Beauty From Ashes (11 page)

chin, and smiled still more. “Are you really looking at me?”

“Aye.”

“Then why aren’t you smiling? Since when have we been able to look at each other without laughing, even when something might be terribly wrong or irritating? Since when, Papa?”

A mere hint of the familiar, slightly devilish grin flicked at the corners of his nearly toothless mouth. He looked almost like her papa again. This was her papa. Nothing must ever happen that could tarnish the singular humor that had always rescued them both. She and Papa were together— together in a room all by themselves—and any second now, one of them would find a way to laugh at the other, with the other.

“Which one of us is going to be the first to think of something funny to say?”

“You, Annie,” he whispered hoarsely.

“I don’t know how funny this is, but I can ask you a question. A silly question, really. One that came to me in the middle of that stormy night last week. I was just lying there in my Lawrence bed, thinking about our great, noble, giggly marches up and down the long Cannon’s Point porch, and

suddenly I yearned to know if ever, since 135 the beginning of time, any other father and daughter marched as we did, even in the face of all those scoldings from Mama and James Hamilton. Have you ever wondered that? Every time there’s a storm, do you think about us in the old days, Papa? Can you sometimes still hear them both scolding us through the open parlor windows?”

Anne patted his cheek. Not only was he looking at her through the tears standing in his blue eyes, he was smiling almost the way he’d always smiled when each had inevitably known the very moment when humor was about to spring forth of its own accord.

When he cleared his throat, jerked back his bent shoulders, and began his gallant apology for keeping her standing all this time while he sat, she quickly pulled up a straight chair, perched on the edge of it, and took both his hands. “You’re about to make one of your little speeches, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Aye. The hardest speech I’ve made in my long life, and the only way I know to do it is to begin, say it fast, and—and—was

“And what, Papa?”

“It’s about Lawrence, Annie … you’ll

have to leave Lawrence.”

She jumped to her feet. “Don’t tease about that, please!”

“I’m not teasing, lass. Lawrence is falling down around you. One more storm like the one last week, and that whole porch roof that’s banging in the wind now will blow off into the marsh.”

“No, it won’t! I won’t let it.”

“You’ve wrapped your old papa ar-round your finger all your life, but even you can’t control a dilapidated house.” His hands shook as they reached for hers. “I’d rather cut off both my hands than say this, Annie, but your proud old Scottish father’s a pauper. Too old to manage his own land any longer, taking the very nourishment for his ancient body itself from the charitable hand of James Hamilton.”

“But I—I own some people yet! I have John’s small widow’s pension. The children and I own the Lawrence land free and clear. I can borrow enough money to fix my flapping porch roof if it really bothers you. I’m not a pauper and neither are you!”

“We’re both the same as paupers, Daughter. Even James Hamilton has no cash to repair an old cottage on land no

longer productive because so many of your people 137 are here at Hopeton, down helping William Audley at Hamilton, or shamefully rented out. James can’t borrow a dollar anywhere. William’s eking out just enough to feed and clothe his people and his own family, but no profit at all through the sale of several crops. James and I have settled the matter, my dear. Do you think if he could avoid it, he’d be leasing Cannon’s Point to those folks from South Carolina? He is, you know. My tongue feels like a poison adder telling you what I know will deaden your soul, but Annie, you and your family—because there is no other way, no means of making your house livable—will have to leave Lawrence and move over here to Hopeton to live with us.”

For a long moment Anne just stood there beside his chair, not daring to look at him—fearing the defeat in Papa’s heart, fighting utter defeat in her own. In what seemed at this dark minute a complete irrelevance, her thoughts flew back over the decade past to the day she found the strength to leave John, to walk away from his grave, to leave her reason for living there alone in the sandy churchyard ground. Would it be any more painful for her

and her little family to pack only their clothes and personal belongings and leave the crumbling Lawrence cottage to which she still clung?

“I live in fear and trembling,” Papa was saying, “that the very next storm could injure all of you. Every storm is fiercer at Lawrence and Cannon’s Point, so near the sea. James and Caroline will try to make room for you and your three girls here, and from time to time, so will William Audley and Hannah. You know you’ll be more than welcome. Oh-have, Annie, help me—a little!”

Still she stood there, unable to speak one word of comfort to her own adored father.

“You’ve never lied to me, Annie,” Jock went on, his voice weak and helpless. “I know you’re all deathly afraid every time a storm strikes. Can you look me in the eye and tell me you’re not? Can you look me in the eye and tell me you don’t believe me when I say that neither I nor your brothers can lay hands on one penny for repairs until cotton prices go up again? Because you’re forced to rent out so many of your people now just to make ends meet, Lawrence can no longer be productive. I’ve tried to shield you from the

pain of any financial hardship throughout 139 the years of your life, Daughter. I’d give my old right arm if I could shield you now. I can’t. I—can’t. Annie, speak one word to me that shows me you at least understand. I know how it will hurt you to leave your home—to live on the charity of your brothers. But we face an irrevocable fact, my child. Please? Just one word to—help me?”

“I—I don’t have any words,” she said, her voice sounding hard. “I need—time. If I began to talk to you now, I’d break your heart. I knew conditions in the market were bad, but—give me some time! Even for you, I’m not going to pretend this isn’t almost as hard as losing John or Annie.”

Unable to help herself, she was hurting him. So, without another word, she ran from the room, down the curving stair, and out into the vast, perfectly landscaped Hopeton yard, with no thought of where she meant to go except away from that elegant, always orderly mansion where she would now be forced to live for only God knew how long.

True, she would be living right in the same house with Papa, but she was no longer a girl, not even

a young woman. Certainly she could never again run to the frail old man who was her father and expect him to fix her problems, to kiss the skinned knee. Nothing could ever be right again if she had to leave Lawrence, and she did have to leave Lawrence for a humiliating, crushing reason John would have been unable to endure for her. Not until now, even inside her own thoughts, had she been able to admit that except for Lawrence, he’d left her poorly fixed—a wretchedly small widow’s pension from his Royal Marines and debts she’d managed, with Papa’s help, to pay off only four years ago. John had left her Lawrence, though, and now she was losing even that.

Once outside, she had run until her knees ached and her heart pounded so hard, breathing hurt. Why was she running as though desperate to find something? What? Anything, she supposed, anything not neatly in order but wild, unkempt. One little crooked scrub tree would help. Something homey, not perfect in the way that everything her brother James Hamilton owned was perfect.

When she came on a clump of bullis grapevines at the opening of a pinestraw path she

thought must lead to James Hamilton’s 141 woods, from which his sawyers cut logs for cooking and heating, she plunged onto the path and into the woods. Woods were what she needed now—a plain old tangled stand of woods. Hurrying along the path, relieved that not even one of the Hopeton people was anywhere in sight, she went deeper into the thicket, searching for one blessedly crooked, scraggly little tree. She was glad there was no one to ask why she needed a crooked, wild tree, except that most of her own woods at Lawrence were not what anyone could call tidy. Besides, her heart ached for any living thing that resembled her own cluttered, snarled, untidy thoughts.

Still rushing along, peering right and left as she went, aloud she said, “I’m as crazy as Heriot Wylly! John … John, did you hear me? I just said I’m as peculiar as dear Heriot for needing a plain, crooked little tree to cling to.”

And then she saw it. Unmistakably a sweet gum, its bent trunk leaning toward her from behind a big hickory. Anne braced herself against the huge hickory’s trunk and swung her body around the gum, encircled the bent, plain,

lopsided scrub tree with both arms, and began to cry harder than she remembered crying since the morning she’d roused the children in her unleashed need for John to be in the bed beside her. And that had been years ago.

A Lord God Bird, the huge, awkward, red-crested woodpecker who had been her childhood friend, sounded his tin-horn call from somewhere above her head in the top of the tall hickory. Lord God Birds squawked often, but normally at a distance. She had never heard one so close.

And then footsteps were coming toward her—running footsteps breaking twigs and dead branches as they came. Who in the world would dare to crash unasked into her solitary agony? Pete? Had her impetuous daughter seen her run from the house? That Pete would dare she had no doubt, but surely Pete would be yelling her name. Even in her twenties Pete yelled at the drop of a hat. And then Anne knew …

A hoarse, desperate whisper—as desperate as Anne felt facing the loss of the only house that had ever been truly hers—told her beyond doubt that Eve had found her.

“Lord have mercy, Miss Anne! 143 Sweet Jesus, have mercy …”

As though floodgates had been lowered, Anne’s sobs broke out again. Her careful breeding, Mama’s teaching that ladies found a way to control themselves, were as nothing at all to Anne as she clung to the crooked little tree. Two strong arms were suddenly around her, but still she clung.

“Miss Anne, you knows! Mausa Couper, he done tol’ you, ain’t he? It’s Eve, Miss Anne. Leggo dat little scrub tree an’ look at me!”

“Go away!”

If you allow them too much liberty, Anne, they’ll invade your privacy. They’ll gossip about you—tell lies. In their efforts to prove their standing with the mistress, they’ll go to all lengths at times. …

Was Mama actually talking to her from the grave? “I’m crazy as Heriot Wylly ever thought about being!” she cried out. “Eve! I always thought—and so did John—that Heriot Wylly was just odd. Now I don’t know. Now, I don’t know anything.”

“Miss Anne, hush. Hush now.”

“Let go of me!”

With Anne still grasping the tree trunk, Eve was trying to rock her anyway—back and forth. Anne was standing there seemingly fastened to the tree, but Eve went on trying to rock her as though she were a child.

“I’m not a child! Let go of me. Do you hear?”

“I hears, but sometimes a frien’ knows better —kin help get things untangled.”

“Then tell me if I’m losing my mind! Is this what it’s like to go out of your mind? I can’t find anything, anywhere, to hold on to but this tree.”

Anne could almost feel the earth slide under her as she stood there peering through tears at the agonized, strangely beautiful face of the half-black woman who honestly seemed to love her at times more than she loved herself. Maybe, Anne thought fearfully, even more than she loved June! A different kind of love, surely, but despite the near fierceness of Eve’s attachment to June, she had never once allowed it to take her away from Anne when her mistress needed her. Did Eve know her better than she knew herself? Did Eve know her as she really was?

On impulse, Anne stepped back to look

straight into Eve’s expressive 145 eyes. “Do you know me as I really am? And if you do, what—am I?”

“What you feel like you is, Miss Anne?”

“Lost! Eve, Eve, I just found out I have to—to leave—Lawrence forever.”

“I knows.”

Anne stared at her. “You know?”

“Johnson he done tol’ me an’ I done tol’ June. Him ‘n’ me goes with you. Anywhere you eber goes, Eve be there to help you. We do it all together, you ‘n’ me. We packs up, we goes, an’ we lives our days side by side. You believe what I say? You gonna do what I say?”

Eve had grabbed both her shoulders and stood waiting for Anne’s answer. “Answer me, Miss Anne!”

Her voice loud and shrill, Anne cried, “Can’t you tell I—I don’t know what to say? I don’t even know how, without my own house, I’m ever going to sleep through another night, how I’ll ever find a way to swallow a bite of food. Take your hands off me. Do you hear?”

“I hears, but I don’ heed an’ if you

don’ believe Eve’s gonna shake you till you tell me you trust me enough to do what I say, I’se gonna shake you till you does an’—was Eve’s chin lifted. “Eve not one bit afraid to shake you neither. Even if you got a few white pockets lef’ in you dat don’ trust me, I trusts me to be the way you needs me to be an’ I ain’t plannin’ to wait forever to start shakin’.was

For what seemed a long, long time, the two women who had played together as children, who had quarreled and laughed together through tears and happiness, stood looking, looking deep into each other’s eyes.

At last, with a hint of a smile, Eve let go of Anne’s shoulders and said gently, “Maybe I don’ got to shake you—now. Maybe you comin’ to yo’ senses, Miss Anne.”

Anne failed an attempt at a smile, but as though the last worn, rusty chain that held her to her primary role as mistress of this remarkably perceptive servant had been broken, she allowed herself to fall back against the crooked little gum tree.

“You’re smiling, Eve. What’s so funny?”

“Don’ have to be funny, Miss Anne.

Smiles come outa relief.” 147

“Relief?”

“Did you eber feel so much relief as dis minute?”

“How did you know I was out here in the woods— needing you?”

“For near fifty years I been tellin’ you I’se your frien’.was