He went to milk Lula Bell, though it was generally my job. Franky was eyeing my tools, and I wondered if I was doing the right thing, talking to this boy so straight about this and letting him stay. But I didn't know what else to do. Something about the way he looked at me had made me think that refusing him would've just made things worse.
“You'll have to go in before long,” I told him. “Still pretty cold.”
“Don't seem cold to me,” Franky said.
“Well, your ears look it. Don't you have a hat?”
“Left it someplace, I guess. Maybe in the side garden back home.” He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out two fat, round bulbs. “Mama said day afore yesterday that she forgot to dig the glads outta the ground. So I went an' dug 'em afore the snow, but I couldn't find but two. Reckon they's not been froze?”
I couldn't picture him in the cold dirt, trying to fulfill what he must've thought was his mother's wish. But Wilametta would've known that the cold nights we'd had were enough to do in her precious flower bulbs. Forgotten is lost, I was sure, though I didn't have the heart to tell Franky that the bulbs he'd carefully salvaged were likely worth no more now than the dirt he'd dug through to get them.
“Maybe Mama would like it if we plant them right whereâ”
He stopped and looked at me, his lower lip quivering. And I nodded. “If that's what you want to do, I think she'd appreciate your efforts.”
It was all I could say. He sat quietly and watched me, his nose tipped red with cold.
“Why don't you go back in?” I asked him. “Sit by the fire.”
“No. I owes it to Mama to see this through.”
I didn't know what to say to that. But he was determined, and far more settled about it than any other time I'd seen him that day. So I let him stay, longer than I'd anticipated. He turned out to be good help, measuring and marking for me and then planing some of the boards smooth. I'd never seen a child his size handle a wood plane so well.
But then Robert came in and just stood for a minute, watching me working with Franky at my side. “Mom said to tell you there's food when you want some.”
Something was strange in his voice, and I looked up to see his eyes on Franky.
“Are they all gonna stay over again?” he asked me, the look on his face plainly showing his displeasure.
“As long as they need to,” I told him. “And you watch your manners.” Then I felt bad for scolding him. It was bound to be tough on him at such a time as this to be sharing his parents the way he was doing. I tried to say something else to him, but he ran on ahead and I didn't get the chance.
“Time to quit for a while,” I told Franky. “Sounds like Julia wants to feed you.”
“I ain't hungry.”
“Better to eat anyway right now. We're not in much condition to judge if we're hungry or not.”
“And we got a lot a' work to do?”
“Yeah. There's a lot to do.”
His silvery eyes were shining like the moon, reflecting the light of the coal-oil lamp I used to see by in the old barn workshop.
“Why do you want to help me, Franky?”
“I told you, I owes it to Mama.”
“I don't expect she'd think you owed her anything.”
“To do a good job. She always did say do a good job.”
I could only give him my nod at that.
Covey Mueller brought the pastor by that evening in the same big green wagon he always used, only he'd taken the wheels off and set the whole thing on runners. I'd never seen that done before. But I was mightily glad to see them, hoping for word from Wila's or Emma's relatives and wanting Pastor Jones just to be there a while, especially for the older kids.
They'd already been to the Hammonds'. They brought the evening's milk, some clothes that Joe had stuffed in a bag for the kids, and the news that George's horse Birdie had come limping home. They also had word from Wila's sisters. Neither woman could come, and they'd both made a point to say that they couldn't afford to take in any of the kids.
I wondered why it so quickly occurred to them to consider that. But these were poor times. Hard for anybody to see how George, when he'd already been struggling to make a living, could possibly manage ten kids alone.
“We need to pray for Albert Graham,” Pastor was telling Juli and me. “He can't come down right now either, much as he'd like to, because his wife is sufferin' pneumonia. He's takin' it hard about Emma and fearin' to lose another one.”
He prayed for Albert and his wife on the spot and then added George and the children. The pastor told us George had said he didn't want a funeral, didn't want anything at all, but his boys felt differently. They knew that if they didn't do the best they could, they'd regret it years down the road. But George didn't want anybody coming, not a soul.
“I already talked to Albert about this, and he said Emma would want to be home,” Pastor Jones told us carefully. “We need to perform a funeral, for everyone's peace of mind. But it would be more difficult to move the bodies into town and back, not to mention the children. Albert said we ought to have the funeral right hereâthat is, if it's all right with you folks. And if Lizbeth and Kirk feel the same as their brothers, to include Wilametta here too might go a little easier on George.”
Julia didn't cry at such a thought, the way I might've expected her to. She just sat down and looked around a little. I thought she must be thinking how awfully hard this was going to be for the children. But then she turned her eyes on our kind pastor and startled him badly, I'm sure.
“It's not right! None of this is right at all!”
I took her hand quickly when she said it, but there was no stopping her from saying the rest.
“Emma should've died right here where she wanted to die, Pastor Jones! Not have to be carried back in somebody's wagon! Why couldn't God grant her something so small as that? Why? And Wilametta! George knows it's not right. That's why he's gone near crazy. It's not his fault he can't handle it. There ought to be some things right in this world. There ought to be some kind of sense to be made of it all!”
Lizbeth turned and looked at Julia with the pain so awfully sharp in her eyes. I was glad the rest of the children, except the baby on her lap, had gone upstairs.
“Julia,” Pastor said in a gentle voice, “we don't understand it. I can't argue that. But we know the Almighty has a good plan for each of us and that our loved ones are better off than they were here below.”
“You just make the best a' things,” Mr. Mueller added. “You'll get through. George too. You'll see.”
But there was no question that George wasn't near through it yet. Maybe moving Wilametta and Emma from that bedroom might help.
I looked over at Lizbeth. She should've cried with all this talk going on in front of her. She was the oldest that wasn't with her father, and Pastor wanted to include her because her brothers had asked him to. But she shouldn't have taken it all so silently.
“Mama wouldn't mind a funeral 'long with Emma,” she finally said. “There weren't nobody she admired more in this whole world.” Baby Emma Grace was twisting away at Lizbeth's long hair with her pale little fingers, but Lizbeth didn't seem to notice. “By the birches,” she added. “That's where we oughta put her. She always did like the birches.”
I walked outside with Covey and the pastor when they went to leave, and they were both so solemn and quiet. I knew they had something more to say to me. But I wasn't expecting to hear what I heard.
“George threatened to light the house afire and burn himself up along with it,” Covey told me. “I never did know anybody quite this bad.”
“No use the rest of the kids seeing him this way,” Pastor told me. “They don't need that on top of everything else. We need to pray it'll be different after the funeral.”
“Yes,” I said, wondering how near to such an action George could possibly be. Hard to believe he'd ever do such a fool thing. Surely it was just the hurt talking.
“Samuel,” Pastor said solemnly, “he won't eat. He would scarcely talk to me. As soon as tomorrow he'll have to face all this, the funerals the day after that. He needs to face his children at the same time and see that they're hurting just as much as he is. But he might need helpâhe might need you and Juli to keep on watching at least part of them sometimes, at least for a while.”
“We'll do what we can.”
“Thank you. You've been a godsend, Samuel.”
I had a difficult time picturing that. I hadn't done much. Certainly not anything worthy of special notice.
“I'm going back to be with George and his boys overnight,” Pastor told me. “Pray for me, please. He may be less than pleased to see me again.”
“Threw his wife's Bible at him,” Covey added, though the pastor gave him a reproachful look.
I wondered how we were going to face the night and the next couple of days. Louise had wanted to come, Barrett had said earlier. And maybe it would've been a good thing if she could have, or the pastor's wife, or some other woman the children knew.
Juli and Lizbeth were both quiet when I came in the house, as if they were too numb for words. But then all of the children came downstairs, asking questions or sitting and sulking or, in the case of the two youngest, bawling their eyes out.
Harry and Willy were both complaining that they hadn't been able to go with Pastor and Mr. Mueller. And I could see that Juli was just about at the end of her rope.
I knew I should offer a story. But my mind was blank. What could I possibly say? Any of my little stories would seem so frivolous and cheap. Franky had quietly gone and seated himself in a corner, his head down across his folded arms. Juli had the baby now, and Berty was fussy in Lizbeth's arms. Willy and Robert just stood by the fire, as if they were waiting for it to need something from them, and Kirk was pacing, first in one room and then in another, like a caged beast. Sarah and Rorey were mercifully quiet, sitting on the floor with Sarah's doll between them, both looking up at Juli and Lizbeth as if they were waiting to be told what to do.
“Let's get the beds ready,” I said, and at first no one responded to me.
Then Sarah stood up. “We gonna all sleep downstairs again, Daddy?”
I wondered for a minute. It sure would be nice to be alone with Julia a few minutes in our room upstairs, to talk things through a little. And some of the children would be fine in the other room upstairs, with the rest down here closer to the fire. But it was strange and different and sad and probably scary for the Hammonds. Not one of them should really be too far from the rest, or from us, tonight. I looked at Juli, and she nodded. “Probably we better,” I told Sarah. “So we can all be close.”
I got the big boys to help me again, getting mats and bedding and everything to the living room floor. And then sudden as anything, we heard a vigorous knock at the back door.
Barrett Post. Followed immediately by his wife and their sister-in-law, Elvira, the schoolteacher, both carrying more food.
“Louise plain insisted,” Barrett explained. “Said we had no excuse, us having a sleigh. An' you all hadn't oughta be alone on a night like this.”
I wasn't sure if Juli or Lizbeth was glad to see them or not. They both looked so exhausted it was hard to tell.
Louise and Elvira set their dishes down in a hurry. Louise grabbed the baby and took her straight to Emma's rocker by the fire, and Elvira offered to read Harry and Bert a story.
“Lizbeth!” Berty insisted. “I wan' Lizbeth t' read!”
“Well, then, you'll have to be good and quiet, won't you?” Elvira maintained. “Nobody, nobody wants to read to boys who holler and yell.”
She took off her coat after producing two thin books from one pocket and sat on the long side of a mattress. Even though she wasn't Lizbeth, Berty went to sit beside her and look at the pictures. Sarah joined them, and across the room Franky raised his head, watching all of us and listening.
But Rorey folded her little arms and stamped her foot. “Why are you all here? I don't want you here!”
“I want them here,” Juli declared pointedly. “And that's good enough. Now go sit down and listen to the story!”
Juli turned away from all of us as soon as she had said it. Her hands were shaking. Suddenly and without another word, she stepped alone into Emma's room and shut the door.
“Leave her be,” Louise told me. “Sometimes a body's got to get alone and have 'em a good cry.”
But I knew Juli. She liked being alone all right, in the happy times when she'd go singing around the kitchen or picking something outside in the summer sun. But not now.
I opened the door. I had to go in quick and shut it again, because Rorey and Harry wanted to follow me. Julia was sitting on Emma's bed, already in tears, bent down almost to the pillows. I hurried over to hold her. I climbed right up on that bed, boots and all, and took my Juli in my arms.
“I can't do this,” she cried. “I just can't! I should never have talked to a little girl that way! She can't help it! But sometimes, oh sometimesâ”
“Shhh, honey.” I just held her while she shook and sobbed. I'm not sure how long we sat there. I could hear Louise singing to the baby, and a mingle of other voices, including Elvira's, reading now. Thank God they'd come. Thank God for people, people who just stepped in and cared, even these that didn't know the Lord.
“Now what'll they think of me?” Juli whispered.
“Doesn't matter what they think. You're entitled to grieve, honey. You have to, I can see it, or you're going to burst.”
She took a deep, difficult breath. “Here we are in Emma's room.” Her voice cracked, and I knew the tears were falling again.
“She'd be glad,” I said. “Strange as that sounds, she'd be glad we're here.”