Coldwater Revival: A Novel (14 page)

Granny scraped her chair back, rising erect as she retrieved a hanky from her apron pocket. She scrubbed at her eyes and speedily returned the kerchief to its lace pouch. Her hurried fingers gathered up spoons, cups, and saucers while Mrs. Beushaker tidied up the tablecloth.

“Reminiscing won’t get the chores done, will it, Mrs. B.?” Granny lifted her chin and ramrodded her back. “And it’s for sure I can’t bring my family back, though God knows I would cut me heart out and give it away if that’s what it took to be with ’em again.”

Mrs. Beushaker nestled Granny to her bosom like a little, lost child, but Granny broke free, as she’d brook no such coddling. As her friend departed through the back door, Granny scurried to the kitchen, most likely to whip up a culinary delight of which she expected me to partake. I doubted that would happen.

I lay on the pallet, ruminating on the desperation I had heard in Granny’s words. Were our lives so different then? I thought not, for sadness linked us together in a bond mightier than the blood of our heritage.
For the rest of my life, I’ll suffer the same agony as Granny. Asleep or awake, I’ll be reaching out, trying to reel in my brothers, but like Granny … I’ll never be able to snatch them from the death hole.
A dull, lifeless pall crept over my being like soupy fog. I’d never felt so broken or frail. I shifted on the blanket-bed, turning my back on Granny’s sorrow—and my own.

I studied the room, my glance stumbling over mantle photographs, old and long-faded to the hues of a newborn fawn. My gaze fastened on a picture near the center:
Papa, when he was a young man.
Then it fell on the likeness of three children, happy faces in the springtime of youth; children Granny had lost in the storm. At one time or another, each had been one of Granny’s baby fawns.

Lace doilies and embroidered scarves decorated the parlor: the mantle, couch, end tables, and shelves. White dishes with bright blue centers stood upright in a windowless cabinet. Paintings filled the dishes: birds, dragons, odd-looking sailboats, and squat people wearing domed hats. One plate bore the image of a palace with an upturned roof. It appeared ready for flight; as though a stiff wind might set it free to soar like a March kite. Granny told me Grandpa Falin had given her the dishes the year before he died. The dishes were my favorite things among Granny’s collectibles, for each dish had painted its own story on my heart.

My thoughts returned to the hurricane of 1900. How had Granny escaped the wrath of that terrible September storm? Why had her children and husband perished, but not she? A week or so earlier, I had asked Granny to tell me about the storm, but she had replied that hearing about that horrible tragedy was the
very
last thing I needed right now. She would tell me someday, she promised.

Granny and I abode in the aftermaths of separate storms. But had we both survived? I didn’t think so. My day-to-day life—my existence—felt nothing like survival. I endured with a broken heart and broken spirit, and the knowledge that my brother had died because of me. If life consisted of no more than that—I had just as soon be gone from this place of steadfast sorrow.

Where could I find peace in the world? I wondered. It seemed there was always a storm brewing somewhere—either in someone else’s heart—or in my own.

Eighteen

Granny dangled the carrot in front of my eyes, and I grabbed for it.

“Put this dress on and go to church with me, and I’ll tell you the story ye’ve been pestering me to tell ye.”

I only asked you one time, Granny.

I chewed on my lower lip, not enjoying the discomfort of lying to Granny again. “My head hurts, Granny. I don’t feel much like going to church.”

“Ye’ve had a headache the last three Sundays, Emma Grace. I don’t believe ye anymore. Now … tell me why you don’t want to go to the Lord’s house.”

I shrugged my shoulders and turned my gaze to my hands, fixating on the pitiful set of fingernails I’d chewed down like a well-gnawed bone. I lifted my head, hoping Granny had forgotten her question, but it was still there in her eyes, boring away at my conscience like a posthole digger. I’d not considered the strength and perseverance of Granny’s tired old eyes, being that she had to have more years than the front-yard oak. If I didn’t lead her down a rabbit trail, those eyes would dig and poke and scratch until they’d uncovered the truth for which they searched.

“Can’t you tell me the story when you get home, Granny? I can make us some lunch while you’re gone and then—”

“So … ye’re feeling well enough to make lunch, but not good enough to go to church. ’Tis an interesting condition ye have there, Emma Grace Falin. Ye’ll be getting no more stories out of me, young lady. Nary a one until you tell me why ye’re avoiding church. Surely, you don’t think God’s own family would be making fun of yer leg. Now do ye?” As Granny stared me down, she cocked her head to the side and ruffled her lips into a hundred valleys and hills. She put me in mind of a great white-crested bird, readying itself to peck the head off a defenseless worm. And Granny was no skinny bird.

I shook my head, tempering the shake with gentleness so dampness wouldn’t spill over my lids. Bawling was on the bottom rung of things I wanted to do while Granny stood witness. She must never learn that I had turned my back on God. Hearing about my blasphemy would break her heart, as she was one of God’s kindest creatures; one of his truest disciples. I vowed she’d not hear of it from my lips.

“What’s the matter, then? Don’t ye like the new dress I stitched you?”

I shrugged again, but nodded my head also, lest Granny consider me ungrateful. Truth was I seethed with displeasure because she had hidden all but one pair of my overalls. I wanted a new dress about as much as I wanted my teeth to fall out.

An hour later, after I’d consumed another of Granny’s chocolate concoctions, she and I set out for church. The insides of my chest felt loose and wiry, as though a flock of starlings tap-danced on my heart. The jitterbugging commenced every time I drank one of the mixtures I had secretly dubbed “sugar poison”—being that a single glassful set my heart to clattering for an hour or more.

My head ached in truth, for Granny had insisted on tending my hair, but in the end had yanked a brush through the tangled mess with less than patient hands. Headache or not, I now walked to church by my grandmother’s side. A painful knot tightened my chest as I recalled my vow to never again darken the door of the Lord’s house. Never again be forced to deal with the owner of the house.

The blue norther had moved on down the coast. Having remained chummy with Galveston for three days and nights, it now sought renewal of friendships further south. A salt-flavored breeze churned the warm, moist air. I’d become accustomed to Galveston’s sticky clime by now, no longer wiping its tackiness from my skin after a venture onto Granny’s porch swing.

I tilted my face to a noisy bunch of seagulls parading overhead. Each pass lifted them to steeper levels and stronger currents on which to soar. Perhaps they needed to rest their wings. Perhaps they were as weary as I was.

I wore the brown cotton dress Granny had fashioned by hand and with which she seemed quite pleased. Pretty, it was, though I was too bullheaded and upset with Granny to fork over an admission. As we walked the grassless path paralleling Winnie Street, I kept furtive vigil on my naked legs, preferring the mantle of privacy my overalls would have afforded my shorter, toe-scraping leg. Still, I should have worn the dress with pride, for it contained a wealth of beauty: slender sleeves that puffed out like tulip bells at my elbows; and a narrow skirt with a pointed waist. I’d not worn such a dress before. There was a king’s garden of elfin white flowers on the brown cloth. They reminded me of winter storms back home, when ice pellets filled the furrows of our hibernating fields.

My gaze winded upward as we crossed the street and angled south. A structure came into view. Painted in a coat of purest white, the massive dome reared above the treetops, high splendor parting the elements into blue sky above, green trees below. ’Twas an architectural delight. A bounty of round windows, lacy turrets, and fancy towers decorated the many-storied building. Though I knew it was a church by the small cross on the dome, I pretended it was a majestic white rook, sitting atop a chessboard of leafy green.

“That’s Sacred Heart Church. Ain’t it a beautiful thing?”

I stumbled over a curb, not desiring to alter the direction my eyes had taken.

“It’s been here since forever, ye know?”

Granny’s church. The inside must be as grand at the outside. I’ll be having myself something fine to look at while the preacher’s up telling his tales about God’s love and protection. What slippery tongues these preachers have. ’Bout anything will slide off them.

“Why are we walking away from church, Granny?”

“’Cause our church is two blocks down the street.”

As my heart sank into my stomach, moisture from an endless well of seepage refilled my eyes. I angrily brushed at the wetness with the hem of Granny’s handiwork while she continued to rattle on about nothing. I should have known Granny wouldn’t take to worshipping in such grandeur, her tastes leaning toward the more simple things of life.

“That’s the Catholic church, Emma Grace. And looky there, ’crost the street. That’s the bishop’s palace. ’Tis as beautiful and impressive as the church, don’t ye think? Tell you one thing—them Catholics sure know how to treat their ministers.”

I counted eight chimney-high towers on the palace Granny had been admiring. There were probably more my eyes couldn’t see. The mansion looked familiar, like pictures of castles in fairy tales from my childhood. This one looked like Sleeping Beauty’s castle, except that columns of overgrown hedgerows didn’t surround the foundation, nor did wild vines climb to rooftop peaks.

“There’s our church, Emma Grace.”

I looked in the direction of Granny’s pointed finger, disappointment pooling over me like grease in a pan of cold dishwater. A white frame structure occupied the center of an almost-vacant lot. It had a peaked roof and sawed-off steeple, and needed painting as much as the lawn needed mowing. At the side of the church, a group of five or six children played keep-away amongst a throng of moldy-gray tombstones. A trifling number of stones remained upright, but the greatest number tilted to one side, as though tuckered out by the tugs of too many little fingers.

“It’s nice, Granny.” I could think of nothing else to say.

“Let’s go inside. Want to show you off to my friends.”

The trip back to Granny’s house seemed short, mainly because Granny splattered the air with nonstop chatter, allowing my mind to wander at will. And, because the road home always seems faster than the one that takes you away.

I had indulged in a nap during the preacher’s sermon, despite Granny’s bony knuckle that had persistently tried to nudge me awake. An embarrassment I had been to Granny, I’m sure. But I had grown weary of her friends’ scrutiny, as though I was a sliver of meat on the butcher’s rack, and they were there to find which parts needed chopping off. My odd looks seemed to bring out the sternness in some of the ladies, their lips plaited together like a weaver’s wattle. The other ladies simply smiled wider when I ventured to return their gaze with one of my own. I was certain Granny’s friends had won the stare standoff. When I arrived home and examined myself, I knew I’d find a pack of holes gouged straight through me.

“Set the table, sweet-pie.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“After lunch … I’ll tell ye the story.” Granny peeled potatoes at the kitchen sink, her back to me as she spoke. But I noticed the way her shoulders hunched forward and her head drooped a bit. Did it slump in resignation? Most likely. To Granny, a deal was a deal. You didn’t renege on your promises, even if keeping them might bowl you over with a heart attack.

“I think maybe I’ll wait a bit for the story, Granny. I’m kind of sleepy. I’ll probably take a nap, or write Mama a letter. She’s fussing ’cause I only wrote home that one time.”

It wasn’t my imagination—the prolonged lift of Granny’s shoulders—the way they settled back into place. That must’ve been some sigh she let out. For Granny’s sake I had changed my mind about the story, but also because my heart was overly sad today. She was right, of course. I didn’t need more sorrow heaped atop the landfill I’d already packed in my heart.

I missed my home. Everything about it: reading to the twins and having to explain the big words; Nathan’s brilliance, and Elo’s snarls; Olly giggles, and the ridiculous way they fretted over clothes, hair, and
boys;
snuggling between Mama and Papa on the sofa in the evening hours before bedtime. Sundays at our house were nothing like Sundays with Granny.

Granny took the Bible to heart, resting on the Sabbath as it commanded her to do. Of course, Granny rested on the other six days of the week, as well. I heard her now, snores bumping out her throat, followed by high whistles that probably had the neighborhood dogs yelping in distress.

I lay on my bed, rereading Mama’s last letter, my investigator eyes searching for clues as to the true state of our household in Coldwater. Every letter she wrote said the same thing: Caleb was improving, everybody was fine, and Papa’s fall crops looked exceptional; they’d provide an abundant harvest as long as the weather held true. The letter in my hand spoke of Elo’s evening hunts, after he’d worked the fields with Nathan and Papa. During the past week, Elo had killed one wild turkey, three geese, and a bounty of dove and quail. The Ollys cooked the plumpest goose and delivered it to Widow Lindstrom, along with canned okra, squash, and beets. No, Caleb hadn’t awakened from his coma, but he was showing signs that he’d soon rouse from his deep sleep. Perhaps, Mama explained, her next letter would tell me about his great breakthrough. She ended every letter the same: “We love you, Emma Grace, and miss you more every day. Without your smile to warm our hearts, the house feels cold and drafty. Get well, sweetheart.”