Prayers for Sale (34 page)

Bone-tired herself, Hennie sat down in the blue chair next to the bed to wait for Dick, and with her foot, she rocked the cradle back and forth. “I plain forgot to ask you, Mrs. . . . Nit, that is. I forgot to ask what are these babies’ given names? Do you know how you call their names yet?”

“I do,” Nit said importantly. “I’ve been thinking on it for a long time. The boy, he’s Dick Spindle—‘Dickie.’ That’s what we’ll call him.” She finished the tea and handed the empty cup and saucer to Hennie. “And the girl, her name is Columbine Spindle—Collie, for short.”

Hennie smiled as she set the cup on the table and closed her eyes for a minute, rocking back and forth in the chair in time with the cradle. She’d have to make a second baby quilt before she went below, and then she’d go through her belongings to see what she had that the girl could use. Hennie wished she could offer something special. Nit might want the big rocker from Hennie’s living room, or she could make the young couple a quilt after she went to Iowa. Maybe she’d buy Nit that feather-edged platter the girl had spotted in Ye
Olde Shop. But was there something else she could do for them?

Suddenly, Hennie stopped in mid-rock and opened her eyes. Why, of course there was, you old fool with mud for a mind! Why didn’t you think of it sooner? You’ve got you a present that nobody else can give the girl—a fine log house! Hennie chuckled a little. The Spindles could move into her house while she was away. They would take care of it, and Hennie wouldn’t have to worry about somebody breaking in and robbing her or the pipes freezing up and bursting. The old woman wouldn’t mind at all having the Spindles live there, and Mae would be more likely to let her return summers if she wasn’t in the house by herself.

The old woman smiled with satisfaction. There would be little ones in her home, just like she and Jake had planned when they built it. Hennie closed her eyes and began to rock again, while she softly said a word of thanks. The Lord had just replied to another of her prayers. The only one left unanswered was about that secret that had pricked her for so many years. Maybe the Lord was going to keep his answer to Himself and make Hennie come to terms with it on her own.

Tom Earley brought along a loaf of bread that he had baked that morning, and they sat in front of the fire eating their bread and soup, wiping out the bowls with bits of crust. Tom smacked his lips like any man in Middle Swan would do to show his pleasure with the supper. It was a simple meal, made of leftovers from the Christmas dinner the two of them had shared with Nit and Dick.

“There’s no hereafter. I was going to make a custard, but I got so busy rearranging the house for the Spindles that I disremembered,” Hennie said. The Spindles were moving in the next day, because Hennie wanted them settled in before she left. They ought to get to know the place while she was there to answer questions, because like most houses in Middle Swan, the Comfort home was temperamental.
Hennie leaned back in the rocker, thinking how satisfying it was to be with a man who liked her cooking.

“I never ate a bite of custard in my life. I’m satisfied without dessert,” Tom replied.

“Well, I’d like a bit of sweetness for myself. Wouldn’t a dish of ice cream taste good?” Hennie mused.

“Let’s go get it. The drugstore’s still open. Would that suit you?”

Hennie grinned. “It would!” She stood and helped her friend to his feet. They put on their jackets, and Tom with his cane and Hennie with her walking stick left the house.

At the drugstore, they sat at the counter eating fudge sundaes, scraping the dishes and licking the spoons, greedy as schoolchildren, remembering back to the early days when Hennie had made snow ice cream from fresh-fallen snow, milk, and a drop of vanilla. “I can’t say this is any better,” Tom said, pointing with his spoon at his dish.

“The company is every bit as good,” Hennie replied.

After they had finished and wiped their mouths with paper napkins from the tin dispenser, the two swiveled around on the stools and helped each other down. They buttoned their coats and went out into the night, which was cold but clear. Snow was on the ground now and would be until spring, but there was no sign of a fresh storm brewing. The sky was blue-black in the moonlight, and the stars twinkled like pieces of broken quartz.

“The frost line’s gone deep in the ground,” Hennie said. She’d have to tell the Spindles to keep a drip of water going through the winter so the pipes wouldn’t freeze. There were so many things they needed to know that she’d made a list—who
to call for coal, how to spread the stove ashes on the walk in winter, where the roof shingles were kept and the ladder and the garden tools.

Dick and Nit had been overwhelmed when Hennie invited them to live in her house. She’d waited until a few days after the twins were born, until the Spindle cabin was so crammed with baby things that the couple barely had room to turn around. Then she’d said that it would be a kindness to her if they would look after her house while she was away, staying there so that nobody broke in. They protested, telling her the offer was too generous. So to keep them from feeling beholden, Hennie said she’d take seven dollars a month for the house, less than what they were paying for the Tappan place, and the couple could pay the electric, too. They all knew the house was worth twenty-five dollars anyway, maybe more, but paying her a little something was a way the boy could feel he wasn’t taking charity. And he wasn’t, Hennie told herself, because the place was better off with someone in it.

“You’re thinking about your house,” Tom said, and Hennie almost replied how odd it was that the two of them always seemed to know what the other was thinking, just like an old married couple. But that was too familiar a thing to remark on.

“I am.”

“Don’t worry. The Spindles will take good care of it, just like he does the Yellowcat.” After he took over managing the Yellowcat Mine, Dick made the muckers clean up the adit, and low and behold, he found a nice little pocket of ore back behind a pile of waste. He named it the “pay chute.” “That was good advice you gave me to hire him,” Tom said.

“I disremember it was me that thought it up. It was you.”

“
We
did.” Tom took her arm, and they slowed beside the cribbing of an old mine. “I believe I’d like to sit awhile,” he said.

“Are you tired, Tommy?”

“No, not a bit, but I’ve got something to say, and now seems a good time.” He eased himself onto a rock, and Hennie sat beside him, looking up toward the heavens.

She pointed out a falling star with her walking stick. “I wonder if I’ll ever be this close to the sky again.”

“You’ll never be happy going to Iowa, will you?”

Hennie shook her head. “I don’t know why I dread it so. Fort Madison is as nice a place as you could ask for. But I just don’t love it, not like Middle Swan. I just don’t. I guess I’m lucky to have a daughter that wants me, even though I wish she wouldn’t keep saying I can’t live alone anymore.”

“And what do you say?”

The old woman shrugged. “If I had my way, I’d never say ‘deep enough’ to the Swan. But the time’s coming when I might not be able to do for myself. I hate to admit it, but Mae’s right about that. So what else is there for me? I’m resigned to it.”

Tom squeezed her hand but didn’t let go of it. “You could go to China.”

Hennie gave him a curious look. “I could go to the moon, too.”

“You said once you wanted to visit China.”

“I’d like to see the King of England, too, but you have to have a pocketful of money to get anywheres.”

“I can arrange that.”

The dredge groaned and roared, and Hennie waited until it had settled down to a clatter before she spoke. “You’re going to send me around the world?” Tom was talking foolishment, and she was puzzled.

“No, I won’t send you,” Tom said, then turned and looked Hennie full in the face. “But I’ll take you.”

Hennie said nothing, just stared at her friend, the blood rising in her face, as an idea of what he meant crept into her mind.

“I should have asked you to marry me all those years ago, after Jake died. But I was too busy making money. Besides, I was scared you’d turn me down, and if you had, we might not have been able to put it behind us and remained friends. And having you as a friend means the world to me. So I let the time pass, and then it seemed like it was too late. I contented myself with seeing you in the summers. I never thought you’d leave the high country. But now . . .”

He smiled, a little embarrassed himself, and let go of her hand. “Now, maybe I have a chance. I wouldn’t like to wait any longer. I’ve been lonesome most of my life. There was somebody I cared about a long time ago, before I came to the Swan, but it wasn’t right for us. She was married. You’re the only other woman I’ve ever cared about. Now, I’d like a little companionship before I cross over. I believe maybe you would, too. So I’d like it fine, Hennie, if you’d be my wife and move in with me instead of your daughter.” He paused and added, “You and your quilt frame and your prayer sign. I’d get down on my knees to ask you, but I might not be able to get up again.”

Hennie laughed, and something inside her let go, as if
the stitching on a too-tight garment had suddenly broken. The cords that had bound her since Mae first asked her to move to Fort Madison were asunder. “You’re asking me to marry you? At our age? Why, I’m eighty and six. I can’t get married.”

“And you’ll be eighty and seven next year whether you’re married or not.” He thought a minute. “You told me once you thought ‘can’t’ was the awfulest word you ever heard, so I don’t believe it when you say it.”

“I did tell you that, didn’t I.” Hennie laughed, then grew silent. “Oh, Tom, we’d be a pair of old fools.”

“I feel young right now and not so much of a fool. In fact, I believe this is a pretty smart idea I’ve come up with.” He rested both of his hands on his cane and looked out at the black humps of the Tenmile Range, barely visible in the moonlight. “What do you say, Hennie?”

Hennie herself studied on the mountains for a time, then looked up at the sky. She didn’t believe she’d ever seen so many stars. “I left Tennessee to come to Colorado in a covered wagon to marry a man I’d never met,” she said slowly. “I guess it won’t be any trouble to go to Chicago and marry a man I’ve known for seventy years and loved for a good number of them. We let a long lonesome time go by, didn’t we? I believe we ought to make up for it.”

“We will at that.” Tom leaned over and kissed Hennie then, harder and longer than she would have thought. It wasn’t a kiss of friendship, either, and Hennie surprised herself by wondering if a marriage to Tom Earley might be every bit as complete as her marriages to Billy and Jake had
been. The idea made her blush, and she was glad the sky was too dark for Tom to notice.

Hennie smiled at Tom and kissed him back. Then she pulled away and cocked her head and asked, “Could I really meet the King of England?”

“Any king you want,” he said, taking her hand again and raising it to his lips. “We’ll spend the year going wherever you please—China, Persia, even the North Pole, which they tell me isn’t quite as bad as Middle Swan in January. And in the summer, we’ll come back to the Swan, take a private railroad car to Denver and hire a car and driver to bring us up here.”

Hennie chuckled and then began to laugh. “Why, I’m not looking at the end of my life anymore but a beginning. I believe we could have some good years.”

“That we could. Will you do it, Hennie?”

“I’ll do it, Tommy. I’ll say yes to you.” He clasped both of her hands, pulling her to him and kissing her again. Then the two of them stood up, making their way back to Hennie’s house, Tom using his cane only a little now.

“Imagine,” Hennie murmured, as she slipped her hand through his arm, “the King of England.”

She told the Tenmile Quilters a few mornings later, after the Spindles were settled into the house, when the women had stopped by to present Hennie with a Friendship quilt that they had made for her in secret as a going-away present. This one was every bit as finely quilted as the old quilt that Hennie had brought with her from Tennessee seventy years
before. Made in Chimney Sweep blocks and embroidered with the names of Hennie’s friends in Middle Swan, the quilt contained more than one block that had been pieced from the peacock blue that Hennie had given the quilters. The old woman ran her hand over the names, then said slyly, for only the Spindles knew of her plans, “I don’t know if you’re giving this to me because I’m leaving or because I’m getting married.” She looked down in hopes her friends wouldn’t see her face turning red.