Lucy by Anselmo Ray

Author:Anselmo, Ray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Million Dreams Press
Published: 2022-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

Ten

After Sunday, the deluge.

Ma and Pa must’ve talked a lot about Noel at the picnic, because it seemed like half the farm came over Monday and Tuesday to see the new arrival. Thankfully, Noel was getting his strength back rapidly, so he was able to keep up with most of the visitors between naps, meals and dressing changes.

Lucy stayed with him a good portion of both days to fetch food and drink, check his bandages, flex his leg and generally play nurse – any time she didn’t have other chores, she was by his bedside. She watched him interact with everyone and noticed he had a facility with it, always friendly and asking questions – as her cousin-in-law Marshall would say, he was “a bonny audience.” And since the Weavers loved to tell stories about themselves or others, they eagerly filled him in on the family and the area, their tasks and jokes and foibles.

She may have been the only one to see that inquiring of others meant that he could avoid talking about himself. Maybe he was just self-effacing … and maybe there was something he wasn’t willing to tell.

His leg was healing up well, though, and by Tuesday evening, he was starting to feel restless. “Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked Lucy after supper. He’d just wiped out a plate of pork chops, home fries and boiled apples, and she was unwrapping his leg to check it.

“I think you should focus on getting better,” Lucy scolded kindly. But she sympathized – she didn’t like lying around doing nothing either, and didn’t know many people who did.

“But you’ve done so much for me, you and your family, and I want to give something back.” He held up his hands like claws. “‘I long to be in the fray’,” he groaned dramatically.

She giggled. “That’s a quote, I know it.”

He nodded. “Martin Luther. After the Diet of Wurms, where he defied the Pope and the Emperor, he was abducted by his friends and hidden away in the Wartburg Castle so the Roman church couldn’t burn him at the stake. He hated it, and he got surly and ate too much and complained about being out of the fight. But he also translated the New Testament into German while he was there. Do you have anything you’d like translated? I only know English and Norsk and enough French to get by, but I’ll do my best.”

She smiled. “Nothing at the moment, though I can get you a book to read if you like.” His leg looked a lot better – there was no sign remaining of the earlier infection, and the skin around the wounds was returning to a good healthy pink. She decided to start flexing it uncovered, just to make sure it was as healed as it appeared. “You sure know a lot about church history.”

“Not really. But I know a lot about Martin Luther – he’s one of my father’s heroes, and he’d read us a biography of him when we were going to sleep as children.

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