House of Gold (40 page)

Brother-and-sister? Surely the idea had come from
outside
themselves. For Catholics accustomed to the ways of Providence, their new arrangement was just too strange, too absurd, and too wonderful to have come from anywhere–or anyone–else. The evil one frightens; only the Almighty surprises.

And so it was.

Yet they fell
into their dreams having completely forgotten the germ of this conversation which had ended so well.

The flu. A killer flu way too small, even for a man like Buzz Woodward to wrap his arms around. Too tiny for him to administer a lethal jerk.

+  +  +

Tommy Sample grabbed two udders and milked, with hands so knowing of their task that he could pray or daydream or probably even sleep during the
chore.

It was an especially pleasing task in the summertime, before the sun came up, when it was warm in the barn, and he beat the birds to their songs. Today, he banged out his Rosary in no time at all, then gathered wool about his little Grace; Grace Woodward up on the Henderson Swell.

Grace's little life meant almost as much to Tommy Sample as it did to Buzz and Ellie. She was his hope, too,
for the future. The little red bean represented for him the children he would never have.

Tommy had been forty-two when he finally found the right woman, and the flu had taken Dede away so quickly. One miscarriage–their only child. Tommy was forty-four now, and accustomed to living alone, if only because he had lived that way for so many years before meeting Dede.

Finding another Catholic woman
like her would be a miracle. ("Not with all the widows around," his practical side piped in sometimes.)

Before Buzz came over the hill, Tommy had hoped for such a thing with Ellie, but only dimly–because she was close in age; because she was so achingly pretty and so staunchly Catholic. But he accepted in his heart of hearts (in that unabashed way of a man who grows up tending animals) that he
could never tame an intrepid filly like Ellen Fisk.

As his wife, she would no doubt end up dominating him, and he cherished his independence. But she sure had pluck, and he liked that in a gal.

Besides, she was two inches taller. And it was so obvious (at least to Tommy) that she was meant for Buzz now that Sam was gone. She and Buzz had a history. Buzz was rugged, too–tough as tarpaper after
that long jaunt. This was not a world for a woman to go it alone. He was glad Buzz had convinced her to get married again. Good for her.

Good for us all.
(Tommy had a big heart.)

Little Grace again. Even if Buzz and Ellie weren't meant for each other, it was clear to Tommy that a marriage of convenience would be necessary for the sake of the child. The myth of the gentleman farmer was no more.
Real
farms and ranches were back, and were back to stay, and would once again return to the most exalted status in a new economy which catered to no luxury, now that those fool computers had made everything local again, like it had been when Tommy's parents were just starting out here in Bagpipe.

A real farm took two–a man and a woman–to run it right proper, and them two up on the swell had plenty
to learn. (Although Tommy thought of himself more as a rancher-trader than as a farmer.)

Tommy believed his own role in the passion play unfolding in Bagpipe was clear; he would be the one to teach 'em what they didn't know how. He was the dutch-uncle, stage left. A johnny-on-the-spot in a jam, ever ready to jump over the candlestick. Wasn't there a guy like Tommy all in the best westerns, the
kind John Ford used to make which had flickered across the silver-screen when he was boy?

You're darn tootin'–and Tommy was the guy with the wagon. The guy who spotting the bad guy hiding in the barn, early in the movie, tipping off the hero, and thereby saving the good guy's life. Helping the hero win the pretty girl's heart. It was much more rewarding to be an active member of the cast than
to sit in the theater munching popcorn, Tommy reckoned.

Did or didn't that angel wake him up an hour early with the rumbling sound of the engine that wouldn't leave his head? Merely to save the lives of a few cows and mangy old plow horses?

And what were cows for anyhow?

Milk for human babies, that's what.

God Himself designed the dumb-animal for that specific purpose. You didn't need a fancy
college degree to put two-and-two together about cows.

The blessed animals provided twice as much milk as they needed to feed their young. What was all that extra milk for?

It was a wonder there was one atheist in the world, but Thomas P. Sample was damned sure that if there were any, they didn't know nothing 'bout cows.

Nature is lots of things, after all, but there was one thing for certain
about her: she was not
generous.
The double-extra milk from cows was a complete anomaly. Every farmer knows that cows get sick if they aren't milked, if the extra milk isn't taken. It took a human being to keep a cow alive. In all of history ain't nobody ever see no
monkey
milk a cow.

Now why was that?

The milk was for babies like his Grace.

The double-extra-milk coming out of the udders in his
hands proved there was a loving God who cared for mankind. A God who loved Grace Woodward.

Squirt-squirt. Squirt-squirt.

The distinct melody zipping into the steel bucket helped him think.

During this chore, even though the bulk of the milk would be sold in Errol or Colebrook, he indulged himself with the fiction that he was milking these cows exclusively for the little red wonder up on the swell,
his godchild–or at least, that he was providing the nourishment needed to keep the lovely, round breasts of Grace's mother brimming.

Sure, he traded with Buzz and Ellie because that's what farmers do–"you scrub my back/I'll scrub yours"–and because those poor folks up there kept taking it on the chin, yet always managed to pull themselves up from the canvas to keep on punching back. Some locals
here had run off, and maybe there was no blame there, because Bagpipe had practically been a ghost town even before the Troubles, but by staying on the land, the Fisks and Woodwards had made their bones as true Bagpipers by Tommy's reckoning.

Old-time tough, that's what they were up on the swell. Just like the Samples, God rest the souls of his dear parents.

Tommy, in perfect rhythm, reached up
from an udder and made the sign of the cross.

Yet Tommy always insisted on giving them the milk free-and-clear. For Grace. Just a few weeks ago, while chopping wood, Buzz had even asked Tommy to be the "stand-in" godfather now that Sam was gone. Tommy's heart had swelled, and he had accepted with understated farmer-relish.

He had loved that, loved being asked by Buzz; he loved being the godfather.
And he loved Bagpipe. Let them kill his dog and burn down his house. Like Buzz and Ellie, Tommy Sample wasn't going
anywhere.

His frequent trading quests to Colebrook and Errol and Berlin were not optional. He needed tools. He lived on the margin. He needed to stay alive until the people came back here so he could sell them the raw materials they needed for butter and cheese. And he was always
coming back with something necessary for the Woodward/Fisk homestead, not just notions.

Buzz and Ellie were his best friends, and he loved that baby, so Tommy had understood perfectly well when they discussed the semi-quarantine with him. Come winter, he would hole up for two or three days after coming back from a town, unless it was a dire emergency. (Tommy had a sleigh-wagon, too, for winter
travel. He had been waxing and buffing it all summer.) If he had a sniffle or even the slightest cough, he would stay off the swell.

Tommy Sample did catch the bug, in Errol, on the twenty-eighth day of September, from a ten-year-old kid just up from Berlin. Only Tommy had no way of knowing that he was carry-ing. He was immune. He lugged the virus back to Bagpipe in his lungs, though the deadly
germ revealed no symptoms in his body.

He sneezed on a peppercorn while having a hot cider with Buzz when the big man came down to the cabin to pick up the hand-drill for the new woodshed he was trying to build before the snows came.

Neither man noticed that one little sneeze, laughing as they were at one of Buzz's patented, corny observations about farm living.

Buzz was also immune to this strain
of flu–a hardy little mutant that had marched on its own ugly path to Bagpipe all the way from Asia, leaving women keening over graves in its brutal wake.

He did not know he was carrying when he took it back to the swell, where he passed it on to his daughter while playing with her on the deck of Sam's old house.

+  +  +

"There he is, do you see him?" Buzz asked Ellie after he plopped a chunk
of wood down on the kitchen table, at the end of a long day in early October.

"See who? I see a piece of oak," she told him.

He had that impish smile.

"Found him in the woodpile, looking up at me."

"Stop with the riddles. Is this one of your man-in-the-electric-socket things?"

She touched her hand to it. A chill wind had trotted down from Canada last week, and Buzz had been keeping the woodstove
burning at night.

It was a friendly, solid piece of wood.

"Exactly. You got it. It's Saint Joseph. I saw him in there."

He pulled out his blade.

"You're going to carve a statue?"

He nodded.

"You bet, sister. For the altar. It's going to be a long, long winter–with no videos to watch. I have read every book in this house. I have got to keep myself busy while you knit me sweaters."

She looked across
the kitchen to their altar. A small table with a lace cloth. Mel's picture of the Shroud of Turin. Buzz's porcelain statue of Our Lady of Grace. Two candles. Four wooden rosaries. One leatherbound Douay-Rheims Bible opened to the Gospel of John. When it was too cold outside, they prayed their nightly Rosary before this jiffy-chapel.

"Sweaters? I don't know how to knit."

"Mel stocked in plenty
of yarn, El. Plenty of yarn sitting in the roof rafters in plastic bags, behind the toilet paper. I'll show you how."

"You know how to knit?" She raised her eyebrows and smiled in that bright, silly way he loved.

"No, El. But three months ago, I didn't know how to hoe potatoes or use a root cellar, either."

She rolled her eyes. No way, José.

But it would be nice to have something for Grace for
the winter,
she thought.

She did not give him the satisfaction of knowing he had guessed-her again. That's how Ellie thought of it now:
Buzz guessed-me.

His gift could be quite annoying. Now she understood some of Mel's hints of frustration, though she had not told Ellie about his preference for laying on the floor after dinner with his thick calves on the chair. Ellie just did not like that.
It was too weird.

But what could she do? She tried to tell him once, last month, while looking down at him on the floor, potatoes steaming on her plate. He got that hurt-little-boy expression on his face. Then, for three straight meals, he sat in his chair, fidgeting after his food–

"Ellie, may I please have your permission to sit on the floor tonight?" His voice had been so sincere.

That's what
he called it. Buzz wasn't
lying
on the floor. He was
sitting
on the floor. Bizarre.

So she blew a lock of hair from her brow, nodded slowly, then finished her potatoes, chatting with him
down there
as if he were in the cockpit of Apollo 13, ready for blast-off.

Chesterton had better manners.

By the end of October, his block of wood was taking on a likeness, and Ellie had two-thirds of her first
sweater knitted, although little Grace would need to grow her right arm two inches longer than her left to fit into it.

+  +  +

Buzz was outside, getting wood for the stove.

She knew he would stack, dither, and daydream. With the harvest in, there was less to do. It had been a week since Buzz had returned from helping Tommy Sample bring in the hay using nothing more sophisticated than two scythes.

It had warmed up, and it was a pleasant, almost summery day, as sometimes happened in the North Country in the fall.

Ellie was in the bedroom, hovering with the child in her arms. Pacing, back and forth, between the bed and the changing table. Waiting for the thermometer again.

The second reading.

She took it out; looked at it.

"One hundred and one," she mouthed.

How many times had she taken Christopher's
temperature over the years? Had a temperature this high caused her the least bit of worry with him?

Take another one.

And so she did. No need to alarm Buzz.

Same temperature.

Maybe the thermometer was screwed up. She put her hand on her own forehead, then on Gracie's.

Ellie took her own temperature.

Ninety-eight point-six,
she read.

She took Grace's temperature again, but found it difficult to
get a reading because the little dear–and who could blame her–was not cooperating with the procedure.

One hundred and one...point-four.

Point-four!? How long since the last reading?

Ellie looked at the brass, wind-up alarm clock next to the bed.

Five minutes.

She scrambled into the living room to Mel's desk, and put the child, who was already becoming a bit listless, on the floor. Gracie cried
and pulled herself up on her mother's leg, holding her dress. The baby could not walk yet, but she could stand and balance like this. Her red hair was growing now, too, starting to curl.

Ellie ignored her little sobs.

Where is that stupid book!

There it was, a thick, intimidating medical home-reference. There were two yellow post-it notes sticking out of its pages, marked in Ellie's indeciferable
hand:
Flu. Colds.

She had practically memorized these two sections. Nothing in them about her clue, the rate of a temperature rising.