Emma's Gift (33 page)

We rounded them back in again and finished the milking and feeding. Then with the milk and only three eggs, we started back across the timber.

George had grown quiet again. But when we got closer to the graves he said, “I wanna talk to Wilametta when we get there. If you don't mind waitin'.”

I wasn't sure that was a good idea. But I figured maybe he needed to do it. He'd hardly been able to manage much on the day of her funeral. And I could really do nothing but agree, anyway. “I don't mind, George.”

We trudged through new-drifted snow that had almost completely covered our tracks. But the wind was down now, and suddenly the sky burst clear in the west with a stunning blue.

“Don't see that too much in winter 'round here,” George said. “Sky stays white most a' the time, seems like.”

“I'm glad to see it. Maybe the kids can get out more.”

“You fixin' to send 'em home with me, ain't you?”

“Going to have to, one of these times. You all need to be together.”

“Don' know if they'll wanna leave you now, after such a Christmas as that was. Land, but you went all out! I s'pose you got some birthday somethin' up your sleeve too.”

“Just the cake. That's all I know about.”

“I can't do birthday presents. Not for so many. I jus' can't.”

“You're not the only one. You can be sure of that.”

“You reckon that Herbert Hoover'll ever lift a finger to help the strugglin'?” he asked me almost angrily, but then he shook his head. “'Course, they wouldn't do nothin' for me anyhow. I was strugglin' 'fore I ever heard a' Hoover or no market crash. None a' that don't mean much a' anything to me.”

“We can't really blame the president for what happened,” I told him, though I never cared much for a political discussion. “We likely won't have him a second term, though. With an election before the new year's out, there's bound to be some change.”

“That'll be a good thing. Be more help for farmers, good Lord willin'.”

It was strange to hear him talking that way, as if nothing at all had happened out of the ordinary that morning. “You all right, George?”

“Well, sure I'm all right!” he exclaimed. “Didn't even get the rope 'round my fool neck afore you knocked me in the dirt. Some bruises maybe but can't blame you for that. What about you? Clipped you pretty good the one time, didn't I?”

“I'm fine.”

“You look kinda mussed up. Like you been fightin'. I look that bad?”

“Yeah. I guess you do.”

“They's gonna wonder then. You gonna say anythin' to 'em?”

“Not to the kids. I'll need to explain myself to Juli. And maybe, eventually, to your oldest boy. He knows what you've been about anyway, doesn't he?”

“Don't think he cares no more. Don't think he thinks I'll be nothin' to 'em.”

“Then you need to show him different. Let him see it's not going to be all on his shoulders. He's tryin' to be a man and needs you to show him the way.”

George didn't answer, just headed in front of me straight to the barren white birches. Before I knew it, he was standing there looking down on Wila's grave.

And he looked so broken again, sinking to his knees. I wanted to lift him up and make him go on, but then I figured maybe this would be good for him somehow. At least this time he was doing what any man might do—just grieving at the side of his wife's grave.

I walked away from him, just a little ways around the hill where I could see Emma's wooden grave marker next to Willard's stone one above me on the rise.

What must Juli be thinking, us gone all this time? And no telling how much longer exactly. I couldn't go ahead without George. I sure wasn't going to leave him alone. But he needed his time, and thank God he was through the worst. He was doing better.

Stepping into smooth, untouched snow, I realized I must be on the pond. There were no weeds sticking up here. The brush stopped in a neat circle around where I stood, leaving a clean, unbroken surface of white. If we had ice skates, what a time it could be skating under a clear sky like this! That is, if we could skate at all with snow drifted this deep over the surface. A person might not even know there was a pond here if they hadn't been out to see it before.

I got to wondering if there was a way to make skates. I thought I'd ask George about it later. I went on toward the hill, thinking those thoughts. It never occurred to me how thick the ice was. It never entered my mind that cold enough to snow again might not be cold enough after the bit of melt we'd had. But I only took two more steps before hearing an ominous, almost echoing, crack.

And then my foot was sinking. It happened so fast. Pitching to the side with the cold shock of water rising over me, my head struck something hard. And then all I knew was chilling blackness.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Julia

When the cake came out of the oven, I started to really worry. There was no way under God's heaven it could take two grown men so long to get a mile through the woods, do a few chores, and come back. Especially since the snow had stopped. Something else was keeping them, I'd known it all along, and it pained me not to know for sure what it was.

The kids were wondering too, by now. I could tell. And it wasn't long before young Sam was pulling his coat back on.

“It's time I checked about my business,” he said.

Joe, Kirk, Willy, and Robert were all ready to go with him, but Lizbeth protested. “Only one a' you,” she insisted. “It don't take more'n two to go see 'bout nothin'. All right? Least ways till we know somethin' about it. Jus' go see if chores is done. See if they's over there. An' come right back.”

I had to agree with her, knowing nothing else to tell them. Sam appointed Kirk to go with him, to Joe's disappointment and Willy's disgust.

“Maybe they went to Post's house for something,” Robert suggested. “Or maybe one of the stock come up lame, needin' their help.”

I didn't venture a word, and young Sam and Kirk were soon out the door. Lizbeth turned her face from me, and Rorey sat down on the floor and cried.

“I don't want cake! I don't want cherries! I don't want nothin'!”

I tried to comfort the little girl, and so did Sarah, bringing her new doll. But Rorey only set it on the floor beside her and went right on crying.

“Rorey, honey, there's no reason to cry. I'm sure they're fine.”

“Then why ain't they home?”

I couldn't tell her anything she'd accept. I knew I couldn't. She'd seen her big brother's worry, and she was only thinking the worst. They thought their father was gone. They thought he'd left them somehow, and my Samuel was out there trying to find him.
Lord help them, they've suffered so much already. Can't they have good news, just this once? Can't Robert be right, perhaps? Maybe ol' Rosey was needing extra attention. Or one of the pigs. Anything but more trouble with George.

“Is Daddy okay?” Sarah suddenly asked me.

“Of course, he's okay. He just went with Rorey's daddy to do the milking and such.” Of course, that was all it was. The men would explain their delay as soon as they got here, which was bound to be any minute.

But Sarah just looked me, less than satisfied. She had no reason, no reason at all, to seem so worried all of a sudden. But she was. And Rorey had no reason to be crying like this. At least no new reason. I caught myself impatient with the both of them and took a deep breath.
Lord, we're all in your hands. Wherever the men are, they're in your hands too.

Suddenly a song seemed to be filling me from the inside. Like it was Emma singing it, like we were back to the day she'd sung it before, coming home from church in the sunshine, with me knowing how poorly she'd felt that day.

“Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father…”

She'd started so quiet. But she seemed to just gain strength as she went on, and she wasn't quiet for long.
“Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not! As thou hast been, thou forever wilt be…”

I could almost hear her resonant voice singing the glorious hymn.
“Great is thy faithfulness! Great is thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see! All I have needed thy hand hath provided! Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!”

How Emma had loved that song! It summed up the way she'd looked at everything, her answer to anything that came her way. God's presence. God's provision. God's mercy.

Why can't I be more like her, Lord? After all you've done to bring us through such terrible trials so smoothly, why haven't I rejoiced? Oh, God, you know what the future holds. You know our days and all the good that you have planned. I rest in you. The way I should have been doing all along, I rest in you. We'll manage, no matter how long the kids are here, no matter what happens. Because you are here, faithful Father God. You are here, and I cannot doubt it. I cannot doubt the goodness that brought us here, that put so much of Emma in my heart and made me love this sometimes difficult family.

I wasn't prepared when the boys came bursting in, carrying someone between them. I thought it was George. But George came in right behind, shouting out orders, taking charge.

“Get him by the fire! Quick! Get them wet clothes off him! Get blankets! Go on! Hurry!”

He was talking to everybody more than anybody in particular. For one quick, irrational moment, I thought,
Where's Samuel?
And then I saw that the icy gray figure they were hustling past me
was
Samuel.

“Mommy!” Sarah screamed.

“Get towels,” I told her. “Run now.” She was scared, but I couldn't address it. “Robert,” I ordered, “you run up and bring down every blanket you can carry!”

I saw myself then in Emma's room, yanking all the covers off her bed, without even knowing how I'd gotten in there. And then I was running to the fireside, where George and his big boys were pulling off Samuel's dripping coat and boots.

“He broke through the ice, ma'am,” George was saying as I struggled to pull the covers around my Samuel.
Oh, God, how could this happen?

“I—I shoulda been watchin' where he walked to,” George said on. “But tell the truth, I wouldn't a' known neither that the ice weren't solid. Awful sorry, ma'am. Truth told.”

He looked pretty pale himself and was at least partly wet. He must've managed somehow to pull Samuel out, God have mercy.

Mercy. Faithfulness. Yes.

“Sammy? Can you hear me?”

He was shivering. He was breathing. But he didn't answer, and I couldn't be sure he'd heard me. He hadn't opened his eyes.

“Lay a couple a' them towels right along the edge of the screen here, right close to the fire to get 'em warm,” George was telling my daughter. Then he turned to me. “Got to pull ever'thin' off him, ma'am, 'fore the fire an' the blankets can do their job. He's soaked clear to the skin.”

“Yes.” Feeling numb, I helped him pull the wet things off my husband, cover him again completely, and start rubbing warmth into his arms and legs.

Oh, God,
I thought.
Emma rubbed Wilametta so fruitlessly. We tried so hard. And now Sammy is laying here all pale.

Sarah came up at my shoulder, her teary eyes just glancing at mine before she started in rubbing her father too. Robert was throwing more wood on the fire. Seemed like everybody was doing something.

“He gonna die?” Rorey asked timidly.

“Nah,” George answered immediately. “Nah, he's a tough bird, this 'un. He'll be up again afore long, keepin' an eye out for me.”

There was something about the way he said it. And the deep look in his eyes. I wouldn't have imagined it to be so, especially after the way George had been lately. But he really, really cared.

“Was he under long?” I dared ask him.

“Didn't seem like long, ma'am, but I can't say. Done the best I could. Breathed on his own, he did. That was the most a' my worry.”

To think of Samuel in that icy pond! It was shallow enough around the edges, but ten feet in, it was deep enough to baptize, and in the middle easily over a man's head. He might've been lost. He might've slipped beneath the ice, where George couldn't reach him.

“Thank you,” I managed to tell him. “I'm so glad you were there.”

He shook his head. “He wouldn't a' been there if it weren't for me. Dad blame it all if we ain't some kinda brothers after today.”

Samuel didn't wake. And I kept thinking,
Shouldn't he? Shouldn't he have already, even before they got him to the house? In a near-drowning, once the person's breathing, doesn't he wake up?

“Sammy?” I tried whispering to him.

“You know,” George told me, “if it weren't for those two-by-sixes stuck out there to the post, I couldn't a' reached him without falling in my own self. Give us a safe track clear to the shore. Lucky there was snow knocked off, or I couldn't a' even seed where they was.”

Two-by-sixes jutting out over the water instead of a dock. The Hammond boys fished from them in the summertime. But snow knocked off? Maybe Samuel had tripped on them. Or worse.

“Was he right next to them?”

“Yeah. Arm's length. Good thing too.”

A chill working through me, I reached my hand ever so gently to the back of Samuel's head. Under his thick, dark hair behind his left ear I felt what I'd dreaded. A welt, long and swollen, where he must've struck his head. Pulling my hand away, I saw just an inkling of blood across my fingers, and it turned me cold.

“George, see if you can get Barrett Post to fetch the doctor for us.”

He looked at me first in surprise, then with a sturdy sort of resolve. “Yes, ma'am.”