Together Apart Read online

  Issac

  I STOOD THERE BESIDE THE TRAIL, MY HEART THUMPING AS IF A six-footed rabbit was trapped inside my ribs, and stared after Mr. Barnett's wagon until it disappeared over a rise. Stared until Hannah disappeared over a rise. Hannah with hair the color of midnight. Hannah, who had danced on the prairie. Hannah, the girl who'd saved my sorry life. I was mighty tempted to chase after the wagon, ask Hannah how she'd been faring, but thought better of it. There'd been a warning in Mr. Barnett's scowl—stay away from Hannah or else. So I hog-tied my want and headed for the schoolyard.

  The dampness from the grass seeped through the holes in the soles of my shoes, chilling my toes. This put me in mind of something Hannah had said during the blizzard. "Make believe your feet are loaves of bread, hot from the oven." I'd never been one to put much stock in make-believe, but I'd survived when others hadn't, still had my feet and hands when others didn't.

  My empty stomach, not knowing the difference between pretend bread and real, begged and growled as I climbed the schoolhouse steps. "Soon," I said, and my stomach shut up. I stopped before going through the door and tried to recollect how many times I'd stood there before. Far too few. Plowing and planting had kept me away every spring. Harvest stretched into late fall. In between there were fences to mend, wood to chop, hogs to butcher, and any other chore my stepfather, Mr. Richards, could dream up so I wouldn't, as he put it, "Get too smart for my britches." If it hadn't been for my ma holding her ground now and again, Mr. Richards would have put a stop to my schooling by the age of nine or ten. As it was, I'd gone whenever I could —a day here, three in a row there.

  When I stepped inside the schoolhouse, I half expected Miss Farnham to gawk over the top of her spectacles and frown, half expected the girls to giggle, half expected a spit wad to splat between my eyes. But there wasn't anybody there, only the busted desks, the cannonball stove lying on its side, and a heap of splintered rafters and shingles that'd once been half the roof. At the make-do chalkboard, which was nothing but a plaster wall painted black, I rubbed out "Isaac slept here" with my sleeve and wrote, "Isaac's moving on." That done, I headed for the one dry corner to fetch my gear.

  I lifted the moth-eaten wool blanket from the straw pile that had been my bed for nigh onto a week, shook out the dust, and spread the blanket on the floor. Lined up next to the straw pile were my real pa's woodworking tools. I turned each tool over in my hand—block plane, brace, calipers, chisels, and gouges—before laying them on the blanket. The hammer I held for a minute, tightening my grip on the handle that'd been worn smooth by my pa's hand. Next I piled on the few duds that weren't already on my back. The socks, in particular, smelled a little rank. On top of it all, I set my real pa's shoes—good, sturdy shoes that didn't need rags to hold them together.

  I folded two corners of the blanket over my gear. I knotted the other two corners in the fashion of a sling, then poked my head and one arm under the knot. The knot resting on my shoulder, leaving my hands free as birds, I set off down the road for Prairie Hill.

  Pa's tools clicked and clacked and my shoes flipped and flapped as I hiked along. I pulled my harmonica from my hip pocket, cupped my hands about it, and made up a tune as I kept time with the clack click, flap flip. It was a lively tune, and it got livelier as I stretched out my strides. But when I passed a farmer hunched over a breaking plow, my music slowed to a funeral pace. That farmer had been me six days before.

  I'd been busting sod, opening a new field so Mr. Richards could plant some flax. Back and forth, sunup to sundown, trudging through clods and dung, my eyes fixed on the oxen yoke until it felt like the yoke was sawing into my shoulders. There wasn't any music in this work, at least none I could hear. Other men heard it. I'd seen it in their eyes when, at the end of a long day, they'd lift a hand to their brow and look out over their land.

  I'd tried using Hannah's trick, make believe I was anywhere but in that field, but the only picture that'd come to mind, the only sound I'd heard, was acre after acre, year after year, of lonesome, backbreaking silence. I'd tried again, tunneling deeper into my noggin. Deeper still, and I heard something. A raspy whisper? I reeled the whisper in as if it were a stubborn, bawling calf at the end of a rope. When I'd dragged it close enough, yanked the lasso tight enough to choke, it bellowed, "Is this how you spend your second chance?"

  I ran away from Mr. Richards's house that very night, but not before begging my ma to come with me. Her eyes had watered. "Go if you must, but I cannot. My place is with my husband, for better or worse," she'd said. I told her worse was all she had to look forward to, but she only looked away and said there was more to it than I knew.

  Ma had smuggled food to me those first days I'd holed up at the schoolhouse, but Mr. Richards must have found her out because there'd been no food for the last three. No matter. I was on my way to a home-cooked meal and a bed that wasn't just an oversized bird's nest.

  Down the wagon trail a piece, the click clack, flip flap was joined by another, louder, click clack, flip flap, then louder still and mixed with a belch of locomotive steam. I blew hard into my harmonica, ran my mouth up and down the scale, and then waded through the tall grass that separated the wagon trail from the tracks. Standing as close to the tracks as a fellow dared, I braced myself like a runner about to begin a footrace. The iron horse neared. The earth shivered. Closer still, and I took off, my arms pumping and the tools clacking madly. Double time, triple. The engine edged past. The coal tender. One freight car, then two, then five. Half the caboose. I reached up and into the swirl of sooty wind. Grabbed the bill of my cap. Tipped it just as the caboose sped past. I waited there beside the tracks until I'd caught my wind, then set off again for Prairie Hill.

  ***

  I smelled the town before I got there. This wasn't altogether disagreeable. Prairie Hill was growing fast—a "boom town," folks called it. There was the spicy stink of the livery stables and street-sweeper's dung heaps, but there were also the stick-to-your-ribs smells of bakeries and eateries and meat markets, the thought of which caused a river of spit to float my tongue.

  I heard the town nearly before I got there, too—the metal clang of foundries and blacksmith shops, the echoing thwack of carpenter hammers, the bark of a peddler hawking his wares. It was my kind of music, and I was about to join the band.

  The sun was sinking by the time I reached the wooden sidewalk that marked the beginning of Main Street. I sat myself down and fished my pa's shoes out of the blanket. I held one up before putting it on. It threw a shadow of heroic size. Ma had saved the shoes for me, even though it meant Pa'd had to go shoeless into the Hereafter. She'd said they had too much wear left in them to waste. I'd been stingy about wearing them because I didn't want to walk holes in the soles before my feet got big enough to fill them.

  I'd learned a thing or two since running away from Mr. Richards's farm, and one of those things was that, to be seen as a young man and not as an ignorant farm boy by the townsfolk, you had to wear decent shoes. I'd been shown the door in several business establishments before getting the chance to apply for a job. The place where I'd most hoped to find work, Boggs Furniture Makers and Undertaking Parlor, was one of them. When Mr. Boggs figured out I wasn't there to buy one of his handcrafted wooden cradles or chifforobes or coffins, he threw me out on my ear, the soles of my shoes flapping.

  I'd worn Pa's shoes the next day, and some few of the proprietors had at least let me say my piece. Mr. Hertzel, the wagon maker, had said he'd consider me if I came back in the fall after his boy had started up his studies at the university over in Lincoln. Sons, fathers and sons, was another lesson I'd learned. Establishments with names that ended with "and Sons," as in "Preston and Sons Home Builders," weren't likely to give someone else's son a second look.

  I'd finally nailed down a job earlier that day, and in a most unlikely place. I put my harmonica to my mouth and played my way up Main, past the millinery, dressmakers, druggist, and barbershop. When I got to the corner of Main and Fourth, I
stopped and looked up to the northernmost window on the second floor of the Ackerman Hotel. That was the room where Ma and I had holed up in the weeks after Pa died. I was a runt of only five, but I remembered, and the thing I remembered most was the bedbugs. I scratched an itch in the middle of my back then played my way around the corner.

  A boy, young enough to be wearing knee-high britches, fell in behind me. I switched my tempo to a march, and the one boy was soon joined by two more. They paraded after me as far as the place where the wooden sidewalk veered off to the right. One hollered after me, "Don't go that way. My ma says the Widow Moore is crazy, that likely as not she eats boys for her supper."

  "Crazy as a fox," I hollered over my shoulder, then broke into a run. Halfway along, I almost tripped on a loose sidewalk board. I hammered the board flat before moving on.

  ***

  Before announcing myself to Mrs. Moore, Eliza, I ducked into the stable and climbed the stairs to the sleeping room above to drop off my gear. Eliza had said I was welcome to sleep in the house, but the stable room suited me just fine. It had a cot and a table and two chairs, one of these chairs being overstuffed. What more could a fellow want? I thought as I slicked down my hair in the fancy mirror that hung on the wall.

  To get to the main house, I didn't have to go back outside. A door on the first floor of the stable led to the room that housed the printing press, where I was to begin working the next morning. From there, a door led into a larger, longer room, which Eliza had said the Judge once used for his courtroom. I didn't know much about courtrooms, but to my way of thinking this longer room said "school." Tall windows lined each of the side walls. At one end the floor was raised to stumble height, like a teacher's platform or a stage. Newfangled gaslights hung here and there on the walls as they did in every room inside the main house, the gas hissing in from wooden pipes that not long before had been dug under the town's streets.

  If Eliza hadn't shown me around earlier in the day, knowing which of the room's doors to choose would have been akin to finding the pea in a fast-handed shell game. A door on one side wall opened on the bricked drive. The back yard was gotten to by a door on the other side. Two more doors flanked the raised floor. The first of these led to a room used for washing clothes; the other led to an indoor necessary. Each of these smaller rooms had yet another door, both opening into the kitchen of the main house.

  I picked the door to the indoor necessary, thinking maybe I'd try it out, but sniffed smoke so hurried on through and into the kitchen, where I spied the culprit. I didn't see an oven glove, so I unbuttoned my shirt, wrapped it around my hand, and then yanked the roaster pan out of the oven. Into Eliza's fancy, hung-off-the-wall sink it went, charred chicken and all. My stomach was mighty disappointed.

  Hannah

  I REMOVED THE PAN OF GOLDEN BROWNED BISCUITS FROM THE oven and then turned to the table where my papa and brothers, their faces and hands freshly scrubbed, had just sat down. Our table wasn't large enough for everyone to eat at once, so the menfolk ate first, followed by Mama and us girls. I served Papa his two biscuits, then Jake, eighteen, and James, eleven, and then moved quickly past the two empty chairs to where Joey sat. Joey looked up and smiled. Joey's was the only smile given in trade for a biscuit. Jake and James wore the same tired expression as Papa.

  Hester was dishing up the stew when Joey said, "Hannah took us to a castle."

  I froze.

  "Hannah," Papa said, "I thought I told you to stop filling the boy's head with your make-believe foolishness."

  I'd wanted to wait until after supper to share my news, but Joey had opened the door, so I figured I might as well step through it. I smoothed out the handbill and laid it next to Papa's bowl. "Sir, the castle isn't make-believe, it's a big brick house in town, the home of the Widow Moore, and I applied for a position there today, and she has asked me to return tomorrow morning to stay and work there through the end of the week, and if she finds me acceptable and asks me to stay on, I will bring home every penny of my wage."

  Papa picked up the handbill and began to read. Mama wiped her hands on her apron then hurried to look over his shoulder. Hester and Lila's eyes grew to the size of hens' eggs. Jake stuffed his mouth with biscuit; James filled his with stew.

  When Papa finished reading, he returned the handbill to the table, took up his spoon, and began to eat. One mouthful, then two, the air in the soddie growing more taut with each lift of his wrist. So taut that, if I waited through another mouthful, I was afraid the air would snap and I would fly apart. I braced myself, hiccupped, then asked, "Do I have your permission, sir?"

  Papa took his time swallowing then said, "You told this Moore woman you'd come?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then I'd say it's a little late to be asking my permission."

  I should have been relieved, but I wasn't. Papa used a tone meant to hurt, as had become his habit when he was required to speak with me.

  Mama returned to the stove, her back to the table, wiping at her apron as if there were something dirty she couldn't get off her hands.

  When Papa and the boys had finished their supper and gone out to the barn to tend a sick calf, Mama told my sisters to fill their plates and carry them outside. They didn't fuss. Then it was just me and Mama. Her eyes showed the same worry I'd seen there so many times before—when I'd come home from wandering too long on the prairie. She laid one hand on my shoulder and asked, "Why, Hannah?"

  Why? I'd been asking myself the same question, over and over, since the blizzard. Why had Jon, Jacob, and I been the only three of my brothers and sisters to wake without scratchy throats that morning? Why had the morning air been so deceitfully balmy when the three of us had set out for school—the falling snow so pretty? Why hadn't I read the signs in the noontime sky? Why had the prairie drawn me in that day? Why had I wandered so far? Why hadn't I heard the school bell? Why had the prairie I'd so loved turned against me? Why had I been the only one to ever make it home? Why?

  "Is it your papa, the way he's been treating you? Is that why you want to go away?"

  Again I had no answer. Papa was part of it, the harsh way he often spoke to me, the way his eyes avoided mine. The daily reminder of the two empty chairs was part of it, too. But there was more to it than Papa and empty chairs. I'd been circling the questions like a cat chasing its tail. I knew only one thing. I wouldn't find the answers there in our house. Wouldn't find the answers surrounded on all sides by too much prairie.

  "Your papa doesn't blame you, Hannah. Men keep their grief bottled up inside and once it's in there it gets mixed up and doesn't come out the way they mean it to. And all that talk about you shaming yourself, he doesn't mean that either. You just need to give him more time."

  Tears rushed to Mama's eyes then. "And you need to give me more time. I've known from the time you were little that you'd go away from me one day, but I'm nowhere near ready to lose you yet."

  "I'm not going far, Mama. Only into Prairie Hill. If Mrs. Moore hires me, I'm sure she will allow me to spend Sundays here with you, and I'm also sure she wouldn't mind if you visited me whenever you are in town."

  Mama threw up her hands. "You know yourself how hard it is for me to go into town. There's no decent place to feed the children and all I can think of is the work going undone at home. And, Hannah, have you so easily forgotten the winters when the roads are buried in snow? How many Sundays do you think you'll be able to come home then?"

  "I'll find a way, Mama. I promise."

  Mama began to weep then, but no tears visited my eyes. I hadn't cried since before the blizzard. When I didn't cry at my brothers' funeral, Hester had accused me of being cold-hearted. She'd been more right than she knew. My heart felt as if it had shattered into a hundred jagged, icy pieces.

  Hester, who must have been listening at the window, came into the house just then. She shot me one of her "now you've done it" looks, then guided Mama to her bed and stayed there with her, mumbling comforting words.

  Late
r, after Lila and I had done up the supper dishes and I'd rinsed the mud from my clothes and hung them to dry near the stove, I stuffed a few things into a pillow cover that would serve as my make-do traveling valise. That done, I joined my sisters in our bed. Hester and I, being the oldest, usually slept at either edge. Lila slept in the middle and Megan crosswise at the foot. That night, Hester traded places with Lila. I expected that as soon as Papa had turned out the last of the oil lamps, she'd shame me for multiplying Mama's grief. I turned my face to the sod wall. Megan's breathing fell into sleep, followed in a moment by Lila's. The cornshuck-stuffed mattress tick crackled. I clutched a fold of the quilt. Hester's breath warm in my ear, she whispered, "I'm glad for you."

  Her words were like a spring breeze. I rolled over and whispered, "Will Mama ever forgive me?"

  "In time."

  We whispered then, as we hadn't done for months. Hester wanted to know every detail of my day, how I'd learned of the position, what Mrs. Moore was like, wanted especially to know how I'd been brave enough to rap at her front door.

  When Hester ran out of questions, I asked her one. "If suddenly you found yourself quite alone in the world, your only assets a grand house and quickly dwindling funds, what clever, yet tasteful, endeavors might you undertake to support yourself ?"

  Hester was quick to answer. "I'd take in boarders," she said. Soon after she drifted off to sleep.

  An answer to Eliza's question didn't come quickly to me, so I did the thing Papa had earlier said was foolishness. I made believe that I was there in Eliza's house, wearing her ink-stained apron. The carpet tickled my feet as I zigzagged from one side of the main hall to the other, peeking into one room after the other. Books lined the walls of a wood-paneled room; lush ferns decorated another. I stacked logs in all the fireplaces and sun-washed the windows. The kitchen drew me again and again, and I might have lingered there if not for the vision of Mama. Gossamer as a dragonfly's wing, she stood at the stove, her hands tangled in her apron.