Read Online In Open Spaces by Russell Rowland - Free Book Online Page B

a relief nonetheless. He checked Bob, and determined that he just had a cold, and not meningitis. Dad thanked Doc for his trouble, offering him a bed for the remainder of the night. But it was only a few hours before his first appointment, so he had to hurry back.
    Because of the state of George’s body, the funeral had to be hastily arranged for two days later. There wasn’t time to make Katie a funeral dress, and none of George’s clothes fit his bloated torso. So we wrapped him in one of his blankets, and we laid Katie out in her favorite frock—a calico with lace. Pastor Ludke from the Little Missouri Lutheran Church performed the service the afternoon after he had buried the Glasser baby.
    The coffins looked strange side by side—one too large, to hold George’s swollen corpse, the other seemingly too small to hold anycorpse at all. Pastor Ludke stood behind the odd pair, his thinning hair oiled in parallel lines across his scalp. His ruddy cheeks shone with sweat.
    “We come to this barren world with high hopes,” he said. “And then the land takes our children from us, and we ask why. We ask how a just God could let this happen. And I say that perhaps it is a price of risk, of adventure. Perhaps if we remained safely in our old worlds, we would not have to pay this price. Perhaps God is telling us that the earth will not yield unto us what we ask without first asking that we yield unto Him. It is a question I have searched this book for answers to…” He held up his Bible. “And I have yet to find one that satisfies me.”
    He bowed his head, showing a certain guilt about not being able to provide the kind of hope or comfort that someone in his position might be expected to provide. “Let us simply pray, then.”
    Mom and Dad stood very close to each other, their hands only an inch apart, their brows low over their eyes. Neither of them shed a tear. No one in the crowd showed any sign of tears. Jack eased off to one side, as if he wasn’t invited.
    I held my face still but felt the full force of a sadness and loneliness that were new to me. I had been to more funerals by this time than I had weddings, birthday parties, or Fourth of July picnics combined. I knew the routine. And I had always felt a little strange about the stoic demeanor that was common among our people. I had always looked around at the faces at these funerals and wondered how everyone could appear to be so unaffected, unmoved, by death.
    I studied my father’s face. And I thought about his favorite bit of philosophy, the one and only phrase he repeated with a sense of religious conviction. “Always expect the worst, and you’ll never be disappointed,” he’d say. He said it about everything. I had never been comfortable with the phrase, and although I didn’t then, I now understand why. Because my father didn’t live by it. Although he did expect theworst, expecting the worst had never prevented disappointment. In fact, my father not only experienced disappointment, day after day, but he had built his life around it. And I see now that it was a common quality among our people, to live with a wary knowledge that things could always get worse. To not enjoy accomplishment because of the certainty of more disappointment. It was an attitude born of experience, as a bumper crop of wheat, and a bountiful year, could change to failure in the time it took for a hailstone to bounce off your head. We expected the worst because it often happened, and the disappointment was buried deep in all of us. For some, it served as a motivator. My father was a perfect example. He acted on the disappointment by working harder. It was all he knew.
    On this day, I looked around at the faces, and for the first time in my life, I did not see stony, lifeless expressions. I felt the loss of my siblings. I thought of Katie’s pathetic garden, and her unwavering dedication to it. I thought about our little homestead house, which I had ceremoniously burned the