Grandfather's Dance by Patricia MacLachlan
“Yes,” said Grandfather, looking out at the prairie.
“Oh, yes,” said Aunt Harriet.
“Oh, yes,” said Jack, half awake, half asleep.
Yes.
Joshua began packing up. Grandfather walked to the barn, Jack following him. Joshua turned.
“John! Stop for a moment. I want to take a picture of you in front of the barn. Where’s your hat?”
“Here,” I said.
I ran over and handed Grandfather his big black hat. Jack reached up and took his hand.
“Cassie,” said Grandfather. “I want you in this picture.”
Joshua nodded at me.
“Go on,” he said.
I took Grandfather’s other hand. Little swirls of wind made circles in the dirt in the yard. I could smell the roses on the fence.
“Smile,” called Joshua.
“You don’t have to smile if you don’t want to,” said Grandfather.
I grinned.
The camera shutter clicked.
“That’s it,” called Joshua. “The end.”
Later, all of my life, I would hear the echo of Joshua’s words.
All of my life.
The end.
12
After Joshua left, it was quiet. Grandfather and Jack went to make sure the animals had water. The rest of us sat under the tents.
“We’ll have to take these down soon,” said Papa.
“I suppose,” said Mama. “Maybe we can leave them up for a while.”
Papa smiled at her.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe you can leave them up until Cassie gets married,” said Anna.
“I already had my wedding,” I said.
“That’s right,” said Justin. “You had a grand wedding. Where’s that groom?”
“He’s in the barn with Grandfather and Jack,” I said.
As if he had heard me, Nick began barking in the barn. Papa stood up.
“What’s that about? Nick doesn’t bark all that often,” he said.
Jack came to the door of the barn and looked at us. He was not smiling. His small voice carried on the summer wind.
“Boppa?”
Mama stood up. Papa began to run to the barn.
“Cassie!” he called to me. “Come get Jack.”
For some reason, I couldn’t move. William touched me on the shoulder and ran to Jack.
“Boppa!” said Jack more loudly when William picked him up. He pointed over William’s shoulder back at the barn.
“Sarah?” Papa’s voice sounded weak. His face was pale.
“Sarah. I need your help. Now.”
I started to go with Mama, but Aunt Lou held me.
“I want to be with Grandfather,” I said.
“I know,” she said, putting her arms around me.
I began to cry. My heart hurt.
I knew. Somehow, I knew.
* * *
My grandfather died in the barn where I had found him when I was a little girl. He had come back then to see the place he loved. He had come back to see Papa. Today he lay down in the hay and closed his eyes there.
Papa let me see him for a minute because I wanted to. For a minute Grandfather looked just the same. I thought maybe he would open his eyes and smile at me. But he didn’t. And that made him look different.
When I looked up at Papa he was crying, tears coming down his face like rain.
That made me frightened.
“Papa?”
“It’s all right, Cassie. It’s all right to be sad.”
I reached over and took his hand and stood there until Mama came to get me.
* * *
Jack was very quiet. He wouldn’t sit on anyone’s lap. He wouldn’t smile.
Just before they came to take Grandfather away I took Jack for a long walk so he wouldn’t have to see.
“You don’t have to do that, Cassie,” Mama said.
“I know. I want to.”
Jack and I walked up to the hilltop behind the house and sat under the one tree that grew there. Jack didn’t look at me. He picked a piece of grass and stared at it.
The aunts had told me that Jack didn’t understand. But I knew better. I took a deep breath.
“Jack?”
Jack didn’t look up.
“Jack, I want you to listen. I want you to listen to something very important.”
There was silence. Insects buzzed in the grass. Finally Jack looked up at me. His eyes were blue and sharp.
“Grandfather loved you, Jack. He loved you more than anyone else.”
Jack stared at me. After a long time he reached over and touched me.
Tears came to my eyes. I smiled because I knew what he meant.
“Yes, he loved me, too. And we don’t ever have to forget him. We won’t.”
Jack didn’t say anything, but I knew he understood my words. We sat for a long, long time. The sun began to set. I stood up. Nothing seemed the same. The land didn’t look the same anymore. The sky looked different. I stared down at the farm that was once Grandfather’s farm.
There was a small rustle beside me. Jack took my hand, his hand warm in mine. Together we walked down the hill.
Grandfather would have liked his funeral. The aunts dressed up like they had for the wedding. Even Aunt Lou wore a dress and high-heeled shoes. All the townspeople came. They told stories about Grandfather. Sometimes they had conversations about him.
“Once he saved a horse of mine.”
“That horse never should have been saved!”
“I remember how he loved to cut the hay.”
“He hated cutting the hay.”
“Oh, no he didn’t. Sometimes he sang when he cut the hay.”
“He taught me how to ride a horse,” said Aunt Lou. “And he was nice about it.”
“He didn’t love my music,” said Aunt Harriet.
“He did, in the end,” said Aunt Mattie.
Caleb told about when Grandfather first came.
“Cassie found him. He had been gone for many years, and Cassie talked to him so much, as if she wanted to fill up all those years. He couldn’t make her stop, but he never cared. Because he loved her.”
“Cassie?” said Papa.
“Grandfather gave me a wedding,” I said. No one laughed when I said it.
Words about Grandfather floated around our heads. And then, when it was time to bury him, it was quiet again.
Papa’s voice was clear and strong and sad.
“We were stronger having him,” he said.
Tears came to Papa’s eyes, and Mama put her arm around him. And then Jack walked up to Papa and then away a bit. As everyone watched, he did a little dance, turning around and around with his hands up in the air just the way Grandfather had done. Grandfather’s dance.
“He understands,” said Mama, starting to cry. “Jack understands.”
Jack did the dance again. Then, for the first time in a long time, Jack smiled.
* * *
It is quiet here without Caleb and William and the aunts. Mostly quiet without Grandfather. There is a great space where he used to be.
Jack is quiet some of the time. Other times he acts as if Grandfather might be just around the corner. Or in the barn. Sometimes he wears Grandfather’s big black hat, so he acts like him and looks like him, too.
Joshua came and brought us the family pictures. And there we are, Aunt Harriet with her hat flying away in the wind, me looking up and smiling at Grandfather, Jack asleep on Mama’s lap. Lottie and Nick leaning next to us.
And there is the picture of Grandfather in front of the barn with his big black hat: me on one side, Jack on the other, standing so like Grandfather.
When Jack saw the picture he went to get Grandfather’s black hat. He put it on. He pointed to the picture.
“Boppa,” he whispered.
Grandfather is here.
* * *
About the Author
John MacLachlan
&n
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Author’s Note
I began writing about the Witting family in Sarah, Plain and Tall and have been telling their stories ever since. It is bittersweet for me to end my writing relationship with them and all the extended family in the book Grandfather’s Dance. I know I won’t end my personal relationship with them; the characters are too much a part of my life. Their landscape is mine, one I left behind many years ago—partly my father’s landscape in North Dakota, my mother’s in Kansas, and mine in Wyoming. I live in the East now, but writing these stories has kept my childhood close.
The “real” Sarah was my step-great-great-grandmother, though I never knew many things about her. For my books, I invented her personality, the family and life she left in Maine, and her thoughts and fears. In many ways, this has strengthened my connection with my past.
The dogs and cats are friends to me; some I have patterned after my own pets, past and present. And the grandfather is modeled after my own father, who told stories about the prairie, the horses, the farm dogs, the storms, the harsh winters, and the droughts. Somehow, he is there in every story.
And so am I.
Also by Patricia MacLachlan
Sarah, Plain and Tall
Skylark
Caleb’s Story
More Perfect than the Moon
Grandfather’s Dance
Arthur, For the Very First Time
Through Grandpa’s Eyes
Cassie Binegar
Seven Kisses in a Row
Unclaimed Treasures
The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt
Word After Word After Word
Kindred Souls
Mama One, Mama Two
All the Places to Love
What You Know First
Three Names
The Truth of Me
Written with Emily MacLachlan Charest
Painting the Wind
Bittle
Who Loves Me?
Once I Ate a Pie
Fiona Loves the Night
I Didn’t Do It
Before You Came
Cat Talk
Back Ads
Credits
Cover art © 2013 by Jim Madsen
Copyright
Grandfather’s Dance
Copyright © 2006 by Patricia MacLachlan
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
MacLachlan, Patricia.
Grandfather’s dance / by Patricia MacLachlan. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: As her family gathers for the wedding of her sister Anna, fourth-grader Cassie Witting sees the many changes brought about by everyday life and finds comfort in the love of those around her, especially her grandfather.
ISBN 978-0-06-134003-1
EPub Edition © MARCH 2013 ISBN: 9780062285744
[1. Family life—Fiction. 2. Grandfathers—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M2225Gr 2006
[Fic]—dc22
2006000463
CIP
AC
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Patricia MacLachlan, Grandfather's Dance