A Trail of Crumbs

by Finkbeiner, Susie;

  The portrait of President Roosevelt still hung on the wall above the radio and the rocking chair was still in the corner with Daddy’s ashtray on the table beside it. The photos of our family were there, still where Mama’d placed them on our first day in the house. The telephone and the few books Daddy’d brought from Red River and Meemaw’s old Bible all stayed where they lived on the table.

  Mama’s music box was gone, though. And the lacy doily she’d kept under it. Her mending basket was missing from beside the chair she’d liked to sit in.

  I went to the bedroom my parents had once shared, the one Daddy had avoided since Mama left. Anything that had been hers was gone. Dresses and shoes and even the quilt from the bed. Checking the dresser, I saw that her wedding ring was gone, too.

  “Pearl,” Opal said, standing in the doorway with a piece of bread and jelly on a plate. “Come on out of there.”

  “Were we robbed?” I asked.

  “Your mother …” She sighed. “Mrs. Spence. She came for a few things.” As an act of instinct, I felt for Meemaw’s locket where it would’ve been on my neck had I put it on. But that morning I’d left it in my dresser up in my room. I’d worried about it getting lost or broken. It was my most prized possession and all I had left from Meemaw and Beanie.

  I’d wanted to protected it, so I’d left it home, safe in my top drawer. Racing up the stairs, I crashed into my room, the door banging on the wall behind it. All was normal, just the way I’d left it that morning.

  If only I hadn’t gotten myself held over after school I might’ve seen her.

  I’d have begged her to stay. I would have done anything.

  I put my hand on the cool metal knob of the top drawer and pulled. Without looking, I felt around for the chain of my necklace, for the gold with tiny chips of diamonds. It wasn’t there.

  I opened the drawer wider, leaning over it to inspect. My eyes only caught a glint of light on my shears and a stack of folded-up letters from Millard.

  I slid the drawer closed gentle as I could and rested my fingertips on the top of the dresser. Mama’s fingers had just touched that same metal and wood. Her feet had been in the same spot that mine were in just then.

  My chest felt squeezed by some large and unseen hand that wanted to crush me to dust. I tried to breathe deep. I shut my eyes and gritted my teeth.

  I never did tell Daddy that Mama’d stolen my locket from me. To speak it would have been to make it true. It would have made me admit that Mama’d done something so low. That she’d hurt me once again.

  What I did do was imagine how I’d be if ever I did see her again. Every time I thought on it, I pictured Mama walking my way, her sorry eyes fixed right on me. As far as I was concerned she could just keep on walking.

  I would just turn my back on her.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  We’d been in school a full month already and Opal sent us off each morning wearing thick jackets. I wasn’t sure I had ever been so cold as I was walking with Ray and Bert to the schoolyard. The whole way we’d purse our lips and blow into the crisp air, pretending we were smoking cigarettes. Mama’d said long ago that it wasn’t nice pretending like that. It didn’t matter anymore, though, what Mama said. She wasn’t there to get sore or sigh or give me a sideways look.

  When we stepped out of the house that morning, the air had a different kind of smell to it. As we walked and puffed out our mouths, I tried thinking of what the air smelled like. It was brand-new to me, that smell, and it was like nothing I’d ever breathed in before.

  “Look at them trees,” Ray said, nodding out behind the house at the woods. “Ain’t that somethin’ else?”

  It sure was. Orange and yellow and red, the trees seemed to have all changed colors over night while we were sleeping. They were so bright, so startling, I would have thought they weren’t real if I hadn’t known any better. If I squinted my eyes just right it looked like the whole forest was ablaze.

  Seemed the entire world was changing right before my eyes. The air blew colder and grass poked out of the earth a duller shade of green. Fields that’d been full of growing things were harvested to stubble; the remaining stalks had gone a hay color. Geese flew south in their practiced formation.

  Where Mama was, she saw it, too. I imagined her stopping in the middle of her morning to look up at a tree or to see a squirrel darting across her path with a mouth full of food for storing up. She’d put a hand to her heart, in quiet awe of the colors and the way the air smelled like spice and warmth.

  And I imagined—I hoped—she maybe thought of me doing the same thing. I did hope Mama still gave me a thought every once in a while, even if it was small as a crumb.

  A crumb might just lead her back to me.

  After school on a Friday toward the end of October, Ray and I opened the front door of our house to the finest and sweetest smell I could have imagined. If warm had a smell, that would’ve been it. The smells of baking apple and cinnamon and sugar filled the whole house and made my mouth water.

  Aunt Carrie stood in the kitchen with Opal, the two of them wearing aprons with beads of sweat on their foreheads even though the day outside was so cold. Canning jars lined the counter, most of them filled to the brim with applesauce.

  “Oh, good,” Aunt Carrie said when she saw us. “Just in time. We need someone to make sure this tastes good.”

  She gave each of us a spoon with a bite of the applesauce on it. It was nice and warm and tasted like autumn. I said it was real good, that I liked it a whole lot. Ray, though, said he might have to taste a little more of it.

  “Maybe I’d need a whole bowl of it,” he said, shrugging. “Can’t hardly tell if somethin’s good unless I eat more’n a bite or two.”

  “You sound just like your Uncle Gus,” Aunt Carrie said, laughing.

  She did give Ray a good ladleful of the applesauce in a bowl. When I asked real nice she gave me one, too.

  Opal told us we should sit at the dining-room table. We did as she said and ate our applesauce with the kitchen sounds of jars clomping on the countertops and the rings spinning around the glass to hold down the lids.

  After we finished I went to my room and wrote a letter to Millard,

  telling him about leaves and applesauce and how cold it got when the sun wasn’t warming the sky. I put a pretty orange leaf in the envelope, hoping it wouldn’t crush to powder on its journey down to Red River.

  In all the letters I’d written him that October I hadn’t said one thing about Mama. I was sure he knew about her leaving though, on account each of his letters ended with him asking, “You all right?”

  In my letters I made sure not to give him an answer.

  My envelope sealed and addressed, I walked down to the kitchen, wishing I could capture the goodness of that canning day somehow in the folds of paper so Millard could smell it. I thought he would have packed his bag right away if he could’ve caught a whiff of that applesauce.

  “Can I take this to the post office?” I asked Opal. “It’s for Millard.”

  “Go ahead,” she told me. “I’ve got a stamp there in the drawer. You know the one.”

  I told her thank you and headed for the front door.

  “Come right home when you’re done,” she told me. “And button up that coat.”

  It was a fine day. Even cold as it was, the sun was kind and my coat kept me warm enough. Not too many people were on the street that day. All the shops had their doors closed to keep the heat in. It was as if I had the whole town to myself and I liked that.

  The post office was toasty and the postmaster snoozed at the counter. I let him sleep and slid Millard’s letter in through a slot in the desk and snuck out, careful not to let the door slam behind me. If ever there was a good day for napping, I thought that was it. Besides, if I’d woken him, that postmaster would have wanted to talk my ear off about the price of stamps going up or this or that and I wanted to get back to the house before Aunt Carrie left for the day. I hoped maybe she’
d even give me another taste of that applesauce.

  The Wheelers’ house was right across the street from the post office.

  Where it’d seemed fine and grand in the glow of summer, the dim light of that October day made it dark and wicked looking. Even under the warmth of my coat I got goose pimples. I would’ve sworn that house was haunted.

  I gave a start and let out a small yelp when I saw what looked to me like a ghost standing right in one of the full-length windows on the second floor of the house. Wrapping my arms around myself, I took a second look and realized it was Mrs. Wheeler standing there, staring out.

  I’d hardly seen her more than a handful of times in all the months I’d lived in Bliss. She wasn’t one for coming to church and she didn’t lower herself to walk along the street with the common folk in the town. From the way Hazel talked, Mrs. Wheeler was too important and too busy to do something so regular as running errands or sitting at a friend’s kitchen table for a cup of coffee.

  Far as I knew Hazel wanted nothing more in life than to grow up to be just like her mother.

  She didn’t see me, Mrs. Wheeler didn’t. As a matter of fact, it seemed she didn’t see anything at all. Her eyes were fixed way down the road, in the direction that led north out of Bliss and toward places I’d never been. One of her hands was held over her mouth and by the way her body moved in jerks and how her eyes closed every once in a while I wondered if she was crying.

  And I wondered what it was she was missing, what it was that made her so sad.

  I couldn’t help but think on what Aunt Carrie’d said. That everybody had a hurt in their heart. Maybe even two or three. Everybody was missing something whether they liked to admit it or not.

  As much as I didn’t want to, I felt sorry for Mrs. Wheeler because I’d seen that same look of pain on Mama’s face.

  Grief can do terrible things to a person, Aunt Carrie had said.

  How true that was. How terrible and true.

  I didn’t hurry back to the house on Magnolia Street. As it was, every step made me miss Mama more and more.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Back in Red River we’d never celebrated Halloween. Pastor had told us it was the devil’s holiday with kids dressed up as ghosts and witches, running from door to door and begging strangers for candy. Never mind that everybody in town knew each other and would gladly give a sweet to a child that asked nice.

  Each year in my memory Pastor Ezra Anderson had devoted a whole sermon to the evils of Halloween.

  “Witchcraft and demon possession,” he’d screamed. “That’s all that’ll come from such pagan holidays.”

  Meemaw would sit in the pew, rocking back and forth the way she did when the Spirit grabbed hold of her, calling out amens as Pastor ranted.

  So when Aunt Carrie asked if we’d come to a Halloween party on the farm, I was surprised when Daddy told her we wouldn’t miss it for all the world.

  Had Mama been around she’d have made sure we didn’t go.

  It was just one more thing on a long list that made life without Mama different.

  If I could have, I would’ve traded that party to have Mama back even if just for one day. I wouldn’t care if I missed out on the treats or the costumes. None of that would matter if I had Mama. I’d gladly sit beside her on the davenport, content to be quiet along with her.

  Instead, I made myself pretend that I couldn’t wait for Halloween to come along.

  The party was the talk of Bliss for a whole week. Miss De Weese had to disallow all discussion of it during school on account none of us could keep our focus on our work. All anybody wanted to think on was what they’d wear for a costume or who they might sit with on the hayride. A couple boys even tried guessing who might win the pumpkin-carving contest.

  Opal told me she’d help me with my costume just so long as I didn’t go as anything scary. She said she could help me make an angel costume if I thought I’d like that. Far as I remembered from reading the angel stories in the Bible, they’d been scary enough to the folks that’d seen them. If they hadn’t been I didn’t know why they’d had to say “fear not” so much.

  When I told her that she just smiled and told me I was something else. I asked if I could go as Sacagawea.

  “I don’t even know who that is,” she told me.

  I showed her in the book Mrs. Trask had let me borrow from the library how Sacagawea was an Indian woman who helped the explorers Lewis and Clark. Opal just looked at me like I was speaking German or some such strange tongue.

  “You want to be an Indian?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered with a smile.

  When she told me I could, I about fell over with surprise.

  I added that costume to the list of things Mama would have said no to if she’d still been at home.

  I thought when she came back someday she’d be real surprised by all that’d changed.

  Of all the things to do at that Halloween party—bobbing for apples and square dancing and jack-o’-lantern carving—the very best fun I had that night was sitting on a bale of hay on the wagon pulled around by Uncle Gus’s pack mules.

  The hay prickled my skin through the brown-colored fabric of my Indian squaw costume, but I did not care even a little. The cool breeze blew through my still-short hair making me wish I’d brought along a warm sweater like Opal’d told me to. But the full-of-stars sky twinkled down at me making me forget the goose pimples on my arms and the way my teeth chattered. An almost full moon lit up the trees and the stubble of harvested cornstalks and the smile that had been on Ray’s face all night long. Anything that could’ve haunted me that night was pushed far from my mind.

  Uncle Gus took us over fields and along the edge of the woods. He wove us between rows of apple trees that had been picked clean of their sweet apples to make pies and cider. Oh, how I wished I’d had a cup of warm cider just then.

  The sounds of the party—the bouncing music and hooting laughter—seemed far gone from us as we rode along. All I wanted to hear were the clip-clopping of mule hooves along the ground and the light clicking of their harnesses.

  If he’d offered, I would have let Uncle Gus drive me around like that all the rest of the night. Cold as I was, I didn’t want the free and easy feeling of the bumping ride to end. I imagined a warm arm wrapped around my shoulders, pulling me to her soft side. She’d hum a happy tune, stopping every now and again to wonder over all we saw.

  “Did you see that shooting star?” she’d ask. “Make a wish, darlin’.”

  Or she’d plant a kiss on the top of my head, healing every hurt part of my soul.

  But when I imagined her sighing before sounding out the words of a poem, I realized it wasn’t Mama I was imagining but Aunt Carrie.

  Mama never would’ve done something so unladylike as ride around on a bale of hay.

  The ride was over, I could tell by how Uncle Gus slowed the mules, pulling up on the reins as we neared the barn and clucking his tongue at them. One of them let out a ghostly sound. It wasn’t a whinny and it wasn’t a bray. It sounded more like a witch’s cackle and I tried not to let it spook me too much.

  Ray and Bert climbed over the side railings and took off running toward the table piled high with doughnuts. Uncle Gus swung his legs down from his seat and set to freeing the mules from the wagon, leading them one at a time back to the stables where I knew he’d have fresh feed for them to nibble. Once he finished that, he came around by where I had stayed on the old wagon. He rested his arm on the side of the wood right behind me.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” I told him. “Thanks for the ride. It was real nice.”

  “I’m glad you liked it.” He nudged me with his elbow. “We’ll go again this winter sometime. It’s real pretty out here after it snows.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Tell you what, I’d even let you sit up front if you’d like,” he said. “You could steer the mules wherever you wanted to wan
der. You think you’d like that?”

  “Yes, sir,” I told him.

  A thought passed through my mind. Just a flicker of imagining. I pictured Beanie riding along beside me on that wagon, not daring to so much as touch the reins, a shy and happy smile stretched across her face.

  The spark set a slow burn of longing deep in my gut. I sure missed my sister.

  “Well, I think you’ll wanna come along.” Uncle Gus patted me on the back. “It’s just about time for the ghost story.”

  “Is it real scary?” I let him take my hand and help me off the trailer, hay still clinging to my Indian squaw clothes, thoughts of my sister still in the center of my mind. “Will it give me nightmares?”

  “Nah. You’ll see.” He leaned down and whispered in my ear. “Don’t tell nobody else, but I got a funny one this year.”

  Uncle Gus didn’t let go of my hand as we walked to where Daddy was busy building up a big campfire. Other men carried over logs and stumps for all the kids to sit on.

  Ray had saved a spot for me right beside him and I took it, glad for the warmth of the fire but even more glad to be near him. The flames were hot, almost too hot, but I wasn’t about to move away from them. I hadn’t realized how cold I’d gotten on the hayride.

  Uncle Gus sat on the tallest stump so we could all see his face, yellow and orange in the flickering firelight. Nobody said so much as a word, or moved or cleared their throats, even. We all leaned in, our eyes on the man, waiting for him to begin.

  “Y’all ready for a scary story?” he asked, his voice just above a whisper. We nodded our heads, still silent.

  “Well, then, I’ll tell ya one.” He rested his hands on his knees, elbows pointed outward, and looked at all of us sitting there, his face not showing one hint of a smile. “There was once a man here in Bliss …”

  Uncle Gus went on a long time telling his story and all the kids laughed and shrieked and listened close as they could. Seemed it was a powerful good story. When I looked around I saw the adults standing by to hear it, too.