Julia's Hope (12 page)

“You’re welcome to visit anytime,” Sam said, careful to step out of her way. “Forgive me for not greeting you in town the other day.”

“Ashamed to face me, you were,” she told him bitterly.

“Yes, ma’am. I suppose you’re right. It’s not easy being broke with a family. And you’re right about work. If you hear of any jobs available, I’d thank you to give me word so I can apply.”

“Pray for us,” I added, feeling a warmth inside as I saw fresh color spread over Miss Hazel’s face. “Pray for Mrs. Graham too. We’re so grateful to her.”

Without another word, Miss Hazel hustled outside, gave a quick glance to Sarah sitting on the porch, and then rushed across the yard. The young man by the car had to move quickly to open the door before she got to it. And they were gone as quick as they’d come, leaving a lingering cloud of dust in their wake.

Sam put his arm around me. “Herman said I should help you.”

“Herman?”

“The driver. Her nephew. He said she talked all the way here about how she was going to set you straight. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. And she can’t do anything, Sam.”

“We’ll take what comes, whether she does or not. A lot of people may feel the way she does, that we’re taking advantage.”

I stepped away from his arms, my hands clenched, the heat inside me uncomfortable. “It’s none of their business, Sam! We’ve done nothing wrong! It’s only Emma Graham’s business and ours! God has blessed us. He’s going to bless her too, and nobody has a right to put their nose in!”

“That doesn’t mean they won’t.”

I turned away. I almost snipped at him that Hazel Sharpe was only one person, and surely most people would have the decency to let Emma Graham make up her own mind about things.

But then I saw Robert making his way toward us through the trees, and I held my tongue. He was running, holding high three fish on a string like there was nothing that could make him more proud. I could see his smiling face, and I thought of all the good Miss Hazel was missing.
Why do some people insist on looking for the bad?
I thought. Oh, if she could have seen my son’s delight, my daughter’s contentment! If she could have seen Samuel’s face the night he told me he’d welcome Mrs. Graham! She didn’t know us. She didn’t even try. And I could scarcely believe she really knew Mrs. Graham either.

Maybe it was Miss Hazel’s snippetiness driving me, but I couldn’t wait a week to go back to Belle Rive. I didn’t want to ask George Hammond to take us to church, or to talk to anyone else until we’d had a chance to sit down with Mrs. Graham again. So the next day, with a bundle of field daisies and lavender lilacs from Mrs. Graham’s front yard, we set out, getting a ride from Barrett Post, a nearby farmer.

I was just as nervous as the first time we went to see Mrs. Graham. Sam and I had agreed that before we made any further plans about Mrs. Graham coming out to the farm with us, we’d better make sure that’s what she really wanted. Miss Hazel had a point about us being strangers.

I let Sarah hold the daisies, since she’d picked them for me. She was delighted to be seeing Mrs. Graham again. She’d drawn her a lovely picture of the apple tree with a smiling Robert sitting on one limb and waving.

But Robert wasn’t smiling now. He didn’t like going back before we were expected. He didn’t like what his sister had told him about Miss Hazel. He thought we might be asked to move on, just when he’d begun to feel at home. He sat in the old truck with his shoulders humped and his eyes on his scuffed shoes.

“Boy oughta be in school,” Mr. Post said in a deep baritone that revealed a hint of disapproval.

“We just came to the area,” I explained. “He’ll be starting as soon as we’re settled. Where is the school from here?”

“’Bout a quarter mile south of Curtis Creek, over on Persimmon Ridge. Nice little old schoolhouse been there three generations.”

Mr. Post was so stiff and unsmiling that I didn’t tell him I wasn’t sure of his directions. We’d be sending Robert to school with Will Hammond when the time came, I supposed, if the Hammond boy went to school. “We’d like to meet the teacher,” I told him. “We’ve been doing what we can in the middle of travel, but it’s high time Robert was in a classroom again.”

My son turned to look at me. “Hope we’ll be here long enough.”

“Well,” Post said, turning and looking at Robert with some understanding, “a boy needs to be planted, that’s a sure thing. Gotta have your roots in good soil to grow, that’s what I say.” He smiled for the first time and took a deep breath, like he was getting ready to unload something important. “You’ll like the teacher, I reckon, son. But not too awful much. Elvira married my brother when I was in the school m’self. She started her teachin’ way back then. She’s a fine’un, but she packs a lot of starch. I done m’ best to lighten her up, bringin’ snakes and craw-daddies in my lunch pail. Had me haulin’ the water for three months at a time, she did. Don’t take the tomfoolery off nobody else, neither. She’s a good’un for figures, though. And she counts it a true enough lesson if a boy’s gotta miss a day to put in seed or bag a turkey for his fam’ly.”

“Don’t the girls go?” Sarah spoke up. “I wouldn’t bring no snake.”

Mr. Post laughed. “Sure, there’s girls to go. But you’re a mighty little thing. Better wait till fall, at the least.”

We learned that Mrs. Elvira Post, wife of Clement Post, was a fine piano player and sang on occasion. She made the best blackberry jam and something called corn preserves, and she ended every school year with a program of songs and the reciting of poems. Church was once held on Sundays at the schoolhouse, but for twenty years now people had gone into Dearing, for lack of a second preacher.

Mr. Post was amiable the rest of the way, and Sarah seemed to like him. She showed him she could count to twenty-nine and spell her name out loud. Duly impressed, he invited us to his farm one evening to meet his family, including Clement and Elvira, who lived “’bout a stick’s throw from the back fence.” But he didn’t say anything at all to Samuel until we got into Belle Rive and stopped in front of the boardinghouse. Then he gave Sammy a stern look and told him to do right by Emma Graham.

“She’s mothered a whole lot of the countryside,” he said. “It wouldn’t set too well, her bein’ taken ’vantage of.”

Samuel shook the man’s hand and thanked him for the ride. He turned to leave, but Mr. Post wasn’t finished.

“Went to school with her boy. He was the finest soul you’d care to meet. I spent a lot of time over to Graham’s place when we were growin’ up.” He shook his head. “I know the times are changin’ and Emma won’t be ’round much longer, but it don’t feel right, somebody else out to her place. We’ll get used to it, though. Long as it’s done proper.”

“I’ll do right concerning her, Mr. Post,” Sam promised solemnly. “You have my word.”

“I’m hopin’ you make good,” the man replied. “For Emma and your young’uns. But you got at least one neighbor don’t trust you for it. He come by yesterday, or I wouldn’t even knowed you was out here.”

Sam said nothing, but it made me boil inside to think of George Hammond traipsing around, telling everybody what he thought of us. He’d told us he had to stay home with his pregnant wife, so I wondered how good his word was. But more than that, I wondered how many people already knew about us and what kind of things they’d been told.

We soon stood outside Rita McPiery’s door, waiting for someone to respond to the clank of the brass knocker. Rita had come so quickly when I had been there before that I worried she was not quite sure how to receive us. We knew Miss Hazel had been there. Who could tell what she might have said?

Finally the door opened, and Mrs. McPiery greeted us with a shy kind of smile. “You come on now and see Emma,” she said. “I told her you were here.”

I wanted to be a blessing so badly I could taste it. I wanted to make the dear old lady smile. But my feet wouldn’t budge until Sarah put her little hand in mine. What if Mrs. Graham was angry? What if she thought we’d been trying to cheat her all along?

I put one foot in front of the other, but I was sure my knees were shaking as we went through the green and yellow living room liberally draped with crocheted doilies.

Mrs. Graham looked almost fragile when Mrs. McPiery opened her door, but she had a tiny smile.

“Mrs. Wortham, Mr. Wortham, come in.”

Sarah let go of my hand and went running up to her like she’d known her forever, daisies flopping precariously from one hand. Thank the good Lord for an uninhibited child!

“Well, what’s this?” Mrs. Graham asked, her smile for our daughter widening. “You got flowers for ol’ Emma?”

Sarah dropped the daisies carefully in the woman’s lap and went fishing in the oversized pocket of her gingham dress. “That’s not all,” she declared proudly. “I drew you a picture too!” She produced the work of art, which was folded twice and crumpled. With careful effort, she opened it up for Mrs. Graham to behold.

With steady fingers, Mrs. Graham held Sarah’s drawing toward the window’s light. I looked at the woman’s hands, so wrinkled and spotted with brown.
She’s held a pitchfork
and spade as surely as her sewing needle,
I thought.
She’s milked
cows and shucked corn, raised a baby to manhood, and buried
the ones dearest to her. How could my child’s little picture ever
compare to the booklet we’d found, so carefully saved, of handsome
drawings by her own handsome son?

Mrs. Graham was quiet for a long time. Finally Sarah could stand it no longer. “Do you like it? I sure hope you like it, ’cause I did the bestest I could.”

Mrs. Graham lowered the picture slowly and patted Sarah’s shoulder. “It’s one of the finest things I ever did see,” she said. “Did you mean me to keep it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sarah answered with her eyes bright.

“I sure am glad of that. And thank you. It’s been such awhile since I had somethin’ new. Is this m’ apple tree?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Does it really look this pretty out there right now?”

“It’s prettier than my picture,” Sarah freely admitted. “I don’t draw trees so good as Robert does, ’cause he’s older.”

“Likes to climb too, I see.” She smiled and looked up at Robert, who ducked his head.

“Well, that’s the best thing a tree’s for,” Mrs. Graham declared. “I’d go climb it m’self if I could.” She looked up at me with a tender moistness in her eyes, and I knew she wanted me to talk, to tell her about why we’d come back so soon. I could see the questions in her.

“Mrs. Graham . . .” I looked up at Sam, and he took my hand. For a moment, I didn’t know how to start, so I just held out the sweet-smelling lilacs to her and watched her take in their delicious fragrance with a long-lingering sniff.

“Oh, Mrs. Wortham, this is m’ most favorite flower in the world! Unless it be the roses. They both smell so good! Here I been hopin’ m’ violas have done all right. I used to baby them so, but these are God’s gift to spring, they are. Make you glad to be alive.”

She called for Rita and asked her to put the flowers in water. After Rita had come and gone, Mrs. Graham looked up at me with some sadness. “I’m glad you come,” she said. “I wasn’t expectin’ you back so soon.”

I glanced at Sam again, and he squeezed my hand, somehow understanding how speechless I felt.

“Mrs. Graham,” he said, “we’re so glad for what you’ve done for us, it just didn’t seem right. You lived there an awfully long time, and we know how much the place means to you. We’ve got a lot of work to do yet, but—”

“It’s your house!” I burst in. “It’s your farm! Oh, Mrs. Graham, if you want to come home, we’ll help you! We’d be there every minute and make things nice as we can!”

“You know we’ve got no money,” Sam added. “I’ve got no car either, to take you about. It might seem awful foolish, when you’ve got a nice enough place here, ma’am, but it would be wearing at me. I’d feel guilty if we didn’t offer and do all we can towards it, if that’s what you want.”

Mrs. Graham looked us both over, the wetness still clinging to her eyes. “Did Hazel come and see you? She told me she would.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I guess you know she doesn’t think very much of us.”

“Hazel’s herself, child,” Mrs. Graham said. “Ain’t nobody else like her.” She looked down at her lap and reached out for Sarah’s hand. “You’re not bound to do nothin’ for me,” she said in a soft voice. “All I said was to fix on the place.”

“Yes, but—”

“No,” she said firmly. “Don’t let Hazel worry you none. We had an agreement, we did, before she ever come in the picture. If I want you on m’ farm, that’s my business. I offered it to you, and as long as you’re willin’ to work at it, I ain’t takin’ it back.”

“But Mrs. Graham,” I said, rather surprised at her words, “don’t you want to go home?”

Mrs. Graham let go of Sarah’s hand, laid down her picture, and turned to the window. I thought she was going to speak then, but she said nothing for several minutes.

“We understand you hardly know us,” Sam finally told her. “It’d be awfully hard to put yourself in such a spot, I can see. But we don’t want to just take what’s yours, Mrs. Graham, and give you nothing. If you don’t want to live out there with us around, I can understand, but let us find a way to do something for you. Come and visit, if you can. I would’ve never imagined a stranger being so generous with us, ma’am, and it bothers me not being able to return you a favor.”

When Mrs. Graham turned around, a tear had traced one of the many deep, furrowed lines across her face. “Hazel had things turned ’round backwards, Mr. Wortham,” she said. “I knew she did, but she don’t listen to me. You’re decent people. I knew that when I saw you.”

“We have a lot to thank you for,” he told her. “Even if we couldn’t stay another day, it’s been a relief to have a place for the kids to lay their heads.”

“It can’t be too nice out there, with so little furnishin’. And filthy too, I ’spect, if the door was left open.”

“It’s not filthy anymore. And it was better than another day begging rides, anyway. A lot better than having my children look at me, wondering if we’d be sleeping in a ditch someplace. It’s been a godsend, and I know better than to think I deserve it.”