by Leisha Kelly
I put down the shovel, thinking I’d better try again. “Will you boys shovel for me a few minutes?” I asked.
They both looked at me in question, but then Joe came in, shovel in hand.
“Yeah,” Franky said. “You do what you have to.”
“Pa said we oughta stay an’ help,” Joe told me. “But it’s gettin’ on toward noon an’ he’s fixin’ to head over to home in a little while to see what Sam and Kirk and the rest is got done.”
I nodded and stepped outside. Edward had the top open over his engine, and George was standing there still talking to him. I would have gone and offered to help with whatever the problem was, so we could talk things through and come to some kind of conclusion. But I could hear tiny voices of singing coming through the timber. It sounded like Sarah and somebody else. All the little girls, surely, with Julia on their way back. George looked up, and Edward with him, in time to see them breaking through the trees.
Juli! I should have been more prepared. I didn’t know what to tell her about why Edward was here or how long he’d stay. It seemed like a betrayal to have him standing here so peacefully.
Even at the distance I could see her slow down. She would have questions in her eyes, I knew she would. She would look at him, and at me, in a way I wasn’t used to seeing. Distrust. Dismay. Why was he back? Why was I having it so?
It was all to Edward’s pleasure, apparently. He was smiling again.
ELEVEN
Julia
“Look,” Sarah whispered. “Is that Uncle Edward over there?”
“Yes.” I didn’t say anything else, only took her hand in silence and gave it a careful little squeeze.
Katie sought my other hand of her own accord. “Did he come back to take me away?”
“No,” I assured her. “He’s not taking you anywhere.”
Rorey ran on ahead like the wild little thing she was sometimes, shrieking to her father about the turtle we’d caught. A stranger’s presence didn’t faze her in the slightest. I shouldn’t let it bother me, either, I decided, but I went to our yard slowly, glad it was Samuel taking the first steps to meet us.
“He’s not been here long,” he told me when he was near enough. “He says he wants to tell Katie he’s sorry.”
I couldn’t help it. I stopped and stared at him. “You’re speaking for him, now?”
He lowered his eyes. “No. I just wanted you both . . . to be prepared, I guess. You don’t have to talk to him at all if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to,” Katie said right away. “He said if you wouldn’t own me, he might just take me away and we’d join the circus.”
“That’s not up to him.”
She turned her big dark eyes to Samuel. “Is it up to you?”
“Only partly. So long as Ben Law has you with me.”
The little girl tightened her grip on my hand, and I felt so sorry for her. Samuel wasn’t making her future sound very secure. Of course, he couldn’t help it. He was only being honest. But it left her looking rather crestfallen. And I realized she was still hoping that Samuel would indeed “own” her. I looked down at the child who was clinging so tightly to me. She hadn’t given up. She still wanted her father. And there seemed to be nothing I could say.
“Mommy,” Sarah whispered, “I’m hungry.”
“Yes,” I answered her. That was, of course, why we’d hurried back. Nobody’d had much breakfast, so I’d figured on an early dinner.
I looked over at the tall man at George’s side, who was wiping his hands on a grease rag. Maybe he would just keep showing up. Expecting a cool drink and a plate of food. I thought of the sorrel in my bag, of mixing it with our seedy garden lettuce and some lamb’s-quarter, and serving that with those few potatoes and the rhubarb cake I’d forgotten and left in the coals. If he thought yesterday’s meal was strange, maybe he’d find this one strange too.
I wondered why he didn’t just buy his meals in town. If he had money for the gas to keep driving that car out here, surely he’d have some to spare for a bite or two. I almost felt like telling him we couldn’t afford to feed anyone else. Katie was enough.
But then I remembered what I’d been thinking in the woods about Emma. She would have fed him with a smile. She would have killed a chicken, plucked it, and cooked it in nothing flat. And she would have been telling him how much God loved him, even while she was working. Tears came to my eyes. I couldn’t hold a candle to her. I just couldn’t.
“Juli . . .” Samuel reached his hand to me, but I didn’t let go of either girl.
“I’m fine,” I told him quickly, before he could say anything else.
“Don’t worry about dinner. We can wait. It’s plenty early.”
“I’m going to kill a chicken,” I said so quietly that I barely even heard it. My own words had taken me by surprise. Kill a chicken? One of our precious egg-laying hens? For Edward? Oh, Emma. Oh, Jesus. Must I?
“What?” Samuel asked me.
“I’m going to kill a chicken,” I repeated, steeling myself to the idea.
“We get to eat it?” Sarah asked. The shock was plainly evident on her face. Killing a chicken ought to be undertaken only with careful consideration, I’d told both my children many times. Because we mustn’t rob tomorrow, thinking about today.
“Are you sure?” Samuel asked. “We can make do with whatever else.”
“No,” I told him. “We have a guest, and we haven’t yet treated him like one. Maybe it’ll make some difference. We can hope.”
He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “I thought you wanted to keep them for winter—”
“Things change,” I said quickly. “Things come up.”
I started for the house in a hurry, wanting to get this over with before I changed my mind. There were only six potatoes, not enough if the Hammond children stayed. I could devil the eggs that were left, but there weren’t many. I’d have to get creative rather quickly if we were to have a feast. We’d had the green beans yesterday, so I knew there weren’t enough ready yet. And the tomatoes weren’t ready either.
“Sarah, you and Katie take one of the empty pails down by the road and pick me all the unopened daylily buds you can find.”
“We gonna eat that too?” Sarah asked. It wasn’t entirely new to her. We’d done it once or twice last summer.
“Yes. And we’ll need quite a few with company here.”
The girls hurried off together.
Samuel grabbed my hand. “Julia—”
“Now don’t even try to talk me out of this. He’s your brother. What would Emma do? She’d serve him the very finest meal—”
He leaned and kissed me. Right on the lips while I was trying to talk. Not caring that all the world could see. “I love you,” he said. “You’ve got a bigger heart than I do.”
I could feel the tears welling up, and I tried my best to deny them. “No. I’m bitter and mean and I’m just doing this because it’s the thing to do. I didn’t say I liked it.”
He smiled. “I love you anyway. I don’t think you’ve ever been mean.”
“You watch,” I said. “It might happen.” I hurried the rest of the way to the house, knowing it wasn’t only Samuel’s eyes watching me. Inside I got a soup pot and came charging back out. Samuel was waiting on the porch.
“Fill this with water,” I told him. “I’m going to stir the fire back up.”
Samuel kept a pile of wood next to the ring of rocks, right there handy for summer cooking. I pulled my cake pan out of the coals, stirred the embers, and added little sticks to get a flame again. By the time Samuel came with the pot of water, the fire was blazing. He set the pan over the fire for me, and I took a peek at the cake. Too done on one side, not quite enough on the other. That’s what happens when you just leave something without checking. I set it on a rock with the underdone side toward the heat and marched right on to the chicken coop. Emma’s chicken catcher was just like Grandma Pearl’s. Wooden handle on a long, stiff wir
e with a crook at the end. I grabbed it from its nail on the wall.
“You want me to do that?” Samuel asked.
I hadn’t even realized he’d followed me. “No,” I said quickly. I knew I needed to do it. I needed to be able to, not so much for Edward as for Emma and our merciful God.
“Just guard the gate, if you don’t mind,” I told him. “Make sure none of them get out.”
I took that chicken catcher by the wooden end and stepped inside the coop with it. Right away, those hens knew exactly what was on my mind. Every one of them lit out the back flap into their yard, squawking up a fuss. I tried hard to get the last of them, Lazy Susan, we called her. But even she was too fast for me.
I came back out of the coop, pushing the hair away from my face. All the chickens were gathered in the corner opposite Sam at the gate, probably figuring him to be in on this little attack. I knew it wouldn’t do a bit of good to sneak up. I just ran at them as they started to scatter, and I swung the hook end of the catcher right into the middle of those fluttering feathers. I hit one of them and gave it a yank.
Wingy. That was Sarah’s name for the hen. She’d given all of them names. At least this one wasn’t my best layer. I pulled the hen close. The hook of the catcher had got her by the leg. I struggled to reach past her flapping wings to grab her by both legs and hold her upside down.
“That’s a pretty piece of work,” Edward declared from beside the fence. I hadn’t even seen him come up so close. “No wonder Samuel married you. I bet you take care of him real fine.”
I’d never admitted to hating anyone. Maybe I never would. But I sure hated his words, his attitude. Here he was, disparaging my husband right in front of him. Samuel didn’t say a word, but I couldn’t be so meek about it.
“He’s a good provider,” I said. “He takes care of me.”
The rest of the hens had run for cover back in the coop again, and the old rooster was pacing back and forth, looking at me with suspicion.
“Uh-huh,” Edward scoffed. “I don’t suppose he’s worked a job since he lost the one in Pennsylvania. Have you, Samuel?”
My quiet husband opened the gate for me, ignoring his brother completely. “Hatchet’s sharp already,” he said. “Let me kill it for you.”
For a moment our eyes met, and I saw something I hadn’t expected to see. He was angry. Sad and angry and trying just as hard as I was to maintain control. I handed him the chicken. It’s a sacrifice, I suddenly thought. Lord, receive it from us.
I hadn’t noticed George Hammond. But suddenly he was standing beside us, telling us he had to get home.
“You got yer comp’ny,” he said. “An’ I got me a’ plenty to do. Don’t worry ’bout gettin’ to the field this afternoon, Samuel. I know you got your hands full.” He looked sideways at Edward. “Maybe some folks don’t know that farmin’s all work. Long hours, purty near ever’ day. Don’t have to be in no fact’ry to work your tail off, that’s for sure.”
I smiled.
“I’ll leave Joe an’ Frank to finish them stalls, if you don’t mind feedin’ ’em, Mrs. Wortham.”
“No,” I said, thinking about the food I’d have to muster up. “I don’t mind. Thank you.”
“Yes,” Samuel echoed. “Thank you.” He started walking to the shed with the chicken. I thought of how strong he’d had to be, facing the sheriff and his brother and even little Katie, telling them all the same thing. The truth. Why couldn’t I have just believed him without question when he needed me to? And now he was facing a day like this, having to bury our cow and then stand and take Edward’s ridicule. What was he thinking inside?
I glanced at Edward, who was still gawking at us with his cocky kind of smile. How could two brothers be so different?
I followed Samuel, and Edward spoke to me quickly, before I could get out of earshot. “You’d be loyal, no matter what. Rather that than do any thinking, I guess.”
Samuel was reaching for the hatchet, an old one, longer than most, which he kept good and sharp and clean. He was good about that, like he was good about so much.
There was a stump to one side of the shed. We’d killed chickens there last year when Emma was still living, and once in the early days of spring when we’d had to have the meat. Holding Wingy upside down, Samuel took her there, laid her across the flat old stump, and with one quick whack, took off her head.
Suddenly killing this chicken seemed awful, when Lula Bell had died and we’d killed a fine, healthy turtle earlier in the day. That was farm living, I knew. That was survival, even. But at that moment, I didn’t like it one bit, because it just spoke of our need. Oh, Lord, help us.
“So you pluck it now?” Edward asked us.
I was still watching Samuel holding the headless hen with its wings flapping and the blood oozing down onto the ground. “You want to do it?” I asked Edward right back.
“I don’t have the slightest idea how.”
“Maybe you should learn,” I told him. “It’s a useful skill. Someday you might want to settle down somewhere and provide for yourself.”
Samuel looked at me rather oddly. Edward didn’t reply, but he was looking at me differently too. And I knew I was wrong to let bitterness do the talking. I knew what Emma would do. I swallowed hard, mustering my courage.
“God loves you, Edward Wortham,” I said. “He may not like the way you behave, but he loves you just the same.”
Edward stared at me in silence, glanced over at Samuel, and then back at me with some distant thing churning in his eyes. But whatever it was vanished away quickly, and he laughed again, loud and ugly.
“Mother told me about you! She said you and Samuel can’t hardly take two breaths anymore without getting all religious! You gonna take up preaching? Huh? You gonna build you a church out here somewhere? Next to the outhouse, maybe, and preach to the chickens and the neighbor kids and anybody that’ll come and listen?”
“We go to church in Dearing,” Samuel said. “That’s good enough.”
“You think you’re better, that’s what it is,” Edward continued, addressing Samuel directly this time. “That’s what I’ve been talking about. You act like you’re better, but you’re not.”
“Better than what?” Samuel asked, his deep eyes looking soft.
Edward didn’t hesitate. “Me.”
I wished to goodness Edward had kept his mouth shut long enough for Samuel to answer that. It might’ve changed things for both of them. But Edward rushed headlong into another tirade, not giving Samuel a chance for even a word.
“You’d be nothing without your woman here, and you know it! You don’t know what to do out here on no farm. You’re a city boy. Couldn’t even make it in that factory! And now you think you’re Mr. Christian Do-Good all of a sudden! Don’t you think you owe her an apology—”
“No,” I cut in. “He owes me no apology at all. But you do, for coming in here and tearing him down. I don’t want to listen to it.”
Samuel started walking toward the fire and the water that hopefully had gotten hot enough.
I followed, and Edward followed me, shaking his head. “Gads, woman. You must be in love.”
“Of course I’m in love!” I replied. “And I always will be.”
Samuel dunked the dead chicken in the bubbling water pot and back out again. I looked up at him, glad he’d heard me. Maybe I could redeem myself in his eyes.
“I know Samuel well,” I addressed Edward again. “Better than you do. So I don’t believe what you say about him. Not any of it. About Trudy Vale or anything else. And he was doing fine in that factory. He’d been promoted three times. It wasn’t his fault the place closed down. Everybody lost their jobs the same day. It had nothing to do with him.”
Samuel laid the chicken across a rock and started plucking feathers. I picked up a stick and poked the well-done potatoes farther to the side than they already were, and then started helping.
“You’re being mighty generous,” Edward remarked with another s
hake of his head. “Julia Wortham. Quite a wonder.”
“It’s Samuel Wortham who’s the wonder,” I argued. “If you were in his shoes and he came railing on you in your own home, do you think you’d be quietly plucking him a chicken? Or running him clear out of the countryside?”
He laughed. “Well, at least the hospitality here has improved a bit.”
“That’s because God loves you,” I said again and took a deep breath. “We do too, and we’re trying to show it, despite what you think.”
“You’re incurable,” he said. But he got real quiet. He looked at us both and then past us to the road where the girls were still picking daylily bulbs.
“I think I’ll work on my car while you’re fixing,” he said. “It was sounding funny on the way out here this time.”
“Not bad,” Samuel ventured. “Just a bit of a knock.”
“What do you know?” Edward asked him, but without the malice his words had had before.
“Will you let me help you?” Samuel asked. “Just to take a look?”
Edward didn’t answer. He just turned around and walked to the car.
I took the chicken from Samuel’s hands, and he leaned and kissed me again. “Thank you,” he whispered and then headed over to Edward’s side.
It was strange seeing them together, with their heads bent over that automobile. From the back, they truly looked like brothers. And working together that way, they almost looked like friends.
I had to run in the house for my knife, fry pan, and lard pail. Then I cut the chicken quickly while my pan was getting hot. Sarah came running up with the pail of daylily buds and a fistful of flowers.
“For you, Mommy.”
Maybe she knew I needed such a gesture then. I hugged her and thanked her and then sent her inside for a vase and a bowl of flour for the chicken.
“Do we get chicken too?” she asked when she came back.
