Hidden Places (49 page)

‘‘I have to be honest with you, Mrs. Wyatt, and tell you that your husband is a very sick man. Tetanus antitoxin is most effective when it’s given as soon as the symptoms appear, but...well, that decision was taken out of our hands.’’ He sighed, then picked up his medical bag. ‘‘I’ll be back first thing in the morning.’’

My husband’s illness was too far gone for the antitoxin to work. Dr. Gilbert couldn’t do a thing for him and neither could I. Sam died a horrible, painful death as the seizures finally became so violent he stopped breathing. Yet he was awake and aware of everything that was happening to him until the very end. The last words he heard me say were, ‘‘I love you, Sam.’’

The day he died I was so distraught I raged at my father-in-law in front of my kids. ‘‘It’s all your fault!’’ I screamed. ‘‘Sam died because you wouldn’t go for help! You killed your own son! If you had gone for a doctor sooner and Sam had gotten the antitoxin, he never would have died!’’

Frank didn’t respond to my outburst. He stared right through me with haunted eyes, and I had to wonder if he’d even heard a word I’d said. The hateful, manipulative Frank Wyatt I’d lived with these past years died with his son, leaving a broken, embittered old man in his place. What good was his orchard and everything he’d built without a son to inherit it? Still, I didn’t feel one shred of pity for Frank. He’d reaped what he’d sown.

My father-in-law had hardly seemed to notice my kids before Sam died. I always figured he hated them because he hated me. But as he stood beside the graves of his wife and two sons he slowly looked up and saw Jimmy and Luke clinging to me, their faces pale with grief. He looked at his grandsons, really looked at them, for the very first time and I think he suddenly realized they were all he had left.

‘‘Oh, dear God...’’ he whispered.

Frank seemed different after Sam died—not any kinder, and certainly not any warmer or more loving toward me or the kids. But he was a broken man, and he and I both knew it. We lived together like strangers in a boardinghouse, rarely talking, seeing each other only at mealtimes.

Then one cold November day a year later, Jimmy found his grandfather sprawled on the floor of the barn. I hurried outside when I heard my son’s frantic yells, but the moment I looked into the cold, vacant eyes of the man I’d hated, I knew he was dead. I didn’t feel one bit sorry. In fact, I found myself wishing he had suffered twice as much as poor Sam had suffered. I was about to turn my back on him when I noticed that Frank’s hands were empty. They lay open, palms up, and there was nothing in them. He had grasped and controlled and manipulated with those hands all his life to get his own way, and now they were empty. Frank Wyatt’s orchard and everything he had worked for had been left behind for someone else.

Wyatt Orchards

Winter 1931– 1932

‘‘While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest,
and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night
shall not cease.’’

GENESIS 8:22

CHAPTER NINETEEN

A
unt Batty and I sat at the kitchen table as the sun rose that morning. The cows needed to be milked, the horses had to be fed and watered, and the boys had to eat breakfast and get ready for school. But I felt too weary to move. Telling my story after all those years left me feeling empty and drained. My mama had left me and Sam had left me, and now Gabe had gone off and left me, too. What was wrong with me that made everybody turn their back and walk away from me?

‘‘You were very blessed to have had parents who loved you so much,’’ Aunt Batty said quietly.

‘‘Are you crazy?’’ I asked. ‘‘Weren’t you listening to me? Daddy never once told me he loved me, and Mama said it all the time and then she abandoned me!’’

‘‘You’re standing too close to see it, Toots. Your father showed you how much he loved you in a hundred different ways.’’

‘‘How? Name one!’’

‘‘He guided your decisions, raised you by the Good Book, took you to church. He made sure you didn’t grow up to become a circus oddity, but instead a warm, loving woman who could become the person God intended you to be. Most of all, he let you go when the time came. He did everything a good parent should do. That’s why you’re such a wonderful parent yourself. You learned how to love from your daddy.’’

‘‘But he lied to me about my mama!’’

‘‘Are you sure that’s the way it was?’’ she asked gently.

When I thought about it, I had to admit that Daddy had never exactly said Mama was dead. I slowly pulled myself to my feet and opened one of the stove lids to put another stick of wood on the fire. ‘‘Well, I’m sure that my mother abandoned me,’’ I said, closing the lid again.

Aunt Batty stood, too, and opened the dish cupboard, talking to me as she set the table for breakfast. ‘‘It looks to me like your mama knew she couldn’t take proper care of you, and she loved you enough to give you to someone who could. My sister gave up her own chance at happiness for her child’s sake, too. You know all about that kind of mother-love, don’t you, Eliza? Just look at how hard you’ve been working to hang on to this orchard and provide for your kids. Your mother didn’t abandon you, Toots. She made the greatest sacrifice a mother could make.’’

I watched Aunt Batty putting plates around the table and saw that she had taken out one too many. She started placing it where Gabe always sat, then caught herself.

‘‘Gabe abandoned me,’’ I said, fighting tears.

‘‘Well, it looks that way right now,’’ she said. ‘‘But Gabe loved all of us. Maybe he had a good reason for what he did. Maybe he made a sacrifice for the people he loved, too.’’

‘‘Ha! I doubt that! From what Sheriff Foster said, it looks to me like Gabe was trying to save his own skin and keep from getting arrested.’’

Aunt Batty didn’t reply. She put silverware by all the places and poured milk in the kids’ glasses while I got out the frying pan and started cracking eggs into a bowl to scramble them. When I realized that I’d added enough eggs for Gabe, miscounting just like Aunt Batty had, I covered my face.

‘‘What am I going to do without him?’’ I wept.

Aunt Batty took me in her arms. ‘‘You’ve been depending on Gabe’s help,’’ she said gently, ‘‘instead of on God’s. But He knows all about how you feel. Jesus suffered the pain of being abandoned when He hung on the cross for us. He cried out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ He made that sacrifice so that He could say to His children, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’ When everyone else is gone, Eliza, God is still here.’’

She led me back to a chair and sat me down, then took over cooking the eggs. ‘‘God knew when it was time for Gabe to leave,’’ she continued, ‘‘just like He knew when it was time for Walter to go. God did it so that you and I would both turn to Him for strength and discover the strength He’s been trying to build inside us all this time. Look back on your life, Toots, and think about all the experiences God gave you—the good ones and the bad ones—and you’ll see how they’ve shaped you into the woman you are today. Accept those experiences as His daily bread. Thank Him for them. Then be the person He created you to be. Growing up without a home has given you the will and the determination you’ll need to run this place....And your juggling skills will come in handy, too.’’

Aunt Batty smiled as she tried to juggle the broken eggshells, and I had to laugh as they all fell to the tabletop. She giggled along with me.

‘‘Will you teach me how to do that sometime, Toots?’’ she asked.

‘‘Sure, Aunt Batty.’’

She gave the eggs in the frying pan a quick stir, then took a loaf of bread out of the bread box and began slicing it for toast. ‘‘Listen,’’ she said, ‘‘all these troubles you’ve been having aren’t a punishment from God. He wants to use them to draw you closer to himself—just like your mama’s illness, which was a terrible tragedy, forced you to draw closer to your daddy.’’

I dried my eyes and stood up to help her. ‘‘I guess I haven’t thought much about God these past few years,’’ I said. ‘‘The way my father-in-law talked about God made Him seem like somebody I didn’t really want to know.’’

‘‘That’s because Frank read the Bible and went to church, but he didn’t know God. He just had religion. Eliza, it’s good that you know about the Bible and that your daddy took you to church, but you need to get to know God.’’

‘‘How do I do that?’’

‘‘Ask Him for help when you need it. Talk things over with Him the same way you used to talk with your Aunt Peanut or with Gabe. You have to learn to trust God to catch you when you feel like you’re going to fall, just like those acrobats trusted each other. God may be big and strong, but He’ll never crush you. Everything God does in our lives is perfect, even if doesn’t always look that way on the outside. Your friends in the sideshow taught you that.’’

‘‘I miss them all so much,’’ I said. ‘‘They were my family, and I haven’t been able to talk about any of them for ten years.’’

‘‘You’ll miss Gabe, too,’’ she said, laying her hand on my shoulder. ‘‘We all will. But even if Gabe was still here, he couldn’t meet all of your needs. Only God can do that. Gabe could help you work in the orchard, but only God can make the apples grow.’’

Later that morning I took a walk out in the orchard. I knew it was high time I talked to God. I told Him all the things I was sorry for, all the things I was afraid of, and I asked Him to help me keep this orchard going. When I opened my eyes and looked around, I saw that Aunt Batty was right—God was right there beside me. The tree branches were His hands, reaching out to me—and He held the gift of an apple in every single one of them.

One cool, fall morning the apple pickers began to arrive. At first I felt nervous about trying to manage the harvest all by myself, but then I started thinking about how smoothly the Bennett Brothers’ Circus had run. I realized that no one person had tried to run that huge operation all alone, but everyone had worked together like a team, each person doing the job he did best. Some of my apple pickers had been coming to Wyatt Orchards for years and years and probably knew a lot more about it than I did, so I divvied up the work and paid the experienced ones a little bit extra to be my foremen. They thought of things I would have forgotten all about and kept me from making a lot of mistakes.

When it came time to take the apples to the open-air market, I thought about the fast-talking ballyhoo of the sideshow hawker with his
‘‘Hurry, hurry...don’t miss your chance,’’
and when I realized that those fast-talking apple buyers were putting on an act just like that hawker, I wasn’t afraid of them anymore. Aunt Peanut and Gloria the fat lady and Albert the albino had faced all those gawking people with strength and dignity, knowing they were just as good as the next fellow, so I stood tall and proud, too, when those buyers started gawking at me, a woman selling apples. I got the price I wanted and made enough money to pay my workers and buy the coal and other supplies my family would need for the winter. We didn’t have any extras, but thank God we had enough.

Once I’d sold the apples, I swallowed my pride and went over to talk to Alvin Greer and some of my other neighbors about working together to slaughter the pigs and pick the corn. I let my neighbors borrow some of Frank’s fancy equipment, and asked them for their advice about running things in return. Frank Wyatt had lived alone, worked alone, and died alone, and I made up my mind I would never be like him.

All through the harvest, Aunt Batty worked like a trooper right alongside me. The kids and I had all grown to love her, and since she’d retired from writing books, I begged her to stay with us and live with us and be our adopted grandmother. My daddy had never been very good at telling me he loved me, but I remembered how I’d longed to hear him say it, and I started telling my kids I loved them—all the time. I told Aunt Batty, too.

Gradually, the pain I felt over losing Gabe began to heal—just as my grief had healed after Sam died. I still got an empty feeling whenever I went into the workshop where Gabe used to sleep, or whenever I saw Myrtle and her calf, or when I watched the boys push Becky on her swing. But I only thought about Gabe once or twice a day now, instead of once or twice every hour, so I knew that my grief was slowly easing. Maybe one of these days I wouldn’t think about him at all.