Mittman, Stephanie (22 page)

Between
ironing and mending on Thursday, Annie took down the summer curtains and dusted
the windows. The weather had turned much colder as the week wore on, and
Saturday she hoped to get Bart to help her put up the heavy drapes and bring
the warmer blankets down from the attic.

Friday
she pickled tomatoes and canned plums. Willa ate.

Saturday
Ethan brought home his dirty laundry and, since he was there, decided to stay
for dinner. After dinner he asked Annie to mend some trousers and sew on a
couple of buttons and wound up spending the night.

For
the most part, the days were the same as always, filled with enough work to
tire her body but never enough to turn off her mind. And so while she cooked
and cleaned and milked and minded the chickens, she dreamed. She dreamed of the
fancy house on Summit Street with the hot water heater in the kitchen and the
sparkling Sterling range. She dreamed of buying her milk and butter instead of
coaxing it out of Edwina and Harry. She dreamed of lights that came on with the
touch of a button. She dreamed of setting the table for a man who would say to
her the things that Bart said to Willa. Well, a girl could dream.

The
daydreams were a comfort to her, but those that came at night, they were
different. She'd lie in the dark listening to the sounds of Willa and Bart,
who, while they'd quieted down some had decided for reasons of their own that
Annie knew more about safe childbearing than Willa's mother.

They'd
moan softly, or cry out, or just simply whisper and giggle while she tossed and
turned in the big bed that had once held Francie and Della and her all
together. And in her throat she would feel that soft moan rising up as Noah had
pressed his lips to her, and she would taste the cider that lingered on his
tongue, and she would pull the pillow tighter and tighter against her chest as
the peaks of her breasts stiffened until she would finally fall asleep.

But
sleep gave her no relief. In her dreams there was always Noah Eastman, Noah
with his soft lips and his easy smile and his strong hands. Hands that he used
to pull her to him, hands that held her tight against his body, so tight she
could hardly breathe, and she'd wake up gasping for breath and hoping she
hadn't been heard by Willa or Bart.

By
Sunday she was at the end of her rope. Without even giving Ethan an argument
when he refused to get up, she dragged herself to church. She was reluctant to
face Miller after the dreams she couldn't control, afraid to let Noah see her
for fear that her emotions, as always, were written on her face. Bart, sensing
her hesitation, extended one hand to her and one to his wife as they entered
the Pleasant Township Methodist Church.

***

Miller
watched the various congregants enter his church. He raised his head and smiled
at one or another, lowered his head to put the finishing touches on his sermon,
raised it again in time to see Bart Morrow coming in with his wife on one arm
and his sister on the other. Sissy looked tired and pale and her eyes remained
downcast as she made her way to her usual row and then slid into the pew to
join the rest of her family.

He
hoped she wasn't ill. He couldn't go down that path again. It was one of the
things he liked best about Sissy Morrow: she was never ill. And she was so much
younger than he. Surely she would outlive him and he would never have to nurse
her the way he had done with his dear Elvira.

Elvira.
A smile touched his lips. He turned it toward some incoming parishioners, but
the smile was for her, for the good, proud woman he had married with never a
moment's regret.

Though
they had never bothered him, her humble beginnings had embarrassed Elvira for
long after they were married, but he remembered the moment it all changed for
her. They had been having dinner with Dr. Hamilton at the Xenia Seminary in
Bellefontaine.

Jokingly,
or perhaps only half so, he had said that the best way to get people to
services in the winter was to be sure the church was warmer than their homes.
"Perhaps then the new furnace, rather than your wonderful sermons, is
responsible for your great success," Elvira had teased.

"A
new furnace?" Hamilton had exclaimed. "But how fortunate you are!
I've been pleading for one for two years, but I cannot get the school to pay
for it! How ever did you manage?"

It
had come out then that Elvira was Elmer Wells's daughter.

To
her surprise, Hamilton had said, "Oh, but you're a lucky one, Winestock.
Imagine! Not only is your wife beautiful and smart, but your father-in-law is
in the most important business we have in our country today. Not counting the
railroads and the mines, of course."

He
still had his loyal congregation and his lovely home and his memories. And soon
enough, for the days just rushed through his fingers, he would have a new wife
to keep him fed and see to his needs.

"We
will start today on page—" he began, only to be interrupted by the Eastman
family, late as usual. He waited with exaggerated patience for them to take
their seats. "Page twenty-two of the Plymouth Hymnal. All rise."

It
was amazing, when he thought about it, that he could conduct a whole service
while his mind was on a hundred other things, some mundane, some as important
as his ordination or his wedding.

Today,
though, his thoughts were on Noah Eastman. The man troubled him greatly, though
he couldn't really say why. Was it the fact that he had lied about his wife?
Miller had to admit that in all honesty the man had never said his wife had
perished in that awful flood. He had said he couldn't talk about it. And since
he had lost his parents and relatives, that was certainly understandable.

"In
the hymnal.

Damnation,
why did he have to be so fair? Was it because he was a minister that he always
gave everyone the benefit of the doubt? Couldn't the man simply irritate him
without making him feel guilty about that very irritation?

And
why did Eastman insist on calling Sissy "Annie" when everyone in the
county had called her Sissy since she was barely able to walk? The man came to
Van Wert, and suddenly Sissy Morrow wasn't Sissy anymore.

His
sermon was all about respect. Respect for each other, respect for one's
parents, one's elders, one's memories. Respect in the end for the Lord, though
"God is no respecter of persons" (Acts 10:34), and so on. He spoke of
respect for the dead and wondered whether his congregants took his words at
face value or looked deeper into his meaning, surmising that he meant Elvira
or, with the funds he had collected, Wylene Eastman. He supposed each listener
attached his own meaning, remembered his own dead, and this morning he didn't
care.

He
couldn't see Sissy. He wished he had the nerve to ask the women in his parish
not to wear those ridiculous oversized hats to his services. Jane Lutefoot
blocked his view of three of the Morrows and two of the Montgomerys behind
them.

"May
God in his infinite wisdom be merciful."

It
was over.

"Excuse
me," cried a voice from the back. "Before you all leave—"

"Mr.
Eastman?" He had felt it in his bones, and bones simply didn't lie.
"Do you have an announcement?"

"It's
about my furnace," he began.

Miller
groaned loudly enough to be heard all the way in the back of the church.

"I've
gone over the whole installation and found a serious defect."

"In
your
furnace," Miller reminded him.

"Yes,"
the man replied, "in
my
furnace. But there may be the same defect
in yours"—he pointed to Samuel Dow—"or yours." This time he
pointed straight at Miller himself.

"The
pipe that connects the furnace to the rest of the house rotted through, due to
the heat, even though there was an adjustable thimble to guard against just
such an event. I am convinced that the metal used for the conduits was too soft
and too easily melted and I believe that had I not found the weak spot in the
pipe I would have had a fire in my house and perhaps lost it-—and my family
along with it."

His
family. The comment only served to remind Miller that he had lied about that
very family. "If, as you claim, the connecting pipe would have caused a
fire, why haven't there been any fires? Many of us have furnaces in our
cellars. There have been no fires."

"I
lost my house last year," Brian Kelly said, rising with his hat clutched
in his hand. "Lost our darling Bethy, too."

"What
kind of furnace did you have?" Eastman asked, but Miller refused to let
Kelly answer.

"This
is ridiculous!" he exclaimed. "I cannot believe that a furnace pipe
installed fifteen years ago, problem-free until now, could cause a fire. If it
were going to do so, it would have done its damage a long time ago."

"Not
if it took all these years to weaken the metal to the point of breaking
through," Eastman explained.

"Mr.
Eastman, I fear you are an alarmist, and I must ask that you not use my church
to frighten the good people of Van Wert. You are a stranger here, and you must
be forgiven for not understanding this, but we in Van Wert are a community. We
watch out for each other. We care about each other. And the men who built those
furnaces and installed them were our own people. They would never have done
anything to endanger the lives of their neighbors."

Everyone
turned to look at Eastman. Miller saw the backs of their heads and couldn't
read their faces. He only knew that Eastman's claim was ridiculous and he
couldn't let him tarnish a man's reputation with scurrilous claims.

"I'm
only suggesting that people check their furnaces. Make sure there is no danger.
What can be the harm in that? If you have a Wells furnace, you should make sure
that the pipes are sound. Have you never heard that it's better to be safe than
sorry?"

The
congregation turned back to him as one, questioning eyes looking to him for
guidance. "There's a Wells furnace in this very building, Mr. Eastman. Why
don't you and I and some of the others go down right now and check it
out?"

"Excellent,"
Eastman said, as if he'd won his point.

"And
if we find it to be sound, I want no more talk of this matter in my church.
Agreed?"

"But
lives could be at stake," he said.

Miller
had no doubt that the man was in earnest, no matter how misguided he was.
"No more, Mr. Eastman. Agreed?"

"I
can't agree to risking people's lives when I know that there is a problem in
that flue system."

"Let's
go take a look, Mr. Winestock," Bart Morrow suggested. "If there's no
problem here, I won't bother lookin' at home."

"We
don't have a—" Sissy began, but Bart hushed her. He was a good man, Miller
thought. The rest of the community respected him and he'd be a powerful ally,
should he ever need one.

Bart,
Mr. Eastman, Mr. Kelly, and several other men accompanied the minister to the
bowels of the church where a Wells furnace, its emblem of shiny red letters
affixed to the front, stood waiting for cold weather to set in.

Eastman,
in the lead, ran his hand up the back of the pipe that protruded from the top
of the furnace. "It's sound," he said, surprise in his voice.
"Of course, it should be taken apart, checked from the inside, but it
feels all right." He knocked against it with his fist, and the sound, deep
and resonant, echoed in the high-ceilinged room.

"Well
then," the minister said.

"Who
else has these furnaces?" Eastman asked. "We should check them
all."

"I'm
sure I don't know," Miller said. He didn't add that it would not be a very
difficult matter for him to find out.

***

Noah
had no doubt that his furnace and any others installed in the same way would
cause a fire.

"Anything
left of your house?" he asked the man who had said he'd lost his house and
daughter the year before.

The
man shook his head.

"Was
it a Wells furnace?"

Again
the man shook his head. "I don't recall. It didn't look like this one,
that's for sure."

Noah
looked at the big church furnace. "Neither does mine," he admitted.

"Well,"
Bart said, looking around the room at Kelly and the other men, "I guess
that settles it. Eastman's furnace ain't any kinda trend or nothin'."

"Would
it hurt to look at other furnaces?" Noah asked, hoping his exasperation
didn't show. "Closing your eyes to the problem won't make it go
away." Though everyone in Van Wert seemed to think it would. And hadn't
he, many times, been guilty of the same thing? But not when it could mean
lives. Never when it could mean lives.

"Look
all you want," one of the men said. "You got time to waste this time
of year, go ahead. I got corn shocks to cut, a field of clover seed waiting to
be hulled, cattle cars to bed, hogs to ship. With the weather gettin' colder so
fast, I ain't got time to go pokin' around in other people's cellars."

Winestock
clearly wasn't pleased with the man's less than charitable concern for his
fellow man. With a withering look he said, "Time for neighbors is time
well spent, Mr. Webb. And if I believed for moment that there was even the
threat of a problem, I would lead the charge into every cellar in Van Wert to
make sure my people were safe. As I am sure you would."