A Promise to Love

by Serena B. Miller

  She knew he was drawing close to the end when he glanced down at the pillbox in his hand and studied the label.

  He closed the diary and swiped his shirtsleeve across his eyes, as though trying to wipe away the reality of what he had just read. Then he walked over to where she sat, dropped down beside her, and fell back onto the grass, staring at the darkening sky.

  “I knew she wasn’t happy, but this . . .” He tossed the diary a few feet away as though he could not bear to have it near him. “I had no idea. After Trudy’s birth, it seemed like she went into one of those moods that women sometimes go into directly after childbirth—except it never went completely away and it seemed to deepen with Polly and Bertie’s births. Thank God the children will never have to know how little their mother cared for them!

  “And this!” He held the box out for her to see. “She was trying to get rid of our child. She was so determined to do so that she took double doses and drank that tea she made just to make absolutely certain. Ingrid, she sat there at the breakfast table with me that morning, sipping that poison, enjoying the fact that I did not know what she was doing.” He glanced at the label once again. “She killed herself with this poison.”

  “I know.”

  “She cared nothing for any of us,” Joshua said wonderingly. “What little she did was just an act to keep me from putting her away—which is something I would never have done.”

  “You not know how bad she get?” Ingrid asked.

  “She would wander off sometimes, but she would always come back. It seemed to me that she spent a lot of time just staring into space, and it was hard to get her to focus on what I was saying sometimes. I thought she was thinking about something so deeply, she couldn’t always hear me. Now I realize that she was listening to something or someone I knew nothing about. Voices! My wife was listening to voices that weren’t there!

  “Dear God”—he threw his wrist over his eyes—“what a fool I’ve been, grieving for a woman who cared so little for us that she managed to accidentally kill herself trying to get rid of my child. I’m lucky the voices didn’t tell her to murder me in my sleep.”

  Ingrid decided that the pain he had caused her with his hurtful comment back at the cabin was small compared to the pain he must feel. At least what she and Joshua had, such as it was, was built on truth.

  “It is as though Diantha bewitched me thirteen years ago, and I could never break free from the spell, even when all the signs were there that she wanted to be anyplace except with me. I’m sorry, Ingrid. I’m sorry about using you simply to keep my children. I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions about what you were doing here in the cemetery. I’m sorry about what I said about you to my mother. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t true. I was aggravated with that stupid drawer and the fact that I couldn’t make it slide in and out properly. I was aggravated that my mother was asking questions that I didn’t want to answer. Sweetheart, you need to know that there are thousands of men out there who would give anything to have a woman like you.”

  He looked haggard and cold lying there on the ground.

  “You need coat.” She scooted closer to him and lifted his head onto her lap. He did not protest. She gently traced the contours of his face with her fingertips, in exactly the same way her mother had soothed her as a child. It was the most intimate thing she had ever done with a man.

  “Ingrid, I am just so sorry—”

  “Shhh.” She touched his lips with her fingers. “We do best we know how.” She pulled the maroon shawl off her own shoulders and placed it over him. “We do best we can.”

  He looked up at her. “The children can never know about this; they can never know how much their mother despised them.”

  “I not tell them. That hurt so bad.”

  “Millicent was the one who gave her that . . . medicine. She should have to pay for what she did. She knew what she did! That’s why she was so adamant about pinning the blame on me. She was probably afraid that if the real reason for Diantha’s death were to come out, George would find out what she had been doing all those years.”

  “Why he need to know? What good it do? It break his heart—just like this break yours.”

  “I’m going to show Richard and Virgie that diary—then they’ll know what really happened to their daughter and quit blaming me.”

  “Virgie blame you anyway. Virgie say you cause daughter’s mind problem.”

  “Then what am I going to do?”

  “You do nothing,” Ingrid said. “You are not important, Millicent is not important, George is not important. Richard and Virgie are not important. The only important persons is the children. There is things children no need hear.”

  He was silent as he considered her words. “You’re right.”

  She continued to trace his face with her finger. The worry lines on his forehead had begun to ease away. He seemed in no hurry to go.

  “Was Diantha always this person?”

  “No . . . yes . . . I don’t know. I met her at Michigan State Normal School in Ypsilanti when we were both training to be teachers. We were only nineteen. I was straight off the farm, shy and tongue-tied. The fact that someone like her would agree to marry me was a matter of wonder and amazement. She was different than anyone I had ever known, more beautiful than anyone I had ever seen, and I wanted to find a way to impress her.”

  “Did you find?”

  “I thought I had. When war was declared, everyone was all in a fever to go to war. I signed up to ride with the Michigan First Cavalry.” His voice was bitter. “It was all quite dramatic and romantic. We thought the war would be over in a few weeks, and we didn’t want to miss out on the excitement. We were young and as ignorant as tree stumps—about life, and about war.”

  “Diantha impressed?”

  “Far from it. Agnes was only a baby then, and Diantha was furious with me for volunteering. She went home to live with her parents while I was away. Michigan was a long way off from the battlefields I was on. I didn’t see her again until the war ended, and by that time, we were complete strangers. I was a bitter man with too many bad memories. She had buried two brothers and lived too long with her parents’ grief.”

  “You and Diantha,” Ingrid asked, “you fall in love again?”

  “I did. At least I thought I did. From what I just read, the woman I loved did not exist.”

  Those eyes that were the color of the ocean looked up at her. “You were trying to save me from knowing this. You were burying it so I wouldn’t be hurt by knowing—even though I had wounded you by my words. You should be angry at me.”

  “My heart not hurt as bad as your heart.” She laid the palm of her hand upon his chest. “We have healthy family, food, cabin, work, hope. Everything be all right someday.”

  19

  “The trees, they need water,” Ingrid pointed out after breakfast when she found him staring at the cherry orchard.

  Her innocent comment irritated him. It was such an obvious thing to say. Did she think he couldn’t see for himself that his trees were thirsty?

  The early promise of the cherry crop had withered beneath the scorching sun of this year’s strange weather. They had not had the cool, damp spring common to Michigan. Instead, the weather they were experiencing was an aberration, as though the lovely state in which he had placed all his hopes and dreams had been picked up and placed by a giant’s hand in the middle of an area fast becoming a desert.

  It was August and there had not been a drop of rain in two and a half months. They were in danger of losing the cherry trees entirely if they did not get water soon.

  “I know,” he said.

  “You need to give them a drink,” she said.

  His annoyance increased. He was already worried sick about the cherry trees. What was wrong with the woman? Did she think he was blind?

  The little creek from which the livestock drank was disturbingly low. The barrels that caught the rain from their roof had been bone dry for weeks. Their well wou
ld give out soon.

  There were only two dependable sources of water accessible to him. The lake, which was two miles away, over a rough road, and the spring that was about a half mile from their house.

  Diantha had called it the Faraway Spring, and the name had stuck. It was a half mile from the cabin—close enough for a pleasant walk but far enough away to make everyday use a chore.

  The spring, welling up from some deep, unfathomable source, never went dry, but it was surrounded by an old growth oak forest that the lumber men had ignored in their quest for white pine. It would be impossible to get a wagon into it without cutting down trees and blasting out stumps. As it was, creating a wagon trail to give him access to the spring was simply too much work to contemplate.

  “Cherry trees need water,” Ingrid pointed out once again.

  “I know they need water!” He threw his hat on the ground in frustration. “What do you want me to do, woman? Carry it to them on my back?”

  “Ja!” she shot back. “That what you do—carry on back.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Ja,” she agreed. “I crazy like fox!”

  “I can’t carry enough water to save them all.”

  “Maybe you save some.”

  She was right. It was time to start carrying water. He had gone to too much work and expense, purchasing the saplings, carefully transporting them from the Traverse City area. He could save some, possibly even all, but it would take the biggest part of every day to do so. Of course, it wouldn’t be forever—they should get rain any day now.

  “Garden need water too,” she said, “or no food for winter.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The first thing he did was load their two empty rain barrels into the wagon, then he fashioned a water yoke for himself out of light, sturdy poplar. By late afternoon, he had pulled the wagon as close to the spring as possible. Then with the help of the water yoke, he walked the water out, two bucketsful at a time, filling the barrels. When the barrels were full, he drove the wagon to the garden and orchard and reversed the process. It was tedious and time-consuming work, but there was nothing else he could think of to do. Allowing the garden and orchard to shrivel up and die was not an option—not if he wanted his family to survive.

  Surely the rain would come soon.

  It didn’t rain that week or the next, and it felt like he had done nothing except carry water. The trees and garden were still alive, but doing the rest of his farm chores on top of this extra work was beginning to take a toll.

  He finished his last watering trip for the evening, put the horses up, and went into the cabin. All he wanted to do was fall into bed and sleep. Every bone and muscle in his body ached.

  As usual, the cabin smelled of good cooking, but he was almost too tired to eat. He sank down onto the sitting room bed and dozed while he waited for supper.

  “So tired.” Ingrid came over and put a palm against his cheek. “Work too hard.”

  “I have no choice.”

  “Make water yoke for me,” Ingrid suggested.

  “Don’t be silly, Ingrid.”

  “Make water yoke for me.”

  Her request went all through him. A man did not allow his wife to do his work unless completely incapacitated. “Thank you, Ingrid. But no. You are already doing too much.”

  “Make water yoke for me,” Ingrid said. “Two persons cut water-carry time in halvt.”

  He absolutely hated the idea, but he knew that she wouldn’t let up until he had made that yoke for her. The woman was more tenacious than a bulldog, and she was right, it would cut his carrying time in half.

  The next day, he made the yoke, and carrying water became a family ritual. Every morning they went out together, with the children accompanying them. They would spend the next two hours trudging back and forth from the spring to the wagon and then to the garden and orchard. Until Ingrid began to help, it had taken him four hours both morning and night.

  The sight of that woman trudging back and forth to help him keep his farm alive was a memory he knew he would never forget. She should not have to do the work of a pack mule, but that is what the drought and marrying him had done to her. He wondered how much more she could endure before she broke down completely.

  And still the rain did not come. The days began to blur together as they trudged back and forth every morning and every evening carrying water to the trees and the garden.

  How could a farmer make a living without rain? It was a desperate battle they waged, their only weapons buckets, strong backs, and the blessing of a deep underground spring.

  Agnes took upon herself the job of waiting at the wagon. There she would unhook the buckets from the yokes and empty them into the barrels. Ellie and Trudy’s job was to entertain Polly and Bertie. Mary, who was becoming progressively stronger each day, began to walk to the spring to help keep an eye on the little ones. They timed it so that there was always an adult at the spring when the children were there.

  In town, rain had become the sole topic of conversation. All were praying. All were hoping. All were desperately waiting for the rain.

  In this way, they made it into September, and still the rains did not come. The level of Lake Huron dropped an astonishing two feet. There were rumors of long-forgotten shipwrecks being discovered in the shallower depths left behind. The strange summer of 1871 took them into an unprecedented drought that descended on a peninsula surrounded by fresh water.

  20

  “Are you taking Ingrid to the harvest square dance over at the Andersons’ barn tonight?” Lyman said as they shoveled out the barn together. “I’m taking Susan.”

  Lyman had found a paying job at the local sawmill. Joshua had given him permission to stay in the barn, which they fitted out with an old army cot. In return, he pitched in with the farm work each evening when he came home.

  As long as Lyman could see Susan on a regular basis, he was a happy man. Joshua wondered if Susan’s distracted circuit-riding father had noticed yet that there was an extra man frequently sitting at his table.

  “With this drought, why bother to have a harvest dance?” Joshua said. “Even if we got a good rain tomorrow, it would be too late for anyone to have much of a harvest.”

  “Susan said that the Andersons had decided to have the dance anyway, just to raise everyone’s spirits.”

  “That’s nice of them, but I hadn’t planned on going.”

  “Your wife wants to go.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because Susan told me. They were talking together after church last Sunday. Susan said that Ingrid wants to go in the worst way and was hoping you would ask her.”

  Joshua leaned both arms on his shovel and gave it some thought. It seemed like a reasonable thing for a man to do—take his wife to a dance; but after all they had endured this summer, the last thing he felt like doing was going to a party.

  However, considering the miles Ingrid had walked lugging those buckets of water—if anyone deserved to go to a party, it was her.

  “Are you sure Susan heard right?”

  “I’m dead sure. Susan gave me instructions to make certain you knew but without Ingrid finding out that you knew. Susan says it should sound like it was your idea.”

  Joshua liked Susan, and he could picture her black eyes snapping while she gave the besotted Lyman his instructions.

  “I’ll bring it up.”

  “You might want to bring it up now.” Lyman nodded at a spot over Joshua’s left shoulder. “The dance is tonight, and you probably ought to give her a bit of time to get ready.”

  Joshua glanced back and saw Ingrid approaching them.

  “My stove is got problem,” Ingrid said when she reached the two men. “I think something wrong with flue. Can you come fix, please?”

  Joshua noticed Lyman sidling away. Ingrid noticed it too.

  “I come at bad time?” she asked.

  “Lyman and I were talking about that dance over at the
Andersons’ tonight,” Joshua said. “I was telling him I thought I might like to go. Would you enjoy that?”

  Her face, always so expressive, positively lit up. There was never any guessing about what was going on in Ingrid’s mind. Her blue eyes grew wide. “I love to go!”

  He smiled at her excitement. “You’d better hurry and get ready then.”

  Stove flue forgotten, she ran to the house.

  She stopped midway and whirled around. “What about girls and Mary?”

  “Do you want them to go?”

  “I think yes!”

  “Whatever you want, Ingrid. This is your night.”

  She ran the rest of the way to the cabin.

  Lyman wandered back. “See what I mean?”

  “That woman works so hard and asks for so little,” Joshua said, looking after her. “Thanks for being a friend and letting me know. I had no idea it would mean so much to her.”

  “Might be a good idea if you spiffed up a bit too,” Lyman said. “I don’t think you’re supposed to wear horse manure to a dance.”

  “Joshua says we can go to Andersons’ party!” Ingrid burst into the cabin. “All of us.”

  “Well, he certainly didn’t give us much time to get ready!” Mary exclaimed.

  “No, but the girls’ Sunday dresses is washed and ironed. Just need to clean faces and hands and put on clothes. I have many dry diapers for Bertie.”

  “You’re awfully happy about this!” Mary said.

  “Back in our village, I dance. I was just little girl, but was much fun. I want very much to go.”

  “Well, then,” Mary said, “I have something you might be interested in.”

  “What?”

  “Do you remember that lavender material that I thought would look so good on you?”

  “Ja.”

  “Wait right here.”

  Mary went upstairs and came down with two boxes.

  “What you have?” Ingrid asked.

  “You’ll see.” Mary opened one box, shook out a lavender dress, and held it up.