'Herbert gives more than we can use, and the milk truck can’t get in here, what with the driveway all washed out. Anyway, I don’t want no town people nosing around the place. Feed it to the pigs.'
It broke Will’s heart to carry the milk out of the house.
Donald Wade led the way, though Will could have found the pigpen with his nose alone. Crossing the yard, he took a better look at the driveway. It was sorry, all right. But Mrs. Dinsmore had a mule, and if there was a mule there must be implements to hitch to it. And if there were no implements, he’d shovel by hand. He needed the driveway passable to get the junk hauled out of here. Already he was assessing that junk not as waste but as scrap metal. Scrap metal would soon bring top dollar with America turning out war supplies for England. The woman was sitting on top of a gold mine and didn’t even know it.
Not only was the driveway sad; the yard in broad daylight was pitiful. Dilapidated buildings that looked as if a swift kick would send them over. Those with a few good years left were sorely in need of paint. The corncrib was filled with junk instead of corn-barrels, crates, rolls of rusty barbed wire, stacks of warped lumber. Will couldn’t tell what kept the door of the chicken coop from falling off. The smell, as they passed, was horrendous. No wonder the chickens roosted in the junkpiles. He passed stacks of machinery parts, empty paint cans-though he couldn’t figure out where the paint might have been used. The goat’s nest seemed to be in an abandoned truck with the cushion stuffing chewed away. Lord, thought Will, there was enough work here to keep a man going twenty-four hours a day for a solid year.
Bobbing along beside him, Donald Wade interrupted his thoughts.
'There.' The boy pointed at the structure that looked like a tobacco-drying shed.
'There what?'
'That’s where the pig mash is.' He led the way into a building crammed with everything from soup to nuts, only this time, usable stuff. Obviously Dinsmore had done more than collect junk. Barterer? Horse trader? The paint cans in here were full. The rolls of barbed wire, new. Furniture, tools, saddles, a newspaper press, egg crates, pulley belts, canepoles, the fender of a Model-A, a dress form, a barrel full of pistons, Easter baskets, a boiler, cowbells, moonshine jugs, bedsprings… and who knew what else was buried in the close-packed building.
Donald Wade pointed to a gunnysack sitting on the dirt floor with a rusty coffee can beside it. 'Two.' He held up three fingers and had to fold one down manually.
'Two?'
'Mama, she mixes two with the milk.'
Will hunkered beside Donald Wade, opened the sack and smiled as the boy continued to hold down the finger. 'You wanna scoop ’em for me?'
Donald Wade nodded so hard his hair flopped. He filled the can but couldn’t manage to pull it from the deep sack. Will reached in to help. The mash fell into the milk with a sharp, grainy smell. When the second scoop was dumped, Donald Wade found a piece of lath in a corner.
'You stir with this.'
Will began stirring. Donald Wade stood with his hands inside the bib of his overalls, watching. At length he volunteered, 'I can stir good.'
Will grinned secretly. 'You can?'
Donald Wade made his hair flop again.
'Well, good thing, ’cause I was needin’ a rest.'
Even with both hands knotted hard around the lath, Donald Wade needed help from Will. The man’s smile broke free as the boy clamped his teeth over his bottom lip and maneuvered the stick with flimsy arms. Will’s arms fit nice around the small shoulders as he knelt behind the boy and the two of them together mixed the mash.
'You help your mama do this every day?'
'Prett-near. She gets tired. Mostly I pick eggs.'
'Where?'
'Everywhere.'
'Everywhere?'
'Around the yard. I know where the chickens like it best. I c’n show you.'
'They give many eggs?'
Donald Wade shrugged.
'She sell ’em?'
'Yup.'
'In town?'
'Down on the road. She just leaves ’em there and people leave the money in a can. She don’t like goin’ to town.'
'How come?'
Donald Wade shrugged again.
'She got any friends?'
'Just my pa. But he died.'
'Yeah, I know. And I’m sure sorry about that, Donald Wade.'
'Know what Baby Thomas did once?'
'What?'
'He ate a worm.'
Until that moment Will hadn’t realized that to a four-year-old the eating of a worm was more important than the death of a father. He chuckled and ruffled the boy’s hair. It felt as soft as it looked.
With the hogs fed, they stopped to rinse the bucket at the pump. Beneath it was a wide mudhole with not even a board thrown across it to keep the mud from splattering.
Naturally, Donald Wade got his boots coated. When they returned to the house his mother scolded, 'You git, child, and scrape them soles before you come in here!'
Will put in, 'It’s my fault, ma’am. I took him down by the pump.'
'You did? Oh, well…' Immediately she hid her pique, then glanced across the property. When she spoke, her voice held a quiet despondency. 'Things are a real fright around here, I know. But I guess you can see that for yourself.'
Will sealed his lips, tugged his hat brim clear down to his eyebrows, slipped his hands flat inside his backside pockets and scanned the property expressionlessly. Eleanor peeked at him from the corner of her eye. Her heart beat out a warning.
But again he saw the possibilities. And nothing on the good green earth could make him turn his back on this place unless he was asked to. Gazing across the yard, all he said, in his low-key voice was, 'Reckon the pens could use a little cleanin’.'
Chapter 5
They went for a walk when the midmorning sun had lifted well above the trees-a green and gold day smelling of deep summer. Will had never walked with a woman and her children before. It held a strange, unexpected appeal. He noticed her way with the children, how she carried Baby Thomas on one hip with his heel flattening her smock. How, as they set off from the porch, she reached back for Donald Wade, inviting, 'Come on, honey, you lead the way,' and helped him off the last step. How she watched him gallop ahead, smiling after him as if she’d never before seen his flopping yellow hair, his baggy striped overalls. How she locked her hands beneath Thomas’s backside, leaned from the waist, took a deep pull of the clear air and said to the sky, 'My, if this day ain’t a blessin’.' How she called ahead, 'Careful o’that wire in the grass there, Donald Wade!' How she plucked a leaf and handed it to Thomas, then let him touch her nose with it and pretended it tickled her and made the young one giggle.
Watching, Will became entranced. Lord, she was some mother. Always kind voiced. Always finding the good in things. Always concerned about her boys. Always making them feel important. Nobody had ever made Will feel
