“He hasn’t seen me for a while out there.”
“He know you are okay. He wants to know how you’re doing,” Annie said putting emphasis on the words he and you’re. Mags laughed at Annie’s shenanigans.
“That’s nice, Annie. No matter what you thinking.”
“Didn’t he just say to you that you better not play with him, that he’s a man?”
“He said that last week.”
“Yes. See, that’s him saying that when you are ready, he going to take it all the way with you. Excuse me, I don’t want to speak about the deceased, but Travis sound like a little boy, declaring his love for you all the time and everything. This here is a man who been to the war and seen some things, and he didn’t never say anything about another woman.”
The stillness in the room made her realize that about four other women besides Annie were listening to Annie talk.
“That’s it. He like you,” one of the older women butted in and when she did, Mags remembered her name was Lizzie. “Like a man likes a woman.”
“He just wanting a welcome from you,” Annie insisted.
“A welcome?”
“You got to do something, let him know he’s welcome.” Lizzie sliced down more ham for the women to eat and all of the women giggled.
“What?”
The laughter grew and filled the room. Except for her.
“She know when the time come.” Annie waved them off. “We is hungry, serving up these hungry men. And we got dinner to make too? Let’s go eat. While we eat, we can think of something to help our friend here with her man problem.”
“That ain’t no problem,” one of the younger women, Reena, said. “That’s easy.”
“Easy for you to say.” Mags eyed the cooling dishwater that had a layer of congealed ham grease and bean juice floating on top. She went to heat more hot water in the kettle.
God must have sent Asa by way of her sister to escape Winslow. She needed him to figure out how she could impact Paul Winslow enough to destroy him, but not his business. Her brother-in-law and nephew, as his only living descendants, still drew dividends from the mill.
When the time came, there might be another man who would stay by her. By that time, when she accomplished what she needed to do, the newspaper man would be long gone after some other story.
A funny feeling rolled around her stomach at the thought of her life without him, but that was reality.
She had better get used to it.
Chapter Ten
“A wonderful day.” Asa broke another silence between them as they rode back from Calhoun. “Thank you for spending it with me.”
“You’re welcome.” Mags played with her handkerchief, always keeping her fingers occupied. He started to whistle, but then stopped.
“I think I’ll get back and write this out, so it stays fresh in my mind.”
“Sounds like a good idea. That’s why Annie gave you a nice plate of leftovers. You can eat and get a lot of work done back at the mill house.”
“You think I am going back there?”
“That’s what it seems like.”
“No, I think that you Bledsoes are stuck with me until I leave. I mean, when we leave for up north.”
“That’s nice.” Mags stared off to the side of the road. What was going on? She wasn’t happier that he would be around a bit more?
“Yes. Winslow can keep his mill house and the money he’s taking from me to live there if I cannot be safe and unthreatened in my own home.”
“Makes sense.”
“Glad that you agree.”
She whipped around to face him. “Do you think there will be any more lynchings around here?”
“Hard to say. We’re engaged in a risky investigation right here.”
“I know. I don’t like that there is so much danger for people, and so much hurt for the families.”
“Did Travis leave family behind?”
She gave a thoughtful pause. “No, nobody. His mama had died the year before— God is merciful in some ways because his killing would have about killed her. I think it was one of the reasons why he was so willing to take on that risk, because she was gone. He might have been more careful if she were alive.” She brought the handkerchief up to her face, shedding a few tears.
Clearly, she was still enamored by this Travis fellow, and he was glad. He sat himself straighter as he drove. Really. Her great love for the deceased Travis freed him from feeling more responsible for her and it made it all the easier for him to say goodbye to her when it was all said and done. The hollow feeling inside of him probably could be filled with more dried apple pie.
“Did you ever have anybody to love?”
Now it was his turn to whip his head around. “What made you ask that question?”
“You told me,” Mags said evenly as if he were a child, “you were a man and that you were not to be toyed with, and had a man’s needs. You been away to war and injured and everything. You aren’t too bad to look at. It stands to reason that you would have somebody, ’less all the girls in Pittsburgh are fools.”
Asa wanted to laugh out loud at her nerve and tenacity. She was something. All of her reasoning made sense and was quite in line with reality. Once again, another reason to admire her fine mind. He took in a deep breath, ready to confess. “I had a fiancée.”
“I thought so,” Mags said half smiling. “You used the past tense. Did you break up?”
“Aline died in the flu epidemic.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She died in my arms.”
“As Travis died in mine.”
They were both quiet as the realization dawned on him that they had this in common as well. Anything more that he had in common with her frightened him. He did not want to be closer to her.
“Well, it would appear that we had some sad times in our lives.” There. That would wrap up the moment.
“I’ve asked God many times to help me about Travis. So much of what I think about and do is about getting Paul Winslow back for the role that he played in killing Travis.” He looked over and saw that there were tears running down her cheeks. Stop. Stop.
He gripped the steering wheel. He did not want to be impacted by her. He did not want to have feelings for her.
Too late. He pulled the car over onto the side of the road.
“Every time I try to do something else, or think about something else, I’m so mad. It’s a prison. I want to be free of it.”
He reached out and she went into his arms with her tears wetting the front of his farmer shirt and making it quite wet and soggy. Stroking her cloud of hair, he didn’t care. She should not be upset anymore. There had not been any other woman in his arms since Aline took her last breath more than a year ago. Somehow, he carried a curse in his person and he wanted Mags to be free of him.
So he pulled her away to face him. “Look, you loved Travis and he loved you. Keep thinking about young Negro men being free of the chains of men of power like Paul Winslow. It’s time for that treatment to end. We’re all coming back from the war and we want to be treated like men. Like how it was in Europe.”
Mags sniffled, and edged over again, restoring herself. “How were you treated in Europe?”
He’d better do something else before he lost control, holding her like that. Taking the opportunity to pull his arm back, he maneuvered the controls to start the car. He made his arm muscles rigid and strong because he didn’t feel strong inside, holding her soft, sweet smelling body so close to himself. Shifting in the front seat, he steered the car out onto the road again.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded her head. “How was it?”
“We were treated like, like human beings. All of the things you think about, even now, about how we couldn’t stay for the dinner because it would have been too dark to go home
, that doesn’t exist over there. Women don’t look at you in horror as you walk down the street past them. They’re friendly and say hello.”
“Is that how you met your fiancée? Aline?”
Asa nodded and his mind wandered a bit. “We met in a café. She worked there, and I liked to go there to eat and write. See what I mean? Here, in the wonderful United States, we have to think about where we can go to eat. There, you do not.”
“My goodness.” Mags put a hand to her chest.
“One time, she asked me what I was always writing and I told her. She seemed very sympathetic to the plight of the Negro soldier. The café was owned by her parents and people like to go there to have celebrations. When the troops were about to leave, she had a moment where she told me that she liked me very much and wanted for me to stay. I promised her I would be back after covering the events on the front. That was when I was shot by the commanding officer and I had to have a place to heal after the hospital. Her parents took me in. There was no judgment in their eyes when they had to help me with the wound, and they did not hesitate to call the doctor. She fell in love with me. I asked her to marry me and she said yes.”
“She said yes?” Mags breathed out. “A French woman?”
“Yes.” Asa inclined his head to see if she understood. Given her usual precise way, he could see that she was still reaching and did not grasp it fully.
“She was not a Negro?”
“No.”
Now she understood.
She shifted in her seat, grappling with the magnitude of his revelation about his dead fiancée. “I see.”
Silence.
“Her family helped me to find the right kind of leg and to walk all over again. They were wonderful to me, as if I were their own son. Their treatment of me was so kind, I was prepared to never come back to the United States ever again. However, the flu came and struck her down. She died within a day.”
“I’m sorry,” Mags breathed.
“Thank you,” he said, with some relief, knowing that she had a heart. “So my praying to God has been of a different sort. I’m in a prison of a kind, too, and I can pray to be free of it, but I know that I never will. You, with your self-imposed prison, you can go north, get more education and be free. You don’t have to be at the behest of Paul Winslow all of your life. Think of it that way.”
The Bledsoe farm emerged into view and he was glad. This conversation with Mags was very tiring and he wanted to be sure to write tonight. He needed a good meal and energy to help him do that. He thought that he had made her see reason, and to let her know that she had choices in her life, choices that a lot of young Negro women did not.
“What makes you think that you are in a prison?”
She was serious and composed with her hands folded quietly in her lap, not industrious in spite of the white salty traces of tears down her face. The sight jarred him. “I just, I made the comparison because of you know, my injury. It’s permanent.”
“It is. But did it change who you are? Your mind? What you can do?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then what gives you the right to act as if it is a prison? When so many of the troops came back poisoned with mustard gas or shell shock? You’re a writer and someone with an education. The commanding officer took your leg but he can never, ever take your education from you. He hated you for that. I hope that you won’t waste your life because of some hateful man. You owe it to your people to be a beacon of hope for them. You don’t have the right to lock yourself away.”
Who was this self-righteous, beautiful woman telling him about what should motivate him? Who was she to tell him what he should feel about his leg? She wasn’t a man. He breathed again. “That’s very harsh, Mags.”
“You aren’t a farmer or a manual laborer. You have a work, and a purpose. You don’t have the right to feel as if you are less. You have a work to do that is meaningful. That’s a lot more than a lot of Negroes have.”
Asa parked the car and sat there, floored by her words. “Well, I’ll just take my plate around the back and begin to work.”
“Yes, I think that you better do that.” Mags opened the door and let herself out. “I’ll let the family know and no one will be offended.”
He watched her take her own tin plate upstairs into the front door and heard the warm welcoming sounds of the Bledsoes embrace her and love her. What a wonderful thing to have a family like that, rather than his mother and sisters who were always judging, always thinking themselves above everyone. She was lucky that she had something, people to fight for. She wasn’t in a prison at all.
And she made him begin to see that he wasn’t in a prison either.
With a few sentences, she turned his entire world upside down, and lobbed a grenade to his sensibility about going back into his mother’s room and ending his life.
The entire week, Asa kept his distance from her. Suited her fine. His name is Mr. Thomas. Caldwell. Mr. Something.
What had she said that was so wrong? She told him a truth that he needed to hear. She could ask him about his frosty attitude, but she didn’t know how to form the words. Even Katie made a notice of it at the mill one day. “He’s different. He doesn’t act like he did before.”
“I know. I think it’s my fault.” She gave Katie the quick rundown of their conversation.
“You said something he didn’t like.”
“Well, if he’s that changeable, then he might as well finish up here and go back up north and give me my job back.”
“You still going up there?” Katie asked, and Mags saw that she was very interested in her response. Well, maybe her young friend would miss her while she was away.
“I don’t know. Sometimes, I want to go, but if it means going with old sourpuss, maybe not.” They both giggled and then sobered when Asa came walking by, limping a little more because he didn’t have his cane for some reason. Or was he hurt? She smoothed down the hurt in her heart, and instead busied herself putting her lunch dishes back into her pail. She was not ashamed of how she felt. Probably high time someone had let him know about himself. She was not deluded into thinking Asa would be interested in her as some type of wife prospect. She looked nothing like what he had been interested in as wife material.
Besides, that was her mother’s own imaginings because the handsome Prince Adam had come into their lives four years ago and swept away Princess Ruby.
No. She was sensible Mags. No one ever swept her away, and she was just fine keeping her feet firmly on the ground. It was too bad that Mr. Thomas could not be grounded in the same sense of reality.
That Friday was the Fourth of July. The mill was closed for a holiday, and since it was, they would have to work on that Saturday to make it up. She didn’t mind, as long as they got the work day off. The Bledsoes had the tradition of going into the town of Winslow to partake in Paul Winslow’s largess. Mags really didn’t want to eat of the too-sweet ice cream that he provided to all who came to see the beautiful fireworks. Still, if she stayed at home she would be there alone with Asa, who wanted to work, and that was not appropriate. She leaned into the small back room. “I left your plate in the warming oven so that you can eat your dinner as you wish.”
She put on a pair of white gloves and smoothed down the front of her dress, which was a mauve color. Her large white hat had enough veiling on it to protect her from the sun, but the amount was ridiculous. She had wanted to tell Em to take some of that veiling off, but her sister insisted that was the fashion now, so she had to go around with this big nest on her head. She much preferred the smaller boaters.
Asa had been in his room much of the day, not engaging with the family because he had been working and they were all under orders not to disturb him. He blinked at her as he stood and stretched. She felt more than a little embarrassed at seeing his broad, strong chest peek through his undershirt, and felt a
little warm remembering how it felt to be nestled into him when she needed some comforting.
With Travis gone, that would be all she ever had of a man. Once she returned from Pittsburgh and helping her sister, her life as the maiden aunt of her sister’s children was set. She would remain there on the Bledsoe farm to take care of her parents to the end of her days. Just thinking of her life provided a kind of reassurance to her.
“Where are you going dressed like that?”
“We had said at breakfast that we were going in for the Fourth of July celebrations. Delie asked you to come and you said that you had to work on your writing.” She remembered the singular look of disappointment on her young sister’s face and kept a subdued look on her face at Asa’s serious countenance when he said nothing in response to her younger sister.
“I’ve been working on it. I have gotten pretty far today, so I can come and escort you into town.”
His curious choice of words struck her and she was about to ask him about it when her mother called her to the front door, dressed in her own finery. “Your father has the mules ready.”
“I was just saying goodbye to Mr. Thomas and letting him know about his plate.”
“Fine then. Come on.”
“No, wait.” Mr. Thomas grabbed her arm before she went to the front door and a jolt shot up her arm, making her feel alive as if summer lightening had come down and struck her. “I can drive you in the car.”
“I’ll go and sit on the porch and wait while you dress.” She reluctantly pulled her arm free and went out front. She told her mother what their border had said. Lona looked skeptical, but John waved her concerns off.
“We’ll see them there. Look at that hat she’s is wearing, you won’t be able to miss her.” John chuckled, while she fixed her father with a fake angry look at his jesting her.
“We’ll see you there soon,” Mags said. “I’ll sit out here on the porch until he is ready.”
With her mother’s concerns alleviated because of propriety, the mules pulled off with the three Bledsoe girls sitting in the wagon, waving at their big sister, and probably privately wishing they, too, were waiting for a man on their front porch—even little Delie.
A Most Precious Pearl Page 11
