There were good days when Our Jane felt well. When she was smiling and happy, there wasn't a more beautiful child in the whole wide world than Our Jane, the supreme ruler in the cabin of the Casteels. Oh, indeed, all the valley folks said, how beautiful were all the children of the wicked, cruel, sullen, and stormy Luke Casteel, and his wife Sarah, who, according to jealous women, was not just plain but huge and downright ugly.
One day when Keith, who seldom wanted anything, asked for crayons, it happened that the only ones in the cabin at the time were the ones given to Fanny by Miss Deale months ago. (So far Fanny had not once opened the box to color anything.)
"NO!" Fanny screeched. "Keith kin't have my brand-new crayons!"
"Give him your crayons or he might not speak again," I urged, keeping a wary eye on the little quiet brother who had Grandpa's own silent way of sitting and doing nothing much. Still, Grandpa saw so much more than the rest of us. Who else could whittle each hair on a squirrel's tail? Who else had eyes that didn't just look, but really saw?
"I don't kerr if he neva says nothin!" yelled Fan
ny.
Tom took her crayons and gave them to Keith as Fanny screamed and threatened to drown herself in the well.
"SHUT UP!" bellowed Pa, striding in the door and surveying his raucous children. He winced as if the noise we made pained his head.
"Ya made 'em, didn't ya?" was Sarah's only welcome. She clamped her lips together and didn't say another word. Pa glowered her way and dumped his supply of food on our scrubbed plank table. I hurriedly checked it over, trying to calculate how long that fifty-pound sack of flour would last, that fivegallon tin of lard, the bags of pinto and navy beans. I'd make soup to stretch the cabbages and ham . .
Bang went the front door. Dismayed, I looked up. Pa was striding across the yard toward his old truck. Gone again.
My heart sank.
Every time Pa walked out and left Sarah needing, she did something terrible to one of us, or to herself. And I could hardly blame him sometimes for not wanting to stay. Not only did Our Jane and the rest of us wear on Pa's nerves, he and Sarah wore on each other's nerves too. Sarah had lost not only what looks she had but her sweet personality as well.
Early mornings turned winterlike and squirrels raced around, hurrying to store their nuts for the winter, and Tom was helping Grandpa find the wood he needed to whittle, and that was no easy chore, for it had to be a certain kind,- riot too hard, and not so soft it would break easily with much handling. Both Pa and I were in the yard, alone for a change. "Pa," I began in a tentative way, "I'm doing the best I can for this family. . . can't you do at least one thing for me, like say a kind word now and then?"
"Haven't I told ya before t'leave me alone!" His piercing eyes glared my way before he turned his back. "Now git before I give you what you deserve."
"What do I deserve?" I asked fearlessly, my eyes no doubt an everlasting reminder of all he'd had once and lost. Her.
Starlings sat like miniature dark soldiers on the clotheslines. Puffy, sleepy birds, eyes closed, anticipating the coming cold and waiting for the warming sun. Mountain snow would soon be falling in the nights. I sighed as I stacked the wood, knowing no matter how we tried we'd never have enough to keep really warm. There was an ax half jutting from a felled tree trunk, an ax I thought Pa might use on me if I said one more word. I shut up and hefted the logs he'd split neatly onto the pile.
"There," Pa said to Sarah when she came to the door, "that should hold you until I'm home again."
"Where ya goin this time, so late?" called Sarah, who'd washed her hair and tried to make herself pretty for a change. "Luke, gets mighty lonesome fer a woman without a man, jus ole folks an kids fer company."
"See ya soon," Pa called back, hurrying toward his pickup truck. "Got me a job to finish, an then I'll come home t'stay all night."
He didn't come home for an entire week. I sat on the porch steps late one night and stared at the grim, stormy sky. Sour thoughts made me miserable. There had to be a better place than here for me. Somewhere, a better place. An owl hooted, followed by the howl of a roaming wolf. The night held a thousand sounds. The autumn wind from the north shrieked and whistled around the forest trees, whipped around the trembling cabin and tried to blow it away, but all the people huddled close together for warmth held the house down, or so I thought.
I stared at the horned moon half hidden by dark clouds--the same moon that rode high over Hollywood and New York City, London and Paris. I blinked my eyes and tried to see across the hills, the ocean, then closed my eyes the better to see my future. Someday I'd like to have a real bed of my own to sleep in, with goosedown pillows and satin comforters.
I'd have closets, too, full of new dresses I'd wear once, like Queen Elizabeth, and I'd burn them as she had hers burned, so she'd never see them worn by anybody else. And shoes by the dozens I'd have, in all colors, and I'd eat in fancy restaurants where tall, slim candles glowed . . . but right now I had only a hard, cold step to sit on. And tears were freezing on my cheeks and eyelashes.
I began to shiver, to cough; still, I wouldn't go inside and lie in that crowded room between Fanny and Our Jane. Tom and Keith slept next to the pallet used by Granny and Grandpa.
While the others lay sleeping more or less peacefully, there came the whisper of old feet moving slowly. Raspy breathing, grunts and groans, as Granny settled down by my side on the step.
"Yell catch yer death in this night cold, an maybe yell think that will make yer pa sorry, but is that gonna make ya happy in yer grave?"
"Granny, Pa doesn't have to hate me like he does. Why can't you make him understand it wasn't my fault my mother died?"
"He knows it ain't yer fault--down underneath he knows it. But if he admits it, he's gotta blame himself fer marryin up-with her, an bringin a gal like her ta this kind of place she weren't used ta. She tried, oh, she did try to do her best, an I'd see her out here scrubbin, ruinin her pretty white hands, brushin back that hair of hers that was somethin t'see . an she'd go runnin t'that suitcase of hers, full of all sorts of pretties, an she'd rub on cream from a tube, tryin, always tryin, to keep those hands young an pretty."
"Granny, you know I can't bear to look in that suitcase and see all her pretty things. What good are clothes like that way up here where nobody ever comes? But I had a dream about the doll the other night--that she was me, and I was her. Someday I'm going to go to Boston and find my mother's family. I owe it to them to let them know what happened to their daughter, for surely they must think she's alive, living happily somewhere."
"Yer right. Neva thought of it myself, but yer right." Her thin old arms hugged me briefly, and there was no strength in them, none at all. "Ya jus set yer mind on what ya want, an ya'll get it, ya will."
Life in the mountains was harder on Granny than on any of us. Nobody but me seemed to notice how much more difficult it had become for Granny to get up and down. Often she'd stop walking to clutch at her heart. Sometimes her face would go chalky gray, and she'd gasp. It didn't do any good to suggest a doctor; she didn't believe in doctors, or any medicine she didn't concoct herself from roots and herbs she sent me out to find.