The Tender Years

by Janette Oke

  “Just Uncle Luke,” her mother explained. “Aunt Abbie and Georgia have gone to see their folks at Fowler Creek. I happened to see Luke at the post office and invited him to have supper with us.”

  Virginia almost grinned. It no longer mattered so much that all of the others were down at the creek chasing frogs and sliding over moist logs. They didn’t have an Uncle Luke. An Uncle Luke who was a doctor.

  The next morning Jenny was full of exaggerated reports about the trip to the creek. Most of the comments were not directed to Virginia but spoken in her hearing. Virginia knew they were intended to be little rubs to inform her of just how much she had missed. She could have made comments of her own. Tales about her uncle Luke and his joining them for supper. She could have told of the interesting accounts of his medical adventures. About his deep laughter as he shared little family jokes with her mother and father. About how he had helped her with the supper dishes. About the fun they’d had together after supper playing ball in the backyard. Even her mama and Clara had played. And the good laugh they had all had when Clara chased a fly ball and almost ended up in the pen with Danny’s guinea pigs. But Virginia said nothing about that. She was sure that Jenny would not understand, would simply make fun of her.

  Ruthie seemed to be hanging around Jenny all day. In the lineup for the afternoon spelling bee, she even pushed herself between Jenny and Virginia. Normally Jenny would have protested loudly. But she did not. Just cast Virginia a look that warned her that her cherished position was tenuous at best.

  Virginia tried to ignore the barbs, the looks, the little titters. But it all hurt. Deep down inside it bothered her a good deal. But she didn’t know how to go about regaining her former place at Jenny’s side. What could she do to get back in Jenny’s good graces again?

  “Some of the kids have been visiting the creek.”

  The comment from her father brought heads up around the supper table. It was her mother who spoke. “Is that a problem?”

  “Sheriff Brown thinks it could be.”

  “The town kids always play at the creek,” observed Rodney without slowing his enjoyment of the shepherd’s pie.

  “But there is still some ice left. Rotten ice. It wouldn’t hold anyone’s weight and can’t be trusted. Yet it’s a temptation. Especially to the daring. The creek is already quite high, and there is a lot of snow up in the hills to melt yet. If we get a good rain, it will likely flood again this year. We’ve had an extra fall of snow this winter.”

  Virginia listened to the conversation but made no comment of her own. Her school friends had visited the creek a few more times in recent days. Each time they had returned to school triumphant, bragging about the fun they’d had and the daring exploits of their bravest members. So far nothing more than wet pant legs had resulted, although there was much joking laughter about Samuel Boycie nearly sliding in and losing his hat in the process.

  “There was this hat floating on down the creek, bobbing up and down in the current,” Jenny had said gleefully. “I said, ‘What you gonna tell your ma?’ and he said, ‘I’ll tell her ole loony Marshall’s pet crow took it.’” More shouts of laughter.

  Virginia had passed on out of earshot. She didn’t want to hear more. Jenny was intent upon rubbing in the fact that she was missing out on all the fun. Besides, she hated it when folks made fun of Rett Marshall. She knew that in a way the comments were true. He was loony. At least he was not like other folks, if that’s what loony meant. Her grandmother had told her Rett’s story.

  His folks had wanted a child so very much. His mama had lost several babies, and finally God had sent her Rett. She had been so happy, and Rett’s pa had been so proud. And then it was discovered that the baby boy was not normal. Oh, he developed physically, though progress was slow, but mentally he stayed a child. Still, they loved him. His mama, Wanda, thought of him as her forever baby, and his papa, Cam, took the small boy with him wherever he went.

  He wasn’t very old when people began to notice that he had an unusual rapport with animals. He gathered the sick and cared for the helpless and communed with the wild things. He soon became known in the community as the boy who could tame the beasts. Folks might not understand him, but they did have a strange respect for him.

  He was left to roam the hills and wander the woods to his heart’s content. To the community folk he never seemed to age. Rett just stayed as a boy, forever on the move. Forever finding new animal friends. Forever free.

  But things around him changed over the years. His folks did not have the same protection against aging. His mama was the first to go. Not an old woman, she took a bad cold that wouldn’t leave her chest. All through a long winter she coughed and choked. Virginia’s grandma and other neighbors had tried to save her. Her uncle Luke had doctored the sick woman for several months, but nothing that they could do seemed to help. She died early spring and was buried in the little cemetery by the country church.

  Her husband and son took it very hard, but they struggled on. Cam took over the cooking and cleaning, and he did a fair job of it, too, surprising even the most critical of neighbors. Folks tried to help him as they could, but each neighbor woman had her own household to attend to, and in time they discovered that he was doing just fine on his own.

  Then one day Cam showed up at her grandparents’ door. He had just paid a call on Doc Luke, he said, and found that he had a bad heart. He’d been suspicious. Funny little things had been warning him. He wasn’t concerned about himself. He was feeling rather tired and lonely, anyway, since Wanda had left. But he was concerned about Rett. What would happen to his boy once he was gone?

  The Davis family had talked about it. Prayed about it. At last they went to see Mr. Marshall. Rett was always welcome to live with them, they told him. They would care for him as long as they were able to do so. But the father had other ideas. He thought it might be best for the boy, who in actuality by now was a man well in his forties, to be in town. He’d heard of a new boardinghouse. He was going to sell the farm, set up a trust fund for his son, and move into town to get Rett settled and used to the new dwelling before his heart gave out.

  When the plans were carried out, Rett had chafed at first. Restless and anxious, he paced the one small room that was now their home, and finally his father had realized that he needed to be free. Needed to be able to roam the hills and the woods. He asked the woman who ran the boardinghouse to fix up a lunch for his son, and with that in hand, no matter what the weather, Rett set off each day. “Go ahead,” the father told the boy-man. “Just be sure to come back home at night.” And he always did, returning at the end of the day satisfied and well. Uncle Luke had said that Rett Marshall had the constitution of an ox. Virginia had no idea what that meant, but Uncle Luke always made the comment as though it was a good thing and something to be admired.

  The father and son had lived together at the boardinghouse for almost a year before Mr. Marshall’s heart finally failed him. He was gone even before Uncle Luke got there. The loss of his father only increased Rett’s wanderings. But he still came home each night. Hungry and often cold and damp—but content.

  His only problem was what to do with his pet crow. It was the only bird or beast that Rett attempted to bring in from the wild. All other creatures he insisted on leaving, healing them and returning them to their natural habitat. But the crow went with Rett wherever he went. It perched on his shoulder or flew on ahead of him. His landlady would not allow the bird to be kept in his room. Rett had to build a cage in the backyard, but he fretted some about the bird being left out there alone each night. Folks said that often when a bad storm came their way, Rett stayed right out there with the bird.

  Folks said that the crow was better at communicating than Rett himself. Mostly folks’ remarks were made without meaning to disparage the strange man. But the schoolboys were an entirely different matter. They teased and tested the man sorely. He had become the butt of many of their cruel jokes. Virginia hated it. When she had been yo
unger, she had quickly come to Rett’s defense. At one point she was even known as the loony lover. But as she had grown older and understood just how important the approval of her peers was to her, she had stopped publicly defending Rett. She felt cowardly. But she was not brave enough to defy the crowd in order to take a stand against their constant ridicule.

  Danny, however, had no such reservations. If anyone said anything cruel concerning Rett when he was within earshot, he was quick to defend the strange man. Virginia felt both pride and chagrin. She hoped that the school crowd would not link her with her younger brother. Yet she did admire his courage. However, she reminded herself that one day Danny would realize that standing up for society’s outcasts came at a big price. She was sure that when that time arrived, Danny, too, would be silent.

  CHAPTER 5

  Have you heard what that long-nose Mrs. Parker is saying now?”

  Her green eyes flashing, red hair tossed back with an angry flip, Jenny almost flung the words at Virginia. Virginia had no idea. She didn’t believe that the folks in their small town paid much attention to anything that came from the lips of Mrs. Parker. Leastwise, her own folks chose to ignore it. “Facts are facts,” her papa always said, “and until one has proof, it is merely hearsay.”

  But then her papa was an attorney. He didn’t care much about any information that couldn’t be proven solidly enough to hold up in a court of law.

  And her mama didn’t pay much mind to Mrs. Parker’s stories, either, but for a totally different reason. She quoted from the Bible about gossiping tongues. Gossip and Christian charity didn’t fit together in her mama’s mind. Family members in the Simpson household were discouraged from dragging home with them bits of neighborhood gossip.

  Virginia looked back at Jenny’s flushed face and gave her shoulders a bit of a shrug. She seemed to have been accepted back into Jenny’s good graces, but she had no idea what Mrs. Parker had said and wasn’t particularly interested. Jenny was sure riled up, though, about something.

  “She says my pa’s a drunk.”

  Virginia did not even blink. It was well known in the town that Jenny’s father was a drinker. Virginia supposed the bit of information would be seen as undisputed fact even in the eyes of her attorney father. But she did not say so to Jenny.

  “She says that he comes home and pushes me around.”

  Virginia’s eyes did widen some at that, remembering days when Jenny appeared at school with bruises here or there and funny little excuses of how she had bumped into this or banged against that.

  “She says that’s why my ma ran off.”

  “How did she find out all that?” Virginia asked innocently. An angry glare was her reply.

  Too late, she realized the implication of her words. She fumbled mentally for some words to cover her mistake but could think of nothing that would wipe the conversation slate clean again.

  It was also commonly known in the town that when Jenny’s pa had too much to drink, he babbled on and on to anyone who would listen to him about the hard luck that life had handed him and the fickle wife he’d had the misfortune of being “chained to” for seven long years. The story varied with the telling. Sometimes he’d kicked her out. Other times he sobbed uncontrollably as he told how she’d up and left him—him and his little girl—to run off with a fella she scarcely knew. Virginia’s folks never allowed such stories to be passed on at home, but Virginia had heard plenty from talk in the school yard. Would have been no problem at all for Mrs. Parker to get enough information to keep her gossipy tongue in business for weeks.

  “I hate it!” Jenny was exclaiming. “I’d love to give that old biddy something to really make her tongue wag.”

  Virginia frowned and shifted uncomfortably. She didn’t like the feel of what was in the air.

  The conversation was interrupted by the ringing of the school bell. Virginia could not help but let out her breath in relief, but Jenny was not finished. As they hurried toward the red brick building, she still raged on. “I’ll do it, too. I’ll think of something. Just you wait. That ole …” And Jenny used a word that Virginia had never heard before. Something told her that the term would not be accepted in the hearing of her mother and father. She could tell just by the ring of it, even if she had no idea what its meaning was.

  “… I’ll put her in her place—just you wait.” And Jenny angrily flipped her red hair back with that familiar toss of her head.

  Virginia was glad to feel the hard seat of her desk beneath her as she slid onto the wooden surface. It felt solid and cool. Almost a comfort after the red-hot anger of Jenny and the out-of-control feel that the girl’s flushed face and furious eyes had brought to the early morning. Surely Jenny would not go and do something stupid. Surely not.

  But even as Virginia reached for her speller, her stomach knotted. She had the unsettling feeling that Jenny just might, and for reasons she could not explain she also feared that, as Jenny’s friend, she was going to be dragged into it. To try to keep herself apart would mean Jenny’s anger. And Virginia hated more than anything to see those flashing green eyes turned on her with disdain. It was even worse than facing the punishment meted out by her parents.

  Virginia cringed.

  The days went by and Jenny did not speak about Mrs. Parker again. Virginia began to relax. Perhaps she was safe after all. At least safe where plots of revenge on the neighborhood gossip were concerned.

  But Jenny was busy with other plans. Constantly Virginia found herself being pushed in awkward corners and uncomfortable situations. The little crowd of malcontents was going across to the pasture of Mr. Moss to tease his big red bull. They set a trap for Crow Man Marshall’s pet, just to hear him squawk a bit, laughing over who would squawk the loudest—the bird or the man. Virginia had managed to bow out of these escapades with valid excuses. But it was not so easy to say no when Jenny decided they were going to the town’s hardware store to pester old Mr. Lougin. Virginia was told that the man firmly believed all school kids were thieves and that he nearly put his neck out trying to watch them all at the same time whenever they entered his store without the supervision of a parent.

  “He thinks anyone under twenty should be kept on a leash,” Freddie Crell sputtered, and ever yone in the group laughed as though it was a great joke.

  “Maybe in a cage,” hooted one of the other boys.

  “It drives him half mad,” Jenny said with great glee, “just for us to mill about a little and pretend to look at this or that. He breaks out in a sweat and his face gets red. It’s great sport.”

  The shouts of laughter seemed out of proportion with the statement, to Virginia’s way of thinking.

  She had known Mr. Lougin all of her life and had never seen him agitated in such a fashion. But then Virginia had never been in his store except with a parent or on a legitimate errand for a parent.

  “What do we do?” she asked, her voice giving away a bit of her concern.

  Jenny laughed her giggling, near-hysteria laugh. “That’s just it,” she finally choked out. “We don’t have to do anything.” She managed to get control of her tongue so she could talk properly and went on, her green eyes dancing with the fun of it all. “We just walk in and scatter. Just scatter.” She indicated this with a flutter of two small freckled hands. “We scatter and just walk around and look—and he turns into a loony. It’s hilarious. He rushes about, here and there, counting items on the counters where we’ve just been, watching this way, then that—his big ole eyes nearly poppin’ from his head. It’s hilarious.”

  It sounded mean to Virginia.

  “My folks would whup me if they ever caught me at it,” muttered Jedd Marlow, who had somehow been tricked into joining the group. Virginia supposed it had something to do with the fact that Ruthie, who was included on some of the escapades, thought Jedd was cute. “I’m not to go in a store unless I got proper business there,” explained the boy.

  Virginia was just about to open her mouth to agree with Jedd. Her
folks would not take kindly to the idea, either, even though they might think of something other than a whipping to express their displeasure. But before she could even get out a word of agreement she saw Jenny whirl around and give Jedd one of her looks.

  “We aren’t doing any harm to nobody. If this wasn’t such a dead town—if the grown-ups were concerned enough to give us something interesting to do with our time—we wouldn’t need to look for our own way of making fun, now would we?”

  It was funny with Jenny. She could make her arguments for almost anything sound so reasonable. And convincing. Virginia found herself agreeing with the words. It was a dull town. The grown-ups didn’t do much, or supply much, to entertain the young. Maybe it was their fault that young folks had to hatch up ways to fill their free hours.

  But Jedd held his ground. He did not even flinch under Jenny’s wrathful glare. He shrugged shoulders that were quickly broadening out in their reach for manhood. “Do what you like,” he said matter-of-factly. “Me—I don’t need to be looking for something to do. Got plenty of chores waiting for me at home. And when I finish them, I’m gonna meet up with some of the fellas for a game of ball.”

  Jenny’s glare became more intense. But she was now looking at Jedd’s full back. He had turned and was walking away, totally unperturbed by Jenny’s fury.

  “Game of ball,” Jenny sputtered to those who remained. “Game of ball—on a dirty ole sandlot. Don’t even have a decent backstop. And he thinks that’s living.” Virginia almost expected her to spit in the dust. But Jenny quickly cast aside her anger with Jedd and let the glint return to her eyes. “Now, who’s in? Just a little fun with the good man Mr. Lougin.” She emphasized the name of the man, drawing out each syllable and making a face as she did so.