You’ve got a bite, Jeff!”
Jeff and Leah were seated on the grassy bank of the creek that wound in serpentine fashion half a mile from her house. It was midafternoon, and Jeff was so tired from his journey that he had lain back and simply dropped off to sleep.
The sound of Leah’s voice awoke him, and he sat up abruptly, staring around wildly. For an instant he couldn’t remember where he was. And then he looked down and saw his red and white cork racing madly around in the water and his fishing pole—which he had braced against a rock—bending almost double.
Jeff grabbed the pole and tried to pull the fish in. He came to his feet, his blood pounding with excitement. For one moment all the problems of the war and of his brother and what would happen in the future left him. This always happened when he got a big fish. He seemed to go a little crazy. As he moved down the bank, trying to land the fish, he vaguely heard Leah calling instructions.
“Be quiet,” he snapped irritably. “You think I don’t know how to catch a fish?” His big worry was that the line would break. He had not expected to catch this big a fish. They had been fishing with crickets for bream—but this was no bream!
“It might be Old Napoleon,” Leah cried excitedly, jumping around as Jeff struggled with the fish. “Don’t lose him, Jeff!”
Jeff growled, “I won’t lose him. When did you ever see me lose a fish?”
The fish broke water, and his heart seemed to stop. It was a huge bass—as big as Old Napoleon. Maybe it was him. However, Old Napoleon was the bass that lived in a creek far away, and Jeff knew that this could not be the same fish.
Finally he worked the fish in close and, keeping the tension with his right hand, reached out with his left. He clamped his thumb inside the fish’s gaping jaws, which closed on him at once. It hurt, but he didn’t care.
With a yell, Jeff slung the bass over his head. It fell to the grass, flopping and twisting wildly, the sun glinting on its silvery scales. Then he pulled the fish along far enough so that it couldn’t get back into the water. Finally he reached down and picked it up.
“Look at that!” he said almost reverently. “Why, he must weigh at least five pounds!”
“He’s a beauty, Jeff! I wish you could stuff him and put him up over the mantle.”
“I think I might do that. He’s the biggest bass I ever caught! Look, I’m too excited to fish anymore. You grab those bream we caught, and we’ll go on back.”
“Do you know how to stuff a fish?” Leah asked curiously.
“No, but you remember Old Man Taylor who lives down the road? He knows how. I think he worked at a taxidermy place for a while. We’ll get Mr. Bass there as quick as we can—before he spoils.”
Leah scrambled to get the stringer. “This’ll be plenty for all of us,” she said, “even without that big bass.”
They started back across the field, and as they walked along Jeff looked down at Leah. She was not wearing a dress today but a pair of her brother Royal’s old overalls. She even looks good in those, he thought. Sure has growed up pretty.
He wanted to tell her so but couldn’t find exactly the right way to do it. Instead he asked her about what had been taking place on the farm while he was gone, about his sister Esther, and about Morena.
Leah was happier than she had been in a long time. She had been terribly worried about Jeff and his family, knowing that they were going into battle—along with knowing her brother would probably be fighting also. Now the sun was bright, the July breeze was delightfully warm and fresh, and the boys were all right except for Tom’s wound—and Jeff was back.
She glanced over at him, admiring as she always did his rugged good looks. His hair, which stuck out from under a slouch hat, was black as a crow’s wing. He was tall for sixteen and looked maybe even eighteen or nineteen. He was huskier now too. He had been very thin when the war started, but now he was filling out, and his bare arms were brown and corded with new muscle.
“I wonder how many fish we’ve caught out of that creek, Jeff?”
“Aplenty.” He nodded with satisfaction and smiled at her. “If you keep on taking lessons from me, you’ll be the best fisherman in these hills.”
Leah knew that he was teasing, but she pretended to be angry. “I caught more of these fish than you did! I caught eight, and you didn’t catch but six!”
“But I caught this big bass, and he weighs more than all those little bream put together.”
They argued playfully as they made their way along the path. The sun threw brilliant fragments of light on the pine needles, which had fallen for years, making a soft carpet. Their feet made no noise at all.
When they came out into the clearing and saw the house across the field, Jeff said rather shyly, “You’ve sure grown up, Leah. You were just a little girl when I left to go to Virginia. Now you’re—well, you’re a young lady.”
Leah might have been a young lady, but she was still easily embarrassed. She felt her face grow pink, and she did not know what to say. “I guess we’re both growing up, Jeff. You must have grown an inch since the last time you were here. I bet you’ll be taller than your father, and he’s one of the tallest men I know.”
“Reckon I’ll be good-looking like him?” Jeff asked with a straight face.
Leah opened her mouth with surprise, then saw that he was teasing again. “No, I don’t think you ever will,” she said. This may not have been true, but she didn’t want him to grow conceited.
“Maybe I’ll be good-looking, and that Helen Wagner will pay some attention to me now.” Helen Wagner was the local beauty. She was about the age of Jeff and Leah, and he had felt himself madly in love with her when he was thirteen. “She’s still around, I suppose?”
“Yes, she is—and still flirting with everything that wears pants!”
“Well—” Jeff looked down “—I guess I qualify, then. I guess I’d better run over and do a little courting before I go back.”
“You stay away from that—that flirt!” Leah burst out. She was not sure he was teasing this time, and she had a vision of Jeff making a fool of himself over Helen the way every other young man in the valley did.
He laughed aloud. “Good to see you’re jealous, Leah.”
“Jealous?” Leah’s eyes suddenly flashed, and she swung the string of fish. “I’ll show you jealous.”
“Oof!” The fish caught Jeff in the stomach, and the blow startled him.
He looked at Leah—lips drawn together tightly and eyes flashing green fire. “Oh, I was just teasing,” he said quickly. “I don’t care anything about Helen.”
“You followed her around like a sick puppy all the time before you left,” she said. She sniffed then, saying, “I trust you’ve got more sense than that now.”
They walked on, silent for a while.
Then Jeff said, “I’m worried about Tom.”
“I know. Sarah and I talked about it.”
“He’s just not himself. I wish he hadn’t lost that foot. If it had just been a wound that had healed up, that’d be different.”
“He could have gotten killed …”
“I know. That’s what I tell him—and I guess Sarah tells him the same thing. He just doesn’t feel that way about it.”
When they had walked halfway across the field, Leah said suddenly, “They’re having a dance at the schoolhouse day after tomorrow.”
Jeff perked up. “A dance! You remember they had one of those when Fort Sumter was fired on. We were just kids then.”
“I remember I had to make you dance with me,” she said. She smiled and looked very pretty in the bright sunlight. “This time I think you ought to ask me!”
“All right,” he said, “I will.” Then apparently a thought came to him. “That’s another thing. Tom was a good dancer.”
“If he gets a wooden leg maybe he can learn to dance again.”
“I don’t think he’d even try. Tom always had to be the best at things. He might dance, but he couldn’t be the best.”
Leah abruptly reached over with her free hand and took his. “It’ll be all right, Jeff. Tom’ll come out of it.”
He squeezed her hand. “I hope you’re right,” he murmured, and the two held hands until they got close to the house.
Jeff and Leah showed their catch of fish to the family, and Jeff took the bass down to the neighbor to be stuffed. Leah was in the backyard, cleaning the bream for supper.
In the kitchen Sarah and her mother talked as they mixed bread dough and prepared the rest of supper. Sarah had been strangely quiet since she got home, and now her mother looked over at her and said, “You’re worried about Tom, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am, Ma. He’s—he’s just not himself.”
“Well, I can see that, but it’ll take a little time.”
“I know.” Sarah opened a jar of pickles and sniffed them. “These smell good. I remember when we put them up last fall.” She took out one, bit the end off it, and smiled. “They are good. I love pickles, Ma, always have. I believe I could make a meal on ’em.”
“You stop that, Sarah,” her mother said. “You’ll spoil your supper.”
Sarah said calmly, “I’ll just finish this one. It’s only a little one.” Then she looked out to where Leah was cleaning fish. “Leah’s growing up, Ma.”
“Yes, she is. She’s always been such a tomboy. Look at her! Cleaning those fish as well as Jeff could do it.”
“Jeff’s growing up too. Almost a man now.”
“Yes, and I can remember when they were knee high, out playing together in the dirt, fighting over something half the time.” A tender smile lifted the corner of her lips. “Sometimes I think of those good times before the war. You and Tom were always playing together, and Leah and Jeff. It’s a shame, I think. Of course, we all have to grow up.”
Sarah said quietly after a while, “I wonder if all this will make any difference in the way Tom thinks about me.”
Mrs. Carter looked at her daughter quickly, her face filled with surprise. “Why should it?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Ma. He’s just so—so different. I try to be just the same, but it’s like he’s built a wall. He won’t let anybody get close. Not even me.”
“That boy loves you, Sarah,” her mother said firmly. “And real love doesn’t—you can’t turn it on and off.”
“That’s what I’ve always said—but if he still loves me, he sure doesn’t talk about it or show it.”
“He’s afraid you won’t love him as much, now that he’s lost a leg. It’s natural enough. I suppose most of us would feel like that. We just haven’t gone through anything as bad as what Tom has.”
“He ought to know that wouldn’t make any difference to me,” Sarah argued. She was mixing dough now, and white flour was on her rounded arms. She molded it firmly, turning it over and punching it, then finally put it out on the counter and began rolling it with a rolling pin. “A man’s more than a foot. Tom’s just what he always was.”
“Sometimes things happen that change everything,” Mrs. Carter said. “For instance, suppose you had a bad accident, and your face was scarred. Don’t you think you’d wonder if Tom would feel differently about you?”
Sarah was rolling out the dough and did not answer for a time. Then she looked up, somewhat startled, “Why—I never thought of that, Ma.”
“You’ve never had to think of it. You’ve always been one of the prettiest girls in this valley. You came to take it for granted. But if you lost that prettiness, I think it would make a difference to you.”
Sarah took an empty can and began cutting out small round circles for biscuits, carefully setting them aside one at a time. “I think you’re right, Ma. It would make a difference. I’d always wonder if he were just feeling sorry for me.”
“Exactly! And that’s the way Tom’s feeling right now. We’ve just got to make him see that it doesn’t make any difference to us.”
“Sure is good to have you here, Tom.” Ezra Payne sat down in one of the cane-bottomed chairs on the front porch.
Tom had been sitting there for some time, reading a book. He put it aside and tilted his chair back against the wall of the house.
“It’s good to be back, Ezra,” he said briefly. He liked this young man a great deal.
Ezra, of course, had been in the Union Army, but only briefly. Ever since he had escaped from Belle Isle Prison and Leah had brought him here, he had stayed to work the farm. He was an average young man in most ways. He had fine brown eyes and very good teeth but was not at all handsome. He was strong, however, and always cheerful.
Now Ezra pulled a pocketknife out of his hip pocket, opened it, removed a cedar stick from his other pocket, and began peeling long slender shavings off it.
Tom watched the keen blade pare away the curving strips of cedar and asked, without much curiosity, “What’re you making?”
“Shavings.” Ezra grinned at him. He peeled off another shaving. “Just like to see ’em curl up. Smells good too. Cedar’s about the best-smelling wood there is, I think.” He pared away a few more and then said, “That battle at Gettysburg was pretty bad, I guess. Papers say it was the worst of the whole war.”
“It was pretty bad,” Tom said. He did not want to talk about the war. He wanted to shut it out of his mind, but always there was his leg that ended just below his knee in an ugly stump, and he realized he would never be able to forget the war. He had a perpetual reminder.
As if reading his mind, Ezra said slowly and carefully, “You know you were lucky in a way that that shell didn’t do worse.”
Tom’s head jerked up, and his eyes grew hard. “What do you mean worse! Isn’t it bad enough to lose a leg?”
Ezra said apologetically, “Well, of course, it’d been better not to get hurt at all. But what I meant was, it would have been a lot worse if you had lost that leg above the knee.” He peeled off another two or three strips of curling cedar. “Quite a few fellows have come back that lost a leg above the knee. Not much to be done about that. But below the knee—you know there’s such a thing as an artificial leg.”
“They’re no good.”
“Why, I don’t think you ought to say that so quick, Tom,” Ezra protested. “I’ve been thinking on it a lot. You know, I ain’t much good on most things, but I guess when it comes to making things out of wood, I’m as good as anybody.”
This was true enough. Ezra’s talent seemed to lie in woodworking. He had a particular genius for it, and already the house was becoming filled up with beautiful furniture he had built. He did not have many tools, but those few he had he used expertly. He’d put together a shop in a shed close to the barn, and neighbors were coming now, asking him to build special furniture for them. And Dan Carter had said, “You ought to leave being a farmhand and set up a furniture shop. You’re a genius with wood, Ezra.”
Ezra said guardedly, “I don’t think it’d be as hard to make an artificial foot as it would be to make a mortise and tenon joint or maybe a dovetail section for a drawer. I figured out what kind of wood would be good.” He held up the cedar stick. “Look at this! See how light it is. Take a piece of oak—would weigh probably two or three times this much. But cedar’s real light, and you could hollow some of it out. It wouldn’t weigh anything at all.” He paused, seeing that Tom had turned his head and was looking away.
Tom listened for a while longer as Ezra talked about the possibilities of an artificial leg, then stood up and seized his crutch. “I don’t want to talk about it, Ezra. I appreciate your thoughts—but just don’t tell me about it anymore.”
After Tom thumped off into the house, Ezra sat on the porch, shaking his head. “He sure is sensitive, and that’s a shame. I could do him a real job with one of them wooden legs.”
Later, Ezra talked to Sarah about Tom and what could be done for him.
She suddenly said, “Ezra, you remember Gus Springer, who lives in Pineville?”
“Sure, I know Gus. Hey! He’s got an artificial foot, hasn’t he? Lost his leg in a train wreck. He does so good,” he said, “I forget he’s got one of those.”
Sarah nodded slowly, as though an idea was forming in her mind.
Two days after their conversation, a wagon drew up in front of the Carter house, and a man got out. He mounted the steps quickly and knocked on the door.
Sarah answered his knock. “Mr. Springer!” she said. “You got my note!”
“Sure did, Miss Sarah.”
Springer was a small man, no more than five seven or eight, who ran a tanning business. He was wearing a natty suit of blue serge, and when he removed his hat, he revealed a shock of rusty red hair. His blue eyes sparkled as he said, “Don’t get an invitation from attractive young ladies to come calling very often. Mrs. Springer was a little bit worried about it.”
“Come in, Mr. Springer,” she said. “I guess Mrs. Springer wasn’t too jealous. She let you come.”
“When she read your letter, she said it was OK.”
Sarah’s note had explained Tom’s injury and asked him to come out and talk.
He appeared glad to do so.
“Sorry to hear about Tom,” he said, “but I’m glad he wasn’t hurt worse.”
“It’s bad enough—or so he thinks, Mr. Springer.”
“Well, I can understand that. I guess I thought the world had come to an end when I lost my leg, but—” he shrugged his trim shoulders “—I hardly even miss it now.”
Eagerly Sarah said, “It would be so good if you could talk to Tom.”
“Sure. Where is he?”
“I think he’s in his room. It’s down the hall, to the back—I’ll go get him, though.”
Springer was sitting on the horsehair couch and looking at a magazine when Sarah came back, Tom thumping on his crutch behind her.
Springer stood up at once. “Hello, Tom,” he said cheerfully. “Glad to see you.” He went over and shook Tom’s hand. “Sorry about your bad luck, but I’m glad you made it alive.”
“Thanks, Mr. Springer.” Tom looked at him with a question in his eye and said, “You just out visiting?”
Sarah had not told Tom the purpose of Gus Springer’s visit.
“Sure, that’s it,” he said easily. “But now that I’m here, I might as well give you my testimony.”
“Your testimony?”
To Tom this would mean a Christian testimony, but Sarah knew this was not what Springer had on his mind.
“What do you mean ‘testimony’?”
“Look at this, Tom.” Springer suddenly began dancing about. He moved quickly with ease, ended with a fancy spin, and said, “How do you like that?”
“Why—I guess it’s all right,” Tom said, bewildered.
And then Springer reached down with his closed fist and tapped the side of his lower leg. It made a solid knocking sound, and Tom blinked with surprise.
Springer grinned. “That’s right! Lost my leg right below the knee in a railroad accident while you were gone. Just wanted to come by and show you what they can do about these things.” He nodded cheerfully. “I know it’s been a blow, but you get you one of these legs.” He pulled up his pant leg and showed Tom the polished wooden leg. “Here, let me show you how it fastens on.”
Tom glanced over at Sarah, who was looking on with interest. He said, “No, thanks, Mr. Springer. I don’t think I want to know.”
He was behaving badly again, but she saw that somehow he was embarrassed by the scene.
“Thanks for coming by. I appreciate it.” He turned and thumped off. A door slammed.
Springer turned to face Sarah. “Well, he’s a little sensitive right now, but he’ll get over it.”
Sarah was terribly disappointed, though she tried to hide it. “Thank you, Gus, for coming. I think it’ll be a while before he’ll be willing to listen.”
Springer said encouragingly, “Sure, he’ll come out of it.”
When he’d said his good-byes and left the house, Sarah knocked on Tom’s door.
“Come in.” The answer was rather gruff, and when she stepped inside, Tom, standing by the window balanced on his crutch, turned to her. He said stiffly, “Sarah, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t meddle in my business anymore.”
“Tom—”
“You just don’t know what it’s like, and you’ll never know what it’s like. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d rather be alone. Just leave me alone. That’s all I ask.” He turned to stare again out the window, his back rigid.
Sarah stood there, terribly hurt. She left the room, and tears rose in her eyes. They trickled down her cheeks. She wiped them with a handkerchief and whispered, “He’s not himself. He’s got to learn that he’s still a man.”