by Leisha Kelly
“There’s nothing more to tell.”
“There must be. Why would you say it in your sleep?”
“Who knows? I could say all manner of gibberish—”
“But it isn’t gibberish. It meant something to you.” He sighed again. “I guess it’s like my dumb story. Dewey and I were pretending to be tough. Acting like we were a couple of braves from the bear clan, but when it came right down to it, we were always scared. Both of us. That’s why we ran off in the first place.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Maybe not. But maybe I’m still running and hiding. I don’t want to talk to my mother. I don’t think I want to know.”
“You never had proof of his death?”
“What kind of proof would there be? We never went to a funeral. Mother’s word was good enough. I don’t even know where the funeral was supposed to be. She didn’t go. But who could expect her to? He broke her nose twice.”
“Oh, Samuel.”
“Shhh. Okay? I don’t want to hear any ‘Oh, Samuel.’ I want you to treat me like always and talk to me like always. I’m no different than I ever was.”
“Except that you have Katie here.”
“That doesn’t have to change anything.”
“It already has.” I kissed him, tender on the lips, hoping he’d know I didn’t mean that in any bad way.
“I don’t understand you, Juli,” he whispered. “Why aren’t you kicking me out of bed?”
For a minute my breath froze. “Why would I kick you out? What do you mean?”
“Any other woman might think I’d have to be guilty. That I’m making up some harebrained thing to get myself off the hook. And not owning up, like Edward says. He’ll probably be ready to belt me again.”
“If he does it around here, he’ll have to watch out for me and Robert. We’re liable to hog-tie him and throw him in the shed.”
I thought he’d laugh. I thought he’d be glad somebody felt that way, even though we’d never actually do it.
But he sat up. “No, Juli. Don’t talk like that.”
“Sammy, why?”
“Our father did that once.” He looked out over the darkened room, toward the blowing curtains in the window. “It was the only time I ever saw Edward cry.”
Samuel slept like a log, but I tossed and turned that night. I kept waking up and thinking about Samuel’s mother, Joanna. I’d met her several times, but she was a strange person to me. Since my own mother had died so young, Grandma Pearl was the mothering image I thought of first. She was thrifty, clean, always busy at something, maybe several somethings all at once. She never cursed, never touched a drop of anything alcoholic. In comparison, Samuel’s mother seemed almost as unreal as the man in the moon. How could a mother be like that? It was almost unfathomable. And I supposed I wouldn’t be able to understand Trudy Vale any better.
I got up a couple of times, checking on kids and just walking about, since I couldn’t seem to settle down very well anyway. Once Sarah was laughing out loud in her sleep. Robert used to do that all the time when he was smaller. But he was getting so big now. They both were. Thank God they could grow up happy. Even though we had little, they would never have to doubt their parents’ love.
Thank God for Grandma Pearl raising me up right. Thank God especially for Samuel, a miracle of a man living wise choices when he could have turned out like his brother. Or even worse.
Katie rolled over and opened her eyes. “Mama?”
“Honey, you’re here,” I whispered. “It’s Mrs. Wortham. Go back to sleep. It isn’t morning.”
She looked up at me groggily. “Do you like me?”
“Of course I like you, but it’s not time to be up talking.”
“I’m glad you like me. I like you too.” She smiled. “I never been in a house with so many kids. I dreamed I got to stay for always. I dreamed I got to be a big kid and I was milking the cow and everything.”
“Sounds like a happy dream.” I couldn’t pledge its reality. Not yet.
“It was happy,” she said. “Sarah was my new sister, and we wore matching dresses and went to school.”
“Well. You’ll definitely have to go to school. Eventually. But right now you’d better try to get back to sleep.”
“Mama never cared too much what time I went to sleep.”
“Things are different now. I expect there’ll be a lot to get used to.” I leaned and kissed her forehead. To my surprise, she reached her little hand up to touch my cheek.
“You’re pretty.”
“Thank you. Now close your eyes. Long time yet till morning.”
“Am I pretty too?”
“Yes. Very pretty.”
“Mama said I wasn’t because I look too much like my mean old dad.”
“There are a lot of things she doesn’t understand very well, I’d say.”
“I figured something out. I think your husband and Mr. Eddie must have another brother. That’s what it must be, right? Because this daddy doesn’t lie.”
“That could be it. Maybe. You’re right about one thing. My husband doesn’t lie.”
“I wished he did. Kind of. I wished he was mine. ’Cause I don’t want to go away.”
“I know, sweetie.”
“Will you please sing me a song again? Please?”
I was a little afraid of waking the other children, but I hated to tell her no. So I sang as softly as I could, an old lullaby Grandma Pearl had sung to me. And before I was even halfway through, Katie was asleep again. I patted her little hand, smoothed the wavy dark locks away from her face, and then looked around at all the other sleeping children. I prayed for each and every one of them, that they would grow up wise and gentle hearted. And then I said an extra prayer for Franky. Already wiser than his years, already gentle, he seemed to have different challenges to face.
TWENTY - TWO
Samuel
The next day started out hot. Sukey was lowing, not too anxious to get out to pasture. That worried me considerably after what had happened to Lula Bell, but the calf seemed fine, and after a while Sukey got to seeming like herself too. All the heat, maybe. I’d have to keep checking her drinking trough and make sure it stayed full.
About half of the Hammond kids went over to their house early. I let Robert go fishing with Willy and Kirk till noon again and started working on what had once been Emma’s husband’s tractor. George and I were going to need it for harvest soon enough. We still had hay to get in too, but I knew that I’d have to wait until George or one of his older boys was ready to help me. I had last season’s experience only, and that wasn’t enough for me to start in on something like that by myself. But I knew what the tractor needed, and I spent the better part of the morning getting greasy and fixing it back into running shape.
I dug some little new potatoes, and Juli fixed some kind of greens with them for lunch, along with the fish Robert caught—two decent-sized bluegill. I knew Juli was wondering about me going into town, but I felt like I’d been spending too much time already just running around. That could wait.
I didn’t want to go at all, truth be told. I didn’t want to know what Mother would say. If my father was alive somewhere, I preferred to be ignorant of it, foolish as that might seem.
Clouds came and went in the sky, and I took to praying that it would break loose and rain. Robert and I sickle cut a small stand of hay to the east of the barn. That much we could do without help, even storing it unbaled in the barn after it cured, without having to use any machines. We were both dripping with sweat when I heard a vehicle not far in the distance. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I prayed it wasn’t Edward. I just wanted to put in a full day’s work without having to stop everything and contend with his foolishness. I wanted us to be back to what was normal around here. Katie didn’t interrupt that. She was a good kid, over there helping Julia pull weeds out of the beets.
As the car got closer, I could tell by the sound it wasn’t Edward. It wasn’t
Barrett, either. Or Charlie Hunter. I looked up when it got close. Not too many people came by here, most days.
A dusty black Chevrolet with a star on its door pulled into our drive. The sheriff.
“Better stop and get a drink,” I told Robert. “Check Sukey’s trough for me and make sure it’s full.”
Robert was looking over at the sheriff’s car too. “Yes, sir,” he said without argument. Juli came from the garden as Ben Law was getting out of his car. We both stood there waiting for what he had to say. I glanced to see that Juli had sent the girls to the porch to play. Whatever the sheriff said, we should hear it first, before any of the children.
“Afternoon, Mr. Wortham, Mrs. Wortham.”
I returned his greeting, feeling impatient. “Good afternoon.”
“Still got the child here, I see.”
“Yes, sir.”
He was looking at me very straight. “How old are you?”
I wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything, but he must have a reason. “I’m thirty-two.”
“That true?” he asked my wife.
“Of course it is,” Juli said, giving him a funny look.
“Well, I found the grandmother,” he finally told us. “She lives in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and she doesn’t happen to know where her daughter is. Says she’s been near impossible to keep track of for years now, she does so much moving around.”
I nodded. None of that was much of a surprise.
“How do you suppose a Pennsylvania girl come to meet up with your brother, clear over to Albany, New York?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “She must meet a lot of people traveling so much.”
“Uh-huh,” the sheriff said. “Miss Vale’s mother tells me she come home to have that baby and tried to leave it there, but when they wouldn’t have it, she ain’t been home much since.”
“That’s too bad,” Julia said. “Katie might have benefited from knowing her grandparents better.” She was looking a little pale as she squeezed at the corner of her apron, and I understood that she deeply cared about what would happen to Katie from here on out. I wasn’t sure the law would agree, but maybe it would be better for us to keep her than for her go to a place she wasn’t wanted.
“What about now?” I asked. “If you can’t find her mother, would they rather Katie be with them?”
He looked at me pretty straight. “I told ’em why she was here, that we figured you was the father, and they said that suited them fine. It oughta be on your hands. Only thing is, Miss Vale’s mother claims her daughter’d been cavortin’ about with an older man. And you seem to be three years younger’n her.”
Juli smiled, but I’m not sure he noticed, because he was still looking at me.
“I need to tell you something Katie told me yesterday,” I said. “She remembers that picture her mother had, of the man who was her father. She says the man had a bird on his arm—”
“You mean like a parrot sitting there?” the sheriff questioned.
“No. A picture. Probably a tattoo. I don’t know what else that could be.”
“You got any tattoos?”
“No, sir. But my father—”
“I wanna talk to that girl. Hey! Katie child! Katie Wortham!”
She looked up and then stood reluctantly. Her steps toward us were slow ones, and by the time she got all the way over, she was biting down on her lip and squelching back tears.
“Tell me about the picture again,” Sheriff Law commanded her, not giving Juli or me time to tell her anything of comfort. “The one your mama had and said it was your father.”
She sniffed and took a quick glance up at me. “He was outside by a tree, kind of leaning on it. He was wearing a vest. He looked like this Mr. Wortham, only not quite, because that one was tireder or something and he had a bird on his arm.”
“What kind a’ bird?”
“I don’t know. Sort of like an eagle or something.”
She hadn’t said it was an eagle before. And I hadn’t told her about my father’s tattoo. “Was the bird right side up?” I asked her.
“I think so,” Katie said, looking afraid.
I knelt beside her and took her hand. “Don’t be scared. We just have to know. Was the man’s arm raised up?”
“Yeah. Because he was leaning against the tree with it. I remember.”
The sheriff was staring at me pretty sternly. “Let me see your arm.”
I rolled up both my sleeves, proud to show him I hadn’t followed my father’s example of marking himself.
He looked and then shook his head and stared me in the eye. “I can’t be sure you didn’t coach her to say that. You’ve had plenty time enough. And that poor grandma might be mistaken, especially if her daughter’s took up with more than one gent in her goings-about. But suppose you tell me what the devil difference it makes to you whether the bird was upside down?”
I had to take a deep breath before I could answer. “My father had a tattoo of an eagle on his forearm. It was only right side up when he lifted that arm.”
“And I suppose you’re gonna tell me you look an awful lot like your pappy?”
“That’s what I’m told.”
“Then why didn’t your own brother think a’ this?”
“He thinks our father’s dead.”
“And you didn’t tell him different?”
“I thought so too.”
Sheriff Law took a step back. He shook his head, stared at me. It was a long time before he spoke. “A man can’t father children if he’s dead. What’s your mother say about it?”
“She told us years ago that he drowned. I don’t know what she’d say today.”
“You’re calling your own mother a liar?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I just knew I needed to tell you.”
Ben Law sat back against the front of his car and thought a moment. Eventually he turned his eyes to Katie, who was standing there silent, gripping my hand. “Are you sure you’re telling me the truth, child?” he asked her. “They didn’t tell you to tell me none of that?”
“No, sir. I mean, yes, sir, it’s true. But I wish it weren’t.” She shook just a little and ducked her head, fighting tears again.
“Speak up, child!” the sheriff pressed. “How come you wish it weren’t true? Huh? Why’s it matter?”
“Because . . . because if I’m not this Mr. Wortham’s, you’re prob’ly gonna . . . you’re prob’ly gonna take me an’ . . .”
She couldn’t finish. Julia leaned over and took the girl in her arms.
“Go easy on her, will you?” I said. “She’s so young—”
“And what do you think I’m gonna do?” the sheriff demanded. “Haul her off to the jail?”
I held my ground. “You’re talking awful stern, and she’s scared.”
“I don’t know what of. I ain’t takin’ her home with me.”
Katie looked up at him.
“I understand you claim she ain’t yours,” he continued. “I can’t even swear to it myself, now, though I ain’t convinced either way. If your pappy’s dead, we ought to be able to find that out fast enough. In the meantime, seems like she’s still kin. Are you willing to keep the care of her?”
Juli and Katie both looked at me. “Yes,” I said. “I am.” Katie spun around and hugged at me so fast I nearly toppled over.
“Guess the explainin’s easier if you’re a big brother,” Sheriff Law said, but I caught his bare hint of a smile.
“I don’t know how to explain it at all,” I told him. “Hard to imagine he could be alive. But with the same name—”
“So your father was a Samuel too?”
“Yes. He was.”
“It is mighty strange, I’ll grant you that. But I’ll tell you what. The mother’s family’s been notified. I told ’em where you was. If they’re wantin’ contact, they can sure contact you. The rest ain’t the business of the law unless you especially want it to be. I’m settled on the ma
tter.”
“Does that mean you intend for her to stay here?” Julia asked.
“Don’t see we got much choice in the matter. Other side of the family ain’t pressin’ no claim, Mrs. Wortham. An’ if your husband says this is his sister, there ain’t nobody here to argue. He’s happy to take her in, she’s happy to stay. Nothing I need do ’bout any of that, ’less you’re wantin’ to know for sure ’bout Samuel Wortham Sr., an’ I’d expect a small payment for that sort of an investigation, since it ain’t necessary in the eyes of the law.”
I wasn’t sure how he’d arrived at what was “necessary,” but I let it go. We had nothing to pay, and maybe before long I’d get around to asking my mother for myself. At least we’d learned the important thing. There was no place for Katie with her mother’s family. She needed us. And that was what we needed to know.
With a feeling of relief, we said good-bye to the sheriff. He never asked me how I’d come to get a black eye. Maybe he’d heard something around town.
I picked up Katie and swung her around. “Sarah!” I called. “Robert!” They both came running, along with Rorey, who was staring at us with her arms folded.
“Katie’s staying,” I told them. “She’s going to live with us.”
“Yea!” Sarah squealed. “She can be my sister!”
“She’s really kin, Dad?” Robert asked, looking far too serious.
“Yes,” I told him. “But let me explain it to you later, okay?”
I looked at him and at Juli and Katie’s smiling eyes, and I wondered how we’d ever manage. Sure, it had to be done. What else could I do? Lord, you’ll have to help me. There’s so much we’re going to need.
I wasn’t expecting anything else that day except a report from young Sam Hammond when he got back, telling us how Franky was doing today. Or maybe George stopping and telling us he’d left his biggest boy there and come home to see to things himself. So it came as a surprise to Juli and me when Joe came pulling up with the wagon in the late afternoon. Not until it had almost stopped did we see young Sam in the back, leaning way over. Juli went running up to them, and I did too, thinking something was wrong.
