by Alan Black
LillieBeth folded her Sunday dress and set it neatly in the box. She pulled down the curtain separating her bed under the attic stairs from the rest of the main cabin, folded it neatly and put it in the box. She had a chamber pot under her bed. It was an old one, a hand-me-down from her parents. She had not used it in a while and it was clean. She set it in the box with her other belongings.
Susanne and LillieBeth carried the little box to the mule cart. LillieBeth looked at the box in the cart. “I wonder if we can move everything we own in one trip. It is strangely enlightening to see how many things we own by pulling them out and stacking them up. It seems everywhere I look, there is something else, something I am so familiar with looking at that I no longer see it.
Susanne said, “I expect that is true of most people.”
Clare framed herself in the eastern door. She smiled and said, “Child, are you and Susanne planning on doing this whole move by yourselves?”
LillieBeth said, “I thought I might as well make myself useful as opposed to sitting around all morning.”
“Like your mother?”
“That is not what I meant, Mama. You are with child and need your rest. I guess you are resting for two now.”
Clare patted her stomach. “This is still as flat as ever. I won’t get big with child for a few months yet, so I am not an invalid. You don’t worry about me.”
LillieBeth said with a serious expression, “I am not worried about you, Mama. I was thinking about my baby sister. I do not want her born so tired that she cannot help with the chores.”
Clare laughed. “What if you get a baby brother?”
“A boy! Well howdy, would that be something? I expect we will take whichever kind we get, but I think Daddy would be happier with a boy.”
Clare said, “I have never seen your Daddy any happier and prouder than the day his daughter was born. He will be pleased either way, don’t you worry about that.”
Susanne laughed. “I remember that day. Art was definitely a sight.”
Clare said, “And Susanne is a guest in our house. We don’t work our guests half to death before breakfast. You come sit down for a bit. Chores can wait.”
Susanne was not sure how much longer they could wait. The younger Baileys were very anxious to have the Hazkits get out. The Bailey grandchildren were running in and out of the doors as if they were already home. The young Mr. Bailey and his wife were nowhere in sight.
Clare waved LillieBeth over to the table. She pulled her down onto her lap and handed her a couple of biscuits. She also handed two biscuits to Susanne.
Clare said, “It is way past your breakfast time. I saved these for you.”
Mrs. Bailey said, “You would think the way those grandchildren of mine went through those biscuits you made, that they had never been fed before.”
Mama said, “Active children go through food like the rest of us go through air. Think nothing of it.”
Susanne figured if Clare had not made biscuits, even if she used the last bit of flour she had, no one would have fed the Bailey grandchildren any breakfast. She shook her head. It was still not her business.
Clare said, “I want to tell you some news, Elizabeth.”
LillieBeth closed her eyes and nodded. “Whenever my mama uses my real name, it is serious.”
Clare said, “The school board met last night-”
Mrs. Grissom interrupted, “Without my Clayton there!”
Clare said, “Yes, Mr. Grissom was not there. The rest of the school board was there, Rail Howerbach, Jim Hollister and Bud Kincaide. But, Reverend James spoke. He told the School Board about how Susanne had been forced into…well…an unvirtuous act by those men.”
LillieBeth flared, “The Braunawalls raped her Mama. They forced her.”
Clare hugged her. “There are little ears in this cabin that might be listening. Be watchful of your words.”
“Yes, Ma’am. I am sorry. How could Reverend James say something? She told him in confidence. He is an ordained minister. It was a secret he should have kept.”
Susanne said, “Please don’t blame him, LillieBeth. I don’t know his reasons, but I am sure he did what he thought was right, as did the school board.”
Clare said, “The school board fired Susanne. Since she was living in a room provided for by the school board, they put her out.”
Mrs. Bailey said, “Sound like a pack of fools, to me.”
Susanne shook her head, “Mr. Hollister said the vote was two for sending me away and one to keep it quiet. He would not say who voted which way. I want to be angry, but I don’t know where I should direct my anger.”
She knew she wanted to be angry at everyone, but it was not fair. Grace Grissom swore if Clayton had been at the meeting he would have voted to keep her secret for her so she could keep her teaching position. She was not as convinced as Grace. She wanted to be angry at Clayton for not being at the meeting. She wanted to be angry at Reverend James for not keeping her secret. She wanted to be angry at all of the school board. She shook her head. The anger was her problem. Her mother had often told her that if she was angry at more than one person at a time, then it was probably not the others’ fault.
She could only be angry with herself. She did not know whether she was more angry for having agreed to go for a walk with Trance Braunawall, a bad decision; keeping the rape a secret, a really bad decision; or ever speaking of the rape, a really, really bad decision…or was it?
Mrs. Grissom said, “I brought her here. Clayton and I have a spare cabin on our place, but we already offered it to Reverend James and he has moved in. I wanted to catch up with Clayton, he would tell us what to do and where we can take Miss Harbowe. But, you heard him, he has sheriffing business on his mind.”
LillieBeth said, “She goes with me. She is my friend and where I go, she goes.”
MONDAY – MID-MORNING
Susanne said, ‘I thank you, but I can’t place my burdens on your house.”
LillieBeth said, “Then we will leave that house and find us a place of our own.”
Clare said, “Nonsense to both of you. Susanne, you have been a friend for more years than Art and I have been together. You are more than welcome to stay with us, wherever we live, for as long as you need and for as long as you want.”
Susanne shook her head. “I have been marked in the community as an unfit woman. I would not have you painted with the same brush.”
Mrs. Bailey snorted, “Seems to me the onlyest thing you’re guilty of is being truthful. Why there are a dozen young widows at the Baptist church wouldn’t so much as flinch an eye to a young man comin’ round after dark. And they gossip about it to each other somethin’ awful.”
Susanne asked, “But, what about Art? What will he think?”
Clare laughed. “Don’t you worry about what Art will think! I am with child and soon enough having another woman around to help with the chores will make LillieBeth and me happy. If LillieBeth and I are happy, then Art will be happy.”
LillieBeth said, “And Daddy is not the kind of man who gives two pennies worth what other people think of him. Besides, having a school teacher living with me will sure make it easier to get to school.”
Clare said, “Oh? So you are going to quit going and forget about Pearl Wikoff and your other friends there?”
Grace Grissom said, “I am not sure they gave much thought to who was going to teach school when they dismissed their only teacher.”
Mrs. Bailey clasped her hands together and looked skyward in her public gesture of Baptist prayerfulness. “Oh Lordy! Where are we going to send my grandchildren for the day without a school? I can’t have them rock apes underfoot all day.”
Young Mr. Bailey stuck his head in the door. “Sure a lot of gabbing goin’ on, but not much moving. Sorry, ladies, but I do need to get a roof over my children’s heads afore nightfall.”
Grace stood up, grabbed her chair, wrapped a meaty and callused paw around the closed end of a gunnysack full
of kitchen goods and headed out the east door. She was back for a second load before Susanne could get her feet under her. Mrs. Bailey picked up the chair she’s been sitting on and carried out to the wagon to be loaded. She headed back to her house, ushering her brood before her and expressing her determination to keep her son and his children out from under foot until the women left for the Hazkit place.
This, that and the thing over there was picked up and carted out the door. Clare supervised the loading and stacking until the mule cart was loaded to overflowing. She assured everyone she was fine, but no one wanted to see a woman with child carrying anything heavy, even if she was not showing.
LillieBeth said, “I am amazed. There are still things to carry from the cabin to the cart, and we have not even so much as opened the door to Daddy and Mama’s lean-to bedroom.”
Susanne said, “It is true that you do not have many possessions, but this mule cart is only a short two-wheeled affair that holds less than you think it might. You would know how much it holds if you studied your geometry more.”
Clare shrugged. “Well, it looks like we are going to have to make two trips.”
Grace laughed, “Fiddle de de. Why, I got a perfectly good wagon setting over there with those two big horses just getting lazy and fat! LillieBeth, you get your mules moved out of the way. We can swap places between my wagon and your cart.”
MONDAY - AFTERNOON
Susanne did not want to laugh with Clare and Grace. She wanted to hide her face and weep. She was tired. Yesterday had been a trying day, last night had been long and not restful, and today had been physically tiring. School teaching did not prepare anyone to be a furniture mover.
All of the past two day’s events kept coming back to her thoughts. Working kept her mind busy, but now they were riding in Grace’s wagon and her mind began running circles around itself. The Braunawalls had ruined her in secret. The school board and the Right Reverend David James had ruined her in public. She could live with having been raped, how could she not? It was a simple matter of life or death. How could she live knowing the school board had betrayed her? They were men she thought of as friends, who trusted her with their children and who often shared the bounty of their tables. Death was not a real option, as suicide was always wrong in God’s book. The only option that remained was a short, unhappy and godless life in Samson’s brothel in Oasis.
Clare and LillieBeth were very sincere in their offer to shelter and feed her. It was some comfort to have friends who would not turn their backs on her. No matter what they said or how strongly they protested, Art Hazkit would have his say. It was his house and unlike many a family; it was the man in the Hazkit house who set the standard. Clare and LillieBeth would follow Art’s lead. She would be gone if he said to go. She would just have to wait until he got back from Galena to know what he was thinking or what he wanted.
The desire to be heartsick, insulted, ashamed and confused whirled together in her head, throbbing and racing uncontrollably; in her heart, stabbing and squeezing tight; and in her stomach, wrenched and twisted. She wanted to skulk off into the wilderness and die of humiliation. She wanted to sit in a corner and cry to the point of dehydration. She wanted to move away from the Ozarks to live where no one knew her.
She could do none of those things. She was trapped, squeezed in between Grace and Clare on the front seat of Grissom’s wagon. Grace’s bulk was like a warm comfortable wall on her left. Clare, on her right, wrapped a friendly arm over her shoulder, a familiar childhood gesture. Worst of all, Grace was sharing a ribald tale of her youth, of punching a poor young boy who tried nothing more than to sneak a kiss from a much larger, yet much younger girl.
Grace’s self-deprecating humor about her own size was more than Susanne could fight. She smiled, then chuckled and finally laughed outright with both women.
Clare wiped the laughter tears from her eyes and pointed at LillieBeth in the mule cart ahead of them. The girl was obviously scandalized that the three women could laugh in the middle of such trials.
It was not just Susanne’s problems. Susanne was not so self-absorbed that she could miss the issues in LillieBeth’s life: the death of a new friend, the loss of her childhood home, and even the short, although aborted, attack on her own virtue and her mother’s goodness by the Braunawalls. All such tragedies would have a deep impact on the young woman, as it would on any woman, young or old.
Susanne could see LillieBeth glance back at the laughter and the young woman urged the Hazkit mules into a slightly faster plod along the rocky dirt road. Whether prodded or not, the mules would move no faster than they wanted to move. That attitude clearly defined the understanding between any Missouri mule and it’s unfortunate owner.
Clare said, “LillieBeth has been having such a hard time this past week. She needs to learn to roll with the punches.”
Grace slapped her knee. “That is exactly what I told that boy when I knocked him upside the head and sent him flying off that upended washtub.”
Clare said, “Serves him right. He shouldn’t have tried to kiss you if he had to stand on a washtub to reach. He should have waited until you sat down.”
Grace said, “Well now, Clayton finally did hit his growth spurts and grew up quite nice. At the time though, even sitting down, he would’ve been shorter than me.”
Clare laughed realizing for the first time who the young boy had been. “At least if you had been seated you wouldn’t have been able to put as much steam behind those fists of yours.”
Grace held up a meaty fist. “I do seem to have grown a set of man hands. It must have been all those years of shoeing horses and blacksmithing when all the boys went off to war.”
Clare held up her hands. “These old paws of mine aren’t as big as yours, but they are still as rough as last years old cob. Cooking, cleaning and moving rocks from one spot to another in the garden don’t keep your skin as soft and gentle as a good coating of goose grease rubbed in every day.”
Grace laughed, “Like you could afford extra goose grease!” She grabbed Susanne’s left hand by the wrist and held it up. She studied it carefully. “It does look like chalk dust keeps a teacher’s hands all soft and pretty.”
All three women laughed.
Grace continued, “Of course, a dainty thing like Susanne wouldn’t do for a man like my Clayton. Just between us old women, he likes things a bit…well, rough and rowdy. He would snap a delicate flower like you in half in no time. Why, it is probably a good thing we never had children of our own, poor little lambs wouldn’t get any sleep at night, no how.”
Clare said, “It’s a good thing LillieBeth sleeps so soundly. I do not know how she didn’t figure out I was with child again. Art may not be rough and rowdy, but he is always ready. He tells me I make enough noise to wake the dead some nights, but I wouldn’t know. I’ll just have to take his word for it.”
Susanne wanted to be scandalized at such inappropriate talk, but she couldn’t. She laughed with the other two women. She ended up wiping tears from her eyes, but not from crying. Even in laughter, there was a touch of sadness. She so wanted to be married and have children of her own. Now she could not see how it would ever happen.
She had thought she was happy teaching other women’s children, guiding their young lives, watching new knowledge light up their eyes, nurturing their onset of maturity and loving them all. But, in the past week, LillieBeth had re-awakened the desire in her heart for her own children.
Susanne had always loved Elizabeth O’Brien Hazkit. She knew the young girl was her favorite from birth, but she struggled not to let it show as her teacher. In the beginning, LillieBeth was a favorite only because she was the daughter of her childhood friend and hero Clare O’Brien. In time, LillieBeth grew into an inquisitive and intelligent young girl in her own right. Now, in just a short week or so, LillieBeth had blossomed into a fiercely independent, ferociously loyal and gently maturing young woman.
The cart ahead creaked to a stop. It was easy t
o see LillieBeth had not pulled the mules to a halt and just as easy to hear she had not called ‘whoa’. It was obvious the mules, as ugly and brutal looking an equine that ever walked the Ozarks, were smart enough to know they had reached their destination, a place they had been before.
Grace braced her feet against the floorboards and wrestled her huge Belgian horse team to a halt. The woman was a fine match for the team. She needed to be, as the horses were unhappy following behind a mule team. It was clear they felt settling in behind a mule team was demeaning.
The women watched LillieBeth open the gate and lead the mule team far enough inside the gate to make room for the Grissom team. The young woman ran back to the gate and waited for them to enter. She stood patiently to close the gate behind them.
Grace stopped the wagon halfway through the gate. There were three signs posted “No Tresspassing”, “Private Property” and “Keep Out”.
Susanne could not help but mentally correct the spelling of ‘Tresspassing’. She was no longer a schoolteacher, but right was right and that was way too many s’s.
Grace looked over at Clare. “I would say the Hazkits are not very friendly folk if I didn’t know better.”
Susanne said, “It does look positively unwelcoming at that.”
Grace grabbed a huge forge hammer from under the wagon seat. She jumped to the ground, heedless of her long skirt flapping up, showing much of what was underneath. She gave a light, good-natured thump on LillieBeth’s shoulder. It sent the young woman back a step. With a few quick flicks of her wrist, Grace and her hammer shattered the signs.
