by Linda Byler
When the doorbell rang late that afternoon, the talking still had not ceased. Like the floodgates of a dam built into a levee, the river of words burst through and continued to flow, surrounding the two brothers with a sense of stability, closure, and certainly memories, both unpleasant and downright absurd, coming to light. Each was examined with a blood brother’s viewpoint and discarded or put away, leaving in its wake a new kind of peace, threaded with uncertainty, perhaps, but a peace, nevertheless.
As the afternoon wore on, shoes came off, feet were elevated on stools, pillows put behind backs, accompanied by a sense of brotherhood swirling about both of them, infusing their laughter, discovering how much alike they really were. They both loved fresh-squeezed lemonade without too much sugar, slept on their stomachs, had huge appetites, and had a cowlick on the left side of their foreheads.
Finally Jackson looked at the clock. “He said he’d be … be here around 4:00.”
“How much do you know about him?” Mark asked.
“Not much. He’s the only one who responded. You know Beaulah was killed in a car accident, in November of ’08?”
“Really?”
“Yes. She was hit by a fuel truck when she pulled out of a street in town. She lived in Ohio somewhere. She was 24 years old. Not married. I know very little about any of the others. I don’t know, maybe it’s just as well.”
“I agree. So, you never feel as if you’re being sucked into a giant whirlpool?” Mark asked suddenly with urgency, as if he needed to clear this with Jackson before Timothy arrived.
Jackson looked up sharply. “Why would I?”
“I mean, don’t you have days when you feel everyone is against you, and it’s just a matter of time until you can’t take another day of battling these feelings of inadequacy? Of not being enough?”
For a long while, Jackson said nothing, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor between his feet. Then, “I guess I do.”
“Jackson!” Jane exclaimed.
“No, nothing serious, my darling,” Jackson said, sitting up and rubbing her soft shoulder with affection.
“It’s just that, yes, I know what you’re talking about. When that empty feeling does threaten, which is less and less, now, I put on my shoes and go running. I run for as many as seven or eight miles. It’s wonderful therapy.”
Mark nodded in perfect agreement. “I ran a lot.”
There was a distinct bell-like tone, and they all looked at each other.
“Timothy.”
Jackson nodded, went to the door.
Involuntarily, Jane touched up her hair, sat straight, while Sadie tucked a few stray hairs behind her white covering. What would Timothy say?
Jackson returned, followed by a strapping youth, his long, unkempt, dirty-blond hair hanging over his eyes, his ears, and well down into the hood of his gray sweatshirt. Loose jeans hung sloppily below the waistline of his boxers, the hem torn and scuffed, the threads gray from contact with the ground.
His eyes weren’t visible at first glance, until he picked up a hand and pushed his hair back, then everyone could see that they were as dark brown as his two brothers’. He had the same perfect mouth, but his teeth were brown and crooked, decay spreading across the neglected grayish-white objects in his mouth.
His cheeks were packed with deep scars where acne had taken its toll, the worst of it gone now that the teen years were behind him. He smiled an unsteady smile, an unsure separating of his lips that had nothing to do with his eyes.
“Hey.”
He shook hands limply, a mere sliding of a sweated palm against his two brothers’, a nodding in Jane’s and Sadie’s direction, his eyes glancing nervously at his feet, a small cough, a sniffling sound before tossing his hair to the side again.
“How y’ doin?” he muttered in the general direction of the women.
“Good. Good. It’s nice to meet you!” Jane said effusively.
Sadie murmured something, she wasn’t sure what, her throat swelling with the same emotion she felt that day when Nevaeh stumbled out of the woods, down the embankment, and crumpled her pitiful body onto the road, surrounded by that cold unrelenting snow.
Here was a youth surround by a cold, unforgiving, joyless existence. Sadie sensed in him the same hopelessness, the same victim of circumstances that had shaped his life so much beyond his control. She bit down on her lower lip, averted her eyes as goose bumps raced up her arms and across her back.
“Sit down, Timothy,” Jackson offered.
“It’s Tim.”
The words were spoken defensively, that self-conscious sniff following the words, as if the sniff sent the words out and supported them.
“Okay, Tim. So … you came. That’s good.”
“Yeah, well. I ain’t staying.”
“But you will have dinner with us?”
“Yeah.”
The first awkward silence of the day followed.
“So, you … want to tell us about yourself?”
“No.”
Mark said that was all right, he’d go first, and proceeded to tell Tim his life’s story. He got as far as the Amish uncle, when Tim lifted his head, the anger creating dark, brown fury, turning his eyes into blazing outlets of raw anger.
“I hate him.”
Mark’s eyes opened wide. “You know who I’m talking about?”
“Yeah.”
“Were you raised Amish?”
“Yeah.”
“Surely not by him.”
“No, but I know what he did to you.”
“How?”
“Word gets around.”
“Who raised you?”
“Aunt Hannah. The old maid. Till I turned 16. Then I left. Went to New York City. Big mistake. Came back. Hannah was dead. Heart attack. I stayed in the area among the Amish but never really went back. Guess I’m half-Amish. Remember all of it. It’s good, in a way.”
He shrugged his shoulders, picked at the hole in his jeans, pulled at a thread, then rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, unsure of what to do with it before straightening his back to put it in his pocket, blinking with a terrible embarrassment. As he lowered his head, the curtain of long hair obliterated him into the safety of his shell.
Sadie had to restrain herself from going to him, peering under that hair and telling him he was just fine exactly the way he was.
“So, what do you do?” Mark asked.
“I’m a roofer.”
With that he actually straightened up, flipped his hair back, and looked directly at Mark, a tiny spark of pride passing quickly through his brown eyes.
“In Illinois?”
Tim nodded. “I’m a good one. Boss said.”
Again he lowered his face, picked at a scab on his arm.
“I’m sure you are, you’ve got some shoulders on you for a … What are you? Twenty? Twenty-one?” Jackson asked.
“Twenty-two, I guess. You know they never found my birth certificate. Had a … mess when I applied for my driver’s license.”
In the course of the evening, they found out Timothy had a steady job, but that was the only stability in his life. He lived from one paycheck to the next and ran with a questionable group of friends who led him from one bad habit to another. But they were the only real form of love and friendship he knew.
Sadie listened, watched, and observed his total lack of support, his free-floating existence, before sitting beside him on the sofa, reaching out a hand, placing it tentatively on his gray sweatshirt.
“Tim, did you ever consider returning to your roots? You know when your mother passed away, you were the only one of her children she really worried about. She mentioned you so many times, asking us to find you. It was her dying wish. I think of all the deep regrets she carried with her, you were the worst. In her own way, she loved you the most.”
Tim shrugged, sniffed. “Yeah. Well, Hannah loved me. Sort of. She died. My mother’s dead. So that’s as far as that goes. Poof!”
He il
lustrated with a rapid opening of his fingers, a short, derisive laugh, followed by a backward movement of his shoulders, and then he slumped against the back of the sofa, his long legs splayed in front of him, tapping his feet in time to remembered music.
Well, he was up and on his feet, Sadie thought. Sick and thin and maybe dying, yes, but on his feet! He had, in his own way, admitted that his real love was Aunt Hannah, his substitute mother, and not in the sort of life he led.
“Would you allow Mark and me to try?” Sadie asked, turning to look at Mark as she spoke.
Mark’s mouth literally fell open. He stared at Sadie in a way she knew was without total comprehension.
“You’re not my mom.”
“I’m your sister-in-law.”
There. She had reached out and stroked Nevaeh under the unkempt mane, where her poor neck was so thin and scrawny, the hairs so matted and pitiful. Now she had reached out to Tim, offering her love.
Was it too much? Too soon? Would she drive him away?
The foot kept tapping. The hands were jammed deep into the pocket of his sweatshirt. His shoulders hunched. He sniffed, then coughed. He scratched his stomach, smoothed the sweatshirt, then looked at Sadie. Really looked at her.
Then he smiled, a small one, but a smile, no matter what he would choose to call it. Sadie could feel the leaning of Nevaeh, a sort of turning her neck in her direction, as if to let her know she appreciated the gesture of affection.
“I guess you are.”
His voice was small, stripped of its coolness, the mask of bravado he wore every day, leaving his words as vulnerable as a newborn baby, completely dependent on someone else’s care. Babies did best on their mother’s breast, but if that wasn’t possible, they could thrive easily on a substitute of another human being feeding them a good formula.
“Mark is your real brother. You were raised Amish. We are your family. Your real family,” Sadie went on.
Jackson and Jane exchanged a knowing look, a smart doctor who could see the miracle unfolding before his eyes. He also knew Sadie had gone far enough; this would take time.
As if on cue, Sadie backed off. “Well, Tim, you know where we live. If you decide to change your life, you know where we are.”
Tim nodded, a strange melancholy landing on his features, clarifying the desperate sadness in his brown eyes.
“Yeah, well I’m … guess you’d say caught in a spider web of my own making. I’ll go back home. I’ll let you know. Give you my cell phone number.”
He sniffed again, self-consciously, and Sadie lifted triumphant eyes to Mark.
Chapter 13
WHEN THEY LEFT THE BROWNSTONE ON RIVER Drive, Sadie could tell Mark had left a sizable chunk of his worst childhood baggage behind, hopefully buried beneath the city streets, never to be picked up again. His step was light, he was ravenously hungry, he teased Sadie with a new lighthearted attitude she had never seen before. They ate sandwiches at the train station, they ate on the train, and they ate when the train arrived at the station in Montana. As Sadie watched her husband, she could only guess at the price he had paid to make that visit into the unknown, reminding herself yet again that he didn’t have that strong system of support from a normal home life the way she did.
When their life resumed its usual rhythm, Sadie thanked God they had gone, returned, and met Timothy and Jackson. Doing so had instilled a sense of worth in Mark. Was it because Mark had filled Timothy’s bottle with Jell-o water? Had helped Jackson eat his oatmeal? Had found a new sense of having done something right? In that time of darkness and pain, had he somehow found that in all situations some good can come of it? Surely he had.
This spring in his step, this light in his eye was a miracle. Sadie had been afraid that Jackson being a doctor would intimidate Mark, lowering his fragile self-esteem, but it had worked the opposite way. Mark was so proud of Jackson and so concerned about Timothy, a new sense of purpose surrounded him.
The winter came early, its harshness arriving along with it. The cold was mind-numbing, the thermometer hovering below zero every night in spite of the sun’s feeble rays during the day. Snow enveloped everything. It clung to pines and firs, placing a huge burden on the sturdy limbs with its weight. It was not unusual to be awakened during the night by the sound of a gunshot, jolting Sadie out of a deep sleep, before realizing it was only the sound of branches snapping beneath the snow’s weight. Mark said ice and snow were nature’s pruner, something Sadie had never thought about. She guessed they were.
Dorothy was not doing well at work, which caused Sadie a few moments of anxiety. Her hip was bothering her quite a bit, and her usual quick movements turned into painful hobbles, her mouth a tight line of determination. Erma Keim accosted her at every turn, telling Dorothy to go to the chiropractor, which, of course, was like igniting dry tinders.
“That quack ain’t touchin’ this hip. Let him crack backs and collect his 30 dollars. He ain’t gittin’ a red cent off’n me.”
And that was that. Erma told Sadie if that thick-headed old lady wanted to be that way, then she’d just have to live in her pain. She guaranteed that Dorothy’s hip and pelvis were out of line, and if Doctor Tresore was allowed to take an X-ray and adjust her a few times, she’d be so much better. Sadie nodded agreement, but added that maybe Dorothy’s hip joint was actually deteriorating and she needed a replacement, which gave Erma so much hope of running the ranch kitchen all by herself that she immediately stopped harassing Dorothy about the chiropractor, leaving an aura of peace in the ranch kitchen.
Richard Caldwell was getting ready to host the annual Christmas banquet, as usual, spending more time in the kitchen, Barbara joining him as they pored over recipe books. He watched Dorothy limping between the refrigerator and the pantry before putting an elbow to his wife’s side. When she looked up at him, he shoved his jaw in Dorothy’s direction, shaking his head in concern.
“Your hip bothering you, Dorothy?” he boomed.
The sound of his voice alarmed Dorothy to the extent that she dropped a five-pound block of Colby Jack cheese on the linoleum, then snorted impatiently.
“Now look what you made me do, Richard Caldwell! No, my hip ain’t bothering me at all.”
Erma pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows, a hand going to her unruly red hair, leaving a trail of flour and bits of pie crust in its wake as she returned to crimping her apples pies. Sadie stirred brown sugar into the baby carrots and said nothing.
Later that evening when she was getting her coat and scarf from the hook on the wall, Dorothy approached her after Erma had gone to talk to Barbara about a Jell-o dessert. Dorothy’s eyes were mirrors of humility, tears brimming on her lower lashes.
“Sadie, if’n I tell you what’s bothering me, you ain’t gonna tell anyone, right? Least-ways not Erma.”
“Of course not, Dorothy. I’m just afraid you’re going to have to go to the hospital and have surgery.”
“No, no, no. It’s not my hip.”
Dorothy raised herself on her tiptoes and held a short hand to her mouth. Sadie bent her head slightly to receive the long-awaited secret.
“It’s corns. I got them corns all over my toes. I bin using them little adhesive tapes, you know. Those Dr. Scholl’s. They don’t help a bit. I got ’em so bad, I can hardly walk. The Dollar General is letting me down so bad. You know, if them shoes were worth what I say they are, I wouldn’t get corns, would I?”
“Oh, my, Dorothy. Corns are extremely painful. I know just what to do. You can have them removed at the doctor’s office, or you can use tea tree oil. Just dab it on with a Q-tip for a few weeks.”
Dorothy nodded, her eyes downcast.
“It’s heartbreaking. The Dollar General is letting me down so bad. I can’t buy any more shoes there. In fact, I’m not sure them Ritz crackers is fit to make my chocolate-coated crackers anymore.”
Her withdrawal from Dollar General was obviously quite painful, so Sadie assured her it was okay to change stores. Suddenly s
he had a great idea, assessing Dorothy’s round stature and small feet. Those Crocs everyone wore! The perfect footwear for Dorothy. Sturdy, wide, slip-proof.
“Dorothy! I have the perfect idea for you. Crocs! I’ll go to town with you, and we’ll fit you into a completely trouble-free pair of shoes. Your corns won’t be touching anything and will heal in no time at all.”
It was love at first sight. Dorothy slid her poor, corn-addled feet into a pair of sturdy Crocs, stood up, and began walking down the aisle of the local shoe store, her head bent, concentrating on the placement of each foot, so much like a small child. Slowly a beatific grin spread across her face as she stopped, turned, and walked back to Sadie.
“It’s like walkin’ on air. An’ I don’t have to bend down and tie ’em. Oh, it’s a miracle, Sadie. The Lord heard my prayers and took mercy on me and … ” She lowered her voice and hissed behind a palm, “… my corns!”
Sadie nodded happily. There were no brown or black ones for Dorothy. She was undecided between bright pink or lime green, then settled for a furious shade of purple.
“Next time I’ll get the lime green.”
When she opened her wallet to hand over a crisp 20 and a 10, she pursed her lips, but told Sadie quietly that wasn’t so dear if you counted the comfort. And when they drove steadily past the Dollar General without stopping, Dorothy shook her head with great sadness and wisdom.
“See, that’s what the world’s coming to. You pay for a cheap product, that’s what you get. And you know what else I thought about? They sell them Dr. Scholl’s corn adhesives right beside them shoes. They know whoever buys them shoes will return for corn thingys.”
She arrived at the ranch the following morning, no limp in sight, her purple Crocs flashing with each step. Erma asked what happened to her limp. Dorothy said she went to the chiropractor, winking broadly at Sadie behind Erma’s back. Dorothy’s gait was new and refreshing, rocking slightly from side to side, the shape of her Crocs making her appear so much more like a lovable little duck.
There was no phone call, no warning, not even a letter. Just the sound of an aging motor driving an old Jeep up the driveway, making its way steadily through the deep snow. And then, nothing. The rusting Jeep just sat at the end of the walkway. No doors opened, no lights blinked or horn blared.
