Julia's Hope (7 page)

“Wilametta sent me with a list of things to get,” he said. “That’s my wife. I ain’t gonna manage but about half of it, though, the way things are right now. Be careful with that box in the middle, young’uns. That’s Wilametta’s eggs. We’ll be tradin’ ’em for the dry goods, I expect.”

“What’s in the other two?” Robert asked.

“Robert!” I exclaimed, horrified that he would so casually ask a stranger’s business. He knew better than that.

“It’s all right, ma’am,” Mr. Hammond assured me. “Got nothin’ to hide, that’s for sure. One on the right’s full of feathers for Bonnie Gray. She’s wantin’ to make pillows and such for her daughter Juney’s weddin’. But the other one . . .”

Young Sam Hammond snickered. “Take a look.”

George Hammond hooted and turned to Robert with a smile. “Go ahead, if you want, son. Take a look. Might never see’d anything like it if you come from the city.”

Robert reached for the box, then turned to look at me.

“Ah, go on,” Mr. Hammond exclaimed. “It’s all right, ma’am. It ain’t gonna bite him.”

The younger Hammond snickered again, and Robert lifted one corner of the old gray blanket that was stretched over the top of the box. He jumped back into my Samuel’s lap, and both of the Hammonds guffawed in unison.

“Don’t you worry, boy,” George laughed. “It’s deader’n a doornail!” He hooted some more, and I leaned forward to take a peek.

No wonder the wagon smelled like hog. In that box was a Yorky pig’s head, the biggest one I’d ever seen.

“We saw the widow Hicks to church Sunday ’fore last,” George was saying. “She told me she’d been hankerin’ for some good headcheese, just like her mama used to make down in Tennessee. So when old Charlie there come up lame, I figured to put him to good use. She’s givin’ me a lamb. Gonna let the kids raise it up for me.”

“You got other kids?” Robert asked, still looking a little green.

“Comin’ out of the rafters, boy,” George laughed again. “Nine of ’em. And one more on the way.”

Robert leaned over to Sarah and nudged her. “There’s a pig in the box,” he whispered. “Wanna see?”

“Robert John,” I scolded. “Just sit and be still.”

“I don’t wanna see no pig,” Sarah told her brother. “Pigs is ugly.”

“Pretty good eatin’, though, little miss,” Mr. Hammond said.

Dearing was about seven miles from the farmhouse, we discovered. It was quite a trip, with Mr. Hammond talking almost the whole time about his family, the economy, and a lot of people we’d never heard of before. He let us out on the main road, right in front of the grocer, saying he wanted to go on and get rid of old Charlie before he made his other stops. We thanked him for the ride, and he pointed to a tidy little house half a block down, its big yard separating Dearing’s only bank from the rest of the businesses on the street.

“That’s where you’ll find Hazel Sharpe,” he said. “She can tell you ’bout Emma Graham. Sure hope she ain’t ailin’.”

We thanked him again, and he shook his head. “My pleasure. Say hello to Emma if you speak to her, will you? We sure do miss havin’ her ’round. Won’t seem right, someone else being on the place—no offense, you understand.”

He drove away, and we all just stood there for a moment, looking down the street. Compared to Harrisburg or Evansville, Dearing was hardly any town at all. You could easily see to the railroad tracks at the edge of town, and its little peak-roofed station.

There weren’t many businesses in the town. A barber. A dry-goods store with room for only one dress in the window. A hatter, of all things, and across from the bank, the Seed and Feed. Over a rooftop I thought I could see a church tower, and it looked as if the church was the biggest building in town.

The grocery building was nice enough, although for some reason it was painted bright blue. But it was the smallest grocery I’d ever seen. Hardly bigger than our bedroom in our house in Harrisburg. Beside the grocery sat a much bigger building with a sign shaped like a chair. O’Toole’s, the sign said. Kerosene lamps for sale, dirt cheap.

Robert and Sarah were already on the first of the grocery store’s three steps.

“Pretty hungry by now?” I asked them.

“I could eat anything they got,” Sarah said.

“Anything but pig,” Robert added.

We bought a loaf of bread, a sack of flour, and a bag of beans. The proprietor took a look at our traveling bags and gave each of the kids a hard candy.

“Thank you, mister,” Sarah said with the candy already in her mouth. “Now we’re looking for the library.”

Her words caught me by surprise. I’d forgotten that I’d promised them that. And here I was, anxious to meet Hazel Sharpe in the little house down the street.

“Can’t say that she’s open today,” the grocer replied. “At least not till school’s out. That’s the way it usually works. You go two blocks west. Easy to see. Right next to the undertaker.”

I thanked the grocer and herded the kids out of the store. We sat under a tree and ate most of the bread. It was a treat to me, plain as it was. And just as we were getting up, a short little woman, stooped over terribly, came out of the house down the street.

“Go on,” Samuel told me. “If this is what you want.”

I stood still for a moment, wondering why he wasn’t moving.
Go on,
he’d said. He meant for me to talk to her alone.

I glanced in the old woman’s direction. She’d stopped to close her front gate but then hurried on away from us, moving faster than I would have thought possible.

Sam gave me a nod but didn’t take a step.
Fine then,
I thought.
It’s my idea. I’ll do it.
He kept the kids and the bags by the tree, and I went running down the street so fast I nearly lost a shoe. If I’d seen the woman standing still, I would have guessed her to walk with an uneasy shuffle. She looked like the wind could blow her over. But she moved like she was racing to beat the band.

“Mrs. Sharpe!” I called.

At first she didn’t seem to hear me, but then she turned and gave me a stare like I’d never had before.

“I’m sure I don’t know you,” she said. “And just as sure you don’t know me, neither.”

“Well, yes, Mrs. Sharpe,” I said. “But Mr. George Hammond said I ought to—”

“George oughta tell you straight, then!” she declared. “I ain’t a missus! Never have been!”

“Oh, well, I beg your pardon, Miss, uh–”

“Miss Hazel is fine. And I’m going to the church. Can you imagine? Our new pastor’s wife can’t play the piano! At least she’s willin’ to take a lesson. I hope she’s got the sense for it, you know what I mean?”

I cleared my throat, unsure of how to ask anything of this rather gruff lady. “Well, uh, yes,” I stammered. “I hope so too.”

“Who are you, anyway?” she demanded. “And what’s George sending you to me for?”

“I . . . uh . . . I need to know where to find Mrs. Emma Graham.”

Miss Hazel looked at me a long time, and for a moment I wondered if Emma Graham was unmarried too. But I was sure Hammond had said Mrs.

“I go up and see Emma when I get the chance,” Miss Hazel said, her voice considerably softer. “What are you wantin’ with her, anyway?”

I swallowed. “We want to ask her about her farm.”

For the first time, Miss Hazel looked past me and saw my family waiting beneath the tree by the grocer.

“Her farm, eh? I see. You’ll break her heart with that, you will. She true loves that old place.”

I was taken aback; I certainly didn’t want to break anyone’s heart. “Do you think we shouldn’t ask then? If she’s wanting to—”

“Oh no, it isn’t that. You might just as well. It’d be the best thing. She ain’t never goin’ home.” Miss Hazel took another long look at Samuel and the kids. Then she stared down at my hands. “You hard workers, are you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And churchgoin’, I hope.”

“Well, yes. Once we get settled somewhere.”

“She might not sell, mind you,” Miss Hazel told me. “But you do all right by askin’. What you need is to go to Belle Rive to the boardinghouse. McPiery’s place, got that? That’s where she is.” She took a deep breath, straightened her hat, and told me she couldn’t be late for the pastor’s wife’s first lesson. Then she scurried away down the street.

The grocer told us Belle Rive was another four miles or so northwest. Closer still to Mt. Vernon. I knew if this fell through, we’d be going right on, into an uncertain future. And I had butterflies flying loops and swirls in my stomach.

“She’s probably an old lady,” Sam said as we stood on the side of the road just outside Dearing. “Probably widowed and can’t keep up the farm by herself anymore.”

Just like Grandma when Grandpa died,
I thought. We’d moved to town, and it’d still been good. We’d had each other. I hoped Emma Graham had someone.

“Do you think we’re doing the right thing, Sam?” I asked.

“That’s up to you, honey,” he told me. “We can still go to Dewey’s and spend a couple of days deciding what to do next.”

We walked along in silence, and I almost gave up the idea of the farm. How could I ask a stranger a favor such as this? Especially when it concerned something so dear to her heart. It was easy for me to see how she could love the place; I wouldn’t want to part with it, if I were her. But, of course, she wouldn’t have to. We couldn’t buy it anyway. Maybe we could tenant for awhile, until she was ready to do something different. And by then, maybe we would’ve found something else, maybe something in the area.

We got a ride from an old couple who drove slower than Hammond’s farm wagon and said scarcely two words to us the whole way to Belle Rive. But when we stopped beside an ancient-looking church on the edge of town, the woman turned in her seat and gave me a quarter. “Get the kids somethin’, will you?” she said. And she and her husband drove away on the road toward Mt. Vernon. Sam would have liked to go on with them, I was sure.

I stood with the quarter in my hand and tears in my eyes, afraid of what I had come to the town to do.

“Are all the towns in Illinois this small?” Robert asked when the car was out of sight.

“Chicago’s bigger than Harrisburg,” Sam told him. “But I hear things are pretty hard up there.”

“Things are hard around here too,” Robert observed. “If people will eat a pig’s head.”

Little Sarah put her hand in my hand, her eyes on my tears. “Don’t be scared, Mama,” she whispered. “I bet there’s something real good to find in this town.”

I nodded to her but couldn’t say a word. I wanted to buy them peaches with the quarter. Just because they loved them so well. I stood wondering about finding a grocer in this town when I saw a sign not even a block away from us. “BOARDERS WELCOME.”

Sam had seen it too. “That’s probably it,” he said. “I’m not sure a town this size could have two boardinghouses.”

Once again I considered giving up my idea. But Sarah expected me to muster my courage and find the good so that I could tell her about it. I looked hard at Sam.

“Are you coming with me?”

He only shook his head. I could see the love in his eyes, all stirred in with his sadness. I handed him my bag with a nod.
Might be better anyway,
I thought,
for a woman to be
talking to a woman on this. At least, if that’s the way Sam wants
it, that’s the way it’ll be.

TEN

Emma

I was sittin’ by the window in my room at Rita’s with an undone quilt bunched on my lap. Every day I tried to sew it a little more. Had to pull it up close to my face, though, to get the stitchin’ halfway right. I was working at it when I heard the knock outside, but I didn’t pay it no mind. There weren’t many folks come to see me.

Before long, I tied off and cut my thread, then pulled back Rita’s old lime curtains to get me a better look outside. An old willow tree not thirty feet from the glass took up ’bout all my view. We had one just like it out to the farm, till it come crashin’ down in the big storm that hit in 1918.

God musta put this willow where it was on purpose, so I could look out and remember all the picnics me and Willard had under the droopy shade of the other one. I remember missing it something awful when it fell. Would’ve planted another just like it, but Willard did the practical thing and put in an apple.

I sat there for a moment, dreamin’ on whether the apple tree had bloomed and how well it might do for fruit this year without the prunin’ it was sure to be needing. Didn’t take much to get me homesick, I guess.

I thought of how the jonquils would be pretty ’gainst the white of the house that time of year. But the violas was likely choked awful by the grass, bein’ along the garden’s edge the way they was. And the violas was precious, since they came clear from m’ grandmother’s farm, to mama’s, to mine. It made me sad to think there wasn’t nobody but me to care.

I tied back the curtain and turned my head to business.
Oughta get this quilt done, just ’cause it’s somethin’ to do.
I cut a new length of thread but had my mind on all the green outside the window. Spring was the worst time for thinking on home and Willard and how much I missed ’em both ever’ time I let myself. Just lookin’ outside could start me off. You’d think I’d learn.

But there was a little fun in imaginin’ Willard standing outside under that willow, watchin’ and waitin’ for us to be together again. I wondered if he was missin’ me the same as I missed him. But maybe he’d be ready to give me the what for by now, for all this sittin’ still so long.

He always said home was the place to live and die. And there I was, spendin’ three good farmin’ seasons in Belle Rive. There weren’t no way ’round it. But what would he think? Willard wouldn’t leave the farm when he was sick. Even when he took real bad, he wouldn’t. But there I sat.

I was just leanin’ into the window light, trying to thread my needle, when Rita tapped so sudden on the door, I jumped.

“Emma?”

“Might just as well come right in, Rita. You know you ain’t gotta knock.” I tried threadin’ that needle again, but missed.

The door opened just a peek. “You’ve got comp’ny, Emma,” Rita said. “Says she’s from Pennsylvaney.”

Now that were a surprise. I couldn’t imagine what this’d be about. I pulled myself up in m’ seat best I could, wondering who in the world had come.