by Leisha Kelly
I’d always thought that with God it was just a matter of believing or not believing. And I definitely believed. So everything was settled. I’d keep coming to church and go to heaven when I died. But I’d never thought it through like this before, that maybe there was more to learn, more to think about and hold on to, about God. I talked about God, I mentioned him in letters, and I said my prayers before bed like everybody else. But was I missing something that Rachel knew about? And that Robert figured Frank must know about too?
I tried to turn my mind to what the preacher was saying then. Maybe that was part of the trouble—that I let my thoughts roam around so much when I was supposed to be listening. I didn’t think I could ask the preacher about this. Maybe I could ask Mom or Dad. I glanced over at Frank again, and he still looked a little teary-eyed. But there was no question that his attention was on the pastor. Just like always, he was taking in every word. I tried to. But after a while, without really meaning to, I started thinking of something else again, about what I might put in my next letter to my brother:
Do you think God uses bad times to make us think more about him? It’s hard not to worry about Joe, and even about you and Kirk and Willy just because you’re not here with us. But at the same time, I can’t stop thinking about the prayer Rachel wrote, for us to become stronger and understand God better. I wish I knew how that was possible. Do you think I should ask her? Or maybe ask Frank?
At the end of the service, Frank went up to the altar even though there hadn’t been a call. He knelt down alone and stayed there a very long time. Nobody seemed to know quite what to do. Pastor Jones went over to him for a little while, but not for long. I heard the pastor tell my father that Frank had some things he wanted to set before God on his own. Dad nodded like that was something he understood well enough. But it made me wonder all the more.
Before we left the church that day, Rachel Gray came up to hug every one of us Worthams and Hammonds. She wasn’t the only one, but it seemed extra important to me that she would do it.
“Thanks for writing to Robert,” I told her.
“I’m glad to,” she answered me. “I’m glad you don’t mind.”
I almost told her there was no way I could really mind. But instead of saying the words, I looked into her pretty face for a minute and remembered my brother’s eyes when he danced with her. “You really like him, don’t you?”
“I really do.”
“I’m glad,” I told her. “Because I think he loves you.” She smiled, just a soft little smile. “He told me he did.”
“I’m glad,” I said again, feeling kind of foolish and unable to ask her if she loved him too. But there really was no need to ask.
She hugged me again, and I told her he’d written to me about her prayer and that I was grateful for it. She looked like she might cry.
“Oh, Sarah. I’ve been praying that we could be close! I’ve been thinking the way we both love Robert, it makes us like family already.”
From that moment, I thought of Rachel the same as a sister. And I felt honored that she would want it so because she seemed something like Frank—an ordinary person full of human foibles but at the same time somehow special. Because of God. Or maybe more precisely, because of how important they made God in their lives.
Lizbeth stayed that next week with her father, and Ben came out every night after work. We had Mary Jane with us the first day because Mr. Hammond was so grouchy that Lizbeth didn’t want her with him. But after that they said he did better.
I helped Mom plant beans and move the volunteer tomatoes into a row. The whole time I kept thinking of Joe and then of Robert, Willy, and Kirk. I wished the war had never started. I wished the Germans and the Japanese would leave the rest of the world alone. If there’d been no foreign threat, maybe Joe wouldn’t have chosen to stay in the service so long. Maybe Kirk wouldn’t have been drafted. And surely Robert and Willy wouldn’t have gone. It wasn’t fair for evil men half a world away to step into our lives and rearrange our futures.
Such thinking almost made me mad, but then I thought of Franky, alone at the altar on Sunday.
“Help him if you can, Sis,” Robert had written.
I decided I didn’t have near as much right to be angry as Frank did. With three brothers away and one of them missing, plus his father not doing so well, it was a lot for him to carry. Seemed like I hardly saw him anymore when he wasn’t working, too hard maybe, at somebody’s order or the business of the farm. He didn’t eat with us like he used to. He either went home to check on his father and eat over there, or he skipped eating altogether to keep right on working. Dad said Frank was going at it a little too hard and getting even thinner than he was before. He tried to get him to take a day off or to take it a little easy, but Frank said that keeping going was all he knew to do.
I wished I knew whether Frank had really wanted to go into the service or if he had only been willing because of the sense of duty that always kept him doing right. I wished I knew if he was really angry, as I could imagine myself being in his place.
I got really bothered at Frank’s father when Bert told me he’d scolded Frank up one side and down the other the night before. And only for spending extra time checking the calf’s legs when he hadn’t fed the pigs yet. What difference did it make? Their pa was leaving so much on Frank’s shoulders, and giving him grief to boot! No wonder Robert had been concerned. He knew what Mr. Hammond was like. Mr. Hammond never gave Frank the benefit of the doubt about anything. It wasn’t fair when Frank always tried so hard.
Once, a couple of years ago, Robert had told me he wouldn’t be surprised if one of these days Frank hauled off and busted his pa in the mouth over all the bad talk he gave him. But I knew it would never happen. I could see something churning in Frank’s eyes every once in a while, but whatever it was never broke the surface. He was meek, which was a good thing according to our pastor, but it left him enduring too much, I thought. There’d been times when I wished Frank would go ahead and bust somebody good, maybe one of his brothers or one of the Turrey boys, just to get them to leave him alone. But nobody really gave Frank a hard time now except his pa. Mostly because we didn’t see other folks much except at church on Sunday. And also because everybody around knew about Joe, so the whole Hammond family was gaining more prayers and consideration than usual.
I wished I knew what Robert thought I could do to help Frank. I sure didn’t know a way except praying for him. But that seemed almost out of place. Frank was the one who knew how to pray, and knew when he belonged at the altar even when nobody else was stepping forward. He knew more Scriptures in his head than anybody else around, at least it seemed that way.
It was strange that Robert would ask me to help Frank. My mom and dad were the ones who had been closest to Frank ever since we were little. I guess they understood him. It seemed like he’d been talking to them like he was another grown-up all the time we’d known him. But I knew he didn’t talk about everything. Not much about his pa. Even less about himself.
Patting the dirt close around a little tomato plant, I sighed. Lord, what Frank needs now is the same as everybody else. Some word from Joe. And Kirk, now, too. It’s been so long since we heard from him.
“Sarah,” Mom suddenly called to me from across the garden. “I’m going to cut the rest of that coffee cake and pour everybody some tea. Why don’t you go ask Frank if he’ll join us?”
Her request almost made me tremble inside. I didn’t know how to talk to Frank right now. I didn’t know what in the world I would say.
“Tell him I said he needs to come and sit a while,” she continued, as if she’d heard my thoughts.
“Where is he?”
“He was going to cut posts. By the east field. If any of the rest are over there, tell them to come too.”
I think she knew they weren’t, or she wouldn’t have put it quite that way. If my father weren’t working on the tractor, he might have been over there with Frank, or at least checking o
n him. Harry was doing some work for the Posts, so he wouldn’t be back till almost sundown. I didn’t know what Bert was doing today. Or their pa, either, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it wasn’t much. Not even Lizbeth could motivate Mr. Hammond to do much more than get out of bed.
I walked across the yard, wondering what it would have been like to have been born a Hammond. Would I be like Rorey, tempestuous and full of herself? Or more like Lizbeth, who kind of acted like everybody’s mother? Or maybe like Emmie, who was quiet and insecure but at the same time full of questions and determination.
Even stranger considerations filled my head then. What would the Hammonds be like if we’d never moved here, if we’d never left Pennsylvania, or if Mrs. Graham had refused to let us stay? I didn’t think Mr. Hammond could have raised the kids without his wife. Robert told me once that Mr. Hammond had come real close to killing himself after she died. I didn’t know how he knew that, or even if it was true, but I could imagine him gone away, and all the kids split up to whoever would take them. That was an awful picture. Emmie hardly knowing her family, Harry and Bert raised up apart from each other and the farm, and us not knowing any of them.
And then my thoughts settled on Frank again. He’d been a scrawny kid when we met him, not any bigger than I was, even though he was older. Dirty and lost-looking, with those odd silvery eyes that made some people stare and other people look away. I couldn’t picture what the world would be like for Frank without my parents. It made me a little mad to find my thoughts so similar to the kind of things Mr. Hammond said sometimes. But I didn’t mean it the same way. Not that Frank would be nothing without my folks’ help. Just that things would’ve been so much harder for him. So much lonelier.
I started praying as I walked along the edge of the timber. Lord, if there’s a way I can do what Robert asked and help Frank somehow, show me.
I thought of the time I’d followed him into the timber after the barn fire. The Hammonds had lost so much, and Frank’s pa came down on him hard, blaming him for the fire when it hadn’t been his fault at all. I’d never talked to Frank alone before that. I’d never seen him the way he’d looked then. I guessed it was the only time I’d ever seen him angry. But more than that, hurt. He’d seemed broken apart because he couldn’t gain something I’d always had without trying. A father’s trust. A sense of belonging in your own family. A future, even, unhampered by people’s doubts.
Rorey said everybody felt sorry for Franky. Everybody babied him. But I didn’t know how she could be so blind. I didn’t remember anybody ever babying Franky, and he wouldn’t have let them if they tried. All he wanted was to be accepted just like everybody else, not shoved aside or put down for being himself.
It occurred to me that I’d thought of him as “Franky” again. Maybe because I was thinking about the past. But I hadn’t called him Franky since that brief talk in the timber when I’d told him I believed him and decided he was one of the bravest people I knew. Everybody else usually called him Franky. Even my mother. But not me. To my mind, he was already acting grown more than three years ago. He was even more grown now. And acting like more of a father to his younger brothers and sisters than their own father did, whether Rorey liked it or not.
I could hear the ax hitting against wood before I got close. I tried calling out, but he didn’t answer. I wondered if he was thinking about Beethoven again, or somebody else that inspired him. Pretty soon I could see him through the trees. He was cutting posts out of hedge wood. He’d downed a tree and was whacking off the side branches. Bright yellow wood chips went flying.
“Frank?”
He didn’t turn his head, and I thought of the way Harry might try to get Frank’s attention. He’d probably throw an acorn or something, hit him with it on purpose. I didn’t want to do that, but I did want him to stop. He was glistening wet with sweat, with his shirt off and tossed aside and his hair stuck to his forehead. He looked tuckered out, but he was still swinging the ax, whacking on that tree for all he was worth. Behind him, against a bigger tree, were three stacks of wood sorted by size. One for fence posts. And he probably had something in mind for the other two besides firewood, but I wasn’t sure.
“Frank!”
Another whack.
“Frank!”
I hollered two or three more times while he kept on working away. Then maybe I was finally loud enough, or whatever train of thought he’d had was broken. He spun around, his ax still in hand, and looked at me with his silvery eyes full of worries.
“Sarah Jean? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said, suddenly needing to take a breath. “Mom just sent me to tell you to come sit a while. She thinks you need a break. She’s cutting coffee cake and pouring you a glass of tea.”
He smiled, just a little, quick as light. “Tell her thanks, but I’m fine. I wanna finish this so I can put new posts on the west side of our pasture. They’s too far apart, and some of ’em’s weak. We’ve had cows out twice, an’ I don’t want it happenin’ again.”
Frank was the only one besides my mother that ever called me Sarah Jean. He’d been doing that for a long time, and it didn’t even bother me. “You know my mom,” I told him. “If you don’t come when she thinks you should, she might walk out here herself to persuade you. Besides, you look hot.”
“Guess I worked up a sweat.” He took two steps and picked up his shirt.
Frank was really slim. But he wasn’t scrawny anymore. He had muscles like my dad’s. Like Robert’s. It was from all the farm work. I turned my eyes to his stack of fence posts.
“Do you have enough?” I asked him.
“Not quite.”
“Maybe after some tea, I can help.”
“This ain’t a job for a lady.”
I looked up. He was putting on his shirt.
“Why not?” I asked him. “I could bring a saw of Dad’s from the wood shop and saw off the little branches from the pieces you want. Work goes faster with two sets of hands.”
He looked at me like he was studying on it for a minute. His hair was so damp it looked black, and he ran his fingers through it without thinking and got it standing up a little in front with pieces of wood chip here and there. “Why would you want to cut wood out here in the timber?”
“Just to help. Doesn’t everybody try to do whatever needs to be done?”
He was staring at me kind of funny. “Well, no. I don’t guess everybody does. Not all the time, at least.”
“You know what I mean. It looks like you could use a hand.”
“I coulda went an’ got Bert.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Sometimes I like workin’ alone. Good for thinkin’, you know?”
“Are you going to come and take a break?”
He didn’t answer me. I saw his eyes wander out across the field. “Do you ever need time just to think, Sarah Jean?”
“I guess everybody does. What are you thinking about?”
“Something Joe told me once. That the day’d come when we’d be without our pa, an’ it’d be easy for all of us to go our own ways. He said me an’ him oughta make sure everybody keeps gettin’ together.”
His eyes were suddenly moist, and it made my heart hurt for him. “Oh, Frank. That’s a lot of years away.”
“Is it?”
I couldn’t answer him. I wasn’t sure what he was afraid of. I wasn’t sure I could handle it if I did know. “Maybe we should go to the house.”
“Will you promise me somethin’, Sarah Jean?”
My shoulders were suddenly tense. I hardly knew what to expect. “If I can. What do you mean?”
“No matter what happens, even years from now when we don’t know where life’s gonna end up puttin’ us, I want you to still be my friend just as much as you was three years ago when I needed somebody to believe me. Do you remember that? When you said you believed me about the fire?”
“I—I wasn’t the only one. My parents believed you too.”
“They always think good of me. Everybody thinks I wouldn’t amount to nothin’ without them.”
My heart was pounding, trying to comprehend why he was talking this way. “That’s stupid. You know that. Your talent didn’t come from my parents.”
He sighed. “We’re gonna have hard times, Sarah. I couldn’t say that to nobody else. I don’t like talkin’ negative. I don’t like thinkin’ it. But I thought maybe you’d understand if I feel like I gotta put it in words. You was always my friend before. If you don’t mind, I think I’m gonna need that again.”
He turned away, and I knew it was because it was hard for him to let me see the hurt in his eyes. I stood for a minute, just looking at his back, wondering what in the world he was trying to tell me. “I’ll always be your friend, Frank. I promise.”
“Do you think much on Joe?”
“Sure. I can’t help it.”
He turned and looked at me but then lowered his eyes. “I think he’s gone. I feel like he’s standin’ in the clouds, hopin’ I understand what a lot I got to do to hold things together.”
I swallowed hard but couldn’t answer. For Frank to admit something like that to me was a complete surprise.
“I’m afraid Pa’s gonna come apart, do you know what I mean?”
“I—I think so.”
“I’m scared, Sarah. I don’t know when I ever been so scared.”
He stood looking almost trembly. I wasn’t sure what to do or what to say. He was baring his heart to me, his worries, in a way I never would have expected. Suddenly I couldn’t help it. My eyes filled with tears. “I’m scared too.”
His whole face changed. “What about?”
“I’m scared you might be right. About Joe. And your pa too, and what that might mean for everybody. I’m scared something’s going to happen to Robert . . .”
I couldn’t go on. The tears got in the way, and I was feeling awfully ashamed. There was no reason for this. That I should come out here and let myself get all weepy over things that might not even happen.
