Hidden Places (36 page)

‘‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Toots,’’ she said, taking my hand between hers. ‘‘Frank worked very hard to bury the truth along with Lydia. No one will ever believe us because no one ever knew that Matthew wasn’t Frank’s real son. We’re just Frank’s crazy old sister-in-law and his scheming daughter-in-law. Besides, if that’s the only official will that was ever found and it was all legally signed and attested to, then there’s really nothing Mr. Wakefield can do but enforce it.’’

‘‘So I have to wait until they find Matthew?’’

‘‘I think that would be the wisest thing.’’

‘‘But what will Matthew do? The orchard is in his name—do you think he’ll take it away from us?’’

‘‘I really don’t know,’’ she said with a sigh. ‘‘That depends on how much Matthew has changed in the past fourteen years, and what he’s been doing with himself all this time. He once loved this place...but he loved Sam, too. Maybe he’ll agree to let the two of you share the place.’’

She bent to lift the half-filled tick we’d abandoned and held the mouth of it open. I grabbed a big handful of straw and stuffed it inside. If only I knew for sure whether or not Gabe was really Matthew. If only I knew what to do.

All of a sudden it was midsummer, and things got so hectic at the orchard that I didn’t have much time to worry about Matthew Wyatt. Frank’s regular pickers came back to harvest the Montmorency cherries—and later the peaches and pears and apples—but there were so many other people out of work that year that I found men standing in line every morning, begging to pick cherries for me. Some of the city folks said they’d work for a quart of milk or a dozen eggs—anything, just so they could feed their families. I thanked the good Lord that my kids would always have enough to eat as long as we lived on a farm.

Gabe did a fine job of overseeing the work—teaching the newcomers how to pick and breaking up the squabbles that broke out between them and the regulars. He set up a table for me at the end of one of the rows and Aunt Batty showed me how to record each person’s name and the number of buckets they picked so I could pay them at the end of the day. We dumped all the day’s pickings into lugs and loaded them onto the wagon, then Gabe and I drove the horses to the open-air market early the next morning to sell our cherries.

I’d never been to the open-air market before. We watched what all the other growers did, then got in line and paid our quarter to get on the market ourselves. The buyers who came to look over our cherries seemed determined to pay rock bottom prices, blaming it on the economic depression. Gabe drove a hard bargain though, refusing to budge, and as more growers arrived with their fruit, they slowly bumped us down the line without making a sale. I started to get worried.

‘‘Take their price, Gabe. It’s the best we can do.’’

‘‘No, I won’t let you be cheated.’’ Gabe looked as tough and unyielding as all the other farmers—a far cry from the soft-spoken Gabe I’d grown accustomed to. ‘‘This is top-quality fruit and they all know it. We could probably sell it at the fruit exchange for the price these crooks are offering. I think we should stand firm.’’

We were almost out of line and off the market when one of the buyers finally agreed on Gabe’s price. Relief flooded through me as we drove to the buyer’s stall and unloaded the lugs onto his platform. I felt drained, and this was only my first crop of cherries, my first day on the market. I still had the rest of the season’s harvest to sell.

‘‘I’m not sure my nerves can take all this bargaining,’’ I told Gabe as we drove the empty wagon home again. ‘‘I’m not cut out to be a poker player.’’

Gabe laughed. ‘‘You’ll get used to it. The secret is not to appear too anxious to sell. Act as though you could take it or leave it.’’

‘‘Well, you were certainly a good actor.’’ I kept my eyes on the road ahead of us, afraid to look at Gabe, aware of him watching me. ‘‘With all that ballyhoo you sounded more like a sideshow hawker than a writer.’’

‘‘Sometimes a journalist has to use a bit of ballyhoo if he’s a free-lancer like me. Editors can be a lot like fruit buyers—why pay top dollar for a story if you can get it for a little less?’’ Gabe shifted slightly on the seat beside me and I felt him brush against me.

‘‘Well, you got us a real good price. I’m grateful. And I want you to take some of this money as your pay.’’

‘‘No, keep it. I don’t want any money. I’m still paying you back for saving my life.’’

I glanced at him, then quickly looked away. ‘‘Gabe, that debt has long-since been paid.’’

‘‘Well, I don’t feel that way. I’m still very much in your debt.’’

His stubbornness frustrated me. ‘‘Listen, it’s not right that you work so hard all the time for nothing.’’

‘‘I’d hardly call it nothing,’’ he said, sounding huffy himself. ‘‘Don’t forget, besides the fact that you saved my life, I’ve been getting free room and board all this time—while a lot of other men are out of work.’’

‘‘Be reasonable, Gabe—’’

‘‘I am being reasonable! You’re the one who’s being unreasonable. You—’’ Gabe stopped. He shook his head, laughing softly.

‘‘What’s so funny?’’ I asked.

‘‘When it comes to ‘mule-headed stubbornness,’ as you once called it, I’d say we’re pretty evenly matched—you and I.’’

He spoke the last words very softly—you and I—like they were holy or something. I could tell by his voice that he was looking at me but I kept my head down, concentrating on the horses’ hindquarters in front of me. We sat side by side on the wagon seat, dangerously close, and I knew that if I looked into his eyes just then I’d want to kiss him again—and then I would be lost. Winky couldn’t come to my rescue this time. How could I love someone so much and yet be so afraid of him at the same time?

‘‘Why are you so afraid of me?’’ Gabe suddenly asked. He’d read my thoughts and that scared me even more. ‘‘Have you been that badly hurt by someone, Eliza?’’

I realized that I was trapped alone with Gabe, the very thing I’d tried to avoid all summer. I didn’t want to open my heart to him but I had no way to escape. We were still a good mile or so from home. I snapped the reins to speed the horses into a trot.

‘‘No,’’ I finally answered. ‘‘I already told you why...because I don’t know anything about you.’’

‘‘Fair enough. But I don’t know very much about you, either.’’ His voice had a hard edge to it all of a sudden, that I’d never heard before. My heart hammered with fear. ‘‘Shall we tell all there is to tell, Eliza? What would you like to know? Where I spent my childhood? Albany, New York. Now, where did you spend yours?’’

I was afraid to answer, afraid not to. ‘‘No one place,’’ I finally said, swallowing hard. ‘‘I traveled all over with my daddy...because of his work.’’

‘‘Well. That explains why you don’t know how to play baseball.’’ His tone was so cold I had to fight back my tears. ‘‘What was your father’s line of work?’’ he continued. ‘‘Some sort of traveling salesman? My father was an attorney. A very prominent attorney, in fact.’’

‘‘Why are you acting this way?’’ I asked, trying not to cry.

‘‘Because I care for you, Eliza, and I think you care for me. I want to know why you keep pushing me away. You say it’s because you know nothing about me—but you know a lot about me. We’ve worked together for nearly six months, you’ve talked with me every day, you’ve seen how I treat you and your kids. What more do you need to know?’’

‘‘Is Gabe Harper your real name?’’ I blurted out.

My question took him by surprise. He hesitated just a moment too long.

‘‘Yes.’’

I knew he was lying. I knew it.

I pulled the horses to a halt and tossed the reins to him, then stood to climb down. Gabe grabbed my arm to stop me. ‘‘What are you doing? Where are you going?’’

‘‘I’d like to walk for a while, if you don’t mind.’’

He pulled roughly on my arm, jerking me back down onto the seat. ‘‘If anyone is going to walk, it’ll be me,’’ he said, pushing the reins into my hand. Before I could stop him, he jumped to the ground and strode down the road with his back to me. He had a slight limp in his step, just as I’d warned him he would.

I flicked the reins and signaled to the horses to giddap, passing Gabe a moment later and leaving him behind.

From then on I made Gabe go by himself to the open-air market or the fruit exchange. He didn’t like my decision, but I insisted that one of us needed to stay home and oversee the pickers, and he finally agreed. Sometimes Jimmy and Luke rode along with him, but only if they’d finished pulling weeds in the vegetable garden for Aunt Batty. She had a real green thumb when it came to making things grow, and she had brought in a bumper crop of vegetables. Gabe took some of the produce into town to sell, but a lot of it Aunt Batty just gave away to folks. I didn’t mind. We had much more than we could ever use.

Aunt Batty helped me with the canning that summer. I got so used to hearing her singing those hymns for all she was worth that I even joined in with her and Becky every once in a while. Aunt Batty had somehow convinced my daughter that cleaning strawberries, peeling tomatoes, and stuffing cucumbers into pickle jars was fun, so we had an extra pair of willing hands. One afternoon the three of us were giggling like schoolgirls as we canned peaches, and without even thinking I tossed four peaches into the air and did a little juggling act, just to see if I still remembered how. Becky stared at me, dumbfounded.

‘‘Mama! How’d you do that?’’

Aunt Batty looked up from her pot of boiling syrup and applauded. ‘‘My goodness, Eliza! We had no idea you were so talented!’’

I quickly caught the four peaches and set them on the table, angry that I’d given away a secret part of myself like that.

‘‘Do it again, Mama!’’

I couldn’t look at Becky. ‘‘Not now. We have work to do.’’

‘‘Wait till I tell Jimmy and Luke and Mr. Harper what you can do!’’

‘‘No! You will not tell them a thing, Becky Jean! I won’t do it again—for them or anybody else.’’

My words came out harsher than I’d intended. Becky’s bottom lip quivered as she fought tears. ‘‘Why not, Mama?’’

‘‘Because...just because.’’ I’d always hated it when my daddy gave me that answer, and now here I was saying the same thing. But there were some things I just couldn’t explain to a four-yearold.

We canned about sixteen quarts of peaches that day and stored them on the shelves in my cellar. It always gave me a feeling of pride to see the rows of home-canned goods on those shelves— tomatoes, green beans, pickles, peaches, pears, and rows of colorful jams and jellies—food that would feed my family come wintertime.

Aunt Batty bribed Jimmy and Luke with Herman Walters’ adventure books and got them to do all kinds of chores, like running the cultivator between the corn rows and cleaning out the root cellar. Pretty soon we would fill that root cellar with potatoes, onions, carrots, squash, beets, and turnips. The two pigs she bought had fattened up real nice, and the rich cream from Myrtle’s milk had earned us extra cash from the creamery in town. The money helped us buy all the necessities we couldn’t grow, like coffee, baking powder, flour, and sugar. A lot of people went hungry that year, but the good Lord had blessed us with abundance, and Aunt Batty made sure we all thanked Him every night when the six of us gathered around the table for dinner.

In August the new Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog arrived. During more prosperous times, I always ordered new school clothes for the boys and let their last year’s school clothes become play clothes. But this year money was too tight. The boys would have to make do with hand-me-downs and patched-up clothes come September. They certainly wouldn’t be the only kids at school with their ankles showing below their britches. We needed to save our money to buy a load of coal to get us through the winter and to buy spray ingredients next spring at Peterson’s store since Merle wouldn’t let me buy on credit. Gabe had given me a list of farm supplies we just couldn’t do without, and the only other thing I ordered from Sears that year were new shoes for Jimmy to replace the ones he’d outgrown.

I finished filling out the order form at the kitchen table one night and had tallied it all up when it occurred to me that Aunt Batty might have something she wanted to add. I went looking for her in the parlor where all three kids sat around the radio listening to
Amos ’n Andy
. She wasn’t there.

‘‘Where’s Aunt Batty?’’ I had to practically shout before I got anyone’s attention. ‘‘Hey there! Have you seen Aunt Batty?’’ It was like they were all hypnotized or something. I had to wonder whether listening to that radio was doing my kids any good.

‘‘I think she’s outside talking to Mr. Harper,’’ Jimmy finally answered.

I saw no sign of her out in the yard. When I went inside the barn, I heard voices coming from the workshop where Gabe slept. He’d left the door open just a crack. I knew it was wrong to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t resist. I wanted to hear what she and Gabe were talking about.

‘‘No, don’t spare my feelings, Aunt Batty,’’ Gabe said. ‘‘I asked for your honest opinion. I want to hear what you really think of it.’’

‘‘I think it’s a very good story,’’ she said. ‘‘And very safe.’’

‘‘Safe? What do you mean?’’