Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction

by Russell, Vanessa

  “What happened, Eunice?” I asked, placing my dinner basket on the ground.

  Eunice flinched, startled. “Oh Ruby, I’m glad to see it’s you. Seeing this sort of destruction at someone’s hands makes me skittish, being here alone.” She straightened and put her hands on her hips. “What happened here, I believe, is a coward from that church came in the night. Look at this!” and she kicked at a splintered board, anger showing on her flushed face. “Now I don’t know what to do. We announced yesterday that the booth would be open every afternoon for two weeks, to collect signatures. Here you are, our first volunteer to station here, and I have nothing...” she kicked at another board, harder this time. “I hate men. If I could just get my hands on the man who—”

  “Whoa, whoa, don’t take it out on all the men!”

  We turned to see the ponytail man walking through the oak trees toward us.

  He ducked under a low-hanging branch. “So, we had more than one enemy in our midst yesterday, did we? Could’ve been worse – I’ve seen women shot at for asking for fairer wages at a bicycle factory. Annan is actually a peaceful little town.”

  “That’s comforting,” said Eunice, in a tone of one not impressed. She continued to look at the damage around her.

  I could only stare, not quite believing he’s standing here, just as I had fervently hoped for but thinking such a wish wouldn’t happen. My face flushed crimson in being so impolite and I quickly bent to examine a piece of vine, its roots exposed.

  “We can have a new booth built in an hour,” he said. “If one of you can come with me and show me the way to the lumber mill or general store.”

  “I appreciate your thoughtfulness, er ... Mr. Bluemountain, isn’t it?” said Eunice.

  “Jeremiah.”

  “Well, I must be frank here, Jeremiah, and say I have no money left to buy supplies. What little I saved went into this,” Eunice said, waving her hand around to the damage at her feet.

  Money? I dropped the vine. I hadn’t put in a penny for any of this, or for the sashes or the signs - worse yet, I suspected Robert had done this damage; he hadn’t come home until long after I’d gone to bed, soaked to the bone from the night’s thunderstorm.

  “I think I can swing a few dollars for a good cause,” Jeremiah was saying.

  “No, I’ll pay!” I blurted out, standing up. I met Jeremiah’s eyes and couldn’t look away. The warmest blue I’d ever seen. Silence circled around us.

  Eunice was gazing, too, as if seeing him for the first time. “You’d do that?” she asked, almost in a whisper. He turned his attention to her and she blushed and began stacking board pieces by a tree. “While you’re gone, Ruby, I’ll take the petition and banner over to the gazebo and if anyone wants to sign the petition, they can do so there in the meantime.”

  Jeremiah gave me a sweet smile. “I have a borrowed buggy here,” he said. “Is that alright? That you go with me, I mean?”

  I could only nod and follow.

  I stepped up into the buggy and sat before the questions came: Alone with this stranger? A married woman? Is he married? Will Robert see me? Can I breathe naturally? Will Jed’s General Store let me use Robert’s account?

  He climbed in beside me and I decided, no, in these close quarters I cannot breath. “Ruby Wright, isn’t it? Pleased to meet you.” He reached out his hand and I watched my tiny white hand disappear into his larger brown one.

  While he maneuvered the horse onto the street, I had a sudden urge to know everything about him. “Bluemountain – must be a meaning behind that name.”

  Am I being too forward?

  “Well, I come from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Tennessee. When you see the mountains from a long way off, they look blue. When my daddy died in a coal mining accident, my mommy, in Cherokee Indian custom, decided to change my last name to what I loved best. I believe I’m in safe keeping surrounded by all those giants. I come up here to walk on flatter ground, all open like this, and I feel naked as a baby.” He tipped his hat to me. “Pardon the expression.”

  An image suddenly appeared in my mind of him without his shirt on and I blushed.

  I don’t know where you are heading, Ruby, when you turn red from your own thoughts.

  Jeremiah turned the horse around in the park and we headed down Main Street. I caught sight of his hands holding firmly to the leather straps. Nice hands, I thought. Clean; not stained.

  “Tell me what your speech was about,” I said, just wanting to hear that sweet southern drawl talk to me. “I’m terribly sorry I missed it – the rest of the convention.”

  “It’s a shame, for certain.” He gave me a questioning look, not unlike the one he gave me yesterday when I gasped. “You look fine today though.”

  I blushed and suddenly felt that yes, everything is fine today. “Please,” I said. “Just a little of what you talked about yesterday.”

  His words were lyrics to his melodious tone as he told me that where he came from, women work right beside men, hunting, skinning, planting, harvesting … and where would we be without their hard work and soft voices, their tender hugs for their children and their ferocious protection? How his daddy told stories about how women fought for the Union Army in the war, disguised like men and earning an honorable discharge. And many more who didn’t fight but stood along the roads where the weary soldiers traveled and handed out bread and cheese, or nursed those soldiers who collapsed. That when all was said and done, we’re asking for no more than what a man has and why should we be denied, when men depend on us for helping them with everything else?

  The center of town came too quickly. The story ended and panic began. Robert’s Walk Wright shoe store was only a few buildings down from Jed’s General Store. Why had I only now remembered that?

  “Pardon?” I asked. I sat back further, thankful for the sides to the buggy.

  “I asked if we were heading in the right direction,” Jeremiah said.

  “Oh, yes,” I answered. “The store is on this street just a few minutes away.” I resisted looking at his face and those blue-blue eyes – blue eyes from blue mountains.

  We entered the business district and no one took notice of us. There were many more wagons, buggies, bicycles, and even a few horseless carriages rumbling along here.

  I dared not glance over to Robert’s shop window as we plodded by far too slowly. I pointed and he pulled in his reins in front of Jed’s General. I jumped down and rushed inside.

  “Is there a sale on something here today I should know about?” Jeremiah called from behind me.

  I waited for him inside the dark entrance. He had that same broad grin from yesterday. He brushed closer to me as he stepped aside for a woman exiting the store and my heart beat faster. I needed to concentrate better on why we were here.

  “No, it is just cooler here, is all,” I answered. I breathed in the familiar smell of cinnamon sticks, pickle barrels, and axle grease. Jed sold it all.

  “Well, hello there, newcomers! How can I help you today?” called out Jed from behind the counter. I faced the counter, adjusting my eyes to the gloomy room and Jed’s dim bulky figure. He could have no legs for all I knew; only that very round belly. He always sat behind the counter directing young boys to “stock, sweep, and sweat – that’s what I pay them for!”

  “Why, it is Mrs. Wright!” Jed shouted to the rooftops. “I hardly recognized you all dressed up in your Sunday best! But then you are a household name now, aren’t you? I’ll tell you what I did. Curiosity got the best of me and darn if I didn’t walk all the way up to City Hall Park and watch a bunch of women bellyaching!” He slapped the counter. “Ha, I’m only kidding!”

  His countenance quickly changed. He pointed his finger at me. “But I’ll tell you one thing. You’ll never see me put my signature on any kind of petition. No, siree-bob. City Council would be on me faster than a rattler, raising my taxes and what ever else they can think of. You rock their boat, they’ll tip yours over.”

  He pointed to J
eremiah. “Hey, I saw you up there, too! You’re from away, now are you?” He sounded like he was making an accusation. Of course he knew Jeremiah wasn’t a resident.

  “I’m from Nashville Tennessee, sir.” He walked over and shook Jed’s hand. “Where are your wood planks?”

  I sensed he didn’t care for Jed any more than I did. Jed was always too loud, too nosy, knew everybody’s business. Probably would pass around that I came in with a strange man.

  “How much wood do you need for the booth, ma’am?” Jeremiah asked loudly, as we headed to the back where Jed pointed. He must have picked up on Jed’s gossipy ways.

  Out of earshot, I turned to Jeremiah with my hand to my mouth, feeling foolish. “Why, I don’t know! Eunice handled that yesterday.” Why didn’t I ask Eunice before we left? Scatterbrained, indeed!

  “Well, I’m sure I can figure it out, Ruby. Don’t look so embarrassed. Eunice did what she knew how, you did what you knew how. You contributed your own fair share. I know – I was watching. That was a mighty touching poem you started quoting yesterday. Did you write that?”

  “Yes siree-bob!”

  We laughed together!

  And he asked me to recite the whole poem on the way back.

  It was as if he really cared what I was thinking.

  Jeremiah added up the cost easily and a new and stronger booth was standing by the noon hour. The cost on Robert’s account had risen to eight dollars when we included cardboard and paint for more signs. To avoid suspicion I had asked Jed for my own account but he had refused. Somehow I would have to figure out a way to pay for this, and very soon before Robert found out.

  I stood back with one hand on my chin, its elbow propped on the other arm across the stomach, a common stance for me, and looked at the finished product. I glanced over at Jeremiah. He stood in an identical pose. I burst out laughing. He looked at me quizzically and I raised my fingers from my chin and waved them. He did the same. He laughed easily, loved to talk. And I loved to hear him tell his stories of “back home”.

  He told me about how he and his “daddy and us eight boys” built their log cabin and called it Smoky Creek, because the creek that ran behind the place had a mist that rose above it about every morning. “I spent my spare time in the hills, stomping around every inch of it, loving every minute of it. Just like some ol’ mountain lion.

  “I had a girl there, we were sweet on each other, mostly from a distance for a few years, until her Daddy caught us holding hands walking up the hill behind her place. He said he wasn’t going to have any half-breed grandbabies running around his place, so that was the end of that. He whipped her with a switch, and he would have done it worse next time, so she did what her Daddy told her to do.”

  He said he left home shortly after that to look for work. “There’s no way I’m going to work in a coal mine and spit up blood like my Daddy.” He moved down from the mountains into Nashville and got a job at a bicycle factory that he nicknamed ‘Wheel and Deal’ because the owner was a clever man who set up bicycle races on rocky terrain and threw in free britches to attract the girls. Even more cheap than clever, he wouldn’t pay good wages to his workers, particularly the women. “I got paid more than women who had been there for years. It wasn’t fair and I told him so, so he lowered my wages to theirs. He added coal to the flames then, I’ll tell you. So we organized ourselves a little group and did what you did here. We made some signs and paraded back and forth in front of the factory, declaring unfair wages.

  “The women there listened to one strong-willed gal, Dellafay, and if she told them to miss work and hold a sign instead, that’s what they did. At first we didn’t get the attention we wanted – like being shot at from the hill beside the building and one poor girl falling dead. Word got to the town newspaper and they sent a reporter to talk to us and Dellafay told him we demanded a town meeting. He put our story in the paper, and then the mayor agreed to the meeting. The reason he agreed was because his wife insisted. As it turns out, the mayor’s wife had been reading up on Mrs. Catt and women’s rights and this was just the sort of event she was looking for. So, she sent a telegram to Mrs. Catt, asking that she speak at the meeting. Mrs. Catt was so good, she got a standing ovation – well from the womenfolk anyway. Mr. Kinsley was told that if he didn’t increase his wages, no one would buy a solitary bicycle from him. Well, he got scared and agreed to pay more to the women. But I didn’t get to stay to reap what I helped sow.

  “That meeting is how I met Mrs. Catt and that is why I’m here. Mrs. Catt asked that I escort her, first by train to Syracuse, and then by wagon these last twenty miles or so. We’ll take the wagon back to Syracuse tomorrow or the next day, and then head on to New York City by train. I’m a volunteer escort, I guess you could say, but she makes sure I have enough to eat and have a roof over my head. She gets paid little or nothing for this and she and her husband put a lot of their own money and time into traveling all over to be the woman’s mouthpiece. Her husband will meet her in New York City, when he gets to feeling better, and then she will get me a train ticket to go back home.

  “I sure miss my mountains. Now that Daddy and Mommy have passed on, I’ll take over the home-place and farm what I can. I’m a pretty good carver, too, so maybe I can make some money selling my carved birds and such. Instead of Wheel and Deal, I can Carve and Starve!” He laughed pleasantly at himself.

  I found him so easy to work with, me holding boards for him as he nailed, explaining his measurements to me as if I was as smart as he and understood it all. In the heat of the day, I watched wet strands of hair falling from his ponytail; I watched the muscles in his arms expand through his white muslin shirt when he lifted the wood. I memorized his profile. Sometimes his hand would touch my shoulder; his arm would meet my arm. Out of the blue, an image came to me of the two of us building our own house, working side by side. I shook my head in amazement and then in shame.

  He rolled his white shirtsleeves up higher and wiped his brow with a red bandana from his back pocket. “Let us sit for a spell and take a rest. There isn’t a soul in this park now.”

  I hadn’t noticed. I remembered my dinner basket shaded under a tree.

  The only seating was the gazebo’s backbench and he followed me there. I had taken my bonnet off to cool down and now attempted to smooth my hair back as I took the stairs. The sound of my footsteps across the planks of the wood flooring brought back memories and I stood frozen in the middle of its round structure, staring at the front and its lawn beyond, where no one stood today, where everyone stood yesterday.

  “I was so frightened yesterday, I thought surely I would faint,” I said softly.

  “I thought you might, too,” he replied, his voice as soft as mine. “Where did you get the courage to be a speaker?”

  I turned around to where he sat on the backbench, and boldly looked into his eyes, thirsty to drink them in. “From you,” I said.

  Our eyes locked and his eyelids drooped ever so slightly as if to shade the shine coming from behind the blue. I looked away as I placed the basket between us and sat down.

  “Well, this isn’t fancy, but there is plenty for the both of us. Let’s see, I have a jar of water, a jar of my twelve-day pickles, and some chunks of corn bread with apple—”

  “You have corn bread?” he asked, incredulous to this, as if he asked, you have gold? He handled a piece like he had discovered the nuggets himself. “I haven’t had corn bread since I left home two weeks ago! Didn’t know Yankees made it up here.” He paused with the piece at his mouth. “May I?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of breaking your heart with no, now!” I replied with a giggle.

  Did I just sound flirtatious?

  He munched down, gazing dreamily far off. He finished it in seconds. “Good,” he said, rubbing his hands together to wipe off the crumbs. “What’s next?” His hand halted in mid-air over the basket as he spotted my hair.

  I was combing back the hair around my face, the same comb whose teeth h
ad held my roped bun in place. The rope had quickly run its course down my back.

  “Your hair – it’s beautiful. May I touch it?”

  I nodded and tensed.

  I felt his hand touch my back and stroke my hair gently. “My mommy had long hair like that and she would braid it and leave it hanging down. You should do that, too – you’ll look like my people.”

  If it were only that easy, to be his people.

  I resumed combing. “My hair is a bear to work with, though; too long and heavy, especially in this heat it feels like a horse blanket on my back. It desperately needs a cut.”

  “Well, which is it, a bear or a horse? You know us Indians, we’ll just name you Horse Hair, or Bear Head.”

  I smiled coyly, enjoying his attention as I twisted the rope of hair around my hand, and pinned it down at the nape of my neck with my hair comb.

  He watched me closely. “You do that quickly and with such grace, you make it look easy. What is my little horse tail back here, maybe three inches?” He turned his head around for me to see. “One leather tie and it is finished.” He turned back to face me. “That’s men’s work for you, but women amaze me how much they handle every day and still manage to look as delicate as a butterfly and as pretty, too.” He smiled at me, his eyes softening, shining again. “You smell of lavender.”

  I couldn’t turn away, even with a blush coming on. “Yes we are pretty tough cookies.” I wiped a crumb from his mouth with the corner of the dishtowel that had covered the basket.

  I would do no differently with one of my children.

  The City Hall bell tower announced one o’clock in the afternoon. “I must go home soon. I left the children home alone for the first time—”

  His eyes came closer, his lips. “Ruby?” He touched my face and moved his palm along my jaw line, his fingertips awakening my senses. Time suddenly stood still. This structure around me became our island, only eternity surrounded us out there, the only sound was his breathing, the only sight was his eyes, like stars brightly shining. I tilted my head and looked at his lips, then looked into his eyes, watched them as they closed, and his mouth was on mine, feeling as soft as a butterfly landing on a flower. My eyes closed, my lips reached for more, and he brought his mouth fully onto mine, giving me my first lover’s kiss. Was it for only a second, or was it a lifetime, I couldn’t be sure. But in that space where time didn’t exist, I loved him forever.