The Storm (3 page)

“Here's your favorite treat, Nellie,” she called. “Nice and rich. It'll keep your coat shiny.”

Nellie lowed and swished her tail. Usually docile, even she rebelled when she didn't get what she needed.

“Be patient, sweetheart. I can't stand for both you and Mother Russell to rush me. Oops.” She'd hit her ring with the scoop. She was all thumbs today.

She glanced down at her left hand. “Oh dear, I knocked the diamond out of my engagement ring.”

She pulled on her gloves, dropped to her knees, and ran her hands along the littered ground. Nothing but chicken feathers, tufts of hay, piles of cornhusks, and mounds of dried and fresh manure. Her stomach churned, and she gulped to keep from throwing up.

“Darn. Well, let me finish milking and run a bucketful to Mother Russell. After I wash the breakfast dishes, I'll come hunt my diamond.”

She rinsed Nellie's tits then sat on the low stool, her head fuzzy as Nellie munched her breakfast and finally cooperated. The leisurely music of the milk buckets was usually soothing as their treble
ping, peng
gave way to a bass
shhoop, shhuup
. But the twenty minutes it took her today seemed like twenty hours.

She grabbed several flour sacks she'd boiled and poured each pail of milk through one of them into small buckets for sweet milk to drink and into crocks for churning. Then she set the crocks in a washtub, poured water into it, and let each one's cloth covering hang in the water to help cool the milk. The cream would gradually rise. After breakfast she would add some leftover souring cream and a little milk, then churn the mixture into butter and buttermilk. As careful as she was, though, sometimes the milk spoiled.

She hurried to the well, even more jittery, and jerked her gloves on again. Otherwise the rough rope would callus her hands. Her shoulder muscles protesting, she strained to pull an already cold tin full of milk from the deep well for breakfast and carefully lowered the small buckets of fresh milk to chill.

She scuttled to the kitchen but didn't dare spill a drop. “This should be enough for breakfast, Mother Russell.” She'd mention her diamond later.

Mr. James walked in from feeding the mules, Patrick dancing beside him. “Hi, Ma. I'm all clean and ready to go to school.”

“Good boy.” She rubbed his arm and her day brightened. She couldn't survive without him and her music. “You missed a spot.”

His sunny expression dimmed. “Gee. Sorry. I tried.”

She squeezed his small shoulder. “That's all right. Just run along and wash your neck again before breakfast.” She gazed fondly at him then asked Mr. James, “Could you draw some more well water? I need to heat enough to fill the kettle, wash the dishes, and sterilize the pails.”

When he returned to fill the reservoir on the wood-burning stove, she was in the pantry looking for some preserves. She overheard him and his mother.

“I declare, James. Don't see why she has to scald those milk buckets every blessed time she uses them. Once a week's enough. Powerful waste of manpower, and well water too.”

“You're right, Ma. Like you're always saying, she's gone overboard about germs. I bet she got that notion at that gol-dern university.”

She'd heard it all before, but she stopped for the first time that morning, afraid the heavy white sacks of flour, corn meal, and sugar on the shelf next to her might fall and crush her. They'd trap her in this small closet and smother her.

Suddenly she wanted to smash the Mason jars lined up on another shelf. The purple blackberry jam, the light-pink plum jelly, and the crimson strawberry preserves, safe and sweet in their glass jars, would dye the pantry floor. Then she'd grab the tidy white bags that hung over her head and scatter seeds all around her—cotton, squash, okra, cucumbers, peas, and beans.

Did Mr. James and Mother Russell even care if she overheard them? Did they think she was deaf and totally insensitive?
How much longer can I endure her hateful remarks and his refusal to defend me?

Mother Russell grumbled about how salty the ham was as she sliced it. When she dropped each piece into her black skillet, it hissed. “Downright finicky, that's what she is.”

Molly felt like crying. They obviously believed she was worthless. She had to get away.

*

The bile started rising in Mrs. Russell's throat as soon as Molly confessed she'd lost that dad-blasted diamond. What business did a farm wife have wearing a one-carat ring, especially while she milked the cow?

She ate a biscuit and gravy, two pieces of ham, and two fried eggs but still felt a mite nauseous. Cooking the ham hadn't taken any of the salt out of it. Better kill another hog pretty soon, before it got too hot.

That diamond kept worrying her. Nothing but trouble, just like Molly.

James had been bound and determined to own that ring. Cost him a good bit of money too. But they'd had a bumper cotton crop that year, and he'd felt flush.

The first gal he offered it to lived just down the road. He musta had her in mind when he bought it. He'd been partial to the sweet little thing for quite a spell. Might have made him a pretty fair wife, and she was always batting her eyelashes at him after church. Why, at the New Hope picnic she sat beside him at dinner and let him buy her lemonade and ice cream. She couldn't figure what he saw in the girl though. She always acted like a scared rabbit.

But when he popped the question, she hemmed and hawed, said she was honored and all sorts of nonsense but wanted to move to town and try city life.

He moped around then started sparking a flashy, hard-looking woman in the next county over. Her folks were kinda trashy, and she looked like she'd had plenty of hard knocks. But James took a shine to her and courted her awhile.

She coulda told him right off the bat that'd never pan out. The woman was most likely meaner than a snake when you got to know her. Good thing she turned him down flat after he brought her over for Sunday dinner.

Now Molly sat there cutting her eggs into little bites and eating 'em like nothing had happened. Acted like she'd forgotten she'd been careless enough to lose a diamond in that filthy barn. But it wouldn't do a lick of good to ask her how she coulda done it. She'd have some smart-aleck excuse.

Her mind seemed stuck on James and that diamond, like the day he charged in real excited, saying Molly had consented to be his wife.

She glared at Molly—leaving all that good ham sitting on her plate—and felt like wringing her neck. What a wastrel.

Back then she'd told herself that Molly was just funning him and, sure enough, after a couple of days there came a letter. She'd had second thoughts and was sending his ring back.

She buttered a biscuit and filled it with fig preserves.

James's heart near 'bout broke. Looked like one of the mules had kicked him in the face. Then he musta decided he just wasn't gonna take no for an answer, because he started paying her all kinds of attention. Courted her for quite a spell, then brought her home on a Saturday afternoon and said they'd tied the knot. Coulda knocked her over with a cotton boll.

Hmm. These preserves sure had turned out good.

Molly'd been all dressed up in a frilly white outfit, with matching kid-leather shoes cut to show her ankles. And wearing real silk stockings! Great Scott. She didn't look fit for anything but sitting around all day drinking tea and playing the piano. And that's exactly what she'd do if she had her way.

She sopped her third biscuit in the egg yolk left on her plate. She didn't feel quite so queasy now.

At least she'd taught Molly to milk old Nellie, and they seemed to get along fine. But look what came of that. Now she had to go help her hunt that diamond. Molly would never find it by herself.

Law. She was just about at the end of her rope.

“Damn horseshoe nails. They ought to outlaw horses from main roads.” Jaq studied her right front tire. “Flatter than this river bottom. Glad I brought some of my brother's old clothes to wear.”

She gazed up and down the hard-packed highway near the banks of the Cane River. “Doesn't look like anyone will rescue us, so I better fix this. How about getting my tool kit out of the back.”

She was sweating after she jacked up the car and wrestled the tire off, but it felt good to get some exercise for a change.

“Say, I've never known a woman who could do that,” Eric said.

She straightened up and wiped her forehead with her shirtsleeve. At least he had the grace to praise her. “My brothers taught me. Came in handy driving an ambulance.” She ripped the tube out of the tire and inserted a new one. “I'll patch this old tube when we reach New Hope. No sense wasting daylight now.”

Fifteen minutes later they leaned against the front fender and gazed at the huge fields. “Those are pecan trees on this side of the road,” Eric said, “and cotton fields on that side, in case you didn't know.”

She shrugged and pulled a small packet of cigarettes from her front pocket, then tapped one out. She needed a break. “Want a cigarette?”

“One of yours? Nah.” He jerked out his own pack and held it up. “Real men smoke Lucky Strikes. Couldn't have made it through the War without them.”

Spoken like a typical man, she thought. “Who changed that tire?”

He grinned. “A real woman, I suppose, even if you do wear men's clothes. They've been okay so far. Fooled the drummers and whiskey salesmen at the hotels. I bet those guys would have pestered a looker like you, even with me beside you.”

He gave her an appreciative glance. “But you need to start wearing a dress tomorrow. I've already told my aunt and uncle in Logansport that we're married. Besides, it's just fifty miles on to New Hope the next day. You'll have to be Jacqueline instead of Jaq when we get there.”

She nodded. The cigarette was loosening her tight muscles, pepping her up. Cigarettes had been her best friend last summer when she returned from a late-night run. After picking up wounded soldiers near the front lines and delivering them to the care stations out of enemy range, she'd needed a boost.

“A drink would taste good about now,” she said. She was ready to reach the hotel and have a decent meal.

“We've got half a bottle of Kentucky bourbon left, and plenty more where that came from. We're set if we have to stay in New Hope longer than we planned.”

“Heaven forbid.” He produced the bottle like a magician, and she took a swig from it. “Ah, that's better. Well, we better get this show on the road. I want to hit Natchitoches before dark.”

As they pushed on over the rough highway, she said, “Willie told me a few things about this area. She's quite literary, you know. Supposedly Harriet Beecher Stowe modeled Simon Legree on someone from around here. And Kate Chopin lived nearby for a while.”

Eric looked down at his fingernails. “Even I know Simon Legree. But who's Kate Chopin?”

“The author of a scandalous novel called
The Awakening.
”

He seemed skeptical. “I never read novels. What made it scandalous?”

“She showed that women experience passion.”

“That's nothing new.” Eric ran a hand through his blond hair, then lit another Lucky Strike. “I've caused a lot of women to feel passion.”

“Uh-huh. Chopin gives the inside story of an unhappy marriage. Her book's about the wife of a New Orleans businessman and her torrid affair with a younger man. I hate the ending.”

“She goes back to her husband?”

“She commits suicide. I wanted her to meet the woman of her dreams and live happily ever after.”

Eric snickered. “You're a romantic. Never going to happen. What else did Willie tell you?”

“Just that a freed slave inherited her former master's entire plantation near here. He'd fathered a lot of her children, and one of their sons ended up with the place.”

“A colored woman and her half-breed offspring owning a big plantation? That's where I draw the line.” Eric took a big drink from the bottle. “Coloreds need to know their place and stay there.”

Her spine stiffened. “What about Willie?”

“What about her?”

“She's an octoroon and used to own one of the biggest houses in Storyville.”

“She's just a whore. She doesn't count.”

“A lot of the high-society women in New Orleans used to send scouts to see what she was wearing so they could get in on the latest fashions. She counted to
them
.”

“Fashions? Huh. They're silly.” Eric picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue and flicked it out the window.

“Is driving four hundred miles and changing a flat tire silly?”

“No.” He stared straight ahead.

“Is driving an ambulance in France silly?”

“No.”

“Is agitating for women's right to vote silly? You know I picketed in Washington this past fall before I went home.”

One side of Eric's mouth twitched. “I don't doubt that. And most men
really
think that's silly.”

“Are you like most men?”

He faced her, his expression serious. “In some ways I am. Being away from home all these years has made me a little more open-minded, but I'm still a country boy at heart.”

“Well, I hope your heart isn't too country. If it is, you may have to stay in New Hope by yourself.”

“What about that annulment?”

“You wouldn't—”

He held up his hands. “I'll give it to you. Let's go get Pop settled. Then we'll drive back to New Orleans before it rains so hard we can't make it.”

“I'll hold you to that.” She hoped she didn't regret this little adventure.

*

Molly pulled on her heavy work gloves. If she jammed one of her hands into an old board with a nail in it under all this mess on the barn's dirt floor, she might not be able to play for church Sunday. She couldn't bear to miss accompanying the special trio she'd been coaching since Christmas.