Casteel 1 - Heaven (8 page)

Day by day Sarah grew quieter, more withdrawn, less devoted to all of us. That hurt, to have no mother at all now, especially when Our Jane and Keith needed her so badly. Her glare hardened whenever Pa came in the door once or twice a week. He was working in Winnerrow, doing honest work, but she refused to believe that, as if she were looking for a reason to hate and distrust him. Sometimes I heard him telling Sarah about his work, looking uneasy because she didn't ask. “Doin odd jobs fer t'church an t'rich ladies with banker husbands who don't wanna dirty their lily-​white hands.”

Sure, many a dollar Pa earned doing handyman chores for rich folks, and Sarah shouldn't dispute him. Pa could do any sort of handyman job.

Our Jane felt Sarah's depression, and seemed to get sick even more than usual that summer. She was the one who caught all the colds the rest of us easily threw off; then she had chicken pox; and no sooner was that over than Our Jane fell into a patch of poison ivy and cried for one solid week night and day driving Pa out in the middle of the night, again, to visit Shirley's Place.

There were good days when Our Jane felt well. When she was smiling and happy, there wasn't a more beautiful child in the whole wide world than Our Jane, the supreme ruler in the cabin of the Casteels. Oh, indeed, all the valley folks said, how beautiful were all the children of the wicked, cruel, sullen, and stormy Luke Casteel, and his wife Sarah, who, according to jealous women, was not just plain but huge and downright ugly.

One day when Keith, who seldom wanted anything, asked for crayons, it happened that the only ones in the cabin at the time were the ones given to Fanny by Miss Deale months ago. (So far Fanny had not once opened the box to color anything.)

“NO!” Fanny screeched. “Keith kin't have my brand-​new crayons!”

"Give him your crayons or he might not speak

again," I urged, keeping a wary eye on the little quiet brother who had Grandpa's own silent way of sitting and doing nothing much. Still, Grandpa saw so much more than the rest of us. Who else could whittle each hair on a squirrel's tail? Who else had eyes that didn't just look, but really saw?

“I don't kerr if he neva says nothin!” yelled Fanny.

Tom took her crayons and gave them to Keith as Fanny screamed and threatened to drown herself in the well.

“SHUT UP!” bellowed Pa, striding in the door and surveying his raucous children. He winced as if the noise we made pained his head.

“Ya made 'em, didn't ya?” was Sarah's only welcome. She clamped her lips together and didn't say another word. Pa glowered her way and dumped his supply of food on our scrubbed plank table. I hurriedly checked it over, trying to calculate how long that fifty-​pound sack of flour would last, that five- gallon tin of lard, the bags of pinto and navy beans. I'd make soup to stretch the cabbages and ham . .

Bang went the front door. Dismayed, I looked up. Pa was striding across the yard toward his old truck. Gone again.

My heart sank.

Every time Pa walked out and left Sarah needing, she did something terrible to one of us, or to herself. And I could hardly blame him sometimes for not wanting to stay. Not only did Our Jane and the rest of us wear on Pa's nerves, he and Sarah wore on each other's nerves too. Sarah had lost not only what looks she had but her sweet personality as well.

Early mornings turned winterlike and squirrels raced around, hurrying to store their nuts for the winter, and Tom was helping Grandpa find the wood he needed to whittle, and that was no easy chore, for it had to be a certain kind, - riot too hard, and not so soft it would break easily with much handling. Both Pa and I were in the yard, alone for a change. “Pa,” I began in a tentative way, “I'm doing the best I can for this family. . . can't you do at least one thing for me, like say a kind word now and then?”

“Haven't I told ya before t'leave me alone!” His piercing eyes glared my way before he turned his back. “Now git before I give you what you deserve.”

“What do I deserve?” I asked fearlessly, my eyes no doubt an everlasting reminder of all he'd had once and lost. Her.

Starlings sat like miniature dark soldiers on the

clotheslines. Puffy, sleepy birds, eyes closed, anticipating the coming cold and waiting for the warming sun. Mountain snow would soon be falling in the nights. I sighed as I stacked the wood, knowing no matter how we tried we'd never have enough to keep really warm. There was an ax half jutting from a felled tree trunk, an ax I thought Pa might use on me if I said one more word. I shut up and hefted the logs he'd split neatly onto the pile.

“There,” Pa said to Sarah when she came to the door, “that should hold you until I'm home again.”

“Where ya goin this time, so late?” called Sarah, who'd washed her hair and tried to make herself pretty for a change. “Luke, gets mighty lonesome fer a woman without a man, jus ole folks an kids fer company.”

“See ya soon,” Pa called back, hurrying toward his pickup truck. “Got me a job to finish, an then I'll come home t'stay all night.”

He didn't come home for an entire week. I sat on the porch steps late one night and stared at the grim, stormy sky. Sour thoughts made me miserable. There had to be a better place than here for me. Somewhere, a better place. An owl hooted, followed by the howl of a roaming wolf. The night held a

thousand sounds. The autumn wind from the north shrieked and whistled around the forest trees, whipped around the trembling cabin and tried to blow it away, but all the people huddled close together for warmth held the house down, or so I thought.

I stared at the horned moon half hidden by dark cloudsthe same moon that rode high over Hollywood and New York City, London and Paris. I blinked my eyes and tried to see across the hills, the ocean, then closed my eyes the better to see my future. Someday I'd like to have a real bed of my own to sleep in, with goosedown pillows and satin comforters.

I'd have closets, too, full of new dresses I'd wear once, like Queen Elizabeth, and I'd burn them as she had hers burned, so she'd never see them worn by anybody else. And shoes by the dozens I'd have, in all colors, and I'd eat in fancy restaurants where tall, slim candles glowed . . . but right now I had only a hard, cold step to sit on. And tears were freezing on my cheeks and eyelashes.

I began to shiver, to cough; still, I wouldn't go inside and lie in that crowded room between Fanny and Our Jane. Tom and Keith slept next to the pallet used by Granny and Grandpa.

While the others lay sleeping more or less peacefully, there came the whisper of old feet moving slowly. Raspy breathing, grunts and groans, as Granny settled down by my side on the step.

“Yell catch yer death in this night cold, an maybe yell think that will make yer pa sorry, but is that gonna make ya happy in yer grave?”

“Granny, Pa doesn't have to hate me like he does. Why can't you make him understand it wasn't my fault my mother died?”

“He knows it ain't yer faultdown underneath he knows it. But if he admits it, he's gotta blame himself fer marryin up - with her, an bringin a gal like her ta this kind of place she weren't used ta. She tried, oh, she did try to do her best, an I'd see her out here scrubbin, ruinin her pretty white hands, brushin back that hair of hers that was somethin t'see . an she'd go runnin t'that suitcase of hers, full of all sorts of pretties, an she'd rub on cream from a tube, tryin, always tryin, to keep those hands young an pretty.”

"Granny, you know I can't bear to look in that suitcase and see all her pretty things. What good are clothes like that way up here where nobody ever comes? But I had a dream about the doll the other nightthat she was me, and I was her. Someday I'm

going to go to Boston and find my mother's family. I owe it to them to let them know what happened to their daughter, for surely they must think she's alive, living happily somewhere."

“Yer right. Neva thought of it myself, but yer right.” Her thin old arms hugged me briefly, and there was no strength in them, none at all. “Ya jus set yer mind on what ya want, an ya'll get it, ya will.”

Life in the mountains was harder on Granny than on any of us. Nobody but me seemed to notice how much more difficult it had become for Granny to get up and down. Often she'd stop walking to clutch at her heart. Sometimes her face would go chalky gray, and she'd gasp. It didn't do any good to suggest a doctor; she didn't believe in doctors, or any medicine she didn't concoct herself from roots and herbs she sent me out to find.

With Sarah acting glum and grim, each day was an ordeal to survive, except when I was with Logan, and then one terrible day when the sun was truly hot, I found him down by the river and Fanny was racing up and down the riverbank without a stitch on! Laughing and teasing him to try and catch her. “An when ya do . . . I'll be yers, all yers,” she taunted. I stood frozen, horrified by Fanny's actions, as I turned my eyes on

Logan and waited to see what he'd do. “Shame on you, Fanny!” he called to her.

“You're just a kid who deserves a good spanking.” “Then ya catch me an give it t'me!” she

challenged. “No, Fanny,” he yelled, "you're just not my

type." He turned to head back toward Winnerrow, or so I thought, and that's when I stepped out from behind the tree that had shielded me from his view.

He tried to smile and succeeded only in looking embarrassed. “I wish you hadn't seen and heard that. I was waiting for you when Fanny showed up, and she just tore off her dress, and she wore nothing underneath . . . it wasn't my fault, Heaven, I swear it wasn't.”

“Why are you explaining?” “It's not my fault!” he cried, his face red. “I know it wasn't . . .” I said stiffly. I knew

Fanny and her need to take from me anything I really wanted for myself. Still, from all I'd heard, most boys wanted loose girls with no modesty and no inhibitions, like my younger sister Fanny, who would undoubtedly live ten exciting lives while I struggled through one.

“Hey,” said Logan, reaching to tilt my bowed

head so my lips were near his, “it's your type I want, and your type I need. Fanny's pretty and bold . . . but I like my girls shy, beautiful, and sweet, and if I don't manage somehow to marry Heaven, I don't want to go there, not ever.”

This kiss he gave me did ring a few bells. I could hear them chiming like wedding bells ringing in the future. Mrs. Logan Grant Stonewall. . me.

Instantly I was happy. In some things Fanny was right. Life did have to go on. Everybody needed a chance at living and loving. Now it was my turn.

Now Sarah took to talking to herself, walking in some unhappy dream.

“Gotta escape, gotta get away from this hell,” she mumbled. “Ain't nothin but work, eat, sleep, wait an wait fer him t'come homean when he does, ain't no satisfaction, ain't none at all.”

Don't say that, Sarah, please don't . . . what would we do without you?

“Done dug my own grave with my own desire,” Sarah confessed to herself on another day. “Coulda had some otha man, coulda . .”

“I'd leave, but fer t'kids.” She said this to herself day and night; then she'd stare hard at Pa when he came home on weekends, only to see he'd grown more

handsome (damn him, she'd mutter), and her heart would jump up in her emerald eyes, and like a stupid stopped clock whose hands had to say the same thing over and over again, back came her love for him.

Only too obviously, too painfully, Sarah's small world grew darker, grimmer. And it was I who bore most of the brunt of Sarah's frustration. Exhausted at the end of the day, I fell to my floor pallet and sobbed silent tears into my hard pillow. Granny heard, and Granny laid a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“Sssh, don't cry. Sarah don't hate ya none, chile. It's yer pa that makes her mad, but yer here and he's not. She can't yell out at him when he's not here, or hit out at himcouldn't even iffen he was here. Nobody ya don't love kin be hurt if ya yell and screaman she's been yellin an screamin fer years an years, an he don't hear or kerran she don't go nowhere, so she's strikin out at ya.”

“But why did he marry her in the first place if he didn't love her, Granny?” I sobbed. “Just so I'd have a stepmother to hate me?”

“Aw, Lawdy knows t'whys an t'wherefors of what makes men like they are,” wheezed Granny, turning over and hugging Grandpa, whom she called Toby, with great affection. Giving him more love with

one kiss and one stroking hand on his grizzly face than any of us ever did. “Ya jus make sure t'marry t'right one, like I did, that's all. An wait till yer old enough t'have good sense. Say fifteen.”

In the hills, a girl who reached sixteen without being engaged was almost beyond hope, bound to be an old maid.

“Listen Vern whisperin,” mumbled Sarah, keening her ears from behind the faded thin red curtain, “talkin bout me. Girl's cryin agin. Why am I so mean t'her, why not Fanny who causes all the trouble? He likes Fanny, hates herwhy not jump on Fanny? Our Jane, Keith? An most of all Tom.”

I pulled in a deep fearful breath. Oh, the pity of Sarah thinking about turning against Tom!

It was terrible the day when Sarah lashed Tom with a whip, as if in striking him she could get back at Pa for never being what she wanted him to be. “Didn't I tell ya t'go inta town an earn money? Didn't I?”

“But, Ma, nobody wanted to hire me! They got boys who have riding lawn mowers with vacuums that pulls in cleaves. They don't need a hill boy who hasn't got even a push mower!”

“Excuses! I need money, Tom, money!” “Ma . . . try again tomorrow,” cried Tom,

throwing up his arms and trying to protect his face. “I'll never get a job if I look swollen and bloody, will I?”

Frustrated momentarily, Sarah stared down at the floorunfortunately. Tom had forgotten to wipe his feet. “Didn't look, did ya? T'floors clean! Jus scrubbed it! An look at it now, all muddy!”

Wham! She slammed her heavy fist into Tom's astonished face, spun him back against the wall, jarring from the shelf above our precious jar of stolen honey that fell on his head and spilled the sticky stuff all over him.

“Thanks a heap, Ma,” said Tom with a funny grin. “Now I got all t'honey I kin eat.”