Sweetwater Run

by Jan Watson

  Darcy’s mind raced with possible ways to answer that wouldn’t be a lie. “Why do you care anyway?” was what came out.

  Dance gave her a dismissive look. “Where’s Ace?”

  “Right here,” he said, filling the doorway. “You young’uns ready to go home?”

  The children flocked to their father.

  Dance set her coffee cup back on the saucer and stood with the baby. “You going our way, Cara?”

  Cara trailed the Sheltons. “Will you be all right, Darcy?” she whispered at the door.

  “Yes, I’ve just got to pull myself together before Mammaw wakes up.” Darcy gave her sister-in-law a quick hug. “Thank you, Cara. Thanks for being so understanding.”

  “Well,” Cara said with a quick smile, “I know all about pining after a man.”

  When the house was quiet again, Darcy set about washing Dance’s coffee cup and righting the things the children had left scattered across the room. One of the little ones had been in Darcy’s sewing kit, and now her soap marker was broken, tape measure unfurled, and the apple-shaped pincushion was missing. Darcy wondered, not for the first time, what was wrong with Dance. What kind of mother let her children meddle in another’s belongings? What kind of woman didn’t wash her own coffee cup?

  Darcy fretted while she curled the tape measure around her finger. Why couldn’t her sister be a sister? That was all she’d ever wanted from Dance. She worked herself up into a righteous wrath until she remembered a sermon sometime back where Brother Jasper spoke of Peter asking Jesus if he should forgive his brother seven times. She supposed she hadn’t come close to forgiving her sister seven times, much less seventy times seven.

  Darcy put the measure back in the lidded basket where it belonged. She reckoned she’d best not be pointing fingers today. Why did she go behind closed doors with Henry? Why did kissing him today seem so wrong when kissing him last Sunday out among the trees felt so right? Was it because she’d been caught today? Regardless, just thinking of Henry’s kisses made her head swim.

  On hands and knees, Darcy spied the pincushion behind the corner cupboard. Stretching, she dragged it out and dusted it off. She might as well clean under there while she was of a mind to. After Darcy fetched the broom from the porch, she covered its business end with an old pillowcase. Back on the floor, she jabbed the broom back and forth until there was not a speck of dust remaining under the cupboard. What a senseless plight women had, cleaning dirt from dawn to dusk and then being buried under six feet of it.

  Darcy sat back on her heels and looked around. What else might she clean under now that she had the broom in hand? Crawling across the floor like her nephew Cleve might do, she set about poking the broom under the cookstove. One thrust, then two, and she was sorry she had started. The pillowcase was brown with grime, and a streak of grease besmirched the front of her pretty blue dress. If she didn’t get the grease out quickly, it would be ruined.

  Standing at the ironing board in her corset, muslin petticoat, and knee-length drawers, Darcy rubbed renovation soap into the dress skirt and brushed it off with a boar’s hair brush. Darcy learned to make the special soap while apprenticed to Mme Pacquin at her House of Couture in Lexington. Mme Pacquin insisted the care of clothing was as important as its construction. Darcy could still see her teacher at the blackboard, ticking off the list of ingredients for the soap with a long, pointed stick: alcohol, beef’s gall, borax, turpentine . . .

  “Darcy Mae?” Mammaw called from the bedroom. “Honey, can you come here?”

  One more brush and the greasy stain faded away. With a flip of the dress, Darcy laid it across the board. She wished she had some renovation soap for the stain of sin that soiled her conscience before she had to face her grandmother.

  Finally the Hansons were done wrangling over Orban’s modest estate. Now Henry was out behind the office, repairing a fence for his latest acquisitions, Lester and Daisy. Henry was pleased with the dogs Orban’s nephew brought back in payment, though the male was obviously past his prime. Daisy leaped around the yard while Lester circled a spot of sunshine, winding down for a little nap.

  “Daisy! Down!” he commanded when she knocked against his knees in her exuberance.

  The dog slunk off, disappearing through the open gate into the shade of the stable at the back of the lot.

  Henry heard his horse nicker a welcoming sound. That’s good, he thought.

  The day heated up as he pounded nails and dug new post holes. He pulled off his jacket and his stiffly starched boiled shirt and hung them neatly over a rail. He shattered a rock with a pickax, then flung the pieces out of the way. He could feel the muscles of his arms bunch against the short sleeves of his knit undershirt. It felt good to be outdoors working off the frustrations of the day. He’d lost his head this morning with Darcy. Falling in love was not an option. She was just another girl, only a cog in the wheel of his plans; he needed to remember that.

  As he stood back to admire his progress, he wiped stinging sweat from his eyes with the tail of his undershirt. Daisy tried again to make his acquaintance. This time she stuck her long snout into the curve of his palm. He laughed as he rubbed her silky ears and ran his hand along the ridge of her bony back. Daisy was one fine animal, and Lester would do to teach her to hunt.

  Henry had never owned a dog before. But when he was around seven years old, a beagle pup started hanging around the yard. Henry took to saving half his own meager supper to sneak out to the dog. That worked for about a week. Every night the little creature lapped beans and corn bread soaked in bacon grease from Henry’s hand. Then Henry’s mother caught on and cut Henry’s portions. “We cain’t be feeding no mangy mutts,” she said when Henry cried.

  He’d tried. He really had. For three nights he fed the beagle instead of himself, and then his own belly let him down. He never knew what happened to that pup.

  It was almost dark when he finished the fence. It was past time for supper. He slipped on his shirt and his jacket and started off for the boardinghouse where he took his meals. He could see the top of Daisy’s head as she jumped behind the fence. Turning back, he opened the gate and soothed the dog. “I’ll bring you something tasty,” he told her and Lester. “You’ll eat well. I promise you that.”

  CHAPTER 13

  CARA SHRUGGED OUT of Dimm’s old work shirt, then laid it aside. The sun was heating things up nicely this early Tuesday morning, and she was bent on cleaning the place, starting with the corncrib. She picked through ears of corn in the wood-sided structure and tossed any molded pieces out the door. Soon there was a small pile out there. She hadn’t been a very good steward of last fall’s hard work or else she wouldn’t have let the corn spoil. Dimmert kept it turned and aired out. She should have done the same.

  A smile tugged at her lips when she remembered picking the heavy yellow ears of corn with Dimm. “Good as gold,” he’d remarked, running his thumbnail between rows of perfect kernels. As she remembered it, everything about that fall day had been perfect—the air crisp with the promise of winter to come, leaves swirling in jeweled colors, corn shucks rustling when they brushed by.

  Once the corn was harvested, Dimm cut the stalks and left them on the ground to cure. After the forage had wilted and partially dried, it was Cara’s job to bundle and bind the tops with supple osier twigs. The loosely packed shocks looked like rows of tepees when they were set upright. She’d really liked working beside her husband in the fields, sharing the harvest. Seemed like all her resolve had wilted like fodder shocks when he went away.

  There. Most of the corn was still good. She chose a couple of ears for Pancake and latched the door. Perhaps she’d hunt for a blacksnake to keep in there as her father had done. “Yeah, sure,” she said. Chuckling at her own foolishness, she turned to find a chicken pecking at the moldy corn. She popped some golden kernels from a good ear with her thumb. The hen scurried over, scratching around Cara’s feet and clucking at her lucky find. Cara watched as a dozen more chickens emerge
d from a wooded hillside. A strutting red rooster followed, claiming the barnyard as if he’d never left.

  “I guess you’ve got no news of Dimmert then?” she asked while shelling more corn with the heel of her hand. They sure looked like her lost hens. As she gathered the moldy ears, she thought of the day’s work ahead. She’d burn the bad corn, clean out the chicken house, plant some seed corn now that she had animals to feed. Why she might go to the Sheltons’ and retrieve the cow Ace was milking for her. With a cow and chickens she’d have cream and eggs to sell in town, and that meant money in her pockets. She wouldn’t have to borrow from Miz Copper when the taxes came due.

  She was full of purpose and resolve. One thing she wasn’t going to do was worry. Somehow the good Lord had sent her a rocking chair, a mule, and now chickens. Starting today she was going to count her blessings.

  Inside the henhouse she opened a small window to let some sun and air in. My, the stench nearly took her breath. Miz Copper would never have let her coop get in this condition. “Elbow grease doesn’t cost a cent,” Cara could almost hear her say.

  “Come on in,” she said to the rooster, who stuck one yellow clawed foot through the open door. “I reckon you’re ready to bring your chickens home to roost—so to speak. Just give me a minute here.”

  “Plawk,” the rooster agreed in his rooster language while he circumvented the room in an exaggerated strut. “Plawk, plawk, plawk.”

  Cara collected the feeding trays and the watering jars, then set off toward the spring-fed creek that divided their property from the Sheltons’. Sweetwater, Ace had dubbed the creek. She agreed with the name, for it was an easy, meandering little stream not given to fits of flood and destruction like Troublesome Creek. Dimmert had formed a dam of rock and clay a little ways upstream, so she had a nice deep pool in which to rinse the metal trays and the glass jars. With a handful of sand from the creek bottom, she scoured the feeders. Fluffs of downy pinfeathers whirled like tiny shipwrecks in the current.

  Enjoying the sun on her back and the cool water at her fingertips, Cara sat down on the creek bank. She plucked three broad leaves from the branch of an overhanging sycamore and christened them the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María, then launched her leaf ships and watched as they sailed away. What must it have been like to leave the old world for the new? Where did they find the courage? Whoops! The Santa María nearly capsized, and the Niña was threatened by a muddy-brown newt. Without a thought to fear, Cara plucked the salamander from the water and let him swing from her fingers by his long tail. The newt hung motionless, his tiny limbs folded, his bright eyes dulled.

  The little creature’s reaction to the disturbance Cara caused to his world made her feel mean. “I didn’t aim to bother you.” She released it to scurry under a pile of decaying leaves. Nothing really harmed newts. Their bad-tasting skin protected them good as a knight’s armor. Too bad the newt didn’t have knowledge of that.

  Cara wrapped her arms around her knees and rested her head there, trying to recollect the Scripture Ace had told her to commit to memory. It was just yesterday on their ride to Fairy Mae’s from the lawyer’s office. They were traveling at a slow pace behind Darcy, who seemed in no hurry to get home. There was plenty of time for talk. Cara had been glad for the opportunity to ask Ace about the books of comfort. He said for her to study Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. “That will take a while,” she replied. “I’m a slow reader. Can you give me something quick to hold fast to?”

  Last evening she sat on the front porch in her new rocker with her Bible and searched until she found Psalms. The Bible was divided in books, Ace said, and the books had chapters like any other book. Psalms was in the Old Testament. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were in the New Testament, which had all of the words of Jesus. That was why they were so comforting.

  Now sitting on the creek bank, she spoke a verse from the chapter in Psalms Ace told her to commit to memory: “‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’” That sure was pretty. It was one of the verses Ace read to the prisoners that day Dimmert was carted off.

  A tear slipped down her cheek and settled in the corner of her mouth as a sure knowing of God’s love settled in her heart. Was she not as important as a mindless lizard? Wouldn’t God cover her with protection as surely as He’d provided the scurrying woodland creature a protective skin? It didn’t mean she’d never be plucked up, never have her world turned upside down by unknown forces, but it did mean she was not alone, whatever befell. And being alone was what she really feared, not tadpoles and spiders and not even lockjaw . . . well, maybe lockjaw still, a little bit.

  A warm spring breeze ruffled the surface of the creek. One of Cara’s little ships whirled around in an eddy, broke loose, and sailed downstream. It was so peaceful on the bank of Sweetwater Creek. Cara felt her shoulders release the knot that had formed there when Dimm was led away by the sheriff.

  Just as she released her fears, a slithery snake raised his head from the water. Screaming, Cara scrambled to her feet. Ha, she wasn’t as brave yet as she meant to be. She tossed a piece of shale in the water moccasin’s direction. Plop! Rings formed in the water, then broke upon the bank. Taking its sweet time, the snake swam away. Cara tossed one more rock for good measure. “I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.”

  Leaving the water jars and the trays to dry in the sun, she went to the yard and started a fire under a medium-size cook pot that she filled with water from the rain barrel. Once the fire was under way, she got a rake, a shovel, and an old broom worn down to a nub from the barn. Back in the chicken house, she tied a scarf around her nose and mouth before she removed stale straw from the nests. She stood on an overturned box and scraped manure from the overhead perches with the stubby broom, glad she had on her oldest bonnet, a worn cotton shift over her dress, and Dimmert’s work shirt.

  Dimmert had built the perches from 2½-by-1-inch slats so the hens and rooster could rest upon them rather than clinging with their toes wrapped around the more usual narrow poles. He said this resting position allowed the birds’ feathers to cover their feet so they wouldn’t freeze in the coldest weather. He was a marvel, her Dimm. A frozen-toed chicken was a sad sight, she would admit. She hoped the chickens appreciated him as much as she did. The rake made it easy to move the refuse to the door, where she could shovel it into the wheelbarrow to burn later with the moldy corn.

  The water was at full boil when she returned. After pouring half the water into a common bucket, she took a kitchen knife and shaved half a pound of hard soap into the pot. With a long-handled spoon she mixed until the soap dissolved. Swinging the iron crane to the side, she removed the cauldron from the fire. Slowly, carefully, she added a measure of kerosene and mixed until all was absorbed. This she poured into the pail of hot water and stirred some more.

  Now she was ready to paint the nest boxes, the perches, and every crevice in the hennery. The chickens would be happy to be spared the torment of lice. She would have to leave her shift and bonnet on the porch until wash day or else she might carry some of the mites to her own bed.

  Cara’s muscles were sore and she had a crick in her neck after the day’s chores. As usual, she’d planned more work than she could do, but that was good. For supper she crumbled stale corn bread into a glass of buttermilk and carried it out to the porch. Pancake wandered over, and she went back in the kitchen to fetch a piece of bread for him.

  Across the barnyard, chickens straggled toward the henhouse. It made Cara happy to think of their clean perches, sweet-smelling straw in their nest boxes, quart jars tilted in chicken saucers dripping clean water, and trays full of feed from the barn. Soon the hens would start setting, then hatching their eggs. The yard would be full of doodles, little bits of fluff and promise.

  Cara was content until a little itch of worry demanded scratching. She still didn’t know what to do about Pancake. Walker Wheeler could c
ome in the night and take him from the barn easily enough. Her rocker picked up speed, and her spoon clanked against the rim of her glass. There was an old cot in a stall that Dimmert kept for bums, those poor souls without a bed to call their own. Dimm always gave them a job for a day or a week, fattened them up some before they drifted off again. She reckoned she could sleep on the cot out there.

  But what if some mites lived in there? The very thought made her skin crawl. She scraped the last bit of tasty corn bread from the bottom of the glass and sat back in her chair. Ace was going to talk to the sheriff, clear everything up, but until then Pancake would have to leave his comfy shakes in the barn. The Walkers weren’t getting easy access to him.

  Dressed for bed, she sat on the porch and let down her hair. Bending over her knees, she brushed and brushed until she was satisfied there were no critters hiding there. Dimmert loved her hair, though it was nothing special. Dimmert said her plain brown hair shimmered in the sunlight. He said he could see strands light as corn silks there. Her heart ached like her shoulders did when she thought of her husband. Dimm saw beauty in everything—even a dumb mule, even a hobo down on his luck, even her.

  He didn’t even mind that her womb couldn’t hold a baby. With every loss he’d kissed her tears away as if he needed only her and no other. As she wove her hair into the familiar braid, she wondered how he was tonight, her Dimm. She envied every person in that awful prison who might sit at his supper table, who might work alongside him, who might be granted a piece of his generous heart. My, she hoped he had a window. Maybe he was looking up at the same moon that shone down on her.

  Laboriously, once a week she wrote and mailed a letter, though she wondered if it was worth the trouble and expense. Would anybody read it to him? She supposed a note from home might give comfort even if he couldn’t make out the words. Surely he would know it was written with love from her.