The rat-a-tat sound of the rain beating down on the tin roof of the farmhouse was as soothing as it was useful. The day before had been barraged by a beleaguered pious excuse for a human being, even if he was an old man. Osprey needed the rest and he longed for it like the warmth of the bed covers, pulled tight against his ears so that not another sound was heard. Only it wouldn’t be as easy as that and he knew it, especially with a house full of several more children added to his own.
It had began with a day at the mission, organizing donated food and clothes for the needy in their community, interrupted by the widow O’Neal’s unnerving dilemma. She had arrived in the huddle of the doorway with her five children, along with what they could haul in the back of heir wagon. She was distraught and in tears when she told him about her Landlord, having tossed them out onto the street for not being able to meet the rent on their small log cabin. It had disturbed him to no end how a person could be so cruel to a family in their time of desperation.
Aside from the idle eyes of the women that looked on at their dismay, he had decided to take them to his home temporarily while he tried to iron out the situation. However, his attempts did little to persuade the old man otherwise, as he was as firm in his action as in any other business decision he might make.
His wife, Lila, did her duty as a hostess by making them feel as welcome as possible. Having arranged pallets of extra quilts on the floor for the children to sleep on, there was little else that could be done. Funds were tight that came through the church and on any given Sunday there was hardly enough to grow on. So even though his heart was in it, Osprey couldn’t guarantee a personal note on another home, and so he had spent hours milling over the possibilities of how to resolve the situation. There was only one idea that came to merit, and that was to build her a house himself.
As soon as the rain let up, he would climb out of bed and go pay Lloyd a visit. Maybe between the two of them they would be able to conjure up enough support within the congregation to make it a joint effort, but he doubted it. Things never set too well when it came to expecting more from others than they were willing to give. If it wasn’t time, it was money, and the lack of popularity for the two was causing too much unrest.
Lila had compared it to one person being the sower and another bringing the seed, but even the birds gathered for themselves. So the opposition was rivaled against the ability to do for oneself, and Osprey’s back was covered by the singular fact that he was the only one willing to do the job.
“Make me a plate and I’ll eat it,” he had teased Lila the day before, as she had labored the morning stretching a meal into two.
It had consisted of brown beans and cornbread with some leftover ham from breakfast, but it was good and he was grateful. After all, it wasn’t easy working magic when an additional six showed up for dinner, but she always did her best to keep back a cupboard of canned vegetables from the summer. Without it, they would have never survived the winters.
Soon everyone was awake and tried as he might to shift his weight beneath the blanket and cover his head with the pillow, the ordeal had already begun. There was scuffling and running and trampling up and down the stairs to no end. It was as if the children were ripping the house apart strip by strip, and among all of the commotion was the nagging voices of Lila and Mrs. O’Neal, yelling for all to behave.
So he finally decided that he would go ahead and pay that visit to Lloyd at the store. They would be needing some more staples for later anyway, and he was getting efficient at running the errands.
On the way there, he stopped the horses to gaze at the view above the mountains of the Chippewa Valley. The moisture sat in the tops of the trees and concealed the hill peaks, and the clouds were thick, some white but most with deepened gray billows that appeared to have rolled into position to support the sun, which pierced through them in voluminous transparent rays that shod the earth. The tips of limbs and snow reflected where it landed, sending shimmers of light across the blanketed white plain. He wanted to stand in it, to absorb some of the light and somehow fuel the flame that had grown dim. He stepped down from the wagon and walked over to a stretch of timbers where the light hid their cover behind the bright veil, and he stood in the stream that was well lit and stretched out his arms to welcome its warmth. Then it was as though the woods had awakened again, as the squirrels began to scurry about and birds made their songs. And he decided in that moment, that despite all of his trials and many shortcomings, it was a majestic place to be.
The door of the store was locked and not a sign of anyone was inside. There was a sack of flour ripped open on the floor and about the stepladder was a mess. No one had bothered to clean it up or open the doors that morning, so he hurried the miles over to his brothers home.
It was a simple home of logs and wide bands of white chinking. There was a front porch the length of it and smoke lofting up from the chimney. All seemed peaceful enough from the outside, but inside was all manner of disarray. There were clothes strolled about the floor space so that it was difficult to walk without having to step over them. Wooden toys and books were mishandled about by the two-year-old boy that plopped them about the main room, and was aggravating his brother and sister. Lloyd’s wife Judith, plump and boisterous by nature, was fussing about the cake that had burned while she slapped at the dark smoke that rose from the oven door.
“Come on in,” she waved to Osprey,” who was already making himself at home and wishing he had stayed put. “Now I’m going to have to start from scratch again,” she sighed in disappointment.
“That’s a pity,” he replied, “but I’ll still eat it burnt, as long as it’s something sweet.”
She laughed from her belly mockingly, as though he probably would eat it that way, and the small affect of laughter sent the children into a more jovial mood as the boy of ten started jumping around the room, blowing through a harmonica as the other two followed his lead.
“Quiet it down in there, dammit!” the voice sounded more like it came from something stuck in a hard place. “Sounds like a damn train is rambling through the house!”
“Hark.., he speaks.” Osprey replied to Judith with a twitch of one eye that said he would make his own way to the back room.
Embarrassed by his tone and foul language, she went and grabbed the boy by his forearm and started popping him on the behind as he complained.
Inside the room, Lloyd was propped against four pillows and was staring at the clutter of emptied dishes on the floor beside the bed. Although he was glad to see his brother, he was bothered by the fact that he hadn’t heard him come in.
“Went by the store. Looks like you dusted the place good,” he said.
“Don’t be poking fun at my expense,” he smirked. “Despite how it looks, I really did myself in this time.”
“Back again?” Osprey questioned the obvious.
“Took a turn for the worse,” he shook his head and chuckled it all in. “Been laid up for two days now. Wondered when you’d get wise of it.”
“Didn’t know till this morning,” he replied. “Looks like you’re being fed good though,” he nodded to the pile of crusty plates and winced.
“If I up and die of something around here, it won’t be of starvation. “That’s for damn sure,” he rolled his eyes and scratched at his greasy head.
Osprey pulled a wooden chair over next to the bed as the legs scraped across the floor and then straddled it. They had talked about the O’Neal’s for a while and how they might get a fair price on lumber from the local mill when Lloyd drew a blank. Instead he just laid there looking up, as if it had been the one thing that had consumed his thoughts for the past couple of days.
“You know,” he said while letting his depression show, “sometimes I just stare at the ceiling and think this is all I’ve got to look forward to at the end of the day. Seems like after you live in a place your whole life that friend’s would come calling.”
“You’ve got Jud
ith and the kids,” Osprey tried to be positive.
“I know, but sometimes it’s a sore comfort is all,” he complained.
“I hear ya, but I don’t necessarily agree. You see, sometimes God has to put us on our backs so that we’ll have to look up,” he said with a sudden wind of charisma.
Lloyd didn’t say much for a minute or so, before he got around to the real issue at hand. “Haven’t you ever wanted for something better?”
“Sure, there’s been times when I’ve wanted more maybe, but I wouldn’t trade what I have to get it,” his answer was more of an understated awareness than anything else.
“Yeah,” he replied, “maybe it is as simple as that, but you know how you’re always having to press for the impossible, like the wheel is working against you.., well, sometimes it just seems like we’re no better off around here than a pair of ostriches.”
Osprey stood up and placed the chair back against the wall.
“May be the case,” he said firmly and with a steadiness to his voice, “but it’ll be the day before I’ll go around with my head stuck in the mud.”
Then he walked to the door as Lloyd’s little girl, Wembly, an eight year-old with strawberry blonde hair and a face dotted with freckles came running past him and bounced up on the bed, causing him to whine at the jolt.
“Take care now,” Osprey patted the door jamb. “And take the cue from these young ‘uns, the sooner you’re on your feet again, the better off we’ll all be.”
“I heard that,” he replied as the girl curled up tight beneath his arm.
That night Osprey had taken a seat on the floor of the living room of his own house, strumming his guitar and singing, “Amazing Grace,” to the children. His three children, along with the O’Neals’ were spread about on blankets, listening intently, as he thumbed the last chord slowly.
“I bet you all didn’t know that the man who wrote this song was a slave trader,” he said.
Osprey’s oldest son, Michael, with thick black hair, spoke up. “Then how could he write about grace?”
Osprey replied, “Because it was the grace of God that saved him from the chains he had put on others. That’s what it’s all about really, grace enough to save us from ourselves.”
His younger son, Jonathan, with smooth rounded features and a bashful stutter questioned, “Do.., do you think the slaves in the South know about Gods’ grace?”
Osprey answered, “Well, if they don’t they are about to. The Union Army is going to win this war. We have to. It’s on the side of right. Then each man can account for himself.”
One of the O’Neal boys, Andrew, cut in. “What if a man doesn’t want to fight for what is right?”
Osprey replied, “Then he has already suffered defeat.”
Jonathan wanted to know if that was the case with Uncle Daniel. But just then, Michael, angry about the accusation, pounded him across the head with his pillow.
“You don’t talk that way about him! He’s gone off to strike it rich. It’s got nothing to do with the war. Isn’t that right, Pops?” he blurted out.
Osprey only wished that it were true. So he kept his answer to the point, as he didn’t want to confuse them anymore than was necessary.
“You boys don’t need to be arguing about it,” he replied. “Wherever Daniel is, you can be sure that he’s bound to cross enemy lines sooner or later. So it’s best that you include him in your prayers. Maybe that way, the grace of God can find him, too.”
golden, but perilous