“I think there might be something my mother needs help with,” she said, looking right straight at Roy.
It flustered him for a moment but he nodded. “Tell your mother I’ll come by tomorrow afternoon. Just to take a look, mind you. I can’t actually do anything ’til later on, seein’ as it’s the Lord’s Day tomorrow.”
Gracie told him that she’d let Raedine know he was coming, thank you very much, and then we headed down the lane leading to Carmella’s house.
“What does your ma need done?” I asked her.
“Oh, lots of things,” Gracie said. “She said just the other day that she wishes she had someone around so she wouldn’t have to fight with stuck windows and such.”
It was a mystery to me why she’d tell him to come over just to shove up some stuck windows. I was still puzzling this through when we got to Carmella’s kitchen door. We banged good and hard.
Carmella’s cheerful face appeared and she ushered us in, declaring that we were a sight for sore eyes. “Sit right down, sit right down,” she told us, bustling about. “I’ll put on the kettle and make you some tea with honey to warm your bones after that long walk.”
We told her we’d gotten a drive, but she said the lane was long anyway and just kept on with what she was doing. When the kettle didn’t boil fast enough to suit her she added a chunk of hardwood to the stove, even though the firebox was more than half full of crackling, snapping wood and flames.
“Now!” she said, once she’d put steaming, enamel-coated cups in front of us and produced a plate of buttered bread. “What brings you two here on a day like this?”
“Some ladies came to see my mother,” Gracie said, reaching for a slice of bread. “They said they were there to help her, but the things they said didn’t seem one bit helpful.” You had to admire the way Gracie could just come right out and say whatever she wanted to, no matter how difficult the subject might be.
“Is that so?” Carmella didn’t sound surprised. “What kind of things did they say, honey?”
“They said that my momma’s soul was in danger and they had done what they could to help her but it could be too late!”
“Well, they were wrong to say such a thing. And anyway, there’s no call for the ladies of Junction to be concerning themselves with your momma’s business,” Carmella said.
“But they are concerning themselves,” Gracie pointed out. “And I don’t know what it all means, exactly, but it frightened me.”
“That’s why we came here,” I said. “So you could explain it all for us.”
Carmella’s shoulders slumped a little and her head dropped forward so that her chin rested on her ample chest. She mumbled something that sounded like a prayer and then sat without moving for a full minute or two. Gracie and I sat silently, waiting.
“I declare!” Carmella said, bringing her face up so suddenly that I started in my chair, “you two do know how to put a body on the spot.”
Chapter Twenty
“I have a story to tell you,” Carmella said after a long pause.
We leaned forward, setting aside our bread and tea in order to give her our full attention.
“Back when my granddaddy was a young man, he worked for a rich man on a ranch in Wyoming. My granddaddy’s job was to take care of the horses—brush them down and tend to their shoes and feed them—all the things that have to be done to keep them in fine health.
“Now, one year there was a beautiful chestnut foal born and the white man’s daughter loved that foal, so she asked her father if she could have it for her very own. And because he was rich and he loved his daughter, it was in that man’s power to give that horse to his child.
“My granddaddy took good care of that foal and it grew into a beautiful young filly and the man’s daughter loved it. She wouldn’t ride any other horse in the stable no matter what. Now, that horse knew she was special and it showed in the proud way she pranced around or shook her head. And everything was fine for about three years.”
Carmella adjusted herself in her seat and took a drink of her tea before going on.
“This horse wasn’t meant to be bred or worked, of course. It was just for the daughter to ride. But one day, my granddaddy was terrible sick with a fever, and that fever made him a mite delirious and he put the filly in the wrong field, and in that field there was a stallion. And the next thing you knew, this filly had a foal in her belly.”
Gracie clapped her hands at that, which made me and Carmella look over at her. A strange feeling of dread crept into me as I took in the glow of Gracie’s face, shining with delight.
“A new baby horse!” she cried. “The girl must have been so excited!”
“Well, now, you might think that. I guess lots of folks would be, but this girl wasn’t. She didn’t want that horse to change, not one little bit. But the horse was changing, and so, she stopped riding it, and she stopped taking apples and sugar cubes to it. Where she used to spend hours talking to that filly and brushing it, she hardly even looked at it anymore.”
“That’s awful!” Gracie said.
“Yes it is, child,” Carmella agreed. “Well, before long, the girl decided she wanted a different horse and she picked a new foal for herself. Then her first filly—well, I guess she was a mare by then—was put to work to increase their stable by producing a foal every year. My granddaddy declared that that horse had some of the most beautiful foals he ever did see. But it was a changed animal.”
“Changed how?” I asked.
“My granddaddy said that horse lost all its joy. She never pranced or held her head up the way she had before, and he said you could see a sadness in the horse’s eyes that would break your heart.”
“Because the girl didn’t love it anymore,” Gracie said.
“That’s exactly why. But you need to remember that there’s a happy side to this story too. Even though it all began because of a mistake, those beautiful foals would never have been born, and the world would have lost them and all their offspring too. And I think that’s the most important part of the whole story.”
As we were thinking about that, Carmella poured more hot tea into our cups and slid the remaining bread slices in front of us. “Best eat up and be on your way, now,” she said. “It’s a cold day and you have a long walk ahead of you.”
We did as she suggested and it wasn’t until we were halfway home that it occurred to us Carmella hadn’t answered Gracie’s question at all.
“Maybe she did, though,” I said. “Maybe it was like a parable or something.”
“What’s that?” Gracie wanted to know.
“We learn about them in Sunday School,” I explained. “It’s a story about one thing that’s supposed to teach you about something else.”
“Like what?”
“Like, there’s one that I heard a few times about this shepherd who had a whole bunch of sheep—I forget how many, but a lot. And one day one of the sheep got trapped on a rock on a hill or something and the shepherd went out in the storm to look for it because he cared about that one little lost sheep just as much as he cared about all the rest of them that were safe.”
“Did the shepherd find it?” Gracie asked.
“Yes, because he wouldn’t stop looking until he did.”
“That’s a nice story,” Gracie said.
“Yeah, but like I said, it means something else.”
“Like what?”
I thought hard, trying to remember it right. “Something about how God cares about lost people and keeps trying to get them to come to Him where it’s safe.”
“Oh.” Gracie nodded. “So you think Carmella’s story was one of those pear-apple things too?”
“Parable,” I corrected. “I think it might have been. Only, we probably have to be older to figure out what the story was really supposed to mean.”
Gracie sighed. “Well, I wish I understood more things right now. My head gets so confused sometimes that I feel dizzy.”
To demonstrate,
she began to weave and spin, flopping her arms out at her sides as she pirouetted along the roadside. It was okay until she tripped on a clump of mud and landed on her hands and knees in the muck and slush.
“Luke!” she yelled, as if I’d made her fall. I knew I hadn’t but that didn’t keep me from being nervous.
“What?”
“Why didn’t you try to catch me?”
I’m almost certain that it had happened too fast for me to react—one second she was whirling and the next she was flying toward the ground. It’s unlikely that I had a chance to do anything more than watch.
That doesn’t change the fact that I’m haunted by that moment, frozen in time. I can see her face, turned to me, those small brows knitted together in puzzlement. I can feel the hurt behind her words, the inability to understand why she’d felt no movement behind her. If I had lunged forward or reached for her, it wouldn’t have mattered that it was too late. She would have known that I’d made the effort.
But I didn’t, and her question still troubles me.
Not: why didn’t you catch me? But, why didn’t you try to catch me?
Chapter Twenty-One
“Luke! Luke!”
“Now what on earth is that child on about?” Ma asked, looking up from the shirt she was making for Pa’s birthday.
“I dunno.” Through the window I could see Gracie racing toward the door, her hair flying out behind her in the April sun. Excitement lit up her face as she called my name again. I hurried to the door and pulled it open as she rounded the corner of the house and came barrelling toward me.
“You’ll never guess what’s happened!” she said, bursting into the room.
“Hello, Gracie.”
“Oh, uh, hello Mrs. Haliwell.” Gracie turned back to me after answering my ma’s greeting. “Well, what do you think, Luke, but Miss Prutko is getting married and moving all the way to Halifax with her husband. That’s in Nova Scotia—way far away on the other side of the country.”
“Oh, yeah?” I tried to sound enthusiastic since Gracie was so excited, but it wasn’t easy. I was actually pretty disgusted that the big exciting news was something as dumb as a wedding.
“And I’m going to be her flower girl!” As this last bit of news burst out of her Gracie clapped her hands and jumped up and down.
The needle in my mother’s hand stopped in mid-stitch and her head came up. “Gracie!” she said with a huge smile. “That’s wonderful.”
The next thing I knew there was a boring old discussion going on between Gracie and Ma about a dress. It seemed that Miss Prutko was going to see about borrowing one somewhere, but then Ma said she would make Gracie a dress.
When I think about it, my parents don’t seem to play a very large role in many of my memories. Aside from a few, stand-out moments, they appear very much as shadows in the background. Maybe it was because they were busy most of the time, or because our everyday routine was so unremarkable. Whatever the reason, that’s the way it is.
But the smile I saw on my mother’s face when Gracie made her announcement, and the work she put into that dress over the next few weeks—these are things I will never forget.
So, Gracie had her dress for Miss Prutko’s wedding—not something borrowed and ill-fitting, but a brand new gown, pale pink with a white ribbon around the waist. She looked like a faerie princess in it, with her hair floating free around her face, and her hands dipping into that basket and gracefully scattering flower petals on the bride’s path to her new future.
Not that I was there, but I saw enough demonstrations to cover a hundred weddings, and I bore it easily because I could see the happiness shining right out of Gracie. That was something I didn’t mind looking at for hours on end.
Then the wedding was over and Miss Prutko was going away, but not before she had a second surprise for Gracie. This one I saw happen for myself because Gracie and I were gathering Hawk’s Beard and chamomile for a wildflower bouquet she was making for Raedine. We were engrossed in our task when a car horn honked and drew our attention to the road.
“Miss Prutko!” Gracie squealed and then corrected herself with, “Oh, no! I mean Mrs. Knowling!”
I followed her as she hurried from the field’s edge to the side of the car.
“Hello, Gracie, Luke,” our former teacher greeted. “We’ve just stopped at your house, Gracie, but there was no one home. We left something on the front porch for you—just a little present to remember me by.”
“What is it?” Gracie asked, but Mrs. Knowling shook her head and laughed.
“Why don’t we take them to see it?” asked Mr. Knowling. He reached over and touched his new bride’s arm and gave her a sappy smile. So we jumped into the back seat and Mr.Knowling drove the short distance back to Gracie’s house. There on the porch was the painted desk and chair.
Gracie said, “Oh!” and clapped her hand over her mouth. Then she stood up and leaned forward to put her arms around Mrs. Knowling. And she started to cry.
“Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Knowling. “Maybe we best get out and sit on the porch and have a bit of a visit before we go, Eddie.”
“Sure,” said Mr. Knowling. He looked like he’d agree to pretty much anything she said.
We all got out and sat on the porch, and Gracie asked, did anyone care for a refreshment. Both Knowlings said no thank you, they’d just eaten a huge lunch and couldn’t manage a single thing. I was about to say I could manage something all right, but Gracie plunked down and started talking about the wedding and the desk, so that seemed to be the end of the offer.
Mrs. Knowling explained to us about how she’d taken the desk back home because she knew they wouldn’t let Gracie sit in it anymore after they fired her from her job.
“They fired you?” Gracie and I echoed.
“Yes. What did they tell you?”
“That mean old Mrs. Drillon said you quit,” I said.
“Oh. Well, I guess I should have known they wouldn’t admit to what they’d done,” she said quietly. “But the truth is, when I wouldn’t do what they wanted, they decided I was no longer fit to teach. It broke my heart to leave that classroom, but I had to stand up for what I believed.”
“It broke our hearts too—right, Luke?”
“Uh, sure,” I said, a bit embarrassed claiming something like that. I’d felt bad when Miss Prutko left but I was pretty sure it hadn’t broken my heart.
“Oh, oh!” Gracie said, jumping to her feet. “I bet she knows, Luke!”
“Knows what?”
“Remember, the girl at the town meeting? She said something happened to her cousin but we could never ask anyone what it was because we weren’t supposed to be listening. But I bet Miss Prutko—I mean Mrs. Knowling—knows all about it.”
I’d forgotten about that but my curiosity was piqued as soon as she mentioned it. It seemed our teacher’s was too, because she insisted we tell her exactly what we were talking about.
I explained how we’d gone with my parents that night and weren’t supposed to go near the building but had snuck over and listened at the window anyway.
Mrs. Knowling didn’t look very happy about that. She said something about how we should have obeyed, but then she wanted to know what we’d heard.
Between us, Gracie and I gave her as many details as we could remember of the different people who had gotten up and spoken, and how they’d wanted her to take that desk away from Gracie.
“Except for Leah,” I said.
“Leah Zecchino?”
“Right. She was talking about her cousin…I forget her name but she had something wrong with her mouth, I guess.”
“Eliza. Yes, I remember her,” Mrs. Knowling said.
“Well, Leah said something about a tragedy, only she didn’t say what it was, and we couldn’t ask anyone because then they’d know we were listening to the meeting!” Gracie said. “So, do you know what the tragedy was?”
“It was a long time ago,” Mrs. Knowling said, nodding. She paus
ed and took a deep breath. Her face had gone sad and I almost wished we hadn’t brought it up, except now I was really keen to find out.
“It was at the end of the summer—oh, I suppose it must be fifteen years ago or more—just a few days before school was to go back in after the holidays. Eliza was a few years younger than me; I believe she was going into grade five or six that year, and I was starting grade eight.
“She’d been picked on a good deal in school. Not by everyone, mind you, but by enough that it must have felt that way to her. And I imagine, looking back, that she just decided she couldn’t take another year of it, because just before Labour Day weekend, she tried to do herself harm.”
“What did she do?” Gracie asked, her eyes wide and almost frightened.
“She threw herself down a well.” Mrs. Knowling shuddered, remembering. “It was just by the grace of God that her older brother saw her and was able to lower the bucket and climb down the rope in time to save her. She was banged up quite badly but otherwise unharmed. But she never spoke again—not a single word—at least, not as long as the family was still living here. They moved away some time ago and I imagine they keep in touch with family members, but no one ever seems to mention Eliza.”
Mr Knowling moved the conversation to lighter things then and after a while they left, hugging both of us goodbye and telling us to write now and then.
I know that Gracie wrote several times over the next months, but I wasn’t much for letter-writing and never did get around to it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I used to wonder where Raedine’s men friends came from. None of them were from Junction and, to my knowledge, none of them had any particular business in Junction. They just seemed to show up out of nowhere, come around for a while, and then disappear.
It took a while before that came to an end, though Gracie had put the wheels in motion the day Roy Hilbert drove us to Carmella Tait’s place. Roy showed up at Raedine’s door the next day, as promised, only Gracie had forgotten to tell her mother about her conversation with him, so it was a total surprise.
The Glory Wind Page 9
