Applesauce Footprints, part 6

At the kitchen table Nan, the eldest Tucker girl, squinted from the dim glow of the kerosene lamp as she wrote a letter to her boyfriend in Korea, being sure to include among her modest endearments, that his wolf-dog was fine. As if the dog knew the young woman’s thoughts included him, from somewhere outside could be heard his familiar call as he greeted the rising moon. The sound cut deep through the silence and was carried away on the wind.

Mr. Tucker was telling one of his “almost true stories” as Mrs. Tucker called them. Annie only half-listened. She was thinking about that last slice of applesauce cake. She looked up as her mother came into the living room, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.

“Wade,” Annie’s mother said. Mr. Tucker paused in his tale and looked up. “Mr. Henderson delivered a load of coal late yesterday evening. I couldn’t pay him. I told him it would be next week before I could. He said he understood, and was real nice about it. Even said the cake I was baking smelled real good. He asked if it was applesauce.”

“Wish we could have paid him,” Wade Tucker said. “We sure are a lot better off then they are.”

“That’s for sure,” Annie’s mother agreed. She lay the towel aside and picked up some mending as she sat down in her rocking chair. She was always busy with something, even on Christmas night.

Annie watched her mother’s hands as they moved. They were so small, but yet, so strong. The needle she pinched between her forefinger and thumb danced in and out of the heel of one of Mr. Tucker’s socks.

“Mom, can I go for a walk?” Annie asked.

Mrs. Tucker looked over the top of Annie’s head towards Mr. Tucker, then back at Annie. “Well—all right, but don’t be gone long, and put on your boots,” she said.

Slowly Annie stood. She took her coat from its peg in the dining room on her way to the kitchen. After pulling on her boots that rested on a sodden newspaper by the back door, she carefully wrapped the last slice of applesauce cake in a piece of waxed paper. She put the small package in her coat pocket, then came back to the living room. In the distance the wolf-dog barked again.

“Button your coat,” Annie’s mother interrupted herself to say. “And don’t be gone long,” she repeated, giving Mr. Tucker a knowing glance.

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