Mary Connealy (65 page)

“That will not be the case in my school.” His eyes seemed to come back again and again to Sally. Beth wondered why he would focus on the littlest girl in the room. She wasn’t likely to be any trouble.

“And your parents have also agreed with me that if you come home complaining about school or about being given lashes, they’ll back me and hand out double the punishment.” He slapped the ruler on his hand again with a loud crack.

Beth knew that was true. Her parents had always said whatever punishment the girls received at school, they’d find awaiting them at home. Of course, Beth couldn’t remember ever being punished at school—scolded a bit from time to time, but never given lashes with the ruler—so that rule had never been tested.

“Very often I’ve found children to be both stupid and naughty, and they need a lesson to see that I mean what I say.” Mr. Parrish’s eyes narrowed on Sally. “You, little girl, what’s your name?”

“S-Sally McClellen.”

“Sally, you were noisy entering this classroom. That’s one lash. Come forward.”

Beth looked at her sister and saw that Sally’s eyes had gone wide with fear. “B-but, Mr. Parrish—”

“And now you’re disobeying me. That’s a second lash. Do you wish to continue disobeying me?”

Sally slowly rose from her desk. Her usually pink cheeks white, her chin tucked against her chest, she walked to the front.

“It is
Master
Parrish.”

Beth thought he said the word as if he savored it, as if he were feeding on something delicious.

“You will speak my name as I order you to, or you will be punished.”

Sally opened her mouth, then stopped herself and nodded.

Beth was afraid if Sally spoke, she might be breaking the quiet rule, and obviously Sally had thought of that.

“Extend your hand, palm up.” Parrish stood on the raised floor at the front of the room beside his desk. He towered over Sally. She raised her hand as ordered.

The moment stretched. Beth held her breath. Master Parrish stood like a looming vulture.

Please, God, help me be good. Help us all be good. Please, God, don’t let Ma and Pa find out Sally’s been bad
.

The ruler crashed on Sally’s soft skin.

Beth saw tears well in her little sister’s eyes, but Sally was good. She took the thrashing with complete and utter silence.

T
he house was going up with lightning speed. Daniel worked until he wanted to drop every night and got up hours before dawn the next morning. He couldn’t sleep anyway.

What if there was a baby? What if she died? He prayed long and hard as he worked the punishing days.
Please, God, please, please, I can’t stand to bury another wife
.

By the end of the week, he’d finished the roof and the fireplace could be lit.

He laid a wooden floor. Splitting all those logs was a useless frippery, but it was hard work that took a long time, so Daniel insisted on it. When he got the floor done in the main room, the family moved in. He planned to put flooring down throughout the house, but since the boys only had blankets to sleep on, they could clear out of their rooms in half a heartbeat and he would work in there during the day. Grace avoided him, thank heavens. But as she carried a flour sack from the barn to the ridiculously large cabin, he knew he hadn’t built it big enough. She was ignoring him, but he knew the ways of women, and now he didn’t have anything to do to keep busy.

It took about ten minutes to settle into the house. Once they had a real home, Daniel realized that they really had nothing.

“Pa, aren’t there some boxes up in the barn loft left from back home?” Abe asked one day.

Daniel had forgotten them. He’d wanted to forget. He hadn’t wanted anything in Texas that reminded him of Margaret.

Grace heard Abe. “You’ve got things for a home stored away?”

“Sure. Let’s go get ’em.” Abe jumped up from where he sat on the floor in front of the fireplace. “I think there are some dishes in there and other stuff left from our first ma.”

“Grace, I don’t—” Grace was gone before Daniel could protest.

Daniel watched her go. She was too thin. Her ribs stuck out almost sharply. She was underweight and had a tiny frame. Margaret had been big-boned and built from sturdy Irish stock. And childbearing had been too much for her. He decided then and there Grace needed to fatten up.

He stared out the door after them and saw them enter the barn to collect Margaret’s things. Daniel wanted to call out that they were to leave those things alone. They were his, not to be toyed with or used or even seen.

He didn’t because he would have had to speak to her, and he hadn’t in nearly two weeks.

All he needed to make his life into perfect torture were Margaret’s fussy belongings spread out all over this house.

The other boys went whooping and hollering after Abe and Grace. They liked Grace, all except Mark. He delighted in tormenting her. Mark didn’t follow her like the other boys did.

Daniel looked down at his son. An expression had settled over Mark’s face that Daniel suspected was an exact reflection of his own.

“We have to get rid of her, Pa.”

Daniel didn’t speak for a long moment as he looked out the open door. He wanted to agree.
God, there’s no getting rid of her. What am I going to do?
He ached for her.

It was part of Satan’s plan to bring mankind down. Daniel had to be strong. That was God’s will.

Daniel glanced at Mark. His heart turned over at the anger and rebellion on his son’s face. Daniel knew he was responsible for that. The other boys were giving in to their longing for a mother, but not Mark.

Mark followed his father’s example. And while Daniel didn’t need a wife, Mark needed a ma.

The gentle ways of a woman were so pleasant to a child. He had loved his own mother fiercely. He could still hear the gentle way she sang a lullaby and feel the soft touch of her hand when she tucked him into bed at night. Yes, children needed a mother. So why did God let a woman die giving birth? It made no sense.

Daniel wrestled with his own dangerous feelings. He had to be a better example for Mark or the poor boy would grow up twisted inside. “Well, let’s go help drag that old stuff out of the hayloft.”

“We don’t need it.” Mark crossed his arms.

Only then did Daniel see his own crossed arms. He let them drop. “Sure we do. We didn’t have room for anything to spare in the cave, but here we’re rattling around. Let’s get that house stuff out and use it. It’s dumb not to.”

Daniel headed for the barn, knowing he had to set an example for Mark.

They met Grace backing down from the hayloft, balancing a small box in one arm. The boys were coming right after.

Grace turned to him and smiled. “There’s a lot there we can use, Daniel.” She always spoke nicely to him, considering he never spoke back.

“There are even some women’s dresses. I can get out of these ridiculous boy’s clothes.” She sailed past him, not waiting for a response that he’d trained her would never come.

He caught sight of one of Margaret’s dresses poking out of the box Grace carried. He thought of Margaret, bleeding and dying and begging him to save her. Her strength ebbing away as Daniel pulled child after child from her body. He was overwhelmed by three wriggling babies and two frightened five-year-olds.

Margaret’s weak pleading had come close to breaking him. He’d tried everything, knowing nothing to try.

“Do something, Daniel. Help me.”

His hands had been soaked in blood. It coated his clothes. He watched Margaret die by inches. The blood, the pleading, the fear, the hungry infants, and the crying toddlers had kept him awake every night for months. After she died, all he’d done was stay alive and keep the boys alive and his livestock alive so he could get milk for the babies. It took a pure miracle from God to keep the babies alive.

Now, five years later, he’d begun to forget. He hadn’t jumped awake in the night, feeling Margaret’s blood on his hands, for a long time. Until two weeks ago.

His nightmares were back, and he might have to live through it all again if Grace had a baby.

The rest of the boys followed after Grace, their arms full. He thought of Mark and the example he knew he needed to set and turned to climb to the hayloft. He had to treat her decently while the boys were watching.

On his way back to the cabin with his arms loaded with bits of fussy lace and cloth that he didn’t remember from their other home, he said to Mark, “We’re in the house, but we aren’t gonna be settled for a long time. I need to build some furniture.” He stepped inside. “You boys need beds.”

With a sigh of relief, he realized he’d thought of a whole new big job to keep himself busy.

Sophie McClellen was delivered of twin boys in the middle of a cold winter night, and after that, Tillie worked so hard she quit feeling guilty about putting Beth out of her bedroom.

Tillie heard the whispers coming from behind the chicken coop and almost went back to the house so as not to disturb the girls’ privacy. She could collect eggs later. The days were getting longer as the winter wore down, and she’d come to fetch eggs without bothering with a wool coat she’d made, bought with money Sophie had paid her for nearly running the household since the twins had been born.

“You didn’t deserve that thrashing.” Tillie recognized Beth’s voice and stopped her retreat.

“I’m telling Pa what Master Parrish did to you.” Mandy’s angry voice rose past a whisper.

Master? What was this? And thrashing? The schoolteacher had thrashed one of the girls? A shudder ripped the whole length of her body as Tillie remembered thrashings. She’d grown nearly to womanhood with her parents on the plantation in Virginia, and she’d never received one of the beatings the field slaves had endured.

And then she’d been sold south to Louisiana. She was the sole slave to a miserly man who lived in a decrepit, isolated mansion just outside New Orleans. Virgil was brutal, and nothing she did pleased him. She toiled all day in the thick heat, her legs cuffed with a short length of chain between them. Then she slept shackled in the cellar at night. He delighted in finding a reason to reach for the whip or a cane. When those tools weren’t handy, he’d used his fists or a boot. And then to find out she’d been freed by President Lincoln years ago. The injustice of it infuriated her.

And the injustice of someone striking Sally set a torch to that fury. She’d never seen the McClellen girls receive more than a quick swat on the seat at home. They were lively but bright, with hearts as good as gold. She didn’t even make a conscious decision. She marched around the chicken coop and saw the three older girls sitting on the ground.

“Your teacher makes you call him Master? Master Parrish?”

They all gasped, and their matching blue eyes shone with fear. Their reaction reminded her so much of herself that her throat nearly swelled with a sob.

“Y-yes,” Sally said.

“I
hate
the word
master
.” Tillie jabbed a finger at the three of them. “No schoolteacher is going to thrash one of my girls. You tell me what’s going on.”

“No—you’ll tell Ma, and then we’ll get in real trouble.”

Tillie knew just how it was to be in trouble not of her own making.

She felt such a kinship with the girls she wanted to go fight the schoolteacher for them. Sophie and Clay were good people. But Sophie was so busy with her baby boys that she barely stirred from the house. And schooling seemed like a woman’s business.

She briefly considered telling Adam. But he might tell Clay, and if her actions somehow resulted in the girls getting a beating from their pa, Tillie would never forgive herself. Before she decided what to do, she had to find out what exactly the trouble was.

Despite her doubts about the girls keeping this from their parents, she nodded firmly. “I won’t tell unless you give me leave to. Now what is this man doing to you?”

They all relaxed. Mandy eased back from the circle of bright-colored gingham to make room for her. “Okay. Let us tell you about the mean man they hired to be our schoolteacher. Maybe you can help us figure out what to do.”

G
race washed the supper dishes and caught herself humming. She had dishes. A whole set of china. Plain white clay pottery to be sure, but pretty enough, especially compared to a bare tabletop. A couple of pieces had chips here and there, and a fine mesh of cracks covered all of them, but they were beautiful just the same.

She might have a husband who didn’t love her, but that was pretty much the same as her life had always been. At least now she had a roof over her head and a cloth for the kitchen table and one to spare. She had a nice set of silverware, enough so everyone could have his very own fork, and four spoons in case she ever learned to make soup out of steak and eggs and potatoes and biscuits and milk.

She even had a soup bowl, although only one. But since she had no idea how to make soup or porridge, it hardly mattered.

Washing carefully, Grace enjoyed the smooth sides of her very own paring knife. Daniel had used his whetstone to put an edge on it as sharp as a razor. She’d already nicked herself with it a dozen times, but she still loved that knife.