Willow Springs

by Jan Watson

  “Joseph, go with me to the kitchen. I need a tea tray and a beefsteak.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, standing back.

  “You’ll need to go first.” She rested her hand on his broad shoulder for support and hobbled down the steps, testing her ankle. No harm done, she thought when she reached the landing and headed to the kitchen.

  As soon as the water in the teakettle rose to a boil, she assembled an invalid tray with tea, toast, and orange marmalade as well as a mound of chipped ice tied up in a soft cotton towel.

  Joseph fetched a small beefsteak and carried the whole lot up the stairs to Alice’s room.

  “Thank you,” Copper said after he placed the tray on a serving table.

  “Will you be needing anything else?” he asked, his face impassive, as if he didn’t see the carnage in the room.

  “I’ll use the bell if need be, Joseph. You can go on about your day.”

  Alice lay with closed eyes upon the bolster pillow. The sight of her hands, her beautiful hands, lying defenseless upon the counterpane nearly caused Copper’s undoing. Obviously she hadn’t fought back. One good whack with the heavy gold candlestick from the mantel would have cleaned Benton’s clock. Poor Alice; she needed a backbone.

  “Alice? See if you can eat a little something. You need to get your strength back.”

  “Perhaps a little tea.” Alice winced as she sat up , allowing Copper to place the tray on her lap and pour her tea. “There is no spoon for the honey. I can see I need to teach you to prepare a proper serving tray.”

  “Forevermore.” Copper stirred honey into the teacup with the handle of a knife. “Hot butter’s not the only way to choke a hound dog. Make do, Alice. Make do.”

  “Ouch!” Alice exclaimed as a hint of a smile stretched her split lip. “Laura Grace, you say the most ridiculous things.”

  “I talk like my daddy talks and his daddy before him. It marks where I’m from.” She shook out a starched napkin and tucked it under Alice’s chin. “Did you ever study Paul’s letters? Mam had me memorize this verse in Colossians: ‘Let your speech be always with grace.’ But then it also says ‘seasoned with salt.’ Well, my folks like to use a little salt in our speech for flavor. I don’t think God judges us for that, do you?”

  One trembling hand covered Alice’s eyes. “If God is judging anyone in this room, it’s me. If there’s any fault, it’s mine. Benton says I’m no better than a dried-up old maid, and he’s right.”

  “Alice, you’re making me mad. How can you dismiss what he’s done to you so easily?”

  Alice choked down a tiny piece of dry toast and a sip of tea. “He’s not always like this.”

  Copper began to tidy the room, righting an overturned chair and laying Alice’s dressing gown across the foot of the bed. “I don’t see how you can blame yourself. I’d feel ever so much better if you’d let me send for help.”

  “No, I told you!” Alice’s voice rose in alarm. “I couldn’t bear for anyone to see me this way. Please, leave me a little pride.”

  Pulling the backless stool from the dressing table to the bedside, Copper sat and took Alice’s hand. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I angered Benton. He was looking for . . . he couldn’t find . . . I-I can’t talk about this. I’m so ashamed. You must promise to keep this to yourself.” The eye that was not covered with beefsteak beseeched Copper.

  “Benton has hurt you before, hasn’t he?”

  “A pinch maybe or a twist of my arm when I upset him.” One finger traced the bruise on her face. “Never like this.” Her voice became quiet, dreamy, as if she were relating a small piece of fancy, not something real, not a bit of her own life.

  Copper tucked her hands under her hips to keep from reaching out, breaking the spell, putting herself in the way of Alice’s story.

  “Benton chose me. Of all the girls he could have had, I am the one he wanted.” Her laugh strangled from her throat. “He said my beauty cast a spell over him.”

  Mesmerized, Copper watched Alice stir her tea with the knife handle. Round and round she stirred though she never took a drink.

  “My father was just like Simon, forever putting everyone else in front of his family. I can’t count the number of times he let some drifter, some tramp, sit at our dinner table like an honored guest. I could never entertain in that house, never be who I was meant to be. And then Benton and I wed.” A sweep of her hand took in the room. “I was so proud to have all this.”

  Carefully, she set the knife on the edge of her saucer and pressed the monogrammed napkin to the corner of her mouth. “It’s no small thing being Mrs. Benton Upchurch.”

  Shame for Alice burned Copper’s face. How could she revel in Benton’s wealth while he disrespected her so? What was that Scripture Brother Isaac had preached a dozen times? “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.”

  Copper kept her silence though Alice’s violated face shouted corruption, and the broken jewelry box spilling riches across the floor stank of rust and the dry, powdery dust of moths.

  “Did you know Benton is the fourth Upchurch to own the bank?” Alice asked as if it mattered. “Tradition is important to him.” She set the tea tray aside and leaned back against the pillow. Her white hands pleated and smoothed the ribbon edge of the bedcover. “I tried, you know. It wasn’t for the lack of trying, but I couldn’t seem to hold a baby in my womb.”

  The air in the room grew dense, close, as if a summer storm threatened. Copper wished she had opened the curtains, wished she had propped the window, wished she were home folding the sun-sweetened laundry. Quietly, she waited for the rest of the story.

  “It was after the fifth pregnancy—or was it the sixth? Oh, I don’t even know anymore—that he moved across the hall.” Her head whipped back and forth again.

  Copper reached out and caught the beefsteak and laid it on the invalid tray beside the melting ice pack.

  Alice’s words clotted together as if she were trying to stop the bleeding out of her painful memory. “I loved him. I loved him. I loved him.” Her fists beat against her thighs as she choked, “I only had to do this one thing for him, and he would have loved me back.” She raised her shoulders as she took in a deep breath, then let them fall with a long sigh of resignation. “I’m barren. Benton deserves better than me.”

  Copper was at a loss. There were no clever words to ease Alice’s suffering. “Alice,” she started, then stopped. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I couldn’t stand the sight of you when Simon brought you here. Did you know that? Your very presence offended me. Now, somehow, your presence gives me comfort. Can I trust you with my secrets?”

  Against her better judgment, Copper gave all she had to give. “You can trust me. I won’t tell Simon, but I hope you will. He needs to know.”

  “I want to sleep now, Laura Grace. You can send the maid up to sit with me.”

  “What will happen when Benton comes back?”

  “Nothing will happen as long as I don’t interfere, as long as I leave him alone.”

  “Let me put this right before I go.” Stooping, Copper picked up the ornate jewelry chest. Ropes of pearls and loops of beaded jet slithered through her fingers. A diamond ring glinted in the shadow under a table, and beside it a little lump of gold beckoned. Down on her knees, Copper captured the pretty pieces. The ring fit perfectly in a section of one of the trays, but the other piece caused her brain to pucker. Why did it feel so familiar to her hand?

  High overhead, the sun said it was only a little past noon. It seemed to Copper as if she’d been in Alice’s bedchamber all day. It was good to be outside, away from that room swirling with secrets. Her head pounded with all the words she’d had to digest, but at least she felt she understood Alice a tad better. Maybe she shouldn’t have refused the carriage ride home; her ankle still ached a little, but she just had to be alone for a while, alone with a secret of he
r own.

  Lord forgive her, but the piece of jewelry she’d found under the table now burned a hole in her pocket. Like a game of old maid, she couldn’t wait to get home to see if she held the winning pair. Did that other bit of gold, also tucked away in a dress pocket, match this one?

  Standing still, she shaded her eyes. Was that Andy across the street? “Andy?” she called.

  He waved but did not stop. Strange—that wasn’t like him. Had the whole world gone mad? Alice was talking and Andy was not.

  Copper dropped her hand and walked on. She was in a bit of a hurry herself.

  Copper paused to select just the right hat to go with her blue-and-white pin-striped blouse and conservative gray skirt and jacket. Stepping in front of the cheval glass, she adjusted the broad-brimmed gray felt hat with its mass of ribbon bows. Her stomach fluttered with apprehension, but she ignored it. She was taking the carriage to the bank and that was that.

  “Afternoon, ma’am.” The doorman tipped his hat and swung open the heavy glass door proclaiming People’s Bank and Trust; Est. 1854; Benton Upchurch, Esq., President. “May I take your parasol?”

  “No, thank you,” Copper answered. “I might need this pointy end.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Never mind. I’m here to see my brother-in-law, Mr. Upchurch.”

  At that moment Benton stepped into the lobby. He struggled to button the jacket of his brown serge suit over his ponderous belly. “Laura Grace, what a pleasant surprise,” he boomed as he escorted her, his hand resting familiarly on the small of her back, into his inner office.

  After closing the frosted glass door, he pulled out the chair fronting his enormous desk for her. “My, you look fetching this afternoon. Do you mind?” Not waiting for a reply, he clipped the end of a hand-rolled Havana and, after a brief flare from a match, puffed noxious fumes into the air. His piggish, bloodshot eyes never strayed from Copper.

  She remained standing as he rolled back in his armed chair and placed one booted foot upon the polished surface of the desk.

  “I’ve just left Alice,” she began.

  His eyes narrowed. “Did she ask you to talk to me?”

  Copper paused, taking in the room. She saw his heritage in portraits of his father and grandfathers, like the ones in Alice’s dining room—imposing oils of men with the same round face and prominent ears as himself. “No, she doesn’t know I’m here.”

  “So what brings you here?”

  “You hurt her badly.” Copper leaned on her hands and met his cold stare across the desk. “And I’m here to tell you that won’t happen again.”

  Benton took a long draw on his cigar and released smoke in her face. “Your regard is strangely placed, my dear. Alice despises you, you know.”

  “She doesn’t have to love me for me to love her. You sit in church every Sunday. Isn’t that what Jesus teaches? Love for one another. Even you, Benton, though that might take some praying, considering what I saw this morning.”

  “What I do in my house with my wife is no business of yours.”

  “You are right, of course,” she said, leaning farther toward him, “until you harm her and I find out; then it becomes my business.”

  His foot dropped to the floor, and he met her eye to eye. “What are you going to do? Shoot me?”

  “That’s an idea,” she said, “but I’d thought more along the lines of going to the elders in the church.”

  “Ha!” He laughed and held out his beefy paw, palm up. “They sit right here. You’ve got nothing on me.”

  Copper rolled a set of cuff links across the desk like a pair of dice. “One of these was in your jewelry case. Guess where I found the other one?”

  He grabbed the studs before they skittered off the edge. A pulse throbbed at his temple, and he dabbed sweat from his forehead with a monogrammed handkerchief. The same monogram—BU—Copper noted, as the one on the cuff links. She might have shot him, he lost hot air so quickly and dropped back into his chair with a thud.

  “What do you want?” he asked, suddenly not able to meet her eyes.

  “Benton, where you choose to spend your time is indeed none of my affair. All I ask is your word of honor that you will never touch Alice in anger again.”

  The cigar smoldered in a cut-glass ashtray, smoke curling up like a question mark. Copper thought she’d never felt so sick, but she stood her ground.

  Benton juggled the studs in his hands, back and forth, back and forth. “I care for her, but a man has needs. I lost my temper when she threw her jewelry casket at me.” He stared at the floor. “I never meant to go so far.”

  “Do I have your word?”

  “On my honor, Laura Grace, you have my word.” Benton rose from the chair and pulled a watch fob from his vest pocket. Flipping the watchcase open, he gazed at it as if time was of sudden import. “That’s settled then.” He stuck the cigar in the corner of his mouth and spoke around it. “Ladies first.”

  “Thank you, but no,” Copper replied. “I’ll see myself out.”

  I shouldn’t have eaten that second pancake, Copper reckoned. It’s made me queasy this morning. Chickens clucked and the rooster preened as she leaned against the henhouse door with a bucket of water in one hand and a poke of shelled corn and oats in the other. “Here, biddies. Biddy, biddy, biddy.”

  Chickens and doodles circled round her feet, scratching and pecking at the feed as she scattered it about, completing her favorite chore, one she’d had to wrest from Searcy. She scooped up a tiny ball of downy fluff and held it close to her face.

  The chick peeped its high-pitched call. Copper set it in front of the watering tray.

  “Here, little doodle, have a drink. No, I didn’t say drown yourself, silly.” Laughing, she pulled the piece of fluff from the watering tray. “Like this.” She tipped the chick’s beak in the water, then tilted its head so water could trickle down its throat. “That’s not so hard, is it?”

  Copper watched the baby chicks closely as they ate and drank, occasionally pecking on the floor with her fingernail, mimicking a mother hen. The doodles weren’t blessed with brains, but she loved them nonetheless. And once it figured out how, a chicken would eat anything, some of which she’d rather not think about.

  Black specks swam before her eyes when she bent over the last water container. She pried off the circular tray and poured water into the small tank before tapping the tray back on and upending the whole thing. “Now we’re in business. Scat, Old Tom.” With one foot she scooted the curious cat out the henhouse door. “No chicken for your breakfast. How about some warm milk? Let’s see if Reuben has saved any for you.”

  She savored the feel of dew-soaked grass as she walked barefoot to the stable with her full egg basket.

  The tomcat butted his head against her ankle.

  “Hey, what are you doing? Your bowl is full.” Giving in, she scratched the insistent cat behind the ears.

  “Miz Corbett? You all right?” Reuben stepped from a stall with a brimming bucket. “You looking white as this here milk.”

  Copper steadied herself with one hand against the barn door. “I’ve been rushing around too much. I’m just so glad to be outdoors.”

  “You want I should walk you to the house?”

  “Thank you, Reuben, but really, I’m fine.” At her feet, Old Tom lapped at the sweet morning milk. “But could you drive me to the Tollivers’ this afternoon? It’s such a pretty day. I’d like to take Marydell and Dodie out for a while.”

  “Andy ain’t been by all week. Usually stops for milk in the evenings.”

  Copper pinched her lower lip. “That seems strange. I haven’t seen him either. Maybe I’d better go check on them this morning instead of waiting.”

  “I’ll get the carriage whenever you be ready,” Reuben said. “You let me know.”

  On her way back to the house, Copper stopped to admire the garden plot. Reuben had already plowed the ground, and now the rich, dark soil lay waiting to be planted.

&nbs
p; The garden gate stood open, so she stepped inside and bent to scoop up a handful of soil. She could almost smell green onions and ripe red tomatoes as she held the dirt to her nose. And cucumbers—soon they’d plant cucumbers, and before you knew it, she and Searcy could make pickles. Just the thought of crunchy bread-and-butter pickles made her mouth water and cleared up her queasy stomach. She wondered if there were any left from last year.

  Back in the kitchen, Copper put the eggs in the pantry and then washed up. Her mind wandered as she leaned against the sink, gazing out the window. It was nice talking with Reuben, she thought, but sad to think of the loss that had opened their friendship.

  Paw-paw had been dead since midwinter, a season so severe that the creeks froze solid and birds huddled in masses, too cold to fly. She’d found her pet after she went searching in the snow when he’d missed breakfast and then dinner. Copper found him out behind the barn, sheltered by an ancient lilac bush.

  Reuben had come across her sitting there, the dead dog cradled to her chest like a baby, tears leaving frozen tracks down her cheeks. “He was trying to get home, Reuben,” she cried. “I shouldn’t have let him out of the house.”

  Reuben knelt in the snow, stroked Paw-paw’s head, and ran his hands down Paw-paw’s back. “He was a good old dog.”

  “I didn’t take very good care of him,” Copper confessed between sobs. “Once I left him in a cave for days, and now I’ve let him die scared and alone.”

  “Looks to me like Paw-paw died being a dog, Miz Corbett. Looks to me like this old hound died doing what he wanted.”

  Copper shifted a little under the dog’s weight. The cold seeped from the ground into her very bones. “What do you mean?”

  Gently, Reuben pulled a tuft of white fur from Paw-paw’s mouth and held it out. “He almost had hisself a rabbit. Caught its cotton tail anyway.”

  “But if I’d kept him in the house, he wouldn’t have been hunting in this awful weather.”

  “Miz Corbett, would you druther die cooped up in the house or running free?”