THINGS UNSEEN
Laura Torres
B.A., Brigham Young University, 2003
PROJECT
Submitted in partial satisfaction of
the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
ENGLISH
Creative Writing
at
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO
SPRING
2010
© 2010
Laura Torres
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ii
THINGS UNSEEN
A Project
by
Laura Torres
Approved by:
__________________________________, Committee Chair
Professor Brad Buchanan
____________________________
Date
iii
Student: Laura Torres
I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format
manual, and that this project is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to be awarded for
the project.
__________________________, Graduate Coordinator
David Toise
Department of English
iv
___________________
Date
Abstract
of
THINGS UNSEEN
by
Laura Torres
This project is the first half of a novel, Things Unseen, which explores themes of faith,
relationships and resiliency. Beth Gray, the protagonist, is a farm wife who has had a near-death
experience. She believes the purpose of the experience is to help other people with their faith and
suffering, but she harbors doubt about how it can help her own family in desperate circumstances.
, Committee Chair
Brad Buchanan
______________________
Date
v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my professors Doug Rice, Peter Grandbois and Brad Buchanan for helping
me hone my skills and helping me take an honest look at my work. Thank you also to my
husband, Lance, for supporting me through all of this.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Acknowledgments.................................................................................................................... vi
Chapter
1.
MORNING LIGHT…………….……………………………………………………….. 1
2.
THE HOUSEGUEST ...................................................................................................... 11
3.
FISHING ......................................................................................................................... 16
4.
EAGLE ROCK ............................................................................................................... 29
5.
MIRACLE WORKER…..……………………….……………………………………. 38
6.
HOT DISHES………………………………………………………………………….. 48
7.
THE LIST……………………………………………………………………………… 55
vii
1
Chapter 1
MORNING LIGHT
Beth slipped on the dark blue Keds she kept by the cement steps. She hummed on the
short walk to the dumpster, a black plastic garbage bag in each hand, her towheaded grandson and
two strays trailing her. The stillness of the morning was not broken by the white noise of the
Snake River rushing past, a few hundred yards from the apple tree that shaded the dumpster
enclosure. She tossed the bags in, then shooed a noisy bird away from a nest on a low branch of
the tree. She reached into the nest and snapped the neck of a baby bird with a flick of her thumb.
She tossed the carcass a few feet out for the cats. Snap, snap, snap. Three more baby birds.
Another cat sprinted from the shed to fight for his share.
“Oh, Grandma!” Jake said. “Why did you kill the birdies?”
“Them’s trash birds. Had to be done.”
Jake kicked at the cats, more interested in the half-chewed bodies than Beth’s answer.
“What would you like for breakfast, Pumpkin?” Beth asked.
“Peanut butter on toast. With raspberry jam.”
“You got it,” Beth said. “I’ll race you back in!” She jogged a few steps and watched Jake
race ahead.
“I beat you! I beat you!”
“You sure, did, Jakie. You sure did.”
Back inside, Jake sat up on the barstool. Beth washed her hands and went down the
narrow stairway to the basement pantry to retrieve a jar of last season’s homemade jam. She
brought up a few quarts of pears, as well.
2
Tate and their boys had eaten breakfast already and were gone to move the water pipes.
An assortment of grand kids wouldn’t be getting up for a while yet. With most of her grown
children living close, there was a constant shift of people in and out of her house. They all knew
they were welcome, but some had taken to forgetting to tell Beth when they left their children
overnight. Every morning when she woke up, she surveyed the house to see who she might need
to drive to school or keep an eye on. She cleared the table and re-set it with clean dishes for the
next round while the toast browned.
She hummed again. Tate’s manner this morning had told her something was coming, but
there was no use worrying. Married sixty-odd years, she’d learned when to press and when to let
Tate keep to himself. She wouldn’t get anything out of him, anyway, if he didn’t want to talk. She
was content with his sturdy, physical presence, his constant storytelling, and his delight in the
little ones. He would tell her when he was ready if she needed to know something. She smiled
when she thought of the evening before, when she had started to spray Windex on the sliding
glass door to wipe away tiny fingerprints, made by their twin granddaughters who had gone home
earlier that day. Tate had stopped her, because he missed the girls and wanted the fingerprints
there, as a reminder. She spooned some dry yeast into warm water in an orange speckled bowl to
start the dinner rolls. She’d double the batch today and make a few hamburger buns for supper,
too. How many to expect was a question, but it always worked out. She’d throw on a few hot
dogs if needed. The grand kids didn’t mind eating them without buns. Dinner would be Tate, the
boys, maybe a daughter-in-law, and the grand kids. Two cut-up chickens should be plenty.
Jake, with jam extending his smile a few inches, went off to watch the television. Beth
took two grocery sacks out of the quilted holder on the inside of the pantry door. She put on the
old Keds again, made her way across the vast lawn, around a tool shed and to her half-acre
garden. She had plowed it herself into raised straight rows and planted carrots, radishes, corn,
3
peas, spuds, spring onions, red onions and two kinds of tomatoes. She dug some new potatoes
and carrots for dinner. She wondered if Jake’s brother, Sam, had woken up yet. Christine didn’t
always hear him cry from his crib, and he was a patient little fellow, apt to just sit and wait for
someone to come get him, pulling at the eye of his stuffed elephant.
The hot sun cut through the cool morning air and a few of the moths that lingered near
the ground fluttered up around Beth’s face. She swooshed them away and decided to add a few of
the large, last carrots to the bag. The bushy ends stuck out of the bag and came nearly up to her
armpit. She walked past the garden and to the fence where an old, white horse whinnied at her
approach. The caked dirt on the carrots scraped off easily against Beth’s pants and came almost
completely clean after she rinsed them in a running hose in the trough. The horse snorted and
snuffled as he ate the carrots.
“That’s a sweet boy,” murmured Beth. “That’s a good horsey.” She kissed the horse on
its muzzle and then chucked the carrot greens into a nearby compost.
As she stroked the horse she heard boot steps behind her. She did not turn, but waited
until whoever it was approached her. It often happened this way. People were afraid to talk to her
in her home where someone else might see them or interrupt, preferring to catch her outside.
They rarely called first, few in a state of mind for a proper visit. Sometimes she wondered who
was hiding in the bushes or behind the barn waiting for her. She didn’t mind being watched
necessarily, but she worried that the ordinariness of her life wouldn’t match their expectations.
She suffered a good measure of anxiety that she didn’t glow from the inside out or float over the
packed Idaho dirt. Maybe some expected a prophet or soothsayer, but she was only an imperfect
farm wife, after all.
He stopped a good distance away.
4
“Hello, Beth.” It was Mitchell, a spud farmer from across town. She remembered him as
a skinny teenager, skulking around the market, hiding his cigarettes. Now he was a thick,
prematurely graying man, with the leathered farmer skin that showed his years on the farm.
Although you could say that amount of sun aged a person, Beth found it attractive. It was the sign
of a hard working man.
“Well, hello there, Mitchell. Nice day isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am. Sure is.” He squinted into the sun as if to make sure. The usual morning
wind had died down a bit, leaving just the rush of the river as a backdrop.
They stood quiet for a moment. The horse whinnied and nudged Beth’s shoulder.
“What can I do for you, Mitchell?”
Mitchell looked down at his feet and swirled some dust with the toe of his boot.
“I feel a little silly, but Amos, before he passed, he said you....” Mitchell studied the dust.
“Go on,” Beth said. She did not fill in the blanks. She found it was better for the person to
say things out loud. Made it more real. She occupied herself picking a bristle from the horse’s ear
to give Mitchell space for his thoughts.
“He said, you, well, you know....passed on for a while.”
Beth clucked at the horse and nodded just slightly. She wouldn’t say it for him.
“And then came back.” Mitchell looked up, his self-consciousness gone, his eyes steady
on hers, his mouth quivering at the edges. It took a lot to make a farmer such as Mitchell
contemplate what Beth knew. It didn’t come from nowhere. There was bad news, to be sure.
“What has happened?” she asked, her voice soft and low.
Mitchell coughed into his balled fist.
“My wife, Adele. She’s got cancer.”
“Oh,” Beth said. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
5
“It don’t look good. A tumor that’s spreading. Very aggressive.”
Beth thought of Adele, a sweet, tiny woman, barely into midlife. The idea of her fragile
body fighting off such an opponent seemed dire, indeed. She took his hand and led him toward
the white plastic chairs by the side of the shed. Dirt pooled on their seats, but they both sat
anyway. Beth still held on to his hand. The physical contact, she felt, could somehow make up for
what she feared she couldn’t say. Sometimes she wondered that God had given her this
experience, and yet had not given her a way to express it properly.
“What is weighing on your mind?” She needed a starting point. The parts she could
share depended on a lot of things. At times, she could bring back the emotion strong and sure, and
at other times, it felt like reciting a fairy tale to a child. At those times, on days when she was
preoccupied or plain worn out, she repressed the urge to apologize afterwards that she hadn’t
been able to recall it from her deepest reserve. It was like summoning a prayer. Sometimes she
could open up the connection straight into heaven and sometimes her lips just said the words.
“Well, I might...I might lose her.” He took a deep breath to stave off his emotion. “I’ve
gone to church my whole life and heard about heaven and all, but I guess I never thought much
about it. It’s one thing to think a place might exist, you know, and another to believe the person
you love is actually going to be there. Really be there. Am I making sense?”
“Yes, of course you are,” Beth said.
“I can’t imagine my Adele...” He leaned forward, elbows on knees and rubbed at his
eyebrows. “I need help with this. You’ve always seemed like a sensible woman,” he said and
blinked at her as if she, too, were incomprehensible. “After what Amos said...I wanted to hear it
for myself. Because of Adele.”
Beth put her other hand on top of Mitchell’s. “I will share with you what I can. But I have
to trust that you won’t repeat it to just anyone. Sometimes it ain’t appropriate. And sometimes it
6
confuses people. Messes with what they already believe. It does no good to give a person anxiety,
especially if they are near the end themselves. And if it comes from someone other than me, well,
it’s like playing telephone. It don’t come out right at the end. I don’t want folks to be misled.”
Mitchell nodded.
“I guess Amos trusted you enough, so I will, too.” She closed her eyes, took a deep
breath and tried to bring herself back to the moment.
She did her best to tell him all the things she could that would bring him comfort. When
she finished, Mitchell wiped at his eyes with the backs of both hands.
“Thank you, Beth. Thank you,” he said. He stood and walked off with a nod, his hands
clasped as if in prayer in front of him.
Beth sat in the plastic chair for a bit, drained. She was glad to help people, but all of their
pain wore on her. Mitchell seemed reassured for the moment, but she never knew what stuck with
them. And if they truly believed.
Back at the house, Sam sat out on the back porch, still in his wet diaper, examining a
scraped knee. Christine must have taken him out of his crib and planted him here, where she
would find him. .
“That girl has no sense,” Beth muttered. He would have been better off left in his crib
than here, unattended, in a back yard that led to a rushing river. Sam put his fingers in the blood
and wiped it on the cement.
“What’d you do, Pumpkin?” Beth cooed. “How’d you get that boo boo?”
Sam realized he now had a sympathetic audience and began to cry.
“Poor, poor baby,” she said. Her anger quickly turned to guilt. Sam depended on her.
She scooped him up and brought him to the kitchen sink. His soggy bottom made a
squish sound as she plopped him down on the counter. Beth rinsed his wound and distracted him
7
with one of the suckers from the big glass jar near the windowsill. A spray of antibacterial
medicine, a Band-aid, a quick diaper change on the floor and a kiss sent him and his sticky
fingers on his way to find Jake. She could hear Christine getting out of the shower upstairs,
almost late for work. Only twenty-two, a nasty divorce sent her back home in recent months with
these little angels, after social services had threatened to take them away after finding her in a
chemical stupor and the boys unwashed and unfed.
This daughter, her youngest, had been a mid-life surprise, when her house was overrun
with the tail end of her teenagers and already a horde of grandchildren. The rest of her children
had been raised just fine, mostly with the support of each other, in the big, raucous family, but
Beth recognized too late that Christine had needed something different. She was strong-willed
and wild, and Beth didn’t have the wherewithal to oppose the hippie she married so young amid
the swirl of everyone else who needed her. Her middle son, who should not have been still living
at home had Beth the guts to throw him out, had brought the hippie home in the first place. So
Beth saw it as her fault that Christine had ever met him and followed his errant ways. She liked to
think she loved all her grandchildren the same, and she did love them all intensely, but Christine’s
Jake and Sam were like her own, and she would make up for the failings of their mother. Weren’t
those her failings, too? She couldn’t do anything about their absent father, but those boys would
not be without all the love they deserved. Her heart hurt with the weight of it all, and although she
was old, she would make it right for those boys. They would never be dirty or hungry again.
This morning, now, her heart held an extra burden. How many children did Adele have?
She thought four, last she knew. None old enough to take care of things if Adele were gone.
The mail truck’s wheels against the gravel of the road was early today. Beth went out the
front door and waved. There were only ads, bills and the letters she saved for Tate without
opening; not a postcard or anything worth coming out of the house for. At least today there was
8
no letter from one of those nay-sayers who claimed she’d been misled by Satan. The letters didn’t
bother her so much as time went on. What she minded were the people who traveled from out of
town to see her. She found a woman, once, who had sat for two days across the street by the train
tracks hoping for a glimpse. Beth felt bad that this woman had traveled so far, waited so long,
when she could have come in for dinner, at least, and here Beth was, just an ordinary woman. A
disappointment, to be sure. She dropped Tate’s letters in a basket by his chair. Whether he opened
them or not was his business. Taking care of Tate meant a lot of things, but it did not mean
squinting at the small type of his troubles.
She’d married Tate when she was sixteen years old, for better but mostly for worse, and
stood solidly by him through drunken behavior in town and even rumors of other women. Her
family had warned her, but she’d made her bed. Tate chose Beth from all the other girls and
charmed her so she could hardly say no to his advances and his quick proposal. He was
masculine, strong, and there were stories of the wild Gray boys, the three of them, Tate the
middle brother, up to all sorts of shenanigans. But Beth saw him at church in his clean white shirt
and trusted that as long as she did what was right, things would work out. She would never dream
of doing any thing wild; couldn’t even think of anything in particular that seemed appealing, but
Tate filled her with an overwhelming desire. His strong hands with their deep calluses made him
seem a capable man at only twenty and she agreed to marry him on a date set just after her
sixteenth birthday.
His bad behavior had surprised her but no one else. It stung, and sometimes she had even
allowed herself to cry in those early days, but only to herself. To complain to anyone else would
be asking for them to tell her that they told her so. But there was never a question that she and
Tate were in it for the long haul. She’d had a season of resentment that she alone was not enough
to keep him in line. But eventually, their farm, their home, their children and grandchildren, along
9
with the small details of their life, eggs cooked just the way he liked, the supply of bottled Pepsi
she kept stocked for him in the outdoor refrigerator, how he recounted stories of the day’s events
for her every evening, were evidence of indisputably connected life. She trusted in that. Trusted
in that, and in the overwhelming love and light she’d been held in when she was gone. When she
came back, she’d learned not to be quick to judge, especially for those you were assigned to love.
After straightening up the kitchen, Beth took Jake and his older cousin Dustin to the river
to fish. The old, yet still functional rods were propped with branches, as if left momentarily, but
the line was not strung down the long shafts. Beth untangled one line from the crank and sent
Dustin to dig for worms in a fertile compost heap nearby. He came back before she was through,
with a fistful of red, squiggling bait. When she finished, she took the fattest worm from his hand
and threaded it through the hook several times, the thing still squirming as she held Jake’s arm,
helping him to cast the line properly out into the river. Dustin split his worm lengthwise almost in
two trying to hook it, so Beth jabbed the one whole end of the worm onto the hook and tied the
flayed parts together around the bend in the hook to stay put.
“Try to catch trout, not suckers,” she told them.
“What if I don’t catch anything?” Jake asked.
“Well, then you is fishin’,” Beth said, “Not catchin’.”
“I don’t mind just fishing,” he said.
Beth pulled at the front of her shirt to get some air between it and her sweaty torso. The
best thing about their farm was its proximity to this rushing water, beautiful even in its ferocity.
Just last summer a toddler had been swept away but a few miles upstream. Beth closed her eyes a
moment and thought about Mitchell and Adele. Then she rubbed at the dirt on her pants and
pulled a few weeds. “Be careful, now. The current’s swift. Dustin, you watch the little one, all
right?”
10
“Yup,” said Dustin, still fiddling with the worm. She left them there, their bright white
hair reflecting the pale sun.
11
Chapter 2
THE HOUSEGUEST
It was about time to start dinner; Tate and the boys would be coming in soon, hungry,
with almost a whole day’s work behind them. She looked forward to seeing them come in every
day, their boots and pants dirty, shirts clinging to their chests with damp heat. Her grown boys
resembled Tate. Tall, barrel-chested, thick wavy hair and an easy strength in their gait and
movements. Every day they brought with them the smell of the spud fields, the smell of hard
labor, the smell of the Idaho dirt that provided their livelihood. When she got close to the house,
the two trucks were already parked and Beth had a feeling that they’d been there a while yet, too
early for any good. She hummed away the anxiety and thought how she would first heat the oil
for frying the chicken before she shaped the rolls to save time.
Tate sat in his chair in the living room, not at the dinette, as was his habit. He also still
had on his dirty boots, which was strictly forbidden in Beth’s house. She was going to scold Tate,
but a man in a dress shirt and slacks sat across from him on the sofa. An open briefcase spilled
papers onto the coffee table, over Beth’s sewing magazines.
“Well, hello,” Beth said. She recognized the man. A lawyer son of the Walcott family
who lived in town. Andy was his name, maybe.
“Mrs. Gray,” he said and stuck out his hand. “Good to see you.”
Beth shook his hand and offered him a soda or an ice water.
“No, thanks. Kind of you,” he said. “Please, sit down.”
Beth did as she was told.
“I’m here to assist in any way I can,” he said.
12
Beth looked to Tate, but he said nothing. She noticed how still he sat.
The Walcott boy continued. “I’ve been explaining to Tate that it’s best if he were to agree
to a plea bargain. There’s really no way around the facts....”
“What’d you do, Tate?” Beth asked in a steady voice. “What’d you do?”
“My hell,” Tate finally said. “I ain’t done nothing wrong.”
Walcott cleared his throat. “Your wife isn’t aware of this?”
“Will you please just tell me what’s going on?” Beth said.
“Mr. Gray?” Walcott said.
“Tell her,” Tate said. He waved his hand in the air as if Walcott were a pesky insect.
“Tax fraud, Mrs. Gray,” Walcott said. He paused, wiped his forehead. “You are not in
trouble. The IRS has limited its suit to Mr. Gray. They have grounds. As I was explaining to Mr.
Gray, a trial would be expensive and I don’t see any outcome other than....”
“We pay our taxes!” Beth interrupted. “I know that we do. I sign the forms every year.”
“Well, yes, on your direct income.” Walcott spoke slowly, as if not sure how much he
should divulge. “But what Mr. Gray has failed to do...well, the illegal labor is just the beginning.
There are irregularities in every aspect of....”
Beth cut him off again, never mind her manners. “Well, surely you can’t be held
accountable for mistakes when...”
“I’m afraid they weren’t mistakes, Mrs. Gray. The government won’t see it any other
way.” Walcott picked up a folder and shuffled some papers.
“They’ve got Vern and Harold, too, “ Tate said. “Like we are criminals. The
government’s the criminal, I tell you. My hell, they suck you until your bones are dry and then
grind them up to get every last bit of you. A farmer can’t make a living anymore.”
13
The living room fell quiet and Tate’s chair creaked as he shifted his weight. Beth
wondered where her sons and grandchildren were. Who was watching Sam?
“Will there be a big fine?” she asked. She thought of their tremendous debt. The crops
paid out less than they cost to grow last year. “Can they make a payment plan?”
“I’m afraid it’s much more serious than that, Mrs. Gray.” Walcott did not look up from
his papers. “There is, uh, time to be served.”
“For making mistakes on the taxes? Jail?”
“Fraud is not taken lightly...”
“Fraud?” Beth’s voice rose. “Tate’s going to jail?”
The silence that fell between the three then was unbearable. Beth began to quietly sing
the hymn that had been on her lips all day. All those letters over the months and Tate’s unease...
“I realize this is hard to take, Mrs. Gray. I’m sorry that I didn’t realize you weren’t aware
of what’s been going on. I’m sure Tate was just trying to spare you the unpleasantness. I’m sure
that he thought, well, even I thought at the beginning, that this could be resolved...a prison
sentence does seem extreme. I think the government is making an example of your husband and
the other two.”
“And there’s nothing to be done?” Beth asked.
“Like I said, a trial would be expensive and I would think....well, I’m certain that it
wouldn’t go your way. And if it didn’t, the sentence would exceed what we could get in a plea
bargain.”
“I see,” Beth said. She let herself feel the weight, but only for a moment. “I best be
getting dinner on. Will you be staying?” she asked the Walcott boy. He was just a boy, after all, a
boy who had delivered her this news.
“No, thank you,” he said. “I’ll just finish up with Tate, here, and be on my way.”
14
“I ain’t got nothin’ else to say,” Tate said.
“We should review the...”
“I ain’t got nothin’ else to say. I know what’s on your paper.” Tate stood up, his imposing
height causing Walcott to start to put his papers away.
“I will meet you tomorrow, then, in town?” Walcott asked.
“Yeah. I’ll be there,” Tate said. “Beth, what’s for dinner?”
“What’s it matter, Tate?” Beth said and went to fry the chicken.
“Don’t you be boo-hooing in there,” he shouted after her. “I got enough troubles.”
When dinner was about ready, Beth went out back to find her sons and the grandchildren.
They were on the side yard, her son David adjusting a sprinkler. The kids ran around naked or in
diapers, one of the girls in a swimsuit too big with ruffles on the bum. The other two boys stood,
hands in pockets, watching, quiet.
“Dinner’s on,” Beth said.
“How’d it go in there?” asked David.
“I don’t know. Come eat.” Anger welled up in her. She realized they all knew and had
kept it from her. Why? God knows her feelings hadn’t been spared for anything else over the
years. Although they’d had lean years, and sometimes, even now, they were in debt when the
prices weren’t good on their crops for a season, Tate had been a constant, good worker. Some
years he’d worked himself near to death and never gave up or sold out like some of the farmers in
town. It was a matter of pride with Beth that they’d never stooped to public assistance. Tate
would simply take on another load if things were that tight. Maybe he’d messed up with the
accounting, but he’d never slacked.
As they sat down at the table, Beth found towels for the little ones and cut up a
watermelon for dessert before she sat herself.
15
“When was you going to tell me?” she asked.
“We weren’t sure what was going to happen, Mom,” David said.
“There wasn’t nothing to tell,” Tate said. “Except the damn government out to get the
farmers. That ain’t nothing new.”
“But Tate,” she said.
“We’re going to have to figure a few things out, and that’s it,” Tate said and bit deeply
into a wedge of watermelon. He wiped the juice from his chin with a blue paper napkin.
“Let’s get going,” Tate said. “Pipes don’t move themselves.”
The squeaks of chairs pushed back, a shuffle of boots and the slam of the screen door
four or five times and Beth was left to herself with the chicken bones and sticky sweet
watermelon plates, swimming with black pits. She sat, drinking Kool-aid out of a tall glass and
picking at a leftover roll, wondering at the news. She was long past the age when a person still
thought they could negotiate hard luck. She knew that was that, and she’d have to get used to it.
Before long, she gathered the dishes and took the hamburger out of the freezer to thaw for supper.
When the kitchen was cleaned and the floor mopped, it was time for her daily ten-minute snooze
in the easy chair in the living room. She leaned her head back and folded her hands in her lap.
Normally, she’d be out in a matter of seconds, but today it wasn’t going to happen, and it felt like
maybe she’d never be able to just drift off again. She sat with her eyes closed anyway until Sam,
the boo-boo on his knee long forgotten, came in the back door asking for a popsicle.
16
Chapter 3
FISHING
The news had come to Beth all at once, but the interminable days that followed each
carried a similar unrealness, a clear break in the pattern of their lives. Their day-to-day routine
didn’t change, save the few meetings with the lawyers and at the courthouse. It was more a
feeling that blanketed everything. Tate did not talk to Beth about what was coming, but it was
between the cracks of everything they did and said.
One morning when Jake and Sam were out with their mother, Beth decided to take the
small boat out on the river to see if she could get some trout to put up in the freezer. It was chilly,
but she’d brought her silver quilted jacket and one of Tate’s old baseball caps that fit down over
her ears. The solitude would be nice. She dug some worms, put them in a pickle jar, and readied
one of the old rods. Tate came down to see what she was doing. With most of the work done for
the season before harvest, he spent more time at home. Since the visit by the lawyer, he no longer
liked to be left alone.
“Hell, you can’t go out alone, Beth,” he said.
“You know I can, Tate. I do it all the time,” she said.
“You just wait a minute. Let me get my jacket,” he said.
Beth had wanted to be alone to think about things, but she didn’t argue. When Tate
returned, he carried two cans of Pepsi with him, one for her, even though she never drank soda. It
was a nice gesture. Tate got in the boat and Beth pushed it off from the shore, just barely getting
her shoe wet. They floated out into river, more like a lake at this spot at this time of year. Tate
rowed every minute or so to keep them in sight of their yard while Beth fished. The flow of the
17
river and the swish of the oars made conversation unnecessary, but Tate gave a running
commentary on the small details of the previous day. Tate could spin the most mundane day into
a considerable and engaging tale. Beth loved him best when he was telling his stories, laughing at
his own insights. To a man who found a story in everything, life could never be boring. And Tate
loved his life on the farm. That he knew nothing else was not a concern, never gave him a
moment’s restlessness. An hour or so passed and Tate grew increasingly sober and quiet.
“Is it all that bad?” she asked, after she’d bagged her sixth trout.
“Damn government. Take away a man’s livelihood. I ain’t got nothing left if I ain’t got
the farm.” Tate sniffed and stared off at the far shore. “A man ought to be able to provide for his
family. Them boys of Christine’s ain’t got no one but us.”
“You done a good job, Tate,” Beth said. “Bad times come to everyone.”
“The boys should be able to keep things running. We’ll hire out a few hands if we have
to. And my hell, you’ll be all right.”
Beth could not remember a more vulnerable moment with Tate, and she rubbed his
shoulder as he wiped at his nose.
“It’s time we head in,” Beth said. Yes, bad times were coming to them, but they would
see them through and come out on the other side. They had been through plenty and had always
survived. “We got plenty here.”
Tate’s powerful strokes had them back in no time. He got out of the boat first and pulled
it forward. Beth put one leg over and lost her balance as the boat tipped to the side as she put too
much weight on the side rail. She fell hard, the fish spilling out of the plastic grocery sack, sliding
into the dust. Hot pain shot through her hip and back.
“Tate, I can’t get up,” she said.
Tate put his hands under her shoulders and tried to help her sit.
18
“Oh, that hurts! I think I broke something. Stop, please, Tate. You have to call an
ambulance.”
Tate hurried away. As she lay on the ground, Beth attempted to get some of the slippery
fish back into the sack. She tried not to think about what would happen if she had broken her
back.
She heard his breath first, before his feet coming toward her. He bent over her and
handed her the phone.
“Hello?” she said into the receiver, confused. There was no sound at all.
“There’s nobody there,” she told Tate.
“You gotta call ‘em,” Tate said.
“You didn’t call 911?”
“You gotta do it. I don’t know what to say,” Tate said.
“Oh, Tate. The phone service don’t reach down here. There’s no dial tone.” The cold
from the ground seeped up through her pants and jacket and her feet were wet up to her ankles.
“Go back up and call before I freeze to death,” she said. “Please hurry.”
She passed the time before she heard the siren of the ambulance by humming to herself
along with the lap lap of the water. She gave up on getting the fish back in the bag. She began to
feel ridiculous, lying there, quite alive, with the dead.
Finally, finally, she heard Tate come back and he was followed by two young men who
were going to help her.
“Beth, you get better and get back here,” Tate said as they loaded her into the ambulance.
“There’s some leftover cold cuts in the refrigerator and some potato salad you could have
for your dinner,” she said, but she knew he wouldn’t eat without her there. “Watch out for Sam
19
and Jake. Make sure Christine knows I’m gone.” The doors to the ambulance closed and the wail
of the siren echoed the one inside her head.
They took her into X-ray almost immediately, but after that was done, she lay inside a big
room, separated from other patients, also all waiting, by thin dividers. She called home several
times to make sure someone was taking care of the boys, but got no answer. Tate wouldn’t
answer the phone, but she thought Christine, at least, ought to pick up. On the fourth call, after
several hours, her daughter Linsey picked up.
“It’s all right, Mom. I’m here with Christine and the boys. We took them out to lunch.”
“That’s good. You tell Jakie Grandma’s sorry I couldn’t take him to the store. I promised
him a Hershey bar,” Beth said.
“I’m sure he doesn’t even remember. You just worry about yourself. I’m leaving to come
down there in a few minutes. I’ll see you soon, OK?”
“You don’t have to come, Linsey. Ain’t nothing to do but wait.”
“Then I’ll wait with you. Bye.”
The line went dead. Beth was glad Linsey was coming. She hoped she would get to go
home soon.
Linsey walked around the partition with a young woman doctor. They stood by Beth’s
bed. Linsey held Beth’s hand as the doctor flipped through the chart.
“So you are Beth Gray,” the doctor said. “You are quite famous around this place.”
“Is that so?” Beth said.
Linsey frowned and squeezed Beth’s hand a little.
“Well, yes. You are a medical miracle, you know. I don’t know that anyone else around
here has come back from the dead.”
The doctor smiled and seemed so friendly that Linsey relaxed a little.
20
“And there’s more good news, relatively speaking,” the doctor said. “The fall you took, at
your age, could have easily caused a hip fracture or other serious trauma, but what you have is a
minor pelvic fracture. It’s certainly uncomfortable, but there will be no surgery required. It will
heal on its own. You, Beth, are a very lucky lady, indeed.” She put her hand on Beth’s arm and
gave her a pat. “We’re going to keep you here for a few hours. When the orthopedist is available,
he will come talk to you about what you need to do at home, bed rest and therapy and pain
management.” She looked at Linsey. “Will you be here, or maybe Mr. Gray? We’re going to give
Mrs. Gray some pain medication, so it would be good if you could be here to listen and ask any
questions you might have.”
“Yes, I’ll be here,” Linsey said. “My dad is useless in a situation like this. And he doesn’t
like hospitals.”
The doctor raised her eyebrows but said nothing. She finished writing something on the
chart and handed it to a nurse who had come with the pain medication. It made Beth feel sleepy
almost immediately and she closed her eyes while Linsey started dialing her cell phone to make
arrangements for her children for the afternoon. When she woke, she was in a smaller room,
maybe the same one as when she was here before, about a year ago. The ceiling tiles, the small
whiteboard on the wall, the blue plastic chair next to the bed were familiar. Linsey wasn’t there,
but her purse and phone were on the small table. She must have gone to get something to eat.
Beth was no longer sleepy, but felt drugged enough that she needed to close her eyes just the
same. That day seemed so long ago sometimes....
Later they told her it was an aneurism. She’d fallen to the floor of her basement where
she’d gone to retrieve a bottle of canned cherries to put on vanilla ice cream for dessert, and hit
her head. Beth simply hadn’t felt right during the tail end of dinner. She ignored it, with the
21
bishop over as a guest; it would have been rude to excuse herself. She chalked it up to the heat-they’d been eating supper outside, the heat equaling that inside, but hoping for the breeze to kick
up early--and maybe a virus that had been going around, but the suddenness of the feeling was
odd. She’d gone for the cherries, thinking the coolness of the basement would offer a bit of relief.
As she stepped into the storage room, she became confused although her shelves had always been
perfectly organized. Although the light bulb had been burned out for some time, she hadn’t
bothered replacing it, so well did she know her stock. She reached for cherries, and found a jar of
green beans in her hand instead. As the room spun and she felt her knees give out, her only
thought was for the waste of the jarred vegetables, which would surely break when she fell.
Not a second later, she was held, like the beans in the liquid of the jar, suspended in a
substance, not liquid or solid, but a light and an all-penetrating emotion of peace and love that
caused her not to feel the weight of her own body. The urge to look and rise up was
overwhelming, but she looked down instead, briefly, and saw a body on the ground, splayed
unnaturally. Five-year-old Keltzie and Jake come into the dark room looking for her. She realized
then that the body was hers, but it held no concern for her, except that she wished she could pull
her skirt down for modesty. She wanted to tell Jake, who was barefoot, to watch out for the
broken glass on the ground. Keltzie screamed and she lifted higher, away....
A doctor had visited her before she was out of the hospital that time. Beth had thought he
was a medical doctor, but it turns out he held a Ph.D. from a university in a field Beth couldn’t
remember. One of the nurses had told him that she’d had a near-death experience, he’d said, and
he’d like to discuss it with her. Beth had welcomed the doctor’s inquiries. This was
groundbreaking, wasn’t it? She didn’t quite agree that it was a “near death” anything. She hadn’t
been “near death.” She’d been dead. They didn’t need to take her word for it. It was right there in
the charts. Her heart had stopped. No pulse. No respiratory function. Dead. Gave the EMT in the
22
ambulance quite a scare when she’d come back. He’d been just about to pull the sheet up over her
head.
Beth knew now that her naiveté was laughable, but at the time, she figured the whole
world would know now that there was something after death.
“Can you describe what you saw, Mrs. Gray?” the “doctor” had asked.
“The words might be hard to come by,” she said. “I’ve been trying to think it through
and it’s mostly feelings, you know, impressions...”
“Just try your best,” he said.
How to describe the feeling, after she left her body there on the floor?
“Well, I was still essentially myself, but part of something greater, a whole something. It
was like being in a pool of light and love. Not like a swimming pool, but more like...being
surrounded, and whatever it was kind of just went right through you, like you didn’t have any
barrier. Do you see what I mean?”
The doctor nodded. “Go on...”
“It’s funny, I didn’t suddenly have any special knowledge, but I felt that all the things
you would ever need or want to know were held in that space. Like I could know whatever I
wanted to know. But I had so much peace and there were no worries--it was like my mind was at
ease, so I didn’t need to know anything, because everything was going to be all right. Until I
thought if maybe my mother was there. It’s been an awful long time since I seen my mother.... As
soon as that thought occured to me, well, I didn’t have to speak the words, or even think the
words. I just got my answer...felt my answer. There wasn’t any words. Just a feeling, but a feeling
that couldn’t be wrong. Like truth. It was truth that just sunk right into me.”
“So you saw people who had passed on?”
23
“No, I didn’t see anybody. I just felt they were there. Not just my mother. Everyone
who’d gone on before me. Family. Lots of them, like they was all together somewhere close.”
The doctor scratched at his notepad, but it didn’t look like he wrote that part down.
“Then what happened?”
“I noticed I was in kind of tunnel, with the light more at the end, and there was a whoosh;
oh, that ain’t the right word.”
“Just do your best, Mrs. Gray. Don’t worry so much.”
“Well, OK. Imagine what a whoosh would feel like, not sound like. That’s what it was,
and then I was at the other end, in a light place, and I was surprised because there was a field with
grass and flowers and trees...stuff you see on earth. I always thought of heaven, I guess, as white
marble buildings and sparkling white stone streets...but I guess it makes sense that God’s
creations is what’s the most beautiful....”
“So it looked like somewhere you’d been before?”
“No, nowhere I’d been because there ain’t anything that beautiful here. I mean you can
imagine green, perfect grass and you won’t even come close. And you can think of the best
flowers you ever seen and they look like ugly weeds compared to what was there. They was in
shades I ain’t never seen, the flowers were. Purple is the closest to it, but not purple. Mixed in
with white buds, but a deep white, like a white that had dimension...oh, it’s impossible to
describe. But this is the best thing. All these things, these colors, have a sound. A musical sound.
Each one with its own.”
“Sounds like it was...noisy there?”
“Oh, no, no, not at all. It’s like the most beautiful symphony, and not loud or noisy at all.
And there was a taste, almost.”
24
“A taste? You could taste the flowers?” He had stopped writing and looked at her over
the top of his glasses.
“I ain’t explaining it right. Not a taste like if you were eating them. It’s as if each thing
affected all your senses somehow. Each thing was something more than it is here. Each thing had
more...dimension. And more...feeling.”
“What else did you see?”
“Trees. Oh, the trees were something else. I could see every leaf at once, and each one so
different, and so many colors I didn’t know about!”
“Hmmm. Yes, yes. And then what happened?”
“I was there for a while. It’s impossible to say how long...time seems awfully different
there...like it don’t matter. The things that were there, the birds, the trees....”
“Birds?”
“Yes, there were wonderful birds in them trees. It’s like everything here on earth is just a
paper cut-out of what it really is. What I wouldn’t give just to hear them beautiful sounds
again....I thought I could stay right there forever in that love and peace and with not a single
worry, but suddenly I knew I wasn’t staying. I wanted to stay, but, you know, it wasn’t like I
could be angry or upset or anything. I asked, well, you remember, there aren’t any words, I just
thought my desire, and I became aware....I guess that’s how you’d put it, of lots and lots of others
all around, very busy, and they’d be glad to see me when it was really my time. But for now I had
to go back.”
Beth paused and tried to lean in toward the doctor a little. “Ain’t that funny? That people
are busy in heaven? You’d think it would be all about resting, but it wasn’t that way at all.”
Beth closed her eyes and the doctor waited.
25
She opened her eyes again. “The next part I don’t like to remember, but it’s probably
what you need to hear.”
“The next part?”
“Coming back. That’s the hard part.”
“Go on.”
“Well, I whooshed right back through that tunnel thing before I knew it, and that great
feeling of peace and love was already going, leaving me. I was in the ambulance now, watching
my body, all cold, blue and ugly, and knowing I had to go back in. It wasn’t a great feeling, but I
willed myself to do it. It was my choice, but I knew I’d do it because that’s what was necessary. It
felt so awful to come back into my body. Oh, I can’t tell you the pain in my head! And then that
young man, that paramedic let out such a yell when I grabbed his arm. He thought I was a goner,
and here I reached out and grabbed him! Then I blacked out.”
“And here you are,” said the doctor.
“Here I am,” said Beth.
“You said it was ‘necessary’ that you re-enter your body. Why was that so?”
“It wasn’t my time. That was communicated to me. That truth feeling that I tried to
explain to you. Tate needs me, and Jake and Sam. Who else would take care of those little boys?”
“I see,” said the doctor and he wrote notes for a long time on his paper.
As he wrote, Beth was flustered and unsettled because she was aware of the injustice her
words had given her experience. At the same time, she thought about everyone at home and
wondered who was taking care of things. Had someone cleaned up the broken glass in the
basement? She hoped Jake wouldn’t wander down to the river unsupervised. She would call
Linsey just as soon as the doctor left and make sure things were taken care of so she could rest
her mind.
26
When the doctor was done, he flipped the pages over and put them under his chair.
“Have you ever had an experience like this before?”
“No, never.”
“Have you read about others’ near-death experiences?”
“Other people have had this happen to them?” Beth asked. She thought for a minute. “I
guess that makes sense, but why wouldn’t it be all over the news? Why wouldn’t we have heard
about it?”
The doctor did not answer her question, but clicked his pen in and out a few times.
“Are you particularly religious Mrs. Gray?”
“Yes, you could say that.”
He clicked his pen again and took a breath.
“Let me explain something to you that might help you make some sense of this. When a
person is experiencing trauma, such as you did, victims often describe this tunnel with light at the
end. This makes sense, of course, when you consider that visual ability is shutting down, the
peripheria going first and this, of course, leads to tunnel-like vision just before you black out.
And when the blood pressure drops suddenly, it is not uncommon to experience a feeling of
euphoria...”
“Wait just a minute.” Beth’s head hurt and she thought perhaps she’d misunderstood, but
now it came as a great insult and shock that he did not believe her, or at the very least, was
explaining away her experience as a side effect of trauma. “I was in a dark room, my basement
storage room, that ain’t got a light bulb in it, so the bright light didn’t come from that. And it
wasn’t a natural light anyway. And I didn’t see it right away. I saw my own body lying there on
the ground first, and Keltzie and Jake coming in. The tunnel came later.” Beth felt certain this
27
should put the man’s doubt to rest, but he merely continued his pen-clicking while he tried to
explain to Beth about “constructed memories” and “REM intrusion.”
When he stopped, Beth took his hand, which seemed to startle him. “What exactly is your
purpose in being here?”
He seemed surprised by the question and his hand spasmed under hers. “I study these
near-death experiences. I’m a researcher.”
“It sounds like you are no such thing. You are not interested in what I said. I just shared
an experience with you....a sacred experience....and you sitting there the whole time thinking I
made it all up. That’s not a nice thing to do to an old woman.”
“I’m sorry if you thought....”
“Now, any other time of my life I would be quite angry with you. But I’m trying not to be
because I’ve been shown something different, a kind of love that don’t exist here, and I’ll try to
hang on to it best I can. You are interested in disproving something real with your medical talk.
This wasn’t any dream, young man.”
“Don’t misunderstand, Mrs. Gray. I am certain that the experience seemed very real to
you.”
Beth could not hold on to her hurt feelings. What she’d experienced lingered, as if it were
now in her bones, and she found herself consumed with love and compassion for this person for
whom she might have felt great disdain. Instead, she squeezed his hand and looked into his flat,
blue eyes.
“You are trying to keep yourself from believing in something,” Beth said. “You got your
notes there. I’ve told you everything. You ain’t doing me or yourself any good by sitting here
talking your talk to me. You might as well tell me my head ain’t right here attached to my body.
And you might as well tell yourself it ain’t there, either.”
28
The doctor retrieved his hand from Beth’s and put his notepad into his briefcase.
“Well, Mrs. Gray, I thank you for your time.” He excused himself from the room and as
the door closed, the realization that she would not necessarily be believed seeped into her like a
cold fog.
Beth must have dozed off again, because when Linsey came back into the room with a
soda, she started awake.
“Hey, how are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m doing all right.”
“You look upset. Are you in pain?”
“No, no. That medication worked good. I just...I was just thinking about last time I was
here. Linsey, why don’t people believe? Wouldn’t the world be such a better place?”
“Shhhh, Mom. Shhhh.” Linsey pulled the blanket up on Beth’s chest. “It doesn’t matter. I
believe, OK? I always believed you. Lots of people do.”
“I need to get home. When are they going to let me go home?”
“Soon enough. The world isn’t going to stop spinning because you’re stuck in here.”
But her world might, Beth thought. Her world just might.
29
Chapter 4
EAGLE ROCK
A few days after Beth’s fall, Tate surprised her with the news that their son, Danny,
would be coming from Montana to live with Beth and run the farm while Tate was away.
“Is Elaine coming, too?” Beth asked. She’d never taken to this daughter-in-law, who’d
only had one child, and then sent him to a boarding school as soon as he was old enough. Beth
had never known anyone who sent their child away to school, and it embarrassed her when her
friends inquired about that grandson. Boarding school was something for made-up characters in
old novels, not a boy with the surname Gray who had a perfectly healthy mother and father at
home, and a ranch the size of the Montana sky to run and play and work on. What kind of excuse
was there, really, for not being a mother to the boy?
“She’s his wife, ain’t she? Besides, you will need the help. You ain’t worth a damn
banging around with that walker.” His grin belied his words, as did the full dinner spread before
him, but Beth felt defensive, just the same.
“I done everything I needed to do today just fine. Just a little slower. I don’t suppose I
need help from Elaine.”
Beth tried to imagine depending on Elaine. When they’d come to visit, she never helped
with dishes or anything. She’d sit and listen to the chattering of whoever was doing the dishes
with a quiet smile on her face, as if they were there for her entertainment. She had razor-point red
fingernails that made her fingers look useless. Beth stopped this train of negative thoughts. A few
extra dishes would be little bother in comparison to Danny taking care of Tate’s work. She would
be happy for the company while she scrubbed, and simply take a deep breath and count her
30
blessings when it was time for chores and Elaine settled into the couch to read a fashion
magazine, turning the pages with the pads of her fingers.
As much as Beth tried not to find fault with her daughter-in-law, she couldn’t help but
notice that Elaine and one or two of the others didn’t seem to be made of the same stock as the
Grays and her ancestors, the Pulleys, not a frail one among them. The weak were weeded out long
ago. As a young girl, when Beth balked at a chore, her mother needed only to bring up one of the
stories of the sufferings and hardships of a grandmother to shame her into doing her duty. Both
sides of the family originated in England, and came not ten years apart to America in the mid1800s after their conversion to a strange new religion. They were led by a prophet who convinced
them to sail across the ocean to form a kind of Zion in America. Beth still had a journal from her
great-grandmother with a careful list copied from official documents to prepare for their voyage
on a ship filled with like-minded converts. They packed, among other necessities, ten pounds of
biscuits, two pounds of rice, four pounds of sugar and, as the official instructions said, a large
amount of kindness and forbearance one towards another. The Graysons, whose name was
shortened and hardened to Gray on their arrival in America, couldn’t have imagined that they
would end up eventually in the barren Salt Lake Valley to coax a life out of a desert. Beth
imagined when they left for Idaho for the idea of gold, just one generation later, it was with
mixed feelings, but still with a pioneer spirit. Idaho Falls was called Eagle Rock then, for a rock,
an island really, not too far from where Beth now lived, in the swirling waters of the Snake where
some twenty eagles nested. Although it wasn’t uncommon to spot eagles, none lived on the
barren rock any more, which now only served the occasional fisherman.
For a few short years the ancestors lived in Nauvoo, Illinois where they lived with
refugees from Missouri, who had escaped Governor Boggs’ Mormon extermination order. The
Grays helped drain a swamp, fighting malaria and other diseases to make a grand city out of
31
wasteland. Sometimes when Beth labored in her garden and felt the pain in her back from the
endless weeding, she thought of this swamp and the hard work that brought about the miracle of
Nauvoo. Some of the culture and niceties of life were restored with the success of that city, but
the persecutions started again. Mobs burned their houses and raped their women. When their
leader was murdered in Carthage Jail, the trek further west to the Salt Lake valley became
inevitable. Once again, they left their comforts and loaded their flour, sugar and forbearance on
wagons. They left much too close to winter, driven by the mobs.
To Beth, then, being a Gray meant walking until your shoes wore out and then making
due, sometimes leaving a trail of blood or bits of frozen flesh on the 1100 mile journey. Being a
Gray meant giving birth on the trail, the wagon train stopping for nothing, not even for the
digging of more than a shallow grave for the mother or child, heaped with whatever stones they
could find to prevent the wolves from digging up the bodies. Being a Gray meant sacrificing
everything for your faith, for hope of an eternal reward.
Beth remembered all of this when she began to feel, as the day wore on, that the burden
of Tate’s incarceration would be too much for her. As far as she was concerned, being a Gray
now meant the same that it did then: You dealt with what came your way with forbearance and
you thanked God for whatever blessings you had. She was certainly slower because of her injury,
but she could still do everything she needed to do. She’d even found a way to lower herself down
to dig new potatoes in her garden. Her physical limitations were the least of her concerns, and she
could withstand a great deal of pain. It was her mind she needed to keep strong. She welcomed
the familiar shame that came when she thought of her relative ease in comparison with the life of
those who came before her. Her own Pulleys had it a tad easier, trekking straight to the Salt Lake
Valley, and eventually north to Idaho on improved trails and in a better season, but their women,
especially, were made from the grit of a pioneer life and mind. Sure, some of her sons and
32
daughters seemed lazy and had strayed from living right, but she did not doubt their true
constitution. And she would not crack under this bad luck that paled in comparison to burying
your kin along a trail in the prairie, left to the wild animals. And she, especially, would not see
her burdens as anything but light when God had shown her a glimpse of that eternal reward. She
hoped she was not given that glimpse because God saw a sign of weakness in her and felt it
necessary. No, certainly it was so she could help others.
That evening, Beth followed Tate out the back door, the air still heavy with heat,
mosquitos and Tate’s uncertain mood.
“Do you got matches?”
Beth found the matchbox by the grill and handed it to Tate. He scratched one with his
thumb and lit the citronella candles suspended in plant baskets from the roof overhang. Beth
hated the smell of them, but she was glad for the thinning cloud of the mosquitos despite a few
bites already.
Tate pulled a plastic chair close to Beth’s and they sat in companionable silence. Tate’s
familiar breathing and movements next to her seemed natural like the perpetual evening breeze
bringing a hint of moisture up from the river and the sudden appearance of stars from one horizon
to the other the moment the purple disappeared from the sunset. The idea of her life here without
Tate seemed as likely as the river going silent.
“Tate, you know I’m going to be fine. I don’t need live-in help. I got Linsey and
Christine and all the other boys live close.”
“Linsey told me the doc says it’s going to be a good six months before you’re completely
well again. Besides, if Danny’s coming, then Elaine’s coming, too.”
“I’m already getting around just fine.”
“I spoke to the lawyer today. I got maybe six weeks before I have to go in.”
33
The volume of the crickets and frogs increased while Beth wondered how to respond
without Tate shutting her down.
“You ain’t got an exact date?”
“Nah. It’s a dog and pony show down there. Hell, you run a farm like that, you’d be belly
up before sundown. They don’t know their assholes from their nostrils.”
Beth looked at Tate and saw that it was all right to laugh. He grinned at her.
“That’s an awful thing to say,” she said and slapped his thigh.
“Well, it’s the truth.” Linsey’s kids, running around from the front ahead of their mother,
made a beeline for the rope swing that hung close to the river. The plank of wood held by an old
yellow rope tied remarkably high up in the tree sometimes put splinters in the backs of their
thighs, but that swing was as close as you could get to flying. Just swaying on it close to the
ground put flutters in Beth’s stomach. The older boys sometimes jumped off at the highest point
of the arc and flew, slow-motion, their arms flailing, to an unforgiving landing on the hard ground
past the edge of the lawn. When Beth watched them, her own breath caught.
“Get over here!”
“You get over here!” The girl yelled back at Tate.
“Sassy one,” Tate said. He got up, adjusted his suspenders and lumbered over to the
swing, one of the strays at his heels. He picked up the cat and cupped it like a kitten in his
oversize hand, his thick white hair neat and glowing in the twilight. “I’m gonna push you to the
moon!”
Linsey came round holding a soda as big as a small bucket.
“Want some Pepsi, mom?”
“That’ll keep me up all night.”
“How are things going here?”
34
“Well, Tate’s just said he’s going in about six weeks.”
Linsey sucked in her breath and held it for a moment until the squeals from the swing
caught her attention.
“Dad! You be careful! Britney, not so high!” Then, to Beth, “How’s he taking it?”
“Hard to say. He’ll miss the grand kids. He lives for those kids.”
“What about you?”
Beth shrugged. “I’m all right. Did you have supper?”
“We picked up something on the way.”
Beth thought about Linsey and the kids eating fast food in the car. She guessed it was
how people did it now, but it didn’t seem right not to have a proper supper. And all that soda.
Linsey was thin with a good figure, a natural platinum blonde. So pretty she learned early that she
could navigate the world with a certain confidence, but it hadn’t ruined her generous heart. She’d
kept her figure after marriage, but Beth guessed her bones weren’t worth anything for strength,
with her office job and poor diet. Linsey was a good egg, watchful of her children, and she didn’t
sleep until noon when she had a day off. She could imagine Linsey up to her elbows in the swamp
water of Nauvoo. Beth didn’t understand some of her other children who felt the day’s hours
were expendable.
“I can’t imagine you’re really all right. You know, it’s OK to admit that you might be
scared, or upset. Or something. And besides all that, you must be in pain.”
“I take comfort that the Lord watches out. I’m in good hands.”
Linsey sighed and chewed on her straw as she studied Beth.
“Say what you came to say.”
35
“Mom, we want you to come live with us. With me and Larry and the kids.” She paused
to see if Beth would react, then continued. “This place is too much for you alone, especially with
your injury. And even after....well, Dad’s getting old.”
“I ain’t doing no such thing. Tate will be back in a year if he’s got good behavior, the
lawyer says. He’s strong as an old ox. And Danny and Elaine is coming to take care of things.”
“I know Mom, but really. Danny and Elaine?”
“Danny is perfectly capable. He’s been running his own place just fine.”
“No, he hasn’t. Why do you think he’s so anxious to come here? Why do you think he
can up and leave everything there? I’ll tell you why. Because things aren’t going so well in
Montana.”
Beth considered this. Hard luck didn’t mean Danny was incapable. He worked as much
as any of her other sons, and Elaine aside, had made good decisions as far as she could tell.
“He’ll do just fine, and there ain’t nothing around here that I can’t do.”
Linsey got up and went into the garage to retrieve some bug spray. She sprayed a cloud
on each arm and then patted a bit on her cheeks.
“It would be a nice change to live with us, for a while at least. Take your mind off
things.”
“And leave the whole place to Danny and Elaine? While I live at your house? I didn’t
raise my children to become a burden on them.” Besides, she thought, Elaine would let
everything go to pot, and there was Christine, Jake and Sam to consider. Where would they go?
“Besides, it wouldn’t take my mind off anything. It’d give me a whole pile of new worries.”
“It wouldn’t be a burden, and no one is trying to replace you with Elaine. You could sell
the house. Look for a nice condo. Take your time and find something you like.”
36
“I’ll do no such thing, and Tate wouldn’t stand for that. This is his home and this ain’t the
last of him living here.” She slapped at a mosquito on her arm. One of the citronella candles had
run low. Linsey might as well have suggested she put on a wig and go to clown school. She
would not lose Tate, Jake, Sam and her home at the same time. Besides, it was only a temporary
situation. A year might seem like a long time to young people, but it was nothing but four seasons
that flew faster each time they came around. She would manage.
Linsey sighed again, sat down and took a long drink of her soda.
“At the very least, you ought to get someone, someone not in the family to oversee
things. An accountant or lawyer. Mom, you don’t really know the process of the whole thing, and
Dad’s obviously made a mess of it.”
“Tate’s done the best he could.”
“He’s going to jail. They don’t put you in jail for nothing.”
“Look, I know he ain’t perfect. Lord knows that’s true. But I don’t see that he’s done
anything that any of the other farmer’s ain’t done. He’s been farming for sixty years, and he’s
done OK with it. We’ve always gotten by.”
“Yes, but we’re worried about you. Things change. Maybe it’s time for you to start
thinking about what’s next. Larry doesn’t necessarily think Danny...”
“What’s next is whatever you make of it. Now you hush, Linsey. Your husband ain’t a
farmer and he don’t even know Danny very well. Tate is trusting things to Danny and I’ll be just
fine.”
“But Mom, the situation might not even be salvageable with the best of circumstances.
We just don’t know yet. You might not have a choice.”
Beth let her defenses down for a moment. “But Linsey, how would I take care of the little
ones if I lived in a condo, and with no income....”
37
Linsey took the lid off her soda and dumped the ice out to the side of the chair. They
listened to the kids play on the swing and Tate’s teasing.
“Look, Mom, I understand how you feel. I really do. But you know Sam and Jake have a
mother, and a father, somewhere...”
“Their father ain’t worth the dirt he stands on.”
“I know that, but maybe it’s time for Christine to step up. You make it too easy on her.
She’s never going to change if you pick up all the slack.”
“I am aware of Christine’s shortcomings, but that don’t mean those boys don’t need
raising in the meantime.”
“You can’t take care of Christine’s kids forever. And now, since you are
injured...something else needs to be done. Let Christine take care of her own kids. It’s not fair
that she doesn’t have to take responsibility.”
“Linsey, you know she ain’t ready for that. It ain’t about her and what’s fair. It’s about
those boys needing a mother and someone there to love them. I ain’t trusting them back to her
again. She’s my own daughter and it kills me to talk that way, but you know I’m right.”
“It’s just...you’re not invincible, mother, even though you might think so.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing,” Linsey said. “Nothing at all.”
38
Chapter 5
MIRACLE WORKER
Dustin came up from the basement with the phone one late afternoon as Beth finished
sewing a skirt for Keltzie, from some leftover fabric from a long-ago quilt project. Keltzie twirled
while Beth tried to get her to hold still to fit the elastic at the waist.
“It’s the bishop. Says it’s urgent.”
“Here we go,” Beth said, and pulled the skirt down off the girl. Keltzie squealed and ran
for the couch, young enough not to be all that embarrassed.
“Thanks, Dusty.” He shrugged and walked off.
“What can I do for you, Bishop?” Beth asked. Her suspicion ran deep, because although
she respected him as the leader of their congregation, she did not think his own faith was
sufficient for his position. When she shared her experience with him the day it happened, after
that doctor left, he didn’t believe, even though he had witnessed the earthly part of the miracle.
“Sometimes the mind can play tricks on us, Beth,” she recalled him saying, “But I’m glad
you had a faith-promoting experience.” A faith-promoting experience! As if it could be reduced
to that. She’d wondered about him ever since.
“I’m over at Evergreen Hospital with Brother and Sister Madison. Their son, Nick, has
been in an accident. Dirt bike versus a spud cellar, I think, and it looks like he might lose his leg.”
“Yes, and?”
“And, I’ve been trying to offer comfort. We said a prayer...”
“And?”
39
“And, the doctors want to move forward with the amputation, but the Madisons would
like you to come first and see what you can do. They’ve heard things....”
“Bishop Henley, I ain’t a healer.”
“I know that...I mean, Beth, I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant....”
“It’s the truth. I ain’t nothing of the sort. I can’t save a boy’s leg.”
“No, you can’t. But faith can heal. And what the Madisons have right now is faith in you.
Or, should I say, faith that God can work through you.”
“Bishop...”
“Beth. Please. They want you here. Can’t you do them this favor? I can’t say I quite
understand, but I have nothing left to offer them. Sister Madison is insistent...I’ll send Brother
Granger to pick you up. He’s only five minutes away. Say you’ll come, for them?”
“But what will I say? What will I do?”
“Pray for guidance. You’ll come up with something for their sakes.”
Beth went upstairs as fast as she could to change out of her dungarees and into her
Sunday dress. She was getting by without the walker, now, but she was still slow, especially on
the stairs. She pulled on some nylons, not worrying about the run down the side of one ankle. Her
hair looked reasonable and she swiped on a little lipstick and wrestled the deodorant stick up the
sides of her dress to her armpits, where she slicked some on over her already damp skin. Good
Lord, what had she gotten herself into? She could no more heal that boy than levitate his hospital
bed.
She found Christine home, asleep as if gone to the world in her bed, the covers pulled up
around her ears.
“Wake up,” Beth said, shaking her not so gently.
“What is it?” she said on the third shake.
40
“I’ve got to go to the hospital. The Madison boy’s been in an accident. There’s stew on
the stove for supper. Stir it and don’t let it burn up and get stuck to the bottom of the pot.”
Christine blinked at her.
“And watch those kids.”
Granger pulled up in his work truck, but he, too, had on his Sunday clothes, she guessed
for the same reason she did, out of respect for the tragedy. He nodded to her and then came
around to help her up into the cab. His thin hair was slicked back with water and he smelled like
a mixture of dirt and aftershave.
“I guess Nick’s leg is bad,” he said as they sat at the railroad crossing, waiting forever for
the train to pass. Beth tried to crowd a vision of Nick’s leg, mangled and turning blue, out of her
mind by recalling scripture. She needed to be thinking right if she were to do any good at all.
“I guess so.” Beth didn’t want to be impolite, but she didn’t feel much like talking. She
resorted to humming the familiar hymns in rhythm with the train because she couldn’t seem to get
at any verses that brought comfort.
Granger shifted his hands on the steering wheel. A half-moon of sweat showed through
his shirt at the armpit. “You think you can do something for the boy?”
The clickety-clack of the train grew louder in the space waiting for Beth to answer. She
wasn’t acquainted enough with Granger to know if it was a sincere question or just conversation,
but she decided the question deserved an honest answer.
“No, but they think I can. Maybe that’s what matters.”
“Maybe,” Granger said. “People gotta believe in something.”
At the hospital, which Beth hoped she would never see again, Granger led Beth through
until they arrived outside a room where Nick’s parents hovered over a bed.
41
“I’ll let you be,” Granger said, and stepped back. He nearly stepped on Bishop Henley
who came up behind them that moment.
“Ah, Beth. I’m so glad you are here. Thanks, Brother Granger.” Bishop Henley shook his
hand. “Stick around, will you?”
Bishop Henley urged Beth through the door, alone. Nick’s mother, her eyes red and her
face swollen with tears, fell on her as soon as she entered the room. She sobbed into her shoulder
while Mr. Madison looked down, his shoulders sagging low. A nurse excused herself.
“They...they want to amputate. His. Leg.” Mrs. Madison could barely breathe, let alone
speak the words.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Mrs. Madison spoke into Beth’s shoulder. “They say we’ve waited too long already, but
I knew we should wait. You have seen God.”
“Well, that ain’t exactly true,” Beth said, but Mrs. Madison ignored her.
“Ask Him to save his leg.”
Beth felt she had no choice but to show courage in the face of such sorrow. She hoped
her voice spoke confidence to them.
“God answers your prayers same as he answers mine. It’s a matter of faith and God’s
will...I got faith plenty enough for all of us, but I ain’t got no special direct line.”
Mrs. Madison pulled away from Beth’s shoulder and looked at her, more stricken now
with Beth’s words. She looked like she might become angry. Her voice rose.
“But you know....you’ve been....” Mr. Madison came and put his hands on Mrs.
Madison’s shoulders and pulled her away from Beth. She buried her face in his chest.
“Now, Ginny, calm down. Beth is here. She’ll help how she can.”
In that moment, inspiration came. “May I sit with Nick alone, for a minute?”
42
Mrs. Madison whirled around and faced Beth. “Of course. Anything.”
They left the room, and for the first time, Beth looked at Nick, lying on his bed, his head
bandaged, as well as his left arm. A tented sheet hid his lower body, but all the same, she tried not
to look.
“Hello, Nick.” Beth pulled the metal chair against the wall close to the bed, careful to
avoid the plugs and IV lines.
“Hey.”
“Sorry about your accident. About your leg.”
“Yeah. They want to chop it off.” Despite his cavalier words and the thin adolescent
facial hair that sprouted from his chin and upper lip, he looked like a frightened toddler.
“Do you remember what happened?”
“Me and Aaron were riding the dirt bikes over the spud cellar. We made some ramps near
the top. I guess I took it a little too fast. I don’t really remember much after I realized I lost
control.” He picked at the edge of the sheet with his good arm.
“Do you know why I’m here?” Beth asked.
“You’re the lady who saw God,” Nick said. “I guess my mom asked you to come. She
thinks you can fix me.”
“I ain’t seen God,” Beth said. “And I can’t fix you.”
“I didn’t think that. It’s my mom and dad...”
“I know, Nick, I know. You’re their baby. A parent would do anything for their child in a
pickle like this. Including believing that an old lady who is nothing special might be able to work
a miracle.”
Nick smiled at her, and she was relieved there seemed to be a connection. She said a
prayer in her heart that she could get through to him.
43
“I can’t work a miracle, but that don’t mean it ain’t possible. ‘Faith is things hoped for
and not seen.’ Have you heard that before?”
“Sure, in Sunday school.”
“Well, I seen a few things. I seen that there is something else out there. I ain’t just seen it,
I actually experienced it, so my faith is beyond just hoping for something. Now I ain’t saying that
I got everything figured out, but there is hope and love and even miracles, and for some reason,
God saw fit to show me that, especially the hope and love part. Perhaps me still being alive is
some kind of miracle, maybe just so I could help folks like you. The nurse will be back soon and
your parents will want back in, too, so I ain’t going to go into details, but Nick...” She gripped his
hand, careful not to squeeze too hard in case something hurt there. She saw in his eyes that he
wasn’t skeptical; the sincerity she looked for was there. “There is a God that can answer your
prayers, if you can see fit to ask for what you want and then ask for His will to be done. But it’s
between you and Him, and you gotta have the faith. But it’s all right to lean on my faith for now
if you ain’t got enough of your own. Do you understand?”
The nurse and two doctors came in at that moment, followed by the Madisons.
“Excuse us,” said one of the doctors.
“It’s OK, we was done, wasn’t we, Nick?”
Nick nodded his head, and Beth gave one last squeeze to his hand and got up to leave.
“Beth?” Nick called. “I understand.”
Nick’s mother questioned Beth with her look. Beth smiled at her and nodded her head
and left the room. She’d done what she could.
Granger was in a cheerful mood on the way home, whistling along with the radio that
spat out mostly static. Beth, though, was drained and felt on the verge of tears, although there was
no moisture in her tear ducts. It was more a feeling inside her head than the whole body reaction
44
an actual cry takes on. She wondered at her reaction to these things, because while she was
preaching what she knew, trying to give other people faith, she was well aware that there were
things that God didn’t see fit to fix. He let even those with the faith to move mountains try with
all their might to move them and fail, then let them call it God’s will that the rock stayed put.
Suffering was part of the life everyone had to live. Dying wasn’t the thing; that, she knew, was
easy. It was living that was the difficulty. Maybe God would save Nick’s leg; it was possible. But
there were still the mountains that stood testament to God’s immovable will.
That Tate wasn’t home in time for supper cast a large shadow over the small group that
gathered around the table and the overdone, smoky stew with burnt bits floating in it. Beth had
stalled supper, making baking powder biscuits in the meanwhile, the extra dough baked into the
initials of the grand kids. Her granddaughter twirled and twirled at her feet in her new skirt, the
elastic held for now with a safety pin, singing a waiting-for-grandpa song. When they finally ate,
no one said anything about Tate being gone, but when the phone finally rang, they sprang for it at
once. David got there first.
The gist of the call was that the sheriff was not going to pursue any charges of public
drunkenness, he told David, on account of what was coming for Tate in the near future, although
it certainly was in the realm of what was appropriate considering the scene Tate had caused, but
someone needed to come to the station and pick him up. Not Beth, the sheriff told David, come
yourself, and bring another brother because he wasn’t being cooperative.
“I thought he was done with all that,” David said, once he’d finished with the sheriff.
“I thought so, too,” Beth said. “Things must be weighing on his mind heavy.”
“We sure as hell don’t need this. Once the old bastard settles down, he’s gonna get a
piece of my mind.”
“It ain’t no use, David. No use getting yourself worked up. Tate is Tate.”
45
“Yeah, well, he doesn’t need to be a drunk, too. Maybe if you wouldn’t put up with so
much....Never mind.”
David stomped to the door. “I’ll get Dennis on the way. Call him and tell him I’m
coming.”
Beth sat on the couch after the dishes were done with Christine, who had let the stew
burn, and had her thread a needle so she could finish the skirt. When the phone rang again,
Keltzie, who was now dressed in her pajamas, answered and brought it to Beth.
“Hello?” Beth was expecting David, but it was a woman, whose voice she didn’t
recognize. Oh, Lord, not now. Her mind was crowded with Tate and she had no room for another
lost soul. But it was Mrs. Madison. There was too much emotion in her voice for Beth to make
out all of it, but she gathered that Nick’s leg had been saved.
“Well, I’m just so pleased to hear that,” Beth said. “I’m glad Nick’s going to be OK.”
The doctor said it was highly irregular that things had turned around like that, and that
quickly. He’d never seen anything like it. Mrs. Madison called it a miracle. She thought Beth
ought to know. Thought Beth ought to know how grateful she was, how she’d known all along
that God had given Beth something special. That she’d never doubted and it was God that
inspired her to call Beth in the first place, a miracle worker sent by God to save her Nick.
Beth let her go on, uncomfortable with all the praise, as if she’d called down the powers
of heaven her own self. It must’ve been Nick who had mustered the faith. And of course it was
God’s will. Beth had a feeling Nick could have weathered the trial of a missing leg just fine, but
maybe his mother could not.
When Mrs. Madison was finally quiet, Beth said, “You give that Nick a big hug from me,
all right?”
46
She sat back, a little shaky, but closed her eyes to pray her gratitude, while Christine
gathered the children together for bed. She’d always thought the gift she’d been given was meant
to help other people. She did not like to think that God gave it to her because she had a weakness
and would need to rely on such tangible evidence for her faith. Nor did she think it was random.
It was meant to bring peace to others. And yet people confused it with something it wasn’t. She
was grateful to be part of whatever helped people, but with situations like this, with Nick’s injury,
she felt like she was helping promote a lie. She’d had nothing to do with the recovery, but there
was no telling Mrs. Madison that. And now, what rumors would be spread about her ability as a
healer? Who would believe she didn’t believe this about herself in the face of convictions such as
Mrs. Madison’s? Jake and Sam came to say good night and she held them in a hug for a long
time, even though it hurt her pelvis something fierce. If only, if only, she were a miracle worker.
When the boys finally arrived with Tate, it was past midnight, everyone else long asleep,
and even Beth had dozed there on the couch. Tate went straight into their bedroom while the boys
headed for the kitchen. She followed them in.
“Can I make you something? Some hot chocolate maybe?”
“Nah. We stopped on the way home and fed dad some coffee.” David flung his coat over
a kitchen chair.
“He don’t drink coffee,” Beth said.
“He didn’t protest.”
“How about you, Dennis? Can I make you a sandwich or something?”
“For God’s sake, Mom. Get yourself upstairs and go to bed. Make sure Dad doesn’t pee
himself while you’re at it.”
The boys meant no disrespect by the way they talked to her. They were just tired and
after all, they’d done the dirty work of retrieving Tate, hadn’t they? Beth kept herself busy in the
47
kitchen. She did not want to go upstairs to Tate because she had nothing to say to him. In their
younger days, when she still harbored an idea that things could be talked out and changed, they’d
gone round about his drinking and womanizing and no good ever came of it. It just agitated him,
and, she suspected, made his behavior worse. She had accepted that Tate would never adjust
according to her hurt. She simply had to wait until he got tired and his carousing got old, or until
he maybe found something regretful about living contrary to what he knew was right. And he did
know. They shared a faith, and had taught their children that there was such as thing as right and
wrong. The question was whether one had the strength of character to live accordingly or not.
Beth fussed with the kitchen, wiping down the fronts of all of the cabinets, running the corner of
the dishtowel in every groove and around the base of each knob. When she was finished, she
considered mopping the floor, but morning might come before she was finished, so she
reluctantly went up to bed where Tate snored deeply, his sleep apnea machine forgotten in his
stupor. Sleep was impossible and Beth found herself thinking not of her own distress, but of Nick
and his miracle. And that was a blessing.
48
Chapter 6
HOT DISHES
On the morning that Tate was to turn himself in for formal sentencing and immediate
incarceration, Beth found herself awake earlier than usual. It was still midnight dark outside, not
even the earliest birds were chirping yet. The unusual silence, though, was not the absence of the
birds, it was Tate next to her awake also, his C-pap machine quiet, his mask pushed to the side.
They had not laid side-by-side in the morning, both awake, since Beth could remember, with
chores to do, bladders to empty, breakfast to cook, and the demands of life requiring their feet on
the carpet before the grogginess of sleep left their heads. Beth reached over and found Tate’s
hand. She squeezed his fingers between the heel of her palm and her own fingers. Tate did not
respond, but he did not move his hand away, either. Beth tried to think of something comforting
to say, but there was nothing she could draw on that could lend peace to this situation. They laid
in silence, still, until finally the first morning birds woke and began their cheerful songs. Beth did
not immediately get up, but held on to the morning, the light slanting in through the half-drawn
shade. It was no use resisting in her mind the change that was coming, denial and anger would do
nothing; instead she allowed the emotion to come in waves, unrestricted, because soon enough
she would have to soldier through.
“Andrew and Sadie here?” Tate asked.
“Callie dropped ‘em off last night,” Beth said. Her children did not see her as someone
who needed consideration, even under these circumstances. Normally, this would be a point of
honor for her, but today, today was different....she pushed this momentary resentment out of her
mind. She didn’t see these two grand kids as often as some of the others, and she did love them as
fiercely. Tate had been hoping Danny and Elaine could arrive days in advance so he could set
49
things in order with Danny, but they wouldn’t be able to come for another week, due to delays in
setting their own affairs in order. The kids would be a distraction, anyway, from Tate’s absence.
“Good. I’m gonna scare ‘em,” Tate said. He unplugged the Darth Vader-like mask from
the C-pap machine and strapped it to his face. Imposing anyway, he looked ten times so with the
mask.
Beth went down to get breakfast on. She pulled the cast iron skillet from the cupboard
and set it on the stove to heat while she cracked half a dozen eggs into a bowl. No sense making
something special. Tate didn’t like change; he would take comfort in his usual meal. She
wondered what they would serve him in prison. She hoped their was a real cook, someone who
would take care not to overcook the eggs and use plenty of butter on Tate’s toast.
“Call ‘em down, Beth,” Tate hollered at her. He had hidden himself behind the slot door
between the kitchen and the mud room.
“Oh, Tate, it’s barely dawn. They is still sleeping.”
“Call ‘em down!”
Beth went to the bottom of the stairs.
“Andy? Andykins!” she called. “Sadie, darling, come and eat some breakfast.” She singsonged her call until she heard the rustle from their room. Sadie, at least, would be bounding
down in a matter of moments. Beth went back and dumped the eggs into the sizzling skillet.
“Here they come,” she said. “Tate, you ought not to....”
Andrew and Sadie came down together, mussed hair and big grins on their faces, excited
with the novelty of the early morning and the prospect of spending the day with Grandma. Not
grumpy morning slugs, these two.
“Boo!” Tate jumped out from behind the door, big paws raised in the air, clawing like a
bear’s, his voice unrecognizable and muffled behind the mask.
50
Andrew screamed and jumped in the air, while Sadie immediately burst into tears.
“Oh, honey, it’s just Grandpa,” Beth said, taking Sadie in one arm, while continuing to
stir the eggs with the other. “Mean old Grandpa trying to scare you.”
“Ha! I knew it was you,” Andrew said. “You surprised me, that’s all!” His voice was
shaky, but the smile returned.
“Ha, ha, I got you guys,” Tate said. “You screamed like a sissy.” He pulled on Andrew’s
nose and went back up the stairs, calling behind him, “You was a sissy!”
Andrew sat at up on a barstool. “I was not a sissy. He just surprised me.”
Sadie had stopped crying and hiccuped in her uncertainty.
“That old Grandpa. He was playing a game with you,” Beth told her. “You don’t mind
him. How about some pancakes?” She patted Sadie on the rump, guiding her toward the stool
next to her brother. “You like pancakes, don’t you?”
Sadie nodded and Beth got a small smile. “Can you make them like Mickey Mouse
heads, like you did last time I was here?”
“Of course I can, Pumpkin.”
As Beth whisked the batter for the pancakes smooth, she smiled at Tate’s antics, even
though she wished he hadn’t scared the children quite so badly. That he was up for a joke on such
a day gave her hope that he would keep his spirits up. The smile, though, pushed against the
pressure that was already behind her eyes. She wouldn’t cry, at least not now, because then where
would she have left to go after he was gone?
Tate came down, dressed in his usual Levi’s and a button-down work shirt. Sadie
scowled and stared into her breakfast.
“You was a sissy!” Tate pointed at Andrew.
“Was not!”
51
“Tate, now, leave the boy alone,” Beth said.
“You gonna help dig the tractors out of the shit when they get stuck? Ain’t nobody else
gonna be around to do it.”
“I’m not a sissy!”
“Oh, yeah? Bet you can’t dig a tractor out of the shit.”
“Sure I can,” Andrew said. “As good as anyone else.”
“Well, good. Because that Danny ain’t worth nothin’ when it comes to shit-diggin’.” Tate
turned his attention to Sadie. “How about you, girlie? You any good?”
“I ain’t doing no such thing!” Sadie said. She hopped down from her stool and stomped
off.
“You see? Your sister, she ain’t a sissy.”
Tate stuffed half a piece of toast in his mouth and chewed with glee. He liked nothing
better than to get the grand kids riled up.
“Drink some juice, Tate,” Beth said and set a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice in
front of him.
“That lawyer boy’s gonna be here any minute,” Tate said.
Beth said nothing. She continued scraping at the egg skillet over a paper plate she would
give to the strays out back. Tate wouldn’t allow her to go with him to the courthouse. Not that she
could stand it, anyway, but she felt like a bad wife, staying behind while they took him away. She
tried to imagine him in the prison jumpsuit. What would become of the clothes he was wearing?
Perhaps she would go to the courthouse later and try to retrieve them, but she didn’t have the
vaguest idea who to ask. She’d check with Walcott boy when he arrived.
“Is it true?” Andrew asked. “Is Grandpa really going to jail?”
52
Tate drained his juice glass and didn’t answer. Andrew looked at Beth, but Beth didn’t
have the words.
While waiting for Walcott to arrive, Beth and Tate sat in the living room, an unnatural
situation. There were dishes to do, yeast to dissolve for the dinner bread, pipes to move, tractors
to maintain. The strays yowled in anticipation of the paper plate of breakfast leftovers that had yet
to arrive on the back porch. Worse still, Beth didn’t know what to say and she felt afraid to try
anything that might be the wrong thing. She didn’t want Tate to leave on a sour note. Tate sat,
staring into nothing, tapping his fingers on the arm of the chair until the armslip cover fell to the
ground. As he reached to pick it up, the knock came at the door.
“Let ‘em in,” Tate said. “I’m gonna go put my boots on.”
The Walcott boy wore a dark suit and he had on sunglasses, which he removed as soon as
Beth invited him inside. At first the sunglasses struck Beth as disrespectful for a reason she
couldn’t put her finger on, but when she saw the boy’s eyes, she realize he was distressed also.
She didn’t suppose he sent many of his clients to jail.
“How are you doing this morning, Beth?”
“I’m all right, I guess.”
“You are a strong woman. You’ll get through this.”
“I guess there ain’t a lot of choice about that, is there?”
“Well, no, I suppose not.” Walcott smiled, but looked down at his shoes until Tate came
back. He had Jake under one arm and Sam under another. Besides his old work boots, he’d put on
his green John Deere cap also. There would be no mistake who they were jailing. Tate no sooner
put the boys on the ground than he grabbed a leg of each one and held them upside down. They
squealed and giggled.
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“You boys be good or I’m gonna drop you on your heads,” Tate said. Jake giggled some
more. Sam’s face was turning red.
“Let ‘em down, Tate,” Beth said.
He lowered them gently to the floor.
“Let’s go,” Tate said. Walcott opened the door for him.
“Oh, Tate.” Beth lost her previous reserve and threw her arms around Tate’s neck and
held him close. He hunched down toward her slightly and patted her back. Walcott stared outside
and tried to repress even the sound of his own breath in order not to disturb the moment.
Then Tate pushed her away and said, “Bah! Don’t be boo-hooing.”
When the door shut behind them, Beth watched from behind the curtain as Walcott drove
away, his fancy car kicking up dust. Her throat felt dry as if she were standing in the road,
inhaling the particles of this grief. She stood until she was aware that she’d been standing there
too long, and there was nothing to be gained from all her dumb staring. There was work to be
done. But first, Beth worked her way up the stairs to retrieve a diaper for Sam.
“Jakie?” she called. “Jake? Come help Grandma with the baby.”
Jake appeared with Sam and they got him changed and dressed. Sadie and Andrew called
from downstairs that they were going out to play. Beth heard Christine stir in her room. Nothing
different but the gaping loss.
It wasn’t but two hours later that the doorbell began to ring and people began knocking
on her door. Most carried a fresh-baked loaf of bread, a hot dish, or maybe a half dozen muffins.
Those that called first, offering to bring food or to help with a chore, Beth turned down as often
as she could and still be polite. It was a waste, all this food, enough for a large family reunion for
heaven’s sake. And what was she to do, then, if all her work was done for her? She spent the
afternoon wrapping things in foil and putting them in the deep freeze, and transferring casseroles
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to tupperware to store in the refrigerator, and making small talk with those that lingered in her
living room.
She had wondered what people would finally say. That Tate was going to jail was wellknown, for sure, yet the gravity of it was not like the regular gossip that spurned countless phone
calls and over-the-fence head shaking. It struck fear into the farmers, whose accounting was
maybe not so different than Tate’s, and if it gave any of the town folks some kind of
schadenfreude, Beth was unaware of it. The most she got was an uncomfortable silence at
moments in church in the hall when the subject seemed at hand, or in clipped conversations in
town at the store, as if people were suddenly in a rush. But now that Tate was gone, the town
seemed to let go of its breath and the casseroles were proof of that.
As much as it touched her, though, the cooking and the chores and bringing a fresh loaf
of bread to recent widows and people down on their luck were what she did. Being the recipient
was something different. The do-gooders’ scrubbed clean dishes, to be returned at church on
Sunday, sat like accusers on her counter at the end of the day.
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Chapter 7
THE LIST
Danny and Elaine arrived three days later, their van full up with their things.
“We put all the furniture in storage,” Elaine informed her as she ate the turkey sandwich
Beth made for her. “It killed me to do it.”
Beth shook her head in sympathy at Elaine’s emotions, even though she didn’t quite
understand. Wasn’t one couch just as good as another? Did Elaine wish she could throw out
Beth’s things and replace them with her own, or was she resentful she was going to be living
here? Beth hadn’t asked Tate for details, but at the moment she wished she knew better the
circumstances behind Danny and Elaine agreeing to this arrangement. She had thought it was
pure charity on their part, but after what Linsey said, she wondered if they didn’t need her more
than she needed them. She would be more comfortable with that. Elaine certainly enjoyed Beth
making her a sandwich. Beth was happy to do it because she needed to be busy. It was a relief to
do something for someone else.
“I hope your bed is comfortable,” Beth said.
“Oh, I’m sure it will be fine. We stayed in that room last year at Christmas, remember?
Well,” she said, “I should get some of my things out of the car.” Elaine opened the back door and
stuck her head out. “Danny? Can you get my things?”
Beth went outside to give the cats the turkey scraps and then she went to help Danny
unload the car. She couldn’t bend over to set things on the ground, but she could hand things to
Danny and straighten up the front seat.
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“We can go see Tate tomorrow morning,” she said. “They say we have to get there two
hours earlier for security screening and such. What can you imagine they need us that early for?”
“In case you baked a cake with a file in it, I guess,” Danny said. He hefted a few trunks
out of the back seat. “I have a few things to ask Dad, so it’s good we can see him.”
Danny was the son the most mysterious to her. He looked the least like Tate, but that
wasn’t it at all. He was her seemingly most obedient child, but she suspected he probably got
away with more than the others combined because of his poker face. As she watched him unload
Elaine’s bags, she noticed how thin he’d gotten, the fat that once filled out his face gone, giving
more emphasis to the deepening lines on his face. He had the thick hair of Tate and her other
sons, but it had receded a bit in two U shapes on his tan forehead, and it was turning white above
his ears. All of these changes were natural with aging, of course, but it surprised Beth when her
children started to look like old people. But he was still strong and sturdy, with a flat stomach and
his arms, she could see through his shirt, were still well-muscled. He’d always been more of a
cowboy than a farmer, better with the animals than most. Montana had suited him fine, with a
leased ranch and several thousand head of cattle. She’d missed him something terrible, as it was
difficult for him to get away to visit, even for a holiday. And as for Tate and herself, they never
left Idaho Falls, except for the occasional wedding only as far as Salt Lake City. Beth would
travel more herself, but Tate was a homebody and she couldn’t very well leave him home alone.
He couldn’t manage without her, and it wouldn’t be right, anyhow. That was one of the worst
things about him being in prison. How was he coping without her? Tate was a creature of habit,
and she was his keeper. She buttered his toast just right, diluted the orange juice with half a can
more water than the directions said, and tucked the blankets in on his side of the bed loose at the
bottom. There were so many things he was used to, so many things he could depend on that made
him content.
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“It’s nice that you and Elaine could come. What about your place?”
Danny set down a box and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Our lease was coming up.
We were thinking of leaving anyway.” With that, he packed away any further comment or
emotion on that subject. “So it worked out. If we can keep this place running, we’ll all come out
ahead. It’s all a mess right now, but I’ve got someone coming in who has some good ideas.”
“Someone coming in?”
“We are in over our heads, Mom. It’s going to take a little creativity to get things rolling
again, and save the farm and the house. We can’t just keep doing what Dad was doing, obviously.
We have to dig ourselves out, and I need someone who is willing to help me figure it all out.”
“Save the farm and house? Are we in that much trouble?”
“Look at it this way. We were going south quick and now is our chance to turn things
around. It’s a new opportunity.”
“And it’s going to be all right?” Beth asked.
“I think it’s going to be all right, Mom. Now don’t you go worrying.”
“Who is it that’s going to help?”
“Doug Henley.”
“Why, Danny. Bishop Henley? He’s my church leader. I don’t think it’s a good idea to
mix our personal business with....”
“He’s a sharp guy, Mom. You know he’s not just a bishop. That’s a volunteer position.
He’s got a successful mill and he’s got lots of other things going on. He’s got a plan that seems
pretty foolproof.”
Beth did not know what to say, so she kept quiet. She should have felt reassured that her
own bishop was going to help them out, but at the same time, when she had trusted him above all
others with her story, he had let her down. How could she fully trust a man that hadn’t trusted her
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to tell the difference between a dream and reality? That they might lose the house and farm was
inconceivable. She could not imagine herself anywhere else but here, taking care of Jake and Sam
and whoever else needed her at the moment, and waiting for Tate to return. Despite all the things
Tate had done, she had always felt secure when things were in his strong hands, with his steady
reassurance. It didn’t make sense, but a person couldn’t help a feeling. That the only life she
wanted to live was now in the hands of her unreadable son and Bishop Henley’s scheme rattled
her to the core. But she had no choice but to trust them. She willed her doubts away in that
moment. There was work to be done.
The unloading finished, Beth went to see if the laundry she’d put in earlier was ready for
the dryer. She thought about what she would tell Tate when she saw him tomorrow morning.
How much she missed him. But she expected he would do most of the talking, if he was in the
right mood. She wanted to know everything, down to what kind of pillow they gave him to sleep
on. As she headed back upstairs, she looked into the storage room at her rows of jars and took a
deep breath. How much had happened since that day she’d come down for cherries and ended up
with beans, and how she wished she could share her experience with Tate. It would bring him
comfort, but he’d never been ready to listen. She’d waited until she felt it was the right time
because if you couldn’t share your most important experience with the one you loved the most,
then it wasn’t much good was it?
Beth decided to pick up the mail, and found two hand-addressed letters for her among the
ads and bills. She first took the bills and put them in basket on the countertop. She would have to
get Linsey to help her decipher the small figures of what she owed. She opened the first letter,
from a writer, someone who had heard about Nick’s healing, and wanted to include her story in a
book he was writing. She would decline, but for now, she stuffed the letter back in the envelope.
The writer had for certain heard the story wrong, or he’d realize there was no story other than
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Nick’s own faith. The other letter was from someone who had also heard about Nick’s healing,
but commanded her to stop deceiving people with her devil magic. She had no right to call herself
Christian, the letter said, while committing such blaspheme. Though there was no direct threat in
this letter, as there had been in others, this person said that the wrath of God would be upon her
soon enough. She knew this was from a crazy person, and there had been plenty like it before, but
it still disturbed her. If only everyone could see what she had seen. If only they could understand
she wasn’t claiming anything except what had been real. She did not think she had special
powers. If she did, wouldn’t she have fixed her own situation by now? If only they could see.
At first, Beth thought maybe some people didn’t believe her because of her lack of ability
with words. She took to keeping a notebook in her nightstand drawer where she wrote down
words and phrases as they came to her. Sometimes she got the words from church. She wrote
down “firmament” just last week to describe the earth when someone read it out of the Bible in
Sunday school. It sounded right, like the cold, dead rock that the world really was in comparison
to what was waiting on the other side. She didn’t guess that the glorious grass and those trees and
flowers were planted on a “firmament.” She guessed that even the soil in that place was somehow
alive and humming with its own music and tones. As she considered this though, she realized
there probably couldn’t be such a thing as soil there, because that required death and decay. So
many mysteries. She wished she could have stayed longer, had thought to ask so many more
questions.
“Ultraviolet” was another word she’d written down. One of her grandsons had talked
about it because he was learning the light spectrum in school. You couldn’t see ultraviolet, but it
existed. Beth wondered if ultraviolet was the purple-like shade of the flowers she saw. Violet,
only better, something you can’t see with mortal eyes. Possibly. She scanned the rest of her list so
far: Mellifluous, Cerulean, Plethora, Sublime, Infinitesimal, Serene, Halcyon, Celestial,
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Effervescent. She got that last one off Tate’s denture box. She wasn’t sure what it meant exactly,
but it sounded a lot like the happiness and lightness that seemed to run through her at the time.
She kept the list, but she hadn’t used any of the words in actual conversation yet. They
didn’t roll off her tongue and it required effort to think of exactly how to use them. Eventually,
though, she realized that maybe the right words just didn’t exist. Maybe it was matter of a feeling
of whether she was telling the truth or not. Of course it depended on the one listening, not the one
speaking. It brought one person comfort, and caused another to write her a hateful letter.
But the right time to tell Tate had never come and he’d never asked. Beth wondered if
Tate thought he knew the whole of it from the newspaper story and from overhearing talk. But he
needed to hear it from her, if only she could be certain he would believe. She shook this from her
mind, remembering all the comfort she’d brought people like Mitchell and Mrs. Madison. But
still....Beth picked up a bowl of peas in the kitchen and went out on the back porch to shell them.
She would bring some to Tate tomorrow. Maybe in time, in prison, he would want to listen to her.
Maybe he would soften.
And now, Bishop Henley, who was there when she died, and who had sat by her bedside
while she recounted her experience for only the second time, and hadn’t believed, was going to be
her supposed savior.