The Hired Man

by Lynna Banning

  Eleanor frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “Might be good for her older brother, too.”

  Eleanor just looked at him, a bite of ice cream halfway to her mouth.

  Then he looked straight at her. “Might be good for their mother, too.”

  She choked on her ice cream. “I,” she said when she could talk, “already know how to dance.”

  Cord waited until she looked up. “So? Molly and Danny don’t.”

  “I don’t need to go, Cord. Molly and Danny could go in the wagon with you, couldn’t they? And I could stay home.”

  “That won’t work, Eleanor. Leaving Danny on his own at a dance wouldn’t be a problem, but I’d have to stick pretty close to Molly, and I’d, um, want to do my share of dancing.”

  She sent him an exasperated look. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Cord.”

  “The least you could do is come just to keep an eye on your daughter,” he said quietly.

  “Oh...oh, all right,” she said sharply.

  “Good,” he said mildly. He glanced at her half-empty bowl. “Want some more ice cream?”

  “No, thank you.” Her voice was so crisp it could cut paper. Then she changed the subject. “Was there any interesting news in town?”

  Cord laughed. “Well, the mercantile’s pink storefront is now purple.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Purple? Not really!”

  “Yeah, really. Awful color. You can just about see it from the window. Carl Ness is about to disown his daughter.”

  “Molly,” Eleanor said, “if you have finished your ice cream, we should be heading home.”

  “I wanna go see the purple store,” Molly announced.

  “Well...”

  “And,” her daughter added at the top of her voice, “I wanna go to the dance!”

  * * *

  That evening after the supper dishes were done Cord slipped into the space beside Eleanor on the porch swing. “We need to talk,” he said.

  “About?” Her voice sounded weary, and he felt halfway guilty about pressing her on a subject she obviously didn’t want to talk about.

  “About why you never want to go to a school shindig or a picnic without a lot of pushing from Molly and Danny. About why you don’t want to go to the dance on Saturday.”

  “I don’t like crowds.”

  “There was a big crowd at the Fourth of July picnic.”

  “That didn’t matter so much. People were fairly well spread out along the river at the picnic.”

  “But at a dance, they’re not, is that it? At a dance they’re all bunched up together.”

  She gave the swing an extra-hard push with her foot. “Yes, they are.”

  He brought the swing to an abrupt stop and turned to face her. “Eleanor, I’d like you to explain why you feel so antisocial. Most women like being around other people.”

  “Why should it matter what most women like? I have never liked social gatherings. Why should I have to explain it to you?”

  “Because it’s hurting your kids,” he said quietly.

  She was silent for so long he thought maybe she hadn’t heard him.

  “Eleanor?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Cord. I...I feel uneasy around people. Other women, particularly.”

  “Why?”

  She began twisting her hands together in her lap. “I’ve always felt that way, ever since I can remember. My mother...my mother was very society-conscious in Portland. I was extremely shy. I preferred reading books or fishing, things one did alone. But Mother said that I was not normal, that no daughter of hers should grow up being ‘ingrown.’ That was her word for it.”

  She broke off, and Cord pushed the swing back and forth for a full minute. “And?”

  Eleanor pressed her lips together. “Mother was...critical. I still hear her voice in my ear sometimes. ‘You are too independent. Too quiet. Too...everything.’ I was never enough for Mother. She said I wasn’t like other girls who had ladylike manners and could sing and play the piano. I didn’t know how to make charming conversation, and I would never have any gentlemen callers.”

  Cord gritted his teeth. “Well, she was sure wrong there,” he said under his breath.

  “I grew up feeling that other people looked down on me, that I wasn’t as good as they were.”

  “And you’ve been afraid of people ever since,” he said.

  Eleanor said nothing.

  “Eleanor, that fear is hurting Molly and Daniel. Their mother’s shyness shouldn’t keep them from enjoying other people. Unless...” He gave the swing a shove with his boot. “Unless you want your kids to grow up afraid, too.”

  She remained silent, but when he sneaked a look at her he saw that her eyes were shut tight.

  “Eleanor?”

  “Yes,” she said in a low voice. “I know you are right, Cord. I will try.”

  His throat ached so much he couldn’t speak. Instead, he reached out and quietly touched her hand.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Eleanor spent all day Saturday fighting a battalion of butterflies that had flitted and bumped about her stomach since before breakfast. It wasn’t that she had nothing appropriate to wear. Her friend, dressmaker Verena Forester, had created a truly lovely red-and-yellow-print calico dress with lace around the square neckline and a full gored skirt that swung wide when she moved. Molly’s dress was the same except hers was blue and the skirt was only four gores. Still, Molly had spent every minute since supper twirling about the parlor and watching her skirt bell out.

  Danny was disgusted by the whole idea of a dance, and no amount of man-to-man encouragement from Cord was making any difference. “Why do I want to go to a stupid old dance, anyway?”

  “Well, son, there might be cakes and cookies and maybe even some apple pies.”

  “Aw, I can get cakes and cookies from Ma when she bakes. I bet they’re not near as good as hers.”

  Eleanor was so jumpy with nerves she only half heard Danny’s compliment. She felt faint already. Her mother had belittled her because of her lack of social graces, and as a result she had never really learned to dance well. And Tom had never encouraged her to come into town for any reason, much less a social or a dance.

  She had never missed Tom when he went somewhere. She had always been happiest at the farm, by herself. In fact, in all the years he’d been gone since the War, she hadn’t missed him.

  Tonight she would be frozen with fear by the time they arrived at Peter Jensen’s barn. Well, so be it. She had the worst case of the flutters she’d had in years, but somehow she had to get through this one evening for her children’s sake. Then, she promised herself, she would never, never have to do this again.

  She racked her brain for a plan, a strategy, for surviving this ordeal. And then an hour before they were to leave, Molly unknowingly supplied one.

  “Mama, are you gonna teach me how to dance?”

  Of course! It was the perfect solution. If she was busy teaching Molly all about two-steps and schottisches she would have no time to talk to anyone. Even better, she would be too occupied with her daughter to pay any attention whatsoever to her “male admirers,” as Cord described them.

  Mercy! The evening might not be as bad as she feared. She stiffened her backbone and climbed the stairs to her bedroom to brush her hair and don her new dress.

  In the children’s room, Molly could barely sit still while Eleanor brushed her hair and tied blue ribbons on the ends of her blond braids. Danny grumbled about everything, the too-tight cuffs on the sleeves of his clean shirt, his new leather belt, which was too stiff, even having to polish his shoes. By the time she herded both children downstairs her nerves were thoroughly frazzled.

  Then Cord stepped in through the back door and sh
e caught her breath. He wore his usual jeans and a crisp blue shirt she remembered ironing only yesterday, but droplets of water clung to his dark hair, and he had trimmed his moustache. He had refused to let her do it when she had given them all haircuts; apparently he’d sneaked her mending scissors out of her sewing basket and done it on his own.

  “The wagon’s ready,” he announced. “Eleanor, could you spare an apple for the—” He stopped short and stared at her. “Horse?” he finished.

  “I’ll get one,” Molly sang. She clattered off into the pantry and returned with a shriveled red apple and held it out. But Cord wasn’t looking at Molly. He was looking at Eleanor.

  Her cheeks got all pink, and she self-consciously brushed an imaginary speck off her red dress. He’d never seen her wear anything but blue or brown before; the red dress, with tiny yellow flowers sprinkled all over it, came as a shock. The low, lace-edged square neckline was a shock, too. He’d never seen so much as an inch of skin below her chin. The plain shirtwaists she wore revealed nothing, and seeing her bare forearms when she rolled up her sleeves was nothing like looking at the creamy smooth skin of her chest. The neck of her dress dipped down to the curve of her breasts, and suddenly he found his mouth had gone dry.

  He scarcely noticed when Molly thrust the apple into his hand and gazed up at him. “Are you gonna dance with me, Cord?”

  “What? Oh, why, sure I am, Molly.”

  “Are you gonna dance with Mama, too?”

  Cord’s eyes met Eleanor’s over her daughter’s head. A full minute went by, but neither one of them said a word.

  “Well, are you?” the girl cried.

  “Maybe,” he said, his voice quiet. “That depends on your mama. I’ll have to ask her first.”

  “I’m not gonna dance with anybody,” Danny announced. “I think dancing is dumb.”

  Cord drew in a long, slow breath. He still held Eleanor’s gaze, and he was wondering why she didn’t look away like she always did when he looked at her too long.

  “Don’tcha think dancing is dumb, Cord?” Danny pursued.

  “No, Danny, I don’t. I think dancing is God’s way of reminding us of something.”

  “Remindin’ us of what? Boy, you sure aren’t making any sense tonight.”

  “Reminding us that a man and a woman—”

  “Can have a lot in common,” Eleanor interjected.

  Molly gave a squeal. “Is that like the boy cat and the girl cat? Like you told us before?”

  Eleanor’s burst of laughter at her daughter’s question surprised him. “Um...maybe a little,” Cord said. “But first they...um...dance together.”

  “Cat’s don’t dance!” Molly protested.

  “But people do,” he said. “There’s an old vaquero saying about dancing. It’s what a man does with a woman when he’s thinkin’ of doing something else.”

  Eleanor’s cheeks turned an even deeper shade of rose.

  * * *

  All the way out to the Jensen place Eleanor and Cord sat on the wagon bench with a carefully maintained eight inches between them and didn’t say a word. Molly sang snatches of songs she had learned from her mother and Danny grumbled about everything.

  She didn’t know why she was so jumpy this evening. A part of her couldn’t help wondering when Cord would collect the kiss he’d won the day they’d bet on the laundry. Soon, she hoped. Waiting and wondering was making her nervous. Oh, no, not soon. The thought of his mouth touching hers again gave her the shivers.

  When the wagon rolled into an empty space beside the huge red barn, Cord breathed a sigh of relief and Eleanor’s shoulders tensed. He climbed down and lifted Molly out of the back, and the instant the girl’s shoes touched the ground she raced off toward the barn door entrance. With a sullen expression on his face, Danny climbed down and trailed after his sister.

  Cord then lifted Eleanor down from the bench. For some reason she couldn’t look any higher than the buttons on his shirt, and after a long moment he removed his hands from her waist and they followed the sound of guitars and violins and a banjo or two into the overheated interior.

  Jensen’s barn overflowed with people, ranchers in clean jeans and pressed shirts and their best leather vests, wives in ruffled gingham or denim skirts and colorful shirtwaists with knitted shawls about their shoulders, townspeople and dozens of children, from babies in wicker cradles to adolescents, some of whom Eleanor recognized from Danny’s School Night.

  She set the plate of molasses cookies she’d brought on the already crowded refreshment table and searched for a quiet corner where she could sit out of the way of the noise and bustle and keep an eye on Molly.

  Cord drifted off...somewhere, and a few moments later she saw him bend down to Molly’s level, lift her little hands in his and step back and forth with her in time to the music. Every so often he would turn her under his arm and her skirt would flare out. Eleanor smiled in spite of herself. Molly would be lit up for days.

  She chose a bench at the edge of the dance floor, half in the shadows, which suited her just fine. She scooted into the darkest part, folded her hands in her lap and settled down to watch.

  Couples waltzed and two-stepped around and around on the sanded and polished plank floor, visited the refreshment table, changed partners and waltzed around and around some more. It was pretty to see. The women were decked out in their best “goin’ meetin’” clothes, and it turned out to be quite a fashion show. She wondered if Verena Forester had played a role in the parade of finery that passed in front of her, everything from double-flounced peach silk to plain blue denim. She knew Verena often attended dances and socials to see her handiwork in action and to get ideas for more.

  She began to relax a bit, and then something across the room caught her eye and she jerked upright. At the outer edge of the throng of dancers, there was Danny, laboriously two-stepping along with a very pretty little girl in a yellow striped dress and a matching pinafore. They weren’t looking at each other; both were studiously watching their feet. The girl was talking and she seemed to be leading, which was understandable since Eleanor knew her son hadn’t the foggiest idea what he should be doing on a dance floor.

  She wanted to laugh, and then she wanted to cry. Dear grumbly, unwilling Danny was actually dancing with a girl! She closed her eyes. My firstborn is growing up right before my eyes.

  It had all happened so fast! All at once she felt older and lonelier and more lost than she ever had in all her twenty-seven years. She clenched her hands in her lap and resolved she would not cry, not here in front of all these people.

  “Miss Eleanor?”

  She snapped her lids open to see Todd Mankewicz leaning over her.

  “Would you care to dance, Miss Eleanor?”

  She stared at him. He wasn’t bad looking with his pale blue eyes and blond sideburns. He just wasn’t very interesting to talk to.

  “Oh, I... Actually, Todd, I am not dancing this evening. I am...watching over my children.”

  “Oh. Maybe some other night, then.”

  She watched him move away and head straight for Helen Landsfelter, the woman Doc Dougherty had sent out to take care of her when she’d had pneumonia. She had to laugh. Helen was over thirty if she was a day.

  But you yourself are almost thirty. Your life is half-over!

  Tears stung into her eyes. Oh, mercy sakes! Whatever was wrong with her tonight?

  She focused on Danny and the girl in yellow, then caught sight of Molly and Cord coming toward her.

  “Didja see me, Mama? Cord twirled me so my skirt went way out!”

  “Yes, I did see you, Molly. You looked...very twirly, I must say.”

  Chuckling, Cord set a glass of lemonade on the bench beside her. “Guess you didn’t think I looked ‘twirly,’ huh?”

  She looked up at h
im. “You looked plenty twirly, Cord. More twirly than I’ve ever seen you!”

  He laughed and handed her the glass. “The lemonade’s for you, Eleanor. Molly and I already had our share.”

  “Thank you, Cord.” She sipped a few swallows, then folded her hands around the glass.

  “I saw what’s-his-name from your Sunday porch crowd asking you to dance,” he said.

  “Todd Mankewicz. I told him I wasn’t dancing this evening.”

  “Eleanor, you know it’s a sin to tell a lie.”

  “But I wasn’t—”

  “Yeah, you were. Cuz you are dancing this evening.”

  “Oh, no, I’m—”

  “With me.” He lifted the lemonade glass out of her hand and handed it to Molly. Then he deliberately twined Eleanor’s fingers into his own and pulled her to her feet. With his hand at her back he guided her onto the dance floor and turned her to face him.

  She sent him a resigned look. “I haven’t danced in so many years I’m not sure I remember how.”

  “It’s been a lot of years for me, too. But you couldn’t be worse than Molly. All she wanted to do was spin around so her dress twirled out.”

  “Would you like to see my dress twirl out?” she said.

  He focused on the musicians for a moment. “Not sure you can twirl to that. It’s a two-step.”

  She smiled. “I can two-step and twirl.”

  “Prove it.” He swung her into his arms and started a determined two-step against the waltz rhythm the musicians had slipped into, and that made her laugh out loud.

  Cord restarted their dance, swinging into what he thought was a waltz. At least he prayed it was a waltz. He glanced down into Eleanor’s face and she looked quickly away. He went back to the two-step because it was slower and he could just hold her and move his body with hers.

  She smelled good. The scent of her hair reminded him of the honeysuckle that trailed over the front porch post, and the subtle fragrance rising from her skin was faintly spicy-sweet, like roses, maybe. He could hear her breathing slowly in and out...in and then out again...

  God help him, he could scarcely think!