Prairie Rose (16 page)

On the other hand, Seth was beginning to sense that Miss Rosenbloom Cotton Mills had a good head on her shoulders when it came to how things ought to be done around a homestead. Maybe she
was
a fatherless foundling who had grown up in an orphanage. But since she’d come out to the prairie, Seth had eaten three square meals a day, slept on clean sheets at night, and lived in a house with curtains at the windows, a cloth on the table, and flowers in a jug. More important, in Rosie’s presence, Chipper’s sullen attitude had begun to fade. If she thought it was right to pray before meals and sing on Sundays, who was Seth to argue?

“It’s Sunday,” he said to Rustemeyer. Then he pointed at heaven and folded his hands. “Time to pray. To God.”

“Gott. Ja, ja.”

“We’ll sit in the sunshine,” Rosie said. “That way we can dry off.”

As they approached the soddy, Chipper came dancing through the front door. He was wearing the nightshirt Rosie had sewn, and at the early hour his hair was still rumpled from sleep. “A puppy! Rosie, you have a puppy! Can I pet him? Can I hold him?”

Chuckling at the utter delight in the child’s eyes, she handed over the pup. “He’s hungry now. We must feed him some milk right away.”

“What’s his name? Where did you find him? Where did he come from?”

“God sent him to us. He’s our gift from heaven. He has no mama, no papa, and no name. But he’s a very special treasure all the same.”

“Like you, Rosie!” Chipper said. Then he turned to his father. “He’s just like her, isn’t he?”

At the implications behind the question, Seth stiffened for a moment. Then he gave his son a deliberate grin. “Muddy and damp, you mean? With lots of tangled hair?”

“Not that!” Chipper said, breaking into a giggle. “I meant that the puppy has no mama or papa, and neither does Rosie.”

“I reckon you’re right.” Seth rubbed a hand roughly between the puppy’s two perky ears. “Miss Mills is wet, homeless … and a very special treasure. Our gift from heaven.”

Rosie’s mouth dropped open, and Seth couldn’t resist giving her a wink as he sauntered toward the soddy. But inside the darkened room, he could hear his heart hammering in his chest. Now why had he gone and done that? Why did the opportunity to tease and disconcert her give him such amusement? Why couldn’t he keep his focus on practical matters—instead of on Rosie’s long brown hair and warm smile? What was happening to him?

Last night Seth had followed her into the pouring rain like some lovesick fool. He had held her hand. He had told her he liked her hair. It was pretty, he had said. She was pretty. Now he had all but admitted she had become special to him. How could such foolishness have come about? He felt half-dizzy inside. Light-headed. Off-balance.

He had to put a stop to this, or she would get ideas. Wrong ideas. Carrying the heavy, black, leather-bound Bible his mother had given him, Seth strode back outside. He arranged himself on a big stump near the woodpile and spread the book open across one knee. Rosie crouched on a log, draping her skirts out to dry in the sunshine. Rustemeyer sat down near her. Chipper stroked the puppy as it lapped at a saucer of milk.

“All right,” Seth began, determined to take control—of himself and the entire situation. “We’ll start at the beginning. Genesis.”

“Deuteronomy,” Rosie said. “Please.”

Seth frowned. “That’s a bunch of laws and rules, isn’t it? I think we should start at the beginning—the way a book ought to be read.”

“But Mr. Holloway said there’s a verse about … about foundlings.” Her voice was small, wounded. “He told me I’m not supposed to go to church. It’s forbidden … for people like me.”

“What’s wrong with you, Rosie?” Chipper asked. “Why shouldn’t you go to church?”

“Whoever my mama and papa were, I don’t expect they were married to each other. God likes for people to marry each other before they have babies, Chipper. He wants … families.” She swallowed, and Seth thought his heart was going to tear open at the pain written so visibly in her brown eyes. “You know, I’ve been to church all my life, but now I wonder if I’ve done wrong. Maybe … maybe God hates the sight of people like me in his house. Mr. Hunter, would you find that verse? It’s in Deuteronomy. I want to know what it says. I want to try to understand.”

Seth scratched his head. It couldn’t be right to talk about touchy subjects like illegitimacy with children around. Could it? And Rustemeyer was getting restless. The German didn’t understand a word of the conversation. He kept glancing in the direction of the unfinished bridge. Worst of all, Seth couldn’t even remember where Deuteronomy was situated in the Bible.

“Maybe we should just read a psalm and be done with it,” he said. “My mama used to read them to us kids all the time after Papa went off and … when she was feeling lonely. Or sad.”

“Deuteronomy,” Rosie repeated. “Please, Mr. Hunter.”

What could he say to those brown eyes? Seth flipped around through the pages until he found the book. It was near the beginning of the Bible—almost like starting in Genesis.

The first batch of chapters had to do with the Israelites wandering in the desert. He bypassed that part as too boring. Then came the Ten Commandments. Those had been hanging on the wall in the house where Seth grew up. The neat sampler sewn by his mother had stated God’s laws in bold black cross-stitch. And Seth had watched his father methodically break every one of them. He elected to skip over that part of Deuteronomy, too.

“All right, chapter six,” he said. “Maybe Holloway’s verse is in here. ‘And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.’ That sounds good enough to me. Okay, who wants to pray?”

Rosie blinked. “But that’s not the part about the foundlings.”

“It’s about children. It says to love God and teach your children about the Bible.”

“It’s not what Mr. Holloway was talking about.”

“All right, all right.” Seth lifted his hat and raked a hand through his hair. To tell the truth, he didn’t really want to find the part about the foundlings. It might upset Rosie. Seth couldn’t stand the thought of her eyes filling with tears the way they had in Holloway’s station. Fact is, if the Bible made Rosie cry, Seth would be tempted to chuck the book in the creek. Though he believed in God—Jesus’ death on the cross, the resurrection, and all that—he’d never seen much good come of religion in his own life.

After his papa had run off, Seth used to pray every day for God to bring the man back. But he never did come back. Seth had longed for a father—a good, strong father—more than anything in the world. But all his praying hadn’t done a lick of good.

“You know there are an awful lot of verses in here,” he told Rosie as he flipped through the pages. “Chances of finding that particular one are mighty slim.”

“I’m praying for you to find it,” Rosie said. “The Lord will lead you there.”

Seth shrugged in resignation. “Here’s something about the church. Chapter 12. ‘But unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose … thither thou shalt come. … And there ye shall eat before the Lord your God, and ye shall rejoice in all that ye put your hand unto, ye and your households, wherein the Lord thy God hath blessed thee.’ Sounds to me like God wants everybody to go to church—and even have a good time eating and rejoicing. Okay,
now
who wants to pray?”

“Keep reading,” Rosie said. “You haven’t found it yet.”

Seth turned through passage after passage about which animals to eat, what to do about murder, and who ought to marry whom. Just when he was ready to shut the book and get back to the bridge, his eye fell on Deuteronomy 23:2. He read it silently. Read it again. Finally, he looked up at Rosie.

“Go on,” she whispered.

“‘A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord.’ I don’t believe that,” he exploded. “What’s a child got to do with how his parents behave? It’s not right to blame a child for what his father did. You can’t hold innocent children accountable for their ancestors’ sins and failures. That’s a bunch of bunk.”

He dropped the Bible to the ground. “Enough,” he went on. “We’ve got to get to work on the bridge. Pray, Rustemeyer. Do it in German. I don’t care to understand it anyhow.”

Rustemeyer stared at Seth.
“Was ist los?”
he asked, gesturing angrily at the fallen book.

“You’re not supposed to throw the Bible in the mud,” Chipper said. “Only a nasty ol’ Yankee would do that.”

“What do you know?” Seth snapped, his own father’s harsh voice echoing in his head. “What do you know about anything?”

Chipper shrank into himself and buried his face in the puppy’s fur. Rosie sat forlornly on the log, her shoulders sagging, her focus on her lap. Rustemeyer glowered.

“So much for Deuteronomy,” Seth barked, standing. “So much for the whole worthless Bible. So much for religion and church and a God who doesn’t love people for who they are and not what they came from.”

Hot, frustrated, confused, he stomped off toward the bridge. At least building was something he knew how to do.

On the first day of June, Rosie, Chipper, the new puppy, and the entire O’Toole clan gathered to watch Seth drive the last nail into the pontoon bridge that spanned Bluestem Creek. He, Rolf Rustemeyer, and Jimmy had worked on the project every minute that they weren’t plowing, planting, or hoeing. Rosie had used her own spare minutes to sew a flowered scarf that would hold back her hair. But they didn’t have another Bible study, even though two Sundays passed during the building of the bridge.

Rosie could hardly see the point in forming a group to worship God. The preacher at the church in Kansas City had said that wherever two or three believers were gathered in Christ’s name, he was there among them. But now Rosie knew that God didn’t want her— an illegitimate child—to worship in a gathering of his believers. As far as she could understand the verse in Deuteronomy, it would be just plain wrong for her to bring them all together again like a small church. Her very presence would defile the gathering.

Since that Sunday morning after the rain, nothing had gone particularly well around the homestead. The harmony had been spoiled. To Rosie, it felt like Satan had used the moment of discord to jump right in and throw everything out of kilter. Seth was so angry about the verse in Deuteronomy he had stopped praying at mealtimes. Chipper crept around like a lost lamb. He seemed half-fearful that Jack Cornwall would jump out from behind a bush and grab him—and half-hoping he would. It was hard to tell what Rolf Rustemeyer was thinking.

If Rosie and Seth had begun to build a bridge toward accepting and understanding each other, it too had been destroyed the morning of Deuteronomy. Rosie felt that her stubborn insistence on observing the Sabbath had led Seth to reject God—and Seth in turn had rejected her. He worked day and night, and he hardly gave her a second glance. There were no more long midnight conversations, no more teasing compliments, no more dances in the barn. For some reason, Seth’s disinterest in her hurt almost as much as the discovery that God didn’t want her to set foot inside his church.

“Casimir Laski sent us a message this afternoon,” Sheena O’Toole whispered to Rosie as the two women led everyone who had observed the ceremonial pounding of the last nail across the new bridge for a celebratory evening meal at Seth’s soddy. “Jack Cornwall has been spotted around the Red Vermillion River, so he has. Word is he’s been asking the whereabouts of the Hunter and O’Toole homesteads. He’s working his way closer to us, Rosie. Sure, you and Seth must keep a sharp eye on the wee one. First thing you know, that
sherral
will kidnap the boy and ride hotfoot back to Missouri.”

Stopping in the front yard, Rosie dipped a spoon into the large black cauldron that hung on a tripod over the outdoor fire. The stew she had made that morning looked delicious, and it smelled even better. With fresh greens from the prairie, wild onions and carrots, and the very last of the stored potatoes, the concoction would fill hungry stomachs well. Best of all, Sheena had whipped up a batch of Irish dumplings, which floated in the broth like puffy white pillows.

Rustemeyer, who had ridden over for the celebration, leaned across Rosie’s shoulder. “Fery goot,” he said. “Schmells fery goot.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rustemeyer. I’m glad you think so,” Rosie replied. She had grown accustomed to Rolf’s awkward attempts at speaking English. He reminded her of the toddlers at the Home— the way they stumbled over words and put sentences together in funny combinations.

“You are velcome.” He executed a neat bow, which sent Sheena into a fit of giggles. Ignoring her, the German picked up a stack of bowls. “I helpen you, fräulein.
Mit der Suppe
.”

“With … the … soup,” she pronounced carefully.

“Vit … dee … zoop.”