Free This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger Page B

declared that Emmy Frost would not be motherless for long. It was her intention to adopt the little girl just as soon as she could.
    Mose, when he heard this, signed, Black Witch her new mother? Then he signed something that Mrs. Frost, had she been alive, would never have approved of.
    Albert said in a low, resigned voice, “What the Black Witch wants, the Black Witch gets.”
    To me it seemed just one more unfair thing in a long line of terrible unfairnesses. I could live with all the disappointment and destruction that a heartless God had sent my way. Maybe I even deserved it. But Emmy Frost? All she’d ever done her whole brief life was bring happiness to the rest of us. And Mrs. Frost? If ever there’d been an angel on this earth, it was her.
    The funeral service was held on Thursday in the gymnasium. All the kids at school were there, except Billy Red Sleeve, who hadn’t been picked up by the authorities yet. We were dressed as if for Sunday, and the podium Mr. Brickman always preached from stood on the gym floor with chairs behind it for him and Mrs. Brickman, and one for Emmy, who sat there slumped like a lifeless doll. We hadn’tseen her since that terrible day of the tornado. She wore a new dress and shiny new leather shoes. The grit and dust and plaster had been so thick in her hair that they couldn’t wash it out, and they’d simply cut back all her curls to within an inch of her scalp. Without the dress, she could have passed for a boy.
    Miss Stratton sat at the pump organ. She played “Rock of Ages” and we all mumbled along. Mr. Brickman gave the eulogy. For the first time I could recall, he spoke to us in a respectful tone with no bombast whatsoever. I’d never liked him, but I was grateful for the kind—and true—things he said about Cora Frost.
    Then the Brickmans got a surprise.
    Miss Stratton announced, “Odie O’Banion and I have something we’d like to offer in Cora’s memory.” She nodded to me, and I stood.
    “What are you doing?” Albert whispered. He eyed the Brickmans, who sat with looks on their faces that were far from Christian.
    “Just listen,” I said.
    Mose signed, Make it sweet, Odie.
    I stood beside the pump organ and pulled my harmonica from my pocket, and Miss Stratton and I played together the song we’d been practicing in secret.
    I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cry. I wanted to deliver the only gift I had to offer in the memory of Cora Frost. But as I started blowing the first notes of “Shenandoah,” the tears began to run. I played on anyway, and Miss Stratton followed, and the music itself seemed to weep and not just for what we’d lost that week. It was for the families and the childhoods and the dreams that were, even for those of us so young, already gone forever. But as I continued, I went to that place only music could take me, and although Cora Frost was dead and about to be buried along with my fleeting hope of a better life, I imagined she was listening somewhere, with her husband at her side, and they were both smiling down on me and Emmy and Albert and Mose and all the others whose lives, at least for a while, had been better because of them. And in the end, that’s where my tears were coming from.
    When I finished, everyone was crying, even Mr. Brickman, who had a heart, I could see, though a small one. But the Black Witch had no heart, and she shed not one tear. She was giving me and Miss Stratton the evil eye. I tried to return to my seat on the bleachers, but Miss Stratton took my hand and held me where I stood.
    Mr. Brickman closed with a prayer, and the kids all began to file out. Mrs. Brickman leaned to Emmy and said something, then she stood and walked to the pump organ.
    “A lovely tune” were the words she said, but her voice said something entirely different. “And quite unexpected.”
    Miss Stratton looked as if she believed the Black Witch was going to pounce and devour her whole.
    I said, “It was my idea, ma’am. I knew it was