Rorey's Secret (11 page)

Behind me, Franky continued his quiet recitation. Hearing him speak day to day and knowing how he still struggled to read, I found it was easy to forget how good his memory was, and how flawlessly he could repeat the words he heard our pastor say. Samuel didn’t wake or even move a muscle. But hearing the Ninety-first Psalm in the quiet of that room gave me peace.

“Because thou has’ made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee . . .”

10

Sarah

Emmie’d said last night was a bad night. Well, this was starting out to be a pretty bad day too. I kind of felt like screaming, if it would’ve helped anything at all. Daddy was just lying there downstairs in his bed. I wasn’t sure if he could get up if he did wake. And now Robert and Harry were accusing Franky of setting that fire.

Maybe it
was
Franky. Maybe he’d gone and fought with Lester, and they’d overturned a lantern. Or maybe he’d fought with Rorey. She would fight. She’d been in fights before. And Franky’d been in one just yesterday.

Why couldn’t he have just told on her? Maybe none of this would’ve happened if he would have just told his pa whatever he’d found Rorey up to.

I looked over at Georgie on the bed, knowing it wouldn’t be long before he woke up. Especially after Harry came up to Robert’s room the way he did, with no particular effort to be quiet. I knew I should go back downstairs pretty soon. We’d have to get breakfast for everybody who didn’t have sandwiches, and there was plenty more besides that to do. Mom would be occupied with Bert and Frank and Thelma’s new baby. Not to mention Dad.

Lord, heal my daddy. Wake him up.
I couldn’t think of anything else to pray. I couldn’t think of anything more scary than having him lying there so still.

But another voice was nagging me, chasing away my prayers and making me feel guilty for even praying them.

It’s your fault. It’s your fault! And nothing will be right until you tell.

I knew I had to go back downstairs. I should tell Mom what I knew about Rorey first thing. But for a minute I stood looking at myself in the little wall mirror, wondering what Rorey might be thinking right now. Was she worrying about my dad and her brothers? Was she praying for them?

Down inside I really didn’t care what Robert or Harry said. Because even if Franky had started the fire, it probably had something to do with Rorey, who shouldn’t have been up, and Lester, who shouldn’t have been coming over. Then it wouldn’t be Franky’s fault, would it? It was Rorey’s fault. Surely it was. Rorey should’ve known better. At thirteen, she was too young for a boyfriend. But old enough to know it.

It wasn’t my fault. All I’d done was promise not to tell. And that’s what friends do. Who could expect me to do anything different? A promise is a promise, and Rorey would expect me to keep it. Of course she would. Even now.

Mom was being strong. And I knew I’d better get that way too, even though I was afraid I’d cry again if I went downstairs. But maybe Daddy was waking up right now. Maybe he’d smile that glad-to-see-my-pumpkin smile again. And then sit up and have breakfast and be just fine.

I could hope so. I could maybe even expect it, except I was afraid of feeling worse if it didn’t happen.

I looked out the window and saw Katie coming back to the house with a basket of eggs. Why couldn’t I be like Katie? Katie was always doing the things she was supposed to be doing. She was never in on any of Rorey’s trouble.

I remembered Rorey refusing to take Katie along two winters ago when she wanted to go sledding in back of the school. We’d crashed into the outhouse and broken the door, and then I wished I hadn’t gone either. And Rorey had never wanted to play beauty shop with Katie when we were little, so Katie wasn’t the one who got in trouble for having cut-up hair. Rorey never would tell Katie her secrets.

I used to think I was the lucky one for being Rorey’s best friend. Not anymore.

Georgie stirred on the bed with a little chuckle and rolled enough for his legs to plop over the side again. I scooted him, not wanting him to fall. And he opened his eyes and looked at me with a merry smile.

“Sarwah,” he told me. “I stay-ed at your house.”

“Yes. You did. Do you need to hurry down to the outhouse?”

“We gots a pot unner the bed at my house.”

“I know. But we usually use those only if somebody’s sick.”

“Mommy sick?” He suddenly frowned.

“No. She’s fine. And you have a baby sister. Remember?”

“Dat baby?”

“Yeah. You wanna go see her?”

“Me baby.” He pointed to his chest and looked at me kind of sideways, as if he were challenging me to disagree.

“You were. You still are. Sort of. But you’re a big brother now too.”

“Carry me?”

“Oh, Georgie.”

But he wasn’t very big. I knew I could, so I did, and we went downstairs together.

Mom and Mr. Post were standing in the bedroom doorway as I got to the base of the stairs. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to interrupt.

“He’s always been strong,” Mr. Post was saying. “’Fore we know it, he’ll be up helpin’ George get on his feet again.”

Mom just nodded, looking back into the room.

“I told those boys to let the pastor know if they get the chance. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was to come right out here. It’d be like him.”

Mom didn’t say anything. I hoped the pastor did come. I hoped he brought his wife, because she was Mom’s best friend. Delores was good, but nobody talked and laughed with Mom the way Juanita Jones did. She oughta be here because it would make Mom feel better.

“Down! Down!” Georgie suddenly protested, his eyes turned to the sitting room, where we could see his mother on the davenport. I put him down, and he scooted away.

“Need me to do the milkin’ for ya?” Mr. Post was asking. “Gonna be a full day for you, seems like.”

“Yes, thank you,” Mom told him. “I’d appreciate that.”

Mr. Post didn’t look how he usually did. Gray and serious in a way I didn’t like. Mom told him where the milk pail was and thanked him again, and he went outside.

Tell.
I felt the prompting inside me.
Now. Tell Mom about Rorey and her boyfriend.

I was close to doing it. I might have done it. But Emmie came running at us all of a sudden.

“Can I he’p make breakfast?” she begged. “Is Pa comin’ over? Did they go to bed at our house?”

“I expect he’ll be over eventually,” Mom answered. “But I doubt they went to bed.”

Mom looked so tired herself. I wanted to help her so she could rest. “Mom, Katie and me can make breakfast. You could sit down or something.”

“Thank you, but you girls weren’t upstairs long enough to catch even forty winks. You ought to go back—”

“We can take a nap later. Honest, we can make breakfast. Emmie can help.”

Emma Grace jumped up and down. “Yeah! It’ll be fun! An’ we can carry some right to Mr. Wortham an’ anybody else that don’t wanna get up an’ come to the table.”

Mom nodded, but she had an odd sort of look on her face. I figured maybe Emmie saying that might have hurt her a little. But Emmie didn’t know any better.

“Thank you,” Mom finally said. “That’s very kind. It would be a blessing if you girls would make breakfast.”

She turned and walked back toward Daddy in the bedroom. And I went in the kitchen with Emmie pulling on my hand. I wondered what was the matter with that little girl anyhow, that she didn’t take a bit of consideration over what had happened. She didn’t even ask if they still had a house. I guessed they did, from what Robert had said, but it was probably not in very good shape.

Katie was standing at the counter already, wearing an apron and looking in one of Mom’s cookbooks. “Let’s make pancakes,” she suggested. “I remember how to make the syrup, and that’s one thing we can add to and stretch no matter who all shows up.”

There wasn’t a thing wrong with her deciding for that or saying so, but I was suddenly mad again. “A bunch of cornmeal mush would only take one big pot,” I told her, not very kindly.

She answered as calmly as she ever did. “Well, all right, if you think it’d be easier. But Dad doesn’t like mush very much.”

Dummy!
I wanted to tell her.
Do you see Dad sitting at the table, asking for breakfast?

“I’m kind of hoping when he wakes up he’ll be hungry,” she went on, as though she’d heard my thoughts. “Maybe I’m just being silly, but I wanted to make one of his favorites, just in case.”

I stood there for a minute as Emmie jumped up on a chair and asked to help again. Why did Katie have to be so perfect? That was such a nice way to think, a nice way to try to trust. And I wasn’t being very nice. At least not to her. “Okay, then,” I managed to answer. “We can make the pancakes.”

She was looking at me kind of straight. “Remember what you told me. Mom said he’d be all right.”

I didn’t want to answer her a word. I didn’t even want to stay in the kitchen right then because I felt like such a crosspatch compared to Katie. But I’d promised Mom, and it wouldn’t be right to leave Katie to cook alone with Emmie right in the middle of things. “I’ll measure the flour,” I told her. “How big a batch do you think we’ll need?”

“Maybe triple,” she said. “If the rest of the Hammonds get here. What do you think?”

We started in, filling the bread bowl with pancake batter before long.

“I bet Rorey’ll be over soon,” Katie told me at one point.

I didn’t answer. But I couldn’t quit thinking about Rorey and how she’d looked in the crazy light of that fire. She hadn’t made any effort to approach me last night. Even when everybody else had run to find Daddy and Berty, she’d stayed back. And I wasn’t anxious for her to come walking in now in time for pancakes.

11

Julia

Franky stood as still as stone beside the bed, his psalm finished. I walked up beside him, thinking that it might be time to move the ice to Samuel’s leg for a few minutes and then back before it melted. Or maybe I should use more of the plantain and comfrey as a wash for his leg again and the back of his head.

I might’ve been all right with Samuel sleeping long. I think I would’ve been, except that I knew there was no way I could’ve kept on sleeping if someone had pushed ice behind my head. I thought of his mother suddenly. Would she want to know what was going on? How would she react?

“Samuel,” I said softly, “I’m going to be moving the ice just a little and washing the area with some of the herb again.”

Maybe it was silly to talk out loud, but I wanted him to hear me. I didn’t expect him to open his eyes. But he did. He looked first at me, then at Franky, and I felt like I could breathe again.

“Oh, Sammy.”

“Juli . . . I’m thirsty . . .”

I smiled, delighted to find him “talking like himself,” as Delores put it, and asking for something. I grabbed the glass of water off the nightstand and did my best to help him sip at it carefully.

“I made nettle and mullein tea, Samuel. It might help the pain if you think you can manage it.”

“Yeah. I’ll try.”

Excited as a child, I ran to the kitchen for a cup of the medicine tea I’d left at the back of the stove to stay warm.

“Thank the Lord,” I told the girls as I rushed past them. “Your dad’s awake.”

Kate smiled. Sarah dropped what she was doing and followed me back into the bedroom.

Samuel didn’t say anything when we came in. I gave him the tea right away, and he took two or three sips in a row before stopping and looking up at me.

“Thank you,” he said.

I set the cup down and gingerly gave him a hug. “How are you feeling?”

He looked over at Sarah and Franky. I thought maybe he didn’t want to tell me with them standing there. But slowly he spoke, looking at them. “Don’t worry. I’m all right. Just tired.”

Sarah smiled. “Gonna be hungry soon?”

I knew the hope in her voice. Samuel did too. “Maybe so, pumpkin,” he answered her quietly.

“We’re making pancakes for you,” Sarah went on with a sparkle in her eyes. “You want a spoon of vanilla in the syrup?”

“Sure,” he told her. “That’d be great.”

“Okay. We’ll have it ready pretty quick.” She gave me a little hug and then rushed up to kiss her father’s cheek before leaving for the kitchen again. I knew Samuel had calmed her fears just that easily. I only hoped he really would be hungry.

Only Franky stood there beside me now. I knew the relief in him too.

“Don’t worry ’bout them orders we got comin’ due, Mr. Wortham,” he said. “I’ll take care a’ the sandin’ on Mrs. Calloway’s cedar chest today an’ see that she’s happy with it. I’ll start the Porters’ rockin’ chair too, so you don’t have to be thinkin’ on none a’ that.”

“Thank you,” Samuel whispered. “You’re a good partner.”

I wondered how much work Franky could do with his hands the way they were. But I had no doubt he’d try. I thought of Robert and Richard again and hoped they’d be back quickly with the doctor.

“Mr. Post is milkin’,” Franky continued. “But I’ll make sure all your animals got feed an’ water since Robert ain’t here. Anythin’ else you want done, you jus’ let me know.”

“Franky, are you sure your hands are all right?” I asked.

“Nothin’ but a scratch or two,” he answered me, though he absolutely knew that I knew better. “Nothin’ to stop a body from gettin’ a few things done.”

I wondered at him. Perhaps he wasn’t wanting Samuel to know he’d been hurt. So I only nodded. “Make sure you get some breakfast,” I told him. “I’ll let you know when the doctor gets here.”

“I’m glad you’re seemin’ all right, Mr. Wortham,” he said and turned to the door. For a moment he hesitated.

“Thank you, Frank,” Samuel told him.

Franky didn’t say anything more. He just went to see about the animals like he’d promised.

“I’m sorry if I had people worried,” Samuel told me as soon as we were alone.

“We just care so much about you. Everybody’s wanting you to be fine.”

“I will be,” he said.

“You’re still hurting, though, aren’t you?”

He managed a bit of a smile. “What can we expect? I guess the barn fell on me.”