The House Near the River Page 12

  Wrinkled deepened on the woman’s forehead. She seemed deeply puzzled. “You know I can’t see,” she said.

  “No, I didn’t realize.” It was true. The old eyes didn’t look at her, but stared into empty space.

  “Macular degeneration, one of the curses of old age. I have arthritis too, that’s why I’m in this chair.” This was said matter-of-factly and not as a plea for sympathy. Old people sometimes had things go wrong with their bodies; Aunt Kay seemed to accept that matter-of-factly.

  “I’m sorry,” Angie said and again. Aunt Kay seemed to listen closely. Angie supposed that she depended on her sense of hearing to make up for not being to see.

  “Say something else,” she said abruptly.

  “What?”

  “Say a poem or something from the Bible,” the order was not to be ignored.

  “In the beginning,” Angie felt she had no choice but to comply, though she’d never been very good at memory verses. “God created the heavens and the earth . . .or something like that,” she finished weakly.

  “Ange,” Shirley Kay whispered. “After all the times I listened to you read us stories, I’d know that voice anywhere.”

  Angie hardly knew what to say.

  “Why did they tell me my sister’s granddaughter was coming?”

  “I am her granddaughter. My name is Angie Ward.”

  “You’re Ange.”

  Angie sighed. “That too.”

  She could almost see the wheels turning in the elderly woman’s brain. “The little girl baby that Rose Sharon found.”

  “Found?”

  Shirley Kay’s mouth tightened into a stubborn line. The subject was not one she cared to address.

  “My grandmother was trying to tell me something before her stroke. I hoped you might know something about what she wanted to say.”

  The tight line didn’t soften. She’d have to start somewhere else.

  “You all changed from being called by your first names to your second. How come?”

  Sightless eyes blinked. “My sister had been sick and missed some school so that we were leaving home at the same time. Sharon was married and she and her husband were looking after the home place. Anna Fay and I were going to Norman to school. We were going to be so sophisticated, so different, so we decided Fay and Kay sounded more up-to-date.” Her laughter was almost a giggle. “Sharon said she wanted to be sophisticated too, so she would be Rose.

  “It was a really special night, our last together with we three girls staying awake half the night in the big bedroom. We planned our entire lives that night.” She paused a moment then went on, “Things didn’t always go as we’d hoped, but on the whole it’s been a good life. And now they’re all gone but me.”

  Suddenly Angie couldn’t stand it any longer. “What happened to Matthew?”

  The eyes blinked again, their graying lashes sweeping the thin face. “He left. He went away. We missed him so. Mother married Tobe.”

  “And the baby that your sister found?”

  Aunt Kay seemed to have forgotten that she didn’t want to talk about that. “Oh, that was much later. We’d just lost Fay and I’d gone to the farm to stay with Rose and her family until the funeral. She was so young and we were feeling so awful.” She reached out a shaking hand and Angie took it in her own. “Young to me, not to you, “ she explained. “I was a grandmother already, but your mother couldn’t have children and she and Clarence were just heart broken. They’d tried to adopt but it was so hard and took so long.”

  Margaret was Angie’s mother. She nodded even though she knew her aunt wouldn’t see the gesture. She was afraid to speak for fear she would stop the monologue.

  “We were at the farm alone, the others had gone to town for dinner, but we didn’t feel up to it. The dark came early because it was a winter night. Rose went out to make sure the calves’ pen was shut up good. She was gone so long I almost went looking for her. When she came back, she had a newborn baby in her arms.”

  “How did you know it was newborn?” To save her life Angie couldn’t have kept from asking the question.

  Aunt Kay gave a snort of laughter. “I’m no fool. The babe hadn’t been even cleaned up yet and the cord had just been cut. She was naked and wrapped in a blanket.”

  “Surely Grandma gave you some sort of explanation?”

  Aunt Kay chuckled. “Told me she found the baby in the cabbages. It was an old tale they told sometimes little children. A silly one, no cabbages were growing in the midst of the winter.”

  “But you couldn’t have just accepted her walking in with a baby like that?”

  “You were acquainted with your grandmother?” she asked in a tart voice. “And you ask that question? Besides she was my big sister. I figured some girl she knew who wasn’t supposed to be having a baby came by. No doubt she asked Rose to help her find the baby a home.”

  “Like a lost puppy!” Angie protested. After all that baby was her.

  “It seemed Heaven sent. There were your mom and dad wanting a baby so badly and a girl who couldn’t keep her baby. When they came home, your grandmother showed them the baby and told them it was available for adoption. She had a lawyer friend who could work out all the legal details.”

  “But the mother. She had to sign off in approval, it’s surely not that simple.”

  “Rose and the lawyer took care of everything. I didn’t go back to Oklahoma much after that because my husband died and I had to support myself and do what I could for my family. But your grandmother wrote to me and I wrote to her. I have some pictures of the baby when she was a little thing, but after that they kind of dwindled off.” She shook her head. “Sad the way close kin can be so separated and now I’ll never see Rose again in this life.”

  A small boy broke into their solitude. “Snacks are ready, Gran,” he announced cheerfully.

  She nodded and he got behind her chair to push her forward. “Funny thing,” she said, “the very next day Rose made our husbands get out and remove the old tombstone in the back yard. Said she couldn’t stand having the depressing thing around any longer.”

  “Maybe,” Angie said, “that’s because the name on the tombstone was the same as that on the baby’s birth certificate.”

  Aunt Kay’s face took on a look of disapproval. “I kept my sister’s secrets as long as she was alive.”

  They went into a pretty, sparkling kitchen where slices of apple pie were laid in plates around the table along with cups of coffee for the three women and glasses of milk for the boys.

  After they were seated and the boys were eagerly eating their pie, Aunt Kay had one last comment. “Come back to us, Ange,” she begged. “I’m afraid if you don’t, nothing will be the same.”

  “Gran,” her granddaughter corrected gently as the young so often do with the old. “Her name is Angie.”

  “Oh, yes,” Aunt Kay said. “I forgot.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Dad and Aunt Kay had been right. Angie stood beside the old grave back of the house, not so well tended now with knee-deep winter grass yellowing around it, though someone had made an attempt to clear weeds and grass from the grave itself. The fence was as tumbled down as the house itself.

  The grave was unmarked. No stone stood identifying its long sleeping occupant.

  She had changed her return flight from Michigan, coming home instead to Will Rogers Airport in Oklahoma City where she rented a small van to drive to Grandma’s farm.

  She knew from Dad that the land was leased to local farmers, though these days grass and wheat grew in the fields instead of cotton.

  She hadn’t told Amanda she was coming because she knew she needed to be alone for what she intended doing.

  The air around her was alive with invitations. Cracks in time appeared in kaleidoscope fashion, coming and going so fast she couldn’t even think
about reacting to them.

  But for some unknown reason this was the place where it happened and that was why she was here.

  Her heart beat fast and she was breathing as hard as though she’d been running. The mystery was here and she wanted answers.

  She could be patient. She had come prepared this time. She had a bedroll, purchased at the nearest box store, and plenty of bottled water and food. This might take a while, but she could catch a nap in the back of her van or eat when she got hungry.

  If it took days, she still would see this through.

  Angie walked around the farm, looking at fallen pens and bits of rotten lumber, envisioning how the farmyard had once been full of animals and the house of children. She poked around the edges of the house, afraid to step foot inside because of the many hazards. She could step on an exposed nail or what was left of the roof could fall in on her. Out here by herself, such an accident could be deadly.

  Though this time she had a working cell phone that was fully charged. Back in Clemmie’s day dependable phone service still wasn’t available out here in the country. The store, the school and very few homes had phones at all and these were the kind of polished wooden boxes that hung on the wall. You had to crank them up for power and then yell a number at the operator in hopes of being heard.

  Yep, they’d come a long way since then, Angie supposed, but wasn’t so sure in her own mind.

  Certainly there was more acceptance for differences between people. She’d seen few blacks or Orientals in her stay in 1946, not in western Oklahoma, and the names they were called had shocked her. At least in the 2000s they paid lip service to respecting each other and the mix of people was so much more obvious.

  But homes were less secure, divorce and blended families the norm. Things were better for half the world as women had gained more opportunities, but for children life was a hard battle and the world an increasingly dangerous place.

  Clemmie’s kids had worked hard, but they’d known a freedom to run wild and explore the world that parents today would be afraid to grant their children. Most of her friends feared to allow small children to play unsupervised in their own yards .

  Once she’d been young enough to believe in progress, in a world that was gradually being perfected. Now she just believed in change. Some things got better, some got worse.

  Finally she sat down on the back porch. Made of stones, it had survived where the wooden front porch had fallen in. She looked at the lightning streaks of openings into other times that flashed by her.

  They no longer seemed to command her, to force her attention, but rather were an invitation she could accept or not as she chose.

  Her heart beat fast from excitement, not fear. What was there to be afraid of?

  She saw glimpses of other times that were both behind and before her. The farmland around her bloomed into huge wind chargers like the ones she’d seen dotted throughout the state and she knew she looked at the future. She laughed. How her mom had complained about the unceasing Oklahoma wind, saying it was enough to drive a person out of her mind to hear that unceasing howling.

  “We never guessed wind could be worth much, did we, Mom?”

  And then she saw her mother, getting out of a shining new car. She remembered photos of that automobile. Her mom and dad’s first new car. Mom was younger than she’d ever remembered seeing her and she looked so happy.

  Before she could give in to temptation and run to her mother, the image was gone, and she was almost glad. Being with that version of her mother, younger than she now was herself, was more than she could bear. Some things weren’t meant to happen.

  Other visions flashed by, but not the ones she was hoping to catch. She wanted to see Matthew, but though she occasionally glimpsed Clemmie, the kids, even Tobe working at chores around the farm, the tall, lean man with the quiet face did not appear.

  She waited. When early darkness began to fall, she managed a simple supper of bread, cheese and an apple and then climbed into her makeshift bed in the back of the van. The wind that might bring future gold to Oklahoma farmlands sang in the night and the coyotes were silent.

  Unlike the last time she’d spent the night outside the house, she slept well and without the memory of dreams. She’d brushed her teeth and washed her face and was thinking about breakfast when she started to notice the flashes again. She had begun to learn that she could tune them out, lessening the pull they had on her by her own will. What caught her attention this morning was the familiarity of the scenes she was seeing. She saw Clemmie in her garden, then the children, Shirley Kay and Anna playing with their dolls on the porch, Sharon and Danny throwing a ball between them.

  She poured still warm coffee from her thermos and, sipping it, continued to watch. Then she saw Matthew and sat frozen as he, a long dirty sack strapped over his shoulder, grasped boll after boll of fluffy cotton into capable hands, steadily filling the sack. But the field wasn’t here at the farm, the soil was black, not red, and the workers around him were not familiar to her.

  She started toward him, calling his name, when another opening appeared on her other side. “Clemmie wept silently over the bedside of a child, who tossed restlessly, his face blushed red with fever and his eyes wild with delusion. Danny! Danny was dying.

  When she glanced back at the other image, Matthew was gone and only the gray sky of an October afternoon backed up the crumbling house. She willed herself to sustain the continuing vision of the sick child and flung herself into it, stepping into the front bedroom of Grandma’s house to where the scent of fever and illness was in the air.

  Clemmie cried out wordlessly at the sight of her, then grasped her in a fierce hug. “Oh, Ange, if you only knew how I prayed for you to come.”

  Angie hugged her back, “What’s wrong with Danny?” she whispered, though it was obvious that no sound could reach the boy who appeared to be out of his mind with fever.

  “What’s wrong with all of them? The children are all sick. The doctor says it’s food poisoning and he’s doing what he can.”

  “Why aren’t they in the hospital?”

  “It’s so far, Ange, and they’re too sick to be moved. The girls are in the other bedroom, but Danny’s the worst. He doesn’t even know me.”

  Desperately Angie told herself they’d all live. Grandma had survived to old age, back in Michigan Shirley Kay was still alive, calling herself Kay. They’d said Anna had passed away in her middle years and that Danny was gone, but she’d had the impression he’d lived to be an adult.

  But were those fixed facts or could they be changed?

  “Tobe has to work and though the doctor thinks it’s food poisoning, he said to keep everybody out in case it is contagious.” Her eyes widened in horror. “You shouldn’t be here, Ange. Get out before it’s too late.”

  “I’m here, Clemmie. It’s already too late and anyway, you must have help to care for the children.”

  Clemmie looked as though she were about to protest further, but Angie ignored her, insisting on seeing the girls. They greeted her weakly but with joy from their bed in the room she’d shared with David. She was relieved that though pale and weak looking, they by no means appeared to be as sick as Danny.

  She hugged them and asked Clemmie about their symptoms. She sure wasn’t medically trained, but the decades in which she’d lived had shown considerable development in knowledge. Maybe something she knew could help here.

  “Throwing up and well, coming out the other end as well. Can’t keep a thing down ‘til I’m afraid to urge them to eat.”

  Sharon looked sick at the idea of food while Anna made gagging sounds. “I’m hungry,” Shirley Kay said.

  “She throws up, then wants to eat,” Clemmie explained ruefully.

  Angie looked for signs of dehydration, pinching their arms lightly, checking their gums for loss of color. As best she could judge, they
didn’t seem to be too badly dehydrated.

  “How long have they been sick?” she asked.

  “Just since yesterday,” their mother said. “I was afraid that meat was a little off, but Tobe thought it would be all right. He didn’t want to waste it.”

  “Did you all eat the same thing?”

  “Not Tobe, he had to hurry off because of a call, but I did.”

  “And you weren’t sick?”

  “A little. Not so much as the girls and Danny couldn’t eat a bite he was already so sick. I was sure the girls were getting what Danny had and made Tobe bring the doctor out. He said food poisoning and they’d be better soon.”

  “You told him Danny was already sick and he hadn’t eaten with the rest of you?”

  She nodded. “But he wasn’t so bad then, he got worse last night. And with all of them being sick . . .”

  “It can be really confusing if everybody’s sick, like in a flu epidemic, What if the symptoms seem similar, only it’s something else?”

  “Flu?” Clemmie asked. “Bad flu like after the old war. People died of that flu. My aunt’s whole family died.”

  Angie didn’t think this was flu. She went back to where Danny lay half out of his mind and groaning with pain. Gently she touched his tight stomach with one finger and he screamed. It hurt that bad.

  “It could be appendicitis. We’ve got to get him to a surgeon.”

  Clemmie met her eyes. She knew as well as Angie what appendicitis meant. “Sick as he is, it may be about to rupture.”

  “I’ll call Tobe. He’ll get us to town.”

  “Call him?”

  “He has to have a phone because of his job, so he had one put in.”

  Angie could only hope they could get through on it. She followed Clemmie into the living room and watched while she cranked the phone, then yelled into it, “Sarah, this is Clemmie. Get the sheriff’s office for me. It’s an emergency.”

  She had to repeat the message three times before the operator understood and then she was unable to talk directly to her husband’s office. The operator had to communicate the message.