Hidden Places (20 page)

Because Frank Wyatt was a coward. Most bullies were. Lydia laid her hand on Father’s arm.

‘‘You need to calm down. All this shouting isn’t good for your heart. I told you, Frank had to take care of his livestock. He’s coming down with the wagon in a little while to move my things up to his house. You can talk to him then.’’

But Father wouldn’t be calmed. ‘‘What about your sister? How could you do this to her? How is Betty supposed to hold her head up in church after sitting in the Wyatt pew for so many weeks? Don’t you care about her feelings at all, you selfish hussy?’’

I reached for Lydia’s hand and our eyes met. Hers brimmed with love for me. She hadn’t acted selfishly but selflessly. I wanted to explain the truth to my father but she silently pleaded for me not to. Still, I wanted him to know at least part of it.

‘‘I’m not angry with Lydia at all,’’ I said. ‘‘I don’t love Frank.’’

‘‘But what’s to become of you now?’’ he asked hoarsely. ‘‘Nearly twenty-one years old and no marriage prospects. I won’t always be around to take care of you, and then what?’’ He pushed his chair back and stood, wagging his finger in Lydia’s face. ‘‘She’s your responsibility now! Yours and Wyatt’s! Since you’re the one who’s stolen her land and her future, it will be up to you to take care of her, you hear me?’’

He slammed the kitchen door on his way out, rattling the dishes in the cupboards. I felt so emotionally drained, first from Walter leaving and now this, that I didn’t think I could ever move from the chair. But Lydia still looked serene as she offered me a hand to help me up.

‘‘Come upstairs and help me pack, okay, Betsy?’’

As soon as I walked into the little room under the eaves that we’d shared all our lives, the enormity of Lydia’s sacrifice struck me once again. ‘‘You shouldn’t have done it,’’ I wept as I helped pack her clothes. ‘‘We could have found another way if you didn’t want to go to the home for unwed mothers.’’

‘‘But I have everything I’ve ever wanted,’’ she said with a smile. ‘‘A beautiful house, plenty of money...and I can still have my baby. I get to keep Ted’s baby, and that’s the best part of all.’’

I saw then that her serenity was merely a facade she had erected to keep her true feelings at bay. She still loved Ted Bartlett. But if she ever faced up to all that he’d taken from her she would start screaming and never be able to stop. He had stolen her trust, her virginity, her dream of a happily married life with him. But she wouldn’t give up the only thing she had left—his baby. I wondered how long my sister could continue to avoid reality. And at what cost.

‘‘You’re married to
Frank
,’’ I murmured, still finding it hard to comprehend.

‘‘Yes. So what? You don’t love him, Betsy, you told me you didn’t.’’

‘‘But you don’t love him, either. You did this for me.’’

Lydia drew me into her arms. ‘‘We promised to take care of each other, remember? We made a pinkie-promise.’’ Tears brimmed in her eyes as she held up her little finger.

‘‘But this is too much,’’ I cried as I hugged her tightly. ‘‘You paid much too great a price!’’

Seven and a half months later, Matthew Fowler Wyatt was born.

Wyatt Orchards

Spring 1931

‘‘For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing
of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard
in our land....’’

SONG OF SONGS 2:11–12

CHAPTER NINE

B
y the time Aunt Batty finished her tale, I felt numb. The boys had arrived home from school, and I could hear them on the back porch, thumping the snow off their boots. Becky had fallen asleep on the rug with both cats curled up beside her. I was about to get up and see about starting supper when Aunt Batty clamped her hand on my arm to stop me.

‘‘Your children deserve their own dreams,’’ she said quietly. ‘‘Don’t ask them to live yours. Maybe they’ll want this old orchard someday, maybe they won’t. If it’s your dream to make a home here, then good, fight to keep this place for yourself. But don’t do it for them. You’ll heap so much guilt on the poor little things they’ll never be able to hear their own music. Let them follow the beat of their own drummer.’’

Later, when I was alone upstairs, I went into Becky’s bedroom and looked at Aunt Batty’s photograph again. She was right— Walter Gibson did have kind eyes. But this time I also noticed the limpness in his slight body, the way he sat as if it required an enormous effort to hold himself together. No wonder Aunt Batty had to help him shave.

Funny, she hadn’t mentioned shaving him in her story this afternoon.

All of a sudden I got that strange, tingling feeling again. If Aunt Batty shaved Gabe Harper like she’d wanted to do last week, maybe she would recognize him as Matthew Wyatt. It was worth a try. But first I would have to figure out a way to talk them both into it.

I waited until Aunt Batty brought Gabe his supper tray that night and followed her into his room. ‘‘I’ve been thinking,’’ I said, leaning casually against the door frame. ‘‘Now that your hobo story is finished and all mailed off to Chicago there’s really no need to be looking like a hobo anymore, is there?’’

‘‘Um...Isuppose not.’’ He scratched his chin self-consciously. ‘‘But I guess I’ve grown used to having a beard after all this time. It feels like part of me.’’

‘‘Well, my kids get used to having dirt behind their ears, too, but I make them take a bath anyhow, whether they want one or not. Now, I’m thinking you’re long overdue for one. You’re finally well enough to wash yourself—so a shave and a haircut would finish up the job real nice. Don’t you think so, Aunt Batty?’’

‘‘Sure thing, Toots. And as I said, I’m a real crackerjack at shaving people.’’

I could tell by the way Gabe ate with his head bent down, and by how quiet he’d become, that he wanted to be shaved about as much as Queen Esther and Arabella did. I would have to bully him into it.

‘‘I once saw ‘The Wild Man of Borneo’ in a sideshow act,’’ I said, ‘‘and he wasn’t half as woolly as you are. Can you cut hair, too, Aunt Batty?’’

‘‘Why, sure. Nothing to it—snip, snip!’’ She made scissoring motions with her fingers.

Gabe ran his hand through his hair protectively. ‘‘Um, listen—’’

‘‘Tonight would be a real good night for a bath, too, ‘‘ I added. ‘‘The reservoir on the stove is full of hot water. Why not get all cleaned up?’’

‘‘Can we watch you shave him?’’ Jimmy asked. I was still leaning against the doorjamb and all three kids ducked beneath my outstretched arm like a game of ‘‘London Bridge.’’

I smiled sweetly. ‘‘You don’t mind if they watch, do you, Gabe?’’

He was trapped and he knew it. ‘‘I guess not.’’

Aunt Batty grabbed a hank of Jimmy’s shaggy bangs and pretended to cut them with her fingers. ‘‘Maybe I should practice on you while Mr. Harper finishes his dinner.’’

‘‘Naw. Mama says company should always go first,’’ Jimmy said, wriggling out of her grasp.

‘‘All right, then. Can one of you boys tell me where your daddy kept his razor and shaving soap?’’ she asked.

‘‘I’ll get you what you need,’’ I said.

Sam’s shaving things were still in the washstand in the kitchen where he’d left them. An age-cracked mirror in a painted wood frame hung above it. As I opened the drawer, I remembered how Sam would shave in front of that mirror every morning, and how the smell of his shaving soap would slowly drift through the kitchen. When the weather got warm he would move the washstand onto the back porch, picking it up like it weighed nothing at all, so he could clean up outside in the fresh air.

Sometimes Sam would put a dab of shaving cream on Jimmy’s face and hold him up to the mirror and let him shave it off with a teaspoon. Jimmy and Luke loved to watch their daddy strop his razor blade on the leather belt. One time little Luke said that the sound of the blade slurping back and forth reminded him of a thirsty horse lapping water, and Sam and I had laughed and laughed.

The boys had never known how their grandfather had used a leather strap just like that one to beat his two oldest sons when they were boys. Sam had whispered the awful truth to me one night in the darkness of our bedroom. He’d held me tightly and told me how he’d hated the sight of that belt in his father’s hand. His older brother, Matthew, had always seemed to get the worst of it. Big as he was, Sam had trembled as he’d remembered, and he’d vowed never to use a belt on his sons that way.

I lifted the mug of shaving soap to my nose. It smelled like Sam. I thought of Aunt Batty trying to keep Walter’s lemony scent in her little cottage after he’d gone, and I wished I had loved Sam the way she had loved Walter. Instead, I had used Sam to get what I’d wanted the same way Frank Wyatt had planned to use Aunt Batty. I was no better than he was.

I gathered Sam’s shaving things together, along with a towel and a pair of scissors, and returned to Mr. Harper’s room. He had finished eating.

‘‘Aunt Batty’s barber shop is now open for business,’’ she declared as we helped Gabe out of bed and onto a chair. He was still pretty weak and shaky. She tied the towel around his neck and trimmed his hair first, chattering a blue streak while she worked.

When she was ready to shave him, I fetched a basin of warm water and set it on his lap, then stood nearby, ready to call a halt to the proceedings if Aunt Batty began to butcher him. But she was surprisingly good at it, just as she’d said. She didn’t draw a single drop of blood. And she had done a good job on his hair, too. She gave him a hand mirror and a hairbrush and let him comb it himself.

‘‘Thank you,’’ he said as he stroked his bare chin. ‘‘I look like myself again.’’

The man who emerged from beneath all that hair proved to be the biggest surprise of all. I felt like I’d just watched a woolly caterpillar turn into a butterfly. Mr. Harper had a lean, ovalshaped face with a strong, square jaw—but without the deep cleft in his chin that all the Wyatt men had. He wasn’t as old as I had imagined him to be, but surprisingly young, in his thirties—Matthew Wyatt’s age. His wavy, dark brown hair might have come from Ted Bartlett; his high forehead and curved brows might have come from Lydia Fowler.

‘‘What a handsome thing you are without all that fur!’’ Aunt Batty exclaimed. ‘‘Put on some decent clothes and you could pass for a gentleman.’’

‘‘But first he needs a bath,’’ I reminded her. ‘‘Instead of him climbing all those stairs to the bathroom, the boys can help me drag the old copper tub in here and fill it up. Then I want everyone to clear out and give him some privacy—and that means you, too,’’ I said, shooing Winky and the two cats off his bed. ‘‘Think you can get in and out by yourself?’’ I asked him.

‘‘I’ll manage.’’ It was much easier to see Gabriel Harper blush with his face shorn.

I could scarcely wait to get Aunt Batty out of his room to ask if she had recognized him. ‘‘You did a nice job shaving him,’’ I said as we filled buckets with hot water from the reservoir for the boys to haul. We’d already moved the bathtub into his room. ‘‘Gabe sure does look different now, doesn’t he?’’

‘‘Like a newly shorn sheep.’’

‘‘Does he look at all familiar to you, Aunt Batty?’’ I held my breath as she thought for a moment.

‘‘Well, now that you mention it, he reminds me of a young Robert E. Lee, the famous general. Lee was a handsome man, don’t you think? Even if he was on the losing side?’’

I exhaled in frustration. ‘‘What I mean is, do you see a...a
family
resemblance.’’

‘‘Oh, I couldn’t say, Toots. I never met Mr. Harper’s family.’’

I would have to come right out and say it. ‘‘Take a good look at him, Aunt Batty. Is he Matthew Wyatt?’’

‘‘Matthew! Don’t be silly, Toots! His name is Gabriel Harper. He’s a writer. From Chicago.’’ She pronounced the words slowly and carefully, as if I were senile. ‘‘Matthew went to fight in that awful war.’’

‘‘That war has been over for more than ten years. Please...look at him
closely
. You said he looked familiar, remember?’’

‘‘Did I?’’

‘‘Yes! The first time you met him. Could he be Matthew, finally home after all these years? Look at him, Aunt Batty. He’s about the same age Matthew would be.’’

She peered into his room as if she expected him to jump out of bed and beat her with a stick, then she shook her head. ‘‘Oh, no. He’s not Matthew.’’ She seemed certain. I didn’t know whether to believe her or not. I was so frustrated I wanted to shake her.

‘‘Are you
sure
he isn’t Matthew?’’

‘‘Positive, Toots.’’

I wasn’t convinced. I saw too many similarities between Aunt Batty’s story and Gabe’s story for them to be a mere coincidences. While Gabe splashed in the tub, I got out the photograph album again to study Matthew’s pictures. When I happened upon one of Lydia, I suddenly realized why she looked familiar to me. I could swear she was the same woman I’d seen in Gabe’s Bible—or was I imagining things? I wished I could get another peek at his picture and compare the two, but the Bible no longer lay beside his bed. He must have put it back inside his burlap bag.