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

by Pamela Morsi

  "Rude?" Pru was incredulous. "What is rude is saying that we must take this without even voicing dissent. If someone gave you a rattlesnake for Christmas, would you say ‘Thank you very much' and build the reptile a cage next to the chicken coop? I don't think so."

  "So what can we do?" Alice asked.

  "What we truly need," Bertha Mae announced, "is to speak to Gidry Chavis personally. This is his idea; all the other men in town are going to follow him.”

  There were murmurs of agreement all around.

  Bertha Mae directed her attention to Pru, her expression challenging.

  "We all realize, dear Prudence, considering your past heartbreak, that you would undoubtedly prefer to keep your distance from Mr. Chavis," she said.

  Pru felt the woman's words as keenly as if she had been kicked in the stomach.

  "Although it is the president's obligation to do this," Bertha Mae continued, "allowing the unfortunately personal circumstances, I would be willing to contact Mr. Chavis myself on behalf of the club."

  There was a spattering of muted applause.

  "It is absolutely unnecessary for you to trouble yourself, Mrs. Corsen," Pru assured her firmly. "I have already reacquainted myself with Mr. Chavis upon two occasions. We were childhood friends."

  "Yes." Bertha Mae nodded sagely. "We all remember how you doted upon him."

  Pru purposely ignored her.

  "We are merely asking Mr. Chavis for a fair hearing and a public meeting. I am perfectly capable of requesting both."

  Bertha Mae looked doubtful and deliberately pitying.

  "Mr. Chavis has always been a fair and reasonable man," Pru stated with a calmness and strength of purpose she did not feel. "Surely his experience in the West has not changed him overmuch."

  Mrs. Corsen and her followers still looked skeptical but adopted an attitude of acceptance.

  "We'll try this," Mrs. Whitstone said jokingly. "If it don't work, then we'll send them out to the porch."

  Chapter Seventeen

  The second day of ginning did not go as well as the first. A loose belt flew off the platens, barely missing Edmund Krueger, who could have easily been decapitated as was clearly evidenced by the huge chunk of the building's south wall that was broken open. The near brush with eternity so disconcerted the man that he began to shake so badly that he could not work. Running a man short put extra pressure upon Gidry who now, more than the day before, needed to be everywhere at all times.

  Stanley Honnebuzz stopped by to see him twice to warn him that a group of ladies was all het up over the lighting project, but he put the man off both times because he was too busy.

  They still managed to gin twenty-seven bales. But at the end of the day, when Gidry sat once more at his ledger, he was bone tired, drenched with sweat, and not a little bit cranky.

  An hour later, cleaned up, well fed, and relaxed, he wondered aloud at his decision as he sat in the chair at his father's bedside.

  "Honnebuzz said that it’s best not to give the opposition an even chance," Gidry explained. "He said that allowing the ladies a forum to air their objections is the same as legitimizing their concerns."

  Gidry, his brow furrowed, looked longingly into the expressive face of his father, wishing the old man could advise him.

  "I'm sure he probably knows what he's talking about," Gidry said. "Still it seems very high handed to me not to allow the ladies to speak their piece."

  There was a light knock at the door, and Aunt Hen entered without preamble carrying an armful of linens and a pitcher of hot water.

  Politely, Gidry rose to his feet.

  "I thought you had surely gone on home," Gidry said to her.

  The older woman shook her head. "I haven't changed the bedsheets," she said. "I can't do it by myself, and today Mrs. Butts was simply not at her best and couldn't help me."

  “I’m not too adept at bed making, ma'am," Gidry admitted. "I will do what I can."

  "Actually, if you could just lift him off the bed and into that chair," she said. "Mrs. Butts and I usually roll him from side to side, but I believe that you could probably move him. And he might enjoy sitting up for a few minutes."

  Gidry was momentarily taken aback. He could not imagine that he would be strong enough to lift his large, powerful father. But Aunt Hen's rather generous faith in him kept him from saying so.

  As she pulled down the covers, Gidry saw that his father's striped flannel nightshirt hung upon him as if a half dozen sizes too large. Determinedly, he put one arm around the lower part of his father's shoulders and the other beneath his knees. Taking a deep breath, he, hefted his father into his arms. To his complete astonishment, Gidry was able to lift him easily.

  "My God! He doesn't weigh anything!" he exclaimed.

  "No," Aunt Hen said quietly. "No he does not."

  Gidry held his father in his arms for a long moment. It was hard for him to get his mind around it. It was hard for him to comprehend. His father, who had so many years ago held him and carried him and had been his strength, now lay in his arms, no more weighty than a child himself. The silence in the room lingered.

  Gidry sat his father in the chair at the side of the bed. He looked better sitting somehow. He was gaunt and pale, but if Gidry ignored that, it was as if the man was his strong, powerful father once more.

  "Get the basin and a rag," Aunt Hen directed. "Mrs. Butts usually washes and shaves him, to spare my modesty, of course. Perhaps you will do a better job than she does."

  Gidry had never washed another human being in his life. But gamely he set himself to the task. Beneath the nightshirt, the evidence of his father's decline was even more pronounced. His ribs showed as distinctly as the pickets of a fence. His arms and legs lay like wasted sticks at his sides. Gidry felt the sting of tears come to his eyes and gritted his teeth against them.

  "Were you telling your father more stories of the Wild West?" Aunt Hen asked.

  Gidry was grateful for the distraction.

  "Not yet," he answered. "I was telling him about the day's work at the gin and relaying a discussion I had with Stanley Honnebuzz about the electric lighting project."

  Aunt Hen had stripped the bed and shook the tick thoroughly before turning it over and replacing it on the spring mattress.

  "Electric lighting all over town," she shook her head. "It’s hard even to imagine."

  "Yes, it is," Gidry agreed.

  The woman was thoughtful for a long moment and then a soft, sweet smile brightened her face as if a pleasant thought had pulled at her heart.

  “Peer, do you remember that perfect pumpkin year?" she asked with a faraway chuckle.

  The question was not directed at Gidry, so he made no comment. Aunt Hen apparently required no answer.

  "There were flowered vines in every corn row in the county. The weather was good. Not too rainy, not too warm and plenty of sunshine. By the fall, we had so many of those great big pumpkins we couldn't have stored them all for winter if we'd emptied out every barn."

  She laughed lightly as she snapped the bedsheet open with a firm jerk and spread it upon the mattress.

  "That was something, wasn't it, Peer? We ate pumpkin cookies, pumpkin bread, pumpkin cakes, pumpkin pudding. There was roast pumpkin, pumpkin fritters, pumpkin soup, even pumpkin butter. But we still couldn't eat them all up," she said.

  Gidry ran the damp soapy cloth along his father's emaciated chest and looked up into the old man eyes. His father was looking at Henrietta.

  "Finally toward the end of the season when not a soul in town could bear the taste of pumpkin for one more meal we began feeding the seedcores to the hogs and making jack-o'-lanterns."

  Aunt Hen was smiling to herself, evidently lost in thought for long moments before she continued. "Those jack-o'-lanterns really lit up the town," she said. "Every post and porch and pillar sported some garish looking face and a bright orange glow."

  She carefully tucked the corners of the sheet under the mattress.


  "And it was just the kind of excuse that young people needed to roam around at nightfall."

  She shook her head. "You were tall as a tree in long pants and I already with my hair up, but we ran up and down the streets like two children let loose at the fair," she said.

  "We met friends and made up stories and laughed and giggled our fool heads off. And you held my hand all night long," she said with a soft, sweet sigh. "You held my hand all night long."

  Gidry cleared his throat.

  "It must have been beautiful," he said.

  Aunt Hen glanced over at him, as if just remembering that he was there.

  "Yes, it was pretty," she agreed. "The town all lit up like that, it was really pretty. And I suppose you could say it was romantic, too. More than one young couple made a hasty trip to the altar that winter."

  Gidry felt uncomfortable and in the way. He turned his attention to his father's bath and hurried to finish. He got him into a clean nightshirt.

  "Would you like to stay in the chair for a while, Papa?" he asked.

  His father's neck and jaw were trembling as if the weight of his head was almost more than he could manage to support.

  "You'd best put him back to bed," Aunt Hen said quietly. "It saps all of his strength to sit up."

  Gidry nodded and tenderly laid his father back in the fresh, sweet smelling bed.

  Aunt Hen pulled the coverlet up over him and tucked it carefully around his shoulders. Gidry noticed, perhaps for the first time, how the old woman's care of him was as tender as it was efficient.

  She looked up into Gidry's eyes. He saw no embarrassment there, but there was wariness. There were a million questions he wanted to ask. There were a thousand things that he wanted to know. And clearly the jut of her chin spoke silently that none of them were any of his concern.

  "Is that what your electric lighting is going to be like?" she asked.

  "What?"

  'The electric lighting," Aunt Hen repeated. "Is it going to be as pretty as having a town full of jack-o'- lanterns?"

  Chapter Eighteen

  She should speak to Gidry immediately, Pru decided bright and early the next morning. She had lain awake most of the night, anxious about seeing him again. Her fine, brave words in front of the club ladies were all good and well, but in all honesty she would as cheerfully walk over cactus barefoot as face Gidry Chavis.

  She dressed in her Sunday best, determined to make a good impression. The silver gray silk suit was stern and serious enough for a discussion of business. The trim-cut jacket and wide sleeves made her appear formidably buxom and tiny waisted. This morning, however, she regretted the ruffled shrimp pink blouse. She had thought it sheer beauty when she'd sewn it. Now, however, it appeared much too pretty for her severe state of mind.

  Gidry had not seen her except in her gardening clothes. At the town meeting, when she was finally dressed fit for company, he hadn't noticed her. It was important for him to see her well dressed. But she didn't want him to think that she was dressing up for him. Her heart was no longer on her sleeve. She wouldn't give the man the satisfaction of believing that she still had feelings for him.

  She was ready to go just after breakfast, but decided that it was best to wait and catch him during the midday luncheon pause. The gin was already bellowing out its noisy business. Pru had no desire to carry on a discussion within the deafening noise of it in operation. It would be difficult enough to talk with him at all. It would be impossible to scream at him over the roar of machinery.

  Determined to wait, Pru seated herself primly in Aunt Hen's front parlor. It was something she'd grown accustomed to doing back in her girlhood days of loving him. She had waited for him to come sit on her porch. She had waited for him to walk her to church. She had waited for him to notice that she was now quite grownup and desperately in love with him. Deeply enough in love to want more than hand holding and sweet words: she had wanted his kisses, his touch. He had not noticed. At least not until that night, that last incredible, unfathomable night when he had held her in his arms, whispered words of desire, and made her feel for once truly like his woman.

  Pru closed her eyes, savoring the memory for a long moment. It was all she would ever have of him. That one wicked, star crossed night was all she would ever have. It simply could not be enough.

  Her eyes flew open at the direction of her thoughts. No. Absolutely not. She would not allow herself to start thinking that way, wishing for those things. She was no longer in love with Gidry Chavis and she refused to allow herself ever to be so again. Theirs had been a perfect, tender love. And he had torn it to shreds, ruined it for all time. She would never, could never care that much for anyone again.

  She rose to her feet. She could wait no longer. Noise or no noise, she would see him now and get it done. Like ripping a bandage from a wound, the pain would be momentarily searing but quickly over.

  Pru gave herself one last examination of her appearance in front of the looking glass. She was handsome, she assured herself, and businesslike. The ruffled bodice was a bit frilly, but it rounded her silhouette nicely and she couldn't quite regret it. She was heavily corseted, an unusual circumstance for her. Being a lady of the outdoors generally, and one who was past the first blush specifically, she saved extravagant underpinnings for Sunday only. But facing Gidry Chavis again required the most forbidding corset a woman could muster. Like a soldier fitting himself for battle, she donned her flat straw bonnet with the braid trim, satin roses, and the matching shrimp pink ribbon.

  "You'll do," she assured her reflection in the mirror.

  She gathered up her papers and her parasol and hurried purposefully through town. She was certain that the Rose and Garden Society would be allowed to present their case once she had voiced their concerns to Gidry. He had always been a fair and reasonable man. And he had, by his own admission, always listened to her advice.

  He had not loved her and had ruined their romance. In all conscience, a man could not be blamed for that. When a woman took so little care of her heart she must expect that it would get broken.

  She walked with deliberate sedateness down the tree lined boulevard that was upper Main Avenue into the business district. Except for the noise and a slightly increased pace of business, things appeared very normal. People hurried to and fro. Farmers were buying, merchants were selling. Old men sat on benches and watched the world go by them. Chavistown was exactly what it should be, safe and familiar.

  As she neared the area of the railroad tracks, the roar of the machinery was made more untenable by the flurry of activity and hordes of people, all forced to yell to make themselves heard. Farmers' wagons loaded with raw cotton were queued up in lines that snaked this way and that along the streets and across the open ground around the gin.

  She smiled and waved at people as she passed. Having lived in Chavistown all her life, she had at least a nodding acquaintance with practically every man, woman, and child in the county.

  One face that caught her attention was very familiar. Sharpy Kilroy came running out the door to give the next haul signal to the weigh master. The scales dropped beneath an overhang between the gin itself and the seed house. The tonnage of the heavily loaded wagon had already been noted. When it was empty, it would be weighed again and the difference noted as the amount of cotton. Pru watched as the man lowered the flue into the back of the wagon. A huge fan inside began sucking up the light, white cotton bolls.

  Pru watched the procedure for several minutes with as much curiosity as the little boy.

  He turned finally and caught sight of her. He waved joyously and headed in her direction at a boyish lope. He was so proud of his new job. Last evening he'd talked incessantly about it, hardly even pausing to give himself a chance to draw breath. He'd also talked about his new hero, Mr. Gidry Chavis. There was justice there, she thought. Some sort of sweet justice. She wondered briefly once again if she should say something. But no, it was none of her concern. Gidry Chavis and his life were none
of her concern.

  But somehow the little boy who was now running toward her grinning ear to ear, delighted to see her, had wormed his dark haired, wide eyed, devilish little self into her heart.

  "Milton, I hope you are not working too hard," she called out to him.

  "What?" he hollered back at her.

  They were standing only paces apart, but the noise level was excruciating.

  "I hope you are not working too hard," she tried again a little more loudly.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked.

  "I need to speak with Mr. Chavis," she answered.

  "What?"

  "I need to speak with Mr. Chains."

  Pru pointed meaningfully at the gin.

  The little boy nodded eagerly and motioned for her to follow him.

  Although the gin was only two stories high, it was the largest building in town, bigger in area than the new courthouse that had four stories as well as a basement.

  He led her through the small doorway near the end of the building. Coming from the bright morning sunshine outside, she was momentarily blinded within the dim interior. The noise was almost unbearable, and the lint filled air burned her eyes and tickled her nose.

  Young Sharpy tugged on her hand and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she allowed him to direct her to a very narrow set of stairs, nearly hidden within the churning, cranking, screaming machinery. The steps were barely twelve inches in width and there was no handrail, giving Pru the sensation of ascending a ladder.

  She made her way tentatively as the little boy scrambled up with childish self-assurance. At the top of the stairs was a low-framed door which Sharpy opened for her with such good manners, that she nodded at him approvingly.

  The gin office was empty. Somehow she had expected Gidry to be sitting here waiting, but apparently there were many things for him to do that required more than sitting alone in a tiny and sparsely furnished room. The high stool at the ledger desk was awkward for a lady in skirts, so Pru was forced to remain standing. She hoped that she would not have to do so for very long.