Under A Living Sky (7 page)

Papa thought for a moment, then fingered his knee, where the patch was coming loose. “Then I got me a hole in my heart too, somehow, and lost what little faith I had. Watch out, son!” The wheelbarrow was ready to spill as its legs sank into the soft soil. “Can't you leave that manure alone? Go help Judith, will you?” Papa pulled Joseph off the handle, shook his head sternly and moved the dripping reeking mess to solid ground. Leaning against the doorpost again, he added, “A crash, by the way, is what we're living here. When you lose your shirt, and nobody's interested because they lost theirs too.”

“Will we crash again, Papa?” Mary asked.

“Can't say.” He scanned the yard till his eyes rested on Judith. “I guess we ought to get ourselves uncrashed first.”

Judith was filling a pail with water, pumping at a pump handle as high as her head. Its metallic squealing filled the yard.

“It ain't right,” whispered Papa, “but every time I look at her I see a parade of all the things I lost.” He spoke as if he were telling Mary a secret, and a thrill ran through her at his new, confidential tone.

Releasing the handle, Judith turned to the right. She raised her arm. With her palm up and fingers extended, she might have been summoning someone nobody else could see.

Chapter 8

“Guess I'm not much of a father,” said Papa, sighing again. “We should have moved away, up north or off to the coast with all them Joneses and Smiths. They knew when to leave.” He walked away from the barn, his rubber boots slurping and sucking in the mucky yard. Past the lean-to, his head turned to see what Judith had found to point at.

“Two-bottom plow to the northwest,” he called back. Mary and Joseph ran out to see for themselves. A huge black cloud that did look like a plow hovered there. Its two black tines scraped along the skyline, plowing a path toward them. Ropes of lightning hung like a harness from its sharp points. A low growl of thunder rushed over the steaming brown land.

“Papa!” exclaimed Joseph. “I just saw thunder, and it looks like lightning!”

“You see lightning,” said Judith, scowling at Mary, “and you hear thunder.”

“The Doerksens will be getting her now,” said Papa, “and I guess there'll be plenty left for us all to see and hear both. You children dash in quick and tell Mother a big storm is on the way and that I say to batten the hatches.”

They ran into the house. Mother, beginning the laundry, was emptying a pail of hot water into the washtub. “Mom,” asked Judith, “what's batten the hatches?”

“Why?”

“Dad says a big storm is coming and to batten them now.”

“Goodness me, it's always something,” moaned Mother. “Mary, you take Joseph and close the north shutters. Judith, you take the west ones.” Mother ran for the stairs.

Mary set Jessy down in her place at the table, grabbed Joseph's hand and pulled him out the door. They ran to the box under the north window and climbed up on it. Thunder ran everywhere in long loud peals, like the bell in town when it called everyone to church. The thunder boomed as they undid the latches and wrestled the shutters away from the wall. They had to fight the wind. What had always been an easy chore seemed to take a long time.

The wind changed direction, and the second shutter shut with a bang. Mary turned each center latch securely, the way she'd been taught. She heard Mother slamming shutters and windows upstairs. When they were nearly done, they heard banging from the west side. That had to be Judith at work. Mary sent Joseph to help Judith and ran to the barn to help Papa.

Papa was just closing the big doors, which swung in the wind. Mary held one. The door was warped and jiggling and hard to hold. He brought the doors together and forced a bar down into the wooden yokes. The cracks in the doors let through bars of sunlight, smudged yellow from the mingled dust high in the sky. The light flickered and was gone.

A cold gust swept into the yard and whined through the darkened barn. A drumming began on the roof, as from thousands of nervous fingers. Mary ran to look out the small door. The hail cascaded down all at once, as if someone had tripped and spilt a barrow-load of ice marbles onto their farm. Mary's hand found Papa's, and they watched the hail bounce off the sheds and fences and water pump, and blanket the yard and fields.

The temperature dropped quickly. As the rattling went on overhead, their breaths became visible. Laura the cow and Clyde the horse shuffled in their stalls. Stella grunted in her pigpen. As if hoping to escape notice in their corner, the chickens were silent. About fifteen minutes into the storm, Papa said, “Let's cross over in this lull.” He picked up Mary, and away they went, out through the low door, rushing toward the house. The yard, pure mud minutes earlier, was now a sugary white, like creamy frosting on a birthday cake you knew was really chocolate inside. The wind tugged at them, and Papa's boots crunched the ice underfoot. His strong legs carried them to the kitchen stoop.

Papa closed the door on a thunderclap that shook the house to the floorboards. Every window rattled. The three children looked at each other. After Papa set her down, Mary ran to her seat at the table, yelling, “I'll have to show Jessy the storm.” But the doll wasn't on her chair. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” she called, but found no sign of Jessy beside the chair, either, nor under the table.

“Lose something?” Papa asked.

“Jessy's gone. I put her right here on my chair.” Mary patted the cold wood of her chair seat. Another clap of thunder shook the kitchen and rumbled off toward the living room. Mary ran that way, thinking she could have been wrong. But Jessy was not there either. Nor was she in bed, in the wardrobes, under the sofa, in the cupboard, under the beds, on top of the wardrobes, behind the sofa, by the cupboard, in the firewood bin, in the butter churn.

Jessy had vanished.

Mary ran up to her room for the third time. Why did things always go wrong for her? she wondered in a fit of despair. She threw herself on the bed, crying on the same pillow she'd shared with Jessy only hours before.

“We'll find her,” said Papa from the door. “In all the excitement you probably left her outside. I expect she's in the barn, honey.”

“She's not in the barn.”

“Well, tonight at chores I'll look the place over.”

Mary calmed down. Papa was always right. And this time she wouldn't mind being wrong. She saw the sad eyes pleading for help; she saw Jessy swimming in the slop between the cow's back legs or gashed by Clyde's heavy metal shoes.

“Can't you look now, Papa?”

“I doubt she'll be going anywhere.”

“Won't Jessy be eaten to death by one of the animals?”

“I guess she'll just give them some company out in the barn.”

Overhead, fingers of wind caught at the eaves. They scratched at the house, tried to pry off the roof. Thunder broke again and again, rumbling, Mary could tell by the echo, way out over the prairie. It was comforting to have Papa's strong arms about her.

By evening the thunder had long since ceased, and the wind with it. Mary went out to the barn with Papa. Winter had returned. It was hard to believe winter had ever gone away. The snow lay deep as her knees in places. She had to struggle to keep up with Papa and his shiny tin pail. While he did the chores, she checked every nook she could find. She found no sign of Jessy, not a scrap of canvas, not a telltale thread of blue yarn.

“Papa, I can't find her. Do animals eat wool?”

“A goat might. None of our animals would. Do some clear thinking about the last things you did together. Then you'll know where to look.”

Mary tried to think clearly. Maybe while they were shuttering the house she had laid Jessy down. In that case her doll would be somewhere near the north window.

From the yellow circle of light thrown by the barn lantern, Mary ran out into the night, toward the house. A long white drift, higher than Mary's shoulder, lay under the north window. She dug in the snow for a while, kicking it aside. The snow was heavy, and she grew frustrated. She had no light. She had no idea where to begin. Crying bitterly, she went into the house, dejected, tired, cold and wet through.

Mary ate her supper in silence. Joseph smacked his food as usual, and Mother shushed him as usual. Judith was calm and quiet. Nobody seemed to have grasped the extent of the catastrophe, except perhaps Papa, who sent a few consoling looks Mary's way before turning on the radio and listening to Glenn Miller.

After supper Mary sat dazed on the sofa. Her guard was down. Oddly, Judith did not leap at this opportunity to pester. She ignored Mary. Mother and Papa listened to the radio. No one dared interrupt while Nellie McClung spoke soberly about the recent struggle to get women officially declared persons. Then Mother and Papa chuckled through the “Air Adventures of Jimmy Allen.”

In the next fifteen-minute segment, the station broadcast “Heart-throbs of the Hills.” Everyone was listening. Mary thought of Jessy lying under a hill of snow. They were both alone. She hated that radio, which pushed aside her troubles. Her heart throbbed with pain. Her love for Jessy was being frozen inside her. She saw the gray face sink away, smothered under a weight of snow, deep, airless, loveless. Each breath seemed harder to find.

Mary went up to bed and cried herself to sleep. The next day she went digging. Judith and Joseph helped, and they soon had the area around the north window completely trampled. Yet as Mary had feared, they found no sign of Jessy.

“You might have left her in the root cellar,” Judith said.

“I doubt it.” They checked anyway. Judith helped her down the ladder into the hole. Deep in the ground, a smell of potatoes and dirt and cabbage and squash pressed heavily on Mary. “See, she's not here either.”

“Have you tried the hayloft?” Judith asked.

“No.” Wearily, Mary climbed the ladder out of that deep pit in the earth, closed the door of the tiny shed, which was also its roof, and ran to the barn.

“We're gonna try the hayloft, Papa,” Judith shouted.

He was hard at work, heaving manure over the chewed boards of the calf pen. It landed with a thud in the wheelbarrow. “You do that,” he grunted.

They climbed up the ladder. The rungs were almost too far apart for Mary to manage. Up top, the air felt warmer and the hay smelled sweet. She looked feverishly for Jessy.

Judith flopped onto a low mound of hay. “I just can't think what could have become of your dolly,” she said. “How would you like to play with Candy instead?”

“No, thanks.”

Judith flapped her arms as if making a snow angel, then rolled off and stood up. She stared down at the shape she'd left in the straw. “My new invention,” she said. “It's a hay angel.”

Chapter 9

Mary didn't want to give up so easily. And she certainly didn't want to play with Judith's doll. With her smiling ceramic face, and pink hands and feet, Candy was cold and lifeless. She was a pretty doll, but a doll just the same. Jessy knew Mary's world, which Candy never could. When a doll was born in Papa's barn instead of bought in town at a stranger's store, everything was different.

But it was a generous offer, especially coming from Judith. “No, thank you very much, Judith,” Mary said. She dug into a tall mound of hay, dug until she set a hay slide in motion. Dust particles flew up and drifted like clouds across the slats of sunlight squeezing between the barn boards. Mary kicked through the dusty hay and peeked into musty corners, determined to find her baby. How could she have let Jessy out of her sight for one minute? She peered into a pigeon nest that straddled a large beam. Nothing.

At supper Papa asked, “So then, did you find your doll, Mary?”

“No, Papa,” answered Judith. “And we looked everywhere.”

Papa looked at Judith. Her face froze into that about-to-whine cast she always wore around him. “I appreciate the way you're taking an interest in this,” he said.

Judith sat up and beamed. “We still have a few places to look, I think.”

Papa wiped his mouth. “Well, thank you for the effort. Even if you don't find her, you've tried, and that's all we can ask, isn't it, Mother?”

“That's right,” said Mother. “Judith, you've been wonderful through all of this.”

“Well, I…I…,” Judith said shakily, then shrugged.

“Go on,” Papa said.

Judith looked up. “I'll take Mary's turn drying dishes tonight.”

Papa raised his eyebrows. “Whoa! Above and beyond the call of duty! Do we have a new daughter on our hands?” His blue eyes studied Judith, who blushed back to her ears.

Mother put down her fork. “Raynold, she's just trying to help.”

“Won't hear no complaints from me.”

“Well, you don't have to scare her off.”

“Yessiree!” Papa said, saluting briskly. He winked at Judith and then at Mary. They both wiggled on their hard wooden chairs and giggled at his impertinence toward Mother. It had been such a somber supper. Anything light, anything at all, was a welcome relief.