by Leisha Kelly
Before long they were bundled up, though I would’ve felt better about them waiting till morning. I’m not sure why. The weather was not a problem that evening, and it would be a relief in a way to have them home. But I fretted and stewed inside even as I wrapped another blanket around Emma Grace and got my and Sarah’s scarves for Lizbeth and Rorey.
“Oh, Lizbeth! I left Emma’s coat over to your house! I wish I’d thought to bring it. She would want you to have it, I know she would, and you’re just not warm enough in your thin wrap. Take my coat for now, please. You’ve got a ways to walk.”
“That ain’t necessary, Mrs. Wortham,” she told me. “I’ll be just fine.”
But I persuaded her, and she took my coat, promising to send it back with one of the boys tomorrow.
“Bring it Christmas,” I told her.
“You been a fine host,” she said. “We thank ya for all your help.”
“You’re very welcome.” I was hoping she’d hug me. But she didn’t; she wasn’t one to volunteer a hug toward anyone. And I wasn’t sure what she’d think if I approached her. She’d back away from it, that’s what I expected.
But Rorey hugged me. “Bye,” she said, and nothing else.
“Goin’ home,” Berty told me.
“I know.”
“We’ll come play Injun with ya some other time,” Harry offered with complete seriousness. “We got cookies ready to take?”
“Right here.” I handed him a paper bag and then gave Franky and Willy each a bag of other things. Lizbeth held Emma Grace. Joe picked up Berty. And Samuel lifted Harry and his bag of cookies.
Sarah came up beside me and took my hand, and Robert stood watching as his father struck out again through the timber with all those Hammond kids bundled as well as we’d been able.
“They’ll be back,” Robert said when they disappeared into the woods. “Before Christmas.”
I didn’t know why he’d say such a thing. I hoped he was wrong. But, oh, I hoped Samuel was right and that George was ready and they’d all be okay.
“Dad’s gonna make ’em a sled,” Robert announced. “And it’s a good thing.”
“Can we make them something too, Mommy?” Sarah asked. “Can we?”
“Yes, and we’ll have to hurry. There’s only the rest of today and tomorrow before Christmas.”
It was getting dark when Samuel got back, and he was exhausted but happy to report that things had gone smoothly enough at the Hammond house. George was more like his old self than any of us had seen him for days. And though the kids were all quiet in that house that had always been so loud, they had all seemed to be all right with it. And young Sam had come back with Mr. Felder’s promise to work him at least a day a week for a while, and that was better than a lot of men had right then, my Samuel included.
I stitched a scrap of an old linen sheet into a simple doll shape and then, knowing she’d approve, I stuffed it with some of Emma’s old stockings cut in little pieces. I let Sarah pick out yarn for the hair and colored thread for the nose and mouth. Two buttons out of Emma’s button jar would make the eyes.
“This is going to be so pretty!” Sarah exclaimed. “I just know she’ll like it. But Mommy, oh! We need two presents for Rorey because it’s her birthday too!”
I nodded. “I wish you had more clothes so we could share. But you need everything you’ve got to wear, and we won’t be able to get more very soon. Maybe I could make something, though, if I work quickly enough.”
We went to Emma’s closet again, and I pulled out all the spare fabric we had to work with, which included what was left of Willard’s old shirts and trousers and things. Emma scarcely ever threw out anything because she used so many scraps in her quilting. Then her blouses and dresses caught my eye. She would want them put to use too. Of course she would; that’s the way she was. And she had been skinny, the way Lizbeth was skinny.
My hand went to a soft pink button-down blouse, and I knew what I wanted to do for Lizbeth. Of course, anything of Emma’s I’d share with her or use for any of the rest of them. But for Christmas there ought to be something special. I carefully removed the regular collar from that blouse and then cut the lace collar and cuffs from a dress of mine that had torn badly. That lovely pink blouse with a new lace collar and lace edging around its cuffs looked truly pretty, and I was pleased with myself over it. But Rorey and the boys would be more of a challenge.
I finally decided to give Sam a hat that had been Willard’s, and Willy Emma’s garden gloves, because he was small enough to fit them. I could give Franky the shirt that Robert had outgrown; it wasn’t worn too badly because it had been for school or church and not at home.
“I could give Rorey a book, Mommy,” Sarah said. “I got three.”
“Oh, honey, are you sure?”
“Yeah. If I want to read that one again, I can read it with her when we visit each other.”
“Okay. That would save me a bit of time not to have to make something else. We still have to make the doll a dress.”
And figure out something for Joe, Kirk, Harry, and Berty too. Then I remembered something Grandma Pearl had made for me when I was little. It hadn’t taken long—I’d watched her do it. A little cloth ball, made from a towel on the outside, stuffed with rags. I’d had such fun with that, rolling and tossing it, and I even took it into the washtub with me. I would make two small ones, one for each little boy.
Samuel and Robert had brought in wood from the barn and gotten their start on a sled, working on the kitchen floor where they could benefit from the cookstove’s warmth. But all our eyes were drooping now. We’d have to finish everything tomorrow. Rorey’s doll dress, the sled, something for Joe and Kirk. And something for George.
Only when we were in bed did Samuel tell me the way George had been. We figured that having the children around him might be the only way to lift him out of his hopelessness and help him gain a renewed sense of purpose. They needed him. Surely he’d see that.
It was sunny in the morning, and I was scurrying about, thinking of the gifts and what we could make to feed so many. Christmas. Tomorrow.
Completely to my surprise, Barrett Post came with his team and sleigh before the morning was half gone. Samuel went out to meet him, and I thought he’d just come to talk, but pretty soon both of them came in the house, each carrying a huge bundle.
“You ever roast turkey where you’re from?” Mr. Post asked as he came in the kitchen door. “Louise said it’ll take a good three hours to roast this ’un, maybe more.”
“Turkey?” I could scarcely believe it.
“I was by the Hammonds’ last night, an’ they said they’d be here Christmas, else I’d a’ brought a lot a’ this straight over there.”
Sweet potatoes. Three pies. Cranberries. Oh, it’d been so long since I’d seen cranberries! Home-canned peaches and home-canned corn. And the turkey was one of the biggest I’d ever seen. “Oh, thank you! Tell Louise thank you!”
“Kinda figured you had potatoes an’ enough flour for rolls an’ such.”
“Yes. Yes, we do.” I was overwhelmed by this generosity, and Samuel must’ve been too, because he didn’t say a word.
“Them Hammonds is a lot a’ mouths to feed. They need help for sure this Christmas, an’ it wouldn’t be neighborly to leave it all on you.”
“Thank you so much,” I told him again. “God bless you.”
“Now that’s exactly what Emma would say,” Barrett declared. “Only she’d say God was wantin’ to bless me more, if I’d let him.” He was quiet a minute. “You all believe like she did, don’t ya? You all believe she’s in a real heaven right now, singing with angels or some such?”
“That’s what the Bible tells us, Barrett,” Samuel said. “That they who believe shall receive eternal life.”
“What if you don’t know if somebody believed or not?” He was looking uncomfortable.
“God knows their heart,” Samuel told him. “We don’t know for sure, but we can hope th
at God touched them and that they received his grace and are with him right now.”
“My pappy was a good man,” Barrett said. “Never went to church, though. He was killed by a couple a’ crooks when he wouldn’t let ’em steal his wagon team. Don’t know if I ever tol’ you that.”
“No, I don’t think you did,” Samuel said.
“Mama grieved pitiful, said she couldn’t stand to think a’ him burnin’ in hell, an’ I couldn’t neither. Couldn’t stand to believe God’d do that when he was a good pappy to me. I never went to church with her again. Guess that grieved her too.”
“It surely must have, but we don’t know the workings of God with a man when he comes close to his death,” Samuel said. “We don’t know but that maybe God was talking to his heart, and maybe your dad cried out to him, even just before he died.”
“But you reckon that’d count for anything?”
“Of course,” Samuel assured him. “Scripture says that whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
“They shot him four times. You sayin’ he might a’ called on God while he was layin’ there bleedin’?”
“It’s sure possible. Likely, even. I’d have been calling on God if it was me.”
Barrett looked especially somber. “Can’t say that I wouldn’t. That much is true. Things looks differ’nt when death is starin’ at ya.” He turned to the door. “Better be goin’, I guess. We all got our work to do.”
“Thank you again, Mr. Post,” I said quickly.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “You was about to say God bless me again. But you know, he has. For a lot a’ years now too, an’ I ain’t exactly figgered out why. Emma prayin’ for me though, that’s prob’ly what it’s been.”
“And your mother’s prayers,” Samuel added. “Even if it was long ago.”
Barrett looked struck suddenly, more than I’d ever seen him. He didn’t even try to say anything else, just tipped his hat hastily and headed back out our door.
“Every one of the Posts is going to come to know the Lord because of all this,” Samuel told me when he was gone. “I can feel it in my bones.”
EIGHTEEN
Samuel
I let Robert pick the length of the sled we were making, and true to his word, he wanted a long one. It would fit three or four Hammonds easily. I just hoped it would be good and fast. Without metal runners, I’d used a couple of planks about an inch by three inches and five feet long, carved them down some, and then left the ends to soak overnight. Now we had to put the bend to them with the help of a vise and a couple of clamps. Sanded smooth and greased slick, they would do just fine, provided they took the bend. I hadn’t had any trouble with that before, but I’d had more time for it too.
Robert seemed happy, helping me piece together the top, but he must’ve been thinking too, because it didn’t take him long to start asking questions.
“Are we gonna stay here?”
“I don’t know how long we’ll be here, Robert. But you shouldn’t worry.”
“But where would we go if we left?”
“Well, there’s all kinds of options. Mt. Vernon, Vandalia, Springfield. Maybe even Pennsylvania again—”
“I’d rather stay close around here.”
“Well, I like it here too, but there’s not much for work or housing around.”
“What about Grandma in New York?”
I was surprised he would ask, surprised he would remember her. I’d talked to her with a telephone once and written letters a few times, but we hadn’t seen her since we made the trip from Harrisburg to show her newborn Sarah when Robert was almost five. “We won’t be going there,” I told him.
“She’s not like Emma much, is she?”
“No. Not hardly.”
“Does she make cookies?”
“Can’t say for sure now. She didn’t use to, but that’d be a pleasant change if she’s ever taken it up, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I’d like it.” He was quiet for a second. “Dad, why don’t you like her?”
Such a question. “I like her. I love her, more like. It’s just hard to be around her sometimes.”
“Why?”
He didn’t remember. Probably a good thing. “She’s not very patient with kids, son. And she drinks too much. At least she used to.”
“How come she doesn’t write?”
“I don’t know.” It wasn’t something I really wanted to talk about right then. My mother would visit my older brother in the penitentiary but scarcely give me the time of day. Been that way for years. “You think you’re something, Sam Wortham,” she’d said once. “You think you’re better than us. But you’re nothing but Bible-toting trash.”
How I’d prayed for her. But she didn’t want anything to do with God, and she didn’t want anything to do with me. Or my children.
“I’m gonna miss Emma,” Robert suddenly said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Me too.”
Juli called us for lunch, and we all sat down to a hodgepodge of things the neighbors had brought that we hadn’t had room to carry over to the Hammonds.
“I know what I’m going to make for Joe and Kirk,” Juli announced happily. “And George too, I think. You know the tie Emma made you, Robert?”
He nodded. Cut from sturdy old green drapery, it was one of the nicer ties I’d seen, and with interesting texture.
“There’s enough of those curtains left,” Julia said. “I don’t suppose they’d mind having matching ties for church?”
“I don’t think they ever had no kinda ties for church, Mom,” Robert said.
“Well, then, this’ll be just the thing. Maybe I can make the rest of the boys some another time.”
“Mommy made the doll dress!” Sarah exclaimed. “All pretty with rickrack and ruffles! Rorey’s really, really gonna like that! Her new dolly’s just as pretty as Bessie!”
It was nice to have the kids so excited about giving. It was nice to be able to give. Though we had, by last count, only forty-three cents to our name, we had willing hearts and Emma’s legacy.
Julia must’ve been thinking the same thing. “Emma would be pleased,” she told us. “She said we’re always rich when we have faith, so we can always find a way to give.”
I couldn’t deny the truth of that. Emma had tried to give me this farm. She might even have her way still, though I couldn’t let that concern me one way or the other at the moment. She’d long decided to forgive George Hammond’s debt and give him his farm too. She hadn’t really held anything to be her own, just had it in her hands as long as she needed it, until someone else needed it more.
We scarcely did anything then but the necessary chores and finishing up our gifts for the Hammonds. And it was a good thing we’d been so diligent with what time we had, because at no later than two that afternoon, we heard something off in the timber. I looked out the window and saw Franky come crashing through the trees. At first I thought something was wrong, but he didn’t seem to have anything distressing to report.
“We—we come back early, if you don’t mind,” he told me, all out of breath. And I didn’t have to wonder who the “we” was for long.
Joe came stepping out of the trees with Berty on his shoulders, followed by Kirk and Lizbeth with the baby, then Willy, Harry, and Rorey all in a line. Everybody but the big boy, Sam. And George.
“Pa said it’d be all right to come back over here,” Lizbeth told me with something distant and strained in her eyes. “He’s still plannin’ on comin’ in the mornin’, far as I know.”
“Is everything all right?”
She assured me that it was, though I knew it wasn’t. Juli rushed out the back door of the house and helped get all the little ones inside to sit down, unbundle, and warm up a bit.
“How’s your father today?” I asked Joe, hoping for more detail than Lizbeth was willing to provide. But it was Kirk who answered me.
“He’s got him a bottle. Said he weren’t gonna do nothin’ but sip off t
he top, but it’s more’n half gone by now.”
“Let’s play school again,” Rorey said to Sarah, not appearing touched by the worry burdening her older brothers and sister.
The little girls ran off together, and the little boys were soon scurrying around as well. But Joe was looking heartbroken. “I knew it was better to get the little ones away, Mr. Wortham. You don’t mind, do you?”
The despair in him made me wonder what the older kids may have gone through that the younger ones were too little to remember. And I was angry at George for putting them through it again, especially now. “Where’d he get a bottle?” I had to ask, finding it hard to imagine that George would just go off somewhere, especially after I’d brought all his needy children home. And liquor was illegal. Where could it have come from?
“I dunno where he got it,” Joe confessed. “He ain’t been no place. I jus’ hope he ain’t got another’n hid back.”
I was hot inside, and I knew Julia could tell. She was looking at me with worry.
“Samuel, what are you going to do?”
“I’m going over there.”
“He ain’t gonna listen to you,” Joe said. “Nobody but Mama could keep him sober. If his babies can’t do it, nothing can.”
Those were hopeless words, and I didn’t want to acknowledge how true they seemed. If George wouldn’t abstain for all his children who needed him so much, why did I think he’d hear a word I said? But I wanted to see young Sam as much as George. He’d been to Buzz Felder’s, less than a quarter mile from town. Might he have brought his father liquor? Could he have?
“Samuel…” Julia started to say something but stopped.
“I need to talk to them,” I said. “I won’t be gone long.”
But Lizbeth shook her head. “Be all right if you’d stay a while. Keep ’em from hurtin’ each other.” She didn’t say anything else. She just walked off, but not before I saw the tears in her eyes. The poor girl, over here like this with all her younger brothers and sisters to take care of. Christmas Eve. God help her.
