Long Upon the Land
Page 21
There it is. Finally out in the open, yet she brushes his admission aside with no more concern than if he’s said he’s a Fuller Brush Man.
“I don’t need anybody’s permission,” she says firmly. “I hope he’ll give us his blessing, but I’ll marry you without it if I have to. Besides, you might be surprised. Dad respects you.”
Surprised is too weak a word. “He does?”
She nods. “He does.”
He turns that over in his head, then sighs. “All the same, you can’t marry me. You need somebody like him. A lawyer or a doctor.”
“I don’t want a lawyer or a doctor.” Rebellion flashes in her eyes. “I want the father of my baby. I’m pregnant, Kezzie.”
He’s shocked. “You ain’t!” His own eyes go to the shiny little packet that lies next to their pallet. “You can’t be.”
He picks up the packet and waves it at her. “I used one of these every time.”
“Not every time, darling. Not those first two times.”
He groans and sinks down beside her. “Oh Lordy, Sue.”
When he tries to put his arms around her, she turns away in tears. “You really don’t love me, do you?”
He pulls her to him and kisses her until she yields to his embrace. “It scares me how much I love you, but I’m not right for you. Why can’t you see that?” He pushes the hair back from her face and his blue eyes are sad. “I can’t give you all the things you’re used to. You’re a town girl, honey, and running a farm’s hard work. Besides, them boys ain’t gonna keep acting like little angels once they get used to you.”
“I’m not afraid of hard work, Kezzie. Don’t you see? I want it. I need it. I can’t stay in town and twiddle my thumbs and pretend I’m doing something with my life. Out here is real. The boys are real. The land is real. You’re real. This is what I want.”
“Are you sure, Sue? Really sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my whole life.”
She hasn’t realized how tense he is until she feels his arms relax around her and he finally smiles.
“Another baby, huh? Well! Maybe this one will be a girl. I always did want a little girl.”
She stops smiling. Guilt floods through her veins and the look on her face puzzles him.
“What’s wrong?”
Her eyes are brimming with tears again.
Alarmed, he says, “What? Tell me!”
“Promise you won’t be mad at me, Kezzie?”
“Mad at you? Mad about what?”
“I’m not really pregnant,” she confesses. “I was going to trick you. Make you think you had to marry me. But I can’t do that to you. If you don’t love me enough to marry me before God and my friends and my father, then—”
He laughs out loud and hugs her to him tighter than ever. “Oh, honey! I even love you enough to marry you in front of your mama, poor lady.”
He folds up the quilts and blankets while she dresses. “Second week of May, huh?”
Her smile is radiant. “Second week of May.”
“Reckon I’ll have to buy me a new suit. And new clothes for the boys.”
He takes a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his jacket and offers her one. “Still can’t figure where you get the nerve to do this. Not much scares me, Miss Stephenson, but you got me beat by miles on this one.”
Before he can strike a match, she pulls out Mac’s lighter, hesitates, then hands it to him.
He turns it in his fingers. “Who’s W.R.M.?”
“Walter Raynesford McIntyre.”
“Old boyfriend?” He flips back the lid of the Zippo and lights their cigarettes. “Do I need to be jealous?”
“No, he’s a friend who didn’t come back from the war. But he’s why I know I’m right to follow my heart. He’s the one who showed me what happens to people when they don’t.”
She pulls apart the lighter so he can read the hidden inscription. “Let me tell you about Mac and Leslie.”
CHAPTER
21
Thy mother is like a vine in thy blood, planted by the waters.
— Ezekiel 19:10
I was puzzled. “If Leslie wasn’t black, then what was the big deal? Was she a Lumbee Indian? Jewish?” I tried to think what other prejudices were rampant in those days.
Daddy shook his head. “Leslie won’t a black woman, honey. Leslie was a white man. And he killed hisself because Mac won’t man enough to speak up for him when the word got out about him in New Bern. Nobody knowed Mac was like that, but when they found out Leslie was, they beat him up and tied him naked to a fencepost in the middle of town with a sign around his neck. Thought it was a big joke. Somebody brought him a blanket and cut him loose—not Mac—and that night he shot hisself.”
I was stunned.
“Mac told your mama that Leslie was dead ’cause he was a coward. They couldn’t live together in New Bern and they couldn’t go to Paris but they could’ve gone to New York or California or some big city. Found a place where people would let ’em live like they wanted to.”
He slid the engraved case back into place, closed the lighter, and handed it to me. “It happened a few weeks after he give Mac this lighter and Mac never quit grieving. He liked your mama and before he went overseas, he made her promise that she’d be braver than he was. That she’d break the rules and not care what people thought was right or wrong for her. ‘Follow your heart,’ he told her. When I tried to tell her we couldn’t get married, that we was too different, that people would say she was throwing herself away on me, she wouldn’t listen. She said we was right for each other and we was, won’t we?”
“Oh yes!” I said. “Yes!”
“Real funny, ain’t it, how things work? People finally getting used to the idea that we are how we are and we can’t change the way we was made.” He smiled. “You might not even be here if it won’t for Walter Raynesford McIntyre. Nor Will and the little twins neither.”
“Don’t count on it,” I said. “Aunt Zell says Mother was always pretty headstrong. The promise might’ve made it easier, but promise or no promise, I bet she would’ve married you anyhow.”
He stretched his long legs straight out and there was something downright prideful about the smile on his face. “Yeah, I reckon she would’ve.”
The rusty old green glider barely squeaked with the gentle push of his foot. “Just wish she could’ve knowed what’s about to happen with the grandchildren.”
“The grandchildren?”
“Ain’t they told you yet?”
“Told me what?”
“That’s right. They wanted to keep it a secret. You gotta pretend you’re real surprised when they tell you.”
“Tell me what?” I said again.
“You know how your mama never did like me messing with whiskey?”
I nodded.
“Just about the only thing I ever lied to her about.”
“So?”
“Them young’uns been plaguing me to death this summer, making me tell ’em how to make it, wanting my best recipes.”
“What?”
“Ain’t you wondered how come they planted so much corn this year? They’re gonna have me making corn liquor again, honey, only this time, it’s gonna be legal. They already started the paperwork. Full circle, Deb’rah. Full circle.”
Deborah Knott Novels:
DESIGNATED DAUGHTERS
THE BUZZARD TABLE
THREE-DAY TOWN
CHRISTMAS MOURNING
SAND SHARKS
DEATH’S HALF ACRE
HARD ROW
WINTER’S CHILD
RITUALS OF THE SEASON
HIGH COUNTRY FALL
SLOW DOLLAR
UNCOMMON CLAY
STORM TRACK
HOME FIRES
KILLER MARKET
UP JUMPS THE DEVIL
SHOOTING AT LOONS
SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT
BOOTLEGGER’S DAUGHTER
Sigrid Harald Novels
:
FUGITIVE COLORS
PAST IMPERFECT
CORPUS CHRISTMAS
BABY DOLL GAMES
THE RIGHT JACK
DEATH IN BLUE FOLDERS
DEATH OF A BUTTERFLY
ONE COFFEE WITH
Non-series:
BLOODY KIN
SHOVELING SMOKE
LAST LESSONS OF SUMMER
SUITABLE FOR HANGING
Acknowledgments
Once more I give my heartfelt thanks to the three who have been with me almost from Deborah Knott’s beginning: District Court Judges Shelly S. Holt and Rebecca W. Blackmore and the Honorable John W. Smith, director of the Administrative Office of the Courts. I truly could not have done this without your patient and generous help.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Family Tree
Epigraph
1943
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
December 15, 1945
CHAPTER 3
December 18, 1945
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
December 21, 1945
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
December 27, 1945
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
January 10, 1946
CHAPTER 21
Books by Margaret Maron
Acknowledgments
Newsletters
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Margaret Maron
Cover design by Jerry Todd
Cover copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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