She stood outside and watched as they drove away, perhaps, she admitted to herself, as much to make sure they were truly going.
When the last puff of road dust had vanished behind the stand of cottonwoods, she returned to the living room.
“How on earth did they know?” she asked her brothers.
“Well,” Bud started out, and she knew she was in for a long story, “we went to the doctor’s office to find him. You remember, you sent us to get him, so don’t even think about blaming us.”
“Bud—” she began, but he picked up his story, apparently anxious to clear his name.
“He wasn’t there, so we went to the usual places we might find him. The bank, the post office, the church. Nobody’d seen him. George had to stop at the café, of course, and make lovey-dovey eyes at Ruth—”
“I did not!” his brother interjected, his face growing red at the mention of the young woman he’d been somewhat courting.
But Bud continued. “So by the time we got to Leubner’s Store, word had spread that we were looking for him, and everybody of course thought you were sick or you’d cut off your hand or had died or something.”
“Bud!” George broke in. “You can’t tell a story straight for anything.” He turned to his sister. “Let me tell what happened. We went into Leubner’s, and we were asking if anyone had seen the doctor, and the next thing we knew, here he comes, wondering if you were all right.”
“So,” Bud interrupted, “we really did have to tell about this fellow here, and it couldn’t be helped that Amelia the Snoop was there with her big old ears on; and next thing we know, everybody in town had heard.”
Lolly sat down next to the couch. The smell of Hildegard’s perfume hung heavy in the air, and she knew it also clung to her clean dress, courtesy of the hugs the older woman had given her.
“I don’t like those two,” Bud declared. “They were squeezing and poking our fellow, even wanted to look under his shirt to see how thin his arms were. I just don’t like them at all.”
“Oh, hush!” Lolly scolded. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”
“But if I say I do like them, I’m lying, and that’s a sin, and you know it.”
“You don’t have to say anything about it at all. I don’t recall anyone asking you what your feelings were about them.” A bit of hair had fallen over Colin’s forehead, and she brushed it away. She was feeling quite protective about him, and the fact was that she didn’t want to share him with anyone else. Maybe later she would, but right now she wanted to make him better.
Bud shoved his hands in his pants pockets. “I guess I’ve got work to do outside. The farm isn’t going to take care of itself, you know. Wheat won’t grow on its own. Well, I guess it will, but I don’t suppose anyone’s got the eggs out of the henhouse yet, did they? Didn’t think so.” He whistled for the dog.
As he and George turned to leave, Lolly heard him mutter, “Hildegard Hopper. Bet that old woman’s got a whetstone somewhere in that house that she sharpens her tongue on every morning.”
Lolly looked down to hide her grin. It wouldn’t do to let her brother see it. No, it wouldn’t do at all.
❧
Finally the room was quiet. Colin opened one eye a crack, just to make sure that they were gone.
He’d been asleep when suddenly a woman with a sharp voice like a cackling hen had bent over him, pinching his cheeks and pulling up his sleeve to examine his arm. Someone had pulled her away from him, but her voice clawed at his eardrums.
Her shrill voice kept on, until the woman with the gentle voice, the familiar voice, led her away. Her words were indistinct, but he could tell from her tone what she was doing.
Now they were gone, and the men, too. It was safe.
He opened his eyes. “Hello.”
The young woman who’d floated in and out of his delirium jerked into alertness. “You’re awake!”
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
That was what he tried to say, but it came out distorted. His words sounded thick and muffled. Something was wrong with his tongue. It seemed to be twice its normal size, and his lips didn’t move like they were supposed to. He tried again.
“Excuse me. I’m having trouble speaking.” The last words came out more like lubble beeding.
She leaned forward and ran her hand over his cheek. “Sssh. Let me get you a sip of water. That’ll help.”
She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Of course at the moment he couldn’t recall any women he’d ever seen, but he was sure that when he could remember them, she would still rank at the top.
The water she dropped into his mouth from a spoon was like liquid grace. A few precious drops spilled out, and she caught them with her fingertip.
“Sit up.” The words came out with remarkable clarity, and encouraged by that, he tried more. Slowly but distinctly the words formed. “I want to sit up.”
“Are you sure?”
He started to nod but thought better of it when his head pounded in immediate response.
“I’ll try,” she said, and she leaned over. The smell of the sharp-voiced woman’s perfume returned but under it was the soft aroma of soap, and a faint scent of shampoo.
She moved the pillows around and put her hands under his arms to lift him. “If I hurt you, let me know. I’ll do my best not to, though. On the count of three? One. Two. Three!”
It felt wonderful to sit up at last. His body felt discon-nected, as if his legs and his arms were no longer joined to his torso. He moved them experimentally and was relieved when feeling sparked back into the limbs.
“More water, please.”
“Just a bit at a time, but yes, here’s more.”
She held the spoon to his lips again.
“I dreamed of water,” he told her.
“I’m not surprised. You’re quite dehydrated.”
“I was swimming at Jones Beach.”
She smiled. “I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s on Long Island, in New York.”
“That’s quite far away.” She lifted the spoon again. “More?”
“Yes, please. And I could breathe under water.”
“Ah. That is quite a rare talent.”
He was like a bottle uncorked. He couldn’t stop talking, and the more he said, the easier it was. The words kept coming.
“You sang to me, didn’t you?”
“Maybe. My brothers might argue if I sing or if I caterwaul, though.”
“You sing. Like an angel.”
She laughed at that, and the sound was like a crystal waterfall. “I think I should tell you that you hit your head pretty hard. I don’t sound anything like an angel, I’m sure.”
He couldn’t stop looking at her. “What is your name?”
“Lolly. Lolly Prescott.”
He nodded but checked the motion before it could set off the drums in his head. “Who’s Eleanor?”
She grinned. “You were listening, weren’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“I’m Eleanor, but nobody calls me that, and neither will you. Not if you know what’s good for you.” She put another spoonful of water in his mouth.
“What happened?”
It felt as if he were waking up from a long sleep, which in fact, was probably true, he realized. Bit by bit his mind was starting to put all the little pieces together. But the effort of talking had worn him out, and he was glad to let Lolly speak for a while.
“My brothers, Bud and George, found you in the road behind our field. You were unconscious, and all you had with you was a backpack and a bedroll. They brought you to our house, and this is where you’ve been since yesterday, watched over by my brothers, our mutt of a dog, myself, and, of course, God. Somehow we managed to keep you alive. I think
most of the credit goes to Him.” Her lips curved into a slight smile. “All the credit goes to Him.”
She settled back in the chair. “By the way, you’re in Minnesota, not too far from Mankato. We’re right along the Minnesota River. I don’t know if you’ve ever been here before, but this is a lovely place, and I wouldn’t trade it for all the riches of the city. The Minnesota is a golden river, especially in the fall when the leaves are touched with autumn and they fall into the water as it courses its way to meet up with other rivers, other streams. They’re carried along like russet and bronze and copper boats, taking away the story of summer joy and making room for the icy splendor of winter.”
Her words were spontaneous poetry, and he found himself hanging on every syllable. She sat back, and the images flowed from her like the current.
“You weren’t too far from the river, and you may have heard the sound of it as it rushes toward Mankato, and then pushes up to join the Mississippi. I think it was calling you, and you heard its voice as it offered to give you relief from your thirst. When you’re stronger, we can go to the riverside, and you can put your hand in the river, touch the water that saved your life. We will make little boats out of milkweed pods and send them on to Mankato and Minneapolis and on down to New Orleans.”
He put his head back and shut his eyes again and listened. Her words flowed over him like the river, like the music of the river.
four
Even though he has been away from me, away from my arms, away from my embrace, he has never left my heart. I think of him with each sunrise, and I pray for him at each sunset, and when the moon rises high into the sky, a pure pearl suspended against a velvet drop of ebony, I throw a kiss to the orb that watches over us both as surely as our Creator does. The universe wants us together, needs us to be together, as surely as we need each other.
The days passed, from June to July to August, with a wild energy. Lolly’s garden grew straggly in the afternoon heat, but still she watered it each evening with hope. Bud pointed out to her that maybe she should start watering it during the afternoon, and that way the potatoes and carrots would already be boiled when she dug them up for dinner.
Colin got better quickly—the doctor attributed that to his youth and prior good health, but Lolly knew the real reason. God had meant for Colin to survive.
His memory was spotty. Sometimes he could recall an event down to the tiniest detail, and at other times, entire events seemed to be missing. And of course, in between were the spots where traces of his former life lurked, tantalizingly imperfect and incomplete.
The gaps in his recollection frustrated Lolly, but she held her impatience in check. His healing couldn’t be hurried.
He had gotten, finally, to the point where he remembered parts of his life: his name, where he had lived, and so on. He had been in the family business in New York City, but exactly what that was, he couldn’t totally identify. He’d told her he had brief flashes of a large building and desks and the distant sound of machinery, perhaps a printing company.
Trying to bring back the scenes of his past brought him to excruciating headaches, so they’d come to an easy accord: He would, at his own pace, explore the reaches of his memory, and she would listen as he shared the growing volume of his own history.
He had moved to the old house, a small building adjacent to the farmhouse. When her parents had first gotten married, they lived in the tiny place until their growing family needed more room, and they built the larger farmhouse. When Lolly was growing up, the old house had played many roles: a playroom, a place to dry pelts, a handy spot to store potatoes, and a catch-all for unused furniture. With the brothers’ help, Colin repaired it and made it livable. It wasn’t fancy, but it was good.
The wheat was starting to turn golden, baked too quickly under the summer sun, and he watched the crop as anxiously as George and Bud did, learning at their side the capriciousness of farming.
As soon as Colin had been able to, he’d joined them in worship at the little church in town. The townspeople of Valley Junction had taken to him, and with their usual good grace accepted him into the church community without reservation. Of course, Hildegard Hopper and Amelia Kramer were intensely interested in talking to him, but George and Bud were expert at moving him out of the women’s sphere of nosiness. Her brothers knew how to keep the focus on worship.
Lolly was so glad to have them all together in God’s presence each Sunday morning, and as this Sunday came with the usual August heat that shimmered from the ground to the sky, the church’s windows were thrown open with the hope that can only come on Sunday that some breeze might find its way in. Ladies fanned themselves furiously, and men used prayer cards and announcement sheets, whatever they could find that made the still air move even a little bit.
Reverend Wellman was a tall, slender man with a slight limp. Born and raised in the area, he knew everyone and had an astonishing ability to tailor his sermons to the needs of the community—without casting an accusatory light on any member of the congregation.
His sermon was about the uniqueness of creation. Every one of us is different, he said.
He used the example of identical twins and told the story of his own brothers. No one, he said, could tell them apart. The doctor had marked them with his pen—A for the firstborn, and B for the second.
“Keep these marks on them,” he’d told their mother and father. “That way you can tell them apart.”
His mother had shaken her head. “I know them already.”
The doctor tried some tests to prove to her the necessity of doing it his way. First, he had them dressed in matching buntings, with the marks covered.
She knew which was which.
He took them behind a curtain and she listened to their cries.
She knew.
He had her eyes covered, and laid each one in her arms.
She knew.
Now she was an elderly woman with failing eyesight, limited hearing, and a faltering gait. Her senses seemed to be abandoning her, yet she knew which son was which by touch alone, and sometimes by his mere presence in her room. She knew; even through the veil of the years, she knew.
That, Reverend Wellman said, was the way God knows his own. God wants us to seek out the qualities of each other that are special and to care for them, to know them the way God knows us.
Lolly sneaked a glance at Colin. He listened in rapt attention to the story the minister told, and when he’d finished with the sermon, Colin nodded, as if something had spoken to him.
The four of them sat together as they always did during every service, with Colin at Lolly’s left side and Bud on her right, while George was perched on the edge of the pew.
Ruth, the woman who had George’s attention—and his heart, if he’d ever admit it—sat across the aisle from him, her silvery blond hair glowing in the sunlight that poured through the open windows. Lolly suspected that George’s attention wasn’t always on the service. One day, she knew, either George would cross the aisle to sit with Ruth, or the reverse would happen, and she’d cross to sit with him, and they’d be as good as engaged.
Outside, Bruno snoozed in the shadow of the steps, keep-ing a wary eye open a crack in case an inattentive squirrel wandered too close.
Lolly had always enjoyed going to church. The music, the sermon, and the Gospel reading—all of those elements combined with the fellowship of the congregation kept the experience uplifting every week, a respite from the cares of the day.
Having Colin at her side made church even better. She told herself it was his strong baritone that the little church needed in the hymns, or his fervent amen at the end of the prayer, or his willingness to stay afterward and help straighten the sanctuary.
But she also treasured the way he held his Bible out to her so they could follow the Gospel reading together. Why it mattered so much, she couldn’t say, but it did. Whe
n he was beside her, and they were sharing the Bible he’d had in his pack, she couldn’t imagine a Sunday without him.
He was, as Reverend Wellman’s sermon had illustrated, very special, not only to God but to her.
He was still a man of contradictions in so many ways, and he wasn’t able to reconcile them all himself. The blankets in his bedroll, she’d discovered when she’d laundered them, were woven from what she presumed to be cashmere or something similar. She was guessing, of course, never having seen cashmere, but these blankets were softer than any she’d touched.
The pack he’d been carrying when her brothers found him was made of fine leather, and the lining, although faded from days on the road, was a thick silken fabric with a golden brocade pattern woven into it. It had to have cost a dear penny, too.
Yet inside was that same Bible he shared with her on Sundays, a free Bible that had been given to him on the road. One afternoon he’d told her how he’d come to have it.
Her mind wandered away from the closing hymn, as she remembered the story he’d shared with her.
He’d been on the road, hitchhiking when he could, but generally walking and riding on freight trains, and following a set of railroad tracks on the theory that they would, eventually, take him to a city of some substance.
Sure enough, at last he’d gotten to a town in the upper Midwest—he didn’t know the name of it—where he’d met some fellows in the rail yard. As a group of ruffians surrounded him, he’d heard the soft swish of knives being opened.
Suddenly an arm came out of seemingly nowhere, and a loud voice announced, “I’ve got him now.”
The thugs stopped their advance, and he was spirited out by his rescuer. It turned out that the fellow ran a flophouse for transients, and he’d put Colin up for the night.
But first he’d asked Colin if he was continuing on his travels, and Colin had said yes, he was. Would he like a road map? the man asked. Colin had nodded, and the man put a Bible in his hands, and said it was the best road map anyone could use.
It wasn’t his first Bible. He remembered another one with pages he’d hesitated to turn because they were so thin they tore easily. He was almost afraid to touch it for fear of damaging the Word.
Kind-Hearted Woman Page 4
