If Wishes Were Kisses: Six Beloved Americana Romances, a Collection (Small Town Swains)

by Pamela Morsi

  Gidry snorted to himself in derision. The fellow must not be much of a lover. If Pru had just spent half an hour in Gidry's arms, she'd be tousled and jelly-legged from the experience.

  What the devil was he thinking about? Prudence Belmont was never going to spend even one minute in his arms. What a ridiculous idea! It was as if he thought he could turn back time, as if he believed that people got second chances.

  He watched her walk through the night gloom of her back garden, the lantern in her hand to help her see the way. Of course it worked otherwise as well. He could clearly follow her path even in the thickest of shadows. That was worrisome. If he could see what she was up to, others in the neighborhood might as well.

  Gidry shook his head. When one was up to disgraceful deeds, darkness was definitely preferable.

  His brow furrowed thoughtfully. Then a smile curved upon his face.

  That was it!

  He put his hands upon his hips and reared back almost laughing out loud he was so delighted with himself. That was the best answer to crime in Chavistown.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The ginning had begun at dawn. There was no question about that. The machinery was loud enough to be heard in every corner of town. And for those fortunate enough to be deaf as a stone, the ground vibrated underfoot like an ongoing earthquake.

  Prudence walked through her garden anxious about the root systems of her plants. If the trains, trolleys, and heavy footsteps of city dwellers could harm roses, heaven only knew what the tremendous shaking of a steam driven cotton gin might do. It was only for a few weeks, she assured herself. Though her plants lived through the quaking every year, it worried her. Modern life seemed so incompatible with the laws of nature.

  Pru had little time to dwell on the fact, however. A town meeting was called for twelve noon at the courthouse square.

  The news spread through town from one citizen to the next with a speed and efficiency that Western Union could only envy. Especially considering that a person must scream to one's neighbor simply to be heard.

  Ethel Peterson had informed Pru. Ethel's husband was influential in the Commercial Club, so it would make sense that she would get the news early. In fact, she got it quite early. Her husband didn't have a chance to tell her. The Petersons had a telephone, and Bertha Mae Corsen rang up every number in town.

  The ladies in the community, noting the time of day, took part by organizing an impromptu picnic. As president of the most prominent ladies' organization in Chavistown, Prudence was immediately drawn into the center of the enterprise.

  It was not a position that she relished. Some women could take a scrap of fatback and a peck sack of butter beans and competently manage to feed five thousand, while receiving lavish compliments from every satisfied stomach. Pru could certainly cook well enough to keep herself and her aunt from starving. But huge, public meals that fed hundreds of people were clearly not her forte. She had never had a large family, never lived in one.

  Resolutely, and grumbling only beneath her breath, Prudence took up the mantle of picnic production. With the tremendous rattle and shake of the cotton gin numbing her brain, Pru made out lists upon lists upon lists notifying the ladies of their respective assignments. Even Aunt Hen was appropriated from the sickroom and set to frying chicken in the kitchen of the Chavis house.

  The town was overflowing with people. Farm families, their wagons loaded high with cotton, took their places in line around the gin. The queue spanned the length of Austin Street from Santa Fe to the courthouse, then circled around and went another block and a half down Main Avenue. The combination of the first day of ginning and a town meeting had the city crowded and bustling as a grand metropolis. The carnival atmosphere was so seductive that classes were let out at the public school. And once those children were running loose and cavorting in fun, Erma Beth Whitstone's Normal School for Young Ladies dismissed students as well.

  By eleven-thirty makeshift plank tables were draped in bunting and set up on the north side of the courthouse. By a quarter to twelve they were sagging under the cumulative weight of five dozen covered dishes. Corn pudding, string beans with snaps, beet pickles, and squash fritters sat among mountains of mashed potatoes and cooked cabbage.

  At exactly twelve o'clock the horrendous noise and endless shaking of the cotton gin abruptly stopped. The resulting silence was so startling and welcome that the women looked at each other and spontaneously laughed out loud.

  Pru spotted Sharpy Kilroy racing toward the square. His ragged clothes were sweat-soaked and his face was dirty, but there was a big smile on his face and he sported a shiny new pair of shoes.

  He stopped abruptly in front of the first table and held out his dinner plate.

  Cloris Tatum shooed the boy away angrily. "Get away from here, you dirty little beggar," she said to him. "These vittles are for decent folks."

  Pru watched the little boy's smile disappear and his cheeks pale in humiliation. Her own emotion was immediate boiling rage. Cloris was a Kilroy by birth. Her family's neglect of the orphaned child set the tone of treatment to him by the whole town.

  "Milton," she called to the child softly. She motioned for him to come to her.

  He did as he was bidden, his visage frozen in a cold, beaten expression that would have sat more reasonably on a man of forty than a child of seven and a half.

  She looked down into that little face, her heart aching. He could have been mine, she told herself not for the first time. He could have been my very own child. But he wasn't. He was a pitiful orphan, unclaimed and all alone. Reviled by the community that had produced him.

  Prudence took his dinner plate from his little grubby hands.

  "Milton, sweetie," she said. "Why don't you go wash up at the trough, and I'll fix your plate." She learned forward and added a conspiratorial whisper. "I know where the best food has been put back."

  The suggestion of getting something to which only the favored were entitled appealed to the touch of larceny in the boy's little soul as Pru knew it would. His beautifully gleaming baby-toothed smile reappeared, and he rushed off to do as she'd suggested.

  Pru began piling up the child's plate with enough food for three boys his size.

  "It's doesn't do to coddle little beggars like that," Cloris warned Pru snidely. "They begin to think the world owes them something."

  To Pru's mind, the world clearly owed this child a full belly and this community owed him a lot more, but she deliberately maintained her silence. Never would she reveal what she suspected, what she thought she knew.

  “That child ought not to be running wild in the streets," Cloris continued. "He should be in an orphanage somewhere."

  Mrs. Hathaway was nodding agreement. "I have said that very thing to the reverend a dozen times at least."

  "He's doing very well by himself," Pru insisted. "A lot of men have gone out to make their way in the world when they were mere boys."

  "Not that young," Mavis told her.

  "He's almost eight," Pru said.

  Mrs. Hathaway looked genuinely surprised. "Has it been that long?" she asked skeptically.

  Cloris waved away her words. "Nonsense, he still has his baby teeth."

  Pru couldn't imagine what teeth could have to do with it. She piled his plate high with the foods she already knew to be his favorites, fried chicken, creamed peas, snap beans in fatback, and plenty of beet pickles. As he hurried to her she found him a shady spot under one of the native pecan trees that had been planted along the edges of the square.

  The little boy seated himself cross legged on the ground and dug bare handed into his food.

  "Don't you have a spoon, Milton?" she asked him.

  He shook his head with unconcern.

  "I don't need one, Miss Pru," he said. "I can always manage to get the da ... the danged food to my mouth."

  Prudence squatted beside him and tenderly brushed his thick dark hair away from his brow.

  "You've been working hard this mor
ning?"

  His mouth was full, but he nodded eagerly.

  "I want you to be very careful around that dreadful machinery," she said. "More than one man has been maimed at such a job, and you are very small to be doing it."

  "For the work I do, you got to be small," Sharpy answered. "Mr. Gidry, he done told me that he did the same scooting and fetching when he was a boy."

  "Well, I still want you to be very careful," she said. "Even scooters and fetchers have been known to be injured."

  He nodded once more, intent upon his food.

  "I see you have some new shoes," Pru said.

  "I didn't steal 'em," the little boy declared.

  "I never thought for a moment that you did," she assured him.

  It was terrible the way people always thought the worst of someone like Sharpy. The poor boy was undoubtedly the frequent target of accusation and censure.

  "I assumed that you had already made enough in wages to purchase the new shoes yourself," she told him.

  Sharpy's mouth was mostly full once more, but he nevertheless managed a reply.

  "Mr. Gidry done traded 'em to me," he said. "And they's just exactly my size."

  "Gidry Chavis bought you these shoes?" Just the sound of his name on her lips had her heart beating a little faster. "That was very good of him," she said.

  "I traded him," Sharpy insisted defiantly. "I don't take a God—a gosh darn thing from nobody never."

  "Oh yes, of course," Pru agreed solemnly. She knew perfectly well the young boy's fears of being indebted to someone.

  "What did you have to trade?" she asked.

  The youngster looked momentarily evasive.

  "I traded him some valuables I got."

  "Valuables?" She smiled warmly at him. "What kind of valuables would that be?"

  "Men kind of valuables, Miss Pru, nothin' you'd be interested in," he said gravely.

  Pru ruffled his hair lovingly. He never pulled away from her like most children his age would have done. It was almost as if he needed her mothering touch almost as much as she needed to bestow it.

  But she could not linger long at his side. She didn't want to draw attention to her obvious preference for the boy. Part of having taught herself not to feel had made Prudence one of those women who simply did not dote upon children. She had never allowed herself to hold them, kiss them, talk baby talk, or even squeeze a fat pink cheek. It had been a safeguard for her own heart. She never talked with the young mothers about their children. She had never joined in a game of ring-around-the-rosy, never so much as showed a vague interest in anything said or done by anyone less than legal age. Those very facts now made her feelings for young Sharpy more inexplicable.

  She could not allow her tenderness for the boy to bring him to public notice. People might start asking questions, thinking things through, coming to conclusions. Very likely the same ones that she had come to herself. She must protect the young fellow as she protected herself. It was not such a hard deception to endure. Especially when he obviously knew that she cared for him.

  And she had plenty to do. Deliberately she left him alone with his vittles. She made her way back toward the table, purposely stopping to make a fuss over Leda Peterson's twin boys and homely Constance Redfern's surprisingly pretty daughter, Sassy. Let folks imagine that she was growing a soft spot in her heart for children. That was mostly what they expected of a spinster anyway. An unfulfilled female like herself would cherish the attention of even the most unruly and unattractive youngster. To have it thought that her barren womb led her to be unnecessarily attached to Sharpy Kilroy was humiliating. The true reason was even more so.

  Within minutes a parade of laughing, joking men was spilling into the square from the gin.

  Against her will Pru's gaze was drawn to Gidry Chavis. It was not Gidry himself that she was looking at, she assured herself. It was that he was still dressed in his body-hugging, inappropriate cowboy garb. Among the crowd of workingmen in overalls and the few upstanding citizens in sack suits, he appeared tall and broad shouldered and far too good looking for any useful purpose.

  Defensively she raised her chin. After the previous afternoon's fiasco, Pru was more determined than ever not to allow any foolish notions concerning Gidry Chavis to be unloosed. But it was difficult to ignore him when he so clearly stood out in a crowd.

  The men began lining up for food, and Pru was quickly caught up in the hubbub of getting everybody fed.

  By some kind of unwritten protocol, the gin workers ate first, followed by the farmers, townsmen, and laborers. Once the men had filled their plates, women lined up as well. But not on behalf of themselves. They procured food for their children, their mothers, their ancient old maid aunts. It would have been considered an egregious breach of etiquette for a woman in fine health and the prime of life to so much as taste a bite before the food was cold and the rest of the community overfed and drowsy.

  Because Pru was neither too old nor still growing, and a spinster, no child at her breast or growing in her womb, she was one of the last to eat. In fact the meeting had already begun.

  Stanley Honnebuzz was already arguing with old Ollie Larson. Judge Ramey had to get between the two to shut them up.

  "If I could just have your attention for a few moments here," the judge called out.

  The crowd began to hush and settle.

  Pru found a solitary spot in the shade and seated herself. Although she was naturally interested in the affairs of the town, those concerns were almost exclusively centered around cotton. And as she had no such crop to tend to and worry about, her concentration was more upon her meal than the business at hand.

  "I want to thank you all for coming out today," Judge Ramey said. "I know that it probably had more to do with the gin being in operation and the ladies fixing this fine meal than anything you thought you might hear from an old politician like me."

  There were light chuckles heard throughout the square.

  "In fact a fellow on this very spot once told me, 'Ramey, I wouldn't vote for you if you was Saint Peter!' "

  The judge reared back slightly and locked his thumbs at the clips of his suspenders.

  "I told him, 'Sir, if I was Saint Peter, you couldn't vote for me. 'Cause you wouldn't ever be living in my district!'"

  The menfolk guffawed at the great joke. The ladies tittered a bit uneasily.

  Pru managed with difficulty to keep a smile from turning the corners of her mouth. A spinster lady probably should pretend that she didn't even comprehend the meaning. Feigning ignorance had never been something at which she was particularly adept.

  Judge Ramey continued.

  "As most of you know, Gidry Chavis is back among us," he said. "He's got some new ideas for us. I'm going to let him tell you about them himself."

  Gidry stepped up to take the judge's place. There was a spattering of applause, mostly from the men of the Commercial Club and the gin workers. The rest of the community had not yet decided what they thought of the prodigal's return.

  He smiled warmly at the crowd. He was not as easy with speaking as the judge had been, but he had a natural bent for leadership.

  "I don't suppose I need to tell any of you that the gin is in operation as of today," he began.

  There was notable laughter in the crowd. Certainly anyone who was not dead and in the grave would be aware of the morning's noisy clatter.

  "As I told the farmers first in line," he continued, "what seed you don't need back for your farm we're going to try to process ourselves. Elmer Corsen and Conrad Peterson are checking into building a cottonseed oil plant right here in Chavistown."

  There was a collective intake of breath from the crowd, followed immediately by excited chatter as each and every person on the square felt the need to share his or her opinion with whoever might listen.

  Pru was as pleased as most everyone else, perhaps more so as it was her own idea.

  "As we all know, there is not a cottonseed oil plant in the entire
Black Waxy Prairie. If we can get one started, donate our own seed for free processing, then we can use the income generated to pay off the construction."

  There were murmurs of agreement everywhere.

  "Mr. Shipley has assured us that Farmers and Merchants Bank would be willing to lend the Commercial Club the startup money for construction," Gidry continued. "Within three to five years, whether cotton prices are high or low, we should be out of the red and beginning to pay off dividends to members and shareholders."

  The applause for that announcement was hearty and genuine.

  "That’s a fine idea the boy has," one old farmer was heard to say.

  There were nods all around him.

  "Everybody knows the price of cottonseed oil is more stable than the fiber," Amos Wilburn answered.

  "Those industry folks is coming up with more things to do with that dang oil ever day," Plug Whitstone added, punctuating his words with a spit of tobacco. "If we got a processing plant, it’ll bring new business to town faster than buzzards to a dead skunk."

  "He's right about that." Pru heard someone agree.

  "Now wait just a minute!" Ollie Larson hollered out. "Wait just a dad-blamed minute."

  The talked stopped as people craned forward to see what Know-It-All Larson, the soapbox orator, had to say.

  "You don't like the idea of us producing our own cottonseed oil?" The question came from Gidry Chavis.

  The wiry old man shook his head. "I ain't opposed to making some money from that worthless cottonseed," he assured the crowd. "But that ain't my main concern here. It don't matter how much new business comes to town nor how much money we make if they is thieving no-accounts among us going to rob us blind."

  An immediate clamor arose at his words. It was true. For the people of Chavistown, times were already good. Crime was a bigger issue than prosperity.

  "I've got some ideas for that, too," Gidry announced.

  "He's going to bring in one of those west Texas lawmen," one man suggested.