Heart of the Wilderness (4 page)

“It might take time,” Maggie responded. “You’ll have to be patient. She has been through so much for such a little tyke. It might take a while until she is ready to warm up to anyone.”

“Oh, it’s not that. Not Kendra.”

Maggie looked at him with puzzlement.

“I mean—she’s chatty and friendly. Seems glad to see me whenever I arrive. It’s this—home situation. I’ve followed every lead I’ve been given, and I still haven’t found a place I would feel right about leaving her.”

Maggie stirred the soup before spooning some into their bowls. She knew George had spent most of his days making calls throughout the city trying to find a suitable place for the young child.

Maggie nodded. It was hard to see her old friend carry such a heavy burden.

“Did you check with that pastor Mrs. Leed told me of?”

He nodded.

“He gave me two names,” he answered. His hand stole up to his beard, and Maggie’s expression mirrored his deeply troubled one.

“Both fine enough folks, I guess,” he went on. “One man has no work right now. Finding it hard to feed his own family. ’Course I could pay him for Kendra’s keep—but would the money meant for her be used to feed the others? Could hardly ask a man to feed an outsider better than his own offspring. And the other—I think they mean well enough—but, well—she’s rather a sour person. Mary was always so—so bright and cheerful that I don’t know if Kendra could—could live comfortably with dour sternness.”

“Something will work out,” Maggie said, trying to console him.

“These things take time.”

He nodded. But he was impatient. The days were slipping by so quickly. Days spent hunting for the right place for the child. Days spent with the little girl who was so quickly claiming his heart. He felt as if he were being torn asunder.

“Do you know what that is, Grandfather?” she quizzed as they took a walk along the riverbank hand in hand, Kendra holding tightly to her rag doll. “That is a boon.”

“A boom,” he corrected. “A log boom.”

“Yes, a boom,” she repeated. “Papa told me. A boom.”

It was one of the many things her papa had told her and she had repeated in their few days spent together. George McMannus was getting the feeling that the son-in-law he had hardly known had made a good father for Kendra. She spoke of him constantly. Just as she chatted about her mother.

Her grandfather noticed that she still interchanged past tense and present tense as she discussed them. At times she even spoke of the future. It worried him. Did Kendra really know that her folks were gone? That they wouldn’t be coming back to pick her up? He hardly knew how to deal with the child. Should he remind her each time that she would not see her parents again? Was that too harsh for a child to bear? He did not have the answer, but the small child’s desire to live in the past tore at his already wounded heart.

He turned his attention to her now as she pointed at the log boom that moved slowly down the river.

“Do you know what that man does?” she asked him. “He makes sure they don’t jamp.”

Jam,
he was going to correct her, but he let it go.

“And sometimes he runs all across the logs—jumpin’ and jumpin’,” she went on. “Papa showed me a jumpin’ man once.”

“When did you see the jumping man?” he asked her softly.

“Once—when Mama was home with a tummy ache from the fu and Papa took me with him for a walk by the river.”

He didn’t correct her word for flu either.

“Mama was real sick that day,” went on Kendra. Then brightened. “But she got better. She doesn’t got any fu now at all.”

He winced. Would she never remember? he wondered.

“Kendra,” he began slowly, not knowing what to say, not knowing how to say it, but sensing that this might be a good time to feel his way, “I’m goin’ to make a little trip—”

He saw the questions darken the large green eyes. Had she heard those words before? Had he chosen his words poorly?

“Where?” she asked quickly.

“Well, just—just—up to where you used to live—with your mama and papa.”

The eyes changed dramatically. He saw the light in them.

“Can I go?” she asked before he could even continue.

He stopped walking. He felt his hand tightening its grip on the small one that was slipped in his. She stopped him and looked up into his face, her eyes pleading. He reached down and lifted her and sat her up on one of the posts that lined the river dock.

“Kendra—” He struggled for the right words. “It—it won’t be like it was—you know that. Your—your mama and papa are no longer— they no longer live at your old home.”

She looked at him solemnly, then nodded her head in understanding, tears forming in her green eyes.

“They’re dead,” she said with candid frankness.

It was his turn to blink away tears.

“Yes,” he agreed when he could trust his voice to speak. “Yes, they are dead. Do you—do you know about—about what it is like to be dead?”

She nodded slowly.

“Have you seen anything that was—dead?” he pressed further.

She nodded again.

“What?” he asked her.

“When—when Papa shoot things—they be dead,” she answered him.

So her father had been a hunter. At least the child had an idea of what death was.

“But nobody shoot my mama and papa,” went on Kendra, shaking her head vigorously. “They got dead in the river rapids.”

He nodded in agreement.

When he found his voice, he went on. “Do you know what—what happens to people who—who die?” he asked with difficulty.

“They get buried—in the ground. They make a grave and they— they bury them in a special place so that we always know where they are.”

He bit his lip to keep it from trembling. He knew that someone had been trying to explain to her what had happened. He was thankful for that “someone.”

“I’m going to your old home to see—to see the graves of your mama and papa,” he told her. “So that—so that I’ll always be able to remember—where they are.”

“Can I come?” she asked again without hesitation.

“Do you—do you really think you’d like to do that?” He still wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do.

“I want to,” she said simply. “I want to see where they really are, too.”

He nodded. “I’ll talk to Mrs. Weatherall about it,” he promised her. “We’ll see what she thinks.”

He lifted her back down from the post and they turned their steps toward the Home.

He told Mrs. Weatherall about the conversation he’d had with Kendra that afternoon. The woman said very little as she listened. Just nodded her head occasionally.

When he finished his little account he was stroking his dark beard vigorously. “What do you think we should do?” he asked.

She turned the question back to him. “What do
you
think?”

“I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know. She—she seems to understand. But I don’t know.”

“How do
you
feel—about visiting your Mary’s grave?” asked the woman.

His head came up quickly. “I have to go. You know that,” he responded.

“Why?” she asked softly.

“Well—because—” He stopped, impatience edging his voice. He had felt that she understood him, and now she was asking this—this question to which the answer should have been so obvious.

“I need to see her one last time.” He hesitated. “Oh, not her—I know I won’t see
her.
But I mean I have to—to sort of make that last contact. I have to—to know where she is—to say that final goodbye before—before I can have any rest—get on with life.”

She did not speak. She just sat silently, letting his words hang in the air between them. Letting them echo back in the big empty space that had been Mary in his own heart and mind.

“And Kendra?” she asked softly. “Do you think she might need that too?”

“She’s a child,” he argued, but his tone was thoughtful. “She’s so young.”

“But she’s also a person,” spoke Mrs. Weatherall. “A person—a very small person—with a great big loss.”

“I don’t know,” he said after the silence between them had lingered long enough.

“I don’t know either,” said Mrs. Weatherall. “Perhaps we’ll have to let Kendra guide us.”

He nodded and rose to his feet. Already he knew in his heart that when he visited Mary’s grave, Kendra would be at his side.

Chapter Four

An Exciting Adventure

“I ’member that house.”

There was excitement in the small girl’s voice. The building she pointed out was nothing more than a log shack along the riverbank, but the sight of something familiar seemed to please her.

She released one hand from holding her doll and swatted at the mosquitoes that buzzed about her face, then turned her little face behind her. “Grandfather. Do you ’member it?”

“Can’t say that I do,” he answered as he took a long stroke on the canoe paddle. “But then I haven’t been up this way in a long time.”

“I ’member it,” she said again. “When we went by it before, there was a red shirt on that line.”

He marveled at her memory.

“Grandfather,” she said again, “do you ’member the red shirt?”

He smiled and shook his head. “No,” he responded, “I don’t remember the shirt either.”

She swatted another mosquito. “These ’skitoes are a pesky nuisance, aren’t they, Grandfather?”

Surprised, he couldn’t hide the smile that played about his lips.

“That’s what Mama says,” she added.

Yes—Mary had said that. And his Mary had borrowed the words from
her
father. His words were now coming back to him through the grandchild who shared his canoe.

“Grandfather—do you know what I think?”

“Well,” he said, resting his paddle against the side of the small craft. “I know what I think. I think that grandfather is an awfully big name. Do you think there might be something else you would like to call me?”

She puckered her brow, deep in thought. He studied the seriousness of the green eyes, thinking back to another little girl who had shared his canoe such a long, long time ago—but that only seemed like yesterday.

“I know,” she said, her face brightening. “I could call you Papa Mac.”

The words caught him so totally off guard that he heard his own soft gasp. “Where’d you—?” he began, but she was bubbling on.

“Mama used to call you Papa Mac—so I will call you Papa Mac.

Okay?”

Another link. Another pull at his heart. He couldn’t answer her because he was so choked up, so he just nodded his head.

“How much longer?” she asked, seeming totally oblivious to the sweet pain she had just caused him.

“A long way yet,” he managed to answer, clearing his throat. “But I think that it’s about time to take a break and eat the lunch Mrs. Miller sent, don’t you?”

She agreed wholeheartedly. He eased the canoe up against the bank of the river and helped her from the craft. He was surprised at how easily she seemed to adjust to the sway of the small boat. He wondered where she had learned the rhythm of a canoe. Never once on their trip upriver had he needed to caution her to sit still or not to lean over the edge or never to move quickly. Worried about it, he had been prepared to rescue her from the water should they have a spill. But she seemed to know instinctively how to move.

“Have you been in a canoe before?” he asked her as she stood beside him on the riverbank.

“Oh yes,” she enthused. “Mama used to take me. And sometimes Papa used to take me. And sometimes we all went together.”

So that was the secret. Already Mary and Stu had been raising a little girl who would love the wilderness just as they did.

They ate their simple lunch in silence. It was the first she had stopped chatting since they had left the city behind. He watched her as she tilted her head and listened to the song of a bird.

“What was that, Papa Mac?” she whispered. He couldn’t believe how easily she had adapted to the name.

“That was a wild canary,” he replied.

“Mama was teaching me the birds,” she said sadly.

The bird called again, and Kendra tipped her head to listen. “A wild canary,” she said to herself as though to implant the words firmly in her mind. Then she shrugged her shoulders. “Guess I’ll never know the birds now.” She spoke quietly, but her voice broke with the words, and he saw her chin quiver.