“There was an earlier structure here?” she asked.
Evan nodded, but Forrest answered. “Sure. We cooked over wood in a fireplace in those early days.” He smiled. “Not so different from now.”
Here choices were limited. Nothing could be brought in for Lavender from the outside, not since Dr. Tyler Stephens had locked the community in time. But back then in Civil War days, the time she’d got a glimpse into, much of Texas had still been frontier. And yet the country that had become a state not so long before, had joined with the south in defying Abraham Lincoln and the union.
Her head whirled and the food in her mouth was tasteless. Surely it was too much to ask of one young woman to bridge the gap between three centuries.
Forrest went on. “We used the wood from the old house toward starting this one. I liked to think we weren’t a beginning, but a kind of ongoing, one home for the Stephens family leading to another.
That was it. That was the connection. She could step from one room in the newer house, walk along the open passage-way to the old kitchen for the original home.
Later she would wonder why she didn’t tell them then, didn’t tell Mama and Papa and Grandpapa Forrest what had happened, that she’d actually seen Tyler Stephens years before he’d become the patriarch who’d tried to protect the world from the deadly illness in Lavender.
Certainly they had all heard wilder stories. Hadn’t she escorted her sister and brother-in-law through the time barrier to the volatile world of the 21st century where humankind seemed on the brink of self-destruction? Would they blink at the notion that Betsy, their time-walker, had peered into the past.
But she didn’t tell them. It was as if she held a precious secret close to her and didn’t want to tell anyone, not yet. Especially not about the man in the gray uniform whose face had so caught her attention.
“Tell me, Grandpapa,” she said now. “What was your father really like?”
Grandpapa Forrest touched his beard, then gave a little laugh. “You mean you want to know what it was like to be the son of a genius? Well, I have to say it had its good points and its bad points.”
Caleb Carr thought the older man was sometimes a pompous windbag. An absolutely brilliant and lovable pompous windbag, he had to admit privately, though he would never let Tyler Stephens know about the brilliant part of his opinion.
Doc was already too full of himself as it was. Now he finished his cooling coffee, tried to ignore his aching leg, and considered how soon he’d be recovered from the leg wound that had sent him home from the battlefront.
Tyler didn’t want him to go back. The old man barely got away with being a pacifist in the middle of the war because of his many years and the fact that he was the only doctor around for miles of Texas countryside. The people of Lavender couldn’t do without the irascible doctor, otherwise they would have run him out of town on a rail.
Of course it didn’t hurt that his well-liked son, though in his forties, had immediately sighed up and gone to serve as an officer in the newly formed southern army and had fought with distinction at the battle of Manassas, the one the Yankees called Bull Run.
Caleb, as the long time hired hand and foster son of Forrest Stephens owed his life to Forrest. He’d most likely have died there on the ground after the battle if Forrest hadn’t come looking for him and seen that he got medical care and then sent him home to Texas.
Now he was itching to go back to the fighting and old Tyler wouldn’t let him go. And Mrs. Forrest, Lavinia, she asked him to call her, said they needed him at the house in Texas to protect them from the possibility of raiders coming down from Kansas.
He had to admit the stories from Kansas were bloody and terrible, but he doubted that Lavinia Stephens and her baby son were in any particular danger. Hell, the war would most likely be over within a few weeks considering the way they’d had the blue coats running at that first battle. If old Tyler didn’t let him go soon, he’d miss the whole damn war.
The trouble with Tyler was that he still thought Caleb was the pathetic little orphan boy his bachelor son had taken in out of sheer pity. He didn’t seem to see that their foster child was fully grown up, turning thirty this year, and managing nicely on his own with his little farm on the far side of the county. He still thought of both men as family and would do anything he could to help either one, but normally he didn’t hang around much because Forrest’s young wife didn’t seem to like the idea that her husband had any son other than the infant Evan.
But now that there was even a hint of risk, she was glad to have another man around to see to her baby’s safety and encouraged Tyler to prolong his period of recovery.
Now he looked at the doctor, reading his book over breakfast even as he lectured Caleb. Doing one thing at a time was too simple for the great brain, it would leave cracks in between unoccupied.
“You sure do have strong opinions about war for a peaceful man,” Caleb said now, feeling he had to somehow defend his position as a warrior.
“That’s because I was just like you when I was young and eager to prove my manhood. I wouldn’t mind so much if each generation made new mistakes; it’s simply this same old repetition of the old ones that confounds the mind. You know, a man must defend his country, his cause, or whatever. We sacrifice the young and they think they are going on to glory in the process.” He snorted his disapproval. “They’re going to glory all right, glory in whatever Heaven they believe in after a vicious, unnecessary death that takes a few dozen of their follow man along with them.”
Caleb had never really gotten use to the high-falutin’ way the old man talked, not even after spending his youth as part of this household. He was a plain man, educated only by the presence of the two men who had taken him in and made him attend the closest school until he was too old to be made to do anything.
He’d been lucky, he knew that. Orphaned and alone on the frontier he’d stumbled into the tiny town of Lavender, gotten a job doing odd work for the Stephens men, and found himself with enough to eat, clothes to wear, and a bed in a back room of one of the best houses in town.
Doc was doc and folks paid what they could for his much needed services and Forrest had started up a business of his own when they’d come here to live. Everybody came to his little general store to make what purchases they could afford so between them the two Stephens were among the most prosperous in town.
They’d even been able to hire the black woman, Hetty, who let it be known that she’d never be anybody’s slave, but had always been a free woman, to do for them. Good thing, too, ‘cause Lavinia Stephens, the young woman from the deep south who had married Forrest a couple of years back had been trained to do nothing for herself. A babe in arms she might as well be for all the useful purpose she served in the household. Still, she was pretty and well-spoken and Forrest just about worshiped the ground she walked on. If Tyler had another opinion of his decorative daughter-in-law, he kept it to himself.
Now he shifted position to relieve his injured leg and contemplated returning to the fray back in the south. “Forrest will be wondering what became of me if I don’t head back soon,” he said more to himself than to Tyler.
Lavinia was in her bedroom with her little son. Tyler seemed absorbed in his book, so it was left to Hetty Snow to answer. “Almost got you killed last time, boy. Haven’t you learned your lesson.”
Hetty’s speech no longer surprised him, though the first time he’d met her he’d been taken aback by the fact that she didn’t talk like the slaves who worked on neighboring plantations, didn’t, in fact, talk like a Texan. She’d come here with her family, all of whom had obviously a different upbringing than what he was used to seeing in her people. She was that rare being who could actually read and write and she said things that would have barely been tolerated except for the support she got from Tyler Stephens.
Tyler not only had thoughts that other people didn’t think, at least not around here, but he said them out loud.
Bot
h Hetty and Tyler were too outspoken for their own safety. They didn’t seem to know how to guard their speech from the more ardent supporters of the southern cause. Sometimes these days he feared for them.
“All philosophy aside, my boy, you’re simply not ready to return to the battlefield. That leg of yours isn’t healed and traveling across country to rejoin Forrest and the others in the army just isn’t in the cards. They need you to be able to walk at least.”
Tyler looked at him with what Caleb resentfully thought was pity. “Give yourself some time, son.”
Time was what he didn’t have. Most folks said the war would be over in ninety days at most. He’d miss the whole damn thing.
But when he got up to stride indignantly from the summer kitchen, he took one step onto his injured leg and only kept from falling by grabbing hold of the table. Pain streaked from his right limb throughout his body.
Tyler, a gaunt man with a narrow, intelligent looking face, only grunted.
Hetty brought him a breakfast of eggs, fried salt pork and her fluffy biscuits. She didn’t say anything either and he was just as glad. He didn’t like anybody feeling sorry for him.
Last winter he had been a strong, healthy young man and now just look at him. He was a pitiful cripple. He couldn’t help feeling he’d let everybody down.
Tyler spoke without looking up from his book. “You take care of that leg and give it time to heal and eventually you’ll be all right. Ignore my advice and you not only will never return it to full function, you may live to see the day it will have to be amputated.”
This was plain speaking. Caleb, who had seen too many limbs being removed after his first and only battle, shivered inwardly, though he remained outwardly stoic. Doc Tyler was just trying to scare him, to keep him from going back to the war that had caused him a serious split with his only son.
Doc always thought he was right. Course most times he was, but when it came to this little disagreement between the states, he was dead wrong.
He just needed to see that if the southern states stood up strong, they’d quickly convince those boys in blue that they would choose their own path. After all, Texas had voluntarily gone into the union, they had a right to leave when they chose and nobody could say any different.
Chapter Three
Betsy contemplated with considerable dissatisfaction how one man’s face could linger in the unconscious, seeping up at the wrong moments to overtake what was actually happening.
When she was helping Dottie in the kitchen, she saw as a shadow around her that other, more primitive room where two men sat talking at a homemade table not seeing the black woman who watched them so thoughtfully even as she cooked over the fire.
And up in the study she once shared with her sister Eddie while they both did the work that earned their living, she would see a strong man’s face, shadowed with pain and yet somehow making her want to look more closely.
Now, as she walked across town to where her friend Susan lived with her family, she found to her embarrassment that she was imagining being in that man’s arms. Somehow she knew instinctively how his touch would warm her body, how his lips would turn fierce against her own.
How foolish! At twenty five and a grown woman, she shouldn’t indulge in such daydreams. As a girl, well actually until she was well into her twenties, she’d had a habit of getting herself engaged and then, contemplating the actual fact of marriage, unengaging herself. She’d known the truth that she was afraid of becoming bound to a man in the way her mother had been to her first husband, Betsy’s biological father, who had abused them both.
But Mama was free now and married to Evan, her dearly loved Papa, so she’d proved that marriage didn’t have to be a disaster. The fear lingered for Betsy, however, and though the young men still came courting, these days she kept them more at a distance, told them she only wanted to be friends.
Eddie had told her once she’d just never met the man who could really stir her emotions. She said someday she’d find the man she could feel about the way Eddie felt about her Zan and then it would be all over.
Well, it wasn’t all over. She wouldn’t let it be. Her future was all mapped out, in her own mind at least. She would marry one of the boys she’d grown up with here in Lavender. She would continue her work as the community’s storyteller and find a home somewhere in town. Her first years had been chaotic, disturbed, and she was determined her own still unknown children would have peace and security.
There was absolutely no place in her life for the kind of relationship her sister had entered, one that led her from one place to another as she worked with her scientist husband.
Lavender wasn’t at its best today, that would be in spring when all the blossoms were presenting in dewy perfection, but summer, steaming hot though it could be, was lovely as all the homeowners competed to grow the most stunning flowers and succulent vegetables. The light purple wisteria blooms had faded but the crepe myrtle displayed like exotic birds in all the brilliance of the season and honeysuckle and lush, overblown roses sent out a fragrance that the modern hybrids of her childhood had lacked.
The dirt streets were like country paths and though most residents were busy about their work this morning, she knew that by the time the afternoon heated, they’d be out on their cool porches, calling friendly greetings to her or inviting her up for a cold drink. In the last years, they’d increased their wind generated power enough to operate a small ice plant. Ice, used almost as sparingly as though made of diamonds, was a welcome addition to life here.
As she strolled down the lane that led to the spreading wood frame house painted an inviting mint green, Betsy thought with renewed fierceness that she would never live permanently in any town other than Lavender.
It was an oasis of peace in the midst of a turbulent world. Only here could she feel safe. She tried to urge the image of the man called Caleb from her memory almost as though she were a priest exorcizing a demon.
The mint green house was almost as familiar to her as her own home on Crockett Street. When no one came in response to her soft knock, she pushed open the door and went inside, calling, “It’s me, Betsy, come for the latest miracle drugs.”
It was a joke in a way. They had nothing in the way of wonder working 21st century medicines, but the concoctions put together here by a group of women who fell back on old knowledge and their own ingenuity to produce the liquids and pills that her doctor parents used to treat the people of the community.
Miranda Murphy who had been part of their circle of closest friends since longer than Betsy could remember, gave a little call of greeting, blew her a kiss, then called an apology as she rushed past. “Sorry, love, in the midst of a mixing so I can’t talk, but Susan has what your Mama needs. She’s out in the kitchen.”
Betsy smiled and nodded, knowing enough not to distract Miranda by conversation when she was in the midst of her work. A dark-skinned woman confident of her gifts, she and Evan Stephens had been in school together from first grade through high school and when he’d become the only doctor after the town was cut off in time, he’d gone to her for help in producing needed medications.
She found Susan, who was a couple of years younger than herself, in the kitchen, not pouring one of their medical cures, but grape juice into a glass. She looked more like her beautiful mother than her burly father, but her skin was lightened to a medium chocolate by the mixed heritage she’d inherited.
Susan and Betsy hadn’t been particularly well acquainted during their school years, but since then they’d gradually become close friends and Susan handed her glass of cold juice to Betsy, reaching for a second glass to pour another for herself.
“If you’re in a rush,” she said, nodding to a container over during the kitchen sink, “it’s right there.”
“No rush.” Betsy sank into her chair and took a serious drink of the bittersweet purple liquid, then gave a sigh. “It’s already hot out and it’s not even mid-morning.”
“
Hey, girl, it’s July in Texas. What do you expect?”
Betsy nodded, laughing. Susan looked like a delicate flower of a girl and led the local swains a merry dance, but in reality she was commonsense practical with a strain of funny that made her the most amusing of companions.
“What do you think of the Civil War?” she asked without further preamble.
Susan blinked, fluttering long, absolutely gorgeous lashes. She and Betsy were total opposites in appearance. Betsy was all golden sunlight; Susan the dark mystery of a moonlit night. But inside they shared a lot in common; both of them had an optimistic outlook on life. Now she drawled in a honey-coated southern voice, “Laws, Miss Betsy, you do bring up the most uncomfortable subjects.”
Betsy smiled only slightly. Race divisions played little part in Lavender. Susan’s mother and her uncle’s family had been the only blacks in the community when it closed down, separated from the rest of the world. There were, of course, a few families of Mexican descent, but no Native Americans. It had been a solid little community, mostly settled by refuges from a troubled Europe, like the members of her stepfather’s own family.
As far as Betsy knew, they had all gotten along without regard to race or color. They’d had to—they’d had to cooperate to survive once all they had to depend on was each other and the resources they could dig from the town and the surrounding farms. Most everybody got along; quarrels blew up and went past when you had to associate with the same people day after day.
“I don’t remember anything before Lavender,” Susan said in her normal tone, but Betsy frowned, sensing some omission. “I was little when Lavender happened. Anyhow, you know they didn’t call it a Civil War here, it was the war between the states.”
Lavender’s history went back to years before the war; Betsy knew that from her sister’s research. Before her marriage, Eddie had been the keeper of the town’s oral history. She still was when she was here, her prodigious memory making her perfect for the role.
Lavender Blue: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series) Page 2
