Oh, Mike, what will become of me without you? The words battered against Letty’s brain. Let Mike know, God, she prayed. Let him know and he’ll come back. Letty knew that divine intervention wouldn’t come soon enough to save her from her father’s wrath. It had been wrong to lie with Mike when they had not stood before the preacher and said their vows. They had said them to each other as they lay pressed tightly together beneath the willow. She thought of him as her husband. They had shared their innermost thoughts and dreams. Their bodies had come together so naturally, so sweetly. And, oh, she loved him so much.
Suddenly, without warning, the door of her room was flung open. From between the spread fingers covering her face, Letty saw her father standing in the doorway. His tie was askew, his usually well-combed hair looked as if he had been in a violent windstorm. His face was beet-red except for the white around his mouth. The hatred that blazed in his eyes struck her like a lash.
“Bitch! Slut! Whore!” he spat. His head jutted forward and the cords on his neck stood out. “You’ll not make me the laughingstock of this town with your bastard! You’ll not ruin me!”
“Papa . . . don’t—”
“Hush up!” He bellowed. “Hush your lying mouth or I’ll put my fist in it. You’re a bitch in heat is what you are!” His voice rose until it was a strangled screech.
“Where’s . . . Mama?” Letty shrank back across the bed until she was huddled against the wall.
“Go from this house. You’ll never set eyes on her or your sister again! Hear me.” He kicked a ladder-backed chair out of his way and swept his arm over the top of the bureau, sending the lace doily and dresser set crashing to the floor. He stopped at the side of the bed, his face frozen in a mask of hate. Spittle ran from the corner of his mouth.
Letty cringed and held up her hand in an attempt to ward off the blow she knew was coming. Watching his hand come toward her face was the longest second she ever lived. The slap sent her head flying back against the wall.
“Whore! You’re ruined all I’ve worked for. Besmirched my name! Damn you to hell and damn your bastard!” His voice rose to a deafening roar.
“Please, Papa—”
“Don’t papa me, you bitch! I’m not the papa of a fornicater, a forsaker of God, a harlot, a . . . scarlet woman! From this day on you are dead to this family. Do you hear me? Dead!” As he paced the floor in long strides, the words poured from his mouth. “You are no longer a member of my family. You will take your hot little twat and leave my house. But first you’ll tell me who it was that crawled between your legs and planted a bastard in your belly. Who is it that’s laughing at me? Was it one of those damn Catholics who’s been trying to drag me down?” He stormed across the room, pounded the opposite wall with a balled fist, turned, and came back to tower over her. “Well, was it?”
Letty was so frightened she feared she would throw up. Her father looked so frenzied, so ugly and maddened. She was paralyzed with shock and fear. He grabbed her shoulder with one hand and slapped her with the other. Somehow it calmed her, released her from shock. At that moment she made up her mind she would not tell him if he killed her. When she didn’t answer, he struck her again with such force her ears rang.
“Tell me, damn you!”
“I’ll not tell you anything!”
The blows came repeatedly first on one side of her face and then the other. “Whose bastard are you carrying?”
“I’ll die before I tell you,” she shouted. Her eyes looked so defiantly into his that he released her shoulder and backed away from the bed. “And my baby is not a bastard in the eyes of God. He was conceived with love, something you know nothing about.”
“You’re possessed of the devil!” he gasped. “I can’t bear to . . . look on your face.”
“It’s the same face I wore when I passed the collection plate this morning.” The courage to defy him became stronger.
“Damn you to hell and back. Don’t leave this room. Tonight I’ll take you to Huxley. You’ll take the train and never come back.”
“Where will I go? What will I do?”
“It matters not a whit to me where you go, what you do, or whether you live or die.”
The coldly spoken words killed something in Letty as surely as if it had been cut out with a knife. She slid off the bed and looked him in the eye. When she spoke, it was as if she had suddenly become another person.
“I’ll leave here gladly. I’ll not die and neither will my baby. It would give you too much pleasure.”
His mouth closed like a trap; his eyes turned glassy. He stood there as if suspended while his face became expressionless and his eyes looked through her.
“Ye who have sinned shall be cast into the fiery furnace.”
“This morning you said that there was no sin too great for God to forgive.”
“God may forgive you. I won’t!”
“I don’t want your forgiveness.”
He turned his back on her and walked from the room. Letty sprang to the door and slammed it so hard the house shook. Anger, an emotion she seldom exhibited, bubbled up out of her misery. The anger turned into a red rage. She pounded on the closed door with her fists and kicked it until her toes were sore.
“Hypocrite!” she shouted. “I’ve sinned, but so have you!
“Double-tongued charlatan!
“Faker!
“I’m ashamed that I’m the daughter of a sanctimonious hypocrite! I’m glad I’ll never again have to see you cry your crocodile tears and pry money from poor dirt-farmers. I’m ashamed of you! Ashamed!”
As if her legs were melting, she staggered to the bed, sank down, and rested her forehead against the cool brass bedpost.
Gradually her head cleared. Every word her father had uttered came back into her mind. Tonight after the service he would take her to Huxley to catch the train. Trying to keep at bay the pain in her heart, Letty began to plan. Where could she go? She hadn’t the slightest idea how to find Mike in the vast land to the west. Could she stay in Huxley, find a job and wait for him? No. Her father was well-known there and would be sure to find out.
Letty searched her memory for a relative or a friend who might take her in. The only relatives were Grandma and Grandpa Fletcher who lived on the farm northwest of Boley. Papa didn’t like Grandpa Fletcher and refused to go there. Mama seldom mentioned them, although she got a letter from them about once a year. One time the family had stopped there on their way to a new church. Letty had sat on Grandma’s lap and watched her make lace. Grandpa, she remembered, had a white beard. He argued a lot with her father, smoked his pipe, and drank corn liquor from a jug. If she went there, would they be as outraged about her condition as her parents had been? Perhaps she could tell them she was married and her husband was away working. What would she do if they refused to take her in? She pushed it from her mind. She would have plenty of time to think of that later.
The next few hours were spent in selecting what she would take with her. First, she dressed in a striped cotton shirtwaist and a serviceable brown gabardine skirt. She laid out the jacket and brown hat that went with the suit. Then she made neat piles of dresses, nightgowns, underwear, and stockings on the bed. To these she added her heavy coat, a scarf, and mittens. She took from a bottom drawer soft cotton material that she had planned to use to make underskirts and teddies. Someday she would make a dress for the baby—her precious baby and Mike’s. She wondered what Mike would think when she told him. Oh, he would be so proud!
As for keepsakes, she had only two. From beneath the paper lining in one of the bureau drawers, she took a valentine Mike had given to her. Inside the heart-shaped card was a picture of a couple sitting on a park bench. The man was whispering in the woman’s ear. Above them was written, “Heart of my heart, will you be mine?” Letty blinked away tears, pressed the card to her lips, then tucked it into the pocket of one of the dresses on the bed. From between the pages of the Bible on the bedside table she took a sprig of dried violets. She and Mik
e had picked them the first time they had met secretly over a year ago. Placing them carefully between the sheets of a pad of paper, she added it to the pile on the bed.
Letty heard the clock strike seven. Soon her father would be leaving for the evening service. She stood beside the window and waited for a glimpse of him going down the walk. She was leaving this house, her parents, and Cora forever, and she was glad. Each side of her face was bruised from her father’s blows; her heart was sore from her mother’s betrayal. Letty couldn’t remember ever feeling affection for her sister. Cora had always treated her as the enemy and had pecked away at her self-esteem for years. That was over now. Whatever the future held for her, it couldn’t be worse than living here.
When Letty was younger, she had accepted her father’s duplicity. She had become used to the fact that the conduct he exhibited at church was different from his conduct at home. She was aware that he uttered contrary sentiments at different times in relation to the same subject. Lately, she could no longer justify his actions. It was clear to her now. Her father was just what she had said he was—a hypocrite.
Dry-eyed now, Letty could even think of her mother without the terrible pain knifing her heart. Her mother had not shown her one ounce of compassion. But then, she told herself, she should not have expected any. Her mother was merely an extension of her father and rarely expressed an independent thought. There was no room in her life for anyone but him. Cora had made her own place in their lives by becoming as much like him as possible. Letty realized now that she had always been the outsider.
The front door closed. The sound resounded throughout the quiet house. Letty saw her father’s erect figure—his black hat set straight on his head, his Bible under his arm—going down the walk.
“Goodbye, Papa. I’m not one bit sorry that I’m seeing you for the last time. You never loved me. You never loved anyone . . . but yourself.”
Letty turned from the window and hurried to the attic to get a suitcase. After it was packed, she carried it downstairs and set it beside the back door. Without the slightest hesitation, she went to her parent’s room and from the bottom drawer of the bureau, lifted the small cedar chest where her father kept the cash collections. The key was under the dresser scarf. She found it and opened the chest. It contained more than two hundred dollars in bills. Letty counted out half of it and put it in the purse that hung on her arm.
“Papa will call it stealing,” she murmured to herself. “Let him call it what he wants. It isn’t stealing. You said I was dead, Papa, no longer a member of this family. You are dead to me, too. All of you. I’m taking my inheritance.”
She wanted to leave as quickly as possible. While she waited for darkness to come so that she could go to the carriage house and hitch Isaac to the buggy, she ate a plate of food from the leftover noon meal and drank two glasses of milk. Her jaws were sore and it hurt to chew, but common sense demanded that she eat. After she finished, she made up a packet of food to take with her. Had she had time to think about it, she would have been surprised to realize how calm she was and that she no longer had the nervous nausea in her stomach.
She wrote a letter to Mike telling him where she was going. The Dolans lived on a small piece of land outside of town. On her way to Huxley she would stop and ask Mike’s mother to forward her letter. She had never met Mrs. Dolan, but because Mike thought the world of her, she had to be nice.
When darkness finally came, Letty carried her suitcase to the carriage house, put it in the buggy, and called to Isaac. The horse trotted to her when she held out an ear of corn. Fifteen minutes later she was on her way.
Dreading to pass the church, but knowing she must, Letty felt her heart beat harder and faster. Her thoughts raced. Would latecomers recognize the preacher’s horse and buggy? Would they think she was a thief and try to stop her? Letty slowed the horse when she saw a man and woman walking toward the door. The church would be full judging by the number of wagons and buggies parked at the side and along the road.
The building was well-lighted and music floated out into the night. Her mother was playing the piano with extra zeal, adding in the extra flourishes that made her style of playing distinctive. As Letty passed the church, the congregation stood and began to sing:
“I am bound for the promised land,
I am bound for the promised land.
O who will come and go with me?
I am bound for the promised land.”
“So am I,” Letty said aloud. “So am I.” She slapped the reins against Isaac’s back and fixed her eyes on the road ahead.
A mile out of town she turned up the long lane that led to the Dolan house. It was not yet pitch-dark. She could see the outline of the house. No light shone from the windows. She calmed herself by thinking that perhaps the Dolans were sitting on the porch. But, she reasoned, it was a little too cold for that. The gate leading into the yard was closed when she reached it. She wrapped the reins around the brake handle and started to step down. Two huge dogs came from beneath the porch and flung themselves at the sturdy wooden gate. The snarls and barking frightened Isaac. He whinnied nervously, fidgeted, and sidestepped. Letty grabbed the reins to hold him. She glanced toward the porch, waiting for someone to come and call off the dogs. No one did.
Deeply disappointed that no one was at home, Letty turned the horse back down the lane. If her heart had been pounding any harder, she was certain it would burst. She reached the end of the lane and turned toward Huxley. Isaac moved along easily in the darkness. She was grateful that his eyesight was better than hers. Letty had never been afraid of the dark, but she was completely alone, and it was a good ten miles to the next town.
Now that she had time to think, it occurred to her that she wasn’t alone and that she never would be alone again. For the first time since she had become aware that she was pregnant, she felt a deep joy. Growing within her was living proof of the love she and Mike shared. The babe was a part of her and a part of him. She would be a mother and he would be a father.
“The ties between me and my child will be strong.” She whispered the vow aloud, then to the child, “You will have the love of your parents. I swear it.”
Lamplight shone from the windows of a farmhouse set back from the road. A horse whinnied a greeting to Isaac and ran alongside the fence until it could follow them no longer. The wind came up, swept dry leaves along the road. Stripped to their bare limbs, the trees looked sullen and unfriendly. Letty’s breath curled on the cold air. Winter was on its way. She shivered and wished for the wool shawl she had packed in the suitcase.
Mike was never far from Letty’s mind. She thought now of his jet-black curls and laughing dark eyes. He had been shaving for a year and his whiskers were as black as coal. He had been so careful not to leave telltale scratches on her face. It wouldn’t matter now. She was free! Free to love him. Free to be with him. As soon as he heard where she was, he would come. She hadn’t told him in the letter that she was pregnant. The news was too precious to have eyes other than his read it.
Letty bridled her thoughts and refused to plan any farther ahead than reaching the train station and buying a ticket to Boley. In an hour her father would arrive home. She had no doubt he would be relieved that she was gone. She would leave the rig at the livery if it was open. If not, she would water the horse and leave him tied to the hitching rail.
It wasn’t until Letty could see the lights of Huxley ahead that she met anyone on the road. A horseman came toward her out of the darkness. Her heart leaped with fright as she watched him approach.
“Howdy.” The man spoke and lifted his hat when he came even with the buggy.
Letty returned the greeting in a low voice, hoping it was too dark for him to see that she was a woman alone. After he passed, Letty peered around the side of the buggy. He had stopped, turned the horse so he could look back at the buggy. She held her breath, then let it out slowly when the rider put the horse in motion again and went on down the road.
&nbs
p; Later she was to wonder where she had gotten the courage to make the trip. She had never been this far away from home alone even in the daytime.
A clock chimed loudly from a church tower as she drove into town. Nine-thirty. She had made the trip in an hour and a half. Isaac was sweating. She went directly to the livery, reaching it just as the proprietor was shutting the big double doors.
“Wait, sir!” she called. “I wish to leave my horse.”
The man ambled toward her as she was getting down. “I seen that rig before.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sure you have. It belongs to the preacher over at Dunlap. He lent it to me and I said I’d leave it here. He’ll pick it up tomorrow.” Letty tried to lift her suitcase up out of the boot.
“Where ya headed, miss?”
“The train station.” She continued to pull the heavy case upward, but couldn’t lift it high enough to clear the footboard.
“Well, leave it be. I’ll drive ya. I’m thinkin’ it’s too far for ya to be haulin’ that suitcase.”
“I would certainly appreciate it. Do you know what time the train comes in?”
“Where to?”
Letty thought a minute, then said, “Chicago.”
“Ya gotta go north to Lincoln to go east or west.” The liveryman climbed into the buggy and took up the reins. “Giddy-up. Ain’t it late fer ya to be roamin’ round all by yore ownself?”
“Maybe. But . . . I just heard disturbing news about . . . my aunt in Chicago.”
They turned into the street leading to the station. “Lights still on. The agent’ll tell ya ’bout connections in Lincoln.”
CHAPTER
3
The station was deserted except for a baldheaded agent in the barred ticket cage and another man sweeping the floor. The man from the livery set Letty’s suitcase inside the door, gave her a rather disapproving look, and left. Letty was glad she hadn’t asked him to mail the letter to Mike’s mother. He might have told her father when he came for the horse and buggy, and it would have meant trouble for the Dolans.
Ribbon in the Sky Page 3
