Julia's Hope by Leisha Kelly Page B

for wood even by the fireplace in the living room. Surely the Grahams didn’t go to the basement every time they needed a log. They’d have been up and down those dark stairs all day in the winter.”
    “You gonna make a box for in there too? Or a little rack thing like we had in Harrisburg?”
    “The rack would look better.”
    Robert was quiet for a moment. “This is different than the city, ain’t it, Dad? You don’t have to have a job to work around here.”
    “I suppose there’s always work to do on a farm,” I told him. “But I’m going to be asking around town too. If I get a job, we’ve got some hope, with some money coming in.”
    “Mom says we won’t need much money here. Once we get the garden in and some animals, we’ll make it okay.”
    That was Julia. No worries, kids. We’re fine, broke as we are. I shook my head again. “Everything takes money. There’s a lot of things you can’t get no other way.”
    “Like a milk cow?”
    I smiled. “Yeah. Does your mother want a milk cow?”
    “Yeah. And Sarah thinks it’d be keen too. Will it taste just the same as the delivery milk back home?”
    “Not as cold without an icebox.”
    “Maybe we could get one.”
    “That takes money for sure.”
    Before we even got the wood box into the house, Willy Hammond came walking up through the yard, looking for Robert to go fishing again. I sent Robert on with my blessing. It would be good for him to have a friend, and good if we could manage some fish for dinner.
    My box fit right behind the stove, and I piled it full with all the wood I’d cut. Sarah followed me back out to the garden, enjoying the feel of the turned-over dirt on her bare feet and asking a million questions.
    “Daddy, will we stay here forever?”
    “I don’t know how long it’ll be. I don’t suppose anything lasts forever.”
    “’Cept God?”
    “Yeah, except God.”
    “Can we grow tomatas?”
    “If we get plants.”
    “And more flowers?”
    “We’ll have to. That’s what Emma wants.”
    “Is Emma an angel, Daddy? Mama said she’s an angel.”
    “Kind of. If your mama says so.”
    “I want to be an angel when I grow up. I want to fly around and give people stuff. Can Emma fly?”
    “Not yet. Not in this world.”
    Julia came outside to dump the water she’d used scrubbing the woodwork and the stairs. She’d have the house looking fine before long. But it was hard to imagine it filled with furnishings, and harder still to think of the rooms upstairs with decent beds or the pantry loaded down with jars of food.
    “We should plant the corn today,” she told me. “The sooner we get the garden up, the better. I wish we had Mrs. McPiery’s other seeds now too.”
    “I guess we have to earn them.”
    She gave me a look, got herself a hoe, and began whacking over the same piece of ground I’d already worked. “Kind of rough,” she said. “But I’ve seen worse. Let’s make some rows.”
    Dutifully, I raked my hoe through the dirt to create a shallow furrow, and Julia followed in my tracks, breaking up clods. “Corn does better in several short rows than one or two long ones,” she said. “Pollinates better.”
    “No problem.”
    “What’s pollynate?” Sarah asked us, and I left the question to Julia, not knowing the answer for sure myself.
    “It’s what bees do for flowers, honey,” she said. “Taking pollen from one to another. I guess maybe the wind does it for corn stalks. They like to be close together so the pollen can blow back and forth. You get good ears that way. And more of them.”
    “Maybe with ears,” Sarah suggested, “the corn can hear the wind coming.” She giggled and then picked up a handful of dirt. “I’m gonna have a big garden when I grow up,” she told us. “Big as the whole world. And I’m gonna have a truck too, like that one we rode in, and I’m gonna drive corn all over the place and give it to everybody for supper.”
    “That’s a good idea,” Julia told her.