As for me, I couldn’t keep my mind still to follow along. All I could think of was Mama. Hard as I tried to push the idea of her away, I couldn’t. I just wasn’t strong enough.
The story ended and all the folks clapped. The kids around me clamored for another story and Uncle Gus said he had just one more. He started in on one about a dark and foggy night that wasn’t scary at all. I was real glad for that.
Once the fire started to die down, mothers gathered their children, wiping their faces of sticky-sweet and putting an arm around their shoulders to guide them to their cars. They followed, sleepy children full of doughnuts and apple cider and memories that might last them a good many years.
I rode in the back of Daddy’s truck alongside Ray, not saying a word. We were too tired, I thought, for talking. Arms folded on the side of the truck bed, I rested my head on my hands, watching the dark farmland rush past me.
In my heart was a longing I’d grown tired of. A wanting I wished so hard I could shake off myself.
Even when we got to the house on Magnolia Street and Daddy half carried me up to my room, putting me to bed, costume and all, the feeling stayed.
I wanted Mama.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The night before Thanksgiving I dreamed of Beanie. She ran off like she always did, faster than I could go. Chasing far behind, I called for her to stop, to come back to me. Her feet moved across the grass, dew wetting her shoes and making her slide along between the apple trees. If I listened close I could have sworn I heard her laughing.
It was a good sound.
How she ended up there in Uncle Gus’s apple orchard I couldn’t figure out. In life she’d never left Oklahoma, let alone made it all the way to Michigan. It didn’t matter really, I guessed. It was a dream and Beanie visited me with a smile and a laugh. It made me glad.
“Come get me,” she called over her shoulder, still darting here and there, getting herself lost among the apple-heavy branches.
Reaching the end of the line she stopped, a breeze lifting her hair. Her wild curls spiraled up from her head and she leaned back so the sun would warm her face.
The wind picked up, making a pinwheel of green grass and fresh-fallen leaves of orange and yellow and red right in front of my sister. She lifted her hands and I thought it was her way of wondering at the glory of such beauty.
“Where’s Mama?” she called to me, her eyes closed. “I don’t know,” I answered. “She went away.”
“But not how I went away?”
“No.”
“She got lost?”
“No, Beanie,” I called to her, having to talk louder because of the wind-swirl filling our ears. “She left us.”
“Then she’ll come home again.”
The flowers turned to dirt, the blades of grass to dust. They gathered together into a dark-as-ink cloud, roaring all around Beanie and me.
“Don’t be scared,” Beanie hollered at me. “Mama’ll come back.”
I tried standing still, but the storm around us pushed at me, knocked me to my knees. I curled into a ball on the ground.
But it was then I heard Beanie singing. Not with a girl’s voice and not with words. She sang like a bird that wasn’t afraid. A bird that wouldn’t ask for so much as a crumb.
Aunt Carrie let me help in the kitchen. She put me to work peeling potatoes and cutting them up for boiling. I was real proud that I didn’t cut myself once and I only sent two slippery potatoes flying across the room as I worked the peeler over them.
But each time that happened Aunt Carrie let out a hooting laugh, clapping her flour-covered hands so they sent a cloud of white puffing up around her face.
“You’re doing well, my dear,” she said. “You’re a good help to me.” Women’s work was hard. And Thanksgiving food was forever-long work. At least that was how it seemed to me.
But as much as Aunt Carrie laughed, she made it a lot more fun.
Before it was time for us to eat our meal, Uncle Gus packed a load of food into his car. Pies and breads and a whole basket of eggs. He even took a whole turkey, roaster and all, putting it in the trunk.
“Where are you taking all that?” I asked after he carried out the last of it.
“Well, I’m fixin’ to take it out to the Fitzpatricks,” he said. “I do believe they could use them a little feast today, too.”
I thought about Delores and her small lunches, her dirty hair, and her worn-out clothes. Then I imagined her sitting at a table with a plate of food in front of her. More than she’d be able to eat. The picture in my mind was of her smiling with every bite she took. It seemed as pretty a sight as any I could see.
“Can I go?” I asked, hoping maybe I’d get to see Delores even for a minute.
“Just so long’s it’s all right with your daddy,” Uncle Gus said.
Daddy said it was fine by him, so I climbed into the seat next to Uncle Gus, smelling all the good food and trying not to let my tummy rumble.
Hungry as I was, I knew the Fitzpatricks were even hungrier. I imagined standing beside Uncle Gus while he carved up that turkey at their table, dishing it up and passing it out. The family’d be so grateful they wouldn’t know what to say. Delores would smile at me shyly and I’d nod back at her, to let her know that I was right happy to see her enjoying the food we’d brought.
It didn’t take us ten minutes and we were pulling up to where Delores and her family lived.
I’d heard the kids at school tease about the Fitzpatricks’ home more than once, how it’d been a chicken coop before they moved in. I thought they were just making fun until I saw it with my own eyes on that Thanksgiving morning.
Aunt Carrie’s hens had a bigger coop than the Fitzpatricks did.
Uncle Gus pulled up real close to the door and cut the engine.
“We’ll just put the food right there,” he told me, pointing to where a porch would’ve been on any other house. “We’re gonna leave it there and drive right on back home.”
“Why?” I asked. “Can’t we say hi?”
“No, miss. They’d be too embarrassed.” He nodded. “We’ll just let them hold a little of their pride.”
I helped Uncle Gus place the food in front of the door, worrying the whole time that it would be cold before they could get to it. And sorry that I wouldn’t see how happy it made them. I wished so hard that I could’ve heard them say thank you for the kindness we’d shown them. I didn’t say a word about it, though. We moved quiet as we could and quick, too.
We climbed back into the car and drove away from the chicken coop house. Just before we turned down onto the road, I looked back.
The food was already gone.
We sat around Aunt Carrie’s table, our plates full to the edges with turkey and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. I tried eating dainty-like, the way Mama had taught me. Ray, though, shoveled it in like he hadn’t taken a bite of food in a month.
Between him and Mayor Winston, we weren’t like to have anything left over.
“Now, Carrie, I gotta say I ain’t never had such good mashed potatoes,” Uncle Gus said. “I’d sure like some more if I might. Please and thank you.”
“I’m happy to say I didn’t make them this year.” Aunt Carrie handed him the dish with a pretty silver serving spoon sticking up out of the yellowy mound. “Our Pearl made them. From peeling to mashing. She did all of it.”
“Well”—Uncle Gus put two helpings on his plate—“must be why they taste so good.”
“I guess it couldn’t hurt me to have a little more of them,” Winston said, reaching for the bowl. “Pearl, some day you’ll make a man real happy.”
“Hold on there,” Daddy said, pretending to be upset. “She’s not allowed to get married until she’s thirty. At least.”
I pretended to be embarrassed because it seemed the ladylike thing to do. Really, though, I was right proud. I was glad nobody said a thing about any of the big lumps of potato I hadn’t managed to smooth all the way.
&nb
sp; “I ever tell you about the time old Jed Bozell came for Thanksgiving?” Daddy asked, winking right at me.
I couldn’t help but smile and real big, too. I thought sure Daddy had run out of Jed Bozell stories soon as we left Oklahoma.
“Now,” Uncle Gus said, lowering his fork to his plate and sitting back in his chair, “that’s a name I ain’t heard in years.”
“You know about Jed Bozell?” I asked, leaning forward.
“Course I do.” Uncle Gus grinned at me. “Fella came to Red River every single year.”
“And he was real?”
“Real as you or me.” He shoved a big forkful of potatoes in his mouth. He had to give them a good chew, still he made a humming sound like they tasted real good. “Tom, go on with your story, would ya?”
And Daddy did go on. He told a story about Meemaw making Thanksgiving dinner and how Jed Bozell’s human dragon had helped cook the turkey all the way through by spitting fire on it. And he told of the cats that did acrobatics in the living room and the woman who sang opera in a voice so high all the dogs in Red River came running.
Ray slapped at his leg under the table he got to laughing so hard, and Uncle Gus backed Daddy up that every word of the story was true. Winston took quick breaks between bites to chuckle at the ridiculousness of it all. Aunt Carrie listened with one eyebrow raised the whole time like she wasn’t sure what to think. Still, she had a smile on her face that made me believe she was right delighted.
As for me, I gave thanks for lumpy potatoes and kind uncles. For pretty tablecloths and aunts who smiled easy. For stories that made pictures in my head and books that drew me to wondering. I gave thanks for the folks who shared that very table and for Delores and her family, too. And I gave thanks for the one who was somewhere else.
And for Jed Bozell. I gave double thanks for him.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
It wasn’t the first snow. That had happened weeks before. But it was the first that left a good blanket of white over everything. I stood at the back door of the house on Magnolia Street and waited for Ray to find a saw. I thought I might sweat to death before we made it out the door for all the warm things Opal insisted on me wearing.
Ray and I stepped off the back porch and let our booted feet sink into the three inches of snow. As soon as we were far enough away from the house so Opal wouldn’t see, I lowered my scarf, shoving a gloveful of snow into my mouth.
All it tasted like was water, still there was something magical about it. “You ready?” Ray asked once we reached the tree line.
I told him I’d been ready near half an hour.
We walked in together, the forest seeming different with the leaves all fallen off and the snow dusting the branches. It was quieter, even, as if the cold had made all the birds shy. Winter seemed a season of stillness.
We reached the clearing near where the twisted tree stood, tall and bare. Its many arms reached up to the God who’d made it and I wondered what it could be that it needed from Him. I imagined the woman, Miss Ada, standing beside that tree not so many years before, missing her son the way I missed Mama. I pictured her standing beside that tree, her arms lifted same as the branches, asking God if He’d be so pleased as to send her boy back home.
I thought about raising my hands over my head, too. I thought if I begged Him for Mama one more time maybe that would do the trick.
Trouble was, she was the one who had to do the returning. God wasn’t one for forcing. He was one for gentle nudges. How I hoped she’d let herself feel His elbow.
“You comin’?” Ray asked.
I told him I was and followed him to a clearing where the evergreens grew to just the right height. Where he’d stepped I stepped, my feet in the holes he’d made in the snow.
We walked past the cabin, the one window like an eye. I imagined Miss Ada standing in that window, staring out.
Watching and waiting for the part of her that was lost.
Waiting and watching, an untrue hope all she had to keep her from crumbling.
She couldn’t hardly help herself, I didn’t think, from checking in between kneading dough and hanging laundry on the line. She would peek out, just in case, before turning down the lights for the night. And every morning she’d pass by that window, a hand on her heart, allowing a quick look out the corner of her eye.
Just in case.
Ray and I picked our tree and he dragged it until we stepped out of the forest and made it all the way to the house on Magnolia Street. He leaned it against the back porch and put a hand to his chin, examining it to see if it would be right.
“I think it’ll be just fine,” he said.
“It’s a good tree,” I told him. “I like it.”
We stood admiring it for a couple minutes as if it were a fine painting hanging in a museum somewhere.
“Hey, Pearl,” Ray said after a moment.
“What?” I asked.
“Heads up,” he hollered.
When I turned toward him I ended up with a faceful of cold and wet.
We ran all over that back yard, our footprints scuffing up the fresh snow. We threw handfuls of it at each other until Opal hollered out for me to pull my scarf back up over my mouth.
Then Ray found a good untouched spot. He fell backward onto the ground, his arms stretched out at his sides.
He lay there real still with his eyes closed, taking in deep breaths like he meant to fill up on the good feelings of that very moment.
Opening one eye, he caught me looking at him and I hoped he’d think the red in my cheeks was from the cold air.
“I know what you’re thinkin’,” he said, lifting himself up on his elbow and grinning at me.
“Oh yeah?” I crossed my arms and stuck out one of my hips. “What am I thinking?”
“You’re thinkin’, ‘My, my, but that Ray Jones is a handsome young man.’” I bent over at the waist and laughed so hard I thought my sides would split.
I didn’t dare tell him he was right.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Miss De Weese had me playing Mary the mother of Jesus in the school Christmas pageant. She told me I didn’t have to do much more than hold the baby doll Jesus in my arms and keep a peaceful look on my face as the shepherds came to see the sweet Christ child.
“I’ve never held a baby before,” I told her, hoping that would lose me the part. “I don’t know how to. I’d probably drop it.”
“Didn’t you ever play with dolls?” Miss De Weese asked.
I guessed she didn’t know all that much about me yet.
“Why don’t you get Hazel Wheeler to do it?” I asked.
Miss De Weese said that Hazel had played Mary the year before, it said so in the program somebody’d saved in a file. And Ethel the year before that. She told me that it was time for somebody else to take a turn.
I just did not know why it had to be me.
From what I remembered, Mary of the Bible was about as perfect as any girl could be. I didn’t imagine she’d ever sassed her folks or took something that didn’t belong to her. She was God’s pick for Jesus’s mother due to the fact that she was so good.
As for me, I was anything but good. It would take either a miracle or mighty good acting for me to play that part.
On the day of the pageant I knelt at the manger, the swaddled baby doll Jesus in my arms. Like Miss De Weese had told me, I didn’t look at all the folks sitting in the pews watching me. Instead, I kept my eyes on the face of the fair-skinned, blue-eyed newborn Lord.
The cattle lowed and the sheep bleated. The shepherds shook with fright.
Angels gloried and wise men gave gifts. Joseph stood off to the side like he might just get sick.
I kept all those things and pondered them in my heart.
When I’d been smaller I’d thought Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus had stayed there, taking up housekeeping right in that Bethlehem stable. From the watercolor picture of the first Christmas in my Bible, it hadn’t looked any worse t
han some of the cabins the sharecroppers stayed in back in Red River. Maybe even a good deal better.
I’d learned since then that it wasn’t so.
But for that night, that short time, it had sheltered that holy family. I wondered if God hadn’t seen fit to clear away the animal smells and plug up the drafty gaps in the stable walls. If He’d let a little of the angel’s glory song stick around until it turned to a lullaby for His sweet baby Son.
And I hoped that, in His greatness, He’d looked at all He’d done on that night in that humble and dim stable and saw that it was good.
Daddy kept the fire going all day on Christmas. Aunt Carrie made sure we stayed full up with cookies and ham and potatoes and such. Ray beat me no less than five times at chess on the set he’d gotten under the tree that morning.
All those funny-shaped pieces did nothing but confound me.
Uncle Gus told us stories of Christmases past. He sure did have a lot of them to share on account he’d seen so many in his life. At least that was what he told us.
I took to sitting on the davenport, my brand new book of fairy tales open on my lap. It wasn’t the same as the one I’d had before. The pictures were different, darker. But the stories were more or less the same.
I read them slow, those stories, letting them sink back into that familiar part of my soul that knew them each by heart. Princesses turned to slaves and fairy godmothers saving the day. Three little pigs and bears and blind mice. A girl in red gone to call on her grandmother.
Fairy tales with happily-ever-after endings that I needed right about then.
Right smack-dab in the middle of that storybook was the one of the boy and girl, them being taken from the home where they’d not been wanted, not been loved. They’d found danger and struggle and darkness along the journey. But they’d found their way to a new family and a new life.
They’d gotten home.
And not a trail of crumbs could have led them away.
A Trail of Crumbs Page 29
