Mr. Rainwater arrived at the appointed time. The Dunnes had gone to the lending library, which was a converted panel truck that came to Gilead only one afternoon every two weeks. Margaret was ironing in the kitchen while keeping an eye on Solly. Mr. Hastings was still out of town.
Except for the grandfather clock in the formal parlor softly chiming the hour of four o’clock, the house was hushed when Ella unlatched the front screened door for him. They exchanged pleasantries, then she led him upstairs. Their footfalls echoed hollowly on the newly polished floor of the hall.
He paused in the open doorway of the bedroom and looked it over. He took in every detail, including the sprig of honeysuckle that Margaret had left in a vase of water on the bureau. Then he turned to Ella. “You were right to hold to your standards, Mrs. Barron. The room is much nicer now. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I realize I asked a lot of you to make it ready, but I wanted to move in sooner rather than later.”
She merely nodded, afraid that if she said something in reference to the time frame, it would come out sounding wrong.
He passed her a white envelope with his name printed on it in black ink. “The first week’s rent. Let me know what I owe Brother Calvin.”
Then he carried two canvas suitcases into the room and gently closed the door.
“Northeast Texas. About halfway between Dallas and Texarkana.”
Throughout the evening meal, the Dunnes had peppered Mr. Rainwater with questions. Ella was stacking their empty dinner plates on a tray when Miss Violet inquired where he was from.
Miss Pearl, who had been gazing dreamily across the table at him, said, “That’s good cotton-growing country up there.”
“He knows that, Sister,” Violet said. “He’s a cotton broker, after all.”
“I realize that,” Pearl returned with asperity. “I’m just remarking.”
To prevent a sibling quarrel, Ella tactfully intervened. “Should I bring out cream with the berry cobbler, Miss Pearl?”
“Oh, cream, yes, please. Don’t you think cobbler is best served with cream, Mr. Rainwater?”
“I certainly do.” He glanced up at Ella, the corners of his lips twitching to contain a smile. “Cream for me, too, please.”
“Coffee?”
“Please.”
She hefted the tray.
Mr. Rainwater stood up. “Can I help you with that?”
“No.”
The word came out much more emphatically than Ella had intended, and everyone in the room, even Ella herself, was taken aback by her tone. The sisters were gaping not only at her but also at the new boarder. Apparently they were as surprised as Ella by his unprecedented offer to help.
To hide her embarrassment, she ducked her head and murmured, “No, thank you, Mr. Rainwater,” then hastily headed for the kitchen.
As she left the room, she overheard Miss Violet delicately clear her throat before inquiring, “What about your family, Mr. Rainwater?”
“My mother and father are both deceased, and I’m an only child.”
“Oh, that’s unfortunate,” Pearl said. “Violet and I have only each other. The rest of our family has died out.”
The kitchen door swung shut, preventing Ella from hearing Mr. Rainwater’s comment on that.
“Them ol’ ladies is goin’ drive that man plumb crazy with all them questions about hisself,” Margaret said, shaking her head.
“I heard you asking him some questions earlier.”
“I’s just being polite,” she grumbled. When she glanced across at Ella, she did a double take. “You all right?”
“All right? Of course. Why?”
“Your cheeks look hot. I hope you ain’t coming down with that bad summer fever. It’s keeping some folks prostrate for weeks.”
“I don’t have a fever. Have you spooned up the cobbler yet?”
“Ain’t I always got dessert ready before I start washing up?” The maid used her shoulder to point out the dishes of cobbler on the counter, waiting to be placed on a serving tray. “What about them shutters on the front windows?”
“What about them?”
“I tol’ you. Brother Calvin offered to paint them.”
Ella added the coffee service to the tray. “I can’t afford to have them painted right now.”
“They look shabby.”
“I know they need painting, Margaret, but—”
“Brother Calvin said he’d do it for cheap. It was nice of him to bring us those dewberries. Picked ’em hisself.”
Ella sighed. “Have him come around and talk to me about the shutters. We’ll see.” She checked Solly’s dinner plate. He had eaten enough to sustain him. “Solly can have a serving of cobbler now,” she told Margaret.
The maid smiled down at the boy as she removed her hands from the sink and shook dishwater off them. “I’ll feed it to that baby myself.”
Ella carried the tray to the door, put her back to it, and gave it a push.
“David.”
“What?”
“Mr. Rainwater’s first name,” Margaret said. “I figure you wanted to know.”
Ella looked at her with annoyance as she backed through the door. When she turned around to face the dining room, her eyes went directly to Mr. Rainwater, who looked up at her. His gaze held hers for a beat before he directed his attention back to Miss Violet, who was telling him about her and Pearl’s thrilling days as public school teachers.
“It’s so nice to have pleasant conversation with a new acquaintance, isn’t it, Sister?” Violet said.
“It is indeed.” Pearl simpered, patting her lace collar. “I hope you’re with us for a very long time, Mr. Rainwater.”
Ella avoided looking at him and kept her expression impassive as she served the dewberry cobbler and cream.
She was sitting at the kitchen table eating her own meal when he poked his head around the edge of the door. Immediately she came to her feet, blotting her mouth. “Mr. Rainwater. Can I get you something?”
He stepped into the kitchen.
Margaret stopped what she was doing and gave him a wide smile. “Coffee’s still on.”
“No more for me, thank you.”
Solly, sitting across from Ella and tapping his spoon against the edge of the table, didn’t react.
The new boarder nodded down at Ella’s plate. “I wondered when you got to eat.”
“Do you need something?”
“Forgive me for interrupting your dinner. I was just wondering if it’s all right for me to turn on the porch light so I can read out there.”
“Oh, of course. The switch is—”
“I’ve located the switch. But I wanted to ask before I turned it on.”
“Just be sure to turn it off when you come back inside.”
He looked at Solly, who was still rhythmically tapping the spoon, then gave Margaret and Ella a nod and backed out the door.
“Nice of him to ax,” Margaret said. “That Mr. What’s-his-name, the one with the liquor breath? You wouldn’t’ve caught him axing. I hope Mr. Rainwater plans to be with us for a long spell.”
Ella sat down and resumed eating.
After Margaret left for home, Ella put Solly to bed, and he fell asleep quickly. She remained kneeling beside his bed, gazing into his sweet face, listening to his soft breathing. When her knees began to ache, she kissed the air just above his cheek and slipped silently from the room, leaving him peacefully sleeping. Nevertheless, she listened for any signs of him stirring as she sat at the kitchen table, shelling black-eyed peas for tomorrow’s dinner. It was well after ten o’clock when she made her last inspection of the kitchen and turned out the light.
Her neck and shoulders burned with fatigue as she moved down the darkened hallway. The front porch light was off. Mr. Rainwater hadn’t forgotten. But she went to see that he’d also locked the screened door. He hadn’t. She reached for the latch.
“If you hook that, I won’t be able to get back in.”
She jumped at the sound of his voice.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
She pushed open the door and stepped out onto the porch. He was sitting in the darkness in one of the wicker chairs. “I’m the one who’s sorry,” Ella said. “The light was out, so I thought you had come inside. I hate that I disturbed your solitude.”
“You didn’t. I turned out the light because the bugs attracted to it were becoming a nuisance.” He stood up and indicated one of the other chairs. “Join me.”
She hesitated for several moments, then moved along the porch and sat down in one of the other chairs.
“The air feels so good I couldn’t bring myself to go to my room.” He smiled at her. “Even as comfortable as it is.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“Cabbage rose wallpaper and all.”
They lapsed into a silence broken by the night song of cicadas, a barking dog in the distance, and the faint squeak of the wicker as he repositioned himself in the chair. He stretched his long legs far out in front of him, loosely clasped his hands over the book lying in his lap, and leaned his head back, seeming to be perfectly relaxed.
Ella wasn’t sure that such a loose-limbed posture was appropriate when a man and woman, strangers, were alone in the darkness. In fact, she was quite certain it wasn’t. It suggested a familiarity that felt vaguely improper, although the chairs in which they were sitting were several yards apart.
“Where was the food going?”
She looked over at him.
“The food that Margaret was packing up when I came into the kitchen,” he said. “Where did you send it?”
“To the shantytown. It’s on the far east side of town, across the railroad tracks.”
He continued to look at her, his eyebrow arched with interest.
“It started out with just a few hoboes who got off the freight trains to camp by the creek. The law ran them off, but more came, and they kept coming, until finally the sheriff gave up trying to keep them away. For the most part they’re left alone now. The number fluctuates, but I understand a few hundred are over there at any given time. Whole families. So every few days, I send leftovers, stale bread, overripe fruit. Like that.”
“That’s very benevolent of you.”
She lowered her head, smoothed her hands over her skirt. “It’s food I’d have to throw out otherwise.”
“I doubt the people in shantytown mind if an apple is bruised.”
“In exchange for these scraps, I ask them not to come begging here at the house. Word gets around to newcomers and drifters. Don’t go to Barron’s Boarding House for a handout. You won’t get one.”
“Still, you’re charitable.”
She didn’t want him giving her more credit than she deserved. “I don’t take it to those poor people myself, Mr. Rainwater. That would be charitable. I send it by Margaret.”
“Some people, a lot of people, wouldn’t send it at all,” he countered in a quiet voice.
She was about to protest further but changed her mind, feeling it would be better to let the subject drop. Another silence fell between them. She sensed that he was more comfortable with it than she was. To her it seemed to stretch out interminably, to the point that she was about to excuse herself and return indoors when he said, “Have you lived here all your life?”
“In this house. My father built it soon after he and my mother married. Several years later, he added on the rooms that Solly and I now share. Except for that addition, the modernized bathrooms and updated kitchen, it’s just as it was the day I was born.”
“Your parents are dead?”
“Yes.”
“Brothers and sisters?”
“I had twin brothers born three years after me. Both died in infancy.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I can’t really remember them.” She looked off in the direction of the barking dog, which kept her face averted from him. “Mother and Father never talked about them.”
It had been a sorrow that was obviously unbearable to her parents. Neither recovered from it. Overnight, it seemed, her mother had turned into a bitter and cold woman. She no longer smiled, no longer found joy in her healthy daughter, who from then on she kept at arm’s length. Ella’s father, losing his wife’s affection and attention as well as his twin sons, had found his only consolation in whiskey. He’d died of cirrhosis at age forty-five.
Upon his death, her mother had been forced to take in boarders. When she finally succumbed to her sadness—with a great deal of relief, it seemed to Ella—Ella had taken over management of the house. She’d been eighteen. Despite her youth, as prideful as it sounded, she was much better at running the household than her mother had been.
“Murdy told me you’re a widow.”
She turned and looked at Mr. Rainwater sharply, then almost immediately dropped her gaze. “That’s right.”
“Unfortunate for you.”
She nodded.
“You were left with sole responsibility for Solly.”
She raised her head. “He’s not a responsibility, Mr. Rainwater. He’s a child. My child. A gift.”
He retracted his long legs and leaned toward her. “Of course he is. I didn’t mean to imply—”
“I’d better go inside.” She stood up quickly.
He did likewise.
“Please stop doing that.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Stop popping up whenever I stand or enter a room.”
“I—”
“I don’t expect it. That kind of consideration isn’t necessary. I’m your landlady, not your … not a ….” She couldn’t think of what she wasn’t to him, only what she was. And what she was didn’t warrant his vigilant politeness. “You don’t have to stand for me.”
“I was taught to stand up for ladies.”
“I’m sure you were, but—”
“Habits die hard. But I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known it would make you angry.”
“I’m not angry.”
But her sharp tone indicated otherwise. His eyes penetrated the darkness between them, touched hers, and in fact seemed to see straight through them, making her feel ungracious, uncomfortable, and, somehow, vulnerable.
“Good night, Mr. Rainwater.” She turned her back on him and walked to the door, but when she reached for the handle of the screened door, his hand was there first, reaching around her to pull it open. Rather than raise another ruckus about his manners, she went inside. He followed her in, then stood there watching as she went up on tiptoe to latch the door.
“Isn’t that hook placed inconveniently high for you?”
“Yes, it’s very inconvenient.” She hooked the latch, turned to face him. “But it has to be where Solly can’t reach it. He wandered off once and was missing for hours before we found him walking on the railroad tracks.”