by Indiana Wake
Still, there was no good him running over that now, he had a task to perform and no amount of thinking it through was going to make it any easier.
He walked cautiously up to the door and paused, peering in to look around the store for any sign of Katie. Not seeing her, he walked further in, quickly realizing that she was tucked out of the way, sitting on a great big barrel behind the counter and fully engrossed in whatever it was she was reading.
“Good morning, what can we do for you?” came the voice of none other than Josh Lacey, seemingly from nowhere.
He had wandered in from the main lumber store and cutting area that formed the largest part of the building. Where Arlen had hoped to find Katie alone in the front of the shop, it seemed that Josh had unwittingly scuppered his plan.
“Mr. Lacey,” Arlen said and attempted a smile. “How are you?”
“I reckon I am doing real good, Arlen. Been a long while since you last came in for any lumber. Still, I reckon you’ve been busy these last couple years, huh?” Josh Lacey laughed, and Arlen remembered just what an amiable man he was.
He didn’t know him too well, it was true, but he’d liked him whenever their paths had crossed. And now, as Josh advanced upon him with his hand held out and a smile on his face, Arlen thought he liked him all the more.
“It certainly has been a while,” Arlen said and returned the smile as he took Josh’s hand and shook it firmly. “How’s business?”
“It chugs along nicely. I’ve got no complaints.” Josh was not the least bit awkward in his presence and Arlen was enjoying the moment so much he had almost forgotten what he had gone in there for in the first place. “And how about you? A little bit worse for wear after three years in the Cavalry?” He nodded down at Arlen’s leg.
But it did not elicit the same response in Arlen as it ordinarily might have done. There was no artless curiosity in it, just one man asking after the well-being of another, plain and simple.
“Just a little bit.” Arlen laughed. “I am just glad you weren’t outside to see me almost falling out of the wagon trying to get down.”
“I guess there will be a few adjustments to make, but I am sure you will be able to make them. After all you’ve seen and done, I reckon you must be up to it.”
“In the end, maybe. Not being able to do this and that is still kind of a new experience for me.”
“Well, I wish you the very best with it.” Josh nodded at him in a natural, genuine way. “So, what is it? Using up a bit of quiet time with some woodwork?”
“No, I reckon I am going to be the worst customer you’ve seen all day.” He laughed and felt a little anxiety creep up as he realized the moment had come. “I’ve come in to speak to Katie. To apologize, actually,” he said and tried not to sound too crestfallen.
Josh looked entirely nonplussed and it was clear then that Katie had told her father nothing of the argument they’d had after dinner on Sunday.
He’d been vaguely aware of Katie peering over the counter at him, not moving from her barrel as she sat in silence. He turned slowly to look at her and could see that her mouth was hanging open just a little.
“Well, I reckon I will leave you to say your piece in private.” Josh chuckled deep and low and Arlen saw him quickly peer over at his daughter and raise his eyebrows.
When she nodded, Josh turned to go.
“Nice to see you again.” He called over his shoulder as he wandered away out the back and into the lumber store.
“You too,” Arlen said and then slowly made his way over to the counter.
“Well, hello there,” Katie said, sliding down from the large barrel and straightening down her thick apron over a dark blue dress.
He couldn’t entirely read her expression now that she no longer looked surprised and wished that he at least had something to go on.
When he reached the counter, he leaned against it somewhat gratefully, although he tried to keep his relief to himself. Standing there without support of any kind as he spoke to Josh had been increasingly awkward. He knew he ought to relent and take a walking stick, just as Doc Brown had suggested, but he was still a young man and his pride was most certainly a factor. And once again, recognizing it didn’t do anything to change it.
“Hello there.” He responded and paused for a moment, wondering where to begin.
“You don’t have to apologize, just forget it,” Katie said in a tone that was a little waspish.
“Now, how can I just forget it when you clearly haven’t?” he said and laughed.
“To be honest, it’ll take some forgetting.”
“But maybe if you let me apologize that might speed things up?”
“Mmmm,” she said and narrowed her gaze.
“Come on, don’t we all get a chance to apologize? You apologized to me, didn’t you? And I didn’t interrupt, I didn’t tell you you couldn’t.”
“And you weren’t particularly bothered either.”
“All right, keep it coming. I deserve all of it, so have your fun.”
“There’s nothing fun about this,” she said, but he could see that her sharp green eyes brightened somehow.
“Oh, I don’t know, I think you might be enjoying this just a little bit.”
As he leaned on the counter and looked at her, he realized just how young she looked. Her skin, compared with his, was as soft as silk and as clear as those bright green eyes of hers.
Her thick silvery brown hair was tied back into the sort of ponytail that swung this way and that when a girl walked. Even with the utilitarian apron over the top of her dress, Katie still managed to be just about the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen.
And now, for the first time, he truly appreciated that beauty. He wasn’t annoyed by it as he had been when he felt himself to be humiliated by her curiosity. And he wasn’t antagonized by it as he had been at the dinner table when he thought he’d felt her pity.
“Maybe a little,” she said, and the corners of those full and rosy lips began to turn up. “But more than anything I’m surprised to see you. I must admit, after everything I’d said, I couldn’t imagine that you’d bother to talk to me again.” She relaxed enough to lean on the counter opposite him.
“I can’t think of anything you said to me that I didn’t deserve. And I really am sorry for the way I behaved on Sunday. I guess I had decided before you even got there that I wasn’t going to have a real good time.”
“But why?”
“Because it’s hard enough to come back home like this without having to put up with pity.” He spoke the words honestly and without any rancor at all. “I’m sorry, it’s just the truth.”
“All right then, maybe I’ll add a little truth to yours,” she said and held his gaze in a way which made her seem much older than she looked suddenly. “I haven’t been pitying you, Mr. Bryant. I felt guilty, and that’s the truth. Guilty for staring at you twice and behaving in the kind of way I reckoned I was above. But if I’d had any tendency to pity you, it would have been wiped away in our first meeting. I hope it makes you feel better,” she said and continued to stare at him.
“I guess so,” he said and laughed. “I do feel better, although I’m fairly certain that you’ve just taken another swing at me.”
“I’d rather take a swing at you than have you all annoyed because you think you have my pity.”
“Then we’re quits?”
“Yes, all right, we’re quits. And thank you for apologizing.” she said, reminding him of the slightly shy and bumbling girl she’d been outside the diner when she first approached him.
“Well, thank you for accepting,” he said and leaned back from the counter a little, wondering if it was time for him to go.
She had made his apology a lot more comfortable than he deserved, he knew that much. But because of it, the conversation had come to an end much sooner than he had imagined it would and now he felt a little bereft. For reasons best known to himself on the very deepest level, he didn’t want to
go.
He wanted to stay just a while longer and carry on talking to this unusual young woman. He wanted to find out more about her, to learn more about somebody who could be sweet, learned, and determined in her own defense. She was such a mixture of things and none of them the things he had been expecting.
“Your daddy sure is an understanding man. He would have been well within his rights to bounce me right back out into the yard.” He was casting about for something else to add, an opening for a conversation that she would take part in.
“Even if he knew that we’d argued the other day, he still would have appreciated your coming here to apologize. My daddy is not hot-headed in any way.”
“Is your ma?”
“No, why?” she asked and suddenly started to laugh as if the idea of her mother being hot-headed was hilarious.
“I just wonder where you get it from then, if your ma and daddy are so even-tempered.” He laughed too, wishing more than ever that he hadn’t been so obstructive in the first place.
“I’m not hot-headed, Mr. Bryant.”
“Well, if you’re not hot-headed, you sure know how to dish out a tongue lashing.”
“Nobody was more surprised than me, I can assure you,” she said shyly, looking down at the book she had set on the counter, the book she had been studying so intently when he had first wandered into the store.
“Are you serious?” he said, amused and curious all at the same time.
“I’m serious. I don’t normally speak my mind like that. Mind you, I don’t normally have cause to.”
“Then I reckon I must have given you good cause, huh?”
“Something like that.” She laughed. “But aren’t we supposed to be forgetting about it?”
“Yes, I suppose so.” He tapped the book. “So, you really are into planting flowers and hedges and what not?”
“Yes, I am.”
“So, what are you growing this year?”
“I guess the same old stuff I usually grow; sunflowers usually feature. They were the first things I ever grew, you see.” She paused for a moment and looked embarrassed, as if her pastime really was unusual for a young woman of her age. “But I’m struggling with rhododendrons. They need a certain kind of soil, alkaline soil, and I’m not exactly sure that’s what we have in our garden.”
“Sounds complicated,” he said and smiled, knowing nothing whatsoever about growing things, even vegetables.
“It’s proving to be.”
“So, how long have you been a gardener?”
“Ten or eleven years.” She shrugged. “Since I was a little girl.”
“Let me guess, your ma gave you that handful of sunflower seeds to keep you quiet.”
“The very same, but when I saw those tiny little leaves bursting up through the soil, I guess it kind of got hold of my imagination.” She shrugged. “I know it’s not an interesting subject for most folks apart from old men, but I like it.”
“Then it doesn’t matter what most think, does it? All that matters is that you do the things you like doing.” He began to feel alive, as if something of his old self was out there somewhere on the horizon.
For the few minutes he had stood speaking with her, his bitterness had evaporated and deserted him completely. He wasn’t foolish enough to think that it wouldn’t return, probably somewhere on the journey home, but he would enjoy its absence for now.
“That’s a real nice way of looking at it.” She smiled at him and she was once again the sweet girl.
“I’m glad I came in to see you,” he said, changing the subject suddenly, “I reckon I felt pretty rough about the way I behaved these last few days.”
“You apologized, so you don’t need to feel rough about it anymore.”
“I know.” He smiled, finding her determination to truly forgive him strangely inspiring. “I know you were only trying to help, to be my friend, and I know I’ve apologized, but I think it needs saying. When I threw that back in your face, I wasn’t angry at you.”
“Then who were you angry at?” She squinted at him and looked a little confused, her youth finally usurping that curious maturity of just moments before.
“I don’t know. Me maybe? Circumstances? Life? Honestly, I don’t know.” He shrugged and realized that it was the absolute truth.
“Well, if you’re not angry with me anymore, maybe we could be friends after all?” Her cheeks were flushing again, just as they had done outside the diner.
She was a little bit tongue-tied once more and something about it dug deep into him.
“Why not? It’s not like I have more friends than I know what to do with.” He laughed, trying to lighten the seriousness of the moment.
“Well, I don’t have any either, if it’s any consolation,” she said with such honesty and yet he could hardly believe it was true.
How could it be that such a beautiful young woman could be without friends? Sure, he didn’t remember her in the time before he left, but she would have only been a kid then. But now, looking like she did, the young men of the town must be circling her like hawks.
And yet nobody looking at those sincere eyes, that earnest expression, could doubt her words for a moment.
“Actually, it is a consolation,” he said and laughed humorously. “As selfish as that seems. At least I’m not the only one.”
“You’re not,” she said and laughed.
“Well, I suppose I’d better let you get back to your work,” he said and straightened up, knowing it was time to go. “Or your reading, at any rate.”
“All right. Well, thank you for coming by,” she said and looked at him a little expectantly.
“I guess I might see you in church on Sunday.” He shrugged. “If I get there.”
“If you get there,” she said and smiled at him in a way which was in danger of melting his heart if he didn’t hurry up and get out of there.
By the time he made it out to the wagon, his leg was aching. But this time it was aching from standing with all his weight on it for so long. And it certainly made clambering back up into the wagon so much harder this time than it had been when he’d set off. He could only imagine how ungainly he looked, and he felt the old stab of annoyance as he hoped that Katie hadn’t followed him to the doorway to see him off.
He didn’t want her to see him struggling.
But when he finally settled himself in the seat and rattled the reins to get his horse moving once again, he peered over his shoulder briefly to see that the doorway to the store was empty.
He didn’t want the annoyance to come back, he didn’t want to taste the bitterness again. The last few minutes had made things somehow different, and he wanted to hold onto that.
Of course, Katie was such a young woman, a girl really, and he knew that all she was offering was friendship. But at a time when he felt so deeply lonely, that sort of friendship wasn’t to be turned down.
And maybe, in the end, it would be an easier friendship than his old ones. Katie had no memory of him before, no idea of him as an entirely whole man, and that somehow made the idea of it easier.
When he hit the main road and began the trek home, he wondered if he really might see his old self out there somewhere on the horizon. Could he really return to the man he’d been? If not whole, then at least himself?
He smiled; if he did see his old self out there somewhere, he’d rattle the reins harder and chase him until he caught him.
Chapter 11
It was another fine day and even warmer than it had been as Katie made her way down into town on foot. Even though she was at liberty to take the wagon or any one of her daddy’s horses, Katie liked to walk, to look all around her.
Her daddy had given her the day off from the lumberyard, given that her ma wanted her to take some yarn down to Connie at the boarding house and to extend an invite to her to have dinner with the family on Sunday after church.
And after that, she was going to walk out to the Bryant place, for Mary had invited he
r the day before when she’d seen her coming out the mail office. She was going for some coffee and pie and idle afternoon chitchat, nothing so formal and anxiety- inducing as her first visit had been.
Mary had seemed so at ease with her that she was sure that she knew the details of the reconciliation between Katie and Arlen at the lumberyard, and so she’d agreed with a smile.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Connie questioned when Katie let herself in through the back door which led into the kitchen of the boarding house.
“Yarn,” Katie said simply and held the two large skeins up in front of her, “Mama said you needed it for something.”
“Yes, I wanted to knit up some little jackets for the Drayton’s new baby,” she said and held two floury hands up in front of her, “I guess you’d better put it down, honey.”
Connie was clearly making bread or buns or something similar, whatever it was she was kneading dough on the table with some ferocity, spraying flour this way and that as she did so.
“Do you want me to make your drink? Some coffee?” Katie asked, deciding that making herself useful would be the best way of staying for a little while.
“Yes, by the time you’ve got it ready, I’ll be able to set this to one side to rise,” Connie said, confirming Katie’s suspicion that she was, indeed, making bread.
Katie set some water to boil on the stove and set down two mugs ready. She knew Connie Langdon’s kitchen as well as she knew her own and was equally comfortable there.
“I believe you’re going out to the Bryant place this afternoon,” Connie said cheerfully as she continued to pound the dough.
“I am, but how did you know that?” Katie asked, thinking that she had been looking forward to telling Connie all about it.
“I saw Mary yesterday afternoon. She said she’d just bumped into you.”
“You don’t miss a thing, do you?” Katie said and laughed as she peered into the water and waited for the first bubbles to appear.
“Not a single thing,” Connie said, throwing herself into it good-naturedly. “She sure was singing your praises, young lady.”
“Was she?” Katie said, trying not to sound as if she was searching for information.