Gingham Mountain (10 page)

“How long have you been here?” Charlie snarled at Benny.

“I’ve been here almost three years.”

Charlie quit struggling. Grant saw his surprise. “You must have been just a baby. They put babies on the orphan trains?”

Benny shrugged. “Pa says I was so young it didn’t make no sense. That’s why no one chose me. But Pa did.”

Benny nodded at Marilyn. “Marilyn’s just been here a few months.”

Charlie looked at Pa. “The orphan trains come through that often?”

“No, Marilyn was living in an alley in LaMont. I found her there when we drove some cattle in to sell.”

“The orphan train doesn’t come through this route more than once every year or two,” Sadie added.

“But whether we came on a train or some other way, we’ve all been through this.” Joshua wiped the sweat from his shining black brow. He’d been cleaning stalls. “Pa brings new kids home all the time. Sadie ’n’ me were with the first group of kids he adopted. We’ve been here ten years and we’ve seen lots of new brothers and sisters. He doesn’t throw the old ones out or love the new ones more. He has enough love to go around.”

“God has given Pa a heart that has more room in it than this whole wide Western land,” Sadie said.

Grant’s heart ached at hearing Sadie’s kind words.

Charlie glanced at Grant, then at his other brothers and sisters, then back at Benny. He scowled.

“We’re all orphans,” Grant said. “Me included. I know exactly what your life has been like because I’ve lived the same one.” Since the boy hadn’t taken a swing at anyone for a full thirty seconds, Grant took a chance and released Charlie, then came around and hunkered down to his eye level.

“All of us have,” Marilyn assured.

“We know how it is,” Sadie nodded.

“That’s why I can’t let Joshua live in the barn.” Grant silently prayed that Charlie would understand. “I have to treat Joshua right, and I’m going to treat you right, too. Can’t you see that a parent who loves one child more than another hurts the child he loves as much as the one
he doesn’t love? If I treated you better than Joshua, I’d be hurting you both. I’ll never desert you, no matter how angry you get. I know what it’s like to hate the whole world just because it hurts too much to hope for something good.”

“It’s all right, Pa.” Joshua said. “I can sleep in the barn. No matter where I am, I know you love me and I know God is always with me.”

Grant focused on Charlie. “When you’re alone in the world, God is a really good idea. It’s the best lesson you’ll ever learn. God will never fail you. He’ll go with you wherever you end up.” He smiled at the confused, angry little boy.

A deep longing appeared on Charlie’s face then was wiped away by rage. “Why would God love a kid when his own parents don’t?” Charlie gave Benny a violent shove, knocked him down, then whirled and ran out of the barn.

The whole family watched Charlie go.

“You think he’ll run away?” Joshua crossed his arms.

“Maybe.” Grant sighed. “But he can’t get far. I’ll talk to him. He’ll get over being mad.”

“I think I’d better go after him, Pa,” Benny said. “I’m the one he has a problem with.”

“No, he might hurt you again. I don’t know all he’s been through.” Grant frowned and rubbed at the deep furrows that cut across his forehead. “But I can imagine.”

“That’s okay. I can take it. I’ll watch out for branches, and if he wants to take a swing at me, well, I don’t mind if he works off a little temper on me.”

Grant shook his head, “Benny, thank you, but—”

“You let these children work their tempers off with fistfights?” Hannah rushed into the barn and hurried over to Benny. She immediately pulled a handkerchief out of her sleeve and began fussing over Benny’s bleeding temple.

“What kind of a madhouse do you run here, I’d like to know?”

I
f this was a madhouse, Grant was the man in charge when he should have been an inmate.

Hannah had a good mind to shove him into a straitjacket right here on the spot.

She dropped to her knees and dabbed at the blood-soaked cut on Benny’s head. “This looks ghastly! We need to get him to town to a doctor.” Hannah felt her sleeve drop off her shoulder in the back. It was still stitched on the front, hanging by a few threads. She ignored it, too worried about Benny’s cut to care about her dress.

“I’m okay, really, Miss Cartwright.” Benny patted her hand. “I think it’s already quit bleeding.”

“You’re very brave.” Hannah comforted him. “But you’re just a child. You can’t see how serious this is.”

At that moment, Grant caught Hannah’s hands and pulled them away from Benny’s head, then lifted her to her feet until their noses almost touched. “Quit fussing over him. He’s all right.”

“He is
not
all right.” Hannah wrenched her hands against his steely, work-roughened grip. “He’s hurt and bleeding. You can’t just stand by and do nothing while these children harm each other.”

Grant didn’t even seem to notice her pathetic efforts to pull away.

“It’s a head wound, ma’am,” a black boy nearly as tall as Grant said politely. “Everyone knows they bleed like crazy.”

As she jerked against Grant’s hold, the last stitch on her sleeve gave up the ghost and the fabric fell the rest of the way down to her wrist. Grant’s eyes zeroed in on her bare arm, and humiliated, she looked over at the boy who had spoken to her then looked at all the children who stood behind Grant as if they were lined up against her.

She was making a fool of herself fighting Grant’s superior strength. She quit struggling and drew herself up to her full height. She came to Grant’s chin.

Grant said with mild menace, “Do I have your attention?”

“You do.” She spoke through gritted teeth.

Grant, without looking away from Hannah, asked, “Sadie, what work do you do around here?”

Hannah identified Sadie by the way she stood straighter and took a step closer to Grant. Her dark eyes glowed out of the ebony skin on her face. “I cook the meals with Marilyn and now Libby.”

Hannah had been so upset about Benny’s bleeding that she hadn’t even given her little sister a look yet. She noticed Libby clinging to Marilyn, but when Sadie said Libby helped with the cooking, Libby beamed.

Sadie took the bloody handkerchief out of Hannah’s confined hand and pressed it against Benny’s head while she went on. “I wash a couple of batches of clothes a day and I keep the cabin straightened. I sew for the family and I ride out with the herd in the afternoon if I have time.”

“Do you ever get any time to rest or have fun?” Grant asked, still staring into Hannah’s eyes, holding her secure.

A flare of heat climbed up Hannah’s cheeks.

Benny took over tending his wound.

Sadie stepped back beside Grant, tugged at her tightly curled black hair that had escaped from a bun, and tucked it behind her ear. “Well, sure, Pa. I go along when there’s a church social. And I spend time every evening reading.”

“Marilyn, how about you? Miss Cartwright is the new schoolteacher. She thinks I work you children too hard. What do you do around here?”

“The same as Sadie.” Marilyn was as fair as Sadie was dark. Her fine hair was pulled into a flyaway braid that hung down nearly to her waist. Every hair that had escaped curled. Her eyes were blue under slim arched brows. Her skin was deeply tanned, and she was almost a foot taller than Sadie. “I’m also working on a patchwork quilt and I help with the younger children, see to their baths and help them with their studies and such.”

“Do you have any fun, ever?”

“Since Wilbur’s been sparkin’ me, I have him over of an evening, and sometimes we go for a buggy ride or the whole family goes to a church social. And I spend time reading, too.”

“Miss Cartwright seems to think you’re a slave,” Grant said in a voice so acid it nearly burned Hannah’s skin.

Hannah jerked on her wrists, but Grant didn’t loosen his hold.

“A slave?” Marilyn gasped.

The older black boy stepped forward. “Only a person who’s never been a slave and knows nothing about slavery would make such a comment.”

“That’s Joshua.” Grant pulled Hannah a little closer until her arms bent at the elbow and pressed against Grant’s chest. “He spent the first few years of his life on a plantation. His father was sold when he was too young to remember him. His mother died after a beating from her master when Joshua was five. He escaped with some other slaves running away and ended up living on the streets in New York. Eventually he came here. How about it, Sadie? Do you think this silly woman should be throwing the word
slave
around?”

Sadie, short and black with very old eyes, crossed her arms. “My parents were emancipated before I was orphaned. I was four when they died. Joshua and I and four others lived on the street for a year. Then we found out we could hide on a cargo ship and get out of that cold, awful city. We ended up in Houston.”

Grant shuddered visibly. “Sadie and Joshua, living on the street, behind Confederate lines during the war.”

“How long did you live on the street?” Hannah’s earliest memories were of a Chicago orphanage. Then she’d been under Parrish’s thumb. But the last few years, Hannah had been little more than living on the street.

“About a year in New York before we got the idea of stowing away. We’d only been in Houston a little while when Pa found us there and—”

“Yes,” Grant interrupted, “one of the boys they were running with tried to pick my pocket.”

“Will,” Joshua said with a fond smile.

“He was a mighty good thief,” Sadie added.

Grant shook his head. “No, he wasn’t, or he wouldn’t’a got caught.”

“He just didn’t know who he was dealing with.” Joshua shoved his hands in his pockets. “He didn’t know he was taking on someone who’d been a hand at thievin’ himself for a time.”

Hannah knew how it was to be hungry or cold and see something you needed. Things had found their way into her hands, too. She’d never picked anyone’s pocket, but a pie left on a windowsill or a dress hanging on a clothesline had come home with her now and then.

She’d known it was wrong and she’d gone right ahead. What’s more, to survive, she’d do it again, maybe not for herself. She liked to believe she could put herself in God’s hands and even face death from cold or hunger before she’d break another commandment. But if she had children in her care, she wouldn’t stand by and let them starve. She couldn’t. She asked for forgiveness to God and hoped the day never came again that she was forced to make such a choice. She waited for Grant to make excuses and pretty it up.

He didn’t.

Joshua continued, “It’s how I survived. It was wrong, and I knew it, but I did it anyway.” He nodded at Sadie. “She’s fifteen. Sadie is one of the few of us who knows her last name.”

“Sadie Mason.” The black girl tilted her chin up with pride. “My pa named himself after what he did for a living in New York. Then he and Ma died in a diphtheria outbreak. They were both born into slavery, and they were separated from five children, all sons. Their owner sold my brothers off when he needed a little spending money. I wasn’t born until later, after Pa and Ma had escaped north. They told me what it was like, and even though I was mighty young when they died, I remember the scars of lash marks on both of their backs. You’re a mean lady to come in here and tell Pa he’s treating us bad. You don’t know what bad is if you can say such things.”

Hannah knew exactly what bad was. She’d lived it herself when she’d been in Parrish’s hands. She had lash marks of her own, and she knew a person didn’t have to be black to be a slave.

Every breath she took was for the purpose of helping and protecting children. Her heart ached to see these young spirits broken to the point that they’d defend this man. She remembered the times she’d said what Parrish expected her to say and put her whole heart into the lie, because she knew punishment awaited her if she didn’t defend her pa.

She looked at the little boy who was standing beside Libby. The bleeding
had
stopped. Freckles sprinkled across his nose, and lank hair drooped across his eyes. His ears stuck straight out from his head, and his brown eyes didn’t shoot pellets of rage at her. Stepping nearer to her, he watched her like he was afraid she’d vanish.

“I’m Benny, an’ I’m six. Pa isn’t a bad man. And I don’t think you’re a bad lady neither. You came out here because you were worried about us. I think that’s nice. We’re fine, but you can worry about us if’n you want to.” He edged closer.

“You’re right, Benny.” Marilyn stepped up beside Grant, her blue eyes level with Hannah’s. Hannah wondered if Marilyn wasn’t almost her age. “She’s not bad. She just doesn’t know us very well yet. She doesn’t understand how things work on the Rocking C.”

Marilyn looked sideways at Grant and added with a teasing lilt to his
voice, “You seem to have latched on to Miss Cartwright for good, Pa.”

Grant looked away from Hannah and arched an eyebrow at Marilyn. Hannah saw the sassy way Marilyn grinned at him and knew for a fact that she’d never grinned at Parrish in such a way. Grant returned the smile, then let loose of Hannah’s wrists and stepped away.

Hannah rubbed her wrists distractedly and noticed her sleeve dangling. She pulled the fabric up to her shoulder, but it drooped back down. Ashamed of her arm being bare, she pulled it back up and clamped her arm to her side to hold it as best she could.

Looking from one child to the next, Hannah balanced their obvious contentment here against what she knew their life must be like. She noticed Grant rubbing both his hands on his pant legs, as if touching her had gotten his hands dirty.

She finally ignored the rest of them and said to Benny, “I’m not a bad person. You’re right about that, Benny. I didn’t like Charlie and Libby coming here when Mr. . . .Grant said there was no mother and not enough room. I still don’t think he should have all of you out here.”

Grant snorted, clamped his arms across his chest, and shook his head. He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Joshua said, “So what would have been better, ma’am? All the folks that wanted kids had already chosen. Sour Springs is the end of the line. The only thing ahead for Charlie and Libby was a long train ride back to the orphanage. You really think they’re worse off here?”