"Well, Josh went wild. Told her he loved her and she wasn't gonna screw anybody else—never. She was gonna leave with him—
now!
He made a grab for her and out of nowhere she pulls this little gun—Christ, I never knew the girls there even carried 'em. But there it was, pointed right at Josh's eye and I reached for a bottle of Old Star whiskey and let her have it. Hell, I didn't think. I just ... well, I just beaned her. She went down like a tree, toppled sideways and cracked her head on a chair and laid there in a puddle of broken glass and blended whiskey and hardly even bled, she died so fast. I don't know if it was the bottle or the chair that killed her, but it didn't matter to the law. They had me behind bars in less than half an hour.
"I figured things'd come out all right—after all, I was defending Josh. If I hadn't clunked her, she'd have shot Josh smack through his left eye. But what I didn't figure was how serious he was about marrying her, how broke up he was when she died.
"He..." Will closed his eyes against the painful memory. Eleanor sat up, watching his face closely.
"He what?" she encouraged softly.
Will opened his eyes and fixed them on the ceiling. "He testified against me. Told this sob story about how he was gonna make an honest woman out of Honey Rossiter, take her away from her lousy life in that whorehouse and give her a home and respectability. And the jury fell for it. I did five years for savin' my
friend's
life." Will ran a hand through his hair and sighed. For seconds he stared at the ceiling, then rolled to a sitting position with arms loosely linked around his knees. "Some friend."
Eleanor studied the moles on his back, wanting to reach out and touch, comfort. Like him, she'd had only one friend. But hers had turned out loyal. She could imagine how deep her own hurt would have gone had Glendon betrayed her.
"I'm sorry, Will."
He threw his head aside as if to look back at her, but didn't. Instead his gaze dropped to his loosely linked wrists. "Aw, what the hell. It was a long time ago.
"But it still hurts, I can tell."
He flopped back, ran both hands through his hair and clasped them behind his head.
"How'd we get on a subject like that anyway. Let's talk about something else.
The mood had grown somber, and as they lay side by side Eleanor could think of little except Will's sad, friendless youth. She had always thought herself the loneliest soul on earth, but ... poor Will. Poor, poor Will. Now he had her at least, and the boys. But how long would it last if the war came?
"Is the war really like that, Will ... like they showed in the movies?"
"I guess so.
"You think we're gonna be in it, don't you?"
"I don't know. But if not, why is the President drafting men for the military?"
"If we were, would you have to go?"
"If I got drafted, yes."
Her mouth formed an
oh
, but the word never made it past her lips. The possibility pressed upon her, bringing with it a startling dread. Startling because she hadn't guessed she'd feel so possessive about this man once he was her husband. The fact that he was made a tremendous difference. The black and white pictures from the newsreel flashed through her memory, followed by the colored ones of the War between the States. What an awful thing, war. She supposed, in the days when Grandpa had been alive, they would have prayed that
America
stay out of it. Instead, she closed her eyes and forced the grim pictures aside to make way for those of the beautiful ladies in their enormous silk skirts, and the men in their top hats, and Hopalong waving his white hat ... and Donald Wade in Will's black one ... and eventually when she rode the thin line between sleep and wakefulness, Will himself riding Topper, waving his hat at her from the end of the driveway...
Minutes later, Will turned to say, Let's not worry about it until the time comes. But he found she had fallen asleep, flat on her back, lips parted, hands crossed demurely beneath her breasts. He watched her breathe, a strand of hair on her shoulder catching the light with each beat. His gaze drifted down to her stomach, back up to her breasts, soft and unsculptured beneath her nightgown. He thought about how good it would feel to roll her onto her side, curl up behind her with his arms where hers were now and fall asleep with his face against her back. But what would she think if she awakened and found him that way? He would have to be on guard, even asleep.
His eyes wandered once more to her stomach.
It moved!
The quilts shifted as if a sleeping cat had changed positions underneath. But she slept soundly, as still as a mummy. The baby? Babies moved ...
that much?
Cautiously, he braced up on one elbow until he sat over her, studying the movements at close range. Boy or girl? It shifted again and he smiled. Whatever it was, it was rambunctious; he couldn't believe all that commotion didn't wake her up. He resisted the urge to turn the quilts back for a better look, the even greater one to rest a hand on her and feel what he was watching. Either—of course—was out of the question.
He lay back down to worry that he'd agreed to deliver that baby. God, what had he been thinking? He'd kill it for sure with his big, clumsy hands.
Don't think about it, Will.
He closed his eyes and concentrated instead on the goodnight kisses of Donald Wade and Baby Thomas. He recalled their childish voices wishing him goodnight, especially Thomas—"'Night, Wiw..." He tried to wipe his mind clean of all thought so sleep would come. But the light shone through his eyelids, urging them open once again.
Eleanor flipped onto her side, facing him. He studied her eyelashes lying like fans against her cheeks, the palm of her left hand resting near his chin with the friendship ring peeking through her relaxed fingers. He let his eyes roam over the button placket of her nightgown, the quilt that had slipped down to her waist, the white cloth covering her breasts. He reached out carefully—very carefully—and took the fabric of her sleeve in his fingers, rubbing it as a greedy man rubs two coins together. Then he withdrew his hand, flipped over in the opposite direction and tried to forget the light was on.
Chapter 11
I
n the morning Eleanor opened her eyes to the back of Will Parker's head. His hair was flattened into a pinwheel, giving a clear view of his white skull underneath. She smiled. The intimacies of marriage. She watched each breath lift his shoulder blades, studied his back with its distinctive triangle of moles, the hindside of one ear, the pattern of the hairline at his nape, the ridges of his vertebrae disappearing beneath the covers just above his waist. His skin was so much darker than Glendon's, so much barer; Glendon always slept in an undershirt. Will's skin looked seasoned, whereas Glendon's had been doughy.
The object of her study snuffled and rolled onto his back. His eyeballs moved behind closed lids, but he slept on, his face exposed to the sun. It turned him all gold and brown and put glints of color in his pale hair like those in a finch's wing. His beard grew fast, much faster than Glendon's, and there was more hair on his arms and chest. Studying it gave her an unexpected jolt of reaction, down low.
She slammed her eyes closed only to realize that he smelled different from Glendon. No smell she could name, only the distinctive one given him by Nature—warm male hide and hair and breath—as different from Glendon's as that of an apple from an orange. Her eyes opened stealthily, halfway, as if such caution would prevent him from waking. Through nearly closed eyelids she admired him, letting the sunlight shatter on her lash tips and diffuse over his image as if he were sprinkled with sequins. A handsome, well-built man. The whores in
La Grange
probably fought over him.
Again the queer radiant disturbance intensified low in her belly as she lay with her knees only inches from his hip, his unfamiliar man-smell permeating her bedclothes, his warmth and bulk taking up half the sleeping space. It was a shock to find herself susceptible to fleshly thoughts when she'd thought pregnancy made her immune.
Another disturbing consideration struck. Suppose he had studied her as intimately as she now studied him. She tried to recall falling asleep but couldn't. They'd been talking—that was the last she remembered. Had she been lying on her back? Facing him? She glanced at the table; the lantern still hissed. He had left it on, could have lain awake for hours after she'd dropped off, taking an up-close tally of her shortcomings. Studying his becoming face, she became all too aware of how she suffered by comparison. Her hair was dirt brown, plain, her eyelashes thin and stubby, her fingers wide-knuckled, her stomach popping, her breasts mammoth. Sometimes she snored. Had she snored last night while he watched and listened?
She rolled toward her edge of the bed, thinking, just forget he's back there and go about dressing as if it were any other day.
At her first movement Will came awake as if she'd set off a firecracker. He glanced at her back, the alarm clock, then sat up and reached for his pants, all in one motion.
They dressed facing opposite walls, and only when the final buttons were closed did they peer over their shoulders at each other.
"Mornin'," she offered self-consciously.
"Mornin'."
"Sleep okay?"
"Fine. Did I crowd you?"
"Not that I remember. Did I crowd you?"
"No."
"You always wake up that quick?"
"It's nearly eight. Herbert's gonna bust." He sat down on the edge of the bed and yanked his boots on. A moment later he was stalking out the door, stuffing in his shirttails.
When he was gone, she dropped onto the bed and sighed with relief. They'd done it! Gone to bed, slept together, gotten up and dressed without once making physical contact, and without him seeing her ugly, bloated body.
She sat moments longer staring despondently at the mopboard.
Well, that's what you wanted, wasn't it?
Yes!
Then why are you sitting here moping?
I'm not moping!
Oh?
Well, I'm not!
But you're thinking about when the judge ordered him to kiss you.
Well, what's wrong with that?
Nothing. Nothing at all.
Leave me alone.
Silence. For minutes and minutes only obedient silence hummed inside her head.
If you wanted him to kiss you goodnight, you should've just leaned over and done it yourself.
I didn't want him to kiss me goodnight.
Oh, sorry. I thought that's why you were moping.
I wasn't moping.
But she was, and she knew it.
* * *
At midmorning that day, with breakfast eaten and his routine chores done, Will returned to the house to find the veiled hat, hive tool and smoker on the back-porch steps. He grinned. So ... no more egg grenades. Going inside to thank her, he almost regretted the loss.
The house was empty, on the table, a note:
Gone to pick pecans with the boys.
He took the stub of a pencil, scrawled across the bottom, "Thanks for the wedding gift!" and hit for the mint patch.
Their first twenty-four hours as husband and wife seemed to set the tone for the days that followed. They lived together amicably if not intimately, helping one another in small ways, adapting, sharing a mutual enjoyment of the children and their uncomplicated family life. From the first they accommodated each other—as with the beekeeping gear—so there were no more bursts of anger. Life was peaceful.
Though the sudden appearance of the hive tool, hat and smoker was never mentioned between them, it signaled the true beginning of Will's work with the bees, He sensed that Eleanor would rather not know when he was out in the orchard, so he kept the equipment in an outbuilding when it was not in use, and retrieved it without telling her. Only when he returned to the house with the honeycomb frames did she know he'd been among the bees.
He learned to respect them. There was a calm about the orchard that seeped into him each time he passed there, a serenity not only among the insects, but within himself for the necessity of having to move slowly while among them. But as slowly as he moved, it was inevitable that he should eventually get stung. The first time it happened he jumped, swatted and yowled, "Ouch!" For his efforts he received three additional stings. He learned, in time, not to jump and most certainly not to swat, forcing the stinger farther into his skin. But more importantly, he learned to recognize the variations in the sounds of the bees—from the squeaky piping of the contented workers as they moved about their business on humming gauze wings to the altogether different "quacking" occasionally set up by a single provoked bee, warning him to anticipate the sting and be ready to fend it off. He came to recognize the feel of bee feet digging into his body hair for a good grip, and to pluck the insect away gently before the grip became a sting. He learned that bees are soothed by the sound of human whistling, that their least favorite color is red and their most favorite, blue.