I’d been making quite a racket, slamming pots and kettles around as I fixed the poultice and cooked some porridge. And I must have still had an angry look on my face when I carried it all into the stranger’s room because he was wide awake and gaping at me as if he was afraid I was going to start throwing things at him.
‘‘I’m so sorry for troubling you, ma’am,’’ he said.
‘‘I’m not vexed with you,’’ I replied, trying to smooth the frown off my face. ‘‘But you’ve got to do your level best to get better, you hear me? That means no more running around outside. Now, I’ve brought you some food and you’re going to eat it whether you want it or not, because you can’t get better unless you eat. Then I’m going to dab some iodine on that cut of yours and it’s going to hurt like the dickens, but you’re going to grit your teeth and take it because it’s the only way that cut will ever heal, understand?’’
He smiled faintly. ‘‘Yes, ma’am.’’
‘‘Don’t call me that. You make me feel like a schoolmarm.’’ I felt a smile tugging at my mouth, too. ‘‘Now, do you think you can eat this porridge by yourself or shall I feed you?’’
‘‘Let me try.’’ He reached to take the spoon from me, and his hand felt hot as it brushed against mine. Drops of sweat glistened on his forehead as he struggled to sit up in bed. When he was ready, I laid the tray with the porridge bowl on his lap and turned my attention to doctoring his leg. From the corner of my eye I could see oatmeal dripping as he tried to feed himself with shaking hands, but I knew enough about men and their stubborn pride to leave him alone.
‘‘Ready for the iodine?’’ I asked when he’d spooned the last of the porridge down. He nodded and reached behind his head to grip the brass headboard. I tipped the bottle and, as quickly as I could, poured a thin stream of it down the length of the wound. His body went stiff as he stifled a moan.
‘‘You can yell if you want to, mister.’’
‘‘It’s Gabe,’’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘‘My name is Gabe.’’
‘‘Well, no one will hear you, Gabe. My kids are outside playing in the snow, and my closest neighbor is Aunt Batty, who lives way down by the pond. I’m going to put on a fresh compress now, then I promise I’ll leave you alone.’’
I tried to be gentle, but I could tell by the funny way he was breathing that his leg pained him a lot. Maybe talking would help take his mind off it.
‘‘Care to tell me how you did this?’’ I asked.
He drew a ragged breath. ‘‘I was running to catch a slowmoving flatcar. I’ve done it a hundred times before, but the railroad guards were after me and I didn’t want to end up in jail for vagrancy. I ripped my leg open on a jagged piece of the undercarriage as I jumped. It was dark and I didn’t see it sticking out.’’
‘‘How long ago did it happen?’’
‘‘I don’t know...how long have I been here?’’
‘‘You spent a night in my barn and a night in this bed.’’
He exhaled. ‘‘It must have been two or three days before that...I’m not sure. I lose all track of time being on the road without a calendar or a clock.’’
He had a smooth, deep voice that rumbled like the low notes on a church organ. Yet his words seemed to settle in the room as softly as snowflakes falling. I glanced at him, longing to ask why someone who spoke as fine as he did and who could make words come alive when he wrote them down on paper had to ride the rails like a worthless tramp. He was still gripping the headboard, his eyes closed. I quickly finished wrapping his leg.
‘‘There. All done.’’
When he opened his eyes I handed him a towel so he could wipe off the sweat that ran down his face. He looked as white as flour.
‘‘Need anything else?’’ I asked as I gathered up my things.
‘‘Yes...Ineed to thank you, Mrs. Wyatt.’’
‘‘Well, then, you can thank me by getting better.’’
I was almost through the door when the thought struck me. For the life of me, I couldn’t recall telling him my married name. I slowly turned to face him. ‘‘How did you know my last name?’’
His gaze shifted away and for a split second he wore the same look Jimmy gets when I catch him with his hand in the cookie jar. Then the moment passed and he smiled weakly. ‘‘I read the sign outside and I just assumed...’’
‘‘Oh. Of course.’’
I knew the sign he meant. A long time ago, in better, happier days, my father-in-law had painted on the side of the barn: Wyatt Orchards—Frank Wyatt & Sons, Proprietors. I shuddered to think that Frank Wyatt and his sons were all gone.
‘‘It is Mrs. Wyatt...Isn’t it?’’ he asked shyly.
‘‘Yes, but you can call me Eliza.’’
I had just put away the iodine and things, when all of a sudden my three kids came thundering through the back door with their boots on, scattering clumps of snow everywhere.
‘‘Mama! Mama! Come quick! You gotta come!’’ They all tugged on my skirt and jabbered at me at the same time.
‘‘Stop it! You’re getting my floor all wet! Look at this mess!’’ I tried to herd them back out onto the porch, but they weren’t listening to me. From the way they carried on, I began to think something terrible must have happened. ‘‘Slow down, one at a time. Let Jimmy tell me what’s wrong.’’
He was breathless from running. ‘‘We were sliding down the hill behind Aunt Batty’s house when she came outside and asked us to help her shovel snow. She said she would pay us and everything. So we followed her over to her house and she kept calling me Matthew even though I told her my name was Jimmy—’’
‘‘Is she a witch?’’ Becky asked suddenly.
‘‘No, of course not,’’ I said. ‘‘Who told you that?’’
She looked up at Jimmy.
‘‘It was a joke,’’ he said, giving Becky a shove. ‘‘Anyway, I thought she wanted us to shovel a path to her outhouse or something, but she said no, we had to shovel out the snow that was insideher house.’’
I remembered how my father-in-law used to insist that Aunt Batty was crazy, warning us to stay away from her, and I groped for a way to explain her to my kids. ‘‘Listen, you need to understand that Aunt Batty is—’’
‘‘But, Mama, she was right! The snow isinside her house!’’
‘‘Inside!How on earth did it get there?’’
‘‘I don’t know, but you gotta come. There’s way too much for me and Luke and Becky to shovel out by ourselves.’’
As I pulled on my coat and an old pair of Sam’s boots, I decided that maybe Aunt Batty’s door had blown open during the storm and the snow had drifted inside. But as soon as I reached the top of the rise behind her house I saw that it wasn’t the case at all. The entire roof of her kitchen had fallen in from the weight of the snow like the top of an undercooked cake. The kitchen looked like it had been added some years after the original stone cottage was built, and its roof was not as steeply pitched—or as well-made.
We walked around to the front door and Aunt Batty let us in. I had never been inside her cottage in all the years I’d lived up in the big farmhouse, and I stood in her front parlor and stared. It was neat and cozy, with the ruffled curtains and crocheted afghans you’d expect in an old spinster’s house. But every inch of wall space in the entire cottage was lined with shelves—and every inch of shelf space was crammed with books. It looked to me like Aunt Batty owned more books than the Deer Springs Library. I even saw a long row of thin yellow spines on a bottom shelf that had to be National Geographic magazines. A rocking chair stood beside the coal stove along with a big console radio with a plant perched on top.
What looked to have once been the dining area now held an enormous wooden desk, the kind you’d see in a fancy bank or a lawyer’s office. It even had one of those swivel chairs beside it with a black leather seat. The typewriter sitting on top of the desk was much bigger and fancier than the one in Mr. Harper’s burlap sack.
Th
e house was freezing inside, and tiny little Aunt Batty looked as though she had on every sweater and coat she owned. ‘‘Did you bring the matches, Toots?’’ she asked.
I frowned. ‘‘Matches...?’’
‘‘Yes, I asked young Matthew there to bring me some. I keep mine in the kitchen and I won’t be able to get to them until we finish the shoveling. My fire went out, you see, and Winky and the girls don’t like it when the house gets this cold.’’
I figured Winky must be the disagreeable little dog that had been yapping and snarling at us ever since we arrived, scaring poor Becky half to death and making her cling to my leg like a monkey. But I didn’t see any ‘‘girls.’’ From where I stood, though, I could see into the demolished kitchen and I realized right away that there was no way Aunt Batty could close off that part of the house and keep the heat in the parlor and bedroom. And she certainly wouldn’t be able to fix any meals in that kitchen. The plain truth was that her house was uninhabitable.
I knew what had I had to do, and it made me feel as though the roof had just caved in on me. I drew a deep breath and rested my hand on her arm, speaking as slowly and carefully as I could. ‘‘Aunt Batty, shoveling out all that snow isn’t going to help. Neither are matches. You still won’t be able to stay warm or cook your food. Your kitchen roof has caved in. Do you understand that? You can’t live in this house until the roof gets fixed.’’
‘‘The roof? Oh my! I don’t believe I own a ladder that’ll reach to the roof! I’ll have to borrow one—’’
‘‘No, listen. You’ll have to hiresomeone to repair your roof. It’s a huge job, Aunt Batty. I can’t do it and neither can you. In the meantime, until it’s fixed...’’ I paused, wishing that I wasn’t Aunt Batty’s closest kin, wishing that I didn’t already have an invalid to take care of, wishing I had never asked God to send me another angel. ‘‘In the meantime, you can come and live in the farmhouse with the kids and me.’’
‘‘My sister Lydia’s house?’’
‘‘Yes.’’ I lacked the energy to explain to her that Lydia, my mother-in-law, had died like all the rest of them. Besides, Aunt Batty would probably just forget all over again. Added to my worries about Mr. Harper dying, I felt like I had more troubles than Job’s wife.
‘‘Oh dear,’’ she moaned. ‘‘I can’t leave Winky and the girls here all alone.’’
I gritted my teeth. ‘‘Winky can come, too.’’
‘‘But Frank Wyatt hates dogs. He won’t allow one in his house.’’
‘‘Frank Wyatt is dead. It’s my house now.’’ Aunt Batty stared at me as if she had just heard the shocking news for the first time, as if she had never even been to his funeral three months ago. What was the Good Lord trying to do to me?
‘‘Can I help you pack a few things to bring along?’’ I asked gently.
She smiled. ‘‘Why, yes. Thank you, Toots.’’
We went into her tiny bedroom and I helped her toss some clothes and underthings and toiletries into a scruffy carpetbag that was probably last used during the War Between the States. Aunt Batty added her knitting and an old photograph in a brass frame, then glanced around the room.
‘‘There, now. I guess that’s all I need. And you’re sure that Winky and the girls are welcome, too?’’
I nodded grimly.
‘‘I’ll have to wake the girls up. They won’t like having their nap disturbed, but it can’t be helped.’’
I still saw no sign of any ‘‘girls.’’ I wondered if Aunt Batty had imaginary friends like my Becky Jean did. But then she pulled back the quilt on her bed and I saw that what I had mistaken for lumps in an old feather bed were really two enormous cats that had burrowed down like moles beneath the quilts.
Becky squealed in delight. ‘‘Oh, look—kitty cats!’’ She crawled up on Aunt Batty’s bed and pulled off her mittens so she could pet them. ‘‘Do they have names?’’
‘‘Yes, that one is Queen Esther and that’s Arabella.’’
They were both tiger-striped—Esther in shades of gray and Arabella in orange—with splashes of white on their chests and faces. They stretched and yawned and blinked their yellow eyes sleepily at Aunt Batty.
‘‘Come on, girls. Rise and shine,’’ she said. ‘‘I’m afraid we have to move someplace warm for a few days.’’
I wanted to believe that it would only be for a few days, but I knew in my heart that it would likely be much longer. Even if we could find a carpenter who would come all the way out here in this snow, I doubted if he could get much work done on the house until the weather warmed up. It looked to me like Aunt Batty’s entire kitchen would have to be rebuilt.
‘‘Now, then,’’ she said. ‘‘Would you children like to help me?
We’ll let Samuel carry this satchel, and Matthew can—’’ ‘‘I’m Jimmy,’’ he said. ‘‘And he’s Luke.’’
‘‘Oh, that’s right. Young Matthew went off to France to fight in that awful war, didn’t he?’’ She gave Luke the carpetbag, then bent to snap a dog leash onto Winky’s collar. She held out the other end to Jimmy.
‘‘Does your dog bite?’’ he asked warily. Winky hadn’t stopped snarling since we’d arrived.
‘‘Heavens, no!’’ She bent over the little dog and said sternly, ‘‘Now, that’s quite enough of that, please.’’ Winky whined and lay down on the rag rug with a sigh.
‘‘I’ll carry Queen Esther,’’ Aunt Batty continued, ‘‘because she can be a bit crotchety after her nap. And your mother can carry Arabella.’’
‘‘What about me?’’ Becky asked.
‘‘Oh, you’ll have a very important job to do, Toots. You must carry my friend Ivy.’’
I was afraid to ask who Ivy was, but she turned out to be the sprawling ivy plant on top of the radio in the parlor. Aunt Batty nestled the pot in Becky’s arms, draping the trailing vines around her shoulders like a wreath so they wouldn’t drag on the ground. ‘‘I hope you have a radio. Ivy loves listening to the radio.’’
‘‘No, ma’am,’’ Jimmy said solemnly. ‘‘Grandpa Wyatt wouldn’t allow one.’’
‘‘Well, then, I suppose we’ll just have to sing to her instead. Can you children sing?’’
‘‘I guess so,’’ Jimmy said with a shrug, though I couldn’t recall ever hearing any of my kids sing.
‘‘Splendid!’’ Aunt Batty replied. She returned to her bedroom and rolled each cat over onto its back, then swaddled it in a blanket like a baby. She handed the orange one to me before picking up the gray one herself. Neither cat protested this undignified treatment—but then, they were both so enormously fat it would have been hard for them to put up much of a fight. Aunt Batty glanced wistfully around the cottage one last time before we all headed out the door.
I can’t even imagine what a sight we made, parading single file up the hill through the snow drifts to the farmhouse, all of us bundled to our eyebrows in hats and scarves and carrying a wornout carpetbag, two lumpy cats, a stubby misshapen dog, and an overgrown ivy plant. As we trudged along, I wondered how to explain the bedraggled-looking man in the spare bedroom to Aunt Batty. In the end I decided to let her think he was whomever she wanted him to be—she could call him President Hoover for all I cared. I would have my hands full reminding her that Luke and Jimmy weren’t my dead husband and his older brother. Next she would be calling me Lydia.
As it turned out, Becky pointed to the closed spare room door as soon as we got inside the kitchen and said, ‘‘We have to be real quiet because there’s an angel sleeping in there. He’s sick.’’
Aunt Batty held a finger to her lips and nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world for people to have an ailing angel asleep in their house. We unwrapped the two cats and they waddled away like they knew exactly where they were going. Becky and Aunt Batty found a new home for Ivy in the parlor. And as soon as we unleashed Winky he sauntered up to the rug I kept by the kitchen stove, circled it three times, then fell over onto his side in the middle of
it as if he’d been shot between the eyes. A minute later he was snoring. I longed to lie down beside him but it was already lunchtime and I still hadn’t even washed the breakfast dishes.
‘‘Becky Jean, take Aunt Batty upstairs and show her your room,’’ I said. ‘‘She’ll have to sleep with you for a couple of nights since my spare room is already occupied—that is, if it’s all right with you, Aunt Batty.’’
‘‘That will be just fine and dandy, Toots,’’ she said with a wave of her hand. ‘‘I can sleep just about any old place.’’
‘‘And you’re not reallya witch, are you?’’ Becky said, as if to reassure herself.
‘‘I should say not! The Bible says that God hates witches...and since God is a good friend of mine, I certainly can’t be a witch!’’
‘‘Jimmy just made that up to scare me, didn’t he?’’
‘‘I expect so,’’ Aunt Batty replied as they headed toward the stairs. ‘‘I never had a brother myself, but I do know that little boys love to tease little girls.’’
I threw some food together and called it lunch. Afterward, when I went into Mr. Harper’s room to bring him some, I found him moaning and burning up with fever again. I sent Jimmy outside to fill a basin with snow and I soaked washcloths in it to lay on Mr. Harper’s face and neck to bring the fever down. I spent most of the afternoon doing that, along with changing the poultices on his leg to draw out the poison and tending the stoves and cleaning up the dishes and boiling some navy beans to make soup for our supper.
I heard the kids bundling themselves up while I tended to Mr. Harper, and they disappeared outside with Aunt Batty for a while. They all came trudging up the hill from her cottage an hour or so later, lugging something on Luke’s sled. I didn’t give it much thought, worried as I was about Mr. Harper.
Later, as I chopped carrots and onions to add to the navy beans, I heard the kids entertaining Aunt Batty in the parlor—or maybe she was entertaining them, it was hard to tell. The mysterious bundle had turned out to be a pile of books, and the kids paged through them with her, spellbound as they gazed at the colorful pictures.