by Anne Mateer
He swallowed, glanced at Jewel. “I couldn’t let Mama come here alone. I sent them next door.”
I tousled his hair and smiled down at him. “Good job, JC. You took care of everyone.”
He huffed out a huge sigh and then grinned, some color returning to his cheeks.
Then Jewel grimaced, her hand skittering over her round stomach. A deep inhale. A slow exhale. I swallowed hard. Oh no. Not here! Not now!
“You ought to be at home.” I tried to hoist Jewel to her feet, but she wouldn’t budge.
Her face hardened. “I can’t.” She spoke through clenched teeth. “Get. Doc. Adams.”
JC’s eyes grew round and frightened. Mirroring mine, I imagined.
Jewel hissed as she sucked in air. “Now, Lula.”
I couldn’t move. How would I find the doctor in this chaos? He could be anywhere. A hand seized my arm. I spun around, peered into the face I needed most.
“Ma told me what you did for her, Lula. Thank you.” Gratefulness softened Chet’s eyes, turning my knees to jelly. I wanted to wilt into his arms, but Jewel’s groan snapped my mind back to the moment.
I pointed out the door. He let go, clearly confused. “It’s Jewel. I have to find the doctor.” Reason fled. I clutched his arm. “Help me. Please.”
A guttural cry rose above the squall of voices. Mrs. Vaughn rushed across the sanctuary and knelt beside my sister.
With a hand at the small of my back, Chet propelled me through the curious onlookers. We reached the door, anxious to be free from the crowd. The door opened before I could touch the latch, bringing me nose-to-nose with Miss Morrison. She blinked, her eyes and mouth both round. But as her gaze roamed over my shoulder, she smiled.
“Why, Chet! Fancy finding you here.” She stepped forward, forcing me back. But I had nowhere to go. Chet remained rooted to the ground behind me.
“Did you come to help?” Chet’s voice sounded friendly, but I could hear the edge, the same tightness it had when his team didn’t do as he’d instructed.
“Of course! Isn’t this just awful?” She skirted around me, tried to take Chet’s arm.
“Good. They need help. Now if you’ll excuse us.” Chet urged me into the gold-washed world. I looked for his automobile, couldn’t find it in the cluster of cars near the church.
“It’s buried in my house,” he said, as if reading my mind. His pace increased. I tried to keep up, taking two steps to his every one, worrying about Jewel with every heartbeat. I glanced back at the church. Miss Morrison stood in the yard, arms crossed, watching us go.
When we arrived at Doc Adams’ house, my lungs struggled to draw air. Chet was barely winded. No visible damage here, but no occupants, either. A window opened next door and a gray-haired woman poked out her head.
“He’s over on Tenth Street. A boy hit with flying debris.”
Chet sprinted away. I flew after him, a hand at my side trying to stop the pain that skewered with every breath. We reached Tenth Street. Doc Adams had departed. Needed over near Mifflin Avenue, someone said.
Exhaustion, frustration, and fear swirled into a wail. I leaned against the porch railing of the house where we’d stopped.
Chet’s hands cupped my face. “We’ll find him, Lula. We will.”
I nodded in spite of my tears, my fears.
On Christ the solid rock I stand.
I grabbed his hand. “Pray,” I breathed.
And he did. “We need direction, God. Help us to know where to go, what to do.” Chet spoke as if God stood at his side. I almost expected to hear an audible answer. Though no voice replied, the solidness of Chet’s faith anchored my own.
Twenty minutes later, Chet rushed back into the church, Russell in one arm, Inez in the other. I followed, Trula grasping my hand so as not to get left behind.
I pried her fingers from mine and attached them to Chet’s suit coat. “Wait here,” I whispered before sweeping past Miss Morrison, nearly knocking her flat. Why was that woman always in my way?
Outside Pastor Reynolds’ office, low voices murmured through the closed door. A long grunt. Quiet. Then the piercing wail of a disgruntled babe.
I leaned my head against the door, tears of relief and joy and sorrow mingling on my cheeks. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for my—
My head popped up. Niece or nephew?
Without a sound, I slipped into the room. Jewel lay limp on a pallet on the floor, Doc Adams attending her. Mrs. Vaughn scooped water from a basin over the squirming, screaming ball of flesh. “It’s another girl. And she’s beautiful.”
She wrapped the child in an old shirt before placing her in Jewel’s arms.
“Davina.” Jewel stroked the pink cheek with the back of her fingers. A tear slid down her face and baptized the fuzz on her daughter’s head. She smiled, wiped the place dry.
“Is she—?”
Doc Adams patted my shoulder, eyes still on baby and mother. “A little on the small side, but she looks fine.”
I knelt beside Jewel and my new niece, pushed back the sweat-soaked hair around my sister’s face. I couldn’t utter a word. My heart was too full. Missing Mama and Daddy. Missing Davy. How much more did Jewel ache with their absence?
Jewel laced her fingers through mine. “JC told me to stay put while he went to find you, but I didn’t listen. Imagine that.” She smiled wryly in my direction before she gazed at her baby again. I wanted to laugh. Jewel had never been the obstinate one. That had been my role, and I’d played it better than any starlet of stage and screen.
She took a jagged breath. “I’d never have forgiven myself if stubbornness would have cost me this child.” Jewel’s attention returned to me, eyes brimming with tears.
A loud, familiar voice came from the front the sanctuary. “Where? Where is she?”
One look in Jewel’s eyes and I knew what she wanted me to do. I sprang to my feet, quickly reaching the sanctuary, where Bo was turning circles in the aisle, eyes wild. I grabbed his arms, shook him still.
“Bo. Listen to me. She’s here. She’s all right.”
He calmed, finally seemed to see me. “She’s all right?”
I nodded. “The baby, too.”
Doc Adams answered our timid knock at the door. I led my nieces and nephews to their mother’s side, their eyes wide with wonder and a bit of fear. Bo held back, as if unsure of his reception. I nudged him forward. Jewel propped the baby up a little. Russell reached. Bo grasped his little hand, guided it gently to Davina’s head. Inez popped her thumb in her mouth and pressed into Bo’s side. Trula cooed to her sleeping sister while JC’s grin encompassed them all.
Then Bo’s focus moved from the baby to Jewel.
I leaned against the wall. The love shining from Bo’s eyes left me breathless. Mrs. Vaughn and the doctor had vanished altogether. I ought to leave, too, but the scene held me captive. What would it feel like to have a man look at me that way? To have Chet look at me that way? With such obvious devotion.
And like a flash of light in a dark sky, I realized Jewel didn’t need me anymore. Nor did JC, Trula, Inez, or Russell. At least not in the same way as before. I wrapped my arms across my chest. It was what I’d wanted—to be released to go back to my old life. To resume my course to make something of myself. To make Daddy proud. But like the tornado through the streets of Dunn, these past few months had broken apart the life I’d so carefully constructed. Splattered it to the ground.
For the first time, I asked myself what Lula Bowman really wanted.
Bo and I corralled the children while Mrs. Vaughn—Louise, as she’d insisted I call her—cooed over Davina and fussed over Jewel. “I’ll take good care of them until the doctor says they can be moved home again.”
And I knew she would.
I spied Chet near the pulpit, passing out quilts to the displaced—like himself—to bed down in the church. Sarah Morrison smiled at his side. He reached to take a quilt from her hands. Their eyes met and held. Inez tugged at me. I lifted her into my arms, my focus stuck to Che
t and Miss Morrison. Her whispered words, his low chuckle. My heart lurched. Had I waited too long to admit even to myself my true feelings for Chet?
He turned his head, looked straight at me. I let my gaze fall from his, peered into Inez’s small face. “Let’s go home, sweetheart.”
Bo drove the children and me home, dodging tree limbs and other debris strewn across the streets. At Jewel’s house, a few shingles from the roof littered the yard. I thanked Bo, grateful for his help, his presence, but wanting him away, needing to be alone.
“I’ll check in when I’m able,” he said before motoring off.
Inside, I fumbled for candles and matches, finally acquiring enough light for us to mount the stairs without mishap. Exhaustion tugged at my limbs, but once the children were asleep beneath their blankets, I couldn’t keep my mind still. Too many thoughts of Jewel and Bo. Of Louise and Chet. Of all I’d thought and seen and experienced in a few short hours that felt years long.
I cleaned the kitchen by candlelight, then curled on the sofa with one of Jewel’s dime novels. Anything to distract me from a pair of dark eyes in a striking face—and the heart of compassion that beat beneath the broad chest. We’d been friends because of basketball. Because of Nannie and Blaze. I’d been the one to stop it there—at friendship. But now I wanted so much more.
A gentle tap startled me. Or had it been my imagination? I held my breath, listening. One of the children must have slipped out of bed to use the chamber pot. Or maybe the wind had blown a branch over rough ground.
I returned to my book, senses heightened. One sentence later, the plink of an object against glass gained my attention. I lit a larger candle and crossed to the foyer, cracking open the front door.
Soft footfalls over dead grass pulled my attention to the left. The flicker of candlelight caught Chet’s face.
My heart skipped a beat. Had something happened to Jewel? To the baby? I sucked in a breath. He mounted the porch. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“What is it?” I whispered, afraid of the answer, afraid of breaking the fragile connection between us.
“May I come in?”
My gaze swept over the yard, the street. I opened the door wide. “I’ll put on some coffee.”
I slipped into the kitchen, stirred the coals in the stove, and set the coffee pot to boil. If only I could read his face more clearly than in the dim light of a single flame. And yet I was glad he couldn’t decipher mine. Desire to give in to my feelings for him swayed me like a sapling in a strong wind. And then I remembered I didn’t have to hold myself upright.
Be near, Lord Jesus. My hope is built on nothing less.
The ground seemed to settle beneath my feet even though my heart pattered at a faster gait. Boil, pot. Boil.
I felt his presence, but refused to turn.
“I came tonight, Lula, because I thought you ought to know—and I didn’t want you to hear it from anyone else.”
Miss Morrison. The pounding in my chest rose into my ears. My hands trembled. Another moment of silence and I feared I’d fly apart. A deep breath. A slow turn.
His gaze met mine. “I’ve enlisted.”
40
CHET
Lula’s eyes squeezed shut. Then the hush between us stretched long and heavy, like one of Ma’s quilts on washing day. The smother of it made me wonder if I’d misread everything, if she had cared for me at all.
“It won’t matter much to you, I know,” I mumbled.
Her eyes flashed to mine, as angry as the bubbling from the range behind her. The bitter smell of burnt coffee billowed into the room. I wrapped a towel around my hand and pulled the pot from burner to warming shelf as I searched for something to say.
How could I ask for the right to hold her—to love her—for the rest of my life? I’d forfeited any thought of that when I enlisted. I’d leave Dunn sooner than she would, and with no certainty of return. My jaw tightened. My fingers clenched and then flexed. Even if I thought she loved me, I couldn’t tie her to a dead man.
“Thank you for taking care of Ma. She’s very grateful for your—”
A knock sounded, and Lula started for the door. I picked up the candle and followed, stopped short when the light in my hand fell on Mr. Morrison and Principal Gray.
Principal Gray’s eyes locked on mine. My mouth went dry. Lula and I alone. In her house. At night. But this time, the witness wasn’t Pastor Reynolds, willing to believe the best of us. This was Mr. Morrison, school board member. Father of the girl who’d taken up Miss Delancey’s abandoned pursuit. The one batting her eyes and trying to help. Listening to my conversation with Ma and making sure word got to her father. And quick.
I stepped in front of Lula. “I can explain everything.”
Principal Gray’s gaze slid to the floor. He cleared his throat, pinched the crease in his hat. “We cannot have any appearance of impropriety among our teaching staff. You understand.”
“But the children are upstairs,” Lula whispered as her hands wrung in front of her.
“Miss Bowman, you are in breach of your teaching contract. You’ve been relieved of your duties. Please do not report to school again.”
A tear slipped down Lula’s pale cheek. Anger twisted inside me like the tower of cloud earlier that afternoon. Sarah Morrison had a powerful father and plenty of money. She didn’t lack for admirers. So why, like Miss Delancey, had she set her sights on me for a husband? Why ruin my chance at happiness?
She’d done more than play havoc with my heart. She’d cost Lula her job. Not just this one, every one. Lula had already sacrificed that mathematics prize to take care of Jewel. Now, because of me, the rest of her dreams had been ground to dust, too.
I thrust the candle into Lula’s hands, led Principal Gray and Mr. Morrison onto the porch, and shut the door behind us. “You can’t do this. It’s not right. There is nothing—”
“This isn’t about you, Mr. Vaughn. Not yet.” Mr. Morrison’s finger wagged in my face. Then he jogged down the steps and walked away.
I gripped the porch railing, almost sure I could snap it in half. I’d been the one who compromised her reputation. Why shouldn’t this be about me?
Principal Gray set his hat on his head. “I’m sorry, Chet.” He glanced at the closed door. “For both of you.” He left more slowly, as if weighted by the burden of what he’d been asked to do.
I slumped against the house. Then I paced across the porch twice, a low growl in my throat. Lula didn’t deserve this. I had to explain, to apologize. But as my hand connected with the door knob, the bolt shifted and clicked into place and the light from the window vanished to black.
Principal Gray would not be moved. His hands were tied, he said, by the school board. But I knew he meant by Mr. Morrison.
Two days later, with electric service restored and much of the damage cleaned up, school resumed. I kept to my classroom, not wanting to cross any path that would remind me of Lula. Like I needed any reminders.
In the late afternoon, I stood in front of the shell of our house. With the help of a horse and wagon from the livery stable, my Tin Lizzie had been towed out of the wall. I walked around my auto, noting the dings and dents on the frame before trying to crank it to life. The engine sputtered and coughed, but eventually resurrected. If only my heart would do the same.
I steered it out of the yard and parked on the street. I’d drive it to Pastor Reynolds’ house later, grateful for his offer of a place to stay for Ma and me until we could make other arrangements.
My stomach twisted as I climbed out of the car, set a foot on the running board, and rested my arms on the dimpled leather roof. All my life I’d believed that God could—and would—bring beauty from ashes. But since the day the telegram about Clay had arrived, the ashes had been piling higher than my faith.
After salvaging a few of our personal items, I motored through streets swept clean, only an occasional felled tree or boarded up window left as reminders of the power of the storm
. The motorcar bounced into the grassy place between the parsonage and the church. With the engine silent, I prayed for Ma to be willing to consider a new type of living situation, like a room in a boardinghouse where there would be people around her. Where she’d have to remain engaged in life, no matter what happened to me. And she wouldn’t need to worry over the little things to be maintained in a house. The storm insurance would more than cover her expenses, especially in conjunction with my army pay.
I climbed from my car. Piano music bled through the walls and windows of the church. My heart twisted. Lula? I crept closer to the building, trying to place the tune, familiar and yet not quite right. Slower than usual, maybe? I pressed my ear to a smooth board, humming until the words and music connected in my head.
The light in your eyes makes the bright stars grow pale,
They’re jealous as jealous can be;
But one word or sign tells them all you are mine—
A crash of notes. I cringed, stepped backward. Then the music began again. More timid this time. Hesitant.
Then stronger. Louder. But not the same song as before.
A voice joined the chords, sure and strong. “‘On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.’”
I hung my head. Lula might have enough faith to believe that, but I’d sunk so far in the sand I expected it to close over my head and bury me at any moment.
There’d been no service for Clay. Not with the chaos of the tornado and my enlistment. A few days later, after a physical examination, I boarded the train for Kansas, like Pa had. I only hoped I’d acquit myself more honorably. Make Ma proud and honor Clay’s short service. Blaze moped at the news. I didn’t blame him, after the way I’d pushed him toward graduation and then abandoned him before it arrived. But at least he and Archie seemed to have found a mutual truce on the matter, for Blaze was still attending school every day.
Ma had taken my suggestion about the boardinghouse surprisingly well. So well it alarmed me. She settled into two rooms at Mrs. Morton’s while I stayed the final few days with Pastor Reynolds and his family. I’d seen Lula only at church, her face drawn, her dresses hanging on a slimmer form. I didn’t approach her, and she steered clear of me.
