Almost Home

by Valerie Fraser Luesse

  Daisy stopped and turned to face her. “That bother you?” She looked genuinely concerned.

  Anna thought it over. “It’s not the things themselves I miss. It’s just that, when I’m reminded of all the things I’m doing without, it makes me realize how much everything has changed—and that’s what makes me sad.”

  Daisy nodded slowly. “I follow that.” She turned and led Anna a little farther down the trail to a quiet spot just out of sight of the lake. They sat down on a mossy carpet, with the shady canopy above so thick that Anna could catch only little glimpses of blue sky through all the green. Right here the creek was deep and cold, bubbling and sighing as it cascaded over rocks.

  “You can’t wade here because it’s too deep,” Daisy explained, “but I just wanted to stop long enough to try and catch those wild lilies over yonder before they fade away. Then we can walk on to the shallows if you like.” She took an eraser and a small piece of charcoal out of her front pocket and opened what Anna now saw was a sketchbook.

  “Are you an artist?”

  “I ’magine there’s plenty o’ people would disagree. But I like to paint and draw.”

  “Where did you learn how?” Anna asked as Daisy began sketching the lilies. But then she caught herself. “I should keep quiet while you’re working.”

  “That’s okay,” Daisy said, keeping her eyes on the lilies. “I can talk and draw at the same time. Besides, I’d rather have comp’ny than a finished drawin’ today.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Daisy stopped sketching for a moment and turned to Anna. “Because exactly fourteen months ago . . . I got the telegram.”

  As Anna’s hand flew to her mouth, Daisy resumed her drawing.

  “Daisy, please forgive me. I’m so sorry I asked. I had no idea.”

  Daisy reached over and laid a hand on Anna’s arm. “Don’t feel bad. I think I kinda wanted you to ask. Sorry I blurted it out like that. Charlie was a tail gunner. I’m mighty proud of him . . .” She shook her head and changed the subject. “Why don’t you tell me your story?” she said, sketching mirror images of the flowers she was studying.

  Anna sighed. “It’s not a very happy one just now.”

  “Lemme guess—farm girl.”

  Anna nodded. “Jesse’s been struggling to save our farm for several years now, but we had to auction off everything except our house and barn and most of our land. He didn’t qualify for the draft—flatfeet—so we moved down here to be near the Army plants. Jesse got a job at the one in Childersburg. He’s hoping he can make enough money to get us going again when the war’s over.”

  “If you don’t mind my sayin’, there’s an awful lotta Jesse in what was supposed to be your story.” Daisy added shadows to her drawing, which made the leaves on the lilies look touchable. She stopped to examine her work, then looked at Anna. “That how it’s always been?”

  Anna shook her head. “No. We used to talk about everything and do everything together. But ever since our farm fell apart . . . I don’t know, it’s like he thinks it’s all his fault, and he has to fix it by himself. Until he can do that, I guess he plans to pretend I’m not there.”

  “There’s a ring on his finger that says he’s got no right to do that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean hard times ain’t a bit rougher on a man than a woman. Men just wanna feel like they’re carryin’ this big burden all alone and protectin’ you from everything. But they’re not. They’re just makin’ it harder on you by makin’ you feel lonely and useless. Charlie tried that nonsense on me right before he enlisted.”

  “What did you do?”

  Daisy smiled. “I took some o’ the money I had tucked back for an emergency and bought a bus ticket to Biloxi, down on the coast. Then I packed me a small suitcase. After supper one night, I went and got my suitcase outta the bedroom and asked Charlie if he would mind givin’ me a ride to the bus stop in town. You shoulda seen the look on his face! He turned snow-white.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Well, he went to stutterin’ and stammerin’ and wantin’ to know why on earth I needed to go to the bus stop. I showed him my ticket—which I knew I could cash in—and told him I was goin’ to Biloxi. And then I told him I already had me a job at the shipyards in Pascagoula. That was a big fat lie, but I was too fed up to worry about the particulars. ‘Why on earth?’ he wanted to know. That’s when I looked him in the eye and said, ‘Charlie Dupree, if you keep refusin’ to share your trials with me and makin’ me live alone for all intents and purposes, I can think o’ lots prettier places to do that than here on this Mississippi cotton farm. I’m gonna go live by the Gulf o’ Mexico. And you can just stay here and follow through with whatever plans you’re makin’ because they don’t seem to include me. Now hurry up—my bus leaves in an hour.’ Then I marched out the door with my suitcase.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He came stumblin’ outta the house and got in the truck. Drove me all the way to the bus stop in town. I have to say, I was gettin’ a little nervous because I only had ten dollars to my name if he let me go. But just as I was reachin’ into the back of the truck to get my suitcase, he stopped me and said, ‘If I tell you how bad it is and how ashamed I am, will you stay with me?’ And I said, ‘I believe that’s why they call it marriage.’ We took a drive together and ended up at the Delta Deluxe—that’s a burger joint back home. While we had cheeseburgers and Co-Colas, he told me we were fixin’ to lose everything if he didn’t enlist. He knew he’d be drafted sooner or later and wanted my blessin’ to sign up so he might start the money flowin’ and have some say in where he ended up.”

  “And did you—give him your blessing, I mean?”

  Daisy slowly nodded. “I told him I’d rather lose everything we had than lose him, and if he was doin’ this because he thought I couldn’t live without that ol’ farm, he was crazy. But I wouldn’t stand in his way if enlistin’ was what he really wanted.” She was quiet for a moment before she said, “What if I had stood in his way? What if I’d pitched a hissy fit and screamed and cried and begged him not to go? Maybe then he’d still be alive.”

  “What-ifs are big sticks with which we smite ourselves,” Anna quoted. “That’s what my mother says.”

  “Oh yeah? What else does Mama say?”

  “That all we can do is the best we can do, and all we can see is what’s in front of us. So there’s no point in looking back and judging ourselves based on things we know now but didn’t know then. You were doing the best you knew how to do for Charlie at the time. You were helping him do something you thought was really important to him. That’s nothing to be sorry about.”

  Daisy smiled, but then, in an instant, she burst into tears. Anna put her arms around her new friend and did the best thing she knew to do at the time. She let Daisy cry.

  CHAPTER

  six

  After a few weeks at Dolly’s, Anna had settled into the morning routine. She had just filled one platter with hot biscuits and another with smoky bacon and now was peeking into the dining room, watching Jesse and Si deep in conversation. Her husband mimicked the motion of casting a line, and she knew the two men were onto their favorite subject: fishing.

  “Honey, are we ready with the biscuits and bacon?” Dolly had a coffeepot in one hand and a big bowl of scrambled eggs in the other. Evelyn was coming behind her with a tureen of grits.

  “Ready for the table,” Anna answered.

  The women paraded into the dining room and delivered breakfast. Once Si offered thanks, the usual morning chatter began.

  “I thought maybe we could go for a drive or something today,” Anna said to Jesse as the others talked about the latest news of the war. “Dolly said there’s a good restaurant right on the river in Childersburg—might be fun?”

  Jesse moved his food around with his fork, looking down at his plate, and Anna knew he was about to deliver bad news.

  “What’s the matter?”

&
nbsp; “Well . . . it’s just that I promised Si I’d help him paint the boardwalk over at the lake today.”

  “But why? You’re so busy during the week—I just thought since it’s Saturday . . . Never mind.”

  “Anna—”

  Jesse was interrupted by Dolly, who was making a round with the coffeepot. “Can I fill your cup, honey?”

  “Thanks, Dolly.”

  “Now, Jesse, if you all had plans today, don’t you let my ol’ boardwalk get in the way,” Si said. “I can manage just fine.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Jesse said. “I can help—this morning, I mean. But I’d like to save the afternoon for Anna.”

  “Well, alrighty then.”

  Anna gave him a smile. Back before all their troubles started, he couldn’t steal enough time with her. When she would drive his lunch to the fields, he would beg her to stay “just for a little while and keep me company.” She knew what that meant. It’s a wonder that corn ever got harvested. Now there always seemed to be a wall between them. But with the women of the loop giving her courage, she was hoping to take it down, one stubborn stone at a time if necessary. She would just have to be patient a little longer.

  Anna had walked Jesse to the lake after breakfast and thought she might find Daisy on the creek bank. But she wasn’t there. A morning breeze was stirring the oaks and the pines overhead, their peaceful sighs blending with the gurgle and splash of creek water over flat rocks. She tossed two oak leaves into the water and watched them float away, enjoying the peaceful pleasure of seeing them ride the creek together. But then the current suddenly pulled them apart, and Anna could feel it drawing her down too. Maybe a visit with Lillian would cheer her up.

  As she reached her friend’s porch, Lillian beckoned to her. “Good morning, Anna.”

  “Good morning,” Anna said, taking a seat on the porch. “It’s a beautiful day!”

  “Yes, I know—I can feel it. The sun is especially bright, the sky a glorious blue, I imagine.”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  “And how is your Jesse faring?”

  “Better—a little better each day.”

  “And I divine Miss Anna is happier because of it?”

  “She’s trying. How about you? How are you doing?”

  “Fine, just fine. Old Southern women don’t change much. We just rock slower and slower till we don’t rock anymore.”

  “Well, I’m glad to see you’re still rocking.”

  Lillian laughed. “Ha! Me too!”

  They sat quietly together until Lillian said, “What is it you came to tell me, Anna?”

  Anna thought for a moment before she answered. “Have you ever tossed leaves into a creek and watched them float downstream—before you lost your sight, I mean?”

  Lillian smiled and nodded. “I can recall such a vision.”

  “I was on the creek before I came here, just looking for something to occupy my mind, I guess. I dropped two oak leaves in the water to see where they would go. At first they stayed together—they were side by side when they rode a tiny little waterfall between two rocks—but then the current pulled them apart and they went their separate ways. Why couldn’t they just glide down the Tanyard together?”

  “Leaves are at the mercy of the current, Anna, but you and Jesse are not. You can choose whether to float wherever it takes you or swim against it. And you can choose whether to travel together or let the rocks divide you. That’s a decision you must make together. Otherwise you could land on opposite sides of the river.”

  “I don’t know what to do, Lillian.”

  Her friend handed her a handkerchief from her pocket. “Sometimes we must take a look back before we can see the way forward.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What is your fondest memory of your time with Jesse—the one that rises above all the others?”

  Anna blotted her eyes with Lillian’s handkerchief and smiled. “It happened at a little country store when we were teenagers. We hadn’t gone on our first date yet, but we were ‘noticing each other,’ as my grandmother says. I had walked to the store to sell eggs, and Jesse was at the gas pump, filling his father’s pickup. He smiled and waved at me. I smiled and waved back. When I came out of the store, he was still there, waiting for me—for me. You can’t imagine how many times I had sat in the stands at school, watching him play baseball or football, wondering what it would be like if he actually talked to me. Jesse had pulled the truck under a shade tree and lowered the tailgate. He wanted to know if I’d like to sit for a little while and have a Coke with him. We talked so long that Mother sent one of my brothers to see what had become of me.”

  “And why does that day with Jesse stand out?”

  Anna watched a butterfly flutter around a flowerpot on Lillian’s porch. “I guess it’s because . . . that was the beginning. It was the first time we really talked, the first time we were alone together, with no one else around to come between us. And it was the first time I knew what it was like to have somebody look at me as if he could see me all the way through. I remember thinking, ‘So this is what it would be like to be part of somebody, to belong to somebody and have them belong to me.’”

  “Perhaps you need to remind Jesse of that day.”

  “What good would that do?”

  Lillian smiled. “When we are lost, it can be quite helpful to retrace our steps.”

  “Can you tell I’m smiling?”

  “Ha!” Lillian clapped her hands together. “Good! I would much rather hear smiles than tears.”

  “Let’s talk about something besides me and my troubles. Can I ask you about a story Dolly told me when I first came here—about a man named Andrew Sinclair?”

  “Ah yes—Andre Chauvin, the river pirate.”

  Anna gasped. “You mean you believe the story?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I want to.”

  “Well, by all means, do.”

  “Can you tell me what you know—if you don’t mind, I mean?”

  “Of course. Let me think just a minute and see what I might recollect.” Lillian’s eyes narrowed, staring straight ahead as she rocked back and forth. At last she said, “My mother and father knew the Chauvins—before they married, I mean.”

  “They did?”

  “Yes. I remember Mama always said she found it hard to believe that one so handsome as Andre could ever have been a river rogue. And Papa would answer, ‘Dear woman, that’s likely what made him so good at it.’” Lillian smiled at the memory.

  “So they were friends, then—your parents and the Chauvins?”

  Lillian thought for a moment and nodded. “My father grew up in Louisiana.”

  “I guess that’s what he had in common with Andre?”

  Lillian’s eyes narrowed again, as if she were trying to picture her father and the pirate together. “Yes. Louisiana—and the great joy Papa took from being on water. Creek, river, lake, or pond—he loved them all. I guess he missed the bayous of his childhood. My mother grew up here.”

  “So she would’ve known Catherine from church maybe?”

  Lillian thought about it and again nodded. “That sounds right.”

  “Did your mother tell you anything about Catherine? Anything you wouldn’t mind telling me? I know it was a long time ago, but is there anything else you can remember?”

  Lillian looked straight ahead and silently rocked back and forth.

  “Dolly said Catherine’s father arranged the marriage?”

  Lillian’s expression changed, and Anna feared she had somehow offended her friend. “I’m sorry, Lillian. Did I say something wrong?”

  Lillian’s face softened as she closed her eyes and shook her head. “No, dear Anna. ’Tisn’t you that stirs my anger. ’Tis what could have befallen young Catherine had Andre Chauvin been cut from a mean cloth.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Her father, the good reverend, effectively sold his own daughter to a river pirate. That gr
eedy old rascal was the worst sort of clergyman, my mother always said—drawn to the power of the cloth but wholly lacking in the compassion. The pirate wanted a wife; the minister wanted a fine new pastorium and traded his own daughter for the money to build it, without even bothering to find out who exactly was purchasing his own flesh and blood. That happened before I was born, but Papa never could speak of that preacher without swearing. He could not abide hypocrisy.”

  “How could Catherine’s father do that—make her marry somebody she barely knew just so he could live in a big house? How old was she?” Anna had no idea why her heart broke for a young bride who had been dead for years.

  “You feel it, don’t you? Her fear, her sense of betrayal? Poor girl wasn’t even twenty yet.”

  Anna nodded, forgetting that Lillian couldn’t see her.

  “Only a woman understands. The reverend had visions of overflowing coffers, and he didn’t care at all what Catherine might have to endure. He planned to use her to keep the money coming in. Her mother was just as bad. But they both miscalculated.”

  “How?”

  Lillian smiled. “They misjudged Andre and underestimated Catherine. The two of them never set foot in her father’s church again or gave him another red cent, and good for them! But, of course, they both disappeared.”

  “Well . . . what about servants? Rich people living in a house that big—they must’ve had servants who knew what happened to them.”

  “Only one, a Creole cook and housekeeper. She lived in that little shotgun house right out yonder at the edge of that cotton field.” Lillian pointed in the general direction of an unpainted house she could not see, barely visible to Anna from the overgrown hedgerow at the far edge of the field. “The Creole woman appeared in Alabama with Andre and disappeared when he and Catherine did. I can’t help but wonder if there might be some small piece of their story in that little shack. But I’m far too blind and feeble to get there. You might have a look, though.”

  “Do you think Andre and Catherine escaped through a secret passageway in Dolly’s house?”

  Lillian smiled and shook her head. “Who can say after all these years? I don’t know that they would’ve needed one. A pirate would’ve made it his business to know the waterways around here, and Andre could’ve easily followed the Tanyard through the woods to the Coosa River. All he would’ve needed was a boat and a map tucked away somewhere beyond the slough, where the creek deepens on its way to the river, and he and Catherine could slip off into the night. I doubt there’s any passageway.”