A Woman so Bold (4 page)

After Mama died, she came back to the big house to live with us for a time, but when Colleen came to replace her, she retreated once more. At least Elizabeth had been a Southerner. Colleen, with her northern accent and strange cooking, was entirely too foreign.

Chapter 6

An Old Neighbor and a New

In those days, our closest neighbor was Harold Buckley, who lived across our south field. Mr. Buckley was a tenant farmer who sharecropped a portion of our land, and a visit from him generally necessitated a meeting with Daddy. His land was separated from ours by a thin copse of trees, and on occasion he came calling, riding his ancient nag. This was not an event of any particular consequence, but on one morning that March, he appeared as I was shelling peas on the front porch and brought tidings that proved to be of interest to our solitude.

“Morning!” I called, waving my hand in greeting.

He leaped nimbly out of the saddle, considering he was well into his sixties and wearing coveralls to boot, and threw the reins over a hitching post before removing his battered hat and nodding to me. In his dark face were etched the deep grooves of hard work and years in the sun. Ezra had been playing with his wooden blocks on the porch floor, but at the sight of Mr. Buckley’s dour countenance, he ran and hid his head in my apron.

“Don’t be such a scared little rabbit,” I whispered to him.

“How ah you this aftuhnoon, Miss Andrews?” Mr Buckley spoke with a slow, elegant drawl, absent of r’s. His speech was regional to coastal Georgia and the Carolinas, rather than backwoods Florida. I once overheard Daddy say that he was born in a big city in one of those states, Charleston maybe, or Savannah, but had been sold further south as a young child.

Whatever his history, he had lived in Willowbend longer than Daddy had been alive. My details were fuzzy on the matter, but I far preferred the sound of his lulling speech to the local “Cracker accent” as Colleen called it, which seemed askew somehow, with emphasis on r’s, crisp consonants, and long, distorted vowels.

“Just fine, sir, and you?”

“Your Pah arown?”

“No sir. He’s in town, at the cotton gin.”

“Your stepmothuh then?”

“Colleen is . . . feeling poorly. Might I help?”

His eyes had fixed on Ezra, who was cowering against my skirt, and he did not reply.

“Not a very frenly mite, is he?” he asked.

“Might I help?” I repeated.

“Well, the thang is, I saw that scamp brothuh of yours . . . Eh-frame?”

“Eee-frumm,” I enunciated.

“Yessum. Anyhow, ah caught ‘im in mah corn patch yestiddy, makin’ off with mah plants, and he run fore I could get mah hands on ‘im to bring up to ya Pah.”

I set down my basin of peas and stood up, brushing Ezra gently to the side. He cowered behind me. “I’ll see to this immediately,” I said with gravity. I cupped my hands to my mouth and shouted, “EPHRAIM! EPHRAIM ANDREWS!”

Some minutes later, Ephraim’s towhead and freckles appeared around the corner of the house. His squinty blue eyes, so like Daddy’s, glinted with mischief, but he blanched when he saw the old man in coveralls.

“Get you right here!” I demanded. He walked toward me slowly. “Mr. Buckley says he caught you trespassing and
stealing
in his cornfield yesterday, and you ran off. What were you doing there?”

“Not stealin’, no ma’am. I was pickin’ dandelion clocks.”

“You weren’t stealing ears of corn to eat on the sly?”

Ezra glanced between me and Mr. Buckley, then back again, weighing his chances.

“No’m. I was pickin’ dandelion clocks.”

“I see. Don’t we have dandelions for you to pick?”

“Yes, but not like his among the furrows of the picked field. He has ever so many!”

I sighed, wondering if Mr. Buckley had truly ridden down to our house over such a matter. He must be unseasonably bored, but here he was, expecting me to punish my brother, when that was my father’s business.

“Going on another person’s land without permission is trespassing,” I explained.

“Mr. Buckley’s land ain’t his, it’s
ours
.”

“He rents the land from us and . . .” I sighed, struggling with how to explain the matter of sharecropping to a six-year-old. “He had every right to give you a backside full of buckshot,” I said finally.

Mr. Buckley mmphed at this. I couldn’t decipher if the sound were one of discomfort or approval.

“It won’t happen again,” I continued. “Understood?”

Ephraim seemed to be fighting some inner demon; his small mouth tightened into a grimace, and he squirmed.

“Yes’m,” he said finally.

“Now apologize.”

“No! I ain’t apologizing to that . . .” I clapped my hand over Ephraim’s mouth to prevent him going further and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Buckley. Won’t happen again.”

Harold Buckley did not look at all satisfied with this agreement, but he settled for discussing the weather with me.

“Seems ah’m to have no end of unrest,” he drawled.

“How is that?” I asked politely.

“I now have a naybuh buhind me as well as bufoh. The ole Macready place been let, let or bought.”

I looked up, genuinely engaged. “Let? The Macready estate? It’s been vacant since I was a child.”

The Macready estate was in possession of a grand old manse that had not been updated since before the war. The outbuildings had fallen down, and its fields had gone to seed. As children, my brother and Henry Miller had often scared me with stories that it was haunted by a woman in a white shift, a woman who was murdered and buried in the middle of the cotton field. The story had terrified me as a child, but I thought it was a beautiful place.

“That’s whut ah said, let or bought. Some fellah from Alabama.”

“Have you met him? What sort of person is he?”

“Ah couldn’t tell ya, Miss Andrews. Ah know he’s unmarried with no chillun, so that’s a boon. And now ah best be goin’. See yah keep yon scamp outta mah field.”

Shooting Ephraim one last look of dislike, he doffed his hat and mounted his mule, swinging lazily back onto the drive. Ephraim wheeled on me like a stung cat.

“You’re not my mama!” he shouted, aiming a kick which was lost in the folds of my voluminous skirt. I took hold of his sleeve and steered him toward the porch. “I just saved you a licking from Daddy you wouldn’t forget. Go wash for dinner, or I’ll call your mama out here!”

He took off running but not before throwing me a dark look over his shoulder and slamming the screen door.

“Goblin spawn,” I muttered, spinning around in alarm as Colleen spoke from just inside the house.

“Is the old man gone?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good.”

She stepped out onto the porch. She wore a faded red calico wrapper over her nightgown, and half of her fair hair was caught up in a messy bun, the rest hanging in tendrils around her shoulders. There were purple half-moons beneath her eyes.

“I don’t see what the trouble is with a little boy taking a few dandelions. I would not wish to spank him over so small a thing. If a man can’t spare a few weeds for a child, then so much for Southern hospitality.”

As usual, where local matters were concerned, I took the opposing side.

“I think Mr. Buckley implied Ephraim took corn.”

“And what if he did?”

“If it
were
dandelions, maybe he uses them for medicine. Mama used to when times were hard. She even put them in stew sometimes. They’re quite good, rather like collards.”

Colleen made a mouth that signified she did not relish serving dandelions, even in the worst of circumstances. I ignored her.

“It’s all about boundaries,” I tried to explain. “If a child with sticky fingers goes into his corn crop when it’s ripe, well, that’s Mr Buckley’s loss. His fields are smaller than ours, and he owes us the percentage on everything grown as it is. In his mind, it’s criminal to steal from him, especially when we make profit off his yields.”

Colleen furrowed her brows. She was from Concord, and her father was a solicitor. Farm life confused and annoyed her, and I decided not to argue the subject further. I went back to shelling peas. When I was finished, Colleen put them on to boil for supper, and we sat down to the noon meal: greens with pot liquor and cornbread. Although in her time with us she’d been induced to try trout, gator, wild venison, and even squirrel, Colleen had never learned to like the taste or smell of collards. Odious, she called them, and she relegated herself to cornbread with honey and the cold hominy from breakfast.

Afterward, I began a game of tag with Ezra as Colleen seated herself in the rocker with her customary cup of ginger tea. Ezra’s idea of tag consisted of slapping whatever part of my body was closest to him and then scampering away, shrieking delightedly as I chased him. After half an hour of this, I was in a grand state of dishabille, my face flushed, my hair slipping out of its bun and falling all around me. Our hound dog, Ebenezer, frolicked at my heels, barking as happily as a puppy.

I was wearing a white cotton tea dress that Colleen had passed on to me when she was pregnant with the twins. It had been beautiful once, with a classic shape, a pin-tucked bodice, and eyelet lace on the three-quarter-length sleeves and hem. Over the many years she wore it for company calls, it had collected various tea and coffee stains and a tear on the back of the collar, but it retained such a simple elegance that it became my favorite dress. When she was thin again, Colleen was kind enough to let me keep it. I held the skirt up around my knees so I could run after Ezra.

“Goodness, another rider!” wailed Colleen, hearing hoof beats. “Are we to have no end of company today?”

I assumed it was Daddy returning from his errand in town and continued to chase Ezra. When I caught him, I tossed him into the air until he shrieked with laughter. When the rider turned up the drive, Colleen cried for me to stop. I put Ezra down, pushing my hair out of my eyes so I could see.

The man riding up the drive this time was no one I recognized, and I knew everyone in Willowbend. He was young, and he rode a dapple-gray mare with hints of ginger in her mane and tail. The breathtaking animal had all the aloof grace of a well-bred aristocrat, her tail and ears held high. A slim hunting dog trotted obediently at her heels. The spectacle was such a contrast to the former one of Mr. Buckley and his plodding, drop-eared nag that I stood for a moment as one paralyzed. Once he had dismounted, the rider spoke to the mare with obvious affection, patting her neck and clucking to her until she nickered at him. His canine companion loped about the yard, sniffing unseen trails, then jumped to attention and ran to his side when he called, “Pharaoh, come!”

“It’s not anyone we know,” I murmured, for Colleen’s benefit, mounting the front steps. Her eyes were weak. “It’s a gentleman by the looks of him.”

“Goodness!” she hissed, “and I look like common white trash! Landra, invite him in and make my apologies while I change.”

She snatched up Ezra, who had run to her, but he struggled, wailing, so she put him down and rushed inside. The screen door snapped shut behind her on its tight spring as I gathered Ezra into my arms. I stared after her, aghast that she had left me to meet a strange man without an introduction. Finally, I drew myself up and turned to face him, remaining on the porch.

Having fastened the mare to the hitching post, the man was approaching. I saw that he wore a gray slouch hat, a khaki frock coat with a white shirt beneath it, and brown, brushed cotton trousers tucked into worn, leather riding boots. He wore no tie, cravat, or waistcoat. I did not think he was wealthy, but he was dressed so well, at least in comparison to my father’s usual habiliment of denim bib overalls or chinos and striped cotton shirt, that I was taken aback.

He paused several feet before the front steps and removed his hat.

“Good afternoon, ma’am” he said. He held a riding crop in his free hand, but from the look of his horse, I doubted he ever used it.

I kept my chin up, conscious of my appearance, but unwilling to acknowledge it by smoothing my hair. “Hello.”

“My name is William Cavendish. I’ve just inherited an old estate nearby and wanted to make a friendly call.”

“Mr. Buckley told us of your arrival just today.”

A brief silence elapsed. He crouched on his heels and stroked his hound as it came to him. Ebenezer was beside me in an instant with his hackles raised, and I quieted him with a word.

I slowly became more and more conscious of my bedraggled hair and shabby dress, and Ezra grew heavy on my hip. I set him down, but he refused to come forward, hiding himself in the folds of my skirt. Resisting the urge to smooth my tumbled hair, my hand went instead to my mouth, where Daddy had hit me with the lash. It had healed, but a scar was left, a thin line that split my top lip on the right side. I rarely thought of it, but when I did, I was self-conscious of it.

All of this passed in a matter of moments, but each one seemed an aeon thanks to my discomfort. Mr. Cavendish smiled at Ezra.

“Your little boy is bonny. It’s comely in a child, to be shy of strangers.”

“This is Ezra, my brother.”

He looked confused. “You are
Mrs.
Andrews, are you not?”

“I’m Miss Andrews. Mrs. Andrews is my stepmother. You might have seen her on the porch as you approached.”

“Begging your pardon. Did I frighten her away, arriving so unexpectedly?”

“You didn’t
frighten
her. She went inside to make herself presentable. We weren’t expecting company, you see.”

“Even on a Saturday afternoon?”

“We live too far out for it to matter.”

“I see.”

He rose, his boots creaking, and made as if to swing the crop, pivoting on his heel. He turned back to me and said, “Begging your pardon, but I don’t believe I caught your first name.”

“My name is Landra,” I said, managing not to grimace, for I hated my Christian name. No matter how often I said it, it felt odd and awkward in my mouth. At church, the girls who didn’t like me said it was ugly. I never signified their remarks with a reply, but I knew they spoke the truth. My mother had pronounced my name with a soft
a
in her drawling Georgia accent, much as one says the word
lawn.
Daddy, in his smugness that I had been named after his father, pronounced it with a short
a
, like the word
land
. Neither pronunciation improved it, but I generally went with my mother’s; there was a hint of refinement in it.