The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries)

by Connie Shelton

  Her situation was hopeless and she could only wonder how long the balloon could possibly stay airborne before either it crashed or she simply died from exposure. Her spirit felt crushed. She curled into a small ball and cried.

  When next she opened her eyes the air had changed. The sun was low in the sky and it was, if possible, even colder. She shivered until her muscles ached. Her mouth was so dry. She looked about for a canteen of water—anything to eat or drink—but there was none. They’d only planned to traverse the city and then partake of a sumptuous barbeque luncheon at the park. All of that would be long finished, she realized, watching the sun hit the far horizon.

  Where were James and the girls now? Had anyone gone by the church and discovered Rory? Did he live to tell the story, to tell them what to do now? Probably not. If hitting the tin roof had not killed him, surely the fall to the ground did. That church roof was high. She remembered when it was built—the stone edifice, the wood beams inside, the pounded metal for the roof that would keep the structure safe and dry for generations to come. James had been in on the planning and Elizabeth had watched men sit around her dining table, discussing and revising the plans.

  And what did that have to do with her plight now? Nothing, she realized, but it was something to think about other than the bleak prospect of what lay ahead.

  She saw the last scrap of sun disappear and could not face the dark sky. She wrapped every bit of her clothing around her and closed her eyes.

  * * *

  Sammy Avila started the day early. Living with three women sometimes made him feel crazy and he liked to get outdoors, to walk along the beach, to see if he could scare up something to eat. Once in awhile a nice grouper or eel would wash up on the shore; other times there were mollusks or clams caught in the little tide pools down by the big rocks. If they were still alive or only recently dead, he would catch them and take them home for breakfast.

  His mother would be awake by now, perhaps stirring up a batter for plantains. He loved the way she fried them and served them hot with a little agave syrup on them. But if mama was awake, so too would be his sisters. Cornelia had a boyfriend in the village and he hoped the hombre would hurry up and marry the little witch so she would move out. She did nothing but criticize and torture him.

  Yolanda was a confirmed spinster at thirty—she had already promised (threatened!) to live at home and care for Mamá until her last breath. Sammy had thought that duty would fall to him as the only son, after the summer before last when his father’s fishing boat had gone out to sea and never returned. Well, pieces of it had returned, smashed to bits on the rocks. Hurricanes in the tropics posed a constant danger, even though the resulting waves sometimes washed interesting things ashore.

  Now that Yolanda’s position in the home was confirmed—never to change—Sammy supposed he could consider finding a wife and a place of his own. But the village had few choices and he found none of the young women appealing. Plus, a wife would insist that he take up some type of work to support her, and then she would get grand ideas of living in a nice house like those on the banana plantations, and Sammy knew he could never go to work for one of those big companies. He loved the sea and would have followed his father’s trade except that, if he had to confess the truth, facing the same fate as his father terrified him. He’d not been out in a boat in nearly two years.

  The tide was on the rise. Each successive wave splashed a little harder and came a little nearer to his bare feet. He counted to ten with his eyes shut and, surely enough, the very next wave lapped at his toes. He opened his eyes and scanned the foamy edges for signs of a fish that might come within his reach. He carried a small net made of fine rope and a long spear of flexible wood.

  A dark shape bobbed on the water, just inside the reef, farther than he wanted to venture just yet. As he watched, the waves brought it closer. It was large—maybe even a young porpoise. His eyes remained fixed on the spot. It was not swimming away, so it had probably been injured. When it came close enough he would snare it in his net and drag it in. But he had to be careful—if it had much life left in it, the creature would fight him. He could swim, but not strongly. He could not chance that it would drag him far out to sea, and he could not afford for it to get away with his only net.

  Closer it came. He caught flashes of white, along with the dark parts. It looked like no other fish he’d ever seen. He stealthily took one step after another until he was in the water nearly to his waist. When he got a clear look, his breath caught.

  It was a person.

  Long, dark hair floated away from the head and that was what had first caught his attention. A woman, he saw, with very light skin. Her eyes were closed against the morning sun. She floated on her back and one hand held fast to something else that was dark—a piece of driftwood maybe? He waded out another two steps, nearly chest-deep now, the buoyant salt water trying to lift him off his feet. He touched the woman’s arm and she jerked. She was alive!

  Her feet kicked and she sputtered for a moment.

  “Tranquilo, te tengo a ti,” he said gently.

  She stared at him with blue eyes such as he had never seen before, but she seemed to understand that he only wanted her to be still and let him help. She gripped the small wooden object more tightly with her right hand but allowed him to take her left arm and pull.

  “You can probably stand now,” he said gently in Spanish.

  The woman struggled to place her feet on the sandy bottom of the sea but she wobbled and fell backward, nearly taking Sammy with her.

  “Está bien. Do not worry. I will help you.”

  She weighed practically nothing in the water, so he pulled until the sea came barely above his knees and he was having to lean over too far to keep hold of her.

  “Try again to stand,” he said.

  Again, she fluttered a bit but this time she was able to get her feet under her. He draped an arm around her waist and took much of her weight as, together, they struggled ashore. The woman immediately sat down hard when she reached dry sand. Sammy’s net had become tangled around his arm and shoulder; luckily, he had left his spear ashore and it had only floated a short distance away. He retrieved it, unwound the net, and set them down.

  The white woman sat with her legs bent slightly, the chunk of wood on her lap. She had not let go of her tight grip on it. No wonder—hanging on to the one thing that would float may have saved her life.

  “Who are you?” he asked, kneeling beside her.

  She gave him a blank stare.

  “¿Hablas español?”

  She nodded vaguely but did not answer. Sammy stared out at the endless sea. “¿Dónde vienes?”

  She opened her mouth but only a small croak came out. She tried to swallow, to moisten her throat to speak, but no words came. He tried to think quickly. Water. She was thirsty.

  “Can you walk? Come to my house and my mother will give you water.”

  The blue eyes rolled upward and the woman fell sideways onto the sand.

  Sammy stared for a moment. What to do? He bent over her, tried to lift her but she was as large as he and with the wet clothing was far too heavy for him to manage. He looped his hands under her armpits and dragged her, but quickly saw how impossible it would be to get her all the way home. He had walked well over a mile from the house.

  A banyan tree cast its large shade over the sand, twenty yards away. A few steps at a time, Sammy got her to the cooler spot, then he headed for home at a run.

  “Mamá! Mamá! I found a woman on—”

  “Finally,” teased Cornelia. “Sammy, ready to marry!”

  “No, you stupid fool,” he said. Could she not simply let him finish? “She was floating in the sea. She almost died, but she is alive. I need water—and help. I cannot carry her.”

  Bless her, Mamá responded by drawing water from their drinking cistern into a small jug. “Take this. Cornelia, get Manuelito.”

  The tide had risen even farther by the time Sammy and Corne
lia’s muscular boyfriend arrived at the banyan tree. The woman was exactly as he’d left her and Sammy rushed to her side, afraid she might have succumbed. Her shallow breathing told him she was alive—barely.

  “What’s this?” Manuelito asked, kicking at something with his toe.

  The chunk of wood, to which the woman had been clinging, lay near her feet. Sammy felt drawn to it, this object that had probably helped save the lady’s life.

  “I’ll get it if you can lift the woman,” he said.

  Manuelito caught the hint of doubt Sammy had put into the question and he bent to pick up the woman as if it were no effort at all. Sammy reached for the wooden thing and discovered that it was a box, carved in a pattern like quilting, with small stones mounted on it. He fell in behind the other man as they walked back to the house, pondering this odd item. Although the wood was fairly well saturated with seawater, it should dry out nicely.

  The box might have washed out to sea during the hurricane that ravaged the entire area a couple of weeks ago, but where had the woman come from? Not from around here; he knew everyone in their tiny village. Maybe she belonged with the Americans who had recently begun to move to the nearby plantation to cultivate bananas. It was the only logical explanation, he decided. She was one of them and had foolishly gone out in yesterday’s high waves in a small boat.

  At the house, Mamá had already prepared a bed with a clean blanket and both sisters were standing by.

  “Put her there,” she instructed.

  Manuelito seemed happy to deposit his burden, although he made a point of preening in front of Cornelia, acting as if it were no difficulty at all. Sammy set the wooden box on a table near the bedside and they all watched as the unconscious woman stirred. Her eyes did not open.

  “I wonder how she came to be in the water,” Yolanda said as she dipped a cloth into a basin of cool water and began wiping the soft white face.

  Sammy gave his theory but Manuelito quickly shot it down. “She’s not from the plantation. Only two of the Americans have brought women with them. She is not one of those.”

  “Well, she must have left home with more clothing than she’s wearing now,” offered Cornelia, eyeing the fine cotton chemise. “These are only her undergarments.” She glanced at her fiancé. “And I think you men should leave the room now.”

  “Very true,” said Mamá, giving Sammy a stare.

  As he walked toward the back door he heard Yolanda say, “She must have realized that heavy skirts would pull her under the water so she took them off.”

  “Si. Can you imagine her fear?”

  Sammy thought of his father. This poor woman had nearly met the same fate. He walked away from the house, remembering that he’d set out this morning to catch some fish. Now, most likely, his net had washed away on the tide.

  The day passed. Yolanda watched the white woman on the bed. She and her mother had managed to get the poor thing out of her sodden undergarments, had washed the salt from her skin and dressed her in a clean nightgown. Still, the woman had not awakened. She tossed in her sleep, at times crying out. Once she said something that sounded like nanci. None of them knew what this word meant.

  If the woman was not from the plantation her sudden appearance here was entirely a mystery.

  * * *

  James Cox extended a hand to the black-clad man who approached, accepting condolences on the front steps of the church. At his side, Nancy and Constance picked at each other. For the first two days they had continually asked when mommy would come home. James had tried to stay cheerful, to let them think she was away on a grand adventure and would ride up in a carriage with whatever kindly soul had followed the balloon and brought her back to them. But the balloon had last been seen over the open sea and he knew, down inside, that if it did not change direction and drift back inland within the first hour it probably never would. Despite the lookouts posted up and down the beaches, the small aircraft had never been seen again. The funeral served as hard evidence of the facts.

  The line of mourners moved forward, each stopping to shake his hand and to purse their lips at the sad sight of those motherless little girls.

  “Now, James, if there is anything …” Virginia McDermott laid a gloved hand on his arm. “Of course, I will continue to bring your supper by each evening. You have much more important things on your mind than preparing meals.”

  He knew the woman had been Elizabeth’s best friend, but ever since Bill McDermott went away to the Congress of the Republic, James had found Virginia to be just a little too cloying.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I have Elvira and she’s doing a beautiful job with the house and the meals.”

  “Still … no one makes a chocolate layer cake like mine.” She actually batted her eyelashes. “I’m bringing one over this afternoon and I will accept no argument.”

  What could he say? He sighed and put on a brave smile.

  The brother of Rory Duncan stepped up next in line. He mouthed nearly the same words James had said to him yesterday in almost this exact spot. James had spent four days wanting to hate the balloon pilot but somehow simply could not work up the energy to do so. The man was dead. Elizabeth was gone. He had to accept that.

  Eventually, the whole sad procession moved to his house where it seemed every woman in town had brought dishes. For one man, two children and a maid, it was an obscene amount of food. He began insisting that people take some of it home with them, and he was pleased when he overheard Elvira getting a little firm with Virginia McDermott, telling her not to show up with one more thing to eat.

  He had telegraphed Elizabeth’s family back in Maryland to let them know of the tragedy. Her mother became bedridden at the news and her father was a somewhat frail man, a banker who’d never traveled west of the state line. It was no surprise that they had not attempted the journey to Texas.

  “Mommy missed having this delicious chocolate cake,” little Nancy said as Elvira used a damp cloth to wipe smears of icing from the child’s face. “Be sure to save her a piece for later.”

  The colored maid turned quickly away, stifling a sob, and James tried once more to explain to his youngest that mommy would not be here for cake. Or for anything. As much as it pained him to think of it, once the prescribed year of mourning was over he really should look for a wife, a mother for these babies. They needed a woman’s care.

  By the time the month was out, James was beginning to think more frequently of his own needs. He missed Elizabeth in their bed at night; her reticent manner in public did not extend to the bedroom and he’d never lacked for satisfaction of that sort, until now. He invented a meeting to attend each Tuesday night and left the girls in Elvira’s care.

  In reality he strolled down to the waterfront, wearing simpler clothing than the top hat he usually sported when performing his official mayoral duties, deceiving himself into believing that no one would notice his presence at one of the smaller saloons or see that he often walked up the stairs with a young woman who went by the name of Fancy.

  Fancy delighted him in ways that even Elizabeth had never dreamed of. For one thing, the oil lamp in the room was never turned off. And he had never seen a woman wearing red satin undergarments before. Her blond hair and the perfume she wore enchanted him, although sometimes afterward he realized that only a few months ago he would have thought them tawdry. And if a spot of her lip rouge stained his collar now and then, at least Elvira had the good sense not to mention it.

  He continued to sit at his desk in the mayor’s office five days a week, to make speeches as needed, and to attend church on Sundays with his daughters. Two months passed and he had almost become accustomed to the fact that Elizabeth was not waiting in the parlor to greet him when he came home. The sight of her clothes in the cupboard startled him less often—he should gather them for charity, along with her hairbrush and mirror.

  Yes, he had almost grown used to his widower status but still, it did not suit him. Then one Sunday as he took hi
s little girls’ hands after church, he noticed Mary Conway. The young Sunday School teacher had stooped down to tie Nancy’s bonnet ribbon and the interaction between them was so sweet, so loving. Mary would be a natural mother someday, young and energetic and very attuned to the activities of children. He decided to call upon Mary soon.

  * * *

  The day the strange woman woke up, Sammy happened to be alone in the room with her, pouring water from a pail that he filled at the rain barrel into the little cistern his mother used in the kitchen. He heard a moan, which was not unusual, but then the woman said something he did not understand. She was sitting up in bed with the blanket drawn up to her chin and a worried look in her eyes.

  “Usted está despierto. ¿Cómo te sientes?”

  “I feel well, thank you,” she said. “Where am I?”

  He did not understand a word of that; he thought she was speaking English.

  “Wait here,” he said in Spanish. “I will get help.”

  He motioned with his hands for her to stay in place, then he rushed from the house. Manuelito would know what to do. Despite the fact that Sammy did not care for the man’s bragging ways or the way he took pride in demonstrating superior strength, his sister’s fiancé worked for the Americanos and could find someone to translate their guest’s words. He ran toward the plantation office.

  When he returned an hour later, Mamá was sitting at the woman’s side, applying an herbal compress to her forehead.

  “She was sitting up when I came in, but she fell back to her pillow a few minutes later.”

  The lady must have heard the voices because her eyelids fluttered and she stared at the strange faces surrounding her. The American man, Manuelito’s supervisor, spoke to her.