Sweet Mercy by Donald S. Smurthwaite

Author:Donald S. Smurthwaite
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novel;farm;Idaho;family;friends;home;Great Depression;hope
Publisher: Covenant Communications, Inc.
Published: 2018-01-23T22:23:37+00:00

Chapter Eleven

The rug at the end of her soft, fluffy bed. The plastered pastel walls. The graceful light fixtures. The pantry filled with food. The delicate, lacy curtains on the windows. The warm blowing air from a furnace. The comfort of family and friends, of people calling upon each other. And no outhouses. Indoor plumbing, enough to make her feel pampered, a queen. And while the Pennsylvania weather is cold, there is no shrill, biting wind, not like that of the Snake River Plain in faraway Idaho. Idaho. Was she really there, or was it all a long and complicated dream?

Anne Durham revels in being home.

For two whole days she glories in her parents’ plush house, and through breakfast on the third.

Then she is surprised at how much she thinks about her schoolchildren. She tells people of them, their stories, their hardships, how they ride horses to school, how many of them wear the same threadbare clothing each day. She tells how some families disappear overnight, never to be heard of again. She tells them of her prized students, especially the small spitfire named Mercy May, who can recite Longfellow and Dickinson as effortlessly as her multiplication tables. She tells how she cannot eat in front of the children because she knows many have had little more than a slice of bread, a potato, or tomatoes canned the previous fall. She tells them of children who arise before dawn to milk cows, who work long hours in the fall with gunny bags tied to their rope belts to bring in the sugar beets and potatoes, or spuds, as they’re called in the West, laughing at the moniker as she says it to family and friends. Spuds. Such a funny word!

She tells them of seeing a mountain lion on a walk in the foothills one October evening and feebly tries to describe the way the sun rises over the Albions to the east, how the light is so long and thin and takes on hues that she has never seen before, colors without names.

No, Idaho was not a dream. It is real to her. Real and enduring and lovely, and it tugs at her emotions. And she thinks how she has never felt quite so alive as on those chilly mornings on the south side of the Snake, especially on Saturdays, when she is prone to taking a long walk.

And her mother, after listening well into the evening to her speak of these Idaho people and places, reaches across the kitchen table and takes Anne’s hands into her own and says softly, “It sounds as though you’ve found a home and found a place, dear Anne. It sounds as though you have found people to love. How strange it is that you were led to Idaho. I am happy for you, but I will miss you and Daniel. I know now that you will never be back, except as a visitor, and I must accept that. Oh my, but how you have grown.

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