The House Near the River

by Barbara Bartholomew

  They seemed to enjoy it as much as children she knew liked television and even Clemmie seemed amused. Matthew came in from the back of the house, his hair wet from a fresh combing and he was clad in clean clothing.

  Danny, who wanted to listen to the radio, was sent for his bath . Angie sank into a chair and promptly fell asleep.

  When Clemmie awakened her later to send her to bed, she smiled gently at her. “Just another day on the farm,” she said with considerable irony.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Matthew felt ready to chew nails. He came in to noon dinner dirty and tired from work he usually loved. Working on the tractor, planting cotton was to build the future. Usually he could think of the various stages of the growing cotton from the first plants breaking through the soil to producing squares, blossoms, then the heavy green bolls hanging from the plants. Best of all was the fall harvest when workers gathered in the fields with their long dirty-white sacks to pluck the fluffy balls of cotton, stick them in their sacks, weigh the sacks and then dump cotton into the old red wagon until it was piled high and he pulled the wagon to the gin with a bale of cotton.

  A good crop meant good times. Saturday, the usual market day when they bought groceries and feed for the week turned into a full-fledged festival as everyone had money in their pockets and new clothes, household goods and small indulgences could be purchased.

  After a decade of poverty, then the war years, the fall of 1946 promised to be a superlative one.

  Trouble was his mind wouldn’t stay on his planting today, nor on the promise of the planting. These days it went back like a homing pigeon to thoughts of Ange.

  The truth was that he was about out of his mind with his need for her. It had been a long time since they met back in 1941 and the kisses and hugs of that day were thin food for a grown man who had been forced to sustain himself with dreams for years now.

  It was even harder now that she was here, a presence in his home, living like another sister in the house and leaving him aching with want and desire so that he could hardly sleep and spent half his nights pacing the long drive outside the house. He was in a bad case indeed when he could spend a long day on farm work and still not drop off to dreamless sleep the minute his head hit the pillow. Hard work had been the only thing that kept his body functioning after his breakdown, but the good news of Ange’s return was something that even exhausting work didn’t overcome.

  Sometimes he was tempted to just reach out and grab her right in front of Clemmie and the children, claiming her for his own. Oh, he knew only a few days had passed and she was confused and frightened. He had to give her time, but didn’t know if that was possible.

  And yet one premature move and he could lose her forever. How bleak his future would be without her.

  And so he spent his evenings and meal times in close contact, but never alone with her and his time in the fields making fierce love to her, even if only in his own mind. Those dreams were as detailed as he could make them. This morning they had been alone down by the river with no one else within earshot and she’d come willingly into his arms.

  In his dreams she was never shy and easily shocked the way a maiden lady of mature years would be in reality. Most of the girls he’d known had married before they were twenty and in spite of conventions to the contrary had sometimes sampled love before hand.

  His lips pressed to hers, the kiss deepened into passion with sweet slowness. She met him with every bit of the eagerness he felt until they melted into each other’s arms on the crisp spring grass at the riverside, turning into one person.

  He felt each kiss, each touch, each stroke of a gentle hand until he was about ready to go out of his mind.

  Sometimes he felt so frustrated that he grabbed her and ravished her before she could say a word, but only in his dreams, of course.

  He thought about the way she looked: her creamy skin a darker shade then that of most of the women in his family as though she’d left off her sun-bonnet to turn her skin a delicious creamy coffee, her features and high cheekbones chiseled into perfection, her large dark eyes . . .

  He came back to the May day where he was planting cotton with a sudden swerve, discovering that he’d just formed some of the most crooked rows that he’d made since back when he was a boy just learning to plant and plow.

  And so it was that Matthew Harper headed to the house at the sound of the dinner bell in a state of high frustration, ready indeed to chew nails and he didn’t mean the kind that grew on the tips of his fingers, but sturdy metal objects that would crunch satisfactorily against his teeth.

  The smell of cooking bread and beans mixed with the homey scent of hot iron against starched clothing struck him as he went in the kitchen. The others were already gathered at the dining room table so he hurried to wash his visibly dirty face and hands and join them for dinner.

  As always Clemmie led them in a short grace and then with Sharon’s help began to serve the meal. They had plates heaped with brown pinto beans, slabs of cornbread, crisply fried potatoes, pickles, sliced tomatoes and onions, and as a special treat, lemonade served over cubes of ice that tasted like heaven on this warm spring day.

  He was suddenly starved, but not so much that he wasn’t conscious of Ange, seated next to David across the table from him, and managed to ask, “Ironing day?”

  To his delight, not Clemmie but Ange answered him. “Stacks of it,” she said wearily, rubbing her right arm. “Didn’t know house work was so hard back in these days.”

  These days! He was reminded that she remained convinced that she had somehow been transported back to a time earlier than her own. He frowned, worried that if she talked like this around others, they would be like Tobe and think her a mental defective.

  Clemmie came immediately to the defense. “With all these modern conveniences, we have it easy,” she said.

  Ange stared at her in disbelief. “You got up before dawn to start the beans that you’d soaked overnight to cooking for this meal. You did your housework, then ironed for hours. All those white shirts and frilly dresses made out of material that has to be starched and sprinkled and still is so much harder to iron than modern fabrics, if they have to be ironed at all. Personally I try never to pick out a garment that needs to be ironed.”

  Clemmie observed her with interest, then laughed. “Ange, neat as you always look I just can’t imagine you going around with your clothes all wrinkled.”

  Ange opened her mouth, no doubt to say something about the advances of that future time she talked about, then closed it again. Finally she said, “You work so hard, Clemmie.”

  Clemmie smiled. “When I was a little girl, my mama washed clothes in a pot outside scrubbing them on a rub board and washing with lye soap she made herself. She was lucky to have an ice box that she had to put a block of ice in every few days.”

  “And she cooked on the same coal oil stove you use now,” Matthew accused with a smile. “But if it’s a good crop this year, I promise you a new gas stove this harvest time.”

  She smiled back at her brother. “We’ve been through some hard years, Matthew, and new things weren’t available anyhow during the war years.”

  He listened to the gentle wrangling as he ate his meal and then was served a large slice from one of two lemon pies Clemmie had made this morning. He thought about that future that Ange hinted at and was less than optimistic about it. His experiences had taught him more about despair and he imagined a time when weapons grew more and more powerful, though he couldn’t think things could be much worse than the bombs they’d dropped on the Japanese.

  He’d been as glad as anybody to find the war suddenly ended by those super weapons, but he wondered that any soul felt peaceful when the knowledge of such terrible destructive power was unleashed.

  For a full five minutes he was back near Bastogne, trapped and starving, watching men he knew die screaming in a tank
fire.

  Suddenly he was aware that the table had grown quiet and his hands were shaking. He looked up to realize that the children were staring at him, fearful of what was going to happen next. Danny, Sharon, Anna and Shirley Kay had seen him through some bad times, even though he’d tried to keep them from knowing. Even more his sister had shared his pain.

  He tried to smile. “Terrific pie, Clemmie. You’ve outdone yourself.

  She looked relieved at his reversion to normalcy. “Ange baked the pies.”

  “Anybody can bake a pie,” Angie said.

  “No, they can’t,” Clemmie disagreed and then they were off again and he was grateful to no longer be the center of attention.

  It wasn’t until after the pie was finished and he was out making sure the stock tank was still full of water that he was able to focus once more on Ange. What he needed was a chance to court her. If he’d been eighteen and she sixteen, he would have taken her to the picture show and they would have sat in one of the back rows and held hands.

  But now he’d feel like a gray-beard sitting back there with his girl, surrounded by teenagers. Maybe he should plan an outing of some sort instead.

  With Clemmie’s help, he persuaded Angie to drive with him down to the wild life reserve to see the animals. She seemed bewildered at the suggestion and the protests from the older kids were loud that not only were they not invited along, but because he was taking his car, they wouldn’t get their usual Saturday trip to town.

  “We’ll go on Monday,” he assured them quickly.

  “Nobody goes to town on Monday,” Sharon protested. “None of our friends will be there.”

  “I’ll take us all to the picture show,” he promised desperately, “You can have popcorn and a pop.”

  They all stared at him. Such a treat was unprecedented. Oh, Danny and Sharon were sometimes allowed to go to the western matinee with their friends on Saturday afternoon. It was only a dime each for the kids, but dimes had been rare in their lives, and the younger children had never seen a movie in their lives. And buying food at the movie just didn’t happen, nor did grownups like him and Clemmie attend.

  “There’s no matinee on Mondays,” Danny advised briskly, as though certain the whole plan was about to be scuttled.

  “We’ll go in the evening. You don’t have school.”

  They stared at him, overwhelmed most of all that he was actually taking a week day off from work. This was truly unprecedented at planting time.

  Quickly hiding her grin, Clemmie rushed the kids off and left him alone with Angie.

  She, of course, seemed to have no idea any of this was unusual. “What’s the reserve?” she asked.

  “Wild life refuge,” he explained, “down in the mountains. Prairie animals like buffalo and longhorn cattle.”

  She nodded, looking interested. “Anything to skip wash day.”

  He grinned. “It doesn’t actually go away,” he said, “Clemmie will just plan for a day later in the week. But we need some chance to be alone.”

  She nodded, looking solemn. “We need to talk,” she agreed. “We can’t go on this way.”’

  He nodded agreement, though talking was not all that he had in mind.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  They said little to each other as they drove across the river bridge and headed south toward mountains that looked like nothing so much as purplish clouds hovering on the surface.

  But as the clouds began to turn into low, rocky mountains, worn down by the ages, but offering a surprising landscape change from the prairie that dominated most of this part of the state, somehow Angie found herself edging closer to Matthew’s side. The seat was wide and empty and she saw there were some advantages to the fact that seat belts would not be in common use in automobiles for years yet.

  He didn’t look at her, but reached down to take her left hand in his right, driving with his left hand along the deserted dirt roadway, the car kicking up dirt behind them. Naturally there was no air conditioning and the sun against the windshield rendered it necessary for windows to be rolled halfway down so the warm breeze stirred across them.

  She felt good to be away from the farm and its busy occupants, though the thought of David separated from her by the miles did nudge her consciousness with a certain level of discomfort.

  Trying to push her guilt away, she instinctively snuggled against his side, not even examining her own motives. A modern girl, she was well aware of the facts of life and was most assuredly not without some experience with the opposite sex. But she’d never met anybody like Matthew.

  He was a gentler Heathcliff, a grittier Mr. Darcy, nothing like the ambitious young men she’d known at college and since. He was grownup where they were just boys.

  A few of the roads that took them south had a surface of gravel, but most were poorly cared for red dirt and the condition degraded as they drove into the more remote mountain area. They wound around until she had little sense of direction and only supposed they were still going generally south, away from the farm.

  Finally the area grew more wooded, though to Angie, accustomed to visiting the tall pines of east Texas and the live oaks further south, they seemed scrubby, still woods of any kind after days of prairie was a treat.

  When they drove through a gate and he told her they were now in the wildlife refuge, she didn’t see much change in terrain. Funny thing though, the woods and nearby mountains gave her a sense of privacy, of being safely alone with him. The prairie with its endless vistas felt as though everything happened out in the open and anyone could see.

  They drove at a very slow speed and after about twenty minutes, he turned the Nash down a trail so narrow that tree limbs edged against the car on each side, enclosing them in a secret world. He pulled the car to a halt near a lily-covered little lake and turned off the motor.

  She kissed him first, a quick, but firm touch against his lips that stirred him to quick response so that they connected for what seemed like several minutes and she felt warmth flood her being.

  Back home in Texas the boyfriend she’d been seeing seemed impossibly remote and irrelevant as she sunk into this heated bliss. Jason hadn’t even been born yet, she told herself in an excess of ill-logic and continued to kiss and be kissed.

  After some little while, he released her and hastily exited the car out the driver’s side door, dragging her with him. He let her go and then, turning away from her grasped the door handle r as though dizzy and afraid he would fall.

  “Matthew,” she asked, “are you all right?”

  He didn’t look at her. “Not hardly.”

  What could she say to that? “I’m not sorry.”

  “Nor am I.” He turned to face her. “Ange, you’ve got to say you’ll marry me.”

  “You said we were already engaged.”

  “Ange!” Her name was said as a cry of pain.

  She felt a need to comfort him and went into arms that closed almost involuntarily around her and then they were kissing again, twining together until once again he pulled back. “You have to say you’ll marry me.”

  It was the one promise she couldn’t make. She thought about Jason back at home and how unlikely it would be that he would demand an agreement to marry before he made love to her.

  She knew about World War II soldiers. They were men like other men. It was the war that ended American innocence. Boys and girls were much the same as they would be later . They had longed for each other and found release in each other’s arms even though public standards had denied them.

  But for Matthew, she guessed, to be in love meant more than that. He was not a boy, but a mature man and he wanted a lasting love. Even as half-thought reasoning flashed through her mind, she supposed that even in the new century where she lived most everybody dreamed of that kind of love.

  What did they call it? Finding your soul-mate, waitin
g for the love allotted you at the very beginning of time. Such romantic ideas. She’d never believed in such nonsense, not after she’d grown up enough to put fairy tales behind her.

  Right now she wanted nothing so much as to fall down to the grassy meadow at their feet with him and make love for hours. She closed her eyes and bit her lower lip. Matthew, already so lost and wounded, what would happen to him if she did that and left him again?

  She didn’t belong here. She was not a woman of the 1940s. “I can’t make that promise,” she said and wondered if that wasn’t real love when you didn’t do what you wanted, but what you thought best for the loved one.

  He looked so crushed, as though she’d smashed his face in with a rock, that she couldn’t leave it at that. “Tell me again about that first day when we met,” she said, thinking that might help him.

  “I was in the coffee shop and had ordered a hamburger and chocolate shake. I was waiting for it when you walked up to my table and asked if you could share because there weren’t any others available.”

  “And you said ‘sure,’ she contributed teasingly. “You looked up and saw me and thought you’d be happy to share your table with this woman.”

  His smile came slowly to his pained face. “Actually I thought you looked a little snooty all dressed up as you were. I wasn’t used to girls like you and was feeling very much like I was in a foreign world with all those fancy looking people around me.”

  She frowned. “But you said yes.”

  He shrugged. “It was the only polite thing to do.”

  “So it wasn’t love at first sight.”

  His look was tender. “Must’ve taken at least five minutes. It was after we started talking and I had a chance to see how pretty you were . . .”