Heaven (Casteel 1)

That's what he'd said, all right, but right now Sarah was feeling that her cross weighed a ton, and I could hardly blame her.

We walked slowly toward the cabin, reluctant to part. "You're not going to ask me in . . . again?" asked Logan in a stiff way.

"Next time . . maybe."

He stopped walking. "I'd like to take you home with me, Heaven. I've told my parents how wonderful you are, and how pretty, but they'll have to see you and know you to appreciate the truth of what I've been saying."

I backed off, sad for him and sad for me, wondering why he didn't let the poverty and shame of the Casteels drive him away. That's when he stepped up very quickly, grabbed me, and gave me a peck on my mouth. I was startled by the feel of his lips, by the way he looked in the strange light of the early evening. "Good night. . . and don't you worry, for I'll be here when you need me." And with that he was off down the trail, heading for the clean and pretty streets of Winnerrow, where he'd climb stairs to the apartment over Stonewall's Pharmacy. In bright, cheerful modern rooms with running water and flushing toilets, two of them, he'd watch IV this evening with his parents. I stared at the place where he had disappeared, wondering what it would be like to live in clean rooms, with a color television. Oh, a thousand times better than here, I knew that, just knew that.

If I hadn't been thinking romantically of Logan, and his kiss, I wouldn't have drifted so unaware into the cabin--and been so surprised when it exploded all around me.

Pa was home.

He paced the small space of the front room, throwing Sarah glares hard enough to drive knives through her. "Why did you let yourself get pregnant again?" he bellowed, slamming his fist into the palm of his other hand; then he whirled to bang his fists on the nearest wall, causing cups to jump from the shelf nearby and fall to the floor and break. And we had just enough cups, none to spare.

Pa was terrible in his anger--frightening as he whipped around with energy too great to confine in such a small space. "I'm working night and day now to keep you and your kids going . . ." he stormed.

"Ya had nothin t'do with em, did ya?" screamed Sarah, her long red hair loose from the ribbon that usually held it back.

"But I gave you those pills to take!" yelled Pa. "I paid good money for those things, hoping you'd have sense enough to read the directions!"

"I took em! Didn't I tell ya I took em? Took em all, waitin fer ya t'come home, an ya didn't--an when ya did, all t'pills were gone!"

"You mean you took them all at one time?"

She jumped up, started to speak, and then fell back into the chair she'd just left, one of the six hard straight chairs that gave-no one real comfort. "I fergit . . . kept fergittin, so I swallowed all so I wouldn't fergit ."

"Oh, God!" Pa moaned. His dark eyes glared at her with scorn and contempt. "Dumb! And I read the directions to you!" With that he slammed out the door, leaving me to sit on the floor near Tom, who held Keith and Our Jane on his lap. Our Jane had her small face hidden against Tom, crying as she always cried when her parents fought. Fanny was on her bed pallet rolled up in a tight knot, her hands over her ears and her eyes squinched tight. Granny and Grandpa just sat rocking on and on, staring blankly into space, as if they'd heard all this many times before and they'd hear it many times again in the future. "Luke'll come back and take kerr of ya," Granny comforted weakly when Sarah continued to cry. "He's a good boy. He'll fergive ya when he sees his new baby."

Groaning, Sarah got up and began to prepare our last meal of the day. I hurried to assist. "Sit down, Ma, or go and rest on the bed. I can handle this meal by myself."

"Thank ya, Heaven . . . but I gotta do somethin t'keep from thinkin. An I used t'love him so much. Oh, God, how I used t'love an want Luke Casteel, neva knowin, or guessin, he don't know how t'love anyone betta than himself . . ."

Fanny hissed at me that night, soon after supper was over: "Gonna hate that new baby! We don't need it. Ma's too old t'have babies . . . it's me who needs my own baby."

"You don't need your own baby!" I flared sharply. "Fanny, you're just brainwashing yourself to think having a baby means you'll be grown-up and free--a baby will tie you down worse than youth, so watch out how you play with your boyfriends."

"You don't know nothin! It don't happen t'first time! Yer ten times more a kid than me or else ya'd know what I really mean."

"What do you really mean?"

She sobbed, clutching at me. "Don't know . . jus want so much we don't have it hurts. There's gotta be somethin I kin do t'make my life betta. Don't have no real boyfriend like ya got. They don't love me like Logan loves ya. Heaven, help me, please help me."

"I will, I will," I pledged as we clung together, not knowing what I could do but pray.

Hot August days seemed to grow shorter much too fast. The last weeks of Sarah's pregnancy passed more or less painfully for her, and for all of us, even though Pa showed up more often than he had, and he'd stopped yelling and pacing, and seemed resigned to the fact that Sarah might have five or six more kids before she was through.

She clumped heavily around the mountain cabin, her red, callused hands often clasped over the mound that carried her fifth baby, which she was not anticipating with much joy. Mumbled prayers stayed on her lips, or else she bellowed out orders. The sweetness of Sarah at her best seldom showed anymore. Then, worse than anything, the

loudmouthed meanness we'd unhappily grown accustomed to was replaced by an alarming silence.

Instead of yelling and screaming abuse at Pa, at all of us, she just shuffled along, like an old lady, and Sarah wasn't more than twenty-eight. She hardly glanced at Pa when he came home, not even bothering to ask where he'd been, forgetting about Shirley's Place; forgetting to ask if he was still earning "clean" money, or selling that moonshine which was "dirty" money. Sarah seemed locked up in herself, struggling to make some decision.

Day by day Sarah grew quieter, more withdrawn, less devoted to all of us. That hurt, to have no mother at all now, especially when Our Jane and Keith needed her so badly. Her glare hardened whenever Pa came in the door once or twice a week. He was working in Winnerrow, doing honest work, but she refused to believe that, as if she were looking for a reason to hate and distrust him. Sometimes I heard him telling Sarah about his work, looking uneasy because she didn't ask. "Doin odd jobs fer t'church an t'rich ladies with banker husbands who don't wanna dirty their lily-white hands."

Sure, many a dollar Pa earned doing handyman chores for rich folks, and Sarah shouldn't dispute him. Pa could do any sort of handyman job.

Our Jane felt Sarah's depression, and seemed to get sick even more than usual that summer. She was the one who caught all the colds the rest of us easily threw off; then she had chicken pox; and no sooner was that over than Our Jane fell into a patch of poison ivy and cried for one solid week night and day-- driving Pa out in the middle of the night, again, to visit Shirley's Place.