Beauty From Ashes (40 page)

“June, he say Rollie an’ Big Boy bof ketch on how to fit an’ nail down them floorboards. He speck Rollie to learn, but good an’ kind as Big Boy is, ain’t nobody, even June, thought he’d ever learn how to do more then fish.”

“Is the water ready for my bath? I’ve got to get dressed for the big arrival,” Miss Anne said, throwing back the covers. “Maybe if the weather warms up some, John Couper can take Big Boy fishing in the Chattahoochee River while he’s here. You’ve got me feeling so sorry for the man, I wish you hadn’t brought it up in the first place.”

“Don’t fret ‘bout Big Boy. He smilin’ lots more these days an’ dat man think so

much of you, Miss Anne, ain’t nothin’ 535 kin make him grin like seein’ you ack happy again!”

Anne and the girls had almost finished breakfast in the dining room when they heard a harness jangle and the rattle of a carriage drawing up in the lane outside.

“Mama, he’s here!”

“Pete, you’re yelling the way you did when you were a little girl,” Anne said, hurrying after Selina and Fanny toward the front door.

“Why not?” Pete demanded. “He’s the only brother I have, and I guess the moment’s close enough now so I can tell you John Couper has a big surprise for you, Mama.”

“What surprise?” Fanny scolded. “You didn’t tell me.”

“Me, either,” Selina called, jumping over a bare space in the new hall floor between oriental carpets they’d laid yesterday, so the carpentry work wouldn’t look so unfinished. “I want to open the door for John Couper, Mama,” Selina demanded. “I want to be the one!”

“All right,” Anne laughed. “But do open it. I can’t wait one more minute to look at him!”

And there he was, his dear, smiling face more striking than ever with winter frost coloring his cheeks. John Couper would, for a few days at least, no longer have to try to comfort and counsel her by letter. The handsome young man was actually beaming up at her from the path that led to her front steps, laughing, shouting lighthearted orders to Louisa’s driver, Elmer, who almost never smiled but was smiling today. An unfamiliar boy of ten or twelve was there, too, and had plainly ridden from the hotel with her son in the Howard House carriage. Louisa had insisted on the carriage. No doubt the strange boy worked at the hotel where the Fletchers still lived. What difference why he was there? What if Elmer had shown himself able to smile after all? Weren’t they all laughing and shouting “Happy New Year” and hugging? Weren’t they all, except Elmer and the strange boy, acting like happy, laughing idiots at the soul-deep joy of seeing one another again after so many months?

After John Couper had reassured them for the second time that they had enjoyed a fine train

trip from Savannah, the strange boy 537 agreeing eagerly, Pete asked, “And do you like all this snow we have today, sonny? You must have come from Savannah, too. It certainly wasn’t snowing there, was it?”

For the first time Anne looked closely at the boy, who was smiling at her now—almost, she thought, as though they knew each other. Pete had asked about the snow, but the lad answered with his eyes fixed on Anne’s face.

“I like the snow just fine,” he said, “although I’ve only seen it stay on the ground once before in my life. And no, there was no snow in Savannah when Uncle John Couper and I boarded the train.”

Anne stared at the boy as though she saw a ghost. In a way she did. Except for the definite cleft in his chin—John’s cleft— he was as much like her daughter Annie as a boy could be like his mother!

The slightly built, sweet-faced lad with John Couper must be Annie’s son, John Fraser Demere. The baby Anne hadn’t laid eyes on since his father, Paul Demere, came to Lawrence to take him out of her arms and

care only months after blessed Annie died bringing the infant into the world.

Something needed to be said, but no one uttered a word until Selina asked, “Mama, who is this boy?” Her question went unanswered.

John Couper, unable to miss seeing what his nephew’s arrival had done to his mother, was steadying Anne, his face anxious. “Mama, I —I didn’t do this intentionally. I swear to you, I had no idea until his father brought him to my door in Savannah that John Fraser was anywhere close by. He isn’t the surprise I wrote about, Pete. I have another one, aside from Fraser here.”

Finally, Anne whispered, “Fraser?”

“Yes, ma’am. Most people call me Fraser,” the lad said, patting Anne’s arm. “I’m so sorry, Grandmother. The very last thing I’d ever want to do would be to upset you. I thought, and so did Uncle John Couper, that you’d be kind of glad to see me.”

“Oh, I am, son! But John Couper, couldn’t you have sent a telegram?”

“Never mind that, Mama,” Pete said, almost scolding. “We’re all glad you’re here,

Fraser, but we’re all going to catch 539 colds if we don’t get in the house by Rollie’s good fire. Look at us, standing here as if it was summer. I don’t think we’ll ever learn how to live up North!”

“Pete’s right, as usual,” John Couper said. “I’ll go dismiss the driver. Fraser can help you inside where it’s warm, Mama. I know I made a big mistake surprising you like this. I guess I’m not all the way grown-up yet, eh?” He gave Anne his melting look. “Can you forgive me? Can you all forgive me?”

“Sure, Brother,” Pete said. “But you did write me you had a surprise, and of course we thought—was

“I do have a surprise,” he said, again assuming his role of man of the house. “Another one aside from Fraser, but not out here in the cold. Inside now. Inside—all of you!”

“Take my arm, Grandmother Anne,” young Fraser Demere said, his smile warm. “I’ve learned to mind Uncle John Couper. I’ll be honored to take you in to the fire.”

Anne did her best to smile at the boy as she slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow.

Her smile, she knew, had no warmth in it.

It had been almost two days since John Couper turned Anne’s world upside down by bringing her only grandson, John Fraser Demere, with him from Savannah on New Year’s Day. She stood at her bedroom window, looking out at patches of green-brown where the snow had melted. She only half saw remaining clumps of ice drop from tree branches and bushes into the yard, and she failed to check tears that kept flowing as though her blessed Annie had just died—again. It was as though she’d had no chance to grieve until now. In September of this year 1853, young Fraser Demere would be twelve. Annie would have been gone twelve long years. Yet the first pain-blurred days after they’d buried her firstborn rushed back now in such agonizing immediacy, Anne honestly wondered how she’d endure the remaining days until John Couper would leave and take the lad with him. Adding to her agony, as always, she rejected even the idea that her son would

have to leave her again. 541

Her pride in John Couper knew no limits today. It had never known any, but just last night he had sprung his second surprise—the one he’d promised Pete in a personal letter: All financial arrangements had been made, and sometime next year, before his twenty-second birthday, John Couper Fraser would become the owner of his own Savannah mercantile business!

Her heart swelled with joy for her son, but as she stood looking out at her snow-covered acres, the joy was matched by fresh grief for her daughter Annie.

Cold wind seeping in around the bedroom window did not cause her sudden, hard shudder. Her failure to show any real sign of affection toward Annie’s boy, since their first glimpse of each other, shook her with a shame foreign to the Anne Fraser who lived her life for her family, who had so adored the tiny, warm bundle left in her arms when Annie went away forever.

Oh, Annie had tried not to die! How she had struggled to stay with her infant son, her young husband, Paul Demere, whom beautiful, tender, peace-loving Annie had—Anne could now

finally admit—truly loved. To his motherin-law, Anne Fraser, despite his efforts to establish some form of friendship after Annie’s death, Paul Demere was still the epitome of arrogance and insensitivity. As she saw it, he had robbed good, sweet-tempered Annie of her very life in order to assuage a selfish passion.

“Dat be enough, Miss Anne,” Eve ordered from across the room where she’d been standing silently beside Anne’s freshly made bed, evidently reading Anne’s unspoken thoughts. “What you thinkin’ is bad! It ain’t fittin’ for you to hold them thoughts. Stop it, Miss Anne. You hear me?”

Whirling to face Eve, having forgotten she was there, Anne cried, “What? Who gave you permission to shout orders at me?”

“Where it written down that Eve not allowed to save you from yourself? Where that written down, Miss Anne? You ain’t never threaten to sell me, but Eve can hear thoughts when you thinks ‘em, so don’t you dare think such a thought again. You mad enough to think it, but don’t you dare speak it!”

Weeping openly now, Anne cried, “What

did you just dare say to me?” 543

“Eve your property. Because June be gittin’ old, Eve the most valuable piece of property you got. So, I ain’t skeered. You ain’t gonna git rid of Eve. Even when you so filled with fury at what you done you yell it out at me, Eve gonna shield you from hurtin’ yo’ poor self no more! Answer me a question. Dat boy, Fraser, he been here almost two whole days. You done give him even one hug in all dat time? An’ don’ tell me I ain’t talkin’ so good now. Eve know when she talk good or bad. Jus’ like she know when you think good and when you think bad. You been thinkin’ bad dis morning!”

For a long, long moment Anne stood, her back turned, silent, locked in a struggle to untangle the knots deep inside herself. With her own John Couper and the boy she had loved so tenderly as an infant both under her roof, there should have been no struggle whatever. There should be only joy and merriment and gratitude to God. Instead, Eve, the one person on whom she depended most next to John Couper, was giving her, deservedly, the sharpest, cruelest piece of her

mind. Eve knew her so well, she could tell all the way across the room exactly what Anne had been thinking. Had somehow caught her ugly, secret accusation that young Fraser’s father, Paul Demere, had caused sweet Annie to die!

“Mausa Paul Demere, he don’ kill our good Annie. He done jus’ what any man do when he love a woman like he love her. He didn’t straddle her an’ rape her like my poor mama got raped by dat mean white man I know be my earthly father. Annie, she want Mausa Paul Demere to do jus’ what he done. Annie, she wasn’t named Annie Fraser no more. She name Annie Fraser Demere, ‘cause nothin’ would do that girl but marry the one man she love an’ dat be good lil Fraser Demere’s papa!”

“Hush!”

“Why you want me to hush?”

“Because I said to, that’s why.”

“You wants me to hush ‘cause you knows Eve be speakin’ de truf, an’ I knows the white way to say truf, too. You wants me to be somepin I ain’t. But dumb I ain’t, neither. Effen anybody know you want Eve to ack high

‘n’ mighty an’ say truth, it be 545 Eve. Eve part white, but Eve also part nigger. Today, Eve speakin’ de truf to you an’ the quicker you admits it, the easier you poor heart gonna be. It ain’t really me that matters, though, Miss Anne. It be dat poor boy. Hab you hug young Fraser Demere even once?”

Anne waited. Waited. For one of the few times in her life, she could think of nothing to say to Eve—nothing kind, nothing sharp, nothing. When her servant crossed the room and laid her hand almost gently on Anne’s shoulder, she could only breathe a silent prayer that Eve would keep talking just in case she hit on something that might give Anne the courage to admit that she had not yet given the boy even one small hug.

“You know you wants to hug him, Miss Anne.”

Already Eve had said the right thing! “Yes. Oh, yes. He’s—Fraser’s so like her. Isn’t he, Eve? Isn’t the lad the picture of his mama? Those pale blue eyes, round face, pert little nose, and did you notice that when he’s curious or doesn’t quite understand, he wrinkles his forehead just the way our Annie did?”

“Yes’m. I notice. I also notice you done dug ‘roun’ till you find you a way to own up to all dat thick, black, bitter sludge down inside you where our sweet Annie still battle to live. She needs still to lib in her mama’s heart, but not in all dat bitter!”

Eve might just as well have struck her. Anne turned like a wooden puppet and staggered to her little rocker, sure that Eve would rush to her side. Eve did not move.

“Take that back! Say you’re sorry. Eve, I’m—I’m not bitter! Christians aren’t bitter. Christians don’t allow themselves to be bitter. How dare you?”

“You want I should lie to you instead?”

“Don’t you ever let me catch you lying to me. I suppose you have often, but don’t let me catch you doing it.”

“You jus’ spoutin’ words now. Open yo’ heart an’ let dat bitter drain out, Miss Anne. De boy, Fraser, he keer ‘bout his own papa. Don’ you ‘member how you love Mausa Couper, yo’ papa?”

“Don’t ever mention my father in the same breath with Paul Demere! Is that clear?”

“What be clear is I best git 547 outa dis room till you simmer down to where we kin talk like—like friends.”

“Don’t go,” Anne cried. “I just need a little time. You know we’ll always be friends.”

Without another word, Eve left the room and shut the door behind her.

Eve not only ran from her mistress’s room, she ran out of the house and hurried along the path beyond the grape arbor out back toward her own cabin, begging the Lord as she went that June might be finished chopping wood for Mina’s kitchen and that he was sitting as she was picturing him every step of the way, by their own roaring fire warming himself. She needed him to be sitting there, the steady light of June’s spirit in his big, protective body ready, as always, to ease away her troubles. Ready, as always, to listen about Miss Anne, no matter how foolish Eve sounded, even to herself, as she poured out her heart to the man who would—even from heaven one day—go on being her shelter. “An’ June, ‘cause morning to night he ack like a man ob God, be gonna fly sure to heaven one day.” Eve, however, permitted herself to think only

about June when she thought of that day. To think about herself still trapped in grief on the earth and June in heaven with the light all around him was the only way she could let herself reflect on it. Oh, she could consider June’s joy, but in no way could she allow her mind even to flick over herself when she would have to be torn in half as Miss Anne was torn when Mausa John went away from her.