CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

 

A strong spirit is the only thing that warms us when a cold wind sweeps across our soul.

 

Holly

 

I FELT LIKE I had been pushed off a cliff when Mother shoved me aside. Nothing could have prepared me for being rejected for wanting to comfort her. Late last night, I had heard her crying as she and Daddy carried all of Jake’s belongings from the hospital upstairs. The train set and all of the other toys they had given him as early Christmas presents were now hidden away in his room. I was glad they hadn’t put them under the tree. That would have been unbearable. I hadn’t turned on the tree lights since Jake’s angry outburst over not waiting until he came home to decorate it. This morning, I noticed that Jake’s door was shut tight. I was tempted to look inside, but knew, even without being told, that it was forbidden.

I was embarrassed knowing that Mrs. Lake had witnessed what had happened that morning. Afterward, she followed me to my room, as though I was a wounded bird that needed tending. I fell across my bed and buried my face in the pillows. Mrs. Lake sat on the edge of the bed and patted my shoulder.

“Do you want me to help you pack?” she asked. “Your Uncle Drew will be here shortly to drive you all to Land of Goshen. Lord knows, your parents have no business driving a car in their state of mind.”

“I don’t want to ride with them.”

“Holly, your mother is upset, is all. She can’t bear to show her feelings right now. Such a terrible loss, what all of you are going through.”

I sighed and waited for her to leave.

“You didn’t answer me, dear. Do you want me to help you pack?”

“No, I can do it myself.”

“Well, okay. I’ll leave you alone.”

I waited until the last minute to pack my bags. I didn’t know what to wear to my brother’s funeral, but I wasn’t going to trouble Mother. Why did Jake have to die before Christmas? We would never be able to celebrate again. Christmas would always remind us that he was gone from our lives.

 

MOTHER SAT UP front with Uncle Drew on the way to Land of Goshen. A few scattered derricks hammering the earth offered the only relief to the flat, tedious landscape that floated past us as we rode through an oil patch near Kilgore. The dismal hum of tires rolling along the highway buffered the occasional sob that broke from Mother’s throat.

After a miserable three-hour ride, we arrived in the small town where my parents grew up and had expected to live their entire lives. Daddy asked Uncle Drew to drop me off at Uncle Martin and Aunt Libby’s house before going to the funeral home. He and Mother wanted to spend time alone with Jake’s body. Even though that was not something I wanted to be a part of, I felt like I was being pushed aside once more.

My aunt and uncle’s white clapboard house with its black shutters and widow’s walk above the verandah looked the same as it always had. It was here that Jake and I spent a week each summer with our twin cousins, Caroline and Carl. Carl came out on the porch when we drove up. He was tall and lanky, like Jake. They looked so much alike that my heart quickened. I thought about the time Jake and Carl had teamed up against me and Caroline, spraying us with imaginary gunfire. We went screaming into the house, making such a fuss that Aunt Libby hollered at the boys to leave us alone. In retaliation, Jake loaded Carl’s air rifle with BB pellets and aimed it directly at me. Spurred on by Carl, he slowly pulled back the trigger, laughing at my angry cries to put the rifle down. There was a pop, and I doubled over in pain. The thick elastic waistband of my shorts had kept the BB from penetrating my skin. Aunt Libby immediately took the rifles away and locked them up. Prior to putting me in their lineup, the boys had honed their skills on a lizard wandering around the backyard. I remember seeing it the next day, still alive, but sporting a dusty Band-Aid that one of the boys, feeling some remorse, had slapped across its scaly back.

It was sad to think that those days were over. Jake would never be part of my life again. I would keep growing older, keep havingexperiences thatJake wouldnever have. One day, I would be fifty; my life would have changed a thousand ways. But Jake’s life would always be what it was until now and nothing more. He would always be thirteen.

I was grateful for the idle chatter that kept our minds off of Jake when the family gathered that evening. It was going to be a cold winter according to Farmer’s Almanac. Luke Haley was already getting rheumatism in his bad knee, and that was a sure sign of a rough season ahead. Did anyone know if what everyone was saying about Sheriff Carson’s daughter was true or not? That she was supposed to have a shotgun wedding, but the damn scoundrel ran off before Sheriff Carson could chase him down?

None of this mattered, of course. We all knew that. We all knew how fleeting and unforgiving life could be. Our inability to step back into the past and recapture a single second of our existence, or to move forward safely beyond the boundaries of an injurious moment, bound us to the present. The only thing we could do right now was to numb ourselves with mindless chatter. Tomorrow, we would have plenty of time to hurt again.