Sweeping Up Glass by Carolyn Wall

Author:Carolyn Wall [Wall, Carolyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-440-33850-5
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-08-04T04:00:00+00:00

35

There comes a thaw over the next day and a half that surpasses record, and I am able to trek down and bring home the truck. The sun is brilliant, and it warms the kitchen, even though we’ve still only one window because I’ve not fixed the other. In the box by the stove, the cubs are fading. Will’m’s anxiety is enormous. Something has shifted in me, too, maybe from watching Grace Harris leave this earth. I believe she wanted to go on and be done with it—for herself and so’s Wing could get on with his life. Maybe she contrived the whole thing, and if that’s the case, I admire her more than I’ve admired another soul.

All this coming after so many years of don’t-utter-his-name, when I’d have fallen to the floor in a lovesick heap if Wing had so much as walked through my door.

We are quiet, the two of us, Will’m with a bit of a cold—and me ladling up oats. I’ve kept him home from school today, lest he take the croup, the possibility of which he’s not yet outgrown.

I give him blackstrap molasses on a spoon, and there’ll be a poultice around his neck at bedtime. Come right down to it, I’m terrified of losing him. He says nothing when I set his bowl in front of him, and I put on my cape and carry Ida’s dollop of oats and a bit of bread. A cup of weak coffee. I cross the yard. It’s dark in her cabin, the single window covered with an old sheet. Inside, I pull it back to let in some light. But Ida’s not in her bed, nor in the chair, nor rooting around in her moldy boxes. She’s not in the cabin at all—and she wasn’t in the outhouse, which I’ve just passed. I set down the breakfast things and go back out, calling her name.

“Ida?” I stump off to the barn. “For God’s sake, Ida, where’ve you gotten yourself off to?”

But she is not there, nor in the toolshed, or sitting in the truck—places I’ve sometimes found her when she was mad at me. I study my own boot tracks, winding ’round and messing up the snow, which is rapidly turning to water in the sun. There are no clear prints that match Ida’s tiny feet, and that turns my stomach cold. It’s still early. She may have been gone for a while—but where? Up the mountain?

“Ida!”

Along the road? Maybe she’s taken off across some pasture, forgotten where she lives, gotten into a car.

“I’m going to look for her,” I tell the boy.

He sniffles and runs his hand under his nose.

“Use your handkerchief, Will’m. She’s wandered off, I guess. Can’t imagine anyone taking her.”

He’s done with his oats, and pushes back his chair. “I’ll help.”

“No you won’t,” I say. I can feel the pulse hammering in my neck. “I’ll take the truck, ask if anyone’s seen her. Get dressed, Will’m, and mind the store. Weather’s broken, there ought to be customers today.

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