Coldwater Revival: A Novel (2 page)

Three

“Well, I’ll be. Says here that ash wood is real light, but strong and springy, too.” Papa shoved the advertisement under Mama’s nose. “I’m gonna write this Minnesota company tonight and order a box load.”

“But, sweetheart, do we have enough money?”

“I don’t care how much it costs. If I have to—I’ll sell the mule. Emma Grace is gonna have the best crutch her papa can whittle out.”

“Oh, Roan, you know we don’t own a mule.”

Of course, I wasn’t there to hear this conversation firsthand, but learned of it through a story bantered about our house. The tale pricked my attention and stilled my busyness the first time it rolled over my ears. With a bum leg like mine, I’d often wondered how I’d become such a gadabout at the early age of fourteen months.

From the mind’s eyes of my childhood, I recalled a tiny wooden crutch—one of many Papa carved in my growing-up years. When I parted company with crawling and attempted to walk at twelve months of age, my leg—which appeared normal in every way but length—toppled me over every time I took a step. After declaring I needed a “second leg,” Papa squirreled away the necessary coinage, ordered a box load of wood, and whittled a crutch to fit my runt-sized body. Mama padded the arm basin with soft cotton and bound my arm and leg to the crutch with cloth strips. As the story goes, from that point on the wee colleen with a less-than-perfect leg scooted about the house like the queen of pixie land.

Nathan, born two years after me, busied Mama’s days, so when I turned three, she charged Elo to keep a good eye on me. Overnight, I became his least favorite person in the world. He blamed me for stifling his wicked boyhood adventures and fled my outstretched arms with the swiftest of feet. But I followed in scampish pursuit, extending leg and crutch over logs, rocks, and varmint holes. His usual path of evasion led to the woods, where he bonked the noggins of jackrabbits and squirrels with his slingshot. His aim held true, even while I clumped about the woods and chattered like a magpie. Between his steady hand and my wagging tongue, we scattered the wild critters on our farm from hither to yon.

By the time I was five, Elo had accepted our twosome. Our choicest adventures occurred at Two-Toe Creek, a beauty of rushing water that traipsed the south edge of our property. After picking summer days away in Mr. Peavy’s cotton fields, Elo headed for water. I was never far behind. We held no secrets between us, Elo and I, as we stripped to our underwear and dived into hollowed-out water holes along the creek bed. After weeks of flailing and thrashing, in poor imitation of Elo’s powerful strokes, a wondrous thing happened: I learned to swim. I must have painted a frantic picture, lurching after my brother, struggling to match him stroke for stroke. But all that lurching and struggling prompted a second miracle of the season: Muscles in my stunted leg strengthened and grew.

During the next two years, Elo and I swam, fished, hunted, and scoured the woods for hidden treasures. Cold weather found us with overalls rolled to our knees, our feet tiptoeing over stone pathways washed smooth by eons of rushing water. While tiny waterfalls tickled our toes and wrinkled our skin like old turtle leather, we flitted about the stream like sprites in a water fairyland, our feet as sure-footed as the deer that sipped from its depths.

“Quiet!” Papa said in hushed voice. “I know you’re excited, but you’ve got to calm down. Mama needs her rest.”

His red-rimmed eyes settled a gaze on The Ollys. “Watch the little ones while Elo and I do the chores. Polly, why don’t you cook up some of that vegetable soup Mama likes?”

By “little ones,” I knew Papa was referring to me, as Nathan never required looking after. His blond head, forever snuggled in a book or angled over a writing tablet, seemed incapable of thinking up ways to displease Mama and Papa. Though our parentage was identical, Nathan and I were as disparate from one another as pigs and woolly worms. My seven-year-old head was more akin to the daring young man on the flying trapeze. Willful thoughts soared through its density with the greatest of ease. Or perhaps I just lacked ordinary sense.

As Papa and Elo made their way to the barn, The Ollys flicked a glance in my direction, then headed for the kitchen. They whispered secrets, most likely about Flynn Aarsgard, the latest boy to fall under Holly’s enchanting spells.

Had it been but an hour ago I heard that first mystical sound—the tandem wailing of babes sucking in the breath of life? The wails had shifted to bleating cries of hungry lambs, the crescendo heightening when Papa opened the door and rejoined his surplus flock. He gathered us near, inspecting us with good-shepherd eyes as he warned us of the behavior he expected at the first viewing of the new lambs. Springy fingers and shuffling feet garnered his shushing twice more before he led us into the birthing room. My heart soared as we crowded the bed, snatching peeks at our little brothers. But all too soon Papa ushered us from the room. Now my fingers twitched with the need to hold the newest members of the Falin clan.

I tiptoed to the door of Mama’s bedroom, bracing myself for the dressing-down I was sure to receive from The Ollys. But they were distracted, their chitchat buzzing the air like hungry mosquitoes. Turning the doorknob with cautious hands, I padded into Mama’s presence on gentle feet. When her eyelids shot open, I withdrew a step, thinking to be shooed from the room. She reached out a hand, consigning it to the handle of my crutch.

“Hi, sweet-pea. Come up here and take a look at your brothers. They’re quite a sight.”

I flew to Papa’s side of the bed, casting my crutch aside as I scrambled to the twins, tucked in close to Mama. My brothers looked like duplicate dolls. Mama must have oiled their shiny curls that coiled up like corkscrews all over their heads. As I studied my brothers, I decided they were a pair of scrappers. Why else would their fingers be curled into tight little fighting fists?

“This is Micah, firstborn. And this is Caleb. What do you think, punkin?”

What did I think? That my heart might flutter away like a butterfly on wing. As I stroked brown curls, the same color as my own, my fingers shook like windy-day leaves.

“They look just alike, Mama. How can you tell them apart?”

“Well, if you look real close, you’ll see a birthmark behind Caleb’s right knee. Papa and I examined them from head to toe and that’s the only difference we found.”

“Can I hold them, Mama?”

“Soon, sweetheart. But for now let’s let them sleep. I’m kind of sleepy too.”

“If I’m real quiet, can I stay? I won’t wake them up.”

“Honey, they’re your babies too. Of course you can stay.”

Mama’s eyelids closed and I knew she slept. My chest lifted with the scent of newborn babes. My skin prickled with love and excitement. I tried to slow my runaway heart, but it hammered along as though a rabid dog gave chase.
The babies are mine—Mama said so.
As my heart bobbled and skipped about, it delved into a new world of promises, devotion, and overwhelming love for my baby brothers. Somehow, in their first hour of life, they’d managed to reach out, grab a great chunk of my heart, and claim it as their own.

As I lay beside them on the bed, my gaze lifted to the high, yellowed ceiling. The weight of many timbers had cracked the plaster, and now it forked and branched-off like the river of veins in Granny Falin’s hands. That set me to worrying. Would Granny come visiting, sparing Mama a bit of the workload? A stay from Granny suited me fine, so long as she confined her busyness to cooking and helping Mama clean. But she needn’t worry herself over the twins. That was my job.

Lazy quietness settled over the darkening room, flour-sack curtains blotting late afternoon sun. I yawned and slid my gaze back to the babes. Wild heartbeats hoisted my chest as I vowed to fight for my brothers as Mama and Papa had fought for me. How else would they survive? I leaned in close and whispered secret promises to my babes: I would be the best sister in the world; I would protect them from harm; I would keep them safe. Before I slipped off to the Land of Nod that afternoon, I checked and rechecked the twins, convincing myself they were healthy and strong.
Surely, I won’t have to fight so hard to keep my brothers alive. Not like Mama and Papa had to fight for me.

At the time, I didn’t understand the swarm of restless thoughts and fears that circled my head that day. Many years passed before I understood the truth: ’Twas God’s hand that reached down and touched me on that late afternoon—preparing me for what was to come.

Four

After the twins’ births, I scheduled my creek excursions around their naptimes and feedings, though I continued to shadow Elo’s trail whenever the babes weren’t in need of my mothering care. The parcel of adoration I heaped upon Micah and Caleb must have relieved Elo greatly since it often kept me from stubbing my toes on his heels.

There arose in me a possessive nature of which Mama and Papa felt the need to address. Seems I didn’t tolerate gawking neighbors and church busybodies as well as I should. How could I not defend the babes with my crutch, when necessary, from visitors who swooped down, grabbing and fondling my brothers in ways I thought careless?

I recalled the afternoon of Mrs. Fenster’s visit. She and Mama sat at the kitchen table while I lurked in the hallway. Mrs. Fenster clasped Caleb to her overgrown bosom, the gleam in her eyes of particular grievance to me. As she cooed and pounded on Caleb’s back, he strained for release. She held him with force, it seemed, and he wanted down. He wanted me. Mrs. Fenster’s possessive nature and greedy behavior churned my insides into a boiling frenzy. Before I knew what I was about, I stomped into the kitchen and snatched Caleb from her monstrous paws.

“It’s past time for you to go home and feed your family,” I blurted in a stern voice, surprising myself, and from the look on Mama’s face, surprising her, as well. I gripped the corner of the table, having not yet mastered a steady stance while clutching a babe. My crutch spread wide, stretching me to a near split. I would have toppled both Caleb and myself to the floor had Mama not jerked him from my grasp. My bottom smacked the floor, but not one bit harder than my heart pounded in my chest.

“Emma Grace Falin,” Mama sputtered, her face darkening like the skin of a threatened chameleon. “You apologize to Mrs. Fenster this instant!”

Oh, the glare Mama hurled my way! I looked up at Mrs. Fenster’s walruslike face, with its sprinkling of chin whiskers, but couldn’t dredge up an apology I wouldn’t have to later confess as a lie. Mrs. Fenster’s cheeks puffed in and out like sheets on the line as she squirmed in her chair and heaved coffee-scented breath to the floor. I sat wide-legged and wild-eyed until, with great suddenness for a woman of her girth, Mrs. Fenster bent over and scooped me onto her pillow-soft lap.

“I know just how you feel, Emma Grace,” she said, roaring with laughter. “I didn’t want anyone holding my babies, either. You just keep on watching over them, little princess. These angels are fortunate that you love ’em as you do.”

She beamed down at me, her grasp leakproof, but reassuring. As the eyes behind her spectacles misted over, her greedy nature upped and disappeared. I hurried a smile back to her, which she accepted with another head-locking embrace.

When Papa was present at such visitations, he hauled me to his lap and tightened his grip if I sought post near the twins’ crib. Or when I approached a visitor with murder in my eyes.

On the night of Mrs. Fenster’s visit, Nathan and I sat at the kitchen table, wolfing down cold biscuits. It remains a mystery how my bottom tolerated such an unyielding stool after the three hard wallops it received from Mama’s untiring hand. But there I sat, my backside warm and stinging as I jabbered to Nathan about the babes. I spoke as though he hadn’t the wherewithal to notice the twins’ uniqueness.

“Micah’s the quiet one,” I said, happily assigning myself the teacher’s role while biscuit crumbs rained from my mouth. “He’s the follower.” Knowing my brothers as well as I knew the names of the seven dwarfs, I continued blissfully on. “Micah’s heart is as tender as a steamed turnip. But Caleb … well, he’s the leader of the twosome. Micah will tag behind Caleb like I run after Elo.”

“Yeah. Well … together they’re a perpetual motion machine,” Nathan said. With a jerk of his wrist, he wrenched a biscuit in two, flooding both halves with pear-blossom honey.

I returned his grin as though I knew what he was talking about.

As is the way with coincidences, a few weeks after my twelfth birthday our family received startling good news—on the exact day I survived my first, and only, lesson in chewing tobacco.

After swiping a wad of tobacco from Papa’s pouch, Elo hauled himself to the creek, stationed his slimness behind a curtain of trees, and packed his cheeks full. Before he dived into deep water, I begged him to share with me, but he refused. Being the stubborn Irish girl I was, I snitched a handful from his pants pocket while he splashed fish from the depths.

What wafted sweet and aromatic from Papa’s pipe proved no such thing once I champed down on it. My mouth filled with wretched vileness that lurched in my stomach, forcing me to gulp down the putrid mess. Sickness hit, spinning my head, roiling my insides as though I had turned cartwheels in the air. I lay on the creek bank, clutching my belly and blubbering for Mama like a two-year-old.

“Told you to leave it be.”

I rolled a watery gaze upward, viewing Lord Elo through a haze of nausea. To this hour, I stand amazed at how Elo maintained that awful sneer while laughing his dunderpated head off.

“I’m sick, Elo. Take me home. I need Mama.”

“You crazy? Papa would string me up to a sycamore if he found out you’d been chewing tobaccy.”

“I won’t tell. Promise!”

The brother I adored laughed and dive-bombed into the creek. I prayed he would drown in his own spittle on the way down. As I lay there dying, I thought about The Ollys, wishing I had hound-dogged them instead of Elo. Perhaps I’d have turned out prim and proper-like, instead of the brier-bush ragamuffin I was.

The sickness lasted past noon.

To make up for his nastiness, Elo shared his secluded spot on the Brazos River with me, though Papa had warned me against swimming the river. Too unpredictable, he’d cautioned. After following Elo through a mile or more of sticky-fingered thicket, we spied the river. I reconciled myself to this truth: Before eventide, Mama would have me sitting with a needle and thread, mending all the damage done by those black-hearted thorns in the bushes.

A tall cypress slouched over the water, its gigantic roots rising from the muddy banks like prehistoric claws. After Elo secured a rope to the loftiest branch, we swung ourselves into high arcs and plummeted into the rolling river for hours.

In late afternoon we dragged ourselves out of the water. If I looked half the mess Elo did, I was in a heap of trouble. I examined my sorry condition, knowing Mama would soon do the same with her twenty-twenty eyesight. My eyes felt as though they’d been used as pincushions, and the other parts of me, those I could view through puffy, slatted lids, appeared to have been hurled down the rocky side of a cliff.

Hands on her hips. That’s how Mama greeted us when we tried to sneak into the house later that afternoon. Before my bare toes touched cool linoleum, Mama had commenced with the third degree.

“Where in the world have you been, Emma Grace? You look like a grizzly’s been chewing on you.” Relief danced in her soft brown eyes and a hint of smile played on her lips, but gathered brows let me know her scolding held meaning. Though used to my wanderings, she maintained a high fear that something evil would someday overtake me.

Mama threw her arm across my shoulder, tucking me in close. “Honey, you’re a young lady now. It’s time you start behaving like one. Just look at your hair!”

“Told you that brillo pad was a dead giveaway,” Elo said with a snort.

“Which was it, Emma Grace—the stock tank or the river? Must’ve been the river. You’ve got twigs and leafstalks sticking out all over your head.”

Since both were forbidden swimming holes, and I couldn’t conjure up an excuse, I plastered a hangdog look on my face and said not a word.

“It’s time for a haircut, young lady,” Mama said as she stuffed straggly curls behind my ears. I recognized her stalling tactic. Punishment would come, but not until she could ponder a bit over what it would be.

“This is the thickest head of hair God ever created. I can’t believe he graced one of my children with it.”

I had heard all this before. When Mama felt badly about the shortchange I received in the leg department, she heaped that bit of praise on me. The compliment didn’t sit true. Tuning her out, I detoured my thoughts to The Ollys’ pale-gold, satin-smooth hair. My tumbleweed hair had proved a bother to me, nothing more. Though I’d inspected it in the mirror a hundred times, I’d not once identified the lambent luster of which Mama spoke. It had certainly not attracted the boys’ admiration at school. Their interest lay in pulling it by the roots, not ogling it as they did Olly hair. A hankering to snip golden tresses had me scanning the cabinet for Mama’s scissors.

As Mama tweaked sprigs and offshoots from my hair, Papa’s wide shoulders burst through the back door, his stature crowding the kitchen.

“Gather round … got some exciting news.”

Exulting in my temporary reprieve, I scuttled off to gather The Ollys. With Mama’s elephantlike memory, I knew my obstinate feet would soon reconnect with the path of discipline. Mama seemed compelled by some unspoken maternal law to see that I walked the straight and narrow.

I sat on the kitchen floor with Micah in my lap and Caleb tucked beneath my arm. The Ollys sat at the table, looking wide-eyed and expectant. A furrow riddled Nathan’s brow as he stood beside Papa, but Elo appeared unfazed as he slouched himself in a chair and stretched his gangly legs halfway across the floor. Mama stood at the sink with a worried look in her eyes.

“You remember that ol’ Clive Huggins—Mr. Peavy’s foreman—died a few weeks back?” Papa asked his brood. We nodded our heads. “Well, Mr. Peavy has asked me to be his new foreman … that is, for the cotton season. He knows I’ve got this farm to run and have no interest in a permanent position. He wants me to oversee his next year’s cotton production from planting to harvesting. If I accept, we’ll move to the foreman’s house and live there from March through September. Somehow, we’ll keep this place going too.”

“Oh, sweetheart, won’t the load be too much? Tending our farm and managing the workers at Mr. Peavy’s place?”

“I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but I can manage for a few months.”

My gaze rode the family. Thoughts of living in a larger, grander house sounded alluring—tantalizing. How did the others feel? The Ollys twittered and squawked like a gaggle of geese while Mama stood open mouthed, looking a bit shaken. Nathan cleared his throat. He spoke infrequently, but when he talked, we listened.

“It’d require some adjustments, Papa, and a timetable to keep the farm operating at peak efficiency. I’d be happy to work up a schedule for you.”

Papa clasped his big hand over Nathan’s shoulder. “That’d be most helpful, Son, most helpful.”

Nathan’s smile flashed bright as he dashed off to fetch his tablet. Mama collapsed on a nearby chair. Papa lowered his weight to the one beside her and spoke with quiet persuasiveness.

“We’ll get a hefty salary those six months, and with Elo and Nathan already doing grown-man labor, they could keep this place going while I work Peavy’s fields. We’ll be able to pay our taxes, buy supplies, and put something aside so Nathan can go to college someday. Heck, we could even buy you and the girls something new to wear. What do you say, honey?”

Mama swiped dewdrops from her eyes. “I won’t give up my garden, Roan. You know I’ve got to work my garden.”

“You will, Henri, you will.”

I felt the furious blinking of my eyelids. For a moment, I’d forgotten that Mama’s given name was Henrietta Annaleen. Papa never called Mama by her first name, which proved the seriousness of their conversation now. With a label like Henrietta, ’twas no surprise that Papa reserved sweet endearments for our mama. And no surprise that Mama had assigned soft, lyrical names to her children.

From that point on, our thoughts centered on springtime and the welcome upheaval soon to alter our lives. As giddy excitement replaced the humdrum motion of my life, I packed our future full of rose petals and set my daydreams adrift on the high pinnacles of prosperity. I assumed my family did the same.

But now, as I gazed back in time, I wondered how we had overlooked the dark bank of clouds that had poised nearby—right over the horizon of our tomorrows.