Carry the World

by Susan Fanetti

  But it was Jonah everybody looked sideways at. Jonah they’d yanked up by the arms and shoved out of the room, to sit virtually alone while all the people of Barker’s Creek fussed over their own. Jonah the doctor had made wait until he’d seen to Chancey first.

  Ada was with him, though. She’d even left her mother to be with him here.

  “Where’re the children?” he asked her.

  “With my momma. Bluebird was frightened. I think Elijah was, a little, as well. But they’re alright.”

  He’d heard Bluebird calling for him while he was fighting Chancey off. Heard the fear in her wail. Jonah finished closing what buttons he could and raked his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  Ada was there, curling her pretty, pale hand over his arm. “Jonah, it’s not your fault. Chancey did this. The children aren’t afraid of you, they’re afraid you’ve been hurt. They’ll be glad to see you’re not.”

  Doc Dollens chuckled. “I don’t think our Chancey knew what he was lettin’ himself in for.” He closed his medical bag and squinted up at Jonah. “He says he punched you ‘cause you were talkin’ outta turn ‘bout Ada.”

  “Jonah wouldn’t!” Ada exclaimed.

  “No, sir.” Jonah didn’t want to elaborate. He didn’t want Ada to know anybody was talking about her in any way but seemly, but now the thought was out there, among all Ada’s people. And he was a man in her house. He’d been nursed by her when his injury was fresh. He might be from the backwoods, but he understood how gossip worked. His stomach burned at the thought of what people might be saying about her. About them.

  The doctor’s squint deepened. “You’re a stony one, Jonah Walker. But somehow, I think there’s more to it. If I had to put the pieces of all this together on my own, I’d add in what I know ‘bout how Chancey feels for our Ada, and how he feels ‘bout you bein’ ‘round her. And I’d think on the witnesses. Joe Guthrie looked mighty uncomfortable when that accusation came outta Chancey’s mouth. And Paddy—well, Paddy’s who he is. If Chancey said jump, Paddy’d jump. Into a snake pit, even. Without a second thought.”

  “I didn’t say nothin’ ‘bout Ada,” Jonah asserted, but stopped short, again, of saying what he’d heard. It wasn’t Chancey who’d said it, anyway. And yet the implication landed on that boy. And he’d been the one to act out.

  Ada’s hand slipped down his arm and grasped his hand. “Of course you didn’t. Doc, I don’t want this known, but ... Chancey’s been ... unseemly with me before.”

  “What?” Jonah snatched his hand from hers and changed the grip so he had hold of her. “When?”

  She shook her head and stayed focused on the doctor. “The night we had that accident, when he gave me a ride to town and back. He was drunk. I was driving. He ...” Again, she shook her head. “I didn’t let him get anywhere, but it’s why we crashed.”

  Jonah’s grip must have tightened; Ada set her other hand over his and muttered, “Jonah, please.” He loosened his hold.

  “I tell you this not to shame Chancey,” she went on, still talking to the doctor, “but I don’t want what he’s saying out there to become the truth as people believe it. Is there anything you can do? Sheriff Guthrie was there. Can’t he get him to stop saying that? There’s got to be some story that doesn’t drag Jonah’s—or my—name through the mud. Chancey owes me that.”

  “I’ll talk to Joe, but it might be too late. Ada, you’ve got a man in your house who’s no relation. I know it’s chaste, and they prob’ly do, too, in their hearts, but they don’t care. People talk. They were already talkin’. It’s what they do. Tryin’ to stop that’d be like tryin’ to catch a cloud.”

  Dejected, Ada dropped to the pew. “Can’t I just have this day? I just want to say goodbye to Daddy.”

  Jonah still had her hand. He squeezed it—gently, this time. “C’mon, darlin’. I’ll walk back out to the churchyard with you. Leave all them to they whisperin’.”

  The grave had only just been covered. There was no headstone yet, or even a cross. Only a plain stake at the head of the grave, with black letters Jonah assumed made up Ada’s father’s name.

  All the mourners were still in the church, or had headed home following Jonah’s scandalous dust-up with the boy. Elijah and Bluebird were inside as well, in the surprisingly attentive care of their ‘Grammy Bess.’

  Grammy Bess. Jonah’s children had been trying to make Ada their own from the moment she’d first crossed their threshold. For not nearly as long, but for quite a while, Jonah had been trying to work out how that might come to pass.

  He stood here, beside Ada, holding her hand. She stared at the mound of dark earth, without words, without tears, as if she were waiting for something to happen.

  “D’you want to be alone?” he asked, after they’d stood silent for some time.

  Her hand tightened in his. “No.”

  There likely was no worse time to say the words clamoring on Jonah’s tongue. Standing at her father’s grave, after tearing up his wake and causing a scandal through her whole town. But he didn’t know how to hold them back.

  “Ada.”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you marry me?”

  She flinched, and her hand went stiff inside his grasp. “What?”

  He turned his head. She was staring at him, her eyes round and her jaw slack. Before his natural tendency to silence took him over again, he rushed into his reasoning. “I was thinkin’—couldn’t you ride from the top down instead? The way’d be easier most days, since you’d already be on the mountain. I know we ain’t got the ‘lectric or one of them fancy toilets, and the house ain’t so nice, but mainly that’s ‘cuz I ain’t got no talent for keepin’ it, and Bluebird’s too young yet. It’s a big house, plenty of room. We’d bring your momma up, and she won’t never be ‘lone. Maybe they’s some folk in Red Fern she’d like to visit, time to time. You don’t gotta be ‘lone like I been. Isolated, like you say. It don’t gotta be that way. They’s people up there, if you want ‘em.”

  “Jonah ...”

  “I know this is your world down here, and I been tryin’ to figure if I could stay in it, but I jus’ can’t. I don’t understand nothin’ ‘bout things down here, and ever’body looks sidelong at me. You fit better on the mountain than I do down here. And if you was with us, you could give the children some schoolin’. They love you like you was they momma, Ada, and I guess that’s what you is, in all the ways that count.”

  “Jonah!” Her tone was sharp, and he closed his mouth and set his gut like he expected a punch. This one would hurt a sight more than Chancey’s sucker jab.

  Ada turned to face him fully, and picked up his other hand. There were tears in her eyes. He didn’t know if they were for her father or for him, but in either case, she looked sad, and he wasn’t ready for what she’d say.

  “I’m sorry, Ada. I should’a kept my mouth shut. I know—”

  “Do you love me?” she cut in.

  “Huh?”

  “Do you love me, Jonah? More than once, you’ve told me the children love me. But you’ve never said how you feel. I love Elijah and Bluebird, too, but I don’t want to marry them.”

  “Don’t you know?” He was stunned. She had to know.

  “You’ve never said the words.”

  He slid his hands from hers and cupped her face. “I love you, Ada. I loved you before I knew it.”

  “I love you, Jonah.”

  He’d known she did, but the words were still beautiful. “Would you marry me?”

  The tears flooded her eyes and dropped to her cheeks. They wet his hands. “I love you,” she whispered again, each word breaking. But that wasn’t an answer.

  “Ada?”

  Her hands hooked over his wrists and held tight. “I don’t know. I can’t think. I’m standing here at Daddy’s grave, and everybody’s at the windows watching us, and I don’t know what my life is now! I don’t know if I still have my job, or if I can even do it anymore. I don’t k
now how I’m gonna take care of Momma, or how to keep up the farm, or what to do about anythin’ if I say yes to you. I don’t know if Momma can live on the mountain anymore. She’s past seventy and blind. Soon, she’ll be frail. I don’t know, Jonah. I know what I want, but I don’t know what I can have, or what I should do.”

  As she’d spoken, her flow of tears had become sobs. Jonah looked over his shoulder and saw that, indeed, the windows of the church meeting room were full of gawking faces. Refusing to let those people into this moment, he turned back to Ada. “What do you want, darlin’?”

  “You!” she cried. “I want you!”

  It wasn’t an answer to the real question, and he didn’t have a better solution to her worries than the one he’d just babbled at her. But just then, he didn’t care. He didn’t care that there was a church full of people watching, feasting their gossip-mongering eyes. He didn’t care that her murdered father lay at rest beneath their feet. He didn’t even care just then what her answer would be. He bent down and kissed her.

  With a gasp, she went calm, and opened her mouth. Ah, she was so sweet. Every sweep of her tongue with his, every waft of her breath over his cheek, every fragile sigh that trembled against his lips sent a new burst of life through Jonah’s grief-hardened veins. He’d been existing in the shadows for years, barely holding enough form to be a father to his children, wanting nothing at all for himself. All those years that he’d seen Grace every day, he hadn’t been much more alive than she.

  This woman, Ada, was bringing him back to the world. Making him remember what it was to live. Making him want it.

  Her hands let go of his wrists, and her arms came up, insinuating themselves between his so she could wrap around his neck. He dropped his hands and circled his arms around her waist, and she rose onto her toes.

  She arched in his arms, pressed her body firmly against his, felt what she did to him, and twisted her hips against him.

  They both froze then. For Jonah’s part, he was nearly unmanned. With just that slight twist, accompanied by that soft pressure, he was close to losing control of himself. He pulled back just enough to put a breath’s space between their lips, and opened his eyes. She was staring up at him, her eyes full of shock, and maybe shame.

  He didn’t want to see that kind of look in her, not ever, and his concern returned to him a measure of control. With a soft kiss, he set her fully on the ground and stood back. “You are the best of women, Ada Donovan. I love you. I will take care of you and your momma, too. Will you come up the mountain and be my wife?”

  She was pale, but her tears had been shed. She slid her hands from around his neck and let them rest over his heart. “I love you, Jonah Walker. I know what I want, but I need to think of what’s best for my mother, too. May I have some time to think?”

  That wasn’t a no. It was exactly the answer Ada should give.

  “’Course you can.”

  That night, Jonah lay alone in Ada’s bed. He was well enough to give up the bed to her again, to sleep on the sitting-room floor with his children, but she wouldn’t hear of it. In her mind, he was still convalescing, for at least the week Doc Dollens had set as a minimum. Truth be told, he still had stitches in, and he wasn’t yet full strength. That fight today had taken a lot out of him and left him scattered and weary for the rest of the day. He reckoned she was more right than wrong, so he’d given up the argument. Ada slept, as she had been since he’d been here, with her mother, on her father’s side of that bed.

  The rest of the day had been quiet, with a strange air about it. One of the neighbors drove them all home in his truck, with Jonah and the children jostling in the bed, and then they were all left alone.

  No one said it out loud, but Jonah thought that kiss in the churchyard, more than the fight with Chancey, had been the spark the scandal about them had needed. He’d kissed her like that, she’d kissed him like that, in full view of them all, beside her father’s grave, and then he’d come back to be the only man in this house. After beating one of their neighbors unconscious. He’d made the rumors true.

  He had to get back up the mountain. Back to his home and the world he knew. He hoped to go up with Ada and Bess, but if she stayed, that was all the more reason for him to go. Once he and his children were gone, these people could forget about him and remember the Ada they knew.

  She hadn’t given him her answer yet. He’d caught her staring at him several times, as if lost in thought, but they’d barely spoken a handful of words to each other the rest of the day, and none of them private. He’d made his case—she didn’t have to quit her job, he and the children could look after her mother, he and the children loved her and needed her. Now, she would have to decide what was right, and he would abide her decision. She understood better than he ever could what it was to live fully and live right.

  Except for the sounds of a night summer rolling through the open windows, the house was quiet. Except for the light of a waning moon, the house was dark. Jonah was exhausted and sore, in both body and spirit, but he couldn’t coax his mind to rest. Thoughts of his love for Grace, and for Ada, and his shadowy life between them, filled his mind with love and longing and regret.

  The light cotton curtains wafted in a scant breeze, frogs chirruped at a pond somewhere in the distance, crickets rubbed their legs together, and whippoorwills sang their chant. At night, this world was as close to his as it ever got.

  A soft knock at the door pulled him from his half-dozed musings, and he lifted his head from Ada’s pillow as the door creaked open. The hallway was dark, but the moonlight slanted enough through the window and its fluttering cotton curtains that he saw Ada standing on the threshold. Her hair was loose and flowing over her shoulders. She wore a pale nightdress, voluminous but with slender straps over her shoulders that showed her full arms. Her collarbones made soft shadows at the base of her throat.

  “Ada?”

  She stepped into the room and closed the door. Without that pathway, the breeze settled, and the curtains lay over the window again, dimming the light. Now she was a faint white form at the foot of her bed. For a moment, his weary mind slipped, and she was Grace. He blinked, and she was Ada again.

  He sat up, reclaiming full consciousness with the twinge through his belly, to make her stay that way. Grace was his past, and he would love his memory of her until the day he died. But Ada was his present, and, he hoped, his future. She was here, warm and alive. He wanted Ada. Only Ada.

  “Ada. What is it, darlin’?”

  “How do you love me, Jonah?”

  “What?”

  She curled her hands around the top bar of the iron footboard. “How do you love me? As a mother for your children? As a keeper for your home? As a teacher? How?”

  For once in his life, the words came easily. “All those things, and more. I love you as a woman. A sweet, kind, beautiful woman who is better than me in ever’ way. A woman I think of ever’ moment I’m awake, and most when I’m asleep. I love your smell, and your taste. I love the sound of your voice and your laugh. I love the sight of you comin’ to me, and my heart breaks to see you goin’ away.” Jonah held out his hand, and Ada eased around to the side of the bed and set hers in it. “I love the weight of your hand in mine. I love the way you feel in my arms. I love you, Ada. In ever’ way a man can love a woman.” He kissed her fingers. “What’s vexin’ you, darlin’?”

  She didn’t answer. She stood beside the bed, her eyes on their joined hands. There was something new between them, something so intense the crackle and spark nearly had sound and light. Jonah felt himself harden, and shifted so it wouldn’t be apparent, in case the shadows of night weren’t enough camouflage. He’d been long without a woman, and nearly as long without the impulse to take himself in hand. Lately, around Ada, he was like a newly quickened boy, going hard at the slightest provocation.

  But this moment was no slight provocation.

  She took her hand from his. Before Jonah had time to feel disappointed to lose
that touch, she’d gathered the soft folds of her nightdress and pulled it up over her head. She let it drop from her fingers, and her hair settled over her bare chest, brushing her small, pert breasts, their pearly pink nipples that he’d tried so hard not to see over the weeks of her recovery and that had tormented him in dreams. Between her legs, a small, soft nest of burnished gold that had tortured him as well.

  Bare. She was naked, not even a pair of drawers. Her body was so beautiful, pale and thin, but strong. Strong enough to hold her powerful will. Need cramped Jonah’s body with such force he moaned.

  “Ada ...”

  “Are you strong enough? Healed enough?”

  Never in his life had anything mattered less than the wound in his side. “Yes. But Ada, do you got an answer for me?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Those words stabbed at him. They sounded like a no. “I won’t take you, ‘less you’re mine.”

  “You’re not taking me at all, Jonah Walker. I’m giving myself to you.”

  “As wife?”

  For a moment, she was quiet, regarding him in the filtered moonlight. Then she nodded, and Jonah’s heart stopped. “As wife. I love you.”

  The bed was narrow, too narrow for two, unless those two kept very close. Jonah meant to keep her as close as he could, from this day forth. He scooted to the side and turned the summer quilt down. Ada slid into her own bed like a guest.

  As he rolled to hover over her, he asked, “You don’t want to wait? Until after the words are said?”

  Her hand came up and brushed his cheek. He hadn’t shaved since he’d come down the mountain, and his beard was nearly winter-full now. “We’ve said the important words, haven’t we?”

  Indeed they had. Jonah slid his hand over her satin cheek, threaded his fingers into her whisper-soft hair. Just then, a change in the breeze pulled the curtains through the open widow, and a bright wash of dappled moonlight slanted over the bed. Her eyes gleamed up at him, deep pools of fresh water. They fluttered closed as he came down and put his mouth on hers.