She turned most of it down within a few months, too proud to accept what she considered charity, insisting she'd manage on her own account rather than become some permanent burden on neighbors already stretched thin themselves. Everett offered this with a rueful sympathy. I expect her pride's cost her and those boys considerably more than she's properly willing to admit. Though I'll confess none of us have found much success arguing her out of the stance. He described further several specific instances of the county's earlier attempts at assistance, a neighboring family's offer of hired help during planting season, politely declined.
A church collection quietly organized the previous autumn that Sarah had learned of and refused before it could even properly reach her. Small acts of community generosity that had each, in turn, run aground against the same immovable pride Everett's account suggested defined Sarah Colton's whole approach to her family's mounting difficulty. I don't say any of this to speak poorly of the woman. Understand, her pride comes from somewhere honest enough, I'd wager, a fear that accepting charity somehow confirms she's failed her own husband's memory by letting the farm slip. Everett's own assessment carried a genuine considered sympathy rather than any judgment, but I've watched those two boys grow considerably thinner across this past year, and I'll confess it troubles me more than I generally let on to customers passing through.
Caleb turned this account over across his own supper that evening, understanding from Everett's description exactly the particular bind Sarah Colton had constructed for herself, too proud to accept charity offered directly, yet plainly unable to properly feed her own children through pride alone. He recognized, too, something of his own mother's similar stubbornness during his own difficult childhood years. A woman who had likewise refused most direct assistance, accepting only the kind of help that arrived disguised as something other than outright charity. He remembered, in particular, one especially difficult winter following his own father's death, when a neighboring rancher had begun leaving unmarked supplies at their own family's gate, rather than offering direct assistance his mother would have inevitably refused. A small kindness disguised carefully enough that she'd never once properly questioned its origin, or perhaps had questioned it privately and chosen not to press the matter.
Understanding on some level that accepting the disguised gift cost her pride considerably less than accepting an openly offered one might have required. Caleb had never learned, even decades later, who that particular neighbor had actually been, and had often wondered, across his own subsequent years, whether some part of him had always intended to eventually repay that anonymous kindness by extending its equivalent to some other struggling family, should the opportunity ever properly present itself. He returned to the Colton property that same evening, riding up the lane just as the light began fading toward dusk, carrying with him a considerable sack of provisions he'd purchased at Everett's Trading Post. Flour and salt pork and dried beans, enough to properly sustain a small family through several weeks, rather than merely a single evening's meal. He had spent the ride back turning over exactly how to properly frame his return, understanding, from Everett's account of Sarah's earlier refusals, that arriving with an obvious basket of charity would likely produce exactly the same rejection her previous well-meaning neighbors had encountered.