Harmony (20 page)

S
unday morning, high clouds gathered in the sky, but the temperature was mild enough to be outdoors without wearing multiple layers of clothing. After returning home from church, Edwina gathered a rake from the toolshed and left for the warehouse. She'd felt restless and idle indoors and had looked for an escape to bring her outside, where she could exercise. She'd never objected to raking, as it stimulated her mind as well as kept her busy. Though there was no point in raking the grove, she wanted to anyway.

Anything to keep from facing the tower of bills that were accumulating in the pigeonhole of her desk.

Three more had come since Wednesday. And although she now got her own mail out of the box, she was certain Tom Wolcott was still going through hers. How could he not? Her telling him that she would get her own mail wasn't preventing him from sorting through the letters, which led to reading her envelopes as well. But as of two days ago, she'd outfoxed him. She'd gotten to the mailbox first. Even if that had meant abruptly halting her class mid-lesson to hurry out the door and take the items from Mr. Calhoon before he could slip them in the black box.

Embarrassment washed over Edwina anew. It was bad enough Mr. Calhoun thought her foolish enough to send away to those backwater companies. Now Tom knew as well. What he must think of her? Not that she cared . . .

I do care
. But she hated to admit she did.

Oh, when this all ends, I can do what I want
She kept telling herself that she was doing all right, that she was paying whom she could and staving off those whom she could not. But the stress was wearing her down. She resented having to be accountable. She hadn't been the one to make such a mess of things, yet she was the one who'd gotten stuck bearing the burden.

As Edwina rounded the back of the building, she stared at the vast expanse of golden leaves littering the ground before her. There truly was no need . . . but if she didn't, she'd have to go home and face the likes of Crab Orchard Water Co. and Noyes Bros. Blanket Wraps.

With a nod of conviction about the therapeutic effects of physical activity, Edwina began to rake.

•  •  •

Tom had cracked more walnuts than he had cracked ledger columns. In over an hour, he hadn't gotten a single row to add up and match its corresponding posting on the opposite side of the chart. According to his calculations, he didn't have jack. All his money was gone. Which couldn't be true. Because he'd gone to the bank on Friday and had taken out eight dollars and sixty-four cents to pay cash on a collect shipment of life-sized rubber deer—your does and bucks. If he'd been broke, the teller wouldn't have given him the money—along with a receipt that showed he had six hundred thirty-two dollars and sixteen cents remaining in his account.

So he was obviously doing something wrong when it came to tallying debits and credits. And he'd even tried working things Edwina's way.

She'd pointed out that his columns were mixed up and he'd tried to remember how she'd told him to put them. He'd thought he'd done it right, but neither side was in
accordance with the other. One saw red, the other black; once, one totaled zero.

He slammed another nut with the revolver, the hulls scattering. With a flick of his fingertip, Tom played a game of points to see how many he could get off the accounting paper without spilling any onto the floor.

In a sloppy shot, a hull flew over the counter and beaned Barkly, who'd been sleeping on the floor by the stool, on the right ear. Snorting, he lifted his boxy head and glared, with one bloodshot eye, at Tom.

“Ho, there, Barkly. Penalty on Wolcott,” Tom commentated.

The dog reclined once more, gave a heaving sigh, then shut his eyes.

Drumming his fingertips, Tom slouched on the stool's seat and gazed across the store, not seeing anything in particular, just losing himself and trying to figure out what he could do to avoid bookkeeping.

He wasn't in the mood to throw balls at Buttkiss. And since the store was closed on Sundays, he couldn't count on the customers to keep him from the worksheets. He'd gone as far as dusting his small rodent trophies with a signature paintbrush. The eyes and ears of those weasels and foxes had never been so damn clean. He'd even polished their teeth.

After that, he'd gotten out his beaver clock and examined it for repairability. In five seconds flat, he'd concluded the thing was history. There was always the zebra clock. That motorized pendulum he'd ordered to install in the tail had come in. But he wasn't in the mood to work on that, either.

He'd finished painting the exterior, so he couldn't use that as a distracting excuse anymore. Shay wasn't due back until late afternoon of the following day. No camaraderie to be had today.

He ought to go fishing, pick a fight with a cutthroat trout. Once they took the hook, they ran against the stream bottom and then did a little broad jumping. It'd been too long since he'd dropped a line. But Tom
couldn't rationalize putting that much distance between himself and the store. The way he saw things, if he stayed in the warehouse's general vicinity—within, say, twenty yards—he was within mindshot of the accounting pages. Anything beyond that and he couldn't say he was actually working on them.

“Ah . . . hell,” he mumbled.

Flat. His life was flat, at the moment. Deader than the stuffed field mouse he'd mounted on a block and used as a doorstop. Tom stared at the rodent with its two beady glass eyes, his fingers tattooing out “Three Blind Mice” on the countertop. When he was through, he muttered his disgust and stood.

“I've got to get out of here or I'm going to go crazy,” he said to Barkly as he reached for his overshirt, which was hung on a peg by the door. A walk outside and a smoke ought to clear his head, make him see things in a different light.

Tom stepped through the door and Barkly shot past him, banging into his leg as he dashed out to chase after a squirrel that had been nibbing an acorn. Had he the capability, the hound would have run right up the tree. Instead, he stared the squirrel into quivers with his hollow eyes while it clung to high bark.

Lighting a cigarette, Tom started walking around the corner of the building but stopped shy of the warehouse's grove. He hung back to spy on Edwina as she raked leaves toward a fairly big pile. She must have been out there a while.

Smoke curled through Tom's lips on an exhalation. As with most of the things she did, Edwina used a stringently frugal method. Three even strokes. Left, right, and center. Then swish, swish, swish toward the main mound.

That she could be so meticulous annoyed him. That she would even bother to rake the leaves when the trees were still sifting them down made him wonder about her soundness.

A slight smile curved her mouth. She was sound, all
right—in all the places men were drawn to, himself included.

An image of her wearing drawers and a shirtwaist—all long legs and disheveled hair—flashed in his mind. She'd forgotten herself that evening of the tree fall, and he'd enjoyed her company all the more for it, even with that cat as her foremost concern. She'd been able to make him smile. He liked to provoke her into losing hold of that rigid mold she poured herself into each day.

So to break his morning of monotony, a little frolicking was in order.

He was getting his rope.

•  •  •

Edwina choked on a gasp when she saw Tom Wolcott bearing down on her with a coil of fat rope in his grasp.

“Hey, Ed,” he called, a cigarette dangling between his lips. “Nice day.”

Her eyes narrowed automatically. “Nice day for what?”

The lift of his shoulders had more innocence in it than had a newborn babe. “Leaf raking.” He said nothing further and proceeded to unwind the rope to lay straight on the grass. A few seconds later, Barkly rounded the corner and came charging at her pile of leaves.

Taking a position of defense, she held the rake out in front of her to ward him off. He merely circled and caused her to spin, then took his opening when her back was to him; he dove headfirst into the crackling leaves. Delight lit his face—she could swear he smiled; he snapped up several oak leaves in his teeth and took off at a run. He zoomed between the trees, then skidded to a stop, tail wagging as he spit out the stolen leaves. The excess skin under his chin and his long ears made a flapping noise when he shook off.

Edwina stared at the damage. Her neat and tidy pile had been ransacked. It wasn't a big mound anymore. Stragglers and ragged pieces of leaves littered the area surrounding her.

Her focus switched to Tom, who examined the high limbs of the oaks and then studied her scattered leaves.

“Stand back a little, Ed,” he said at length, looking not at her but at the high, gnarled branch of a stately oak off center above her head.

Skirting him, she gripped the rake's handle and watched as he took the rope in his hand. Like a cowboy, he somewhat circled a long length, then began to swing it. Momentum gathered and his arm came back just before he released the rope, its end sailing high into the tree and right over the limb. With a few twists and jerks, he made crimps that slammed against the branch's underside to hold the rope secure. That done, he created a series of knots in the length that dangled about a foot from the ground.

“Give it a try, Ed?” Tom asked while pitching his cigarette and snuffing the nub with his boot toe.

Gazing at the rope swing, she was reminded of the one hanging in her own backyard, long unused, though she'd performed many acrobatics on it as a child. Her father had hung it up when she'd been around six years old. The thought of the trouble he'd gone to made her sad—made her feel guilty for not appreciating all the things he'd done for her when he'd been living. Both her parents had taken care of her. Her father had worked to feed and clothe her; her mother had cooked and cleaned alongside Marvel-Anne to make sure their house was always inviting and presentable to Edwina's friends.

Shame burned hotly inside of Edwina. Not an hour ago, she'd been full of bitterness over her current set of circumstances. But her parents had taken care of her, now she had to take care of them. She'd done so physically; however, family didn't die when a loved one was laid to rest. She would make sure the Huntington name wouldn't suffer slander. Financial obligations would be met, and without another grudging thought from her.

Why had it taken Tom's silly tree swing to make her see this?

Tom's voice intruded. “So what do you say?”

With her hand shading her eyes against a shaft of bright sunlight that took advantage of a part in the clouds, she replied, “No. I don't think so,” even though the temptation pulled strongly at her.

His easy shrug said that he didn't believe her. A tug on the rope proved it to be secure. Then he walked away, turned, and gave her an easy smile. A wisp of a breeze caused his hair to fall across his nose; he swiped the unruly strands off his forehead. Then, striking a run, he aimed for the rope, grabbed on, and lunged forward. With the motion of his body, he got himself into a good swing.

Back and forth, higher and higher. He made apish sounds, like he was a jungle primate. If he hadn't sounded so ridiculous, she wouldn't have laughed—or egged him on in turn.

Clamped between his legs, the rope gave him firm support, and with the sides of his boots against one of the knots, he could pretty much free up his hands without falling. He let go with his right, then left. Her heartbeat hitched in her throat. She knew he was athletic and could very well do tricks on the rope, but she worried anyway. She didn't want him to fall.

“Okay,” she shouted at him, “you can stop that now! You'll get hurt.”

“Wooooooooo!” he hollered into the sky, thoroughly ignoring her sage advice.

Why was it men thought they needed to prove themselves to women? Edwina grew perturbed. She ought to just turn away and go home so he'd stop acting like a ham bone and behave.

But she couldn't pull her gaze off him.

She'd never known a man quite like Tom Wolcott. Ruggedly handsome, totally masculine, yet boyish and still full of pranks at his age. His inordinate height was emphasized by being up higher on the rope. With each pass, his hair flowed around his face. Long hair had never intrigued her before; Ludie had worn his clipped short and quite distinguished, styled with pomade. But
Edwina found she rather liked the look of Tom's wild and careless mane. She also liked his smile—broad and genuine, easygoing, nice teeth.

Both her gloved hands rested on the top of the rake's handle, and she set her chin on her fist. A smile claimed her lips as she watched, listening to him hoot and holler. She wished she could soar free like that, be six years old again and not care a whit what people thought of her—or in Tom's case, be thirty-two and not care.

On an extraordinarily vulgar monkey sound, Tom let go of the rope and flew into her pile of leaves. He landed on his chest, arms sprawled out from both sides, his face turned, eyes closed.

Lying deathly still.

“Tom!” The rake fell out of her hands. She raced to him and dropped to her knees. Barkly came barreling in behind her. His slobbery tongue slicked her cheek, so she shoved him, hard—enough to make him move. Insulted, the dog sat back with his head hanging low.

“Tom, can you hear me?” Edwina asked, bringing her face close to his. Her fingers rested beneath his nose to feel for breath. It was there. Labored and moist. She bit her lip and worried the tender skin. “Tom . . . ? Tom, wake up.”

He remained unmoving.

Bracing her hand on his shoulder, she jiggled him. Nothing happened.

She slipped his hair from his brow and tucked the length gently behind his ear. Moving closer again, she tried to view all of his face. No blood. A promising sign. Or was it? Head trauma . . . he needed to wake up. Should she leave him and get Dr. Porter? Or should she shout for help? Who would hear her down here?
Oh, help.