Bittersweet Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #5): A Novel (34 page)

“I know where it is; it’s not too far—”

“We can keep in touch, Birdie,” Davey said. “I’ll be with Grandpa and Grandma from now on.”

“Your father?” The question came haltingly.

Davey blinked, as though surprised.

“She doesn’t know, Davey,” Mr. Jacoby said and continued, “Maurice is dead, Miss Wharton. Drank himself to death, in a way, though it actually happened in a fight. He started a drunken brawl, or so we’ve been told, and someone bigger, stronger, angrier, was more than he could handle. As soon as I got word, I came for Davey, and we’ve spent some time on our way home tracing your moves, locating you. Davey insisted on it.”

“Oh, Davey!” Birdie’s tears flowed freely now, and Big Tiny, sympathetic, handed her a large and colorful bandanna. But hers were tears of release, healing tears.

The afternoon waned as conversation flowed. Questions and answers, explanations, revelations, tears. And at last, smiles and hugs. Finally, Big Tiny, an enthralled listener to all, felt the pressure to get home and to work. “Tell you what,” he suggested, “you can adjourn to my place, if you wish—”

“Oh, no,” Birdie said firmly. “Though we thank you. Lydia will surely want to meet them, to hear the story. To find out where I’ve been all this time!” She glanced at the clock with an exclamation of dismay and jumped up, straightening her clothes, brushing back her tumbled hair.

Big Tiny, watching, saw a woman of action, of sparkle and vigor, a woman he had never seen before. It only enhanced the woman he already knew and loved.

Big Tiny made his reluctant way homeward. Climbing into Mr. Jacoby’s rig, the others made their way to the Bloom homestead. Here the astonishing story was repeated, accompanied by fresh tears, fresh hugs, fresh smiles. Lydia capably stretched supper to include the newcomers, and the same account was told again to Herbert.

Eventually Mr. Jacoby pulled out a massive watch, consulted it, and with a sigh announced their departure. “We’ve been gone too long now,” he said. “Minnie will be worried at the delay. But we just had to try this one more place on our way home. We’ll always bless the decision. Now, Davey, it’s time to say our good-byes. But we can promise you, Miss Wharton, that we’ll keep in touch. We’re less than a day’s trip by buggy, and we’ll see that Davey makes it every once in a while. In fact, he can ride over, which will be faster. And you, of course, will be most welcome to visit us. In fact, I urge you to plan on doing so.”

“School will be out soon,” Davey reminded Birdie, “and you can get away. Won’t you plan on coming to Glenfield? Please, Mama Bird!”

Birdie agreed wholeheartedly. Having found her Davey again, she was not about to let him go permanently.

Lydia promised them a bed if they would stay the night; Mr. Jacoby said they would spend the night at the Stopping Place in Bliss and be on their way early in the morning.

It was a dazed Birdie who made her way upstairs and prepared for bed. To have found a son
and
a Father in one day!

Laying her head on the pillow, Birdie thanked her heavenly Father for the gift of His Son and for the restoration of the little stepson who had been lost to her for so many years.

My cup runneth over
, Birdie murmured, reveling in a quotation of her own choosing.

T
he smells of spring were pungent, all the more so because they followed the olfactory vacuum of the long winter: fresh turned soil, damp leaf mold, manure piles steaming in the sun, sap oozing on tree trunks in golden globules, thick quilts redolent from months of human contact, winter woolens long unwashed.

Through it all the breezes of spring wafted with fresh fragrances: the purple violet, so elusive, so dainty, shouting “spring” in its quiet way; tender grasses and greening bush spreading rare perfume far and wide; pails splashing full of new, rich, sweet milk; Fels Naptha, that brown bar, a washday standby, sometimes replaced by the vaunted “Old Glory Mottled German Laundry Soap—thick, fancy-shaped, hard-pressed, and wrapped,” changing the effluvia of every home as it was turned inside out—bedding, rugs, curtains, kitchen linens, clothing, all brought out to the relentless glare of the sun and the ministrations of the scrub board and the stomper, to be rubbed and stomped, boiled and blued, and finally spread out in the sun to bleach.

Sounds changed. No longer hampered in movement or shrouded in silence, dogs cavorted and barked with abandon, children jumped and shouted for the sheer fun of it, passing neighbors called cheerful greetings. The pail splashed into the well and was pulled, dripping, to be dumped into the trough to the noisy gulps and slurps of cattle now free of dim and silent stalls. Birds beyond counting filled the sky, flickered through the bush, perched on fence posts and barbed wire, warbling out their joy and staking out their territory; new calves bawled, baby chicks peeped; screen doors slammed with the going to and fro of people with a purpose. And overhead—a sight never accustomed to and stirring every winter-logged heart—a phalanx of honking Canada geese, their long blackks u necndulating with the sweep of their wings, circling and settling down to the sloughs and lakes of home.

Along with the sap rising in the trees, a certain vigor and
aliveness
flowed through the slender body of Ellie Bonney. As she shed the winter woolens, she seemed to shed winter’s stagnation and inactivity and felt infused with an energy that could not be contained.

Spring housecleaning was a breeze; Ellie scoured and scrubbed, chinked and whitewashed, revived old and faded curtains and furniture, and freshened all of it.

Then, offering to do the same for Sam Dickson, she moved her operations to the Fairway home, much like her own and much like many another in the territories—built of sturdy logs, with a roomy half of it serving as kitchen, dining room, and living quarters in general, the remainder divided into bedrooms. It was compact for easy heating, rather sparsely furnished, and readily turned out to clean. Folderols were in short supply in the bush; gewgaws and gimcracks were as superfluous in bush homes as frills and furbelows on clothes. For the most part it was a simple life. And, for the most part, satisfying.

Laboring in the Dickson yard over the washboard, laundering the family’s heavy wool quilts, Ellie was not surprised when she paused, straightening her back a moment, to find Sam not ten feet away. With one foot hoisted onto a block of firewood, one
arm on the raised knee, and with his hat in his hand, his eyes were fixed on her.

It was no surprise, because as the winter slipped away, Sam’s admiration had been expressed in more ways than one. By look, certainly. But also by word.

“Beautiful,” he had murmured, reaching a hand to help her from the buggy, seemingly transfixed by her rosy cheeks and her eyes sparkling with good health and good humor, “... so beautiful.”

Once, slipping up behind her as she stirred something on the stove, he had lightly placed his hands on her hips and, when she turned her head, laid his cheek against hers momentarily and whispered, “Desirable... so desirable.”

Ellie, across the months, had learned the language of love, sometimes by words but more often by the expression in Sam’s eyes. Biding his time, perhaps, there was a point beyond which his lips did not go; but his eyes, his telltale eyes, spoke eloquently. Spoke not only of love and longing but admiration, appreciation, satisfacation.

Now, looking up and recognizing a strong man’s healthy regard for the woman he thinks of as the mate of his choice, Ellie’s heart leaped. Color surged into her cheeks.

“What...” she attempted, flustered.

“You know what!” Swiftly Sam crossed the distance between them, took the tumbled, aproned figure into his arms, and kissed the astonished face thoroughly, very thoroughly indeed. Kissed the ready lips.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” he murmured when speaking became possible, and he dipped into the sweet honey again, and yet again.

Finally, knees wobbly, more flushed than ever, more starry-eyed, Ellie had opportunity to speak.

But could find nothing to say. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she leaned in for more of what her heart hungered for, and said, with her responsive lips, all that Sam needed to hear.

How the suds flew after that; how the windows shone, the furniture gleamed.

How the children hugged her and pranced about when, having sensed something in the air, they pestered and pried until they had been told: Daddy was going to marry Ellie.

How, later on, the old fears surfaced, the hesitations, the despair. Sam sensed it and was quiet, waiting. Ellie, restless, fought her old battle.

The evenings were lengthening, and it was during that quiet, tranquil time with the children abed that Sam and Ellie walked together, and Ellie, taking a deep breath, told Sam the story of old Aunt Tilda, her fiery death, the investigation that decided nothing, her conviction of herself. Her nightmares.

“It sounds like an unfortunate set of circumstances,” Sam said. “But you say you are tormented by this?”

“Ever since it happened... well, ever since the Mounties failed to come up with a solution, didn’t out-and-out clear my name. Though I was just a child, it seemed that a dark cloud of guilt dumped on me at that moment. And yes, it torments me, torments me to this day. Especially in the night. Out of the dark it comes, placing
me
in that fire, with
me
doing the calling for help as Aunt Tilda must have,
me
catching fire... burning...”

Ellie shivered, and her voice—high and thin and anguished—broke.

“Hey,” Sam said, and pulled her into his arms. “You’re safe, Ellie. Safe with me.”

And so it seemed, for the moment. But standing in the circle of his arms, the thought of her wedding night rose in her imagination—the moment when she jerked and thrashed in her sleep, perhaps in her husband’s arms, struggling and attempting to cry out, to finally come awake, shaking and jibbering, with the face of her husband frightened and dismayed. What would a bridegroom think? What sort of a blight would such a dreadful occurrence place on a marriage?

Ellie dropped her face into her hands, the prospect too grim and depressing to be accepted.

Sam led her aside to a felled log and sat beside her.

“It seems to me,” he said thoughtfully, “that this is something unnatural, out of the range of the normal reaction of a child... a girl... a woman. Something that you’ve not been able to control, to handle, to change, try as you will. Right?”

Ellie nodded miserably. “I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried. And prayed!”

“I know a little about such things,” Sam confided. “When I was little, some boys locked me in a closet for hours. I was mortally terrified, of course, and ever after tormented by a spirit of fear. I believe now that certain sad or terrible or frightening things, especially happening early in life when a child is innocent, without defense, may result in a lifetime of harassment from... well, from the enemy, the one the Bible calls a thief. We know his mission in life is to steal and to destroy. Certainly he stole my peace of mind.”

“Satan,” Ellie whispered, the idea not a new one, so tormented had she been, so helpless to rid herself of the torment. “It makes sense, Sam. You’re saying it’s an attack... not coming from within but without.”

“I believe so. I myself didn’t come free until I was an adult and a Christian. And then someone who understood, who had experience with such fears, ministered to me. And, Ellie, I learned that we don’t have to take this oppression. Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world, right? And doesn’t the Bible say in John 8:36, ‘If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed’?”

Ellie agreed, agreed wholeheartedly. “You’re right, so right!”

“You’re a child of God, forgiven, born again, adopted, part of his family. Right, Ellie?” Sam was laying groundwork here, good groundwork based on God’s Word.

Once more Ellie agreed.

“And according to 1 Corinthians 6:19, ‘your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you.’ Right, Ellie?”

Ellie nodded vigorous assent.

“Well, then,” Sam said, moving ahead methodically, certainly. “We’ll tell this interloper that he is no longer welcome, that he has
no place in God’s temple—are you game? That is, are we agreed on this, too? Remember,” he said, searching diligently for additional support for what he was about to do, “it says in Deuteronomy 32:30 that one can ‘chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight.’”

Caught up in the drama of the moment and the victory about to be claimed, still, Ellie had time to marvel at the spiritual insights of this man and to thank God that he had come into her life.

Taking her hand in his and turning to face her, Sam spoke the words, in the mighty name of Jesus, that commanded the release and freedom of this child of God, refusing any further harassment by the tormenting messenger of Satan.

Finally, putting in the last nail, he quoted 1 Corinthians 2:16, “‘We have the mind of Christ’!” And Ellie, with a long and shuddering sigh, breathed an amen.

Through the lingering twilight, wrapped in unspeakable peace and in each other’s arms, Sam and Ellie, murmuring into the fragrant night, lifted voices of praise and hearts of gratitude:“‘Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’” (John 8:32)!