Letters 41-46

Letter #41 A Seed For Thought September 01, 1943

Dear Heavenly Father,

Well, with the help of Stan and Randall Browning all our crops is in, with enough to pay them a little extra. Their kids has been going to school with ours in the school bus. Even war is becoming as normal as counting out ration stamps. I purely thought we was done with those and free of them.

I would have burned ours for the joy of not having to use them any more but Mother saves everything. Every scrap of paper that ever came into this house is put to two or three uses before it ever gets used up or burned up in the morning start up fire in the wood burning stove that so lovely warms the kitchen and then fills the house with the good smells of baking and cooking.

So at least when they re-issued the need for additional rationing, as hateful as that was, we weren’t caught short or as embarrassed and angry as folks what tore up their gas ration books or meat coupons! Nor are new ones being issued for them what threw theirs away.

Demond Wymott, he is strutting around like a cock-of-the-walk, selling back their coupons to people were willing to give him their unused coupons when it was declared several months ago there weren’t going to be any more need for rationing. But all things, for good or bad, comes back to folks. And it’s a fact that honest they had a good laugh at his expense when he paid them ten cents on the dollar for things they was going to throw away!

Some folks just likes to grumble. Like Anna Mae Browning? She was the mother whose new baby almost died after the change in milk? Now that she’s used to living in the piney woods, she’s pestering her man to go back to the city and take a factory job after all. But Stan, he’s a sweat and soil born man . How those two got hooked up in the first place is beyond me, but as long as I’m out here and I got Your attention anyway, there'’ a questioning in my own mind and I ain't never got a right answer because it be about my own son James, Father.

How the world has changed the man I see through his letters. Molly Beatrice she has come out here with her mare and wagon nearly every Wednesday on the pretext of helping Mother out with the sewing Penny Acres’ gown for next month’s Community Sweetheart’s Social and Hayride with Young Master Arno Cleaver. You remember them kids as well as I do, I’m sure. Right nice kids, reflect good on their parents and their up-bring don’t You think, Father? I do too.

Well, they be making over Penny Acres’ June graduation dress with the extra material they brought for a purpose for her first adult party. But Penny Acres, instead of being grateful, she’s so nervous and excited she won’t tolerate nothing but the most tolerant and patient advice since every additional stitch needs must be sewn by her own dear hand.

When she makes mistakes and the world comes crashing around her slender shoulders and nothing will do but she goes a’running to Mother in the kitchen, to sob her despair that she will never perfect the womanly art of sewing. Which, Mother explains to me in private, is being self-reliant. Richard and Sandy scoff, claiming they have seen her making “goo-goo” eyes at Arno Cleaver, whom they remember only as that tall, shy kid who shared their Fourth of Julys what seems so many years ago because it was “Before The War”. And they tease her unmercifully behind Mother’s back until Molly Beatrice makes them stop for their awe struck love of her, as they be growing up too

. Now Mother, she cain’t quit her work for every little crisis, real or imagined, in somany children’s lives so she waits for the tears that she can dry with her apron then sits Penny Acres down in a chair at the edge of the kitchen table and they continue their intense one-on-one conversation while Mother’s hands fly unbidden to the familiar but time consuming tasks that always cry of being done before they have to be done all over again.

I guess I’ve talked all the way around what it is I want to say, but I couldn’t help but overhear Molly Beatrice whispering to Mother about a letter James sent her in May from Paris, France. And it ain’t like Mother to engage in any conversation where such un-Christian things had been said that you couldn’t repeat the words out loud so I naturally listened the harder to hear what was being said, although I know it’s rude to do so.

Then I heard, against my will, why they couldn’t look one another in the eye as they spoke it. That’ll just teach you the old folks knew what they were talking about when they said be careful what you strain to overhear, you may strain to forget what you weren’t meant to hear in the first place. But that’s going clear around the barn to kick the lazy cat sitting in the doorway! I know that for a fact, Sir, but I’m shamed to even speak my thoughts out to You. And YOU already know what I’m trying not to say!

That James, he said he didn’t want to “waste a lot of his Leave Time” on her unless she “grew up a lot in the meantime” and something about “knowing a man’s needs”!

It makes my blood boil with rage!

There ain’t nothing till now James ever did what could make me ashamed, but I swear LORD, I’d taking the stropping belt from my straight razor and use it against his back to beat some sense into him, if’fn he was to stand in front of me at just this moment! Even knowing that violence is wrong, Sir!

Strike me dead, if You must! But I would for a fact!

I hate my son’s arrogance more than I have ever hated any man his deeds! It makes me cold mean to my babies, for they are boys, as were their two brothers once’st were before them. Innocent and trusting, but quick to disrespect and quick to use their fists against smaller boys than themselves be!

What’s that, Lord?

Now, why didn’t I think of that? I got a whole field of stones what needs to be gathered like Ecclesiastics Three suggests!

If You’ll excuse me, Father. I feel the wood lot chopping stump calling out my name to me. I feel too mean of a fact to even talk civil to You. But much obliged, Father.Really I am!-Yours, I mean…

Letter #42 Halloween Plumpkins-to Be October 08, 1943

Frost come early Father,

But we’re prepared. Hope You didn’t mind our not shooting any of them pretty white geese this year, though You sent them as thick as manna for us. I know that means our larder will be thin on meat come Spring but I couldn’t shoot nary a one of them pretty things. Not after ole Charley Thomas, he painfully crawled into Mother’s lap while she was sorting pea pods for next year’s planting in our own garden and passed away, quiet-like while he was watching the Snow Geese land down in the empty corn field.

Even the children couldn’t grieve. Penny Acres, she officiated at the somber little ceremony to make Charlie Thomas’ burial fittin’, down in that corner of the meadow what we reserve for our faithful animal friends, near the hallowed graves of own beloved dead.

In a small speech spoke from the heart, penny Acres she allowed as how it was hard to mourn the easy passing after a full and long life here on Slumberbrook Farm instead of being drowned as a kitten which was his initial destiny. The hobo came through with a dirty burlap sack and asked us how much we would pay him NOT to drown the dirty, frightened lump inside. Said a man gave him a whole dollar to do it but he was hungry and saw a way to make the same burden pay for him twice. Must have been a lawyer at one time it seems to me, You know what I mean?

Though I agree, I find a hard knot at my throat at the thought of the places I’ll be missing ole Charley Thomas the most. He was our last link to Father Washburn.

Chased the man away with a stick, Father Washburn did. Nursed that pitfall set of claws and teeth into existence and named him after kinfolk of his own, long since passed on to their own reward. He was a good friend and a sure mouser, Charley Thomas, not Father Washburn.

Am I wrong to smile like this Father? Penny Acres, she be right. I mourn my loss of him, and envy him the fun he and Father Washburn are having in Your Kingdom at this very time.

The cabins is empty again, as I’m sure You well know. They’re probably already pulling on Your ear and asking Your help with that there work in the city what they finally took. In some ways, it feels like a blessing. Especially since Stan he got called up for the Army and had to go. Once Anna Mae she forbid her children from playing with Richard, who takes “being the oldest son left on the Farm” to heart, cause she said he was too rough, it got right uncomfortable with them unhappy strangers living so near. For all of his sterness, Richard he has the tenderest of feelings for a cross word being spoken back. He takes it to heart in the slightest of ways that makes me a’feared for his being so thin-skinned when he has to make his own way in the world, Father.

Penny Acres and young Sandy, they loyally stood by their brother but I fear to question too deeply if Richard would have done the same thing for them had it not been to his advantage to do so?

He is a changed boy. He gets into fights at school and sometimes he comes home with SEN-SEN on his breath and tongue. Maude Amy she fears it is to cover the stench of cigarette smoking, but I fear for the worst—rum or alcohol! I bitterly regret the short time Abe Fielder and Jesse spent in our midst!

The wall has been breached for the “oldest son I got left on the Farm” and I fear for him in the worst way; so I give him from my hand into Yours, Father.

Harlow Crowley, he asked about renting our less used pasturage for to put into corn next year. He’ll give us a fair price since he wants to buy the whole Farm. Family means little or nothing to him even born as he was in our Valley. Some takes to love and some to money. Seems like you cain’t have both. Least not as long as I can pay taxes on this here homestead.

We bought us a beautiful spotted Guernsey fresh with calf for the price of our Anna Belle alone. Sadie, she looks all bony next to our new fawn and white spotted cow Elsie, but they seem to be good company for one another. Sadie, she seems to enjoy laying in the cool thin sunlight next to ole Mule even without calf, but through long years of being accustomed too, she stands in the milking shed to eat

. Between You and me I think she likes the feel of hands on her udder. It lets her pretend there’s a spindly legged calf there. Mothers come in all shapes and sizes, don’t they? Anna Belle she liked’to kicked her calf senseless when it tried to suckle, but her milk was rich and creamy. Her good price let us clear up some bills and get a barn raised cow in Elsie. Now I don’t have to watch for bad temper or hooves when Richard he sets it upon himself to “help me”.

Mama Cat she coaxed a wild stray into the barn to catch rats, but she won’t let him into the house like she did ole Charley Thomas. I think its cruel the way people they drop off their strays and think t hat they will survive. Most don’t. And they die hard deaths. But you cain’t tell folks what think they are being “kind”.

But as look around the shadows and the familiar places of this ole barn I think back to nearly fourteen years ago when Father Washburn saved this skinny ole yellow striped kitten what somebody paid a whole DOLLAR to drown in our spring! Don’t know why I ended up giving that no-good bum a whole dollar, except maybe, Father Washburn, he done a real good job cane-ing that bo’s legs and back with that there willow stick and had the man been all bad he would just had done it and gone on his way without no one of us being any the wiser, right?

What a loss that would have been to my beasts and babies, for a fact honest. Even if we hadn’t known anything to expect on it being different at the time, wouldn’t it have been Father? Don’t know why I took a whole dollar out of my babies’ mouths at that time, Father, except that it fought so hard to live and didn’t thank nobody when it thought it fought its own way out of that there gunny sack. I think now, being older as I am, that Father Washburn, he needed something to love like me and Maude Amy had with our kids, much as we loved him. I’d like to think so. I know they loved one another for all his long life and he grieved hard when Father Washburn finally passed on.

I got ’tae smile as I picture him all curled up in Your lap. Charley Thomas, not my Pa! It makes me feel good and clean, and calm again. Today was the day we got him and here-and Mama Cat brings home a new tom for the barn.

I think she misses him too.

Mother is still shaking her head at the amount of cord wood split and stacked by the side of the pump house for this winter’s use but I feel a heap better inside and that’s for fact honest! I just don’t want to go around naming no ole cats. They hurt too much when they up and die, You know what I mean Father?

Oh and Penny Acres is hoping You’ll rush the ripening of the pumpkins just a little for the dance her and Arno Cleaver are planning to hold here on the Farm to ease the anger we’ve been suffering under? You know how children are.

But if You could see Your way clear, we’d be much obliged

Yours in Cherishment and love,

Amos Webb

Letter #43 Tom’s Homecoming September 12, 1943

Dear Heavenly Father,

How do, Sir. We got that letter about Tom him being returned to the States, on account of his being wounded, but alive. Mr. Ramsey he allowed as how it was something of a wonderment as how that one truck got through when all the rest was turned back for early but severe snow and ice. Or that it got there in time to allow Mother to return with him to the train station in time to catch the 9:40.

Or the snow plow clearing the tracks in time to allow Mother to be at the County Hospital by train in time for Tom to wake up from his anesthesia to find her at his bedside, holding unto his hand. But You and I know about Mother and the miracles of consistent prayer, don’t we Father?

Don’t nothing happen to the good or for the bad what don’t have Your permission to happen. Sometimes to build up others in the midst of our discouragements, we don’t never know. But this time…this time!

Thank You, father, from the bottom of my heart!

For myself, I ain’t going to disavow the miracle of James being allowed fifteen minutes to call home at a time when I ain’t ordinarily anywhere near the inside’s of the house, no-sir’ee-bob! Not at that time of day.

I couldn’t do more’n hear him say “Hello, Pa!” and then maybe say “Good Bye Son” after Molly Beatrice and my Babies they each had a few minutes to talk with him in Paree, France. And yet, for all the noise them other boys was making in the background, because they was just as hungry to hear the sound of “home”. I could hear all the love and the sorrow of knowledge in his voice. So I come out here to be with You.

There will be three more operations done by the Army Surgeons before they know for certain if Tom he will live or die, but they ain’t hopeful. At least one of our warriors will be home in time for Thanksgiving in an American hospital, but at what cost!

I’m ore than a little scared for Tom, Father, and I might just as well admit it. I know it already. Please just take care of my Boys, okay? I promise I’ll do better. I promise I’ll be good for the rest of my life if’fn You’ll just see Mother and Tom! Alright?She has tried to hide from us that she loves Tom best, better’n me sometimes I think.But I ain’t never minded, and You of all people know that for a fact. Not even now. Flesh is flesh, and Tom was borned of her pain and her dreams.

P.S.

Willis he agreed to send his car for the children so I can take the next train as soon as they unfreeze the cars from their tracks. So please bless them as they struggle through this terrible time of their own, and them thinking of us all at a time like this like the true Christian friends they are. It DO make up for the rest of them what don’t, don’t it Father, Dear?

Please keep the younger ones busy so they won’t be a trial to Penny Acres. Thank You very much in advance.

Yours,

- Amos-

Letter #44 Be-Ribboned Angels THANKSGIVING, 1943

Dear Heavenly Father,

It’s so good to feel the sounds of the Earth, to find the early snow has sharpened the smells of the Brown Apple Betty (you know, I never did figure out who was brown? Betty or the apples?) But the smells of yeast breads and cooking blowing on the breeze the way feathers will drift gentle on the breath of the wind.

With Heather Cox here in the house, helping give us a break with Tom’s care as she is so quick to give aid and comfort to Willis and to keep Pauline in such good spirits since they have shared so much of their lives together here in the Valley, and both being childless, itself a bond, Mother and I feel comfortable in stepping away to gain just a moment’s time in the joy of one another’s company.

The smell of gingerbread men and the laughter of adult sounding children following us out as Mother and I stand here together, side by side at the pole corral. Lingering to hear the wind’s song without no real desire to rush back into the overheated house.

It is still and always the HARNESS HOUSE. But here, standing under the tree, the moment and the land belong to this be-ribboned Angel and me.

Over the whispered words of our shared, out loud prayers for Tom we heard Molly Beatrice, Penny Acres and Arno Cleaver laugh out loud wholesome like from the two story house behind us. But all we hear now is the exciting barking of Lady, who came with Molly Beatrice and Caesar, what Tom keeps with him for companionship.

Tom, he cain’t overly long stand the noise what the children makes so heedlessly, so the Collie he makes an excellent buffer as Mother will send him outside and the children needs must follow him out doors to keep him from harm as poor Caesar he can not seem to understand his slavish devotion is not wanted nor welcomed by ole Mule or DomiNick the barn cat!

Yet when the children are at school or out at chores, the young Collie he is keenly aware of the gaunt, brooding man in Mother’s rocking chair. The handsome if some boned Collie seems to know what Tom he has stared over-long at the flames in the fire-place without really seeing anything there but the reflections of his private memories of the horrors left of war in a tenderhearted man’s soul.

And he walks of his own accord to comfort the brooding man as he may. To press his nose against Tom, his muzzle on the unmoving leg until the empty eyes seems to collect themselves sufficiently to become aware of his warm, golden eyes looking so deep into a man’s soul.

Or he will push his head under the pale man’s limp hand until Tom he needs must either pet and caress him or he reaches for his walking stick to take the joyful young monarch out to the pole corral where we be now, where once Tom he worked and ran so intently.

Leaving his side just long enough for a continuing if futile attempt to dig out the ground squirrels from the dried dunghill what’s been heaped there since the start of Wilson’s War!

I know that Mother she is praying silently to You for Tom’s swift recovery as she stands silent so long beside me, Lord, so I add all that’s in my heart to whatever she says. That blood clot what almost took his life when it tore loose from his legs and lodged in his lungs? It made me realize he ain’t near so much mine as I arrogantly believed because he was conceived between Mother and me.

I only know that I love Mother more for it, and my Babies, beside! And that lets me love You all the more. I wish I had a pretty way with words like that thereShakespeare fellow and that there modern playwright Eugene O’Neil what Mother reads to Tom during those long cold nights when he’s in too much pain to sleep. But I hear You.

I hear eternity sweep past me in every shiver of the leaves under the snow, every flake that warms the air and every raindrop what splatters on our window sill. The sun inhis season and the night in its time for all my babies to be together doing homework anddrinking hot apple cider around our pot bellied stove what warms the front room, or near Tom as he sits silent by the fireplace.

James he has promised to be home in time for Christmas. He may want to sign up again when this term of enlistment is ended. He says that he’s going to join the Navy this time because he’s seen enough of other young men fighting and dying in the cold slick mud.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

I love You father. I think I am now beginning to understand my natural father, though he wouldn’t let me love him in the ways I allow my own sons from his example;Wherever he went. Just don’t tell him, okay?

Sincerely yours,

Amos and Maude Amy Webb

Letter #45 December the Seventh December 07, 1943

Dear Heavenly Father,

Tom he is sitting up with pillows in Mother’s rocking chair. It be the first time he’s stayed up all day since he come home from the hospital. Now that’s a good sign, ain’t it?

Penny Acres and Diane Sannyonson (here to visit us two weeks for the Christmas Vacation). They be waiting sitting here at the table using the paste pot to glue in the pictures and the post cards what Diane brought from her first year in college.

We’re all pretending we don’t see the tired smile on Tom’s face as he silently watches us with such a sweet expression of peacefulness and love. But each of us feels it in our own way, even Sandy and Richard, who don’t take himself behind his locked bedroom door as he was a mind of to before his older brother came home and relieved him of being “the oldest son” after all.

It do rightly feel like Christmas come early to this house.

Nurse McFadden stayed here overnight because Tom he is having problems breathing and the Doctors fear the blood clots may break loose into his lungs at any time. But even the doctors have to admit that a mother’s love is the best medicine which can give Tom the only hope he has left. Mother is extra good to us in the rare times she ain’t in Tom’s room using home made poultices which seems to have given him as much breath as the smelling medicine and the electric vaporizer what the Army brought for him.

I am much surprised to find that the rebellious son who never seemed my flesh as much as he was Mother’s seems to enjoy discovering me as much as I am shocked and pleased at my ease in his company.

Thank You for this time of holiday and preparations, Father. It’s odd to think that the same war which stole away the son I most prized has given me this stranger in whom I may take such pride.

Mother and I put James in Your capable hands, and I’m not about to take him back out with my regrets, so don’t worry none.

So Good night and God Bless You Heavenly Father. Oh and thank you for not allowing Tom to remember what day it is today. Only two years ago on this day, but it feels like two centuries have passed. But I needs must give that to You too.

Your loving son,

Amos

Letter #46 Next Stop-Tomorrow December 21, 1943

Dear Heavenly Father,

I must say in all honesty, that beneath my joy in having James home tonight, lies the fear I felt before I recognized my own sweet son from among them other hard-faced war returning soldiers waiting for the train between smokes. Then James, he saw us and moved away from the others so I could recognize him. It’s good to have him home sound of mind and body for a fact!

I thought he looked for a moment like he looked at Mother and me as if he was only dreaming us. And neither Mother or me rushed up to him, but we stood rooted to the spot with disbelief that this could really be finally coming true!

The City Girl she come to see Tom but she hung on James’ every word while’stTom he sat like a ghost. Being tied to the chair discretely by Nurse McFadden.

Mother has gone to kiss him goodnight as if he were still her little boy. I’ll breath easier when she comes back and is able to say they are all asleep.

I let Mother think I was lulled to sleep by the steady noise of Grandfather Harkness’ mantle clock and the click of her knitting needles, but the truth is I feared to share my worries and doubts with her.

I feel too old to be so alone. So old, Father GOD. Old and all alone unless Mother is where I can see, hear and smell her. Guard them all for me while’st I shut my eyes for just a minute, Okay?

Unsigned

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