by Leisha Kelly
My legs were like jelly. Pushing them through the drifts of snow was a torture. But the barn stood only a stone’s throw before me, pale as the sky. I started shaking inside as I neared it.
“Mr. Hammond?”
I might as well have been talking to the wind. My voice just spilled out over the snow-flaked sky and went on endless without response.
“Mr. Hammond!”
Lord, have mercy. Lord, send Samuel to me. It’s too late for the doctor. Oh, dear God, please send Samuel.
The barn door was open just a crack, and snow was blowing in. I had to squeeze myself through the opening because it was froze in place and there was no budging it. With some relief I heard the shuffle of animal hooves. I’d almost expected to find the place ghostly empty or filled with the dead, frozen bodies of George Hammond’s forsaken stock.
I edged over the straw-strewn floor, looking in on three pigs in one stall and a big billy goat in another.
“Mr. Hammond?”
There was firewood along one wall, standing nearly as high as my head. More pigs were grunting from somewhere nearby, and I could smell them now too. That was the only thing that seemed familiar here. The only thing that hadn’t changed.
The pigs started in squealing, and I figured that seeing me brought them the hope of breakfast. But I didn’t know where the feed was, and I had other things pressing on me. Slowly I peeked in every stall, steeling myself the best I could for whatever I might find.
A sleek, gray barn cat peered up at me from a hole in the floor, a mutilated mouse dangling precariously from her jaws. Somewhere a cow was calling, and then another, and then the first one again. I sought them out, following the sound to the south end of the barn, where I could finally see old Rosey with her head down to the hay. There were at least half a dozen goats in with her, and a younger cow. This was the largest enclosure of the barn, and only a wire fence and a crooked unlatched gate separated me from the animals.
I put the hook in place when the goats started crowding toward the fence, pushing their noses at me, hoping for a treat. There was a stack of hay in one corner, but they ignored it to gather around me, all but Rosey and one little nanny goat that stood busily licking away at something I couldn’t quite see. I almost turned away, but the nanny raised her head, and I could see then what she found so interesting. A boot. An old, brown, man’s boot, well worn and patched.
George Hammond’s. Sure as I was standing. Fear clutched at my throat so tight I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t see but the bottom and one side of the boot sticking out from the edge of the hay. If he was in it, he was lying still.
I forced the gate open and pushed my way through the goats. The beasts kept on crowding me, getting in my way, and I shoved at them and hit one right between the ears, my eyes blurring and my breath coming in short, hard gasps. I couldn’t call out to him now. I was too afraid, even at this distance, that there’d be no answer.
George was in the boot. Backed up in the hay with Rosey standing over him like a protective mother, a pair of goats cuddled at his chest and the nanny now nudging at his knees. He was blue with cold. I was afraid to touch him and couldn’t help thinking of Joe, how he’d looked running to our house just yesterday, scared and urgent. I hadn’t had the sense then to be worried for him. I hadn’t had the faintest inkling.
Then George moved, just the slightest bit. Rosey leaned her nose down to him, but I pushed at her and fell down on my knees at his side. He opened his eyes and looked at me, but it wasn’t him, really. Not the same as he’d been. He looked empty.
“Mr. Hammond, can you get up?”
He closed his eyes and turned his face away from me.
“Mr. Hammond! You have to get up! You have to come in the house!”
“No.” He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“You have to!” I screamed, all of my anger pouring out at him. I grabbed at his icy arm and gave him a mighty pull. “You have to! You’re gonna die if you don’t! And one of your sons is gonna find you laying here and wonder why you wouldn’t even try!”
He opened his eyes, and for a minute I thought he was going to come to himself. But he shook his head again, his voice now as cold and horrible as his touch. “Get away from me.” He shoved me back against Rosey’s leg, and she stepped away from us. The goats were crowding in again, and he let them. I pushed them back.
“Mr. Hammond, you got ten kids to think about! You’re cold as ice. You got to get to the house. You got to.”
I tried to grasp his arm again, but he pulled it away from me. “I can’t go in there. Don’t you unnerstand? I can’t.”
I stood. One goat came nibbling at my skirt, and the nanny commenced to licking at George’s boot again. He curled his legs up to him, shivering. I could see that it wasn’t his right mind, this thing that had hold on him. It wasn’t his right mind to stay out here in the hay with the goats and the cows, despairing of life.
“Wilametta didn’t ask to leave you this way,” I told him. “She wouldn’t want you just giving up.”
“Get away from me.”
He looked hard, vicious, and I knew he’d shove me again if I tried to touch him. There was nothing I could do to make him get up. I couldn’t wrestle a man bigger than me and carry him in the house. I couldn’t convince him, not with my rational talk. He was half crazed or more, whether from the grief or the cold or both, and not even looking on me as a friend.
But I couldn’t let him die. I couldn’t just wait around till somebody got through, and then tell them where to find one more frozen body. Not one more.
I’d get his coat. I realized then I should’ve carried it with me to the barn. I should’ve known I might’ve found him in here and he’d be needing it. Stupid, that’s what I was. Stupid. But I couldn’t make any more mistakes. Not now. George Hammond was all they had left.
I’d bring blankets too. Even if he wouldn’t get up, they’d feel so good he wouldn’t refuse them. I’d bring every blanket I could find, and his coat. I’d get a fire blazing again and heat him some coffee or something to warm his insides. I’d make him come to himself. God help me, I’d make him see.
I turned to the rickety gate, but the other cow was standing right in front of it. Two goats were trying to nibble at my skirt now, and I swatted them both away. I squeezed by the cow, and she stuck her nose against my neck and made me jump.
I ran out of the barn and into the snow, picking up my feet high in the drifts. But my boot stuck in one, and I fell face down in the snow and stayed there for a moment, stunned. Oh, God, it would be so easy just to lay here, do nothing, and die. It would be easy, but it wouldn’t be right.
I got myself up with tears cold on my face and pushed on to the house. I was nearly inside before it dawned on me that I should’ve been carrying in a load of firewood as I came. Stupid. Stupid. People dying on me and all I could be was stupid. I grabbed George’s coat off the floor and the blanket that was draped on the sitting room chair. I looked around the room. I should have another blanket. Maybe two. There were those in Wilametta’s room. But no. There would be more in the loft.
I went up the ladder quickly. The loft was nothing much but bedding all over the floor. I grabbed the two closest blankets and hurried back down, too fast. One of the blankets caught under my foot and I fell, hard, from the second rung. Devil be hanged, I wasn’t going to stop though. I wrestled myself up off the floor, grabbed those blankets and George’s coat, and tore outside.
Right away I slid off the bottom porch step and into a drift. But I wouldn’t yield to this either. I wasn’t going to lose again. I wasn’t going to give up and die or just stay here and bawl. I picked myself up all over again, brushed the snow off the blankets, and hurried as fast as I could back to Mr. Hammond.
He hadn’t moved an inch. And just like I’d thought, he didn’t refuse the coat or the blankets I tucked around him. I asked him again to come in, but he only shook his head. So I told him I’d be right back, and headed for the fi
rewood. If he’d drink something warm, maybe it’d help him. Maybe he’d look different on things and come and get warm by the fire. I’d have to get some heat in the cookstove and fireplace both. Get the house real warm again in case he came in. He’d have to eventually. He’d have to face Wilametta in that back room and then go on with the life he had ahead of him.
I went and fed the coals in the cookstove first and put on water to heat. Then I got the fireplace going, and it looked like life in this place again. I thought maybe I should make more than coffee. Maybe I should cut up some of those potatoes for a broth. George would need his strength. He’d need all the strength he could get to go over the timber and tell his children.
Nobody could come by the road; I was resigned to that. But somebody determined enough could get out on foot. I’d prayed for Samuel to come, but now I prayed he wouldn’t. He had all the children over there to look after; he couldn’t just leave them alone. And it wouldn’t be right to send any of them out in this either. It was just getting worse. Thank God, at least, that last night’s crazy wind had gone.
I carried in two more loads of wood, checking on George both times just to make sure he was still under the blankets. Snowflakes as big as my thumb floated down like they’d been asked for. How ironic, I thought. After the dry summer, we’d prayed for Christmas snow, and now here it is. But Christmas. Oh, Lord. At such a time as this.
I was peeling potatoes into a pot when the knife slipped into my finger. Seeing the red, oozing line of blood, I broke down. I’d come here to help, but everything I did was worthless. I was falling apart, bleeding onto George Hammond’s potatoes. If it was me dead, only me, it would be so much better. Everybody would be all right. I got the blood stopped and made myself still stand there, though my knees felt like buckling clear to the floor. I made myself stand there and finish those potatoes with my tears dripping down. Emma wouldn’t quit. Emma would be strong enough to do what needed done without complaining. Even Wila would rise to the occasion. They were so much better than me. They were so…so…
Gone. Just gone. And nobody else in this world even knew it.
It was too much. I dropped the knife on the countertop and looked behind me to the Bible I’d so irreverently left on the floor by the fire. Psalm 46. That’s what Emma had wanted. For the first time I wondered why.
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble…”
I read it out loud as though there were anxious throngs waiting just to hear.
“We will not fear, though the earth be removed…”
Tears clouded my eyes, and I could not read on. As I hugged the book to my chest, I cried for the dear soul who’d given me these words in her last moments. God was still here, somewhere, even in the pain that tore through me and the despair that clutched at my heart. Some way, his way, he would make things right again.
SIX
Samuel
I couldn’t make syrup the way Julia did, so I served pancakes with the blackberry jelly she and Emma had made over the summer. The younger boys would’ve kept me busy a long time making more, but Joe was anxious to get going, and I didn’t want another Hammond son going out alone. So Lizbeth took over flipping the pancakes while Sarah and Rorey played with the baby. And I piled on layers of shirts, my gloves, and Robert’s hat, hoping that Sam Hammond, who had my coat, was warm and safe somewhere.
I told Lizbeth we’d be back by noontime, maybe with Juli if Wila was feeling better. I told Robert to keep a special eye on Harry, who was hardly ever in one place more than half a minute straight. I could see how that boy alone could weary Wilametta or Lizbeth, or both. But his older brothers paid him almost no attention.
Harry was out the door twice in the time it took me to button my top shirt, the heavy double flannel I’d used for a fall jacket. I pulled him off the porch rail, and he kicked me and told me he was a wild Indian on a horse and I couldn’t stop him with all the soldiers in the county.
“Scoot into your teepee,” I told him. “And stay out of the weather till you’ve got extra leggings.”
He laughed. “I’ll go upstairs. It’s a mountain. And you can’t climb it.”
“Fine.”
Sarah came to the door for a hug. I thought at first she was going to protest me going, but she was still wrapped up in the fun of having her best friend overnight. “Tell Mama we’re playin’ school today,” she said. “Me an’ Rorey is taking turns bein’ teacher.” I smiled and nodded, and she made me promise to give Juli a kiss from her.
Franky asked to come along, and Joe adamantly refused to let him. I had to agree, though I felt sorry for poor Franky. He was the only one taking our departure gravely, except maybe Lizbeth, but she was so busy with a houseful of kids around her that it was hard to tell.
“Tell Pa I didn’t mean to break the clock,” he whispered to me.
“I doubt he’s fretting over a clock today, son.”
He shrugged, doubting my words and still stewing. I could see it in his eyes. “Help your big sister,” I said. Then I turned to Kirk, the oldest of the boys that would be left. “You too.”
“I need water in,” Lizbeth said. “Gonna have to boil the diapers I brung and hang ’em by the fire. All right with you, Mr. Wortham, if I use a dishtowel to put Emma Grace in till the others is dry?”
“Do what you need to. I’ll get some more from your mother while we’re over there.”
“Ain’t many clean,” she admitted. “I was fixin’ to wash yesterday.”
I wondered what Juli would think of diapering the baby with dishtowels. Probably wouldn’t bother her. She was always making do. I tried to think if there’d be anything they’d need from over here, but I couldn’t figure what it might be. So we left, Joe Hammond and me, making just as quick of tracks as we could into the timber.
It wasn’t long before I realized that most of the landmarks I knew in these woods were covered in snow. I might’ve gotten lost if Joe hadn’t known his way so well. He never wavered from his direction, just pressed on through the drifts, and I did my best to keep up.
More snow was fluttering down on our faces, and I groaned inside, thinking of the long wait they’d surely had for the doctor, and were probably still having. Coming clear from Belle Rive by the road, the doctor would encounter even more difficulty getting through than we were having, if he’d attempted to venture out at all.
The pond lay buried and invisible, and I wouldn’t even have known it was there if Joe hadn’t pointed out the top corner of Willard Graham’s grave marker on the hill above it. About then, the snow stopped coming down. Joe pulled his coat tight and hurried even faster. Lord, may it warm enough to start things melting, may the doctor have a sleigh, or better still, may Wilametta have no need of him now.
It was almost spooky when we finally broke through the trees into the Hammonds’ field. The house and all the outbuildings stuck up from the drifts, stark and gray, as if they were features of the nature-claimed landscape, hugged in by the snow. The place looked like it had been long abandoned, silent as the timber we’d passed through.
“Pa must’ve fed the stock already, or they’d be bellerin’,” Joe whispered. Somehow he sensed it right to whisper, as though out of respect for the silence that lay around us. “We oughta check the barn first, though, jus’ to be sure. Pa won’t mind me comin’ if he knowed it was for chores first thing.”
The closer we got to the big old barn, the tighter I felt in my stomach. I turned my eyes to the house, hoping we’d find the best of news. There was just a thin trail of smoke out the chimney and what looked like tracks in the snow on the front steps. George had surely come out and fed the stock, just as Joe said. But then we heard the pigs start up squealing, loud and deliberate.
“Shoot,” Joe said. He stopped in his tracks for the first time, and I could see his eyes turn to the house. He looked a man already, standing there with the worry drawing his face tight. He didn’t say another word, but he didn’t have to. If his father
hadn’t fed those pigs yet, pigs he prized, there had to be some reason, and it couldn’t be good.
I more than half expected Joe to run for the house. But he kept himself moving straight to the barn. It was a strong thing for him to do. He was just a kid, but with one decision he was more a man, taking on himself what needed to be done.
He went straight for the hogs, pulling a bucket down off a hook on the wall and filling it full of corn from a huge barrel. “You ever milk goats?” he asked me.
“No.”
“Well, there’s two to do, plus old Rosey. I’d thank ya to take one of ’em.”
I didn’t know why I didn’t go on to the house. Joe knew far better than I did what to do out here and would’ve managed without me. But I didn’t want to leave him; I knew it wouldn’t be right. And he didn’t seem to want me to, either. He was going to need my help with something more than milking, I knew that in my spirit somehow. Strong as he was, he was still a kid.
We found George in with the milk cow, wrapped in blankets and with three goats snuggled against him. He was staring up at the rafters, blue with cold.
Joe dropped his feed bucket and ran to him. “Pa! What you doin’ out here?”
George wasn’t of a right mind. I could tell it. He didn’t even look at Joe, didn’t blink his eyes.
“Let me alone, boy,” he said, his voice raspy. “Ain’t nothin’ you can do.”
“You sick, Pa?”
No answer. George shut his eyes and didn’t help in the slightest when Joe tried to lift him. I leaned to help, and we finally got him to a sitting position but had to hold him. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stay up on his own.
“C’mon, Pa. We gotta get you inside.”
He didn’t look at either of us. He just said no, plain as day and incredible as snow in the summertime.
