PROLOGUEGinny Rose
It’s August sixteenth.
My birthday.
I wake before sunup, excited. I’m not expectin’ much in the way of gifts, but that’s all right—it’s still my day. And maybe there’ll be cake.
A bird twitters a morning song, and I smile through the lifting darkness. But then I hear a high, sharp cry—like a squirrel, shot just off the mark.
I sit up.
There’s no squirrel in our shanty.
It’s Mama.
“Jeremiah,” she cries. “The boys!”
Papa’s quick to check on my little brothers, but everything goes still soon after.
“Mama?” I call, shootin’ forward from the blanket bed she made for me when the boys turned sick.
“Stay where you are, Ginny Rose,” Papa commands. His voice is thick in a way I haven’t heard before, and it sends me scuttlin’ backward.
“They’re gone, Mary,” I hear him say to Mama a short while later.
At first the words confuse me. How can they be gone? They’re right there! But Mama’s wail swirls through the shanty and I understand.
“To Heaven?” I ask.
“Yes,” Papa tells me.
My eyes sting. It’s a sharp pain, sudden and fierce, and I’m grateful for the wash of tears that follows. For a few moments the room swims and sways and I can’t hear anything but my own heart, poundin’ in my ears.
Lucas.
Elijah.
Gone?
Lucas.
Elijah.
Gone.
Papa’s voice cuts through. “No,” he’s tellin’ Mama. “I’ll take care of it.”
Mama staggers up from the mattress on the shanty’s dirt floor, but she stumbles backward and falls.
She tries again.
Falls again.
Papa puts a hand to her forehead and backs away quickly. “Mary,” he says, like he’s drivin’ a stake into the earth. “Stay here.”
“But, Jeremiah, I—”
“You’re in no condition to go anywhere,” he says, but more gently. “You’ll need to say your goodbyes here.”
“But…where will you take them?”
“I’ll find a nice place,” he assures her. Then he turns to me and says, “Load the water jug, the soap, and the shovel, and wait for me in Faithful. I’ll be along shortly.”
“But—” I say.
“Git!”
There’s a heavy fog hangin’ wet and cool over the camp, and the dirt shows signs of a drizzle. I don’t mind the cool, because I know it’ll give way soon enough to the sizzle of summer. But it does feel like the skies have been weepin’—like they knew about Lucas and Elijah while I lay dreamin’ of cake.
I load the soap, water jug, and shovel in the bed of our jalopy, then go wait for Papa inside the cab. It’s a long wait. One that gives me time to shed quiet tears for my brothers.
One that gives me time to already miss my only friends.
When at last Papa comes out of the shanty, he’s carryin’ a tight blanketed bundle in his arms which I know holds the boys, wrapped together. I have a pang of jealousy as I step down from the cab. They’ll always have each other, and who do I have now besides Mama and Papa?
I put on a brave face, and once Papa’s placed the bundle in the bed of the truck, he uses the soap and a worn cloth to scrub my hands and arms, clear up to the elbows. He gives himself the same treatment, then wrings out the cloth, feels my forehead, and nods. “Let’s go.”
I climb back into the cab and watch as he cycles through the steps of startin’ Faithful. It takes a few tries, but when she fires up, we putter through the labor camp slowly, then bump along across a field in silence.
At last Papa says, “Your brothers loved playin’ around that tree.” He’s got his eyes fixed on what Lucas called the Eagle Tree on account of the way it’s shaped. And Papa’s right—in the month we’ve lived at this camp, the boys were never so happy as when we’d picnic beneath its shady branches. “I’m thinkin’ it would make a nice restin’ place,” Papa adds, more to himself than to me.
He parks Faithful near the tree, and once he’s walked around a bit, he leads me down to the river. “I need rocks,” he says. He picks one up and hands it to me. “This size is good.”
The rock is smooth and shaped like a big egg. And, surprised by the weight, I nearly drop it on my bare feet. “I’ll need dozens of them, Ginny Rose. Can you fetch them for me?”
I nod.
He kisses my forehead. “Good girl.”
So while he digs, I carry rocks. Back and forth I go, back and forth. Down to the river, up to the tree. Down to the river, up to the tree. And when at last the hole’s deep and wide enough and the stones are collected, Papa fetches the bundle out of the back of Faithful, steps into the hole, and lays it down. He looks around a little and frowns. “It should be deeper,” he says, but climbs out and shakes his head. “It’ll have to do.”
I stand by, dumbly starin’ into the hole.
Into the grave.
My eyes sting again.
“You don’t have to watch, Ginny Rose,” he says, but something inside me’s refusin’ to look away.
“They have each other,” he says softly. “And their sock monkeys.”
“Really?” I ask, and for some reason the sock monkeys bein’ with them makes me feel better.
He nods. “And Mama’s necklace, too, to protect them.”
I know what necklace he’s talkin’ about. She’s only got the one. But I don’t know what Lucas and Elijah need protectin’ from anymore, or what a little gold cross on a chain can do for them. I’m just glad they have their sock monkeys.
Since I don’t move away, Papa says, “All right, then. Why don’t we say a prayer together?”
I nod, and after a short quiet spell, he says, “Take Lucas and Elijah into your arms, O Lord. Release them to laughter and play in the company of their cousins Matthew and Jake, and bless them with the watchful care of family that’s passed into your Kingdom before them. We thank you for the time we had with these boys, and we await a joyful reunion with them when it’s our turn to be called home. We pray all of this in Jesus’s name. Amen.”
“Amen,” I whisper.
And then Papa begins shovelin’ in dirt.
I help by pushin’ it in with my hands.
By layin’ the river stones in tidy rows over the top.
By coverin’ the stones with oak-leaf mulch.
Then, after we rinse off in the river and spend another quiet minute at the grave, Papa takes my hand in his and we walk back to Faithful. “Thank you for your help,” he says gently.
I nod, and through the sadness and confusion in my heart, I feel a swell of pride at his look. Suddenly I do feel bigger. So this is what it’s like to be six years old.
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