Oskie

Oskie                                                                                word count 2258

                                                           By MagicMama          



Oskie was Grandma Ginny's oldest boy from her first husband.  He was only a few months old when  hit the logging camp, so her father came and took Oskie home with him, while Grandma nursed first her husband, and then others at the camp after he died.  She eventually grew sick herself, but lived.



She took a job cooking for the camp, as new men came in to log. Oskie stayed with his Grandpa Flick, as she could not care for him and work.  The work was hard, but she hung on, hoping to be able to bring her son home to her.  Each family received a small house that would fold up and fit on railroad cars, but she stayed in a dormitory tent with the other women who worked for the Logging company.



Things changed a few years later when Ginny met and married Robert Boling.  She sent for Oskie, but Grandpa Flick said he was in school, and needed to stay there.  As the camp was getting ready to move to another area, she gave in.  By the time school was out, she was in another state and pregnant.  Again, she let Oskie stay with Grandpa Flick.



Time went by.  Ginny longed to have Oskie with her, but their little home, although small and depressing, was being filled with her new family.  By the time the oldest of them were six, Robert had enough of listening to Ginny talk about Oskie.  He saddled his horse and set off for the Flick farm.



Grandpa Flick saw him coming, and met him at the house.  "I come for Oskie," Robert said roughly.  "I ain't puttin' up with no more nonsense.  Ginny wants him.  Go get him."



Grandpa Flick was an older man, but he was a strong man, and wasn't about to be pushed around.  "He's not going, unless he wants to.  No man is going to make him do anything that he doesn't want to."



Robert was inclined to argue, but Grandpa Flick stood firm.  Robert went back to the mountain where the logging camp was.  When Oskie came home from school, he and Grandpa Flick had a talk, and the result was when school finished for the summer, and Oskie had graduated sixth grade, he went back to live with his mother.



When he got to the logging camp, Oskie learned that his Grandpa’s admonition to be a help to his mother was sadly needed.  The younger boys were wild, and the little home was bare of comfort.  His stepfather worked hard during the week, but spent most of his pay on Saturday night, drinking and gambling.  At night, he sat in the only chair, while Ginny served him his supper on one of the few tin plates.  The boys ate earlier, in shifts, and Ginny washed the tinware between times. 



She tried to plant wild flowers around the little hut, but they did poorly in the hot sun.  An empty tin can served as a vase when she had time to gather wild flowers.  Old catalogue pages served to plug cracks in the rough wooden planks that made up the walls.  Her own salary from taking in wash fed the family, and the boys brought home berries and nuts when they found them.  All in all, it was a sad little place.



Oskie spent his first Sunday with his family quietly.  He read his Bible and told a Bible story to his younger brothers.  He taught them a few simple games, and for the first time, the boys got along and had fun, without raising the ire of their father, who normally cussed them for waking him from his drunken stupor.  Ginny cried a little, and thanked him for playing with the boys.  It made Oskie sit down to do some thinking.



There’s a limit to what a twelve year old boy can do about the adults in his life.  He realized that he could do nothing about the way his stepfather treated the family.  His Grandpa Flick had raised him in the knowledge of God, and he decided that God was the only one who could deal with Robert.  What he could do to help, he would.



First thing he did was to get a part-time job delivering lunches to the men who were too far away from the cook tent to eat there.  While that took a good sized chunk of time in the middle of the day, he found it beneficial in dealing with his brothers.  He spent the morning helping his mother and teaching his younger brothers how to help too.  He made deals with them; when they completed the tasks he gave them, he would read or play with them after work.



The boys loved it.  No one had ever done much with them, except to scold.  He began to teach them to read and cipher, since there was no school for them. They sang the songs he learned at school and church. He taught them the things his Grandpa Flick had found interesting to teach him—hunting, fishing and tracking.  He taught them to use tools, and together the boys began to repair things around their home. 



For the first time, it really began to be a home.  Singing and playing; working and learning; Ginny began to smile and laugh with them.  When Oskie got paid, he gave his mother half of his earnings.  He saved ten percent, and spent the rest on items for their home, and candy and books for the boys.  He bought home fabric, and for the first time, curtains graced the windows.  Ginny was able to make a new dress; one not made from feed sacks.  China began to take the place of the tinware, and the boys found ways to make chairs and Ginny made a tablecloth.  The boys and Ginny began eating together, using the manners that Ginny had nearly forgotten.  Oskie would say grace, and one or more of the boys would share a verse they had learned.



Robert was oblivious to most of these changes.  The boys all ate before he got home, and they spent time outside when he came home.  Oskie was not trying to keep the boys away from Robert; they had always avoided him as a manner of course anyway, because of his temper.



Slowly, Robert began to pay attention.  He asked about the china; at first he didn’t believe that Oskie was spending his money on such things.  He asked at the company store, expecting to find out that Ginny had been charging on his account. 



“Not at all,” the clerk answered.  “In fact, you have paid off your account.  Ginny’s boy has been paying on it since he got here.  He even works here on occasion, and has been putting that amount on the bill.”



“That boy has a head on his shoulders,” they said.  “He’s a good worker, and is willing to help other people.  He and your boys have been doing a lot of good around here.” They went to tell him how much better behaved his boys were. “They would almost rather have a book instead of candy!”



Robert was puzzled by the whole thing.  He realized that things were more pleasant at home, and he still wasn’t sure why.  Things came to a head one night, when Oskie came home from working after he did.  The boys clustered around him as Oskie came up the path, all of them trying to talk at the same time.  Oskie laughed and stopped still, giving each boy a chance to talk.  Each boy got Oskie’s complete attention as he talked, and Robert realized that the boy had something that he didn’t. 



He had to admit the boys had never been glad to see him.  Before, it hadn’t been an issue.  He had only cared that the boys leave him alone, and didn’t get in his way.  The children were Ginny’s job.  For the first time, Robert wished the boys cared about him.  It surprised him.



He began to pay attention to his family.  Still, remaining aloft, he watched Oskie’s interaction with Ginny and the boys.  Ginny, pregnant again, looked happier than he had ever seen her.  He was surprised to see how attractive she looked.  The boys were clean, and he noticed that even their language was clean.  He hadn’t noticed how foul their language was before, as his own was quite colourful.  The lack of it startled him, and he began to be self-conscious of his language at home.



Next, he realized that all the boys were now affectionate with Ginny.  Normally, he would have scoffed at such things, but it was a revelation to see how happy it made Ginny. Would it make him as happy?  Then another thought struck him.  Would it make Ginny happy if he were affectionate?  Something outside of bed?



He began to try think of something pleasant to say to the boys.  It was hard.  He didn’t know them well enough to come up with something.  All he could come up with was a grunted, “Nice day.”  He felt a failure, and didn’t like it.  He was losing interest in his normal activities with his friends, and didn’t know what to think about it.  He bothered him to realize his family didn’t care whether he was around or not.  Also, he realized he was jealous of a twelve year old boy—or was he thirteen now? For that matter, how old were any of the boys?



Disturbed, Robert took his pipe out into the night, and as his custom on a Friday, began to walk around the little house, planning to visit a friend whom he knew had some ‘shine.  He stopped, hearing a rough voice coming from the loft where he knew the boys were settling in to sleep.  Was someone else up there?



He grasped a limb on a tree and pulled himself up to check.  As he did, the voice cracked and slipped back into a boyish treble.  He realized that Oskie’s voice was changing and started to drop down out of the tree.  A few words drifted out the window, and Robert paused.



“We thank Thee for this day, and ask that Thy blessings will be on all that we have labored on this day.  We especially ask that Thy blessing will be on our father and stepfather, and that Thou will draw his heart to Thee and to our family.  Help us to show him love and goodness.  Help us in our unbelief and weakness.  Bless our family as we sleep and help us to have a good day tomorrow as we go fishing together.”



Robert could barely hold on to his perch as he heard other childish treble add in “Amen.”  His boys were praying for him?  Tears filled his eyes, and he clung there and listened as his boys wished each other a good night, and settled down.  Had anyone ever prayed for him?  He remembered Ginny asking him to take her to church, but he refused, instead sleeping off his “good time” from the night before.  He bitterly wished that his life was different, but it wasn’t.



Silently, he dropped to the ground.  His walk resumed, but instead of going to get shine, he walked through the camp, looking up at the sky.  For the first time in his life, he began a conversation that wasn’t about work, cards or whiskey.  He talked to the Lord of Creation and when he finally returned home to find everyone asleep, he was a changed man.



When the boys got up the next morning, he already a can full of night crawlers, and had prepared for all of them to fish.  They were a bit startled, but welcomed him, wondering how long he would last.  When they came home that morning, he set in to cleaning them, Oskie bringing him a pail of clean water.  Ginny fried them up, and they had a lunch like none they had ever had before.  That night, Robert stayed home, and asked Oskie to read them a story.

 

Oskie calmly got out their current book and began to read.  The other boys were a bit shy; they wondered how their father knew about Oskie reading, but it didn’t take long for the adventures of Jim and Long John Silver to weave their spell, and they forgot to be in awe of their father’s presence.



After all the boys went to bed, Robert looked over at Ginny, quietly knitting in her new rocking chair.  He got up and stood, back to the potbellied stove.  He cleared his throat a couple of times.  Ginny smiled to herself, but she just kept knitting.



After a moment, Robert said, “Yur Pa done a heap better with Oskie than I done with the rest of ‘em or by you.  But I’m agona’ try to do better by ya now.”  He roughly pulled the money from his paycheck out of his pocket and thrust it at her. “Here.  You’ll do better with this than I could.”



Ginny dropped her knitting and awkwardly stood, her belly throwing her off balance.  Robert turned to her, and she opened her arms, and he went into them, wrapping his around her.  His tears dampened her shoulder. 



“Shh, shh, it’s all right.  We’ve got the rest of our lives, to make it better.”



“Thank you,” he whispered. 



“No, thank God.  And with His blessings, we can make it better.”



And He did.