by Pamela Morsi
Gidry Chavis, former resident of Chavistown, Texas, now an itinerant cowboy and drover, had not been sent for by his father. The old man didn't even know that he'd been asked to come home. What if he was unwanted? What if after all this time he was unforgiven?
Still he turned his boots westward. In the years he'd been gone he'd become a decisive man, quick to action, fast on his feet. But this place, these people, brought back memories of uncertainty, bad decisions, misplaced loyalties, and past mistakes.
Was he going there? Was he to see the house he'd grown up in? Was he to visit his father? To visit the man who had been both his hero and the standard to which he had failed to measure up. Was he to admit how wrong and foolish he was? To make peace with him at long last?
What about her? Would he have to see her? The image of a blushing young girl gazing up at him adoringly flashed before his eyes. Was he returning to ... no, no. It was impossible. He had made it impossible, irrevocable.
He touched the telegram still in his coat pocket. His father was ill. It was not at all certain that he would live. His father who had struck him in anger, who had declared him a shame, who said that he never wished to see his son again, might soon have that wish come true. He perhaps would soon lie in cemetery shade, only a stone to differentiate his resting place from pasture grass. Maybe he was ready for that. Maybe he could be content with it. His son could not.
Gidry made his way up Main Avenue toward the grand home of his boyhood. His father might have no wish to see him again. But Gidry wanted very much to see Peer Chavis. Though clearly he remembered his words when he didn't.
"I don't want you or her or any of this!"
He had screamed at the old man that long ago night just before he left. At twenty-one, Gidry had had a mind of his own, and it did not in any portion resemble his father's.
"I am not you. I never have been," he spit out. "And you wouldn't let me even if I wanted to be!"
Peer Chavis was quaking with anger, red faced, furious.
"You . .. you are like me," he bellowed. "You are exactly like me, that's the dadgum problem, and I'm determined that you won't make the same foolish choices that I did."
"Choices? When did I ever get choices?" Gidry hollered right back. "It's always what you want. What you think is best. Well I'm done with that. Now I am my own man."
"You're not a man at all," his father answered. 'You're just a boy and an untried, ignorant boy at that, all lust and no learning."
'That's what really galls you, isn't it?" Gidry challenged. "That I'm spending my nights with the finest looking female in town while you're living like a monk."
"Don't talk more stupid than you are."
“You want me to get married," Gidry said to him. "You say it's time for me to think about responsibility and companionship. I'll marry all right. But I'll marry the gal that I want, not the one you think I should settle for."
"Gidry, you cannot seriously think to marry that floozy," his father said with certainty.
"Of course I can," he insisted. "You can't stop me. I can do whatever I want."
The old man's eyes were as hard as glass.
"And what you want is to embarrass me, humiliate your sweet young betrothed, and scandalize this town."
Gidry had no answer for that and held his silence, anger cloaked around him like medieval armor.
“You've had it too easy, too soft," his father said. "You've been given every thing that you ever wanted. You're no man at all, just a boy. A boy that's had it too soft."
"Soft? When have I had it soft?" he shot back "When have you ever been soft on me? You've cuffed me, cursed me, berated and blasted me. Did you ever wonder that I didn't ask why my mama left you? It's because I know exactly. You probably didn't treat her a bit better than you've treated me."
His father's face had been florid with fury.
"You know nothing about your mother and me," he bellowed at his son. "And you could never understand it if you did."
"I know she doesn't want to live here in your house, in your town, and neither do I," Gidry answered.
"My house and my town have given you everything that you've ever needed, everything that you've required!"
"Well, these days I require a lot more. I require the freedom to do what I want, choose my own friends, marry who I please."
"Are you willing to give up your family for that?"
"I won't have to," Gidry answered, challenge in his youthful tone. "After we're wed we'll go to Alabama and stay with Mama."
"You wouldn't know your mother if she came walking up Main Avenue," Peer told him.
"And whose fault is that?" Gidry's words were an accusation. "I've lived here in your boring town with your boring people all my life. I never once received a kind word or even a nod of approval from you, just blaspheming and the back of your hand."
Gidry raised his chin and through clenched teeth voiced his defiance. "I've had my fill of it, old man. And as for you and this town and all the people in it, well as far as I care you can all go straight to hell."
His father slapped him. He could still hear the sound of it reverberating in his mind eight years later. He could almost feel the burning sting of it against his cheek and taste his own blood as the corner of his lip gave way.
"I will not be cursed at in my own home!" Peer had shouted. "Not even by my own son."
Gidry's eyes were slits of anger. "It won't happen again, old man," he'd said. "It won't happen again 'cause I'm leaving."
He'd picked up his bag, but his father was not yet finished.
"You walk out that door, Gidry Chavis," he said, "and I'll never let you walk back through it again."
"As if I would ever want to," he shot back before slamming the door behind him.
Eight years later, Gidry stood out in the street a hundred yards from that front door wanting to walk back through it very much. And wondering if he should take his father at his word.
He stopped in the middle of the tree lined streets to gaze upward at the grandest house in all Chavis County. The mansion his father had called it. He had it built in plantation style in honor of his wife and to remind her of her family home in Alabama. There was not one iota of his stern, practical father in the fashionable design. He had fashioned it deliberately for her. It had not even been completed before she'd deserted her husband and returned to the bosom of her fine Southern family.
When Gidry had left home, Alabama had been his destination. The round-heeled saloon gal had been only an excuse. He'd never asked her to marry him. Truly, he'd never even considered it. His father was right about that. There were gals a man married and ones just for practice. The red spangled gal wasn't even interested enough in him to practice. She'd let him pay her way to San Antone, but he'd headed eastward.
He'd soon realized his mistake.
His strangely childlike and selfish mother and her aggrandizing, narrow-minded relatives had been as cloying and repellent as the Alabama summer. He was too much like his father, she'd told him. Too common to appreciate the finer points of Southern gentility.
Of course she could never have been happy in Texas, not even as mistress of this fine reproduction of an antebellum house. Gidry had always admired his home with its wide verandas curved around the east corner, both stories adorned with spindlework friezes and balustrades. On the lower one a white plankboard swing hung in the corner. The place was in some need of a fresh coat of paint, but its intricate woodwork and the majestic cross-braced gable were scuffed but still welcoming.
Gidry was not certain that it was meant to welcome him.
His eyes were drawn to the second story window of his father's room. The old man would be lying in there. Perhaps he was dying. If he was, there were things he wished to say to him. He wanted the chance.
Gidry had learned a lot in the years he'd been gone. He'd learned to fend for himself, to face his fears, to stand up as a man. He'd driven cattle, tended horses, and hung fences. He could cook a rattlesnake over
a campfire and scrub his clothes clean with lye. He'd discovered that a man is only as good as his word. And that a vow unkept was more loathsome than vermin. In his years away from home Gidry Chavis had learned to respect his father. He knew now that his father had been right. He had been too soft, too safe, too selfish.
He wanted another chance. He ached for another chance. But he knew he didn't deserve one.
His father was only a short distance away. Up in the room beyond the window. What would his father want? That was the question that plagued him. His father needed him now.
The town needed him now. Peer Chavis had controlled cotton in this community as if it were he himself who created it. The market was low and uncertain. A firm hand and an iron will was necessary to secure a good price for the crop. The people of Chavis County had depended on Chavis Cotton Company to provide that for the last fifty years. Gidry Chavis could continue that for the old man, for the community.
Gidry was uncertain. He'd made a life for himself out in the cattle country of west Texas. It was a plain life full of hard work and hard won respect. But he was proud to call it his own. Out there, alone, he was nobody's son, only a man with a job to do. And Gidry had learned to do it well. He wanted to hurry back to it. The hard, hot sameness of it suddenly held bright appeal.
But he wanted to stay here also. He wanted to help out. To somehow atone for his past. To say with his deeds what perhaps he could never say with his words. He knew now what he'd thrown away. And he was not without regrets about it. He wanted to show that.
There was something more that he wanted. He wanted, at long last, to admit that he was wrong, to say that he was sorry. He wanted his father's forgiveness.
But he was unable to confront his father, to ask him what he wanted. And he would not force his presence upon the sick old man against his will.
As he hesitated, deep in his thoughts, a movement at the corner of his eye caught his attention.
He glanced over at the garden of the house next door and a grin spread across his face. With her back to him, on her hands and knees, Henrietta Pauling was working in the rich black soil of her flower garden. Her faded, shapeless gown hung upon her shoulders like an oversize cotton sack, and a huge unfashionable sunbonnet hid every wisp of her scraggly hair and protected her face from the harsh rays of a Texas afternoon.
"Aunt Hen," he said quietly to himself.
She'd been their neighbor and his family's closest friend all of Gidry's life. When his stubborn father would listen to no one else, he continued to accept counsel from the outspoken, rawboned spinster next door. She had helped shape Gidry's life. She had treated him fine and fairly, even when he was in the finest devil of trouble. Which had been most of the time.
Of course, since his departure, the older woman would have good cause to dislike him. But in all honesty, Gidry knew that she wouldn't hold a grudge. It just wasn't in her nature. A man could confess to Aunt Hen that he had been in prison and know, somehow, she'd manage not to think any less of him.
Aunt Hen would be happy to see him, no matter what. And she would know how his father was doing. She would know whether he wanted Gidry to come home and do his duty or stay in exile forevermore.
Hopeful, Gidry made his way to the front of the Pauling house and through the narrow, blooming, trellis gateway. The garden was much improved since last he'd walked here. Aunt Hen loved growing things, but he had not recalled such glorious roses. The thorny bushes grew in great variety with large blooms all along the narrow garden paths. He made his way with some stealth remembering how he used to sneak up on her and startle her as a child.
He was already grinning broadly as he slipped up behind her.
"Well if it isn't the crankiest old maid in Chavis County," he said.
She turned in a flash to stare up at him in surprise.
Gidry's smile froze as the face of the wide-eyed woman who gazed up at him from the depths of a gingham slat bonnet was not familiarly lined with ancient mirth and motherly goodwill, but one many years younger and equally familiar. A face he had hoped to avoid entirely for the next thousand years.
"Prudence?"
"Gid!... ah ... ah ... Mr. Chavis."
He was stunned into clumsy speechlessness.
Hastily she rose to her feet. The threadbare Mother Hubbard gown she wore looked at least twice her own age and bore two dirty prints at the level of her knees. A pair of seemingly giant men's plow boots peeked out from beneath her skirts. Altogether it was an incongruous and unattractive costume.
"Prudence, what are you doing here?" he asked stupidly.
Her expression was momentarily puzzled. "I live here," she answered.
"Here with Aunt Hen? You mean you never married."
Her cheeks blazed vivid red. "I certainly had offers!" Her tone was strident, defensive.
"Of course, of course," Gidry insisted quickly, wishing both to bite his own tongue and to have lightning strike him dead on the spot. There was a smudge of dirt upon her nose and one tendril of sweat dampened brown hair stuck to the side of her cheek.
Gidry turned slightly sideways, making it less necessary to meet her eyes. Good Lord! What a disaster! Of all the people in Chavistown, Prudence Belmont was the one particular woman he decidedly wished to avoid.
They had once been close, perhaps too close. For years they were devoted playmates, partners in mischief, and complete confidants. Pru was his friend, the favorite part of his day, his perfect pal. For that crime he had rather publicly jilted her.
"I... I was looking for Aunt Hen," he said. 'That's why I'm here. That's why I said ... well, where is Aunt Hen anyway?"
"She's with your father," Pru answered, brushing ineffectively at her mud stained dress.
"Has he worsened?" Gidry asked, glancing toward the big house.
"No, no," she assured him. "Aunt Hen likes to spell the nurse. I think she doesn't quite trust her with his care."
Gidry nodded.
"Yes, she has always been so good to him."
"She still is."
The silence between them lingered. Gidry wanted to take his leave. He didn't want to have to look at her. Like most men, he would have preferred facing a whole pack of rabid coyotes than the one true friend whom he had wronged.
"We did not know you were returning home."
Gidry patted the pocket of his coat. "I received a telegram from the Commercial Club. I... thought perhaps that I was needed. I hoped Aunt Hen would be able to tell me if my father might want me to step in."
"Well she is there, with your father," Pru said, indicating the house. “You can talk to both of them at once."
Gidry hesitated, glancing toward his home briefly before turning once again to Prudence.
"Could you simply tell her when you see her that I am in town," he said. "I will go get myself a room and try to catch up with her later."
"You are not staying at your house?" Pru sounded completely dumbfounded.
"Probably not," he admitted evenly. "I... I'm not sure that I am welcome."
Her cheeks visibly reddened.
"It was all such a long time ago," she said a little breathlessly. "Surely, all is forgiven."
"Is it?" he asked, looking her straight in the eye for the first time.
His direct look apparently caught her off guard. But she raised her chin higher, as if refusing to see more in his words than what was on the surface.
"I'll go get her for you."
“Thank you. Thank you, Pru. I..."
"Don't mention it," she said quickly as she hurried away.
He was quite certain that she was not referring to this moment, this small favor. Don't mention it, she had said. His father had wanted him to marry Prudence Belmont. Prudence had wanted it also. He had formally asked her. He had given her a ring. And he had run off and left her. It was a long time ago. And yes, it was by far best not to mention it.
Chapter Four
She had heard people relate moments in which they wished t
hat the earth would open up and swallow them. For Prudence, seeing Gidry Chavis in her garden this afternoon fit that bill entirely.
She made her way as quickly as possible to the back door of the Chavis house.
I certainly had offers! She heard her own words again and wanted to scream in frustration. Why had she said that? What malicious unkind devil had put those words in her mouth? How bitter and disappointed she sounded. He would be all built up and full of himself that she had pined away for him for eight long years. Poor jilted spinster, he would say to himself, she never married, you know.
It had not been a lie, of course. She had had offers. Shortly after Gidry had left, old Henry Tatum had diligently attempted to court her. When she resisted his more amorous attentions, he'd come straight to the point stating clearly that he needed a wife and he thought she'd do.
Still aching from rejection, she had not believed he would do at all.
Not more than a year later, Stanley Honnebuzz began walking her to church. He was a stern, sober young man who'd just hung up his law shingle. Pru had seriously considered marrying him, but when he finally did ask her, she couldn't go through with it.
And not three years ago, when Amos Wilburn's wife passed on, Pru had been the first woman he'd approached with the opportunity to take on the rearing of his rowdy brood. By then Prudence was so involved with her roses, she was completely uninterested in the rather stern older man and his seven half grown children.
She'd had offers. She wanted Gidry Chavis to know that. She would be horrified if she thought he felt sorry for her.
She glanced down at her dirty gown and nearly moaned aloud. What unkind fate should bring Gidry Chavis back into her life on the same morning she intended to replant the Ragusas that were getting too much sun along the fence row. She was dirty, perspiring, and wearing a dress more suited to liming an outhouse than meeting her former betrothed. One look at her in this morning's outfit and how could any man not feel sorry for her. She looked absolutely wretched.
