Yesteryear: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Novel by Caro Claire Burke - 19

Well. The worst possible thing to happen has happened—worse, even, than having a foot caught in a steel trap.

The bread I made was bad.

Actually, bad is an understatement. It was completely inedible. Hard like a rock in some places, mealy and soft in other places. No flavor whatsoever, even though I remember— I remember! —sprinkling my regular amount of salt into the bowl.

Mary told me to make another boule. She said it doesn’t matter, that food is food, and I should get over it. And in response, I told her—at a decibel level that I really do now regret—that something is wrong, wrong, wrong, something is terribly and utterly wrong, and really, how many times do I have to explain this to her before she understands? Then she yelled at me to go to my room until I could control my temper, and I yelled at her to LEAVE ME ALONE, STUPID LITTLE GIRL, and so she screamed for me to GET OUT OF THIS HOUSE RIGHT NOW .

So now I’m standing on the front porch, fighting tears, feeling sorry for myself, when suddenly the front door opens and the two girls step outside.

I glance over my shoulder at them. They’re wearing coats, which are worn and stained and covered in patches. Mary is fastening a hand-knitted cap on Maeve’s head. Maeve says, “We’re gonna find flowers, Mama!”

I turn away to face the mountains.

“We’ll be back in an hour,” Mary says to my back. “In the meantime, why don’t you go take a nap inside?”

I roll my eyes and hiss over my shoulder, “Wouldn’t you like that.”

Mary sighs loudly. “Come on, Maevie.”

I stare firmly out at the mountains, listening to the tip-tap of their footsteps down the stairs. Maeve’s chattering voice carries them farther and farther away. I turn around right as their figures are disappearing over the nearest hillside. It’s quiet now, except for the occasional clanging from the barn. The boys and Old Caleb have been in there all morning.

I cast my gaze beyond the barn. Even the farm animals seem distracted today. The chickens are huddled quietly in one corner of the coop, all staring blankly in one direction; the horse is walking slowly away from me, up the shadowy hillside toward the sliver of sunlit paddock.

The air is brisk, but there’s no breeze. The sun is still rising.

Go. Run. Now.

I stare at the fields, considering this intrusive thought. I wonder where it comes from, if the voice in my head that is telling me to run is the Lord, or my gut instinct, or a byproduct of an undiagnosed concussion. It’s foolish, anyways. A terrible idea. I’ve tried it twice now, and received a beating for it both times. And besides: running is no longer an option. The best I can manage is a slow crawl.

No reason to try to escape right now, I think, leaning on my walking stick. Might as well just…stay…here.

I rock back and forth on my one good heel. Yes, I should stay here. That’s what a good Christian woman would do: bake another loaf of bread, and then maybe wash the floors, and then start preparation for dinner, and then scatter more feed across the coop, and then check the chickens’ feet and feathers for any sort of disease, and then ask them if they’re bored, and then give the cow a bubble bath, and then—

Wait, I suppose. That’s what I’m meant to do. Wait here on this porch, day in and day out, until someone—or something —saves me.

And yet.

At this very moment, I feel my mind repelling itself from the house, pushing me backward, like a magnet with incompatible charge.

No need to run away—but I could always go for a walk, couldn’t I?

I limp down the front porch stairs.

This time my pace is calm, my walking deliberate, the kind of movement that doesn’t trip a single sensor. Right down the road, too—none of that nonsense of darting into the woods and getting shot down like some moronic woodland creature. No. I am a human, and humans are meant to walk down roads, and so I am walking when a voice stops me from the barn.

“Where’ya going?”

I freeze. Turn slowly to see one of the boys, standing at the barn entrance. Noah.

“Nowhere!” I glance down the road, gesture merrily with my walking stick at nothing. “I thought I’d get some fresh air.”

Noah peers down the road. I know that look of consideration on a little boy’s face: he’s considering the merits of such an adventure. “Can I come?”

“Of course,” I say, though my heart sinks.

I don’t have a plan. Clearly I don’t have a plan. I’m a one-legged woman with an eight-year-old sidekick walking at about a mile-an-hour pace. Regardless, we walk along the path together for several minutes. I don’t say anything to Noah, and he doesn’t say anything to me. This doesn’t surprise me; my Samuel and Stetson are just the same.

Were just the same.

Are just the same.

I send a little prayer to the Lord for my boys right as Noah starts to whistle. He doesn’t seem to mind walking at this pace. He’s holding a long stick, waving it in the air occasionally, but mostly dragging it through the dirt behind us while I limp steadily forward. At one point, I glance back at the house to see how far we’ve gone, and I notice a long, shaky line in the ground, as if the boy is carrying a tether to the farm, slowly unspooling it while we walk.

Soon we’re at the base of the hill, beneath the trees. This is the farthest I’ve been from the house. Noah’s whistle slowly peters away. He gazes around with interest. A strange thought occurs to me: Is this the farthest he has ever been from the house, too? Or is he acting? Trying to fool me?

“Do you come here with Pa?” I say, as calmly as I can manage. “Down this road, toward the highway?”

“Highway,” he repeats, frowning. Then he looks up at me and nods quickly. “Mhmm. O’course.”

He’s lying. A shot of adrenaline rolls through me. “What else do you do with Pa these days?”

“Lots of stuff.”

“Lots of stuff, like what?”

“All the manly chores. Fence work and wood chopping and stall mucking and the like. I’m growing up, you know. I’ll be a man soon.”

I glance at his tiny little arms. “Chopping wood?”

“Well.” He shrugs abashedly. “I guess I mostly watch that. But I’m in charge of the horse, completely. I brush him and shave his hooves and keep him in good health.”

“What’s his name?”

“Whose name?”

“The horse.”

He snorts. “Horses don’t have names, Mama. Don’t be silly.”

“Ah,” I say after a moment. “Of course. Silly me.”

“ Very silly,” Noah says happily. “But yes. The horse is my job. And it’s a very big job if you really think about it. I have to feed him twice a day, and check him for scratches or injuries, and keep him occupied so that he doesn’t chew on the fence on account of boredom.”

“What about Abel?”

“Abel’s better at chopping wood than me,” he admits. “Pa says Abel’s almost old enough to go out with him into the far woods. Thirteen is when it happens. I can’t go yet ’cause I’m not old enough.”

“Where will they go?”

He shrugs. “Everywhere. All over the place.”

“All over the place, like, where?”

Suddenly my ears ring with silence, the sudden absence of sound. Like a radio has been turned off. I turn around and see Noah standing ten feet back, stick paused in the dirt. The spool, apparently, has run out of thread. “We can’t go any farther,” he says.

“Why not?” I laugh lightly, a flimsy trinkle of sound.

He stares past me, at the road beyond. “There’s evil out there,” he says, with the uncanny calmness of a child who barely understands what they’re saying. “Wolves and Indians and other souls who are bent on our spiritual destruction.”

A breeze rolls through. The leaves whisper overhead. I am staring at this boy, and I am thinking that the evil out there is surely no match for the evil right here, standing in front of me, claiming to be my child.

“I’m your mother, and I am telling you it’s fine,” I say. “So come on now. Let’s go.”

Noah doesn’t move. Just looks at me with a face of plain skepticism.

“It’ll be fun,” I cajole, “an adventure!”

Nothing.

“Come,” I snap. “ Come here. ”

“No!” he shouts. He drops the stick and runs back up the road toward the house. I let out a wail as he sprints away, his boots kicking up little plumes of dirt along the path. He’s up the hill, and then at the top of the hill, and then he disappears into the barn.

One, two, three—Old Caleb comes crashing out.

Run.

I don’t, because I know it’s a glitch of a command, a neural instinct that no longer applies to my current situation. I cannot run. I cannot hide. And so I just stand there, leaning on my walking stick, practically humming with fear and sadness and fury while my husband barrels toward me, his own face twisted with fury. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, I tell myself. You’re only going on a walk. Do not apologize for going on a walk.

And yet, right as he reaches me, a different kind of instinct takes hold: I drop my walking stick and fall to my knees, fingers clasped in prayer.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” I cry to his bloodied, dirt-smeared boots. “Forgive me, dear husband, and deliver me from evil—”