Emma's Gift (36 page)

“No, sir. He's not been too ugly. Nor so lazy, neither, if you don't mind me contradictin'.”

He smiled. “You take care of your brothers and sisters, don't you?”

She wiped at her cheek with a sleeve. “I try.”

“Been to school enough to read well?”

“Haven't been in a while, sir. But I can read, yes.”

“Then I think I'll make this little agreement between me and you. For Emma's sake, you understand? Because she felt so strongly about it.”

“I'm not sure I do unnerstand. No, sir.” She was looking bewildered and more than a little scared, and I could understand why.

“I'll draw up a paper,” he explained, his expression clearly softening. “It'll say your farm is yours to live on as long as you want to. Or your brothers and sisters. If ever any of you should manage to turn a profit off it, well, I'll get percentage payment. And if ever the time comes you all move away before it's paid clear, the land comes back to me.”

She seemed almost breathless. “Then you'll let Pa keep the farm?”

“Not your pa. You.”

“Me?”

“That's right. And your older brother after you. He was the only one of you Emma didn't midwife into this world, I understand.”

“Y—yes, sir.”

“Well, it becomes his if you ever choose to leave it, and the others after him. Of course, as young as you are, I'll have to set up the whole thing in a trust, in my own name, I guess, till you come of age.”

“What about Pa?” The girl was looking truly shocked.

“You can choose to keep him if you want to. I don't have any particular say in that matter.”

“He's a good pa! A' 'course we'll keep him. And he'll be in charge too. He's our pa!”

He nodded. “It's your farm. If you want him in charge, it's your business.”

I had to smile at that, and Juli did too. Her eyes twinkled with relief, her cheeks glistened, and I reached for her hand.

“Thank you, Mr. Graham,” Lizbeth was saying, still in shock. “We thanks you so much.”

“Well, you're welcome. I suppose I have very little choice in the matter if I want to honor Aunt Emma's memory. But I already told Mr. Wortham here that I'm keeping some of the land for myself.”

I could see how those words jarred Juli. She must've been thinking he meant Emma's farm. This whole farm. But before I could tell her different, Albert was talking on.

“I'll have it surveyed to put the measurements on paper. The pond, Aunt Emma and Uncle Willard's graves, and the land around them.”

Lizbeth drew in a quick breath.

“But not your mother's grave. That'll be your side of the line. I don't mind you using the pond, but don't do it any damage, and don't let Wortham here sink his bones into it again.”

She stared at him, then nodded her head. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

I could feel Julia's tension beside me, but Albert had turned his eyes back to her too.

“Mrs. Wortham, you surprised me. When I told your husband you and Emma were two of a kind, I didn't know how true that was. I thought you were going to beg me for this farm for yourself, not plead for the Hammonds' sakes. No wonder Emma loved you. You almost think alike.”

“No,” she stammered. “I haven't been—”

“Don't worry. I'd have a hard time with myself if I didn't accept Emma's last wishes. Everybody that knew anything of it'd have a hard time with me too, I expect. I already told your husband I'd fix you a deed. She had a right to her decision, just like you said, whether it made any common sense or not.”

Then Julia breathed easy. “Thank you, Mr. Graham. She would be so glad.”

He nodded, gave Lizbeth another glance, and then another one to Julia. Then he fixed his eyes on me and smiled. “Didn't somebody say something about cocoa?”

TWENTY-NINE

Julia

Albert was true to his word. Within two days, we had a deed, and Lizbeth had her contract. George had some mixed feelings about the arrangement, as is understandable. But he was more grateful than anything else. And he swore to Samuel on Wilametta's Bible that he'd never drink again, and never try doing himself any more harm.

Sam Hammond's job at the mill didn't last very long. The mill closed, and the Dearing grocery, and more businesses than I could count. My Samuel too continued without work, though he would've loved to find anything at all available. But the southern Illinois mines were failing, and there were no other businesses anywhere near us hiring. Samuel couldn't even find many odd jobs, because we were too far from town to make that a practical option without transportation of our own.

It wasn't long before we were hurting, and the Hammonds as well as us, needing things we had no money to buy. But we prayed. We shared things. We got by.

Franky came over almost every day, trying to get Samuel to keep on working with his wood.

“You can sell stuff 'long the road when there's more folks out come spring,” he told us. “I'll help. We'll make lotsa money. You'll see.”

At least it was something for them to do. With Franky and Robert and sometimes Willy watching or helping, Samuel made a porch swing, two upright chairs, and half a dozen little carved-top boxes for jewelry or keepsakes. I didn't know if they'd sell or not, but it was all good work, and I was glad to see those boys growing so close and eager to be working in the shop with Samuel that way. I knew he felt good too, just to be able to accomplish a task, to create something beautiful while the weather was too cold to work the ground.

“You don't wanna ever be idle,”
Emma'd said once.
“A good rest is all right, but don' let the devil catch you idle! Oh, but he'll play with you then!”

I took such words to heart and worked hard that winter teaching Rorey and Sarah to sew. Soon they were doing mending for me, sewing buttons and the like. And when I wasn't busy with children or anything else, I got out the quilt blocks Emma had already cut and started piecing, determined to finish for her what she'd barely had time to start. She'd done so many beautiful quilts in her lifetime, but this would be my first. Working in the lamplight while the children slept, I decided to give the quilt to Pastor and Juanita. They'd blessed us so much and continued to look out for us the best they could. I knew Emma would be pleased. She would be glad to see us all working together this way.

Even Hazel Sharpe, who found it in her heart to give every child a Bible. That was a miracle from heaven, and we all knew it. Though she still barely spoke to us when we saw her at church, we knew things had changed. Miss Hazel was family too, though she'd never be one to come out and say so. I picked out Emma's two prettiest lace doilies, perfectly matching, beautiful work, and gave them to Hazel one Sunday morning. She just stood there the longest time, fingering Emma's fine work and avoiding my eyes.

“Land, she was patient, wasn't she, doin' the like a' this?” Hazel finally said.

“Oh, yes,” I ventured bravely. “Very patient. With people too.”

Hazel looked up at me, her tiny gray eyes seeming to sparkle without the hardness that usually masked them. “I'll say. Where would you be without her?”

That was all she said and all she did, except to hug the doilies to her breast and hurry away, almost as if she couldn't risk another moment of someone peering into her soul. Emma used to say that the very thing Hazel wanted most was what she tried the hardest to push away. So every time after that when Charlie Hunter came to get us for church, I would sit with Hazel if I could, even though I knew how she'd behave—like I was irritating the daylights out of her. I even hugged her once or twice, though she never hugged me back. It made me feel good inside to love her right over top all the rough edges.

Sukey's calf was born in February. And Samuel was so nervous about it that little Franky, who'd spent the night, just sat there and laughed. “You can read all right, huh?” the little boy said. “But you don't know nothin' 'bout them cows? Guess there's all kinda smarts to this world!”

It was a difficult birth, and Samuel and I were glad that George and his boys were there to help us. I'd been just a child the last time I'd been in on a calving, and Samuel had never seen such a thing before in his life.

Sukey was bawling, and I knew it bothered Samuel not to know anything he could do to help her. But she did all right, her calf was strong, and George seemed especially glad to be of such service. Not long after, his milker Rosey took sick and died, and from that point on we shared everything, from either farm, as if it were all one.

I soon discovered that George didn't read a bit better than his son Franky did. But after hearing me read from
Pilgrim's Progress
a few more times, he took to liking it. Even seemed to understand it better than he had at first. Several times I caught him with Franky discussing this or that part of the tale. Or with Willy or Kirk, though they always had their minds on something else.

George and Samuel did most things together, an arrangement that Samuel really seemed to like. He told me he might learn a thing or two yet about livestock, at the very least. And I marveled that he didn't see the progress he'd already made to seem so at home on this farm where at first he'd been so uncertain. I prayed that we could manage a good crop from the fields next season and turn a profit by it. Maybe we could turn Albert Graham's opinion of George too. Maybe.

All the Hammonds that were old enough went to school more regularly than they had before. Of course, that kept me busy with Harry, Bert, and Emma Grace, but seeing the change in Lizbeth, I didn't mind.

“You think any a' us'll go to college?” she asked me one day.

“Well, I don't know. Maybe. If you really want to.”

She stared at me for a minute, then shook her head. “I can't hardly b'lieve you said that! Don't you think there ain't no way? We ain't got no money atall for that!”

“That doesn't matter,” I told her with confidence. “None of us knows what God has in store for tomorrow.”

“You're the strangest lady,” she told me. “Even when you's poor, you don't know you's poor.”

She studied more than the others, late at night when her younger siblings were sleeping. Her older brother had given up on school and declared he was only going till some job opened up. But Lizbeth, though she started the term almost two years behind, was determined to end it on the same level as students her age. She was like a different person, a Lizbeth I'd never seen, with a book in one hand and a bottle for Emma Grace in the other, taking full advantage of a chance she'd thought she lost. And she loved me for it.

“You don't have to watch the kids, Mrs. Wortham,” she told me more than once. “I'm old enough. I can stay home with 'em.”

And every time when I told her no and sent her on to school, she hugged my neck and very nearly cried. She loved her family. She truly did. But they all thought she'd wanted to stay home from school. No one had seen how much it had torn her heart to do so.

I tried to help Franky with his reading sometimes when he came over. But I didn't get any further than Elvira Post did. But we did discover that he had a propensity for math, at least if he could do the figuring in his head and not on the chalkboard or paper. I wondered for a while if he might need glasses. But Samuel said his eye was far too good working with wood for that to be the case. We prayed about it, but none of it was bothering Franky anymore.

“I'll keep tryin' to learn it,” he assured me. “But I'll jus' be the bestest at woodworkin' in the whole country! I can do that!”

And I could believe him. Samuel said it wouldn't be long before that boy could build whatever he wanted to build.

I could believe for Lizbeth too, that she could go to college and be a schoolteacher or whatever else she wanted to be. And the rest of them could dream whatever they wanted to dream too. Not that times weren't hard. The kids would still cry sometimes, especially at night, especially on special days when they missed their mama. But there was always a ray of God's hope shining through, breaking through the darkness of grieving, worry, or doubt. Like Franky's dead flowers that came up by Wila's grave in the spring, surprising us all with their little green shoots and blossoming promise.

Only later did we learn that Barrett and Louise Post had gone and gotten new bulbs and planted them fresh so there'd be life when Franky came to look. It made me think of how God does the same thing. When we have nothing left, he hands us something new, something beautiful, that we could never have managed on our own.

To everything there is a season. A time to every purpose under heaven.

Emma's time was Emma's time, and Emma wouldn't have changed a thing. She gave us something stronger than the memories, better than her house and all the land around it. She gave us peace, deep and eternal. And trust, knowing that even when it looks like there's never enough, God always has plenty to share. So do we, when we look with an eye to eternity, with the loving, giving, selfless heart of God.

I found it's not so hard to love the unlovable or open our arms or our homes. I came to respect George much more deeply than I'd ever resented him. It thrilled my heart to see Emma Grace's first tottering steps angling in his direction. And Samuel and I stewed with him for several days over what to do about headstrong little Rorey causing fights after school.

Kissing cheeks, passing plates, even listening to George pour out his woes one more time over a late cup of root coffee—it was all the work of God. Because people need each other. And sometimes we don't realize how much we have to give until we've started giving it.

Perhaps the best thing of all was knowing that Barrett and Louise were family now. Both of them turned their hearts to the Lord. And then their son, then Clement and Elvira too. How Emma must be dancing for that news!