A Surprise for Lily (11 page)

Dear Hannah,

Thank you for writing and telling me all about the new hired boy at your farm. I'm glad your father chose someone big and strong. And cute, you said, though I'm not sure what cuteness has to do with working on a farm.

So much has happened in Cloverdale that I don't even know where to begin. First, here's a story you'll enjoy about our very own relatives:

Since our Uncle Jacob is the new bishop, Cousin Noah has been sitting on the preacher's bench, right up front. This morning, Noah was playing with his handkerchief. He wadded it up in a ball and popped it in his mouth (don't ask me why! boys do strange things like that) and then he started to choke! Uncle Jacob stopped preaching mid-sermon to take care of him, and then continued preaching like nothing had happened. On the way home, Papa said that Uncle Jacob was born for the bishop job.

During lunch on Friday, Aaron Yoder offered Wall-Eyed Walter five cents to eat a cup of sand in school. That was downright mean—everybody knows that Wall-Eyed Walter isn't the brightest lantern in the barn. Of
course, he accepted Aaron's challenge. He took one bite and spit it out. All afternoon, he kept spitting and coughing and gagging. Teacher Judith finally sent him home.

Mama started teaching English twice a week—on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. The school board kept coming to Whispering Pines to ask her to teach and she kept saying no, but then Uncle Jacob came with them to ask. I guess you don't say no to a bishop, even if he is your brother. She's doing a fine job. She has a clever way of taking the shine off Harvey Hershberger. Harvey has a disgusting habit of sticking his pen cap on the tip of his tongue and flicking it in and out of his mouth. On Thursday, Mama told the whole class that we were fortunate to have a rare blue-tongued boy in school. Just as unusual, she said, as the rare blue-footed chicken. After that, Harvey stopped sticking the pen cap in his mouth.

Lately all Joseph talks about is playing in the woods. He says he wants to live off the land like Teaskoota, the old Shawnee Indian who lives up in the hills in a little log cabin. If you ask me, I think Joseph is just trying to imitate Aaron Yoder (ridiculous! just ridiculous). Aaron is always traipsing off to the woods to fish or hike. Yesterday, Joseph disappeared to play in the woods. He saw a chipmunk and thought it would make a good pet. He waited, still as a stone, until it came near him. Then he reached out and grabbed its tail. The chipmunk scrambled to escape and its tail came off in Joseph's hand! Joseph felt horrible.

Your cousin,
Lily

L
ily woke with a start. Something was wrong. The sharp whoop of a siren rushed past Whispering Pines—first one, then another. She shivered. Sirens made such an eerie sound, especially so in the middle of the night. She turtled her head down into her covers and wondered where the fire engines were hurrying to. Had there been an accident? The roads were icy. Sometimes cars slid into ditches. Or maybe there was a house fire. Lily burrowed down deeper under her covers. How awful it would be to be awakened by a fire in the middle of a dark, cold winter night.

During breakfast, someone rapped on the door. Papa left the table to see who had arrived, and he returned with David Yoder. Mama jumped up to get David a cup of coffee. “Thank you, Rachel,” David said, putting his cold hands around the mug. “I came to let you know that Jonas Raber's house burned to the ground last night.”

“Was anyone hurt?” Mama said, first thing.

“No,” David said. “The family got out of the house in time, but they lost most everything. Everyone is gathering today to help with the cleanup.”

Lily looked down at her fried egg. So that's where the fire truck was rushing to last night. Poor Beth! What a frightening experience it must have been—to watch your house burn down. How ghastly. What would the Raber family do without a house to live in? Lily put down her fork. She couldn't eat another bite of her egg.

David Yoder gulped down the rest of his coffee and left to go tell a few more families about the work frolic for the Rabers. Papa finished his breakfast, grabbed his hat and coat, and hurried outside to hitch Jim to the buggy. No work in the woodshop would go on today. Papa would spend the day helping the Rabers.

Lily cleared the table and went upstairs to change her clothes for school. She wondered if Beth would even be at school today. What did you say to someone whose house burned down? Lily didn't want to make her feel worse. Maybe Beth wouldn't want to talk about it at all. Or maybe, if Lily didn't ask her about it, Beth would think Lily didn't care. Lily didn't know what to say or not say.

As Lily put her bonnet on, Mama handed her the lunch box and said, “Good friends lend listening ears. I think you'll make a good listener.”

It was astonishing how Mama seemed to know exactly what Lily was fretting over. “But what if Beth doesn't want to talk?”

Mama tied the ribbons under Lily's chin. “I think you'll be able to tell if Beth wants to talk or not.”

When Lily arrived at school, she saw Beth standing by a window, a look on her face like she was staring without seeing anything. Lily removed her shawl and bonnet and hung them on a hook. Slowly she walked across the room. As she drew closer to Beth, she caught a whiff of a smoky smell. Beth was wearing someone's borrowed clothes and she looked exhausted, like she hadn't slept at all—her eyes were puffy from crying. Her face had a squinched-up expression.

“Are you all right?” Lily asked in a hushed voice.

Beth shook her head, tears starting all over again. “Lily, it was terrible! The fire was everywhere! It happened so fast. My brother Rueben ran over to the neighbor to call the fire trucks while Papa dumped water on the fire. Mama and I grabbed things and ran out of the house until Papa said we had to stay outside so we wouldn't get hurt.”

Lily rubbed circles on Beth's back, hoping to comfort her. She was trying to be a good listener.

“It took the fire truck such a long time to get there,” Beth said. “By the time it arrived, the house had collapsed in a heap. The firemen sprayed water on what was left of the house until the fire was completely out. A fireman carried me to his truck and let me sit inside where it was warm. I hadn't even realized I was standing in the snow in my bare feet.”

Lily looked down at Beth's feet. She was wearing boots that were much too big for her.

“These are my cousin's old shoes.” She tugged on her dress sleeve. “And her clothes, too. All my clothes were burned up.”

Lily couldn't imagine what it must be like to have everything you cared about . . . gone. Just like that. She thought of her scrapbooks and her circle letters and the letters from Hannah that she kept in a special box. The closest she could
get to imagining such loss was how she felt after Dozer chewed up Sally. Beth must be feeling one hundred times as bad.

Beth wiped away her tears with her dress sleeve. “By the time the fire truck left, there was nothing but ashes. We saved a few things, like Mama's sewing machine and a few pieces of clothing. Some dishes, too.” She gave a little half laugh. “I was so scared that I saved the stupidest things.”

“Like what?” Lily asked.

“I carried out the trash can and a box of onions,” Beth said. Then her face crumpled into tears and she covered it with her hands. “But I forgot all about Pete!”

Oh no.
Pete was a beautiful blue parakeet that lived in a pretty cage in Beth's living room. Lily knew how fond Beth was of Pete. She had even taught him a few words. To think Beth had saved the trash can and not Pete. How awful! She must have been in a dreadful panic to forget her special pet.

Would Lily remember Dozer if a fire swept through Whispering Pines? She hoped so, but after he had recently chewed up one of her favorite books, she wasn't quite sure.

After school, Lily helped Mama prepare stew for supper. “Lily, please go down to the basement and get some carrots,” Mama said. Lily wrinkled her nose. That could only mean that Mama was going to put carrots in the stew. Lily loved raw carrots but it was another thing entirely to eat a cooked carrot. They became mushy and squishy and disgusting. She took a bowl and went down to the basement. Mama kept the carrots in a barrel filled with cold sand so they stayed fresh. Lily dug through the sand until she grabbed half a dozen carrots.

Lily washed and peeled carrots at the kitchen sink. She looked up and saw Jim pull Papa's buggy into the driveway. She hurried to cut up the carrots and plop them into the simmering pot of hamburger, onions, and cut potatoes. She wanted to hear everything Papa had to say about cleaning up the Rabers' house.

Instead of going to the barn, Papa drove Jim right up to the house. Through the kitchen window, Lily saw Beth jump out of the buggy. She dropped the last carrot in the stew pot and ran to the door. “Beth! Come in!”

Beth held up a rumpled brown paper bag. “Your father said it would be okay for me to sleep here until we get our new house.”

Mama had come to the door when she heard Beth's voice. “You're more than welcome,” she said. “Lily will be happy to share her room with you.”

How exciting! Now Lily wished they could have prepared a delicious supper since Beth was here. Her friend had enough things going wrong in her life without having to eat carrot-filled stew.

Later that night, as the girls settled down to sleep in Lily's bedroom, Lily heard Beth start to sniff as if she was getting a cold. She popped up from her nest bed on the floor. “Do you need a handkerchief?”

When Beth turned to her, she burst into tears. “Oh Lily . . . it's all my fault,” she sobbed.

Lily jumped up on the bed to sit next to her. “What is?”

“The fire! I burned down our house last night.”

“But . . . how? Why would you do such a thing?”

Beth wiped her tears. “I didn't do it on purpose. As I was getting ready for bed, I lit my lamp, just like I always do. I
shook the match to put it out, and the match head dropped and rolled under my dresser. I tried to look for it but couldn't find it. I figured it had just gone out. So I got back in bed and wrote in my diary, just like I always do. Then I got sleepy and went to bed. Not much later, I woke up and smelled smoke. The match head hadn't gone out and my dresser had caught on fire. Flames were licking at the walls. I jumped out of bed and ran down the hall, screaming to my parents and my brother to wake up because the house was burning down.”

“Why didn't you tell your parents about the match head?”

“I couldn't! There was so much confusion going on, and since then, I haven't had a chance.” She hung her head. “Plus, I don't know how.”

“In the morning, let's ask Papa,” Lily said. “He'll know how to help.”

It was still dark when Beth woke Lily. She had heard Papa's footsteps go down the stairs. He was heading to the barn to do chores. Lily yawned and stretched, wondering if Beth had slept much at all. “Let's go talk to Papa,” Lily said, grabbing a flashlight. “You'll feel so much better afterward.” She knew that from personal experience. Trying to keep a secret from parents took a toll.

The two girls tiptoed down the stairs and out to the barn. When Lily pulled the barn door open, Papa looked up in surprise. He had just started to feed Pansy. The big cow turned and looked at Lily and Beth, blinking and batting her big, thick eyelashes as if to ask why the girls were up so early, then she turned back to her trough, deciding the hay was more interesting.

Lily grasped Beth's hand firmly and walked over to Papa. “Beth has something she needs to tell you.”

Papa kept tossing fistfuls of hay to Pansy, as if this was the most ordinary way to pass the time—feeding a cow by lantern light with two little girls in their nightgowns. Lily squeezed Beth's hand.

“I burned my house down.” Beth's voice was very small, almost a whisper.

Papa's expression revealed that he had not anticipated an announcement of that sort. “Go on.”

“I didn't mean to,” Beth said. “I lit a match and it dropped under the dresser. I did look for it but couldn't find it. Next thing I knew . . .” She threw her hands up in the air. “Whoosh! The whole house was burning down.” Beth gave Papa all the details, every one, because once she got started, she wanted to get it all out.

Papa kept on putting hay in Pansy's trough, nodding in all the right places to Beth's story. When there was no more hay to toss, he walked over and put a hand on Beth's shoulder. “That's a very big burden for a little girl to carry, Beth. It was an accident. Accidents happen, all the time. No one will blame you, but keeping it a secret wasn't the right thing to do. Even if you didn't lie about it, you didn't tell the truth, either. It's always best to tell the truth. After school today, I'll go with you over to where your parents are staying and you can tell them the story for yourself.” He picked up the lantern. “I'm sure they'll understand. Don't you worry yourself about it anymore.” As Papa walked to the feed room, the swinging lantern cast eerie shadows on the walls.

As the girls went back to the house, Beth, Lily noticed, didn't have that squinched-up expression any longer.

Papa had answers for everything.