Running Around (and Such) (6 page)

D
AT LEFT TO CALL
a driver, and Mam went to take a bath, even if it was mid-afternoon. Mam was very particular about being clean when you went to see a doctor. Even when she took the twins for a checkup, she gave them a bath in the middle of the day.

Emma hurried anxiously after Mam. “Are you sure you should be taking a bath, Mam?” she asked.

“Why, Emma?”

“Suppose you pass out?”

“I won’t. I’ll be fine.”

Mam always said that. Lizzie twisted her fingers nervously around the small hem of her bib apron. She could not bear to hear Mam coughing from the bathroom, so she hurried outside to the porch. Jason was sitting on the porch swing.

“Is she going to die in the hospital?” he asked, his voice quavering.

“No, Jason. She is just really, really sick. I’m sure the doctors can make her well.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes.” Lizzie said this with a lot more bravado than she felt inside. People died of pneumonia every day. That’s how Mommy Miller had died. But she didn’t say that to Jason. She just pushed the porch swing back and forth with her one foot.

The porch swing comforted Lizzie. It was the one thing that made her feel at home these first days of living on the farm. There was something very soothing about swinging back and forth on it in the clean spring air. Even if Lizzie was troubled, the porch swing always calmed her spirit.

Dat hurried up the sidewalk and into the house without even glancing at Lizzie. Emma called him, and Lizzie heard their low tones as they discussed something in the kitchen behind the screen door. Soon Dat reappeared, looking sternly at Lizzie.

“Where’s Mandy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, Emma said she doesn’t want to tattle or make you and Mandy angry at her, but you don’t always listen to her when Mam and I are away, that you just run off to the creek or go drive Billy, or do anything you can to get away from doing jobs she asks you to do.”

Lizzie watched her foot on the concrete floor of the porch, not sure what to say. She knew it was true. There was just something about Emma asking her to do a job that ruffled Lizzie’s feathers. She wasn’t as bossy as she used to be, but whenever Emma asked, Lizzie always felt like not doing the job Emma wanted done.

“Do you hear me?”

“Yes.”

Lizzie wished her toes weren’t so crooked. She had the ugliest feet she had ever seen on anyone. She decided then and there that she would never go barefoot except at home. Her toes were hideous.

A dull thump from the direction of the living room and a piercing scream made Lizzie leap to her feet, almost upsetting the porch swing. Dat sprang to the door of the kitchen as Emma screamed again. They yanked open the bathroom door to find Mam in a heap on the floor beside the counter. She had been pinning her apron when she fell. Pins were scattered all over the floor.

Dat cried out as he stooped to lift her, but he wasn’t able to pick her up because she was so limp. Her face was so pale, Lizzie couldn’t bear to look.

“Emma open the windows,” Dat said.

He rolled Mam over.

“Lizzie, go get a pillow. Hurry up!”

Lizzie dashed to the bedroom, her heart racing. Poor Mam! Poor, sick Mam who just went on and on, feeling horrible all week. She grabbed a pillow off of her bed and ran back downstairs.

Dat lifted Mam’s head and gently placed the pillow underneath it. Lizzie was terribly alarmed to see how Mam’s head rolled around on her shoulders, just like a rag doll’s. Dat stood up and held a clean washcloth under the cold water faucet. After he wrung it out, he knelt to bathe Mam’s face.

Mam’s head rolled to the side, and she moaned as her eyes fluttered open.

“Annie!” Dat touched her face. “Annie!”

Mam’s eyes blinked, and she struggled to focus.

“Ach, my,” she whispered weakly.

“Annie, you’ll be all right. You fainted,” Dat said tenderly, as he kept stroking her forehead with the cool washcloth.

“Ach, my,” Mam said again.

Dat was just helping her to a sitting position when the kitchen door banged shut.

“Hey,” Mandy yelled.

Lizzie hurried out. “Shh!”

“What?”

“Mam passed out on the bathroom floor!”

Mandy clapped a hand to her mouth, her big green eyes opening wide. Hay was stuck in her hair, her face was grimy with dust, and she had torn a big hole in the sleeve of her dark purple dress.

“What happened?”

“Mandy, she’s terribly sick. She has to go to the hospital. Where were you?”

“In the haymow. Hey, I found a bunch of kittens. You know all those wild cats around here that have no tails? There’s a whole nest full of kittens and
not one
has a tail!” Mandy was so excited, the veins in her neck stuck out like cords.

“Shh! Mandy, calm down! Mam’s sick.”

“I know. Are they … is she … how are they going to the hospital?” Mandy asked as she made her way to the bathroom door.

Dat was helping Mam to her feet as Emma hovered nearby, picking up the pillow and comforting the twins who were crying.

Mam sank wearily onto the sofa, just as they heard the crunch of tires in the driveway.

“Your driver’s here,” Lizzie announced.

Dat helped Mam back to her feet while Emma hurried over with her black Sunday apron.

“Your apron, Mam.”

Mam could not answer. Her mouth was pressed into a straight, thin line as she used all of her concentration to stay on her feet. Dat shook his head at Emma as they slowly made their way across the kitchen, through the door, and into the waiting car. This was the first time Lizzie ever saw Mam go away without her black apron, but she supposed it was all right to do since Mam was so sick.

As Mam and Dat got into the car, the twins started crying uncontrollably. Susan wailed steadily, and no one was able to console her. KatieAnn finally sat in her little chair with great sad eyes and sniffled, her teddy bear clutched to her chest.

Emma reached down and scooped up Susan, holding her close until her wails at last subsided.

“Poor little things, Emma,” Lizzie said over the top of KatieAnn’s dark head.

“I know,” Emma agreed. “We just moved from the only home they’ve ever known, and now Mam leaves them like this.”

“Let’s rock them on the porch swing,” Lizzie suggested.

They took both little girls and held them, gently rocking the old wooden porch swing in the warm spring sunshine. Jason sat on the steps, his curls lifting and falling as the breeze played with his hair. Mandy found a flashlight and ran across the yard to the barn, returning to her newly found nest of baby kittens.

E
MMA STARTED HUMMING AS
she rocked back and forth on the swing. Here they were, way back in the sticks, or so it seemed to Lizzie, the twins crying, Mam sick, Dat on the way to hospital with her, everything frightening and unsure.

Lizzie felt as if her life was a jigsaw puzzle, all finished, each piece fitting perfectly into the next, until now when it seemed someone had suddenly come along and scattered the whole thing. Now nothing made any sense.  

She thought of praying, but she didn’t really know how to word her scattered thoughts and fears. Would Mam die? Could God be so mean? The thought was so unbearable that she got up from the porch swing and went into the kitchen, balancing KatieAnn on her hip.

Just as she was opening the refrigerator door, she heard the dull, muffled sound of a car engine. Quickly she closed the door of the refrigerator and watched as an old green pickup truck ground its gears to a stop beside the sidewalk. Her heart leaped in her chest as she saw a young man leaning out from the window, his thick, hairy arm bent in a V shape. Huge red, black, and blue tattoos covered most of his arm.

His hair hung straight down over his face. His eyes were half closed. Lizzie clutched KatieAnn so tightly that she began to squirm and push at Lizzie’s arms.

“Sorry,” Lizzie muttered, without thinking.

Another passenger turned the handle of the old truck and climbed down to stand beside it. Looking more closely, Lizzie saw that this second person was a woman, dressed in ragged jeans and an old, torn T-shirt. Her hair was swept up in a tight ponytail that bounced as she moved.

Finally, the driver opened his door and ambled around the front of the truck. He was very heavy, with holes in the stomach of his shirt, white skin showing through. His hair was just as long and dirty as his companions’.

Lizzie shivered with raw fear. She swallowed, thinking wildly of where she could run. The attic. That would be the best. They would never find her in the attic back under the eaves behind some cardboard boxes.

But what about Emma? Or Jason? She had to stay here. She couldn’t leave Emma alone. She wished Emma was not out there on the porch swing. If only she was in the house, they could hide somewhere and those awful people would think there was no one home.

What should they do? Lizzie glanced wildly around the kitchen, still looking for a place to hide. But she couldn’t leave Emma alone to talk to them. Who were they? What did they want?

Mustering all of her courage, she made herself walk to the screen door. Her legs felt like wooden stilts, she was so afraid. She was fairly gasping for breath because of the unnatural rhythm of her racing heart.

Without thinking, she prayed in silent little screams. Please, please. Help us, dear God. Help Emma to know what to do.

The dark-haired man stepped up on the sidewalk in front of Emma. Emma stopped the porch swing with both feet. She clutched Susan tightly on her lap, her face very white and as still as a stone. Jason sat beside her, not even a curl ruffling his stillness, his eyes big, round, and absolutely terrified.

“How you?”

Lizzie jumped as the man spoke to Emma in a raspy, deep-throated voice.

Emma’s mouth opened, but no sound came from it. She cleared her throat and tried again to speak.

Lizzie pushed open the screen door and stepped out. She did not know if these people were dangerous; she just knew she could not trust them. First of all, they must never know their parents were not at home. The man’s eyes were on her. The woman stepped up on the sidewalk beside the man and glanced at the twins that Emma and Lizzie were holding. For a moment, Lizzie thought she would smile, but she didn’t. She only lowered her eyelids farther.

“How y’ doing?” the man asked.

“I’m fine,” Lizzie said, louder than she had wanted to.

“Y’ Mom and Dad home?” he asked.

“Y-yes,” Lizzie lied.

“Can I talk to ’em?” he asked, eyeing Lizzie suspiciously.

“No. My mom is too sick and my dad is with her. He can’t come to the door right now,” Lizzie said.

The dark-haired man glared at her, and Lizzie glared back.

“Y’ think your dad would let us look for arrowheads along your bottom field, here close to the creek?” he asked, jerking his thumb in the direction of the line of trees bordering the creek.

“What do you mean?” Lizzie asked bluntly.

“These.” He came forward, reaching into the pocket of his jeans for a few arrowheads. He held out his hand, showing her pieces of grayish brown stones in the shape of an honest-to-goodness arrowhead.

Lizzie bit down on her lip as she surveyed the stones from her spot on the porch.

She looked at the arrowheads, and then looked up at the man’s face. His eyes were chocolate brown and not unfriendly now. She looked at the arrowheads again, and then up at him. What should she do? She glanced at Emma.

“Could … could you come back later this evening?” Emma asked.

The man smiled widely and Lizzie took a step forward.

“Your dad ain’t home, huh? Your mom ain’t, either,” he stated.

Lizzie stepped back. She felt extremely foolish.

“That’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you. We live a couple miles from here. I own a machine shop in the nearest little town. Everybody knows me, Evan Harper, my wife, and brother-in-law.

“So you bought this farm from ol’ Edwin. Don’t look the same with his junk gone. We’ll be back later when your dad’s home. See ya.”

He headed down the sidewalk toward his truck with the woman close behind him. The truck starting with an awful-sounding roar.

Lizzie sank onto the porch swing, letting out her breath in a long, slow whoosh. Emma looked over at Lizzie and said, “Oh, I mean it, I was never so scared in all my life!”

“It was awful,” Lizzie agreed.

“You lied, Lizzie,” Emma said.

“Not really a bad lie, Emma. I was only trying to protect both of us, Jason, and the twins. They looked so … so, well … just like you would imagine kidnappers or thieves might look.”

“It was still a lie.”

“Emma, now don’t scold me. What if they were dangerous, and I would have let them know our parents weren’t at home? I couldn’t do that.”

“He knew you lied.”

“So? If he knows, he could wash his hair and cut it and stop acting so big and tough. Then I wouldn’t have to lie, because I would trust him in the first place. It’s his own fault, not mine.”

“You better ask God to forgive you.”

“I will.”

Dat came home toward evening, leaving Mam at the hospital. As the girls crowded around him, he told them how sick Mam was, how they took X-rays of her chest and admitted her as soon as they could.