Circle of Grace

Chapter One September 8, 1900 Gonzalez, Texas

“I smell a storm.” Mother muttered. “Rain’s a’coming. My knee has been hurting somethin’ awful. Ruth, Suzanna, get down from that tree. We need to go home and make some victuals in case we get laid up a spell. It was uncanny how Mother’s knee only hurt when it was going to rain. She held a clutch of eggs in her apron from the coop behind the diner.

We’d played in the ancient oak that morning in our fort high among the leaves that flanked the front of Mother and Father’s diner, The Cattle Horn, named for the massive set of Texas longhorns that hung over the front window.

“Come on, girls,” Mother called up to us again. “Get down from there.”

I jumped down from the third rung on the ladder and glanced up at the morning clouds, unimpressed by the look of them. Sure didn’t look like rain to me.

Mother turned the sign on the blue door of the diner from open to closed, locked it, and collected a basket of fresh vegetables and supplies she’d left on the porch. She handed my sister Suzanne the basket of eggs. “Ruth, you bring along the bag of apples, will ya?” She asked.

Taking an apple in hand, I bit into it and passed one to my sister. The juice ran down my chin.

“Where’s Father?” I asked between several big bites.

“He’s closing up and nailing some boards over the windows, and he’ll bring the chickens and some firewood home in the wagon later.”

“Why don’t we stay at the diner?” I asked as I threw the core into the brush by the side of the road and wiped my chin with the corner of my apron.

“Our house sits up on the rise. We’re too close to the river here.”

We traipsed the quarter-mile on the road to the house. Once home, we started a pot of chili bean, mixed some biscuits then we brought jars of food up from the cellar to have at the ready. Mother’s wrinkled brow worried me as she filled the lanterns and stuffed rags under the door and around the windows. She added a clean night pot and washbasin to the room. All the while, Suzanna and I took turns stirring the chili.

“Those beans sure smell good, girls,” Mother said. “I’m glad you’re not letting them burn.”

Father’s big voice boomed as he entered the back door. “We better make haste, it’ll be raining bullfrogs by tonight. I’ll take care of the livestock.” He headed out again, the door slamming behind him.

Late afternoon, the ominous dark and gloomy clouds filled the sky. We gulped our dinner and cleaned up as the rain started softly. The air was oppressive, humid, and quiet as a graveyard. We all huddled in the drawing room. Mother’s chair creaked while she rocked, knitting a baby blanket for the poor box at church. Father sat next to her on the horsehair sofa, nervously twiddling his thumbs. The pages of his almanac lay open beside him, but he hadn’t glanced at it. Suzanna and I sat at the table and culled an enormous pile of black beans, separating them from the pebbles and debris.

“Bess,” Father asked, “do you think we oughta go down into the cellar?”

“I think we’ll be fine up here. It’s so small down there we barely fit. There’s no need to get all riled up.”

Father grunted in agreement.

We finished our chore by filling the large crock with the sorted beans, and I gathered the bits of stone and dirt in my apron. Unthinkingly, I opened the door and threw out the chaff. I closed my eyes when it blew right back at me.

“Let’s sleep in here tonight,” Mother said while walking down the hall to pull the bedding from our rooms. Meanwhile, Father and Suzanna moved the sofa and chairs to the wall. I placed my hands on the glass lamp on the table—one of Mother’s prize possessions. The rounded shade had small square pieces of green glass soldered together. The post was a most beautiful brass maiden holding her arms to the sky. The wick was lit on special occasions, like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

“Be careful with that lamp,” Father said. “Better yet, let me move it. You push the table.”

Returning to the room, Mother dropped her load of blankets on the floor. We helped her make up the shakedown beds. The room had turned dusky, and Father lit the wick of our workaday lamp. He put it on the table. We huddled in the middle of the room. The lantern flickered as a whisper of wind made its way through the cracks and crevices of the drafty house. We heard branches scratch the walls, flailing in the wind. Raindrops pattered like mice square dancing on the shingled roof.

Father stood and paced. “Bess, I think there is going to be some damage tonight. I’m gettin’ worried. You sure we shouldn’t go into the cellar? I don’t know why I didn’t figure to board up the windows up in here?”

Father gave voice to my worries.

Mother shrugged. “We won’t be able to rest if we go down there, and besides, it might flood. Best to wait it out here. We’ll sleep in our clothes tonight. If we need to go down, we’ll be ready. Father, I don’t expect you’ll be going out, but I hung your slicker by the door, and the night chamber pot is in the corner.”

“It’ll be fun, you’ll see,” Mother said. “Father, why don’t you tell us a story?”

“It doesn’t sound like fun to me,” I said.

Mother gave me a look. “You’re a worrywart, Ruth.”

Perhaps I was.

Father began a story of the grim reaper he had told us around the fire last summer.

“Father, do you really think a frightening tale of ghosts on this stormy night appropriate?”

“I suppose I could tell them the story about my brother,” he said. So he began to tell a yarn about how his brother fell off his horse into a shallow lake. He couldn’t swim, falling in the water he panicked until he realized the water was only waist-deep.

We all laughed at Father’s antics. He mimicked his brother’s fall, pretending he was swimming, his arms and legs kicking wildly while lying on our blankets with pillows and such surrounding him. Before long, we jumped onto him, and he tickled us until we screamed for mercy.

“Y’all are messin’ up the bed,” Mother said with a smile. “ Stop this nonsense. You girls are getting to big for all that horseplay. It’s time to sleep.”

After straightening the covers, Mother and Father tucked us in with a kiss on our foreheads.

“Mother, can we keep the lamp lighted?” I asked.

“Yes, I suppose so. You’ll see everything is gonna be all right.”

Uncertain, I swallowed my doubt.

The wind picked up and howled through the enormous old oak trees. It sounded like hundreds of demons shrieking and whistling. An occasional downpour smacked the roof with fury. Frightened and uneasy, I sank deeper into the bedding, rolling myself into a ball. I closed my eyes, but sleep was slippery. Eventually, I heard slow, even breathing coming from Mother and Father’s side of our makeshift bed. My anxiety eased. Despite that, I tossed, turned, and landed squarely eye-to-eye with my doll, Josie.

Mother had made Josie from homespun, with a blouse and skirt out of linsey-woolsey, and her embroidered face wore a sweet expression. Mother had even used some of Father’s dark curly hair to make a wig.

Where’s Sally? Suzanna’s doll? I crawled out from underneath our covers and tiptoed into our room. The doll wasn’t in the kitchen, or the living room. I couldn’t find her I laid down next to Suzanna and tapped her arm until she woke.

“Where’s Sally?” I whispered. This morning, she was with us up in the treehouse.

Sally was quite magical, and I envied my sister’s beautiful doll. Auntie Caroline, who left Texas to visit family in Europe, brought Suzanna’s Sally over from far away Germany. While she was there, her mother, my grandmother, had taken ill and died. Upon Auntie’s return, she brought Suzanna her doll, not wanting to leave it in an empty house across the vast ocean.

“Where’s Sally?” I repeated.

“I don’t know,” she mumbled sleepily, turning her back to me.

I shook her shoulder. “Wake up. I’ve looked everywhere. I can’t find her.”

Sally’s big blue eyes opened when you stood her up and closed when she lay down. Her long chestnut-colored hair was like mine, and she had rosy cheeks on a porcelain bisque face. Sally’s soft body was hand-sewn in linen and silk cloth and stuffed with cotton. She wore a crinoline skirt with a lacy bodice and tiny buttons down the front. I loved the flower in her hair, sewn onto a silky pink ribbon.

Suzanna now awake,  “I must have left her up in the tree when Mother called us down this morning,” she said.

I gasped in horror and whispered, “We can’t leave her out there in the storm.”

Sally and Josie had living souls, and they definitely had their own personalities.

Mother roused. “What are you two talkin’ about over there? Settle down! Hush now and get some sleep!”

I replied, “We’re just talking about the storm, that’s all.”

“Well, there ain’t nothing to talk about. We’re all here together. Don’t worry, things will be all sorted by the morning. You’ll see. Now lay down and go to sleep.”

When I heard Mother’s soft snoring, I gently crept from under the crazy patch quilt that covered us.

Suzanna sputtered, “Wh…wh…where are you going?”

“I need to go to the privy.”

“Remember, Mother put the bedpan over there in the corner,” she said. “We don’t need to go to the outhouse.”

“Come on, we got to go get Sally,” I whispered urgently. “She might be blown away by the wind or swept down the river. I just gotta save her!”

“Oh, Ruth, I don’t know. I don’t want to get in trouble,” Suzanna said.

“But it’s… it’s Sally, come on,” I insisted.

“You’re braver than me,” she heaved a sigh and said, “Okay, okay, I can’t let you go alone.”

I slipped on my hand-me-down shoes. Suzanna’s new school shoes stood next to mine, but she didn’t put them on. She walked out barefoot. The door creaked as we unlocked it. I looked at Mother and Father, I noticed they didn’t stir. We stepped out into the pelting rain. Suzanna was close behind me, our heads bent battling the wind; I grabbed Suzanna’s hand lest we be swept away. We headed down the path by the railroad tracks and soon waded in big puddles.

Suzanna yelled, “We should go back. The river’s rising”

“You go on,” I hollered. “I’ll get Sally and come straight home.”

“No, Ruth, it’s too dangerous.” Suzanna was always the practical one. “Come on, let’s go home.”

I dropped Suzanna’s hand, rushing forward. I didn’t dare look back, she would have stopped me.

The last time I saw her that night, she was sloshing through the swirling, muddy current.

I marched forward, intent on my mission.

We had begged Father to build us a treehouse up in that oak. When he finally found time to build it a few years ago, I was eight and Suzanna ten. He nailed some thin pieces of wood onto the tree trunk, which served as a ladder, and added a small table and two little chairs. We scampered up and down like squirrels. Spending our days playing with our dolls and teacups in the higher reaches of the limbs. We watched hungry folks go into the diner, none the wiser to our presence.

Mother said we were both getting too old to play amongst the branches since now I was twelve and Suzanna would turn fourteen in a few days. The sound of the storm assaulted my ears, and darkness masked the landscape. The wind hurried my steps along. It pushed hard on my back like a ghost trying to open a coffin. I squinted into the storm. A black shape rushed towards me. I feared it was the reaper from Father’s story earlier this evening. Suddenly, my feet lifted off the ground. I screamed, and fought my assaulter, petrified.

“Settle down Ruth, I’m right here,” I heard Father yell into my ear. “Where’s your sister?”

“I don’t…I… don’t,” I said, throwing my arms around his neck. “I don’t know. She was back there.” I pointed to the area behind us. “Father, I’m sorry.”

“Your mother is at the diner. She’ll get you home,” He shouted in my ear. “It’s not safe here.” Strands of my wet hair whipped around his face.

He carried me, holding my head to his shoulder, battling the wind. Within minutes, he came to the diner’s back stoop. Water lapped at the bottom step. Mother was inside with a lantern. She opened the door and embraced us.

“I’m gonna find Suzanna,” Father said.

The door creaked. Mother grasped at the knob to close it, but it slipped from her hands. It opened wide and was ripped off its hinges, leaving the wind to play havoc with a single lightbulb in the kitchen that swung wildly on its cord.

“Come on, Ruth. Let’s get home.” Mother’s face pale. Her wide eyes frightened me. Determinedly, she grabbed my hand as we tried to run against the wind. But it blasted against us, every step forward was a challenge. Occasionally, a bolt of lightning gave us a moment of clarity, when darkness took over again a clap of thunder shook the ground we walked on.

Mother took me under her arm and hugged me close as we waded through the mud. The driving rain, leaves, and other debris battered our bodies. I cried as we moved in the opposite direction to where Father and Suzanna surely must be.

We approached the first home in our path, where our next door neighbors Señor Abel and his family lived. Candlelight flickered in their window. We pulled ourselves up the porch steps. Mother pounded on their door. I leaned against her and nearly collapsed her around her waist. The door flew open with a blast of wind. Señor Abel stood in the doorway and pulled us into the house, securely latching it behind us.  

“Dios Mio, Mother Bess, what are you doing outside in this weather?”