Died in the Wool

by Rett MacPherson

  If she had gone to her brothers or her father, she and her baby did not appear on the 1920 Soundex in their households. Instead, I found Hazel Kendall listed in the household of one Ellie MacBride. That Ellie, I was almost certain, was Hazel’s sister. That’s the other great thing about the Soundex. Whoever you were searching for would show up by name, independently, and then the Soundex would tell you what family the person was living with. This did not always work, since, say, if your niece was staying with you, sometimes the census takers would list her with your last name. But if your ancestor was in a hospital, poorhouse, convent, or boardinghouse, or even just living with a family as a hired hand, during a Soundex census year—1890 through 1930—you could find that person quite easily, provided he or she were listed by last name. Whalen’s daughter, Sophia, was listed as S. A. Kendall, and under the column that was for relationship to head of household, she was listed as niece. They were in Callaway County.

  I knew there was a chance that, even if I did find any descendants of Whalen’s daughter, they wouldn’t know anything about what I was looking for. Most people never talk about uncomfortable subjects, or mistakes they wish they hadn’t made. No, they usually keep infuriatingly quiet about it.

  How much easier my job would be if everybody wore their life’s mistakes and secrets on their sleeves for me to check. Fantasy world. Oh well, I’m allowed to dream.

  Most likely, the only way to find Hazel and her daughter would be to follow the line of the brothers to the present day, then call up their descendants and ask them if anybody knew what happened to Great-aunt Hazel. I could only follow the census trail to 1930, because the 1940 census was not yet available due to a seventy-five-year privacy act, and by 1930, any female descendants would have changed their last names, assuming they’d gotten married. That left me with male offspring of Hazel’s brothers, Sam and John.

  I could not find Hazel Kendall in the 1930 census. Most likely, she’d remarried. Nor was Sophie Kendall listed. I hoped that didn’t mean she had died, that instead she’d been adopted by her mother’s new husband. The 1930 census gave the names of Sam Schmid’s children as Francis, three daughters, and then Henry. Henry was only two at the time, so it’s possible that Sam had more children after 1930. John Schmid had Morgan, Ralph, two daughters, and then two more boys, Seth and Isaac. Now I just had to hope that at least one of these boys remained in the St. Charles and St. Louis area.

  In the white pages, I found three Henry Schmids, one Ralph, and two Isaacs. I wrote down the phone numbers and addresses, stuffed the list in my pocket, and sighed heavily.

  I gathered everything I had found, paid for copies, and then headed for home. Another day, I’d check the Callaway County marriages for Hazel Kendall, even though I couldn’t be sure that Hazel would have married in Callaway County, especially if her spouse had been from someplace else.

  My head was swimming with all of this information by the time I got home. There was a note waiting for me on the kitchen table. It said that Rachel and Mary had gone to see Mrs. Hassler, the elderly neighbor across the road and down a half mile. They often go to Mrs. Hassler’s to help her with her yard work. It ticks me off no end that my kids will work for a neighbor but won’t even pick up their own dirty underwear without me having to threaten them. At least our neighbor, who needs the help, was getting it.

  Matthew was still at my mother’s house, and Rudy, I assumed, was still at work. I called Mrs. Hassler real quick to make sure that my kids were actually there. Call me paranoid, but how hard was it to leave a note saying you’d be with an old lady and actually be somewhere else? Huh? It scared me that I was thinking like a teenager. Mrs. Hassler answered on the third ring and confirmed the note on the table. I could almost hear Mary rolling her eyes on the other end of the line, because I’d been “lame” and checked up on them.

  I grabbed an ice-cold Dr Pepper and some cheese to nibble on and went up to my office and sat down. The trees were all fully leafed out, and had been for a few weeks. They wouldn’t seem this green in August, after they’d been baked by the sun all summer. I opened a window and let the spring air in, propped my feet up, and took a deep breath and a long drink of my soda. Then I saw on my desk a piece of paper that I’d jotted names on. Marty Tarullo and Judy Pipkin. They were the names Father Bingham had given me. Marty Tarullo still put flowers on Glory Kendall’s grave every June. I decided that I would go see Marty, and possibly Judy, tomorrow.

  Tonight I was going to veg. Right after I made some phone calls. I called the first Henry Schmid and got a recording. He sounded very young on the recording, so if he was related to the family I was looking for, he’d probably be a great-grandson. The second Francis answered.

  I hate this part. Cold calling has never been my specialty, and people often think you’re a quack when you say something like, “Excuse me, are you descended from Christophe and Antonia Schmid?” I’ve learned to sort of prep them a bit first.

  “Hi, my name is Torie O’Shea, and I work for the historical society down in Granite County,” I said.

  “I’m not interested,” he said.

  “No, no, I’m not selling anything. Are you familiar with genealogy? It’s where you trace your family tree?”

  “Yes,” he said cautiously. “I know what it is, but I’ve never done it.”

  “Well, I’m trying to track down a living descendant of a family that I’m working on. A Christophe and Antonia Schmid, who lived in St. Charles County at the turn of the twentieth century,” I said.

  He was quiet. “Is your family from St. Charles County?” I asked.

  “My father is, but my mother was from Illinois.”

  “I’m actually looking for a descendant of their daughter, but the male line is easier to follow because the last name never changes,” I said.

  More silence.

  “Do any of these names sound familiar?” I gave him a list of Schmid family names that I’d found in the census.

  “I don’t think I can help you,” he said.

  “Okay, well, save me a phone call and let me know if the other two Henry Schmids in the phone book are related to you?”

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “The first one listed is not related. The second one is my father.”

  “Thanks for your help.”

  That’s how it went. Name after name. Finally, I struck gold with Isaac. The grandson of Christophe and Antonia would have been seventy-eight or seventy-nine years old, depending on when in the year his birthday fell. I went through the whole spiel, and he admitted that Christophe had been his grandfather.

  “Oh, great,” I said. “That’s fantastic. Okay, what I’m really after is what happened to your father’s sister, Hazel Kendall. That would have been your paternal aunt.”

  “Ummmm,” he said.

  “See, on this end in Granite County, she just up and left one day and never came back. She had been married to a Whalen Kendall. I have no idea if you know it, but Whalen Kendall was a member of a family that had a tragic demise, and I was hoping that maybe Hazel’s daughter could shed some light on what had happened,” I said.

  “Oh, yes … I always knew her as Aunt Mac,” he said. His voice was raspy but clear, and I worried that his hearing was going bad, because he seemed to shout into the phone. “Her husband’s name was Tom MacBride, but we always called them Aunt and Uncle Mac. The only reason I connected it was because Aunt Mac’s daughter’s name was Sophia Kendall, and I always wondered why her last name was different. My mother told me not to question it. I know at some point Sophia started going by MacBride, because when she got married in the early forties, her wedding invitation said Sophia MacBride. I remember that clearly, because I asked my mother when she’d changed her name and my mother told me not to question such things. That it was rude.” He gave a little chuckle then.

  “Wait, Hazel married a MacBride? I thought her sister, Ellie, had been married to a MacBride,” I said.

  “Yes, Aunt Mac married Aunt El’s brother-in-l
aw. I don’t know why we never called Aunt El ‘Aunt Mac,’ since technically she woulda been an Aunt Mac, but she’d just always been Aunt El.”

  So, when Hazel had gone to stay with Ellie, she’d come to fancy her sister’s brother-in-law. I had run across siblings marrying siblings quite a few times while tracing family trees.

  “So Sophia is your cousin, then,” I said. “Is she still alive?” The chances were pretty slim, since she would have been born around 1919. She’d be pushing ninety. Not impossible, but I wouldn’t count on it, either.

  “No, in fact, she passed away about eleven years ago,” he said.

  “Did she have any children?” Please say she had children.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Seven of them. One lives in Boston. Two are in Chicago.”

  “Any of them live around here?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Renee is here in town.”

  “In St. Charles?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “The other one, Anna, lives down by you. Around Wisteria, or maybe it’s that other little town.”

  I almost dropped the phone. “In Wisteria?”

  “Yeah, Anna Gatewood.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said. “I know Anna Gatewood.” And she didn’t live in Wisteria, she lived in New Kassel.

  “Ain’t it a small world?” he said.

  “Well, Mr. Schmid, thank you so much for talking to me,” I said.

  “Any time,” he said. “Glad I could be of help.”

  You know, this whole naming scheme of the western world is just all wrong. Do you know how much easier all of that would have been if women didn’t change their last names when they got married? I was mentally drained. It had taken me eight hours to learn that a woman I knew in town was the very person I’d been looking for.

  I heard the front door slam, and Mary came running up the stairs to my office. She was gasping for breath by the time she reached the top stair. I was amazed she hadn’t had a heart attack, since she’d just run half a mile; most of the time, she can’t even sit up straight on the couch, much less actually run.

  “Hi, Mom. What’s for dinner?”

  Maybe I’d just leave home.

  Twelve

  I was absent through most of dinner. I’d managed to pull together stuff for chicken fajitas, and I’d made brownies the night before. Even though I was seated at the table with my family, I wasn’t really there. I kept thinking about Anna Gatewood. During our festivals Anna had set up many, many booths with literature on the gray wolf, the brown bear, and the lynx. All endangered species, all near and dear to her heart. She was the local animal rights and conservation activist. She worked at the animal hospital in Wisteria and at one point had almost fifteen strays staying in her house. Then her husband, Blake, stepped in and told her that she had to keep it to a maximum of five animals in the house. She was in a depression for nearly six months afterward.

  She was about four years older than I was, maybe five. She must have been the youngest of Sophia Kendall MacBride’s children, because Sophia would have been almost forty when she had Anna. Technically, Anna and her siblings were entitled to the Kendall house. Why hadn’t she said anything before now? I wasn’t even sure if there was anything she could legally do about her inheritance, fifty years after Sandy Kendall’s death.

  “It just seems odd,” I said out loud.

  Rachel and Mary exchanged glances and then laughed.

  “What?” I said.

  “You’re thinking out loud again, honey,” Rudy said.

  “Oh, sorry,” I said.

  “So, what seems odd?” Mary said.

  “Anna Gatewood is the granddaughter of Whalen Kendall,” I said to Rudy.

  “Whalen Kendall being?”

  “One of the three siblings that I’ve been telling you about.”

  “Really?” he asked, plopping sour cream on his tortilla shell.

  “I just think it’s odd she hasn’t mentioned it,” I said.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not exactly an icebreaker you’d use at a party. ‘Oh, hello, I’m the granddaughter of the man whose entire family committed suicide.’ I mean, think about it,” he said.

  “Yeah, guess you’re right,” I said. I ate some more and totally spaced out, unable to follow the conversation that was going on right in front of me.

  “Go,” Rudy said.

  “Huh? Go where?” I asked.

  “Go see Anna,” he said. “You won’t sleep or anything until you do. You know you’ll lie awake all night thinking about it, and by morning you’ll have some cockamamie conspiracy theory all worked out and get yourself all in a tizzy. So go see her now and get it over with.”

  “I can’t tell if I find it a comfort that you know me that well, or if it’s really scary.”

  “It’s really scary,” he said. “I’ve damn near left you a hundred times.” He winked at me, and I knew he was joking.

  I finished eating and then headed over to Anna Gatewood’s house. She lives on the street behind where my old house used to be on River Pointe Road. In fact, from my old bedroom window, I could just make out the chimney on her house. The lights were on and there was a car in the driveway.

  I knocked, and Anna’s husband answered the door. “Hi, Blake,” I said. “I was wondering if I could talk with Anna.”

  “Well, sure, come on in,” he said. “I don’t think she can work the rose show, though. She’s on double duty at the vets’ office until they get another person hired.”

  “Oh, it’s not about the rose show,” I said.

  “Anna! Torie’s here to see you.”

  She came into the living room wiping her hands on a towel. She’s about five foot six and never wears makeup. You have to respect that. She comes across as young, with short hair cut right at the ear in one of those swoop-bobs. “Torie,” she said. “Nice surprise.”

  I often wondered if people really meant that when they saw me or if they were saying internally, Oh, God, not her again. What does she want this time?

  “I was wondering if there was somewhere we could talk?” I said.

  A worried expression crossed her face, and she glanced over her shoulder to where her husband had been moments before. “What about?” she said. “We can talk here. Would you like to have a seat? Do you want some tea? Or lemonade?”

  “No, thank you,” I said. I sat on her sofa, and she took the chair across from me. Her house was done in warm reds and browns, and there was an incredible smell of baked cinnamon and dough. It was the type of house that you could get comfy in. I like that kind of house. Then my purse was attacked by a Siamese cat, and a basset hound that was hidden under the table growled at me, and I thought that maybe her house wasn’t so comfy after all.

  “Don’t pay any attention to them,” Anna said. “If the cat goes for your hair, thump her on the head.”

  “Oh, great,” I said. “Um … Anna, do you have a cousin named Isaac Schmid?”

  “He’s my mother’s cousin,” she said. “Haven’t seen him since my sister got married … back in ’85. Why?”

  “I’m just making sure I’ve got the right Anna Gatewood,” I said.

  “What’s this about?” she said.

  “How much do you know about your mother’s family?” I asked.

  I was giving her the opportunity to tell me about the Kendalls on her own. If she didn’t mention them, then I’d have to ask. “My grandma’s family lived in St. Charles County. German, I think. That’s about it really. Oh, my grandpa was an auto mechanic.”

  “Your mother’s name was Sophia, right?”

  “How did you know that?” she asked.

  “All right,” I said. “Just hear me out before you say anything. I’ve been doing some research on the Kendall family here in town.”

  If she was hiding the fact that she was related to the Kendalls, she was doing a great job. Her expression never changed, except she raised her eyebrows. “The, uh … the suicide family?”

  “
Yes,” I said, thinking how horrible it would be to forever be known as the “suicide family.” “Whalen Kendall married a woman named Hazel Schmid. Ring any bells?”

  She shook her head.

  “She had a daughter named Sophia.”

  Anna sat back in the chair. “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” she said.

  “Hazel left Whalen shortly after he came back from the First World War, and she returned to her family. As far as I know she never had contact with the Kendalls again. Their daughter was Sophia. Hazel remarried, a man named MacBride.” Now recognition registered on her face. “So your mother was known as Sophia MacBride for most of her life, not Sophia Kendall. She got married in the forties,” I said. “When was your oldest sibling born?”

  “The twins, Mike and Nathan, were born in 1950. Mom was older when she started her family. Well, nowadays she wouldn’t have been considered older, but for back then she was. I think all of us were born after she was thirty.”

  “Do you remember your grandmother? Hazel?”

  “Oh, yes, she died … in ’78, I think?” she said. “Yeah, because she was about eighty-four or eighty-five when she died. I mean, she’d always been old to me, since she was almost seventy when I was born.”

  “Anna, do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  She only smiled at me.

  “You and your siblings are the heirs of Sandy Kendall. Your grandfather was not Tom MacBride. He was a stepgrandfather. Your biological grandfather was Whalen Kendall,” I said.

  “I hear you,” she said.

  “I take it this is a surprise?”