“And you smell like sunshine,” he told her before she could make sense of her emotions.
The oddly poetic words sounded strange coming from a man who looked as if he’d been hewn from a bold outcropping of Arkansas rock. It wasn’t the sort of thing she expected to hear from a man like Ace Allen.
And why not? What do you really know about him?
Nothing but what she’d heard around Wolf Creek, and that wasn’t much. She’d been too busy keeping body and soul together to pay much attention to talk—good or bad.
She wasn’t aware that her hands still rested on his shoulders until he circled her wrists with his fingers as he had the day before. Lowering her hands, he stood. She realized then that he’d been sitting on the side of the bed.
“You rest. You must have done too much this morning, or you wouldn’t have fainted.”
Meg sat up quickly and regretted the hasty action. “It wasn’t the work.” She didn’t want Ace and his mother thinking she was overdoing things. “It was you.”
Shock molded his features and he leaned toward her. “Me? What did I do?”
Too late, she realized that once again, she’d done or said the wrong thing. Hadn’t Elton told her time after time that she was the one who made him crazy and caused him to do the things he did?
“I’m sorry!” she cried, holding up her hands in a futile attempt to keep him away. To her surprise, Ace mimicked her action and took two steps backward, away from her. The simple, nonthreatening action slowed her racing heart.
She swallowed and forced herself to look up at him. “I’m sorry. It’s just that when I...when I saw you standing there with your hands on the door frame just...looking at me, I just... I saw...”
Ace didn’t say anything for several seconds. Then, to her surprise, he went to the doorway and stood in the same pose that had caused her such alarm.
“Look at me, Meg,” he said in that deep voice. “Who do you see?”
“What?” She frowned, unsure of what he was doing and wondering at the sorrow reflected in his eyes.
“Who do you see standing here?”
What did he want from her? she wondered in confusion. “I see you,” she said at last. “Ace Allen.”
“Exactly. You see the mixed-breed ex-convict who killed two men. I’ll always be sorry for that, but if you never believe anything else about me, you can believe that I would never deliberately harm a hair on your head.”
His statement was much the same as what he’d said the day before in the woods. It seemed he was determined that she knew he was no threat to her.
“You’re wrong,” she told him.
His dark eyebrows snapped together in a frown. “What?”
“What you said. I didn’t see th-that at all.” She hurried to explain. “Elton used to stand in the doorway like that a lot. For just a moment when I looked up I saw him, not you. I...I’m s-sorry.”
“I’m not Elton, Meg.”
His voice held an urgency she didn’t understand. “I know that.”
“Do you?” he persisted. “Look at me. Do I look like Elton?”
“No,” she murmured. Elton hadn’t been nearly as tall, and unlike Ace he’d been almost too good-looking to be masculine. She’d once heard him called pretty. No one would ever think of Ace Allen as pretty. Striking, surely. Magnificent, maybe. Pretty, never.
“No, and I don’t act like him. Can you see that? Do you believe it?”
Still confused, but knowing somehow that her answer was of utmost importance, she whispered, “Yes.”
He nodded, and the torment in his eyes faded. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Meg Thomerson. That’s something else you can be certain of, so never think it again.” With that, he turned and left her alone with her thoughts and a lot of questions.
* * *
After a lunch of cheese-and-tomato sandwiches that Meg fixed while Ace and Nita finished the laundry, they took up the sheets and tablecloths that had been drying on nearby bushes and replaced them with those they’d just starched. The tea towels were spread on the grass to dry, and the tablecloths and sheets were sprinkled with water and rolled up until it was time for them to be ironed.
With three people, they finished the laundry in less than half the time it would have taken Meg working alone. Ace used the soapy water to scrub the back porch, watered the thirsty plants with the rinse water and turned the tubs upside down until they were needed again.
As she dampened and rolled up the starched linens, Meg sneaked glances of him through the open window. He worked with an economy of movement and an easy grace that was unexpected in a man his size. She tried to imagine Elton offering to do the wash while she recuperated from an illness and almost laughed aloud.
When he finished, Ace took his rifle and ax and went to chop down a few more trees. Nita and Meg set up both ironing boards and started the ironing, even though they knew there was no way they would finish until the following day. Still, it felt good to do something productive, to know that she’d taken another step toward healing herself both physically and mentally. A rush of hope suffused her.
She’d never minded ironing. It had always been a time for her to think through her problems and make plans for the future. Nita, too, worked mostly in quiet, but with the older woman standing just a few feet from her, Meg felt compelled to make some conversation. At the same time, she was at a loss for something to say.
She wasn’t really shy, but Elton’s daily activities hadn’t been the sort a man wanted to discuss with his wife when he came home at day’s end, and talking to two small children made conversations a bit one-sided and not very stimulating. The only time she had an opportunity to talk to fellow grown-ups was when she went to town, and those exchanges were usually confined to questions about how she and the kids were doing or to discuss when she would return with the clean laundry.
Her world was so confined and her learning so limited that she felt incapable of holding up her side of a conversation. Everyone she knew, including Ace, was more knowledgeable than she would ever be on any range of topics.
“Ace says you need a real clothesline for the amount of washing you’re doing.”
The statement pulled Meg from the web of her thoughts. She glanced up from the tablecloth she was ironing. A clothesline? Now, wouldn’t that be wonderful? It was something she’d often dreamed of having, but never supposed she would.
“Maybe someday when I get some of my doctor bills caught up,” she said.
Nita nodded. “What else should he do to get you ready for the winter?”
Winter. How she dreaded its arrival! It was miserable working over the boiling kettles in the summertime and keeping the inside fire going for the irons, but at least the clothes dried in a hurry.
Though the southwest Arkansas winters were usually milder and shorter in duration than many places, winter often brought a whole new set of problems and its own share of misery. Cold rain. Sometimes sleet and ice, and even the occasional snowfall. No matter how hot the fires, it was still frigid work, and often days passed when it was so nasty and wet she couldn’t possibly do any laundry.
“I’m sure there are a lot of things that need doing, but I hadn’t given it much thought,” she said after a moment.
“And no wonder,” Nita said with a gentle smile. “You’ve been through a lot. Thank goodness there’s still time to get things when he finishes getting the wood put by.”
“Shouldn’t he be...working somewhere else or doing things for you?” Meg asked, frowning at her companion.
“Ace is real smart and got a good education, but he doesn’t do well working for other people. Says it stifles him. Nate Haversham offered him a job at the bank, but Ace says he’s not cut out for suits and ties or being in a cage all day.”
Meg was amazed. Ace had turned
down a good-paying job at the bank so he could hunt and trap? Why would anyone do something like that, especially when he had an education? Before she could bridle her tongue, she’d asked Nita that very question.
“It is strange, I know, but he says he’s happier outside hunting and trapping and such. He tans the hides to sell.”
“Is there enough money in that to take care of things?”
“Depending on the hide, they’ll bring from twenty-five cents to a dollar each.” Nita shrugged. “He’s a grown man and it’s none of my business, and Ace has always made his way doing this and that and gotten by just fine. Of course, he does other things that help me, too.”
Meg looked at her expectantly.
“We always have a big garden and I have an orchard,” Nita told her. “What I don’t can or dry for winter, we sell to Gabe at the mercantile. Some of the people in town who don’t garden depend on us for fresh fruit and vegetables. A while back, he traded out some work with Caleb Gentry for a hog, and we’ll slaughter it when it turns cold. With our other smoked meat, we’re pretty much set for winter.”
Meg couldn’t imagine being so well prepared.
“Ace keeps a lot of needy folks in food, too,” Nita added, almost as an afterthought.
That bit of news was not surprising. Meg offered the older woman a wan smile. “I know. When I saw the basket with the dried beans yesterday, I figured out that I’m one of them. Thank you.”
Nita laughed. “Several people suspect he’s the one, but no one knows for sure. He never brags on what he does. I know I sound like a boastful mother, but he’s a good man, and he’s been through a lot, like you.”
Meg supposed Nita was talking about Ace’s two prison stints. Meg had never thought about the two of them having anything in common, but now that it had been pointed out, she could see similarities in their pasts. She wondered what prison was like and what sort of things he had suffered there. More important, she wondered how he’d come away from the experience with his faith, peace and decency intact.
“Tell you what,” Nita said. “When we finish the ironing tomorrow, maybe you and Ace can take a look around and see what else needs doing. He won’t mind taking care of anything.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Meg said, though she had no idea how to tell if something needed doing or not. Elton hadn’t spent much time here, and he’d pretty much let things run down since they’d bought the property. As long as the shed was standing and he had a place for his horse and a pillow for his head, he couldn’t have cared less if the rest fell down around him.
Meg knew what she’d like to do, but had no way of knowing if her ideas were practical or not. She had little if any money to have things done, and besides, most of her longings were nothing but pipe dreams, like the clothesline and a new stove.
After more than an hour of ironing tablecloths and sheets, Meg was exhausted and figured her new friend was, too. Nita was strong, and though she wasn’t old by any means and didn’t look her age, she was no longer young, either, and she’d already done a hard day’s work.
“I think it’s time for a break. My back is getting tired,” Nita said, almost as if she’d read Meg’s thoughts. “Why don’t we sit and have a glass of cold water on the back porch?”
Meg suspected that even though the older woman probably was fatigued, it was likely she’d seen the weariness on Meg’s face and was blaming the halt on herself to persuade Meg to take a break. She admitted to herself that she was tired enough for them both. As the day had progressed, she’d begun to see that the doctor and her new caretakers were right. She wasn’t ready to be on her own just yet. She might not like being beholden to anyone, but she was a long way from being well enough or strong enough to get back to her regular routine. She certainly didn’t want to overdo it and have a setback.
“That sounds good,” she said with a weary smile. “We can warm up the breakfast coffee and have some of those leftover biscuits from breakfast with a little of that peach jam I made.”
Nita nodded and smiled. “I do like a little something sweet in the afternoon.”
* * *
Ace felled a couple more trees and chopped off the limbs. Tomorrow he would bring Meg’s gray mare to snake the timbers out of the woods and then he could cut them into proper lengths and split what was too big to burn easily.
He’d worked all afternoon with memories of Meg Thomerson filling his mind: the way the sunshine glistened in her freshly washed hair, the remarkable green of her eyes, the delicate wing of her eyebrows and the shape of her wide mouth. He also thought of the way it felt to have her arms around his neck. Knowing it was pure foolishness, he couldn’t help imagining coming home to her every evening and having her throw her arms around him in pure happiness that he was there.
He must be getting daft in his old age. There was no way a pretty woman like Meg would have any interest in him. Not with his background. Why, she couldn’t be much more than twenty or so, and he was approaching his thirty-first birthday.
It had been a rough thirty years. But for the grace of God, he’d have never come through it as well as he had. From the time he was young and had begun to wonder where he belonged in the world, he’d struggled to reconcile the quick, hot temper that often got him into trouble with an inborn sense of right and wrong. Even though he’d sown his share of wild oats as a young man, he’d always been tormented with a powerful guilt afterward.
The two years he’d spent in prison for getting into a brawl and unintentionally killing a man had gone a long way toward improving his control over his temper and forcing him to take a good look at his life. Seeing how quickly and unexpectedly everything could be snatched from you, he’d started taking stock of where he was and where he could go from there.
Looking for something to help ease his inner disquiet, he’d done a lot of Bible reading. To his surprise, he’d found peace in the pages of the worn leather Bible a visiting preacher had given him. He learned about forgiveness and the grace of God, and over time, he realized the only way a man could be truly happy was to live a life for Him.
Faced with the reality that in one way or another, he’d been running from the differing cultures of his heritage, he spent the remainder of his time in jail mulling over the various aspects of his mixed birthright and considering the ways they had shaped him. This time, instead of dwelling on the discrepancies in his background, he began to appreciate and reflect on the similarities.
While still in prison, the preacher who’d given him the Bible had baptized him in a nearby river while a small army of guards stood watching, just in case he tried to make a break for it. His act of obedience had been cause for a lot of jeering and laughter, but he hadn’t cared. He’d begun to treat things he’d once considered burdens as opportunities to change his thinking and to grow in faith and trust in God.
More important, he began thanking God for the things that caused him grief and pain or disappointment. That was no easy thing to do, and he often failed miserably. Even so, his newly found faith made the long days of tending the prison garden, shoeing the guards’ horses and doing mountains of laundry bearable.
When he was released, he’d chosen to go to the reservation in Oklahoma. He’d needed time to put things into perspective, to heal inside and out. After a few years, he’d decided to come back and help care for his mother.
One of his deepest desires was to build a life that would make him acceptable to the people in Wolf Creek. It wasn’t that he was often mistreated or insulted, but neither was he welcomed into the small town’s social circle, which made finding a suitable wife next to impossible. There was no Indian population from which to choose a bride, and even if any of the available ladies had appealed to him, he doubted his suit would have been acceptable.
Then he’d seen Meg Thomerson coming out of Ellie’s Café, and as improbable as it seemed, he ha
d known in an instant that she was the one he’d been waiting for. When he’d discovered she was already taken, he’d let a new kind of bitterness eat at him. Eventually, common sense returned and he realized that as much as he didn’t like the situation, it was time to practice what he professed to believe.
Did he trust that God had his best interest at heart, no matter what happened? Did he truly believe that if he lived for the Lord, that everything that happened to him had a purpose and would work out the way it was supposed to? As hard as it was, with much prayer, he did his best to accept that he’d come to care for a woman he could never have.
It was plain to see that Elton was often away doing whatever it was that he did, leaving his wife and two children to fend for themselves. Ace saw how hard Meg worked and heard through the Wolf Creek grapevine how she struggled. He’d seen her lifting heavy baskets of laundry into and out of her rickety wagon. A couple of times he’d approached with offers to help, and she’d always accepted with a sunny smile of thanks that brightened his day and cheered him until the next time he saw her.
He was careful to not make a habit of helping her too often, or people would talk. He discovered that there were other opportunities to relieve a little of her burden as well as those of others in need, so that no one could fault him.
He’d started leaving food of some kind for Meg and several others who struggled to make ends meet every now and then. The grapevine provided the information that she was appreciative and, like the others he helped, she wondered who her benefactor might be. Ace had been secure in his secret until the day of the showdown on the Thomersons’ front porch.
Elton had known, or at least guessed, what Ace was doing, or he wouldn’t have made the crude comment about wondering how Meg was paying for the things he left for her and the kids when he’d dragged her out onto the porch to taunt the posse.
Wolf Creek Widow (Wolf Creek, Arkansas Book 4) Page 6
