Torrent Falls

by Jan Watson

  “Listen—” his mind scrambled for purchase—“we can figure this out. You don’t want to harm yourself.”

  “See, I ain’t hitching up with Quick Hopper, and ain’t nobody gonna hit me again.”

  John flinched at her words. A fading bruise on her right cheek bore witness to her suffering.

  Outside his snug cabin, the dark sky hunkered down for the night. Wind whistled down the chimney and fanned the fireplace flames. Faithful woofed in her sleep—chasing rabbits, no doubt. John loved Copper with all his being; there’d be no one else for him. And Copper had loved the desperate girl sitting across from him, loved her like a sister. She would expect him to take care of Remy Riddle, distasteful to him though she was.

  “I’ll give you my name,” he said. “That way your pap won’t have no claim on you. You can live here until your pap sees it’s legal; then you’ll be free to go wherever you want.”

  She laid her head on the table, the first sign of weakness he’d seen. “Why would you do something like that for me?”

  “Because of Copper. She’d expect me to take care of you.”

  “We ain’t never gonna—”

  “No!” He heard his own voice, too forceful. “No. I’ll live across the creek in the Browns’ empty house. Nobody ever has to know our deal but us.”

  The very next day, with Brother Jasper and his wife sworn to secrecy, John had married Remy Riddle. Faithful and the preacher’s wife stood attendance. They had the paper to prove it when Remy’s father came pounding on the door nearly a week later.

  Rastus was a mean little man and as dangerous as a cocked gun; John could see it in his black eyes. He’d thrown a right smart fit before John tossed him off the porch.

  Rastus cursed as he tumbled across the frozen ground. “You’ll live to rue the day you took to interfering with me and my brood.”

  Less than a week later, one early morning when John forded the creek to check on Remy, she was gone . . . along with his plowing mule and the thin gold wedding band that had once belonged to John’s great-grandmother Pelfrey. He reckoned she took the mule to carry her to Torrent Falls and his grandmother’s ring because she wanted to hold on to something pure, something that held meaning. His heart turned over in pity to think a person was so desperate she’d take her own life. Seemed he should have been able to stop her.

  As he had supposed, he found his mule at Torrent Falls, but there was no sign of Remy Riddle. For two days John and Brother Jasper scouted the banks of the creek below the falls, swollen with snowmelt, looking for Remy’s body. Miles downstream, they found her blue mantle and one boot with John’s great-grandmother Pelfrey’s ring knotted in the lace. Figuring she had died in a plunge over the falls, they buried the shawl and the boot at Torrent Falls. John left the ring knotted in the lace. He figured it was the least he could do.

  Copper was in tears before John finished his sad story. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe Remy is dead.”

  “I’m sorry. I feel like it’s all my fault—like I should have saved her.” John rooted in his pocket for a handkerchief and handed it to Copper.

  She mopped her face. “I can remember feeling the same way about Remy. Her life was so hard compared to mine.” Folding the handkerchief into a rectangle, Copper pressed it to her swollen eyes. Guilt stabbed like sharp needles at her heart. She’d hardly thought of Remy in years. “When we were girls, I used to beg her to come and live with my family, but she wouldn’t listen. Poor little Remy.” Fresh tears came, leading to sobs that shook her body. “It seems so unfair, John.”

  “I know,” he said, patting her shoulder. “I know.”

  Faithful stood and stretched, then loped back to the old cabin. She looked back at John as she stood in the open doorway.

  “I guess we’d best get you home,” he said, standing and helping Copper up.

  Copper swayed against him.

  He caught her with one strong arm. “What do we do now?” he asked.

  “I love you all the more for what you did for Remy,” Copper replied. “We have time; don’t you think? Time to let our love grow and see where it leads?”

  Copper’s house never had looked so good when they got back. John wanted to come in, but she shooed him away. She needed time alone. After heating a pot of water, she stripped off her ruined dress and took a pan bath, washing away the scent of hog with rose-scented soap, a gift from her sister-in-law.

  When she’d dressed and tidied her hair with the combs John found, she sipped a cup of chamomile tea to quiet her stomach. It made her nauseous to think of what almost happened to her and what did happen to her friend. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Remy tumbling over the falls. Life was a beautiful gift but so fragile. Here one moment and in heaven the next. And she was sure that Remy was in heaven. They had talked, and she knew Remy believed in her own backward and curious way.

  Sinking to her knees, Copper thanked God for sparing her life today, saving her from that feral hog, letting her live to raise her daughter. And she thanked Him for Remy and the short time she’d had with her. Doubled over, her face to her knees, she cried again for the loss of her friend.

  Out in the barnyard Mazy bawled. Copper got to her feet. It would soon be time to milk, time to gather eggs, time to start some supper before the children came home. She was a mother with a daughter to raise. It was time to get back to work.

  Sunday after church service, there would be dinner on the grounds. Copper was still sore, bruised from her encounter with Old Hitch, but there was lots to do. All day Saturday, Darcy ruled the kitchen. Anyone who ventured as close as the porch was given a job. Copper was churning butter for a pound cake. Dimmert stood at the wash bench peeling a huge green and white cushaw for Darcy to bake with butter and brown sugar. John, who’d come innocently for breakfast, sliced apples for the four pie shells waiting to be filled. Lilly was in the yard, playing dolly with one of the small cushaws from the garden. Its long, crooked neck fit perfectly over her shoulder. Copper smiled to see her pat its back, crooning to her pretty squash baby.

  Finished with his task, John took the apples to the kitchen. Although John had apologized to him, Dimmert flinched as he walked past, drawing his neck into his shoulders. He reminded Copper of the turtle they’d had for supper the night his sister Dance delivered her baby.

  John reached for the hat that rested by the apple-peeling chair. “Dimmert, let’s leave these women to their work. What say we rustle up some fat and tasty rabbit for Miss Darcy to fix for tomorrow?”

  “What about my cushaw?” Darcy asked, eyeing John.

  “I’m thinking your fried rabbit is every bit as good as Ma Hawkins’s fried chicken. Why, if we could get a platter of your rabbit on the table tomorrow, folks will be knocking elbows to get a piece.”

  Darcy’s eyes widened. Ma Hawkins’s fried chicken was legendary.

  Dimmert’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he shot a look from John to Darcy. He had half a cushaw to go.

  “What if you was to help Dimmert?” Darcy countered. “Then I could get that cushaw on the stove.”

  Copper caught John’s slow wink and his smile. He threw up his hands. “I give up, Darcy Whitt.”

  Soon the pale yellow meat of cushaw overflowed the gray granite cooker.

  “Ready, Dimmert?” John said as he started down the steps.

  “Get three,” Darcy called after them, wiping her floured hands on the front of her apron. “No, four. I’ll need four if you really think my fried rabbit is better’n Ma Hawkins’s chicken.”

  “Four it will be,” John answered with a backward wave. “Get the skillet ready.”

  Dimmert walked at least six paces behind John. Once he glanced back at Copper, and she gave him a smile. Poor thing was probably afraid John was going to shoot him out there in the woods. John was making amends the best he could, and it would be good for Dimmert to spend some time with him.

  Finished with the butter, Copper sat Lilly on her hip and carried her to the
cellar. She needed to bring up some canned green beans.

  The cellar had been built years ago by Copper’s daddy’s daddy. He’d dug a big hole in the side of a hill and installed freestanding shelves. The walls were lined with flat rock, and the floor was hard-packed dirt like the cabin in the meadow. The wooden door with heavy crosspieces was cumbersome to open, an attempt to deter thieves. “Some folks would steal the dimes off a dead man’s eyes,” her daddy liked to say.

  She was just about to set Lilly down and tackle the cellar door when something off-kilter caught her eye.

  “Pretty,” Lilly said.

  “For goodness’ sake, what’s this doing out here?” Copper admired a string of quilt pieces threaded together on a length of green ribbon and tacked over the cellar door, small circles of color dancing in the doorway.

  “Mine?” Lilly asked, smacking her fingers against her palms.

  “I think this is Darcy’s.” Copper recognized the scraps of material and the silk ribbon. “We’ll look at it later.”

  “Mine!” Lilly shrieked and drummed her feet against Copper’s legs.

  “Lilly Gray Corbett, behave yourself.” Flustered, she sat her daughter on the stone step behind her and wrestled the door open. When Copper turned around, the pretty trifle was torn loose and flung away. On hands and knees, Lilly started up the stairs.

  One swat to Lilly Gray’s little bottom was all it took to deter her. “Now sit there and mind me!”

  By the time Copper had put two half-gallon jars of green beans in her basket and closed the door, Lilly was in a full-blown tantrum. With the basket on one arm and her daughter hanging like a sack of potatoes from the other, Copper trudged back to the porch.

  On Sunday morning John came around with a buggy to take them to church, all except Dimmert. He was off somewhere on Star. Copper didn’t monitor his comings and goings. As long as he did his work and minded his manners around the house, she figured he was capable of making his own decisions. He would soon be eighteen, after all.

  Between running back and forth from the kitchen to pack all the food she and Darcy had fixed—pound cake, apple pies, green beans, two rounds of corn bread, and four fried rabbits—and dealing with Lilly Gray’s bad mood, Copper thought they’d never leave the yard. They’d have to eat right there in the buggy.

  Finally, everyone was ready and they were off just like a regular family. Copper hoped her riding to church with John didn’t cause tongues to wag more than they already were. Funny how folks liked to mind other people’s business.

  Lilly and Darcy looked like sisters in matching blue floral-print cotton dresses. Darcy’s was trimmed with rickrack at the hem and sleeves, while Lilly’s was smocked across the top. Jean had patiently taught Copper the intricate smocking stitch, and Copper couldn’t wait for her to see it. They wouldn’t make any new frocks for a while, however. Copper didn’t want folks to think she was showing out. It was best to not lord it over anyone if she wanted to make any more friends than Jean, who seemed to be without judgment. Copper admired the older woman tremendously and hoped someday to be as kind as Jean was.

  The novelty of riding in a horse and buggy delighted Lilly Gray, and soon she was sitting on John’s knee and helping hold the reins, her bad mood forgotten for a moment.

  Copper had shed a few tears last night when she’d tucked the sleepy baby in bed and kissed her rosy cheek. How could she have spanked her precious child? Even though it had been just one light swat, Copper felt the sting of recrimination.

  As if she sensed her mother’s guilt, Lilly Gray let go of the reins and hung over the seat back, whining and reaching for Darcy. My, it was hard to be a mother.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” John said.

  “I was just thinking what a sassy child I was and how often Mam had to discipline me.”

  “You, sassy? Imagine that,” John teased. “Your mam was awful hard on you.”

  “Mam’s willow switch taught me some valuable lessons, and I needed every one of them when I lived in the city.”

  “Still,” John said, “my ma raised thirteen young’uns and never raised her voice, much less a stick.”

  Copper laughed. “Your ma is the most patient person God ever put on this earth. If I had thirteen children, I’d go insane.”

  John turned her way, letting the horse find the familiar path to church. His hair fell across his eyes, and he swiped it back with his palm. His eyes were as green as her own, and she couldn’t look away from their directness. “How many kids you reckon on before you’d go crazy?”

  Copper rolled her eyes toward the backseat of the buggy, where Darcy was entertaining Lilly Gray with a fuzzy black and brown woolly worm. “Little pitchers have big ears,” she reminded. And then quietly, for him alone, “I’m not doing so well with one.”

  John took control of the horse with one tug on the reins, and he took control of her with just the touch of his hand on hers. She kept still, not even caring if Darcy saw, for his touch felt so right and she was ever so tired of being alone. Her heart wished for a life with John.

  The church service was a little too long considering what waited outside on sawhorse tables: Ma Hawkins’s fried chicken, Jean Foster’s potato salad, and Mrs. Mullins’s dried-apple pies. Singing all seven verses of “The Sheep of Christ” was tedious. Brother Jasper’s long-winded sermon took its toll on people’s patience. Stomachs growled as men shuffled on the hard wooden pews, older women fanned themselves, and young mothers chastened squirming children.

  They’d harmonized the beautiful, calming words of the doxology, always the end of their service, when Opal Smithers declared she had backslid for the umpteenth time.

  Some folks couldn’t suppress groans as Opal stood and declared this week’s stumbling block: the dandelion wine her husband brewed last spring. “Just a tad,” she whispered. It seemed Opal was determined to enter heaven without a single jot by her name.

  In her seat by a window, Copper noticed a group of boys dart out of the woods and grab food from the table.

  Elder Foster, from his stance in the open doorway, also noticed and ran out. “You boys! You’ll be in the back of the line.”

  That’s all it took. The pews emptied out as women took their serving positions behind the tables and Brother Jasper took his rightful place at the head of the line. Even he couldn’t resist the tempting sights and smells of so much food. His blessing was short.

  Copper stood between Jean Foster and Ma Hawkins, remembering—just yesterday, it seemed—when she would have been with the children, jostling for position behind the elders and deacons. Now she ladled food, filled glasses, and sliced desserts. Darcy came through the line holding Lilly and leading Bubby, who waved a drumstick at Copper.

  Elder Foster punished the mischievous boys, one his own son Dylan, by making them wait until the ladies had finished serving and filled their own plates. Truly, there wasn’t much left but bony chicken backs and gristly necks. Dylan kicked up a fuss until his father raised his hand. Copper saw Jean wrap her piece of chicken in a napkin and set it aside. Copper knew Jean had a soft spot for her oldest son.

  After dinner the children paired off for games of tag and hide-and-seek. The men pitched horseshoes, and the women visited among themselves. It was a great gift to sit with friends in the churchyard on such a beautiful day.

  “Has anyone called on the Wilsons lately?” Copper asked.

  Hezzy’s eyes lit up, but she didn’t open her mouth. Even she wouldn’t gossip in the shadow of the church.

  “My husband went up there yesterday,” Jean replied. “He wanted to remind them about dinner on the grounds.”

  “How is Mrs. Wilson holding up?” Fairy Mae asked.

  “As well as can be expected, I guess,” Jean responded.

  As if nobody knew what she was doing, Hezzy hid behind her apron and poked snuff between her cheek and gum. “Humph,” she snorted.

  Copper determined to make a call on the Wilsons. She shouldn’t have put
it off so long. Lifting Lilly from her lap, she shifted her to the blue-and-white double wedding ring quilt she’d spread under the shade trees. Surrounding her blanket were other mothers whose babies slept beside them. Copper wished she could fly to the top of the highest tree and look down on the quilt of souls God had designed. It must be a perfect picture to His eyes, she thought. All His children stitched together for an afternoon of harmony.

  Hezzy spat into a patch of weeds. Copper looked at her. Where did her mean spirit fit into God’s design? An image of the quilting circle at Jean’s house came to mind. Of course, Hezzy was the crooked stitch. Maybe not so pretty as the precise stitches of a seasoned seamstress, but a crooked stitch held the quilt together just the same.

  At Mammaw Whitt’s cozy cabin, Dance Shelton walked the front yard with her fussy baby. Nothing satisfied him this morning. Nothing satisfied Dance either. Mammaw had tried to get her to go to church and dinner on the grounds, but Dance craved solitude.

  Back and forth Dance trekked, jouncing her baby on her shoulder. She’d dreamed last night of Ace and wakened with a sensation that he was near. If he was coming, she hoped he was smart enough to come while Mammaw and Ezra were gone. She was ready to go home, for she couldn’t stand the way everyone—Mammaw and her brothers and sisters, even the baby—clutched at her here.

  Jay broke out crying. She carried him into the house and put him on his belly in the dresser drawer where he slept. His screams followed her to the porch, and she covered her ears. The cabin up the holler where she’d lived with Ace seemed a tranquil place now. Ace wasn’t so bad, just that one time with the poker. She couldn’t exactly remember what happened with that.

  Dance sat on a step, gathering her skirts and tucking them under her knees. She hankered for a smoke to settle her nerves, but Mammaw didn’t keep tobacco about. A movement in a copse of trees caught her eye, and she strained to see what was coming. . . . Just a deer. He was sure a pretty thing, standing at attention at the edge of the trees, his ears flicking, his antlers like a coatrack on his head.