Manny's Triumph: Sequel (Secrets In Idyll Wood Book 2)

by Marisa Masterson

  As he became more awake the memory of someone holding his hand filled his mind. He was sure he remembered a soft voice singing--a lullaby of all things. When he concentrated, he could still feel a tender caress on his brow.

  Now that it was morning, he could be thankful he’d made it through one more night. Day, however, merely meant that he would struggle through the cravings again and need to hide the shaking from the foreman.

  Last night had been a real test for him. The other men had pushed for him to go with them into Eagle River. Mostly Canadians who crossed into Wisconsin for employment, these large and powerful men worked hard and were ready to drink and carouse. An incredible thirst filled him at their invitation and he remembered the many days of hard, physical labor. It would be nice to unwind with a drink.

  Jorgensen, the foreman, snorted at Manny’s refusal. When he saw by Manny’s expression that he was warming up to the idea of joining them, the man thumped Manny in the arm with his meaty fist and said, “Grab your coat. I got hard work to forget and a willing woman to find.”

  It was that thump on the arm as much as anything that woke Manny to what he was about to do. All those nights of suffering to get rid of the habit would be wasted.

  When several loggers started bullying him into carousing with them, he’d told himself to stand firm. He refused Jorgensen and then ran--not walked--away into the woods.

  Before returning to the camp, Manny sprinted to Lake Snipe as if dogs were nipping at his hindquarters. There he swam in water gone brutally cold because of the fall temperatures. Drinking gulps of the lake didn’t quench the thirst. Staying underwater until he thought his lungs would burst did dull the cravings, though.

  When the taste for alcohol grew intense, he would mentally replay scenes from his final week in Idyll Wood. Last evening on his way back to camp he’d thought about Hart Bahr.

  Hart was the closest Manny had to a respectable friend. And that friend had asked him to stop drinking. That friend had covered for him so many times at the bank and understood the depth of Manny’s problem.

  A single sentence from Hart had motivated Manny. While his father might berate and threaten, the man never seemed to care. That Hart did care and believed that Manny could change his life had been a catalyst.

  After his late-night swim, the lumber camp lay disturbingly quiet. Manny found it eerie being surrounded by towering pines in the dark of night with only one small fire lit when, usually, several blazes dotted the camp. He had been drawn to the lone fire, wanting to see who remained. He shouldn’t have been surprised to see Old Johansen, the cook, and Carl, the boy who had hitched a ride out of Idyll Wood with him.

  “Evenin’ Manly! Surprised you stayed in camp.” Old Bert, the cook, looked at him quizzically.

  Every time someone used the name Manly, he felt just a little taller. In response to Bert’s comment, Manny shrugged rather than explaining why he avoided a night in town.

  Manny sat across from them at the fire and rubbed his hands. And rubbed and rubbed. Try though he might, he couldn’t halt the nervous action. To distract himself, he mentally recalled how he’d met the boy.

  When he was still in Idyll Wood, the kid walked up to him just as he saddled his horse. In retrospect, he supposed he should have been more careful, in case the kid had been out to rob him. That night, the boy appeared as desperate to leave the town as Manny was.

  Yep, Carl was a mystery. That night he’d wanted to ask the boy why he smelled so sweet, like a girl. He didn’t because he figured maybe the kid had been hugged and cried over by a mother when he left home. The thought of a mother’s attentions had brought a lump to Manny’s throat and so he asked nothing, said nothing, for most of the trip.

  As small and skinny as the kid was, he hadn’t added much weight for the horse to carry and Manny had taken him to Eagle River. Carl knew of a lumber camp that was hiring. When they’d arrived at the camp, Manny had asked about a job too.

  Though unskilled, Manny quickly learned to handle the Peavey, grasping the long wooden handle to force the hook into any logs jamming the river. The only problem was the work gave him too much time to think. Even so, for a man struggling with the shakes it presented fewer dangers and he stuck with it.

  Bringing his mind back to the present, he watched his companions stare into the fire. Maybe they were lost in memories. He idly wondered at what their thoughts could be. Perhaps the boy ruminated about whatever he’d fled from in Idyll Wood.

  Before Manny started wringing his hands again, he headed to his tent and lay down. Pulling up the blankets, he began his nightly mantra. “Dear Lord I need your grace for another night. Your grace. Your grace.”

  In those last few weeks before leaving Idyll Wood, he had been meeting weekly with Pastor Nillson. The pastor had approached him at the bank one day, soon after Ram was arrested and Hart had left town. The invitation issued by him had surprised Manny.

  Sure, he knew that preachers counseled people. He hadn’t expected the pastor to speak in such a kind or nonjudgmental way. Because the pastor seemed to sincerely care about him, Manny had visited him at the Manse that same week and several times after. Pastor Nillson’s firm belief in Manny’s ability to escape from his habit of drinking and his advice to find a physically demanding job in the fresh air had been motivation for him to travel farther north to the lumber camps.

  North to the lumber camp he lived and worked in now. A camp where there were no women. So why had he felt a gentle touch and heard a woman singing to him last night?

  He wasn’t familiar with a woman’s gentle touch. His own mother had never stroked his hair or brow when he was ill. Why would he imagine this kind of gentleness? There had to be a woman in camp!

  That had all been yesterday. Today he worked as hard as possible steering the logs and removing jams. It had been easy to outwork most of the men since they were hungover. He wanted to be exhausted, right down to his bones, so he could sleep. However, his plan wasn’t working.

  Later his own agitation as much as the mystery of the woman drove Manny out of his tent and back in the direction of the lake. He meandered toward it with a blanket draped over his coat and around his shoulders. Just moving around rather than lying on his cot seemed to be calming his churning unrest.

  Splashing? Along with the call of a loon, he heard someone else at the lake. Most of the others in camp seemed to avoid bathing, something Manny realized every time he got close enough to smell any of them. So who would be swimming on such a cold night…other than himself, of course?

  As Manny watched from the edge of the trees, a shapely silhouette rose from the water. Manny blinked several times. Either this hallucination was extremely vivid or his earlier idea had been right. There was a woman in the lumber camp!

  Carlene laid aside her nail scissors and reread her latest newspaper clipping. It was about a theater near Hurley, Wisconsin which police had raided. According to the article, girls believing that they would have careers as performers were forced to put on risqué shows and then to service men afterward. Sister Magdalena had explained to Carlene about men and women so she could imagine a little of what those poor women experienced.

  Sighing and running a hand through her short hair, she picked up the remains of the newspaper that one of the men had brought back from town. The lumberjacks had returned last night, singing loudly and laughing. Today most held their heads and groaned. There had been no laughing and little talk amongst them, she noted, as she served their meals.

  Carlene cringed at what the good sisters at the orphan asylum would think if they could see her now. She resisted the urge to again run her fingers through her very short, choppy hair. She’d used the nail scissors from the small manicure set, a gift from Sister Magdalena. God bless the sister. That gift had come in handy.

  Carlene was still ashamed of herself when she looked down at the clothes. It hadn’t been easy to find clothes that night, especially ones close to her size. She’d left her valise against the o
utside wall of a building whose sign read livery. Then she’d crept through the shadows of the town, looking for garments left on a clothesline. So many people left their clothes out overnight to freeze. They’d done it at the orphanage too. It made them dry faster.

  The clothes line she’d pilfered from had been loaded with garments about her size. It made her feel better to know the boy she was stealing from would still have plenty to wear. Thinking about this, she heard Sister Boniface’s voice reminding her not to try to excuse her sins.

  She had hated trusting the man, Manly, for a ride up north, and had said a quick prayer for safety that night. Still, she’d reasoned that he thought she was a boy and no man would ever use a boy in the same way he might hurt a girl. Taking the risk, she had ridden with him and later thanked God for blessing her with safety and for bringing along a decent man to help her when she had needed him. Surely Sister Magdalena must have been praying for her that night!

  Tonight, she hadn’t been able to stand her smell any longer. Each evening she went to the lake to wash as thoroughly as possible while still wearing her clothes. In Idyll Wood she had taken—stolen Sister Boniface’s voice said in her head—two sets of clothes so she would have a clean set to change into. Taking that set out of her carpetbag, she’d headed for the lake.

  The quietness of the camp assured her that tonight was a good night to take a bath. No one was stirring, and this gave her enough courage to hustle to the lake. Throwing aside the dirty clothes she planned to wash after her bath, she waded into the water with her soap in hand.

  Oh, it was bliss after the two weeks of sponge baths, even with the freezing temperature of both the air and the water. Lathering the soap, she dipped her head and then scrubbed her greasy short hair. It took several scrubbings to make it feel clean. Then she lathered her neck and arms. Heaven!

  As she waded back out of the lake, the clouds parted and the moon revealed its face for the first time that night. She stopped and arched her neck up to look at it. A gasp from the shore caused her to stiffen in alarm before letting out a squeal.

  A dark figure standing just inside the shadowy tree line watched her. She felt sure of it and thought she could feel those eyes burn her with their gaze. Should she wade back out into the water? The cold temperature caused pain now and drove her to get dry and clothed again.

  Gathering her courage, she raced out of the lake and up the shore to her pile. Quickly dropping the soap onto her dirty clothes, she wriggled rapidly into her clean clothes. Grabbing up the pile, she shoved her feet back into her boots and turned to run into the woods, using a different trail than the one where the figure stood.

  “Horse feathers! Horse feathers! The fat’s in the fire now.” She couldn’t help herself. She talked out loud as she headed back to the camp, berating herself.

  Was it dark enough? Will he know it was me?

  A crunch of dried leaves alerted her to her pursuer. She still didn’t know the shadow’s identity. The name of the man didn’t seem important when compared to what he might do to her.

  This thought made her sprint into the blackness of the woods. Hampered by boots that were too large for her feet as well as the darkness, she stumbled and fell headlong over what felt like a tree root. With the breath knocked out of her, she laid still and waited.

  Time slowed and stretched out so that it seemed like several moments passed before the man caught up with her. When a foot roughly connected with her back, her pursuer flew over her and landed on the ground almost eye to eye with her.

  The man groaned roughly and began to feel around to see what had tripped him. As his hand reached her, he brushed down her nose and over her mouth with his fingers before quickly jerking his hand back in surprise. So, he hadn’t realized he had tripped over her?

  “Why’d you have to chase me, mister?” Having regained her breath, Carlene went on the offensive. Sister Lydia always said a lady could protect herself best by taking charge of a situation.

  She waited but didn’t get a response. Maybe he’d knocked the air out of himself when he fell. Carlene decided to take advantage of this and pushed against the ground to get to her feet. She felt a grip on her ankle that stayed her motion.

  “Don’t go.” She knew that voice. Manly! Thank goodness it was him and not one of the other rough lumberjacks.

  “Manly, let go of my ankle! I want to get up off of the cold ground.” Again, she pushed to take charge. Sister Lydia would be proud.

  “So, you do know me. Who in camp is the right size to disguise herself as a man?” Manly asked the question, wanting to see how she would respond. From the tone of his voice, she felt sure he knew who she was.

  Before she could halt the words, Carlene whispered, “Not as a man.” Sister Magdalena said her biggest faults were always insisting on accuracy as well as needing to have the last word. Both were evident in her comment.

  Oddly enough, Carlene heard a chuckle. “Well, Carl, you’ve just about admitted it to me, haven’t you? Might as well tell me your real name.”

  Carlene jerked her ankle in an attempt to break his hold. “I’m not lying here on the ground all night. Let go!”

  In a blink, Manly let go of her ankle and popped up off of the ground. She felt his hand search for hers as he ran his touch along her arm and then down her wrist to her hand before helping her to her feet. “Are you hurt at all?”

  “I don’t think—Ow!” With one step she knew that she had injured her left knee in the fall. Without letting her say another word about it, Manny swept her up into his arms, carrying her back, she assumed, to camp.

  It was dark. She was alone with a man. She was being carried. That had to be why Carlene felt an incredibly strong urge to rest her head on his shoulder and curl into him.

  They were going in the wrong direction. She had a strong sense of cardinal directions and they were definitely not going east to camp. Just why did this man take her deeper into the darkness of the woods? How would she ever escape him?

  Chapter 3

  Carlene could tell that Manly had now carried her nearly out of the woods. The light from the moon was visible ahead of them at the tree line. She experienced profound relief that he hadn’t stopped in the secluded darkness to harm her.

  During the walk, she pushed against his arms and threatened him with retribution the next time he closed his eyes to sleep. Even kicking out with her good leg didn’t faze him. He kept walking, and his only reaction was to squeeze her more tightly when she tried to punch his chest with her small fisted hand.

  Once they emerged from the forest into a moon-bathed world, he walked directly to the lake. Placing her on the ground he finally spoke.

  “Which limb is hurt?” Carlene noticed that he used the polite term for a lady’s leg. That came as no surprise to her, though. He had always behaved very much like a gentleman, making him seem out of place in the rough lumber camp.

  Carlene pointed to her left knee. She wanted to speak, to take control of the situation. Opening her mouth to voice a complaint, she looked into his face. He wore such a concerned expression that the words died before she let them loose.

  Carlene felt Manly remove the boots from her feet and roll up the legs of her pants. She dumbly allowed him to care for her. Having someone attend to her needs was such a novel experience that she simply soaked in the feelings and didn’t try to stop him.

  Once her legs were bare to above the knee—something that brought a bright red flush to her face—Manly removed his boots and rolled the woolen legs of his work pants. Placing a strong arm behind her back and under her legs, he waded into the lake.

  Slowly letting her body slip down his and into the freezing water, he supported Carlene’s weight while she soaked her knee. Though Carlene was short, the face above her was only about six inches away. Perhaps awkwardness at his lack of height contributed to the somber quietness she associated with him.

  Settled into the water, Carlene looked up at the man who held her. In the dim light of t
he moon, she caught a speculative gleam in Manly’s eyes.

  “Since we’re going to be here for a little bit while that cold water bathes your limb, why don’t you tell me the story of why a little woman feels forced to masquerade as a boy?”

  Carlene tried to moisten her mouth that had gone dry with fear. “I’d rather know what you’re going to do. Are you going to tell Jorgensen that I’m a woman?”

  Carlene felt Manly’s sigh against the top of her head as he bent to look into her face. “Can’t you answer a question without asking one of your own? I’m not out to hurt you Carl” Here he paused.

  “Your name can’t be Carl.” She recognized the deep rumble in the chest next to her head as a chuckle. “What is it?”

  She whispered, “Carlene January.”

  When she didn’t say anything else, he asked, “What’s your last name Carlene?”

  She wasn’t surprised when he didn’t recognize January as a last name. “I told you. January. I’m Carlene January. This water’s getting too cold.” She moved to pull away from his arms and walk out of the water. When he recognized her intentions, he picked her up again and carried her to the shore.”

  “You can’t just carry me all night. I’m too heavy.”

  He chuckled. This man certainly did laugh a lot Carlene thought with some approval. “Carlene, you’re such a little lady that I haven’t strained myself yet.”

  Using her dirty clothes, Carlene sat on the shore and dried herself. Then she offered the pants she was using to him as a towel of sorts and slipped on her boots.

  “I know I have an odd name. The foundlings at St. Rose’s Orphans Asylum all were given the last name of the month they came to the orphanage. A police officer found me in a park in January, thus my name.” She was embarrassed to admit to this obviously educated gentleman that she was a foundling. The idea of being so unwanted marked her, she felt.