Beverly Jenkins
Page 5
“She’s in her office. Chase, too.”
Cara groaned again as she pushed on the door to let herself out. She definitely wouldn’t see Sophie now.
Every available bit of space in Cara’s room was crammed with books—packed in crates, stacked in piles, and neatly arranged on shelves. Only Sophie and the women folks lovingly called “the Three Spinsters” had more books. Sophie had one whole room whose walls were lined with bookshelves holding beautifully bound leather volumes. The Three Spinsters had so many books, they’d turned a portion of their home into the town’s first lending library.
Cara was in the process of searching through her library for a book on plants she’d promised to loan to one of her students. She used an old saw-horse as a stepladder to access high places. It was not the most sturdy thing, and Sophie had warned her many times about the dangers of using it, but if Cara balanced herself well, she could reach the crated books on the top shelves Asa had put up for her. A knock at her door interrupted the search. Balancing on the sawhorse, she called out, “Come on in.”
“Afternoon, ma’am.”
Cara teetered on her precarious perch at the mellow sound of Chase’s voice. After the briefest of glances at him she returned her attention to the crate of books. “Go away. The kissing booth is closed.”
She heard him walk farther into the room.
“Sorry to hear that.” He chuckled. “Real sorry to hear that.” Chase liked the view, slightly above eye level, of Cara’s hips in the flowing green skirt. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for a book for one of my students.”
“Well, come down before you fall.”
Cara ignored the advice. “Why are you here, Sergeant?”
“Had a talk with your sheriff about you. He says unless my intentions are honorable, I should keep my distance.”
Cara looked down from her perch. “And are they?”
“Suppose I said they were?”
How many women had fallen victim to his fatal smile? From the rakish face to his knee-high boots, he was every woman’s temptation. “Sergeant, though I hardly know you, I doubt I’d be wrong in saying that you probably don’t have an honorable bone in your body where women are concerned.”
To her surprise he laughed. “I thought schoolteachers were supposed to be timid little things.”
“Not this one. Timid doesn’t jibe real well with opinionated.”
“You are something,” he said with soft admiration.
His heated gaze made every nerve in her body come alive. She felt her limbs go weak and decided she’d better climb down. When she’d dusted her hands on her skirt, she looked up at him. “I hope you will take the sheriff’s words to heart.”
“And miss the most fascinating campaign of my career? I’ve never been one to go against the law but—” He reached out and brushed away a cobweb clinging to her cheek. “How’s this for a solution? I won’t touch you again unless you ask me to.”
Cara shuddered as his knuckle grazed her skin. The gesture almost became her undoing. His words were as innocent as the look on his handsome face, but she realized he was challenging her. For someone who claimed to have been warned off by the sheriff, Chase did not appear to be the least bit wary. He seemed to know she wanted nothing less than to feel his kiss again. Despite the treacherous softening of her will, she said, “You can rest assured, sir, that I won’t be asking for your touch.”
Chase smiled. “You never know, Miss Cara Henson. Time has a way of changing things.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Paying me so much attention?”
Chase wondered if being frank was also one of her gifts. “Would you rather I didn’t?”
He had her there, and she knew it. She also knew she was certain how she felt. “It’s flattering, but I think this is just a parlor game to you. A way to pass the time while you’re here.”
“I find you attractive Cara, very attractive, and, yes, I would like nothing better than to spend my time here in your company. But it’s not a parlor game. If it were, I’d win very easily.”
“Oh, really? You’re very sure of yourself, Sergeant.”
“Some of us are gifted in other ways, too, schoolmarm.”
“Modest, too, I see.”
He grinned. “You doubting my abilities?”
“No. I just think no other woman has ever told you no before.”
“And you plan on being the first?”
“It might do you good to be denied once in a while.”
“Do I hear a challenge?”
Cara had no idea how she’d gotten to this point; she should know better than to toss words with him. “Yes. You hear me saying that this is one woman who can resist your legendary talents.”
“You think so?”
I’m certain.”
He smiled again, the mustache twitching. “All right, schoolmarm, you’re on. Since I’m not the marrying kind, we’ll stick to kissing, how’s that?”
The audacity of the man. And the charm of him . . . He was wildly attractive, his challenge exciting, stimulating—and totally out of line with the morality clause in her contract. “You’re going to leave town a frustrated man, Sergeant Jefferson.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Especially since you’ve already promised not to touch me.”
“Granted, that might have been a mistake, but it’ll make the prize that much sweeter.”
“What prize?”
“The kisses I’m going to get.”
“My lips are not going to touch yours.”
“It’s not your lips you should be worried about. A woman can be kissed in a thousand places . . .”
Cara blinked against the dizzying effects of his husky voice saying those shocking words.
“I’ll see you later, schoolmarm.”
He tipped his Stetson and started toward the open door. At the threshold he turned back. “Oh, by the way, I’m in the room next door.”
The news caught her by surprise. “That’s good to know, Sergeant.”
He left then, and Cara spent quite some time just staring at the space where he’d been, wondering what she’d gotten herself into.
The next morning, Cara sailed out of her classroom and over to the Liberian Lady with a glare in her eye and mayhem on her mind. Previously she had stopped by the sheriff’s office, but was told he was in Nicodemus on business. The Liberian Lady, the town’s combination saloon and whorehouse, was owned by the nineteen-year-old son of Virginia Sutton.
When Cara barged through the swinging doors, the hands of the man playing the piano froze above the keys. The sudden quiet drew the attention of the nine or ten patrons seated at tables and those standing at the bar.
“Why, hello. If it isn’t our little schoolteacher.”
Cara turned and looked into the wintry gray eyes of Miles Sutton. He’d come to town six months before and opened the Lady, much to the anger of every church member in the Valley. In those six months, Cara had yet to find anything about him that she liked.
“What can I do for you, love?”
Cara found it difficult to conceal her dislike, especially when he dared to use such an intimate term in addressing her. She started to tell him she was not, nor would she ever be, his “love,” stopped herself, and asked brusquely, “Was Issac Brock in here earlier today?”
Miles, drying a glass with a none-too-clean rag, made a show of mulling over her question. “Let’s see, Issac Brock. Fess Brock’s boy?”
“Yes.” She gritted her teeth, then with a false smile added, “Fess Brock’s boy.”
“Maybe. Why?”
“Because he was late for school this morning.”
“What’s that have to do with my establishment?”
“He was drunk.”
Miles smiled at her and continued to dry the glass. “If he’s got money. Cara, I have to serve him.”
“The boy’s twelve, no more than a child.”
Aria looked up from her glass and let out a knowing laugh. “That child sure taught me a thing or two.”
Embarrassment scalded Cara’s cheeks. Arla was one of the three women Miles employed as “hostesses.” None of them would ever be mistaken for beautiful, but the men who patronized the Lady didn’t seem to care. The knowledge that Miles allowed Issac not only to drink, but also to cavort with the whores, made Cara all the more angry. “Sutton, if I hear about any more of my children being in here, I will have Sheriff Polk close you down. If he can’t I will write the Federal marshal in Wichita, and then the governor.”
“Whoa, whoa, love, take it easy. The last thing I want to do is get you riled at me. I’ll keep the Brock boy out of here.” He smiled. “In exchange, how ‘bout letting me escort you to the party my mother’s giving for the soldiers?”
“There is no exchange for being a decent human being.”
“Now, Cara, sooner or later, you’re going to realize you and I are fated.”
“Miles, you are fated for territorial prison if you serve any more children in here.”
“I won’t be put off forever, love.”
“Good day, Miles.”
Issac had come to school retching from the effects of too much of the Lady’s cheap alcohol. Cara had put him on the cot in the back with a wet cloth on his head and an old pot nearby to catch his misery. She’d also sent one of the children out to the Brock homstead to fetch his parents. Now, as she returned to the school, the children looked up from their studies. “How’s Issac doing?” she asked.
“His ma came and got him. She said to tell you that she’d whip him as soon as he quit throwing up.”
Cara nodded, while wishing fervently that someone would take a whip to Miles Sutton.
That evening, Cara sat at her small dressing table brushing her hair. She stopped in mid-stroke as her thoughts floated back to Chase. He made her feel so reckless, so . . . so alive. No man had ever kissed her passionately before. She’d been nearly incoherent when he released her. The mere memory sent a rippling response through her body. She admonished herself for dwelling on his “talents” and vowed to push thoughts of him aside. No matter how he made her feel, she knew he would be around only ten days and then ride away. She meant nothing to him beyond dalliance, and she just had to keep reminding herself of that fact—or endure the consequences.
Cara gave a final pat to her hair and got dressed. Tonight her students were putting on a skit for the Tenth. Later she, Sophie, and other invited guests would ride out to the Sutton spread for Virginia’s dinner.
Cara was not looking forward to that part of the evening.
While waiting for her students to arrive, Cara moved about the empty classroom, setting out the costumes and props for the performance, then paused a moment as her mind played back over other classrooms in her past. She’d been teaching for several years, and although none of the positions up until now had worked out, her drive to bring education to the children of her race had not diminished. One woman was most responsible for placing her on the path to teaching—Mrs. Rosetta Sterling. Rosetta and her dear friend Harriet Bat, the orphanage’s other staff member, insisted on educating every child who entered their doors, even if the child—due to limited intellect—could grasp only the basics. To supplement the orphanage’s books, kept in crates in nearly every room in the old plantation manor, the women wrote North for materials from relief organizations and churches. Writing paper had not always been available after the war, so lessons in penmanship and ciphering oft times had been conducted in the hard-packed earth. The daily lectures held in the mornings after chores had been serious undertakings. Mrs. Sterling allowed no slackers. Both she and Harriet had spent many years lecturing on the abolitionist circuit and loved to debate. Cara remembered spending many nights studying newspapers and pamphlets for the facts needed to do well in the formally conducted weekly Sunday contests.
But during her first few weeks at the orphanage after the death of her grandfather, she’d participated in noting. Everyone, from the soldiers who’d taken her from her grandfather’s cellar a few days after the lynchers had gone, to the laundress who’d fed and cared for her at the contraband camps, to Rosetta and Harriet, thought Cara was mute. Because of her grandfather’s death, she’d withdrawn into a world of silence that not even the whirlwind atmosphere of the orphanage with its twelve rambunctious children could entice her to leave.
The nightmares began the second week after Cara’s arrival. The terrifying dreams were filled with images of bloodied, blue-coated demons killing her grandfather over and over again. The scenes always ended with the Bluecoats, now horrible-looking skeletons, coming for the little girl in the cellar, and Cara would bolt awake, screaming. The soothing arms of Rosetta were always there, no matter how long it took the sweat-drenched and shivering Cara to drift back into a fitful sleep. One night after a routine visit by some Union soldiers come to fix the orphanage roof, a visit that left Cara terrified and recoiling in a corner, the nightmares were especially vivid. Her nocturnal screams brought Rosetta running more than once. As dawn broke, Cara wakened in Rosetta’s lap, the big green rocker in the front parlor cradling them both. She remembered looking up into the compassionate brown eyes and speaking her first words in weeks in a tone as broken as her spirit. “I miss him so . . .” And Cara had missed her grandfather, missed him with all her heart. Mrs. Sterling’s reply had been soft. “I know, darling, but we have to go on . . .” And as she held Cara, they both cried.
In the years that followed, Cara realized the words spoken that dawn could have been as much for Rosetta herself as for the benefit of the nine-year-old child. Rosetta had lost her husband, John, to slave-catchers in 1850. The men sent from his Virginia owner came for John in the middle of the night. They quoted a sum the owner demanded in exchange for John’s freedom, but the Sterling’s entire savings didn’t equal a tenth of the price. John’s one and only letter to her arrived about a year after his reenslavement. He’d written her of his love and of his impending sale in the Deep South as punishment for attempting another escape. Rosetta never heard from him again.
Harriet Bat filled Cara in on the rest of the story one night as they were writing letters to Washington in support of the proposed Fifteenth Amendment to give Black men the vote. Both Harriet and Rosetta thought the amendment too narrow, but they supported it because equal rights for women were also being lobbied for inclusion. Rosetta had gone to Boston to attend a meeting of the American Equal Rights Association, founded by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Frederick Douglass. Cara remembered asking Harriet how long she and Rosetta had been friends. Harriet replied, “All our lives, and in fact we’re twins.”
The revelation baffled Cara. Harriet laughingly explained. She and Rosetta had been born on the same day, six or so hours apart, to parents who’d been the best of friends. Both mothers were helping their husbands bring a group of runaway slaves from Indiana to Michigan when it came time to give birth. The two sets of parents, one free Black and the other immigrant Irish, had been not only friends, but neighbors and staunch abolitionists for many years. The birth of their “twin” daughters further cemented their bond.
Both girls were raised to confront life straight on, so during the second year of the Civil War, when Rosetta showed Harriet the newspaper accounts of the large numbers of runaways being drawn to the advancing Union Army and declared she was going South to look for John, Harriet refused to be left behind. They headed for Washington.
There, Harriet posing as mistress and Rosetta as servant, they toured the camps holding the nearly ten thousand runaways and confiscated slaves, first termed “contraband” by General Benjamin Butler. The camps across the river in Alexandria were not as large as those in the capital but also held thousands of re
fugees. They did not find Rosetta’s John, but they did find appalling conditions in the camps: typhoid, diphtheria, entire families infected with measles. People near death huddled next to the living in dangerously overcrowded buildings. The relief societies and the representatives of the government were overwhelmed by the newcomers arriving day and night. Space was at a premium, food more than scarce.
The two Michigan women stayed to lend what help they could and were assigned to work in the old schoolhouse in Alexandria, headquarters for Black women and children on the Virginia side of the river. Hundreds of women and children were inside the building with nothing to do except to wait for the return of their husbands and fathers working behind the lines of Union troops. The children, like children everywhere accustomed to being outside, had become listless and lethargic from the forced confinement.
The work at Alexandria schoolhouse eventually led to establishing the orphanage. Rosetta brought the first child back to the small room she and Harriet shared because the mother, dying of disease, begged Rosetta to give her daughter a future. Rosetta did. She contacted a childless free couple she knew in Ohio and sent the girl to them via agents of the Underground Railroad. Rosetta Sterling and Harriet Bat found homes for fifty-five other parentless children. They continued to search for John and picked up children throughout their tours of the contraband camps of the South. In 1864, Cara became one of them.
Under the care and love of Rosetta and Harriet, Cara grew from a nightmare-plagued, silent child to an educated young woman of poise and conviction. By the age of seventeen, she’d been arrested twice in rallies on behalf of causes, had more than a few letters printed in local newspapers, and been banned from the local Freedman Society offices for her fiery tirades over the disgusting conditions of the local schools under their jurisdiction.
But neither woman was there now to see how far her life had come. Both were dead, killed in ‘78 when nightriders torched the free school they’d established not far from the original site of the old orphanage. Cara, working with a relief society in Ohio, had been heartbroken at the news. And she still missed them. Always would.