I heard my father speak, though I could not make out the words. Then he left the house and I saw him move through the rain across the yard toward the Bishops . I saw the two men meet on the porch and talk. While I watched they went to the barn, where Mr. Bishop kept the Ford motorcar, and then I heard—I'm sure the whole neighborhood heard—the sound as he cranked the motor to a start and in a moment, the loud sputter and rattle as it moved from the barn to the alley, then the street, and off. I had thought Father was in the car with Mr. Bishop, but after a moment I could I hear sounds in our stable and I knew Father was hitching Jed and Dahlia. Then he, too, was gone, in the buggy.
The night had turned very cold, and the rain had become a windy downpour. Indian summer was over. Shivering in my thin nightgown, I pulled the bedroom window closed and went to ask Mother what was happening.
"There's trouble at the Stoltz farm" was all she would say. "They need help."
She let me climb into the big bed, on Father's side. We lay there side by side, her arm around me, her hand stroking my hair. After a while, I slept.
It was light when Mother stirred and sat up. I opened my eyes.
"Is Father home?"
"No, not yet. Try to sleep some more. It's very early. I'm just going to feed Mary." She rose from the bed and put on her blue dressing gown, which had been draped over a chair.
Then I heard my baby sister making her cheerful early-morning sounds—laughing and gurgling—from the nursery down the hall. Mary was six months old now and slept all night, a great blessing, for there had been times when she was younger and Mother had had to go to her again and again.
I lay snuggled in the warm cocoon of my parents' bed and listened to Mother move down the hall, open Mary's door, and speak softly to the baby. The sounds were familiar, though most often I slept through the ritual. Mother would lift her from the crib, change her wet diaper, wrap her in her pink blanket, and sit in the upholstered rocking chair while Mary nursed.
But on this ruined dawn, the sleepy ceremony of sounds was interrupted by Mother's terrible cry.
In a moment she was back, holding Mary in her arms. She thrust the baby and a clean diaper at me, and said, "Watch Mary. Change her. Don't let her fall off the bed."
Mother's face was white. She took several deep breaths. "Katy? Are you awake? Are you paying attention? I have to go use the telephone. Take care of Mary. And do not go into the nursery. Do you hear me?"
I nodded. I laid the baby on her back beside me, and she grabbed at the sheet with her chubby hands.
"Promise me! Stay out of the baby's room."
"I promise." Mary was wiggling, and I held a corner of her nightie tightly so that she wouldn't make her way to the edge of the high, wide bed and fall.
Mother hurried from the bedroom and down the stairs to the telephone in the front hall. Obediently I unpinned Mary's wet diaper and began to fold the dry one into some sort of shape that I could pin around her. I had watched Mother and Peggy do it often enough, but it seemed very complicated now that I tried it on my own. Below, I could hear Mother's voice, but I couldn't hear what she was saying because Mary had begun to whimper. When I finally had the diaper secured as best I could, I picked her up and carried her downstairs just as Mother hung up the telephone.
"She's hungry." I handed her, crying loudly now, to Mother.
"Father's coming," she said tersely. She went to a chair in the parlor and sat down to feed Mary.
"I thought he was at the Stoltzes ."
"He was. I called there. He's coming home." She stroked Mary's fine hair. The baby was quiet now, nursing.
"What's wrong, Mother?"
But she only shook her head. "Katy, you know the Stoltz boy; what's his name? Joseph?"
"Jacob."
"Yes, Jacob. I should have remembered. Your father just said it."
"Did something happen to him?"
"No. But Peggy said you had become a sort of friend to him." Mother gave an odd laugh. "She told me you wanted to invite him to your birthday party.
"Was that just yesterday?" she asked suddenly. "It seems so long ago." She lifted Mary to her shoulder and began to pat her back. "Get a rag, Katy, in case she spits."
I went to the kitchen and brought her a clean cloth from the place where Naomi kept them folded. Gently Mother wiped some milky bubbles from Mary's mouth.
"What about Jacob?"
"They're looking for him. He seems to have run off. Your father said to ask you if you know where he might have gone."
"He goes everywhere. He roams." Even as I said it, I knew where I would look for him. "I'm cold, Mother. I'm going to go get dressed."
Mother bit her lip. "No, I think you should stay down—" Then she looked at my bare feet and my thin nightgown. I was hugging my arms around me.
"All right," she said. "Run up and put on some warm clothes. But come right back down. And don't—"
"I already promised, Mother. I won't go into Mary's room."
When I came downstairs, Mary was wrapped in an afghan and asleep on a corner of the parlor sofa with a chair pulled up beside so that if she rolled she wouldn't fall. I had dressed hastily and needed help with the back buttons of my brown plaid dress. Mother was in the kitchen, and I could hear Naomi's voice. Naomi always arrived early in the morning, even on rainy Sundays like this.
I went into the kitchen, needing to be where there was warmth.
"A whole group has gone out Lawton County Road, looking. I saw them gathered at the police station when I walked past," Naomi was telling Mother. Mother nodded distractedly and began to set some places at the kitchen table. Father would be hungry when he came in. I could tell from the way Naomi talked, excited but not especially alarmed, that she did not know the whole of it, that she simply thought the touched boy had run off and needed finding before he caught pneumonia from the rain.
When the table was set, I stood with my back to Mother while she did my buttons.
"I recollect when those Cooper boys got lost out near Fielder's Pond. They d gone looking for frogs and wandered too far. My land, they was just little things, then. Maybe five and six?" Naomi began to slice bread. She chattered on and didn't seem to notice that Mother was silent and tense, not listening to her.