What Once Was Lost (11 page)

Levi strode to the wall, removed the damaged chair from the pegs, and plopped it on the floor in front of Miss Willems. “See here? A mouse chewed a hole in the middle of the seat, so the caning came undone.” He explained how Tommy had inadvertently formed a loosely woven pattern with some discarded wood curls. “I figured, if he can weave strips of wood, maybe he can weave reeds or sisal. He wanted to try.”

Miss Willems slipped her arm around the boy’s shoulders. “I apologize for accusing you falsely, Mr. Jonnson.” Considering she was delivering an apology, she certainly chose a tart tone. “Well-meaning you might be, but it’s clear you lack the awareness of what is an appropriate activity for Tommy.” She looked again at the boy’s fingertips, and pain creased her brow. “His fingers require attention—some salve and bandages.”

Levi gestured in the direction of his house. “I’ve got some—”

“No need. I’ll see to his injuries when we reach town. I know Mrs. Beasley keeps medicinal supplies in a cabinet.” Miss Willems began herding Tommy toward the door. “Let’s gather your things, Tommy, and before long I’ll have you all bandaged up and ready to go to Mr. and Mrs. Tatum’s house.”

Levi reared back. What?

Tommy halted, jerking free of Miss Willems’s hold. “What?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Tatum’s house, where Joe and Florie are staying.” Miss Willems caught Tommy’s wrist and gave a gentle pull. “They said you could stay there, too. So let’s go.”

Dumbfounded, Levi remained rooted in place and watched the woman try to draw Tommy to the yard. The boy turned stiff and uncooperative. He wrenched his hand from her grip.

“Tommy …” She sent a pink-cheeked glance in Levi’s direction. A hint of pleading shone in her eyes.

Levi chewed the inside of his cheek. He should help Miss Willems—encourage the boy to go. But his tongue refused to form words.

Miss Willems cupped her hands on Tommy’s shoulders. “Tommy, when I brought you here, it was only because I couldn’t find someplace else. Do you remember? Mr. Jonnson told me this wasn’t a safe place for you to stay and asked me to find another place for you quickly.”

Levi’s chest tightened. He’d been heartless that night. Honest, but heartless.

“I’ve done that. So now it’s time to go.” She lifted her gaze to Levi, her expression firm. “Mr. Jonnson, if you’d be so kind as to collect Tommy’s things and put them in the wagon, we’ll be on our way.”

Tommy knocked Miss Willems’s hands from his shoulders and turned in a circle, his arms reaching toward Levi. He took two steps, and his toe caught on a rock. With a cry of alarm, he plummeted toward the ground. Levi bolted forward and caught him before he fell. Tommy gripped Levi’s jacket with both fists.

“Mr. Jonnson, I wanna stay here. I wanna learn to cane.” The boy held Levi’s jacket so tightly his knuckles turned white. “I want … I want to
do
something.”

Levi’s pulse tripped hard and fast. His mother’s voice drifted in from long ago:
“If you’d only get up and
do
something, Axel, how much better you would feel. Please—get out of your chair and do something.”
Far hadn’t heeded Mor’s words, and they’d all been forced to watch him drift deeper and deeper into himself until he’d finally gone to sleep and didn’t wake again. Did such a fate await Tommy if forced to simply sit and do nothing?

But why should he feel responsible for this boy? Hadn’t he decided long ago his life would be easier if he kept to himself? He knew all too well that some people deceived you. Some people abandoned you. If you let them get close, some people broke your heart. A pain—like a fist squeezed tight—gripped his chest. He wouldn’t let himself be hurt like that again.

He took hold of Tommy’s upper arms and set him aside. “Go with Miss

Willems. You can learn caning at the banker’s house. They’ll have string or rope, too. You don’t need to be here to do something.” His dry throat turned his words harsh.

Tommy blinked up at him, confusion evident in his pinched brow. “But what about your chair?”

Levi gritted his teeth. “Never mind the chair, boy. Just go.”

Defeat slumped Tommy’s shoulders. His hands fell from Levi’s jacket. “M-Miss Willems? Take me to the wagon.”

“I’ll get his things,” Levi said and headed past them to the house. It wouldn’t take long—the boy owned next to nothing. Levi snatched up the few belongings, wadded them into a ball, and returned to the wagon. Miss Willems had already helped Tommy onto the high seat, and she stood poised beside it, watching for him. He pressed the bundle under the seat.

“Thank you for allowing Tommy to stay with you.” She sounded prim. Proper.

He responded in kind. “You’re welcome.” He offered his hand, and she allowed him to assist her into the wagon. He stepped back. “Bye, Miss Willems. Bye, Tommy.”

The woman smiled in reply as she picked up the reins, but Tommy stared straight ahead, unmoving, as if he hadn’t heard the farewell. But Levi knew better. And, to his surprise, it hurt to be ignored.

Chapter 11

Cora hunched over the slop bucket with a plump potato and a paring knife in her hand. Long coils of brown peel fell from the blade and landed with a
plop
in the smelly bucket. She glanced at the Regulator clock tick-ticking on the kitchen wall. Miss Willems had said she’d be back in time to help with supper preparations, but Mrs. Beasley wanted supper on the table precisely at six. The hands had already moved toward five o’clock. It wasn’t like Miss Willems to go back on her word. Had something happened to her?

She reached for the final potato in the bowl on the table. Before she picked it up, though, the scuff of feet on the back stoop captured Cora’s attention. Finally! She dropped the knife next to the bowl and bounded to the door. But instead of Miss Willems, Wes stood outside the door, shivering.

Cold wind wheezed through the door opening. She caught Wes’s coat sleeve and drew him over the threshold, then snapped the door shut with a firm
click
. “What’re you doing here? Have you seen Miss Willems?”

A frown marred Wes’s normally placid face. “I seen her. Drove her an’ them mission men to the house. I wanted to talk to her again. She here?”

Cora shook her head and scuttled to the stove—that wind chilled a person clear through in no time. When would the cold leave and spring arrive? “Huh-uh. I was hopin’ you were her. She should’ve been back an hour or so ago.”

Wes dragged his boot heels across the floor as he approached the stove, hands extended. His frown didn’t melt when he reached the heat. “I’m mad at her, Cora. Don’t like to be mad, but …” He raised his shoulders and held them there, like a turtle trying to shrink into its shell. “Gotta talk to her. Can’t let her give up.”

A chill of foreboding wiggled its way down Cora’s spine. “Whaddaya mean ‘give up’?”

“Them mission men, they said they didn’t wanna build the house up again. Said if they were gonna have another poor farm, it’d be someplace else. Like Lawrence.”

Cora staggered to the table and collapsed in the chair. She stared at Wes, her pulse galloping faster than a runaway horse. She needed a home, but she couldn’t go back to Lawrence! “But why?”

“ ’Cause they don’t want Miss Willems runnin’ the poor farm anymore. Said it was …” He scrunched up his face, his eyeballs rolling back and forth as if seeking something hidden. Then he huffed out a breath. “Unseemly.”

Goose flesh broke out on Cora’s arms. She snatched up the potato and knife and set to flicking bits of peel into the bucket. “They say why?”

Wes yanked out the second chair and folded himself into it. Elbows on the table edge, he leaned close. “You know Ham Dresden?”

Cora searched her memory. She’d heard the name, but she didn’t know the man. “Huh-uh.”

“Oh, that’s right. He was gone before you came.” Wes snorted. “Good riddance, too. Never met such a lazy man in my whole life. If Miss Willems sent him to the garden to chop weeds, he’d stretch out under a tree an’ take a nap. If she sent him to the barn to feed the animals, he’d climb into the loft an’ hunker down in a pile of straw. He was a fine one for sleepin’. For eatin’, too. Only time I saw him set himself to doin’ something with any ginger, it was liftin’ a fork.”

Relief shuddered through Cora’s frame. They weren’t blaming the unseemly behavior on her. At least not yet. She’d finished peeling the potatoes, so she fetched a cooking pot. “Were the mission men upset that Miss Willems let Ham Dresden stay at the poor farm?”

Wes scratched his head, uncertainty pinching his features. “Don’t think it was the stayin’ that bothered ’em so much as … somethin’ else. But I don’t know what the somethin’ else is.”

Cora cut potatoes into chunks and dropped them into the pot. A troubling thought formed in the back of her mind. Miss Willems was old. Lots older
than Cora. Probably twenty-eight. Maybe even twenty-nine. And she wasn’t married. She must be getting desperate for a husband. Had she let this man—this Ham Dresden—stay at the poor farm without working for his keep because she was sweet on him? Had there been some indecent goings-on? Cora didn’t want to think such things about Miss Willems, but she’d known too many women who gave precious parts of themselves to win men, only to be cast aside in the end.

She gulped. “Sure is troublesome, isn’t it? Maybe—”

“So I
did
hear a man’s voice.”

Cora jerked, slicing her thumb with the knife. Wes leaped to his feet and clutched his chest, shock on his face.

Mrs. Beasley stormed to the table, anger mottling her jowled cheeks. “I thought I made it clear I don’t allow male callers. You think I want every tongue in town waggin’ how Miz Beasley’s got a sparkin’ house?”

Wes inched away, his eyes so wide they appeared ready to pop from his head. Even though he towered over Mrs. Beasley and was a man to boot, he hurried out the door like a hawk chased off by a sparrow’s ferocity. And left Cora all alone to fend off the disgruntled sparrow.

“Wes didn’t come here to spark.”

“Well, you two sure seemed mighty cozy there at my table.”

Heat ignited in Cora’s middle. Ma’s sneering face appeared in her memory.
“What you doin’ cozyin’ up to some man? You’re no better’n them gals who live in the bawdyhouses!”
Cora blurted, “He wasn’t here for me. He was lookin’ for Miss Willems.”

Mrs. Beasley’s scowl deepened as she scanned the kitchen. “She’s not back yet?”

Cora inwardly groaned. Now Miss Willems would get the sharp side of Mrs. Beasley’s tongue for sure. Couldn’t she ever do things right? “Meetin’ with them board fellas must’ve gone longer than she thought.” She squared her shoulders. “She’s gotta get things settled. Get the rebuildin’ started.” Even though Wes had said the mission men didn’t intend to rebuild, Cora had to
hang on to hope. Where would she go, what would she do, if they closed the Brambleville Asylum for good?

Mrs. Beasley huffed impatiently. “She’s turned out to be more trouble than she’s worth with all the runnin’ around she does. Checkin’ on this person, checkin’ on that person, meetin’ with people …” She pointed her finger at Cora. “I hope you’re gonna be able to get supper on the table on time all by yourself. Else the two o’ you are gonna have to find some other place to take you in. I’m not runnin’ a charity here, you know.”

There couldn’t be a charitable bone in Mrs. Beasley’s body. Cora wanted to say so, too, but Miss Willems’s instruction to repay evil with good helped her hold the words inside. “I’ll have supper ready.”

“You’d better. An’ it better taste good, too.” Her nose in the air, she departed.

Cora wilted into the chair and pressed both palms to her stomach. Did she only imagine it, or was a small bulge starting to form? She jolted upright and finished chopping the potatoes. As she layered slices of salt pork in a skillet, she looked again at the clock. Five twenty-five. Her pulse stuttered. She could get supper on the table on time without Miss Willems’s help. But smiling and being pleasant while she served, the way Mrs. Beasley expected? Impossible. Too many troublesome questions plagued her mind. She feared she wouldn’t be able to hide her worries any better than she would soon be able to hide her swollen belly.

Levi slid his tin plate onto the table, then scooted up his chair. His fork lay on the edge of the plate, waiting to be used to stab bites of steaming corned beef hash. Levi grabbed the fork, but instead of plunging it into the mound of hash, he held it in his fist like a spear and stared at the empty chair across from him.

Nine days. Only nine days of sharing this table with someone. How could he have gotten used to having someone in the house—how could he have gotten
attached
to someone—so quickly? When dishing up his supper, he’d come
close to pouring a glass of milk. And he didn’t drink milk. Nine days, and he’d set a pattern for himself.

“Narr …”
He flayed himself with the word his father had often muttered to himself, feeling every bit the fool for getting entangled in that boy’s life. Now the boy was gone. Time to forget him. To forget the past. To focus on what waited around the bend.

He jammed the fork into the hash and lifted a bite. He chewed, his thoughts rolling onward. Only one more week and March would arrive. He swallowed. Took another bite. That meant spring. The river would thaw, the water would flow, and the mill would run again. So it was a good thing Miss Willems had fetched Tommy. Once the mill was running, he couldn’t have a blind boy wandering around, maybe getting hurt. He tried to swallow, but the food stuck in his gullet. He slapped the fork down so hard his plate jumped.