Read The Waltons 3 - The Easter Story for Free Online Page A

satisfaction to anyone at the table. They looked at him, but turned glumly away.
    “Well,” he said and pushed his chair back, “Come on, everybody. Time we got all these chores finished up.”
    Grandma came down and took some supper up for Olivia. The others ate in silence, each struggling with his own despairing thoughts. After the dishes were cleaned up, the children did homework and filed quietly upstairs. John turned off the last of the lights and found Olivia awake. He sat on the bed and smiled. “Feelin’ better?”
    She nodded. “It felt good to eat somethin’.” She yawned sleepily and took his hand. “Did you get the Claybournes’ refrigerator fixed? It’s funny—that’s about the last thing I remember. It seems like months ago.”
    “I got it runnin’. But I have to go back and put in a new part.”
    “Did they pay you?”
    She asked the question drowsily, but it jarred John’s memory. He’d completely forgotten about the envelope Stuart Lee had handed him in the car. He had shoved it into his jacket pocket, and his jacket was over on the chair by the desk.
    “Yes, Stuart Lee paid me.”
    “That’s good,” Olivia said, and she was suddenly sleeping again.
    John rose and quietly crossed the room. That envelope could mean a couple used tires for the truck. And if Stuart Lee was as generous as his father had always been, there might even be some money left over. John found the envelope. He sat down at the desk and quickly slit it open. Then he blinked with disbelief.
    It contained a single dollar bill.
    John almost laughed. Stuart Lee couldn’t be serious. Mrs. Claybourne had distinctly told him to be generous with “our good neighbor.”
    John sat back and stared at the creased and dirty bill. Was it possible Stuart Lee intended to pay him more when he returned to install the new part? He doubted it. Stuart Lee already had the envelope in his pocket when John told him he would have to come back.
    No, John concluded. The dollar was probably all Stuart Lee intended to pay him. He sighed wearily and tossed the crumpled bill on the desk.
    Erin took it the hardest, John-Boy wrote in his notebook. I think Mary Ellen suspected the worst all along, while Jason, Ben, and Jim-Bob did their best to follow Daddy’s example. At least outwardly, they accepted it as a tragedy that must be faced and dealt with. In Elizabeth’s case, I’m not sure she fully understands yet. At her age I guess it’s all just too mysterious and confusing.
    But Erin, I think, was shattered by the news. Erin believes everything in the world should be clean and pretty, and healthy and beautiful. For her, Mama has always been the perfect example of this. Tonight, when we all went to the bedroom door and wished Mama goodnight, Erin could hardly bring herself to speak.
    For Mama’s sake, I hope she’ll . . .
    “John-Boy?”
    John-Boy closed his notebook and found Jason, Ben, and Jim-Bob at the door, all in their pajamas. They came in and sat on the bed.
    “John-Boy, we were kind of thinkin’—about Mama and everythin’. And, well—do you think Dr. Vance is a good doctor for Mama? I mean we think he probably knows everythin’ about measles and colds and broken arms, and that kind of stuff. But what Mama has is somethin’ kind of special, and maybe some other doctors know more about it.”
    “Like some doctors know about heart troubles,” Ben added.
    “When G. W. Haines broke his foot that time,” Jim-Bob said, “his Daddy took him all the way down to Richmond to see some kind of a special bone doctor.”
    John-Boy nodded. It was a question that hadn’t occurred to him. And probably not to his father. “I don’t know. I reckon there isn’t anybody who knows a whole lot about polio. At least that’s what Dr. Vance told Daddy.”
    “But we could try, John-Boy. There might be some doctor in Charlottesville or Richmond who knows more than Dr. Vance. Maybe Daddy could go get ’em and bring ’em up here—at least to