Rorey's Secret (3 page)

Georgie came bursting in the room with Emmie Grace right behind him. “Auntie Lizbef!” he called. “Auntie Lizbef!”

Lizbeth scooped up the little boy and planted a kiss on his forehead.

“Look at you,” Thelma told her after a big breath. “You oughta be a mama. Been thinkin’ ’long those lines?”

“No.” Lizbeth shook her head emphatically. “I’ll leave you the pleasure.”

“Auntie Lizbef p’ay wif me?” Georgie was asking.

“In a little while, sugar,” she told him. “I want to sit with your mama a minute first.”

“Is Thelma sick?” little Emmie whispered to me, understandably surprised that Thelma had come over and gone straight to bed.

“No, honey. She just needs to rest because the baby’s due.”

“Oh.” Emmie looked at us with a very serious expression. “Does that mean it’s time to get borned?”

“Yes,” I told her. “But not quite yet. Not for a few hours, so far as we expect.”

“Oh. That’s a while.” She turned on her heels and ran for the kitchen. “I want to frost the cake!”

I could hear George Hammond and the big boys coming into the kitchen, and they were surely hungry. “I’d better feed this crew,” I told Lizbeth. “Wish I’d had the food done in time to send something along with Samuel and Ben.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. We’ll save them somethin’ hot. You need anythin’, Thelma? Cup a’ tea or anythin’?”

“No. Nothin’, please. Sammy, you go ahead though, if you want.”

“I’ll take a plate when the time comes,” he said. “Everybody else here?”

Of course he knew their brother Joe was away with the army at Fort Campbell in Kentucky. It was a bit of a worry to all of us, but just a part of life, seeing boys become men.

“I haven’t seen Franky yet,” I told him. “Maybe he stopped at your father’s place to finish up some chores.” I wondered on that a little. Franky had been working field with the rest, and I would’ve thought they’d manage chores at the other farm together before any of them came back here. But maybe Franky had offered to finish up so the others could come on.

George stepped in the doorway with a smile for his eldest son. “What you s’pose you got there?” he asked with a chuckle. “Twins?”

“Lordy, I hope not!” Thelma exclaimed. “One’s enough work.”

Young Sam disagreed. “Mama used to say that if one takes up all your time, then ten can’t be any harder.”

Thelma squeezed Sam’s hand again as another pain swept over her. But it would surely be a while yet, and Lizbeth was with her, so I started for the kitchen. George followed me, looking a little anxious. “These times,” he said, “they never was easy. Don’t you think Sam oughta step outta there? It’s gonna be a womanly situation, ’fore long.”

Most people felt that way, I knew. But I figured it ought to be up to the mother. “He can stay just as long as Thelma wants him to stay.”

“Ain’t it bad luck?”

“Why would it be? God made him the head of his house. I see no reason he shouldn’t be watching over them.”

“I always used to be pacin’ around outside. Even the ones that was born in the winter. Wilametta shooed me out. Blamed me for ever’ one a’ them babies.”

I had nothing to say to that. I didn’t remember him arriving at all until after Emma Grace was already born, but there was no telling about the other nine.

Sarah was mashing the potatoes, and Rorey was standing right next to her, stirring Lizbeth’s pot of green beans. Funny how she could make herself look like she’d been working all along. Emma Grace stood on a chair, anxiously holding the frosting bowl.

“Just a minute, Emmie,” Sarah was telling her. “I’ve got my hands full.”

Indeed she did, making gravy, tending the chicken, and mashing those potatoes, practically at the same time. Bless her.

“You want me to help with the cake?” Katie asked, setting two kinds of pickles and a jar of rhubarb jam from the pantry next to her generous dish of raw turnip slices in the middle of the table. Bless her too.

“I want to frost it! Please!” Emmie begged.

“You’re gonna need a hand,” Katie told her. “That’s a big job.”

Emmie nodded her agreement, and I waved them on. Sometimes I didn’t know what I’d do without Sarah and Kate. They were my best helpers. Katie was not yet thirteen, a relative we’d taken in about six years ago, and she seemed to make our family complete.

I moved to the stove, offering to take over with the chicken.

“Are you sure?” Sarah asked me. “Doesn’t Thelma need you?”

“She will. In a little while. I think I can feed the rest of you first.”

I’d husked a pot of sweet corn earlier, and the girls had moved it to the back burner to get some heat. Wouldn’t need much. Most of the kids would eat corn on the cob raw, they loved it so well. I lifted the lid, just to see if the water was bubbling.

“Reckon Franky’ll be here in time for dessert?” It was Robert asking from the doorway.

“We can very well wait for him, Robert John, as you ought to know. Is he doing the milking at home?”

“We did the milking over there, Mom. He went to find Mrs. Post. Said he was going to get another book from her.”

I nodded. Just yesterday, I’d finished reading a Dickens novel to him. He’d be anxious to have something new in the house, even if he couldn’t read it for himself. And besides, it was Friday. He always went to see the schoolteacher on Fridays, begging a book or a map or something for me to go over with him at home. I should have remembered that. Franky was always hungry for something more.

William sneered. “Why’s he bother?”

Willy had always hated school and didn’t go anymore unless his father made him, which was far too seldom. Today none of the older boys had gone. Like most of the teenagers in the district, they were helping with harvest.

“Franky likes books,” I told them. “You boys should read, or at least listen, more often.”

Robert and William both frowned. Somehow they’d gotten the notion that it was babyish to be read to and sissy to be caught with a book on your own. From Willy, such an attitude wasn’t any real surprise. But my own son? He’d always been such a good student.

Rorey sided with them. “I don’t know how Franky can stand that stuff you read to him. It’s dead dull, if you ask me.”

“And stupid,” Willy added. “Franky just don’t want to admit he’s stupid.”

Even from the corner of my eye I could see little Emmie Grace turning her face toward me. Her father, Franky’s father, had come in and was standing right beside me, taking a whiff of that chicken, and he didn’t say anything. But I couldn’t let it go.

“I don’t want to hear another such word in my house,” I told them. “There’s not one of you stupid nor even Julia close to it, and I don’t want to hear of it again! You know Franky. You know he’s got a special talent, and he’s sharp as a tack—”

“I sure have appreciated you and Samuel feelin’ that way,” George finally decided to break in. “Don’t know what Franky’d ever a’ had otherwise, if you know what I mean.”

I was suddenly so mad I could have hit him with the pot holder I had in my hand. How could he be so blind? Instead of standing up for his precious son and rebuking William’s cruelty, he was practically endorsing the unkind words! Didn’t know what Franky would’ve had? Indeed! I happened to know that George didn’t read any better than his son, though he claimed it was because he’d never been to school.

“Way I see it, your Samuel give Franky a future,” George continued. “Folks is startin’ to know his work now.”

“The whole business was Franky’s idea,” I reminded him. “WH Hardwoods might never have happened—”

“Do you want walnuts sprinkled on the cake?” Katie suddenly asked.

“Sure,” William told her. “Do what you want.”

I looked at both of them and back over at George and decided to let it drop about Franky for now. There were other things to think about, and it wasn’t helping anyone to have me arguing with George Hammond.

I started wondering just exactly how long ago Ben and Samuel had left and when they could possibly be getting back. They had about ten miles to the doctor, and maybe a stop for Mrs. Pratt. It’d be a while, unfortunately.

We set out all the food buffet style, since there wasn’t room for everyone at the table. Folks could sit wherever they wanted to. Kirk and William were itching to get started and pretty upset at Franky for the delay. He should’ve been here long ago, they thought, since he’d left to find the schoolteacher way before they started for home.

Oh, well,
I thought.
He’s surely on the way.
Their house wasn’t very far. And Elvira Post wouldn’t keep him long, with her ailing husband wanting supper. She seemed uncomfortable around Franky most of the time anyway, though she freely supplied him with books. He couldn’t be much longer.

I went in to check on Thelma while we waited. She was sweating again, but the labor pains seemed no worse. William and Robert impatiently started a game of checkers. Rorey traipsed around the kitchen a few times, trying to look useful, and then went out and sat on the back porch. Finally, after quite a while, she hollered, “He’s here!”

She must have meant Franky, of course, but she didn’t say so. I glanced out the window and was immediately glad I did. Franky’s limp looked far worse than usual. He was hurt, I could tell.

I rushed out the door, thinking that surely George was right behind me. But when I got to Franky, it was Kirk speaking up at my side, and I saw that George hadn’t even come outside.

“Fight! You was in a fight!”

Franky didn’t say anything in reply to his brother, didn’t even look his way. Instead, I saw his gaze resting on Rorey, who hadn’t moved from the back porch step.

He was banged up a little, with one eye going purplish and a cut on his lip.

“What happened, Frank?” I asked him. “Goodness, are you all right?”

“I’m all right.”

Kirk smiled hugely. “Fought back this time, didn’t you, Franky? Finally had enough?”

I knew how some of the other boys in the area treated Franky, teasing him mercilessly when they got the chance. But how had he encountered anyone today? School was let out already, and I wouldn’t have expected anyone to be between here and the Posts’ farm. Neither Elvira’s husband nor her brother-in-law would have let such a thing go on anyway, if they’d seen it.

“Who was it?” Kirk persisted. “Bobby Mueller? Or the Everly twins? I heard they was doin’ some work on Mueller’s farrowing house.”

“Be quiet, Kirk,” I commanded. “Franky, can we help you to the house?”

“I don’t need help. Better wash up, though, ’fore Pa sees me.”

“Ah, he won’t mind much,” said Harry, who’d suddenly come up alongside us. “If somebody fights at you, you got a right to fight back. He knows that. Looks like you got whupped, though, Franky. Did you get whupped?” Franky looked from one brother to the other but didn’t say a word, and I didn’t feel like pressing him for any explanations. Maybe I could talk to him about it later. Maybe. When no one else was around to be enjoying the story.

Franky handed me the book in his hand. “Sorry if it got mussed. I might have to make it up to Mrs. Post. She didn’t really want me to take it, anyway. Didn’t think I’d understand it.”

I looked down at the volume and smiled.
Silas Marner
by George Eliot. Why was it so hard for others to see the searching mind that made Franky want to reach out for books like this? I knew he’d sit just as long as I’d let him, soaking up every word the way he’d done with all the other books I’d read.

“Ugh!” Kirk said quickly. “What do you want with that book, Franky? No wonder people tease you. You’re just plain odd.”

That didn’t deserve a reply, and Franky knew it. I tried to take his arm, but he wouldn’t let me. He limped the rest of the way to the house all on his own, pulled off his shirt on the porch, and washed up best he could. I tried to help, but he’d barely let me touch him. He looked in Rorey’s direction just once more, and she went back inside without saying anything. I wondered what was going on between them.

Franky wasn’t hurt badly, but his eye was getting blacker, and the cut lip made him look pretty awful. The knuckles on one hand were banged up too, leading me to think that maybe Kirk had been right about him fighting back, as out of character as that seemed. I wasn’t sure why his limp was worse, but somebody had lit into him pretty frightfully, and I really would have liked an explanation.

“Kirk,” I commanded, “get me some warm water from the kettle on the stove. And Harry, run and get one of Robert’s shirts for me, will you?”

When they were both gone, I tried to dab at Franky’s eye. “Will you tell me who did this?”

He smiled just a little. “You’re a real good mom, Mrs. Wortham. But don’t fuss on me, okay?”

George stepped out the back door, and I hoped he’d be gracious. Seven years had gone by since his wife had died, and he’d relied on Samuel and me for so much. Most of the time, he’d tried to do his best for his children. Surely he could find a way for Franky now.

“What’s this you’ve got yourself into?” he started immediately, much to my dismay. “Here we are, all waitin’ while you go galavantin’ after some book, and then fightin’ on top a’ that! It’s your brother’s birthday. I shoulda knowed to refuse lettin’ you go over there. What’s the use you gettin’ books anyhow, Franky?”

I opened my mouth to say something, but George didn’t give me a chance.

“And now you’re tyin’ up Mrs. Wortham out here when she needs to be in there with Thelma. They’s havin’ that baby, maybe tonight, and you ain’t been no help at all!”

“Will you go gather up the kids,” I told George, trying to be calm. “Say a prayer and start them eating. I’ll be in in a minute.”

George didn’t budge. “I’ll see to my son, if you please, Mrs. Wortham. You go on in and be with Thelma, ’fore she gets to frettin’ ’bout you not bein’ there for her.”

I hated to go, I truly did. But as if on cue, Thelma gave another yell, and I scarcely had a choice. Franky was tough, after all. And he’d told me he was all right.

Jesus, help us,
I prayed on the way to the bedroom.
What’s happening today? Thelma’s baby to deal with. Franky in a fight. Lizbeth and Ben and Rorey and little Emmie Grace. And even Robert. Seeming not so happy, nor so wise, as I thought we all were.