by Lucy Evanson
Nathan rolled over, pulled back the blanket and got up. That horse, any land, any home of his own would remain unreachable forever if he went home now. It was settled. He was going to get hitched.
He dressed quickly in the cold room; it wasn’t quite to the point where he could see his breath inside, but it was getting close. He was going to have to either find another rooming house or insist that Mrs. Grady give him a different room with a window that closed properly, even if it was more expensive. If nothing else, getting married was at least going to keep him from freezing to death over the winter.
For all he knew, it might even turn out to be a good deal regardless of the money. Cora was one good-looking girl. Maybe a little rough around the edges, but she seemed like the kind of woman who could really spice up a man’s life. Of course, they would only be married for a couple of days, but then again you could never tell what was going to happen in this life. A couple of days might be plenty.
Nathan grabbed his coat and went downstairs, surprising Mrs. Grady on the steps as she was heading up, cowbell in hand.
“You’re up awful early,” she said. “Are you sick?”
“Just felt like getting out for some fresh air,” he said as he passed her. “Although I get almost enough coming into my room as it is.”
He couldn’t quite make out her grumbled reply as he stepped out into the street. It was a clear, cold morning, and he turned up his collar as he started walking, keeping himself on the sunny side of the street. There was nowhere he even needed to go so early, but he felt full of energy, as if he’d go crazy just sitting around in his room.
Nathan found that the storefronts and businesses that he passed looked different this morning. When he’d been trying to find a job, they had seemed imposing. Cold. Unfriendly. Now that he would no longer need them, he felt almost nostalgic for them. There was the hotel, where Mr. Gates had offered him a job. There was the general store, with the second-story addition nearly complete. There was the bank—not that Nathan had ever found a reason to head inside. Yet.
After a couple of hours walking around, Nathan had burned off some energy and was sitting on the steps in front of the town hall when the clock overhead struck ten. The final bell was echoing out across the city when Cora appeared from around the corner, and he stood up to greet her.
“Good morning,” he said. “Beautiful day to get married, don’t you think?”
She gave him an odd look before she spoke. “Morning,” she said. She looked around to make sure that nobody else was in earshot, then leaned closer. “By the way, before we go in there, you have to say that your name is Booker. Paul Booker.”
“What? Why?”
“Because that’s the name I gave to the lawyer who’s handling things,” she said. “I need to show up with a husband named Paul Booker, or he’ll know I lied to him. And that means I won’t get my money.”
“And then I won’t get mine.” Nathan let out a long sigh. “Paul Booker,” he said. “You know, you might have mentioned something about this yesterday. Going in there and using another man’s name…that just doesn’t sit right with me.”
Cora gave him a stare that chilled him more than his drafty window ever had. “Well, you picked a fine time to get cold feet,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait and tell me about it once he says ‘man and wife’?”
“Well, I didn’t think we’d be lying to a justice of the peace, you know? I mean, that’s…that’s fraud, isn’t it?” he asked quietly.
“Look, I’m sorry,” she said. “There just isn’t any other way to do this. I needed to tell the lawyer a name, and that was the first one that popped into my head.” She reached over and grasped his hand. “We do this now, and then in a few days we’ll get divorced, and you’ll never have to worry about a thing. You can go back to being plain old Nathan….Nathan….”
“Larrimore.”
“Nathan Larrimore,” she said. “See? I couldn’t even remember your last name, you look so much like a Booker.”
He snorted and looked up at the building looming over them. “Well, I guess it can’t hurt for a few days,” he finally said, and Cora started tugging him up the stairs by the sleeve before he’d even finished. She led him up to the second floor and down the hall to an office with a brass plate on the door reading JOSEPH TIBBS, JUSTICE OF THE PEACE.
Cora knocked and opened the door to reveal a woman sitting at a small desk.
“Can I help you?”
“We’re here to see Joe,” Cora said. “He’s going to marry us this morning.”
“Is that Cora Rice out there?” The inner door flew open and a thin, middle-aged man looked out into the reception area. His hair had been combed over and plastered down with some kind of hair tonic; more than anything else, it called attention to the bright pink skin that showed through the last remaining strands of hair.
“Hi Joe,” Cora said, moving to shake his hand. “I’d like you to meet my fiancé, Paul Booker.”
The two men shook hands quickly as Tibbs showed them into his office. “Martha, can you bring in that license I gave you before?” he called out to his secretary. “Now, I want you to review this and make sure everything’s in order before we begin,” Tibbs said as Martha entered and handed him a large envelope. He opened it and withdrew a license that had been filled in with Cora’s name, date of birth and so on; as Nathan read it, he saw that it also bore the information of the infamous Paul Booker. He stared at it, trying to memorize the date of birth in case Tibbs asked for some reason. September 19.
“Everything look all right?”
“It’s fine,” Cora said, glancing at Nathan. “Right?”
He nodded. “Yep, looks great.”
“Well, let’s get you two married then,” Tibbs said as he rose from his chair. “Do you have a witness?”
“A witness? Uh, no, we don’t,” Cora said. “I didn’t know we needed one.”
“No problem at all. Martha can fill in,” he said, calling his secretary back into the room. “Are you ready?”
Cora and Nathan both stood up. “You bet,” Nathan said, winking at Cora. Tibbs smiled and opened his desk drawer, removing a leather-bound book, the cover worn and shiny in spots, like a saddle showing its age. He flipped through a few pages and cleared his throat.
“Marriage,” he began, “is the pinnacle of relationships for us as human beings. It is unique among all our relationships because it is the only one that we choose for ourselves.”
Nathan turned slightly to look at Cora as Tibbs continued. Still looks like the tough girl, he thought at first. Her jaw was clenched and she had a tiny furrow in her brow, as if she were worried about something. That’s not surprising; she has a lot riding on this. Still, there was something else about her this morning, something that had only revealed itself in the warm office as the morning sunlight filled the room. For the first time, she looked almost vulnerable.
Cora glanced at him and he smiled at her; her eyes, so blue that they made his heart ache, softened for once. She let a tiny smile appear on her own face before she turned back to Tibbs.
“You’re giving up a solitary life in favor of a shared life,” Tibbs was saying. “From this day forward, you are two people living as one.”
Nathan looked over at Cora again. Come to think of it, maybe he’d been wrong about her from the beginning. It had been known to happen. Maybe when he had first seen her in the bar, she hadn’t been as tough as he thought. She might have just been acting. Perhaps she did need other people in her life, just like anybody else.
“Do you have rings?”
“No, we don’t,” Cora answered.
“All right, then,” Tibbs said. “You two might want to hold hands for this next part anyway.”
Nathan took her hands, so small and light, into his own.
“Do you, Paul, take Cora as your lawfully wedded wife?”
“I do.” Never thought I’d actually say those words.
“And do y
ou, Cora, take Paul as your lawfully wedded husband?”
“I do.”
“Then, by the power vested in me by the state of Wisconsin, I now pronounce you man and wife,” Tibbs said. “Paul, now give that bride of yours a kiss!”
“What?”
“You ever been to a wedding, son? That part’s traditional,” Tibbs said dryly.
“Oh, of course,” Nathan said, his cheeks growing warm. He stepped close to Cora. “Well, here goes,” he said quietly.
“Kiss me, honey,” she said, though her eyes seemed more to be saying just get it over with.
He leaned over and kissed her quickly, though not so fast that he didn’t notice what soft, full lips she had.
Martha clapped. “Congratulations, you two!” she said, coming forward to shake hands. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll have your copy of the marriage certificate.” She waited for Tibbs to sign the paper, then she took it back out to her desk.
“Thank you, Joe,” Cora said, shaking hands with Tibbs.
“My pleasure, Cora,” he said. “Congratulations.” He smiled warmly at her as they started to head back to the outer office, but then reached out to take Nathan by the arm. He waited until Cora had stepped out before turning to him.
“Son, you take good care of that girl,” Tibbs said.
“I will, sir,” Nathan said. “Though it hardly seems like she needs anybody to take care of her.”
Tibbs grunted and a half-smile appeared on his face. “Sure doesn’t,” he said. “But don’t let appearances fool you.”
“You know Cora pretty well, I guess?”
“Well enough,” Tibbs said. “She’s been in a little trouble now and again, but I always knew she’d turn things around. Maybe this is her first step.” He stuck out his hand. “In any case, congratulations, Paul.”
Nathan shook hands quickly, as if Tibbs could somehow sense the deception by touch. “Thank you,” he muttered, then joined Cora at the receptionist’s desk. A few minutes later they were out the door, headed back downstairs and to the street.
Nathan glanced up at the clock overhead. Ten-twenty. It might not have been the most romantic wedding ever, but you couldn’t argue with its efficiency.
“So what do we do now?”
Cora turned to him and cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you know, now that we’re married,” he said. “What do we do now?”
“If you’re trying to hint at something, don’t get your hopes up,” she said. “A honeymoon wasn’t part of the deal.”
“No, I know,” he said. “I was talking about the lawyer.”
“Oh, that,” Cora said. “Well, he said that we should show up at his office tomorrow morning. Meet me here at nine, okay?”
“Sure thing.”
“Now that I think about it, where are you staying?”
“Do you know Mrs. Grady’s rooming house? Over on Elm?”
“Yeah, I know where that is,” Cora said. “All right, then I’ll see you here tomorrow at nine sharp. If you’re late I’m coming to get you. But don’t be late.”
“I won’t.” He watched as she nodded, then turned and walked away, pulling her shawl tightly around her shoulders to guard against the chilly breeze.
Nathan glanced up at the clock again. Some morning. Already married and it’s not even ten-thirty yet, he thought, before turning and heading for home.
Married. The thought still felt odd and uncomfortable, like a new shoe that hadn’t been broken in yet. Cora caught a glimpse of herself in a shop window as she passed. That there’s a married woman. Nope, it was still hard to believe, especially considering she hardly knew anything about Nathan, didn’t feel anything for him, and even now had forgotten his last name again. It sure wasn’t like she had imagined when she was a young girl, but then again, not much in her life had turned out as she’d hoped.
They said that children didn’t notice how hard life was, but Cora knew that to be a lie. From her earliest memories, she had seen that things were different for her than for the other girls from church, but she had tried to ignore the stares that lingered on her worn, scuffed shoes and her threadbare dresses. She smiled and invited them to play with her, making friends with her manner rather than with any fancy clothes.
When she would visit her friends’ houses, Cora would imagine that she was just like them, that she had her own clean and warm room at a well-lit house just down the road, and that she wouldn’t be spending another night in the cramped bed she shared with her mother, huddling against the cold while listening to the field mice burrow through the walls of their sod house.
Gradually, though, she arrived at an age—perhaps seven or eight—at which her friends stopped inviting her over to their houses, and stopped coming to visit at hers. By that time they had moved; Cora’s grandmother and the sod roof both expired about the same time, so they’d inherited a small shack not far away. It had real glass windows and was made out of corrugated tin. It had sounded like music when it rained. At the time, Cora thought that she had finally joined the club that others had belonged to since birth. Still, the days of pretending that she belonged in her friends’ houses, with their clean and shiny floors, were over. The stain of being poor hadn’t been wiped away just by moving from one house to another, and the girls who had once been her friends began to avoid her, as though poverty were a flea that could leap from Cora onto them.
By the time she’d become less of a girl and more of a young woman, she could feel the boys’ eyes on her, and she quickly learned that in exchange for a little attention, they would give her what she wanted. Up to a point. In the end, however, there was always disappointment. Cora never finished school, but life taught her one thing better than any crusty schoolmarm ever could have: you couldn’t depend on men. She had seen her mother’s hopes raised and dashed more times than she could count by men who arrived cloaked in promises, only to depart after taking what they’d wanted and leaving her poorer in spirit, if not in other ways as well. When the boys who sought Cora’s affections became men doing the same, she saw for herself how fickle they were. They were untrustworthy. Uneven. Unsteady.
Still, even then she had harbored a secret hope, a hope that not even she knew existed, that she would someday find a man who would treat her right for once. A man who would look at her and see more than a pretty face and a curvy body. A man who would see her spirit, and one to whom she could open her soul. It was a naïve hope, to be sure, but it existed nonetheless. She had come close, once; a few years earlier there had been a man who she thought might have been the one. He was successful, wealthy and cultured; in other words, everything she wasn’t. Cora had spent some time with him, but in the end he’d moved on just like all the others. Since then, she had been slowly sliding downhill, all too aware that time was running short for her to turn things around.
But this could be something. This could be, at long last, her big step forward. Cora’s pace quickened as the thoughts flooded her mind. Finally she would be free of having to depend on others, free of having to rely on habitually unreliable men. Funny that she had to get married in order to make it on her own.
Chapter 5
If nothing else, Nathan was punctual, which in Cora’s experience was rare in a man and, from what she understood, even rarer in a husband. Still, there he was, sitting on the steps in front of the town hall while the clock above showed five minutes to nine.
“Right on time. You’re early, even,” she said as she approached.
“There’s no such thing as early,” he said. “A man is either late or on time. And I like to be on time.”
“I can see we’re going to get along just fine, then. Let’s go,” Cora said. “I have a horse and carriage waiting for us. You can drive, can’t you?”
“Of course,” he said as he got to his feet and they started walking. “I love horses. I grew up around them.”
“Well, then you’ll drive us to Dodgeville,” she said. They arri
ved at the carriage house in only a few minutes, and shortly they were on the road out of town. It was clear from the smile on Nathan’s face as he drove that he was enjoying himself.
“You weren’t kidding when you said you liked horses,” Cora said.
“It’s that obvious, huh?”
“A little bit.”
“Well, there’s nothing like a good horse,” he said. “As a matter of fact, one of my dreams is to start breeding them someday.”
“Really? Isn’t that kind of expensive?”
“Sure is,” he said. “You need a lot of land and the horses themselves don’t come cheap. But maybe someday I’ll be able to do it. What about you?”
“Oh, me and horses don’t go together all that well,” she said.
“No, I mean what would you like to do with your life?”
She snorted. “No idea.”
“Come on, everybody has something that they’d like to do.”
“Well, not me,” she said. “I don’t waste my time thinking about stuff like that.”
“It’s not a waste of time if you’re planning for it.”
“And how’s your plan for breeding horses coming along?”
He shrugged. “We’ll see,” he said. “Five thousand dollars could go a long way toward that.”
“Well, good for you, then,” she said. “Right now the only thing I want to do in my life is get to Dodgeville.”
He turned his attention back to the road and lightly snapped the reins as Cora leaned back against the seat. What do I want to do with my life? Like I have so many options. It was a silly question, as if she had the luxury of just sitting around daydreaming. She’d seen long ago that life was a lot easier for some people than others, and she, unfortunately, was one of the others.
She would have been happy to ride the rest of the way in silence, but after only a few minutes Nathan insisted on trying to start another conversation.
“You know, a lot of people would want to keep quiet about their plans because they’re afraid that if they say anything about it, then it might jinx them,” he said.
