The New Year's Quilt (Elm Creek Quilts Novels) Page 11

  Once, in late autumn, Father returned home from a trip to Philadelphia, his demeanor quiet and pensive. Long after she was supposed to be in bed, Sylvia stood outside the library door and listened as her father told Great-Aunt Lucinda and Uncle William about a strange encounter with a man at the train station.

  “He knew my name, although I had never seen him before in my life,” said Sylvia’s father. “His shoes and his fine topcoat told me he was no farmer, and although I didn’t recognize him from my lecture, he seemed to know a lot about me. He followed me onto the platform, questioning me with direct intent about Elm Creek Manor. Right before my train was due to arrive, he got to the point. ‘I don’t think there’s much market for thoroughbreds in these hard times,’ he said. ‘It’s a good thing you have all that land.’

  “ ‘Not a single acre is for sale,’ ” I told him.

  “He told me he was glad to hear it because he worked for certain men in the city—he didn’t offer their names—who wanted to hire a farmer to grow particular crops for them. In exchange for growing, harvesting, and delivery, they would pay ten dollars a bushel over the most recent market value.”

  “Good heavens,” said Great-Aunt Lucinda. “What crop could anyone possibly want so badly?”

  “Barley and hops.”

  Uncle William gave a low whistle. “Who do you think he was? Mickey Duffy? One of the Lanzetti brothers?”

  “Could have been,” Sylvia’s father replied. “He kept his hat brim pulled down and stayed out of the lamplight.”

  “You should have asked for his autograph just in case.”

  “The joke seems to be on those unsavory characters,” said Great-Aunt Lucinda. “They pinned their hopes on an honest man. You’ve never broken a law in your life, Fred—as far as I know. Why would they ask you, of all people, to get involved in one of their schemes?”

  “He didn’t say, but I can guess,” said Sylvia’s father. “Elm Creek Manor is remote, but still accessible to the city. I’m traveling around giving lectures for peanuts, so it’s obvious I could use the money. The point is they did ask me, and we have to decide how to answer.”

  Great-Aunt Lucinda’s gasp made Sylvia jump. “You mean you didn’t turn him down right then and there?”

  “It’s a family farm, so it’s a family decision.”

  “Well, my answer is no,” declared Great-Aunt Lucinda. “Absolutely not. We should have no dealings whatsoever with bootleggers and moonshiners. Ties to organized crime won’t bring us anything but trouble.”

  “It’s good money,” said Uncle William. “We could sow the north field with half corn for feed, half hops, easy. Think of the money we could earn. It would make up for all our lost income.”

  “My soul is not for sale at any price,” Great-Aunt Lucinda shot back. “If your conscience wouldn’t bother you, think of the consequences if we were found out.”

  “It’s not against the law to grow barley and hops,” said Sylvia’s father.

  Great-Aunt Lucinda spoke no further, but Sylvia could imagine her withering glare in reply.

  “Then the answer is no,” said Sylvia’s father. She thought she detected a note of relief in his voice.

  “But you said you didn’t know the man,” said Great-Aunt Lucinda. “How will you contact him?”

  “He said he would be in touch.”

  Uneasiness swept over Sylvia, but Great-Aunt Lucinda held steady: “Perhaps we’ll never hear from him. Let’s hope he finds someone else to be his patsy.”

  Autumn turned into winter, and if the man from Philadelphia ever contacted her father, Sylvia did not hear of it. As time passed, she stopped waiting for an unfamiliar car to circle the front drive, stopped fearing a sinister figure at the front door. Although she longed to know for certain whether the gangsters had lost interest in the Bergstrom farm, she could not ask her father without revealing that she had eavesdropped. Nor could she breathe a word to Claudia.

  THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS, Sylvia escaped the lonely confines of the manor, her coat pockets full of apples for her favorite horses. Apples the Bergstroms had in abundance, for the orchards had flourished in glorious indifference to the hard times all around them, to their loss and their grief. Her boots crunched through the icy crust on the snow as she made her way to the stable, holding her hood closed tightly with one mittened hand to keep out the sharp wind.

  Suddenly, a few yards ahead of her, a shadow broke away from the stable wall. Too startled to scream, Sylvia froze in her tracks and stared as the unfamiliar figure of a man shuffled toward her. She took a stumbling step backward, her thoughts flying to the gangster from Philadelphia.

  “Don’t be scared, miss,” the man said gruffly, taking a hesitant step forward, his palms raised. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just trying to find someplace to wait out the storm is all.”

  She took in his threadbare layers of clothes, dark stubble on a haggard face, and knew at once that he could not possibly be the man from the train station. “You can’t go in the stable,” she said, her voice high and thin. “You’ll scare the horses.”

  “All right.” He ducked his head and stepped back. “I hear you, miss. I don’t want any trouble. I’m just trying to keep warm.”

  He turned around and headed for the bridge over Elm Creek, back into the woods. “Wait,” Sylvia called, then turned and ran to the house without waiting to see if the man obeyed. She burst through the back door and raced through the house until she found her father upstairs in the library, his ledger lying open on the oak desk before him. “There’s a man outside,” she said breathlessly. “I don’t think he’s the gangster. I think he’s a hobo.”

  “I wasn’t aware that you were acquainted with either,” her father said, as she seized his hand and pulled him to his feet. In another moment they were at the back door, pulling on coats and boots. They found the man just outside, sitting on the back steps.

  “Good afternoon,” Sylvia’s father said, addressing the man with utmost respect.

  “Afternoon, sir.” The man removed his hat despite the cold wind. “I’ll work for a meal. I can clean out stables, milk cows, whatever you need.”

  “The cows won’t need to be milked again until tonight,” Sylvia’s father said, and Sylvia knew he was thinking that anyone who didn’t know the proper times to milk a cow could not have much experience with farm life. “Can you handle a shovel?”

  “I have a strong back.”

  “All right, then.” Father opened the door wider. “Come inside to the kitchen and get a bite to eat. Afterwards I’ll show you around the stables.”

  The man came inside—quickly, before Father could change his mind—and tugged off his boots. Sylvia recoiled at the smell and backed off down the hallway, wrinkling her nose. She knew it was rude, but she couldn’t help it.

  She peeked through the doorway as the man wolfed down everything Great-Aunt Lucinda set before him—eggs and ham, bread, coffee, tomato and corn relish, dried apple pie. He ate every crumb, including a few that fell into his lap or the folds of his grimy scarf. When he finished, he thanked Great-Aunt Lucinda politely and followed Sylvia’s father back outdoors.

  At supper Father reported that the man had put in a good day’s work and might make a decent farmhand even though his last steady job had been as a shoe salesman.

  “We can’t hire him on,” said Uncle William, anticipating his brother’s unspoken suggestion.

  “We could use the help,” Sylvia’s father pointed out.

  “But we can’t afford his wages,” said Great-Aunt Lucinda. “It would be wrong to expect him to work only for room and board.”

  Sylvia thought the hobo would gladly accept such an offer, but the children were expected to stay out of business discussions, so she kept her thoughts to herself. She stole a glance at her sister, who looked horrified at the prospect of that filthy man joining them at their table every day.

  “We know nothing about him,” said Lydia, glancing nervously out the windo
w to the barn, where Sylvia’s father had told the man he could spend the night. “He says he’s a shoe salesman, but what proof do we have of that? He could be on the run from the law. What’s a hobo doing this far from the train, anyway? Don’t they ride the rails?”

  Father fell silent, his gaze shifting to Sylvia, Claudia, and Richard. He studied them for a moment as if weighing a heavy burden. “I think he’s just a man fallen on hard times, but you’re right, we don’t know for certain. I’ll let him work for his meals and a place to sleep in the barn as long as he likes, but he stays out of the house and away from the children.”

  Claudia looked relieved, but Sylvia felt a wave of disappointment. She had never met a real hobo before, and she wanted to hear about riding the rails.

  The man left the next morning, after breakfast. Two days later, another man knocked on the back door. He had heard, he said, that a kindly family there would give a man a hot meal and a place to sleep in exchange for chores. Father found work for him in the barn, Great-Aunt Lucinda fed him ham and eggs, and the man spent the night in the hayloft.

  “We’re not a hotel,” Claudia muttered as she and Sylvia spied on the man through the kitchen window. “We never should have helped that first hobo. Now he’s told all his hobo friends about us and they’ll never leave us alone.”

  “Father could never send a man away with an empty stomach,” Sylvia replied.

  After a day, the second hobo left, and when two days passed with no strangers at the back door, Sylvia began to think their visits had ended. But late in the morning on the last day of the year, a knock sounded as she was helping Great-Aunt Lucinda cut up carrots for soup.

  “I’ll get it,” Sylvia sang out, wiping her hands on her apron and hurrying to the back door before anyone could warn her to keep her distance. On the back steps stood two boys not much older than she and Claudia, huddling together for warmth.

  She was too surprised to do anything but stare at them.

  “We can do chores,” the elder boy said. The younger nodded, his face streaked with dirt.

  Sylvia didn’t wait for permission. “Come in.”

  The boys exchanged a glance and followed her to the kitchen. Great-Aunt Lucinda quickly hid her surprise and invited the boys to wash up before sitting down at the table. She sent Sylvia to the cellar for butter and apples, and she quickly put together a meal of bread-and-butter sandwiches, cheese, cold bacon left over from breakfast, milk, and apples. The boys devoured the hasty lunch as if it were a feast.

  When they had eaten every bite, Great-Aunt Lucinda instructed the younger boy to sweep out the cellar and sent his older brother outside to scrape ice from the back stairs. They were hard at work when the rest of the family came to the kitchen for lunch.

  “Runaways?” Uncle William asked his aunt.

  Sylvia, who had chatted with the boys, peeling carrots while they ate, piped up, “Not on purpose. Their dad sent them away.”

  “Why?” said Claudia. “What did they do?”

  “Nothing,” said Sylvia. “I think they didn’t have enough food at their house, so their parents kept the little kids and sent the big ones away.”

  “What is this world coming to,” said Great-Aunt Lucinda, “when families have to send their children out to fend for themselves? We should take them home at once.”

  “Who’s to say their parents won’t turn them out again?” said Sylvia’s father.

  Great-Aunt Lucinda, unaccustomed to helplessness, fluttered her hands and made no reply.

  Sylvia’s father frowned thoughtfully. “We can’t have them stay in the barn.”

  “Heavens, no,” said Great-Aunt Lucinda.

  “But we can’t take them in,” said Uncle William.

  “Why not?” said Sylvia. “We have enough room.”

  “Ample space isn’t the problem,” said Great-Aunt Lucinda, as if the admission pained her.

  At once, Sylvia understood. With the business all but defunct, they could not afford two additional mouths to feed. How that must have pained her father, who had always generously shared his family’s abundance. How her mother’s heart would have broken to turn away someone in need.

  “We could take them to the Children’s Home in Grangerville,” said Great-Aunt Lydia. “The good sisters will see that they have warm beds and enough to eat, and they’ll be able to go to school.”

  “It’s the best we can do,” said Uncle William.

  One by one, the adults at the table nodded their assent.

  After lunch, Great-Aunt Lucinda sent the brothers off to take a bath; they obeyed reluctantly, sensing, perhaps, that their fates had taken a sudden turn. Sylvia and Claudia searched the attic for warm winter clothing Uncle William had outgrown, and before long the boys were clean and clad in sturdy wool trousers and soft flannel shirts. There was even a pair of boots for the younger boy.

  Uncle William cleared his throat as he gave each boy a dime “for emergencies.” Great-Aunt Lucinda wrapped cookies in napkins and tucked them into the boys’ pockets. She kissed them each on the brow and quickly disappeared into the kitchen. The boys shifted uneasily, throwing anxious glances at the door as Sylvia’s father explained where he was taking them. To prove that everything was all right, he asked Sylvia to accompany them on the drive to Grangerville.

  The brothers spoke very little as they traveled along the country road winding through the Elm Creek Valley. Sylvia tried to lift their spirits with cheerful accounts of the sights they passed—downtown Waterford, the Four Brothers Mountains, the swirling waters at Widow’s Pining where children were not allowed to swim, the forest where old Indian trails could still be followed for miles from one end of the valley to the other.

  She had run out of things to say by the time they passed the first sign for Grangerville. Soon afterward, her father pulled up in front of a stately three-story red brick building not far from the center of town. The younger boy let out a sound that might have been a whimper, but his brother quickly hushed him.

  Inside, a gray-haired nun in a stiff black-and-white habit welcomed the boys and took down their names and ages. Sylvia, longing for signs of happy children, heard footsteps and laughter overhead. Two girls ran past in simple pinafores, their hair neatly braided. At the sight of the sister, they slowed to a walk, pausing to nod a welcome to the boys.

  Sylvia’s father pressed a crisp bill into the nun’s hand. “For anything they might need,” he said. “Write to me if they require more.”

  The nun nodded and thanked him graciously. Sylvia’s father squeezed her shoulder and led her back outside to the car.

  “Do you think they’ll be happy there?” Sylvia asked as they drove back to Waterford.

  “I hope so,” her father said. “I hope they’ll stay long enough to give the place a fair chance. They could run off again and find themselves in serious trouble.”

  As uncertain as Sylvia felt about an orphanage, she knew it was a far better place for the boys than haylofts and boxcars. She hoped the boys would think so, too. She hoped they would find the food as delicious as Great-Aunt Lucinda’s and the beds as warm and comfortable as those where she and her sister slept.

  “Your mother would have been proud of you today,” her father said suddenly. “Those boys were frightened, but you helped them to be brave.”

  “All I did was talk to them.”

  “That was precisely what they needed,” he said. “Sylvia—” He hesitated. “Sylvia, your mother made the most of her time on this earth. Her kindness and generosity live on. It makes me very happy to see that you are going to be exactly like her in that regard.”

  He reached over and ruffled her hair, yet what had she done to deserve such praise? Mama would have taken the brothers in. She would have found them rooms with soft beds and warm quilts, and she would have seen that they never went hungry. Mama always found a way.

  Sylvia wished she were more like her mother. She knew she was not.

  But perhaps she could try to be. On t
hat New Year’s Eve before Richard was born, her mother had told her that the New Year presented an opportunity to reflect and to improve oneself. Why shouldn’t she resolve to be more like her mother?

  When they returned home, Sylvia retrieved her sewing box from the nursery and asked Great-Aunt Lucinda if she could borrow from the aunts’ scrap bag. “What are you making?” her great-aunt asked, kneeling on the braided rug and pulling out the bag from behind the old treadle sewing machine Great-Grandma Anneke had brought over from Germany. No one used it anymore, preferring the newer electric model Sylvia’s father had bought for her mother, but it remained in a place of honor in the west sitting room as a proud memento of their thrifty, industrious ancestor.

  “I want to make some quilts to give to the orphans at the Children’s Home,” Sylvia answered.

  Great-Aunt Lucinda sat back on her heels. “Why, Sylvia, that’s a lovely idea. It’s also quite a task for one girl to take on all by herself. Would you like some help?”

  Sylvia gladly accepted her offer, for Great-Aunt Lucinda could sew twice as fast as she could. The more quilts they made, the more comfortable and snug the orphanage would be, and the more likely the brothers would stay.

  As they sorted through their fabrics, Great-Aunt Lucinda found a paper sack full of leftover blocks from various projects dating back years. “I had almost forgotten about these,” she said, holding them up for Sylvia to admire. “The quilters of this family hate to throw anything away. Fabric was so difficult to come by when the Bergstroms first came to America that we learned to save every scrap. My mother and Aunt Gerda would no more discard a pieced block than they would leave a sewing machine outside in a rainstorm. ‘Waste not, want not,’ they always said—and today I’m inclined to believe that was a very good lesson.”

  Since the pretty blocks brought them much closer to their goal, Sylvia was inclined to believe it, too. After laying the blocks out on the floor and debating the possibilities, she and her great-aunt decided that with the addition of a few more blocks, they would have enough to make four quilts just the right size for a child’s bed.