The House on Malcolm Street (27 page)

For a second or two, a battle raged within my mind. But despite all the bitterness I held for my father, love for Eliza and for my mother finally won out. Mother had shown me how to be a good example. She was the best she could have been in her circumstance, and I would be wrong not to at least try to emulate her for my daughter’s sake. So many times I’d done poorly in that area, but now she was waiting expectantly, head still bowed.

“Help him feel better,” I said, barely above a whisper. “Thank you, heavenly Father. Amen.”

Still on her knees, Eliza smiled up at me. “I like when you pray, Mommy. It makes me feel all warm and
believy
inside.”

21
Josiah

I hadn’t planned to move in with Mr. Abraham. I went over first just to talk, then to try to help him get his clatter-trap car running again, without much success. The idea came up all of a sudden, and while we were both a little surprised, it seemed like a natural fit. I needed to be away from the women a while, and he needed to not be so alone.

Marigold wasn’t upset when I moved out, even though I’d thought she might be. She said it was probably the most appropriate thing to do and apologized for thrusting Leah and me together the way she’d done.

“Can’t push you to be good for each other just because I think you could be,” she said, and then thanked me for spending time with Mr. Abraham in his grief.

She must have had it through her head that I thought like she did, about doing for the man, just for the doing’s sake. But it wasn’t like that at all. I’d moved next door because I couldn’t stand another night with just one thin wall between me and Leah. And her humming daughter.

The last week there I’d hardly been able to sleep, just hearing them had bothered me so badly.
Why, God? Why them? They didn’t do anything to deserve heartache. Why don’t you punish only the guilty and let everybody else stay with their loved ones until they’re old and gray?

Of course, even my finite mind understood that such a thing would be impossible. No adult in this world was purely innocent. I’d been around enough to know that. And there’d be no way to keep one person’s blessings or trials from affecting a multitude of others unless we were all hermits. I had no reason to struggle with God over the injustices of this world. As long as sin remained, bad things would happen. Until he brought an end to everything. It was as simple as that.

Mr. Abraham’s home was almost as large as Marigold’s but did not have so many bedrooms. He gave me a room down the hall from his own, the only other room in the house with a bed already in it. He was terribly quiet compared to the jesting and talking Marigold and I had done when no one else was around. It was almost like being alone. I’d thought I’d love it, but after only two days the silence was about to drive me insane. I’d talked to him plenty of times, I’d even seen a little mischief out of him now and then, at least in Marigold’s direction. So this was not characteristic surely. Finally one morning in the midst of flapjacks, I decided to ask.

“Has everything been all right with you? Since the funeral?”

“Yes. I suppose so.”

“Really?” I questioned, not willing to let him slip back to silence that easily.

“Much to think about right now,” he said. “Much to pray about.”

“Like what?” I pushed, knowing full well it was none of my business. But I was going to be nosy whether he liked it or not.

“Da,” he said. And for a moment I thought he’d stopped, but then he spoke again with a solemn voice. “He told me many things before his final journey, and I must consider them all very well.”

“You mean your father?” I continued to prompt, hoping I wasn’t somehow stepping over a line. Sometimes my mouth rushed ahead of tact or common sense, and I didn’t usually care. But I’d been insensitive and offensive with Leah and just made matters worse. Better for that not to happen again.

“Yes. He was strong in his teaching. Strong in his opinions.”

“Did he preach? Like in a church? I mean, I’ve never really been sure what a rabbi does.”

Mr. Abraham passed me the plate of flapjacks for the fourth time, and I took what was left on it. “He was a teacher. In a big city he would probably already have had a building similar to a church because people would come to be taught and to worship. But the town where he lived was small, larger than this one, but with not very many Jews. They do not have a building yet but met every Sabbath in his home.”

“What do they do now?” I really wanted to know.

“Now they meet in my son’s home, or another of the families’. They are making plans for a building, especially since they expect several more families to join us in this area. And my son is the teacher now.”

I would have expected some kind of pride in that, but he seemed only far away, and sad. “Mr. Abraham, do you go and worship with them?”

“Call me Saul. You may as well, since we are housemates now. Why so many questions this morning?”

“I miss a good conversation. And I’d like to know. It’s not very far, right? Do you go there for the Sabbath?”

He sighed. “Sometimes. But many times I use an excuse, like the condition of my car or even the weather, to stay away, sometimes for weeks at a time. Then I try to worship and seek teaching right here in my own home.”

“You could come to church with Marigold and me. If you want. Maybe on a week when the weather’s not so good for leaving town.”

He smiled, just a little. “I think were I ever to do that, you might lose half your congregation.”

The words shocked me completely. “Why?”

He looked down a moment. “This town knows I am a Jew. And they don’t mind, if I stay in my home or use my cash in their stores. But if I came into one of the churches, I think many would be afraid.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I blurted out, though his face showed no sign of kidding at all.

“No. You would see it.”

“I can understand people being uneasy about
me
showing up in church. I nearly set the place on fire when I was thirteen messing around with a box of stolen cigars in the crawl space that used to be under the front steps. But you? You don’t have a hooligan’s reputation, a record of drunkenness, or anything like that.”

“I’m a Jew. That’s enough.”

The words made me angry, but he wouldn’t discuss it any further.

“Take every egg you can find to the Kurchers’,” he said. “I have half a dozen in the icebox and that is plenty. Marigold is probably ready with her biscuits. You’d better go.”

“What if
I’m
part Jewish?” I insisted. “Who would know? I don’t know where my people are from. And what the heck difference would it make anyway?”

“Josiah.” He smiled. “With a good Jewish name. Stop thinking and go to work.”

Right and wrong. Blessings and cursings. I couldn’t have stopped thinking that day any more than I could have stopped breathing. So many situations frustrated me. So many things just seemed out of place. Marigold had told me once that I was discontent because I hadn’t stepped into the place God had for me yet. Well, who had? Wasn’t the whole world discontent? Even Marigold herself, because she loved a Jew, an old man who still hadn’t proposed and maybe never would. Maybe never should if it meant either of them would have to change more than their heart wanted.

“You’re called, sure as I’m born,” Marigold had told me once, not long after I’d come from the jailhouse to her boardinghouse. “That’s why things touch you so deeply. He’s already got hold of a good piece of your heart.”

Called. To minister, she’d meant. And that thought was still almost as ridiculous now as it had been then. I just had a pitiful habit of getting my mind so wrapped around things it was hard to let loose again. Kept me frustrated much of the time, but it did nobody else any good.

When we pulled into the Brighton station, I knew immediately that there must be a problem with the Kurchers. Dodie was not waiting on the platform as she usually did, the way it had been since Marigold had started sending biscuits over a year ago. At first I didn’t see anyone, but then scrawny little Bobby came racing like Man o’ War from behind a building to be in time to meet the train. He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten. The brakeman stopped us and I stepped to the platform with the biscuits and eggs. Poor Bobby was breathless.

“Mama’s sick,” he said immediately, sucking wind to get the words out. “Dodie too. Almost everybody. Been hittin’ pretty hard.”

“What has? What kind of sick are they?”

“Fever and spots. Measles, Mama says. I hope to never catch ’em. Mama’s got me doin’ the outside fetchin’ and we’s hopin’ I’ll stay clear.”

“Are all the older children ill, then?”

“Yeah. ’Cept Beth Ann, an’ she’s tending the younger ones. Mama wanted to know if Mrs. McSweeney might come out a few days and lend a hand. If she’s done had ’em, that is. Wouldn’t want her pickin’ up the measles herself.”

“No. You’re right,” I said. “We wouldn’t. She’s a pretty strong woman for the most part but with a lot of trouble with the rheumatism in her knees lately. I’m not sure she could do what you all have need of, or ought to even try. But I could ask her if she thinks somebody from our church would be willing.”

“Thank you. That’s good enough that you’ll ask.” He took the bundle of biscuits from my hand. “We sure thank you for bringing the food again. We sure need it, ’specially now with all the cookin’ and harvestin’ slowed down.” He reached for the basket of eggs. “I’m sorry I forgot to bring a basket to swap everything into. Can I bring yours back the next time?”

“I think we can manage without it. Can you carry it by yourself?”

“I’m going to. I sure will. Slow and gentle, Mama said. So I don’t break a one.”

“That’s right.”

He nodded to me and was on his way, leaving me with a sour feeling. The widow Kurcher and most of the kids down with measles? Harvest slowed down? Oh, Lord! Marigold would want to do everything she could for her old friend, which was a huge problem because she couldn’t, and surely shouldn’t, try to do much of anything at all.

I fed the flames beneath the locomotive’s steam boiler the rest of that day with my mind on the Kurchers’ troubles. Surely Marigold wouldn’t think to go. I could help her find somebody else.

What a pickle, exactly what we didn’t need right now!

At least I’d have tomorrow to try to help find a solution. Mr. Behrens had put his nephew on the train as fire man on Saturdays. It was an odd arrangement, which made me wonder a bit, but it gave me an extra day to take care of other things.

When I got back to Andersonville, I went right to Marigold’s with the news.

“Oh, that Hilda!” she exclaimed. “I wish to goodness she was in church over there regular. With church folks hardly knowing them, they don’t know to look in on her like a church family should.”

“Could we ask someone from our church?” I wanted to know.

“None of them know her, and I’ve got to think about who could go without having little ones of their own to keep them from it. I’d say Minnie Fromm, but she’s away visiting this week. Has the doctor been out?”

“Bobby didn’t say, but from what I know of that family, I doubt it.”

She nodded. “Surely right.”

“What about the Richlers?”

“Oh, Josiah, they’re older than I am.”

“Reverend Pierce?”

“They need somebody to go tomorrow and stay a few days. He’d not be here to fulfill his own responsibilities to the church. We can’t ask him unless there’s no one else.”

“Mrs. Bower?”

“She’s got company this weekend. Clear from Peoria.”

It amazed me how Aunt Marigold always knew so much about so many people, especially since she saw most of them only on Sundays.

“Mrs. Batey?”

“She may act like she’s got sass, but she’s not got the constitution for that rip-roaring house of youngsters, especially when they’re sick. Three years ago she went to nurse her sister and took a lung infection so bad she nearly died.”

“Well, you can’t go!”

“Why not? I’m not bad as a nursemaid.”

I couldn’t believe I had to point out the obvious. “You can’t climb stairs anymore, Mari. You have trouble enough just going from one room to the next.”

“I’m doing better the last few weeks, haven’t you noticed? Maybe it’s the hot oil rub. Or maybe it’s having Leah here to lighten my load a little.”

“I have noticed. And I’m glad. But it’s not better enough. Not for this.”

“Well, then you think on it and I’ll think on it and between us maybe we’ll come up with a solution. They’re going to understand, Josiah, if nobody comes right away. It’s awfully short notice to ask somebody after dark tonight and expect them to be there tomorrow. If we have to wait and get a volunteer at church Sunday and put them on the train the next day, it’d still be a help. Believe me.”

We left it at that. But I didn’t like it. I thought about Mel and Dotty, but knew they wouldn’t go for strangers they’d never met. They just weren’t that way.

I should have been able to let it go. After all, measles weren’t like the typhoid fever, or even the killing influenza that had taken Leah’s baby. The Kurchers would weather this soon enough and be none the worse for it.

If they got their harvest in before it went to waste. Pumpkins, I think they grew, for a local cannery. Corn for market too. Maybe other things.

I used Mr. Abraham’s telephone to speak to a few people about the problem but didn’t get a definite answer. So he and I prayed together about it over a late pot of Marigold’s stew. I watched him in the midst of the prayer as he sat almost tearful, clearly touched by the plight of Marigold’s friends.

It was a foolish moment to bring up another subject, but once again my mouth got ahead of all reason. “You’re a good man. And Marigold’s a good woman. You care about each other. So are you ever going to ask her to marry you?”

He paled in front of me. “Do not ask me that again.”

“But you haven’t answered.”

He put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. “There is more to that than you can see from where you stand.”

“Like what?” I knew I was pushing boundaries this time, absolutely stepping across a line of what was proper to pry into. And to my surprise, he laughed.