The Excellent Lombards(7)

Gloria was the person we first heard calling. “WILL-YUM! FRAAAAN-SEA!” Our own names out in the night.

William called back, “Here we are.” His thin song like an insect’s steady announcement in the grass, hereweare, hereweare. We heard in the farther distance my father calling and my mother’s cries. It dawned on us that although they were looking they might not find us, and then what?

So William again took me by the hand, and out we crawled, back into the night, trying to find the voices, again stumbling, again getting scratched, our legs and shorts soaked with dew. We again wrapped our arms around each other, and went slowly. At the moment when we came out of a tangle into the back field the moon burst from under a cloud, a half-moon but there was enough light to see where we were. Instead of running, for the first time in our lives we cried tears of joy. That made us laugh, how funny that tears could be for something other than a wound or fear. We went skipping along the real path with the heavy ruts, the path that would take us to the manor house and the barn.

On our way we were surprised by Gloria, her headlamp shining along the rise. In our giddiness we’d forgotten that we were still the objects of the search party. She had to start whimpering, clutching us to her, and at the same time trying to shout for our parents, saying we were found. We kept holding hands, William and I stiff in her embrace. We had rescued ourselves and did not appreciate her claim. We hadn’t been frightened, we insisted. Our cuts didn’t hurt. No, we weren’t cold. We’d known where we were the whole time. We knew the woods, our woods. We had only been out for a walk, hungry for some raspberries.

When we came from the path to the manor house, Sherwood and Dolly were walking up the drive from the east orchard, and Aunt May Hill was standing on the porch. Amanda and Adam were in the living room window looking out, pale and still on our account. Everyone had been concerned and everyone was now relieved, even, oddly enough, Aunt May Hill. There was chatter that we didn’t pay attention to, my parents thanking the search party, Gloria recounting her part, Sherwood expressing gratitude to the moon herself for shining. He was the tallest Lombard, the man with the magnificent forehead and wild red curls, the man who right then made us laugh by baying like a coyote at the heavens.

In William’s bed that night we continued holding hands, thrilled by our near-death and our own powers, certain just then that we would always find our way home.





4.


Our Gloria




Just as the farm could not have been the farm without Sherwood and Dolly and Aunt May Hill, we understood without ever thinking about it that Gloria, too, was ours. But that did not mean that we were hers. We didn’t want to have to thank her for saving us, though we were told we must. But even if she had rescued us, say she’d found us in the jaws of a beast, that simple offering, thank you, those two worthless words were hardly compensation for our full long lives.

Well before that night, thanking Gloria for her many kindnesses, how best to thank her, was often a subject at the breakfast table. “She does so much for you,” my mother reminded us, as if we could forget that Gloria had taught us to skate backward and leap, to knit dishcloths, to make cinnamon rolls in knots, to shrink great clumps of fleece into tennis-size balls for the cats, the short list of our skills.

“We do thank her,” William said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, Gloria.”

He was the funniest boy in the world!

But the business about thanking her always reminded us of that time. We’d suddenly remember, we’d look at each other, quickly we’d have to look away. May Hill, we’d whisper in our minds. One long-ago afternoon we’d been in the tool house, a small building near the apple barn with the usual junk, boards with rusty nails in unruly stacks, coffee cans of bolts, drill bits in a mess on the workbench, the floor covered with tires and watering cans, broom handles and the guts of lawn mowers. A power saw, a pile of chain saws, gasoline cans. There was also a nest of kittens in a bag of rags; somebody had said so. We were clambering over a heap trying to find them when the door burst open. Aunt May Hill, the lady giant in her dungarees, her mouth ripped down to her neck. She waved her arms, more than two arms, four or five arms sprouted in order to scatter us.

We couldn’t move. We were too terrified to cry out.

So then she had to say a word. We’d never heard that voice or the spell. It was a thin, high screech and long, the word. “Scram,” it started—“bambow!” She wailed it again. “Scram-bambow!”

We each were exactly like a cornered cat when she said it, chasing any which way to get out, knocking over boards and cans, a box of old nails clattering to the floor. We ran without knowing where we were going, run, run, run and who did we smack into on the orchard path but Gloria.

“Whatever is the matter?” she said. “William? Mary Frances! What happened to you?”

We both fell into her arms. We couldn’t help it. We started to sob, pressing ourselves into the available softness of her skinny chest. Scram-bambow! We’d never heard such a word, but worse, the voice, the screech—

“Oh, my darlings,” Gloria cried, she herself crying with us. “Now, now.” She urgently petted our hair, rocking us. We covered our ears as if we could keep that voice out of our heads. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” Gloria crooned. “You’re safe. You’re safe with me.”