Conor's Way

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  They walked on ahead. "Carrie, you be sure and put those fish right in a bucket of water," she called. "And you girls put away those fishing poles Mr. Conor made for you."

  Conor lingered to walk through the orchard with her as she inspected the ripening fruit.

  "I've noticed there aren't any other peach orchards around here," he commented.

  Olivia smiled and patted the trunk of one tree with her hand. "My daddy planted this orchard when I was thirteen. It was for my mother. Daddy used to call her 'Peaches' because she loved the fruit so much, and he renamed this plantation Peachtree for her." She looked over at Conor, and her smile widened. "Everybody thought he was crazy to waste good acres on anything but cotton. But Daddy, well, he always did things his own way. As it turned out, these trees were a blessing."

  "Why is that?"

  Olivia faced him, leaning back against the tree. "After the war, Daddy died, and I had no income. I needed money desperately. The Yankees came in and started running things, and taxes went sky-high. All the slaves were gone, of course, so there was no one to till the fields or plant cotton except me, and I couldn't do it by myself."

  She gestured to the trees all around them. "But the orchard was already well established. After my mama died, my daddy lost all interest in the orchard, so I had been taking care of it, grafting new trees, having them pruned, and seeing to the harvest. It's my mother's legacy, and I felt it was important to preserve it. Now, this orchard gives me a good cash crop nigh on every year without too much work. It's a crop I can manage myself." She shot him a wry glance. "Well, except for picking time, of course."

  "'Tis a bit hard to pick peaches when you can't climb a ladder."

  "Nate used to do it for me, before he died." She gave an irritated sigh and looked up at Conor. "It's such a bother, being afraid of heights. I hate it. It's a weak and silly fear."

  "What are you going to do this year, Olivia?"

  "I don't know." She turned her face away, too proud to ask for help again. To her disgust, her voice was a bit shaky when she added, "Do it myself, I imagine. The girls will help me."

  She straightened away from the tree without looking at him, and they walked through the rest of the orchard in silence.

  At the edge of the orchard, he stopped walking and glanced back at the peach trees. Olivia also came to a halt, wondering why he had stopped.

  He looked over at her. "How long?" he asked abruptly.

  Bewildered, she stared back at him, not understand­ing the question. "What?"

  "How long until they're ripe?"

  "About a month."

  They stared at each other, and she watched him frown at her almost as if he were angry. He raked a hand through his hair. "I'll stay long enough to help you bring your crop in," he said, walking past her before she could recover from her surprise enough to reply. "Then, I'll be moving on."

  Olivia stared after him as he walked away, so aston­ished that it wasn't until he was out of earshot that she realized she hadn't even said thank-you.

  That evening after supper, while Olivia and the girls went through the ritual of Saturday-night baths, Conor sat at the kitchen table with slate, pencil, and dictio­nary, writing down all the words he could think of that began with C, using the dictionary to look up the words he could not spell. After an hour of this, Conor decided his first conclusion about reading had been right all along. He didn't need to learn how.

  After the girls were in bed, Olivia took her own bath, donned her nightgown and wrap, then went down the back stairs into the kitchen to check on his progress one last time before going to bed. She found him look­ing through the dictionary. "How's it going?" she asked.

  He looked up, glaring at her in exasperation. "This dictionary doesn't have 'kitten' in it."

  "Yes, it does," she said, smiling. "You'll find it under K."

  "That doesn't make sense."

  She laughed and sat down across the table. "Mr. Branigan, you'll find a lot about the English language that doesn't make sense."

  "Knowing the British, that doesn't surprise me."

  "No political discussions, if you please," she admon­ished sternly, tapping the table with one finger. "Think of words that start with C."

  Conor bent back over the paper again. "If 'cat' starts with C, 'kitten' ought to start with C," he grumbled.

  Olivia choked back another bubble of laughter. Trust Conor always to have an opinion. She studied him as he wrote on the slate, his handsome face serious and intent, his attention focused on his task.

  Though he'd been reluctant to learn to read at first, once he'd committed himself to the task, he was relent­less. He asked innumerable questions, and he never seemed to forget the answers. But he also tended to be impatient and overly critical of his own efforts.

  Though he was dissatisfied with his progress, Olivia knew he was progressing quite rapidly. In less than a week, he had memorized all the consonants and vowels and had begun learning simple words. A week from now, he would begin reading and writing simple sen­tences. A month from now—

  In a month, he would leave. The peaches would be in, and he would go away. She was truly grateful that he was staying long enough to help her with her har­vest, but as she studied him across the table, she won­dered what it would be like when he no longer sat here with her in the evenings, when he had gone, and all she had was the memory of his presence.

  Desolation suddenly swamped her, and she real­ized she would have nothing tangible to show he had been here at all. Like the Cheshire Cat in Carrie's story, he would vanish, and only the memory of his smile would remain.

  He straightened in his chair with a sigh, bringing Olivia's attention back to the matter at hand. "Give me all the words starting with C that you have," she instructed.

  He set aside his pencil. "'Cat,'" he said, reading from the slate before him. "'Cot,' 'cut,' 'call,' 'cost,' 'corn,' 'cold.'" He paused a moment. "'Kiss.'"

  He looked up at her, and their gazes locked across the table.

  "'Kiss' starts with a K," she whispered.

  "Does it, now?" His gaze lowered to her lips. "Fancy that."

  Olivia felt a sudden rush of anticipation and denial, pleasure and panic. Her pulse beat frantically in her ears like the rhythm of a runaway train. She lifted her hand as if to touch her mouth, then jerked it back.

  The corners of his mouth lifted in a ghost of a smile, and he did what she'd almost done; he reached out and traced the line of her lips with the tip of his finger.

  A quivering began deep inside her. Her lips parted, and she knew she should speak, should protest, should pull away. But she remained motionless and silent, awash in the sensation of his featherlight caress.

  Was this carnality, she wondered, this raw ache, this intense pull? He knows of this, she thought, watching his gaze follow the deliberate motion of his finger back and forth across her lower lip. He knows all about it.

  His hand moved to span her jaw, caress her throat. Then, slowly, he pulled away, leaving her in the after­math of the sensations he had created, bereft and dazed and still waiting for a kiss that never came.

  "'Tis getting late, I'm thinking."

  Slowly, the low sound of his voice penetrated, and she found herself getting to her feet. "Of course," she mumbled. She rose, staring down at the table, her cheeks burning, unable to look at him.

  "Tomorrow, we can go on to words beginning with D," she said. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "I don't know what made you decide to stay another month to help me bring my crop in. But I want you to know that I'm very grateful, and if there's any way I can repay you—"

  "Go to bed, Olivia."

  She obeyed the terse command, fleeing from the kitchen without a backward glance. But alone in her room, after she'd crawled into bed, she lay there with one arm around her pillow and her hand pressed to her lips, trying to relive that moment when he had touched her.

  No man had ever touched her in such a way. Even Vernon had never
dared to touch her like that. She thought of all the silly, whispered speculations she and Sarah had indulged in as girls. After Joe had begun court­ing Sarah, she'd confessed to Olivia that Joe had actually kissed her in the gazebo at Taylor Hill, but when asked to describe it, she had been unable to do so. "You'll find out, Olivia," she had whispered, with a secretive smile, a blush, and a delicious little shiver. "You'll find out."

  But that was a long time ago, and Olivia was still wait­ing. Somehow, those intervening years had just slipped away. Somehow, moonlight and magnolias and kisses in a gazebo had never come her way. They had been denied her by the needs of her grieving father, kept from her by the turbulence of war, pushed aside by the priorities of day-to-day survival.

  She thought of Conor, and longed for what had passed her by.

  Olivia hugged her pillow tight. He was only staying a month, she reminded herself. And she knew she would never find out what Sarah had been talking about.

  14

  Troubled by vague and shadowy dreams dur­ing the night, Conor awoke feeling edgy and restless. Although it was barely dawn, he dressed and went for his morning walk.

  He could not remember the specifics of his dreams the night before, but they unnerved him nonetheless. Vague whispers of the demons echoed in his mind, reminding him that they were still with him.

  He walked, concentrating on the inane task of putting one foot in front of the other. He wanted to keep walking forever, away from this place, away from the past, away from himself.

  But he could not. He'd made a promise to Olivia that he would stay until her harvest, that he would help her bring in her peaches. It was the first promise he'd made to anyone in a long time, and it was already smothering him.

  Conor walked until the sun was up, until the restless feeling was gone. He turned and began retracing his steps toward the house. But as he passed the barn, another voice intruded on his thoughts, a voice that even raised in frustration was soft and drawling.

  "Cally, you stubborn old mule, come back here!"

  Conor walked around the corner of the barn and found Olivia there, standing beside a gaping hole in the pasture fence. She didn't see him. Hands on hips, she was watching the mule, who was trotting away from her across the yard and who obviously had no intention of returning to the confines of the pasture.

  "Ornery," Olivia muttered as she started after the mule, "just plain ornery."

  Conor grinned and leaned one shoulder against the side of the barn as he watched her chase the mule around the yard, the skirt of her gray Sunday dress whipping behind her in the warm breeze. He knew she was trying to get the animal headed in [be right direc­tion, but Cally clearly had other ideas.

  "Need some help?" he called as she paused for breath.

  She turned around. "How long have you been there?"

  "Long enough." He approached her, still grinning.

  Olivia did not return his smile but gestured to the mule, who had paused about a dozen feet away. "Cally broke through the fence again. Darn mule, always get­ting loose."

  She frowned at the animal. "I never should have bought you in the first place. I should have just let Elroy shoot you."

  Cally tossed his head, not the least bit intimidated. He pawed the ground with one hoof as if beckoning her to continue the chase.

  "Elroy?" Conor asked, pausing beside her. "Elroy Harlan?"

  "How did—" She broke off, realizing the answer to her own question. "Elroy's the one you fought in that boxing match," she said, a note of disapproval creeping into her voice.

  "At least I won the fight," he pointed out. "Elroy didn't even last one round."

  She sniffed, unimpressed. "I'm not surprised he's been doing that boxing. He needs the money, I imagine. He used to own the land across Sugar Creek, but he lost his farm a few years back. Mean old coot, Elroy," she added. "Cally used to get out of his pasture and go runnin' off. One day, I saw him chasing Cally through the woods with his shotgun, yelling he was going to shoot him. He would have done it, too. I couldn't let that hap­pen, and I told Elroy I'd take the mule off his hands. Paid two dollars for him, too." She shook her head and glared at Cally. "I think I got cheated."

  Conor leaned closer to her. "If you go around the other side," he said in a conspiratorial whisper, "we'd have him surrounded."

  She nodded. "All right, but don't be surprised if he manages to get away from both of us."

  Fifteen minutes later, a disgruntled Cally was back inside the pasture, and Conor was examining the fence. "'Tis no wonder he got out," he told Olivia. "These boards are so loose, it'd only take a bit of pressure to pull the fence apart. Look."

  He reached over the fence, made a fist, and slammed it against one of the boards. The nails holding the board to the fence posts popped out, and the board fell to the ground. "All the mule had to do was kick it once or twice."

  "I know the fence is in pretty poor shape, but it seems like every time I nail one board back in place, another one comes down."

  "Mama!" Becky's voice called from the back porch. "If we don't hurry, we'll be late for church."

  Olivia glanced across the yard at her daughter. "I know, honey," she called back. "I've got to hitch the wagon first."

  Conor pushed the board he'd knocked down back in place. "If you'll get me a hammer and some nails, I'll fix this fence while you're at church."

  His offer seemed to surprise her. "You will?"

  "Since I'll be staying another month, I might as well have something useful to do."

  She smiled at him, that astonishing smile that always caught him off guard. "Thank you, Mr. Branigan."

  "I do have one stipulation to make," he added. "Stop calling me Mr. Branigan. I have a first name."

  She eyed him thoughtfully. "Does this mean we're becoming friends now?"

  He looked out over the pasture. It had been a long time since he'd stayed anywhere long enough to have friends. "I guess it does," he admitted.

  But as he watched her walk away, he admired the sway of her hips and remembered the softness of her mouth beneath his finger, and he thought friendship sounded a wee bit tame.

  After Sunday services, Olivia would have taken the girls straight home, but Oren Johnson stopped her just out­side the church. "Do you have a minute, Olivia? I wanted to talk with you."

  "Certainly." She looked around for her daughters. Becky was standing on the church steps talking to Jeremiah, Miranda was enduring a round of cheek pinching from the Chubb sisters, and Carrie was hud­dled in a circle with Jimmy Johnson and Bobby McCann, concocting some form of mischief, she was sure.

  "Becky," she called, but she had to repeat her daugh­ter's name twice before Becky's attention was diverted from her friend. "Keep an eye on the girls. I'll be back shortly."

  Becky nodded and turned back to Jeremiah as Olivia followed Oren away from the church along the dusty main street.

  "I already told you that you could buy Princess's calf, Oren," she said, laughing. "You don't have to worry that I'll sell him to somebody else."

  Oren shook his head. "This isn't about that calf, Olivia." He stopped and turned to her. "Has Vernon been making you any more offers about Peachtree?" he asked in a low voice, glancing around to make sure no one else was within earshot.

  She nodded. "Just two weeks ago, he asked me again if I'd sell. I refused, of course. Why?"

  "Has he been threatening you?"

  "No. Not overtly." She met Oren's somber gaze. "The day after I refused his last offer, some of my peach trees were girded. It killed them, of course. I found some cigarette butts there, and I thought maybe it was the Harlan boys."

  "It could have been them. Elroy and his boys work for Vernon."

  She sighed. "It's so hard to believe."

  "Why? Vernon's a greedy son of a—" He broke off at her disapproving frown. "Sorry, Liv. He's greedy. You know that."

  "I know. But I've known Vernon all my life, and he wasn't always like that. He was kind to me when I was a girl, he was
even sweet on me. I don't like thinking he would do something like this."

  "Olivia, he might do even worse if you keep refusing to sell. You know how bad he wants that railroad deal, and you're the only one who could spoil his plans."

  Oren glanced around uneasily. "I think Vernon's get­ting some pressure from his father-in-law to get this land thing settled."

  "What makes you think so?"

  "Vernon got a telegram two and a half weeks ago, and another one last week," he answered. Olivia instantly understood how Oren knew about the tele­grams. His son worked at the telegraph office.

  "Both telegrams were from Hiram Jamison," Oren went on. "That's why Vernon and his wife left for New York unexpectedly. They weren't planning to go this year, but for some reason, they changed their minds. They'll be gone about six weeks, according to his wife."

  She couldn't help smiling. "Oren, you hear more gossip than Martha."

  He grinned back at her. "Kate's sister is one of the maids over at Vernon's place, you know."

  It was no wonder that news around Callersville became common knowledge within a day. It was more amazing than the telegraph itself.

  Oren's grin faded. "If Vernon's father-in-law is get­ting impatient and starts putting the pressure on, Vernon could get nasty. Maybe you ought to move into town for a while."

  Olivia shook her head. "I can't do that. I've got peach harvest in a month. Besides, nothing is going to happen until Vernon gets back."

  "I wouldn't be too sure about that, Liv. Joshua and his brothers are still here to do Vernon's dirty work." He tugged on the brim of his hat. "Kate and I worry about you and the girls being out at Peachtree alone."

  But she and the girls weren't alone. Olivia thought of Conor, and she thanked the Lord he had decided to stay another month. "We'll be fine. Vernon won't do any­thing to hurt me or my girls, or order Joshua to do so."

  "I hope you're right," Oren answered.

  "Thank you for telling me all this."

  "No need. That's what neighbors are for. I'm just glad my land isn't on Vernon's proposed route for that railroad. Be careful, Liv."