Rachel's Prayer (18 page)

“Pa? I don’t know why you’re here, but I’m gonna try to find a match so’s I can take a look at you. Where’d you tie up Star? I didn’t see nor hear no sign of him outside.”

“Why’d you come here?” he questioned right back. “How’d you know?”

“I don’t know, Pa. It ain’t nothin’ I can explain.”

“You always been different. You always been odd.”

“I know.” Just then my hand lit on to what I was sure was a wax candle, maybe six inches long, and right next to it was a little box of matches. I pulled a match out and reached in the dark to find the chalkboard that’d be behind me. And then I lit that match against the underside of the chalk tray, just like Mrs. Post used to do. I set the candle in an empty inkwell in the front row and lit it.

Pa was over by the cold woodstove where I’d heard him. Just leanin’ against it, starin’ off at nothing.

“Let’s go home, Pa.”

He turned and stared at me then, looking eerie in the candle’s light, like a specter with eyes as deep and black as our old well.

“We’s that much closer, boy.”

“To what?” I couldn’t help it. My skin got kind of prickly. He was giving me the heebie-jeebies.

“Rorey’s got herself engaged. I ain’t got but Harry and Bert and Emmie to look after now. And you.”

He didn’t sound drunk now. But I wasn’t too sure. “Pa, you don’t have to look after me, but Bert and ’specially Emmie’s gonna need you for a long time to come. I ain’t sure what you’re gettin’ at. Kids gets older. It’s just natural. But we’re always gonna need you.”

“You never did need me.”

“Yes, we did, Pa. We always have. We couldn’t a’—”

“Ah, shut up. Go home.”

I stepped a little closer. “I wanna go home. We oughta. We sure don’t b’long in here. But I ain’t gonna leave without you.”

“What do you keep after me for?”

I swallowed hard, not sure I could speak the first words that came to mind when he asked me that. “Because I love you.”

He turned around, took a couple of steps. Then he leaned hard against a middle grader’s desk and slumped over kind of peculiar.

“Are you all right, Pa?”

“What do you think, boy? That I’m some kinda lost thing you gotta hunt up and save?”

“No. I just get bothered when you ain’t home. And . . . and when you drink.”

“You always had that kinda holier’n anybody attitude about you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said real quick. “I didn’t mean it to seem like that. I just worry for you.”

“Why ain’t you ever took the time to worry over your own self?” he snapped back at me. But I stepped a little closer.

“Maybe you’re right that I ain’t got the sense for that,” I said. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

“You wanna know why I came here?”

“We oughta get goin’, but if you wanna tell me first, then yeah, I wanna know.”

“I knowed you’d figure I been drinkin’. I knowed you 160 wouldn’t like it, Franklin Drew, so I didn’t wanna get home just yet.”

Him usin’ my formal name like that took me by surprise. I didn’t think I’d ever heard it from him when he wasn’t yellin’. “But why’d you come here?” I asked him, wishing he’d say what he wanted to say quick so we could get. Bein’ snuck in the schoolhouse like this was uncommon strange.

“I didn’t figure you’d look here, dadblame it,” he answered impatiently. “I didn’t figure you’d ever think to come out this-a-way to the schoolhouse. You don’t even belong here. You never did.”

I heaved a heavy breath. Even now, he seemed to pick his words to push me down. “I know. But there ain’t neither one of us belongs here tonight. You’re not makin’ no sense to me. Why would you run off an’ drink after Rorey was so excited about gettin’ engaged? Now she thinks you’re mad about it. We don’t know what to do no more, Pa. We don’t know what you want.”

He answered with his voice real low, “Most of what I want, boy, is you to leave me alone. You more’n anybody. Why do you think I wanted you to stay over to the Worthams’ before? I don’t want you in m’ hair. You always been weaselin’ around, stickin’ your nose in where it don’t belong, an’ I want shuck of it. Do you hear me? I want shuck a’ you. That’s why I come here. So’s you’d leave me alone.”

I didn’t know what to say. I watched him slowly sink down and sit on the floor. And suddenly I didn’t feel like I had much strength left to stand either. “Pa—”

“Ah, shut up. You ain’t got nothin’ to say worth hearin’.”

I leaned my hand on a desk, feelin’ almost like I’d been hit. There wasn’t nothin’ I could do with him. He wouldn’t leave with me. I might as well just slip back out the window and go home to bed. But I couldn’t. His words was workin’ on my insides too bad, and I felt like I had to know some things. Like maybe now in this strange place with him in this strange kind of mood, he’d tell me stuff he wouldn’t never say otherwise.

“Pa?” I dared. “Why do you talk to me like that? Why do you think I’m some kinda worthless fool? Ain’t I ever proved myself nothin’ to you?”

He was quiet a minute. I thought maybe he’d yell, or maybe ignore me completely. But his voice came out steady and solemn, and calmer than I expected. “Is that what you think? That I reckon you’re worthless?”

I swallowed hard. “Pretty much, Pa. An’ I always did try—”

“Ah, shut up.”

I did. What was the use doing anythin’ else? Tears filled my eyes, and I got mad at myself over having them. This was ignorant. This whole thing, being here like this, and askin’ him any questions. It was just ignorant.

“You pretty well figure I hate you, don’t you, boy?”

“I—I don’t know what to think sometimes, Pa.”

“I reckon maybe I have hated the way you always been.”

The tears tried to take over on me again, an’ I had to fight ’em. “I’m sorry. I try—at pretty much everythin’. I don’t know what else to say, ’cept I love you, Pa. No matter what you think a’ me.”

“You said that.”

“I mean it.”

He was quiet a long time. I sat down too. Despite my feelings, I knew I hadn’t ought to leave without him.

He just sat. I just sat. I wanted to beg him to give up whatever this was he was doin’ and just come home, but I didn’t say a word. Finally he coughed a little. “Franklin Drew,” he said finally, so low I almost couldn’t hear, “I been afraid a’ you since you was knee high. That’s why I talk like I do.”

“What do you mean, afraid a’ me?”

“Ah, don’t you understand? I ain’t never understood the way you think, boy. You’d look up at the sky and ask me things ’bout God none of the rest ever thunk to ask me—stuff I couldn’t answer. You always did remind me how ignorant I am. ’Cause maybe you take after me. I can’t read a lick neither. But then you’d throw questions in my face an’ crazy words ’bout things I don’t know nothin’ about, an’ make me feel all the stupider. You always used to ask the kinda stuff you hadn’t ought to think to wonder. I couldn’t figure how your head worked, nor where it was half the time. I wondered for a while if you was even mine. You hadn’t oughta have two kinda ways about you. It ain’t natural.”

“What do you mean?”

“You talk the Scriptures like the living Savior when you can’t even read ’em. You act all high and holy and knowin’ all kinds a’ things when you’s the same stupid cuss as ever, knockin’ over stuff and failin’ so bad at school they asked you not to come back. I never could figure you out, Franky. I got so I had to quit tryin’. It’s plain easier to have you outta my hair most the time. I don’t know if you can help it or not, but it ain’t easy bein’ around you.”

“I—I’m sorry, Pa.”

“Ah, shut up. I ain’t tryin’ to get no sorry outta you. I’m just tellin’ you what it seemed like you wanted to know. I guess it’s due you. I ain’t liked it, the way you talk, like you know God’s thinkin’ or somethin’. The drinkin’ ain’t right. I ain’t right. An’ you’s so holy you even know how to find me in the schoolhouse in the middle of the night.”

“But I didn’t know, Pa. Maybe the Lord just wanted me to—”

“You see? That’s what I mean.”

I kept quiet. I was so stunned I didn’t know what to say.

“Go on home, will you?”

“But I wanna help, Pa. I just come to take you home. Just in case you need a hand—”

“Ah, boy, I know it. Your old pa’s done got hisself in a mess again.” He fumbled with a shirt pocket, and I realized for the first time that he had a little bottle with him.

“Don’t drink no more. Please, Pa. Let’s go home. Where’d you put Star?”

“Don’t rightly remember. Ain’t that jus’ like me?”

“No. Not usually, it ain’t. Did you tie him in the timber?” “Don’t think I tied him.”

“Then he’ll be headed home. An’ Rorey’ll wonder, if she sees him. We better go.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right.” Before I could say anything, he pulled the cap off the little bottle and took a swig. “Disobedient, ain’t I? Hardheaded against the will of the Lord.”

“I can’t say that,” I said with a sigh. “Just that it worries me. Where’d you get that stuff?”

“Bud Turrey. I got a lot to think on, Franky. I got decisions to make.”

“So long as you realize that we do too, Pa. And we’re gonna need your help.”

He didn’t answer that. He just struggled to his feet. I rose to help him because he seemed so unsteady. I blew out the candle and then shut the window once we’d gotten out it. He let me help him over to the hitching rail where Tulip was waitin’. And I let him ride, and I just walked alongside, holding the rein and making sure he stayed steady. I couldn’t see Boomer around anywhere. Maybe he felt like he’d done his whole duty helpin’ me find my pa and had gone on home without us.

19

Sarah

I guess nobody ever knew what bothered Mr. Hammond about Rorey getting engaged. Frank said that their pa slept most of the next day, but after that he seemed to be better again.

“Do you think I’m too religious?” Frank asked me that afternoon. “Do you think I talk Bible words too much?”

“I don’t know if there is such a thing as too much,” I told him, pinning a pillowcase to the laundry line.

“But I don’t want people to think I’m lookin’ down on ’em.”

“I don’t know how they could, Frank, when all you’re doing is speaking words of comfort. There’ve been times when my mother really appreciated it.”

That seemed to satisfy him, at least a little. I was hanging wash, and he’d come out to talk to me and ended up helping. He held one end of a bedsheet off the ground for me while I started pushing clothespins in place. I always had trouble with bedsheets. I figured a person’d have to have arms like a gorilla to hang and fold them right.

“Do you ever wonder what people think a’ you?” Frank asked me.

“Sometimes.”

“Do you think it’s a sin?”

I felt completely unqualified to answer that kind of question, but I knew he just wanted an opinion, so I did my best. “Maybe it’s just human nature. I’m not sure we can help giving it a little thought.”

“Well, I find human nature pretty sinful,” he said with a sigh. “My own as much as anybody else’s.”

“That’s reassuring,” I told him. “Must mean you’re as human as the next fellow.”

He gave me an odd look. “I guess my pa’s been wondering.” “If you’re human?”

“I don’t know just what. Do you think I look like him?”

“A little. But only when he’s in a good mood.”

“Pray for him, will you please, Sarah Jean? Last night was strange. It was good in a way, like I finally got a chance to see inside him. I hope it stays that way. I hope we can talk over the things that get to botherin’ him.”

I suddenly remembered Lester’s letter to Rorey. He’d used her middle name. Nobody else used her middle name. And here was Frank, always using mine. “I’ll pray for your pa,” I promised, at the same time trying to remember Frank’s middle name. Drew. Like that girl sleuth Nancy’s surname. It was unusual. It kind of fit him. But I knew I wouldn’t start using it.

“Are you going to the fair?” he asked me.

“I don’t know. We’re at least driving into Mcleansboro to see the Arnold’s window display.”

“I could take you, if you wanna see the fair,” he offered. “I’ve got money from my last order to pay the ticket price.”

Maybe I looked at him a little differently when he said that, I don’t know. Maybe he’d had more in mind all along. But he hurried up and said the rest.

“I could take Pa’s wagon, an’ your pa wouldn’t have to use his gas. I wouldn’t mind bringin’ whoever wanted to come.”

“I’ll ask Mom.”

It had almost seemed like Frank was asking me special. Almost. I wasn’t really sure.

And he did end up taking his father’s wagon, and Harry and Bert wanted to go. And Emmie, Rorey, and Kate. But Mr. Hammond didn’t want to go to the fair, and when Frank heard that, he almost didn’t go either. But they talked a little bit, and I guess it was enough to put Frank’s mind at ease. He went ahead and took us, and paid for all his brothers and sisters. He would have paid for me and Kate too, but Dad sent us money so that Frank wouldn’t have to use all of his. For a while everybody stayed together. But then, Kate and Emmie and Bert were lingering in the livestock tent, and Rorey and Harry wanted to watch a wrestling contest.

“Did you ever ride a Ferris wheel?” Frank asked me. “Once. When I was little. In Pennsylvania.”

“I never did. But they got one this year. And I’ve got the dime. Mind comin’ along?”

It was a funny way to be asked, but I agreed. And the ride attendant, assuming we were a couple, seated us together. But I didn’t mind. I wouldn’t have wanted to sit alone. Then just as we were edging upward, I saw Lester’s brother Eugene in the crowd below. He stared at us like we’d been painted green.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” he yelled up at me.

“You just watch,” I answered him back. “We’re going all the way to the top.”

Frank never asked what he meant. He never said anything about Eugene at all. He just sat back and breathed in deep, taking in the sights and sounds of the fair below us like it was all meaning something to him. I’d never thought riding a Ferris wheel could be something spiritual. I’m not sure why I thought it then. But I almost expected Frank to quote a Bible verse for the occasion. And he didn’t disappoint.

“Ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands.”