Rachel's Prayer (8 page)

She nodded and took Mary Jane in her arms. They were the first of us to start off, and Mr. Hammond went with them.

Frank just stood against the depot. He closed his eyes for a second, and I almost went over to him to ask what in the world could be troubling him so much, even with Willy leaving. Was it something his pa had said? I knew Frank’d been quiet last night and this morning, but he’d endured an awful lot in his life, and he usually took things pretty much in stride. It’d been a long time since I’d seen him looking this upset.

Rorey grabbed my arm. “Look, Sarah! Lester gave me a locket. Ain’t it pretty?”

I looked, but I scarcely even saw the thing. “Where’d he get it?”

“How would I know? What difference does it make? He gave it to me. And he told me to write.”

“You were planning on that, anyway,” I said, starting to move away from her.

“Well, I know! But it’s different now that he’s practically begged me to! Don’t you see? That’s like being promised! Ain’t it?”

I sighed. “At least you know he’s wanting to get mail.” “Oh, Sarah! Why do you have to be such a killjoy all the time?”

I didn’t answer. Mom and Dad were starting to walk away, so I went too. By then Frank had pushed himself away from the side of the depot and was up ahead with Sam and his kids, lifting little Rosemary onto his shoulders. He must have been okay because he started quoting the Bible then, just like I’d expected him to do before.

“The salvation of the righteous is of the Lord. He is their strength in the time of trouble.”

Everybody was quiet for a minute. And then my mother added her quiet amen.

Another dinner at the pastor’s house was even stranger than before. I wished we would just go home and get back to normal, but we wouldn’t have felt normal today anyway. It was a big job for the Joneses to feed us all again, especially since they’d invited Sam’s family and Lizbeth’s family to join us. The house was pretty full, but we had plenty of food. Mrs. Jones’s meatloaf was almost as good as Mom’s, and Lizbeth’s rolls were wonderful. Having so many people at the pastor’s house felt kind of like a holiday. But it wasn’t the same without Robert there.

Looking down at my green beans and onions, I wondered why God had chosen to make time pass. I could still remember when Katie first came to us and all the fun we’d had then. She hadn’t been used to the country. Most everything was new to her, even picking green beans. So many happy things happened when we were kids. Maybe nobody else in the world wondered the kind of things I did, but I wished I could know why we’re born little and then grow and everything has to change. Why couldn’t God have just picked a special moment, like when we were wading in the creek, and let us stay there as long as we wanted to? And be whatever age we wanted our whole lives? But maybe that’s heaven. And maybe I was just being silly.

Pastor and Mrs. Jones were being very nice to us. They got out some sheet music, and we sang along with Mrs. Jones playing piano for a little while. But then it was time to go home, and despite what I’d thought earlier, I didn’t really want to. But Mr. Hammond did. I could tell that. I think he was extra bothered about another of his boys going away. He let little Georgie climb on him some and Rosemary muss up his hair. He acted all right to them. He even talked all right, but he didn’t look too happy in his eyes. And I knew that Frank and Lizbeth saw it too.

We waved good-bye to Sam and Lizbeth and their families, and Mom hugged Juanita Jones. The weather had gotten clear again with just another dusting of snow over top the roads. Dad said that was a good thing or we might have been stuck in town. Mom and Mr. Hammond climbed in the front of the truck with him. Katie climbed in the back of the truck with me, and we shared a quilt to wrap up in. Rorey and Emmie wrapped up in another one. Frank and Harry and Bert acted like they didn’t need one, but Mom had stuck in extra for them, and I knew if the wind got cold enough on the way home, they’d use them.

Bert was busy talking about the things he’d been reading about the Revolutionary War. It wasn’t hard to let those kind of words sail on past my ears without much notice. He liked to read, and he always seemed to remember everything. That was fine, except that I didn’t always want to hear about the kind of things he liked. Neither did Rorey, and she wasn’t so quiet about it.

“Why don’t you hush?” she asked him. “What makes you think we wanna hear ’bout Lexington?”

“Well, history’s important,” Bert told her with a frown. “You ain’t in school today.”

“Learnin’ ain’t only for school,” Bert defended himself. “Right, Franky?”

Frank had been staring off somewhere, thinking deep, as he usually did when we were driving down the road. But he must have been listening too. “Education’s the apprenticeship of life,” he said suddenly.

Rorey shook her head. “Did you make that up?”

“Nope. Mrs. Wortham read it to me once from a book Mrs. Post loaned us. Robert Willmott said it.”

“Mrs. Wortham ain’t read nothin’ for a while! Who’s Robert Willmott?”

“A English author. I know it’s been a while.”

I smiled a little. Frank’s memory was even more amazing than Bert’s, because it seemed to last forever even though he’d never been able to read much of anything for himself. None of us knew why he couldn’t. He was sure smart enough.

But his words seemed to bother Rorey. “I got two a’ the craziest brothers!” she lamented. “A couple a’ smarty pants! If you was to get a regular job, either of ya, nobody’d wanna hear it.”

“I’m not gonna get a regular job,” Bert announced. “I’m plannin’ on bein’ a doctor or a newspaper reporter.”

“Says you,” Rorey answered with a frown. She didn’t say anything else the whole rest of the way. But Emma Grace reacted completely differently.

“I think that’s swell, Bert,” she said. “You could write all about the war or fix up the soldiers if they get hurt.”

“Goodness,” I told her. “Bert’s not even fourteen, Emmie. By the time he’s a doctor or a reporter the war’ll be long over.”

“Good. Then he can help deliver babies or write about that.”

“Not much writing to do about the birth a’ babies,” Bert protested. “I’d wanna do real news. Or investigation. You know, like about the mysteries of the past.”

“What mysteries?” Emmie asked innocently.

“Oh, maybe the Roanoke colony, or the underground railroad, or the hidden gold of the James gang.”

“You mean you wanna find the gold, if there is any,” Harry put in.

“That’d be all right. But the best thing’d be findin’ out everythin’ I could an’ writin’ it up in a series of installments— like the way they used to do a Horatio Alger story in the local paper.”

Harry shook his head. “I could never be a doctor or a reporter. Nothin’ that’d take a lot a’ extra education. I been thinkin’ ’bout come summer maybe prunin’ an’ cuttin’ trees for folks. Could have a firewood business on the side an’ keep Franky an’ Mr. Wortham in some wood too.”

Katie nodded her head at that idea. “I think we’ll all have to do our part. That’s what the president says. To help our families and our country.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment at that somber thought.

“I wanna have a café someday,” Emmie told us in a while. “Till then, I can help with the cookin’ at home and maybe even sell pies and such at the open market in Dearing when the weather turns nice. What do you think, Sarah?”

“Sounds nice,” I told her.

“What do you want to do?”

I didn’t know if she meant in the next few months or with my life. But it didn’t make much difference. “I don’t know.”

“The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to,” Franky said soberly.

I didn’t think those were Bible words, so I wanted to ask him who he was quoting this time. But I didn’t. And his eyes turned again to the snow-sprinkled fields.

7

Frank

Mr. and Mrs. Wortham took us Hammonds home first. I don’t think Pa expected me to stay at our place since I was so much over t’ the wood shop at the Worthams. But I planned to stay overnight at home for a while ’cause I figured Harry and Bert and Emmie would be missin’ Willy, and I wanted to be there for ’em, just in case. Me an’ Willy had talked about that. And Lizbeth too, ’bout me stayin’ to home more now. And it was a good thing I did. After the Worthams left, Pa was in a foul mood worse than usual.

He didn’t say much while we checked the stock. Mr. Mueller had set out plenty a’ feed that morning, but the water troughs was froze, so me an’ Harry pumped fresh for all the animals while Bert helped Rorey get more wood in and light the stove in the house to get the chill off. The sky was gettin’ gray early. We were in for more snow.

While we were working, I prayed for my brothers and for Pa too, turning over in my mind the things he’d told me at the depot, trying to figure if he had some reason for saying ’em besides just to be hurtful.

I’d a’ been the one on that train if I had more smarts about me, that’s what he said. That I was old enough to be on my own, but I couldn’t do nothin’ right without Mr. Wortham’s help. An’ they were stuck with me and it’d prob’ly always be that way.

I gave our best milk cow a pat, remembering the calf we’d butchered in the fall. He’d looked just like her, ’cept he’d gone lame after steppin’ in a hole. We would’ve butchered him anyway for the winter’s meat, I knew that. But for some reason it bothered me right then, and I had to shove those thoughts out of my mind.

“I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.” Paul had said that. In the book of the Philippians. After being shipwrecked and stoned and all that, he had a lot more to deal with than I did, but I was having some trouble nonetheless. And it didn’t help to see the state Pa was in.

When the sun got low, Rorey and Emmie put together some supper while Bert and Harry and me did the milking. Pa did nothin’ but complain ’bout all of it. He didn’t eat more’n six bites ’fore he put on his coat an’ hat and disappeared. I knew he’d took a horse, foolhardy as that was on a cold night when we were fixing to get some weather. But I knew he didn’t care. He’d be gone for hours, maybe all night.

I didn’t tell my brothers and sisters that. I just prayed in my head for Pa, not understanding why Willy leavin’ seemed to be upsettin’ him so much more than it ought to. It hadn’t been this bad when Joe left. Nor even Kirk, and we knew by then he could be facin’ war. Maybe it was the three of ’em all put together weighin’ on him kind of hard.

I hoped it wasn’t me he was bothered about. It’d almost seemed that way at the depot, but sometimes folks lash out at what’s handy, rather than bringin’ up what’s really eatin’ at ’em. I’d seen Pa that way plenty a’ times. So I tried not to take the words he’d said too personal.

I knew he hadn’t thought I needed to stay at home that night. But I was glad I did. Harry and Bert’d seemed kind a’ solemn and distracted. I was glad I was there to give ’em a hand with chores and be with ’em a while.

As soon as supper was done, Rorey went up in the loft room by herself to write a letter and told the rest of us to leave her alone. Emmie got kind of weepy. I wished we’d thought to send her home with the Worthams tonight. That would a’ been easier for her than seein’ Pa so down in the mulligrubs and then takin’ off the way he done.

Not knowin’ what else to do, I got her singing. She didn’t really want to, but I told her Willy wouldn’t want us actin’ all funny when he seemed set to enjoy himself along with doing his duty. And besides, she was supposed to sing with the choir in church tomorrow. I told her I wanted to hear her part all by itself so’s I’d know what to listen for when the whole group sung together.

Bert asked me twice where Pa went, but I didn’t give no real answer. “Ridin’,” I said once. “Off to be alone a while,” I told him the other time.

“In the cold?” he questioned.

But I just tried to assure him that Pa’d get back all right, even though I knew he’d be riding to Fraley’s or some other place he knew to drain a bottle before he come home. We might not see him till morning. An’ it might be better not too. Maybe he’d sleep off the drunk in Fraley’s back room and be ready to come to himself in the morning.

“Are you sure we’re goin’ to church tomorrow?” Bert asked me then.

“Yep. Lord willin’.”

“Is Pa goin’?”

“Can’t say. But we’re goin’ either way, long as the roads are clear enough.”

“We can’t take the wagon if Pa ain’t back with Star,” Harry protested. “It’s too much weight for Tulip to pull alone.”

“Then if Pa ain’t here we’ll get over to Worthams’ early enough to climb in the back a’ their truck again,” I said, thinkin’ they oughta know that. We’d done it before plenty of times, even with Pa along.

“If Pa ain’t here, maybe we shouldn’t leave,” Bert said with a worried expression, and I wished Harry hadn’t brung up that possibility.

“He’ll know right where we are,” I assured him. “He’ll expect us to go.”

None of ’em asked why Pa might be gone so long, nor any more on why he left in the first place. Maybe he’d took off a lot when I stayed over in the wood shop. Willy hadn’t told me that, though.

“Pa likes to be off alone,” Emmie Grace said. “Willy said that’s just the way he is sometimes.”

“Ain’t nothin’ we can do about it then,” I told them. “Maybe we oughta get some Bible readin’ in. That’d be a proper thing to do after the sun’s down when tomorrow’s a Sunday.”

“What are
you
gonna do?” Harry was quick to ask. “You ain’t gonna be readin’.”

“I was hopin’ one a’ you’d offer to read aloud for everybody.” Harry made a face, ’bout like I’d expected. So I was glad when Bert volunteered, because I knew readin’ would be hard for Emmie. She didn’t have quite the struggle I did, but she had more trouble than the rest when it come to letters.

Bert was good-hearted about it. He asked me where I wanted him to read, and I told him Psalms. So he just opened to the beginning of the book and started readin’. It was familiar comfort to me, the words I could speak in my head right as he was readin’ ’em. I’d heard ’em read by Mrs. Wortham when she was home-teachin’ me, and quoted by the pastor too. He loved the Psalms as much as I did.