ATOW Chapter Two

“Emma Ru-uth!!” The shrill voice echoed up the stairs, reaching the ears of a young girl who was lying on her stomach on a braided rag rug in the center of an otherwise bare wooden floor. She had propped her chin in her hands as she pored over the somewhat brittle pages of a rather ancient-looking book by the dim light from the rising sun. Its rays barely penetrated the solitary window framed by faded blue-checked curtains. The girl lifted her head at the sound of her name, carefully closing the book and jumping to her feet. 

“Coming, Mama!” she called back, hastily snatching up a hairbrush from a small bedside table and running it through her dark hair. She ran to throw her door open as she twisted strands of hair into a thick braid. Her mother stood at the bottom of the stairs, a wooden spoon in one hand and a green crockery bowl in the other. 

“Ronnie, are you up? Come on, shake a leg boy, daylight’s burning!” 

“He’s already up and gone,” Emma reported, poking her head into her brothers’ bedroom door. The rumpled patchwork quilts on each of the bunk beds betrayed both boys’ absence. “And so is Mickey, I’m afraid.”

“Gracious… never heard a sound from either one of them. Where’s Katie?”

“She’s getting up now,” Emma peered back over her shoulder. Her younger sister was dragging herself slowly from bed, running her fingers through her tangled hair as she blinked in the dim morning light. 

“Oh, sleepyhead,” Her mother laughed, shaking her head. She turned back from the stairs, still rapidly beating the batter in her bowl. “Where in heaven’s name is Mickey?”

A crash followed by a blood-curdling howl from the pantry answered her question. Rolling her eyes, Donna Stewart set the bowl carefully on the oaken table and marched into the pantry to corner her youngest. Emma turned back into her room to gather up her treasured copy of Ben-Hur. It had been her grandmother’s and it still bore her name in beautiful cursive… “Emma Elizabeth Thomas”. “Stewart”, her married name, had been added on later in a slightly darker ink.

“You’re a dreamer, just like my mother,” her father had told her. “I remember how she used to take me on her lap when I was just a little tyke and tell me all her beloved stories. She had such a gift for stories. You were named for her. And you have inherited her gift.”

“Ah, and let’s not forget my mother,” her own mother would always chime in. “Ruth… you were named for her also and you have inherited her gift as well. The gift of caring for others. She was a nurse, your grandma. She helped care for the wounded soldiers of the Spanish-American War… and that’s how she met my father.”

This story Emma knew by heart, for she had begged it to be told over and over. First from her grandmother and, when she had passed away only a few short years ago, she had made her mother tell it countless times. Her grandmother Ruth had been working in a field hospital set up in a canvas tent not far behind the front lines. They had brought him in… her grandfather David… badly wounded. According to the way her mother told it, Ruth had saved his life that day. And he fell in love with her. The best part of the story was that it was true. With a real hero and heroine… romance and adventure and drama. Emma longed to live such stories. But she contented herself for the time being with her stories on paper. She could make them come to life in her imagination.

“How late did you stay up?” Katie raised her eyebrows as she carefully braided her golden-brown hair. It was inclined to be slightly curly and she struggled daily with attempts to tame it. Little curling wisps always escaped to frame her face. 

“Oh, not too late,” Emma replied carelessly, pressing the worn book against her heart a moment before laying it carefully on the shelf above the dresser. She didn’t have many books and those few she possessed were carefully treasured. She had read and reread them so often she nearly had them memorized. She was already reading Ben-Hur for the seventh time… and although she knew it forwards and backwards, she still had stayed up past midnight, squinting over the words by the faint light from a full moon. That was her favorite kind of moon… a moon meant to read by. “It’s a Saturday! Glad we don’t have school today, aren’t ya? See ya downstairs!” 

She skipped down the stairs, two at a time, and danced across the kitchen floor to fling open the cupboard and count out the plates. Her mother was just emerging from the pantry, dragging along a small boy with tell-tale smudges of jam on his cheeks.

“I’ve told you a hundred times, Mickey, haven’t I? Stay out of that jam! We don’t have much of it and it’s for Sundays. Remember? Only Sundays! On no account for Saturday morning snacks! You only had to wait one more day. Now go wash your face. I’ll see to cleaning up that glass.” She groaned as she ran her hands through her hair and smoothed her apron. “He was standing on the shelf to reach it,” she sighed to Emma. “That boy’s gonna run me wild. I found my first gray hair this morning.”

The back door swung open then, creaking loudly on rusty hinges. 

“You need to get that door fixed, Jim!” Donna called from the pantry. “It sounds dreadful.”

“Will do,” Donna’s father tossed off his muddy workboots and plodded inside to take his seat at the kitchen table. He always promised to fix that door but he never actually got to it, what with all the other chores that needed doing around the farm. And during planting season, he was twice as busy. He had dismissed his hired hand over the winter, confident that he and Ronnie could do well enough without him. But now that it was planting time, he was beginning to regret his decision. It always boiled down to the same thing... never enough money. With the economy practically dying on them, it was a marvel they were still managing to stay afloat.

“Did you wash your hands?” Donna returned from the pantry, stowing the broom in the corner. She yanked a dishtowel from the drawer, using it to pull golden-brown corn muffins from the oven. “Oh, Jim. You’re as bad as Mickey.” 

“Surely you don’t mean that, my dear,” Jim grinned good-naturedly as he rose from the table. He bent over her to press a kiss on her cheek. She stepped back, pretending to slap him with her towel, but her eyes sparkled and her cheeks glowed even as she reprimanded him.

“Of course I mean it. Now go clean yourself up, you big lug.”

The door squeaked again as Ronnie entered, following his father to the sink. The importance of washing hands had been so burned into his memory so many hundreds of times that he didn’t dare risk forgetting it. 

“Messala is looking better this morning,” Ronnie remarked as he dried his hands and rolled down his sleeves. “He was on his feet and eating. Remind me again why we have a steer named Messala?”

Emma grinned sheepishly, sinking back in her chair. 

“You’ll never believe the news I have,” Donna spoke enthusiastically as the family finally settled around the table, a sort of semi-calm falling over the room. “I was over at Myra’s yesterday afternoon and she told me. She’s…”

“She’s going to have a baby!” Emma bolted from her chair in sudden excitement. Donna sighed but smiled wearily at her daughter.

“Yes, she’s going to have a baby. Was that just a lucky guess, Emma?”

“Sort of,” Emma grinned as she sat down again. “But not completely. I thought she looked different at church last Sunday…”

“Different how?” 

“I know what she means!” Katie piped up. “She looked the way you did when you told us that you were having Mickey, Mama!”

“It’s the expectant mother glow,” Jim grinned. “I know it well. I’m glad for her and Rob… this’ll be just what they need.”

“And when the baby gets big, he can be Tonto and I’ll be the Lone Ranger!” Mickey waved his cowboy hat in the air, nearly knocking over the milk pitcher. “And we can track down the bad guys!”

“Hey!” Ronnie protested. “You don’t want me to be Tonto anymore?”

“You’re too big,” Mickey sighed and plopped his chin in his hands. “Nobody wants to play with me anymore. 'Sides. You don't look like an Indian.”

“Well, just you wait until this afternoon,” Ronnie reached over to rescue the milk pitcher as Mickey lunged for it again. “I’ll have a couple hour’s free time after lunch and I’ll take you fishing.”

Mickey seemed to perk up at that, but his spirits were quickly dashed by the wise confiscation of his hat by his mother. She wasn’t, as she said firmly, going to risk any more dishes that day. One broken jar was enough for one morning.

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