‘‘They?’’I asked in horror. ‘‘Surely Frank hasn’t...he wouldn’t beat little Sammy? He’s only a baby! What could a five year old possibly do that’s worthy of a beating with a razor strop?’’ When she didn’t answer me I grabbed her shoulders, shaking her slightly. ‘‘Lydia, answer me!’’
‘‘Frank says they have to learn to obey him immediately from the time they are very young. And they are learning, Betsy, honest they are. They both try hard now to do what he says right away. This time it was my fault—’’
‘‘Lydia, stop it! This is insane! Frank can’t expect perfection from mere children—or even from you, for that matter. You’re leaving him tonight, this very instant—and you’re taking those poor babies with you.’’
‘‘I can’t! How are we supposed to live?’’
‘‘I have enough money to support all of us. Let me take care of you. Come home with me, please. For your own sake as well as for theirs.’’
Lydia gave a harsh laugh. ‘‘Do you really think Frank Wyatt will give up his sons that easily, without a fight? Oh, he’ll let me leave him. He no longer needs me now that he has three heirs. But who’s going to protect my boys from their father if I’m not here? Who’s going to make sure they don’t make a mistake?’’
‘‘But he’sthe one who’s mistaken! What Frank is doing isn’t right!’’
‘‘No? Well, who’s going to stop him? Who’s going to come between a father and his right to raise his children in his own home as he sees fit? Frank is a pillar in this community, a pillar in his church. There’s nothing I can do except stay here and try to protect my sons as best I can.’’
‘‘Don’t you see what Frank’s doing? It’s his own sin and guilt that he’s trying to purge out of them. Frank can never forgive himself for his ‘great sin’ with you, and so he’s taking it out on you and his sons. You have to leave him, Lydia. You have to get out of here.’’
‘‘No. I’m staying.’’ Her tears and her trembling had stopped. She was calm suddenly, with that terrible serenity I had once mistaken for inner strength. ‘‘This is the life I deserve,’’ she said with eerie detachment. ‘‘Frank is the punishment for my sin.’’
‘‘But it doesn’t work that way. God doesn’t punish us like that. He forgives us if—’’
She laid her ice-cold hand on my arm. ‘‘The baby is crying, Betsy. I have to go to him. Frank doesn’t like to hear him cry. You’d better leave before Frank comes back.’’
When I walked down the hill toward home, the night was fearfully still. As much as I’d dreaded hearing the sound of little Matthew being beaten, much worse was the silence of a seven-year-old child who’d already learned not to scream. I wept that night for a long, long time. I’d never felt more helpless in my life.
‘‘I hate him! He’s impossible to please!’’ Twelve-year-old Matthew threw himself into Walter’s wine-colored leather chair with such fury I feared he would break the springs. I didn’t say a word. The boy needed to vent his frustration, and my cottage was the only safe place in the world where he could do it. Matthew’s stored-up rage had already caused him to start picking fights at school, and then he’d been doubly disciplined—by the principal and later at home. As a result, Matthew had quickly learned to stuff his anger deep inside. I tried to provide an outlet for him so it wouldn’t build to volcanic proportions.
‘‘Tell me all about it,’’ I said, offering him a piece of spice cake and a glass of milk. He set them on the table beside the chair, too overwrought to eat.
‘‘Why is my father so hard on me? I can’t do anything right, and Willie—his precious Willie—never does anything wrong! I can’t stand living there another minute! I’m running away, Aunt Betty. This time I’m leaving for good and I’m never coming back!’’
‘‘I know, Toots. I know how hard it is for you at home, and I don’t blame you in the least for wanting to run. But you’re only twelve years old. Your father will send the sheriff after you quick as a wink, and then he’ll beat the tar out of you for disgracing him.’’
‘‘What did I ever do to deserve this?’’ he moaned. ‘‘My father can’t even stand to look at me. I see it in his eyes every day and I don’t know why. He hates the sight of me.’’
I longed to tell Matthew the truth; that every time Frank looked at him he was reminded of his own sin. But I couldn’t explain it to the poor child without exposing his mother’s sin as well. I bent over his chair and drew him into my arms. He was stiff with resistance at first, but he eventually melted—as he always did— starved as he was for love.
‘‘You know what, Toots?’’ I said as he clung to me. ‘‘I love you, and your mother loves you, and your heavenly Father loves you— now and always.’’
Matthew dried his tears on his sleeve, and after a while, he dug into his cake. ‘‘Did you make this just for me?’’ he asked.
‘‘You bet I did. And I have another surprise for you, too. Guess what came in the mail today?’’
‘‘A new Herman Walters book?’’ He almost smiled.
‘‘The latest one. It’s called Danger in the Jungle. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?’’
He was soon absorbed in the book, thousands of miles away from his father. I loved watching him read, slumped in Walter’s chair with one of his lanky legs sprawled over the arm of it. I wrote nearly every book in that series for Matthew, so he would have an escape from his sorrowful life. If only for a few hours.
‘‘Can I take this book home with me?’’ he asked when it was time for him to go do his chores.
‘‘You’d better not. You know what’ll happen if your father catches you with it.’’
‘‘But why, Aunt Betty? What does he have against books?’’
‘‘I don’t know the answer to that, Toots,’’ I said, reaching up to smooth his dark hair off his forehead. He already stood several inches taller than me. ‘‘But you know you’re welcome to come down here and read anytime you want.’’
In the years that followed, Samuel would also read every single book in the series. But he never did confide in me or accept my consolation the way Matthew did. Sam was as skittish as a wild rabbit, the result of growing up in constant fear. H. G. Wells once wrote a book called The Invisible Man, and that’s the best way to describe poor Sam—he tried his best to be invisible, to disappear into the background where he could never get into trouble. He couldn’t live up to his father’s standards of perfection any better than the rest of us could, so his only defense was to slide through life as silently and invisibly as possible.
But what broke my heart more than anything else was the fact that no matter how many times Frank beat those boys, no matter how many times he withdrew his love and approval as punishment, his sons still strove with all their might to please him. Willie had somehow managed to earn his approbation—Matthew and Samuel saw the nods of acceptance he received, and it created false hopes in them that they might one day receive such looks as well. It also created in them an intense hatred for their father’s favorite son.
Frank Wyatt claimed to know the Bible and quoted it all the time, but he had somehow overlooked the tragic story of Jacob’s favoritism toward his son Joseph and the murderous jealousy that resulted in Joseph’s brothers. What happened to little Willie was Frank’s fault as surely as if he had drowned the child in the pond with his own two hands.
The image of Willie’s blanched, lifeless body being dragged from the icy water is one that I have never been able to erase from my memory. Worse was the fact that Frank made Matthew and Samuel stand shivering in the muddy snow at the edge of the pond and watch the sheriff and his deputies haul the corpse into their boat. They saw their brother’s frozen, staring eyes, his silenced scream. That’s the only reason I stayed there on that dreadful day. Lord knows, no one else would offer those boys an ounce of comfort.
Willie’s death changed everyone and became the great dividing line between the way things had always been and the way things would
forever be. Matthew never forgave himself for allowing his brother to step out onto that ice. In the years that followed he endured unending verbal and physical abuse, but he accepted his father’s beatings and wrath as the punishment he justly deserved. Sam blamed himself for disappearing and not being there to help either of his brothers. His self-imposed penalty was to stick close to Matthew from now on, enduring Frank’s tirades along with him. If either of the boys had ever dreamed of leaving Wyatt Orchards to escape their father once they grew up, they no longer considered it an option. The orchard became their prison cell, Frank their jailer, a life sentence their punishment for murder.
Lydia never got over the loss of her youngest child, either. She withdrew almost completely from the reality of the world around her, battling bouts of deep depression. I understood her grief, having lost my beloved Walter, but while I accepted God’s consolation and yielded to His will for my life, Lydia accepted her suffering as God’s wrath. Frank Wyatt put that notion into her head.
No one could console Frank after the death of his favorite son, and he expressed his grief through the only emotion he knew how to show—anger. After the last of the mourners had gone home on the afternoon of Willie’s funeral, he turned on Lydia with unimaginable rage. I had walked up to their farmhouse to tell Lydia that Matthew and Samuel were down at my cottage and to ask if the boys could spend the night with me. That’s how I overheard Frank ranting.
‘‘Now look what you’ve done, you slut! This is God’s judgment for our sin! The son of David and Bathsheba died for their adultery and now my son has died for ours!’’
I had silently entered through the kitchen door and heard Frank’s shouts coming from the parlor. I hurried inside, terrified that he might beat my sister, yet knowing that I was helpless to stop him if he did. I heard the sound of glass shattering and froze in the doorway at the sight of Lydia huddled on the floor, while Frank pelted her with her favorite china knickknacks as if stoning her for adultery.
‘‘God says, ‘Vengeance is mine! I will repay!’ ’’ Frank yelled, ‘‘and I have paid dearly for my one moment of weakness with you! The devil used you to bring me down, Lydia! I should have seen your harlotry for what it was and rebuked you the first time you tempted me!’’
He picked up a porcelain teacup I had bought for her, decorated with violets, her favorite flower, and he hurled it with such force it shattered into dust in front of her. Lydia’s hands bled from tiny cuts as she tried to scoop the fragments of her treasures together again. Frank smashed the matching saucer next.
‘‘The child of David and Bathsheba’s sin is the one who died!’’ he shouted. ‘‘But that would be too small a price for us to pay! God demands justice, and my punishment is that the innocent son had to die! Now I’ll have to look at our bastard every day for the rest of my life—to see the fruit of our sin, in the flesh!’’
Frank scooped up a framed studio portrait of Lydia and the three boys, taken two or three years earlier, and flung it to the floor. He stomped it with the heel of his shoe until the frame, the glass, and the photograph were pulverized. I still hadn’t moved from the doorway, paralyzed by Frank’s violence. Frank never even saw me as he swept from the room, blinded by rage, and ran up the stairs, his shoes crunching on the broken glass that littered the carpet.
I crept into the room and whispered my sister’s name. ‘‘Lydia...Lydia, come with me, honey, I’m taking you home now.’’
She didn’t move, didn’t look up. Nor did she weep. Her beautiful, haunted eyes stared, unseeing, at the carpet. Only her hands had life in them as they idly fingered the broken shards of her keepsakes.
I crouched carefully in front of her, lifting her chin until she faced me. ‘‘Lydia? Honey, listen to me. Frank’s wrong. Everything he said just now is wrong. God didn’t take Willie’s life in order to punish you. It was an accident...a terrible, tragic accident. That’s all.’’
Lydia gave no sign that she had heard me. She stared as if looking straight through me. I wrapped my arms around her and tried hugging her, but she still didn’t respond. Finally I stood and tried pulling her to her feet. She was a dead, lifeless weight.
‘‘Lydia, please...come home with me. The boys are already there, and none of you will ever have to return to this horrible house again. You don’t need to stay with Frank any longer. You’ve paid your debt, Lydia...you’ve more than paid it. Please let me help you.’’
Her lifeless eyes finally met mine. ‘‘You want to help me,’’ she said in a flat, hoarse voice, ‘‘then go home. Leave me alone.’’
‘‘I’m not leaving unless you come with me,’’ I said, taking her bleeding hands gently in mine. She yanked them free.
‘‘No. Go home and take care of my boys. That’s how you can help me.’’
I felt torn. I wanted my sister out of this house, away from her monster of a husband, but I also didn’t want to leave young Matthew alone for too long. He suffered under an even greater burden of guilt than Frank or Lydia did, believing that Willie’s death was his fault, and I worried that he might try to harm himself. I pleaded with Lydia in vain until we both heard the sound of Frank’s footsteps upstairs. He had probably changed from his good suit into his work clothes and he would be thundering down the stairs again at any moment. Terror filled Lydia’s eyes.
‘‘Leave!’’ she begged. ‘‘Keep Matthew out of his sight!’’
I did leave, but I watched from a distance until Frank also left the house and went out to the barn. I needed to be sure that he wouldn’t harm my sister. I needn’t have worried. She told me later that after they laid Willie in his grave Frank never touched her again—not even so much as the brush of his hand on hers. They occupied the same house, slept in the same room, the same bed, but lived thousands of miles apart.
When Lydia finally emerged from her shock, the depression lifted temporarily. She was still a beautiful woman, though deeply troubled. She was also starved for love and affection. About a year after Willie died she began traveling to the city by train on the pretense of seeing a doctor for ‘‘female troubles.’’ But she later confided in me that she was having an illicit love affair—the first of many that followed. I watched helplessly as she tried to bury her pain by becoming the very thing Frank accused her of being. Yet how could I condemn her? Who knows what I might have become if I had been the unfortunate woman to have married Frank Wyatt?
To the outside world Wyatt Orchards must have seemed like the Garden of Eden. The trees flourished, the land prospered, and Frank became one of the wealthiest fruit growers in the county. He purchased the latest in modern farm machinery, experimented with new grafting procedures, hired extra farm laborers in addition to his two sturdy sons, and even employed domestic help for his wife. Proud of all he had built, he began the tradition of hosting an annual fall open house so that everyone in the county would see and envy his realm. And envy him they did.
One of the saddest ironies of the whole tragedy was that Matthew was a natural-born farmer. Frank couldn’t have asked for a more perfect son—one so in love with the land, so in tune with the rhythms of the seasons and with the animals and the trees under his care. Yet Frank remained totally blind to the great gift God had given him.
At twenty-one, Matthew had become a handsome man, pursued by nearly every eligible girl in Deer Springs. He’d inherited Lydia’s haunting beauty in a masculine form, with her dark, hypnotic eyes and alluring smile. And if his natural father, Ted Bartlett, had possessed half the charm Matthew did, it was little wonder that Lydia had fallen so hard for him. All the girls in Deer Springs flocked to the open house in droves each fall, hoping to catch the eye of Wyatt Orchards’ crown prince. With each passing year, Matthew’s love for Wyatt Orchards grew stronger—and his hatred for his father grew stronger as well. The two rival emotions simply could not coexist in Matthew’s heart indefinitely.
The open house of 1916 set the final disaster into motion. The day had been a huge success, with hundreds of pe
ople paying homage to Frank’s accomplishments. Lydia had set up serving tables in the backyard for food and cider, and once the festivities ended and the last few stragglers had gone home, I helped her clean up. Suddenly we heard a terrible uproar coming from the barn, with Frank hollering and Matthew shouting. We couldn’t imagine what had provoked such a clamor. We dropped everything and ran inside.
One of the Peterson girls cowered in a corner of the barn by a mound of hay, and Matthew stood with his back to her, protecting her and defending himself from his father at the same time. Frank had a buggy whip in his hand and threatened to lash out at both of them with it.
‘‘Don’t you dare stand there and deny it!’’ Frank roared. ‘‘I caught you in the act!’’
‘‘We weren’t doing anything! Just kissing, nothing more!’’ Matthew stood his ground, holding his father at bay with his hands outstretched. When he signaled over his shoulder for the girl to escape, she ran from the barn, weeping with fright.
Frank took advantage of the distraction to charge forward, scourging Matthew with the whip. ‘‘I’ll teach you not to carry on your lewd acts! Maybe this will drive the lust out of you!’’
At first Matthew simply held his arms above his face, defending himself from the onslaught as he backed toward the hay mound. But as the whip cracked across his forearms, his hands, and his scalp, leaving savage welts, something inside Matthew finally snapped. Years of stored-up rage suddenly exploded. He lunged at his father and wrestled the whip from his hand, throwing it to the ground. Then Matthew turned on Frank with murder in his eyes.
‘‘I swear before God that I’ll kill you before you’ll ever lay another hand on me!’’ He sank his fist into Frank’s gut, and before the older man could recover, Matthew began pummeling him, raining blows on him until Frank staggered backward against the wall. Matthew kept after him, beating him relentlessly. Lydia and I watched helplessly, screaming in vain for him to stop, unable to get close enough to intervene without risking injury ourselves.