A Part of the Sky (13 page)

“In other words,” I said, “it’s a matter of choices.”

“Yes. That’s very perceptive. Robert, our bank has to survive. Circumstances are forcing us to act. We, as a business, can see no possible alternative. No way that you Pecks can continue to skid deeper into debt.”

“This isn’t too easy to take.”

“No. It is not. And if you doubt that the bank regrets its action, I can’t blame you. But someday, after you’re fully grown to manhood, I may be no longer around. Yet there will still be a bank here, a place of commerce where you’ll be able to conduct
business. A bank to make loans to merchants and farmers that perpetuate a thriving community.”

“What’s going to happen, sir?”

“The bank is taking your farm.”

“Couldn’t we get some sort of a loan?”

“You already had one. That’s what a mortgage is. Thus a secondary mortgage is not feasible.”

I nodded. “Mr. Ferguson sort of warned me. But I guess I had to come and hear it direct.”

“That’s the nutshell. The land will be put up for public auction. When the sale to a new owner is approved and legally completed, equity funds will be placed in a bank account in your name. It won’t be much, because it’s only five acres, and the market is meager. Few buyers.”

“I understand, sir.”

“I’m glad you do.”

Mr. Gamp stood, as a signal for me to leave. Our business was over. So I stood as well and then offered him a handshake. He walked me to his door. It was surprising when he put a hand on my shoulder.

“A lot of people,” he said, “think that I’m the meanest snake in town. After what I’ve just done to you, I’m convinced they’re right.”

“You had to do it, Mr. Gamp.”

“Yes,” he said, “I truly did.”

Ferguson’s Feed & Seed was a place I had to pass on the way home. In need of seeing a friendly face, I popped in. There was also another reason for a visit.

“Mr. Ferguson,” I asked him, “now that you’ve had a chance to consider, do you still want us to live upstairs? I hope so. We got nowheres else to go.”

He smiled. “Yup. Deal’s a deal.”

“Sir, we’ll soon be coming. Three of us.”

“You’ll be welcomed.”

18

The wagons come.

Snow wouldn’t clog the wheels, because a fierce northwest wind had blowed the road clear. Its pebble surface was frozen, yet dry. Bare. Rock hard.

When I’d asked Ben Tanner, he offered at once to help move us. So did Sebring Hillman and Ira. Yet I was surprised when Lampson Henry arrived with a team, along with Uncle Hume and Aunt Matty in a one-horse buggy. Only the Tanners arrived with oxen.

The women helped inside.

Bess Tanner, Astrid May Hillman, Aunt Matty, Mrs. Henry and Mrs. Long had all brung boxes and barrels and remnants of wool and muslin to help Mama and Aunt Carrie pack.

Two days ago, I had cleaned and dusted the
three rooms over the feedstore. The stove, when I’d built a fire, heated at least one room. Mr. Ferguson said that he’d relight it so the place would be partial to our arriving.

I’d given away our chickens, to Ira. Only three were left. We’d eaten some. The cold had killed the rest.

I closed the door of our empty barn.

As the wagons got loaded, I felt grateful there was so much to do. Possessions, even the few we had, have a way of owning you, body and brain. With a door constant open, the house become so icy cold. No pulse.

It was like our home was nearing death.

The more it emptied, the sadder it seemed to fill with sorrow. Mama and Aunt Carrie shuffled around inside touching places. Not with gloves. Their fingers were bare, as though searching the wood and stone for something lost.

We let our cookstove go out. There it stood, silently strong, our big, black Acme American that my mother had stuffed with so much split wood and emptied of ashes. No room for it over the feedstore. But how could I ask Mama to leave one of her life’s major companions? Mama and Carrie were standing there, in an otherwise empty
kitchen, holding on to each other at the stove. Even though heatless, to them, it was still baking memories.

Ben Tanner watched them there.

“Too dear a stove to leave behind,” Ben said. “We got more wagons than we need. If you agree, Rob, I’ll porter it to our place and store it into my haybarn. When the time comes, you can have it back. Hear?”

With four big men, Ira, Sebring, Lampson, and Ben, the stove went. Mama understood. Now it would rest safe, with caring neighbors, and have a home.

But no fire.

Before leaving, Mama and I waded through the snow to the orchard, west of the house. The graves had no markers. Yet we knew where they were, beneath a quilt of winter.

“Our lost aren’t here below, Mama. They’re above us. A part of the sky. Someday, we will be together again. All the Peck family. Kin and animals. No bank can divide us apart. You and Aunt Carrie and I can stand without hitching.”

Ben and Bess, the eldest, headed to home property. Loaded, we started for Learning. The wind was a whip. Trying to keep Mama and Carrie warm was impossible, even though I had them
bundled and sheltered some under a big tarp on Ira’s wagon. My mother and aunt had few warm winter clothes. They, for half of every year, were indoor workers. Not snowbirds. To them, winter was a kitchen hibernation.

Several times we had to whoa a wagon because a box or carton got winded off. Whenever we hit a stretch of ice, the going slowed; the iron on the horse hoofs made slippery footing on which to haul. But the big horses, furry thick, leaned into their collars and pulled willing. Snorting out gray plumes of breathing.

At my request, Mama and Aunt Carrie went direct to Aunt Matty’s, where it would be furnace warm. I told her I’d return in a few hours to get them.

We unloaded behind the feedstore. Then up the narrow stairs, with Mr. Ferguson there to greet us all a friendly welcome.

“Where does this thing go?”

“Where do you want this?”

“How about this box?”

Our furniture looked lost. In every corner, boxes and cartons and barrels seemed to huddle without order. Nothing looked right. Yet, while unloading, I couldn’t ask people to tarry while I decided where each item belonged.

“Bless you,” I said. “God bless all of you. Hope someday that I can do for you like you all done for us.”

They left, men and women, the wagons and horses. Alone, I discovered that Mr. Ferguson had forgotten to light a fire in the potbelly. So I did. Then I pegged beds together, my mother and aunt in one room, me in another, and unpacked dishes, a teakettle, pots, and a black cast-iron spider. A few table knives, forks, and spoons now sprouted from a large tumbler like a tarnished bouquet.

Next I undid quilts and blankets. I found towels and soap. How we’d use these, I had yet to figure, because from what Mr. Ferguson said, I’d have to haul water up the stairs by hand. In buckets. Well, it was easier than watering a cornfield.

Downstairs, the feedstore proprietor was decorating each of his double doors with a green wreath and a red ribbon.

“It’s the season,” he said. “Mercy, but it’s cold. Below zero. That’s all the festooning I intend to do. Wilbur, my nephew’s boy, brung me a Christmas tree. Don’t plan to put it up. Too much bother.” He looked at me. “Maybe you might use it. It’s free.”

“I’ll take it.”

“Then don’t stand there. Get to my house, first
one on Oak Street, and fetch it back here. It’s on my back porch.”

I ran faster than a pig to mash and returned with a blue spruce. Took me little time to cross two boards for a standard. Yet, once upstairs, the tree looked green but naked.

“Rob!”

Hearing Mr. Ferguson calling me, I clumped down the stairs and into the store, where the little man was stirring through a mess of dinky hardware.

“Eye screws,” he told me. “They’ll shine like sparklers. So will these silver washers. Sorry. Don’t have any brass.” He laughed. “And I’m fresh out of frankincense.”

“You really are a caution,” I said.

“Yup. Now then, Rob, you leave dressing the tree to me. Fetch your mother and aunt, but don’t tell ’em our evergreen surprise.”

I couldn’t budge. “What church do you attend, Mr. Ferguson? I truly’d like to know and maybe test it. You sure are a Christian gentleman.”

“I don’t belong to any.”

“None at all?”

“Nope. I only go at Easter. Every year a different church. This coming spring, I’ll give the Methodists a try.”

Leaving next year’s Methodist pillar at his store, as ordered, I raced to Aunt Matty’s. Mr. Hume Plover, her husband, answered my knock and opened the door.

“Come in, Robert. You look froze.”

“Thank you, Uncle Hume. We can’t stay.”

I told Mama and Carrie that all was ready at the feedstore, hugged Aunt Matty, and hauled my mother and aunt, plus a bundle of food, down the street and around the corner. I made them almost trot, because I wasn’t giving them any time to grieve or waste on pity.

Up the stairs we climbed. The stove was heating. And the town’s most endearing elf was there to greet us.

“Welcome, you ladies,” he said. “Welcome home.”

As my mother and aunt stood speechless, staring at the spruce, I said, “Allow me to present Mr. Porter Ferguson, the lord of our manor. Sir, meet my mother and my aunt, Lucy and Carrie.”

He left. But he had trimmed our tree. It was glittering with a host of hardware. Outside it was late-afternoon dark, typical December, and the amber see-through triangles on the potbelly were shining a yellow glow, as if our tree was blossoming
with little tiny lanterns. So pretty you could hear it jingle.

We ate in the twinkling light.

Martha and Hume Plover were generous friends, even if they were Baptists. Nobody’s perfect. Matty had packed pie and cookies, a tin of tea, cold chicken, eight apples, and an entire loaf of homebaked bread with little seeds on top. Oh, and did we ever feast.

I saved a few seeds for the sparrows.

Just after we finished at our table, I heard singing. Below, people were cutting through the alley, practicing a carol. It was
Silent Night
. There were only five of them. So I dashed down the stairs to outside, wished them merry, and tossed each singer a polished red apple.

It seemed neighborly to share with folks on a day when our family had been granted so many friends. Besides, Matty had packed us eight apples. Three were left. One for each of us. Yet I knew I’d present mine to Mr. Ferguson.

“Rob!”

Turning, I saw Becky and Mrs. Tate hurrying through the cold. Becky Lee’s mother was carrying a small parcel. It was pleasing to see both of them wave. As though good things were happening.

“We brought you a fruitcake,” Becky said, shining a smile at me. “And I baked it myself. You’d better like.” She laughed. “Because it’s … as you like it.”

“Thank you.” I took the cake.

Becky hugged me. “If Mom weren’t watching,” she whispered in my ear, “you’d receive a more personal present.”

“You too,” I told her. “Soon.”

They left.

Coming inside, I looked at my mother and aunt, as they were heating water in a saucepan for tea, and said, “I never felt so rich. Or so happy.”

After tea, although it was a bitter evening, the three of us bundled up best we could to venture outside and beneath a winter sky. The wind had stilled. Almost reverent. Above us, stars grew everywhere. As if God, with one wide sweep of His arm, had seeded the fields of Heaven.

The light seemed to hum a hymn.

Between them, I hugged Mama and Aunt Carrie, feeling grateful for all the harvest that had come my way to bless me. More than a heart could hold. I felt taller and stronger, as if I could leap to pocket the stars for toys.

The starlight appeared yellow and white. One
particular December star was gleaming like a new birth. I couldn’t help pointing at it, so my mother and aunt could lift their faces to worship in its wonder.

“Look up,” I said, “at all our silver and gold.”

Robert Newton Peck’s first novel was the highly acclaimed
A Day No Pigs Would Die
. He has written sixty books, including the sequel,
A Part of the Sky
. He is also the winner of the Mark Twain Award for his
Soup
series of children’s books. Many of his novels are deeply rooted in rural Vermont, where he grew up.