Rachel's Prayer

by Leisha Kelly

  I slipped once. I didn’t fall all the way down, because I’d come close enough to a pasture fence to catch myself first. I kept right on going. I could almost see Mr. and Mrs. Post opening the door of their big, fine farmhouse to me, wondering why in the world I’d run myself practically out of breath. What could I tell them? That Joe was gone? The honored soldier, brother, and friend. So soon. Way too young. And we needed them to rush into town and spread the horrible news.

  My eyes filled up with tears, and I had to brush them away to see to keep going. This was all like some awful dream. Not real at all. God give us peace! I prayed as I ran. God give us strength! Be with us. Help us understand. Help us make sense of all this.

  Mrs. Post was outside when I got close, on her way back to the house with a skillet in her hands. She must have just dumped kitchen scraps out someplace. She saw me right away and first waved in the yard but then stopped and waited when I hurried her way instead of waving back.

  She called for her husband as soon as I told her what had happened. They both had aged so much. Mrs. Post was getting a little stooped, and Mr. Post wasn’t as spry as he used to be. But they’d always been good neighbors. And they were quick to be good neighbors now.

  “Climb in the truck,” Mr. Post told me. “I’ll take you home before I head to town.”

  “Mom wants you to take Bert home from our house once you get there,” I told him, almost forgetting that part of the request. “And Mom and I might want to ride along too, to be there for the rest of the Hammonds when they get home.”

  “That’s the neighborly thing,” he told me solemnly. “God be with them.”

  It wasn’t a very long drive between the Posts and our house, but my mind was so taken up with awful questions that I hardly noticed the distance at all. Why Joe? Why did he have to die? All this time we’d prayed and cried. But he was still gone. And Robert and Willy were hurt bad too. Even Lester. What if Rorey’s awful dream had been true? What if none of our boys were coming home?

  Getting out of Mr. Post’s truck to get Mom, I found that I was shaking enough to make me feel unsteady on the frozen ground.

  “You all right, Sarah?” he asked me.

  “Yes.” But I couldn’t take my mind off things. I couldn’t stop thinking of Frank’s face, and Bert’s face. We still didn’t know for sure how bad Willy was hurt. And now this. How could the Hammonds manage it all? How could they be expected to bear it?

  I wouldn’t have had to get out of the truck at all. Mom had been watching, and she and Bert hurried out of the house so Mr. Post wouldn’t have to wait. I gave her back her coat first thing, because she hadn’t thought to grab a quilt or anything to put around herself. But she’d left Dad and Katie a note to tell them where we were in case they got back before Mr. Post found them.

  “Don’t have to worry about that,” Mr. Post said. “I’ll be going straight to Samuel at the station first thing.”

  I thought I’d have to ask Mom about me going back to Hammonds with her. She hadn’t said a thing about it, but it seemed like the most natural thing for me to climb back into Mr. Post’s truck and go with them. Mom seemed to expect it from me.

  “How was Mr. Hammond?” she asked me for the first time when we were on our way over there.

  “Not very good, Mom,” I told her. “I’m glad you’re gonna be there.”

  “I hope Franky’s all right,” Bert added. “Havin’ to deal with him alone.”

  None of us were too surprised to find that Mr. Hammond was in bed by the time we got there. Mom hugged on Frank and then sat Bert down and started heating his abandoned tonic and trying to make some lunch. They didn’t feel like eating it, but Mom said they ought to at least try, at least Bert ought to have a little and then maybe go back to bed till he felt some better. He did what she said, because he knew my mother was wise and there wasn’t anything else he could do. His schoolbooks were abandoned by the chair. I offered to bring some of them up the loft ladder to him, but he wasn’t sure he could concentrate on them anyway. Mom said it might be better if he could just sleep.

  Frank told us he’d walked out to his mother’s grave with his pa. I got the feeling there was something working deep in him that he wasn’t telling. But he said he was only glad his pa was home, and he wanted to make sure he stayed.

  “I’m glad you’re here too, Mrs. Wortham,” he said. “You’re a godsend to us.”

  He stayed in the house for a while, but pretty soon he headed for the barn to break the ice in the water troughs or fill them if they needed it.

  He kept busy. He went from one chore to the next, even things that didn’t have to be done right then at all.

  “Why don’t he sit down, Mom?” I asked.

  “Maybe he can’t.” She sighed. “Maybe he knows the sadness’ll catch up if he slows down.”

  She was the same way herself. She cleaned over things I’d cleaned this morning, and then some. She tried to talk to Mr. Hammond, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with that. When it didn’t seem like there was anything else to put her hands to, she pulled the last shrivelly apples out of a bin and started in to make a pie. Not knowing what else to do, I helped her.

  After a while, we heard Bert coughing again. “Take him up a drink, will you please?” Mom asked.

  So I ladled some water into a cup and started up the loft ladder. It was all one big room up there, but there wasn’t much more to it than a bunch of beds with shelves on the wall above every one.

  I brought him the water, and he drunk it down and thanked me. He looked so awful sad I wished I could make it better.

  I sat on the end of his bed with a sigh. “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t s’pose none of us is gonna be all right for a while. Will you get me my notepaper? I oughta write things down. I oughta put it all in my next newspaper article so everybody’ll know . . .” He stopped, and I could see him struggling to finish. “I want them to know Joe’s a hero.”

  I nodded, the tears rising back up in me again. “That’s a good thing to do.”

  “Thanks for being here, Sarah. You were brave with my pa this morning. I couldn’t a’ done that. I don’t know what woulda happened . . .”

  “It’s all right. You’re being real brave too. You’ll get through this. I think you’re all really strong.”

  “Will you talk to Franky?” he asked me then. “I know he’s got Pa on his mind, but I’m afraid he’s gonna hold everythin’ to himself, an’ it’s too much for him to deal with alone.”

  “We’ll help him. That’s why he wanted Mom here. We’ll help all of you all we can.”

  “I know. But that’s not what I mean. Please talk to Franky, Sarah, when you get the chance. He’s worryin’ over everybody else. But you know him, how he does more thinkin’ than the rest of us put together. An’ I ain’t sure he’ll talk to anybody but you.”

  I was surprised to hear him say something like that. I was surprised that anybody in Frank’s family would have noticed him talking to me very much, but maybe I shouldn’t have been. Maybe we were more obvious about it than I realized. Maybe some of them even knew the things I tried to hide. That of all the Hammond boys or any other boy I’d ever met, I admired Frank the most. Because he always did what he thought was right, no matter how hard it was, or how ugly other people were being, or how bad life treated him. He’d surprised me again and again. He’d made me respect him all the more, every time something happened. Even this.

  “I will,” I promised Bert softly. “I’ll talk to him.”

  I went and got him his writing paper. And then I thought I’d go outside and find Frank, but I guess the afternoon was farther along than I thought. He was coming in, and I could see Harry and Emmie coming through the yard.

  Mom thought Mr. Hammond should come out of his room to talk to them. But he wouldn’t, so she and Frank had to sit them down and tell them that Joe was gone. At first I thought Harry was going to blow up like their father had, but then he just sat and said
nothing at all. Emmie started crying right away. Mom held her, and Frank hugged Harry, and I was left standing there feeling completely helpless. It hurt worse than anything to see people hurting and not be able to do anything about it.

  I don’t know what to think anymore, God. Instead of understanding you better, all of this just makes me confused. Why would you make a world with so many struggles? I know you made it perfect. But you knew what would happen. Why did you let it be?

  It wasn’t long before Dad was driving up the lane. We expected him to have Katie and Rorey with him when he came, but Lizbeth was with them too. She jumped out of the truck first thing with Mary Jane in her arms. She said Ben had gone to help Sam and Thelma get here because they were having trouble with their car. But Lizbeth hadn’t wanted to wait. She tried to talk to her pa, but he wouldn’t talk to anybody. Frank told her that’s what he’d said he wanted, just to be left alone a while, and if we’d all agree to that, he’d agree not to run off for solace in a bottle somewhere else.

  Dad hadn’t been able to find out much about William except that he didn’t seem to be hurt so bad as Robert was, and they expected him to recover. He told Mr. Hammond, because it should have been comfort to know that much, but Mr. Hammond wouldn’t respond to him at all.

  I didn’t remember very well what everybody did when Mrs. Hammond died, but I knew it was a bad time, and this one was bad too. Mr. Post and his wife brought a bunch of food at about the same time Sam and Ben were getting there, but the Posts didn’t stay. The pastor and his wife came pretty soon, and they brought food too.

  Pastor prayed, but I guess it was mostly just good to have him there. I wanted to ask him if he could tell me why wars and all their awful consequences had to happen. But I couldn’t make myself speak the questions out loud. It got to be dinnertime, and even with all the food sitting there handy, nobody ate very much. After a while, Pastor and his wife had to leave, and when they did I felt kind of empty in my heart even though the house was still full of people.

  Lizbeth wanted to stay over, to be here for her father and the rest if they needed her. So Mom and Thelma decided that rather than someone making a trip into town that night to take Sam’s family home, they would stay at our house. Emmie was going to go too. Katie helped Thelma bundle the kids while Mom and Sam hugged everybody else.

  “I want to stay, Mom,” I told her when she picked up our coats.

  “Are you sure?” she questioned.

  “I could help Lizbeth with Mary Jane if somebody else needs her,” I said. “Or I could help doctor Bert, or just be here with Rorey for a while.”

  Rorey looked over at me when I said that. She and I had talked so little in the past few months that it maybe seemed a little different for me to say that now. But I didn’t feel right about going home to my bed. And I meant the things I was saying, even though I remembered my promise to Bert too. I needed to talk to Frank. I hadn’t gotten the chance. And I felt like Lizbeth did, that we just hadn’t ought to leave them all alone. Mom nodded, and Dad kissed my forehead and said he was proud of me for helping. Pretty soon they were gone.

  Right away I put on water to heat because I figured that was what Mom would do. I could at least make some more hot tea with honey for Bert, to help his cough in the night. And I thought maybe Rorey would talk to me, but she didn’t talk to anybody. When I hugged her, she held onto me a while. But she turned away as soon as she let go and went to her bed in the loft.

  Lizbeth went into their father’s room, but she didn’t stay very long. He wanted to sleep, she said. So she’d hugged him and kissed him and left him alone.

  Harry was helping Ben carry in more wood again. Liz-beth was rocking Mary Jane in her mother’s old rocker by the fire. And Frank had gone out to the barn. I asked Lizbeth if she thought it’d be all right if I went out just to see if he needed help with anything.

  “You do that,” she said, and she seemed glad I would want to.

  So I bundled my coat back on, and my scarf and gloves and overshoes, glad I’d dressed warm starting out yesterday, because those same clothes were still serving me well. It was even colder now than in the daylight, and I was glad that Frank and his father had come back home from their walk in the timber. There was something about what he’d told Mom and me that I knew wasn’t complete. I knew something had happened between Frank and his father before any of us had gotten here, and I couldn’t imagine that it could be good. And yet they had gotten back. Both of them, and that was much to be glad about.

  The moonlight made the whole farmyard seem strangely unreal. I could easily imagine that I might have dreamed the last few days, or even the whole last year, except that the hurt in everybody’s faces still pressed upon my heart. It was far too deep not to be real. I opened the barn door slowly and stepped inside, trying to see in the dimness.

  “Frank?”

  I didn’t know if he’d hear me. I wasn’t completely sure if he was here or in one of the other outbuildings. But if he was here, he might not hear me anyway. He might be far away in thoughts of his own.

  “Franky?” I called, not sure why I was suddenly using the boyish form of his name I hadn’t used in at least three years. I knew I’d find him. I could almost feel him somehow, sending his prayers and his pains upward.

  He was kneeling in Star’s empty stall. With his back to me, he had his head bowed, and I knew he was praying. I thought of him comforting Bert and the others. I thought of my mother and father and the pastor and his wife and Lizbeth, all of them trying to be a comfort too. But Frank hadn’t taken much of the comforting attention for himself. He’d sat quietly in the Hammonds’ sitting room and quoted a Scripture I’d been surprised to hear right then, even from him.

  “Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort . . .”

  Everybody had been silent when he said it, as if there was nothing else that could possibly be said. He’d looked so strong then, like he understood things the rest of us didn’t. It seemed like he’d found peace far more than I could attain to. So I wasn’t sure why Bert thought he might need my help. Or why Robert had thought it, in his letter so long ago.

  Maybe I was only intruding now, walking in to see Frank praying in the barn stall this way. But suddenly he sunk lower, his head almost to the straw. He’d done so much to smooth everybody else’s way, but here he was bowed over as though he were carrying the weight of all our pain. “Blessed be God,” he’d said, and I swallowed hard, knowing that I came up short compared to Frank. I hadn’t given the Lord any praise.

  His brother was gone. Who knew what else the future might hold? Yet in the face of all that, here he knelt, the strongest young man I could ever meet. He should not be praying alone.

  Slowly, feeling unsure of myself, I stepped closer and eased down to kneel beside him on the cold barn floor. I didn’t know what he’d think. I didn’t know if he’d want my presence there beside him. But I knelt anyway, silent, trying to form halting prayers for Frank and his family in my mind. And slowly, without a word, without looking up at all, he moved his hand to hold mine.

  28

  Frank

  I’d felt so cold deep in my spirit. Trying to hold on to faith, and peace, I’d felt like I was fallin’ and there was nothing more that could be done. But Sarah’s hand in mine was suddenly warm, the only warm thing I thought I could find about this whole situation. But I didn’t want to worry her. I didn’t want to be weak when she might need me to be strong.

  I stood up carefully, helping her to her feet as I went. “You should go back in the house,” I told her. “It’s too cold to be out.”

  She didn’t move or pull her hand away. “Will you come too?”

  “I don’t know. Pretty soon, I guess.”

  I meant to walk her to the porch. I meant to see that she went in where it was warm. I didn’t want her catchin’ cold like Berty. But it was good she’d been here these last two days. I’m not sure how we’d have done wit
hout her.

  I was gonna pull away from her hand. I knew I should. But it was so awful dark in the barn that first I led her out into the moonlight.

  “I’ve been thinking on the Scripture you quoted,” she said in a soft voice. “I wish I could find the strength to bless God when I’m feeling the worst.”

  There was a tiny glistening on her cheek, and I knew it was the moonlight striking a tear. She’d cared about Joe. She loved my whole family, just like her parents did. And of course she was still worried about Robert. She looked so scared and forlorn that I had to put my arms around her just for a minute. “It’ll be all right, Sarah Jean,” I whispered. “You’ll see.”

  The wind blew some of her long hair across her face, and I brushed it back, wonderin’ if she was feeling as cold and empty as I had been just moments ago.

  “Maybe you oughta be sittin’ by the fire,” I suggested. “Maybe Lizbeth would make you some cocoa. That’d warm your insides.”

  “Will you come?” she asked me again.

  I wasn’t sure how to answer. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m kinda like my Pa in a way. Seems like it wouldn’t be right to keep stayin’ in there with everybody. I oughta be out here in the cold and let the hurt just hurt as long as it needs to, do you know what I mean?”

  She nodded. “I think I do. But I don’t think anything will be better that way. There’s only one answer to this. You were right that it’s God. And he didn’t make us to be set off alone in the barn. He gave you your family. And mine.”

  I just looked at her warm, kind eyes, and something came over me I’d never felt ever in my life. Before I could think twice or realize what I was doing, I leaned and kissed her, real soft, right on the lips.

  But the shock of her touch and the look on her face made me jump back. “Oh, Sarah Jean, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—I ain’t thinking right just now . . .”