Dorothy Garlock (20 page)

“Hello, Owen. I didn’t know you were here. Did you come courtin’ me and Lily?”

“Hello, Hettie. I came to talk to Esther.”

Hettie’s face turn sulky. “Esther hit me and said I ain’t got the sense of a pissant. Lily said I did too have sense and to pay Esther no mind. Lily’s smart, ain’t she, Owen?”

“Yes, she’s smart and so are you. Didn’t you grow the biggest pumpkin in the county last fall?”

The smiles returned. “Mrs. McCalister said mine was the biggest brought to the store. Is the slut still here?” Hettie asked, her mind jumping to another subject lightning fast.

“Don’t talk about Mrs. Fairfax like that, Hettie,” he said firmly.

“Ain’t she a slut? Esther said she was. Is a slut a whore, Owen? Sometimes she says slut; sometimes she says whore.” Hettie sighed as if the problem was too weighty for her to understand.

“She isn’t like that. She’s a nice woman. Why don’t you call her Mrs. Fairfax or Ana?”

“Esther’s awful mad. She says we can’t come over while that slut’s there. She said Soren’s there loafin’ and eatin’ everything in sight, and he’d get Lily on her back if he could. Would he do that, Owen?”

“No, he wouldn’t. He’s fond of Lily, and of you too.”

“I like Soren. He makes me laugh. But Esther said he’d pull up my skirt and pull down my drawers if I come over.”

Owen ground his teeth in frustration. He heard voices in the rooms above.

“Shut up that jawin’,” Jens bellowed. “A man can’t sleep in his own house!”

Lily came back down the stairs. “She won’t come down. She said that she don’t want to see you again until you come to your senses. Then she began to rant and rave about Mrs. Fairfax. That’s when Grandpa yelled.”

Owen’s irritation blossomed into anger. “Gawdamighty! Tell her I’ll be back tomorrow night and she’d better be down here.”

“She’ll not pay us no mind,” Lily said.

“Tell her anyway,” he said gruffly. “And tell her I said she was not to come back over to the farm until I talk to her.” Owen swore softly as he turned to leave.

“Are you mad?” Hettie’s distressed voice turned into a wail. She grabbed his arm. “Don’t be mad at me ’n’ Lily.”

“I’m not mad at you and Lily,” he said gently and patted her hand. “I’m angry because Esther is being stubborn. It has nothing to do with you and Lily. Try and be good and stay out of her way until she cools off.”

“I will, Owen. I try to be good.”

“I know you do. Mind Lily, and she’ll keep you out of trouble.”

“I wish we could live with you—”

“Mama, Owen’s got to go.”

“Yes, I’ve got to get back. I’ll be back over tomorrow night.”

Owen rode across the pasture toward home. The horse knew the way even on the darkest night, but tonight there was a half moon. Owen absently watched the clouds scud across it and tried to combat the hot waves of frustration that kept surging over him.

Suddenly he thought that if this was difficult for him, what must it be like for Ana. She had come to this strange, unfriendly place, buried her stepdaughter, taken over the care of an infant, been the brunt of Esther’s hostility and witnessed her bizarre behavior. Now she must decide if she should join her life to his and spend the rest of her life here.

He asked himself in slight bewilderment how things had ever come down to this. The image of Ana’s face rose before him. Instead of being almost a stranger who had touched the fringe of his life, she had suddenly become the most important person in it and he was determined not to lose her.

*   *   *

Ana fried smoked side-pork and made a kettle of hot mush with raisins for breakfast. Owen was in the kitchen when she got there at first light, grinding coffee beans at the wall grinder. He said good-morning but nothing more. After he had stoked up the fire and carried in a bucket of fresh water, he went out to do chores. She wondered if the man had slept. She had been so tired the night before that she was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, and she hadn’t heard him come in.

Soren, friendly as a puppy, kept the conversation rolling during the meal. Owen was quiet, and Ana thought it could be because of something that had happened when he went to the Knutson farm. She half expected to see Esther come in the door and loom over them like a black shadow. Uncle Gus announced that he was going to plant the garden, and Ana wondered about his willingness to do it. Gardening was usually women’s work, but he seemed to be taking an unusual interest as if he hadn’t had free rein before. Esther again? Ana wondered.

Owen lingered at the door after his cousin and uncle had left.

“Uncle Gus will be close by if you need anything.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“The Wilson boys will be helping out for a few days. They’ll be here for dinner and supper. I could come in early and fix it—” He left his words hanging.

“I’ll have a meal ready at noon.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Of course, I don’t mind.” Their eyes caught and held. Both of them were thinking that she was still a guest here and under no obligation to cook for his work crew. Both were also aware that things would have to be settled between them soon. “I don’t mind,” she repeated and somehow summoned a conventional smile to her lips.

“Thank you.” His voice had a hoarseness she hadn’t heard before.

After he went out, Ana went to the door to watch him cross the yard. There was power in his every movement. Even as he walked to the barn with his slight limp, it was purposeful. He appeared to be a gentle man, tender and strong—yet he had not cherished his wife. The thought provoked the doubt that was always in the back of her mind.

Was it his raw physical strength that had attracted Harriet to him? The more Ana got to know him the more difficult it was for her to picture him and Harriet in the relationship Harriet had described.

Ana wrapped her hands in her apron and stepped out onto the porch to look at the morning. The sky was blue and cloudless, the grass green. White and pink blossoms were sprouting on the fruit trees. In the sky a sparrow chased a blackbird, and in a crosspiece joint of the windmill a robin with a beak full of dried grass was building a nest. The air here smelled pure and clean, unlike the smoky air that hung over Dubuque. She filled her lungs with it and let it out slowly.

This morning she looked around, seeing everything through different eyes. If she lived here, she would prune out about half of the wild rose bushes that grew in profusion along the sides of the lane, so that there would be more blossoms. She would plant morning glories at the end of the porch, fill that old hollow stump with rich black soil and plant it full of tulip bulbs.

Water could be piped into the house and an iron handpump put on the dry sink. She would open up all the rooms, and they would all be lived in. She would install a fancy heater in the parlor where they could sit on long winter evenings. A carpet runner in the hall, curtains at the kitchen windows, a fringed scarf on the library table and a wall clock that struck the hour would do wonders toward making this house a warmer, more welcoming place.

Lost in her daydream, Ana imagined sitting in a porch swing after her work was done. On a warm afternoon she would go to the orchard and pick the biggest, reddest apple she could find, sit under the tree, read or compose a poem. When her husband would come looking for her, she would run into his arms, and he would lift her and whirl her around before he passionately kissed her lips.

She halted her daydreams and scolded herself. “Oh, Ana, you are such a dreamer. You’re twenty-six years old, for heaven’s sake. Love and romance are for the young.” Saying the words aloud made her see the bleakness of her future. She swallowed the lump that rose in her throat on a surge of self-pity, straightened her spine, and pushed the pleasant daydreams to the back of her mind.

The morning passed swiftly. Ana bathed Harry in the washdish, oiled his little body, and settled him in the middle of the bed. He was such a good baby. Some of the red was leaving his face, and his eyes, blue as the sky, were staying open for longer periods of time.

With the noon meal well started, she began her search for the cradle. The downstairs was laid out with two rooms on one side with a connecting door and doors leading into the central hall. On the other side was the parlor and the long kitchen-dining area.

Ana opened the door directly across the hall from the kitchen and looked into the room that connected with hers. This was Owen’s room. It smelled of tobacco, leather and shoe polish. The furniture was polished oak and as beautifully made as the walnut set in the room upstairs. There was a bureau, a washstand, a bedside table, a wardrobe against one wall, a handsome combination bookcase and writing desk against another. Behind the glass door on one side of the desk were six shelves filled with books. On the stand beside the neatly made bed was the book she had seen at the store in White Oak—
Common Sense Medical Advisor.
Had he bought the book for Harriet or had he bought it after she left the store?

Ana couldn’t bring herself to go more than a few steps into the room. One glance told her the cradle wasn’t there. She backed out into the hallway and closed the door, deciding that there was a lot more to Owen Jamison than she had at first believed. With her lower lip caught firmly between her teeth and a puzzled frown puckering her forehead, she went upstairs.

The cradle was not in the room she had used or in the one where Harriet had died. Neither was it in a small room with two bunks nailed to the wall. The remaining room was filled with pieces of broken furniture. While searching through the discards, Ana lifted an old moth-eaten blanket in the corner of the storage room and discovered the cradle. Ana managed to get it to the top of the steps and set it down, wondering how in the world Esther had been able to carry it up the stairs. Winded from the exertion, she decided to leave it until Owen came in for dinner.

While the meal was simmering on the stove, she sat down at the table with a pencil and tablet. She had already decided that she didn’t have any choice but to stay here if she were to keep her promise to raise Harriet’s son. But that didn’t mean she would go blindly into marriage with Owen Jamison. She moistened the pencil lead in her mouth and began to write, listing the conditions he would have to agree to before she would consign her future to him and his son.

*   *   *

Ana sliced the pork Uncle Gus had brought in from the smoke house, floured it, pounded it with the back side of a heavy butcher knife, and cooked it in rich brown gravy flavored with sage. Potatoes, sauerkraut and cornbread rounded out the meal along with a cobbler pie she made from a can of the peaches Owen had bought at the store. She seasoned the pie with butter and cinnamon, dampened the top crust with cream and sprinkled it with sugar to make a golden, sugary crust. Then she set a pitcher of milk on the table with a crock of butter and a bowl of thick blackberry jam she had found in the pantry.

The men came in from the fields at high noon. Ana heard Soren’s shouts of laughter as he teased the Wilson boys and splashed one of them with a dipper of water. The horseplay between Soren and the boys went on during the time they were washing up. When they stepped into the kitchen, the boys bashfully hung their heads after nodding a greeting to Ana.

The boys, Soren, and Gus were already in the kitchen when Owen came in. His eyes scanned the cloth-covered table laden with a tempting meal, then sought Ana’s face. As far as he could tell, she wasn’t even aware he was there. She was smiling at Soren and urging them to sit down and eat while it was hot. As Owen took his place at the head of the table, Ana slipped into the chair nearest the stove so that she could refill the bowls and coffee cups.

“Are you sure you won’t marry me, darlin’?” Soren’s smile spread charm all over his handsome face. He looked across the table at Ana as he continued to heap the food on his plate.

“I’ve given it some thought,” Ana retorted seriously. “But I decided that there’s more to life than being chained to a cookstove twenty-four hours a day, and that’s what it would take to keep you filled up.”

“Woe! Oh, woe is me!” Soren groaned dramatically. “Pa, tell her what a fine chap I am.”

Owen’s serious eyes studied both Ana and Soren covertly as he made a big to-do about filling his plate. Uncle Gus read the expression on Owen’s face. It was hard for the serious, hard-working man to understand how Soren could tease a pretty woman such as Ana, and how she could engage in light-hearted banter with him. Why shouldn’t Owen be puzzled? Unnecessary talk, much less tomfoolery, had not been tolerated in this house while he was growing up.

“I’ll have the root crops in today—potatoes, carrots, turnips and rutabagas,” Uncle Gus said, thinking it time to put Owen at ease. He helped himself to a square of cornbread, split it, and covered it with gravy.

“I have a hill of rhubarb in Dubuque. It’s probably ready to cut by now,” Ana said, passing the bowl of potatoes to one of the Wilson boys.

“We have more here than we ever use.”

“I usually make a few jars of rhubarb-and-wild strawberry jam. During the long winter months it’s nice to have a taste of spring.”

“We got wild strawberries aplenty too. But it takes a heap a pickin’ to get enough.”

When the bowls and platters were empty, Ana removed them and set the cobbler on the table. The pie was golden brown, and juice bubbled in the slits she had cut in the crust. She set a pitcher of rich cream beside it, conscious of Owen’s eyes on her face. She was careful not to look at him. Was he disapproving of her extravagance? The cream could be churned into butter and sold at the store.

The Wilson boys ate heartily with their heads down and their eyes on their plates. One of them didn’t speak at all during the meal. The other only asked for the potatoes, then meat. Both ate large helpings of the cobbler, then thanked Ana for the meal and hurried out.

“You’ve got those boys buffaloed, Ana,” Soren said, his mouth looking as if it would never smile again.

“What do you mean?”

“They talked a blue streak on the way in from the field. They come in here and you scare the talk right out of them. What’s their pa going to think when they get home?” His eyes began to sparkle and his mouth twitched in a grin he couldn’t hold back.