Crooked River by Shelley Pearsall Page B

the day before, just in case Mr. Kelley did come back again as he had promised. But Laura said that I was the only person, in all of earth and heaven, who was to know that she had used up eight whole eggs, four great spoonfuls of precious loaf sugar, and a good bit of our nutmeg to make it.
    I believe that Peter Kelley didn't know what to answer at first. After Laura asked him to stay, he stumbled over his words. First saying no, he didn't want to cause us any trouble with our Pa, and then saying perhaps he could stay for a moment to be polite, and finally deciding that it was a real kind offer and, yes, he would greatly appreciate a piece of pie.
    “It's one of our Ma's good pies,” Laura told him. “The kind she used to make.”
    “Your Ma?” Peter Kelley asked gently as he sat down at the table. “She is gone?”
    “Three years ago,” Laura answered. “She died in the month of March. God rest her soul.”
    “Right after giving birth to our sister Mercy,” I added, nodding at Mercy, who had her fingers in the yarn basket again. I don't know why I always had to tell folks that our Ma had died giving birth to her, but I did. It sounded as if I was putting all of the blame for Ma's death on my helpless little sister, who was born into this world silent and nearly blue. Maybe I still was.
    “I don't have any sisters of my own, only brothers,” Mr. Kelley said, slowly stirring the tea that Laura had set in front of him. “Just two brothers still living now and my Ma, who has grown quite old and feeble, I'm afraid.” He shook his head, and I could tell his Ma was dear to him by the sorrowful way his face looked.
    “Every time I see Amik here, what I can't keep from thinking about is how …” He paused and looked toward the loft stairs. “Is how my Ma wouldn't be alive today—she wouldn't have raised any of us, not my brothers or me—if it weren't for his family.” He pointed upward, as if pointing straight at Amik himself. “Years ago, his family saved her life.”
    “What?” I said, more loudly than I should have.
    He glanced at Laura and me. “I could only have been nine or ten years old when it happened,” he said. “It was the fall of the year, I remember, and we had all gone to a cranberry marsh to pick berries.”
    In my mind, I could picture a cranberry marsh— the green color of the leaves and the bright red berries nestled inside like jewels.
    Peter Kelley continued. “All of us went—my Pa and Ma and my four brothers. I remember how it was a beautiful autumn afternoon, not a hint of a cloud. All was right with the world, it seemed. That's what I remember most about that day.” He wrinkled his forehead. “Do you understand what I mean?”
    I nodded.
    There was a summer afternoon before Ma died that I had not forgotten either. It was a real pretty day. Me and Laura and Ma were picking beans in the garden, and we got to singing songs and tossing beans from one basket to another, just for our own amusement. We had never done a thing like that before, and we must have been a sight. I could still recall the bright blue sky and the sound of Ma laughing.
    Peter Kelley shook his head. “Maybe we weren't watching as close as we should have been, on account of how beautiful that day was. But before any of us knew what had happened, a rattlesnake came through the cranberries, just came up real sudden, and it struck our Ma hard on the foot.”
    I caught my breath. I had seen more than my share of rattlesnakes, and I knew what they could do to folks if you came across them unawares.
    Peter Kelley closed his eyes, as if he was remembering the scene exactly as it was. “I can still hear the terrible sound of Ma's voice shrieking for us. Pa sent me and my brother Nathaniel running for thenearest town to fetch a doctor. Never ran so fast in all my life,” he said softly, “trying to save my Ma that morning.”
    I swallowed hard, thinking about my own Ma.
    “The doctor told us to bind up her foot with