Bittersweet Bliss
Page 25
“Busy Bees,” Marfa said promptly. “It means Busy Bees. And I wore it when I wasn’t a lot older than you. We all wore it. We never knew what happened to it. Say,” she said in a puzzled tone, “how do you suppose it got into Aunt Tilda’s cabin?”
The silence careened, screaming, around the room.
And three pairs of eyes swiveled slowly and looked at Vonnie. Vonnie’s pert, usually fresh-colored face was pasty white.
Ellie called the meeting of the Busy Bees to order. She called for the reading of the minutes; no one, it seemed, had done anything to further the cause of the club, to carry out its purpose for existing.
“Hasn’t anyone found something helpful to do?” Ellie, as president, asked.
No one had.
“Well, neither have you!” Vonnie pointed out triumphantly. “And if anyone should, you should. After all, you’re the one wearing the badge most of the time.”
“You’ve all had turns. And anyone can have a turn that wants it,” Ellie defended, rubbing the shiny circle hanging from a string around her neck.
“It’s my turn,” Vonnie pouted. “Flossy had it, then Marfa, then you again. It’s my turn.”
Ellie removed the Busy Bee insignia; they were all fond of it, but she had special feelings for it, having designed it and pounded it out with her own hands. Still, Vonnie should have her turn.
“You can have it, oh,” she offered generously, “for the rest of the month.”
“That’s better!” Mollified, Vonnie slipped the shining bit of tin around her girlish neck and fingered the crimped edges, preening a bit, an exercise that came naturally to her.
“We can’t leave here,” Ellie said, returning to the problem at hand, “until we come up with something to do to help someone. It’s the purpose of the club, you know. What do you suggest?”
“Wash the heads of the Nikolai—”
“We did that already, silly!”
“But it should be done every week!”
Ellie interrupted the argument between Flossy and Vonnie, agreeing that something new, something challenging, was needed now.
“Knit winter socks—”
Flossy’s tentative suggestion was silenced by the pained expression, the rolled eyes Vonnie turned her way.
After a moment’s silence, Flossy, the compassionate one, tried again. “Help ol’ Aunt Tilda?”
Voting it a good idea, plans were laid. Ellie and Vonnie would work as a team, Flossy and Marfa another.
“I’ll start out,” Ellie, the organizer, offered. “I’ll explain to Aunt Tilda what we’re doing and how I’ll come each Saturday. After a couple of hours Vonnie can arrive, and on the following Saturday Flossy and Marfa can do the same. Right?”
Nods of agreement.
“Saturday, then,” Vonnie said. “Fine with me. I’ll be there with bells on.”
But it had not been bells. Vonnie had arrived wearing the Busy Bee badge. The badge that disappeared and was never seen again, that never turned up, that was forgotten in the turmoil and trauma following the death of Aunt Tilda.
Now, years later, the girls recalled it; Vonnie’s white, defiant face confirmed it.
The inquiry of the Mounties had not unearthed it; Vonnie had denied it. “I never went that day,” she had reported.
“Vonnie,” Marfa said now, slowly, “you were there that afternoon. You were there, after all.”
Vonnie blinked rapidly, stammered an “Uh...”
Marfa continued, in a voice of absolute certainty, a condemning voice. “You... you were the last one to see Aunt Tilda alive.”
Under the accusing eyes of the three people who knew her better than anyone else, Vonnie tossed her head, recovering herself.
“What of it?” she asked.
“It means that, that there was no fire when Ellie left.”
“Who said there was? Not me, for heaven’s sake! What other people thought—that’s their own business!”
“The badge, Vonnie,” Marfa pursued. “How did it get left in Aunt Tilda’s cabin, to lie there in the ashes all these years?”
Panic rose in Vonnie’s blue eyes. “The old lady grabbed it, all right?” she shrilled. “It was shiny, and she kept looking at it, and when I tried to fluff up her pillow, she grabbed it, wouldn’t let go!”
“And when you jerked away, did you knock over the lamp?”
“It’s not my fault the lamp was there! Ellie put it there, before she left—”
“It was dark in there; we all know that,” Marfa, the reasonable one, said. “And it had to be close to Aunt Tilda so she could light it... blow it out—”
“What if the old lady shoved me into it! Whose fault is that, I’d like to know! Not mine!”
No one condemned her, but the eyes of Marfa and Flossy looked at her gravely, even sorrowfully. In Ellie’s eyes the smallest flicker was lit, a flicker that presaged an eruption of gratitude to God so heartfelt it could never be adequately expressed. But she would try; her whole life long she would try.
“Anyway, it’s all water under the bridge,” Vonnie concluded belligerently.“The old woman was already on her deathbed, everyone knows that.”
Silently, without further talk, the party broke up and the three visitors said their good-byes, Marfa and Flossy subdued, Ellie in a daze, Vonnie abrupt, her face no longer white, but as red as... fire.
Standing on the porch, as still as a statue, Ellie watched the rigs down the road and out of sight. At her side the children watched with her, their faces puzzled, their eyes wide and raised questioningly to Ellie’s face from time to time.
When the last buggy had disappeared into the bush, Ellie drew a deep breath as though coming awake, perhaps from a bad dream, and turned, looking down at Hans and Gretchen, reaching a hand to each, taking their hands in hers.
“Come, children,” she said steadily. “We’ll walk out to the field to meet your father.”
Ruth Glover was born and raised in the Saskatchewan bush country of Canada. She has written many poems and books, including the Wildrose series for Beacon Hill. Ruth and her husband, Hal, live in The Dalles, Oregon.
Also by Ruth Glover
A Place Called Bliss
With Love from Biss
Journey to Bliss
Seasons of Bliss