by Joyce Wright
Salome felt relief because her new husband looked nothing like her first husband.
Chapter Four
Larkin had intended to head back as soon as the ceremony was finished, but Father Diego suggested that it would be better to spend the night in Santa Teresa and then set out early the next morning. Kenyon could see the wisdom of the priest’s advice. The day as already half over, and they’d be traveling with a child. She was a quiet child, but alert; Kenyon noticed that she watched him with those round, brown eyes intent upon him throughout the ceremony.
The woman, Salome, repeated the vows in a low-pitched voice, her words clear and her voice devoid of inflection. Larkin doubted if he sounded any more enthusiastic. He was just relieved to see that she looked nothing like Lorna, whose curly brown hair was the color of molasses and whose brown eyes lit up like the 4th of July when she smiled, which she generally did. This woman was yellow-haired and blue-eyed; the child must have taken after the father. Kenyon hadn’t expected an Indian child, but that was his own fault for not asking. Beulah Land might not take to an Indian child in school, but it wasn’t the child’s fault that she came of Indian stock. Her mother was fair and womanly looking. But she was not Lorna. If he’d been a praying man, he’d have thanked God for giving him that much, at least.
The ladies had prepared a wedding feast; there was roasted chicken and pork; beans; biscuits, and cake; they were all foods that reminded him of Lorna. He didn’t have much of an appetite. He noticed that the woman didn’t either. She didn’t talk much and when she passed him the bowls of food, her eyes were lowered. He moved the fork from his plate to his mouth and chewed, then thanked her when she passed the food to him, but he wasn’t hungry.
The other women kept the conversation going; there was laughter, a lot of it. Larkin wasn’t any ways sure what caused the laughter but it made it easier for him to be silent and he liked that. The priest didn’t have much to say but Larkin saw how his eyes watched them together. What he was watching for, Larkin couldn’t have said, but he seemed all right for a Roman. Larkin had mainly known Methodists and Baptists in his life, but the priest wasn’t too out of the way in his way of talking about God and those sorts of matters. Larkin supposed he should tell her that Beulah Land didn’t have a Roman church.
She looked startled when he addressed her. He had a low voice, not much range to it; the kind of a voice that could yell “Fire” and “I love you” and sound pretty much the same. Larkin explained about the church.
“There’s just a Baptist,” he said. “If you’re a churchgoer, that’s the only one.”
“That’s fine,” she answered, which didn’t tell him whether she planned to attend Sunday services or whether she didn’t. He’d gone with Lorna because Lorna was raised in the church. He had been church-raised too, but somehow war took that out of him. He’d gone to church for Lorna. When God took Lorna from him, Larkin saw no reason to go back on Sundays.
Larkin concentrated on his plate of food. It would be unmannerly to leave food on it; they’d gone to some effort and trouble to feed him. He chewed with diligence as his way of participating in the celebration which was foreign to him. These were good people; he could see that. They’d suffered too from the floods. The priest had told him that the residents of the mission community were being relocated because the floods had caused so much damage that it wasn’t worth rebuilding, even in an area where pine, oak, and other trees flourished. But it was likely that it wasn’t just the buildings, Larkin realized. It was likely the spirit that had gone out of them. People could only take on so much grief and loss before they figured it was quitting time. The priest would never quit; Larkin could tell that he wasn’t the type. But he wasn’t the one who made the decisions. Priests had bosses, too, probably, although Larkin didn’t know who they answered to besides God.
He saw a white-cuffed hand on his forearm; startled, he realized that the woman was handing him a bowl of potatoes. “No thank you,” he said. “Plenty on my plate.”
He noticed that as the woman lifted her arm, two round brown eyes were looking at him. The little girl was now his stepdaughter.
“Howdy,” he said. He hadn’t exchanged words with her yet and didn’t really know what to say. He didn’t know much about children.
She nodded. “Hello.”
The woman, Salome, set back a bit so that the child could see better.
“What’s your name?”
“Feather Gascoigne. You’re Mr. Kenyon Larkin.”
“I am.”
She continued to watch him. Her gaze was steadfast but not unsettling. She had a clear-sighted way of sizing up a person, he realized. He wondered what she was thinking.
“Do you like dolls?” he asked.
“I don’t have a doll.”
“Yes you do,” he said.
“She had a doll before,” the woman said to him softly. “We—it was lost in the flood.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Could you use another one?”
The little girl looked at him curiously. “You have dolls?” She sounded disbelieving that a grown man would have such a thing.
Despite himself, Larkin felt a smile, and then a laugh, emerge from him like something taken out of storage. “I do,” he said in a jocular tone. “I have one doll. Would you like to see her?”
The little girl looked to her mother, who nodded. Before he realized what was happening, the child had scrambled from her seat and was standing at his side.
“Guess you better deliver on that doll,” called out one of the women, a plain-faced woman of middle years who probably, before the flood, had a husband and a family and a home and now had become the mother to this lot. Or maybe there had been some other disaster that robbed her of what she loved. East Texas had plenty of weapons in its deathly arsenal.
“Guess so,” he said, standing up.
He was surprised when the little girl took his hand. He didn’t know that he’d ever held a child by the hand before. She had a trusting grip, even with those little fingers that were fairly lost in his grasp.
When they left the room, Jeanne said, “I’d say Feather has found a friend.”
She didn’t say that Feather had found a daddy, although Salome guessed that was what everyone was thinking and hoping. To be realistic, Salome knew that she had to hope the same, even though she didn’t want John to be displaced in Feather’s affections or memory.
“A good man,” Father Diego said quietly. Salome knew that the priest was a shrewd judge of character and not one to lavish praise where it was unmerited. She’d seen him talking with Kenyon Larkin before the wedding, and they’d been joined together in conversation before the eating got underway.
Father Diego would tell her that there were times when it was necessary to put trust in God, regardless of how she felt. “Don’t get in God’s way,” he had advised her more than once. “He has a plan and you’re part of it.” After her husband’s death, when she’d cried out to ask if that meant that John’s death was part of God’s plan, the priest had folded his hands in front of him. “God has a plan,” he’d repeated. “We don’t understand it. We laugh when there is joy and we cry when there is grief. But we must remember that God laughs and cries with us.”
When Feather came back, she had a doll in her arms and a bag of peppermint sticks in her hand. She was no longer holding Kenyon Larkin’s hand but it was apparent that they’d reached a new level of understanding because when she sat back down, she planted herself between her mother and her mother’s new husband. Salome didn’t say anything; she just moved down a space on the bench and put her daughter’s plate in front of Feather.
“Did you thank Mr. Larkin for the doll?” Salome asked, knowing that of course Feather had done so; she was a well-mannered child.
Kenyon Larkin answered for Feather. “She did. She’s been well brought up.”
“I need to name her,” Feather announced, ignoring the conversation about her manners and concentrating on the mor
e important matter of her doll.
“Name her Jeanne, after me!”
“Name her Margarita!”
Feather considered these suggestions, then looked up at Kenyon Larkin.
“What should I name her?”
“She’s your dolly, you should decide.”
“But you brought her,” Feather argued with straightforward logic. “What’s your favorite name?”
“Lorna,” he said before he thought better of it.
Feather held her doll in front of her, giving the toy the unblinking stare that revealed the intense importance of the decision. “Lorna,” she repeated. Then she nodded. “Lorna.”
“Feather, finish your food before it gets cold,” her mother told her. “There’s pie for dessert and you know how much you love Jeanne’s pie.”
Jeanne had made extra pies so that they would have one to take back with them. Food didn’t last long in the heat, which even in the spring was building to its usual temperature, but it would be good to have something from home to bring to the new place where she and Feather would live. Memories would have to serve her when the food was gone.
Chapter Five
Feather didn’t ask why she wasn’t sharing her mother’s bed that night as she did every other night. The women had made a fuss over her and her doll and Jeanne said they wanted her all to themselves this last night. Before she left, Jeanne went to Salome. “I have a good feeling about him,” she said.
Kenyon Larkin was outside, seeing to his horses. When he returned, he would enter the bedroom where she and John had been man and wife for happy years. Salome was reluctant at the thought of undressing in front of him, so she’d quickly taken off her dress and undergarments and donned a nightgown. She was covered from neck to toe in white cotton, but she recognized her duty and would do it.
“I hope so. He was kind to think of Feather and buy her a doll.”
“There’s kindness in him. He looks hard-edged, but you can bet that his wife treated him right and he’ll be looking for that again, just as your John was good to you. You can always tell when a man’s been used to a good wife. She leaves her mark on him. It’s a good brand. It makes him notice what it takes to make a house a home. I’d lay odds that the first Mrs. Larkin took good care of her husband and he took good care of her.”
“If they loved each other, I’m sure they did. John loved me and took good care of me.”
“If you had been washed away in the flood, you’d want a happy home for Feather, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, certainly, but that’s not an easy question.”
“No, it’s not. The living have to give up their hold on the dead and let them lie in peace. If John lived and you died, he’d need to do the same thing you’re doing now. He’d have to give up his hold on you---hush now, don’t cry; you know I’m speaking true—he’d have to give up his hold on you so that he could make a life for Feather with someone who would be a good mother to her. You know that. You’ve known loss in your life. When you came here, you were just a scared kid who’d seen your parents die. We both know what that kind of death is like. You can let death win, or you can live. You can’t do both, Salome. What are you going to do?”
“I’ll do my best,” Salome said.
“Make sure your best is everything you have to give,” Jeanne said, wiping away the traces of tears on Salome’s cheeks. She gestured to the bed. “You know that when marriage works, it’s good here.”
Salome blushed, remembering the bliss of John’s arms around her and the passion that had flared between the two of them. She didn’t want to surrender that to another man. “I’m not looking for that,” she said.
“There’s no reason to seek long, cold nights,” Jeanne said tartly. “Believe me. A loving man in your bed is a good man in every other room in the house. Don’t forget that.”
Jeanne was a wise woman who didn’t mince words and didn’t sweeten them either. Salome knew her story; it was not unlike her own. She’d been widowed by an Indian war party in northern Texas that had killed her entire family; she’d survived only because she had been away at her sister’s at the time, helping to deliver a baby. She’d returned home to a scene so grotesque that she thought she’d lose her mind. She’d found her husband, and her children, and the town after the Indian attack, but she’d said to Salome, “God witness, I wish I hadn’t. I’d rather remember them they were, not as they were left.”
Jeanne patted Salome’s cold cheek. “You’re too young to give up,” she said. “Take what God is giving you. Your daughter has.”
“I don’t want her to forget her father.”
“She won’t, not with you there to remind her of him and what he was like. But you don’t want her to live fatherless either and she’s already started on that path. Let her travel it.”
There was a noise at the door, a touch on the doorknob then nothing. Salome hurried to get under the covers.
Jeanne went to the bedroom door. “Goodnight, Mr. Larkin,” she said as she opened the door to let him in.
“Thank you for the eats, they tasted fine.”
She grinned. “My pleasure, Mr. Larkin. Salome is precious to us and we all wanted to make sure she had a fit wedding.”
He nodded. “Goodnight,” he answered, looking after her as she departed as if he was not ready to be alone with his wife.
He doused the light in the lamp while the woman watched him with anxious eyes. He didn’t want to take off his clothes in full view. Carefully, his back to her, he removed his trousers and then his shirt. Still wearing his union suit, he lifted the sheets and eased into the bed. Although the bed wasn’t wide, there was a generous length of unoccupied space in the middle because his wife was as far away from his side of the bed as she could be.
He was grateful for the darkness and the shelter it brought. But it was still hot, the humidity of the season bringing with it the hovering air that made bedcovering unnecessary and unwelcome. Finally he tossed the covers off his body.
“I’ve never gotten used to the heat,” he said.
A surreptitious rustling of the sheets told him that she was doing the same thing.
“You’re not from Texas?” she asked. “I thought not, from your speech.”
“Yours, either. Where were you from before you came here?”
“My folks were from Ohio,” she said.
“Were?”
“They were killed heading West. Comanche.”
“You survived.” She was lucky. He’d seen what remained after a Comanche war party had been through.
“The army found me and brought me here. I was twelve.”
“I served in Comanche territory with the army.”
“You didn’t go back to where you were from?”
“Indiana. No. I’d been gone too long. After my folks died, I joined the army.”
“Did you fight in the war?”
He nodded, then realized that she couldn’t see his movements in the dark room. “With Sherman.”
There was silence for a spell, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It wasn’t the comfortable silence of a married couple sharing thoughts at the end of their day, but the tension between two married strangers had eased a bit as they shared some of their stories. Neither divulged emotional details of what the events had done to them, but it was enough for now to know this much.
“Your little girl. Feather,” he said after a bit. “Her father was an Indian.”
“Caddo.”
He nodded. “Peaceable tribe.”
“The name for Texas comes from the Caddo word for friend,” she said.
“Is that so? I didn’t know that.” Lorna must not have known that either or she would have told him. She was a great one for knowing little things like the stories about flowers and the names of the stars.
“My husband was the schoolmaster here. John Cloud Feather Gascoigne.”
“Feather is named for him.”
“Yes. He didn’t want her to have an Indian name,
though. His mother was Indian and Spanish, his father a Creole from Louisiana. I was the one who named her Feather.”
“I like it,” he said, surprised at himself. He’d never heard it before for a girl’s name, but he reckoned that not every girl had to be named Ann or Susannah or Mary.
“Was Lorna your wife’s name?”
He nodded, then answered when he realized again that the darkness concealed his response. “Lorna, yes.”
There was silence again. He felt the movement of the bed and realized that she was not so far away as she had been. “Thank you for giving her the doll,” she said.