by Ann Treacy
Grandmother took Martin by the elbow. “Come. You walk.” She steered him back up the street in the direction of the store. Samson and Lilly followed after tying the dog to the cart and caging the rabbit.
Martin had to concentrate on shortening his stride to match that of the tiny woman. Eventually she spoke. “Is not that I always see special details,” she explained. “Sometimes maybe, yes.”
Martin was embarrassed by Samson’s request. He’d never much wondered what his future might be . . . not until he met Ruby anyway. Since the wedding he’d thought plenty about seeing her. Feeling slightly foolish, he extended his hand, palm up, but the small woman merely clasped it in both of her own.
“I no need to look at lines and wrinkles to know you,” she said. “I look here and here,” she pointed to her eyes and head, then laid a hand on her heart as if pledging allegiance. “I see that trials have come to your family.”
Martin mentally ticked off the troubles. There was Dan’s death, Meehan wanting to take the farm for taxes, and now Pa. Ma seemed to be getting better, but she worried constantly that Pa might not fully recover. Martin had dealt with his concerns by working as hard as he could.
“But you are lucky; you have friends.”
Martin thought she referred to the past, to Samson’s weeks of helping him on the farm. “But you need much more. The answer to your problems will reach you if you pay attention to the people you love.” She held her hand again over her heart.
Martin didn’t know what this meant. He wondered if it had to do with Ruby. He looked down at Grandmother’s severe, unsmiling face.
“Is that all?” he asked.
She patted his arm. “Is plenty. You good boy,” she said and turned to climb the stairs into Forest’s Dry Goods.
Samson waited on the store’s steps.
“About Ruby,” Martin said. When Sam rolled his eyes at hearing his cousin’s name again, Martin assumed his teacher’s voice, “We have a saying, ‘the squeaky wheel gets the grease.’”
“We say the squeaky wheel gets replaced. I will talk to her. Can you meet me for fishing tomorrow morning?”
Chapter 20
Martin overslept. It had been late when they returned from town the night before, and he’d carried the sleeping Lilly into the dark house.
He stood and stretched, making a moaning sound. His arms still over his head, he turned slowly, wondering why empty haylofts compelled people to walk in circles. Perhaps because it felt like a large, empty circus tent. A yawn shook him to his toes; then he swung his muscular arms down to his sides.
He peeked out the hayloft door, the best vantage point on their land. He had been doing this a lot lately, while holding his breath. But now he breathed deeply. The waiting was over. Not just one or two blades of growth visible only by squatting on the ground, today there was a green tinge floating above the soil everywhere. At last the dirt and seeds verified another of Mr. Perry’s lessons: “The smaller the seed, the faster it germinates.” He had done it. He and Sam. The crops were finally up.
He dressed quickly. Through shafts of dusty sunlight in the corner stood the trunks where he and Pa had sat and talked months ago. He walked over and sifted through the quilt squares, discarded toys, and the crinkly old corset. At the bottom of one chest lay the set of black buttons. They were connected through their shanks by a length of knotted gray string.
A passage in Cora’s diary described such buttons . . . jet buttons she had called them. They were nothing out of the ordinary, but sparkled in a pretty way. He tried to imagine a time when a gift as small as these buttons would have been remarkable. He wrapped the buttons in the quilt squares. He would give them to Lilly.
He went to the house, quilt squares in hand. But his good intentions withered when he saw Ma reading papers spread on the table.
“Good morning, Martin.”
“What’s all that?” he asked without greeting her.
Ma took a moment to answer. “Mr. Meehan stopped by yesterday afternoon to check some things—storage in the barn, which fields are planted now. Those sorts of things.”
Meehan must have seen Martin in town and hightailed it out here. “Why?” he asked.
“So as to be ready if your pa decides to sell. He left these.” Martha looked up into her son’s face and continued, “He’s just being thorough, giving us options. He thinks we’d be lucky to get much for the place. We don’t have things as updated here as some folks have.”
Martin wanted to tell his mother to believe the opposite of anything Meehan had to say. He had taken charge of so much—moved thousands of pounds of rock off the fields, plowed, harrowed, planted. But none of that mattered if Ma wanted to sell. And Pa would do what Ma wanted, especially if she kept getting better. What did his opinion matter, when, with the stroke of a pen . . .
Martin stormed through the house from back to front, taking half a loaf of bread with him. As he stomped across the porch, Lilly shrank back a step, like a mouse scurrying for cover. Martin stuffed the bread under his elbow in the same way she held her doll, and picked up her hand.
He forced his voice to sound calmer than he felt. “Here, Lilly, you take these.” He didn’t manage to sound kind exactly.
She looked at him, bewildered.
“I found them in the barn. A set of nice dress buttons and some old quilt squares. They belonged to . . . ahh, a nice girl like you.”
No thanks came. As though he had never given her anything before, Lilly stood staring at the items in her palm.
Martin had to think, had to clear his mind and try to think like Meehan. He grabbed the pail and settled to milk Ella. He pressed his head against her firm side and remembered how once in Stillwater he’d been jostled against a pregnant woman in a crowded train lobby. He was young, and his face was pushed into her belly. He’d expected it to be soft, but it felt just like Ella’s flank, tight like the skin on a drum.
He shut his eyes. He hadn’t hated the work; he would do it all over again. He would do it again next year if he had the chance. If they didn’t walk away from this place where his ancestors lay buried. Where Cora was buried. And what about the taxes? Were you put off your place the very next day? Maybe it was possible to pay them late, after the harvest. He would ask about this at the bank if only Meehan weren’t the banker.
He pushed away from the cow, upsetting the three-legged stool as he rose. He grabbed the bucket and was about to swing the barn door open when Lilly pulled it from the other side.
“I was just about to call you.” Martin thrust the pail into her hand. “Here, take this to the house.”
Lilly stood before him, unmoving. In her other hand she held her best Sunday dress. It was brown with ivory piping around the collar. Martin knew the decorative edge was called piping because of the endless hours of sewing discussions he had endured last winter. Just like he knew a thimble was worn on the middle finger of the same hand that holds the needle to control its direction. Lilly had cried about wanting to protect the fingers underneath the piece of work, the fingers the sharp end sometimes struck, but Aunt Ida held firm.
Lilly had replaced the buttons on the dress bodice, exchanging plain beige buttons with holes for the ornamental black ones that were attached by unseen shanks. She held forward the neatly folded dress. “See what a difference they make! I could add them to the cuffs also, but Aunt Ida says I’ll be more likely to rub them off since they stick out.”
Martin couldn’t be bothered now by a small girl and talk of buttons. Yet he held vivid images in his mind of Cora with these buttons. He took a moment to study Lilly’s upturned face.
“Thank you for the buttons,” she said in a thin voice.
Martin touched her head, then gently batted a curl that hung fat and springy over her ear. Ma called them sausage curls. He had not felt Lilly’s hair in a long time, silky like corn tassels and just as smoothly cool to the touch.
“Who else would I give them to? You’re the prettiest girl here.” He wo
ndered how it had taken him so long to notice Lilly, to give even the slightest sliver of his attention to her. He had cared more for a girl he would never meet or know except on paper. He thought about Cora, and about Dan, and how short life can be. “I think you should go ahead and put them on the sleeves, too, if you want.”
Chapter 21
Martin was late getting away. When he first approached the lake, Samson tried to ignore him. But the good-natured boy couldn’t pretend to be angry for long.
Martin hurried out onto the familiar log. “Sorry I’m late.”
Samson smiled and pulled a stringer of fish out of the water where the boys had first met.
It was a hot, dry day. Martin balanced on the log until he was over deep water, then rested back on a strong branch. He told his friend everything. Everything about Meehan and Ma seeming to believe whatever the man told her.
Sam listened to it all, then said, “I did not know it was this hard to own land.”
“It’s a gamble the crops will pay—that’s what Meehan tells her and that much is true. I could use some insurance to help me keep the place. Remember the story I told you about some treasure on my farm?”
“Your grandparents,” Samson nodded.
“And my aunt, their daughter who died at about my age. I didn’t tell you something else though. When we moved here I found my aunt’s diary in a trunk in the barn.” With one hand poised over the other, Martin wrote on his palm in a sign language the boys now performed without thinking—diary. What if Sam thought him strange for reading a girl’s diary? “I’ve been reading it. Read the whole thing actually. Read every reference and clue.”
Samson pulled in a line that had no fish on it. He coiled the string, then placed it, lasso style, on a broken limb.
“She talks about life on the homestead. She makes it sound so interesting. She talks about a family inheritance. Maybe it’s true, or was true long ago. Now my best chance of keeping this place rests on a secret treasure my pa doesn’t even believe in. She died young, my Aunt Cora. And fast. She died shortly after writing it.”
“What is this treasure?”
“It never says. I mean, I read the whole thing, but she didn’t mention what it was. Only that she hid it.” Martin shook his head. “I don’t think she really understood its value. I’ve looked everywhere but down the well. I’ve sifted through the entire homestead and I still don’t even know what it is I’m looking for.”
“Sifted through?” Samson didn’t understand.
“Searched, you know, rummaged through.” Martin made busy motions with his hands.
Samson nodded slowly, then reversed the motion and shook his head from side to side. “You must try to figure this out before Mr. Meehan convinces your ma.”
“It’s strange how little bits of her diary keep floating back to me. They stick in my mind like lines of poetry. But I’ve never been able to piece out what it is I should be looking for.” Martin lifted the stringer of fish. “These are yours today. So, Sam, did you think of a way for me to see Ruby again?”
Samson adjusted his feet on the rotting bark and chose his words carefully. “As my friend, and Grandmother’s guest, my people tolerated your presence at the wedding. I’m sorry, Martin, but you would not be seen as a proper suitor for Ruby. We do not even have a word for a gadje man marrying a Roma woman. It isn’t done.”
There it was. Samson disapproved of him for what he was—or at least the rest of his people did. Probably they felt as strongly about him as Aunt Ida did about the Gypsies. “We’re just friends is all. What’s the harm in seeing her one more time? You said you won’t camp here past summer anyway.” Martin didn’t want to be a suitor exactly, did he? It was just that he had been dreaming of the girl with green eyes and beautiful hair. And didn’t Sam’s grandmother say to pay attention to those you love in order to find answers? Did he love Ruby? He sure thought so whenever he recalled dancing with her.
“I will try to arrange for you to meet her here tomorrow night at sunset. Don’t be late. She likes you, but Ruby changes her mind easily.”
Chapter 22
The next twenty-four hours passed like three years for Martin. He slept poorly through the night, waking from dreams in which he chased bags of gold or discovered a drawer filled with money.
Ma had neatly tucked away the bank papers. All day Martin concentrated on details from Cora’s diary. He had searched thoroughly for a doll’s house but, except for the few trunks in the hayloft, none of the original homestead belongings remained. Now he studied the plowshares to be certain they hadn’t been crafted in Sweden with a metalsmith’s signature on them.
It galled Martin to think that Meehan might get this place and see something he had missed. He squeezed his eyes and remembered the painting of the homestead on Mr. Perry’s wall. What other buildings had been here in Cora’s lifetime that no longer existed? Martin thought best while working. He cleaned the barn and patched the rail fence in the afternoon, but by day’s end he had convinced himself there was no treasure hidden anywhere.
The day was broken up only by the arrival of Mr. Perry, who brought a letter from Pa. Ma was overjoyed to learn he would be ready to make the journey home in just two weeks. Decisions would be made in two weeks.
Martin shivered while he bathed in the kitchen during the evening, while the women and Lilly worked in the garden. He had the patience to add only two large kettles of boiling water from the stove to the tub of cold well water he had carried in with buckets. But it had been such a hot day that he didn’t mind the cool soaking. The evening was a repeat of the one before: after supper, he yawned loudly, said good night, and went to the barn while the women prepared their baths. Martin waited in the dark loft for the lanterns from the house to go out. He left through the corral behind the barn, where Finn and Marshall were enjoying the warm evening air. Not wanting to arrive at the lake smelling like a horse, Martin decided to walk. But he walked fast to arrive well in advance of Ruby so there would be no chance she would leave if he wasn’t there.
At dusk, Martin saw Sam approaching with Ruby. Despite the dry heat, Ruby wore a lightly woven shawl and scarf. The friends visited briefly; then Samson left to take a walk, telling Ruby, “I’ll be nearby. We’ll leave in one hour.”
Ruby carried a basket that contained a mat, which she spread on the ground. Neither she nor Martin spoke as she set out several dishes of sweets and cheese. With the food to focus on, conversation came easier. Martin considered telling Ruby about Cora’s diary. He decided to approach the subject by asking about books.
“We don’t read,” Ruby said simply. “Only some Gypsy men read. No women. Reading to us means telling fortunes, like my baba. Some Roma, my people, don’t even speak English. Samson speaks the best English of us, because he listens in towns and sits outside stores and schoolroom windows. He speaks only English to me so I will learn.”
Martin was embarrassed. He had assumed she could read. Samson and Ruby indeed came from a different culture. He searched his mind for a safe topic. “Where will you go after this?”
“Probably to marry,” Ruby said. “It is late.”
“We only just got here.” Martin wondered if he had heard her right about getting married.
“No, it is late for me. Most Gypsy girls marry by twelve or thirteen. The girls at the wedding, with their scarves tied behind their heads, they are all married.”
Ruby gathered her shawl around her. Her green scarf was tied under her chin. “Do I not speak properly, because of my English?”
Martin saw her mood darken. “No, Ruby, no. It’s very interesting—your life. There’s so much I don’t understand. But it’s not your English.” His knee brushed hers. Silently they both looked down at their clothes. Ruby fingered a heavy necklace.
“We also wear coins, and much of our jewelry and buttons are made from gold or silver. We Roma keep our valuable things in wearable forms, not in banks or stored away.”
“That’s interesting.” Mart
in meant it. He carried little of value himself. His everyday pocket contents consisted of a small knife, a half dime from 1854, and the wooden horse Samson had given him. He could spend the half dime, same as a nickel, but he liked carrying it.
Samson had moved down the shore where they could no longer hear him chunking rocks into the water. The evening was very still. Martin lay back and pointed to the darkening sky. As their eyes adapted and twilight deepened, the stars shone more brightly. Soon Ruby was telling him stories and legends her people believed about the heavenly bodies. Martin, who had studied Greek mythology in school, said very little, finding her folktales more interesting than any he knew. He had never studied the stars with a girl before. He pushed everything from his mind, including the time, trusting Sam as Ruby’s chaperone to return when necessary. Martin succeeded at shutting out the world until puffs of smoke began to blur his view of the stars.
“Do you smell that?” Ruby asked.
It dawned clear as well water that one of the senses Martin had been ignoring was the smell of something burning. He jumped to his feet. “Fire!” He turned in a half circle, suddenly all senses alert. “That way. Damn. Stay here.”
Chapter 23
With everything so dry, fire was a constant concern. A swollen black cloud billowed from the earth, the earth near home. The sight took Martin’s breath away, just like when Dan died. So this is life: constantly losing the people you love in various terrible ways. He ran flat out. It was almost a mile.
Ruby raced her long legs to keep up. At the road Martin heard, then saw, a running team and wagon. Ruby stepped into the darkness, her arms outstretched to signal the driver to stop. But Martin pushed her across the road out of harm’s way. “He’d never see you in time,” he shouted, running again. He’d seen Robert Perry lashing his horses as he probably never had before. Martin was glad Mr. Perry hadn’t delayed by stopping for them.
