Heartland Courtship

by Lyn Cote

  Levi bowed his head. “I still don’t know why Posey’s grandmother won’t let me talk to her.”

  Brennan shook his head. He had no answer for the man. He leaned against the wall and tried not to think of a little boy huddled against a tree in the forest. There were bears in those woods. He moved and then stifled a moan, rubbing his side slowly, cautiously.

  Finally, the night wrapped around them, fireflies flickering green in the blackness, and Levi got up. “See you in the morning.”

  Rising painfully, Brennan reached over and touched the big man’s shoulder, grateful for the company and understanding. Then he turned inside to climb the ladder to the empty loft.

  Would the boy make it back? Had he failed the boy, too? Or had the final break with home come at last? If so, then he could leave Miss Rachel before he misled her. The thought clogged his throat. He wanted to stay; he must leave.

  *

  Rachel had remained dressed, sitting outside fanning away the few mosquitoes. The dry weather had reduced the numbers of the annoying little bloodsuckers, probably the only advantage of the drought. She listened to the encroaching night, filled with the sounds of frogs and crickets. She hoped to hear the boy’s voice, tried to forget resting her head against Brennan’s chest and hearing his heart pound.

  Finally she gave up and went inside. Her hearth was cold but she’d left the outdoor oven burning very low, hoping the faint smoke could still be seen in the moonlight.

  She had just let down her hair when she heard the tap on the door. She hurried to open it.

  Jacque stood in the scant light with a grimy face and a torn sleeve.

  She nearly cried out with relief. She controlled herself and didn’t throw her arms around him. She had to remember who she was to him, just his father’s employer. Since Brennan had stated he would be leaving and no doubt taking Jacque with him, she shouldn’t let the child form an attachment to her. And now she should scold him but she couldn’t do that. She focused on the practical. “Come in. Thee must be starved.”

  He stumbled inside.

  “Sit down at the table,” she said, heading toward her pie safe to fetch bread and cheese.

  She turned to find the boy outside washing his hands. For some reason this brought moisture to her eyes.

  He came in and slumped onto the bench, obviously exhausted and downhearted.

  She set the plate down with a glass of water. She touched his head with her hand and for once—unable to completely hide her emotion—said grace, thanking God for bringing him home safely.

  He devoured two plates of food before he paused to look at her.

  She waited to hear what he said, but he said nothing, just looked at her. His eyes spoke pages and pages of pain, sorrow and distrust. She ached to fold him in her arms to comfort and reassure him. But she wasn’t his blood. He belonged to Brennan. She hoped.

  Finally she broke the silence. “I think thee will spend the night here.” She rose and went to the linen chest and drew out her last pillow, just a small square, and a worn quilt her mother had made as a girl. She handed these to him.

  Without a word, he lay down on the floor and rolled up into the quilt and went to sleep almost instantly.

  She stood over him, both glad and worried. She wished she could let Mr. Merriday know he’d come home safe, but walking in the dark alone would not be wise or safe for her or Jacque. Bears roamed the area. And Mr. Merriday would come for breakfast. She would face him then and banish once and for all the pull he exerted over her.

  In the dark, she dressed for bed and then slid between the sheets. The multitude of emotions she’d experienced today had left her depleted. But one part of the day refused to bow to sleep—Mr. Merriday pressed against her. He’d needed her comfort and had seized it.

  No man but her father, and only when she was little, had held her like that. Just one day ago, she’d realized that she didn’t want Mr. Merriday to leave and now she realized that she wanted him to hold her again—often. Oh, how could she hide these unsuitable feelings?

  *

  Rachel woke with Jacque standing over her.

  “I don’t want to have nothin’ to do with that man.”

  Rachel sat up and considered the boy and his words. “He may be thy father.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t want nothin’ to do with a Mississippi man who up and fought for the Union.”

  So it fell to her to soothe the troubled waters. She sighed silently. “Jacque, there is much I could say. But this is all I will tell thee. There are always two sides to everything. Mr. Merriday deserves to have his side of the story heard.”

  The boy stared at her, chewing his lip. “I don’t want to have nothin’ to do with that man,” he repeated.

  “That will be difficult. Where will thee stay?”

  “Why can’t I stay here? I’ll work for you.”

  She tilted her head to one side. The boy was stubborn just like his father. She did not say this, not wishing to set a spark to straw, so to speak. “If thee stays here and works for me, thee will still be with Mr. Merriday.”

  He glared at her.

  “Is that not true?”

  He glared more narrowly.

  “Staring at me will not change the facts.”

  He shrugged in obvious capitulation. “I ain’t gotta talk to him.”

  Arguing would not solve this here and now. “Please go outside and wash up at the creek. I must get up and need my privacy.”

  He stomped outside, banging the door behind him.

  What a pleasant day this was going to be. But thank heaven the boy had returned. Part of her wanted to race into town to let Mr. Merriday know. She knew, though, that like her, he expected that if the boy returned he’d come to her place. He would arrive soon enough to face the angry child.

  So she brushed and bound her long hair, dressed and began her morning routine. Today she decided to make molasses cookies instead of candy as she’d planned. An easy drop dough and no standing over the stove inside. And who could refuse one of her dark, spicy cookies?

  Before the first cookie sheets were in the oven, she heard through the open door Mr. Merriday approaching.

  She stepped just outside.

  Jacque was returning from his “swim” in the creek, damp and clean and very pointedly ignoring the man.

  “You’re here,” Brennan said, folding his arms—to keep from reaching for the child? And Brennan looked as if he hadn’t slept all night, worrying about Jacque.

  Whatever Mr. Merriday said, he had affection for this child. She remained where she was and tried not to let her concern for the man show. “Thee might say good morning to Jacque,” she prompted.

  “Good mornin’,” Brennan muttered. “Glad you found your way back.”

  Jacque looked away from Brennan and folded his arms over his scrawny chest—just like the man who might be his father.

  “Jacque, when an elder speaks, thee will answer.” She kept her voice pleasant and gentle and implacable.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Jacque sent his father a scathing look. “I’m back. I’m staying here, not with you.”

  Brennan sent her a grim look in response, but did not scold the child.

  She shrugged slightly. “We will all be civil to one another. Please come in. I have enough eggs left from yesterday to make breakfast before chores.”

  She turned inside and the two followed her. Soon she served up three plates and the trio ate breakfast in silence. She gazed at Brennan’s hands, so tanned, strong, capable. She closed her eyes, dismissing her foolishness.

  When Jacque finished, he rose. “Good eats. I’ll go gather more eggs.” He carried his plate and mug outside and set them on the table by the basin.

  That left Rachel and Brennan facing each other. What was the man thinking?

  *

  Brennan looked at the lady, then as he recalled the way he’d overstepped the bounds of propriety yesterday, he lowered his gaze. He really did not want to talk a
bout Jacque or anything.

  “I suppose thee doesn’t wish to discuss this?”

  Glancing up, he frowned, confused once again by Miss Rachel’s perception and no-nonsense approach to life. She never flutters or gets flustered.

  She looked at the clock on the wall and turned, stood and headed toward her outdoor oven. “I must take my cookies out before they burn.” She stopped and assessed him with a stern expression he didn’t appreciate. “I told Jacque every man deserves to have his side of a story heard.” With that pronouncement, she turned to leave.

  Her cool attitude further disconcerted him. Any other woman would be jabbering, bending his ear about this. Miss Rachel was one unusual woman. “You’re right.”

  Before she could reply, Brennan walked out and looked around. He didn’t want to face Jacque, but he hadn’t been given a choice. Posey Brown had seen to that.

  He walked over to Jacque. “Come with me. We’ll go look for wild mustard for Miss Rachel.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with—”

  Brennan stooped and stared into the boy’s eyes. “It’s time you and me talked and that’s what we’re going to do. A man has a right to be heard.” That woman was getting into his head.

  Jacque stared back and then nodded. He quickly gathered two more eggs and then set the basket inside. He came out with another empty basket and set off, walking north on the road away from town.

  Still breathing with pain, Brennan caught up with him. At first they just walked, Brennan trying to come up with a way to tell the boy all that had happened in Mississippi before he’d been born. Jacque was just ten. Could he understand it?

  From his own childhood, Brennan recalled a wrinkled, dried-up old farmer who’d lived nearby. He’d learned a lot from the man, who was nearly ninety and who’d come to Mississippi when the Choctaw still roamed there. Brennan remembered how the man taught him—with questions, letting him figure things out for himself.

  “I want to ask you a question, boy.” He waited.

  Finally, Jacque cast him a resentful look.

  “I was born ’n’ raised along the Mississippi and lived there till I was over twenty. Everybody I knew said slavery was good, the way things should be. What would cause a man to go agin everybody he ever knew? What would cause a man to do something so bad that his wife left him and never even told him she was carrying his son?”

  Jacque merely tossed him another more resentful look.

  “You don’t have to like me, but it’s important you figure this out. In not too many years, you’ll be a man and you’ll be faced with choices. Will you just go the easy way, be like everybody else—even if you think different in your heart? Or will you stand up for what you believe is right?”

  Each of the words jabbed Brennan painfully in his rib and in his heart. Life would have been so much easier if his pa hadn’t taken him on that trip downriver to New Orleans.

  Still Jacque said nothing. They walked in silence till they reached a meadow, a natural clearing in the forest. A doe and her fawns glimpsed them and then the three bolted for the trees.

  He watched them flee, wishing he could, too. Pepin had been bad luck for him since the get-go. Then he thought of Miss Rachel and saw her lips curve into one of her smiles. Her smile made her shine so pretty.

  Brennan barricaded his mind against Miss Rachel and bent to look for yellow wild mustard plants that Jacque said he could recognize. The meadow should have been thick with them. But it was dry and burned up. Just like he felt.

  Bending hurt his side, so he sat down, futilely moving his hand through the dry, lifeless grass searching for any green shoot. Time passed; the hot sun rose higher. They moved closer to the edge of the clearing where some green hid in the shade. They kept searching. Waves of heat wafted into the shade, nearly suffocating them.

  “Why’d you do it? Go agin everybody?” the boy finally asked, not looking at him.

  Brennan nearly drew in a deep breath but stopped himself. Instead he took several shallow breaths, minimizing the rib pain.

  The words came easily, as if they had been waiting to be spoken. “When I was only a few years older than you, my pa and I went downriver to New Orleans. My pa had been savin’ up and had enough money to buy a slave to work the land with him. I was real excited ’cause I’d never been all the way to New Orleans before. It was a big city with boats from the ocean.” Brennan recalled that trip downriver, the last truly uncomplicated time of his life.

  “Yeah,” Jacque prompted.

  “We went to the slave auction down by the docks. And that was what changed me.” He recalled the gagging revulsion he’d instantly felt. “It was the worst place I’d ever been.” He reached over and grasped Jacque’s chin, turning his face to him. “It was the look in their eyes, the black slaves’ eyes.”

  Jacque stared at him, looking confused.

  “I’d been to horse sales. Pa acted like it was just like that. It wasn’t. I never seen a horse being sold look that way. They were suffering. They were people and they were being treated like horses, worse than horses. No lady ever went to see the auctions. It was too…”

  Words failed him. He couldn’t speak what he’d seen that day even though the sights and sounds had been burned into his heart. He dropped the boy’s chin and then stared at the dried, cracked ground.

  The shadow of an eagle soaring on the hot winds passed over them. A cicada shrieked and shrieked again.

  “That’s why you wouldn’t fight for the South?” the boy muttered finally, the heat gone out of his tone.

  “Yes, I couldn’t fight for slavery after that.”

  “Did your pa buy a slave?”

  “No, the bidding went too high for him.” I was glad.

  Jacque kept running his hands through the dried grass though there was nothing green to pick.

  Brennan had done his best to explain. But the boy had been turned against him since the day he was born. This hurt as much as the jab he felt with each breath.

  “I want you to know one thing, though,” Brennan continued, taking advantage of this rare, private time. “After the war, I came home even though I knew nobody wanted me back. I had to make sure your ma was all right.”

  Jacque’s hands stilled.

  “Even if she didn’t want me no more, I was still her husband and I would have supported her till the day she died. But nobody told me anything except that she was dead. Nobody told me about you. I wouldn’t have left you there with Jean Pierre if I’d known you had been born. But I couldn’t stay to find out anything. They run me out of town at gunpoint—a second time.” He hadn’t meant to add that.

  Jacque looked up then. “You didn’t leave me on purpose?”

  “No, I never knew you’d been born. Nobody told me.”

  Jacque only nodded in reply.

  Brennan surveyed the cloudless blue sky overhead. “We might as well go home. Maybe there’s some wild mustard near the creek.”

  Jacque rose and walked with him, but said nothing.

  So much for honesty. And Brennan didn’t like it at all when he realized that he was calling Miss Rachel’s place “home.”

  When they arrived at Miss Rachel’s clearing, he heard another familiar feminine voice. He didn’t want to talk to anybody save Miss Rachel or Levi. Certainly not Posey Brown.

  Jacque halted and looked up.

  “Let’s mosey down by the river,” Brennan mumbled. “We’ll try to catch Miss Rachel a few catfish for supper.”

  “Good idea.” Jacque nodded and the two headed toward town.

  *

  Posey had come to Rachel’s to apologize to Mr. Merriday for blurting out his private business in town. Listening, Rachel had just slid the last of her molasses cookies onto the racks to cool when the new school bell rang wildly. Now both of them looked toward the door.

  “What? Why are they ringing the bell? School’s out for the summer,” Rachel asked.

  Posey rushed to the open door. “Smoke! Toward town! We’v
e got to go! They’ll need us for the bucket brigade!”

  “Here.” Rachel thrust a spare bucket into Posey’s hands.

  The girl raced ahead of Rachel, who shut and latched the door behind her and snatched up her own water bucket as she ran.

  The smell of smoke billowed, intensified, filling Rachel with gut-wrenching panic. The drought and the fear of wildfire had hung over them all. Had it come true?

  The two of them burst through the forest onto the river flat of town. Orange flames danced with the wind like little wisps, dangerous wisps, catching every blade of dried grass on the dirt street and river flat, leaping onto anything dry.

  “It’s heading to the grass behind Ashford’s!” Posey shrieked.

  Rachel shuddered. The wind whipped the fire with every gust, driving it toward the trees. A forest in flame! Death and destruction. God, help us! Now!

  Already a bucket brigade had formed across the main street from the river to the fire. The two of them joined the line, filling in wider gaps. Their toil began—passing heavy buckets forward and empty ones back.

  Rachel saw Brennan run toward the front of the brigade.

  “If it gets to the trees, we’ll never stop it!” Brennan shouted in a strangled voice, pointing toward the forest. “Follow me, men! Grab shovels! Anything! We’ll try to smother the flames as they leap toward the trees! The rest of you, keep the water comin’!”

  These urgent orders from a man who never showed excitement and rarely talked magnified their effect. Men raced to join him. Frantic activity suspended every thought except—fire, fire! Rachel was aware only of the wet bucket handles passing through her hands. Terror raced through her like the wind, water splashing, worry mounting.

  “We finished it!” Gunther Lang shouted in his distinctive voice. “It’s out!”

  Having trouble catching her breath, Rachel straightened to see for herself that he spoke the truth. Then the bucket brigade members staggered forward to view the effects of the fire.

  The path of the fire was plain from the river’s edge to patches of dry grass on Main Street, scorching the front of Ashford’s store to the open clearing behind the stores.

  “How did this happen?” Rachel asked.