Keeping Secrets (7 page)

Reuben looked first at Sadie, then at Mark, shrugged his shoulders and returned to his rabbit cages. Sadie acted so odd when Mark was around, he thought.

They went for a walk, then, after releasing a miffed Paris back to the pasture.

Mark talked about everyday, pleasant subjects. He spoke easily and unhurriedly while Sadie bantered lightheartedly in return. He told her of his plans to remodel the old house and just how much work needed to be done. He worked on it every evening and all day on Saturdays.

Then he turned to her and asked her what sort of house she liked. It was so sudden that Sadie became scatterbrained and said something stupid about Richard and Barbara Caldwell’s ranch house. She knew perfectly well that Mark could never afford a house half as big as their ranch. What was she thinking?

He steered her into the empty schoolyard, seated her on the cement porch, and sat very close beside her. He positioned his arm behind her and propped his shoulder on one hand, making her so nervous and confused that she didn’t know what to say anymore, so she fell silent.

Then, easily, he began to talk. Really talk.

“Sadie, do you want to hear the beginning of my story? Do you know why I got so upset today? I’m sorry. I went a bit overboard. I’ll try and do better from now on.”

“It’s okay,” Sadie whispered.

“My first memory is being carried to a horse and buggy and sitting in the back seat with other children. They must have been my brothers and sisters. They say there were five of us.

“My father was a farmer, of sorts. I remember my parents milking cows by hand. I remember the sound of the milk hitting the steel pail, then watching the foam rise up as the pail filled. I remember cats drinking from a dish that my mother filled with the warm milk.

“The milk was stored in milk cans. You know, those big steel ones with handles? We stored them in cold water and then took them to the cheese house.”

Sadie shook her head. “I wouldn’t know. Dat was never a farmer. I think the farmers in Ohio, at least in our church, had milking machines and bulk tanks.”

“Oh. Well, I told you I was raised in a very plain sect.”

“Yes.”

“Our house had no running water. We went to the wash house to pump our water, and then carried it to the iron kettle and heated it on a wood fire. My job was to carry the wood. We were poor, Sadie, painfully poor.”

He stopped, shifted his position, and ran his hand through his black hair. Sadie watched the veins in his large, brown, perfect hands. She wanted to trace them with her fingers, just touch them to see if they were as secure and strong as they looked.

“My mother was a beautiful woman. They said she looked like an Indian from the southwest.”

“She must have been,” Sadie murmured.

“I remember her hair. When she washed it, it hung way down her back and was thick and sort of coarse. It was straight as a straw broom and swung back and forth when she walked.

“Her name was Amelia, but they called her Meely.

“I was the oldest, then Beulah.”

“Beulah!” Sadie said, astounded. “That’s not an Amish name.”

“I know. I think my mother was a bit of … maybe rebellious toward the strict laws of the church. She named her children Beulah, Timothy, Diana, Rachel Mae, and Jackson.”

“But that’s six children counting you, Mark.”

“But … I was told there were five. Well, whatever. Those were the names of my siblings.”

“Why do you say ‘were’? Where are they? Are they all … dead? What happened to them, Mark?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Wait, Sadie. Let me go on. We must have been trouble for the church. I remember my mother asking my father many questions. She wanted out of the church. She wanted to move. She wasn’t afraid of
bann and meidung
. I always thought she said “bone” or “bean,” and I could never understand what a bean had to do with leaving the church and moving away somewhere.

“My father must have become despondent. Despairing, whatever. Our cupboards contained less and less. One time I was so hungry that I ate cornmeal from a white paper sack and drank water to wash it down. I shared it with Beulah and Timothy. Diana cried and cried. Her bottle was empty, so I put water in it to keep her quiet. She cried anyway, and I couldn’t find my mother.

“I remember the smell of soiled diapers. I quickly learned how to open the large safety pins on the cloth diapers and change them. Sadie, this is one of the most painful things about my childhood. There weren’t always clean diapers available, so my little brothers and sisters had to go without. I would watch, though, and clean up after them the best I could. I used a rag that I washed out over and over.”

Sadie bowed her head, the knowledge of Mark’s childhood pressing down on her very soul.

“I still don’t know where my mother went. I just know she wasn’t there for long periods of time, and neither was my father.

“I learned to keep the house fairly warm by adding wood to the range in the kitchen. I would get a piece of wood and lay it carefully on a chair. Then I would climb up on the chair, remove the heavy lid on the top of the range, and put the stick of wood into the firebox.

“Sometimes some women would come, and they’d be angry. Their black skirts swished all over the house while they cleaned with Clorox. I guess it was Clorox. It smelled very strong. The women used the wringer washer all day long and filled our cupboards with bread and cheese and cookies and apples. My mother usually cried when they did that. I don’t know if it made her happy or angry or if she just felt ashamed of the way we lived.”

“Well, where was your mother, Mark? Did she have to go to work, or was she out running around, doing things she shouldn’t have been doing?”

“You know, I can’t tell you, because I really don’t know. She just sort of came and went. I was six or seven, so how much would I really know at that age?”

“But surely she could have explained and hired a babysitter?”

Mark shrugged his shoulders. “My father became increasingly quiet. Actually, he was sort of like a shadow in my life that came and went. I don’t remember very much about my father. Only once … no, it’s too awful to say.”

Sadie lifted her head, found his gaze. “Trust me.”

“No. That can stay buried. I think my father was a man with no hope. Men of the church tried to help him, they must have. They would drive in with their horses and buggies and wide black hats, and stand in the barn for hours. They would talk and wave their hands to emphasize the force behind their words. My mother hated them.”

Sadie drew in a quick breath. “Not hated.”

“Yes. She hated them. She spat out the door once. It was a horrible sound, one I will always remember. I guess a little boy can absorb lots of things that seem evil, and it never really goes away. It’s… I don’t know.”

Mark shook his head slowly, his eyes burning.

Sadie sighed, a quick intake of breath, then laid a hand on his arm as softly and gently as she could.

“There’s healing, Mark. There is.”

T
HE WHOLE RANCH WAS
buzzing when Sadie walked into the kitchen the following morning.

The television set in Richard Caldwell’s study was turned up louder than normal as ranch hands huddled around the desk, sitting on the arms of the sofas and standing at the door. They shifted uncomfortably when Sadie walked into the dining room, casting furtive glances in her direction, shifting their snuff, tucking in shirttails, and clearing their throats nervously.

She wondered what was going on, but of course, she would never ask the men. The important thing at this point was to get the steam table ready for the large, square containers of hot breakfast food. She would drop the pans into the grids so the hot water underneath would keep the food warm, even for the latecomers.

Setting her plastic bucket of soapy water on the table, she added a dash of Clorox and went to work washing the sides and bottom of the table’s long, shining enclosure. She wiped down the grids, the top, and the front, rinsing the rag every few swipes.

She stopped, her hearing strained, as she heard a yell of disbelief followed by exclamations of anger or dismay from a few of the most verbal ranch hands. Richard Caldwell was yelling too, his thundering voice bellowing above all the others.

“Aww! It ain’t right! This is an outrage. Who in his right mind would do something like that?”

Sadie stood positively motionless.

“He’s dead! A magnificent animal! I saw them load him in the truck. He was absolutely huge. Aw! It ain’t right.”

Sadie heard every word.

What? Which animal? It was all she could do to pick up the plastic bucket and return to the kitchen. She lingered reluctantly before opening the swinging oak doors.

Dorothy looked up from her post at the stove, viciously stirring a large pan of scrambled eggs. She was wearing an electric pink shirt over a brown, pleated skirt. The skirt rode up on her ample hips, leaving a few inches of her white, nylon slip exposed beneath the hem. Her hair was in a state of static profusion, held back by two very pink barrettes. Her eyes flashed blue amid all the pink surrounding her.

“It took you long enough!”

“I was listening. The men are all piled around the TV. Something about a dead animal on the news. Richard Caldwell was really yelling this time.”

Without a word, Dorothy marched over to the small television set perched on a stand in the corner and turned it on, expertly pushing buttons on the remote control until she found the channel she wanted.

Sadie picked up the forgotten spatula and stirred the eggs, turning sideways to watch the flickering screen. Dorothy positioned herself directly in front of the TV, obliterating any action from Sadie’s view. Muttering to herself, Dorothy clicked the button, then turned around as the television screen went black.

“Nothin’ much I can see. Some crazy person shot a horse. What’s so strange about that? Horse likely had a bone broke. Those animal-rights people is plumb nuts. You ain’t even allowed to dispose of a stray cat. You know what kills a cat so fast it ain’t funny?”

Sadie lifted the heavy pan with both hands, and a golden yellow avalanche of scrambled eggs tumbled out of it and into the square container on the counter. She shook her head at Dorothy’s question, biting down on her lower lip with the effort of lifting the heavy pan.

“I ain’t gonna tell you.”

“All right,” Sadie said, shrugging her shoulders noncommittally.

“You know why I ain’t gonna tell you? ‘Cause you’d tell everybody else, and next thing I know, I got those animal fanatics on my tail. I got enough to worry about now. Those kids. Those two precious souls, God love ’em. I can’t imagine what’s gonna happen to ’em. The cops has all the information they could get. They fingerprinted ’em, poor babies. Just like common animals, and what did they do wrong? Not one thing. Innocent as newborn babes.”

Dorothy stopped for breath, her cheeks flaming. “I’m takin’ ’em in! I am. I told my Jim, and this is what I said. I says, ‘Now Jim, honeybun, you lookie here. We ain’t never had no children of our own ’cause the Lord didn’t see fit to give us any. I may be old and fat and half wore out, but as long as the Lord gives me the strength, I’m keepin’ these young ’uns, sure as shootin’. They’s sent straight from heaven.’”

She mopped her shining nose with the dishrag that lay beside the stove, then took a deep breath and launched into a vivid account of the room they were going to fix up for them.

Sadie buttered toast, nodded in agreement, smiling, nodding her head, whenever a question abbreviated the sentences.

“You know, pink for Marcelona. She should have pink walls, but that would never work for Louise. He needs blue or green. So what I’m going to do is paint one side of the room pink, about the color of my shirt, and the other side blue, probably about like your dress. Then… Oh Sadie!”

Dorothy clasped her hands tightly, gazing at the ceiling, pure joy stamped on her round features.

“At the Dollar Tree? In town? They have decals to paste on the ceiling that glow in the dark! They glow. I bought a package to test them before I knew about the children, mind you. Now that was straight from the Lord, too. He knew why I bought them stars. He knew! Two blessed children were coming into our lives. Me and Jim’s.”

She sighed ecstatically.

Sadie glanced uneasily at the clock.

“It’s going past eight.”

Dorothy looked, then fairly ran to the refrigerator, bouncing off the cabinets as she whirled toward the dining room.

“Lord have mercy, Sadie! Why’d you let me ramble on thataway? Git the bacon!”

Sadie never failed to marvel at Dorothy’s speed. She was such a rotund little being, her feet clad in the questionable shoes from the Dollar General Store, moving with the grace and speed of an antelope, only rounder. Barking orders, she swung the oak doors, her arms laden with heavy pans of steaming food, Sadie holding her breath more than once as she careened haphazardly between kitchen and dining room.

When everything was laid out to her satisfaction, she whizzed through the doors one last time, dumped steaming black coffee into her large mug, and flopped into a wide kitchen chair, reaching for a napkin to wipe her face.