Katherine Paterson - Read for Your Life #20

Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled;
And still their heavenly music floats
O'er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains
They bend on hovering wing:
And ever o'er its Babel sounds
The blessed angels sing.

"It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,"
Edmund Hamilton Sears, 18101876

I SAIAH had pitied the child before he ever laid eyes on her. Anyone who had to come live with Old Lettie was to be pitied, but when he saw her climbing down off the Greyhound, the last step almost too much for her skinny little white legs, his heart went out to her as it did to one of his hurt and helpless creatures. They weren't his creatures, of course. It wasn't his farm. It was Old Lettie's farm, but she never went out the door of the farmhouse to tend to it. She just nursed the account books, as though numbers on paper were a farm. So although he was only the hired man, it was, in actual fact, his farm, and all the creatures were his to care for.

Except this one getting off the busthis poor little girl, dark, stringy hair past her narrow shoulders, and deep, sad eyes. Her face was streaked with dirttears, he thought at the time, though later he wondered. The child never cried.

"So," he said when he had settled her and her tiny vinyl suitcase into the cab of the pickup. "Soyou Miss Lettie's grandniece, eh? I got a passel of grandnieces and nephews myself."

There was no answer. Maybe she wasn't at ease with black folks. He tried again. "I told you already my name's Isaiah, but you ain't told me your name."

She was kicking the seat rhythmically with the back of her legs, staring straight ahead.

"Look," he said, starting the motor and watching the rearview mirror as he backed carefully out of the Greyhound parking lot. "I'll tell you right off, it might be kinda lonely for you out on the farm. Miss Lettie don't go out, and the animals aren't big talkers. Now, I live over the garage and you may figure I'm just the hired help, but I expect I'll be the best company around. If you don't make friends with me, it's likely to be mighty lonesome for you."

She looked at him sideways, and, for a moment, stopped her kicking. "Travis," she said.

"Huh?"

"It's my name. Travis." He didn't tell her he'd never heard of such a fool name for a little girl. But then, any mother fool enough to ship a baby like this off to live with the very aunt she'd run off from when she was a girl was likely to saddle her poor child with some crazy name. Isaiah thought of his own loving mother, who had given each of her eight children a name from the Bible so that they could grow up straight and proud. She still fussed over him as she had when he was tinyand he sixty years old come February.

He thought of his sisters and brothers and nieces and nephews and all their children, tumbling in and out of one another's lives in noisy, happy confusion. He turned and smiled at this little deserted thing beside him to show that he didn't hold her name against her, but she kept staring straight ahead, even though she couldn't see over the dashboard and never looked his way.

"Well," he said at last. "Here we are." He got out and opened the gate, drove through, and got out again to close it. They rattled up the graveled drive to the old farmhouse. It was a huge, white frame, which had been added to and taken away from for a hundred years or more until Old Lettie's father finally wrapped it around with porches and gingerbread trim, putting an end to all his ancestors' tinkering. Isaiah drove the pickup around to the back, as usual. "You'd best go in at the front," he told the child as he leaned across her to open the door. "I'll bring your bag."

She climbed down and followed the direction of his head around the west porch and the pyracantha bushes to the front door. He got her bag. It was too light to hold anything worth having. Lucille should have sent some warm clothes with the child. Lord have mercy. He shook his head. Poor little innocent lamb.

She was waiting at the front door. "It's locked," she said.

"Nah, ain't locked. Just got to yank hard," he said, pulling the heavy door open for her. "I expect Miss Lettie's upstairs. Little sitting room at the top of the staircase..." That mean old thing. She could at least come down to welcome the poor little scared creature. She could've gone to the bus station if she'd had half an ounce of kindness about her.

All she did when she got the news was rant about how no 'count Lucille was and how no 'count Lucille's mother, Mildred, had been, and how her whole life was plagued with nothing but no 'count bums, including him, Isaiah Washington. He'd nearly taken off on the spot. The only thing that kept him around enduring her insults year after year was the animals. If he left, what would become of the poor creatures?

He followed the child, her sneakered feet dragging as she went down the long, dark hall, past the huge mirrored coat and umbrella stand on the left, the mahogany table with the plastic flower arrangement on the right. She paused a second, just to touch the flowers, and then, clinging to the right side of the hallway, she made her way to the foot of the long staircase. She took a deep breath and started up, holding on to the banister as if to pull herself along. He stood below, waiting to hear what the old woman would say. At last the child crossed the threshold into the room.

"So you're Travis." The shrill angry voice traveled down the stairs. "What kind of a name is that supposed to be?" As though the child were to blame. As though the child, long before she was born, had made first her grandmother and then her mother run away from this house. As though the child had chosen to come here to torment the bitter old woman.

"You look like your mother. Same wild-looking eyes... Well, don't just stand there staring. Can't you see I'm busy? Some of us do our duty..."

He wanted to run and pick up that suitcase and whack that mean old face. Instead, he called to the child and took her downstairs to the tiny bedroom off the kitchen and put her little suitcase on the bed. There were bigger, grander rooms in the old house, but none that would be as warm. And he had known even before he saw her that she would need to have a warm little nest in this cold house. All winter he kept a fire going in the big iron stove. He would take care of her. Of all the creatures God had given him to tend, he pitied her the most.

***

It was he who took the child to town and bought her warm pants to cover her thin legs. It was he who enrolled her in the county school. If it rained, he always managed to be at the stop in the pickup when the bus door opened.

The child never thanked him. Not because she was rude, but because since that first day she hardly spoke at all. The house was as quiet with the child living in it as it had been with only the old woman. Isaiah did the cooking, as he had for years now, and sometimes Old Lettie would leave her account books and deign to come to the kitchen table. Most often she demanded that he bring the meal up to her. Her life had not been changed by the presence of the child.

The child seemed to sense that she was not to bother her great-aunt. She almost tiptoed about the house, and when they were at the table together, she was as silent as a doll baby, hardly eating for fear it might disturb. Sometimes, when she thought her aunt wasn't looking, she would stare at the old woman with her big, sorrowful eyes. It nearly broke Isaiah's heart to see.

He had never had any children of his own, but he was awash in grandnieces and -nephews. He spent his Sundays being crawled over by children. They were noisy, happy, naughty children, frisky as young lambs. It wasn't right, he knew, for a child of eight to be so quiet.