Skylark
Authors: Patricia MacLachlan
This is for Emily MacLachlan—
with admiration
with love
Contents
Excerpt from
More Perfect than the Moon
Excerpt from
Grandfather’s Dance
Papa married Sarah on a summer day. There were no clouds in the sky, and Papa picked Sarah up in his arms and whirled her around and around, her white dress and veil surrounding them like the summer wind. Caleb was so excited and happy, he burst into tears.
Everybody was happy.
“S
tand on that stump, Caleb. Anna, you next to him. That will be a good family picture.”
Joshua, the photographer, looked through his big camera at us as we stood on the porch squinting in the sunlight. Caleb wore a white shirt, his hair combed slick to his head, Sarah in a white dress, Papa looking hot and uneasy in his suit. The lace at my neck itched in the summer heat. We had to be still for so long that Caleb began to whistle softly, making Sarah smile.
Far off in the distance the dogs, Nick and Lottie, walked slowly through the dry prairie grass. They walked past the cow pond nearly empty of water, past the wagon, past the chickens in the yard. Nick saw us first, then Lottie, and they began to run. Caleb looked sideways at me as they jumped the fence and ran to us, running up to stand between Sarah and Papa as if they wanted to be in the picture, too. We tried not to laugh, but Sarah couldn’t help it. She looked up at Papa and he smiled down at her. And Joshua took the picture of us all laughing, Papa smiling at Sarah.
Joshua laughed, too.
“Your aunts will like that picture,” he said to Sarah.
Sarah fanned herself.
“They hardly know what I look like anymore,” she said softly. “I hardly know what
they
look like anymore.”
I looked at Caleb. I knew Caleb didn’t like to think about Sarah and her aunts and her brother and the sea she had left behind.
“It’s Maine you came from, isn’t it?” said Joshua.
“Yes,” said Sarah.
“She lives
here
now,” said Caleb loudly.
Papa put his hand on Caleb’s head.
“That she does,” said Joshua, smiling.
He turned and looked out over the cornfield, the plants so dry they rattled in the wind.
“But I bet Maine is green,” Joshua said in a low voice. He looked out over the land with a faraway look, as if he were somewhere else. “We sure could use rain. I remember a long time ago, you remember it, Jacob. The water dried up, the fields so dry that the leaves fell like dust. And then the winds came. My grandfather packed up his family and left.”
“Did he come back?” asked Caleb.
Joshua turned.
“No,” he said, “he never came back.”
Joshua packed up the last of his things and got up in his wagon.
Papa looked at Sarah.
“It will rain,” he said.
We watched the wagon go off down the road.
“It will rain,” Papa repeated softly.
“Will you worry if it doesn’t rain?” asked Caleb.
“Yes, but we’ll get along,” said Papa. “We always get along.”
“Imagine having to
leave
,” said Sarah.
Papa took off his jacket.
“We’d never leave, Sarah,” he said. “We were born here. Our names are written in this land.”
When Papa and Sarah went inside, Caleb looked at me. I knew what he was going to say, and I didn’t want to hear it.
“Sarah wasn’t born here,” he said.
I picked up the pail of grain for the chickens.
“I know that, Caleb,” I said crossly. “Papa knows it, too.”
Caleb took a stick and bent down in the dirt. I watched him write SARA. He looked up at me.
“I’m writing Sarah’s name in the land,” he said.
“You can’t even spell, Caleb,” I said. “You can’t.”
I walked away. When I turned to look at Caleb, he was staring at me. I wanted to say I was sorry for being cross with him. But I didn’t.
“Happily ever after,” said Caleb when Papa married Sarah.
“Now we’ll live happily ever after.
That’s what the stories say.”
Caleb said that all through the summer and the fall when the prairie grasses turned yellow, and through the first winter Sarah and Papa were married.
He said it all winter long, when the wind blew around the corners of the house and ice sat slick on the windows. He said it when he fell through the ice on the slough and had to sit in a tub of warm water, his teeth chattering.
“I like the sound of it,” Caleb told me. “Happily ever after.”
T
he days grew hotter, the sun beating down on us. We stayed inside as much as we could. Even Nick and Lottie stayed inside, stretched out on the wood floor to keep cool. Papa walked the fields, measuring the level of the water in the well over and over, waiting for rain. He came in bringing the dirt with him.
“Papa!” I poked at his feet with my broom. “Your boots!”
I was sweeping, trying to keep the dust out. Sarah was scrubbing the kitchen floor
on her hands and knees.
Papa was hot and tired.
“That may be the last washing for the floor,” he said to Sarah. “We have to save water.”
“That’s a mixed blessing,” Sarah said, brushing the hair off her face. She watched Caleb feed Seal.
“Don’t feed her too much, Caleb,” said Sarah. “She’s getting fat with your food.”
Papa looked closely at Seal. “I think she’s more than fat, Sarah.”
Sarah looked up. “What?”
“What does he mean?” asked Caleb.
I smiled.
“Kittens. He means kittens, Caleb,” I said.
Caleb and I spoke at the same time.
“Can we keep them all?” I asked.
“When will she have them, Papa?” asked Caleb, excited.
“Don’t know, Caleb,” said Papa, drinking water from the tin cup.
Sarah sat back.
“Has she ever had kittens before, Sarah?” asked Papa.
Sarah shook her head.
“No, never.”
Papa smiled at Sarah’s look. She stared at Seal for a long time.
“Kittens,” she said, her face suddenly breaking into a smile. “Kittens!”
Late light fell across the bedroom, the windows closed to the prairie wind.
I held Sarah’s wedding dress up to me and looked in the mirror.
“Anna?”
I jumped, startled, and Sarah smiled at me.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” she said.
I looked in the mirror again.
“Someday I’ll marry and move to my husband’s land. That’s what Papa says.”
“Oh he does, does he?” said Sarah.
“That’s what you did, Sarah. You came from Maine to marry Papa,” I told her.
Sarah was silent for a moment. She sat on the bed.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I guess I did.”
“You fell in love with us,” said Caleb in the doorway.
“I did that,” she said. “First your letters. Then you.”
“Did you fall in love with Papa’s letters, too? Before you knew him?” asked Caleb.
I sat on the bed and watched Sarah’s face as she remembered.
“Yes, I loved your Papa’s letters,” said Sarah softly. “I loved what was between the lines most.”
“What was between the lines?” Caleb asked.
Sarah looked at me when she answered.
“His life,” she said simply. “That was what was between the lines.”
“Papa’s not always good with words,” I said.
“Sometimes, yes,” said Sarah, laughing. “But when I read your Papa’s letters, I could see this farm, and the animals and the sky. And you. Sometimes, what people choose to write down on paper is more important than what they say.”
Caleb didn’t know what Sarah meant. But I knew. I wrote in my journal every night. And when I read what I had written, I could see myself there, clearer than when I looked in the mirror. I could see all of us: Papa, who couldn’t always say the things he felt; Caleb, who said everything; and Sarah, who didn’t know that she had changed us all.
Sarah loved the snow.
“We don’t have drifts of snow in Maine,” she said.
She waited and watched for it so she could paint the prairie snow with morning sun on it. She taught me to paint with watercolors, too. We painted the barn and tree by the cow pond, and we painted the sky just after sunset, Sarah’s favorite time.
“When you can’t tell where the color comes from,” Sarah said.
O
n Sunday the air was still, the way it is before a storm. We dressed up and rode the wagon to church. Inside the church it was cool, like a prairie spring, and Caleb fell asleep. Matthew, Maggie, Rose, and Violet, our closest neighbors, sat in front of us. Tom, their baby, turned around and reached out to Sarah. She smiled and took his hand. Papa smiled, too. We all hated to go outside into the sun again.
Maggie and Sarah walked to the wagons, shading their eyes against the sun.
“Any news?” asked Maggie.
“Seal is having babies,” said Caleb. “Lots of babies!”
Maggie laughed.
“That’s big news. Come to think of it, I’ve seen Seal at our house,” said Maggie. “With Sam. The orange cat.”
Sarah smiled.
“So it’s Sam, is it?”
Sarah and Maggie laughed together. Then Sarah reached over and took Tom in her arms. She kissed the top of his head.
“I am surrounded by motherhood,” she said softly.
I looked up at the way her voice sounded, sad and thoughtful. “A calf due soon,” she added. “Then kittens.”
Papa and Matthew came over, Papa’s face serious.
“What is it?” asked Sarah. “What’s the matter?”
“The church well is down. A whole foot,” said Matthew.
“A foot!” exclaimed Maggie. “That’s even more than ours.”
Papa looked up at the sky.
“What if it doesn’t rain?” asked Caleb.
I brushed his arm with my hand as if I were trying to brush away his words.
“It will rain, Caleb,” I said.
Tom held out his arms to Papa, and Papa lifted him up, smiling.
“Are those clouds, Tom?” he said. “In the west? Maybe it will rain. Maybe.”
“Yes,” said Maggie, trying to be cheerful. “It will rain.” Her face looked serious suddenly.
“It
will
rain,” she repeated. “It’s just the time before it rains that is hard. It always is.”
We rode home followed by clouds of dust tossed up by our wagon. The sky was blue. Heat waves rose off the land. As much as Papa wished for it, there were no clouds in the sky.
“Anna. Anna!”
I opened my eyes and morning sun poured across my quilt. Caleb was there, half dressed.
“What?”
“The calf is born. Hurry!”
Caleb pulled back my covers and I jumped up. We ran downstairs.
“Why didn’t you wake us up?” I asked, excited. “When was he born?”
“She,” said Papa. He sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. “Eat your breakfast first.”
Papa drank coffee and Sarah put bowls on the table. Caleb tried to run out the door, but Papa reached out and grabbed him.
“Eat,” said Papa firmly.
“Hurry, Caleb! Eat faster,” I said.
“I’m eating as fast as I can,” said Caleb. “Is Mame excited? Does she like her baby?” he asked Papa.
Papa grinned at Sarah.
“An excited cow? I’m not sure I noticed. What do you think, Sarah?”
“I think she likes her calf,” said Sarah, smiling back at Papa.