by Carolyn Bond
She had the same passion for life. The thought of holding a woman with dreams and the drive to reach them excited him and scared him at the same time. What if she didn’t put him and children as a priority? Would she be able to do the work a woman must do and still follow whatever dreams she had? How would he be able to help her reach those dreams?
The answers were out of reach but he couldn’t deny she rocked him to the core. He wanted to hold her and breathe the scent of her skin. He longed to hear her tell him she loved him. He thought of whispering that he loved her in her ear and her smiling with joy.
He came to a bluff over the river. Below, the mighty Ohio quietly ambled toward the Mississippi on its journey to be free of all land and pour into the Gulf of Mexico. These hills were passing obstacles on its journey.
He sat in the moonlight, knees drawn up and held by his clasped hands. A light breeze ruffled his hair. The white light reflected off the water like a shining ribbon streaming through blackness. The serene beauty of the silent body of water was deceptive. He knew that the churning currents would take a man under and hold him down. Catfish as large as a cow hide in the dark depths. River fish with razor teeth waited under the surface for an easy meal. Life, like this beautiful view, was deceptive.
What he thought he had always wanted, may not actually be what he needed. He’d moved to America to have land and wealth and a family. At no point had he considered his heart. His heart did not care about land and wealth. He just wanted Lily. He wanted her with every fiber of his being. Like a magnet, he could sense her in the wilderness below. She was there at the base of the hill, at the end of the road, in the house just before Sinking Creek. There in a room upstairs in the back of the house. Her spirit radiated out to him in the night from her bed.
Or, did it radiate out to Brian Everbright? He knew any sensible girl would chose Brian Everbright over him. After all, survival was primal. The Everbrights had money. She would never worry about food. She would never go to bed bone tired from the sweat of her brow.
He grimaced. What did he have to offer her? He couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t sit back and watch Brian Everbright picking her up and dropping her off. One day she would come home with a ring. He would have to attend their wedding.
His heart pounded, spreading the ache in his chest to every inch of him. Maybe if he had been the first born at home, he could have competed with the likes of Brian Everbright for Lily’s love. He had to leave Scotland and cross an ocean to find a life and now he knew it didn’t matter. Heartache went with him everywhere he went. One thing was for certain. He was not going to sit back and watch the woman he loved, the woman for whom he would give up everything, become another man’s wife. He was leaving. He’d follow the glistening stream of silver below him and, together, he and the river would find freedom.
***
The dim light of dawn made a gray cast on the room when her eyes opened. The sounds of dishes and pans clanging somewhere in the house woke her. The aroma of coffee pulled at her, begging her to find it. She sat up on the side of the bed and stretched, pulling her hands high over her head. As she stretched, she noticed a green dress hanging on the wardrobe door. Bettie must have left it there earlier.
She quickly dressed, becoming more adept at tightening her own corset, and washed her face from the wash basin on the dresser. She brushed her hair until it shined with a golden glow in the low light and pinned it back up using the combs to pull it up on the sides before twisting it into a bun in the back.
In the kitchen, Bettie bustled from the stove to the table setting out bowls of oatmeal, sausage and biscuits. William sat at the table reading the newspaper and Carlton sipped a glass of milk.
“Anything I can do to help, Bettie?” Lily asked.
“Just sit down, darling. That’ll be fine. You can pour yourself some coffee.”
Lily picked up the china coffee server and poured herself a cup. She added two lumps of sugar and stirred it with a spoon. Before laying the spoon down, her eyes fell on a small crystal vase on the table with a few sprigs of cedar with pale blue berries dotting the faded green spray of leaves. The scent of them now wafted by her nose. The sharp woody scent reminded her of a cedar chest. The flat evergreen leaves tickled her memory and then she froze. The memory gripped her.
She replayed the moment in her mind where she had sat at her grandmother’s grave and tucked a sprig of cedar with the little pale berries into a bobby pin holding her hair back. She remembered the scent perfectly. In that instant she knew it clear as anything: the cedar sprig was what sent her back in time.
“What’re you looking at, Miss Wallingsford?” Carlton asked studying her.
She looked up at him as though surprised she was not alone. Time revved forward again and she realized she was touching the stem of leaves in the vase. “I don’t know. It’s just, this sprig,” she paused. “It smells nice.” She stalled trying to get her head back.
Bettie sat a butter plate and cream pitcher on the table, “Thank you, honeycakes. They were on the table when I came in this morning. I suppose Mr. McMcEwen left them. He grinds them into a soap that he likes to use.”
“Oh. Sure. Of course.” Lily was putting the pieces together in her head. The coincidence of all these facts swirled in her mind.
“William, have you seen Evan this morning?” Bettie asked.
“No, ma’am.”
“It’s not like him to be late for breakfast.”
“I’m sure he’ll be along. He probably went to check the animals.”
Bettie looked out the kitchen window on her way back to the stove. “Well, go ahead and get started. You all need to be on your way.”
Lily ate some oatmeal. Something about cedar trees kept nagging at her. When she was finished, she excused herself and quickly pulled her jacket on and headed out the door.
The morning air was cool and crisp with frost making the grass look fuzzy. She scanned the tall hilltop of the cemetery. The tall cedar trees swayed in the cold wind. A memory of a field trip came to mind. She and the students had gone to an Indian reenactment of sorts and heard of a legend of the cedar tree. She wracked her brain to remember and then it dawned on her. The legend goes that the spirits of ancestors are held in the tree. It was becoming more apparent that somehow that cedar sprig had to be involved in her time travel.
She walked up Main Street to the church that served as the school and went inside. She opened the door to the stove and stuffed kindling inside and placed two small logs on top of it. The she dragged a match over the top of the stove and used it to light the kindling. She closed the stove door and shook out the match. It was too cool to take her coat off. To keep from shivering, she grabbed a broom and started working it over the floor, sweeping dust and debris into a small pile.
“Miss Wallinsford?” a soft voice called out.
Lily spun around to see Priscilla standing in the doorway. A cold draft rolled through the schoolhouse and blanketed Lily’s feet. “Close the door, honey. Come in.”
“Priscilla closed the door carefully and turned, “Are you sure it’s okay I came early?”
“Sure it is. Do you want to talk about something?”
“No ma’am. I was just thinking, I can get to school early and not be missed. Maybe you could teach me to write letters before school instead of after.”
“What a marvelous idea! Of course! Let’s get to work!”
***
Lily felt good about the day. She thought about it on the short walk home. Priscilla took to writing like a duck to water. She’d given her some work to do at home on a tablet and Priscilla beamed with delight that she would soon know how to write like her brothers.
She counted the boys off in teams and put them to work on a project to design a water wheel that would work even in a drought. At first they seemed lost. They had never worked in teams, much less on work where they had to set the rules. The room was buzzing with the teams’ conversations.
While the boys were
busy, she had the girls come to the carpet to talk about what they had dreamed of doing. One of the young girls said she wondered if there was a way to make wings on a wagon so that if it fell off a cliff, it would glide to the bottom. He eyes crinkled with delight as she described them and Lily couldn’t help but think of Amelia Earhart. Perhaps Amelia’s mother was given permission to dream and raised a daughter that dreamed as well. Lily’s heart filled with hope as it occurred to her that these girls could change history, or they could influence future generations, if they could open their minds a little.
That afternoon, she walked home lost in her thoughts. The house was quiet when she came in the front door. In the foyer, she unbuttoned her coat and started to shimmy out of the narrow cuffs. All was eerily quiet. She shrugged the coat off and carried it into the kitchen. The breakfast dishes sat in the sink. Something was wrong.
“Bettie! William!” She paused waiting. “Carlton! Evan!”
No response.
She burst out the back door. A chicken pecked at the dried grass near the house making clucking noises. She glanced back to the barn. The door was open. She ran toward it. Something had to be terribly wrong. She hoped no one was hurt.
The wagon was gone and Bettie sat on a wood crate holding Carlton who was crying quietly into her coat.
“What’s the matter?” she breathed.
“Evan is gone. His bed wasn’t slept in. All his things are gone. William is looking for him.”
Lily felt her breath leave her and not come back. He left. How could he do that? He took himself away from her. She’d mistakenly thought she had time to choose.
Reasons presented themselves in her mind: he’d gotten a better job, there was an opportunity to own land, there was another girl, and lastly, what she knew was the real truth, he didn’t want her. Just like Andrew, he didn’t want her. It was all a show to see if she would take the bait and then he ran. Perhaps it was worse. Perhaps he was mad at her for seeing Brian. He hadn’t wanted her to. She didn’t think it was unfair of her. They weren’t promised or engaged. Whatever the reason, he had pulled himself out and was gone. Part of her felt hollow. She knew it now, though it hadn’t been clear before, he’d taken part of her heart with him.
She turned around so Bettie wouldn’t see the tears. She was startled when Bettie’s hand touched her shoulder.
“Lily, are you well?”
Lily pulled a handkerchief from her skirt pocket and dried her tears. “Yeah.” She turned to face Bettie, “Do you all have any idea where he went?”
“No. William has been out looking all day. He has some friends looking as well. It appears that he willingly left because his bag and what few clothes he had are gone as well.”
Lily stood motionless taking it in.
“Oh, honey.” Bettie put her arms around her and squeezed. “I see that your heart is torn.”
Lily nodded as the sound met her ears of a horse clopping the ground as it pulled the wagon around the house. William sat alone in the seat of the buckboard wagon. A cloud of dust kicked up from the commotion. William’s face looked grim.
The wagon slowed and William jumped from the seat. In two strides, he stood beside them.
“William, dear, tell us some news.” Bettie clasped her hands in front of her silently pleading for good news.
“After searching all over, we finally heard a dock hand say a man by his description boarded a steamboat at dawn that was carrying cargo downriver.” He paused and kicked at the dirt. “It sure looks like he left on his own accord. I just wish he’d told us so we wouldn’t have worried.”
“Why would he do it?” Bettie asked.
“No telling, honeycakes.” He took her hand. “But he chose it and we have to respect it.”
William and Bettie turned to Lily. She couldn’t breathe. Shock quickly turned to anger and she pursed her lips. Pain tore at her heart, burning from the inside. He’d taken himself from her and there was nothing she could do.
“His loss!” She turned from them and set out toward the house to get away from their searching stares. She walked away and didn’t look back at them. She didn’t want to face them. She could hear them talking but her mind was spinning.
She made it to the back door and held the door casing to steady herself. Dizziness threatened to take her down. Hot tears and anger welled up. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut refusing to let the emotion loose. Betraying her, tears fell in big drops as she rested her head on her arms on the door casing.
She risked a glance back and saw Bettie and William still standing by the barn watching her and whispering to each other. The furrows in Bettie’s brow told her they were worried. Worried about her and worried about Evan.
She turned the doorknob and darted into the kitchen. Everything looked like a scene in a museum. The iron stove took up a large portion of the kitchen. Cast iron skillets with cold grease caked in the bottom. A small glass front cabinet held china plates. They were thick and sturdy. A water pump stood over the large sink next to a counter. A sack of flour sat on the counter and flour was spread in front of it. A rolling pin waited for Bettie’s hands to put it to work.
The kitchen was probably very similar to the one at Brian Everbright’s house. The difference was that the Blacks used the kitchen for every meal. The kitchen was the heart of the home. Life happened here. Bettie cooked, William talked to her, and Evan sat at the simple worn wooden table and renewed his strength with the bounty Bettie created with her hands.
The Blacks weren’t as poor as some of the children at the school, but they weren’t upper crust, either. They were as close to middle class as you could get in this time. The absence of servants excluded them from the elusive upper class, but William built Bettie a house with all the rooms an elite family would need, which let them waffle in the middle of the class system.
She remembered that Bettie had come from a wealthy family. She had been used to having nice things in a nice home. She’d even had servants. Even so, she didn’t seem bothered by her life now. Growing up, she’d been served food that a cook prepared. Her mother had not cooked and neither had she, but now Bettie had to cook all the meals, clean the house and everything else.
Even now, with her heart aching from Evan’s absence, she wondered if she would be smarter to give Brian her attention. She groaned at herself. It seemed that the problems of her life in the future were just amplified here. The urge to find Evan started with a tug in her chest. In this time, it would be so unreasonable for her to chase him. She surely couldn’t go alone, but worse than that, women absolutely did not chase after men.
She pushed back the urge and closed a door on it. She couldn’t think about it, even though she knew there was more to that urge than missing the goosebumps he gave her.
Her eyes fell on the small vase with the cedar sprig still on the table. She plucked it out of the water and held it in front of her.
“So you did this, huh?”
The sprig sagged limply and one of small berries fell to the floor. She lifted the sprig to her nose and breathed in the scent. What used to remind her of Christmas or visiting her grandmother’s grave now only left her with a vision of Evan. The scent of his skin permeating through his work shirt filled her mind.
She yelled at the sprig, “Send me home!” Tears sprang to her eyes as sobs gripped her. It was all too much. A confining culture, a new body, men who boldly pursued her, and now the realization that somehow a cedar sprig could send her through time overwhelmed her senses.
***
Evan stood on the deck of the steam boat watching the paddle wheel turn. The sound of water falling through the paddles reminded him of the ocean waves crashing on the shore of his village in Scotland. That home seemed so far away now. Too far to ever get back. Now he was traveling again. The pain of loss in his heart now was the same as leaving Scotland: leaving those he loved.
The river bank was so far from the boat, the people working their riverbank farms looked like toys silently
feeding horses, putting away plows and taking down laundry from a line. They had the life he always wanted. Husbands and wives working together for a common good on their land. He watched the woman in a long skirt reaching to unclip the sheets. She seemed content, but what if she wasn’t? What if she had dreamed of doing other things with her life? He had always been free to pursue his dreams no matter where that led him, but what was the lot of women. He had never really considered their dreams. It was so easy as a man to assume their dreams were of home and children.
What if, as a young woman, they had other dreams? Their fathers set them up for a marriage they may or may not want and their dreams get pushed aside. He tried to imagine if he had been forced to stay in Scotland playing second fiddle to his brother. It struck him how unfair it would be to be female.
Lily’s face filled his mind. She was a perfect example of a woman that had dreams. He could tell she wanted more than a home and children. Would it be fair of him to force her to live his dreams at the expense of hers? But, how would it work? How could they both get what they want out of life? He couldn’t imagine how that would work.
He turned away from the shoreline and leaned against the rail. The steamboat had traveled all day since dawn and approached the merging with the Mississippi River. The sun hung low in the sky in a burst of dark orange that made all the bare black branches of hibernating trees stand out. As the current pulled the big boat a smidge faster, he felt a zing of exhilaration. It felt good to get away from his pain. Then the thought occurred to him that perhaps he was running away instead of running toward his dreams. A little tug grew in his heart to go back to Lily, but he pushed it aside. He closed the door to his heart to make the tug go away.
