by Jan Watson
“Stove blacking and sheep tallow,” the girl said as if Copper had asked. “Dimmert polishes them every night.”
The quiet fellow eased over to stand behind the girl. His own bare feet could have used some attention. Taking the water Copper offered, he drank it down in one gulp.
“Thank ye,” the girl answered for both of them. “Darcy Whitt,” she said, releasing the dasher and sticking out her hand.
Copper’s face colored. Why, this girl had better manners than she did. “Pleased to meet you, Darcy.” She shook the proffered hand. “And you too, Dimmert, is it? I’m Mrs. Corbett, but please call me Copper.”
“My brother don’t waste words,” Darcy said as Dimmert stood with downcast eyes.
“Well, now,” Copper said, trying to take charge of her own porch. She wished she had some spectacles to adjust. That’s what Mam would have done, pushed her glasses up on her nose and made everything fall into place with that one motion. “I’ve got leftover cold breakfast pie. Who’d like some?”
Dimmert raised his hand as if he were in school.
“Is it blackberry?” Darcy asked. “I like blackberry, but I’d say no to rhubarb.”
“You’re in luck then. I’ll just dish up a couple of bowls.” The screen door squeaked as Copper opened it. A little grease would fix that, but she loved the sound of a screen door. She slid the pan of cold biscuit from the pie safe, nearly dropping it when she turned back around. Darcy stood at the table pouring whey from the churn into a stoneware bowl. These two were quiet; she’d give them that.
“Where do you want this butter, Miz Copper?” Darcy asked.
Copper put two molds on the table. “These should do it. We’ll make two so you can take one home to your mammaw.”
“We weren’t figuring to go home for a right long spell.” Darcy patted the butter neatly into the copper molds, pressing out air bubbles. “These here sure are pretty.”
“I thank your grandmother for thinking of me,” Copper replied, “but I’m not sure—”
“We won’t be no trouble. Dimm will sleep in the barn, and I’ll be fine right there in front of the fireplace if you can spare a quilt.”
“I’ll have to think about this. I can’t promise you anything right now.”
“Can you think right fast?” Darcy screwed up her freckled face. She was a spunky, brown-haired girl and charming with a ready smile. The opposite of her lanky brother, she was short and stout. “Mammaw cain’t afford to feed us all.”
“How many are there?” Copper asked.
“Well, let’s see. There’s me and Dimmert; that’s two. Then there’s Dance, but she don’t live at home, so that’s minus one. How many’s that?” She counted off her fingers, holding up three and dropping one. “Huh, still two. Dilly’s the baby and next is Dory, Dawn, Delia, and Dean.” Her tongue poked out the corner of her mouth, and she knit her brow as she counted. “I’m leaving someone out.” She tapped her toe as she stared at the floor. “Ezra,” she crowed triumphantly. “I almost left out Ezra. How many’s that? A bunch, I reckon.”
Copper’s head swam. Ezra? Wonder why they hadn’t named him Dezra. “That’s a bunch, all right. I don’t remember Fairy Mae having but one girl living with her.”
“Oh, we ain’t been here long. We’re from Virginia.”
Adding a little water to the beans, Copper gave them a quick stir, then hung her apron on a peg behind the door. “Darcy, will you listen for my baby? She’s sleeping in the next room. I won’t be long.”
Copper needed to think. Truth was she did need help, and there was something about Darcy she liked. She paused to mull it over. Dimmert could be a help for sure. Every farm needed a man’s strength. She wished she could talk to John. She wandered down to the creek. There was Dimmert, a ring of blackberry stain around his mouth, shovel in hand. The trench he was digging had already begun to divert the muddy water from the garden. He held up the shovel, a guilty look across his face.
Copper couldn’t have been more surprised if the tomcat had hitched a team of mice to the plow. “You’ve saved the cucumbers. Thank you.” She could have hugged him. Not only was he smart, but he had the decency to know he should have asked to use the shovel.
It looked as if she had a couple of hired hands. Darcy could have her old room, and with just a little fixing, the tack room in the barn would work for Dimmert. “Thank You, Lord,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. God was good.
The long summer days on Troublesome Creek took on a familiar rhythm. Mornings and evenings Copper milked her cow. Mazy was not charming like her favorite, Molly, had been. She was flighty. Copper had to watch closely to keep her from kicking over the bucket, and sometimes Mazy would smack Copper right in the face with the end of her long tail. But she produced beautiful, creamy milk, and Copper never had to go hunting for her. The bell that hung from her neck tolled like clockwork every evening as she made her way down the mountain right to the stable door. Copper liked that in a cow.
Dimmert had fashioned a tall-sided wagon, somewhat like a crib on wheels, to keep Lilly out of trouble while Copper milked or mucked out the stable. As soon as the milking was finished, the milk strained, and the buckets washed, she and Lilly Gray would go in for breakfast.
What a treat. Darcy was as good a cook as any grown woman, and Copper was more than happy to turn over that chore. On this particular morning thick-sliced bacon and eggs over easy, as well as biscuits, gravy, and fried apples, waited on the table.
Copper, Lilly, and Darcy had just sat down and finished grace when John poked his head in the door. “Smells mighty good,” he said.
“Don’t stand on ceremony. Come on in.” Copper tucked her bare feet under her long skirt. “Your place is set as usual.”
“Morning, girls,” John said, sliding his tall frame into a chair and hefting a white ironstone mug. “Darcy Whitt, you make the best coffee on Troublesome Creek. Sure keeps me coming back.”
Deep dimples played hide-and-seek in Darcy’s cheeks. “Thank you, Mr. John.”
Copper wondered if it was indeed the coffee he kept coming around for. Truly, she hoped so, but her heart told her differently. She never should have opened her home to him so readily. She should have kept her distance, protected herself, but he was a man alone and who could help but feed him? They had once been as close as kin, after all.
“Cat got your tongue, Copper?” John interrupted her reverie.
“Goodness, how my mind wanders.” Copper pushed back her chair. “Do you want some more eggs, John?”
“Couldn’t eat another bite, but I’ll take a biscuit and bacon with me if you girls don’t mind. It will make a fine noon meal.”
“Please help yourself.” Copper opened the screen door. “Dimmert, do you want some more breakfast?” she asked, but the porch was empty, Dimmert’s plate and mug stacked neatly on the wash bench right beside the full water bucket. He never let the bucket get empty. The door slapped closed behind her. “Where are you working today, John?”
“I heard tell of a job felling timber over on Lost Creek. I thought I’d mosey on over that way.”
Copper couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s a sight I’d like to see, you going slow enough to mosey. Sounds like some kind of dance.”
His green eyes met hers across the table. “You think I can’t dance? Try me. There’ll be fiddle playing and dancing at the schoolhouse come Saturday night. Think you might go along?”
She could feel the hateful blush creep up her chest and spread across her face: the curse of a red-haired woman. “Oh no, I don’t think so.” Quickly she busied herself scraping the plates, dumping the scraps in the slop bucket for the shoats Dimmert had bartered for last week. Lilly loved the piglets, and they were cute. Round pink snouts and tails curved like springs. She’d have to watch, though, when they got bigger. A hog could kill a baby as quick as anything.
“Copper?” she heard as if from a great distance. “You all right?” John stood close, too close. He touched he
r shoulder.
She jerked away. “Of course I’m all right. I’m just cleaning up.”
“I’m sorry,” John said, stepping back. “But you seemed so far away.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me!” Sorry for the hurt in his eyes at her outburst, she reached for the biscuit and the bacon, wrapping two helpings in waxed paper, an unspoken apology. “I’m fine. Don’t fuss over me.”
“Sorry, Pest. . . . Oops, sorry again. Didn’t mean to call you that.” He put on his wide-brimmed felt hat and made for the door. “I’d better get out of here while we’re still speaking.”
Standing at the screen door, Copper watched him stride across the yard. Tears shimmered in her eyes. Pest. He called her the nickname he’d given her years ago and rightly so. She’d been his shadow on treks up hollers and through the creek, even to the top of the highest mountain and as far away as Quicksand. She leaned her forehead against the door. He’d never once complained. Just teased her sometimes. Those were good times.
Careful, her mind screamed, but her heart yearned for the easy relationship she’d once shared with John. Best get busy. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” Mam always says.
“Can I take Lilly Gray to the garden, Miz Copper?” Darcy asked. “We want to check on the tomatoes and hoe a few weeds from the corn.”
“Of course. Just put her bonnet on and take the wagon. I don’t want her down on the ground. Remember that copperhead we saw last week?”
Darcy’s eyes grew as round as the biscuits she’d made for breakfast. “Yes, ma’am. He was a big one. Too bad you missed him with the hoe!”
“Just be careful. You really should wear your shoes.”
“I’ll be watchful, but I never could stand to work a garden in shoes. Takes the fun out of it.”
The kitchen was lonesome without Lilly and Darcy. Copper poured boiling water in the dishpan and then cooled it with a bit of cold. She’d rather be in the garden herself, but she couldn’t always leave Darcy with the tedious inside duties. With a memory of their own, her hands worked at their task. Soon plates, cups, knives, and forks stood drying in the wooden rack.
Holding the door open with her hip, she sluiced the dishwater over the porch floor. Ping! What was that? A glint of gold met her eye. Her wedding ring rolled right off the porch and disappeared in the grass. On hands and knees she found it and slid it back where it belonged, where Simon had placed it three years before, where it was never to be removed. “Until death do us part,” she heard him say.
“’Til death and beyond,” she said as she grabbed the broom and scrubbed the floor. Ping! She heard it again. This time the ring fell through a knothole. “For pity’s sake!” She’d have to crawl under the porch. Hopefully the copperhead hadn’t made himself at home there.
Most cabins up and down Troublesome Creek sat on short stilts or rocks, making a crawl space underneath them, and Copper’s was no exception. It was a fine space for hound dogs to lay on hot days, and it helped keep the dank out during rainy seasons. Lying on her belly, Copper peered into the gloom. There it was, shining brightly in the light from the knothole. She dragged it out using the broom handle.
Back in the house, she sat on the side of her bed. The bed she had brought all the way from Lexington, the bed she’d shared with Simon. She cried and cried until she hiccuped, then cried some more. The ring wouldn’t stay on. Her once-plump finger wouldn’t hold it. Finally spent, she lay back on the bolster pillow and remembered the day he died. Remembered and wished she had died too.
One moment’s carelessness took her husband’s life. It had been a beautiful fall day when Simon set off to visit a patient way out in the country. Copper remembered as if it were yesterday how she said good-bye to him. Sunlight played across his shoulders as bright as butter on a biscuit. He cupped her chin, and his parting kiss was gentle and sweet. Then he set off for the livery station to get a horse, for his was being shod. She remembered how glad she was that day, how full of joy.
Simon was found by the side of the road, battered and alone save for the old blacksnake that lay dead beside him. The snake they surmised that had spooked the unfamiliar horse. It took Simon more than a week to die. Days of hope and nights of fear.
Why couldn’t all that stay behind where she’d hoped to leave it? Why did it have to follow her across the rolling hills, over the mountains, and clear up the holler to Troublesome? Before she’d left Lexington, she’d gone to their special place and retrieved two willow saplings. One she’d carried all the way to Troublesome Creek, and the other she’d asked Reuben to plant at Simon’s grave. Maybe she could bury some of her sorrow when she planted the willow by the creek.
Copper heard the creak of Lilly’s wagon from the yard. How long had she lain here? Standing, she unbuttoned her shirtwaist, then looped a black silk ribbon through the ring of gold and pinned it to the front of her camisole right over her heart.
John had ridden his horse at a fast clip over to Lost Creek. The job was his if he wanted it, and he did. Always frugal, John had saved money from every job he’d ever had, from his young days grubbing sassafras root for old man Smithers to the good pay from his days scrubbing decks on a merchant ship.
Now it looked as if it might all be worth it. Copper was home. She was all he ever wanted.
Saturday night, there stood John on Copper’s front porch, holding his hat, his hair slicked behind his ears. A smile spread across his expectant face when she answered the door.
“These are for you,” he said, withdrawing a bunch of wildflowers from behind his back and handing them to Copper.
“Come in.” Copper opened the screen door. “We missed you at supper.”
“Figured I’d eat at the schoolhouse. They’ll have a big spread.”
After setting the flowers on the table, Copper fussed about in the pantry, looking for a container to put them in. How dare he knock at her door on his way to somewhere else. A flush of anger heated her cheeks. Did he think a bunch of flowers would sway her mind about the dance? Did he think he could so easily take her for granted? She spied an empty jar on the back of the top shelf and stretched to reach it. A can of hominy went crashing to the floor followed by assorted other jars. What a mess!
Instantly, John was beside her, swooping her off the floor and depositing her in a kitchen chair. “Darcy,” he said to the girl when she walked in, “fetch a pan of water.”
“Surely,” Darcy said and headed to the pantry.
“Forevermore, John.” Copper drew herself up straight in the chair and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “What are you going on about?”
“You’ve cut yourself.” He knelt before her, examining her bare feet. “There’s blood everywhere.”
Indeed, a river of red snaked out across the floor from behind the curtained pantry. She felt as if she might swoon. “Is it bad?” she asked, afraid to look. Funny, she never had a problem looking at anybody else’s wounds.
He sat back on his heels. “No cuts on your feet. Raise your skirts.”
“John Pelfrey! I will not.”
“Don’t be foolish. I’ve got to see where all that blood came from.”
“Darcy can help me. You wait on the porch.”
His hand lingered on her knee, but he got to his feet. “Darcy, can you come help Mrs. Corbett?”
“Just let me clean up this mess of beets first,” Darcy said from the pantry. “They’ll stain the floor sure as anything.”
Copper tried to hold back her laughter, but John started first and released hers from her chest. Before she could protest, he grabbed a towel and dried her beet-stained feet. Every time they quieted, one would look at the other and start up again.
“We’ll wake Lilly,” Copper said finally.
“I reckon I can’t take you to the dance like this.”
“I wasn’t going anyway, John.”
Darcy watched, holding a pan of broken glass mixed with hominy and beets. “You could go, Miz Copper. I’ll watch Lilly G
ray.”
“You know what, Darcy,” John said, “dances are for young folks. Why don’t you and Dimmert go on over to the schoolhouse? Me and Mrs. Corbett are going to set on the porch a spell.”
“You mean it?” Darcy whipped her apron off and grabbed her shoes.
“Wait.” Copper chose a wild rose from John’s bouquet and put it in Darcy’s hair. “There. You look pretty.”
Darcy pounded across the porch. “Dimmert, get the horse. We’re heading to a party.”
Copper couldn’t remember when she’d last felt such contentment. Her porch rocker creaked a welcome rhythm while Lilly Gray lay sleeping in her arms. She watched as the edge of the forest disappeared and dusky dark crept across the yard.
“There,” John said. “There’s one.”
“Where?” she answered. “I don’t see . . .”
“Right over there by the well house. There’s another.”
“Oh yes. I see now.”
As if on cue, hundreds of fireflies rose from the grass, signaling with tiny flashes of brilliance until the whole yard was awash in fairy light.
“I wish Miss Lilly here were awake to see,” Copper said.
“Wake her.”
“She’d be cranky as an old bear. Lilly doesn’t like her sleep disturbed.”
John stood and leaned over them. “Would you like me to put her to bed?”
“No, she’s fine. It feels good to hold her.” Copper’s chair picked up speed with the discomfort John’s nearness caused. She needed the barrier her sleeping daughter provided.
He sat back down. His long legs stretched to the edge of the porch. The other rocker barely contained his wide shoulders. Against all reason, she wished he’d slide his chair closer to hers.
“You don’t have to sit here with us,” she said. “You must have things to do.”
John didn’t move his head, just kept it straight as if looking out to the yard filled with lightning bugs, but still she felt his eyes on her. She knew his sideways stare. “There’s nothing in the world I’d rather be doing.”
