Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River] (4 page)

Kirby had nothing but disdain for her small flock of sheep and refused to have anything to do with them even though he liked the soft wool socks, warm gloves, and muffler she had knitted for him.

He had worked with a nervous energy that sometimes puzzled Addie. He had not been used to life on a farm, but once told what to do and how to do it, he had gone about the work as if his life depended on its being finished by sundown. And when they had some leisure time, they had laughed, sung, and played games like two children let out of school.

One evening after many passionate caresses, Addie had given in to his sexual persuasion and allowed him to penetrate her. It had not been a pleasant experience for her, and afterward she had been riddled with guilt and fear. She had refused him further intimacy and they had quarreled. To Addie, conceiving a child out of wedlock was something akin to death. A week of misery went by before Kirby had agreed to go to Preacher Sikes and speak the vows. A month later he had gone to town to buy a well bucket and had returned as happy as a boy with a new slingshot.

He had joined the Arkansas Regulars.

Addie was left alone, pregnant and scared. Never would she forget that fall and winter. Knowing that she had no one to depend on but herself, she had worked tirelessly storing food for winter and dragging deadfalls from the woods for firewood.

During those painful months her dream of belonging to a large and loving family had died a slow, agonizing death. She had brought out and pondered the thoughts that had lurked in the back of her mind since Kirby had come into her life. He was not a staying kind of man. Her brief time with him was over. Yet, she did not regret having let him into her bed, for he had given her the one thing she had desired above all others—a child to love.

It was during the last month of her pregnancy that Trisha had come out of the woods and hidden in the chicken house. Thin and sick, she had fallen on her knees and begged Addie to hide her from the man she believed was hunting her. She had been sold, she said, to a man who planned to place her in a brothel. To Addie, Trisha was like a gift from heaven. The two women had comforted each other, depended on each other, and come to love and respect each other. No one had ever come looking for Trisha, and Addie figured the girl must have traveled so many miles after her escape that her owner had given up tracking her.

Then, two years ago, Preacher Sikes had brought Colin and Jane Ann to the farm and asked Addie to take a turn at boarding them. She had taken the orphans to her heart, and, in a way she would never have imagined, she now had her family.

The two women, with Colin’s help, had been able to raise enough food to see them through the winters. Addie and Trisha had brought down small game when they had the shells to spare. Because Trisha was adept at robbing the hives of wild bees, they were never out of honey for their biscuits and wax for their candles.

Addie had managed to save two ewes and a ram. She taught Trisha how to wash the wool, card it, and spin the thread. She was surprised and pleased to discover how much the girl knew about drying the wool and how good she was at creating colors. From the yarn the women knitted socks, mittens, scarves and caps.

Thinking about it now, Addie realized that they had fared better than some. Thankfully, only minor skirmishes had taken place in their section of Arkansas, and they had been forced to give up to marauders only a hog, a few chickens, and some cabbages they had not had time to bring in from the field. On one occasion they had hidden the horses in a thicket and brought the sheep into the house.

The war was over—and now her worries were focused on keeping her family together and the riff-raff that prowled the countryside away from her door.

Addie waited until the family was gathered at the kitchen table before she told them the news about Kirby. She had fired up the cookstove and made a batch of gingerbread while Colin and Trisha did the evening chores.

“I have something to tell you,” she said from her place at the head of the table. She looked at each of the four faces that turned toward her. Dillon’s little mouth was stuffed with warm gingerbread. Jane Ann and Colin stole frightened glances at each other as if they expected that what she was going to say would be bad news for them. Trisha, who had been unusually quiet since their return from town, left an unfinished piece of gingerbread on her plate.

“Mr. Hyde will not be coming back. Mr. Cash told me today that on his way home he was killed and is buried near Jonesboro.”

Addie looked at her son, who continued to eat. The news had no effect on young Dillon, even though she had explained to him many times that his papa was away fighting the war. Colin and Jane Ann looked relieved. Addie knew that Trisha had been worried about what her place here would be when the head of the house returned.

“What will happen to all of us now, Miss Addie?” Colin asked.

“I guess there will be just the five of us from now on. We’ve worked hard and we’ve stayed together. There’s no reason why we can’t continue to do so.”

“If’n old Sikes don’t take a notion to take me over to old man Renshaw,” Colin blurted, then hung his head.

Addie reached over and covered his hand with hers. “He’s not going to take you or Jane Ann. You’re going to stay right here with me and Trisha and Dillon.”

“But, Miss Addie.” Colin looked up, his eyes bleak, his voice raw. “Every Sunday Mr. Renshaw pinches my arm and says that I’m big enough now to work for my grub. He said he needs a stout boy—and he’s tied up with Preacher Sikes.”

“Damnation! I don’t care how tight he is to Preacher Sikes.” Addie never swore unless she were severely provoked. Now her eyes sparkled with anger. “You and Jane Ann are
my
children.
Mine,
by golly, and I’ll be after Mr. Renshaw like a hive of stirred-up hornets if he tries to take you from me. He’ll think he’s in a tow-sack with a wildcat.” She was hoping to get a smile from Colin, but he continued to stare down at his plate.

“And that ain’t all,” Trisha cut in. “I know ways’ve puttin’ a spell on ’im that’ll make his eyeballs bleed and his tongue dry up and pop open. I’ll do it, if’n I don’t kill ’im first.” Emotion made her voice tremble and her remarkable eyes glitter like gold nuggets.

“Colin, have you been worrying about having to go stay with Mr. Renshaw?” Addie asked.

Colin didn’t answer. As Addie met his gaze and saw the misery in his eyes, she felt her heart to go out to him.

“We was goin’ to run off.” Jane Ann licked away the crumbs around her mouth. “We was going to get a horse an’ ride to Calafornie.”

“We was not!” Colin looked at his sister with disdain.

“We was too. You said we was, if you had to go to Mr. Renshaw. You said he didn’t want me, and you’d promised Ma you’d take care of me. You said that, Colin.”

“Forget about going to California or any other place. The two of you are going to stay right here—this is your home. I’ll have a talk with Preacher Sikes and get this cleared up. Let’s hear no more about it.”

“Will you be our mama, Miss Addie?” Jane Ann asked.

“I told you not to ask her!” Colin shouted.

“I—I forgot.” Jane Ann hung her head.

“Honey, if you want to think of me as your second mama and call me that, I’d be proud,” Addie said to Jane Ann’s bent head.

“You’d let me?”

“Of course. But you must not forget your own mama and hold her in your heart.”

“I wish I could remember her. Colin does.”

“I only remember a little bit,” Colin murmured.

“Sit down, Dillon,” Addie said firmly when her son stood on his chair in an attempt to reach the gingerbread. “Ask Trisha to pass the plate.”

Dillon ignored his mother and leaned precariously over the table. Addie caught his hand and held it away from the plate. Dillon’s face took on a stubborn expression.

“Sit down. If we all stood on our chairs to reach for things we’d . . . bump our heads!”

Jane Ann let out a peal of laughter. Even Colin smiled. Dillon sat down, folded his small arms across his chest, and stuck his tongue out at Jane Ann.

“See what he did! He stuck his tongue out at me!” Instantly Jane Ann’s laughter turned to tears.

“I think everyone is tired.” Addie got up to fill the teakettle from the water bucket. “Get the washtub, Colin. What’s needed here is a bath and then to bed.”

“Bath?” Colin grumbled on his way to the door. “I ain’t takin’ no bath.”

Addie watched him leave. The promise she’d made to him lay like a yoke on her shoulders. Mr. Renshaw could provide a good portion of the money to build the new church, which alone would carry enough weight with Preacher Sikes that he might order her to give up Colin. She would somehow have to convince him that she needed Colin’s help more than Mr. Renshaw did. She wondered if she could enlist the support of Mrs. Sikes. One way or another, she vowed to herself, she would keep her promise to Colin.

Addie was well aware that she was a different woman from the one Kirby had left pregnant and alone. She’d weathered the years in better shape than she had expected. She was grateful to the irresistible young man she had known for a few short weeks, and was sorry he had died, but she could not summon up the feeling of crushing grief.

She realized now how dreadfully lonely she had been and how vulnerable to his charm. She had been a young girl reaching for the stars and had unknowingly found the brightest of them all—her son, Dillon.

*  3  *

^“
Y
a know what, Miss Addie? If’n I ever marry up it’ll be with the blackest man I can find. I want my younguns to be black as midnight in a graveyard so there ain’t no doubt what they is. I’m thinkin’ my granny’s pa was white or part anyhow. Mama’s was white, and mine was. White men done ruint us all.”

“You’re awfully pretty, Trisha. Your beauty attracts men like flies to a syrup bucket. Someday you’ll meet a man who’ll love and cherish you for what you are and not for what color your parents or grandparents were. I’ve heard about places where your Negro blood wouldn’t matter.”

“Hockey! I ain’t never heard of no such place as that. That’s just a bunch of windy is what it is.” Trisha twisted the rag mop to remove the water. She was swabbing the kitchen floor with the children’s bathwater. “Ain’t ya sad a’tall that your man got hisself killed?”

“I’m sad that Kirby is dead. He was so young and handsome and so excited about going to war.”

“Lots of ’em was tickled to go fight to keep the poor stupid slaves from bein’ free. They’s so sure them poor niggers ain’t got sense to stay outa the fire less’n white folk tell ’em.”

“Kirby never took life very seriously, I’m afraid. Iola Cash said he was a charmer. He
was
charming, but he was also irresponsible.”

“What that mean, Miss Addie?”

“He charmed his way into my heart, into my bed, and got me with child. The day after I told him he was going to be a father, he went to town and joined up. He left me here to provide for myself and to bear his child. He never wrote to me and never answered the letter I wrote him telling him that his son had been born. In all fairness, of course, he may not have received the letter. The only relative he spoke of was an uncle in Jonesboro, so I sent the letter there. His actions were more than irresponsible—they were contemptible! . . . Wait, Trisha, let me help you empty the tub.”

“I ain’t knowin’ for certain what them big words mean,” Trisha said, as they carried the tub to the end of the porch and emptied it onto the yard, “but I sure understand what ya feel.”

“Now that I think about it, I think Kirby thought that going to war would serve two purposes: give him an excuse to get away from here and provide him with a great adventure.” Addie hung the tub on a nail beside the back door and followed Trisha back into the house.

“Did ya love ’im?”

“Maybe for a few weeks. I was lonely. Weeks would go by and I’d not see another soul. But I can’t put all the blame on Kirby. I wasn’t a child.”

“Ya warn’t knowin’ the ways of a horny man, is what,” Trisha mumbled.

Addie was looking in the glass over the washstand and taking the pins out of her hair. She couldn’t even visualize Kirby’s face, she silently told the image in the mirror. She could remember other things about him: his restlessness, his evasiveness when she asked about his family, his refusal to talk about the future. At times, she had felt that he was with her in body, but the rest of him had always been in some faraway place.

She thought of what she would tell Dillon about his father when he was older. She would say that he liked to laugh, swim in the creek, swing on the rope that hung from the pecan tree, and that he admired good horseflesh. She would also tell Dillon that his father was brave and went to war to fight for a great cause. Yes, she would tell him that. A boy had the right to believe that his father had been a brave man with principles, even if in truth he hadn’t been.

As Trisha picked up Colin’s shoes, a piece of cowhide she had cut to cover the hole in the sole fell out. She clicked her tongue and slipped the leather back inside before she set the shoes under the pegs where they hung their caps and bonnets.

“That boy’s growin’ plum outa them shoes, Miss Addie.”

“I wanted to wait until the end of summer to buy him some new ones. I’m hoping we’ll have a teacher for the school after harvest, and he and Jane Ann can go to school. Did you know that he was worried he’d have to go to Mr. Renshaw?”

“I knowed it. He don’t like that man none a’tall. Said he pinches him ever chance he gets and puts his hands on his butt.”

Addie turned in shock.
“Where?”

“Ya know . . . back here.” Trisha placed her hand on her buttocks.

“Why would he do such a thing?”

“Miss Addie! If you don’t beat all. Yo’re green as grass ’bout the nasties that go on. Don’t ya know why that ol’ puke is botherin’ Colin?”

“No, I don’t. I declare! It’s downright strange, a grown man doing that to a boy like Colin.”

Trisha rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Yo’re the limit, Miss Addie. Don’t ya know ’bout grown men likin’ boys?” Trisha lifted her hands and let them fall to her sides. “If’n I gotta tell ya, I will. Miss Addie, that pig-ugly old fart’s got more on his mind than workin’ Colin in the field. He’s a-wantin’ to get him in bed.”