Thirty-One
CLARA FELT SOMETHING JIGGLING HER SHOULDER.
“
Wake up. Wake up.”
“
Billy?” Clara rose up on her elbow. It was pitch-dark. “What is it?”
“
Meet me downstairs in the parlor. Euphora, too.”
His footsteps padded softly across the room, then down the stairway. Clara rustled Euphora and told her they had to meet Billy in the parlor. They threw on their shawls and tiptoed downstairs toward the lamplight.
In the middle of the parlor, Billy stood dressed in his jacket and wool cap, his right arm in a sling, his neck swollen red on one side. A bulging full burlap sack lay at his feet. Clara’s knees weakened.
“
What happened?” Euphora asked.
“
Shhh. Don’t wake Papa. I’m leaving. Come here.” His gate was gimpy and stiff as he led them to the window seat. Holding his neck and shoulders rigid, he sat down awkwardly.
“
I only have a minute,” he said.
Trembling, Clara sat next to Euphora who was already at Billy’s side. “Papa promised me he wouldn’t hurt you,” Clara said.
“
He was crazy drunk last night. He found me and some boys out raising Cain behind the Veazie House. We were trying to get some young gents to bring us out some beer when Papa stumbled out of nowhere and saw what we were up to. He went wild as a crazy cougar. He shoved me so hard it was like I was shot out of a sling. My neck landed on the rim of a barrel.” He lifted his good arm and cupped a hand under his ear. “I thought for sure he was gonna kill me. I ran all the way to Mr. Maxwell’s house up at the Nursery and he took me to a doctor.”
Whimpering, Euphora took hold of his good arm. “You can’t leave us, Billy. Where will you go?”
“
Far away.”
“
Kansas, with the Free Staters?” Tears rolled off Euphora’s quaking chin.
“
Nah. Not since John Brown got hanged. California. That’s as far as I can get from Papa.” He reached under his jacket and into his waistcoat pocket. “Here, Clara.” Taking her clenched hand, he curled back her shaking fingers, stuck a gold half eagle into her palm, then closed her fingers back over it. “Five dollars for you and Euphora. You save this and use it to take the rail cars to Rochester to Izzie if you need it. Never spend it. Only if you have to get away from him. That’s all I can do. I can’t take you with me. I want to be halfway to Buffalo by the time he wakes up.”
The house creaked. Blinking rapidly, Billy glanced toward the stairs.
“
It’s all right, just the cold,” Clara said.
“
Can’t you stay in Geneva, but live at someone else’s boardinghouse?” Euphora tugged at Billy’s jacket sleeve. He winced. He was injured all over, Clara thought.
“
Can’t, Euphora. He’d come and get me if he knew where I was.”
“
Do you still have the hole in your boot?” Clara pointed toward his right shoe. He gave a slight nod followed by a squinty look. Clara handed him back the coin. “You need boots. I have some money saved Papa doesn’t know about. You can’t go to California in the middle of winter with holes in your boots.”
Brown eyes looking weary and scared, he took the gold piece back and tucked it into his waistcoat. “Thanks, Clara.” His scared look horse-kicked Clara right in the gut.
He stood up. “I have to go now.”
Clara looked over how he was dressed. Underneath his short jacket, it appeared he had on every piece of clothing he owned, two shirts, two pairs of trousers, his cotton summer waistcoat and his wool waistcoat over that and old, fraying gloves with no fingers.
“
Those knitted wool gloves won’t protect you from the freezing weather. Wait here a minute,” Clara said.
“
No. I have to go. It’s getting light.”
“
Wait.”
Clara tiptoed into the foyer. Papa’s greatcoat wasn’t on the rack. It was probably with him in his bedchamber since he had come in so drunk. She whispered for Billy and Euphora to wait again and then climbed the stairs as quietly as she could to Papa’s door. Billy called her name in a loud whisper to get her back, but she ignored him. Grasping Papa’s doorknob, she turned it as carefully as she could. The click was gentle, what she had hoped for. When she entered the room, she stood still a moment, while her eyes adapted to the dark, and listened for his sleep. His snoring was loud and the smell of whiskey thick, even with his window open.
He wouldn’t wake up with that much whiskey in him, not until noon. Sometimes his coat was on a hook by the door. Sometimes, on a bad night, it was in a heap on the floor with his other clothing, but it wasn’t in either place. It was one of those nights when he passed out with everything on him.
Imagining noisy pebbles beneath her feet, she took each step as slowly and tenderly as if she were a huntress wolf about to pounce. When she stood by Papa at the bed, she studied the muddle of his coat and looked for the bulge of a pocket where his new leather gloves might be. It was on the other side of him. She crept around the foot of the bed, gently slid her fingers into the tip of the coat pocket and began to inch the gloves out. It was the least Papa could do for his only son—give him a pair of dang gloves to travel with. Papa snorted. She jerked her hand back, leaving the gloves half out. She waited. After a short moment, his whiskey-soaked snoring resumed. She snatched the gloves, darted for the door, then slowed down again as she settled the latch back into place. He was still snoring evenly.
When she got downstairs, the front door was open a crack. Billy and Euphora were waiting on the front porch and Euphora was crying into Billy’s shoulder. When Clara handed Billy the gloves, her eyes welled up. Her heart had that same ripping sensation she’d felt when Mamma died and again when Izzie left for Rochester.
Billy sneered at the gloves. Clara thought he was going to refuse them, but then he chuckled and stuffed them into his jacket pocket. “I’m going to the depot for the early train. The tracks should be clear. It hasn’t snowed for a few days.” He looked out at the street, disentangled himself from Euphora, and carefully slung his sack over his shoulder. His eyes pinched and he grunted a little as the sack landed against his back.
“
Billy, don’t leave right now,” Clara said. “Stay a few weeks and let Mrs. Purcell heal you. Then go when you are stronger.”
He looked her straight and deep in the eye. “I have to go now, Clara. You know I do.”
She bit the inside of her mouth and glanced across the old crusty snow, away from him. She knew he was right.
In silence, the three of them looked out at the lavender sky for a moment. The soles of Clara’s bare feet stung with cold.
“
Will you write us?” Clara wrapped her shawl tight around herself.
“
Not until I’m far away.” He turned his shoulder toward her. “Here. Reach in my pocket.” She stuck her hand in and found his red bandana. “That’s yours to remember me, that day by the brook when we talked.”
As she clutched the small piece of him, her tears began to flow. He kissed Euphora’s forehead, then hers, then stepped mindfully down the icy stairs and along the front path. Embracing Euphora, Clara found her little sister trembling. When Billy reached the street, he waved. There wasn’t enough light to see his face from that distance, but Clara knew he wasn’t smiling. She and Euphora waved back, then held onto each other and watched him until he was out of sight.
“
Let’s make a fire.” Feet still stinging, Clara led Euphora inside.
She settled her weeping sister into Mrs. Purcell’s wing back chair by the fireplace in the parlor and wound a small lap blanket around her feet. Then Clara piled up the thin slivers of wood, the ones Billy had kept neatly in the brass bucket by the fireplace under the coals. She struck a match and held it to the smallest kindling until it lit. Exhausted, Clara lay on her side on the rug by the fire. She thought about what Billy had said, that he had to get far enough away from Papa that Papa couldn’t find him, that he didn’t even want to write until he was so far away that Papa wouldn’t come after him. He was right. And she realized then that it was true for her, too, if she had to run away. Running to Izzie wasn’t good enough, wasn’t far enough. If you were going to run from Papa, you had better go where he couldn’t find you and drag you back.
“
Will he ever come back?” Still weeping, Euphora was slumped in the chair.
“
No. He’ll never come back. Someday when we’re older, we’ll see him again, though.”
She sat up, took off her shawl and wrapped it around her chilled feet. When her time came, she wouldn’t go to Izzie because Papa would just hop a train or canal boat and yank her right back the same day. If she were going to run like Billy, she’d have to hide like a slave on the Underground Railroad.
About an hour later, when Mrs. Purcell came downstairs, Clara and Euphora, still in their chemises, were huddled side by side in front of the fire.
Clara looked up at Mrs. Purcell. “Billy’s run off. He’s gone.”
Mrs. Purcell’s lip curled up in a snarl. “You don’t think he’ll come back after a while?”
She and Euphora shook their heads.
Mrs. Purcell stood motionless in her brown-and-black plaid checker dress a moment, then went and slumped down into her wing back chair. Then they all three fell numb and quiet for a while.
“
I should have done more.” Mrs. Purcell looked back and forth from the fire to the daguerreotype of her husband Richard on the side table, and kept repeating herself. “I should have done more. I should have done more.”
“
You can’t stop anything Papa does,” Clara said.
Mrs. Purcell rose up. “My Richard always said ‘better late than never’. You girls must remember that. Better late than never.” She turned and, walking toward the kitchen, she had an air about her like she was leading a troop of soldiers.
<><><>
AFTER CLARA AND EUPHORA GOT DRESSED, and Mary and Jane Carter came down to breakfast, Clara told the old sisters about Billy. As she spoke, even adding the part about getting the gloves off of Papa while he slept, Clara noticed a lot of glances passing between Mrs. Purcell and the Carter sisters, as if they knew it was going to happen all along.
Over their breakfast of eggs and grits, they all discussed whether there was any way to get Billy to come back, but finally Mrs. Purcell said it might be for the best and the Carters both nodded. Without Billy, the dining table would be like this from now on, thought Clara, just her and Euphora and the three silver-haired ladies. Papa wasn’t going to ever stay in for a meal again with these three old women evil-eyeing him. Clara sighed. That was all right. Maybe Papa would disappear for good, go searching for Billy and never come back. Or maybe Papa’d run away on his own. He had before. Then she’d be free to work for Mrs. Beattie and get another job as well, and Euphora could keep working for Mrs. Purcell and they’d stay there with the ladies.
It wouldn’t be that way, though. Papa was hell-bent on moving them out of Mrs. Purcell’s. He’d been talking about the little cabin up the canal a ways. That’s what he was set on all right, taking her and Euphora away from the old ladies.
She reached into her dress pocket for Billy’s red bandana and laid it out on his empty chair next to her. She spread it out, smoothing over the wrinkles.
“
I think it would be best if we were all together when we tell your father that Billy is gone. He’ll be agitated.” Mrs. Purcell looked at Clara, then Euphora.
The Carter sisters bobbed in agreement. “We’ll stay in until he rises. Emma, you should tell him. He gets so riled when things go wrong,” Mary Carter said.
Mrs. Purcell wiped her mouth with her napkin, then set both hands firmly on the table. “Yes, I’ll tell him. You young girls don’t have to do that.”
<><><>
CLARA DIDN’T WANT TO LEAVE EUPHORA that morning to go to work at Mrs. Beattie’s, but Mrs. Purcell told her she would take care of Papa if he woke up before supper. The morning at the milliner’s crept slower than a heavy wagon going up a steep hill. While she took inventory of fabrics for Mrs. Beattie, Clara thought frightful things. Maybe Papa would run after Billy but take Euphora with him and then she’d never see any of them again. Maybe Papa would wallop Euphora with a pot when he heard the news or maybe he’d belt Mrs. Purcell on the chin. The noon bell up at the Presbyterian Church finally rang. Clara ran the whole way home.
As she entered the front door, she smelled onions and butter cooking, then sprinted to the kitchen. Euphora and Mrs. Purcell had three bowls set out on the worktable and were standing by the iron kettle.
“
Is there coffee?”
Clara jumped. Papa was right behind her. Hair tousled, shirt and trousers rumpled, he shuffled over to the coffee pot sitting by the sink.
“
It’s cold by now. We can make more.” Euphora flashed a scared, big blue-eyed look at Mrs. Purcell.