Over the River

by Sharelle Byars Moranville

  Daddy looked at the display ruffling in the wind. “Either one is nice,” he said.

  Daddy didn’t seem to understand that you were supposed to pick one.

  “Well, which one would Mama have liked best?”

  “She’d have liked the butterfly one,” he said. “She always thought butterflies were real pretty.”

  When Daddy told me things Mama liked and did, and how she looked, she seemed to come alive again inside me. At first, the stirring memories would hurt, but the more I touched them, the nicer it felt.

  After the interesting things for sale disappeared in the rearview mirror, I read Daddy some stories from my book.

  When my voice got hoarse, I opened a jar of water and offered Daddy a drink, then took one myself.

  “How much farther to the Mississippi River?” I asked.

  “Just a little ways.”

  But it seemed to take forever.

  Finally a silver twist of water glinted between the hills, and I watched the river grow bigger and broader as we dropped into the valley and wended our way to the bridge that spanned the water.

  On the bridge, I hung out the window. A long barge train loaded with golden grain passed beneath us.

  “We’re back in our home state, Daddy,” I told him as we drove off the bridge on the other side.

  “Yep. We’ve only been gone a month,” he said. “Things don’t look much different.”

  We ate the rest of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and drank all the water, not because we were hungry or thirsty, but because we didn’t know what else to do.

  Daddy tried singing to pass the time, but right then I just wanted him to be still and concentrate on getting us home as fast as he could.

  In a while he stopped singing and shifted in his seat, squaring his shoulders. He came up on a truck carrying chicken crates, tooted, and went around. Then he gave our truck more gas and passed everything that turned up in front of us all the way to Huxley.

  A few hours later, we stopped at a filling station just west of town. A man who worked there read the sign on the door and asked Daddy if he wanted any more customers. Daddy said sure and got directions to where the man lived.

  “He didn’t say a word about the Green boys,” I said as we drove away.

  “Maybe they’ve left the country.”

  “If they’ve not, maybe you could run them out,” I suggested.

  “There’s probably enough work to go around,” Daddy said and smiled. It was nice that he’d landed a job close to home.

  “What do you suppose everybody will be doing when we get there?” I asked.

  “Well, I reckon your grandma will be doing something in the kitchen. Maybe finishing up the supper dishes.”

  “And Aunty Rose will be writing me a letter,” I said. “That’s what she does every night after supper.”

  Where would Grandpa be? I thought.

  When we turned in the drive, the special purple light that comes right before starry darkness wrapped the house and barn and other buildings. Pale lamplight glowed through the kitchen and sunroom windows.

  “You know what, Daddy?” I said. “It sure is dark in the country.”

  “Sure is,” he agreed. “And I like that. Maybe all this electricity isn’t such a good idea.”

  Daddy’s voice had a cheerfulness to it that suddenly sounded forced. Was he dreading meeting Grandpa again?

  As I slid out of the truck, Jacky came charging out of the shadows and bumped against my thigh, nearly knocking me over as he wagged his whole body. He groaned and whined as I patted him and squatted down to hug his head.

  “We got company?” I heard Nana say from the back door. “Who’s out there?”

  “Nana! It’s me.”

  I heard her coming down the steps as I ran toward her. Burying myself in her body and feeling her arms close around me, I shut my eyes. My stomach, my heart, and even my fingers and toes warmed. Something hummed inside me that said the whole world might whirl in noise and darkness, but I was safe at the center.

  “Who’s out there?” Grandpa called from the doorway.

  “It’s me,” I said, pulling away from Nana and running to him. “And my daddy. We’ve come home.” Grandpa picked me up in his arms and swung me around like I was a little girl.

  “Well, sure enough!” he said.

  I felt the collar of his denim shirt and the straps of his overalls under my hands.

  “Willa Mae? Willa Mae?” Aunty Rose ran out the door, shrieking, and let the screen bang behind her.

  Grandpa set me down and Aunty Rose hugged me until I couldn’t breathe and had to push her away.

  I heard the truck door slam as Daddy got out.

  “Daddy did real good in Oklahoma,” I said, standing back away from everybody and making an announcement. “He made almost five hundred dollars wiring houses. Now he’s brought me home so I can start school.”

  Daddy and I had never talked about school starting, but it sounded like as good a reason as any to explain his kindness.

  “Well, that’s just fine,” Nana said, her voice practically singing in the darkness.

  “School hasn’t started already, has it?” I didn’t want to miss the first day.

  “Starts Monday,” Grandpa said. “I went down and mowed the school yard today.”

  Silence fell among us. I could feel Nana and Grandpa wanting to get me inside. And Aunty Rose gripped my hand, pulling me toward the door as she danced around.

  “Well,” Daddy said, “I know Willa Mae will want to stay here tonight. And I need to see the folks.”

  I heard the truck door slam, and I slipped free of Aunty Rose to run and stand by Daddy’s window.

  I peered through the open truck window at Daddy’s face, pale in the darkness. He seemed small compared to Grandpa. In Oklahoma, he had seemed bigger.

  “Grandmother and Grandfather Clark will sure be glad to see you,” I said. “And Aunt Belle.”

  He nodded.

  “Will you tell them I said hello?” I asked. “And I’ll see them soon. Thank you for bringing me home, Daddy.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, putting the truck into reverse. “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  I laughed. A bedbug wouldn’t last two seconds in Nana’s house, and Daddy knew it.

  “See you later,” I said, leaping onto the running board and putting my hand on his head, as he had done to mine a million times.

  Inside, everything was just as I’d left it. The kitchen still smelled of wood from the cookstove. I could taste the grime of our trip on my lips and longed for a good bath. The memory of the big, white bathtub in Oklahoma loomed in my mind.

  The floor in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room still squeaked when I passed through. A lamp burned in the middle of the dining-room table, and Aunty Rose’s stationery was spread out just as I’d thought it would be. I grabbed up the robin salt and pepper shakers off the table.

  “I just love these old salt and pepper shakers,” I announced, giving each one of them a big smack.

  Everybody was staring at me like I’d gone crazy. Then we started laughing. I hung on to Aunty Rose and laughed until tears poured down my face.

  Nana warmed up some fried potatoes and lima beans for me and she fried bacon. Everybody watched me eat, and the food tasted so good.

  My own bed was a welcome place, and I fell asleep wondering what Daddy was doing.

  First thing Saturday morning I went across the pasture with Grandpa and checked on my livestock. The woods to the east glowed with patches of gold leaves, and Jacky went dashing into the undergrowth, on the scent of some animal.

  My lamb had filled out in the time I’d been gone and nearly knocked me over trying to get to the bucket of mash Grandpa carried.

  “Seems like everything is back in its right place now. Reckon your daddy will stay around here?” Grandpa asked on the way back to the house for breakfast.

  “I hope so,” I said.
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  “Reckon he’ll leave you with us?”

  I looked up at Grandpa, longing to find an expression in his eyes that wouldn’t make me choose to live with one or the other.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Even from the road, I could smell Nana’s biscuits, and I ran on ahead, anxious to find Aunty Rose and tell her about sitting on the roof for our meals in Oklahoma.

  * * *

  Daddy didn’t come around until the next afternoon. We were just finishing up Sunday dinner when I heard the truck. I asked to be excused and ran out to greet him.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  Daddy looked as if he’d been enjoying some of Grandmother Clark’s good food the last couple of days. And his eyes shone.

  “Come in, Harold,” Nana called, stepping out the door. “We’re just about to have some pie.”

  I knew Nana must have asked Grandpa if Daddy could come in and sit down at the table with us, and my heart warmed that Grandpa had said yes.

  “Thanks, Mae,” Daddy said. “That sounds real good.”

  He got out of the truck, then reached across the seat for a box.

  “What’s that?” I asked, bouncing to see.

  The box was gray-and-white striped, and the words The Mammoth Department Store were lettered in red.

  “Something for you,” Daddy said.

  The Mammoth was a store in Huxley that I’d walked by a hundred times, but Nana said everything in there would be too high for us.

  “I bought you something special to wear the first day of school,” Daddy said, watching my face. “Open it,” he went on, his voice shaking. “Here. I’ll hold the bottom. You pull off the lid.”

  The sound of the lid sliding off and sucking up tissue paper gave me goosebumps.

  “Daddy!”

  I lifted out the jade-colored dress with a little pink butterfly pattern all through the material and a collar made out of a soft white fabric.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, then wheeled to run into the house, leaving Daddy to bring the box and tissue paper.

  “Look!”

  I screeched to a stop in the dining room with the dress up against me.

  “It’ll fit perfectly and it came from The Mammoth and Daddy bought it for the first day of school.”

  I twirled around, holding the dress to my waist, then stopped with one arm stuck out like a model in the Sears, Roebuck catalog.

  After a while I quit drinking in the beauty of the dress, the pucker of smocking across the front, the tiny pleats at the waistline, and glanced up at the expressions on everybody’s faces.

  Aunty Rose’s eyes gleamed with admiration.

  Nana seemed caught up in calculating how she might have made that dress herself. She reached out a hand and rubbed the green paisley between her fingers and stroked the soft collar.

  “That’s fine material,” she said.

  I wasn’t sure about Grandpa’s expression. He didn’t know much about girls’ dresses, but I saw respect in his eyes.

  The next morning, I took a picture postcard of the Mississippi River to school to show everybody. And as we stood around the flagpole I pledged allegiance to the flag with the other students, Marilee on one side of me and Mattie on the other.

  I’d never looked finer for a first day. I loved the deep jade color of my dress. I loved the soft feel of the collar at my throat. Most of all I loved how Daddy had picked it out and bought it for me, and that it had butterflies Mama would have liked.

  Chapter 14

  One Saturday afternoon in late September, when Nana and Grandpa went down to Lorrimer’s to do the trading, I stayed home to help Aunty Rose finish hemming a dress to wear that night.

  We worked in the sunroom, me sitting cross-legged on the floor, a yardstick in my right hand and the strawberry-shaped pincushion on my knee, and Aunty Rose standing in front of me.

  “I wish I had a daddy to get me store-bought dresses,” Aunty Rose said, lifting her hair off her neck. “It would be a whole lot easier.”

  “Put your arms down,” I said. “It hikes up the hem.”

  Aunty Rose dropped her arms and I measured up fourteen inches from the floor and slipped in a straight pin.

  “Turn,” I said.

  Aunty Rose moved slightly and I measured and pinned again.

  Through the open sunroom windows, I could hear wind moving through the trees, and the leaves made a dry sound. The sky glowed with the clear blue stillness of September.

  The grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs struck twice.

  I’d fallen back into my familiar, easy rhythms, but it was a little like walking with a rock in my favorite shoe.

  “Are you ever going to tell me what makes the bad blood between Daddy and Grandpa?” I asked, tugging on Aunty Rose’s hem to say she should turn again.

  When she didn’t answer, I looked up from my pinning, but she didn’t meet my eyes.

  “I hate living this way,” I said, sliding in another pin. “It’s like having my life split right down the middle.”

  Aunty Rose ignored me. “Do you suppose your daddy will buy you more dresses?” she asked.

  “Well, he’s not hardly going to make them for me. He can fix stuff, but he can’t sew that I know of.”

  “You know what I mean,” Aunty Rose said, turning a little. “Mom and I can keep making you clothes. And you’re getting pretty good yourself.”

  I could sew simple things like plain skirts with elastic waistbands, but I could never make a collar or put in a zipper.

  “But that’s not the point.” I steered Aunty Rose back to the subject. “I’m old enough to know why Daddy and Grandpa don’t like each other. I’ve been clear to Oklahoma and back. Crossed the biggest river in the United States. Twice,” I said, pinning again. “And if you don’t tell me, I’m going to ask Grandpa.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Aunty Rose said.

  “Well, I know it has something to do with my little brother,” I told her, looking to see how she’d take the news that I knew about Baby Clark.

  Aunty Rose’s mouth dropped so wide, I could almost see China.

  I kept measuring and pinning, letting her get used to the idea.

  “How did you find out?” she finally asked.

  “Daddy told me way back in the summer. One night when we were down at the cemetery.”

  “What did he tell you, exactly?”

  “He said he didn’t have any idea why Grandpa buried the baby over by himself, but that it shamed Mama. Shamed us all.”

  Then for good measure, I added, “Daddy said I should ask Grandpa why.” I let that rest for a beat. “So that’s what I’m going to do.”

  In the silence, I could hear the hens cackling over at the henhouse and somebody’s tractor running in the distance.

  “If I show you something, will you promise never, ever to tell?” Aunty Rose said.

  My fingers stopped in the middle of pushing a pin through the fabric.

  “Yes!”

  “Then hurry and finish pinning,” she said. “We have to do it before Mom and Dad get home.”

  “Do what?” I said, going as fast as I could, my hands shaking.

  “You’ll see,” Aunty Rose replied.

  When I scooted back and said, “Done,” Aunty Rose slid off the new dress and pulled on her everyday skirt and sweater.

  “We’ve got to hurry,” she said, struggling with the button on her skirt.

  “Hurry and what?” I flexed my hands, my palms damp with sweat.

  “You’ll see,” she said again.

  I don’t know what I thought Aunty Rose was going to show me, but I was surprised when she led me into Nana and Grandpa’s bedroom.

  The window was up a crack to let in the breeze. The afternoon sun fell across Nana’s folded yellow quilt lying on the cedar chest.

  The house made settling noises in the silence, and we looked at each other, knowing it was wrong to snoop in other p
eople’s possessions. My ears strained for the sound of the car in the driveway.

  Aunty Rose squatted in front of Grandpa’s side of the double-sided oak bureau and opened the bottom drawer.

  My face prickled as Grandpa’s papers and other private things lay naked before us.

  I sat down on the floor beside Aunty Rose as she fingered through gray business envelopes tied together with string, a packet of letters, a small brown box on which somebody had penciled Accounts, 1940–1945. She moved aside a worn leather spectacle case, a pair of binoculars, and the box Grandpa’s watch from Montgomery Ward had come in. I saw a fat manila envelope with the cards and pictures I’d made for Grandpa over the years sticking out one end.

  From near the bottom of the drawer, Aunty Rose picked up a small square of folded paper and held it out to me.

  “What is it?” I said, moving my hands back.

  “A letter from your daddy.”

  It was the tiniest letter I’d ever seen, about three by three, written on strange, slick paper.

  “Why is it so small?” I said, feeling it between my thumb and finger.

  “They did that during the war. It’s called V mail. They shrunk up the servicemen’s letters to save on cargo space.”

  I stared at the sheet of paper as she unfolded it.

  “It’s from your daddy to your mama,” Aunty Rose said. “The last letter she got from him. You don’t have to read every bit of it. The part that caused all the trouble is right here.”

  Aunty Rose had had a lot of experience with this letter. I took it from her and read the part where she pointed, straining to make out the tiny words:

  … got a letter from Kyle Rogers today. He told me some things that made me real mad. He told me you’d been stepping out on me and that maybe the baby isn’t mine. Now, I don’t believe him, and reckon he did it just to get even over that deal with the car last summer, but his letter still got me thinking. I don’t want it to come between us, so I want you just to answer me yes or no. Have you done me wrong? And if the answer is no, I’ll never give another thought to it, I promise you that.

  Aunty Rose was watching my face.

  “Do you know what your daddy is talking about?” she asked, her own face red.