by Leisha Kelly
TWENTY-FOUR
Samuel
I rose up several times in the night, restless. And then in my dream I heard the door. I woke up in the stillness, and the first thing I did was check to see if everybody was still there. Juli and the children all slept peacefully. But in George’s place there was only an empty blanket.
I pulled on my coat and boots in a hurry. The boys had planned on chores this morning, his farm and ours, so he didn’t have any need to be up and gone without saying a word. I ran out into the cold and was surprised to find fresh snow almost to my boot tops and more coming down. Much of the snow had melted in the warmer spell we’d had. But here it was, back again. It was dark with no moon, but there was a faint glow to the east, enough for me to make out George’s fresh tracks heading off into the timber toward home.
“Let him go,” some people would’ve said. “Maybe he just needs to be by himself a while longer.”
But I had a nasty feeling, a burning in my gut that I knew wouldn’t leave me alone.
The wind was picking up. Juli and the kids would be waking any minute. I knew I should go in and tell them what I was doing, but I didn’t want them worrying all over again. I didn’t want them all rousting out and trying to come with me to see whatever it was I’d find. Oh, Lord, help, I prayed. Let me be wrong about all this.
I tried to tell myself that maybe George just saw the snow and decided it was his job to get out and tend to his stock. Maybe he thought we’d know that, or that he’d get back before we were very many of us awake anyway. I didn’t know how long it’d been since he left. I couldn’t be sure exactly when I’d heard that door. But I prayed it wasn’t long. Maybe he wasn’t far ahead of me.
I hurried, wishing I knew what George was thinking about. I fell twice in the trees; it was getting harder to see my way. Just yesterday the trail had been plain, but the dry, blowing snow had covered it all up again and now was working at skirting away George’s fresh tracks. I should’ve at least wakened Julia to tell her where I was going, but then others might’ve woken too. I figured there was no use thinking about it now. I could get to the Hammonds’ house all right. And maybe I’d find George making coffee, just wanting to greet the sunrise in the home he’d shared with Wilametta for so long.
It was hard going after I lost George’s tracks. What a fine sack of potatoes it would be if I got out here and got myself lost! The trees and everything looked just the same, and I knew it would be easy to get a little turned around in the whipping wind. But the hint of dawn in the east was enough to help my progress, and I thanked God for it.
“George!” I hollered, just hoping he might still be close enough to hear me. If he knew someone was out looking for him, maybe he’d have the decency to stop.
But there was no answer. I should’ve hollered sooner, maybe, whether I woke the others or not. But he was probably too far ahead then too.
“George!” I yelled again, hoping the snow would stop. I didn’t want George isolated from us at a time like this.
When I finally emerged from the trees at the edge of George’s field, I felt a whoosh of relief. Surely he’d be in the house. Just ahead of me now.
“George!” I called again, running up to the door. I found it hanging open, snow blowing right inside. He’d been here, surely he had. The snow tracked in all the way to the little wall cupboard behind the stove at the far side of the kitchen. I yelled again and checked Wila’s room and the loft, but he wasn’t in the house.
So where would he go? And what had he come here for first? Did he have another bottle hidden somewhere? Oh, Lord, I should’ve turned this house upside down and not just assumed I’d found the only one.
But then as I turned around I saw something I should’ve seen when I first came in. Wilametta’s Bible on the table, and sticking out under it, the only photograph of George and Wilametta that I had ever seen. Maybe he’d come just longing to look at it. And maybe he’d finally chosen to find comfort enough in Wila’s Bible to pick it up off the floor. But maybe, maybe he’d set them there for his children to find, something to keep and remember, something to hold on to.
I tried to shake away the thought. Surely George was in the barn right now, taking care of those chores. He’d probably think me foolish even following him over here. He’d probably be plenty irritated that I couldn’t just leave him alone to tend to his own business.
My efforts to talk myself out of the worry did no good at all. On the way to the barn I prayed, begging God to help me find him, and quickly. But unbroken snow had drifted in front of the barn door. It wasn’t likely he’d gone through there without leaving some sign, but I shoved the big sliding door open and stumbled in anyway, just hoping. A low moo and the sound of shuffling feet welcomed me.
“George?”
I looked in one stall after another, and the hayloft, but found only animals. Where could he have gone? Surely somewhere close. When I was outside again I thought I heard something just for a moment, above the wind. My eyes settled on the implement shed in the distance, where George kept the tractor that had belonged to Emma’s husband. What earthly reason could he have to go there this morning? Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he’d done what he thought he needed to do already and started back. But I’d have to check, on the strength of that one tiny sound.
“George!”
No answer still. I ran through drifts almost to my knees, a tightness growing painful inside me. The large door was halfway open, and as I got close in the small light of morning, I could see a shadowy figure on the back of the tractor.
“Hey! George!”
He just stood there like he hadn’t heard me. And maybe he hadn’t, for all the furious wind. But when I stepped in the doorway, I could see the long, thin line stretched from where he stood to a rafter in the ceiling. A rope. And he was holding one end in his hands.
“No!” I ran forward screaming, but he wasn’t paying me any attention. Just before he got the rope around his neck, just before his feet left the tractor to dangle in mid-air, I got to him. I rammed him, knocking the rope out of his hand, and him down to the hard dirt floor.
“What are you doing? Are you crazy? What are you doing!”
He tried to shove at me, and I hit him, hard.
“Don’t fight me!” I screamed. “Don’t you dare fight me!”
He lay there for a minute, and I could see the angry shadows etched across his face. I thought he’d say something to me. He was shaking.
“George—”
He didn’t give me time to get another word out. He sprang up like a wildcat, knocking me into the dirt, and started pounding at me with his fists. I had to twist around, grab him by the waist, and pull him off balance. And still he wouldn’t stop.
“George! For God’s sake, listen to me!” I shoved him again, just to put some distance between us, and this time he didn’t come roaring back.
“Why should I listen to you?” he demanded. “You don’t know nothin’! Jus’ get off your sorry duff an’ get outta here! I ain’t none a’ your business!”
“You’re all of my business right now! Your ten children in my house are my business! What in blazes are you tryin’ to do to them, George?”
He stared at me. When he spoke, his voice sounded deathly hollow. “Jus’ like I tol’ the pastor. I aim to do right by ’em.”
“You call this right? To hang yourself on your little girl’s birthday?”
“Shut up.”
“I won’t. Is this what you want her to remember? Every birthday for the rest of her life, thinkin’ that her daddy had more coward in him than care about her? That you’d rather die than be with your family?”
“You don’t unnerstand! You don’t know what it’s like! I ain’t got nothin’ for ’em! I ain’t never had nothin’! It’d be better for ’em to be with somebody else. You can see that with your own eyes if you jus’ take a look. But they won’t want it! Not unless—”
“George, you can’t think—”
“
Shut up and let me finish! I seen it, Wortham. I seen how it is. All I ever did for them kids was set ’em about chores or whack ’em once or twice when they got outta line! Wila done everythin’ else. They’d be better off with you. I seen it. You know how to make a kid smile, you do. Like you was born to be father to more’n two. An’ Julia, she’s good as gold, good as anybody could—”
“George—”
“I said shut up! They’s happy with you! Can’t you see that? They ain’t never looked at me how they’s already lookin’ at you, you blame fool! What are you doin’ over here, anyhow? I’m tryin’ to give ’em a chance! You can’t see that? If you don’t take ’em all, there’s the pastor. They ain’t got none yet. He’d learn ’em plenty, I’m a-knowin’ he would!”
“Now listen here—”
“No! I can’t hol’ a candle to you nor him when it comes to kids! I can’t do it without Wilametta! I don’ even want to. Can’t you unnerstand?”
“I’m trying to, George. But your kids wouldn’t agree with you. It’s bad enough, the hurt of losing their mother. If you take away their pa, it’ll tear them apart. That can’t be what you want.”
“They’d be all right. They’s all right with you already. I seen it.”
I had to protest that. “No, you haven’t seen it. You haven’t seen them crying themselves to sleep. Because when you were there last night, George, they didn’t cry. They had their father. And I’ll never be that. Neither will the pastor, no matter how good we can try to be as friends.”
He was quiet for a minute, and I prayed that my words were soaking in. I’d managed to stop him. I’d gotten that far. But what could I do if he wouldn’t let this madness go, if he just waited a while and then tried again? Lord have mercy.
“I figgered you’d be the one to find me, Wortham. I was hopin’ it’d be you. But not this soon.” He looked up at me, and I could see his eyes stormy in the dawn glow. “I care ’bout them kids. I do. Didn’t want one a’ the boys findin’ me when they come to do chores or somethin’. You’d be the only one have call to touch this tractor. That’s why I come in here. You or Albert Graham, an’ it wouldn’t bother him much t’ find—”
“It’d bother anybody,” I protested. “Don’t kid yourself. It’d still break your kids’ hearts, no matter who found you.”
“You can give ’em a lot more’n I can.”
“No, I can’t, George. I’ve got no more money than you have, and no more claim to my home. Looks to me like we’re almost in the same boat. We’re in God’s hands together.”
“I wish you’d just leave me alone.”
“I can’t. And I can’t be party to what you’re thinking to do.”
“What in blazes you gonna do about it, Wortham? Follow me around from here on?”
“If I have to.”
“Precious little work you can get done that way.”
“Not much this time of year anyway without getting hired on somewhere, and you know the chance of that.”
He sat on the cold dirt floor, studying me. “An’ what if I say I ain’t goin’ no place? Not for nothin’?”
I had to sigh. “Then I guess I’ll be here a while.”
“Well,” he said real slow, “guess a man can ’preciate you carin’ for the kids thisaway. It’s kinda like I told ya.”
“I reckon I’d be here to stop you just the same, even if you didn’t have kids.”
“If I didn’t have kids, I wouldn’t a’ waited till Christmas was done.”
“What about Rorey’s birthday? You know it matters to her. Juli making a cake won’t make a bit of difference if you’re not there. She’ll think you didn’t care enough.”
“If I agree on her birthday, then…willikers! There’s Franky’s in January, and then—”
“You ought to think about that. They need you now, and they’re going to keep on needing you till kingdom come, George. What would Wilametta tell you? Would she want you abandoning them this way?”
His eyes flared at me. “She did! She abandoned us! By golly—”
“Not by choice.”
That struck him silent. He stood up and walked toward the open door, where the snow was still swirling.
“We’d better go,” I suggested. “Before we get stuck here.”
“I won’t get stuck. ’Long as you know which direction you’re headed, a little snow don’t have to stop ya.”
“Will you come with me, then? You know the timber better than I do when it’s snowing like this.”
He bowed his head. “That I couldn’t argue.” He was quiet for a minute, and I came up beside him, waiting.
“You think it true she didn’t choose t’ go?” he asked me in a shaky voice. “I figgered maybe she was tired a’ all the hard work. Tired a’ me, maybe, not doin’ no better’n I did.”
“Everybody gets tired. But I don’t think she had any thought to go just now, with all the little ones not even half grown. She wouldn’t leave those children any more than she’d want you to.”
“Then why’d God allow it?”
“I can’t say. I just know the devil loves giving people grief. But God has a way of bringing peace and turning things around all right again.”
“I ain’t too pleased with him right now.”
“But he’s still with you.”
I thought he might argue the point or demand to know why he couldn’t feel God right then. But he only grew quiet, his head still bowed.
“I know,” he finally admitted. “I try to shut him up, Samuel, ’cause I don’t wanna hear it. But he won’t let me alone. I knows he wants me right back over there, holdin’ Rorey’s hand. But Lizbeth’s so much better at that than I could ever be—”
“Lizbeth’s just a girl herself. She needs your hand as much as Rorey does.”
“She’s half a mama anyhow.”
“No, she’s not. Just a good big sister.”
George acknowledged my words with a nod. “You know what she used t’ wanna do? Teach school. But she ain’t even been able to go so long, we needed her to home so much. Ain’t no way for it now.”
“Yes,” I said. “There’s a way. You only have two or three younger than school age. If we help you when you’re in the fields and such, George, all the rest can go back when the new term starts. Lizbeth too.”
He almost laughed. “You talk like I’ll get to keep this place. That ain’t near sure. But I got no fields nor nothin’ else without it.”
“You’ve got your family, and if it came to that, I’m sure your church family would help you find another place.”
He didn’t say anything, just kicked at a blob of snow in the doorway.
“It felt good to be working together when you let me help you with your fall butchering, George. I expect we’ll need to keep working together from here on out.”
He scoffed. “You’re jus’ talkin’. What do you need from me?”
“Help birthing Sukey’s calf, for starters.”
He turned around to face me, something new in his eyes. “You’re serious, ain’t ya?”
“The meat you gave us at butchering was a blessing, George. And shares out of your cornfield for my work on the tractor too. You know I’ve hardly had wages for months. But we’ve been a good team already. We could keep it up and get through most anything.”
For the first time, I saw a little light in him, a hope trying to push through the doubt. “What if Albert throws us both off?”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“You’re serious! Dad-gum city boy! You think you can make anything work!”
“We have to, don’t we? We have our children to think about.”
He shook his head, looking at me and mulling it over in his mind. “Yeah,” he finally said. “Yeah, we do.”
He took a deep breath, but I could scarcely breathe at all. Lord, touch him.
“You really think we can make it?”
“Yes, George, I think we can. Emma did her best to give us both a de
cent chance, and she’d be expecting us to make the most of it. Remember how she used to say, ‘You’ve always got something, even when you’ve got nothing, ’cause that’s what God hung the world on.’”
He shook his head but almost smiled. “Po-tential. Isn’t that what she called it?”
“Faith.”
“Crazy lady. You ever think how crazy she was?”
“Crazy enough to love us, George. Not just the kids. You and me. She could see past folks thinking us a couple of failures. We’re not failures. We don’t have to be.”
“You believed her, then?”
“It was hard at first. Coming here with nothing, having nothing to give my wife and kids. For a while there, I felt like you’re feeling, that they’d be better off without me. If I couldn’t even put food on the table, what good was I?” He was still staring at me, and I was feeling a strange heat inside. “I had a friend back in Pennsylvania. When our plant shut down, we both lost our jobs and everything we’d invested. He jumped off a bridge. Left a wife and son. And for a while there, I used to think about doing the same thing.”
“Guess you musta decided again’ it.”
“I realized Emma was right. We’re put on this earth by a loving God. And he doesn’t abandon us. We’re more than our work or our money or lack of it. And our kids need their fathers. They need us to do our best and show them it’s okay to need God. Just being with them, that’s what they want.”
“I ever tell you you’d make a good preacher?”
“Yes.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I got a hard row to hoe, Sam, any way you look at it.”
“I’ll help you. Your church’ll help you. You know your boys will. They’re all primed to do whatever it takes.”
He was quiet again, looking back toward Willard’s tractor and that dangling rope. “I guess I owes it to ’em then, don’t I? ’Least to give it a try a while.”
“I’d say so.”
