Prairie Fire (23 page)

“She told me her thoughts go around and around. She can’t make them stop.” Caitrin was aware that the crowd had moved toward the tables heaped with food. This rare moment with Jack must not be wasted. “What is Lucy dwelling on, Jack? What are these thoughts that plague her?”

“Memories, Caitrin.” His face was solemn. “She’s got a lot of worries and a lot of bad memories. Lucy always has been more sensitive than most folks to things that happen around her. Even as a little girl, she used to cry a lot. But she always laughed louder, hugged tighter, and loved deeper than everyone else, too.”

“Maybe the trouble is something within the very essence of her spirit. Perhaps ’tis something she was born with.”

“I reckon you might be right. And, too, she’s had some pretty big hurts.”

“Mary’s death, your absence during the war, the loss of the family farm and your father.” Caitrin recited the list. “Is there anything else, Jack? Did something else happen to Lucy?”

He looked away. “She just couldn’t hold up under the pile of troubles.”

“She said she has many secrets.”

“I reckon so,” he said. “In the Cornwall family, you keep certain things under wraps—no matter what. Lucy’s always been the peacemaker of the bunch. She’s so sweet, so trustworthy, that she’s had a lot of confidences shared with her.”

“Such as?”

He was silent a moment. “Seth Hunter, for one. Not until everything had blown sky-high did I learn that Mary had been seeing him on the sly. Seth was just one of our farmhands, you know. He didn’t have a hope in the world of earning Mary a good living, and he was a Yankee sympathizer to boot. Mary confided to Lucy about Seth, but Lucy kept the information to herself. Then Seth and Mary got married in a hush-hush ceremony, and before long there was a baby on the way—and not a soul knew about any of that except Lucy.”

“Oh my. What other troubles has Lucy borne?”

“When Papa took sick, he kept his illness a secret. The only way anybody found out was that Lucy used to empty his chamber pot every morning. She saw the blood, and that’s how she knew. Papa made her swear she wouldn’t tell Mama, but then when—”

“It sounds as if Lucy is the only Cornwall keeping secrets,”

Caitrin said. “’Tis as though she’s been the hiding place for the entire family’s sin and pain. What guilty knowledge have
you
laid on her fragile conscience?”

“Me? None.” His eyes went hard. “Don’t try to blame
me
for what’s happened to Lucy. When she’s feeling bad, she’s like a sledder on top of a big snowy hill—going down fast and nothing can stop her. Once she’s over the crest, you might as well give up. But I’ll tell you one thing. It’s never been me who gave her a push at the top. I’ve always stood by my sister and protected her.”

“By clamping her in chains?”

“It’s that or an asylum.”

“For heaven’s sake, Jack, why must you—”

A shrill shriek cut off her words. Caitrin swung around in time to see Lucy scramble from the bench, fall to her knees, and crawl into the corner. Rolf Rustemeyer leapt over the bench toward her, and Casimir Laski grabbed the German man by his suspenders.

“Stay away from that woman!” Laski shouted at Rolf. “She’s crazy! A madwoman!”

“What I haf done?” Rolf said, turning toward the crowd in dismay. “I bringen her chocolate cake, no more.”

“Get the Cornish strumpet out of here!” Jimmy O’Toole cried, pointing toward Lucy, who began to sob. “We won’t have a lunatic—”

To Caitrin’s horror, a string of foul language and denigrating epithets spewed from Jimmy’s mouth. Lucy held her hands over her head as though she were being physically beaten as she screamed like a wounded coyote. Jack left Caitrin’s side and shoved his way through the throng.

“Shut your mouth, O’Toole!” Jack shouted at the Irishman. “And you, Rustemeyer, get away from my sister. Leave her alone.”

“
Aber
I only bringen
torte
!” Rolf returned, stumbling into his native language. He held up a plate bearing a slice of chocolate cake. “
Ich bin sehr
… I am fery goot man,
ja!
Not hurt nobodies.”

“And you, O’Toole,” Jack snarled, “if I ever catch you talking like that to my sister again—”

“You’re as insane as she is!” Jimmy hurled back. “Your whole family is a pack of filthy Cornish—”

“Lemme tell you something, buster.” Jack shoved his finger in the man’s chest. “You stay away from my family or I’ll—”

“Jack, Jack!” Felicity Cornwall grabbed her son’s arm. “Get Lucy. You must get Lucy!”

Caitrin stood nailed to the floor, staring in disbelief while Felicity raced for the door as though ravenous wolves were after her. Jack scooped up his weeping sister and followed his mother out into the night. As the door banged shut, a hush fell over the room.

Finally Jimmy O’Toole cleared his throat. “’Tis a good thing they’re gone. That family has no business in our mercantile. God created the different races to be separate and apart. The Cornish and the Irish. The black and the white. The Indian and the Spaniard. There is to be no mixin’ of people.”

An assenting murmur ran through the gathering. Caitrin glared at the self-righteous group—Poles, Italians, Germans, French—all a medley of racial backgrounds. Jimmy nodded importantly.

“Mr. O’Toole,” Caitrin spoke up. “Could you please remind me where that particular verse is located in the Bible? Sure, I’d like to read for myself the Scripture where God tells us he wants the different races to remain separate and apart.”

The Irish immigrant folded his arms across his bony chest. “Tower of Babel,” he said. “Genesis, I believe.”

“At the Tower of Babel, God confounded the
language
of the people,” Rosie Hunter spoke up. “Because of their conspiracy to reach God through human effort, the people were given many different languages. But the Scriptures in Genesis say nothing at all about the color of folks’ skin or the place of their birth, Mr. O’Toole. Isn’t that right, Seth?” She looked at her husband for confirmation.

“Well …”

She lifted her chin. “You said, ‘Rosie, let’s start at the beginning of the Bible and read all the way through.’ And just last week we read that passage about the Tower of Babel. The story is not about the races; it’s about languages. I remember the passage very well.”

“Me, too,” Chipper chimed in.

“My father told me that everythin’ is in the Bible,” Jimmy insisted. “Everythin’ right and true. And he said ’tis true that the Cornish folk are wicked, and they cannot turn to good. For myself, I can hardly believe that a Cornishman has a soul. They’re not completely human, but more like the devil himself, and so it cannot be right for us to have aught to do with the Cornish.”

“No soul?” Salvatore Rippeto interrupted. “Then you are saying the Cornishman is like an animal, O’Toole? Maybe you think it’s okay to
own
Cornishmen? Maybe you think slavery was a good thing, too. Is this what you say, O’Toole? You wanted Kansas to go to slavery?”

“Why do you think the girl is crazy, Rippeto?” Casimir Laski stepped into the argument. “God has given this illness to her because of some unconfessed sin! Sin drives the Cornwall woman mad. Sin from her past torments her day and night.”

“I am an abolitionist!” Mr. LeBlanc roared. The miller leapt onto a bench. “I believe that all men have souls, Jimmy O’Toole! Cornishmen, black men, all men! I say it is wrong to own slaves.”

“But if we’d had slaves,” Laski shouted, “we could have gotten through that grasshopper plague a lot better last year! We could have replanted twice as fast!”

“Settle down, everybody,” Seth Hunter hollered. “This is supposed to be a party, and we’ve just run off the guests of honor. Now everybody better get calm, while I go try to—”

“Down with slavery!” someone cried.

“And down with the Cornish!” Sheena O’Toole bellowed. “Down with soulless Cornishmen!”

“Defeat to the Confederacy!”

“All hail the Union!”

“Calm down everybody!”

“Secede! Secede!”

“Yankee!”

“Reb!”

Caitrin clapped her hands over her ears. As Salvatore Rippeto’s fist smashed into Casimir Laski’s nose, she ran toward the door. With the crack of a bench breaking and the wail of a child crying behind her, she let the blackness of night gather her into its arms.

Jack could hear the sounds of the quilt auction inside the mercantile as he strode toward it from the creek bank. The good citizens of Hope must have settled down after their hysterics, name-callings, fist swingings, and general conniptions. Cruel people. Sinners one and all. If he didn’t have to go back inside and fetch Lucy’s handcuffs from where they’d fallen out of his pocket, he wouldn’t come near the place.

Ever again.

It was time to leave. He should have known better than to return to Kansas—flat, dried-up old plain anyhow. Bunch of prairie dogs scratching out a living. He’d heard their cruel accusations against poor Lucy. Lucy had never done anybody a bad turn in her life.

“Sunshine and Shadows!” Seth Hunter called out from the mercantile. “This quilt was made by Mrs. Violet Hudson. Why don’t you tell us about it, ma’am?”

Jack stepped into the crowded store as a woman stood holding a small baby. Five or six little children clung to her skirt. “It’s the dark and light colors that make up this Log Cabin pattern we call Sunshine and Shadows,” she said. “I used scraps from the dresses I made when my husband was alive. And then … well … I sewed myself some widow’s weeds, so I had the dark scraps, too. So that’s it, Sunshine and Shadows.”

Thankful the crowd was facing away from him, Jack walked to the corner of the room where he had sat with Lucy. The whole mess was Caitrin Murphy’s fault, he thought. She was so determined to do her good deeds and make her pious proclamations that she’d run everything straight into the ground.
Go and get
Lucy, Jack. Please fetch your sister, Jack.
If he hadn’t been swayed by her constant belief that all would be well …

As he picked up the chain, the clink of iron drew the attention of the crowd. Straightening, Jack stared at the onlookers, daring them to speak a word. Seth Hunter tossed the quilt onto a bench and took a step forward.

“Jack,” he said. “I … ah … I was planning to come talk to you later. I hope everything’s all right. Your sister, I mean.”

“Same as ever.” Jack squeezed his fist around the chain. Words of venom and bile filled his mouth and soured his tongue. He gritted his teeth.

“I am fery sorry for trouble I make you,” Rolf said, standing. “I do not mean bad to your sister.”

“That’s right, Jack,” Seth added. “I’d like to apologize to you and your family for the ruckus tonight. I guess things got heated up around here and … ah … well, some of us got a little carried away.”

“Yep,” Jack said. “I reckon you did.”

The chain dangling from his hand, he walked toward the door.
Thanks for the welcome party,
he wanted to say.
Thanks for your show
of neighborhood unity. Thanks for your godly example of Christian love
and brotherhood.
But he swallowed the words and stepped outside.

So much for Hope.

Caitrin nearly cried aloud in fear when she saw the huge, shadowy figure moving toward her. But then she heard the clink of an iron chain and recognized the outline of the man’s shoulders.

“Jack.” She stood from the bench outside her soddy. “How is Lucy?”

“Needs her chains. And don’t sass me about it, either. There’s nobody to keep an eye on her while we pack up.”

“Pack?” Caitrin took a step toward him, aching to touch and soothe but aware she had already caused so much trouble. “Are you leaving us, then?”

“It’s for the best.”

“Please don’t go.” The words slipped out before she had weighed them. “Oh, Jack, I know some of the men were unkind, but—”

“They spoke badly of Lucy. She’s my sister, and I’ll stand up to anyone who sullies her name. Fact is, before her troubles, Lucy was one of the sweetest little gals anybody ever knew—a good, upstanding Christian who showed her religion by her actions better than anybody around here. Jimmy O’Toole had no right to cuss her like that. I’ve been trying my best to pray, read the Bible, and walk the straight and narrow. But if I ever get my hands on that skinny little Irishman, I can’t promise he’ll live to see another day.”