn’t go.
We were hardly in the house for two minutes when Barrett and Louise drove up too. I knew to expect them. I’d asked Barrett for more ice. And he’d told me plain that Louise was fixing things to bring over later. But still, more people, more bustle. I was grateful that they cared, but I didn’t like it anyway.
The Posts came carrying in more dishes than were reasonably necessary, and after getting ice on Samuel’s head and Bert’s foot again, I retreated back to Samuel’s room, not wanting to be in the middle of everything. Juanita left us alone and shut the door behind her when she went out. Bless that woman, Lord. She’s got sense that comes straight from you.
“Come here, Juli,” Sammy said so softly it was almost a whisper. “Come up here and rest.”
I snuggled beside him. I lay my head against his shoulder, and he pulled me close.
“Does it hurt, me leaning on you?” I asked.
“No.”
I closed my eyes, just for a minute. Things got quieter. I don’t know how long I stayed like that. But it seemed like only a moment, and Grandma Pearl was walking along beside me, pointing out the bee balms and a clump of trillium in the Pennsylvania woods.
But then I heard what was surely Harry clomping down the stairs, and I jumped awake with a start. How could I sleep at a time like this?
I got up to help Delores and Louise in the kitchen. They were wrapping up a lot of the food to send over to the Hammond house. George and Kirk and a good many of the others, including Lizbeth and Ben, were about to head over, looking to salvage what they could from the barn rubble and see what they could do for the house.
“Franky’ll be stayin’ to work on them orders him an’ Samuel’ve got,” George told me.
I nodded. I wanted to ask about his talk with Pastor and Pastor’s talk with Franky, but I didn’t. “Where’s Rorey?” I did ask, realizing I hadn’t seen her for quite a while.
“I b’lieve she went on over there,” he said. “Prob’ly openin’ the house, and settin’ things out t’ air. Don’t know what I’d do without that girl. I tell you, Mrs. Wortham, since Lizbeth got married, she’s been holdin’ things together.”
For a moment I wasn’t sure what to say. Rorey certainly didn’t display any great diligence at my house. “That’s nice,” I finally told him. “All of your children do their part.”
“Gonna need ever’body to get back on m’ feet,” he went on. “Just when it was startin’ to look like we was doin’ okay, now we’s worse off than ever.”
“It’ll come out all right,” I told him. “You’ll see.”
“That’s the kinda thing you always say.”
He went in to see Samuel again, and the pastor went in too. I left the three men alone and went outside.
Sarah looked up at me from the garden, dropped a handful of henbit, and started in my direction. I came down off the porch and met her on the stone walk Emma Graham had put in so long ago.
“Mom . . .”