Emma's Gift (3 page)

Wila was sleeping a long while this time, and George kept himself busy doing a little odd this and that. I went back to the cleaning that the house sorely needed, top to bottom. While sweeping in the kitchen, I stirred up so much dust and wood shavings that I set myself to coughing.

George looked up at me and shook his head. “You ain't gotta do that.”

“I know. But I feel better making myself useful.”

“Wila does that in the spring, when she can open all the windows and doors.” He said it like he thought I ought to know this kind of thing. “That's why they call it spring cleanin'.”

I stared down at the floor, wondering if he meant that she only swept in the spring. I could almost believe it, as sorry a shape as it was in. But she'd been sick, and you couldn't expect Lizbeth to keep up with everything. With seven boys, though, you'd think at least one of them would lend a hand with housework. Goodness, there was the awfullest crud on the floors and on the counters. Even the walls were a dingy, stained-up mess.

Despite the dirt, I set the broom aside before I was done, not sure if I was bothering George. I went to take a peek in the bedroom, and Emma looked to be sleeping in the rocker. I tried to back out, but she stirred anyway.

“Any change in Wila?” she asked me.

“I don't think so.” I was wondering, and had been for quite a while, what she'd meant when she'd said that Wila was off a rhythm. So I worked up my nerve and asked her.

Emma sat forward, and I stepped closer in case she wanted to get up. She did. I helped her back to Wilametta's side, and she laid her head against the sleeping woman's chest. “Her heartbeat weren't regular, Juli. That's what I meant.”

“What about now?”

She sat up a little. “Wila used to say she was strong as an ox. And she was too. Could lift like two men. And out-eat 'em, easy.”

“Is she all right?”

Emma looked away toward the window and shook her head. “No. No, she ain't. But she's restin' in God's hands, and that's the best place for her.”

I followed Emma's eyes past the frosty windowpane, where we could see the steady, driving snow. “It's getting pretty bad out,” I told her. “George said you can't see the road anymore, even if you're standing on it. I doubt the doctor will be able to get through tonight.”

“Then we wait till tomorrow,” she said, her expression unchanging. “Don't fret for the children none. They'll make out just fine with Samuel over there.”

It didn't worry me about the kids. So long as they'd gotten to Emma's, I knew Samuel would manage all right. He was good with kids. But before long, the whistling wind had picked up fierce and the snow began beating heavier against the window glass. It was a real storm, and there was no question in my mind that wherever any of us were, the doctor included, we were stuck.

Hours passed with everything just about the same. It came past time for supper, but nobody was interested in eating anything. Wilametta woke up twice more, both times briefly and barely long enough for us to get any drink down her at all.

Emma kept up her vigil, sponging Wila down, rubbing her arms and legs, talking to her when she got the chance. I tried to get Emma to rest some more, but she wouldn't do it. She let me take care of all the running between rooms, but that was all.

Later in the evening, I reheated the herbal concoctions and brought them just in time to see Wilametta stir awake again, this time coughing.

“George?”

I set down what I was carrying and turned around for the kitchen. But I didn't have to fetch him. George was just coming in the doorway. He got up close to the bed and squatted down, taking his wife's hand and lifting it up to his face. It was the first time I could recall seeing any physical affection between them.

“George,” Wilametta was whispering. “You remember that necklace your grandmama give me?”

“I do,” he answered slowly.

“You see that Lizbeth gets it, you hear? It's her right. She's been nothing but an angel to me, an' you know it.”

“Uh, yeah. She's a good help, all right.” George reached up and brushed away the frizzled stray hairs from Wila's forehead. “You oughta just give it to her yourself. She'd be real tickled—”

“I loved ya when I first set eyes on ya,” she said, getting quieter. “Under that sycamore, acting the fool. A wonder we ever come together…”

“True enough,” George said, nodding. “I reckon you shoulda knowed better.”

“It's been good.” She was whispering again. “Good enough.”

And then she was quiet. She let out one little gasp and lifted her hand to touch George's flannel sleeve. Then the arm, looking leathery and unreal, slid slowly back against her pillow. She gasped again, and then there was no sound at all.

I saw the change in her face, the peace appearing at the same time as a chalky white. And I felt like running outside, anywhere, to scream for the God who was supposed to be watching and answering the prayers we'd been praying.

Emma jumped forward, rubbing at her again, talking, praying, trying to get some response. But finally she gave up and lowered her head down to Wila's chest. “Oh, Wila,” she cried. “Not today. You ain't supposed to go today.”

Never in my life have I heard anyone sound so absolutely weak and defeated. I could do nothing but stand and stare. It wasn't real. Couldn't be. I looked at George, afraid of what I'd see.

He was shaking his head, the set of his jaw making him look angry. “She ain't gone,” he said. “She ain't, Emma. She ain't gone.”

Emma closed her eyes, her head still on Wila's chest. She looked so tiny and broken. Suddenly she started shaking, and I wanted to pull her off Wila and hold her. “She's gone, George,” she said, her voice far steadier than she looked. “God love her. She's gone.”

Slowly she sat up, but just long enough to sink from the bed to the floor. “So sorry,” she said, and I jumped up, hurrying to her side.

George bent over Wilametta, touched her cheek and her puffy, pale lips. He gave her a shake, tender and desperate, and I could hear his breath drawn out pained and slow. “She's gonna be hungry later, Mrs. Wortham,” he insisted. “Oughta get a pot a' soup on, if you don't mind.” He straightened himself. “Maybe if we put a poultice 'cross her chest…”

Emma was shaking in my arms, and he just stopped and looked at her. The silence right then was heavier than stone, and I could feel the weight of it pressing on my chest. George stood like a statue. Finally, he sunk down at Wilametta's side and bent to hold her. I turned my eyes away, hurting too bad to see.

“It can't be helped,” Emma whispered.

“You said she'd be all right. That's what you said.”

“None of us knows them things.”

He was still a long time, lingering with Wila at the bed, not a single hair of him moving. “No,” he finally said, barely able to get just the one word out.

“George—” Emma reached out her hand.

“No.” He stood up and turned from us. I could hear his rapid steps as he moved to the door and then out, not taking the time for his hat or his coat.

“George!” Emma called again, pulling up straight and tense. “Juli, see if you can tell where he's gone! He oughtn't to be out in the storm in that frame a' mind! Oh, Juli, his heart's plumb broke.”

She fell into sobs, and I didn't want to leave her. But I ran to the door like she'd said.

He hadn't even shut it. And there was no sign of him in the swirling snow. Already the whipping wind had covered his tracks.

“Mr. Hammond!” I screamed, knowing why Emma would worry. Blinded by grief and without his coat, he had no business being out in the bitter cold. I'd have gone after him if only I'd known which way to go. “Mr. Hammond!”

There was no answer but the howling wind and the distant, miserable lowing of one of George's cows. Shut in the barn but cold nonetheless, no doubt.

“Mr. Hammond!” I screamed once more. I thought about running toward where I knew the barn must be, just to see if he'd gone that way. But what if he hadn't? What if something lay out there under the snow that I couldn't see in the Hammonds' unkempt farmyard?

I knew he could be anywhere. He could even be trying to make it through the timber to his children over at our house. I was sorry about it, dreadful sorry for him, but I had to think about Emma inside the house, in the worst shape I'd ever seen her, weak and hurt for the loss of a friend. Wilametta Hammond. Strong as an ox. And gone in a moment. A quiet, cruel, devil of a moment.

Slowly I pulled the worn rope latch and shut the door.

TWO

Samuel

All ten of the Hammond children burst through the back door, covered in snow, too cold to wait for me to answer their knock. Willy was the first to say that Emma had shooed them out so their mother could rest.

“She'll be okay after she's had the quiet,” Kirk offered. “Boy, if it was summer, we could just run outside a while.”

Lizbeth took the baby straight in beside the fireplace, and the rest of the Hammonds followed her. I threw in more wood, all I could, to get the fire good and blazing. Lizbeth was solemn, too solemn. The littler girl and the two youngest boys cuddled close to her, their fingers and noses red with cold.

The oldest boy, named Sam like me, ordered all of them to take off their coats and stay by the fireplace. But he headed back to the door, pulling his old jersey gloves tight.

“You going back home?” I asked him.

“Yeah, and you should tell them so. But I got to fetch the doctor first.”

The gravity of that did not escape me. George Hammond hadn't called a doctor when the baby came early. Didn't even consider it. And that had been decent weather.

“Son, I'm not sure you can make it through tonight in that wagon. And even if you did, I don't know that the doctor could reach her till morning.”

He looked at me a minute, his black eyes deep and somber. “You're right,” he said. “Come near stickin' the wagon in drifts just this far. With your permission, I'll leave it here, and ol' Teddy, and take Bird. She's the stouter of the two.”

I wanted to argue with him, say that it didn't make sense to send a kid out in this storm. But I hadn't been there. I hadn't seen Wilametta. And they surely knew the weather as good as I did.

There was no persuading Sam Hammond. He was bound to go, no matter what I said, so I bundled him up better in my own coat and hat and the scarf Juli had made for me. I didn't know if he was much for praying, even though the family went to church, but I prayed before he left because it was the thing to do.

Robert came into the kitchen looking for me. His eyes were wide with questions. “Dad, are they staying the night?”

“They'll have to in this weather.”

“Is their mom real sick?” He said it with a genuine worry. At ten years old, he was well able to consider what that could mean.

“Yes. I think so.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Make everybody welcome.”

I hunted cupboards for the cloth bag of popcorn we'd gotten from Russell Lowell, and the store-bought box of salt. I pulled out the biggest pan in the house and then ran out to the box on the porch and whacked off a chunk of butter.

“Anybody want popcorn?” I announced, hurrying back to the sitting room before the kids had time to get restless. Most of them were still soaking up heat, so much so that you couldn't even see the flame for all the kids gathered around it. But Bert and Harry, the two youngest boys, were already headed up the stairway.

“Paw-corn?” little Berty stopped to ask me, his rosy cheeks looking almost raw. “We get paw-corn?”

“Sure. If you want.”

My own Sarah, sweet and innocent as a six-year-old could be, looked up with her smiling eyes and said, “Boy, this is better than a real live party.”

Rorey Hammond was already at her side, and the two little girls ran upstairs after Sarah's rag doll. “I wanna be Emma,” I heard Rorey say from the steps. “Your dolly can be Mama, and we'll fix her up right as rain.”

Lizbeth stood to her feet, hugging Emma Grace, who was so quiet she must've been sleeping. The oldest girl took one look at Harry, already halfway up the banister, and shook her head disapprovingly. “Harry Beckwith Hammond, you get yourself down! That ain't no way to behave, and we ain't even been here a minute!”

The little boy looked at his sister, then at me, and as if daring both of us, swung his leg up over the rail and slid himself down to the post at the bottom.

“That's a trick, all right,” I told him. “But I surmise Lizbeth to be your elder, and if you don't mind her good in my house, I might just set you out in the snow.”

He cocked his head, as if trying to gauge if I could possibly be serious. He was nearly five, I guessed, and I'd never seen him when he wasn't in the middle of a mess or about to cause one. But his little brother suddenly sat down on the steps behind him and started to cry.

“Oh, no,” one of the bigger boys lamented. “He's probably got to go outside. He hates the outhouse when it's cold.”

“I'll take him,” Joe said, looking no less anxious than he had when he'd been over here earlier that day. He was tall, lanky. I couldn't recall ever seeing him smile. He picked up his little brother, draped a jacket and one of the baby's blankets around him, and started for the door.

“Robert, why don't you show them the way?”

“Ah, Dad,” Robert protested.

“I know where it is,” Joe told us. “Not like I ain't been here a time or two.”

A time or two was probably all, for Joe, anyway. Willy and Kirk and sometimes Frank came with Robert after school quite often, and we saw a lot of Rorey, who dearly loved the chance to run and play with Sarah. None of the Hammonds were strangers, but I felt pitifully unprepared as I looked at all the faces in front of me.