The Three Billy Goats Gruff

Just a little fun thing that popped out. Enjoy!

"Aaahh!" Clyde slipped off the footbridge and splashed into the very cold stream. "That's it! That is the last time I cross that slippery bridge."

Sarah (part 4 of 4)

Sarah sat on her porch, watching him leave, grateful that he had never once wondered about the happiest day of her life, had never even implied that she should somehow choose between her two wedding days.  She was both excited and nervous about tomorrow, and tired after a day of battling mixed emotions.

She was about to walk inside when Mrs. Whemper came up to her porch.

“Why, hello there!” she said in a voice that sounded falsely sweet.  “I thought that no bride should be alone the night before her wedding.”  She plopped herself on a chair, though Sarah remained standing by the door.  “And how are you feeling?  Are you all right?  Some of us other ladies were wondering if maybe you were a touch nervous, because after all, you barely know the man, but I said, 'Ladies, our Sarah know what she's getting herself into', and they...”

“Yes,” said Sarah, unwilling to continue the conversation.  She had spent the day mourning her husband and looking forward to being remarried.  All the emotion had drained her, physically and mentally, and she was too exhausted to try to smile through an unwelcome speech.  “But it was good of you to be thinking of me.  You needn't worry about me, Matilde.  I'm feeling quite happy.”  Sarah felt a great rush of elation to realize that she was happy.  Nervous, yes, but happy.  “Are you?”

Mrs. Whemper's mouth opened and closed as if nobody had ever asked her so blatantly whether or not she was happy.  Before she could think of an answer, Sarah went inside.

She was getting married tomorrow, and she was happy.

And so it was that on a fine summer day, Jacob Micheael Hadley married Sarah Morgan Harrison, and they spent nearly fifty years together.  They had three beautiful girls, Jessica, Melissa, and Julia, and one boy, Morgan, who looked just like his father.  They found happiness growing from the midst of sorrow.

Sarah (part 3 of 4)

The sun passed noon as Sarah sat lost in the memory.  A wind blew up around her, and for a moment, Sarah imagined she could feel the ghost of an embrace and the memory of whispered words.  She remembered William on their wedding day.  After they kissed, he had picked her up and spun her around, right there in the church, his face radiating pure joy. 

Sarah smiled at the happy memory.  “Thank you, William,” she whispered.  “I will always love you.”

As she was leaving, she stopped at her father's headstone.  “I am sorry you will not be there, Papa, even though I'm not your little girl anymore.  I wish you were still here to lead me down the aisle once more.  You would have gotten on well with Jacob.  He's like you.  I wish...”  She paused, then walked on without finishing.  What did she wish?  That the fire had never happened, and William had not left her?  Yes.  But...then she would never have met Jacob, and she loved him, too.  Even wishing wasn't easy.

On her way down the hill, she met Jacob, coming to look for her.  He bowed in greeting and offered his arm, steadying her so she wouldn't trip.  They walked awhile without speaking.  Sarah felt her thoughts slip from William to Jacob.  She was getting married tomorrow.  It seemed so strange to think of it.

When they reached the winding lane at the foot of the hill, Jacob spoke.  “Did you tell William?” he asked.

“Yes,” Sarah said.  That was one of the things she loved about Jacob.  He didn't mind that he was second, that she had loved and married another before him.  He understood her need to mourn their wedding day as no one else could have.”

“Mrs. Whemper was telling Mrs. Garner that it's a complete scandal,” Jacob said conversationally after another empty minute.  “Especially the part where I'm moving to your house.”

Sarah shrugged.  She had good farmland, and Jacob was renting a room.  It made sense this way.  “She thinks it a scandal that you've only been here three months, practically a stranger, and were engaged.  She thinks it's a scandal that I'm getting married at all, so soon after 'that tragic incident'.  But last year was saying that I had no right to continue mourning, and that it was high time I remarried.  Other peoples' business is her hobby, especially now with her daughter grown and moved away.”

Jacob nodded.  “I can't decide whether to dislike her or pity her that she has no friends.”

“Oh Jacob,” Sarah sighed, “only you would be good enough to like someone who's as impossible as she.”

“Nobody's truly impossible,” he said.  “Only very difficult.  I think Julia would have loved it here,” he said, changing the subject.

Jacob's sister and only family, Julia, had died in Nebraska.  Today, they were both mourning for their lost loves who could not share their happiness.

“I wish I could have met her,” Sarah said.

“I do too,” Jacob said.  “She would have made you laugh.  She had a laugh that made the whole world want to laugh with her.”  Jacob sighed.  “And Julia always wanted to have a sister.”

They were each quiet then, remembering yesterdays, and wondering what tomorrow would bring.

Later that afternoon, Jacob walked Sarah home.  He kissed her hand as he turned to leave.

“I love you, Jacob,” Sarah said, and was glad that at that moment, she felt no remorse for what might have been.

“And I love you, Sarah.  And tomorrow will be the happiest day of my life.”

Sarah (part 2 of 4)

The summer sun was high in the sky now.  Sarah removed her hat and felt its rays on her dark hair and her face.  She would burn, of course, and tan.  But she never seemed to get very dark, for all the time she worked outside.  Not like William.  His skin would be browner than the wood of their home by the end of the summer.

Sarah was silent for a long while as the sun climbed steadily higher in the sky.  At last she said, “I'm getting married tomorrow, my William.”

Again, Sarah didn't speak for several minutes, and when she did, her voice was quiet.  “To Mr. Jacob Hadley.  He's a good man.  He's nothing like you.  He's more quiet and solemn than the pope, but he has a pleasant smile.  He's new here.  We only met three months ago, but don't go saying that's too short a time, for then you shall sound like Matilde.”

“He makes me happy, and William, I haven't been happy since you died.  I know you're in heaven with our little Henry, and I will always miss you, and I will always love you.  But I know you'd want me to be happy.  It's been cruel living without you these five years, and I don't know why we were only allowed such a short time together.  Maybe you could ask God, when next you see Him.”

Sarah lapsed into silence, lost in memories.  She didn't need to tell William about the fire, how to this day no one could figure how it started on such a wet spring day.  How the barn had burned to the ground while the house was barely scorched.  How Rev. Phillips had said that it was an act of God, and she thought it hateful of him to say that, even if there was no other explanation.

Sarah's two nephews, Matthew and Stuart had been visiting that week so their mother and new baby sister could rest.  Sarah was kneading the dough for the bread when she heard them screaming that the barn was on fire.  She ran at once, without even taking the time to wipe her hands on her apron.  William was already there when she arrived, leading a cow out of the burning building.  Sarah took her and lead her to the yard while William had gone in for another.

The fire had made the animals skittish and stubborn, and Sarah was silently screaming at how long William was spending in the smoke and the flames to get them out.  It seemed an hour before he was finally able to move both horses and all the cows.

He had just pulled the last heifer to the door when a timber, weakened by the fire, collapsed.  Sarah, waiting anxiously by the door was knocked down and pinned to the ground by the burning wood.  The dough that was still on her hands melted and she screamed from the pain.  William had tried to pull it off of her, but breathing the smoke was sapping his strength.  Both of their clothes were on fire, and Sarah could feel the blisters erupt on her skin. 

Just then Neil, their nearest neighbor had come puffing up, closely followed by Matthew, both of them out of breath from running.  He and William had wrenched the fallen timber off Sarah, and he had pulled them away from the inferno, patting out their burning clothing.  The rest of the town arrived, and formed a bucket chain to keep the fire from spreading, but it was not until early afternoon when a light shower came had the fire died.

Sarah had been told that part later.  She was barely conscious and gasping in the haze of pain as the doctor tried to tend her burns.  She had ultimately been saved by her several layers of clothing.  William's burns were much worse.  He only lived through the night.  With the dawn, he regained consciousness and looked over at Sarah, lying next to him.  He had tried to give her a smile, which Sarah's heart ached to see on his face burned red and black.  He moved what was left of his lips, but no sound came out.  Sarah knew what he had meant to say.  “I love you, too,” she whispered.

Then William had closed his eyes and died.

Sarah could not attend his funeral.  She didn't leave her bed until Henry was born.  Even after the labor, her father and her brother-in-law had had to help her to the cemetery as they laid her son's tiny body next to her husband.  It was months before she was recovered physically, and even then, she would wake up in the middle of the night, sobbing from horrible nightmares, with no one next to her for comfort.

Sarah (part 1 of 4)

Sarah stared at her reflection in the mirror.  Brown hair, brown eyes, and today, her black dress.  Nothing too terrible to look at, nothing too special.  The mirror itself was large, over three feet tall with an ornate frame of dark wood.  It was the most elegant thing in the house, out of place in a simple farmhouse in the Oregon territory.  Her father had brought in over the plains for her mother as a wedding gift, and it had been presented to Sarah in turn on her wedding day.  More than seven years ago.

Out of the corner of the mirror, Sarah could see the bed.  Most of the time, Sarah preferred not to look at it.  The great bed was too large for one person, and its emptiness only reminded Sarah of her loss.

In the five years since William had died, Sarah had stopped wearing black, had given all her energy to keeping her small farm, had learned to live with the ache.  But she had never really stopped mourning.  And today she was wearing her widow's garb again.

Sarah finished pinning up her hair, put on her bonnet and began to walk to the cemetery.  The little township hadn't existed above three generations, but already the cemetery had seen too many deaths.  So had Sarah.  Her single black dress was starting to gray, seeming as tired and world-weary as she did.  She had been to too many funerals in it, funerals crossing the prairie, funerals on the frontier as people struggled to make a living.  Friends and family and her father.

Sarah's legs started to burn halfway up the steep hill.  The location for the cemetery was chosen because no plow could get up there.  Any land that could be farmed was.  The dust stirred up from the trail.  She started to lift her skirts, but decided not to.  Let the dust cling to her dress and cover the color.  She concentrated on the rhythm of climbing, feeling her muscles work, her heart beating the blood to her legs.  She felt alive.

Sarah came to the top slightly out of breath and took a moment to recover before moving on.  On the far side of the cemetery were two markers.  William and Henry, her husband and son.  William had not lived to see his child, and Henry had never known life.  Grass had grown over the plots, long and high.

Sarah cleared a place and sat down, grateful that no one, especially not Mrs. Whemper, was around.  She would have said it was a sin, and disrespectful to the dead.  Matilde Whemper said most things were a sin, though somehow she never seemed to come to gossiping when naming her list of evils.  But that was unkind, and Sarah did not come here to think about Mrs. Whemper.

She knew William would not mind.  If she could talk to William now, he would probably make of it a joke.  William was always laughing at one thing or another, and she had been forever trying to get him to be serious.  Even on his last day in this life, with his skin badly burned and still coughing from the smoke he had breathed, he tried to smile as he told her goodbye.

Sarah had been burned herself, though not as badly.  She was still recovering two months later when her child was born.  The labor had nearly killed her, giving birth to her stillborn baby boy.  She named him Henry like William had wanted, and buried him beside his father.

In the months following, Sarah had learned to live again, like a child learns to walk.  She worked the farm herself, as much as she could.  The neighbors had plagued her to let it go, but she ignored them.  William had loved this land, had given it so much love that it almost seemed to love him back.  Certainly Sarah felt that the land loved her.  Her farm should have failed every year of the last five.  Sarah knew she had neither the strength or skill to keep it. 

She never told anyone how the farm seemed to grow crops itself.  It would have been dismissed as superstition or blasphemy.  Sarah couldn't see what was blasphemous about a loving God blessing her when she needed so much help, but Reverend Phillips tended to believe more in a just God than a loving one.

Sarah gazed at the headstone, remembering the day of the fire. 

“Thank you for saving my life, my William,” she said at last.  “I know for years I was angry with you for it, for leaving me here when you went on ahead.  But I am grateful now.”