The Quaker Café (28 page)

“I was so impulsive, so in love
. I am ashamed of the truth.”  He paused and reflected. “The truth,” he repeated. “What a complicated requirement of faith.”

He looked down at his folded hands in his lap
. “Do you think the need for truth outweighs silence, Liz?”

“I don’t know
. I’m like a pebble in the Grand Canyon when it comes to religious philosophy.” Liz confessed. “You know so much more than I do.”

His lips curled ever so slightly
. As always, he weighed his words before he spoke. “Maggie’s mother, Sarah, came from New Orleans, a city of entertainment and lights. She didn’t fully understand what to expect when she got to Cedar Branch. Corbett went to Raleigh each week. She was homesick. She didn’t have anything to do. Corbett’s father arranged for her to take horseback riding lessons from my Uncle Charles.”

“At the Hansen’s farm?” The vision of the ghost lady on the horse came to mind.

He nodded. “She turned out to be a good rider, and after a few lessons she wanted to ride every day. Uncle Charles didn’t have the time. He asked me to meet her at the stables until she could get her horse saddled and unsaddled properly by herself.
Keep an eye on her
, he advised me.
Make sure she grooms her horse
the right way.”

              Grandpa
Hoole stopped and looked at Liz. The implications were all there. Liz hoped he might let it go at that. Nothing else needed to be said.

  Grandpa’s brow wrinkled into a tighter knot as he rubbed his forehead in an unconscious effort to erase this memory
. After a couple of minutes he continued. “I was a shy lad of twenty. She was a year older, from a big city. She believed Corbett Kendall and Cottonwoods would give her social status and financial security.”

“Maggie has told me
her mother was unhappy here,” Liz said.

“You know,” Grandpa looked up at Liz, “I worried about you when Chase first brought you here
. Worried that you’d be as miserable as she was, but you have been amazing. Have I ever told you that, how impressed I’ve been at your willingness to adopt Cedar Branch as your home?”

Liz started to say something, but he didn’t seem to need an answer.

“Sarah thought Corbett was fun,” Grandpa looked off in the distance and started to ramble a bit. “That’s what she called him,
fun
…when he was home. On the weekends everything revolved around him. People poured into Cottonwoods and he entertained them. The rest of the week she tried to amuse herself. Once a day she went riding. I met her at the barn. She talked. I listened. And then, to my own surprise, I began to talk and she listened. I couldn’t believe that I had anything to say of interest, but she convinced me that I did.”

“So you met her at the stables before her rides?”

“I not only met her at the stables, I began to ride with her every day. The crops were in. I worked on the bookkeeping for the farm in the morning. We rode in the afternoons. She told me about New Orleans. I told her about Quakers, and farming and horses. She was so delicate and beautiful. I was captivated. I hadn’t ever talked to a girl like that. I fell in love.” 

Grandpa stopped for a long moment and took out a handkerchief from his back pocket to blow his nose
. When Liz offered him a glass of water again, this time he nodded. She walked past Debbie’s desk and shook her head as Debbie rose to assist. Once back in her office, she set the water beside Grandpa.

“Of course, I knew she was married
. I knew that we could only be friends, but the world had suddenly opened a door to a delicious sliver of happiness that no one told me existed.”

“That’s not bad, Grandpa
. Friendship is a good thing.” Liz wanted him to stop.

“Friendship is one thing
. But then I began to feel guilty that I had stolen a moment of joy from Corbett that she’d never shared with him. I know now that guilt was an indicator that I had overstepped an invisible boundary, but I refused to listen to my inner voice. She wanted to ride horses. I was there if she needed help. It was that simple. Of course, if it had, indeed, been that simple, I wouldn’t have kept our relationship a secret from my parents and Uncle Charles.”  

There was a quiet tap at the door
. Grandpa stopped and Liz got up to speak to Debbie.

  “I’m off to lunch,” Debbie whispered
. “You want me to bring you anything?”

“Nope,” Liz said.

“Shall I put the answering machine on for the phone?”

“Please,” Liz shut the door and sat back down across from Grandpa
. “Grandpa, there’s no reason you have to tell me any of this.”

Their eyes met
. “But there is,” he said, not to be dissuaded. “One afternoon, as I helped to unsaddle her horse, she kissed me on the cheek. You can’t imagine how many times I’ve thought about that first kiss. I turned my head to look at her face and then with an intensity I never knew that I had, I kissed her back.” 

He stopped again and stared out the window
. A ray of sunlight shined through onto his eyes. Liz wanted to get up and flip the blinds, but she felt a strong need to remain still until he spoke again.

             
“I don’t know what else to say. I should have stopped at that first kiss, but I didn’t. The fact that I believed with all my soul that my fixation on her night and day must be love seemed to justify whatever we did. I believed that somehow things would work out so that we could be together. Now I look back on that fantasy and marvel that I could be so naïve. But when you’re young, reason often plays second chair to desire.”

“That was so long ago, Grandpa,” Liz said
. “What difference does it make now?”

He ignored the question
. “Corbett came home without warning a day ahead of time for Christmas vacation. Isaac came early to get Sarah and tell her. He had never come into the barn before. He always waited for Sarah by the car, and I would clean up and water the horses after they left so that he wouldn’t know I was there.

“But this day he wa
lked into the barn and surprised us. Sarah begged me to go out the back barn door.” Color rose in Grandpa face. Liz suddenly realized how embarrassing this must be for him. In more ways than one she regretted being the recipient of the story he told.

“We scrambled to get back into our clothes
. Before I could slip out, Isaac walked  back to where we were, probably thinking Sarah might need help with the saddle. She went rushing out half clothed, yelling at him to leave, when I heard a car pull up. Then Corbett came into the barn, and suddenly everything happened at once. We had slipped from a world with just the two of us into chaos: the sound of a car, the shouts, horses neighing, loud voices and screaming. I heard Corbett yelling at Isaac, and Isaac and Sarah shouting back. During the confusion I was able to get out the door without anyone seeing me.”

Grandpa rose for the first time
. He walked over to the picture window in the office and looked out across at the hospital. Slowly he shook his head from side to side and then continued in a monotone that Liz could barely hear. “Shaken, I went back an hour later to water the horses and check if anything might be out of place. There was blood in some of the straw up front and a broken board on one of the stalls. A shovel lay in the middle of the floor. My mind began to race as to what might have happened after I left. I imagined a fight between Sarah and Corbett. I wanted to believe that she confessed to him that she loved me. I worried that perhaps he had hit her. I cleaned up the straw and replaced the board so that my Uncle Charles wouldn’t ask questions. Then I ran home to borrow my father’s car. I drove to Cottonwoods and saw old Doc Hewitt’s car there and the sheriff going into the house. When I knocked on the door, Mason Jones answered.”

“Mason Jones?”  Liz had never heard that name before.

“He worked at Cottonwoods back then and was one of the inside servants. He was a bent, elderly man with hardly any weight on him. I told him that I had come to see if Miss Sarah was all right. He seemed disturbed by my visit and anxious to have me leave.”

“Did anyone speak with you?”

“No. I could hear loud voices. I told Mason I wanted to see if there had been trouble with the horses since things were not as they should be when I returned to the barn to clean up. Mason said no one could talk to me then. I asked him to please tell the family that I had come by, and he said he would.”

             
Grandpa turned and sat back down into the chair. “It wasn’t until the next morning that I heard that Isaac had been lynched overnight in the swamp.” He closed his eyes. “Oh, my God, Liz, what had I done?  I heard the arguing. I knew there had to be a misunderstanding and I ran. That event has haunted me every day of my life.” Grandpa lowered his head into his hands.

“You never told anyone?” Liz asked
.

“I knew I had to
. The only thing to do was to go to the sheriff. But while the mind was steadfast, the body became weak. I began to vomit. My legs would not hold me upright. I went into violent shakes and my mother found me curled up on my bed. After Uncle Charles arrived at the house, he and my father stood in the back yard talking. I could hear them. My mother insisted I was too sick to see them.”

Grandpa picked up the water cup and took another swallow
. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes and continued. “A small child showed up at the back door with a letter. Mother recognized the boy as a grandchild of Mason Jones. At least an hour or more passed before I had the nerve to open the letter and read it.”

Grandpa
Hoole stopped. He reached inside his shirt pocket and pulled out an envelope brown with age and tattered around the edges. “The letter,” he said, as he handed it across to Liz. “She called it
friendship
.”

“You still have it?” Liz breathed out the words with no attempt to cover the surprise in her voice
. Then she read.

December 23, 1937

My Dearest Nathan,

My heart is breaking
. Mason told the family that you came by Cottonwoods last night out of concern for me. My heart nearly stopped fearing what you had planned to say. Please, please, dear Nathan, don’t do that again. How could it possibly help things now?

Corbett says we will go to Raleigh immediately after Christmas. He has found a house for us.
That was the surprise he came to tell me. He feels guilty for leaving me alone in Cedar Branch these past few months and has accepted part of the responsibility for what happened. I cannot tell him the truth, not now. Isaac should never have come into the barn and after he hit Corbett there was no turning back. The truth will only make things worse for the Kendalls and your family. Imagine the scandal it would become. Think of your dear mother and father.

  I will leave this town, but this is your home
. Hopefully, I will find more happiness in Raleigh, although I will never find the friendship that I found with you. Please promise me that you will not reveal our secret to anyone. Our fate is that we must be apart, haunted by God for the rest of our lives. Is that not punishment enough?

I know not what you must do to regain that inner peace that you told me all good Quakers have
. You are such a sensitive soul. I know you will suffer. Please forgive me. You will forever be in my heart.

Love, Sarah             

Liz could avoid the question no longer
. There was only one reason Grandpa was here to tell her this story. “Grandpa, you think Maggie is your child?”

Over closed eyelids, Grandpa arched his eyebrows
. He raised his left hand to his temple and then opened his eyes and looked directly at her. “Yes, I do,” he said. “I feel certain she is my child.” 

“Certain?”  Liz said.

“I remember the first day I saw her. She was almost six years old.” A slight smile crossed his lips. “Corbett held her hand as they walked to The Quaker Café. I had only been back in town a couple of months. I stepped out of the hardware store and Corbett stopped to talk to a friend on the street. I don’t even remember who, I was so captivated by Maggie. He hadn’t seen me. He stood there with his back to me holding Maggie’s hand. She turned. The instant she stared up at me with those same mix-matched eyes of her mother I knew she was mine.”             

“It was that sudden?”

“It was that sudden. I knew, and then of course as Chase got older, I could see the resemblance; same build, same hair, same facial structure. I thought everyone in town would see it instantly, but I’ve never heard anyone say a word.”

“I never saw it, Grandpa.”

“Really?”

“Honestly, I never thought about it until recently.”

“That’s amazing,” he said shaking his head.

“Would you like to be tested as a possible bone marrow match?” 

              “I would.”

             
“I will try to arrange it. I’ll add that we do these tests with complete confidentiality, but I should also tell you that I don’t think there’s any way they will consider you as a donor, regardless of the results.”