Julia's Hope (34 page)

“Has he?”

I just rocked forward and laughed. “I tried! I tried givin’ it to him, Albert, an’ he wouldn’t let me! Ain’t it the most a’ somethin’, you comin’ accusin’ him of stealin’, when he won’t so much as take a gift! You been list’nin’ to the wrong breeze blowin’!”

He shook his head. “Miss Hazel told me—”

“There’s your problem. Right there. You know her, how she’d skin the cat for comin’ in sideways! She don’t like nobody. She don’t know nothin’.”

“She cares about you, Aunt Emma,” Albert was careful to say. “I know she’s coarse and all that, but she’s just concerned. She says the Worthams are just fooling you, to get the land.”

I could almost laugh again at such a notion. “Well, then, they’re foolin’ theirselves too, to turn it down when it’s offered! They didn’t have to help me none, neither. Coulda left me at Rita’s. I tol’ ’em they could stay anyhow.”

He was quiet. Had to take a minute to consider that.

“You really tried to give them the farm?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“’Cause they’d value it. They’s good people. And they need it. But Samuel didn’t think it was right.”

Albert crossed his arms. “Why not?”

“I reckon he don’t figger he’s earned it, and that there might be some kin a’ mine in’erested. Like maybe you.”

I don’t think he was expectin’ that. Him and me’d talked about this farm before, but he wouldn’t of thought Samuel to care. Took him awhile to answer. And then he reached over and took my hand.

“Aunt Emma, I know you love this place. But you haven’t known them very long. I guess I can understand if you wanted to tenant it out to them. But wouldn’t you be better off over there with Rita?”

“It was fine enough, all right,” I admitted. “But it ain’t like bein’ home.”

“Then do you want to come to Chicago?”

“What for?” I asked him, all puzzled.

“To stay with me and Stell, of course. We’ve got room.”

Couldn’t help smiling at that. Albert was always a good boy. “It’s real nice of ya,” I said. “But that wouldn’t be like home, neither. An’ I heared you was comin’ to run
them
off, not me.”

He took a deep breath and reached for my other hand. “My main concern here is you, Aunt Em. Eventually this place’ll have to sell, anyway—”

“I ain’t sellin’ it! I’m leavin’ it to somebody.”

“Fine. But you need to look out for yourself in the meantime.”

I guess it rankled me that he didn’t think I was. “I’m right where I wanna be, Albert. And these folks is good as fam’ly. You’ll see, if you give ’em a chance. The good Lord knowed what I needed, and he sent ’em. I true believe it. And I wanna die right here one of these days, just like Willard did. I don’t wanna be no place else, and that’s possible now, ’cause of the Worthams. They don’t much like me talkin’ thisaway. But we got facts to face, Albert. You up to that?”

He wasn’t happy, that was plain. I was worryin’ him good. But he nodded his head. “I think I’m up to it. If that’s what you need.”

It was. I had to say this to somebody, an’ it sure couldn’t be Samuel. “I’ll tell you straight out, Albert. I ain’t gonna see another summer after this’un. I knows it in my heart, you understand? This here’s m’ last chance to be out here, and that’s what I want. I’m gonna be leavin’ this place to somebody ’fore long. You want it to be you?”

He frowned but squeezed both of my hands. “If that’s what
you
want.”

“Would you come here if it was so? Would you care ’bout it?”

“I’d come. I’d see about things.” He sighed. “But I’d have to sell it, Aunt Emma. I can’t live down here, not with all I’ve got up north. I hope you understand. I wish I could tell you something else, but that’s the truth.”

“I know it. You always been that way. But I’d leave it to ya anyhow if you tell me it’s right. You’re the closest family I got.”

He was lookin’ pained by all this. “I can’t decide that for you.”

“Well, if not you, Albert, I’ll be leavin’ it t’ Sam Wortham. That’s m’ mind on it, but I don’t want you sore at me.”

“I don’t understand it. I don’t know why you want them around.”

“I tol’ you. They’s good people. An’ it’s the only way I had a’ comin’ home. I’m happy with things the way they is. Real blessed.”

“I guess I can see that.”

“I don’t want ’em put out. You wouldn’t try, would you, Albert?”

He was quiet a minute. “You sure you know what you’re doing, Aunt Em?”

“I’m havin’ the time a’ my life! It’s sweet, seein’ all the activity ’round here again. You oughta stay awhile, Albert, an’ see what I mean.”

He looked down at the floor. “What about the Hammonds? You still plan to give that bonehead his plot of ground too?”

That weren’t right, and I let him know it. “He ain’t as bad as that! An’ it oughta be his! Willard didn’t have to be s’ hard all them years ago, makin’ George’s pappy sign it over! When he was still laid up in the bed with his back broke too! Coulda give him time to gain strength an’ see if he could turn things aroun’. He mighta paid us what he owed!”

“The way I heard it, George’s father was never good at paying anything, any better than George is.”

“I’m tellin’ you, Albert, Grahams ain’t always been a merciful lot! Your grandpappy came by
this
place less than kind too. Buyin’ it for next to nothin’ from folks that was too busy grievin’ to know better! I can’t be the same way!”

“You’re not. You never were.”

“Oh yes, I was. Me an’ Willard was both selfish as the dickens when we was younger, but you learn a thing or two over time, thank God! I’m glad as can be that Willard decided to give George a chance. He was thrown off once as a child, an’ I ain’t gonna be the one to do it again!”

Albert sighed. “So you let him keep his place without money, Aunt Emma? For mercy’s sake? You just give it back, when neither he nor his father could make good? That’s not our fault! You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of! You don’t have to do it. And you don’t have to give your home to strangers, either.”

“It ain’t have to. I
want
to. But you got a right to contest it, Albert. Just tell me now. I’m givin’ ya the chance.”

He got out of his chair and walked to the window. He turned and looked at me, then turned right back to the window again. It was a long time ’fore he said anything. And when he did, he said it real slow.

“Aunt Emma, you know me. You know I’ve got enough. I could tell you it was my grandfather and Uncle Willard, and I’ve got a right to step in. But you’d go to your grave thinking me the stingiest beast you ever laid eyes on.”

“Now, Albert—”

“Let me finish! Nothing’s changed with you. I can see you’re not going to be swindled, unless it’s by choice! And I should have understood when Miss Hazel called me that it was just you up to your own ways again. I ought to be able to talk sense into you, but the truth is, you won’t ever change. You got it about you that you’re supposed to be some kind of saint! Maybe we can give away our shirts and be blessed for it. Maybe you’re right. I don’t know. But I can’t argue with you. It’s your land.”

“They need it, Albert. Hammonds and Worthams. They got nothin’.”

“You think they’d have anything more? Really? Would it change them? Or would they lose it in a few months or years, anyhow?”

“They’d ’least have a chance. I like to give ’em that, if you don’t mind.”

He didn’t say nothin’.

“They been good to me, Albert.”

“Maybe so, Emma. I’m willing to see things your way. But if I ever find out different, I’ll pin them to a wall someplace.”

“Don’t be angry at ’em, now. Wasn’t none a’ them asked me to do this.”

“Emma, it doesn’t hurt to look out for yourself sometimes.”

“It surely can. I knows what I was like, Albert, and it ain’t a happy feelin’. But it was Lizbeth changed me. She was real sick her first winter, an’ I come to care that she make it through. Changed the whole way I look at that family ever since.”

“I certainly hope they’re grateful.”

“All them babies is mine.”

“So are a lot more in these parts, looking at it that way. Including me.”

“An’ I’d do all I can for any one of ya, if you was needin’ as much. But you ain’t, Albert. You ain’t. But they is. We gotta care for ’em. God give us that.”

“There’s no talking you out of anything.”

I wasn’t sure if he was angry with me or not. “Lord love ya, Albert. I sure hope you can stay awhile.”

“I can’t. Not long.” He was quiet, lookin’ out the window again with his shoulders kinda sagged.

“You oughta go an’ see Willard while you’re here.”

He turned and looked at me. “What do you think he’d say about all this?”

“I don’t pertend to know. But he was a good man most a’ the time, ’specially when he was older. An’ when he weren’t good, he was sorry on it later. You’ll un’erstand me better, Albert, in your time. You got the same kinda good in you.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

Samuel

Emma and Albert were quite awhile in the house alone. I went and chopped wood while Juli and Sarah took to pulling weeds.

It was hard for me to think of anything except this nephew who’d come charging down clear from Chicago to help his aunt. Whether she needed it or not, he’d thought she did, and he cared about her or he wouldn’t have come. He was the one that had rights here. Including the right to make decisions about Emma, should it come to that. When you got down to brass tacks, I was the one who didn’t belong.

Emma would speak her mind, I knew that. And he would probably listen. He might even let her have her way, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

I whacked at a chunk of hickory with all the strength I had in my tired arms and tried to put myself in the place of Albert Graham. What would I feel like if it were me called to see about a relative who couldn’t manage too well on her own?

That was a hard thought, and I had to consider my mother. What if it were her, sick and needing someone with her? I’d go. I’d have to. But right now, she didn’t even know where I was, unless Dewey had told her. I couldn’t imagine her welcoming me the way Emma had welcomed Albert.

But I knew I should write. I should let the relatives back east know how we were doing and how to get in touch with us. They were kin, after all. I could admire Albert Graham for his sense of that.

When Albert finally came outside, the first thing he did was ask Julia to fix Emma’s tea. Then he went walking into the timber without another word to any of us.

He was gone for at least three hours, longer than we had been, even with the unwieldy chair to maneuver. Juli had made lunch, fed us, and kept back some warm food for him. Eventually he came back with his jacket off, his sleeves rolled up, and his nice shoes as dusty as an old book. He sat with Emma again, ate his lunch, and then found me in the side yard, cutting wood.

“Aunt Emma’s got her mind made up,” he said with a shake of his head. “She wants to be all the way out here, miles from a doctor.”

“That concerns me too,” I admitted. “Doesn’t seem to bother her, though.”

“She’s ready to die. She even says so right out. Maybe I would be too, at eighty-four, but I wanted her seen to by someone I knew. I like Rita McPiery. She’d do anything for you. Anything at all.”

I didn’t know why he was talking to me. I couldn’t even tell just how he was feeling about things, or why he’d come out here. “I believe that,” was all I could say. Rita McPiery was a decent lady, there was no doubt of that, and Emma had been in good hands with her.

“She won’t come to Chicago with me,” he said. “Too far. She’s just as planted out here as if she were a tree with roots. I guess it’d be like chopping her down, expecting her to live anywhere else.”

He took the axe out of my hands and gave the nearest log a vicious whack. I stepped back a couple of paces.

“I guess you know what she thinks of you,” he said. “I guess you know she wants to give you this whole place. You and George Hammond, the ignorant freeloader.”

“I told her no.”

“That’s what she said. But you’re still here.”

I sighed. “Truth is, I don’t know where else to go. We didn’t plan this. And now if we move on, I’m not sure what’d come of her.”

Albert let the axe head drop to the ground and leaned onto the handle. “She doesn’t want you going anywhere. She wants you to see about things for her till she joins Willard on the hill over there.” He looked off into the clouds. “I don’t like thinking about it. I guess if I could, I’d keep things the way they’ve always been, with Aunt Em and this place to come to. I don’t want her gone, you know? I know I don’t get down here much, but I’ll miss her. I’ll miss the whole thing.”

There was nothing for me to say, and I wondered why he was talking like she might be gone tomorrow.

“She wants you to have the farm, free and clear,” he said. “She wrote it all down, and she wants
me
to help her make it a legal will.”

He seemed almost resigned to the fact. But it didn’t sit well with me. “Please believe I don’t want her doing that,” I told him. “I don’t want to take anything that ought to be yours.”

He shook his head and looked me straight in the eyes. “It’s not up to you. It’s all hers. And what Aunt Emma wants to will to whom, that’s for her to decide. There’s nobody has any right arguing with that. Not even me.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I wasn’t trying to influence her at all.”

“Well, you’re not insistent, I can tell that. You could’ve had the deed already. You think my aunt’s pretty much a fool, thinking like this?”

“No. I think she’s glad to be home. But I’d like you to tell me what I should do. It’s not my intention to cause friction between you.”

He glanced over at the house. “I guess you haven’t. She asked me, you know, if I wanted the farm. But I’ve got my own life. I couldn’t move down here now, even if it was mine. I’d have to sell it, that’s what I told her. And if that’s not what she wants, then she’ll have to do whatever she will.”

I swallowed hard at that news. “I’m not sure I want it.

I’m not sure I can make this work.”

“That’s something you’ll have to work out, I guess,” he said. “I should’ve known better when Miss Hazel told me Aunt Emma was slipping from reality. She’s sounder of mind than I am.”