“Are you sorry?” she suddenly asked. “Are you sorry you didn't take the deed when she offered it?”
“No. We need to show Albert due respect. This was his grandfather's place, not mine.”
“Oh, Sammy, I miss her! Imagine what Lizbeth and Rorey and all the rest must feel missing their own mama! And here I sit just thinking on how much I miss Emma when she wasn't even family, not the same wayâ”
“She was family. The truest family I ever had, except you and the kids.”
“I wish she'd lived a hundred and twenty years, like Moses.”
“But she's glad. You know she's glad to be home now. It's not this home that matters so much as that one.”
We had to rejoin the others. Harry kept tapping at the door. Rorey was sitting in the middle of a mattress, pouting, when we came out. Harry grabbed for Julia right away, but I took his hand and led him toward his brothers so Juli could sit down beside Rorey a minute and put her arm around the little girl's shoulders. Even Barrett stayed, eventually sitting down with Harry in his lap.
That night was hard, like nothing else we'd ever had to handle. We were laboring for hours just trying to get all the children to sleep. Then every little while somebody was awake, somebody was crying or just up walking around like they didn't know what to do with themselves. I wondered how Joe and young Sam were doing now and if our pastor, who was younger than me, was having a hard time of it over there with George. I wondered too how Wilametta had managed with ten at bedtime every night. But then it wouldn't have been like this.
Nobody asked me for a story. And I was glad, because I wasn't sure I could find anything to say to them. Franky came and curled up beside me, and I wondered if Robert would be upset about it like he'd seemed to be earlier. But I couldn't turn Franky away. He cried a long time, just lying there kind of quiet, and when I went to sleep, I wasn't sure if he weren't crying still.
ELEVEN
Julia
I'd been dreaming about Emma dancing around in the strawberry bed when her namesake, little Emma Grace, woke me with a wail so loud it shook me clear to the bone. Poor Lizbeth was so tired from soothing one sibling after another all night that she could barely turn over. But Louise must've been up already, because she got to the baby before I could stand up.
Samuel had already fed the fire and gone outside, even though it was still dark. Early as it was, I wondered how I'd been able to sleep that long. Especially since my outbursts of yesterday were plaguing me terribly. Nobody needed to hear any of the bitter stuff churning around in me, least of all Lizbeth. I'd have to keep my thoughts to myself or wait for a minute when I could share them with Samuel again. But maybe that wasn't for the best either.
I couldn't get the picture of Emma out of my mindâon the floor in Wila's room, utterly broken. She would've lived a little longer, I was sure, if Wilametta hadn't gone first. And that plagued me too. I should've been bolder. I should've insisted on going to see about Wila by myself, so Emma could've rested the way she needed to. She might've been here then, when I got back. She might still be here, to comfort all these dear souls.
I got myself up to make sure the kitchen stove was lit, but when I saw Emma's rocker across the sitting room floor, I just stopped. Louise came over beside me with the sniffling baby.
“Don't worry on breakfast,” she said. “I'll start something. Got plenty of eggs?”
There were eggs. Yes. Because Emma'd brought four hens with her when she came back home. And there were sixteen chickens now. We'd raised the rest over the summer, even butchered some. Everything about us coming here had seemed touched by the hand of God. So why did God feel so far away now?
“There are eggs,” I told Louise. “They're down in production since it's been cold, but there'll still be some out there. I'll send Robert to check pretty soon.”
“Barrett's gone to tend the chores at home,” she said. “Maybe he'll think to bring our milk and eggs back over with him too. They'll be gettin' an early start in the timber.”
Digging. Of course, they had to do it, but I wondered how they could. And Samuel, with the job he had to do. He would do it well, I had no doubts about that. But I couldn't have done it, though I'd laid Emma out on that bed. I couldn't have made her a box nor set her in it, and I sure couldn't put her in the ground.
Somebody had already lit the cookstove. Robert, usually an early riser anyway, was stirring around pretty quick, and I sent him out to gather whatever fresh eggs there might be. Kirk wasn't up yet, nor were most of the others, so I decided to go ahead and rinse the milk pail and see to the milking myself. I sure didn't want Samuel to have to think about it this morning, with all he had to do. Tomorrow were the funerals. People would be coming, what people could get through, anyway, to pay their respects. How would I, how would we all, make it through seeing Emma and Wila in their stillness one last time?
All through the milking it bothered me. They'd be bringing Emma and Wila here. It didn't feel right. But nothing else I could think of came even close to feeling righter. Pastor knew going to town would be difficult, and not really like Emma or Wila, who both loved home so much. Oh, that it could've been spring, so we could all just be outside, surrounded by Emma's bounty of flowers.
I was nearly done when Franky came out to the barn, looking to help Samuel at his job. I made him come in with me, but he wouldn't stay. Had to help, he said. Owed it to his mama.
“He's worrying me,” I told Samuel when I brought him coffee a little later and shooed Franky back inside to eat some breakfast. “He hadn't ought to be out here with you this way, watching this.”
“What else is he going to do?” Samuel asked with sad eyes. “He's thinking on it, Juli. It'll be on his mind no matter what. At least he feels like he's contributing something.”
“I could put him at something in the house. Louise is mopping in there to beat the band.”
He sighed. “But we all have to deal with things in our own fashion. I don't understand it either, but maybe this is his.”
Those simple words made me angry. We couldn't deal with things in our own fashion. I didn't even know what my fashion was. Maybe none of us did. We had to help rescue George and hold babies and try to keep from saying anything else as stupid as what I'd said last night. We had to be what everybody thought we should be and not fall apart any more than we had to. Just go through the motions, like Lizbeth was doing. I didn't even have a clue what I might be like if it was just me with this pain. Maybe I'd scream. Maybe I'd fling another cup of apple-mint tea into Wilametta's fireplace. Maybe it was better never to know.
Barrett Post came riding in with the milk and eggs from their place. He handed them to me to take inside, took a package of something in to Samuel, and then was gone, hardly saying two words.
When I went in the house, Sarah had broken a saucer and was sitting at the table in tears. Louise was doing her best to sweep it up with Harry crawling around all the chairs.
“Berty smelled up his pants,” he announced as soon as he saw me. I took the milk and eggs to the cellar steps, thinking about poor Lizbeth. Having that to deal with, and baby Emma Grace too. But it was Elvira who had the baby just then, and I was grateful for that.
Rorey woke up sopping wet and crying, either from the shock or the embarrassment. And just then I might've screamed at George and Wilametta for having so many kids.
Where are you, George?
I wanted to wail.
Confound it! When are you going to be here for them? When are you going to take care of your own problems?
Before we had Rorey and Berty in fresh clothes, Kirk had decided it was time to take his father's other horse back home. I knew I couldn't stop him. There'd be no escaping the awfulness of the situation, regardless of which place he was at. “Just talk to Samuel first,” I beseeched him. “He'll know if your father said anything about that.”
They'll be moving the bodies today,
I kept thinking.
What an awful thing to be in the middle of.
Robert and Willy shoveled out Lula Bell's stall, God bless them, and gave her clean straw. Then they carted new straw to the chicken house too. Covey Mueller came back with Alberta as I was washing the big sitting room window. I hadn't seen a wagon on runners like theirs since Grandpa Charlie's when I was a little girl. Clarence and Pet, the Mueller's team, were the biggest horses anywhere in the area.
Alberta came charging straight in the house with her quick little steps, despite having her arms full with two covered pans. Chicken pie and a frosted cake. I set them on the counter and almost forgot to say hello. Mr. Mueller went straight out to the barn.
Alberta gave me a big hug, though I didn't know her all that well, and asked if I knew how many of the folks from the church in Dearing would be coming.
“We'll just have to see,” I told her. “I don't know how there could be many with this snow.”
But not twenty minutes later, Mrs. Gray, the Sunday school teacher, came riding up on a sturdy gray mare. Bundled in layers and carrying a sack, she came in the house looking like Santa Claus. She'd brought beet pickles and quince preserves wrapped up in towels, and a deep-dish apple crisp that I couldn't picture how she'd managed not to spill. She went straight for Lizbeth and hugged that girl's neck like I'd never seen anyone else do, ever.
“Oh, Mrs. Gray,” Lizbeth said, but that was all. For a moment her face changed just a little, and she looked like she might say something else or even break down and cry. But the moment passed. Her eyes were soon hollow and hard again, and she was scolding Harry for pulling his socks off and throwing them in the potato bin.
“We let off Orville to help the digging,” Alberta suddenly told me.
Her son, along with Louise and Elvira's husbands. Doing all they could, when they didn't have to do any of it. And these ladies didn't have to help clean this house that Emma'd called mine, though Louise and Elvira had already started. They didn't have to bring in food nor willing hugs. But for Emma they'd do anything, just like she'd have done anything for them. Even when it killed her.
Robert and Willy had started shoveling paths through the snow, and I wondered who told them to work so hard. I hadn't thought to, that was for sure.
Louise put on water to heat, and we were doing baths for the kids soon enough, though there wasn't a one of them that wanted anything to do with that in the wintertime. We portioned off a corner of the kitchen and no sooner had one child clean than we started in on another. Rorey cried when I brushed the tangles out of her hair, and Sarah sat as solemn as a stone.
“I don't want all these people,” Sarah told me when I was almost finished with her. “I just want me and you and Bessie-doll all by ourself.”
I had to hold her a minute. I surely understood. The poor child, used to being my baby and my shadow, had to wait her turn just to have me look her way. “I'm sorry, pumpkin,” I whispered. “It'll get better.”
“No, Mommy,” she protested. “You haves to get wider and wider, to cover up where Rorey's Mommy used to be.”
Such a picture. But surely it was true. At least for a little while.
Covey Mueller was helping Samuel with the coffins, and it sure speeded the job. Franky came in at one point and told me that Samuel had started carving flowers on the lids while Mr. Mueller was putting the boxes together. “The flowers was my idea,” he announced. But I wouldn't go and look at them up close. It still bothered me that Franky was in the middle of all that. But there was nothing I could do about it. Samuel let Franky stay as much as he wanted to, and he'd let Kirk take the horse too, because the boy wanted to see his father so badly and be with his older brothers. Pastor was there, Samuel assured me; Kirk would be okay. I just hoped he was right.
Nobody wanted lunch, but Louise cut the chicken pie anyway, shoved a spoon into a potato casserole, and tried to persuade everyone. Once they got started, Robert and Willy could eat, after all that work they'd done. But nobody else had much, except maybe Bonnie Gray, who as soon as she finished, volunteered to carry food to the men in the timber. But Alberta told her that Covey would be going that way soon enough and could take the food then.
Sure enough, not long after lunch, Samuel and Mr. Mueller were loading the two long boxes into Mueller's wagon. It was hard to breathe suddenly, looking out and seeing that. I didn't know how they could've gotten it done so fast, even with the both of them working together. They had put brass handles along the sides; Barrett Post had brought them, and he wouldn't take any payment either, for that or the wood. I prayed for him and Louise, that God would touch them some way and bless them for their generosity.
Bonnie helped Alberta pack a generous amount of food in two baskets, one for the men in the timber and one for George and his boys and the pastor. Then they put their scarves and coats back on and charged outside with the baskets.
Samuel and the Muellers rode off together, and I felt a heaviness just watching them go. Everybody else seemed to change somehow too. Lizbeth sounded extra short trying to get Bert down for a nap. And Franky came in and just sat in a corner, staring into space.
Louise and Elvira were fluttering about, setting our house in shape and then picking out a few things Emma'd been especially proud of to set out and show. I didn't say anything, but I didn't like what they were doing, fingering her things and talking about her. They respected her, no way I could question that. And they were kind. But they didn't know her, not like they thought they did, because they didn't know it was God that had mattered most to Emma. They'd never understood that. All of the Posts were good enough people, but none of them concerned themselves with God at all, and they didn't seem to know what a burden Emma'd had for their souls.