by Jan Watson
In little more than an hour her ironing was done. A pot of butter beans simmered on the back of the cookstove, and a round of corn bread baked in the oven. Her mama always cooked butter beans and fried potato pancakes on Tuesday. Cara kept the tradition. Dimmert loved her potato pancakes.
She was just folding up the ironing board when she heard Big Boy’s booming voice again. “Missus, I caught you some dinner.”
She looked out the window and saw he had a string of fish. Her mouth watered—fried fish with the beans, potatoes, and corn bread? That would be a feast. She covered her mouth with her hand. How could she take the fish without asking Big Boy to eat? Yet how could she turn the gift down without hurting his feelings? Her toe tapping, she peeked out the window again. All right, she’d have him to supper and then gently explain that he could not be hanging around the place. Surely he would understand.
She walked out to the chopping block by the barn. Before she could say, “Stay for supper,” Big Boy was cleaning the fish. Shiny scales flew in all directions before he slit one down the middle of the belly. He expertly removed the insides and the bony spine. The lungs lay still inflated on the block. “We used to play with those.” Cara pointed. “My brothers would float them down the creek.”
“It takes a good hand to get the lights out without busting them,” he replied, sliding the cleaned fish into a pan of water.
“I could fry these up for supper if you have time to eat before you get on your way,” Cara said, congratulating herself on her way with words.
Big Boy scaled another fish. “I figured to leave these with you. But if you want me to stay . . .”
Cara could have kicked herself. She’d been thinking too much as usual. Now what could she do but invite him to stay for a meal? “I’ll have it ready in no time, and you can take the extra with you.”
Soon she and Big Boy Randall were sitting at the kitchen table, which she had pulled out on the porch. She prayed no one would come along and see them sitting here. But she couldn’t very well have him in the house. The worry was giving her indigestion. She’d have to get out the baking soda once he left.
Big Boy ate half a pot of beans with his potato pancakes and his fish, then sopped up the bean soup from his plate with a piece of corn bread. He pushed his chair back and rested his arms on his belly. Cara thought it was big as the rain barrel. He must be eating somewhere regularly.
“Thank you, missus,” he said. Pulling a short piece of straw from his shirt pocket, he worked it around his teeth. “Them was mighty good beans.”
With her elbows on the table, Cara folded her hands under her chin. “So, where do you go from here?”
“Now don’t be fretting about me,” he said with a wink. “I got friends all over yon hills.”
“Might I ask you something?” Cara said.
“Shoot,” he replied.
“There’s this verse in Proverbs that has me puzzled. It’s the one about the spider in the palace. What do you take that to mean?”
“To understand a part, you got to look at the whole—”
“I’ll just fetch my Bible,” Cara interrupted, starting to stand.
Big Boy motioned her to sit. “No need,” he said, tapping his head. “I got the whole of Proverbs right here—Ecclesiastes too. That particular verse speaks to the wisdom of little things, like spiders and ants, conies and locusts. It’s saying a spider can spin her web in a king’s palace as easy as she can spin anywhere else.”
“What do you reckon a coney is?”
“Do you know I had that selfsame question? Mr. Webster says it’s a kind of rabbit. It’s kindly hard to picture a rabbit making a home in the rocks though, ain’t it?”
“You sure know your Bible,” she said.
“They don’t call me Preacher for nothing,” Big Boy responded.
“Preacher? I thought your nickname was Big Boy.” Cara dished up two bowls of peach cobbler and handed one across the table.
“Big Boy’s my given name,” he said around a spoonful of cobbler. “My family calls me Preacher.”
Cara shook her head. Despite herself, she had to hear how a person got such a moniker as Big Boy.
Big Boy polished off his dessert and licked the spoon. “I feel like I died and went to heaven after that peach pie. Reckon I could have just a tad more?”
Cara made the second helping extra large. “How did you come by such a name as Big Boy?”
“My daddy was a little banty rooster–size man. First thing Daddy said after I was born was ‘That there’s one big boy.’ It stuck.”
Cara chuckled. “I’m sorry, but that is funny. It makes me wonder what your brothers and sisters are named.”
“Everybody else has got regular names.” Big Boy counted off on his fingers. “There’s Shacklett, Halona, Aloda, Lulie, and Yeary. I’m the least one. I guess Mammy plumb run out of names by the time I came along.”
“Hmm,” Cara said. “Those are all real pretty.”
Big Boy stroked his beard. “I’ve been pondering on paying a visit to Dimmert. What do you think?”
Cara’s heart beat painfully. She ducked her head to hide quick tears. “If you do, would you tell him that I miss him something awful?” He kept his eyes straight ahead. Cara figured he could hear the anguish in her voice. “Could I maybe send him some things?”
“I’m fixing to head toward Frankfort in the morning. You bundle up whatever you want me to take and set it here on the porch. I’ll come by for it early.”
Cara threw caution to the wind. “You could stay in the barn tonight, Big Boy.”
He looked sideways at her. “Tell you the truth, if things were different, I’d take you up on the offer. I love Dimmert like a brother, which kindly makes you my sister, but I’d better get on the road. I’ll go up Crook-Neck to my brother Shacklett’s. I don’t want to set folks a-jawing and speculating.”
“Didn’t you think they might talk when you hid out here before?”
Big Boy shrugged. “Nobody was the wiser then. I made teetotally sure of that.”
“You’re a good man, Big Boy Randall.”
“Tell that to the law,” Big Boy replied, then laughed.
“Seems like you go out of your way to get arrested, taking chairs from the funeral parlor and stirring up the Wheelers,” she said. “Why would you do that?”
Big Boy stretched his big arms over his head. “I could never stand one person having plenty and another doing without. I was always trying to even things out.”
Cara bided her words. She didn’t want to seem judgmental, but clearly Big Boy was in the wrong. “Don’t you reckon there might be a better way of doing that than staying just this side of the hoosegow all the time?”
“You might be right. I felt silly sneaking that rocking chair back to the funeral parlor.” One at a time he cracked his knuckles. Their popping sounded overloud in the stillness of the evening. “You might not understand, but being with Dimmert Whitt for the short time stirred my soul.”
“How do you mean?” she asked.
Big Boy leaned forward, resting his elbows on the tabletop. “Dimm’s so quiet, it’s like he’s always thinking. He listens to your words and then turns them back on you. Makes you come up with your own answers. You know what I mean?”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“And a body can tell, Dimmert’s a man of strong conviction. He would rather go to jail than lie. Me, I always had me a little fun twisting facts to suit myself.”
It was getting late. Cara stood and started scraping the plates. Big Boy’s was clean as a whistle. “You should take Pancake. He’ll make your journey to the penitentiary easier.”
“Thank you, missus.” Big Boy stood and retrieved his hat from where it perched on the back of his chair. “I’ll take you up on that. I expect Dimmert would druther see Pancake than me anyway.”
“Would the prison guards let Dimm see Pancake?” Cara thrilled at the thought.
Big Boy gave her his slow wink
again. “Don’t you worry none about that. I’ll see to it.”
Later that evening Cara took a worn tablecloth from the press and laid it out flat on the floor. She folded a flannel shirt and a pair of overalls and put them square in the middle. From the top chest drawer she took a cotton union suit with knit cuffs and two pairs of wool socks and added them to the stack. That didn’t seem enough somehow. What else could she add to remind Dimm how much she loved him?
The screen door slapped shut behind her. She searched through her stack of whittling wood. There was a small chunk left over from the doll’s head. Butternut was a soft wood, which made for quick and easy carving. She didn’t even sit on the porch steps but stood in place as a heart the size of a silver dollar emerged from the scrap of wood. DW + CW, she scribed on the heart. Back inside, she stuck it in the pocket of the flannel shirt.
That task finished, she fired up the cookstove. When the oven was hot, she slid in a pan of biscuits.
At 3 a.m. Cara was still cooking. She couldn’t seem to stop. There was fried chicken, boiled eggs, biscuits, baked sweet potatoes, another round of corn bread, and Dimm’s favorite—fried apple pies. When the food cooled, she wrapped it in oilcloth and packed it in a clean lard bucket. As she poured leftover grease from the skillet into a grease keeper, she smiled at the thought of Dimm receiving her gifts—if the food even made it to Frankfort, given Big Boy’s big appetite.
She wouldn’t question though, wouldn’t give orders. It was enough that Big Boy was going to see her husband. She caught her breath. She could go with him! Who was to stop her? For a moment her resolve flamed bright as a new penny. Then she found her senses. It wasn’t fitting for a woman to up and take off as if it didn’t matter what others thought. Her daddy always said the only thing a man packs all his life is his name, good or bad.
Besides she had a feeling that Dimmert would not want her there. The prison sounded like a hard and lonesome place. It would be easier for him to bear the time if time was all he had to bear. While the cookstove still held heat, she put on a pot of coffee. There was no reason to go to bed this late. She might as well wait for morning.
When the rooster crowed, she woke with a crick in her neck. Her coffee had long since gone cold, but there were live coals under the stove burner, so it wouldn’t take long to get a fire going. Twice-heated coffee would be strong enough to stand a spoon in, but she welcomed that. She opened the kitchen door expecting to see the bundle of clothes and the lard bucket full of food waiting to be picked up. Instead there was another Big Boy–type gift.
Leaving the door open, she sat at the table and rested her weary head in the crook of her elbow. The early morning sunlight filtered though the screen door, bathing her face in warmth. The rooster sang another earsplitting wake-up serenade. The aroma of nearly burned coffee called her to get going.
After adding a healthy dash of cream to her mug, she went out to the porch and settled in the newly delivered rocking chair. She was pleased to see the rockers she had made fitted perfectly well on a wide-bottomed chair. Big Boy must have worked all night long. There was no way he went all the way to Crook-Neck and back. She wondered how he knew she had made rockers.
The coffee didn’t taste half-bad. Soon as she finished she’d let the chickens out of the coop for the day. Then she thought to hoe some weeds from around the potato hills before she headed over to the Sheltons’ to do the wash.
It would be nice to have a cat, she reckoned. A cat was good to curl up in your lap when you rocked. Her mind started to scratch around, searching for a worry or two to keep her company. Seemed like she couldn’t hardly work up to a good head of worry though, seemed like rocking and fretting didn’t go together. Her daddy used to say, “Let every day provide for itself and God send Sunday.”
Absently, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Draining the last of her cup, she stood. Her eyes took in the wealth around her—the burgeoning garden; the wild rose climbing a trellis on the whitewashed henhouse; the fragrant patch of orange marigold beside the porch; the white ironstone mug that fitted her hand perfectly; the sturdy rocking chair. Big Boy was taking her heart to Dimm. Cara was thankful.
CHAPTER 18
DARCY SPREAD THREE YARDS of linen across the table. She’d washed it for shrinkage yesterday and hung it to dry in the shade so the pale pink color wouldn’t fade.
“Ain’t ye going to press it before you cut?” Mammaw asked.
“I did that already,” Darcy said.
“Let me feel of it.”
Darcy suppressed a sigh. She had the flimsy pattern pieces all ready to pin to the fabric. The pattern had cost fifteen cents—kind of pricey, probably because it called for double ruffled sleeves and a ruffled collar. Last night she went through her trunk of fabric and selected the handkerchief linen for a blouse and a piece of lightweight wool worsted for a skirt. The dark rose color of the wool contrasted nicely with the light pink linen. Because she had a short waist, she’d use whalebone in the skirt to keep it from rolling over. Darcy hoped for the hourglass figure that was all the rage in the latest fashion magazines Mrs. Upchurch sent her through the mail.
“Are your hands clean?” Darcy asked as she draped the fabric across her grandmother’s lap.
Mammaw’s mouth quivered as she held up her good hand for Darcy to inspect. The gesture made Darcy feel small. She hugged her granny, letting the touch last longer than usual. “Of course they are. I’m sorry.”
Mammaw fingered the linen. “Is this for you, Darcy Mae? Is it for something special?”
Darcy turned away and busied herself with the piece of wool. “I’m going to take this out to the clothesline. It still smells of mothballs.”
The wire clothesline was strung between the well house and a skimpy locust tree. Darcy chose the shaded end, then pegged the folded wool cloth to the line. With any luck the birds would be busy elsewhere this morning.
How did Mammaw know she was up to something? Darcy had been so careful to keep her feelings to herself, so careful her stomach was in knots most of the time. All she’d been able to eat since Henry’s insistent visit was toast and weak tea. That was probably what had Mammaw suspicious, for usually Darcy was a hearty eater. Surely Mammaw hadn’t seen the two of them out her bedroom window that night. She would have said something if she had.
Why did everything have to be so hard? If Henry came with his proposal again, what would she do? How could she turn her back on her grandmother? Hadn’t she made her choice, though, when she picked out the fabric for her wedding dress—going with practical linen and wool instead of the silk she had once dreamed of? Darcy undid one clothespin and pulled the fabric tighter on the line before she fastened it again. Scooping up the free end of the wool, she buried her face and inhaled the sharp mothball fragrance until her head floated. The least bit of a Scripture came to mind—“moth and rust doth corrupt.” As she let the fabric fall, Darcy wished she had some mothballs to put around her heart.
A warm wind kicked up, wafting the scent of lilac her way. The woolen fabric snapped on the line. Darcy scanned the sky. Smallish gray clouds skittered like playful kittens across the sun. She stepped into the well house for a minute’s peace and rested her weight on her palms; then she leaned over the rim of the well. “Hello,” she shouted.
Hello . . . Hello . . . Hello . . . The echo floated up from the shaft.
“It’s me, Darcy!”
Darcy . . . Darcy . . . Darcy . . .
She leaned farther in, careful to keep her footing. “I don’t know what to do!”
To do . . . To do . . . To do . . .
“Are you tetched in the head?” a familiar voice queried from behind her, “or did somebody fall down the well?”
Startled, Darcy’s palms slipped against the rock ledge. She nearly took a tumble. “Forevermore, Remy. You could have made me fall in.”
“Humph. Weren’t me playing games in the well house.”
Darcy pulled the door shut behind her and turned t
he wooden peg that held it closed. “What are you doing here?” Her voice sounded sharp even to her own ears. “I’m not going to town today.”
Remy stared at the ground. “I hoped to visit Fairy Mae.”
Darcy realized she didn’t know Remy the least bit, though the woman had been helping her with Mammaw for months now. She studied the woman who was always . . . what? Available? Darcy couldn’t even put a name to who Remy was to her. Her conscience plagued her. This wasn’t the first time today Darcy Mae Whitt had felt mean.
“Mammaw would love a visit,” she said. “I’ll make us some tea.”
Darcy followed Remy’s slow progress, taking in the other woman’s thin frame, her halting gait, the trail left by the pull of her wooden crutch through the grass. Truly, Darcy thought, what with her white hair, pale complexion, and washed-out blue eyes, Remy was the oddest person she ever chanced to meet. And her voice, like a rusty screen door, sometimes caught Darcy off guard even though she’d heard it a thousand times.
Darcy recalled the first time she laid eyes on Remy. It was in May of 1887, the day before Miz Copper was to marry Mr. John in a double wedding with Cara and Dimmert. The women of the household gathered in Miz Copper’s bedroom that warm afternoon, trying on their dresses. Darcy loved her pink mull frock. It was the fanciest dress she’d ever owned. And Miz Copper—oh, she looked like an angel in her pretty gown with her hair caught up with pearl combs. It was such a happy day until Mr. John stumbled across the threshold with Remy’s crumpled body in his arms. Darcy could still see dark red blood spilling down the front of Miz Copper’s moss green wedding dress.
She’d been shot of all things, Remy had, by old Hezzy Krill when she mistook Remy for a four-legged varmint stealing eggs from Hezzy’s henhouse. Remy had nearly bled to death, and she still walked with a limp. She must be lonely now, living by herself in the house Miz Krill left to her in her last will and testament.