The Pattern

by Jane Peart

She stretched and reached out to the pillow next to hers. She opened her eyes, blinking. The bed beside her was empty. Raising herself on her elbows, she looked around.

  From the alcoved bed, she could see across the center room into the kitchen. She smelled the unmistakable aroma of freshly made coffee. Ross, she smiled. He must have got up early and made it. Just then the cabin door opened and he walked in.

  He looked over at the bed and, seeing her, asked, “Sleep well?”

  “Perfect!”

  He came over and stood at the foot of the bed. “I love you, Mrs. Davison.”

  She held out her arms to him. “Say that again.”

  “Which? I love you? Or Mrs. Davison?”

  “Both!”

  He laughed, came over to the side of the bed, and took her into his arms. He buried his face in her tangled curls, and for a moment they just held on to each other. Then Johanna leaned back and smiled up at him.

  “What shall we do today?”

  “We could go pay Aunt Bertie a visit,” Ross suggested as Johanna threw back the covers and got out of bed. “I saw Uncle Tanner yesterday when I went down to Ma’s, and he asked me if the ‘honey was still on the moon.’” He grinned. “Folks figure a new couple need a few weeks alone to get used to each other or find out they’ve made a mistake.”

  “Mistake?” Johanna pretended indignation. “Well, at least not me.” She tossed her head. “I don’t know whether your kin think you’re the one that might have made one.”

  She slid her bare feet into the small velvet slippers, reached for her dressing gown. Ross held it for her to put on, then wrapped his arms around her.

  “No, ma’am, no mistake. Best thing that ever happened to me.” He leaned down, kissed her cheek, her neck, until she wiggled around laughing and turned, hugged him.

  “Oh Ross, I’m so happy!” she sighed.

  “Well, so am I.”

  Aunt Bertie and Uncle Tanner’s cabin was nestled among shaggy rhododendron bushes as big as trees, and shadowed by balsams. Aunt Bertie was a treat. Just as Ross had told her, Johanna liked her right away. Who could not?

  She was spare, straight backed, her movement as brisk as a much younger woman. Daily use of hoe, shears, washboard, and skillet had made her hands strong. Her wrinkled face had a rosy tan, and her snapping dark eyes held a twinkle. There was a youthful lilt in her voice. Cocking her head to one side like an inquisitive bird, she asked Johanna, “How old do you take me for?”

  Afraid to offend if she guessed wrong, Johanna hesitated, and Aunt Bertie laughed, “Goin’ onto seventy-nine next January. I ‘spect to go on jest as I’ve been doin’ ’til the Good Lord takes me home. I been working a garden and spinning wheel since I was eight years old. My mama had a passel of young’uns, and I was the oldest girl, so I took over a lot of the chores. I’ve been workin’ all my life, and I don’t want to end my days in a rockin’ chair, although Tanner makes the best ones.” She pointed to the two on the porch and urged Johanna, “Sit over there and try it.”

  “Uncle Tanner made one for us, Aunt Bertie,” Ross said. “It was sitting in our cabin when we came. Figured it was a wedding present.”

  “Of course it were! I plum forgot. When he heard you were gittin’ married, Ross, he started on it.” She fixed Johanna with bright eyes. “Don’t it rock nice and smooth?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s beautiful.”

  “Now, you-all sit down and we’ll have a nice visit. Ross, Tanner’s out there gittin’ his cider press cleaned up, ready for when our apples are ripe.” She glanced at Johanna. “Wait ’til you taste Tanner’s sweet cider. But first you gotta try my pie,” she chuckled. She bustled into the cabin.

  Ross gave Johanna a “Didn’t I tell you?” look just as a tall man came from around the house.

  “Reckon I heard voices,” the man said.

  Ross went down the steps and greeted him. “Uncle Tanner, we just wanted to pay you and Aunt Bertie a call, thank you for the chair. Come meet my bride.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Uncle Tanner said, a grin cracking his weathered, tan face. He was thin as a whip, rather stooped in the shoulders, but moved with a lively gait. If Aunt Bertie was almost eighty, Johanna thought, Uncle Tanner must be that old or maybe older.

  Uncle Tanner took the steps spryly. “Mahty pleased to meet you. Looks like Ross got not only what he needed and wanted but somethin’ fine and purty, too,” he chuckled and held out his hand to Johanna.

  Johanna extended her own, and the old man grasped it and gave it a good, strong shake. Under his steady gaze, she felt herself weighed, measured, and not found wanting.

  Johanna was pleased to feel she’d passed muster of someone she knew her new husband held in high regard.

  Aunt Bertie appeared at the door. “Y’all come on in now.” After the three of them were seated at the scrubbed pine table, Aunt Bertie came in from the kitchen, carrying a pie plate in one hand and a jar of honey in the other. She put the pie on the table and the jug of honey beside it, then started cutting generous wedges, lifting them one by one onto the plain, cream-colored pottery plates beside the tin.

  “Now, if you want something tasty, spread some of this here honey over the top,” she said as she handed around the plates. The pie was hot and its flaky crust a golden brown. The honey looked like clear liquid sunshine. Hesitantly but afraid she might offend Aunt Bertie if she didn’t follow her suggestion, Johanna tentatively drizzled the honey over the top of her piece of pie.

  A smile twitched Aunt Bertie’s lips. “Never tried that before, I reckon?” Watching Johanna take a bite, Aunt Bertie said, “See? Good, ain’t it?” With satisfaction, she turned to Ross. “How about you, Ross? You ever tried it?”

  “No, ma’am, not that I can remember.”

  Aunt Bertie looked shocked. “You’re funnin’ me, ain’t you? Can’t believe you’ve lived this long and never had apple pie with honey.”

  When Johanna and Ross left, nothing would do but that they carry away with them a willow basket loaded with goodies from Aunt Bertie’s larder—jars of strawberry jam, peach preserves, apple butter. “My apple butter’s known in these parts,” she told Johanna. “Come fall when the apple crop is in, I’ll teach you how to make it with my recipe,” she promised.

  “So what do you think of Aunt Bertie and Uncle Tanner?” Ross asked.

  “I think they’re wonderful!” Johanna answered.

  “Good.” Ross seemed satisfied. “I could tell they liked you.”

  What Johanna didn’t say, afraid she might be misunderstood, was what she had found so surprising and so refreshing—their lack of artifice of any kind. They spoke, acted, responded, in such a natural, unaffected way. Johanna found it utterly charming. She was used to society’s polite shallowness, especially in a first meeting with someone, when people tended to be somewhat formal. Aunt Bertie and Uncle Tanner had just taken her in, showing her the same warmth they bestowed upon Ross, whom they’d known all his life. Of course, she was sure they would have welcomed her just because she was Ross’s wife. Still, Johanna hoped to win her own place within his family circle before too long.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Johanna woke up and even before she opened her eyes, she knew she was alone. The cabin was quiet. Ross must have already left. She sat up feeling somehow bereft, deserted, even though she’d known this day was coming. She recalled their conversation of the night before, while Ross had been packing his medicine bag.

  “Well, darlin’ mine, I have to be about my doctoring. I’ve got people who’ve been waiting for me, and I had a whole passel of messages passed on to me—the Henson’s baby has colic, Molly Renner needs a tonic, Tobias’s leg is actin’ up again, all kinds of ailments to see to up and down the mountainside.”

  Johanna had sighed, “I guess so. That’s what we came up here for, wasn’t it? For you to be a doctor and for me to be your wife! But what shall I do without you all day?”

  “I don’t know.” Ross had looked puzzl
ed. “Ma always found something that needed doing.”

  Johanna had felt somehow rebuked and said no more. As they kissed good night, Ross told her, “I’ll be up and off at the crack of dawn, most probably. Got a lot of mountain to cover tomorrow.”

  Still, Johanna wished he had wakened her so that she could have fixed him breakfast, seen him off like a proper wife. She got up and looked around the small cabin. Here there were not the kind of household tasks she had been assigned at home—polishing silver, arranging flowers, or practicing her music. Or the social calls or visits from friends for tea in the afternoon, such as there had been in Hillsboro.

  The long day stretched ahead of her emptily. Oh, there were chores enough to do, but Johanna did not feel like tackling any of them. She longed for—what?

  She did not even want to admit that what she missed was the very thing she had run away from. Used to the activity of her busy home, Johanna was not accustomed to spending a great deal of time alone. Even at Miss Pomoroy’s, there had been her classmates and the set pattern of the day.

  There wasn’t even anything really to do. Housekeeping, with no mahogany furniture to dust or polish, no brass candlesticks to shine, was simple.

  When they arrived here, Johanna had found their shelves stocked with home-canned fruits and vegetables, deer jerky, and there had been a cured ham, a side of bacon, fresh eggs, butter, and milk in the springhouse. At the foot of the bed, a cedar box had been supplied with coarse sheets, homespun blankets.

  Johanna’s own belongings, her trunk of clothes, boxes of wedding presents, and her hope chest had not yet come. Perhaps when they did, she would have more to do, placing them, arranging things, putting her own touch on their home.

  She poured herself a cup of the coffee Ross had made and left on the stove, then went over to stand at the open front door, looking out. An unwanted thought came into her mind. What would she do with the rest of her life, here on this isolated hillside with no family, no friends? Surely the novelty of marriage or coming here had not worn off so quickly.

  Their cabin was surrounded by the tall pines, and suddenly she had a feeling of being closed in. Frightened, she turned back into the room. Maybe she should go down and visit Ross’s mother. That would probably be a good thing to do, get better acquainted. Getting out in the open in the fresh air and sunshine would ease that strange feeling of being up here by herself, cut off from the world.

  Johanna put on a fresh dress and did up her hair. She felt a little shy about just showing up at Eliza’s with no invitation. But wasn’t that foolish? She was sure that mountain folk didn’t stand on any sort of ceremony, especially not among family members. As Ross’s wife, Eliza’s daughter-in-law, she was family now, wasn’t she? She tied on a wide-brimmed straw hat and set out. She thought she remembered the way, although the last two times they had been there, they were on horseback. She had only to follow the path, and she would soon be at Eliza’s house. However, the path had several forks winding in different directions, some quite overgrown with brush, laurel bushes, sweeping pine branches. Soon Johanna became confused and wondered if somehow she had taken a wrong turn.

  At a little clearing she stopped, trying to orient herself. Suddenly she heard the sound of childish voices. Within a few minutes two little girls came into sight. Sue and Katie, Ross’s sisters! Recognizing them, Johanna was filled with relief. They would show her the way, of course, even take her there themselves. “Good morning! I’m so glad to see you,” she began, waving her hand to them. But their reaction stunned her. Immediately their smiles disappeared. The smaller of the two slipped behind the older, her finger in her mouth, while the other girl looked startled.

  Knowing they were shy, Johanna smiled and took a few steps toward them, saying, “I’m on my way down to see your mother. Am I on the right path? I felt lost.”

  They stared back at her, eyes wide, but said nothing.

  Johanna tried again. “Is this the right way?”

  They nodded in unison and then spun around and ran, stumbling over their bare feet in their hurry to get away, running back the way they had come. Left so unceremoniously, Johanna felt bewildered and hurt. Was it just shyness or didn’t they like her? She had always been good with children. Elly adored her and so did all her little friends. Johanna sighed. She probably had a lot to learn about mountain people, children as well as grownups.

  All desire to visit with her mother-in-law vanished. She was unsure of her welcome in the middle of the day, when Eliza might be busy with many chores and wonder why she wasn’t similarly occupied. It might be an interruption or, worse still, an intrusion. Not willing to risk another rejection, Johanna turned around and retraced her steps back up to their own cabin.

  That evening when she told Ross about her encounter with his sisters, he brushed it off casually. “They’re just shy. Not used to talking to strangers.”

  “Strangers? I’m their sister-in-law,” she protested.

  Seeing Johanna’s expression, Ross quickly said, “You won’t always be a stranger, honey. But right now they don’t know you, and to them you are a stranger. It’ll work out in time. You’ll see.”

  In spite of his reassurance, Johanna still felt uncertain. Day after day, she kept putting off going down to see Eliza. That is, until Ross brought up the subject himself, saying, “I stopped by Ma’s on my way home today, Johanna, and she was wonderin’ if you were poorly? I said, ‘No, she’s fit as a fiddle.’ I think that was her way of asking why you hadn’t been down to see her. Better go tomorrow, honey. Else she might feel slighted.”

  The next day, Johanna went down to see Ross’s mother, and it was a pleasant enough visit, although she still found Eliza rather standoffish. That too could be shyness—or was it wariness of strangers? However, it made Johanna determined to win her over. She wanted desperately for Ross’s mother to love her.

  The weeks of summer went by. Still Johanna had to fight the feeling of being an outsider. She did not know how to break through the wall they had put up. She was longing to be friends. She couldn’t summon the courage to bring up the subject again to Ross. At length she decided that all she could do was be herself, whatever the mixture was that made her who she was. Whether his family liked it or not, liked her or not, Ross had found that mixture exciting, desirable. Certainly enough to stand up to her father and, against all odds, ask for her hand in marriage.

  Sometimes Johanna would stand on the porch of their cabin after Ross had left for the day and look down into the valley. She saw plumes of thin blue smoke rising over the treetops and knew they came from the piled stone chimneys in the dozens of log cabins scattered all along the way, up and down the hillside. Each of those cabins had people, families, women who would possibly be her friends. All she had to do was reach out. It was a new experience. Johanna had always been open to people, had always had friends. Why not now? Was she really that different that they didn’t want to know her? As the weeks passed, she became even more reluctant to try.

  One day, she saw Ross’s little sisters come by on the trail below the cabin, carrying buckets. Johanna ran out onto the porch and invited them to come in. However, they shyly shook their heads. Sue, the older of the two, said, “No’m, we cain’t. It’s blackberry-pickin’ time. Ma’s goin’ to make jelly, and we best get on with pickin’.” She held up her bucket. “Ma don’t like us gone too long.”

  Johanna was tempted to offer them some cookies and lemonade, cool from the springhouse, but then decided she wouldn’t. Watching them go on down the path with their buckets, Johanna realized she missed her own sisters. More than she expected to, more than she had when she was away at school. The fact was that there were more and more times during the day when Johanna’s thoughts flew home to Hillsboro.

  The tiny twinge of homesickness Johanna had consciously tried to push away surfaced when her trunks finally arrived. They were brought up the hill by mule, delivered by the taciturn Jake Robbins, the postmaster in charge of the small post office in
back of the general store. As soon as he deposited them with the few words Johanna could wrest from him, she eagerly started to unpack them.

  The first trunk contained the wedding presents that, before the ceremony, Johanna had been too excited to really appreciate. She put those beside the gifts of linen and china to wait so that she and Ross could look at them and enjoy them together. It was unpacking the second trunk that caused her first excitement and delight to vanish. An unexpected depression swept over her when she saw the contents. Her mother had seemingly emptied her bedroom of all traces of her. As if she had never lived there at all! Her books, vases, throw pillows, knickknacks. Her mother had sent Johanna her childhood, her girlhood, her life at home! As though she were never coming back! The emotional blow was stunning. It cut a deep wound. Johanna sank to the floor, her knees having suddenly gone weak.

  Holding a small pair of blue Delft candlesticks that had once graced the little fireplace in her room, Johanna felt as though she had been cut adrift from everything dear and familiar. She glanced around the cabin. Where would these go? Where would any of these things fit into her new environment, these surroundings? For the first time since she had come with Ross to the mountains, Johanna felt a sense of loss, a void that nothing came quickly to fill. Had she cut herself off from home, family, as completely as it seemed?

  Chapter Fourteen

  By the end of the summer, Johanna had organized herself to accomplish certain everyday chores, although there were still ones she hadn’t got the hang of yet. Johanna realized she had a lot to learn about housekeeping.

  She had no one to teach her the considerable skills necessary for her to learn if she was to keep house properly here, make a home for Ross. She wanted it to be a haven of warmth, comfort, and peace after a long day on horseback visiting the sick.

  She was hesitant to ask Eliza, fearing that her mother-inlaw would be scornful of her inadequacy. She didn’t want to impose on Aunt Bertie, who had already been more than friendly and who was always busy and never seemed to know an idle minute. Why, Aunt Bertie would think Johanna plum daft not to be able to find enough to do to fill her days.