Katie's Dream (18 page)

I didn't answer.

Edward was looking at me too. “I don't think he can. It's not me hitting Katie but bringing her here that's got him the most worked up. Being found out for the cheat he is.”

“That's all you want, isn't it?” I questioned. “To spread your lie and see what trouble it can bring. You came all this way savoring the thought, didn't you? But why? What did I ever do to you?”

He laughed. Long.

I turned my back.

“He can't do it,” Edward said. “He can't sit down with me. I knew when I come he couldn't.”

I walked to the barn, leaving him and George behind me. I knew that perhaps I was behaving badly. Maybe George and the boys would all think less of me. But if I stayed, it might just be that much worse. Edward wasn't wanting to reconcile. He seemed to be wanting to drive me to distraction. Maybe get me to fight him. I didn't know.

I grabbed the biggest shovel and headed for Lula Bell's stall. This was hot, hard work today, and I was in no mood for Edward's mockery. I found myself hoping that Juli and the girls would go over and eat the noon meal with Lizbeth, and that Edward would be gone before they ever got back.

Robert came in to help me, followed closely by Franky.

“Why does he have to be like that?” Robert asked me.

“I don't know. Maybe he thinks he's funny.”

“He wants to stay till that girl Katie comes back,” Franky said. “Pa told him she went berry pickin' with Mrs. Wortham, so he decided to stay right here till they get back so's he can say he's sorry.”

“I need the wheelbarrow. Think you can get it for me, Franky? It's over in the middle, where the hay hooks are hanging up.”

“I'll get it,” he said quickly and disappeared.

“Robert, I want you to watch for your mother. When you see her coming, you come and get me right away. Edward was a bother to her yesterday, and I don't mean for it to happen again.”

“Why don't you run him off? All he does is laugh at you.”

I looked at my son and could have hugged him then and there. He, and maybe he alone, seemed to understand. “What do you think? What's he saying?”

“That he's thinking to apologize. And maybe work on his car while he's waiting. But I don't know, Dad. If I talked to you like he does, I figure I'd pay for it.”

“Do you know what it means about something being personal?”

“Yeah. Like it's your business and not anybody else's.”

“Yes, but with Edward talking to me the way he does, it's a different kind of personal. He's got something against me that makes him want to hurt me some way, that's the only way I know to explain it.”

“But what? You never picked at him or nothin' when you was a kid, did you?”

“No. I knew better than that.”

He was looking at me so solemnly. Then Franky came carefully back in, balancing the heavy wooden wheelbarrow as well as he could.

Why didn't I run my brother off? It was an honest question. And I wasn't sure of the answer. I wouldn't ask him to stay, despite George's feelings on that. But I guessed I'd let him work on his car in my yard if that was what he wanted. And maybe let him apologize, if he really meant it. After all, he seemed to think he was telling the truth, and Katie did too. I
would
look like a cheat to him, then, if he really believed it all. That wasn't his fault. Maybe there'd be a way to part with some understanding. Or at least in some measure of peace.

I put down the shovel, thinking I'd better try again. “Will you boys shovel for me a few minutes?” I asked.

They both looked at me in question, but then Joe came in, shovel in hand.

“Yeah,” Franky said. “You do what you have to.”

“Pa said we oughta stay an' help,” Joe told me. “But it's gettin' on toward noon an' he's fixin' to head over to home in a little while to see what Sam and Kirk and the rest is got done.”

I nodded and stepped outside. Edward had the top open over his engine, and George was standing there still talking to him. I would have gone and offered to help with whatever the problem was, so we could talk things through and come to some kind of conclusion. But I could hear tiny voices of singing coming through the timber. It sounded like Sarah and somebody else. All the little girls, surely, with Julia on their way back. George looked up, and Edward with him, in time to see them breaking through the trees.

Juli! I should have been more prepared. I didn't know what to tell her about why Edward was here or how long he'd stay. It seemed like a betrayal to have him standing here so peacefully.

Even at the distance I could see her slow down. She would have questions in her eyes, I knew she would. She would look at him, and at me, in a way I wasn't used to seeing. Distrust. Dismay. Why was he back? Why was I having it so?

It was all to Edward's pleasure, apparently. He was smiling again.

ELEVEN

Julia

“Look,” Sarah whispered. “Is that Uncle Edward over there?”

“Yes.” I didn't say anything else, only took her hand in silence and gave it a careful little squeeze.

Katie sought my other hand of her own accord. “Did he come back to take me away?”

“No,” I assured her. “He's not taking you anywhere.”

Rorey ran on ahead like the wild little thing she was sometimes, shrieking to her father about the turtle we'd caught. A stranger's presence didn't faze her in the slightest. I shouldn't let it bother me, either, I decided, but I went to our yard slowly, glad it was Samuel taking the first steps to meet us.

“He's not been here long,” he told me when he was near enough. “He says he wants to tell Katie he's sorry.”

I couldn't help it. I stopped and stared at him. “You're speaking for him, now?”

He lowered his eyes. “No. I just wanted you both . . . to be prepared, I guess. You don't have to talk to him at all if you don't want to.”

“I don't want to,” Katie said right away. “He said if you wouldn't own me, he might just take me away and we'd join the circus.”

“That's not up to him.”

She turned her big dark eyes to Samuel. “Is it up to you?”

“Only partly. So long as Ben Law has you with me.”

The little girl tightened her grip on my hand, and I felt so sorry for her. Samuel wasn't making her future sound very secure. Of course, he couldn't help it. He was only being honest. But it left her looking rather crestfallen. And I realized she was still hoping that Samuel would indeed “own” her. I looked down at the child who was clinging so tightly to me. She hadn't given up. She still wanted her father. And there seemed to be nothing I could say.

“Mommy,” Sarah whispered, “I'm hungry.”

“Yes,” I answered her. That was, of course, why we'd hurried back. Nobody'd had much breakfast, so I'd figured on an early dinner.

I looked over at the tall man at George's side, who was wiping his hands on a grease rag. Maybe he would just keep showing up. Expecting a cool drink and a plate of food. I thought of the sorrel in my bag, of mixing it with our seedy garden lettuce and some lamb's-quarter, and serving that with those few potatoes and the rhubarb cake I'd forgotten and left in the coals. If he thought yesterday's meal was strange, maybe he'd find this one strange too.

I wondered why he didn't just buy his meals in town. If he had money for the gas to keep driving that car out here, surely he'd have some to spare for a bite or two.
I almost felt like telling him we couldn't afford to feed anyone else. Katie was enough.

But then I remembered what I'd been thinking in the woods about Emma. She would have fed him with a smile. She would have killed a chicken, plucked it, and cooked it in nothing flat. And she would have been telling him how much God loved him, even while she was working. Tears came to my eyes. I couldn't hold a candle to her. I just couldn't.

“Juli . . .” Samuel reached his hand to me, but I didn't let go of either girl.

“I'm fine,” I told him quickly, before he could say anything else.

“Don't worry about dinner. We can wait. It's plenty early.”

“I'm going to kill a chicken,” I said so quietly that I barely even heard it. My own words had taken me by surprise. Kill a chicken? One of our precious egg-laying hens? For Edward? Oh, Emma. Oh, Jesus. Must I?

“What?” Samuel asked me.

“I'm going to kill a chicken,” I repeated, steeling myself to the idea.

“We get to eat it?” Sarah asked. The shock was plainly evident on her face. Killing a chicken ought to be undertaken only with careful consideration, I'd told both my children many times. Because we mustn't rob tomorrow, thinking about today.

“Are you sure?” Samuel asked. “We can make do with whatever else.”

“No,” I told him. “We have a guest, and we haven't yet treated him like one. Maybe it'll make some difference. We can hope.”

He looked at me like I'd lost my mind. “I thought you wanted to keep them for winter—”

“Things change,” I said quickly. “Things come up.”

I started for the house in a hurry, wanting to get this
over with before I changed my mind. There were only six potatoes, not enough if the Hammond children stayed. I could devil the eggs that were left, but there weren't many. I'd have to get creative rather quickly if we were to have a feast. We'd had the green beans yesterday, so I knew there weren't enough ready yet. And the tomatoes weren't ready either.

“Sarah, you and Katie take one of the empty pails down by the road and pick me all the unopened daylily buds you can find.”

“We gonna eat that too?” Sarah asked. It wasn't entirely new to her. We'd done it once or twice last summer.

“Yes. And we'll need quite a few with company here.”

The girls hurried off together.

Samuel grabbed my hand. “Julia—”

“Now don't even try to talk me out of this. He's your brother. What would Emma do? She'd serve him the very finest meal—”

He leaned and kissed me. Right on the lips while I was trying to talk. Not caring that all the world could see. “I love you,” he said. “You've got a bigger heart than I do.”

I could feel the tears welling up, and I tried my best to deny them. “No. I'm bitter and mean and I'm just doing this because it's the thing to do. I didn't say I liked it.”

He smiled. “I love you anyway. I don't think you've ever been mean.”

“You watch,” I said. “It might happen.” I hurried the rest of the way to the house, knowing it wasn't only Samuel's eyes watching me. Inside I got a soup pot and came charging back out. Samuel was waiting on the porch.

“Fill this with water,” I told him. “I'm going to stir the fire back up.”

Samuel kept a pile of wood next to the ring of rocks, right there handy for summer cooking. I pulled my cake pan out of the coals, stirred the embers, and added little sticks to get a flame again. By the time Samuel came with
the pot of water, the fire was blazing. He set the pan over the fire for me, and I took a peek at the cake. Too done on one side, not quite enough on the other. That's what happens when you just leave something without checking. I set it on a rock with the underdone side toward the heat and marched right on to the chicken coop. Emma's chicken catcher was just like Grandma Pearl's. Wooden handle on a long, stiff wire with a crook at the end. I grabbed it from its nail on the wall.

“You want me to do that?” Samuel asked.

I hadn't even realized he'd followed me. “No,” I said quickly. I knew I needed to do it. I needed to be able to, not so much for Edward as for Emma and our merciful God.

“Just guard the gate, if you don't mind,” I told him. “Make sure none of them get out.”

I took that chicken catcher by the wooden end and stepped inside the coop with it. Right away, those hens knew exactly what was on my mind. Every one of them lit out the back flap into their yard, squawking up a fuss. I tried hard to get the last of them, Lazy Susan, we called her. But even she was too fast for me.

I came back out of the coop, pushing the hair away from my face. All the chickens were gathered in the corner opposite Sam at the gate, probably figuring him to be in on this little attack. I knew it wouldn't do a bit of good to sneak up. I just ran at them as they started to scatter, and I swung the hook end of the catcher right into the middle of those fluttering feathers. I hit one of them and gave it a yank.

Wingy. That was Sarah's name for the hen. She'd given all of them names. At least this one wasn't my best layer. I pulled the hen close. The hook of the catcher had got her by the leg. I struggled to reach past her flapping wings to grab her by both legs and hold her upside down.

“That's a pretty piece of work,” Edward declared from
beside the fence. I hadn't even seen him come up so close. “No wonder Samuel married you. I bet you take care of him real fine.”

I'd never admitted to hating anyone. Maybe I never would. But I sure hated his words, his attitude. Here he was, disparaging my husband right in front of him. Samuel didn't say a word, but I couldn't be so meek about it.

“He's a good provider,” I said.
“He
takes care of
me.”

The rest of the hens had run for cover back in the coop again, and the old rooster was pacing back and forth, looking at me with suspicion.

“Uh-huh,” Edward scoffed. “I don't suppose he's worked a job since he lost the one in Pennsylvania. Have you, Samuel?”

My quiet husband opened the gate for me, ignoring his brother completely. “Hatchet's sharp already,” he said. “Let me kill it for you.”

For a moment our eyes met, and I saw something I hadn't expected to see. He was angry. Sad and angry and trying just as hard as I was to maintain control. I handed him the chicken.
It's a sacrifice,
I suddenly thought.
Lord, receive it from us.