“Assembling was almost her only comfort, especially before and after Father. She didn’t know anything about the rest of her family-” Bethie whitened. “Oh, must we remember the bad times! The aching, hurting, cruel times?”
“There was kindness and love and sacrifice for us interwoven with the cruel times, too, you know,” said Jemmy. “If we refuse to remember those times, we automatically refuse to remember the goodness that we found along with the evil.”
“Yes,” admitted Bethie. “Yes, of course.”
“Well, if I can’t persuade all of you to stay, why can’t Bethie stay a while longer and Assemble?” asked Meris.
“Then she’ll have a lot of material ready for Davy’s gadget when she gets home.”
And so it was that Meris, Mark, and Bethie stood in the driveway and watched the rest of the party depart prosaically by car for the canyon-if you can call prosaic the shuddering, slam-bang departing of the Overland, now making up clamorously for its long afternoon of silence.
Assembling is not a matter of turning a faucet on and dodging the gushing of memories. For several days Bethie drifted, speechless and perhaps quite literally millions of miles away, through the house, around the patio, up and down the quiet street and back into the patio. She came to the table at mealtimes and sometimes ate. Other times her eyes were too intent on far away and long ago to notice food. At times tears streaked her face and once she woke Mark and Meris with a sharp cry in the night. Meris was worried by her pallor and the shadows on her face as the days passed.
Then finally came the day when Bethie’s eyes were suddenly back in focus and, relaxing with a sigh onto the couch, she smiled at Meris.
“Hi!” she said shyly. “I’m back.”
“And all in one piece again,” said Maria. “And about time, too! ‘Licia has a drake-tail in her hair now-all both of them. And she smiled once when it couldn’t possibly have been a gas pain!”
So, after supper that night, Mark and Meris sat in the deepening dusk of the patio, each holding lightly one of Bethie’s hands.
“This one,” said Bethie, her smile fading, “is one I didn’t enjoy. Not all of it. But, as Jemmy said, it had good things mixed in.”
Hands tightened on hands, then relaxed as the two listened to Bethie Assembling, subvocally
ANGELS UNAWARES
HEBREWS 13:2
I still have it, the odd, flower-shaped piece of metal, showing the flow marks on top and the pocking of sand and gravel on its bottom. It fits my palm comfortably with my fingers clasped around it, and has fitted it so often that the edges are smooth and burnished now, smooth against the fine white line of the scar where the sharp, shining, still-hot edge gashed me when I snatched it up, unbelievingly, from where it had dripped, molten, from the sloping wall to the sandy floor of the canyon beyond Margin. It is a Remembrance thing and, as I handled it just now, looking unseeingly out across the multiple roofs of Margin Today, it recalled to me vividly Margin Yesterday-and even before Margin.
We had been on the road only an hour when we came upon the scene. For fifteen minutes or so before, however, there had been an odd smell on the wind, one that crinkled my nose and made old Nig snort and toss his head, shaking the harness and disturbing Prince, who lifted his patient head, looked around briefly, then returned to the task.
We were the task, Nils and I and our wagonload of personal belongings, trailing behind us Molly, our young Jersey cow. We were on our way to Margin to establish a home. Nils was to start his shining new mining engineering career, beginning as superintendent of the mine that had given birth to Margin. This was to be a first step only, of course, leading to more accomplished, more rewarding positions culminating in all the vague, bright, but most wonderful of futures that could blossom from this rather unprepossessing present seed. We were as yet three days’ journey from Margin when we rounded the sharp twist of the trail, our iron tires grating in the sand of the wash, and discovered the flat.
Nils pulled the horses up to a stop. A little below us and near the protective bulge of the gray granite hillside were the ruins of a house and the crumpled remains of sheds at one end of a staggering corral. A plume of smoke lifted finger-straight in the early morning air. There was not a sign of life anywhere.
Nils flapped the reins and clucked to the horses. We crossed the flat, lurching a little when the left wheels dipped down into one of the cuts that, after scoring the flat disappeared into the creek.
“Must have burned down last night,” said Nils, securing the reins and jumping down. He lifted his arms to help me from the high seat and held me in a tight, brief hug as he always does. Then he released me and we walked over to the crumple of the corral.
“All the sheds went,” he said, “and. apparently the animals, too.” He twisted his face at the smell that rose from the smoldering mass.
“They surely would have saved the animals,” I said, frowning. “They wouldn’t have left them locked in a burning shed.”
“If they were here when the fire hit,” said Nils.
I looked over at the house. “Not much of a house. It doesn’t look lived in at all. Maybe this is an abandoned homestead. In that case, though, what about the animals?”
Nils said nothing. He had picked up a length of stick and was prodding in the ashes.
“I’m going to look at the house,” I said, glad of an excuse to turn away from the heavy odor of charred flesh.
The house was falling in on itself. The door wouldn’t open and the drunken windows spilled a few shards of splintered glass out onto the sagging front perch. I went around to the back. It had been built so close to the rock that there was only a narrow roofed-over passage between the rock and the house. The back door sagged on one hinge and I could see the splintered floor behind. It must have been quite a nice place at one time-glass in the windows-a board floor-when most of us in the Territory made do with a hard trampled dirt floor and butter muslin in the windows.
I edged through the door and cautiously picked my way across the creaking, groaning floor. I looked up to see if there was a loft of any kind and felt my whole body throb one huge throb of terror and surprise! Up against the sharp splintering of daylight through a shattered roof, was a face-looking down at me! It was a wild, smudged, dirty face, surrounded by a frizz of dark hair that tangled and wisped across the filthy cheeks. It stared down at me from up among the tatters of what had been a muslin ceiling, then the mouth opened soundlessly, and the eyes rolled and went shut. I lunged forward, almost instinctively, and caught the falling body full in my arms, crumpling under it to the floor. Beneath me the splintered planks gave way and sagged down into the shallow air space under the
