| |
Harold burst into the big farm kitchen with a practiced scowl and accepted the steaming cup of coffee Addie poured. She returned to the pie crust she was making as he pulled a miniature spiral notepad from his overall pocket and scribbled.
“January 13. Temperature -22. If it gets any colder, we’re bound to lose some stock.”
“Did you get all the sheep out of the drifts?” He flung back the shock of sandy hair brushing his steel-gray eyes and disregarded her question. Maybe this pie would ease his mood, but his scowl matched the weather.
Her shoulders tensed as Berthea’s warning ran through her mind—More than two tries toughens the pastry.
Aware of snow clumps from Harold’s blue and white striped overalls forming pools on the faded gray linoleum, Addie muttered, “Come on, you stubborn crust—cooperate.”
Fern, the Esther Circle leader, said cleanliness and good food made for a happy husband, but those muddy splotches on the floor would have to wait. Harold moved closer and spread his feet wide apart.
“Last night I read about the unjust judge finally giving in to the persistent widow. Maybe today, the draft board’ll take me, although if what happened at Pearl Harbor didn’t change anything, I don’t know what would.”
His volume increased with each word, and Addie bit her lip as he rocked back on his heels. Cinnamon wafted like incense when she stirred an ample spoonful into the apple filling. She folded the crust in half, lifted it into a glass pie plate, and patted the curved edges.
The Golden West Coffee tin holding her egg money caught her eye. Its beaming cowgirl belied the tight knot cinching Addie’s stomach, and the irony struck. Like this gaping pie shell, she waited to be filled.
With a trembling hand, she poured in the apple mixture, dotted butter across the surface, and positioned the delicate top crust. Berthea fluted her crusts, but under Harold’s piercing stare, pressing a dinner fork around the edge took less time. Addie grabbed her paring knife to slit the center with three straight lines to make an H. Then she dabbed on fresh milk with a clean rag.
The oven’s hot gust circled her knees as she slid the pie onto the middle rack. Her heartbeat quickened when Harold touched her waist and nodded his chin toward the kitchen table.
Near the windowsill glittering with ice, she fumbled for a chair. Outside, the snow had turned to ice that slashed the glass. Harold wanted to talk, she guessed, but he kept pacing. Hoping he wouldn’t take his anger out on the plates again, she flattened her palms on the cool oak table.
Sharp ceramic shards still surfaced between the floorboards from his outburst a week ago. How many times had she swept and scrubbed, but another one still showed up yesterday.
If only she could think of something to quiet him, but reminding him the county enlistment board harbored no personal contempt was what had produced the broken plates. And right now, every point she could think of about the unjust judge second-guessed Harold’s scriptural interpretation.
He hadn’t won the county debate tournament for nothing. Everyone in Halberton knew he’d made history at the state contest. But even after three years, Addie could never anticipate his barbed switchbacks.
Her forefinger traced her thumbnail, back and forth, and with her other hand, she picked at a food speck on the yellow tablecloth while size 14 boots forged a rhythmic route across the kitchen. When a stanza from last Sunday’s final hymn came to mind, Addie broke into muffled humming. At a pause in the melody, she anticipated Harold’s pivot, creating an extra floorboard squawk.
For all the saints, who from their labors rest... The song eased her racing thoughts and brought Mama to mind. At least she was enjoying peace at last.
“You’re just going to leave that mess on the counter?”
Addie jumped up to scrape those few crumbs into the slop bowl for the always-ravenous hogs. Their wild grunting would echo through the pen when she dumped the day’s leavings for them after supper.
Oh blest communion, fellowship divine; we feebly struggle, they in glory shine.
When she returned to her chair, Harold’s crossings accelerated. “Will you stop your infernal humming? A man can’t even think.”
Addie swallowed the music. “Sorry.” An undeniable urge to disappear thwarted her determination to remain calm. But then her mop pail called from the corner. She’d thought Harold wanted her to sit down, but maybe he’d be pleased if she cleaned the stair landing, where he’d pointed out some dust bunnies last night.
Half filling the pail from the hot water reservoir, she added a pinch of Borax, Berthea’s answer to every cleaning challenge. She added cold water from the black iron pump set into the countertop, grabbed her scrub rag, and tied her brown wool scarf over her hair.
When she crossed under the dining room archway, Mama’s words came strong and sure. “Find something good in everything.”
Hadn’t Harold’s agitation motivated her to clean a neglected space? That was a good thing, wasn’t it? The water-stained dining room ceiling reminded her that maybe Mama watched right now from glory.
Rounding the table to the stairway door, Addie sent a smile heavenward, just in case. On the last cold step of the first flight, she pulled her wool socks over her knees before kneeling to wet her rag and poking it into the railing’s nooks and crannies. Her rag made a soothing swish over the inlaid oak pattern.
With the scrub water dingy brown, she sat back to enjoy the carpenter’s artistry in this six-by-eight foot space. A master craftsman invested painstaking work in this obscure landing, used only to pause before continuing up or down.
Loud squeaks from Harold’s pacing echoed like squealing piglets, so she carried her pail up the second flight. In the long hallway, her breath rose white before her eyes, but she ought to have cleaned out the storage room months ago. Why not today?
As she and Kate used to do on the frozen river, Addie slid down the long hall—a person could make work fun in such a rambling old house. The transoms above five tall oak bedroom doors cast dancing shadows the entire length of the hall.
Just before she set down her pail at the final bedroom, the toe of her shoe caught an uneven place, lurched her headfirst into the door and splatted her flat on her backside. Water splashed everywhere, but surrounded by dripping walls and baseboards, she broke into a giggle.
“Kate would appreciate this.” A banging door downstairs sobered her. If Harold came up and saw this mess, he’d throw a royal fit. She scurried to the linen closet for cloths, wiped the floor, and stuffed the evidence down the clothes chute.
A shiver took her head to toe, and her freckles greeted her in an old broken mirror Berthea had abandoned when she and Orville moved to their new house across the driveway. The heavily speckled surface still revealed straggling dark curls framing her near-black eyes. Even the wide space between her eyebrows and hairline reflected the deep rose of her cotton dress, the color of her dad’s nose on his worst days.
“Please keep Kate safe and help her find Alexandre. They love each other so.” She touched her chin to the frosty mirror. “Addie Bledsoe, you’ll catch a cold right here in your upstairs. Better get downstairs and check on that pie.”
But she detoured into her room, slid open the top bureau drawer, and fished for an old photograph. Aunt Alvina captured the two of them eight years ago, when Kate dressed up as Barbara Stanwyck and made Addie into Myrna Loy.
Snap. Only a moment in time, but the memory warmed her heart. A newsman’s voice trickled up the stairway. Oh, no—Harold had already tuned in the radio, though the war report wouldn’t air for hours.
“Once we asked if Wilsonian idealism or Jacksonite common sense would prevail. Pearl Harbor, my friends, has made this a moot question.”
Carrying the pail downstairs through wet boot prints embellishing the dining room floor, Addie swiped them with her rag. Back in the kitchen, Harold’s eyes caught hers like a German bomber circling a hapless Allied aircraft. At least from the newspaper accounts, she imagined that’s how it would be.
He shadowed her to the back porch steps, where she flung the remaining scrub water onto a snowdrift. Falling ice rat-a-tatted against the pail, and Harold’s ragged breath hit her neck in the back porch.
“The Japs are taking Singapore. They’ve called on Percival to surrender.”
“Oh, my.” She refilled his coffee cup and pulled out a chair. “Sit down, won’t you?”
He swung his head around. “How many times have I told you—?” Scraping the floor with her chair bothered him. She’d forgotten again.
He tore at his hair, standing Wildroot-plastered sections on end. “Impregnable Fortress, my foot—so much for Britain’s Far Eastern imperial power. The Brits blew up bridges while the Japs used bicycles to maneuver!”
Addie’s throat burned with desire to wash the wildness from his eyes.
“I don’t care what those fools on the board think. I’m going down there again.” He raked his chair over the floor. “I am!”
“Maybe they’ll take you for the February quota.”
“You know it’s hopeless.” He banged his fist on the table.
“I’m sorry. I wish—”
“You always wish, but you don’t know what it’s like to be branded a cripple.”
True, she didn’t know, but no cripple could pace like Harold, or do such heavy farm work. If only he’d been called up with his buddy Joe Lundene, before Orville’s stroke, he wouldn’t be fighting this 4-F status. Why did he have to be the only one able to work the family farm?
His chin poked over the white long-john triangle showing at his flannel shirt opening. “They take riff-raff like Alexandre, but keep me here.” He punched the wainscoting and opened the porch door.
Addie stood near the doorway. She could point out Kate’s husband’s Canadian citizenship, but Harold already knew. A sick sensation swept her.
“You stand up for him for her sake, but where is her big strong pilot now?”
A cloudy streak monopolized Harold’s eyes. “The RAF gave the Japs Malaya and now they’re letting Singapore go, too. This war needs Americans who can fight, yet they refuse me.”
His head grazed the doorway as he ran out, and a rowdy wind banged the storm door against the frame three times before it latched. Addie secured the heavy inside door and smoothed the rough wool of the coat Harold left on its hook.
The bubbletop pick-up sailed between barren lilac bushes and the corncrib, Harold’s torso thrust forward in the cab, his broad shoulders swaying in the crackled leather seat. He careened down the lane and made a run up a slight incline onto the road without checking for traffic. In this storm, few would risk driving to Halberton.
An accident might take his life.
The thought sidled in like a snake. No! Addie refused to entertain the idea. She counted to 10. “I will find a way to make him happy. I will.”
The mailbox at the end of the driveway beckoned, and she reached for her gray and brown plaid wool coat. She needed to keep an eye on that pie, but maybe George brought her a letter this morning, so she could read it before Harold returned. He might come home in a better frame of mind, and by then, she’d have chosen a hiding place.
Navigating the slippery driveway, she retrieved a few letters and a package of mail tied with string. A glossy ice patch dared her to try it out, but she passed in order to deliver Berthea’s mail as fast as possible. Berthea’s slick front railing stuck to her mittens, but the door opened before she knocked, exuding warm, yeasty air.
“Miserable cold, isn’t it? This mail’ll be our excitement for the day.” Addie handed Berthea the packet and stood in the three-foot entryway to let her skin thaw while Berthea broke the taut string with her teeth.
“Not much here but bills. Guess you know that already.”
“No, George keeps our mail separate. I never look at yours.”
For a moment, the corners of Berthea’s mouth reflected Harold’s glower, but she paused. Shaking her head like a wet dog, she motioned Addie in.
“Being cooped up like this makes me downright irritable.”
Lowering her eyes, Addie gave no response. Berthea’s admission came close to an apology. “Well, I’d better get back home and—”
“Start supper? What’re you having?” Berthea veered close enough to waft the aroma of coffee and beef gravy on her breath. “I’m so sick of cooking. Orville won’t eat anyhow, so what’s the use?”
She fumbled with an envelope, and the trace of a smile played on her lips. “What a considerate sort that George Miller is to tie our mail like this.” She glanced back up at Addie. “Did you say what you’re cooking?”
“Something with chicken.”
At Orville’s high-pitched call, Berthea jerked away. Her fleshy neck propelled her head forward, aligning her chin with the top of a full-length flour sack apron that covered her ample bosom and gave off a rendered lard odor. Not exactly heavy, she rounded out more than adequately.
Always find a kind word, Mama used to say.
“Where’d Harold go?” Stray dark hairs on Berthea’s chin wiggled with her conspiratorial question.
“He’s upset about the battle of Singapore.”
“He’s gone down to apply again?”
“Yes.”
Berthea’s shoulders drooped. “How many times will they let him?” Her dark hair had streaked white during the past year, and her green cotton housedress aged her.
“When that boy gets something in his head—” Another urgent call sounded. She opened her mouth, shut it again and turned away.
Addie let herself out. Halfway across the yard she pulled out the letters, and her heart skipped a beat at Kate’s unmistakable handwriting on a pale blue envelope. Between the two houses, an unexpected array of fuzzy snowflakes replaced the icy onslaught, and an enormous flake perched on the tip of her nose.
“Montreal, Canada, January 4, l942. Three weeks ago.”
Two at a time, she galloped the porch steps. In the kitchen, she edged a paring knife under the envelope’s seal and breathed deeper.
