Hidden Places (22 page)

On the third or fourth day of work Gabe brought along his army canteen. In spite of Aunt Batty’s denials, I still suspected that he might be Matthew Wyatt, so when he sat down on the running board of the truck to take a drink, I decided to ask him about the war.

‘‘I see you brought back a little souvenir from the army,’’ I said. ‘‘Did you fight in the Great War?’’

He took a long swallow and wiped his mouth before answering. ‘‘I got this canteen from a tramp named Loony Lou. He was a very sick man the night I met him. I suspected he had pneumonia from the way he coughed. So I hung around him for a couple of days, feeding him, keeping him warm, pounding him on the back good and hard whenever he needed it. He nearly died, but when he finally pulled through he insisted that I keep the canteen as his way of saying thanks. It was the only thing of any value that he owned.’’ Gabe stood and held it out to me. ‘‘Want some?’’

‘‘No thanks.’’ I was an expert at telling lies myself so I figured I should be able to spot one pretty easily. This story had a ring of truth to it.

Gabe had climbed all the way back up the ladder again before I realized that he had neatly avoided telling me whether or not he had fought in the war.

No matter how hard we worked, it seemed like more trees always stretched forever into the distance like a house of mirrors. As long as the weather wasn’t too windy or cold, we worked at it every day during daylight hours. I fell into bed exhausted each night and dreamt about trees, with branches that reached out toward me like scrawny arms that tried to grab me and strangle me. I would wake up in a cold sweat, grateful that it was just a dream—until I remembered that I still had more trees to trim tomorrow.

‘‘You don’t have to work so hard, Gabe,’’ I told him one afternoon. He had sunk down on the truck’s running board for the third time to take a break. I thought he looked a little pale.

‘‘I’m just trying to keep up with you,’’ he said with a faint smile.

‘‘You’re not getting feverish again, are you?’’ I pulled off my glove and felt his forehead. His brow was cool. When I realized what I’d just done, I turned away in embarrassment. I gazed down the long rows of trees we’d already finished, with the piles of brush heaped beneath them, then looked at the long row we still had to trim. When I finally risked a glance at Gabe, he was staring at me with an odd look on his face—as if he’d never seen me before.

‘‘What? Why are you looking at me like that?’’ I asked.

He blushed. ‘‘I...nothing. I admire you, that’s all. You’re an amazing woman.’’ He lifted the canteen to his lips and took a swig. ‘‘How long have you been trying to run this orchard on your own?’’

‘‘Only a few months. Just since my father-in-law died last November.’’

‘‘How did he die?’’

‘‘He dropped dead of a heart attack. The doctor said he was gone in a matter of minutes. At least he had the courtesy to wait until after the harvest was all in.’’

‘‘And your husband?’’

‘‘He passed away a little over a year before his father.’’

‘‘Listen, I know it’s none of my business, but why don’t you hire some help? There are plenty of men out there who are looking for work.’’

‘‘I can’t afford it. My father-in-law left some debts.’’

He swallowed another drink. ‘‘Do you think you can run this place all by yourself?’’ He might have lit a match to kerosene, my temper flared so hot and so fast.

‘‘I can’t tell you how sick I am of everybody asking me that! Every time I hear those words it just makes me all the more determined to hang on. This is my home! My kids’ home! Nothing and nobody is ever going to force us out of here. I may not run things the way Frank Wyatt did, but this is the only home I’ve ever had and so help me God, I won’t be homeless again!’’

Gabe resembled a dog with his tail between his legs after my outburst. I flung him a quick apology. ‘‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.’’

‘‘That’s all right,’’ he said quietly. ‘‘I know what it’s like to be homeless, too.’’

My heart softened a bit. ‘‘Riding the rails, you mean?’’

‘‘Not only then.’’ He fumbled with the lid to the canteen, trying to screw it back on straight. ‘‘I really don’t have a place to call home. I lived in a boardinghouse in Chicago before I started my travels.’’

‘‘Don’t you have a family?’’

‘‘No.’’

My heart softened a bit more. I wanted to ask him what had become of his folks, but I knew that if he asked me the same question I wouldn’t answer it. Besides, if he was Matthew Wyatt I already knew the answer. Gabe stood and stretched his arms and shoulders, swiveling his head in a circle to get the kinks out of his neck.

‘‘I think I know just how achy you feel,’’ I said quietly.

He gave me a slow, gentle smile. ‘‘Yes. I’m quite sure you do.’’

We both looked away at the same time as if realizing that we’d given away too much of ourselves.

‘‘Well, I guess we’d better get back to work,’’ I said, looking at the row ahead of us.

‘‘What about all those piles of brush?’’ he asked, looking at the sections we had already finished.

‘‘I don’t know what to do with it all, but I know it can’t stay there. I remember Sam telling me that dead wood attracts insects. He always used to run the hay rake down the rows to collect the brush at one end.’’

‘‘Can’t we use some of the bigger pieces for kindling?’’

The way Gabe said
we
gave me a funny feeling. I wasn’t sure if it was a contented feeling or an irksome one. ‘‘Yes, once it’s dried out,’’ I said. ‘‘Even so, there’s way too much of it.’’

‘‘I was wondering...you know how the hobos sometimes camp down by the railroad tracks? I think some of them might be willing to gather up the wood for us and haul it away if we let them use it for their bonfires.’’

He’d said it again—
we
.

‘‘All right,’’ I said after a moment. ‘‘But make sure you tell them to camp on my property, on this side of the tracks. The other side belongs to Alvin Greer, and he’ll call the sheriff to run them off.’’

I let Gabe borrow the truck that evening. He filled the back of it with brush and drove the first load down to the railroad crossing for his friends to use. In the weeks that followed I would see people creeping through the orchard around dinnertime, gathering up armloads of branches—pitiful men and sometimes women, dressed in shapeless rags. One or two of them didn’t look much older than my Jimmy. They were homeless, hungry, cold.

As I sat down each night to the meals Aunt Batty cooked, I prayed that my kids and I wouldn’t end up like them.

CHAPTER TEN

T
here are only a few more acres of trees left to trim,’’ I told Gabe one morning as we loaded the truck. ‘‘Why don’t you get started on Aunt Batty’s roof today, and I’ll finish trimming them myself.’’ Gabe had already taken a good look at the damage and had given Aunt Batty a list of the supplies he would need from the lumberyard. I had no idea if she could afford them or how she would pay for them, but I had enough worries of my own as spring approached without taking on hers.

‘‘Well, let’s think about this a minute,’’ Gabe said slowly. I could hear the hesitation in his voice.

‘‘Is there something wrong with my idea?’’ I asked impatiently.

‘‘I don’t like you working all alone out there, so far away from the house. If something should happen—’’

‘‘Like what?’’

‘‘Well...you could fall off the ladder—’’

‘‘I haven’t fallen yet, have I? Besides, you could fall off the ladder down at Aunt Batty’s house, too. What’s the difference?’’ I dared him to imply that I was a helpless woman, but he had sense enough not to. He carefully examined a saw blade before tossing it in with the others.

‘‘How about if I keep working on the trees,’’ he finally said, ‘‘and you can drive Aunt Batty into town for the supplies.’’

‘‘I don’t know one piece of lumber from the next,’’ I said. ‘‘It would be easier if you drove her into town.’’

He wouldn’t meet my gaze. ‘‘I’d rather not.’’

‘‘Why?’’

‘‘It’s not my truck. It’s yours.’’ He turned away a little too quickly. I couldn’t see his face but I got the feeling there was another reason why he didn’t want to go. After all, he’d driven my truck once before down to the hobo camp. Besides, he could always hitch the horses to a wagon instead of taking the truck. As I watched him limp over to close the door to the tool shed, still leaning on Walter Gibson’s cane, I tried to work out what the real explanation might be. Far as I could tell, Gabe had no reason at all to avoid Deer Springs—unless he was afraid folks might recognize him as Matthew Wyatt. And if he
was
Matthew, the joke was on him because
he
owned the truck, not me!

‘‘I wouldn’t mind a lift out to that last section of trees before you head into town,’’ he said when he’d hobbled back to the pickup.

I don’t know which annoyed me more—the fact that Gabe was hiding something, or the fact that he’d been making all the decisions lately. Two weeks ago he had moved back out to the workshop to sleep, telling Aunt Batty she could have the spare room downstairs. Then he’d started getting the cold frames ready for planting and sharpening the plow blades without being asked. Last night I found him tinkering with the tractor. You would have thought he could hear my father-in-law’s voice, plain as day, ordering him around like he used to order Sam:
‘‘Son, it’s time to do such-and-such...Son, you need to fix the thing-a-ma-jig.’’

In the end, I drove Aunt Batty to the lumberyard. I had extra eggs and milk to sell, and I wanted to stop by Mr. Wakefield’s office while I was in town and see if he’d had any luck tracking down Matthew. Judging by the sleepy, confused look on the old lawyer’s face, he might have been sound asleep at his desk since the last time I was there.

‘‘Sorry, Eliza. I haven’t heard a thing about Matthew. Sorry...Iwrote to Washington but these things take time. Sorry...’’

‘‘That’s all right, Mr. Wakefield.’’ He looked so pitiful I had the urge to pat him like a baby until he fell back to sleep.

Aunt Batty and Becky were sitting in the truck waiting for me by the time I walked back to the lumberyard. The wood, tar paper, and shingles were all loaded and ready to go. Lord knows how she paid for them.

For the next few weeks Gabe was everywhere at once, working like a house-a-fire. He would rise before dawn to do chores, then he’d work on Aunt Batty’s roof for a while, then he’d putter around the barn or the orchard, getting everything ready for springtime. I almost never had to nag the boys to do chores as long as Gabe worked alongside them. But the very thing I’d feared—that they would grow attached to Gabe—was slowly happening, and I didn’t know what to do about it. Try as I might, I couldn’t keep my kids from sneaking out to the barn and hanging around him every time I turned my back. Luke, especially, had taken a shine to him, and it amazed me to hear the boy actually talking to Gabe—although they both spoke so softly I could never understand anything either of them said. Whatever they were discussing, Gabe seemed very patient with Luke’s stuttering and all.

Gabe won Becky’s heart when he made her the swing like he’d promised. She danced in circles around Aunt Batty and me as we watched him hang it from a limb of the old oak tree in front of the house.

‘‘Lydia’s boys used to have a swing on this very same tree,’’ Aunt Batty said. ‘‘In fact, they might have hung it from that very same branch.’’

‘‘You’re right, they did,’’ Gabe said.

I looked up at him in surprise as he climbed out on the limb to tie the ropes. Had he just given himself away?

‘‘How do you know where their swing was?’’ I asked him.

‘‘I found some remnants of the old rope still embedded in the bark up here.’’ He prodded at the wood with his finger, dusting us with bits of rotting hemp. ‘‘See? Twenty-year-old rope.’’

It was the same with everything he did—Gabe seemed so at home on my farm, it was as if he’d lived here his whole life. He plowed the field where we always had our vegetable garden and started slips in the cold frame. He fixed nesting boxes in the chicken coop so the hens would set and strung up new chicken wire so the hawks wouldn’t take the baby chicks. He oiled and sharpened and repaired all the tools and equipment as if they belonged to him. And he kept the inside of the barn as neat as a pin, just the way Frank always insisted it be kept.

‘‘You seem to know an awful lot about running a farm,’’ I told him one day at lunchtime. ‘‘Did you grow up on one?’’

‘‘I spent a couple of summers on my aunt and uncle’s farm.’’

He didn’t look up from his plate when he spoke. I could tell he hated answering my questions. If he had been a turtle he would have retreated inside his shell. I understood how he felt. I did the same thing whenever people started asking me about my past, but that didn’t stop me from questioning Gabe.

‘‘Where was their farm?’’

‘‘Out east.’’

‘‘Really? Which state?’’

‘‘New York.’’ He avoided my next question by turning to Aunt Batty. ‘‘If you don’t mind, I’ll need you to come down to the cottage tomorrow morning and tell me how you want a few things done.’’

‘‘All right. How’s my roof coming, by the way?’’ she asked.

‘‘The work is going pretty well. All this rain we’ve had has slowed me down, though.’’

‘‘I’m not in a hurry,’’ she said. ‘‘And the rain is good for the apple trees.’’

It occurred to me that I wasn’t in a hurry for Gabe to finish, either. Once he repaired the roof he would probably go home to Chicago. The thought of getting by without his help gave me a panicky feeling. I remembered Aunt Batty saying she’d been unprepared for the day Walter Gibson had left her, and I decided I’d better get used to the idea of Gabe leaving before it took me by surprise.

‘‘You know, Gabe,’’ I said as I refilled his coffee cup, ‘‘you’ve paid me back a dozen times over for doctoring your leg. You’re free to leave whenever you need to go.’’

He didn’t reply but I felt his eyes on me. When I finally looked at him he said, ‘‘A man’s life is a very big debt to repay.’’ He had dangerous eyes—mysterious and dark. I couldn’t look into them for very long without feeling like I was falling off the edge of the world. Their softness pulled me toward him, yet the pain I saw in them pushed me away at the same time.