[Troublesome Creek 01] - Troublesome Creek (3 page)

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Authors: Jan Watson

Will had kin in town, his mother’s second cousin Sarah, and he’d come to Lexington that fall to stay with her family during court days, a time for bartering and selling goods. The streets, lined with booths and wagons from which people displayed their wares, had a festive air. Will was an excellent hunter and trapper and brought hides to trade as well as tins of molasses and the occasional hound puppy.
One evening he accompanied Sarah to a hymn sing at the Baptist church down the street from her house. The big brick building had floor-to-ceiling windows made of brightly colored pieces of glass held together with what looked like lines of lead. Each of the eight windows told a different story. Will wondered who had made such beautiful things. He thought he’d like to put one of those windows in his church at home, maybe like the one where Jesus knelt in the garden. That would be something to see. He’d have to study on it some more.
He hung back as Sarah made her way to a front pew in the crowded sanctuary. He had never been to a church like this before. It seemed everyone was dressed like a king. At home you didn’t have to wear finery to praise the Lord. He felt uncharacteristically shy, his homespun shirt not quite right, his overalls too short, his rough leather boots unpolished. He took a seat against the wall in the last row, folding his long arms across his chest and tucking his feet under the bench, trying to make his tall frame as inconspicuous as possible. He was sorry he’d let Sarah talk him into coming.
He took a hymnal from the wooden rack in front of his knees and stood when the song leader addressed the congregation. He wasn’t used to singing from books. At home everybody knew the words. Sometimes they’d be singing up a storm on one song when someone would start midverse on another. Then they’d all sing that one ’til they got tired or the preacher started to preach. His favorite hymn had eleven verses. He wondered if they’d sing it: “Before the sun, the font of light, a single round had run; God’s church was present in His sight, as chosen in His Son.”
“Bringing in the Sheaves,” he heard instead. He fumbled through the pages to find the proper place.
Two young men on one side of him looked his way and laughed, poking each other in the ribs. “Hillbilly,” one said under his breath. “Won’t do you any good to hold a songbook when you don’t know how to read.”
The pianist pounded away. “‘Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,’” rang through the sanctuary, nearly but not quite, drowning out the other feller’s stage-whispered taunt.
“Hey, Slick, why don’t you crawl back up the hollow you came from? We don’t need your kind here.”
Will’s temper flared. Nobody talked to him that-a-way. Back home he wouldn’t put up with bullies. About two years before, Calvin Huff had pushed him just one time too many and come up with a mouthful of mud. Will didn’t like to fight, but he could. His big hands shook as he set the hymnal back in the rack. He thought about the knife in his pocket. He could gut a buck with that knife quick as any man. Maybe he’d take it out just to scare the loudmouths. He could tell by their doughy hands they’d never used a knife.
“‘We shall come rejoicing,’” the song continued, “‘bringing in the sheaves.’”
And he remembered where he was. No call for his temper. No call to bring disrespect to the Lord in His own house. He kept his eyes straight ahead. He couldn’t bring himself to take the songbook back out of the rack, but he’d stay there and wait out the service.
“You deaf as well as dumb?” the first one started in again.
“You hush up, Oscar Thornton,” a quiet voice said. At the end of the pew a yellow-haired girl near his age pushed her way past the fellows to his other side. “Here,” she said, handing Will her songbook. “You can turn the pages for me.”
Will was struck dumb. He couldn’t get his tongue unstuck from the roof of his mouth. The girl was the prettiest thing he had ever seen. Prettier even than the top of Pine Mountain when the sun first came up—prettier than a rainbow trout flashing on the end of a line. She even smelled pretty.
It was bad enough before she started to sing, but when she did, his knees got weak. Surely, the angels’ chorus wouldn’t sound this good.
He was sorry when the service ended. He couldn’t get his long legs untangled fast enough, and so she was out the door, his tormentors in hot pursuit, well before he was. Once outside he eyed the crowd, not sure what he’d do if he did see her. She was too fine for the likes of him—like a rare mountain canary in a raucous blue jay’s nest.
Will was about to give up and head out to Sarah’s house when there she was right in front of him. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
“You may walk me home,” she said.
Then the one she called Oscar staked his claim. “Hold on just a minute,” he said. “You told me at Sunday school this morning that
I
could take you home tonight.”
“That was before I learned that you have no manners, Oscar Thornton.”
“Come on, Julie Anne.”
“Apologize,” she replied.
He stuck his hand out to Will. “Sorry. No hard feelings?”
Will squeezed until he saw Oscar flinch. Apology or not, Will was the one to escort Julie Anne.
They walked a piece before she spoke again. “Well, can you talk?”
He opened his mouth and what came out sounded like a screen door rusted upon its hinges after a long wet spell. He was glad they were in the shadows between gaslights because her tinkling laugh brought the blood rushing to his face. He’d never felt so embarrassed. He wished he was anywhere but standing here with her.
She clapped her little hands together. “Do it again,” she begged. “Do it again.”
And so he did; then he did it once more just to please her.
“I can do a rooster.” She tucked her hands under her arms, flapped her elbows, and crowed loud enough to raise Lazarus.
Before he knew it, he was laughing with her, and much too soon she was taking her leave.
“We have to stop here,” she said. “I don’t want my sister to know you walked me home. I’m only allowed to walk alone to church—not socialize.” She glanced up at him, and her face looked so sad he felt his heart reach out to her. “But,” she continued, “I get so lonely sometimes . . . if I don’t talk to someone I might burst.”
They stood at the edge of a well-trimmed lawn. A winding brick path led to a two-story house fronted by white columns. The porch lights were on, but the windows were dark and uninviting.
“We don’t talk much in my house, for Father is ill and my sister, Grace, does not want him disturbed.” She touched his arm. “Come to revival again tomorrow night, and save me a seat.”
Then she was gone, and he realized he’d never said a word.
And so, the romance of Julie and Will began with the innocent flirtation of youth. Will was smitten. He couldn’t seem to leave her so he lay over in Lexington for several weeks, the longest he’d ever been away from the mountains. He knew his friend Daniel would see to things for him.
Julie told him about the death of her mother from pneumonia the year before. She said her father had taken to his bed, and her older sister didn’t allow talking above a whisper in the house. Grace was twenty-eight, ten years Julie’s senior. Julie said Grace taught music and deportment at the same finishing school Julie had just graduated from. When her sister was working, Julie sat in her father’s darkened room and read to him. But she didn’t think he heard.
Will was in that house only once, on the night he was to return to the mountains. Will and Julie had met after dark in their trysting spot in the side yard by the apple tree. Julie still didn’t want her sister to find out. She sat in a rope swing, and he pushed her ever higher. She started to laugh, then caught herself and cried instead, but quietly with little choking sounds. He caught the swing, and she turned in his arms and he kissed her.
“Please,” she begged just like the first time they’d met, “do it again.”
Their nest under the tree smelled of summer apples and fallen leaves. The warm autumn night lay soft as a blanket upon their young bodies. He tried to stop. He was a farm boy; he knew where their passion might take them, but she was so beautiful . . . and then it was too late.
Afterward she pulled him along behind her into the kitchen. Funny, it was in the cellar, underneath the house. She said the cook and the other servants wouldn’t be about at that hour. She wanted him to sit with her at the table. She wanted to feed him. He guessed she wanted to play house.
She got out bread and cheese and poured goblets of cider. “Please don’t leave me,” she said.
He choked down a little piece of cheese and a crust of dry bread. “Now, Julie, we already talked about this. I’ll be back come spring.”
“But you can’t just go! Not now. Not after—” She jumped up from the table and started sobbing.
He went to her and gathered her in his arms. He kissed her tear-streaked face with tender longing kisses. “Honey, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have let that happen.”
“But what will I do without you?” She twisted his shirtfront in her hands and leaned against his chest. “Please, please don’t leave me.”
Her pleading broke his heart, but there were things he had to do at home. He had led her into sin. He had to make it right. “I’ll be back. I promise you I will. I want to meet your sister and ask your father for your hand. We’ll wed, and then I’ll take you home with me.”
And so he left that very same night, saddling his horse in the dark, his heart in turmoil from a newfound love and a shame so stalwart it lodged in his soul like a living thing. How could he have taken something so pure and beautiful and tarnished it for his own selfish need? He would never forgive himself. The memory of Julie’s tears was fresh as he guided his mount eastward back to Troublesome Creek.
Before Will knew it, the guilt of autumn had turned into the chilly remorse of winter. Deep snows alternated with ice storms and kept him quarantined for a long spell. Julie’s tear-streaked face haunted his dreams, and every time the rooster crowed he remembered the night they’d met, and his heart seized with longing. He kept a few leaves from the apple tree in her side yard in his pocket until one day he reached for them and felt nothing but the dust of his promise to her.
He didn’t wait for the spring thaw but led his horse down the treacherous mountain, then rode out across the rolling hills toward Lexington.
At last he stood on Julie’s front porch, his heart slamming in his chest. Will wore the new leather jacket he’d sewn from hides he’d cured himself. He’d shined his boots with stove blacking. He was fresh from the barber, and in his hand a bouquet of roses trembled, an offering for Julie’s sister, Grace. He knocked and knocked.
Finally the door opened. An older, bespectacled version of Julie stood there, except for the hair. Julie’s was the color of the center of a daisy, but Grace’s was bright red and sprang out around her face in spite of her trying to slick it behind her ears.
“I-I’m Will Brown,” he stammered. “I’ve come to marry Julie.” He thrust the flowers toward her. “These here are for you.”
“I know who you are,” she said, her voice as hard as the ice on the mountain he’d slid down to get here. “Don’t you think every gossip in town told me about your little summer romance with my sister?” She flung the flowers across the porch. “Go away. I’ve got trouble enough without your sort coming around.”
Grace started back through the door but paused and turned toward him. Her green eyes flashed like those of the wildcat he’d once cornered in the henhouse. “Mind my words,” she hissed. “Or I’ll have the law on you.”
 
Grace Taylor stepped inside and leaned against the closed door. What was she to do? Everything had gone wrong since her mother’s death. Life had been so good, so full of God’s blessings. Grace taught music and deportment at the Finishing School for Young Ladies, a vocation she loved. She’d had a suitor and plans to marry, but she’d given up everything to care for her father and her sister, and this was the thanks she got? Julie sneaking around like a thief in the night with an ill-dressed young man who probably couldn’t even read.
The only thing that kept her going during this time of despair were the letters she received from Philadelphia, letters from her closest friend Millicent Dunaway. Millicent had married well, moved to Pennsylvania and, along with her husband, David, established a boarding school for children of the wealthy. What joy it must be to have a life like Millicent’s.

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