Tender Betrayal

by Rosanne Bittner

  He had found a new peace out here, and riding in the open air for weeks had strengthened him. His skin was browned from the sun, and a lot of riding and walking had firmed his muscles even more. Nearly everyplace he stopped to ask about Audra, the woman of the house cooked him a meal fit for six men, ham or beef, whipped potatoes, pies. When he left, they insisted he take some extra biscuits and dried meat, ears of corn and raw potatoes, so that he ate well even when he wasn’t spending the night on someone’s farm. He had gained weight but was still several pounds away from the weight he’d been before he spent a year wasting away in bed.

  During the first several months of his recuperation, he had had to learn to walk all over again. It had taken nearly a year to get back his normal abilities and strength, but he had worked hard at it, anxious to leave for Kansas. He missed Maple Shadows…would always miss it. But right now the important thing was to tie up the loose ends of his past so that he could decide what to do about his future. That meant finding Audra. Maybe some day they could both go back to Maple Shadows, spend a summer there, rediscover the sweet love they had found.

  He rode a little closer, squinting at what looked like a burned-out building. Now he could see that part of the cornfields looked trampled. He kept his horse at a gentle trot, saw a sod house flattened here, another there. At one of them a Negro man was restacking the chunks of sod, preparing to rebuild his house. The man looked at him warily, eyeing him with distrust. Lee halted his horse. “Good afternoon.”

  The Negro man just nodded.

  “I’m Lee Jeffreys. I’ve come here looking for a Mrs. Audra Potter. Does she live here in Brennan?”

  The Negro leaned on a pitchfork. “Why you want to know?”

  “She’s an old friend.” Lee looked around. “What happened here?”

  The Negro kept studying him, his dark eyes gauging and wary. “Outlaws. White men who don’t like niggers settlin’ in and havin’ something of their own. They attacked us yesterday, tried to run us off, but Miss Audra, she told us to fight, so we fought. They left, but they said they’d be comin’ back.” He nodded to a distant hill. “Over yonder, we buried what’s left of them white men we killed. Buried some of our own people that got killed, too. The rest of them outlaws, they’re angry that nigger men killed their own. They’re comin’ back for us, all right.” He looked back at Lee. “Maybe you’re one of them, come to spy and see how many guns we got. We ain’t got many, but we do okay, and we ain’t leavin’. Miss Audra, she pretty near got herself killed helpin’ us, so we’re gonna stay and fight, for Miss Audra.”

  Alarm rushed through Lee at the words. “She’s hurt?”

  The Negro nodded. “One of them got into her house and attacked her, but she beat him, Elijah says. She beat him good with a rifle, smashed the man’s head right in. Elijah, he helped her, got her away from him. That man, he hurt her good, broke some ribs. She’s in a lot of pain, and she did it for us, so we stay, for Miss Audra.”

  Lee didn’t know whether to laugh or go into a rage. He tried to picture Audra risking her life to help these people. His Audra? And she had beat the hell out of one of the outlaws! He would have liked to have seen that! My God, he hadn’t even seen her again, and he already knew he still loved her.

  “Where is Audra now?” he asked.

  The man looked him over again suspiciously, then watched the horizon to make sure there weren’t more men behind him. He pointed then to a frame house a little bit north of the main settlement. “She’s there. She lives with Toosie and Elijah Jakes in that there house. Toosie, she’s takin’ care of Miss Audra.”

  “Toosie got married?”

  The Negro seemed to relax more then, realizing Lee really did know Audra, and even Toosie. “Yes, sir. She got herself a little boy, calls him Joey. She’s gonna have another baby ‘fore too long.”

  Lee felt the old stabbing pain. So Toosie had had a baby boy and had named him Joey. Telling Audra the truth was going to be the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life, if he could find the courage to do it at all. “Thanks,” he told the Negro. He rode off, leading his pack horse and heading toward the frame house. He looked up at the sign over the road leading into the little town.

  Brennan, Kansas, Population 262, it read. The population number had been crossed off and painted over several times. A couple of buildings were burned down, but it was obvious this was a thriving town, and from the way people were moving about, picking up debris, hammers already pounding, men sawing new wood, the citizens of Brennan were determined it would continue to thrive, in spite of the outlaws who were trying to run them out.

  Was all of this because of Audra? She seemed to be an absolute inspiration to these people. He approached the little frame house, noticing one window was broken and the door partially splintered. A well-built, handsome Negro man was removing the door to replace it. When he noticed Lee, he set the door against a porch post and moved to the steps of the porch, looking ready to fight.

  “Are you Elijah?” Lee asked, deciding he had better set the man at ease right away. “Toosie’s husband?”

  The man frowned. “How do you know Toosie?”

  Lee dismounted, tying his horse and leaving his weapons on the animal. “I’m Lee Jeffreys. Did Audra or Toosie ever tell you about me?”

  Elijah’s eyes widened in surprise. He looked Lee over, then grinned and put out his hand. “Mr. Jeffreys! Is it really you? Toosie!” he yelled louder then, before Lee could even answer. “Get out here! Come see who’s here!” He shook Lee’s hand vigorously, and a lovely Negro woman came to the open doorway. She stopped and stared, then broke into a smile.

  “Mister Jeffreys! God be praised!” She ran out to him, and to Lee’s surprise she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. “You came! You really came! I told Audra you would find her again, but she wouldn’t believe it.”

  Lee took hold of her arms and held her away from him, meeting her eyes. “Don’t be praising God and all that, Toosie. You don’t know the whole story.”

  “I know you’re here! That’s all that matters. Audra, she still loves you, you know. She denies it all the time, says it’s men like you at fault for all that happened to her, but she’s just trying to make herself believe that so she can forget you. But she never has. I can tell. Oh, and she needs something like this right now. She’s been so lonely, worked so hard helping all of us, and now she’s hurt and—”

  “Slow down, Toosie!” Lee laughed lightly at the way she was carrying on. “I hear you have a baby!”

  “Yes!” She turned and took hold of Elijah’s arm. “This is my husband, Elijah Jakes. I knew him many years ago. Mr. Brennan sold him, and I didn’t see him for a long time. After he got freed, he came looking for me, and we got married. We have a little boy named…” Her smile faded. “Named Joey. Joey was killed in the war, Mr. Jeffreys. Maybe you didn’t know that.”

  When would he stop getting this burning pain in his gut every time Joey’s name was mentioned? “I heard,” he answered. I killed him. He removed his hat and ran a hand through his dark hair. “Toosie, can we go someplace and talk before I see Audra? I’d like to know more about all that’s happened first, what’s going on here with these outlaw attacks, how all of you ended up clear out here in Kansas in the first place. It might help me to know what to say to Audra when I see her again.” He put his hat back on. “It’s been five years, you know, since Baton Rouge.”

  Toosie grasped his hands. “Yes, sir. And you should know all that’s happened. It’s been bad for Audra. I’ll never forget the day we got the letter saying Joey was killed. She had already suffered so much by then.”

  Lee stiffened, his eyes tearing. “Yeah. We’ve all suffered, Toosie.”

  Toosie looked him over, realized he was much thinner than she remembered him. And his eyes, those beautiful blue eyes, had a terribly haunted look to them. “It’s been bad for you, too, hasn’t it, Mr. Jeffreys? The southerners and the Negroes, we all think we’re the only ones who ha
ve suffered; but it was bad for both sides, especially for the men who fought in that war.”

  Lee looked around. “Looks to me like the war isn’t over yet.”

  “For some folks it might never be over. But the time comes when we have to forgive and forget and just start over, don’t we?”

  Their eyes held. “In some cases that might not be possible.”

  “Anything is possible, Mr. Jeffreys, with the Lord’s help. Come over here by the shed. There’s an old log we can sit on that’s shaded by the building this time of day. I’ll tell you all about what happened to Audra and the rest of us, and you can tell me why you’re just now finding us when it’s been two years since the war.” She looked over at Elijah. “Don’t you say a word to Audra till we come back.”

  “I won’t say nothin’.” Elijah turned and walked onto the porch to grab up a little boy who had toddled through the door. He brought the bright-eyed, grinning child close to Lee. “This is little Joey.”

  The little boy reached out, and Toosie made a remark about how readily Joey took to people, afraid of no one. Lee hardly heard her. He took the boy in his arms and hugged him, remembering another Joey, also with bright, dark eyes. But that Joey had white skin and red hair, and he had once told Lee he was the best friend he’d ever had.

  It’s okay, Lee. He could still hear the words so clearly, words from a dying Joey who forgave the man who shot him. Again he fought an urge to find some whiskey and just drink the memory away, but he’d tried that once, and it had solved nothing. There was only one way to get over this hell and go on from here.

  He kissed the baby and handed him back to Elijah. “You have a fine son.” He turned to Toosie then, remembering that first day he met her, struck by her beauty and suspecting she had an intelligence to match. It was good to see her free and married and happy. “I see you’ve got another one coming,” he said, glancing at her swollen belly.

  “Just a couple more months.” She took his hand. “Let’s go talk.”

  Lee walked with her to a shed at the rear corner of the house. They sat down on the log, and slowly the bright afternoon turned to dusk. While Elijah worked on the door, he looked their way several times, and once it looked as if Lee Jeffreys had his hands over his face and was crying. Was he crying over what had happened to Miss Audra? The loss of her voice? All the other things she had suffered? Or had that white man suffered something himself that nobody knew about? He was a good man. Elijah could see it in his eyes. He’d long ago learned to read white men’s eyes, knew when they were sincere. Lee Jeffreys was sincere.

  It seemed the Yankee and Toosie sat talking far longer than it should take to tell each other everything. Something was wrong. The white man still had his head in his hands, and Toosie was rubbing his shoulders, as though the man were suffering some terrible grief of his own. What was it all about? He heard Audra call out for Toosie, and he went inside the house to tell her Toosie had gone to help some others who needed it, that she’d be back soon.

  “I thought I heard you both…talking to someone,” Audra said, every breath painful.

  “Jus’ Joseph and Wilena,” Elijah lied. “You jus’ lie easy. Toosie’ll be back real soon now. It’s almost dark.”

  “What if…they come…after dark?” Audra fretted.

  Elijah knew she was referring to the outlaws. He thought about Lee again. He’d been told Lee was a colonel or something like that in the Union Army. Now that the man was here, maybe he could help. One thing he ought to know about was fighting. “We’ll be okay, Miss Audra. Somethin’ tells me God has answered our prayers.”

  Audra glanced up at him in puzzlement. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see, soon enough.” He grinned and left the room, and Audra tried to imagine what the man could be talking about. She wished she could get around better, but every movement brought a gripping pain. She would be no use now if the outlaws came back, and she knew what would happen to her if they found her, broken ribs or not. She was afraid, but she didn’t want Elijah and the others to know it.

  She heard voices then. Someone called to little Joey, told him what a big boy he was. The voice sounded very familiar. He didn’t talk like most Negroes talked, and he didn’t have the accent of a southern white man, either. Where had she heard that voice? Her first thought was Lee, but that was impossible.

  “Toosie? Who’s out there?”

  Lee was close enough to the bedroom door to hear her, and he felt as though someone had knifed him in the heart when he heard her raspy voice. Audra! He could still hear her singing that first day he came to Maple Shadows, a voice so full and sweet, it gave a man the chills. She would never sing like that again, and he wished he had been the one to know the pleasure of killing March Fredericks.

  “Someone very special is here,” Toosie was saying. She went into the bedroom and leaned over the bed. “We’re going to be okay, Audra. Somebody is here who can help us.”

  “A soldier? Did the commander at Fort Riley send us some help?”

  “Not exactly, but he is a soldier, or at least he used to be.” Toosie looked out at Lee and motioned for him to come into the room. At first Lee could not get his feet to move. Five years! He finally managed to make it to the doorway. Toosie stepped out of the room, and Lee moved closer to the bed.

  For a moment they just stared at each other. “Hello, Audra,” he finally managed to say.

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Lee,” she whispered.

  33

  In spite of all the mixed emotions Lee Jeffreys drew from her soul, Audra could not quell a quick smile of joy and relief at seeing him again. It seemed both impossible and miraculous, and although she no longer understood just how she felt about him personally, the sight of an old friend from a past that was once full of love and beauty was welcome. Still, she had spent years telling herself that she hated him, never wanted to see him again.

  Oh, but for him to be standing here in front of her, this man who had known her as intimately as any man could know a woman, was another story. He was so many things to her, an old friend, yet just a stranger now. Was he still a friend? An enemy?

  “How did you find me here?” she asked, looking him over. So thin. He looked older, and there were small scars on his face, as though he’d been beaten. Such tragedy in those blue eyes she had once loved beyond all measure. So he had suffered, too. “And why? Why now?”

  Lee thought she looked like an angel from his dreams, lying there with her auburn hair spread out on the pillow, wearing a simple flannel nightgown, her face thin, actually burned from the sun and beginning to show just a hint of lines about her eyes. He struggled not to show his shock at her voice and the scar on her throat. It did little to mar her natural beauty, which to him was now a deeper beauty, one that came from the inside. This woman had matured into a strong, generous, courageous person, one with a determination to survive and make do with what she had. She was a far cry from the haughty seventeen-year-old he had met that lovely day in Connecticut, when she stood beside his mother’s piano and sang…sang, with a voice she would never carry again. His own guilt for the wrongs of the past grew even heavier. He should have been there for her. She never should have suffered, but then, if her father had not burned his letters…

  “The ‘how’ was easy,” he answered. “I had gone to Baton Rouge, saw Brennan Manor.” He saw the hurt in her eyes. “There were some whites squatting there. They told me they thought you’d sold the place but weren’t sure who the owner was, so I went into town to find someone who might know. A clerk at the land office told me you’d sold the place to your cousin’s husband and had left for Kansas with your Negroes.” He turned and picked up a wooden chair, setting it beside the bed, then sat down near her. “Audra, you sold everything for a thousand dollars?”

  Her eyes teared. “I had no choice. It was too dangerous to stay there…and I wanted to help…Toosie and the others. They had saved my life. They wanted to come to Kansas…but had no money to buy t
he things they needed, so I sold Brennan Manor.”

  Her words came slowly as she struggled to breathe against the pain of her broken ribs. She knew by Lee’s eyes what he was thinking. Helping Negroes was the last thing she would have done a few years ago. She put a hand to her hair, thinking how different she must look from the elegant, perfectly coifed and dressed debutante he had first met in Connecticut. She moved her hand to her throat in an effort to cover the scar there. Lee took hold of her hand and pulled it away.

  “It’s all right, Audra.” He squeezed her hand lightly. “Toosie told me everything.” He closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of her hand as he held it. “I’m so damn sorry. If things had been different…if I had been with you, none of it would have happened. And if I could have found you sooner, you wouldn’t have had to sell Brennan Manor. I would have given you the money to do whatever you wanted. You wouldn’t have had to let the place go.”

  She studied the thick, dark hair, the handsome lines of his face, the broad shoulders beneath the denim shirt he wore. How old was he now? Thirty-five? Thirty-six? Where had the last seven years gone since they first met and she wrote that song for him? “I suppose no one person or group of persons can be blamed for any of it,” she answered. “As far as Brennan Manor…once I found out Joey was never coming back, it didn’t matter…anymore. It was all for Joey…always for Joey.”

  God, there was the gut-wrenching pain again. For some reason he had found it easy to tell Toosie about Joey, and she had understood. She was a remarkably insightful, gentle woman, and she had forgiven him as easily as breathing, had understood the deep grief behind his tears. Toosie had told him that he must tell Audra and get it off his chest, and he knew she was right. There was no way around it. But he couldn’t. Not just yet. He would let her heal first, see what he could do for these Negroes and their problem with the outlaws.