by Leisha Kelly
“I’m gonna see that the cows got water,” George said suddenly and rose from his seat.
“Got wood enough in?” Emma asked.
“No,” I told them both, though I hated giving George another chore. It seemed to me that he ought to stay right here. But he wasn’t minded in that direction.
It wasn’t but a few minutes more and the red raspberry tea and root tonic water were ready. I carried them in, though I wasn’t completely sure what Emma was going to do with either one.
She was rubbing at Wila’s other arm when I came back in. She stopped to bathe the woman’s face with the wet cloth. Wilametta looked to be asleep again, so soon.
“She doing any better?”
Emma shook her head. “I promised Lizbeth she’d be all right. How long you suppose it’ll take the doctor, comin’ from Belle Rive?”
“Oh, Emma, I don’t know. It’ll be a good while, the way it’s snowing.” Her question was a real worry. Sam Hammond had only just left with the kids. Surely she knew it’d be a considerable time before he even got to the doctor.
Wila coughed and seemed to sputter a little. “Emma Jean?”
Emma took her hand, massaging it carefully.
“My heart’s a-flutterin’, ain’t it?” She sounded quiet, far away, like she was talking to us from the next room.
“It may be that,” Emma said. “Does seem to be off a rhythm.”
I set the herbs down on the bedside table, scooting Wila’s Bible over to make a space. Emma picked up the raspberry tea, poured some of the dandelion root into it, and offered Wila a sip.
“I can’t feel my toes at all,” Wila said.
I felt the breath slide right out of me. But Emma answered calmly. “Don’t worry about it. They’s still there.”
She turned to me and told me to rub Wila’s legs some, not too hard. I sat on the bed and did what I was told.
Emma coaxed another sip of the tea into Wila. “Just think, Wilametta,” she said. “Coming up this May, little Emma Grace’ll be a whole year old.”
“I dreamed she was gonna sing pretty as a bird,” Wila said. “Her and Rorey too. I always did want my daughters to sing. They need more’n what we’ve had. You know?”
“I know,” Emma said quietly. “I been prayin’ on that very thing.”
“Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.” Wila was losing her pinkness, instead looking pale and yellow and slick with sweat. “Will you sing me a hymn? Will you do that?”
Emma turned to me, and I saw that she was sweating too, cool as it was. And there was something in her eyes I’d never seen there before. “Please sing, Juli,” she told me. “‘Blessed Assurance,’ all right?”
It was all I could do to swallow a lump down and take another breath. They were scaring me, both of them. I could hear George come in to the kitchen, dump a load of wood in the box, and head back out. He should be in here, I thought again. But I couldn’t say it. I hated the very thought of what it implied. Wila was fading. Dying. Oh, God! A mother of ten!
I couldn’t shake the feeling of it as I started to sing, tears clouding my vision. I was slow and quiet, afraid to be otherwise and hoping for all the world that I was wrong. Emma’s words went tumbling through my mind. “I promised Lizbeth she’d be all right.”
Lord, help us! She’s got to be all right. You wouldn’t want it any other way!
I sang on, as much as I could remember, praying that I was just being foolish. The snow would quit and Wilametta would be back to her normal clamorous self by tomorrow, most surely.
“She sounds sweet as angels,” Wila said, and I almost had to stop the song. “You know what the Good Book says ’bout heaven?” she asked.
“There’ll be no sorrow there,” Emma answered. “No sickness. No pain.”
“I’ll be glad for goin’ there, one day. You tell Emma Grace an’ all the rest it’s a wonderful place. Will you do that, Emma?”
I stopped singing and went to rubbing her legs again, feeling heavy and cold inside.
George came in again, dumped a second armload of wood, and moved in our direction with his slow, even steps. He shook the snow off his coat and left it lying by the bedroom doorway. “She still awake?”
“Yes,” Emma said. But that was all she said. She laid one hand on Wila’s chest and left it there, moving her lips without making a sound.
“Good.” George came and leaned over the bed, not seeming to notice that Emma was praying. “Wilametta Hammond,” he said, “I called for the doctor. Folks that say I don’t love ya, they ain’t got a leg to stand on. I ain’t never called a doctor for no one.”
Wila looked up just enough to meet his eyes. For a moment she and George stayed like that, not a word between them. Then finally Wila smiled, just a little. “I love you too,” she whispered, her eyes slowly closing.
George looked like he could jump out of his skin. “Emma!”
“She’s still here, George. She’s breathing just fine.” Emma lowered her head down to Wila’s broad chest, as if just making sure. “Don’t you worry,” she told us again. “She’s breathin’ fine.”
George pulled his wet hat down off his head. “She just give me the awfullest scare.” He curled at the brim nervously, sending little drips of half-melted snowflakes to the floor. “She’s never been this bad,” he told us again. “You say she’ll be fine, though, ain’t that right, Emma? Didn’t you say she’ll be fine?”
I looked from one to the other, glad it wasn’t me he was asking.
“I believe it,” Emma told him, solid as anything. “But it’d be a fine thing if you’d pray on it too, George Hammond. You got coffee in the house?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He looked like a schoolboy just then, his too-long hair all mussed.
“Juli, go and make us some coffee,” Emma ordered. “I’ll set with her, but there ain’t much more you can do while she’s sleepin’.”
I made coffee, enough to give to the whole family if they’d been there. Then I picked up the bowls on the table, some of them still half filled with the strange gray porridge. I moved the pot with the same gray stuff in it, heated most of the rest of the water, and did all the dishes. George would have to fetch more water in so we’d have some at hand for the evening.
When the dishes were clean and put away the best I knew how, I went about picking up all kinds of odds and ends that had been left lying on the floor. I could imagine the Hammond children playing with the strangest of things, like the broken shoelaces and mason’s trowel I’d found, and then leaving them lie. Anything I didn’t know a place for I stacked in a pile behind the loft ladder, which rose from one corner of the kitchen.
Emma sat by Wila’s side, praying quietly or singing most of the time. I brought her some coffee and a fresh bowl of warm water a time or two, and she bathed Wila’s face and neck and told me at least three more times not to worry.
I remembered what it’d been like when baby Emma Grace was born right in this bedroom, coming breech, with Wila sick as a dog. Emma had commanded every minute, telling us they were both going to pull through fine. And they did. It was no wonder the Hammonds trusted Emma. After she’d birthed nine of their ten kids, they must’ve thought she could do anything.
But right then I couldn’t help noticing her sunken, weary eyes.
“There’s a rocker out by the fireplace,” I said. “You want me to bring it in here so you can rest while Wila’s sleeping?”
She shook her head. “You cleanin’s fine, Juli. But rearrangin’ furniture on my account’s another matter. George might want that chair.”
“He’s in the kitchen. Patching a boot. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”
She didn’t tell me anything else one way or the other, so I went and dragged the chair in next to the straight-backed one that George had been sitting on earlier. The two chairs together took up about all the floor space there was.
I helped Emma to the rocker and covered her lap with the first spare blanket I could find. It seemed to
be growing even darker outside, and cooler too. And I wasn’t the only one to notice it. I could hear George getting up to throw some more wood on the fire. The Hammonds’ sitting room and kitchen were one open area, so with the fireplace at one end and the huge wood cookstove at the other, it wasn’t bad for warmth. Better maybe than Emma’s house, but a lot more cramped.
Wila was sleeping a long while this time, and George kept himself busy doing a little odd this and that. I went back to the cleaning that the house sorely needed, top to bottom. While sweeping in the kitchen, I stirred up so much dust and wood shavings that I set myself to coughing.
George looked up at me and shook his head. “You ain’t gotta do that.”
“I know. But I feel better making myself useful.”
“Wila does that in the spring, when she can open all the windows and doors.” He said it like he thought I ought to know this kind of thing. “That’s why they call it spring cleanin’.”
I stared down at the floor, wondering if he meant that she only swept in the spring. I could almost believe it, as sorry a shape as it was in. But she’d been sick, and you couldn’t expect Lizbeth to keep up with everything. With seven boys, though, you’d think at least one of them would lend a hand with housework. Goodness, there was the awfullest crud on the floors and on the counters. Even the walls were a dingy, stained-up mess.
Despite the dirt, I set the broom aside before I was done, not sure if I was bothering George. I went to take a peek in the bedroom, and Emma looked to be sleeping in the rocker. I tried to back out, but she stirred anyway.
“Any change in Wila?” she asked me.
“I don’t think so.” I was wondering, and had been for quite a while, what she’d meant when she’d said that Wila was off a rhythm. So I worked up my nerve and asked her.
Emma sat forward, and I stepped closer in case she wanted to get up. She did. I helped her back to Wilametta’s side, and she laid her head against the sleeping woman’s chest. “Her heartbeat weren’t regular, Juli. That’s what I meant.”
“What about now?”
She sat up a little. “Wila used to say she was strong as an ox. And she was too. Could lift like two men. And out-eat ’em, easy.”
“Is she all right?”
Emma looked away toward the window and shook her head. “No. No, she ain’t. But she’s restin’ in God’s hands, and that’s the best place for her.”
I followed Emma’s eyes past the frosty windowpane, where we could see the steady, driving snow. “It’s getting pretty bad out,” I told her. “George said you can’t see the road anymore, even if you’re standing on it. I doubt the doctor will be able to get through tonight.”
“Then we wait till tomorrow,” she said, her expression unchanging. “Don’t fret for the children none. They’ll make out just fine with Samuel over there.”
It didn’t worry me about the kids. So long as they’d gotten to Emma’s, I knew Samuel would manage all right. He was good with kids. But before long, the whistling wind had picked up fierce and the snow began beating heavier against the window glass. It was a real storm, and there was no question in my mind that wherever any of us were, the doctor included, we were stuck.
Hours passed with everything just about the same. It came past time for supper, but nobody was interested in eating anything. Wilametta woke up twice more, both times briefly and barely long enough for us to get any drink down her at all.
Emma kept up her vigil, sponging Wila down, rubbing her arms and legs, talking to her when she got the chance. I tried to get Emma to rest some more, but she wouldn’t do it. She let me take care of all the running between rooms, but that was all.
Later in the evening, I reheated the herbal concoctions and brought them just in time to see Wilametta stir awake again, this time coughing.
“George?”
I set down what I was carrying and turned around for the kitchen. But I didn’t have to fetch him. George was just coming in the doorway. He got up close to the bed and squatted down, taking his wife’s hand and lifting it up to his face. It was the first time I could recall seeing any physical affection between them.
“George,” Wilametta was whispering. “You remember that necklace your grandmama give me?”
“I do,” he answered slowly.
“You see that Lizbeth gets it, you hear? It’s her right. She’s been nothing but an angel to me, an’ you know it.”
“Uh, yeah. She’s a good help, all right.” George reached up and brushed away the frizzled stray hairs from Wila’s forehead. “You oughta just give it to her yourself. She’d be real tickled—”
“I loved ya when I first set eyes on ya,” she said, getting quieter. “Under that sycamore, acting the fool. A wonder we ever come together…”
“True enough,” George said, nodding. “I reckon you shoulda knowed better.”
“It’s been good.” She was whispering again. “Good enough.”
And then she was quiet. She let out one little gasp and lifted her hand to touch George’s flannel sleeve. Then the arm, looking leathery and unreal, slid slowly back against her pillow. She gasped again, and then there was no sound at all.
I saw the change in her face, the peace appearing at the same time as a chalky white. And I felt like running outside, anywhere, to scream for the God who was supposed to be watching and answering the prayers we’d been praying.
Emma jumped forward, rubbing at her again, talking, praying, trying to get some response. But finally she gave up and lowered her head down to Wila’s chest. “Oh, Wila,” she cried. “Not today. You ain’t supposed to go today.”
Never in my life have I heard anyone sound so absolutely weak and defeated. I could do nothing but stand and stare. It wasn’t real. Couldn’t be. I looked at George, afraid of what I’d see.
He was shaking his head, the set of his jaw making him look angry. “She ain’t gone,” he said. “She ain’t, Emma. She ain’t gone.”
Emma closed her eyes, her head still on Wila’s chest. She looked so tiny and broken. Suddenly she started shaking, and I wanted to pull her off Wila and hold her. “She’s gone, George,” she said, her voice far steadier than she looked. “God love her. She’s gone.”
Slowly she sat up, but just long enough to sink from the bed to the floor. “So sorry,” she said, and I jumped up, hurrying to her side.
George bent over Wilametta, touched her cheek and her puffy, pale lips. He gave her a shake, tender and desperate, and I could hear his breath drawn out pained and slow. “She’s gonna be hungry later, Mrs. Wortham,” he insisted. “Oughta get a pot a’ soup on, if you don’t mind.” He straightened himself. “Maybe if we put a poultice ’cross her chest…”
Emma was shaking in my arms, and he just stopped and looked at her. The silence right then was heavier than stone, and I could feel the weight of it pressing on my chest. George stood like a statue. Finally, he sunk down at Wilametta’s side and bent to hold her. I turned my eyes away, hurting too bad to see.
“It can’t be helped,” Emma whispered.
“You said she’d be all right. That’s what you said.”
“None of us knows them things.”
He was still a long time, lingering with Wila at the bed, not a single hair of him moving. “No,” he finally said, barely able to get just the one word out.
“George—” Emma reached out her hand.
“No.” He stood up and turned from us. I could hear his rapid steps as he moved to the door and then out, not taking the time for his hat or his coat.
“George!” Emma called again, pulling up straight and tense. “Juli, see if you can tell where he’s gone! He oughtn’t to be out in the storm in that frame a’ mind! Oh, Juli, his heart’s plumb broke.”
She fell into sobs, and I didn’t want to leave her. But I ran to the door like she’d said.
He hadn’t even shut it. And there was no sign of him in the swirling snow. Already the whipping wind had covered his tracks.
�
��Mr. Hammond!” I screamed, knowing why Emma would worry. Blinded by grief and without his coat, he had no business being out in the bitter cold. I’d have gone after him if only I’d known which way to go. “Mr. Hammond!”
There was no answer but the howling wind and the distant, miserable lowing of one of George’s cows. Shut in the barn but cold nonetheless, no doubt.
“Mr. Hammond!” I screamed once more. I thought about running toward where I knew the barn must be, just to see if he’d gone that way. But what if he hadn’t? What if something lay out there under the snow that I couldn’t see in the Hammonds’ unkempt farmyard?
I knew he could be anywhere. He could even be trying to make it through the timber to his children over at our house. I was sorry about it, dreadful sorry for him, but I had to think about Emma inside the house, in the worst shape I’d ever seen her, weak and hurt for the loss of a friend. Wilametta Hammond. Strong as an ox. And gone in a moment. A quiet, cruel, devil of a moment.
Slowly I pulled the worn rope latch and shut the door.
TWO
Samuel
All ten of the Hammond children burst through the back door, covered in snow, too cold to wait for me to answer their knock. Willy was the first to say that Emma had shooed them out so their mother could rest.
“She’ll be okay after she’s had the quiet,” Kirk offered. “Boy, if it was summer, we could just run outside a while.”
Lizbeth took the baby straight in beside the fireplace, and the rest of the Hammonds followed her. I threw in more wood, all I could, to get the fire good and blazing. Lizbeth was solemn, too solemn. The littler girl and the two youngest boys cuddled close to her, their fingers and noses red with cold.
The oldest boy, named Sam like me, ordered all of them to take off their coats and stay by the fireplace. But he headed back to the door, pulling his old jersey gloves tight.
“You going back home?” I asked him.
“Yeah, and you should tell them so. But I got to fetch the doctor first.”
The gravity of that did not escape me. George Hammond hadn’t called a doctor when the baby came early. Didn’t even consider it. And that had been decent weather.
