by Pamela Morsi
"Mr. Cleavis Rhy," she said aloud for the birds and bees to hear. "The maiden of your dreams and the woman of your future is headed straight to your house."
If Cleav had known, he would have undoubtedly slipped out the back door.
Cleav, however, did not know and was at that moment busy thinking of his own pleasant plans for the evening and humming a ditty of his own.
Kiss me quick! and go! my honey
Kiss me quick and go!
To cheat surprise and prying eyes,
Why, kiss me quick and go!
The week had been a long and frustrating one. Esme had been a constant companion, and his mother's complaints had become almost frantic. "What in heaven's name is the reverend going to say about her underfoot every day?" Eula Rhy had worried. "And I shudder to even think what Mrs. Tewksbury must be imagining."
"Mother, Mrs. Tewksbury's imagination is truly not a great concern of mine," Cleav had replied.
Ultimately it had all become too much for Mrs. Rhy, and she'd taken her nerves to bed. That had been two days ago, and Cleav hadn't been able to budge the older woman.
Today, however, she had moved from the bed to her sewing rocker, happily contemplating the news that Cleav would indeed be escorting Miss Sophrona to the taffy pull.
"Why don't you join us. Mother?" he'd suggested dutifully.
Eula Rhy had smiled at her son with pleasure but refused his invitation. "I really must save my strength for Sunday. I can't be traipsing out for frolic and then not make it to the Lord's house on the Sabbath."
Cleav had expressed the appropriate degree of disappointment, but now, as he straightened his tie before the glass in the downstairs entryway, he was grateful to be going out alone. The walk from the church to the parsonage was unreasonably short, but he expected a moment or two of blessed privacy with Miss Sophrona.
He checked his appearance in the mirror, both in profile and straight ahead. He was no handsome dandy, he decided, but he had the look of a well-groomed, well-tended, prosperous gentleman, exactly the image he chose to portray. He pulled his timepiece out of his watch pocket. Ten minutes before he was due at the Tewksburys'.
After setting his stylish bowler hat at a slightly jaunty angle, he picked up the bright little nosegay of flowers he'd taken from his mother's garden and headed out the door.
There was still a good bit of light; Cleav suspected it was planned that the couples travel to the party in decent sunlight. By the end of the evening, it would be up to the ladies and their fathers, who would be escorted back home through the darkness.
With a smile of self-assurance, Cleav reminded himself that Reverend Tewksbury trusted him completely. His satisfied smile dimmed slightly as he recalled that, of late, the reverend's attitude was somewhat less enthusiastic.
It was this worry and the woman that caused it that was on Cleav's mind as he headed past the front gate.
Unexpectedly Esme Crabb jumped into his path from behind the chestnut tree.
"Hello!" Her words were slightly breathless with anticipation.
Cleav was at first startled, and then annoyed. Was he never to be free of her constant presence?
Then he noticed there was something different about her. Something far more appealing than usual. He sensed that immediately, his body more quickly than his mind, as a surge of hot desire rolled through him. The sudden need to touch this woman was as unexpected as it was unwanted.
She stood there, staring at him as if waiting for his approval, his flattery, perhaps even his kisses. He realized the change was a different dress, a ladies' dress. For the first time she really shone to advantage. Then the image blurred. The pristine white lawn and the neatly tucked bodice pleats conjured up a different picture, a picture of the same cloth draped attractively across the lush bosom of another woman.
He was so startled he blurted out the first thing he thought. "What are you doing in Miss Sophrona's dress?" The question was harsh enough to be an accusation.
"It's not . . ." Esme began. She was so startled at his words that her face paled and the choked denial was forced from her lips.
"It most certainly is!" Cleav's tone was adamant. "I see you've tried to disguise it, but I'd recognize that dress anywhere. Miss Sophrona wore it to the Fourth of July picnic, and I brought her a cup of punch."
Cleav's words clutched at Esme's heart like a vise.
"Have you taken to helping yourself to other women's clothing the way you help yourself to crackers in my store?"
"It's my dress," Esme answered, her voice raw with pain. "It was in the charity basket. Miss Sophrona must have thrown it away."
Esme looked down at the beautiful white lawn garment and fought back the stinging in her eyes. "It's the nicest thing I ever owned," she said quietly. "And some other woman threw it away."
Spying the little bouquet of phlox in her hand, Esme was suddenly horrified at her own presumption. Trying to dress herself up with flowers and ribbons, she was appalled at how comical she must appear in her cast-off charity clothes.
Tears close, she flung her flowers to the ground and turned from him, raising her skirts high as she ran.
"Esme!" he called to her, but she ran on.
Cleav was horrified at himself. He'd been stunned at his reaction to Esme Crabb prettied up. And because of it he'd been deliberately cruel.
"The charity basket," he whispered to himself as he watched her racing away, her shapely legs scandalously displayed. Remembering the raised chin and blush of shame as her family had accepted the handout, he knew with certainty the measure of pride she'd swallowed to wear the dress.
He looked at the scattered flowers at his feet. Squatting down, he picked up one blue-violet blossom and held it before him, examining it closely. The five little petals spread in perfect symmetry from the dark purple center. It was the natural beauty of the mountains, ungilded by human expectation. He compared the discarded phlox to the cut flowers he held in his other hand. The bright mix of roses and hyacinths was very pretty but appeared almost garish and overblown beside the simplicity of the wildflower.
When he looked up again, he could barely make out Esme in the distance. Quickly he shrugged out of his coat and hung it neatly on one white-washed picket, topping it with his hat. The flowers he fit snugly against the rail. Scooping up the rest of the wild phlox, he hurried after the young woman in the white lawn hand-me-down.
Esme's chest was screaming for relief, but her heart wanted to run forever. She might have done exactly that had she not felt her stylish curls suddenly loose and flowing around her.
"Agrippa's ribbon!" she screamed at herself as she stopped abruptly. Frantically she began to backtrack, searching the grass for the plain piece of white satin as the tears continued to hamper her vision. Her mind was numb with pain and shame. She refused to think at all, only to search and weep. She'd crested a small hill and hurried across a just-budding meadow, and Cleav's house was at last out of sight. Somehow, she felt safer. As if leaving the sight of her humiliation could make her unexpected humbling less acute.
The ribbon was visible, a small expanse of pristine white amid a flourishing patch of vivid green clover. Esme pulled her skirts high out of the staining grass and dropped to her knees in the clover.
The ribbon seemed none the worse for being temporarily lost, and Esme stared at it, determinedly forcing back her tears. She was glad she'd found it; her sisters had been so generous. The dress had been meant for the twins, of course. Sophrona knew how they loved pretty clothes, and she had purposely included it in the basket. The twins would have been unconcerned with the former owner, knowing, with perfect honesty, that the dress would look better on them than any female in Vader.
Esme, however, had no such confidence to rely on. She was a shabby hill girl in another woman's made-over dress. And Cleavis Rhy had found her pathetic, not pretty.
Looking now at the dress she had so admired, she wanted to rip it from her body. She wished she could shred it into a hu
ndred pieces and bury it in a rat hole.
Setting her jaw with practical firmness, she knew she could not do that. Even hating the dress, it was the best she owned. Her sisters had worked long and hard to add the sash she now found tacky and the flounce which seemed ridiculous, so now she would have to wear it until it was no more than a rag hanging from her shoulders. She blinked back more annoying tears, secretly hoping that white lawn would not be a very durable fabric.
As she bravely raised her chin, resigning herself to her fate, she heard the sound of running feet on the path behind her.
Before she had time to scamper into hiding, she turned back to see Cleav topping the hill. When their eyes met, he slowed to a walk.
Esme turned her attention back to the clover in front of her. She couldn't just be sitting here, she thought desperately. She'd die if he knew she'd been sitting there crying over him. Praying that her face was not tearstained, she anxiously sought some purposeful work for her hands.
The clover was rife with young blossoms. As if suddenly returning to younger days, Esme pulled up two. Running a fingernail through the lower stem of the first, she created a narrow slit through which she threaded the stem of the second blossom. Treating it likewise, she pulled another blooming clover and wove it, also.
As Cleav crested the hill, the sun setting over the mountain in a splash of pink-tinted sky was the perfect backdrop for the young woman in a swirl of white skirts seated in the bright green clover. The vision touched unfamiliar feelings in his heart. Almost casually he approached her until he stood with her at his feet in the grass.
"What are you doing?" he asked as he watched her nimble fingers weaving the tiny white puffs of grass.
"Making a clover chain," she answered simply, as if such an occupation were perfectly acceptable for a fully-grown woman on a deserted hillside on a Saturday evening.
Cleav watched her progress for a moment and then without invitation seated himself beside her. Gently he laid the handful of wild phlox on the ground before them.
When Esme saw her discarded flowers, a rush of tears filled her throat, but she forced her gaze back to the stems of clover and continued her work with diligence.
Cleav adjusted his position to make himself comfortable. He stretched out one long leg before him and bent the other at the knee. Leaning back, he was almost supine until he turned on one hip and rested his upper body on his elbow.
To Esme it felt strangely familiar to have him practically lying next to her. Without speaking they sat together for several minutes adjusting to the unaccustomed intimacy that surrounded them.
Esme glanced down and noted with surprise that Cleav had taken up the loose end of the chain and was himself calmly weaving the clover blooms.
He looked up and caught her watching him.
"Boys learn how to do this, too, you know," he told her, his voice as soothing as hot molasses on a winter night. "I was about seven, I guess," he said as he reached, not for the clover, but for one of the wild phlox blooms that lay before him. "I made what I think was the longest clover chain in the state of Tennessee." There was self-mocking laughter in his claim. "I swear I combed these hills for a week trying to find enough blossoms."
His gaze was so warm and wry, Esme found herself compelled to smile back.
"It was so long I carried it around in a sack!" he told her, shaking his head. "When it started to die and break up, I wrapped it around the barn for a decoration."
His pale blue eyes were bright with mischief. "Our old Bossy ate every piece of it, and Mama threatened to take a strap to me for feeding clover to the cow!"
Esme's peal of laughter was genuine and once Cleav had her smiling again, he proceeded toward his purpose. "I owe you an apology, Esme," he began.
She shook her head. "You did the right thing," she assured him bravely. "If you think somebody has stole something, you've got to confront 'em."
Cleav felt a stab of self-directed anger.
"I never thought you'd stolen the dress, Esme. I know that you do not steal." His eyes upon her gave her more will than she had thought available.
"No," she stated without boast. "I do not steal."
She raised her chin as if to gaze across the horizon. Cleav found himself admiring her profile, not for its beauty or femininity, but for its strength. He had wounded her, but she would not show him her pain.
"I know how you feel, Esme."
The words brought her focus back to his face. There were unspoken words of derisive disbelief evident in her expression.
"It's true," he insisted calmly. "I've been there myself." He reached for one of the phlox. The stem was not as easy to slit as the clover, but he managed to do it and added the colorful blossom to the strand, where it stood out among the more ordinary clovers.
"You know that I went off to Knoxville to school?" he asked, looking off in the distance.
"Yes."
"I was so excited about that," he recalled, his voice calm and matter of fact. "I had been wanting schooling, oh, it seems like all my life. I'd wished for it, but I never dared to hope." He wove a second phlox into the clover chain, making a companion for the first outsider.
"My father drove me to the train station in Russellville. I could hardly sit still the whole way, talking and squirming like I was six instead of almost fourteen."
Esme smiled, trying to imagine the calm, confident man before her as a fourteen-year-old with jitters in his legs.
"Mama had made me a new suit from the finest brown wool we had in the store," he told her. "It fit me perfectly the day I left and had lots of extra fabric at the seams and in the hem to accommodate a young man with a good deal of growing yet to do."
Cleav wove a plain white clover into the chain with no hesitation in his story. "The train ride was pure pleasure," he said. "I told everyone in the coach about my new suit and my new school." His grin was wry as he continued. "The porter must have thought me the greenest boy ever to come down from the mountain. But he, and everyone else, listened to my wild enthusiasm, offered words of advice on city life, and wished me well."
Esme tried to imagine herself on a noisy train heading for the city and talking to strangers. It seemed a wonderful adventure.
"Knoxville was bigger, busier, noisier, more exciting than all my wildest fantasies. I was probably close to death a half dozen times as I made my way across town to the school."
Carefully weaving another clover into the pattern, he shook his head derisively.
"I was bug-eyed at the scenes around me. I had not one thought to caution in the busy streets. That hectic flurry of rigs and wagons was intent on running me down. More than one angry driver cursed my ancestry."
Esme giggled, earning her a playful rise of his eyebrows.
"The school was just as I imagined it," he said. "I remember stopping in front to read the name carved into the stone: Halperth Academy for Gentlemen of Good Family. I knew that I was going to learn so much there."
Cleav's smile brightened with remembrance but just as quickly faded to a sober line.
"And I did, but not at all what I expected."
Cleav sat up. Cross-legged, he faced Esme. Her eyes were wide with wonder and curiosity. Never had he confessed his secrets to a soul. Instinctively he knew that Esme could be trusted with the most mortifying of truths. "What I learned at the Halperth Academy," he began, his voice now slightly roughened with anger, "is that a storekeeper's son from the hills is not considered a gentleman of good family."
Cleav swallowed heavily, tasting again the bitter gall of disgrace. Unwilling to allow himself the privilege of privacy, he raised his eyes to Esme. He had made her feel shame, so he showed her his own.
"They laughed at me," he told her quietly. "The other boys in the school, the people in the town, even the professors laughed at the way I talked, the way I ate, the things I said."
He didn't stint on the truth.
"They even laughed at the new brown suit my mama made me. Their suits we
re fitted at the tailor's. They called mine homemade cracker clothes. Just perfect, one of the upperclassmen declared, for Cleavis Clodhopper the hillbilly boy." Even after long years of success and achievement, the hated nickname conjured up rancor.
"At first I thought I could prove myself," he told her. "I studied harder than anyone. I perfected my manners. I was determined that I could make them see me as an equal." He sighed and shook his head. "Of course, they never did."
As Esme watched him, there was no pity in her eyes, but there was understanding.
He shrugged nonchalantly. "It wasn't all for the bad, though," he said honestly. "With no friends and resolved to succeed, I spent untold hours in the library. I would lose my unhappiness in the excitement of science."
Smiling wryly, he added, "My biology text was so well-thumbed it looked like a risqué novel."
Esme felt suddenly closer to him. She wanted to touch him, to comfort him. She wanted to feel what he felt.
With his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand, he looked at Esme, willing her to understand. "The people of Vader, probably even yourself," he said, "think that I am a gentleman. And here, well, I guess that I am. But I know that I would never have been seen as such in the city."
The statement was plain fact, not bitterness.
Esme reached across and touched his hand. The gesture surprised and pleased him.
"I'm not looking for your sympathy," Cleav told her, taking up her end of the clover chain and webbing it with his. "I'm trying to say that I do know a portion of how I made you feel. I'm sorry for what I said about the dress."
"It doesn't matter," Esme told him, and strange as it seemed at that moment, it did not.
"It matters to me," Cleav insisted. "I hurt you. That matters."
Esme felt her hand tremble as it lay against his, and she hastily removed it.
