"Hello, Benny," Father said. "Hello, William. How are you boys? Do you like your new babies?"
One boy, busy stacking the rocks in some kind of pattern, ignored him completely. The other scowled and shook his head no.
"Well," said Father, "I'll go in and ask your mother if she d like to send them back." Laughing, he led Jessie and me to the door, just as it was opened by Mrs. Shafer.
"What are their names?" Jessie asked. "And are they boys or girls? And why don't they have any hair?"
I thought she was rude, but Mrs. Shafer didn't seem to mind. She smiled. "One of each," she said. "No names yet. And as for hair—well, maybe they take after their father."
The two bald babies were both asleep, lying side by side on the kitchen table, where she had placed them for my father to make his examination. Father, opening his bag in the corner of the room, looked over with a smile. "Ben had plenty of hair once, Harriet," he said to Mrs. Shafer. "When we were boys in school together, he had a full head. Curly, if I remember it right.
"I seem to recall that the girls admired that hair quite a bit," he went on, in a teasing voice. "Can't think why he lost it so early. Haven't you been treating him right?"
He turned his attention to the babies, unwrapping the blanket from one and moving its arms and legs gently up and down, bending and unbending them. I watched while he leaned over with his stethoscope and listened to the baby's heart, holding the instrument gently against the tiny chest. I could see the baby's ribs.
I knew enough not to speak while he was listening, but when Father stood back, I whispered to him. "That baby's smaller than Mary was when she was born. They both are."
"Much smaller," he agreed. "Twins usually are. And these two were born early. We feared for them, didn't we, Harriet?"
Mrs. Shafer nodded. "That's why they have no names yet. I didn't want to give names only to see them carved on gravestones."
Father was leaning over the second twin now, looking closely at it, moving its arms and legs, listening to it breathe. I watched as he measured both of their heads. Then carefully he rewrapped them both in their blankets, despite the warm kitchen on this hot July day. He picked them up one at a time, and I could see him thinking as he held them."They're each more than four pounds, Harriet," he said, after he laid them back down. "Well more. Close to five, I'd say. That many pounds of potatoes would feed your family a good meal, mashed with butter and cream."
"They're eating good," Mrs. Shafer told him.
"I can see that. They're going to make it. Time to give them names. And you, Harriet? Are you eating? Not working too hard? Does Ben help with the boys?"
"He does. It lets me lie down a bit now and then."
Father looked around the kitchen, at the diapers soaking in a washtub, the pot of something simmering on the wood stove, the broom leaning against the wall in the corner. "Let's put these little no-names back in their cradles, Harriet, and if you come with me into the other room I'll take a listen to your heart as well. Girls? Can we trust you to stay out of mischief? Or maybe you'd like to wash those diapers?"
He was looking at Jessie and me, and I would have been insulted, because he knew I would never be mischievous on a house call. But I understood that he was warning me to keep Jessie out of things. We nodded and agreed to be good, squinching our noses at the mention of the diapers. Then he and Mrs. Shafer each picked up a baby. They seemed as tiny as kittens and just as quiet. Father carried his bag in his other hand and followed Mrs. Shafer down the hall.
"Why does he wear that hat on such a hot day?" Jessie asked me. She wandered around the kitchen, examining the blue and white dishes arranged on a shelf.
"Father? He wears a straw hat. It isn't hot. It keeps the sun from his eyes. Your father wears one, too. I've seen him."
"No, that boy," Jessie said impatiently. "The one in the field."
"Sit down, Jessie. Don't be touching things."
She flounced herself down in a kitchen chair. "It's not even a farmer's hat. The man had on a straw farmer's hat, but the boy had on that hot old thing. Is he stupid or something?"
She angered me. I didn't want her to be thinking about Jacob, to be asking questions, to be raising doubts. "I don't know," I said curtly. "Look, here's a magazine we can look at." I picked up a ladies' magazine from the cushioned seat of a rocker in the corner and set it in front of Jessie at the table.
Later, though, when we were at home, and alone together, sitting in the parlor after supper while Mother put Mary to bed, I asked Father the same thing. "Why do you think Jacob Stoltz wears that wool cap all the time? Once I saw him take it off at his house, but only because his father forced him."
But Father had no answer. "We all have habits," he said. "Your mother tells me I pull at my ear."
"You do," I told him, "when you're thinking. And Mother chews her lip when she's worried."
"And I recall, Katydid, that when you were very small, you had a pink blanket that you carried everywhere."
"I did? Why don't I remember that?"
"You gave it up. It was a baby habit, and you grew to be a girl. But a boy like Jacob—"
"You're pulling your ear, Father."
We both laughed. "Well," he said, "it shows that I'm thinking."
"What about a boy like Jacob?"
"His hat gives him some kind of feeling that he needs to have, is my guess. But since he doesn't talk, we can't ask him what that feeling is. I say he feels a need to hide himself, in a way."
I thought about it, trying to imagine myself with a heavy hat pulled over my hair. "Protect," I said.
"What?"
"A need to protect himself. I think that's what his feeling is."
Father pulled his ear again, then realized it, chuckled, stopped, and grew serious again."I think you're right, Katy. He protects himself."
"But from what? A hat can't keep you from danger."
"No," Father agreed. "No, it can't. Not physical danger. A falling tree branch would go right through that cap, and Jacob would have himself a fine fractured skull, same as you or me.