The Lost Wagon Page 2

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Discussion

  For a Moment after Joe had gone, Emma sat silently at the table. She waslonely and a little depressed, as she always was when Joe left her. Evenwhen he went to work his fields in the morning, she looked forward tothe noon hour when he would be home for lunch. If he did not care tostop working long enough to come home but wished to eat in the fieldsinstead, Emma carried him a meal whenever she could think of a plausibleexcuse for so doing. It was not always possible because Barbara insistedon doing it. Emma smiled wistfully. Barbara thought she was saving hermother work when in reality she was robbing her of a privilege.

  "What are you smiling about, Mother?" Barbara asked.

  "I was thinking of your father."

  Barbara looked curiously at her and Emma made no comment. For all herlovely girlhood Barbara was still a child. She must live a few yearsbefore she could even hope to understand some things, and it would befutile to try to explain them now. Love was always a fine and beautifulthing, but the quick, fierce passions of youth were only the firstflames. The smoldering fires that were fed by years of working andstruggling together really welded it so that two, in actuality, didbecome one. But no young person would ever understand that. Onlyexperience could teach it.

  Emma glanced with studied casualness at her lovely daughter. Approachingher fifteenth birthday, for more than a year Barbara had had a largecontingent of suitors. All were gawky youths who stumbled over theirown feet, never knew what to do with their elbows, and were apt tostutter or stammer when disconcerted. Barbara accepted them with analmost regal poise the while she interested herself seriously in none,and that pleased Emma. She herself had married at sixteen, which wasearly enough. Emma thought with mingled pity and amusement of LucyTrevelyan, whose fifteen-year-old Mary had been urged upon everyeligible man in the neighborhood and who was now going around a secondtime. It was more than a question of just getting a man. It had to bethe right man and, for Barbara, Emma wanted as much happiness as she hadfound with Joe.

  Emma looked again at her daughter, who was staring dreamily across thetable. After a moment, the youngster spoke,

  "Why didn't you go to the store with Dad?"

  "With all those men!" Emma was half horrified.

  Barbara said thoughtfully, "I suppose it would be awkward. But you workvery hard, too. If it relaxes Dad to go to the store, it should relaxyou."

  Emma laughed. "I'd be as out of place there as your father would at asewing bee!"

  "When I get married," Barbara said firmly, "I'm going everywhere myhusband goes. Everywhere!"

  Tad snorted derisively, and left his chair to hone his beloved knife.

  "Don't make fun of your sister, Tad."

  "I didn't say nothin'," Tad protested.

  "'I didn't say anything,'" Emma corrected.

  "Yes, Ma."

  "Let me hear you say it."

  "I didn't say anything," Tad mumbled.

  Emma turned from him and the incident had come, passed and wasforgotten. She had about her a quality that demanded respect andattention, but which never left a sting.

  In passing, Emma sometimes wondered at how much she herself had changedduring the years of her marriage. From a gentle girl, much in awe ofher father, admiring Joe from a distance and struck quite speechlesswhen he asked her to marry him, she had acquired over the years bothfirmness and authority in her dealings with the children. Joe loved toplay with his children when they were little, and he admired them asthey grew older, but when it came to discipline he didn't appear to knowhow to go about it. With Tad he sometimes exploded, sometimes cuffed hisears and sometimes turned his back in despair. With the others hesomehow subtracted himself, so that Emma was left in charge ofdiscipline. Perhaps the trouble was that an ordinary reprimand wouldhave seemed unsuitable to the wonderful creatures he thought them to be.Whatever the reason, over the years Emma had found that while alldecisions regarding the children were discussed between Joe and herself,with Joe often playing a larger part than she did in the actualdeciding, it was usually Emma alone who had to put the decisions intoeffect. She smiled ruefully. Nobody, not even Joe--_especially_ notJoe--realized that Emma still had safely hidden away, some of thetimidity of her younger years. Within the home, in relation to thechildren, she was undoubtedly a tower of strength.

  Baby Emma slid from her chair to climb upon her mother's lap and lay herhead on Emma's shoulder. Emma encircled her with a gentle arm.

  She knew that Joe was in awe of Barbara, stood on just about an evenfooting with Tad, and regarded the other four as lovable, cuddly beingswho were still too young to have any real identities of their own. Butit was Emma who understood their hearts and, much of the time, theirminds.

  Proud of Barbara's grace and beauty, she still saw beyond it. Barbarawas not, as Joe thought, fragile of body. She did have a generous natureand a delicate, sensitive mind that must either encompass all or rejectall. There were times when Emma trembled for her and what the futuremight do to her. To Emma she was an opening bud, almost ready to bloom,and if blossoms were not tenderly nurtured they faced certaindestruction. Emma hoped and prayed that the common sense and almostmature judgment which Barbara was already displaying would come to heraid when she most needed it.

  Tad was a reflection of Joe, and yet he was not Joe. Behind Tad's wildimpulses and rash acts, Emma saw the man to be. Tad would be a good man,like his father, and Emma knew that she was guilty of no heresy when shehoped that he might be even more capable and talented. Joe himself hopedthat. He wanted everything for his children.

  Baby Joe was a child of infinite patience. Given a problem, such as aknotted piece of string, he kept doggedly at it until every knot wasuntied and the string straight. Emma was grateful and happy for him, forshe knew that the world never had enough people who were not afraid ofproblems. One day Joe would be outstanding.

  Alfred was the soul of mischief. Quick and alert, he missed noopportunity for fun or pranks. Once, in all innocence, he had offered apresent to Barbara and put in her outstretched hand a large blackbeetle. He had gone into gales of laughter when Barbara, who shrank fromall insects, flung the beetle from her. Imaginative, Alfred was foreverinventing games that he could play alone or in which all might share.

  Carlyle had been born to laughter and an appreciation of the beautiful.From the very first, a bright butterfly, a stray sunbeam, a bit ofcolored ribbon, a colored leaf, had caught and held his fascinatedattention. The first word he'd ever spoken had not been the traditional"mama," but "pretty." Emma treasured him greatly, and there was atradition in her family that one of her ancestors had painted some ofthe world's outstanding masterpieces. Though she knew that she wouldnever attempt to dictate the lives of her children, Emma had more than afaint hope that artistic talent would live again in Carlyle.

  But it was the raven-haired child in her lap whom Emma cherished just abit more than the rest. It was not because Emma saw her own image there,but because baby Emma was the sickly one. She was subject to sudden,raging fevers that left her pale and weak. More than once they haddespaired of her life. But she had always come through and no nightpassed that Emma did not offer up a prayer that she would alwayscontinue to do so. The child turned to smile sleepily at her mother.

  "Time for bed, darling?" Emma coaxed.

  "Yes, Mama."

  Emma carried her into the living room, put her on a chair and returnedto the kitchen to dip a pan of water from a kettle warming on the stove.Tenderly she removed the clothing from baby Emma's fragile little body,washed her daughter, put her night dress on and carried her into bed.She leaned over to kiss the child twice on each cheek and watched hersnuggle happily beneath the quilts. This was a ritual that Emma herselfmust always perform. Barbara could put the other young children to bed,but Emma always had to take care of baby Emma.

  Barbara had the giggling Carlyle in her arms when Emma went back intothe kitchen. In passing, she patted the child's curly head and startedto wash her dishes. Her china w
as carefully stored in the new cupboardand there it would remain until the children were big enough to respectit. Emma remembered poignantly one of her minor heartbreaks of yearsago. The Casper family, departing for the west, had decided that theirchina was too frail to stand the trip so they'd given it to Emma. It waslovely, delicate ware that had come across an ocean, been used by theCaspers in New York, and brought by them to Missouri.

  Emma delighted in its feel, and her heart lifted when she merely lookedat it. Often she speculated about its history. It was ancient andexpensive, the sort of china wealthy people of good taste would buy. Hadit come from some castle in England, or perhaps Spain? Who were thepeople, now probably long dead, who had made merry over it? Delightedand thrilled, Emma had set the table with it. But Barbara, at the timetheir only child, was a baby then and she had pushed her cup and plateonto the floor where they shattered.

  Emma put the rest away and used her old dishes until they, too, werebroken. Joe, always handy with tools, had made her wooden plates, bowls,and cups. He had used hard, seasoned maple, and had worked endlesslywith it until it was polished almost to the consistency of china. Aseach new baby arrived, Joe had made more table ware. They were almostalike, but not exactly so, and Emma had handled and washed them so oftenthat every line in every piece was familiar. She knew by touch whichplate, cup, or bowl, belonged to whom, and that gave her a good feeling.Just as it was part of Joe's life to respond intimately to the goodnessin new-turned earth, it was part of hers to care for the various thingsthat meant security for her family. Security, to Emma, meant no one bigthing but a host of little ones.

  She soaked her hands in the warm water, liking the feel of that too,while she washed the dishes with a soapy cloth. Rinsing them in cleanwater, she stacked them on the table beside her. She did it carefully,meticulously. Wooden dishes could not break, but it was part of hernature to be meticulous and nothing at all was so easy to get that onecould afford to be careless with it. Besides, the dishes were precious.Joe had spent long hours, night hours when he could not work in thefields, making and polishing them. Where a less particular man wouldhave called them good enough, Joe had worked on. He did not, he said,want to take the chance of any slivers finding their way into babymouths.

  Barbara brought the pajamaed Carlyle out for his good-night kiss andtook him in to bed. She stooped for Alfred. Quick as a deer, he dartedbehind a chair and made faces at his sister. When Barbara went to thechair, Alfred, howling with glee, ran to his mother and clasped botharms about her. Emma turned to him. She herself was tired, and a bit outof patience, and she spoke more sharply than she ordinarily talked toany of the children.

  "Go to bed now, Ally."

  "Do' wanna."

  "Alfred, go with Barbara!"

  Meekly Alfred surrendered himself to Barbara's arms, and was carriedinto the other room for his bath. Emma shook her head to dislodge a wispof hair that had fallen over her eye. There were rare occasions when sheworried about Alfred too. She imagined that Percy Pearl must have been agreat deal like him when he was a baby, and though she liked Percy, shewould not want any of her children to imitate his way of life. Likeeveryone else, she really did not know how Percy lived. But there wererumors, and Emma suspected more. She comforted herself with the thoughtthat there was really nothing to worry about. Thousands of children weremischievous. If all of them turned out badly, the world would be made uplargely of bad people.

  Emma dried her dishes as carefully as she had washed them and stackedthem in the cupboard. She poured her dish water down the drain, aningenious wooden spout that Joe had also constructed and which led intoa cesspool beside the house. Vigorously she began to scrub her table andthe wooden sink. In all their years together, except to praise hercooking, Joe had never once commented on the way she kept house. Thathad been a cause of minor dissension at first. Emma had worked forhours, hand-stitching the new curtains. Proudly she draped the windows,and when Joe came in he didn't even appear to notice. But the years hadtaught her much.

  Joe regarded the house as exclusively her domain and the fields as his,though he always wanted to know what she cared to have in the familyvegetable garden and sometimes asked her advice as to what crops heshould plant. She warmed to him because he did, for it proved that herespected her. Concerning the house, his very lack of comment wasapproval. Emma poured clean water into her dish pans and scrubbed themwhile Barbara brought Alfred in for his kiss and took Joe. Carefully,Emma swept the floor and emptied the trash into the kitchen wastebasket,a hollow stump that Joe had further hollowed and so arranged that it hadboth a dust-tight bottom and a hinged cover.

  Barbara came in with baby Joe, and after Emma kissed him, the girl tookhim to bed. Barbara re-entered the kitchen.

  "Aren't you about finished, Mother?"

  "Almost. Tad, take yourself off to bed now."

  "Already?" Tad was testing the razor-keen blade of his newly honedknife.

  "It's time. Take your bath and go to bed."

  "Do I have to take a bath? I swam in the crick today."

  "The 'creek,'" Emma corrected firmly. "If you swam you needn't bathe.But go to bed."

  "It's too early," he complained.

  "Tad!"

  "Yes, Ma."

  Tad took himself toward the bedroom and emerged, yawning, for hisgood-night kiss. After he had gone, Emma smiled covertly. Tad, at eight,resented his own childhood fiercely. He was in an almost ferocious rushto grow up so he could avail himself of what, in his own mind, were allthe privileges of adulthood. But he still would not go to bed withouthis mother's kiss.

  Emma seated herself at the table for the moment contented to rest. This,for her, was a time of contentment and soul-satisfying joy. She arose toeach new day as though it were a complete new challenge that was sure topresent its opportunities but might offer hazards, too. But the nightalways meant peace, and to know that her younger children were safe inbed brought happiness to Emma's heart. Now she knew only a littleuneasiness because Joe was still absent. Barbara washed her hands andface, and let her satiny, tawny hair cascade down her shoulders.

  "Are we going to the Trevelyans' barn dance Saturday night, Mother?"

  "I think so."

  "Would you mind very much if I did not go with you?"

  Emma glanced curiously at her. "Why not?"

  "Well, Johnny Abend asked if he could take me. So did Billy Trevelyanand Allan Geragty. It would be fun if you let me go with one of them."

  Emma's eyes sparkled with humor. "And which of the three are you goingto honor?"

  Barbara wrinkled her nose. "Allan Geragty is a smart aleck. I don't likehim."

  Emma murmured, "Dear, a choice of only two escorts! Yes, you may go."

  "Thank you. I believe I'll set outside for a little while, Mother."

  "All right."

  Barbara opened the door and closed it quietly behind her. Emma knew thatshe was going only to look at the stars, and that was good because allyoung people should have trysts with stars. They might never pull oneout of the sky and have it for their own, but they could always try.Emma fell into a mood of sober reflection.

  The years had brought her a fair measure of wisdom, and at thirty-twoshe knew a great deal which she had not known when, at sixteen, shebecame Joe's wife. Among other things, she knew now that her father hadbeen a martinet. He knew, he thought, the only true way, and all abouthim must follow or risk his wrath. If Emma regretted any years of hermarried life, it was the first five when she had insisted that she mustnot leave her father. But she had honestly known of nothing else thatshe might do.

  Since babyhood she had been under her father's influence, and in hisopinion women must always take a secondary place. One by one, as her sixolder brothers attained their majority, they had quarreled with theirfather and left home. Then the old man had suffered a series of spasms,and now Emma wondered if they were not simulated spasms designed to keephis last remaining child at his side. But she had loved him and pitiedhim and remained under his influence. She
had brought upon her husbandfive painful and unproductive years. But those five years had taughtEmma the true measure of Joe's worth. In spite of old Caleb's abuse, Joehad given him the fullest help of which a man is capable. He had been inthe fields from the first light of morning until the last lingering glowof twilight. And he had waited without a word of complaint until Emmaherself was willing to leave. With a fresh surge of love and gratitudeshe thought about his patient waiting, more difficult for him than formany another. Because he had waited until she was fully ready, she hadfelt obliged to conceal from him the real anguish she felt when, lookingback from the wagon that was carrying them away, she saw Caleb, astrangely shrunken, isolated figure, standing in the doorway of hisempty home.

  But it was not only pity for Caleb that tore at her. It was that her ownroots ran deep, that Caleb's home had been her home for all of her life,that now she and Joe and Barbara had no home at all other than thequarters that would be given to them on the farm where Joe would beworking. To be without her own home was a personal agony that she hadshared with no one, but it was an agony that had enabled her to save andscrimp and put aside every penny until she could hold out her hands toJoe with enough money in them to buy a place of their own.

  Now she held the spare copper lamp base in her hands, and with a softpiece of cloth she rubbed it and rubbed it until she could see mirroredin it the smiling, contented outlines of her own face. For a fewprecious minutes she dared to hope that, in spite of the troublesomedebt, their most difficult years were behind them.

  Barbara came in, stifling a yawn with her hand. "I think I'll go to bedtoo, Mother."

  "Are you tired, darling?"

  "Lazy, I suppose."

  Barbara stooped to pick up a toy wagon--another of Joe's products--thatAlfred and Carlyle had left on the floor. She put it in its proper placeon a shelf, dipped a pan of water, and bathed herself. Night-dressed,she kissed her mother good night. Emma sat alone.

  For eight years she had gone with Joe from farm to farm, where he workedfor a house, food, and small wages. But he had always fed and clothedhis family, and where other men had given up in despair, taken todrink, or even abandoned their families, Joe had still plodded on.Still, he was more than a plodder. Plodding was his way of making a goodfrom what otherwise would have been a bad situation.

  Just as she herself had wanted a home, Joe had wanted his own land, andto be his own master. Together they had worked and saved and sacrificed,until the day came when they were able to realize their ambition. Forher it was the end of the journey. She had come home. The foundation oftheir life was laid. From here on all the work they did would be towardmaking their home and their land completely their own, forever. Yet shehad seen as the year passed that Joe was somehow not content, andthinking about him now, a familiar fear began to tug at her again. Sheknew the wild fires that flared beneath Joe's placid exterior, and shewas at a loss to explain them. The debt against which he fretted soangrily was to her bothersome but surely not intolerable. Bit by bitthey would pay it off, and meanwhile they could live comfortably, eachyear expanding their little home to meet their expanding needs.

  She started when she thought she heard his footstep, then sank back inher chair. Five minutes later the door opened quietly and Joe tiptoedin. Emma looked at his flushed cheeks and excited eyes, and for a momentshe was startled. Men looked like that when they drank too much, but Joedidn't drink. However, he had surely partaken of some heady draught.Emma asked,

  "Are you all right, Joe?"

  "Oh sure. I'm all right. I was down at the store. Bibbers Townley'sthere. He just came back from the west."

  He sat beside her, his eyes glowing, and Emma looked wonderingly at him.She had never seen him just this way before.

  "Tell me, Joe," she urged.

  He blurted, "How would you like to go west?"

  A great fist seemed to have closed about her throat, and for a momentshe could not breathe. After a time her breath came back, and hervoice. But Joe was already going on, leaning forward tensely in hischair, his face eager and alive.

  "There's land in the west, Emma! Land for us! For Tad, Joe, Alfred andCarlyle! Land for whoever Barbara and baby Emma might marry! It's forthe _taking_!"

  "There's land right here, Joe," she managed to say. "Our own land."

  There was quick impatience in his voice as he repeated her words, "Ourown land? I'll be able to pay Elias Dorrance $50 this fall, and out ofthat $40 goes for interest, and $10 off on what we owe."

  "Still, it's something," she said hastily. "Ten off is something! Littleby little, Joe, we'll make the land our own."

  "How many years?" he demanded almost angrily. "How many more years willit take?"

  She could not answer him, not only because she did not know the answerbut because the question wasn't really a question. It was an accusation.He seemed to be accusing her of unwillingness to see something that wasplain enough to Joe, that was right out there in front of them.

  He was looking at her now, his whole face full of questioning.

  She avoided his eyes. "Let's think about it," she said. "The plowing andseeding's already done for this year. Let's think about it this year,and come next spring we'll talk about it again."

  "Come next spring?" he asked vaguely. All of the glow faded from hisface. Even his lips grew pale, and in the sudden quiet she could hearhis breathing, quick and shallow and weary. He seemed spent, as thoughall the weariness of many weeks of work had been piled upon him all atonce in this moment.

  He rose and shuffled to the window. Directly overhead a lone starglittered, cold and unyielding, and he watched it silently.

  Emma's heart ached for him, but what could she do? How could he ask herto do this terrible thing, to pull up her roots again and turn her backon all that they had so painfully, so hopefully gathered together intothis little house? She couldn't do it, not even for Joe, even thoughshe loved him as dearly as she loved life itself.

  She went to him and stood beside him at the window. Soon he put his armabout her. She dropped her head on his shoulder and a shudder wentthrough her, so that she held to him convulsively.

  "Forgive me, Joe," she whispered. "I'm not brave and strong the way youthink. I'm afraid, Joe. I love this house, and I'm frightened to leaveit."

  He held her close, and could find no words. A door had been closedbetween them, somehow, and he could not get through to her, to explainto her about the west. Maybe another year. Maybe....