Heaven Sent (Small Town Swains)

by Pamela Morsi

"I doubt it. I suspect that bachelors don't even know how to put things up. Making his place into a home should keep you busy for a while."

  Hannah was suddenly very anxious to do just that. She knew she was an excellent housekeeper. She would make such a wonderful home for Henry Lee, he would never regret having to marry her.

  Her father carried out her things to the wagon as quickly as Hannah, her stepmother, and sister could get them ready. She kept waiting for Henry Lee to come back inside the house, but for some reason, he continued to tarry by the wagon.

  Finally when everything had been taken out and loaded up, Hannah said her good-byes and went out to join her new husband.

  He was standing by the wagon, leaning against it and staring out at the distance. As she watched, his gaze turned to her. She smiled broadly at him, but he only continued to stare, his face completely expressionless. This abrupt change in his attitude disconcerted Hannah. However, since her family was beside her, all expecting hugs and kisses and saying good-bye and wishing her luck, she had no choice but to act as if everything were fine and that her future was secured.

  Tying on her sunbonnet, Hannah stepped down from the porch, and with only a slight glance back, she went to join him.

  Henry Lee helped Hannah into the wagon seat and pulled himself up beside her. Thankfully, most of the other folks had already gone, he thought. It was difficult enough being in front of her parents, who surely didn't know what she'd done to him. He didn't know if he would have been able to tolerate a crowd where, possibly, the father of Hannah's baby stood by watching their progress and laughing at Henry Lee.

  Her smile when she had come out of the house had made him flash hot then cold. He still remembered the pleasure of this morning, but the betrayal was more vivid and infinitely more important. He decided it was best not to look at her at all. He released the brake on the wagon and with a curt wave to her parents, snapped the reins, urging the horse out into the lane and headed east toward his own place.

  The summer breeze felt cool against his angry cheeks as Henry Lee kept his eyes unfalteringly on the head of the horse and the line of harness running toward the wagon. After a quick glance at her husband's dark visage, Hannah concentrated on the beautiful morning and the countryside. Unlike Henry Lee, Hannah had only good feelings for the day. Even his less than enthusiastic reception when she came out of the house did not upset her greatly.

  She assumed that he had been thinking about the trick she had played on him. He would probably want her to explain herself. She wasn't sure yet what she was going to say, but she had confidence now that, as his wife, and the future mother of his children, he would be able to forgive her.

  The day was hot, but the nice breeze blowing in from the south made it all seem bearable. The activity of the bees in the clover made a lazy sound that, for all their activity, was strangely relaxing. The sky was an unusual shade of steel blue, so different from the sky she remembered from her childhood in Kansas. She'd come to think of it as Oklahoma Blue, always accented with wispy feathers of clouds hung way high, as if to remind you continually that the weather was changeable.

  "It's a beautiful day, don't you think?" she asked, deciding that a good marriage would need to start with amiable conversation.

  "Hot."

  "But the breeze is nice."

  "Yeah."

  "Think we'll get some rain pretty soon for the crops?"

  "Maybe."

  Hannah was surprised at Henry Lee's reticence. He'd always appeared to be a man quite willing to talk, but this morning he didn't seem to have much to say. If he was angry, she wished that he would just say so. It was best to just tear into a sore spot and wrestle it through. She didn't believe in letting bad feelings fester.

  The countryside was mostly still in prairie grass, although here and there she could see the beginnings of farming. The land here was hilly, but free of rocks and trees. What trees there were grew concentrated on the banks of creeks and ponds. Since Hannah had never been to Henry Lee's place before, she was curious about her new home. She knew it was located in the Indian Territory, an area much older and more settled than the new Oklahoma Territory just beside it. But up till now she had never had any cause to venture that far.

  "You live on this side of Pearson's Creek, or do we have to cross?" she asked, trying to draw out her new husband.

  "Cross."

  "Does it look like this?"

  "Like what?"

  "Like this. Like you can see for miles, just grass and skv "

  "Woods."

  "What?"

  "It's woods, it's in the hills, it's not like this." His voice was impatient and there was an undertone of unmistakable anger.

  "Oh." Hannah was rebuffed. Obviously Henry Lee considered her attempt at conversation feeble. Well, she supposed that discussing the lay of the land was somewhat like discussing the weather.

  "What about the house?"

  "What about it?"

  "Is it big or little, white or clapboard, tell me about it."

  "It's a poled cabin."

  "A poled cabin?"

  "Straight logs, no split rails."

  "It's a log cabin?" she asked excitedly. "I've never even seen a log cabin!"

  "There's more timber around the creek and up on the hills."

  "Oh, how romantic! Just like the real pioneers. I wonder if it looks like Abe Lincoln's did."

  He turned finally to look at her, his face like a thundercloud. "Abe Lincoln was a Republican!" he said sharply.

  "Well, yes, I suppose he was," Hannah replied lamely. Politics was obviously another poor choice of subject. She had always been a Jayhawker Republican, because her father was. She wondered if now being married to Henry Lee automatically made her a southern Democrat. She decided that it was best to stick to subjects more suited to a wife.

  "I'm sure that I will love the house."

  "It's plenty good enough for the likes of you!"

  Hannah was taken aback by his rudeness. It was as if he had slapped her. She guessed it was time to try to explain what had happened in the wellhouse. How would she explain it? she wondered. Well, she wasn't going to lie anymore. She would tell him as little as possible, but it would be the absolute truth.

  She took a deep breath and said a silent prayer for help from heaven.

  "I know I owe you an explanation of what I was doing in the wellhouse," she started, staring straight ahead, not able to meet his eyes. "I realize how angry you are, so it seems to me that we ought to go ahead and discuss it, get it out of the way."

  "I never get angry!" Henry Lee barked at her, realizing that he had been furious for the last two hours! He was looking straight ahead again and clenching his jaw. He wondered if she had managed to think up some plausible lie to try to get him to swallow. Somehow he was sure that she had, and that when she told it, things would be worse than they already were. It was time that he took the situation in hand. She was no longer deciding how the game was to be played. Henry Lee Watson was the man she would answer to now!

  "I already figured out about what you were doing in that wellhouse."

  Hannah looked at him, startled. What could he possibly know?

  "Do you think I'm a complete fool? Did you think that I wouldn't find out?"

  Hannah was totally unprepared for this. She hadn't told a soul about her plan, how could he have guessed it? Had anyone else suspected?

  "How did you find out?"

  Henry Lee's look was rough and angry.

  "I know, that's the important thing. So there is no need for you to continue to pretend that you have any feelings for me. I never could abide a liar."

  Hannah was stung. She wished, unrealistically, that she could just jump off the wagon and walk back home, but she couldn't. She'd made this trouble for herself, and she knew she would have to accept the consequences it had generated.

  "I planned to tell you eventually," she answered guiltily. "But I was hoping by then you'd be more used to me and that you would
n't mind."

  "You were hoping that I wouldn't mind!" He was snarling through clenched teeth. He took a deep breath to control his rising anger. "Maybe I'm not a churchgoer, Miss Hannah, and maybe my folks weren't the finest, but believe me, I mind! I mind just as much as any of those damn farmers."

  "Well, of course I knew that you would mind," Hannah backtracked reasonably. "I know that you would not have intentionally chosen to marry me, but I was hoping that now that it is done, well, I ... I think we could make a life together."

  His angry silence seemed to last forever. Henry Lee could not make his thoughts coherent. He was a jumble of anger, and he deplored that emotion, considering it a weakness. He concentrated fruitlessly on the horse in front of him as he tried to corral his shaking fury. His stillness seemed to say to Hannah that he didn't want to make a life with her. She had no idea what to say to that. "I'm sorry," was her final choice.

  "Yeah, well, I'm pretty goddamn sorry, too!" His voice was rough and his eyes were blazing.

  Hannah was not shocked by his language, but the force of his disdain was frightening. For an instant she feared that he might strike her, but as she watched he seemed to gather his control.

  Henry Lee was outraged. It added insult to injury for Hannah to think that he would be so glad to have a woman like her that he would quickly forget that she had been another man's first. It seemed to him the ultimate in conceit, that because she was a so-called decent woman, he should be glad to have her at any price.

  She thought she was better than him because he wasn't the offspring of stalwart citizens like those in her daddy's church. He was Skut and Molly's brat and no matter what he tried to do with his life, no one ever let him forget that.

  The man he called father, Skut Watson, had moved to Indian Territory after the Confederacy's defeat. Not that politics had meant anything to Skut. He was only thirteen and custom made for trouble when he'd joined up with the rebels. Burning, stealing, and killing became little more than recreation to the rough group he rode with, but it wasn't enough for him. Skut Watson had hoped to make some money out of the war.

  He was one of those men who were always just a minute away from success. All his life he spent looking for the easy way, the fast way, the get-rich-quick scheme that never quite materialized. It had led him near and far after the war, searching for that big payoff. Finally it had led him to Fort Gibson on a snowy afternoon in February. The commander was in a mess of trouble. He was, unbeknownst to his faithful wife, keeping a half-breed Cherokee mistress. The pretty, light-skinned beauty was pregnant and demanding the commander marry her. She was threatening to make trouble and he needed to get rid of her in a hurry. The arrival of Skut Watson was timed perfectly; the commander paid real gold to have her taken away.

  Skut had not intended to wed her, but when he found out that her half-breed status could get them a piece of land, he immediately tied the knot. Feeling safer once he'd taken her away from friends and family, he'd traded her allotment in the Cherokee hills for a useless piece of hilly, wooded ground in the Creek Nation. It was as far away as he could get from those things familiar to her.

  His mother, Molly Fish, had not been particularly happy with her new marriage, but she was young and scared and pregnant and she really had no other choice. She knew that Skut had received gold and she wanted to stay around long enough to take it away from him.

  First she needed someplace to winter and have her baby, so she stayed with Skut for a while. As it happened, she never left. She was sickly after Henry Lee's birth and kept waiting for her strength to return. Lulled by the pleasure of watching her handsome son grow, the weeks stretched into years and she stayed with Skut. Their marriage could never have been called a happy one, but she had learned to just turn her thoughts inward when life around her became too hard. Seeking a quiet comer, the reality of her life faded away as pieces of tree branches came alive in her hands. Her talented fingers held the knife as she formed the small wooden creatures that pleased her bright, blue-eyed son as he played near her.

  Over the years, Skut became involved in one get-rich scheme after another. He'd always managed to keep body and soul together, but he had never made the big success that he desired. His most successful venture had been whiskey.

  Alcohol was in great demand among the Indians. Skut remembered stills back in his home in Tennessee, but he could never quite get his attempts at distillery to work. So instead, he carted in wagon load after wagon load of moonshine from the stills in the Ozarks and made a good living for several years.

  Eventually, he took Henry Lee with him to help, and ultimately to do most of the work. Skut had developed a taste for liquor and felt it necessary to sample every shipment heavily.

  Henry Lee, who was quick and sharp, learned faster than Watson. By observing and listening to the whiskey makers, Henry Lee soon understood the whiskey business in a way that his adopted father never had.

  As Hannah and Henry Lee, on that first morning of their married life, rode silently down the road, Henry Lee ruminated on the irony that he had been claimed and raised by a man who was not his father, and now he was going to have to do the same for another man's child.

  Henry Lee felt both glad that he had let her know that she wasn't fooling him, and angry at the situation and at her for choosing him as the scapegoat. He decided philosophically, that since his mother was a whore, having a wife who was no better than she should be certainly made sense. At least, she could never throw up his background to him. The fancy preacher's daughter had proved to be no better than trash herself. It was hard to believe that Hannah Bunch was of such low morals, but she hadn't even tried to deny it.

  Henry Lee despised himself for hanging onto his anger and purposely put it away. She was here, she was his wife and he needed to accept her duplicity. He had learned long ago that a man's blind rage only served to make him prone to mistakes and miserable in his mind He'd schooled himself to vent his anger in quick little explosions and then get on with his life. Taking a deep cleansing breath, he did just that.

  His bride was a light skirt. She had been with another man and carried his bastard. Those were facts, he would grow to accept them. The past was past, he would see that she never strayed again. The first one might not be his, but he'd be damn sure the rest would be. He wasn't the first man to make that vow, he knew. But he would keep it if he had to tie her to the kitchen door.

  Hannah concentrated on watching the scenery and not making any moves that might catch Henry Lee's attention. Apparently Henry Lee knew that she had been out at the wellhouse to trap another man. She couldn't imagine how he'd discovered that, but she was glad that it was finally out in the open, and that the embarrassment of explanation was behind her. She wanted to stay out of his way until the anger cooled. She knew that she wouldn't get off scot-free, but she wouldn't volunteer for a dressing-down.

  They passed a couple of miles in silence until they reached a place where a small trail wound away from the road and down to a creek bed. Henry Lee turned off and drove the wagon down the steep sides. The water was only about knee-high and the creek had a quiet peaceful feeling to it.

  "Is this Pearson's Creek?" she asked him tentatively, her voice quiet with inquiry.

  When he nodded, she could see that he was in control of his temper, and smiled animatedly. "I thought I recognized it. We held a baptism downstream last fall. It's so peaceful and serene; it's like I think the River Jordan must be."

  "I don't know much about the River Jordan, but come spring, this little creek runs so fast, it's one quick way to die. You'll have to watch my pigs, make sure they stay clear of here during the rain."

  "Is that what you do for a living? Raise pigs?"

  Henry Lee turned abruptly to look at her. Was it possible that she really didn't know how he made his living? He always assumed that everyone in the community knew of his clandestine business interests, but he guessed that it was quite possible that the farmers would spare their womenfolk the horrify
ing experience of knowing they had a moonshiner living in their midst. He thought of how shocked and embarrassed she was going to be when she learned the truth, and it brought the first smile that Hannah had seen on his face since they started the trip.

  "Yes, ma'am, I do indeed raise pigs," he told her. "Some of the most well fed duroc hogs in the territory live right on my premises."

  Hannah was encouraged by his smile and decided that she had finally found a subject to discuss with him, his hog business. Not knowing much more about the creatures than how to feed them and make them into ham and sausage, she began eagerly questioning him on hog farming. Henry Lee seemed to find this very amusing and was delighted to fill her in on the secrets of swine husbandry.

  As they came up on the other side of Pearson's Creek, the landscape made a clear change. The wide-open prairie had given way to a rather loosely wooded area, and the trail headed generally upward.

  When they reached the site of Henry Lee's home, Hannah looked about eagerly. It was a good-sized cabin looking to the west with a porch running the length of the front, facing the creek. On the north side was a well-kept cornfield, green and prosperous. To the south a huge red oak, at least four feet across at the base, sheltered the cabin, its outstretched branches enfolding the small house and yard like a canopy.

  Henry Lee drove the wagon around back. From there Hannah could see the outbuildings. One was obviously a barn and another a pigsty. There was an outhouse, a workshed, chicken coop and a couple more whose purpose was not immediately discernible. The yard was well-kept and clean. An outdoor hearth, undoubtedly used for doing laundry, was in evidence and a cord clothesline ran along the back of the cabin, one end hooked to the henhouse and the other attached to a freestanding wooden crosspole.

  A strange sort of snorty bark caught Hannah's attention and she turned to see a herd of pigs heading for the wagon. Probably a dozen or so rust-red swine of varying sizes rushed toward them in minor stampede.

  "What's going on?" Hannah asked, gripping the side rail as the strange rumbling chorus drew closer.

  "Don't worry, they're friendly little beasts," Henry Lee assured her. “Just looking for something to eat. They like acorns plenty fine, but after two days they're anxious for something a bit more filling."