Roe was certainly jittery at that moment. He was not the kind of man to allow his physical desires to control him, but he was not unaware of them either.
Meggie looked up at him then. She didn't understand the expression on his face, but it wasn't pity and she was grateful for that.
"I'm not sorry that I kissed you," she said, her chin defiantly high. "I liked it and we both know that already."
"I liked it, too," Roe said quietly.
Meggie blushed as a kind of pride stole in her heart. He'd liked it too. Somehow that made it not quite so bad.
"But I know that you aren't my prince come up the mountain," she said. "You're just a man that's come to listen to our music and document it on that Listening Box."
"Yes."
"So, I won't be throwing myself at you anymore, and I'm not going to be walking on pins around you neither."
"I'd like us to be friends, Meggie," he said.
"I don't know that we can be that," she said. "It seems that friendship and kissing don't mix too well together."
"Perhaps not."
"But, I'm glad that you are Jesse's friend. It seems like you really like him some, and I hope that that's true. Because he likes you and I wouldn't want him to get his feelings hurt."
"Neither would I," Roe answered.
"Good," Meggie said with finality.
There was silence between them then as Meggie continued her sewing. But it was a comfortable silence. The first they had ever shared.
"So," Meggie said. "You and I will just go along the best that we can. Not pretending that it didn't happen, but just making the best of the way things are."
Roe nodded understanding. "Do you do that a lot?"
She made a small sound of shock. "Kiss fellows? Of course I don't!"
"Not that," Roe assured her quickly. "Do you just make the best of the way things are?"
Meggie shrugged and gave a positive tilt to her head as she leaned forward slightly to bite off the thread just above the knot. "That's Ozark ways."
The next morning, clad in his brandnew, homespun butternuts, Roe followed Jesse to the barn where Jesse cut him strips of leather for crossed galluses, a kind of suspenders, for Roe's new trousers. The pants were bulky and unfashionable. But, strangely, Roe felt rather comfortable in the cloth made by Meggie Best's hand. It was smooth and soft. Perhaps much like herself. Dressed this way it was hard to distinguish Roe from any other Ozark farmer.
The morning was already warm and heavy as they started out. The thick green canopy of woods overhead was dripping heavy dew unto the forest duff. As the two men made their way across the clearing Roe could smell the fresh scent of mint and dogwood. Everything looked green and slightly hazy. After nearly losing his spectacles in the wood pile, Roe had carefully stowed them in their tooled nickel case and left them in his shirt pocket most of the time. This caused him to squint more than a little. He could certainly see Jesse perfectly well and of course he could hear him, too.
Today, he was talking rapidly about his favorite subject. Hunting dogs. It was the young man's modest ambition to own his own hound. And although Jesse had never managed to memorize his numbers from one to ten, he seemed very much an authority on redbones, blue ticks, walkers, and Plotts. As Roe knew exactly nothing about the animals, he half listened to Jesse as if the man were speaking a foreign language.
"We could get a dog together," Jesse said. "A tree dog is what we need, no derby or bird hunter for us no ways. I could train her myself. But you could hunt with me."
Roe chuckled. "I don't know anything about hunting."
Jesse gave him a wide-eyed look of disbelief. "You know everything" he insisted naively. "You probably just forgot about hunting. But you'll pick it up again when the weather gets cool in the autumn."
"I won't be here in the fall, Jesse. I have to go back to where I come from."
"Why would you want to do that?"
"Because that's where I belong."
The young man considered his words. "You could learn to belong here. Pa was not from here once, but now he is."
Roe smiled at the young man's encouraging welcome, but he shook his head. "No, Jesse, I'll be going back east. It's what I want to do."
Jesse shook his head, clearly puzzled. "What's there that ain't here?"
Culture and music and civilization, Roe thought, glancing at the young man at his side, wishing he knew a better way to explain. He searched his mind for a concept that Jesse could grasp. "Back east, Jesse," he said, "they have privies at every house."
Jesse's eyes widened with appreciation. "At ever' house?"
Roe nodded. "Rich and poor, there are privies in the Bay State enough for all."
Jesse whistled and shook his head in disbelief. "Frien', that is downright amazing."
Roe chuckled and then gazed around at the primitive wilderness that existed on the same continent as his Bay State home.
"Yes, Jesse, it is downright amazing."
The morning's work consisted of rounding up the hogs that lived and lounged at their leisure around the homestead and driving them to the small patch that Onery and Jesse planned to put into corn. There were two big sows, one already heavy with piglets, one big huffing, noisy boar, and three yearling hogs as pesky as puppies, but not nearly as appealing. The pigs were a lazy and uninterested group. But Roe found himself surprisingly deft at the task. Still Jesse was much better. With one small stick and some loud encouragement, he shortly had the squealing swine headed in the proper direction.
The cantankerous creatures attempted to escape more than once, especially during the noisy, splashing moments when they forced the uncooperative hogs across the cold, rushing stream.
"This is our cornfield," Jesse told him proudly as they reached the small plot of cleared land on the far side of the creek.
Roe looked up and down the stubby undergrown hillside. It was far from level land, but appeared to be the flattest piece of ground Roe had seen on the Best farm.
"If it's your cornfield, why are you letting the pigs in it?"
'To hog it down," Jesse answered, as if that explained everything.
Shortly, Roe got the idea as he watched the snorty swine rooting up the leftover corn and early weeds that plagued the field.
"It feeds them and it makes it easier to plow," Roe commented.
The pigs, however, didn't know a good thing when they had it. Off and on throughout the morning a hog would attempt to wander off. Jesse had no trouble handling that problem. With a loud call and a flick of his stick, the errant animal would be back where he belonged in no time.
At midday the two men took to the shade of a big chestnut tree up on the rise. The blaze of sun streamed down through the huge branches in dappled patterns across the ground on which they rested. They couldn't see the hogs from this resting place, but they could still hear the noisy rooting and grunting from over the hill.
For Roe it was with a curious sense of well-being that he rested from the morning's hard work. Peace and good humor had settled upon him like a cloak. He didn't understand if it was this place or Jesse and his family that made Roe feel so comfortable. He had always struggled to fit in wherever he was doing his work. Strangely, here in these desolate mountains it didn't seem much of a struggle.
The men joked together as they searched their respective lunch buckets to see if there was anything that Meggie had packed that might be remotely edible. Jesse found a greasy, half-burnt pork chop. Roe's meat was a jaw of jerked venison.
Jesse laughed. "Don't be thinking she was trying to short you," he told Roe. "That venison will taste a dang sight better than this old cold pork chop."
"At least we've both got gravy," Roe said.
Jesse nodded. "Yep, but it's just poor-do."
Roe and Jesse shared. In Roe's bucket there was an ample supply of Meggie's special corn pone, hard and crispy on the outside, still half-raw in the middle. Jesse had a whole jar of last year's pickled okra, but it was overcooked and ra
ther slimy. Hunger, however, could overcome a finicky palate and the two ate heartily.
"If a feller had a good dog and a steady hand," Jesse said, "he can make a fair living in these hills."
"It would be a pretty hard living," Roe commented.
"How so?"
"Well, it must get very cold here in winter. And the crops surely don't grow well on these hillsides."
The young man shrugged. "Pa says life ain't meant to be easy," he answered. "If it just ain't miserable you've got a lot."
Roe grinned at Onery's homespun philosophy. "I suppose there is truth to that," he admitted.
The two ate quietly together for several minutes, then, his mouth half full and a gob of jelly hanging off the side of his lip, Jesse spoke up again. "Meggie likes you, you know."
Roe raised an eyebrow in surprise at the abrupt change of subject. The ease of tension between them had been abrupt and obvious. Of course Jesse would be expected to notice.
"Your sister is just being polite."
"Oh, I don't think when it comes to fellers, Meggie cares much about being polite. You two just got started off wrong."
The memory of Meggie's passionate kiss gave Roe momentary pause. Wrong wasn't exactly the word he was thinking of.
"Meggie, she don't live with the world all the time," Jesse explained with quiet seriousness.
Roe nodded, hoping Jesse would continue.
"She's kindy dreamy and such," Jesse continued. "Folks make too much of it sometime. But I just don't take no mind."
"I have no criticism of your sister, Jesse. And being dreamy is not something I see as a great fault."
"She just got riled at you 'cause you kissed her. She gets riled at me pretty frequent, too," Jesse said.
"It's not the same thing."
"Near enough. And what I do is just tease her out of it. She can get high up on her horse, but I just kid her down to a Missouri mule and she likes me fine for it. I bet she'd like you for it, too."
Roe smiled at the open, guileless young man. He wondered about Meggie Best.
By late afternoon Jesse pronounced the field sufficiently rooted for the plow. Roe, using his own stick, helped herd the now overfed hogs back across Itchy Creek to the homestead yard. Jesse was singing an old Ozark ballad in rhythm with his swings of the hickory switch.
"Lord Lovel he stood at his castle gate,
A-combing his milk-white steed,
When along came Lady Nancy Bell,
A-wishing her lover Godspeed, speed, speed."
Roe listened with pleasure as the familiar but strangely new words and tune of the song once popular in the time of Charles II were sung from memory by a simpleminded Ozark farm boy. This is why he had come to this primitive place. This is the kind of music and history that was his mission to save. This was the music that would prove his premise was true.
Silently he cursed his lack of paper and pen, but he would get Jesse to sing the song to him later when he could record it on the Ediphone. Nearly every evening Onery and Jesse would sing and play for him. But he was anxious to begin collecting songs from the rest of the community. He could barely wait for next week's Literary where he hoped to interest enough of the local people that the volume of his collection would multiply rapidly.
When the hogs began to recognize the terrain, they took off.
"They can find their own way to the house from here," Jesse told Roe. "By evening they'll all be laying in their usual spots."
As the two men approached the cabin, Jesse began to chuckle, pointing to the lines of freshly washed homespun clothing that hung upon the lines behind the barn.
"It's Wednesday washday," Jesse said.
For the life of him, Roe couldn't see what was humorous about that.
Jesse turned and walked a short way back into the woods. He knelt down on the forest floor and began pawing through the duff. Roe followed and stopped to watch him curiously.
"What are you looking for?"
Chuckling, the young man shrugged. "Oh, just whatever curious, slimy critter I can find," he answered.
Roe eyed him.
An excited fluttering occurred in the leaves Jesse had disturbed. Roe startled slightly as a small creature scurried out. Jesse managed in several tries and quick jerky movements to catch the little frightened creature. When he finally caught it, only a long blue tail flicked wildly from the bottom of his clasped hands.
"What is it?" Roe asked.
"It's a baby skink," he answered. "You want to see?"
Roe dutifully looked at the wiggly little lizard, not more than three inches long, and shook his head.
"What in the world are you going to do with that?"
Jesse only grinned as he carefully stowed the creature in his shirt pocket and secured the button. "Just follow me, frien'. We're going to have the best laugh of the day."
Sensing immediately that the skink and the laugh would somehow involve Meggie, Roe tried to get out of it. His arguments were shushed, however, as Jesse put a finger to his lips to indicate silence. Quietly following, Roe heard Meggie Best before he saw her. She was singing. And to Roe's well-trained ear, she was not particularly good at it. He might do well to have Jesse sing into the Ediphone, but he decided then and there that Meggie Best's voice would likely melt the cylinders.
As the two approached the back of the work shed, Roe could hear splashing. Apparently she was still washing clothes. Roe tried once more to ask a question. But again, Jesse cautioned him to silence. Slipping off his work boots, the young blond man climbed upon the back of the low-roofed building and motioned Roe to follow behind him. It seemed useless to try to argue. Joylessly, Roe removed his own shoes and shimmied up the roof behind Jesse.
Near the point of the pitch, Jesse gently began to wiggle a loose cedar shake from the roof. His eyes sparkled with mischief and Roe found himself grinning, too. Obviously, the plan was to drop the squiggly skink onto his sister Meggie as she worked. It was a childish prank, very much beneath Roe's dignity. But Jesse took such pleasure in these antics, he wasn't about to put a shade on his sunlight.
When Jesse got the roof open, he only hesitated a moment to grin delightedly at Roe before dropping the skink down the hole.
Roe heard the tiny splash of water, followed by a scream that could have awakened the dead as far away as New Orleans.
"Varmint!"
Jesse howled with laughter and then waving Roe to follow him, he began scurrying down the roof to make his getaway. Inside the shed, splashing and screaming were still going on. Before Roe could leave, he simply couldn't resist one look at Meggie Best attempting to kill the skink in her wash-pail. Grinning, Roe scooted up to the loosened shake.
He retrieved his spectacles from his shirt pocket and perched them upon his nose before peering down into the shed below him. His eyes widened.
Meggie Best was not washing clothes, she was washing herself. Standing in the round wooden washtub, Roe watched as she bent over to scoop the soaked lizard out of her bathwater. As the skink darted for the safety and anonymity of the shed's shadows, Roe was frozen with disbelief, staring at the young woman's pale, naked backside.
"Jesse Best! I'm going to murder you once and for all," she hollered as she gazed above her in the direction in which the unwelcome critter had made its entrance. When her blue-gray eyes made contact with Roe's brown ones her moment of anger became as highly charged as summer lightning and the intensity of recognition between them was almost tangible.
They stared at each other in utter silence for the longest moment, then with a wordless plea of horror, Meggie covered her bosom with her arms and dropped down into the soapy water in the tub in such haste that half of the contents sloshed out over the side. Roe jerked himself away from his peephole so quickly that he lost his footing on the cedar shakes and rolled off the roof, landing with an audible huff in the tall grass at the back of the shed.
Nothing was said for the rest of the day about Jesse's little practical joke or Roe's pa
rt in it. Hobbling slightly, Roe had apologized and made a diplomatic retreat to the woods. By evening, Meggie was holding her chin so high a good rain might have drowned her. And every time Roe caught her eye, her color brightened considerably. Roe kept his own profile suitably low. Over and over the memory of her wet and naked plagued him. He felt guilty. He was a gentleman of good breeding and he had behaved badly.
Jesse kept whatever his thoughts might be to himself.
Only Onery appeared able to see the humor in the day's events.
"I believe, Meggie-gal, you've 'bout turned the corner in this courtin' business."
If her father had been a chicken, Meggie might have gladly wrung his neck. As it was, she simply held her peace with difficulty and kept her eyes focused on the beans in her plate.
"You two boys best lay out in the morning to get back on that roof and fix all those shakes you broke loose," Onery said.
Jesse nodded without enthusiasm.
"We'll get to work on it first thing," Roe told him.
Onery gave him a long, lazy smile. "That's right good, right good. 'Cause I know you wouldn't be keen on no other fellers seeing the make of your prospected gal without so much as her josie for coverage."
Jesse giggled with delight.
Roe choked on his coffee.
Meggie looked slightly ill.
And Onery simply howled with laughter.
Chapter Nine
Meggie’s garden rows were not exactly straight. But after the night she'd spent, it was a wonder that she'd managed to get them dug at all. Tossing and turning on her pallet until dawn had not made the events of yesterday any less clear in her mind. And her reaction to them was more confused than ever.
Across the barnyard, she could hear Jesse and Roe on the shed roof. Every loudly hammered blow delivered to the cedar shakes was a vivid reminder to her of Roe Farley staring down from the ceiling at her naked body. Why hadn't she screamed? Why hadn't she jumped? Why hadn't she done something besides stand mesmerized as Roe Farley looked at her?
With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection Page 244