Sarah's Promise

by Leisha Kelly

  The dog gazed at me sympathetically and then leaned his head against me, which could almost knock me over when I wasn’t expecting it. Bert had looked up pictures and declared that the dog was a mastiff, a very large breed.

  “I bet you wouldn’t like Donald if you met him up close,” I chattered on. “Be sure and let me know if he comes around here. I notice you never bark at Kirk or Harry or Bert anymore. Just troublemakers like Eugene.”

  I was just talking because it felt good to talk. The weather had warmed enough that the snow was almost gone. I’d come out to dump the scrap bucket and bring in a fresh pail of water, but I wasn’t ready to go back inside yet.

  “What do you think, dog? Is home really wherever you make it?”

  Suddenly he stiffened. I could feel a difference in his muscles even through my wooly layer of mitten. “What is it?” I hardly dared to ask out loud. Looking around the yard, I didn’t see anything different at all. “Do you smell a fox?”

  He almost pulled away from me but seemed to hesitate at the last minute and then scoot closer to my side. I put my arms around him. “What is it?”

  He was staring at the road. He didn’t bark or move another muscle, he just stood in wary attention and watched as Orville Mueller’s mail truck sauntered its way down our lane with two heads inside. Was Donald with him again? I got up and moved to the back porch where I knew I was out of sight of the road. Horse kept at my side the whole way.

  “Thank you. I’d rather not have them see me outside.” I petted the dog’s head. “Do you always watch the mailman?”

  I’d never paid attention to how Horse reacted to Orville before. Could he possibly know that he had somebody with him today? Maybe it wasn’t Donald. After all, Donald had a job in town somewhere. How could he have the time to ride along on the mail route? It must have been his day off, that time he’d done it before.

  Horse didn’t bark, just kept his alert. I was sure he’d settle down and relax again as soon as Orville drove the truck past our mailbox and on down the lane. But he stood stock still, and then suddenly sprung into action like he’d been wound up and let loose. He went tearing out across the yard barking and carrying on. And at the same time I could barely hear the sound of tires easing up our drive. They were pulling in.

  I dashed inside. “Mom! Orville’s coming to the house. And he’s got somebody with him.”

  Mom glanced out the window with a shake of her head. “Surely Donald has enough sense—” She stopped herself mid-sentence. “Maybe it’s just Orville with a letter that’s charge-on-delivery.”

  But I could see out the window too, and now I could tell for sure that it was Donald in the passenger seat. He stayed put and let Orville get out of the truck and come to the house alone.

  Mom had to step out to shush the dog and call him aside so Orville could get to the porch. He was delivering a package for Katie that wouldn’t fit in our box. A birthday present from her boyfriend. From inside the house, I listened with relief to the brief words between Orville and my mother, and I thought he was going to turn away without incident. But he suddenly stopped.

  “Uh . . . Mrs. Wortham, my cousin asked me to please let you folks know he’s sorry for scaring Sarah in town the other day. He’d . . . uh . . . he’d like the opportunity to apologize to her in person.”

  My mother sounded gentle yet emphatic. “You may tell Donald that his apology is accepted, but Sarah doesn’t want to talk to him. We’re sorry if his feelings are hurt, but he’d be better off turning his attention elsewhere.”

  “Um, he wouldn’t mind if you were right there to listen in on what he had to say,” Orville persisted.

  Mom’s answer made me smile. “I’m not interested in listening in. But my husband would be. So I suggest that Donald take the matter up with Mr. Wortham directly if he wants any more to do with Sarah.”

  This time Orville turned away. “Uh, yes, ma’am. I’ll tell him.”

  Mom held the dog till Orville was in the truck, then she came in with Katie’s package. I hugged her.

  “Maybe Donald’ll finally leave me alone.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Mom agreed. “He certainly is a persistent fellow, putting his cousin up to such a request.”

  She put on water for tea and I set the package on the table for her. It wasn’t heavy or especially big, just too wide for the mailbox. My curiosity about it should have crowded away any further thought of Donald’s latest vain effort, but Mom’s words stuck in my mind. He certainly is persistent.

  Why? Why on earth would anybody be so completely bullheaded? I was engaged, for heaven’s sakes! I’d turned him down or ignored him I didn’t know how many times. Why didn’t he just get the message and give up?

  Then I remembered something he’d said. “I care about you . . . I don’t want you hurt . . .”

  Could that be true? Really?

  It was a numbing thought, and I had to get away from it as quickly as possible. I turned the radio on, but to my dismay it was more static than music and I had to turn it off again. So I turned my attention back to Katie’s package. “What do you suppose Dave has sent all the way from Wisconsin?” I asked, hoping to stir a conversation.

  “We’ll have to wait and see.” Mom was pulling tea herbs from the cupboard and didn’t look my way. “Katie’s going to be surprised. It’s the first time he’s sent a gift.”

  I grabbed the honey jar and a couple of spoons and sat in the closest kitchen chair. “Are they getting serious?”

  “I think so.” Mom turned around. “It’s beginning to look like it.”

  She passed me the spearmint and chamomile, and I set them on the table. Mom reached for cups and I watched her. People said I looked like her, and I knew I did a little. But Mom seemed to have changed lately. The little lines at her eyes and the corners of her mouth never used to be there. Was it aging her to think how close we were to the day when none of us kids would be home? Or was I just noticing such things more because I’d been so aware of my own growing up?

  Things were about to be so different. Everybody would be grown and on their own before long, even Emmie.

  “Mom, do you think you and Dad’ll be lonely after Katie and I have married and moved away?”

  She was checking the water to see if it was hot enough. “Let’s not hurry Katie, honey. But when the day comes, I don’t know. It will seem strange. But there’s always plenty to do around here. And your father and I enjoy each other’s company.”

  If only Frank had found a place as close as Mabel Mueller’s house in Dearing. Only fifteen miles! I almost told Mom that I wished we were going to be living nearby so I could see her more, but I knew she’d tell me that Frank was doing the right thing and deserved our support.

  She always seemed cheerful about Frank’s decision and the idea of our life together so far away. I figured she understood him, maybe better than I did. But it had to make her at least a little sad to think of Robert overseas, me about to be in the northern part of the state, and Katie maybe ending up in Wisconsin. It made me sad.

  I spooned dried spearmint leaves into the tea strainer over my cup and sighed. Life bumped along too fast to let people get a comfortable hold on things sometimes. When I was little, I used to think that Katie, Rorey, and I should all grow up to live next door to each other. I no longer felt that way about Rorey, but with Katie it would still be nice. Especially if we were both close to Mom and Dad. But such wishful thinking only led to foolish, wayward notions, and I found myself daydreaming about houses in Dearing. It was such a nice town. Not as nice as our farm, but I’d always liked it.

  Mom poured my tea water and her own. She sat down and pushed tea leaves away from the edge of her strainer with a spoon. “You needn’t worry about us, you know,” she assured me. “Once you’re married, if we get lonely we’re liable to show up at your doorstep for a visit.”

  “I hope so.”

  “It’d be quite an adventure, actually. Might be fun.”

  I sm
iled. I really could picture my parents doing that. Even unannounced. It was something rather delightful to look forward to.

  I turned my thinking to Frank as we sipped our tea. He’d be just as thrilled as I about a visit from my parents. He’d have so much to show them. I tried to picture the place the way he’d described it to me, but I really couldn’t. I did know that he was in a store that wasn’t very full yet, but he was already open for business, making things right out in the open where people could watch. Plus he took orders. And did repairs. The shop was surely very nice, but from what Frank said, the house was even better, with plenty of room for overnight guests.

  It felt good to find myself thinking about Camp Point in positive ways. Frank’d said business might seem slow for a while, but he was doing all right. A store in Quincy had ordered two of his cedar chests for their showroom and another store in Paloma wanted one too. I couldn’t be surprised. He made the most beautiful cedar chests I’d ever seen. Everybody who saw them would want one of their own. At this rate, it might take him a long time to get his own storefront full.

  I wondered if I would make friends as quickly as Frank had. He’d told me about Mr. Willings from the church and an elderly lady named Hannah Haywood, a brandnew neighbor, who helped with his letters to me. I liked her already, because she always included a nice little note of her own.

  There were good things about Frank’s move. Kirk acknowledged that he had real “guts” and plenty of brains to even make a start. I was proud when I heard things like that. And sitting with Mom over a cup of tea, I found it easier to level my thinking and relax. The idea of moving didn’t seem so strange right now. Just an inevitable part of life. I prayed to keep this frame of mind and not let fretful thinking bog me down again. I was in for an adventure, so I might as well enjoy it.

  Emmie came over that day when she got out of school. By then, Mom was making noodles and Emmie was glad to help her. Bert and Harry joined us for supper, and even though it wasn’t her birthday yet, Katie went ahead and opened the package. It was a fat photograph album in a binder that could be opened to add more pages. Her boyfriend, Dave, had started the first page with a picture of himself at home and one in the service, plus a picture of him and Katie together when he’d visited last November. She said she loved the album because it was ready to fill up with memories. And I wished I had one with pictures from when we were kids.

  We popped popcorn that evening, and Dad played checkers with Harry while the rest of us sat around the table with pens and paper. Mom was working on a letter to Robert, Katie was writing to Dave, and I started another letter to Frank. Emmie was copying several of Mom’s recipes, and Bert was finishing an article he was working on for the Mcleansboro newspaper. I liked evenings like this, except that it would have been even better if Frank were sitting here too, carving one of his angel figures or something.

  I wondered if he missed us as badly as I missed him. I wondered what he did up there evening after evening all alone. In a way, I would feel comfort to leave here and be with him as soon as possible, just so nobody would have to be by themselves.

  February flew by us, and March rushed in. Dad started taking fewer hours at the station, getting ready for spring planting. And the telephone company was making preparations for stringing wire out our way. Frank was still speaking at that church. Mr. Willings had become the pastor. And I was getting so eager to see Frank at Easter that just the thought of it consumed a great deal of my attention.

  Rorey’s plans vexed me, though it didn’t seem to bother Frank when I explained. She still wanted her wedding in our yard, which was complicated enough. But I was most exasperated that she insisted on having it such a short while before ours. I’d asked her to consider changing her date but she refused, even though preparing for both weddings was going to throw everything into a tizzy. We’d chosen our date first. Why did she have to do this? I couldn’t help thinking that she was wanting to turn as much of the attention on herself as she could.

  Frank didn’t care. He said if she was determined to get married then the date was up to her. And if people were too tuckered out after her wedding to celebrate ours then we’d just be blessed in the quiet. But I knew that’d never happen. Everybody’d do both, which would have my mother whirling busy, since she was something of a mother to Rorey too.

  As if Rorey’s timing weren’t already bad enough, in the middle of March I got a letter from her. I knew I wouldn’t like it when she said at the beginning to please not get mad, just consider what she had to say. Knowing Rorey, that meant she was about to get obnoxious, and it didn’t take her long.

  I hope you’re doing a lot of thinking while Franky is away. I didn’t wanna upset you while we was there, but there’s something I have to ask. Don’t it bother you what people will think about you marrying someone you grew up with? I mean, we’re all practically brothers and sisters. I’ve been asked if your parents adopted all of us, especially Emmie cause she’s youngest and Franky cause he’s mostly lived at your house since he was fifteen. Don’t that make him almost your brother? People I know think so.

  By the time I got to that point, I was already mad. What was wrong with Rorey that she would try again with her stupid arguments to convince me not to marry her brother? Was it me she despised, or Frank, or both? I didn’t really want to read on, and maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did.

  You’re scared of change, Sarah. You like Frank cause he’s familiar. You never gave no other boy a chance cause you wanted things to stay the same. But it ain’t a healthy way to look at life. How do you know he’s the one for you? I couldn’t have married Robert. We were over to your house and at your table too much. He seems like my brother too. And Franky’s been over there more than the rest of us. You just want what’s comfortable, like a little kid dragging a old blanket. Why don’t you take a chance? Be brave enough to give somebody else an opportunity before it’s too late.

  I crumpled the letter in my hand. How dare she? She didn’t mention Donald Mueller directly, but I knew what she was getting at. Had he put her up to this? Or was she hard-hearted enough to come up with it on her own?

  How could I respond? I was in the kitchen alone reading the letter. Should I show Mom and Dad? How would they react? What would Frank think, or Lizbeth, or Emmie?

  Everybody else had seemed happy all along that Frank and I had chosen to be together. Rorey was risking angering more than just me by writing this letter. Why didn’t she care? Did she seriously think I’d listen to her and start dating now? How could she want me to?

  She was just hateful, vicious, and cruel. She always had been, throwing my doll down the stairs when we were little girls, and years later lying to blame Frank for the barn fire that was her and her boyfriend’s fault. I didn’t know how she could grow up so mean, but she had, and she was meaner now than ever.

  Of course Frank was familiar, but I loved him for plenty of reasons besides that. And he’d stayed at our house more than the other Hammonds because their pa didn’t want him home. Where else would he go? He was already working with my father, and he slept in the woodshop almost as much as in the house anyway.

  Nobody’d been adopted. They’d had their pa till Frank was eighteen, and then it was Frank who moved back to their farmhouse to care for the younger ones. Of course we were all close, like family. But we weren’t blood kin, and nobody else saw anything wrong with Frank and I deciding to marry. Leave it to Rorey to invent something like this to try to mess up our happiness.

  I grabbed paper and started a letter in reply, but I felt like I was just spitting fury.

  How could you be so hateful? I’m going to marry your brother regardless of what you think, and you and Eugene and Donald Mueller can all go suck eggs. Don’t you dare write me another letter suggesting I date somebody else, or I’ll . . .

  I couldn’t finish. There wasn’t any use. I crumpled my letter up with Rorey’s and threw them both into the cookstove. Maybe the best response was none at all. Even telling
anybody else would just flame tempers, and what good would that do? It was going to be hard enough for everybody as it was to accept Rorey and Eugene marrying, and their abrasive, intrusive presence at our wedding time. Why make it harder? If I kept quiet, maybe she’d forget her nonsense. Or at least have the intelligence to keep her mouth shut.

  Only later did I stop and think that Mom had seen the letter when I first brought it in the house. I prayed she wouldn’t ask what was inside, but that evening she wanted to know if Rorey had said anything specific about her wedding plans.

  “No,” I said simply, hoping she wouldn’t ask further.

  “I was hoping she’d tell us what she’d decided about a wedding dress, and her guest list, decorations, and such.”

  “Nothing about her wedding, Mom.”

  “Well, she doesn’t write a letter often. What did she have to say? May I see it?”

  My stomach tensed. “Um . . . she was just kind of rambling. I burned it.”

  I bit my lower lip and looked away, wondering how Mom was going to react. We normally shared letters from Robert or Rorey or Willy. And burning it would have seemed strange even if we didn’t.

  To my surprise, Mom didn’t press me further. Maybe she knew something had upset me. It might have been plain on my face. But she didn’t ask. Until bedtime. And then she had only one tender question.

  “Is everything all right, honey?”

  I didn’t want to say anything, but part of it came rolling out before I could stop it.

  “Rorey thinks I ought to date somebody else, Mom. She says I never gave anybody else a chance and I ought to before it’s too late.”

  Mom shook her head. “That’s why you burned the letter.”

  “Yeah! What’s she trying to do? Why would she want to break us up? It’s her own brother!”

  “Rorey’s behavior toward Frank has always been puzzling, honey. Just like her father’s.”

  “I know. But this is just stupid. Maybe it’s because Donald Mueller is Eugene’s friend. I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t think it would help matters to get anybody else as mad as I am.”