Julia's Hope (11 page)

“Chicken coop in pretty good shape?” she hollered.

“This I can fix, at least.”

“That’s good. We’ll need chickens.”

Yes, Julia,
I thought.
You’re believing for them too, aren’t
you? Any day now, someone’s liable to come and hand us a
chicken just as easy as we’ve been handed this place. That’s what
you think. That it will all just happen. Why can’t I be like you?

She hung up the clothes while I replaced the chicken wire that had pulled loose along one wall. When Juli went back in, I turned to the garden with a hoe, thinking that the better I whacked the dirt loose, the sooner Juli could plant Rita McPiery’s seeds and have something decent to report.

By the time I went in with my arms full of broken sticks for kindling, Juli had scrubbed every cupboard in the kitchen, top to bottom. I piled my sticks in the corner behind the stove and then got Robert’s help carrying down the rest of the kitchen boxes we’d separated last night.

Julia and Sarah spent quite awhile putting things away in cupboards and drawers, and the room started to look like a real kitchen. But it was messy the way my kindling just lay on the floor. I went back out to the barn with a handsaw, looking for decent boards and some nails I could pull loose from somewhere. With Robert at my side, I hammered together a passable wood box.

“You sure are good at stuff, Dad,” Robert said.

“This isn’t much.”

“Mom’s gonna like it.”

I shook my head. “There’s nothing for wood even by the fireplace in the living room. Surely the Grahams didn’t go to the basement every time they needed a log. They’d have been up and down those dark stairs all day in the winter.”

“You gonna make a box for in there too? Or a little rack thing like we had in Harrisburg?”

“The rack would look better.”

Robert was quiet for a moment. “This is different than the city, ain’t it, Dad? You don’t have to have a job to work around here.”

“I suppose there’s always work to do on a farm,” I told him. “But I’m going to be asking around town too. If I get a job, we’ve got some hope, with some money coming in.”

“Mom says we won’t need much money here. Once we get the garden in and some animals, we’ll make it okay.”

That was Julia.
No worries, kids. We’re fine, broke as we are.
I shook my head again. “Everything takes money. There’s a lot of things you can’t get no other way.”

“Like a milk cow?”

I smiled. “Yeah. Does your mother want a milk cow?”

“Yeah. And Sarah thinks it’d be keen too. Will it taste just the same as the delivery milk back home?”

“Not as cold without an icebox.”

“Maybe we could get one.”

“That takes money for sure.”

Before we even got the wood box into the house, Willy Hammond came walking up through the yard, looking for Robert to go fishing again. I sent Robert on with my blessing. It would be good for him to have a friend, and good if we could manage some fish for dinner.

My box fit right behind the stove, and I piled it full with all the wood I’d cut. Sarah followed me back out to the garden, enjoying the feel of the turned-over dirt on her bare feet and asking a million questions.

“Daddy, will we stay here forever?”

“I don’t know how long it’ll be. I don’t suppose anything lasts forever.”

“’Cept God?”

“Yeah, except God.”

“Can we grow tomatas?”

“If we get plants.”

“And more flowers?”

“We’ll have to. That’s what Emma wants.”

“Is Emma an angel, Daddy? Mama said she’s an angel.”

“Kind of. If your mama says so.”

“I want to be an angel when I grow up. I want to fly around and give people stuff. Can Emma fly?”

“Not yet. Not in this world.”

Julia came outside to dump the water she’d used scrubbing the woodwork and the stairs. She’d have the house looking fine before long. But it was hard to imagine it filled with furnishings, and harder still to think of the rooms upstairs with decent beds or the pantry loaded down with jars of food.

“We should plant the corn today,” she told me. “The sooner we get the garden up, the better. I wish we had Mrs. McPiery’s other seeds now too.”

“I guess we have to earn them.”

She gave me a look, got herself a hoe, and began whacking over the same piece of ground I’d already worked. “Kind of rough,” she said. “But I’ve seen worse. Let’s make some rows.”

Dutifully, I raked my hoe through the dirt to create a shallow furrow, and Julia followed in my tracks, breaking up clods. “Corn does better in several short rows than one or two long ones,” she said. “Pollinates better.”

“No problem.”

“What’s pollynate?” Sarah asked us, and I left the question to Julia, not knowing the answer for sure myself.

“It’s what bees do for flowers, honey,” she said. “Taking pollen from one to another. I guess maybe the wind does it for corn stalks. They like to be close together so the pollen can blow back and forth. You get good ears that way. And more of them.”

“Maybe with ears,” Sarah suggested, “the corn can hear the wind coming.” She giggled and then picked up a handful of dirt. “I’m gonna have a big garden when I grow up,” she told us. “Big as the whole world. And I’m gonna have a truck too, like that one we rode in, and I’m gonna drive corn all over the place and give it to everybody for supper.”

“That’s a good idea,” Julia told her. “You remember that. It would be a wonderful thing to do.”

“You want to help, Mama?”

I could see Julia’s smile, and it was almost infectious. “I’d love to. Maybe we can grow enough right here to share with the neighbors.”

Dreamers,
I thought.
Foolish dreamers. How I love you both!
But don’t you see where we are? Not one seed in the ground yet.
We haven’t enough for tomorrow, and all you can think of is giving
it away.

FIFTEEN

Julia

I was laying things out from boxes again when I heard the motor car coming up the drive. It surely wasn’t Mr. Hammond, since he always seemed to go about with his team and wagon. Sarah ran to look out an open window just as I heard Sam shout hello.

The answer he received surprised me so much that I went to the window myself. “Where’s the missus?” a female voice demanded. “You got her inside someplace?”

I knew the woman, but it took me a moment to recall her name. Miss Hazel Sharpe. The spinster from town. What in the world had she come out here for and why did she sound so angry? I nearly tripped over a kitchen chair on my way out the door to meet her. What would she think of the state the house was in or of the fact I had no tea and cookies to offer her? Had she come to inspect our progress? Surely Emma Graham had sent her.

Miss Hazel was on the porch, waiting for me to open the door. I marveled again at how fast she could move, as stooped over as she was.

“Well, there you are,” she said. “What you done to Emma’s house?”

Such words stopped me cold for a moment, and I could barely manage a hello. I noticed the young man leaning on the shiny black car.
Maybe Miss Hazel has money,
I thought,
or knows someone who does.
I hadn’t seen such a car in a long while nor someone to come along just for driving it.

Taking a deep breath, I asked Miss Hazel inside as graciously as I could, hoping she wouldn’t be distressed by my efforts at housekeeping so far. Sarah ran up to her, staring, and I shooed the girl outside to Sam, hoping to keep her away from the spice of Miss Hazel’s tongue.

“Been cleanin’?” Miss Hazel asked immediately, eyeing me over the brim of her glasses.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “There were so many cobwebs and—”

“For the life of me, I can’t see how you can live with yourself!” the old lady suddenly proclaimed. “Movin’ in here and actin’ like it’s yours, without payin’ a dime! If I’d have known you wasn’t talkin’ of buyin’, I’d have never sent you Emma’s way! The old girl just doesn’t have the sense to turn you out.”

“Mrs. Graham wanted us to stay,” I defended. “She talked my husband into it.”

“You’re a bold one, you are! As if it weren’t your own idea to go beggin’! I know all about it! George Hammond thinks you’re sufferin’ in silence after your husband’s notions, but Emma told me it was you come in with your sweet sob story and convinced her to give you the place!”

I stood for a moment, stunned. Was Mrs. Graham having second thoughts? Was she angry at us? “Miss Hazel,” I dared ask, “is Mrs. Graham wanting us to leave her farm?”

“She ain’t got the sense for that, girl! You’ve got her plum convinced you’re decent folks needin’ her handout! It’s about the same as thievin’, to my mind!”

I looked down at the floor. “She has blessed us,” I said softly. “And we’re grateful. Would you like a glass of water? Or a cup of spearmint tea?”

“You’ve got nothin’ to give me that ain’t Emma’s,” she snapped. “You’re even using her dishes.” She walked to the kitchen counter where I’d left plates and cups to air dry on a towel. “I remember when Willard bought her this set. Nothin’ means much to you, does it?”

“You’re wrong. You think you know us, but you don’t.”

“Well, I asked if you were Christian. Remains to be seen, I suppose, if you’ll show your face in church.”

“I would love to attend, Miss Hazel. But is there one closer to us than town? We haven’t a car or a team.”

“You tell George I said to bring you. Then you’ll have no excuse.”

She turned her back on me and headed for the living room. I hustled to follow her, but not wanting to rankle her further, I held my tongue. She was a difficult sort, one who was pleased to be displeased, as far as I could tell. She eyed the boxes we’d carried down the stairs and lifted a throw pillow from the top of one.

“I helped Emma pack these boxes,” she said. “Of course, she didn’t want to; just wanted to leave everything sittin’ out, you know. But things is a lot safer from tramps out of sight this way.” She set the pillow down and turned to me. “The worst thing ’bout what you’re doin’ is to get her hopes up like this. Rita McPiery’s been her friend for as long as I have. She’s better off there than bein’ took care of by strangers! She ain’t been good. What will you do when she comes down sick again?”

“I suppose we’d get the doctor.”

“With no car and no horse? You’re not even thinkin’! Or else you don’t care. You just want the place, that’s all, and come up with a way to get it.”

Little needles jabbed about inside me, up and down.
What
will
we do if Mrs. Graham gets sick? Run for George Hammond
and his wagon?

“You know it don’t make sense, her comin’ out here,” Miss Hazel continued. “It’s cruel to lead her on about it. It’s a good thing George come and told me or you might have got the thing done.”

She started to walk away from me again, toward the bedroom, and my hands started shaking. She may have had a legitimate concern for Emma’s well-being, but she was overstepping her bounds now.

What right did she have to decide we couldn’t do this? What right did George Hammond have even bringing her in on it?

“Miss Sharpe, Mrs. Graham’s of sound mind. We’ll talk about this, and her health. It’ll be her own decision if she—”

“You mean you think you can talk her into it, no matter what I say?”

“No. I mean she’s no child. And we just want to help her be happy.”

“You want this farm. That’s what you’ve wanted from the start! It’s thievin’, no matter how pretty you paint it up to look! You make yourself an old lady’s friend just long enough to get her name signed to papers. That’s what you want, ain’t it? If you had the deed, you wouldn’t be talkin’ to bring her here, now would you?”

“Yes. And we’re not asking for a deed. It’s enough that she’s let us stay.”

Miss Hazel stomped into the bedroom, muttering something under her breath. She looked in the closet, ran her finger along the top of the little dresser, and then turned her attention to the window. “This was Emma’s room.”

“It still is.”

She wheeled around and gave me the most intimidating glare I’d ever encountered.
That poor pastor’s wife,
I thought.
It must be terrifying to have this woman for a piano
teacher.

“You bet it still is,” she hissed. “Not yours or no one else’s until it gets sold, fair and square. I’ll see to that, mind you. No matter what you say ’bout Emma and her decisions. She ain’t seein’ clear already, havin’ you stay without so much as a red cent!”

“I was hoping you’d be of help,” I said softly.

“Oh, I will be. But not to you.”

“I meant to Emma,” I pressed on, hoping to find a way to make friends. “Tell me about her illness. Or, if you would—”

“You’ve got frightful spunk about you! You should go back where you come from, if they’ll have you!” She pushed her spectacles up on her nose and brushed past me in a huff. I followed her again, and we got to the kitchen just as Sam was opening the back door.

Oh no, Sammy,
I thought.
Terrible timing. She’s a wildcat
liable to bite and scratch on her way out that door.

He looked at me but didn’t have time for words before Miss Hazel lashed out again.

“Mr. Wortham! What kind of a person are you? You should be supportin’ your wife and young’uns, not letting her connive against an old woman like this! There ain’t a thing wrong with decent work. A man ain’t worth a plug nickel without it! You should be ’shamed of yourself, trying to steal a place instead of earning it!”

“I never stole a thing in my life,” Samuel said solemnly. “And Juli doesn’t connive. She does pray for folks, though.” He surprised Miss Hazel and I both with a fine smile. “May I escort you to your car?”

Miss Hazel bristled. “Are you throwin’ me off Emma’s place when I’ve knowed her more years than you’ve been alive?”

“No, ma’am,” Sam answered courteously. “It just looked as though you were leaving. But you’re welcome to stay. Juli’d be glad to fix you some of her leaf tea, and you can have dinner with us if you would, though I can’t promise what we’ll have on the table.”

The old woman just stared at him and then slowly turned her eyes back to me. “You’re up to something,” she said hesitantly. “I won’t be a part of it.” She took another step toward the door.