Sorrows’ Children Sorrows’ Children
The
night’s rain had cleared the dust and the morning breathed easier. Buck closed the front door behind him and stepped
onto the slanting front porch of the school, taken with the changes that
had occurred overnight.
The wooden frame
intended to support the porch stairs had suffered from dry rot over the
years and wasn’t a terribly secure passage.
The top tread was missing altogether. Buck took a big step off the porch into the school’s front yard,
the Reverend Mother’s words, “You
mustn’t be afraid to try,” following him.
Washed clean
by the rain, the leaves of the cottonwood had been transformed into a thousand
shimmering mirrors. But rather
than the image of a cornered child seeking a safe haven from his tormentors
in the towering tree’s limbs, each silver frond reflected the laughter and
dreams of two young boys back to him.
The tree had
been their refuge. Perched upon
its wide shoulders, its branches acted as tributaries carrying them to a
private place. In the boughs of
their safe harbor, they had passed idle time hatching cooly calculated pranks
of revenge against those who had wronged them and mapping plans for a brighter
future.
From their lofty
hideaway, Buck had spotted a young beauty across the school yard and fell
head over heels for his first blue-eyed blonde. An embarrassing infatuation that had sent Ike tumbling from the
tree’s branches in near hysteria watching his friend’s bumbling attempts
at courtship on the ground below. But
when his affections were not returned and Buck climbed back into the sanctuary
of the cottonwood, Ike had followed to pick up the pieces of his friend’s
fifteen year old broken heart and assure him that girls really weren’t all
they were cracked up to be anyway.
In their open-air
classroom, Buck’s patient instruction had given Ike a language, but Ike
had proven to be an equally effective teacher. Books were not plentiful at Sorrows, but the school owned an ample
supply of Bibles and once accustomed to the “thees” and “thous” it served
as a fine textbook. Although Ike
couldn’t read the foreign words for him, at Buck’s mispronunciation, he
would tap at his chest to draw Buck’s attention and insist his pupil repeat
the word until the syllables flowed together correctly.
To Ike, the Bible was the history of his faith, but to Buck it was
a book of great adventures. He had
tried to imagine rain so fierce it would flood the world and cheered along
with David as the boy’s simple slingshot felled a giant.
After reading of Samson, Buck felt a special kinship with the man. Samson knew the importance of a full head of
hair. Ike, however, preferred the
story of Job who having lost everything precious to him was rewarded ten
times over for his faithfulness. The
tale of unwavering faith in the face of despair struck such a chord in Ike
that he asked Buck to read the story twice.
And when dusk
blurred the words, they would mark the page with a leaf and watch the day
fade away in a blue mist, content in a silence so golden, its harmony so
perfectly blended, it might have been composed by a grand master.
The sounds of
laughter broke into Buck’s thoughts and he leaned back against the white
bark of the tree watching two young boys carrying a milk pail between them
jump from the porch and run across the yard toward the barn. Their peals of unbridled laughter floated across the school yard
and swept him back to another morning, not so very long ago.
Ike dropped to his knees in the loose, sandy dirt of the yard and carefully withdrew a small wooden box from the canvas bag that had held his belongings in safe keeping for the past six years. He reverently opened the box containing his possessions as if it contained the world's most precious jewels. With a tender touch, Ike ran his finger along the faded wording, scripted neatly in a woman's hand across the stationary. If he tried very hard, he could still smell the faint traces of his mother's lilac water on the yellowed pages. Ike sifted through the papers until he found the object he sought at the bottom of the box. He lovingly fingered the filigree finish etched in the metal casing and smiled his approval at the steady movement of the watch's hands. He slipped the watch into the security of his trouser's pocket and placed the box back into the cloth bag.
<Come on, Buck!> Ike signed feverishly and jumped to his feet.
"I'm comin'! Just hold on a minute!" Buck yelled back. The hunting knife looked a bit out of place strapped around the leg of his school uniform trousers but he didn't care. There had been a time when he thought the few belongings he had carried with him from the Kiowa were lost for good. In his urgency to reclaim his possessions, he had dumped the contents of a similar canvas bag onto the school's front porch and his bone earring had fallen between the cracks of the dried planks. In the time it took to retrieve it, Ike had gained a good twenty strides on him and was waiting at Sorrows' gate.
"Got it!" he proclaimed and headed across the yard, slipping his medicine bundle around his neck as he trotted toward Ike. His hand anxiously clutched the small bag, his fingers blindly counting the contents inside. One, two, three, four . . . Yes! Everything was still there!
<Hurry up!> Ike's hands worked rapidly, signing his impatience. <I thought you were anxious to get out of here!>
"I've been here for three years, Ike. I'm plenty anxious."
<Well then, since I've been here twice as long, I'm twice as anxious! Come on. We gotta see if old man Evans will give us those jobs like he promised. Two dollars each won't last us very long,> Ike signed rapidly then double checked his pocket for the coins Mother Augustine had pressed into his palm as she bid the boys "good-bye" at Sorrows' door.
"Sure he will," Buck retorted, wincing a bit as he tried to work the metal hoop of his earring through the partially closed hole in his earlobe. "He promised us didn't he? Don't white men keep their promises?" he asked with sixteen year old innocence.
<You ain't never gonna get that earring back in there. The hole's been closed up too long.> Watching Buck's grimace Ike questioned, < Don't it hurt?>
"No, it doesn't hurt!" Buck insisted, working the hoop through his tender flesh . "Ow!" he yelped, causing Ike to snort in amusement at his friend's over abundance of stubborn pride.
"There!" Buck announced victoriously as the hoop finally slid through. With the sheer jubilation of new freedom he took off running down the dusty road leading away from the school. "Who's the slow one now, Ike?" he called back over his shoulder to his friend. "C'mon! Let's go!"
Buck’s gaze clung to the image in his memory
until the two figures were nothing more than small specks in the distance.
They were so young. So innocent. Thinking they had all the time in the world. He felt something foreign in his eye, but didn’t
brush away the tear that slid down his cheek as the boys disappeared from
view.
It did hurt to remember . . . but he didn’t
want to forget.
