“Where are you headed?” the farmer asked after Grandma thanked him profusely.
“We’re on our way from Roseton to Harrisburg.”
“Well, ma’am, I suggest you turn right around again and go home,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ve just come from that direction and the road gets much worse a little farther along. We were going to deliver these chickens, but we’ve had to turn around ourselves.”
I knew how brave Grandma Bebe was. She would never retreat.
“Thanks for the advice,” she said with a smile. “As soon as I get this car turned around, I believe we will heed it.”
“No, please . . .” I begged. “Don’t listen to him.” But Grandma started up the engine, and after executing a perfect three-point turn, we headed home to Roseton.
“We could have made it to Harrisburg,” I grumbled, slouching in my seat. “What do they know?”
“There is no shame in changing direction, Harriet. In fact, once you’ve seen the warning signs, it’s always wise to turn around.”
“You could easily get us there, I know you could. You ran a tannery all by yourself. A little mud is nothing.”
Grandma glanced at me in alarm. “I don’t know where you ever got the idea that I’m invincible, Harriet. And as for managing the tannery . . . well, things didn’t turn out very well for me, in the end. . . .”
Bebe realized on her way to work one morning that a year had passed since she first went to work at the tannery in her husband’s place. She had been reminded of the fact after hearing Mrs. Garner making plans to place flowers on her husband’s grave to mark the sixth anniversary of his death. How could so much time have passed so swiftly? And how could Horatio have remained a drunkard for an entire year? Bebe had stopped pleading with him long ago, becoming accustomed to rising early every morning and going to work in his place. She wondered if Neal MacLeod realized how long it had been.
“Come up to my office,” she told him as she passed his desk.
“There’s something I want to tell you.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Bebe enjoyed working with Neal. He had a gentle smile and a quiet strength that enabled him to remain calm in any crisis. Working alongside him reminded her of the war years when she and her brother Franklin had labored together, sharing the chores, becoming friends. Over the past several months, she and Neal had found new customers and gradually improved their sales. None of their workers had been laid off. The fiery pain in her stomach was gone.
Bebe removed her hat and shawl and hung them on the coat-tree, remembering how angry and resentful she had felt a year ago on her first day there. She stood by the window in her office, looking down on the tannery yard and outbuildings, and realized that she knew exactly what each one was for: the drying shed and bark shed, the buildings for the soaking vats and the steam generator, the warehouse to store all the hides that arrived by rail from the slaughterhouses. And as she looked out at the rainy September afternoon, Bebe realized that her anger was gone, too. She no longer cared if Horatio drank all day. Her life had a purpose, just as it had when she’d helped with the cholera outbreak.
She heard someone tap on the door and turned to see Neal filling the doorframe. He was holding a ledger book. “You wanted to see me?”
She smiled up at him. “Do you realize that I’ve been working here with you for a full year?”
“Has it been that long?”
“Yes. I started in September, five years after Mr. Garner—your father—died. And it will be six years this week.”
“The year sure went fast.” He rubbed his jaw, smiling slightly. “I hope you take this in the way that it’s meant, but when you first came in here and told me that you were going to run the tannery for your husband, I thought we were ruined for certain.”
Bebe laughed out loud.
“I was certainly wrong about you,” he continued. “You’re just a little bit of a thing—no offense—but you have the courage and common sense of someone three times your size. And a real mind for business, too.”
“Thank you. No offense taken,” she said with a smile. “And I have to say that you surprised me, too. You reminded me of one of my father’s mules that first day, and I thought for sure you were going to dig in your heels and refuse to plow for a woman.”
“You know, in many ways you’re much better at this job than your husband was.”
Bebe’s smile faded. “I can honestly say that I’m sorry to hear that. I wish Horatio enjoyed working here, but I know that he never did. I don’t think he is very well suited to being a businessman. I wish he could find something that he truly enjoyed—besides drinking, that is. I thought he would sober up and return to work here within a few days, and that I would be able to return home to raise my daughter. But that’s not what happened.”
“I’m sorry about the circumstances, Beatrice, but I’m very glad to have worked with you.”
“Please don’t say anything more, Neal.” She was going to cry, and she didn’t want to. She wished she’d had the good sense to marry a man like Neal instead of Horatio.
“Let’s change the subject,” Neal said. He opened the ledger book he was holding and traced his finger down the page, pointing to the bottom line. “Here, I wanted to show you these figures. Thanks to our new customers, we’ve made a very nice profit for the third month in a row. That means it might be a trend, not an accident. And if the trend continues, we may be able to pay off our loan ahead of time and save money on the interest. I think the worst is finally over, Beatrice. We’re going to stay solvent.”
“Oh, Neal, that’s wonderful!”
Bebe threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly. She acted spontaneously, responding the same way she would have if she and her brother Franklin had shared good news. But the gesture quickly changed into something more when neither one of them tried to pull away.
Bebe felt the warmth of his body spread through her own as he held her close. She rested her head against his chest and closed her eyes, inhaling his scent. She could feel his heart racing as rapidly as her own. She never wanted to let go of Neal MacLeod.
For months, she had relied on his strength as they’d weathered the financial crisis; now she felt the full force of his physical strength as his arms surrounded her. Horatio hadn’t held her this way for a very long time. She wouldn’t allow him to if he had been drinking—which was all of the time. Bebe had even moved into a separate bedroom, hoping to bribe him into sobriety. It hadn’t worked.
Now the embrace that she and Neal shared lingered much longer than it should have, but she didn’t want it to end. He knew the real Bebe, not the false image of her that Horatio had fabricated when they’d met. And she had come to know Neal, as well—his quiet resourcefulness, his integrity and courage.
Neal finally drew back to look into her eyes but their arms still encircled each other. Bebe saw the truth written on his face—he never had been able to disguise his feelings. He was in love with her. She saw it so clearly. And she loved him.
“Neal . . .” she whispered. She lifted her face toward his, longing to kiss him.
Suddenly Neal’s expression transformed into one of horror. He released his hold on her and pulled her arms from around his waist.
“What are we doing, Beatrice? We never should have . . . I-I’m sorry . . .” He turned and fled from the office as if the room were on fire.
“Neal, wait!”
He kept going, lumbering down the stairs to the main floor.
Bebe couldn’t breathe. Her entire body trembled. She wanted Neal’s arms around her again. She wanted him to hold her. Neal MacLeod had become the rock she had clung to in the middle of the rapids, and she didn’t know how she would survive without him.
“Please don’t leave me . . .” she whispered. But it was much too late for pleas.
She grabbed her hat from the coat-tree and settled it haphazardly on her head. Somehow she kept moving, stumbling out of Horatio’s office like a blind woman and hurrying down the stairs. The noise from the tannery floor throbbed in her ears along with her pounding heartbeat, but she kept walking, moving toward the main entrance, then through it. She ran out of the building and onto the street, into the rain.
Bebe had no idea where she was going as she walked and walked. The rain fell steadily, soaking her back and shoulders and thighs, wicking up from the hem of her skirt as it trailed through the puddles. The rain drenched her hat until the ruined straw wilted and dripped. She didn’t care. Her tears fell as steadily as the rain, pouring down her face, blurring everything around her.
At last she halted, realizing through her haze of grief that the gray stretch of nothingness ahead of her was the river. She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her tears to look around. She was standing on a deserted stretch of waterfront between the railroad tracks and the wide, rippling water. On her left, fifty yards away, the tall fence that surrounded the sprawling brick factory blocked her path. On her right, beyond piles of gravel and trash, stood the shantytown that bordered the area called The Flats. Walking alone in that direction would be too dangerous. She had no business being in this place—just as she had no business falling in love with Neal MacLeod.
She turned to leave and realized that the deep rumbling sound she heard was a locomotive moving closer and closer. She started running toward the tracks to re-cross them before the train blocked her path, but she was too late. The long line of freight cars created a slow-moving fence, barring her escape. She was trapped by her own mistakes.
What was she doing there? What had become of her life? If only she could figure out how she had ended up at this dead end, maybe she could find her way back. She looked up at the heavens as the rain flowed down her face, but God seemed a long way off.
Bebe knew she had married Horatio for all the wrong reasons— his handsome face and fancy clothes and the way he had wooed her with romantic words like the hero in a novel. But most of all, she had liked the image of herself that she’d seen reflected in his eyes, the beauty and goodness he’d imagined seeing in her—things she knew weren’t really there. She had known nothing of his true character, nor had she cared to look beneath the surface. That mistake was hers, not God’s. But what should she do about it?
She heard the squeal of steel against steel as the train halted on the tracks, trapping her. She turned around and walked toward the river again, watching the raindrops dimple the surface. The rapidly spreading rings collided and created more rings, roiling the surface. Bebe remembered the day she had stood at the lake with Horatio, watching the spreading ripples, realizing that one raindrop— one person—could make a difference. Multiple raindrops and multiple people, all interacting and colliding and stirring up the placid surface could create a tidal wave of change. Mr. Garner’s infidelity had created a son out of wedlock, who had collided with Horatio, leading to his misery, his drunkenness—and because of his drunkenness she had fallen in love with Neal MacLeod. It hadn’t happened overnight, but little by little, working with him day after day—the same way tiny raindrops could create a flood.
Freight cars banged and slammed behind Bebe as the locomotive added more cars to the train and released others, coupling and uncoupling. The engine rumbled, hissing steam. She bent to pick up a stick from the ground and snapped it in half.
She had made a terrible mistake. The love she had once felt for Horatio had slowly eroded while her feelings for Neal MacLeod had grown steadily stronger. Had her father-in-law fallen in love with Neal’s mother the same gradual way? Had he overlooked the warning signs, too, until he’d fallen into temptation?
Horatio’s drunkenness had happened with one sip of alcohol at a time. He had made the wrong choice day after day until those choices accumulated into something more, just as Bebe’s wrong choices had. She knew that she no longer left home every morning to work in the tannery out of necessity. She went every day because she wanted to be with Neal. She loved talking with him, loved the nearness of him when they worked side by side, loved everything about him.
She tossed half of the broken stick into the river and watched the current sweep it away. That’s what had happened to her. She had allowed the current to carry her away to a place she had no business going.
God forgive me. God forgive us all.
Bebe glanced behind her. The train hadn’t moved. In front of her, the river flowed through town and out of sight. The rain continued to fall. She was soaked to the skin, her dress plastered to her back and arms and thighs. She turned in a circle like a trapped animal with no way out.
Should she go home to the farm? No, that was another dead end. Her mother would never allow her to stay. Hannah would say,
“What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”
She would tell Bebe that she had to forgive Horatio “seventy times seven.” But how could she go back to Horatio when she loved Neal?
Maybe she should go back to the tannery and beg Neal to run away with her.
Bebe’s tears flowed faster when she realized that he would never do it. Neal had too much integrity. He had turned away from their embrace before she had, just now, as if fleeing the scene of a crime. And that’s exactly what it had been. Bebe was a married woman. And Neal knew firsthand the devastation that adultery always caused.
What was she going to do? She hated living in the mansion on the ridge, hated all the turbulence in her marriage and in her life. Her mother-in-law despised her. Horatio loved liquor more than he loved her. And for the past year, she had spent so much time at work that her daughter barely knew her anymore.
Bebe watched a small ship navigate upriver against the current and remembered her mother’s words:
“Smooth seas don’t produce
skillful sailors.”
Mama said that the rough waters in life made people strong, ready for God to use. But what could possibly be God’s purpose in all of this mess? She couldn’t even remember the last time she had prayed.
Bebe threw the other half of the stick into the water as hard as she could. She longed to shout aloud to the heavens,
“What do
you want from me, God?”
Maybe she should leap in after the stick, let the shock of the icy water steal her breath away, let the water fill her lungs and carry her away to the sea.