Jerusha Spends the Night

By Hazel K. Todd

(previous chapter)

Chapter 5

Synopsis: The night Jerusha was to spend with the Wilsons when her car broke down near their home has stretched into a permanent situation. Her presence in the home has manifested itself in many ways, some of which are obvious to everyone. Joe still resents her presence, but Jerusha has been able to comfort Amy, and has achieved a deep friendship with Suzey and Dennis. Jerusha has introduced Paul, the father of the children, to Lynn Barlow, a schoolteacher.

Paul looked concerned, and Dennis almost burst with excitement. “Please, Dad, I wouldn’t take any room, I …”

“Sh-h-h,” Lynn said with her finger to her lips, her eyes twinkling at the boy. “We’re rushing your father. I’ll tell you, you wait and talk it over together.” Then, quite suddenly, she shot a glance at Joe. “I just had another idea. How about dragging your big brother along to help keep you out of the goblin holes?”

Jerusha had been watching the development with amused interest. Now she stole a cornerwise glance at Joe who was somewhat confused. But he regained his aloofness, shook the lock of hair falling over his forehead into the proper place and found some words. “Why me?” he said with a flushed face.

“Oh, brothers out together in the wilds of nature ought to be a good working combination,” Lynn laughed good-humoredly. “Maybe you could find something interesting for me to crow about to Craig, like a dinosaur bone or something.”

After dinner Lynn insisted on helping with the dishes. “How about Suzey and me?” she asked, reinforcing the offer with a smile at Suzey.

But Jerusha had other ideas. “I just remembered,” she said, “I need to have Suzey try on her new outfit so I can measure some spots. We have to have her ready for girls’ camp next week. Isn’t it next week, Suzey?”

“Why, yes, Jerusha, but …”

“Why don’t you help Lynn with the dishes, Paul?” she went on, without giving Suzey a chance to finish. “It’ll be a good change from farm work.”

“I guess I still know how to wipe dishes,” Paul said with an odd smile at Jerusha. “I haven’t done it since you came, Jerusha.” He looked from one woman to the other. “Anybody have an extra apron around here?”

Jerusha was quick to transfer hers. She tied it around his waist and motioned to Suzey.

Suzey gave the unusual dishwashers an equally unusual sort of smile and followed Jerusha from the room.

All the rest of the evening Amy never left Jerusha. She stroked her hand that she clung to, patted her skirt, and pulled her down to whisper bits of things into her ear. And when Jerusha tucked her into bed after an extraordinary version of the Clippety Clackety Clop Man, the little girl reached up and put her hands on the wrinkled face. “Mommy,” she said in an awed low voice as though the words might frighten even herself, “I love you, Mommy.”

Jerusha caught her breath. The child’s round face swam in a pool of mist. She felt herself engulfed with a smothering, tingling warmth. Then she stiffened. What had she done! She could not be Amy’s mommy! But a great longing squelched the fear. Tenderly she rested her hand on the golden hair. “Good night, my sweet,”she whispered and bent and kissed the soft cheek.

Dabbing the tears from her eyes, Jerusha turned to leave Amy’s room, but she stopped suddenly, fresh emotion gripping her. Paul was leaning with his back against the casing of the bedroom door watching her. His lips moved into a strange, emotion-mixed sort of smile as though there had been stirred together in its making, gratitude and sorrow, hope and weariness, all to culminate in a kind of drastic, heartrending effect.

He took her hand and she closed the door behind them. They stood in the hall facing each other, and he remained holding her small wrinkled hand gently in his.

“You have given her a new life,” he said. “How can I ever repay you?”

It was difficult to make the wheels turn in her head. “It is so easy to love her,” she answered, and then with her own straight-forwardness, “but others could win her, too.”

“No one ever has,” he said, “not since her mother.” He took his eyes from her face and looked away down the hall. “Dorothy loved this little girl so much.”

“Yes,” Jerusha said, and then, presently, she added in a less serious note, “did you forgive me for making you wash the dishes?”

He dropped her hand carefully from his. “Of course,” he smiled, “Miss Barlow is as you said, a very interesting person. She is like you, frank and without pretense.”

“Are we really now!” Jerusha said lightly with a smile and turned to go.

But he caught her hand again. “Jerusha,” he said, his eyes imploringly on her face, “I pray continually that you will never leave little Amy.” His voice held almost a desperate plea.

She looked at him fondly, her heart aching. “I’ll stay, my son,” she said, “as long as …” She searched for adequate words, “… as long as little Amy needs me.”

A light of gratitude and love and peace spread over his face. He raised her worn wrinkled hand and pressed it lovingly to his lips. “Thank you, Mother Jerusha,” he said.

“I thought you were supposed to be helping Joe clean the hen house while your father is in town,” Jerusha said to Dennis who was digging worms for his birdhouse friends while she was clipping the dead flower knobs from the rosebushes and dropping them into a bucket.

“He told me he wanted to do it alone,” Dennis answered.

Jerusha’s heart sank. She was sure she knew why Joe wanted to be alone. She wondered how long it would be before Paul knew, and what he could do when he did. Maybe when school started and he was playing football. … but in that case, it would just be so he could play ball which would not be a real solution.

“I hope my dad will let us go to the ‘Badlands’ with that schoolteacher,” Dennis said. “Every time I ask him, he just says, “We’ll see.” I wouldn’t fall in a goblin hole, even if Joe wouldn’t go with us.”

Jerusha set the bucket down. This trip with Lynn Barlow … Lynn knew teen-aged boys. She had been able to get closer to Joe in an afternoon than she herself had in over a month.

But the promising idea that set the wheels turning in her head was suddenly interrupted. Amy came running and crying from the direction of the barn. She was trying to say something about a fire and the chicken coop, but she was so frightened and crying so hard that her words were almost incoherent.

“The hen house must be on fire!” Jerusha exclaimed. “Get Suzey and the milk pails! Quick!” she told Dennis while she snatched the bucket she had been working with, and paused ever so briefly to touch the little girl’s flying hair, and say, “Go into the house, sweetheart, and love your doll.”

There was, indeed, a fire in the chicken coop. The corner was blazing near the burned-down weeds where it must have started. Chickens were cackling and smoke belching into the sky. Jerusha took a quick survey. Luckily the irrigation ditch ran close by, and it was filled with water, but the inferno was already well on its way, and she knew the dry lumber would go in a hurry. She dumped the stems and scooped a bucket of water in one swish. Then Dennis and Suzey came running, each with a milk pail, while Skeeter galloped at their heels ready to hold up the cheering end of the operation.

Sometime during the excitement of flying water and smoke and fire and squawking chickens, Joe appeared, white-faced and silent. He grabbed a huge feed can standing against the end of the building and began scooping water as though his life depended on it.

Jerusha had begun to realize the futility of the fight. She could see the barn going next, and then the machine shed, but, with the addition of Joe’s strength and the big feed can, somehow the fire was whipped. There was a gaping hole in the corner of the chicken house, a huddle of frightened, wet chickens in the corner of the run, and a few others meandering about freely outside their domain, shaking their wet feathers. The three fire fighters were covered with smoke, flying ashes, and cinders, and dripping with water. Jerusha looked at Dennis and had to chuckle when she noticed the front of his singed-off hair. Joe had traded his can for one of the buckets and was pouring water on burned spots about the area.

“Jerusha, your leg!” Suzey exclaimed suddenly with concern, staring at it.

Jerusha looked down at her leg which was bleeding profusely through the torn hose. In all the excitement she had been oblivious to the injury. But it was easy to see now that a stick or something had jabbed her leg during the scramble. “Well, mercy sakes!” she said, “I didn’t even know it. So it must not be very bad.”

Joe’s eyes were on the injury, but he did not raise them to her face. “Here, maybe this will help.” He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket. “It was clean this morning.”

“Thank you!” Jerusha said, joyful hope swelling in her. She turned to Suzey. “You’d better go check on Amy,” she said, refolding the handkerchief to tie around her leg. “She was very frightened.” Then to Dennis, “I think I threw those sharp clippers into the roses somewhere. See if you can find them before someone is hurt.”

She turned the feed can upside down and sat on it while she tied the handkerchief around her injured limb.

Joe stood silently watching. Presently he cleared his throat. “Jerusha,” he said.

“Yes, Joe?” She went on arranging the handkerchief with more care than was necessary.

“I – I guess you know how the fire started!” he blurted.

“How did it, Joe?” she asked quite nonchalantly with her attention still on the bandage.

“I was smoking. I – I must have dropped the match or the – the cigarette.”

“I suppose so,” Jerusha remarked, her eyes still tied up with her leg.

“Are you going to tell Dad?”

She raised up and looked at him then. “Do you want me to tell him, Joe? I think it would be much better if you told him, don’t you?”

He was silent for a time, his hand rimming the bail of the bucket thoughtfully. Then he looked her squarely in the face. “Yes, I guess so,” he said.

She smiled at him. “Do you suppose you ought to sort of nail some boards over that hole and try to catch those few scalawag chickens that are loose? Maybe Skeeter could help you.”

“I’m afraid he’d bite into them,” Joe said.

“Yes, I guess you’re right. And we don’t need that many chicken dinners all at once.”

She stood up and started toward the house, but he stopped her.

“Jerusha.” She turned.

“I’m sorry about your leg.”

“Oh, it doesn’t amount to anything,” she smiled.

He still stood with something to say. She waited. “I … I really haven’t smoked much,” he said. She nodded. “And Jerusha …”

She turned again her eyes shining.

“I’m sorry – I’ve been such a dope. I won’t be any more. I don’t feel good this way.”

She walked over and brushed some of the charred sticks from his hair. “Let’s just shake hands and forget it, shall we?”

They shook hands, and this time she was able to continue her way to the house, singing inside with elaborate inclusiveness that she would have been must as happy if they had had to burn the whole barnyard down.

When Paul came home, Joe was waiting for him at the gate. They sat in the car for a longtime, and then they walked back to the damaged hen house. when they returned and sat down to supper, there was no indication of any bad feelings between them. Paul asked about her leg and suggested strongly he take her to a doctor. But she assured him it was really not serious at all. The next day Paul, Joe, and Dennis spent the entire day repairing the hen house. And the fire was never mentioned again.

A few days later Lynn Barlow and Ruth Johnson stopped at the Wilsons. Paul and Joe were putting up a new fence beyond the ridge. Dennis was hauling lawn clippings to the calf pasture. He saw them coming and came running to make the announcement.

Amy was standing on a chair watching Jerusha roll out cookie dough. But when Dennis shouted his declaration, she scrambled off the chair, gathered up her doll with the new patchwork quilt Jerusha had made it, and darted away out the kitchen door.

Jerusha’s eyes followed pensively after her. “I wonder how I ever caught her,” she mused, “and how will anyone else?”

Lynn, just ahead of Ruth, stood in the door smiling and full of vivacious well-being as natural as if she had always been a close friend of the family. “Your house has a new look!” she said.

Jerusha smiled with pleasure. “Yes, Joe just painted it,” she said. “He’s going to paint the fence tomorrow.”

“Wonderful! We just came to convince this cautious Father Wilson that I need his sons to help me uncover the mysteries of the goblin holes of this fabulous land of Utah,” she laughed. “Where can I find him?”

“Well, he and Joe are putting up a fence across the farm, *I believe,” Jerusha said. She looked at Lynn’s summer sandals dubiously. “I don’t believe your shoes would take it.”

“I’m sure I don’t want to traipse out in the grain stubbles,” Ruth said, settling herself into a chair.

“I could go tell him,” Dennis offered, more than willing, with his eyes on Jerusha.

“I don’t see why not,” she said, looking at the clock. “It’s about time to quit anyway. And maybe they can talk it over some on the way in.”

Dennis was gone like a bullet from a gun, calling to Skeeter as he shot out the door.

“Where’s Amy?” Lynn asked, looking around the room.

“She vanished out the back way when she heard you were coming.”

Lynn eyed Jerusha curiously. “How did you capture her?” she asked.

“Just kept trying, I guess,” Jerusha answered, watching out the window the little girl rocking her doll back and forth on the bench by the willow tree.

The round table discussion turned out to be successful for Lynn and the boys. After being convinced that his sons would be an asset and not a liability, Paul consented, expressing his appreciation for the opportunity for them.

“Yippie!” Dennis snag out and shot through the door again, this time to make three somersaults across the front lawn and land in a melee of dog legs and boy legs and arms in a mix-up with Skeeter.

“I’ve hired a guide,” Lynn said, “who’s supposed to know the whole country. I tried to get Ruth to go along so I wouldn’t be a lone woman, but she’s afraid she’d end up with the dead horses, so I guess I’ll do it alone unless Jerusha will go.”

Jerusha was looking at Suzey, watching interestedly from the sidelines. “Well, I’ll bet I could keep up with you,” she said, “but I have a better idea. I’m sewing school clothes for Amy right now, and I’m sure goblin holes would be no place to take her. But Suzey just came back from camp. She knows all about roughing it. Why don’t you take her?”

And so it happened that Paul found his three older children telling him goodbye as they departed on a new adventure into a new country with a newly found friend.

“It’ll be good for them,” Jerusha said as she and Paul stood by the gate, Amy clinging to her hand. “Your three children on a trip together with someone as wholesome as Lynn Barlow.”

“Yes,” Paul said, “I feel very confident she will take care of them.”

“She will indeed,” Jerusha remarked happily.