But she didn't.
"I'll pack you some victuals in a tote," she said.
Roe waited. "So I suppose this is good-bye."
"I wish you Godspeed," she answered quietly and turned her attention to the coffeepot.
Roe waited silently beside the table as long as he could, but there was to be no reprieve. He handed her a small scrap of paper he'd torn from his notes.
"This is where you can send for me," he said. "If I'm not there, someone will know how to find me. If you need me, Meggie, I will come back."
She raised her eyes to his and nodded slowly. "I won't be sending for you. Roe."
"If there's a—" Roe glanced over at Onery's still-sleeping form upon the bed in the comer. He then whispered his next words. "If there's a baby I—"
“There isn't," she answered emphatically.
Roe nodded gratefully, but what he felt was disappointment.
Meggie measured the coffee into the water and spoke conversationally. "I'll wait a fortnight or two after you leave," she said. "And then I'll just announce to folks that I've had word that you were killed on the journey. No one will question it."
She sounded so unconcerned that it seemed almost as if she spoke of somebody else, some other man, another couple who were planning their future as if it were the plot of some romantic tragedy.
"I'll dress in black for the rest of the winter," she said. "And that will be the end of it."
The casual finality of her words was like a dousing of cold water on Roe's aching heart. He nodded at her gravely. "All right then."
She looked up at him, her face a mask, revealing nothing. "Good-bye."
It was all that she said.
Jesse, however, was not so easily placated. A quarter of an hour later he wandered into Roe's room to find him packing.
"Why are you puttin' your oddments in a poke?" he asked Roe.
Still sleep-tousled and yawning, the young man's question was mere curiosity.
"I'm leaving," Roe answered simply.
Jesse immediately was wide awake. "What do you mean, you're leaving? Where are you going?"
Roe steeled himself against the sting of shame at his own selfishness. Neither he nor Meggie had given a thought to Jesse, his grief, his loss of a friend.
Jesse couldn't be let in on the scheme he and Meggie had designed. He could never know that it was all a lie. Jesse was simple, and for him their marriage had been the truth and so would be the loss of his friend.
"You knew that I would have to return to Massachusetts at the end of the summer," Roe said uncomfortably.
The young man's expression was puzzled. "But it ain't the end of the summer. We've still got the hottest month ahead of us."
"Well, I'm sure you can manage August on your own. You know that I must present my collection of music to the fellowship committee. It's completed now, and I can be back in Cambridge in two weeks and present my material within a couple more."
Jesse nodded but still looked worried. "So you're going back to the Bay State to take your Listening Box."
"Yes, I'm going to the Bay State, but I'm leaving the Ediphone here. I'll just take the cylinders that I need. I'm not even sure what's on some of the rest of these. I'll leave these for you to play on the box for when you need to hear music, but don't feel like making your own."
Jesse sighed with relief. "If you're leaving the Listening Box, then you're for sure coming back."
"Did you think that I wouldn't?"
"Oh, no, I just seen you acting strange of late."
Roe, hating to lie, turned his attention to the gunnysack he was packing and mumbled a mildly positive sound.
Accepting his friend's word, Jesse smiled with satisfaction and plopped down comfortably on the bed. "You've been acting so peculiar lately, I was beginning to get kindy scared. I guess if you go on now you can be back for harvest," he said.
"Yes, there is certainly time enough for that," Roe answered vaguely. Guilt ate at him. His simpleminded friend was honest and open, and Roe had told him friends never lie to each other.
"Don't worry about nothing here," Jesse said. "I can take care of things 'til you get back and Pa's for sure gonna be back on his feet anyday now."
"I hope so, Jesse."
Jesse's mood had greatly improved, and he was unable to feel any worries or concern.
"You going fishing in that ocean when you get back?"
"I doubt that."
"But you will get to ride a train."
"Yes. I will be riding a lot of trains I'm sure."
"That'll be something, won't it?"
"Yes, Jesse. I guess it will," he answered with feigned excitement.
The young man was quietly thoughtful for a few moments as he apparently tried to imagine the wonders that his friend would be seeing.
"When you get back the foxes'll have their winter pelts on," he said.
"I guess they will."
"I can teach you to go hunting. Last winter Paisley let me borrow one of his dogs. I don't 'magine we can do that this year, especially after you two nearly had a fawnch last night." Jesse laughed as he recalled it.
"Paisley was in his liquor last night. I'm sure he doesn't even remember what happened," Roe assured him.
"Sometimes Pigg Broody lets me run one of his old hounds," Jesse said hopefully. "It'll be a real good time, you'll see."
"It sounds very nice, Jesse."
Roe saw in his own mind the sharp cool months of autumn with Jesse hunting foxes in the brightly colored woodlands with a borrowed dog. But Jesse wouldn't be filled with joy as he was now, he'd be grieving for a friend who would be dead by then, at least dead to him.
"And then in the winter maybe we can go to see the Widder Plum." Jesse's eyes sparkled with mischief and excitement. "Remember about me and the widder. You was thinking about it."
Roe looked up at the simple young man lounging at the end of the bed. He realized suddenly that although he had called many men his friends, he had never known friendship until he met Jesse Best.
"I have thought about that widow, Jesse," he said. "And I don't think that you should go to see her."
Jesse's smile immediately dimmed. "You changed your mind about me getting to be with a woman?"
"No, no, not really," Roe answered, only realizing the words himself as he spoke them. "I hope you do get to be with a woman one day. But lying with just any woman, just coupling with her to get some pleasure, some release; that is not what I'd want for you, Jesse." Roe hesitated, hoping the other man would understand. "When the woman is special," he told Jesse, "being with her is special also. That's what I want for you. I want you to have a woman that you can feel deeply about, a woman who feels deeply about you."
His handsome young brow furrowing in confusion, Jesse asked, "Do you mean love?"
Love. The word continued to haunt him. Jesse wanted it. Meggie wanted it. Roe wanted it, too, but he had no idea what it was or how to get it.
He shrugged. "Maybe love. I don't know much about the subject myself."
Jesse was thoughtful. "Do you think a feller that ain't smart can be in love?"
Thoughtful for only a moment, Roe answered him. "If there is anyone in this world who is capable of loving or being loved, Jesse Best, it has to be you."
Roe seated himself beside Jesse and with a gesture of camaraderie that felt as natural as it was, he slung an arm around his friend's shoulder.
"I don't want to see you waste that love on some quick, sinful coupling with a well-practiced but unfeeling female," he said. "You deserve much more. You may not be equal to other men in the quickness of your mind, but there is no one, Jesse, more human than you. Don't ever allow yourself to accept less than any other man."
Jesse studied his friend's face for a long time, not truly comprehending his words but appreciating them nonetheless.
Finally he nodded his blond head solemnly. "I suspect I understand your meaning, Roe. I shouldn't settle for eating up the chicken feed when
I could wring a young pullet's neck and fry her up for supper."
Roe smiled for the first time that morning. "Yes, Jesse. I guess that is exactly what I mean."
The young man grinned back at him, his handsome, innocent face guileless and believing. "You're my frien', Roe, and friends always tell each other the truth. I won't be feasting on no chicken feed while you're gone," he promised. "When you come back, well, maybe you could help me find a woman of my own. Maybe you could look the gals over and tell me which one might take to me."
Roe didn't answer, but Jesse failed to notice as he grinned wickedly. "Is there a trick to figuring out which pullets fry up the most tender?"
Forcing a smile to his face Roe hugged his young friend tightly and then stood up to resume his packing.
Jesse hadn't noticed the cloud of unwilling deceit that covered Roe's eyes. It was from ignorance and honesty that he spoke. "If I could have whatever I want," Jesse confessed, "I'd want to be married like you and Meggie."
"Onery, I'm leaving," Roe said as he approached the old man seated on the porch.
Looking stronger and healthier than Roe had seen him in weeks, Best nodded. “That's what I heard." Onery gave Roe a long assessing look. "Don't suspect we'll be seeing you again."
"No, sir."
Rubbing his long gray beard, he sighed heavily. "It's a shame," he said. "I've been thinking about this for some time, son. Trying to figure a way for you and my Meggie to quit chewing on the middlin's and go straight for the ham butt."
"Mr. Best, I ... I never intended for things between Meggie and myself to go as far as they did. And I've asked her to marry me more than once."
"I know that, son." Onery nodded, understanding.
"Meggie has made it quite clear that she doesn't want me here, and if I am going to have to leave her, I should do it soon."
"Makes sense." The old man nodded sadly. "I've always been so proud of that girl of mine. A lot has been put upon her; her mama's death, me crippled, and of course, her brother. But Meggie, she's always been the strong one and I've always been grateful that she grew up being so much like her mother."
He looked up at Roe and smiled wanly. "But at times like this I wish she'd gotten herself some of the selfishness that comes from my side of the family."
Roe didn't understand what selfishness would have to do with it, but he offered the old man what comfort he could.
"After I'm gone and she claims me as dead, she says she'll marry someone else," he said. "A woman like Meggie could pretty much get any man she decided that she wanted."
Onery snorted. "That she could. Course she never wanted none before you showed up."
Roe had no answer for that. He waited as the old man rocked thoughtfully in his chair gazing off in the distance at old Squaw's Trunk Mountain.
"Did I ever tell you about my wife?" Onery asked. Somewhat surprised at the change of subject, Roe permitted the old man to continue his rumination.
"You've mentioned her a time or two, and I think I've heard about her from other folks on the mountain."
"Heard tales about us, did ye?" Onery chuckled ruefully. "We was a scandal indeed on this mountain. Having a child without a wedding. Folks at the church was spitting their eye teeth and her own folks done throwed her out of the house." He shook his head disdainfully at the memory. "I was a rambling fiddle player, bone idle most of the time and with a wild streak as long as the White River rapids. Ah, but she was sweet and soft and passionate." The old man sighed in pleasure at the memory. "I swear I think she let me lay with her the first time just 'cause she knew how bad I wanted to. It was something different, son. She was something different. Something that I ain't never had the like of before nor since."
He turned to look at Roe again, studying him. "I knew it was pure sugar bread, but I didn't pay no mind. When it came time for me to move on, she sent me on my way. I didn't want to go. At least that's what I said. I argued with her from daylight 'til dark about it for a week or more. I knew she was no cull list squirmy. But, son, truth to tell, I didn't really want to marry her."
Onery sighed heavily and gazed again at the mountains in the distance. "I had had a good life a-ramblin' around and I was loath to give it up. I thought it would be good again. It'd be having a fancy choke rag around my neck, batch of bald face whiskey, and a pretty new gal in ever' town."
Onery hesitated for a long moment. "But it weren't." He peered closely at Roe. "How is it, oncest you've seen love, son, oncest you've felt it and tasted it, ain't no use trying to go back to the nigglin' life. It ain't there no more fer ye."
Roe's brow furrowed, trying to understand.
"And I tried, son. Lord knows I put a lot of miles between me and this mountain. I drank hard, played hard, run hard. But what I couldn't outrun was how much I needed that woman. And what I couldn't stand was the fact that she didn't seem to need me a'tal!"
Roe agreed. "I guess she was like Meggie."
"She was. That she was. But this talk she gave me about not needing me, it was a lie, you know."
"A lie?"
Onery nodded. "She said she didn't need me and she said she didn't want me. She said she could raise our boy on her own or find another man to take him on. But she was fooling herself as much about that as I was about wanting my ramblin' ways back."
Onery stared once more at the distant mountain, lost in thought. "I guess it's a bit like our Jesse."
"Like Jesse?"
"Yes. Ye see there ain't nothing really wrong with the boy's mind. He can think and figure and remember just like all the rest of us. But it's as if his head is kindy sluggishlike. It don't learn quick and it don't always recall what it sorted out the day before. That's the way she and I were. We couldn't see that we was in love with each other and that if we didn't live together, well, then there weren't much sense in living at all."
"But you did convince her to marry you."
"I did indeed." The old man chuckled and shook his head. "I just said to her, ”Woman, I'm here to stay and you can love me or loathe me but I ain't never leaving no more.'"
Roe glanced back at the door to the cabin behind him and then turned to contemplate the wooded path beyond the homestead. "I'm happy for you, Onery. But when she sent you away, she left the door open. She didn't plan to announce your death. I can never return here. I'll never see this place again."
Onery nodded solemnly. "Yep, that's the way things look." It seemed as if he wanted to say more, but he just kept staring at the mountain in the distance.
Chapter Twenty-Six
FROM THE JOURNAL OF J. MONROE FARLEY
September 23, 1902
Cambridge, Massachusetts
This P.M. I presented the final segment of my first drafting of the results of the Ozarks music study to the fellowship committee. Although I am confident that my evidence was sufficient, there were members of the committee who failed to believe that the presence of previously undiscovered Spenserian and Elizabethan music among native Ozark hill people was anything but curious coincidence. I argued very well, I believe, but the disfavor I faced was overwhelming.
Somehow the truths presented were in conflict with the peculiar bias of the majority of committee members. It appears to me that they generally refuse to believe that the unlettered, isolated people of the Ozark Mountains could have managed to preserve a heritage that the academic circles of this country and the British Isles have irrevocably lost.
While I played cylinder after cylinder of near ancient song, the gentlemen continued to ask me to tell once more the stories of the bear grease on the bread, the privy I had to build, or the young women who never wore shoes.
My work was taken seriously on no point and it was even suggested by one pompous theorist that I had frittered away the fellowship funds on no account. Ultimately, I was strongly encouraged to desist in this vein of inquiry. I announced that I was preparing a paper for the Journal of Theoretic Musicology and I was sternly warned that my finding would be considered frivolo
us and could possibly hurt the reputation of my work and of the fellowship committee. It was strongly suggested that after a reasonable period of time to take care of personal business and to clear my notes, the fellowship committee would hear a request for further expeditions in the remote areas of Scotland or Ireland to get my pursuit into a circumspect direction. I suppose that is what I will do. I am confident that I am not wrong, however I may be, unfortunately, the only one to know it.
I went to the seaside near Boston last week. I watched an old man and his grandson fishing from the pier. It reminded me that I had never fished from the ocean. As I gazed off across the water I thought about Jesse and Onery and worried for them. The days must be getting shorter and colder there now. I wonder if Pigg Broody was willing to loan Jesse a dog for hunting.
Of Meggie, I try not to think at all.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The cold blustery wind of early October sneaked beneath the cabin door and chilled the room. Meggie wrapped a worn shawl around her shoulders, snuggling beneath it. She had already thrown another log onto the fire but it was a sog, turning black and smoldering, and wouldn't burn properly.
The first snowfall of the year had blown in overnight. It was way early and looked as if it wouldn't stick, but it blanketed the homestead clearing, making it appear clean and bright and new. It only made Meggie feel colder and she didn't need snow or ice to feel cold these days. Cold had become a way of life for her.
"Whew-eee!" Onery called as he came barging through the door and across the threshold, stamping the snow that lingered on his boots onto the dirt floor. "It's sure enough biscuit weather out there this morning."
Meggie made a murmur of agreement as her father took off his damp wool coat and hung it on a peg near the door. His color was good beneath the gray of his beard and he seemed strong and young once more.
On the day that Roe Farley had left Marrying Stone, her father had risen from his chair on the porch and declared himself completely well. He'd still been as weak as a newborn colt at the time, but he had pushed himself from one task to another until he had his strength back and was able to do most of the work he'd been accustomed to.
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