With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection

by Kerrigan Byrne

  The narrow, dark weaving shed was warm in the afternoon sun. Even with the door open to the breeze, beads of perspiration gathered at her forehead and the fringed homespun collar of the work dress clung damply to her neck. Most women left weaving for the dark days of winter. But Meggie weaved year-round, whenever she had a spare moment.

  She loved weaving. Its rhythmic routine movements allowed her to enjoy the solitude, giving her imagination free rein to explore whatever strange and frivolous paths it might choose to take. Once the loom was threaded, the rest was simple. Occasionally, of course, she made mistakes. But unlike in cooking, on the loom mistakes could always be fixed or lived with. And sometimes they gave a piece of cloth its character. The Best cabin was filled with covers and quilts, curtains and rugs. And there was always fabric for clothes. Unlike cooking, she never had to throw a length of fabric to the hogs.

  As she reset the threads on the warp Meggie thought about herself and her dreamy nature. It was not a trait common to her family or, for that matter, anyone on the mountain. At times she thought that perhaps the same unsettled humor that left her brother dim-witted flowed in her mind also, just with less severity; although Granny Piggott insisted that Jesse's simplicity was not something carried in the blood, but was caused by having the cord wrapped around his neck when he was born.

  "Came into the world near hanged," Granny had said.

  Beulah Winsloe said that God had tried to strangle the child to rid the devils from his nature, born out of wedlock like he was.

  Granny Piggott had disagreed. "It's 'cause his mama raised her hands above her head when she was carrying him. Everybody knows that each time you reach for something overhead, you twirl the cord around the baby's neck."

  Meggie didn't know who was right, but whatever troubles had weakened her brother's mind, she suffered in some way with her own.

  How else would she have been so eager to make a fool of herself about Roe Farley?

  Not that Farley was bad. He was, Meggie believed, truly Jesse's friend. And although her brother was well loved by her father and herself, everybody needed a friend. Just the thought of Jesse's childlike eagerness for acceptance made Meggie worry. Jesse was so innocent, so sweet, even when he was up to some no-good prank there wasn't a smidgen of evil in him. He was always looking for the good in people and finding it. That's probably why Monroe Farley looked so good to her. Because Jesse just brought out the best in him.

  That was all it was, she assured herself. Farley was no prince or hero. He was simply a fast-talking city man that had the good fortune to meet up with her brother.

  Meggie gave herself a slight nod of self-approval and a mission of determination. She suspected he might want her body, but he'd made it clear that he didn't want her. The sooner she got that straight in her mind, the better. She wasn't under any illusions. She was not some kind of silly scatterbrain.

  As she watched the shuttle speed through the threads, her cheeks reddened. Scatterbrain was exactly the word that Granny Piggott called her. And most of the women on the mountain said the same, though most had the good sense to say it behind her back.

  She did have trouble keeping her mind to daily life. And, truth to tell, the mundane routine of daily life was forgotten completely when she'd kissed Roe Farley.

  It wasn't her first kiss, of course. Abner McNees had kissed her at a Sunday picnic when she was only fourteen. Lots of other fellows had tried since then. All last winter Paisley Winsloe had called on her, and he'd even declared his intention for her in front of Pa. But she was not too scatterbrained to know she wanted no part of Paisley Winsloe.

  No matter how firmly Meggie had told him she wasn't interested, he'd trudged through the cold and snow to sit in the cabin with them after supper nearly every night.

  The last night he came, Jesse was sniffling with a cold and had gone up in the loft early. After a quarter of an hour of boring farm talk, Pa was snoring in his chair, so Paisley had made his move.

  When he came toward her she ran away, but he followed. He grabbed her, pushed her against the wall, and held her there while he smeared his warm, damp lips all over her face. He said that he loved her. He said that he wanted to wed her. When he finally let go, she slapped him so hard the noise woke Pa up.

  Paisley left that evening and hadn't darkened their door since. When she saw him at church or gatherings, he barely nodded. Good riddance was Meggie's reaction. Paisley Winsloe was nobody's prince.

  But if Meggie had been angry at him, she was furious with Pa.

  "How could you just go to sleep like that and leave me unprotected!"

  Onery merely chuckled. "I walked my tail off yesterday hunting that rascally bear," he claimed. "Besides, it was time for that mangy Winsloe bull calf to make his move on ye or get out of the pasture."

  "He forced me to kiss him!" Meggie scolded. "If you'd been doing your duty as a father that wouldn't have happened."

  "Meggie-gal, I'm being the only father I know how to be. I'm trying to let you find your own way in the world, just like my father did for me."

  "I am never going to find my own way if some crazed hornet like Paisley Winsloe drags me off into the bushes."

  Pa had actually chuckled at that. "I don't expect that you'd be going easy."

  Meggie was mad enough to spit, but her father's next words consoled her somewhat.

  "You're like your mama, you know. You're gonna do exactly what you've a mind to and all the rules and reasons and papas in the world ain't gonna stop that. It'd be like telling the river not to run over the rocks."

  Meggie had felt a fleeting moment of pride. Mama had been the most sensible, strong-minded woman Marrying Stone Mountain had ever seen. She'd died of the pneumony when Meggie was only six, but Meggie knew most of her mama's story, or the "scandal" as some called it.

  Onery Best had come to town, a liquor loving itinerant fiddler, just passing through. Her mama, in blossom of her prettiness at seventeen, had taken to the good-looking fiddling man right off.

  Meggie didn't know much about what had happened between them that summer, but she did know that by the next winter, after Fiddlin' Onery was long gone, Mama's belly had swelled up like a mule eating baneberries.

  Her Uncle Jess threw her mama out of his house. He had a low toleration for sinning of any sort. Young, pregnant, Posie Piggott had lived in an old barn up on the mountain for several weeks before Granny Piggott had taken her in.

  Just before the spring thaw she had given birth to Jesse. When Onery returned to take up where he left off, he found himself with a ready-made family. Surprisingly he had been more delighted than dismayed, but Meggie's mother would have nothing to do with him.

  "I ain't going to be the sometime wife of a traveling man," was the way Pa told it. "My boy ain't right in the head," she said. "He's gonna need a man by his side all day long for the rest of his days. If you ain't a-fixin' to be that man, then you'd best move along so I can find another."

  Pa had not been dissuaded so easily. Uncle Jess had sold him this plot of rocky upland for a pittance, and Onery had taken to working it. Although farming was something he was never really very good at, he did try and his efforts were eventually rewarded.

  During the harvest time Posie Piggott had finally agreed to marry up. And the two had pledged themselves at the large, white Marrying Stone as soon as the winter stores were in.

  Plenty of folks on the mountain thought less of Mrs. Onery Best for her past. But Meggie admired her tenacity and bravery, and she'd always considered comparisons with her mother to be wonderful. In the same situation, Meggie hoped that rather than crying and grieving and throwing herself in the big river to drown—which was the expected solution to unwed motherhood on the mountain—she would also be as brave and determined as her mother had been. But of course, she reminded herself she wouldn't go looking for that kind of trouble.

  Up to now Meggie had spent her days "swimming close to the willows," never venturing even near to sinful wickedness or
breaking the rules of society. Resisting Paisley Winsloe and the other randy fellows on the mountain had been as easy as chewing apple butter.

  Immediately the memory of Roe Farley's soft, sweet lips, his warm open mouth, and the enticing masculine smell of his thick black hair overcame her. She'd finally met with temptation. She set the shuttle down and placed a trembling hand against her heart as if to hold it inside so it wouldn't fly away. Roe Farley's kisses were not the kind that a woman could forget easily. But forget them she would. That strange city man was not to be her handsome prince and if she forgot that for one minute, he'd likely leave her big-bellied and ruined at the end of summer.

  And unlike Onery Best, it was quite clear that J. Monroe Farley would never return.

  Chapter Ten

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF J. MONROE FARLEY

  April 28, 1902 Marrying Stone, Arkansas

  Plowed the Best family's cornfield today. I actually enjoyed myself and was glad to make it easier on young Jesse, by teaching him a new way to plow. Of course, I realize that my education and good fortune all put me in great stead, but I never realized that I would intuitively have the knowledge to make subsistence farming easier for these backwoodsmen.

  Have heard several interesting songs of Celtic origin and hope to have an opportunity to record them onto the cylinders very soon. I have also decided to start listing in this journal interesting words that I have come across here that may be of Middle English origin, a logical expansion of my work here. Young Jesse used the verb vilified this afternoon in terms of speaking ill of the local farmers. The use of such an undisputable Middle English term adds much credence to my premise. This morning I helped repair a cedar shake roof.

  Chapter Eleven

  The day’s work finished, Roe had found a nice quiet spot under a shade tree to sit and write in his journal. He had not kept it up with his usual enthusiasm. Since his school days writing down his work, his thoughts, and his progress had been a daily habit. He enjoyed seeing a blank page of paper and filling it with the words and thoughts he had no one else to tell.

  The Ozark journal was even more important, since after all it was the chronology of his work and ultimately a vital piece of evidence to be presented to the fellowship committee. The ancient songs needed not only to be recorded and their lyrics written down, but their origin, their local history, and his impression of them were important to establishing authenticity. But strangely, despite sufficient time, Roe had found himself less and less eager to rush to the quiet aloneness of his own written word. More and more he simply spoke what he thought or observed to Jesse or Onery or exchanged wisecracks with Meggie. And those things that he couldn't say to them, he found he could not write on paper either.

  As he pondered this strange mood in himself, he was distracted by the sound of a heated quarrel coming from the cabin. Although etiquette dictated that a guest should ignore any disagreements among family members, Roe found himself hurrying to his feet and taking off at a dead run toward the little homestead that he had somehow become a part of.

  He clearly heard Onery's angry yelling long before he even reached the house. It had been a long, hot, sweaty day and he knew the old farmer was unlikely to work up much of a fury when he was tired and worn down. Obviously there was something very wrong and somehow Roe had a premonition that it concerned him.

  Perhaps it was the lingering uneasiness he'd felt over plowing. He'd discovered that by starting at the edge of the cornfield, you couldn't turn the mule without leaving the field and tearing up the trees and cover around it. Roe had begun to suspect that maybe there had been some sense to Jesse's early insistence that the plowing shouldn't start at the logical point of entry to the field. But he had quelled his concerns. He was right; he was sure he was right. Jesse did things by tradition and memory. Roe did things by science. Science was always superior, he was sure.

  As Roe stepped through the cabin doorway, he clearly heard Onery's angry words for the first time.

  "Damnit, Jesse! I learn you and learn you and you do a thing right for ten years. Then up one morning you get a wild hair and do things all wrong as if what little sense you had just left you completely!"

  Jesse stood before his father, head bowed, eyes downcast as he blinked back tears of shame and humiliation and endured his father's scolding.

  "Your mind don't work right and we all know that. But that ain't no excuse for such plain foolishness as this. I done taught you better and if you cain't pull your share and do your work on this farm, then you're just a burden on the rest of us and we'd do well to just get shed of you completely. A man who cain't carry his own weight in this world is like a mule gone lame, completely worthless and beneath contempt."

  Roe was frozen into silence.

  Noticing his presence, Jesse glanced up at him for one quick minute. It was only a glance, but it was enough to see those bright blue eyes were red-rimmed and swimming with tears.

  "Plowing up and down hill!" Onery continued. "I never heared of anything so dad-blamed stupid in my whole life. That whole field'll have to be replowed tomorrow morning. And we'll be damned lucky if it don't rain tonight and wash what decent topsoil is left up there right down the mountainside."

  "I'm sorry, Pa," Jesse whispered.

  "Sorry! That you are," his father snarled back. "Lord Almighty, Jesse. It ain't like we got a fine piece of corn bottom that we can just toss some seed near it and wait for the stalks to pop up. This is rocky, poor-yielding hillside ground and if we don't coddle it and nurse it along like a helpless baby, it's going to starve us out for sure."

  "Yes, Pa," Jesse whispered.

  "You're my son and I love ye. But I cain't let you starve us with your ignorant foolishness," Onery declared. "We're going to the woodshed. There's a board in there that might knock some sense into you."

  Roe stepped aside as the two men passed him and went out the doorway, neither meeting his eyes. He stood mutely horrified. A strange silence lingered after they had gone and Roe turned his attention to the only other occupant of the room.

  "My God, what is your father so angry about?"

  Meggie looked up from the blackberries she was cleaning. Her cheeks were tear-stained but her blue-gray eyes met his directly. "You heard enough to know. The field was plowed wrong."

  Roe nodded. "Yes, I understand that. But why is Onery so furious? Why did he say such awful things to Jesse? I know the poor fellow is simple, but there's no ill will in him. How can Onery talk like that to him, to talk of getting rid of him? He's going to beat Jesse?"

  Meggie looked up at Roe. Her jaw was set tightly, but not so much in anger as frustration.

  "Pa loves Jesse. He loves him more than you could ever understand. It's because he loves Jesse that he has to make him do right and be right."

  Meggie's eyes filled again with tears and she stood and went to the hearth to stoke the fire, clearly unwilling to let him see her cry.

  "Don't fret about it. Pa won't hurt him all that much and it has to be done."

  "It has to be done!" Roe flung her words back to her in anger. "What has to be done? The boy is simpleminded and he made a mistake. I don't think that demands a beating."

  "Well, what you think, Roe Farley, don't matter much now does it?" Meggie's reply was brisk. Then, like a balloon deflating, she sighed. "You just don't understand, Roe," she said, turning away from him again. "Pa and I won't always be here for Jesse." She stirred the ashes in the grate listlessly. "At least we can't be sure that we will. We've got to make sure now that Jesse can fend for himself and make himself useful among whatever folks is living on this mountain. He can't be allowed to make foolish mistakes. Foolish mistakes cost food and some winters there just isn't enough for everybody. If folks see Jesse eating, but not producing victuals, it'd be like he was a raccoon or an old bear that was getting into their stores. They'd run him off or kill him for it."

  Roe stood silently, stunned. The concept behind her words was medieval, but he couldn't simply consider t
he idea as another fanciful academic curiosity. This world of the Ozarks was a primitive place where danger and death lurked around every corner. People here were forced to behave differently from those in the brick-paved streets of the Bay State.

  But still, it was difficult to fathom that such vehemence and anger could be part of a father's love.

  Roe thought of his own father and the times, now so far away, when he'd stood before his desk in the chestnut- paneled library. His father had never been angry. Never. He had looked dispassionately at Roe over the top of his spectacles and observed him as if he were a piece of property that he was thinking to buy. Roe had never felt his father's anger and had certainly never felt his father's hand. But, then again, perhaps he had never felt his father's love either.

  Lost in his own thought, Roe was startled when Meggie suddenly touched his shirt to draw his attention. Her blue-gray eyes were grave with worry, but her tone was soft.

  "Pa won't hurt him," she said.

  "It was my idea." Roe felt a rush of guilt in his confession.

  Meggie nodded. "I figured as much," she said. "Jesse didn't so much as lay a smidgen of blame at your feet, but I know he wouldn't have gotten such a fool notion as this on his own."

  Roe looked at her.

  "You're right, Meggie," he answered quietly. "For me to think I could advise Jesse about farming was a fool 'notion.'"

  "Still, you mustn't blame yourself," she said. "Jesse just has to learn, and one of the things that he has to learn is that he must trust what he knows is right, even when somebody tells him different."

  Roe nodded. "Yes, he needs to learn that. And I should learn to trust him when he knows more about something than I do."

  Without another word, Roe stepped out of the cabin. His steps were determined and resolute. He was still angry, but now he was angry with himself.