Fervent Charity (28 page)

Betty had watched politely, suppressing a smile, but when she bit into one of them for the first time, she said with obvious surprise, her mouth still full, “These are good!” Lena nodded in satisfaction.

When the bowls were filled all around, Gustie took some green leaves and twigs and put them on the fire. Smoke drifted in their direction. “Discouragement for the mosquitoes,” she said. She took her bowl and sat on the bottom step to the porch. “How’s Jordis?”

“She’s something!” Lena shook her head. “I’ll tell you. I thought I was good with a horse, and Will is good too, but Jordis—that horse just perked up and decided to live when she put her hands on him. I swear I saw the decision go through him like a tickled muscle. And Dennis isn’t going to do anything to him for killing that crazy Gleeve Pruitt. Dennis always acts sensible. He doesn’t look for trouble or make more or less of a thing than it is.”

Gustie’s face got grim. “She didn’t write too much about that.”

“Well, he came after her, don’t you see? This Pruitt fella, and the horse killed him.” Lena helped herself to another slice of Episcopalian bread, which she dipped into her stew and brought dripping to her mouth. She continued to talk and eat at the same time. “I guess it wasn’t pretty, but for crying out loud, the man was coming after her with a gun and evil on his mind. I say the horse should get a medal.

“He won’t tolerate anybody coming too near him but Jordis and me—and Will, and he doesn’t mind children. Hank walked into the barn one day and the colt made such an uproar, and he wasn’t that strong yet, we thought he’d give himself a heart attack. So, for awhile, the barn was off-limits to everybody but immediate family.” Lena swabbed the inside of her bowl with her bread, not realizing she had just included Jordis in her immediate family.

Gustie smiled.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. Go ahead, Lena.”

“Well, something was done to that horse even before he was put in the stock car, believe me. She’s going to have to keep a tight rein on him, that’s for sure, but if anybody can do it, she can. She’s gone out to your place now. I miss both of ‘em. I even miss the blame cat.” Lena contemplated her empty bowl and decided to let her stomach settle before getting any more. She leaned back against the support pole of the porch where she sat with her feet dangling over the edge. She had relinquished the rocker to Mary.

Without turning around to look at her, Lena asked, “What are you going to do now, Mary?”

“After the baby is born, I’m going to Philadelphia. I just couldn’t go before. I don’t know why. I know it would have been easier on everyone if I could have…”

“Don’t be feeling that way, Mary.” Gustie reached up across the space between them and touched her hand lightly. “We had a good time out here, didn’t we?”

From the other side of Lena, Betty was quick to add, “We sewed and read and fished on the ice—and played cards like loose gambling women!” She waved a big green fly away from her food. “Mary owes me three hundred thousand dollars!”

Gustie aimed her gray eyes at Betty. “If we had known we were harboring a card shark, we’d never have started playing.”

Betty said, “I play at home with my dad and my brothers.”

“What do you play for?” asked Lena, who was not opposed to a good poker game if no money was exchanged. There was a line between fun and something that smacked faintly of the devil and money was usually on it.

“Chores. When I win, they have to do my share of the cleaning and washing up. That’s how I buy more time to practice the piano.”

“Even your dad?”

“He’s a good sport. Yes, he’s done a dish now and then for me. I used to think he let me win just so Mama would let me have more practice time. But I’ve never been sure of that.”

“For a good cause.” Mary beamed. “Lena, have you heard Betty play?”

“Yes, in church. She’s better than Mrs. Happy but don’t tell the old goose I said so.”

Mary changed the subject. “Lena, what were you doing in the path of the twister when nobody else was?”

“We were at the fairgrounds for the Fourth of July picnic.” Lena answered vaguely.

“I know, but you said you were at the Sauer house by yourself…where were Will and Walter? Are they…?”

“They’re fine. They weren’t even at the fairgrounds. They were at the funeral home. Ma died yesterday.”

“What?”

“She just keeled over at her kitchen window. Boom! Gone. Funeral is the day after tomorrow.”

“Oh. Ma is dead?”

Lena turned and looked at Mary. She saw tears in her eyes. “She was nearly eighty, Mary. That’s a good long life.”

“I don’t know how good it was.” Mary put her spoon back into her unfinished bowl of stew.

“You may have a point there.” Lena hopped off the side of the porch and went to the kettle to ladle herself more stew. “Anybody else?” Betty nodded but came to get her own.

“I have to pay my respects.”

“Now, how are you going to do that?” Lena just stood by the tripod, her bowl in her hands, looking at Mary, and wishing she had never mentioned Ma’s death.

No one spoke. Gustie set down her bowl in the grass and watched ants find it and crawl into it.

Mary said, “I know I can’t go to the funeral, but I could go to the grave after they all leave. No one who cared for her will be there to say a prayer, or say good-bye.”

“You can pray here.” Lena took another mouthful of stew. She ate it standing up.

“I know, but it’s not the same, is it?”

“I suppose not.” She went back and sat on the steps next to Gustie.

“She was just so alone always, and now she will be alone. I can’t bear for her to be put in the ground without anyone to say one sincere word over her grave. It isn’t right. Nobody loved her, Lena. I feel so bad for Ma.”

“She wouldn’t feel bad for you.”

Mary said nothing, just stared at the smoke still coming up in thin clouds from the fire.

Lena put her bowl down and took a deep breath. “Well, all right. I feel bad for her too—in a way. And I expect she’s with the Savior now. She lived with a Kaiser all those years. The Lord would not require any person to go to hell twice.” Lena swatted a mosquito against the side of her neck. “Nasty thing!”

Gustie took her eyes off the busy ants and looked at Mary carefully. “What is it you want to do, Mary?”

“I want to go back. I can get my things while Walter is at the funeral—it is the only way I could be really sure of him not walking in on me. He wouldn’t miss his mother’s funeral, no matter what.”

“What things do you need, Mary? I could get them for you,” Lena offered.

“Babka’s prayer book. I don’t know how I could have left it behind. But I did, and that shawl you knitted for me, Lena. I want that. I don’t know how I could have forgotten it.”

“For Pete’s sake, Mary, I’ll knit you another one. And I can get those things for you. Just tell me where they are. I’ll send them to you.”

“I want to see my house again. Just once more. And my roses. Are they all right? My roses?”

“They’re blooming nice as you please. Will is looking after them.” Lena softened. “We won’t let your roses die, Mary. I promise you that.”

Gustie picked up her bowl and shook out the ants. They disappeared into the grass. “We should be able to manage this. If we leave tonight after dark, we would be at my house by daybreak. Mary will have a whole day and night to rest, and the next day, during the funeral, we’ll go to her house.” She turned to Mary. “You can get your things, and in the evening, you can stop at the grave, and then we’ll come back here during the night. No one will see us come and no one will see us go.”

“You’re really going to go to Philadelphia this time?” Lena asked prying out some strings of rabbit from her teeth.

“Yes. I don’t really know why I couldn’t go before, but I can go now. I’m even looking forward to it. That is if your aunts haven’t changed their minds.”

“My aunts are very excited to have you and to have a baby in the house. So is my father.”

“Will they like me, do you think?”

“Mary, they will adore you. You will be to them everything I never could be. They will suffocate you with kindness if you let them.” Gustie paused a moment before she added, “Now, Betty. What shall we do about you?”

“What do you mean?” Betty did not look at Gustie.

“I think it is high time you went home.”

Lena, sitting closest to Betty, thought she heard Betty sigh. A sigh of relief, perhaps?

“I think we just make it simple. You and I took the train back from Philadelphia as far as Wheat Lake so I could pick up my horse and wagon. You stayed with me to keep me company.”

“Gustie, you have the mind of a schemer and a conniver!”

“Why, thank you, Lena.”

When even Lena had finally eaten her fill and given up her bowl to Gustie to wash, the crying of the circling gulls caught their attention at the same time as a strong wave of wind lifted their skirts and blew their hair. They saw the humped backs of black clouds rushing toward them from the south. Betty and Gustie hauled the pot up under the porch roof, and Betty pulled the tarp down on the southern side. They brought more chairs out and sat on the porch.

The sky over the lake remained blue with only wisps of white cloud. They gazed at it through the curtains of rain that poured down upon them. Being at the physical edge of a rainstorm was like being in a dream. Lena just shook her head and said nothing. This had been a peculiar day all the way around.

Once the herd of angry bull clouds had stampeded past them, the land was wet, but softly sunny again.

The light remained diffused over the land and stayed that way till after ten o’clock. Saying that they had to use up their bottle of milk before they left, Gustie put the kettle on, and they sipped milky tea and watched the light fade over the lake and turn Crow Kills’ mated pair of pelicans to silhouettes.

Their conversation, along with the prairie sounds, became more subdued. People would be going home late after the Fourth of July celebration in Wheat Lake. They hoped they would be on the road late enough so they wouldn’t meet anyone. But in case they did encounter other travelers on the dark road, they decided that Lena would tell the truth about how she had ended up in Cleremont and now was getting a ride with some Hutterites who were traveling at night as a favor to her who was so anxious to get home to her baby. Hutterites who only spoke German. If Gustie, Betty, and Mary wore black, and took along black bonnets and veils to cover their faces, in the dark no one would recognize them.

Gustie felt sadness every time she left Crow Kills. She had always thought that it was because she was leaving Dorcas, then because she was so often leaving Jordis. But tonight, even though she was going to be with Jordis, she felt a sadness trail across her heart like the silver train of the moon, which lay like silk on the water.

She wanted not to go. But she couldn’t forbid Mary to return to Charity. Mary would grieve for Gertrude Kaiser, for her prayer book, for her last look at her beautiful house. She needed these things to store in her heart in order to go on. She needed things to be finished in one place before going to another.

Gustie hadn’t finished anything with any of the people she loved in Philadelphia. She had just left. Her mother she had never known, and yet she had always felt there was something there that needed to be done. And it had to be done with and through her father, or through her aunts, or even through Oksana and Michael. All these people had known Philippa Caine, the woman she couldn’t remember but who haunted her in small ever present ways. Gustie had left things unfinished and unsaid between herself and her father. The few letters they had exchanged in the last year had been welcome but superficial…there was so much else.

Maybe Mary was the wise one. You never left anything behind. You always took it with you. But at least you had to tie off an end, close a book before you could put it back on the shelf. Or at least end a chapter. Even if that meant only one last look at some roses and collecting a book of Polish prayers. Gustie wished she had had more courage, more patience to stay in Philadelphia just a little longer. And yet, she did not look forward to going back. She heard Lena’s voice calling from the wagon. “We’re ready, Gustie.” She splashed her face with cold lake water and walked back up the bank to take the reins. Fireflies blinked in the weeds around the cabin and in the brush under the cottonwoods. She thought she saw something stir there. Probably a badger, maybe a raccoon. By dawn they would be tucked in safely at Gustie’s house in Charity. A big surprise for Jordis. Mary and Betty could rest in the bedroom, Lena could have the trundle bed, and Gustie and Jordis could spread a blanket in the barn. They had done it before.