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"And that's all, ALL?" bellowed Pa, snatching the note from my hand and trying to read the scratchy, childish handwriting. "She runs off and leaves me with five kids, and she wishes me good luck?" He balled up her note and hurled it into the open door of the stove. His long fingers raked through his dark mane of hair. "Goddam her to hell!" he said dully, before he jumped up and bellowed, shaking his fist at the cabin ceiling. "When I find her I'm gonna wring her damned neck, or cut out her heart--if I can find it. To go when there's no woman here, to leave little children on their own--damn you, Sarah, I expected better, I did"
In a flash he was out the door, leaving me to think he was going this very minute to hunt up Sarah and kill her, but in a minute or two he was back, hurling down on our table more supplies. He brought in two sacks of flour, salt, slab bacon, beans, dried peas, a huge tin of lard, bundles of tied spinach, apples, potatoes, orange yams, bags of rice, and lots more we'd never had before, such as boxes of crackers and cookies, and peanut butter and grape jelly.
Our tabletop was covered, seeming enough to last a year. And when he had it all spread out, he turned to all of us and spoke to no one in particular.
"I'm sorry your granny is dead. Sorrier your ma ran out on me, and that means all of you as well. I'm sure she's sorry to hurt you just to get to me." He paused before he continued.
"I'm going this day and not coming back until I'm cured of what I've got. I'm almost well, and would like t'stay an take care of ya, but stayin would do more harm t'ya then my leavin. An I've got a job that suits my condition. So you go easy on this food, fer there won't be more coming from me until I get back."
Aghast, I wanted to cry out and tell him not to leave, that we just couldn't survive the rest of this bitterly cold winter without him.
"Don't none of ya have any idea where she went?" "Oh, Pa!" cried Fanny, trying to run into his anus, but he held up his hand to stay her.
"Don't touch me," he warned. "Don't
understand much what I got, but it's a nasty thin t'have. See how I had a man put everything in sacks? Burn all the sacks when I'm gone. I've got a friend who will try and find Sarah, and make her come back. Hold on till she does, or I do . . . hold on."
As bad as he was, as evil and cruel as he could sometimes be, still he'd work long enough selling somebody's moonshine to buy us basic food supplies, a few treats, and enough clothes to keep us covered, if not well, at least warmly.
For I was staring at the used clothes that Fanny was pawing through and squealing over. Sweaters and skirts, blue jeans for Tom and Keith, and underwear for all of us, and five pairs of shoes, though he'd had to guess at our shoe sizes. Tears welled up in my eyes. No coats or boots or hats, and we needed those things.
Still, I was grateful t
o see the heavy ugly sweaters, gone nubby from others' wearing them.
"Pa!" yelled Tom, running after him. "Ya can't leave us all alone! I'm doing what I can to help, but it ain't easy when nobody in Winnerrow trusts a Casteel, an already Heavenly can't go to school--and I've gotta go, Pa! Gotta go or stop breathing! Pa! Are ya listenin? Hearin me?"
Pa strode on, closing his ears to the pitiful words of a son I knew he loved. And the wails of Fanny crying surely must have followed him for many days. But a daughter named Heaven didn't plead or cry, or say a word. I just felt the cold, clammy hand of fate squeezing the blood out of my heart. Alone, just as in my nightmares.
Alone in the cabin. Without parents, without any way to support ourselves.
Alone when the wind blew, when the snow fell, when the trails to the valley disappeared beneath ice and snow.
We didn't have snowshoes, coats, skis, none of the things that would take us swiftly to the valley, to school, or to church. And that pile of food, as high as it looked now, would disappear soon enough. What then?
Pa stood near his truck, staring at us in turn, at all but me. It hurt that even now he couldn't bring himself to meet my eyes.
"Take care," he said, and disappeared in the dark. We heard the roar of his old truck as it took off and sped down the dark trails to wherever it was that he went.
As Sarah would have done, I did, too. I set about putting things away, not a tear in my eye, my lips set in a thin grim line as I faced up to the responsibilities of running this cabin until Pa came home again.
eight Squalor And Splendor
. FOR A BRIEF AND WONDERFUL MOMENT BEFORE PA stalked out into the night, leaving us alone again, hope had lit up all our hearts, lifted us high only to plunge us into even deeper despair once he was gone, and we were, again, left alone.
Snagged in our nightmare, we stood in a tight group and listened to the lonely night sounds when we could no longer hear his truck driving away. We had food on the table to show he'd cared a little, if not enough. I damned him for not staying, damned him for a thousand reasons.
I stared at the table covered with what he'd brought, and though it seemed a great deal--would it last until he came back again?
Out into our primitive wooden box on the porch that served us well enough as a refrigerator during the winters we put what meat we wouldn't use today. In some ways it was a blessing this was winter and not summer when we'd have to gobble down everything before it spoiled in the heat. When Granny was alive, with Sarah and Pa, there had been nine of us, and there was never enough left to spoil.
I didn't realize until later that Pa had come on Thanksgiving Day to bring us our Thanksgiving Day dinner.
Hunger dictated our menus. Only too soon all that Pa had brought to last until he came again dwindled down to nothing but beans, peas, and the eternal staple of our lives, biscuits and gravy.
The howling wind added nothing to our happiness, nor did the cold that kept us all huddled around Ole Smokey. Hours and hours Tom and I spent in the yard chopping wood, felling small trees, and searching to find dead branches broken off during windstorms.
Life in the cabin flipped backward into that same familiar nightmare that even the brightest morning light couldn't dispel. I stopped hearing the early-morning birdsongs (those few brave birds that dared to stay), stopped watching the glory of winter sunsets. No time to linger out of doors when we might catch our deaths, and there'd be no one wise enough to make us well again. No time to linger near a window where it was drafty. Only too much time to crowd near the fire and think bitter thoughts.
