Seasons of Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #4) (21 page)

Parker Jones had made his way back to the side of Jake Finnery.

“Come inside, Jake,” he urged, needing, somehow, to get away from the watching eyes of the girl in the buggy. Taking the man by the elbow and helping him to his feet, Parker led Jake, who moved almost blindly, toward the door and eventually into a chair.

“Now tell me,” he said, seating himself, “surely I didn’t hear you correctly. Your mother—”

“Is dead,” Jake Finnery croaked baldly.

Parker Jones was silent before the news that, truly, grieved him deeply. He had been fond of the ancient woman, admiring her gallantry in spite of life’s blows.

Testimony time at last Wednesday night’s prayer meeting had been an example of Sister Finnery’s indomitable spirit.

“It’s been a hard week,” she had begun, getting to her feet, and everyone had listened sympathetically. “First off, a skunk got in the chicken house and killed four of my best setters . . . a jar broke, cannin’, and chokecherry juice spread everywhere. Then I found where a mouse had eaten into the bag of flour. Oh, the devil he was doin’ his best to get me down. Trouble . . . trouble! I’ve had it this week. But—”

Here old Sister Finnery’s voice had lifted, her eyes lighted, and she concluded triumphantly, “like the good Book says—‘It came to pass’!”

Thinking of the note of victory and of Sister Finnery’s habit of applying Scripture, whether fitting exactly or not, brought a mist to the eyes of Parker Jones.

“Tell me about it, Jake,” he said, his voice cracking under the depth of emotion he was feeling for the loss of this “sheep” from his flock.

Jake Finnery heaved a sigh and sat up. Accustomed to life’s blows and having bent for the moment under another one, like a good, strong bush poplar he was straightening and facing the elements.

“Seemed like she felt good all morning,” Jake said, hollowly. “Of course, like always, she overdid it. I couldn’t get her to take it easy, not ever. This morning she was butchering chickens and canning them. After dinner she complained of a burning in her chest, sort of. Said it was indigestion. I told her to lie down for a while, but it got so bad she was sweatin’ and groanin,’ and I went fast for Gramma Jurgenson. As soon as she saw Ma—well, she got sorta white-faced herself. ‘It’s her heart,’ she said, scarin’ me like everything, and gettin’ Ma’s attention.

“Then Ma sorta got herself together and turned to me and said, desperate-like, ‘Get Parker Jones, Jake! Go get him quick. I need for Parker Jones to come pray with me—’”

Parker stifled a groan, his face in his hands.

“I hurried on over, fast as I could. I guess I sat on your porch for an hour or more, waitin’. I knew you’d be along . . . but just before you came, one of the Jurgenson boys came by to tell me . . . to tell me—”

Jake—big, strong, bull-of-a-man Jake Finnery—broke down. Parker Jones found himself on his knees, but this time not praying. His arms—as far as they would reach—were around Jake, and the two men wept together.

“You’ll be wanting to get on back, Jake,” Parker managed eventually. “Gramma Jurgenson will be needing to do . . . whatever it is she does at times like these. Herkimer came to escort you, I think. I . . . I’d like to go, too.”

Leading Jake out onto the porch, closing the door behind them, neither Jake nor Parker heard the voice of Herkimer Pinkard as he said thoughtfully, staring off into space the while, “A mousetrap never pursues a mouse.” If they noted the open mouth and outraged flush on the face of Vivian, neither gave it a serious thought.

Finally, Herkimer dismounted. Leading his horse to the Finnery buggy, he tied it behind. Then he helped the dazed Jake up into the rig, climbed in himself, took the reins, and headed toward the road and the Finnery homestead.

Without a horse of his own, never had Parker Jones felt more helpless. Whether he wanted her assistance or not, he needed Vivian and the Condon rig at this moment.

Parker Jones knew he could walk, if nothing else. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Had he walked the path of duty for the last time?

This grim question was in the mind of Parker Jones as he and Vivian followed Jake and Herkimer. His dereliction—being unavailable when a parishioner needed him—seemed to spell finish to the pastorate for him.

Not only did Parker feel his own failure deeply, but he was confident that God, whose word adjured “. . . that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called,” considered him a failure also.

Weighed in the balances, and found wanting. These ancient words rang like a death knell in Parker Jones’s heart.

At the Finnery place, Parker followed Herkimer and Jake into the house. Numerous people were there, having picked up the word from Herkimer as he passed, and from the Jurgenson boys who had come
checking on their grandmother who, though not young, was the nearest thing to a doctor—or undertaker—the district boasted, and who was called upon in every emergency.

Sister Finnery, by this time, had been bathed and dressed, and lay in state on her bed until such time as a coffin could be obtained.

There was no grandchild, no daughter. No one except the burly Jake, whose wife had died years ago in childbirth, and who had not remarried but who had taken the care of his aging mother on himself, finding that she did as much for him as he did for her.

At one time there had been other Finnery children—three of whom had died in infancy, two as youths. There had been two grandchildren. A daughter and her two children had perished with Jacob Finnery in the blizzard that had crippled his wife. It was one of the horror stories of the bush—a family far from home and not properly dressed, a blinding storm, horses given their head to find their way home, drifts too deep to stagger through, two children and their mother and their grandfather dead when found. Sister Finnery, piled high with bodies and blankets, had somehow survived, but never quite forgave her Jacob for his sacrifice in saving her life at the expense of his own.

And now—to have died without the comfort and consolation of her pastor! No knife, thrust into a beating heart, could have been more murderous than the guilt that slashed through the bosom of Parker Jones.

Still, a devotion to duty kept him going through the paces. He knelt at the side of the makeshift bier and prayed; he comforted, as best he could, the bereaved son; he spoke proper and fitting words to grieving friends. And felt it all to be a mockery.

It was one of the Finnery horses, after all, that took Parker home. Jake had roused himself, shaken his great body, blinked his reddened eyes, and lifted his head.

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” he said, in much the same manner his mother might have spoken, and friends, listening, nodded and agreed that Jake, with such a heritage, would pull through, pull through one more tragedy.

“Take one of our . . . my horses,” he said to his pastor. “Just tether it out back of your place, and I’ll be by sometime later to get it. We should,” he said, glancing around at fellow church
members, “get on with the task of putting up a barn for our preacher, and gettin’ him a rig of his own.”

Already Jake Finnery, with the spirit of the true pioneer, was looking ahead, doggedly looking ahead. Present circumstances should not triumph. There was a tomorrow for the longest day, there was a dawn for the darkest night, there was—in the heart of the bush homesteader—a dogged persistence that simply would not, could not, give up.

Parker spoke brief words of thanks to Vivian, explained that he would no longer need her services, and sent her on her way. If he noted Herkimer Pinkard’s keen glance, he didn’t pursue it.

Herkimer was a puzzle—to all appearances a careless, laughing man full of waggery and tomfoolery, but with occasional flashes of wit and wisdom that astonished the hearer. In spite of his buffoonery, Herkimer was considered thoughtful enough to be on the church board and had, at times, served on the school board as well, though he was a bachelor without wife or children.

If Vivian felt his eyes on her back as she drove out of the Finnery yard, it served only to lift her chin and put an angry flash in her eyes.

Mounted, ready to leave, Parker Jones looked down into the face of Jake Finnery, seeing kindness, respect, and perhaps love there, and said heavily, “I’m sorry, Jake. I’d give the world to have the afternoon to do over again . . .”

“Ma woulda been the first one to say it’s all right, you couldn’t have known. It was awful sudden. I just took out and tried to find you, not even thinkin’ you might be busy somewheres else. But the buryin’, preacher? You’ll take care of all that.”

It wasn’t a question. Jake, and all the congregation, had full confidence in their pastor. Only Parker knew the hollowness.

He was thankful for the quiet time alone as he made his way homeward on a horse that was reliable—an old plow horse and not given to friskiness—with time to think. To try to pray.

“O God,” he cried silently, “what now?”

A
t the sound of the child’s ululation of anguish, everyone froze momentarily. The silence itself seemed to scream portent; it was the prelude to a great hubbub: The pan of scones in Tierney’s hand, about to go into the oven, poised in midair for a second then crashed to the open oven door; the big wooden paddle in the grip of Quinn Archer, lifted for a moment, splashed into the boiling piccalilli; Alice, her mouth agape and the empty tongs in her hand fluttering ineffectually above the kettle of near-boiling water on the table before her, dropped them among the remaining sterilized jars, setting off a sharp clatter. Even the chicken in Barney’s arms was shocked into a silent huddle before it lunged, with a flapping of wings and a high screeching cackle, making a bid for escape.

Leaving the oven door hanging open and the doughy scones scattered far and wide, Tierney turned in the next instant toward Billy.

Still on his knees at the side of the table, his mouth stretched and shrieks continuing to issue from it, Billy held his burned arm stiffly, like a poker out before him. One side of his face was an ugly scarlet, his eyes were shut, and one was red and already appeared to be swollen. It had been just seconds since Alice, half dreaming as she lifted the hot jars from the water, had let one fall, to break, to splash, to scald.

Tierney was the first to reach the side of the boy; Quinn was beside her in a moment. Alice faltered back, wide-eyed and breathing shallowly, her hand going to her face in a gesture of helplessness.

Young and inexperienced with tragedies of this magnitude, Tierney looked helplessly at Quinn. It was almost impossible to make herself heard above the hullaballoo, but her lips formed the words
What shall we do!

Quinn Archer was no callow, inexperienced youth. Whatever life had held for him (Tierney recalled that he had been a teacher of children; one among them, perhaps, had burned himself), he rose to the need of the moment with clear thinking and sensible solution.

“Ointment!” he said strongly. “We need something to keep the air off these burns. Alice!—”

Quinn turned to the stricken Alice, took her by the elbow, and spoke forcefully into her ear, not only to make an impression but to be heard over the din of the boy’s continuing howl, “Ointment—do you have any?”

At Alice’s shake of the head, Quinn spoke again, “Well, then, lard . . . grease of some kind. Where do you keep it?”

Alice turned to the cupboards, Quinn on her heels. At her pointed finger he located a can of grease, left over from bacon and roasts and other fatty foods.

“Scissors!” Quinn barked, and Alice shuffled through a drawer and came up with them. Quickly Quinn cut the boy’s shirt from top to bottom and side to side, and peeled it from him. Taking the grease and disregarding the increased shrieks
and the boy’s flinching, he began systematically slathering it on the burned arm and face.

“Bandages,” he commanded, and Alice, like a puppet on a string, obeyed. As Tierney steadied the stiffened child, Quinn wrapped the torn sheeting around the arm and, with more difficulty, around the head and over one side of the face. Still the gaping mouth screamed and one eye, peering from under the side of the bandages, streamed tears. The stiffened body, now, was shaking like an aspen leaf.

“Take him; hold him,” Quinn said, turning to Alice.

But Alice was digging feverishly into a cupboard. Cans and bottles flew and dropped as she shoved them aside, tearing past them to a back corner. Here she grasped a couple of dark bottles and, breast heaving and eyes glittering, began working with the cork in one of them.

Quinn and Tierney watched, momentarily startled into motionlessness.

But when—the cork removed and tossed aside—Alice raised the bottle to her lips, Quinn leaped into action.

“Here!” he said roughly. “Give me that!”

With a sob Alice released the bottled potion and sank into a chair.

His brows knit in a sort of scowl, Quinn lifted the bottles and read the scrolled labels—first of one, then the other: Brandy Cordial, Laudanum.

Quinn studied the print, studied the weeping face of the woman, and shook his head—compassionately but firmly.

“Alice,” he said, “Alice!” And Alice ceased her gasping and weeping and focused on the man before her.