Log Cabin Christmas

by Margaret Brownley

  He was impressed with her idea. “We might want to include a few pots and pans,” Richard said, expanding on it. “But always the latest items a woman might need, indeed.”

  “Can you sharpen scissors?”

  “I’ll learn.”

  “You’d have to be exclusive to my establishment, though you could continue to take orders for the Barbour Brothers’ threads sold in their spools and deliver them to other stores around. But sales to individual homes, those would come from my store.”

  “I’d need a cart for my horse to pull.”

  “That could be arranged,” Mary told him. “And you’d earn a percentage from what you sold, the amount to be deducted from the cost of the cart until it was paid for, assuming you’d want to own the cart eventually.”

  Richard thought about that. “To begin with, I’d take the percentage in cash,” he said. “I’ve no need for a cart until we see how this works.”

  “Very good,” Mary said. “Does fifteen percent sound fair?”

  “Indeed it does,” he said. More than fair. He’d make her pleased she’d trusted in him. “And I see no problem with the Barbours. I’ll still be taking orders for their thread and even making it possible for them to sell more.” He reached out his hand to shake hers, hesitated, and then said, “Ought we sign something officially?”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Mary Bishop said. “My husband always said a contract was only as good as the man—or woman—who signed it.”

  “I think I would have liked your husband,” he told her. “What can I do to assist?”

  “First, we need to decide on the thread order and get that Rosa Red sent out,” she told him. “Then I’ll show you the cart.”

  He retrieved order forms from the front, the little dog tagging along beside him, her nails clicking on the floor. Mary read the papers at the table, sipping tea. He smelled lavender stronger than the tea leaves coming from her person, a pleasant scent indeed.

  They’d just finished up the order when the doorbell dangled. Mary lifted her eyes to the outside door.

  “Mary,” the man called out. “Is my order ready?”

  “Yes indeed, Mr. Lawson,” she told him as she rose. The man cast his eyes through the open door to the private area, where Richard sat. He caught Richard’s gaze.

  “I see you have company,” he said. “I can come back later.”

  His words held scorn, and Richard hoped his presence didn’t tarnish Mary’s reputation.

  “We’re doing business,” she said.

  “And I was just about to leave,” Richard said as he stepped through the door and reached for the man’s hand and introduced himself. “May I carry the box to your wagon for you?” he asked.

  “Carry my box? No. I can handle it myself,” Mr. Lawson scoffed.

  For some reason, the man appeared annoyed as he hoisted the box from the floor. Perhaps that’s what caused his abrupt movements, which sent his elbow against Richard’s sample bag, which then slid on its hard leather toward the jarof buttons sitting on the pine slab counter. Richard’s leather bag flopped open, and out spilled the cones of thread that rolled like peeled logs against the button jar, sending it flying.

  The dog barked.

  Richard reached for the cones.

  Mary grabbed for the jar.

  But her hand gripped too tightly. The jar shattered within her palm, sending buttons and shards of glass to the floor and blood pouring from Mary’s hand.

  “Ah, Mary, I’m so sorry,” Lawson said tossing his box to the floor inches from Richard’s boots. “Such a clumsy man.” Was he speaking of himself?

  Richard grabbed a linen towel and held Mary’s injured palm. Worried that he might be forcing glass into her palm but wanting to slow the bleeding, he pressed with the towel.

  “You’ve cut yourself, and it’s all my fault,” Lawson said.

  “It was my spools of thread,” Richard said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Let me take care of you,” Lawson ordered. He literally pushed Richard out of the way, grabbing at Mary’s hand. “Mr. Taylor is it? You’d best run and get the doctor while I bandage this up.”

  “I have no idea where the doctor is,” Richard said, still pressing the towel to Mary’s palm. “You go.”

  “Ach!” the old rancher said, disgusted. “I need to take care of Mary. I’ve caused this.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Mary said. She jerked her hand from Richard’s and Lawson’s pull and scurried around as though to find her hat or shawl.

  Richard would rather have been holding Mary’s hand than running for the doctor, but clearly she didn’t need two men arguing about how to take care of her. His mother would be rolling his eyes at his lack of manners. He stepped back.

  “I’ll go at once,” Richard said, deciding he could ask after the doctor’s location from someone on the ferry. He picked up Lacy and put her in the back room, away from the glass, then headed out the door, hoping to catch the ferry on this side of the river. That was how things happened with him, he thought as he caught the ferryman’s eye. His life was made up of splinters of bad following anything good.

  “You’ll need help now, Mary. Don’t be so proud you can’t accept it,” Laird told her after the doctor left.

  “I’ll do just fine,” she said. The stitches hurt more than she cared to admit, and halfway through the surgery she’d wondered if maybe she should haveaccepted the second dose of laudanum to numb the pain. The stitches ran across her palm, making her right hand stiff as if frozen. For how long, she didn’t know. “The good Lord gave me two hands, Mr. Lawson. I’m sure I’ll do fine.”

  “I can help,” Richard said, and when she started to protest, he added, “To proceed on our business arrangement.”

  “What would that be?” Laird turned, becoming instantly proprietary. Mary needed to stop that yeast from rising.

  “My business arrangements are private, Mr. Lawson,” she said. To Richard she said, “Yes, you can assist, Mr. Taylor. And Mr. Lawson, what you can do to be of assistance is please deliver these buttons to the Widow Mason. That is, if you truly want to help,” she said.

  “Of course I do, Mary. Mrs. Bishop,” he corrected. “Anything at all.” Mary thought she heard him mumbling under his breath something about “all those children scampering about.” Glumly, Laird left, taking the buttons that Richard had carefully sorted from glass and washed.

  Richard’s presence calmed her for some reason, even though Mary wished she could lick her wounds in private. She’d told him he ought to telegraph the order, then return tomorrow to begin setting up the cart.

  “I need to rest now,” Mary said.

  “Agreed,” he said. He smiled shyly, adding, “Just one more thing.” He grabbed the broom and swept again to make sure no glass remained caught on the puncheon floor and then wiped the pine with a damp cloth. Mary wasn’t sure she’d ever seen a man on his knees with a wash rag. No, she was sure of it; she never had. When he finished, she opened the door to the back room, and Lacy came bounding out, sniffing at Mary’s bandage then lifting her front paws onto Richard’s top boots as he stood.

  “It’s all fine.” He patted the dog then looked at Mary. “Except for your mistress. I’ll put the sign on the door saying you’re closed today if you’d like. Or if you trust me, I could come back and begin putting things together and help your customers, too. It might give me a better idea of your stock.”

  Mary sighed. She couldn’t afford to put things on hold. “Yes. I will need help at least for a time. There’s a cart and harness in the shed out back. It’s covered, fortunately.” For the past year, she’d been working on the cart herself, making drawers for buttons and needles, allowing shelves for books of cloth. She had the heavy, round, scissors sharpener attached to the bottom that could be removed and set up outside a patron’s home. Mary was glad the roads would be drying up soon and her new partner wouldn’t get bogged down in the mud. She’d be bogged down in this store, tho
ugh. She couldn’t even sweep the floor with one hand, could she?

  She heard a familiar patter on the shake roof, and Mary looked up, holding her right hand above her waist with her left to keep it from throbbing, which it did when she forgot and put it at her side. She guessed she’d have to use that sling for a while.

  “I could have sworn we had sun, and now it’s pouring,” Richard said.

  “It’ll let up soon, and we’ll have our sun breaks,” she told him. “Little gifts to remind us that there is always sunshine after a rain.” And soon her hand would heal, too, but not soon enough. She’d need his sales more than ever now with a doctor bill she hadn’t anticipated. Laird would insist on paying it, but that would obligate her to him—and she wanted that less than a bill. Or worse, he’d come by more often offering to “help her out” if she didn’t let him pay. She’d have to find a way to deal with that.

  “I’ll make a big circle around the region and keep track of purchases our customers make so we can follow up the next time I swing by,” Richard said. Mary liked that he already said “our” customers. “Tug their memories about what they might be running out of since they didn’t buy it last time.”

  “That’s a wonderful idea,” Mary told him. She sat on the plank chair Dale had made.

  “Let’s put the sling on,” Richard said.

  “Well, all right.” She knew it would help. His long fingers—musician’s hands—lifted her wounded palm, and she felt the tenderness of his care like sunlight kissing the rain. He slipped the cloth triangle around her neck, and she could feel his breath on her cheek. Her steady heart took flight. “I’m … I’m … thank you. And for your good idea of keeping ledgers for each customer to anticipate what they might need.”

  He beamed. “I clerked for the army. North,” he said. “Keeping track’s easy for me. By the way, I got a good look at the Smith’s store. Smells of fresh lumber all right, and shelves are already stocked.” Mary frowned. “But you’ve a much better supply of sewing things,” he said. “I’ll put the order in and return, and if you’re up to it, we can choose what bolts of cotton you want to put into the cart for sales. You know who’s out there and what they’ll be interested in. And don’t you worry over the doctor bill. My thread sent your jar careening; I’ll take a smaller percentage from the cart sales until that bill is paid.”

  Mary nodded and headed into the back room, listening for the door to close when Richard left. She lay down on the rope mattress, Lacy beside her. She could rest with this plan in place, and she didn’t mind accepting his suggestion as a way to pay for the doctor. That would take Laird out of the equation. Thank You, God, she prayed as she slipped off to sleep, for tending to details even if gleaned from the shards of a broken jar.

  Chapter 3

  There’s Nelia Williams and her spinster sister, Ruthie. Nelia’s a fine seamstress,” Mary told Richard, “but I don’t think Ruthie sews much. She’s great with horses, though, and works leather in the winter.” Four days had passed, and in the interim Mary had rested her hand on a pillow while Richard tended the store, loading the cart during sun breaks and letting Laird Lawson know all was under control each time he came by talking about the busy activity at Smith’s new store, raving about the pickle barrel and the little potbelly stove Smith installed instead of the sooty old cat-and-clay fireplace that warmed Mary’s logs or the big brick one at Cooley & Company. Mary put on her best face for Laird, assuring him that competition was the American way and good for business. The town’s fathers suggested that with the sawmill and Moyer’s Sash & Door Factory open now, she ought to abandon the old log store and build a new clapboard one. Modernize, they advised; find a better location, they offered; look more prosperous, they concluded. Now Mr. Smith had done just that.

  But she and Dale had built this cabin together, chinking the logs themselves using pine needles, dried grass, and clay from the bank of the Calapooia River flowing beside them. Together she and her husband had served the good people of Brownsville. They’d done so for five years until Dale had taken sick with smallpox and died.

  Many in the region had succumbed to the epidemic in 1863, and Mary thought it a miracle that she had not. But after Dale died, she’d wished for months that she’d gone with him. Being surrounded by the logs squared at the end by his hands, watching the sunlight filter through the isinglass windows he’d made himself kept Dale close to her heart. Why, she’d even used the froe to split logs into boards for shingles and door planks. They’d put their sweat and soul into the log home and business. She couldn’t imagine ever leaving it.

  “What is Miss William’s preference, wool or cotton?” Richard asked.

  “Nelia tends to use wool for quilts and such, so we’ll need a heavy thread for them with good, thick needles even though she can sew twelve stitches to the inch, or so they’ve told me.”

  Richard whistled. “That’s mighty fine stitching,” he said. “Maybe we should carry eyeglasses. They might have eyestrain from such detailed work. Or maybe something for headaches.”

  “I believe you’re right, Mr. Taylor,” Mary said. She wondered how he’d finesse them into buying eyeglasses without offending them. Everyone knew eyeglasses were for the elderly or weak. Mary pushed her own eyeglasses up on her nose. She’d worn glasses since she was a child. “Cotton, too, though. Good cotton material,” Mary continued. She liked talking with Richard about her inventory. He nodded enthusiastically and smiled at her often without carrying any obligation the way Laird’s smiles did. They might carry something else, but Mary didn’t want to think of that. She was in business with this man, nothing more.

  Richard made notes in a ledger book.

  “What about quilt patterns?” he said. “I know you’re not a quilter, but—”

  “I have patterns here,” she said and rose to find them. “I know the women exchange block patterns, but these are new,” she told him. “It’s a Bible quilt-block book. The squares have names like Garden of Eden, Jacob’s Ladder, Job’s Tear. Oh, and look at this one, Storm at Sea. It’ll require a sharp scissors to get those curves right.”

  Richard said, “Even though the design has no rounded curves, it looks like it does from the placement and size of the triangles.”

  “Really?” Mary said. “There aren’t any curved pieces?” She was amazed, but then she had a hard time even seeing the squares in the pattern until Richard ran his finger around the edges of the triangular pieces, his hand over her fingers as he traced the pieces making the curved design. Mary felt a tingle at her wound, though his hand covered her left one, not the wounded palm. The tingling wasn’t unpleasant, more of a surprise. She let his hand linger, felt the slightest callous and the greater warmth of his hand over hers.

  She cleared her throat, pulled her hand out. “Storm at Sea. Quite turbulent,” she said as she tried to figure what to do with her hand. Why was she so fidgety all of a sudden?

  “Bessie Thompson, over by Amelia, she’ll buy thread,” Mary said collecting her wits. “Abigail Schultz outside of Lebanon will. Her father’s the blacksmith there. She looks after him. She’s a widow, like me. Oh, and Matilda Kaliska. Now there’s a seamstress! Her wedding dresses of satin and silk could win over New York if she had a way to get them there. Maybe when the train comes to Brownsville, the world will widen for Matilda.” Mary told him of several more women who came into her store—or used to—that she thought would be amenable to having a handsome man bring wares right to their cabins.

  “You leave it to me,” Richard said. “I’ll convince them to reach beyond scrapsfor quilts, to invest in good cotton with whole colors and pieces made with a mix of Hoyle’s Wave or brown serpentine stripes. You have a good selection, Mary. Better than at either Smith’s or Cooley & Company.”

  “Thank you.” Her face grew warm at the compliment. “I’ve done as well as I could, but someone who knows material and thread as you do will expand on that. I do believe our partnership is off to a very good start.”

&nb
sp; “We’re off to a very good start indeed,” he told her. She wondered if the twinkle in his eye emphasized only a business transaction. Foolishly, she hoped it didn’t.

  Mary’s hand throbbed, and she found even dressing took more time and energy than she’d ever imagined. Richard had performed a number of tasks that eased her day, and with him gone, she was truly discovering how difficult it was to have the use of only one hand. Even if Richard was successful with his outlying sales, a venture he’d been off on for more than two weeks now, she had to do something to bring customers into the store and perhaps have a little help as well. Brushing off her one dress because she needed help washing clothes could only go on for so long.

  Flower seeds had arrived, but she needed a way to let people know they were here. Richard loved a woman who sewed. She wondered if he liked a woman who gardened? “That’s so silly of me,” Mary told the dog. “Why worry about what Mr. Taylor likes one whit? But he did look flummoxed after he traced the quilt block with my fingers.” The thought renewed the tingling in her palm. “Maybe he felt too … oh, for heaven’s sake.” She was acting like a schoolgirl.

  Mary moved her thoughts back to work. She wished they had a newspaper in town so she could place an advertisement. She decided to post a notice at the church. Surely the growing of flowers was an act of faith. One planted a seed unseen beneath the sod and waited for it to grow and bloom. It was a metaphor of hope. She’d have to close the store while she went to speak to the pastor, missing customers who might be coming in. Her log-cabin store was the first commercial establishment on this side of the river. When ferry passengers approached, she hoped they’d come in before crossing over to the other establishments. But today, she had to take the risk and close up so she could talk to the Presbyterian pastor. Besides, she wanted to survey the competition.