The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield

Author:Jenny Wingfield
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-07-26T12:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Willadee knew that Samuel was going to get a cool reception that evening from his children. As far as they were concerned, what he had done that morning was out of character for him. The Samuel they knew stood up for what was right, no matter what. The fact that he’d done what he thought was right escaped them. Willadee tried to explain it to them that afternoon, when she came out of the garden with a bucket of fresh tomatoes and found them sitting on the porch steps with their chins in their hands and sullen looks on their faces.

“Your daddy did what had to be done,” she told them. “If we’d kept Blade here, there would have been trouble.”

None of that made Samuel look any bigger in their eyes. They’d always seen their daddy as a man who persuaded people to change, not the other way around.

“Just because he’s not a preacher anymore doesn’t mean he should be as bad as everybody else,” Swan blurted.

“He’s still a preacher,” Willadee said. They all hunched their shoulders and shut her out. She was on their bad list, too. “What on earth makes you think he’s not a preacher anymore?”

“He doesn’t have a church. Where’s he going to preach?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Then how can he be a preacher?”

Willadee felt like maybe she ought to say that Samuel was a preacher because God had called him to preach. But that wasn’t how Willadee saw it. The way she saw it, Samuel had called himself. He’d fallen in love with God, and when you’re in love you can’t keep from talking about it, it’s as simple as that.

That’s not what she told the kids, though. To them, she said, “He just is.”

Swan hugged her knees to her chest and glared off at the road. “Well, I hope he doesn’t expect me to go to church anymore,” she declared. “Because I don’t have to do right if he doesn’t.”

Willadee had to smile. When a kid threatens something she can’t possibly go through with, an adult feels easier about a situation. Like maybe it’s not as bad as it seemed. Toy had not yet told her that the man Blade had run away from and the man who had mistreated the horse were one and the same, so she was thinking that, likely as not, everything had turned out just fine. The kid might have gotten a licking for running away like that, but his folks had to be glad to see him when he got home. And Samuel surely would have brought out the goodness in everybody concerned.

“Yes, you do,” she said.

“Well, I don’t see why.”

“You don’t have to see why. But you do have to mind your daddy and me. If you think that’s changed, you’ve got another think coming.”

Swan still wouldn’t look at her, but Willadee didn’t care. A child that doesn’t have strong opinions is one that won’t amount to much. She did care how Swan and her brothers treated Samuel, though.

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