Small Town Girl

by Ann H. Gabhart

  Her mother finally broke the silence between them. “I love hearing your father read to Lorena. I fell in love with him while he was reading aloud. I used to tell him that with his voice he could have been an actor.”

  “Or a preacher.”

  That brought a laugh. “Heaven forbid. I was a preacher’s daughter. I have to admit to being eternally grateful your father never heard the call to preach.”

  “Is it that hard to be a preacher’s wife?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Mama set the swing to swaying a bit. “But I’ve often thought to be a good preacher’s wife, a woman needs to have a calling the same as her preacher husband.”

  “You think Evie has a calling then?” Kate couldn’t keep the doubt about that out of her voice.

  “Not one she’s aware of yet, but the Lord has a way of helping people change. Evangeline has much to learn, but she wants to be a good wife to Mike. Some things might be hard for her at first, but I think she may find a calling in time.” Mama looked out toward the road as if sending a prayer after Evie. “And being a preacher’s wife is surely much different from being a preacher’s daughter. I was never able to please my father, much less his congregation. Mike is very pleased with Evangeline, and his evident love for her will be like the prime for a pump and bring forth love from his church people.”

  “People here already love Evie.”

  “They won’t stay here.” Kate’s mother spoke the words flatly. “He loves our church, but he’s ready to move on. As is Evangeline.”

  “That makes me sad.”

  Her mother reached over and squeezed her hand. “One of the sure things in life is change, my dear daughter. Everything changes.”

  “Everything?” There, swaying back and forth on the swing with her mother the way she had hundreds of times and hearing her father’s voice reading Jules Verne’s words aloud, it seemed as though nothing would ever change.

  “Everything but the Lord. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forevermore, but it’s not like that for us. Even when things seem the same, they’re changing. You girls are getting older, growing toward your futures. Things can happen to change everything.”

  “You’re thinking about the war over there.”

  “Over there.” Kate’s mother let out a long breath that carried the sound of sadness. “Your father went over there in the war that was to end all wars and now look what’s happening. The whole world has gone to war.”

  “Not us. President Roosevelt promised he wouldn’t send our men overseas in a speech just last week.”

  “We can only pray he can keep his promise. And maybe we are far enough away from the conflict that we’ll be able to simply change the course of the war by supplying the Allies.” Kate’s mother squeezed her hand again. “But let’s not talk about war. We can’t do anything to change what’s happening right now, and war talk is hard for your father. He can’t stand the thought of the boys having to go fight the way he did.”

  Kate lowered her voice to a near whisper. “He won’t start drinking again, will he?”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” her mother said with no hesitation. “I don’t think anything could send him back down that path. Thank the Lord. But the war over there does worry him. Carl today worried him.”

  “You and Dad wanted me to marry Carl, didn’t you?”

  “No.” Her mother gave her hand a little shake. “Why would you think that?”

  “You like Carl.”

  “Well, yes, but we would never want you to be tied to a man you didn’t love with all your heart. We just want you to be happy.” Her mother studied her face in the soft light before she went on. “But we did both understand that Carl was upset and nervous about his future. That’s why he did what he did this morning in church, trying to make you feel bad.”

  “I did feel bad.”

  “I know.”

  Again silence fell over them, but this time it didn’t seem quite so easy. The swing’s chains groaned a little under their weight as they kept it rocking back and forth. Inside Lorena laughed. The sound reached out and made Kate want to be inside with her listening to Daddy read. She sat forward in the swing to stand up, but her mother put a hand on her arm.

  “Wait, Kate. We need to talk.”

  Kate started to say she thought they had been talking, but it was plain her mother had more to say. Kate flashed back through the day, trying to remember if she’d done something wrong, but nothing came to mind other than Carl. They’d already talked about him. She leaned back, but stayed stiff.

  “Don’t act so worried,” her mother said. “I’m not going to fuss at you about anything. You’re an adult and can make your own decisions now.”

  “But . . . ,” Kate said for her mother, because she heard the word in her hesitation.

  “You’re right. There is more.” Mama pulled her hand away from Kate’s and smoothed the folds in her skirt. It was a way she had of getting her thoughts organized. “Mike talked to me this afternoon while you were at the movies.”

  “What about?” Kate asked, but she knew. The same thing Mike had talked to her about that morning in the churchyard.

  “Jay.” Mama hesitated again as if waiting for Kate to say something, but Kate stayed silent this time. So after a moment, she went on. “Mike’s worried you might be falling for him and he doesn’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “It’s Lorena who’s head over heels. Not me.”

  “Lorena does like him. I like him. Your father likes him.”

  “It’s only his best friend in life who doesn’t like him.”

  “Now, don’t be mean.” Mama gave Kate’s arm a little tap. “Of course, Mike likes Jay. It bothered him to tell me what he did, but he doesn’t want you to get hurt. He says Jay is not the settling-down type. That he has girlfriends in every town he’s been in. And I can see why. A good-looking boy like him.”

  “He’s a charmer, for sure,” Kate agreed, careful to keep her voice casual. “That was pretty plain from his first hello here before the wedding.”

  “But nobody expected him to stick around after the wedding.”

  “Graham talked him into it.”

  “And that’s what you have to wonder about.” Mama turned to look straight at Kate in the dim light coming from the window.

  Kate met her look. “What do you mean?”

  “About what Graham was thinking when he offered him a job and a roof over his head.”

  “That he can’t climb ladders like he used to and he wanted to get that house painted before winter?” Kate suggested with a smile.

  “That’s a definite possibility.” An answering smile flashed across her mother’s face. “But then it could be he was playing matchmaker.”

  “Matchmaker?” Kate frowned a little and shook her head. “Not Graham.”

  “I don’t know. Good-looking boy blowing in from somewhere outside of Rosey Corner. A touch of the mysterious to make him more interesting. Carl not right for you in Graham’s eyes.”

  “And mine,” Kate said. Then she laughed and grabbed her mother’s hand. “But Graham is no matchmaker. He was just charmed by Jay the same as the rest of us.”

  “Us?” Her mother lifted her eyebrows at Kate.

  “Well, you. I’ve not been charmed. Simply entertained. And a little surprised. I never expected Jay to stick around Rosey Corner this long either.”

  “But he did. I think that may be because of you.”

  Kate was quiet a minute before she said, “Are you telling me I shouldn’t see him again?”

  “No. You’re not a child. You can see who you want. All I’m telling you and all Mike’s telling you is to be careful.”

  “Don’t worry, Mama.” Kate leaned over and kissed her mother’s cheek. “Jay will be heading on down the road again soon, and then we’ll probably never see him again.” Kate was surprised at the way those words bothered her.

  “You may be right. Just make sure he doesn’t take your heart w
ith him.” She put her hand on Kate’s cheek. “Hearts are hard to get back once you give them away.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t want to get your heart back from Daddy.”

  “Never.”

  “Not even when . . .” Kate let her thought stay unspoken. She shouldn’t have brought up those bad years before her father quit drinking.

  “Never means never, Kate. For better or for worse. In sickness and in health. When your father and I made those promises to each other, we meant them. And that’s all we want for you girls. The same kind of love that will endure whatever life throws your way.”

  Kate smiled and tried to lighten the moment. “Well, one down. Three to go.”

  “Maybe two down. Victoria seems pretty set on her choice.” Mama peered past Kate toward the couple on the couch inside. “Look at them. Both so young. Your father says he knew he loved me when he was that age and even younger.”

  “You think she’s too young?”

  “Victoria knows what she wants.” Her mother stood up and reached a hand down toward Kate to pull her to her feet. “You’ll find your dreams too.”

  “If I knew what those dreams were,” Kate said.

  “You do know, Kate. Your problem is figuring out which to do first.” Her mother caught both her hands and held them. “Think about it. What would you do if you could do anything in the world?”

  “You mean like go around the world in eighty days?”

  Her mother gave her hands a shake. “Be serious.”

  “Go to college.” The words spilled out. She’d never spoken them aloud to her mother. There wasn’t money for college. “I know there’s no way and I can’t, but there’s so much I don’t know yet. That I want to know.”

  “My Kate, always reaching for more. But if you can dream it, it can happen.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Nor do I right now, but the good Lord can sometimes open unseen doors to us to give us the desires of our heart.” She squeezed Kate’s hands and turned her loose. “Let’s go in and listen to Phileas Fogg. Talk about an impossible dream. Jules Verne came up with some interesting ones in his stories.”

  Kate trailed after her into the house. College was only the beginning of her impossible dreams. She thought of her notebooks full of scribbled stories and wondered if those stories would ever be in a book like Jules Verne’s for people to read aloud in the night.

  14

  The sunshine-filled days of October kept going. A few nights carried a nip in the air that began to color the leaves until just walking up to the store to help her mother was a treat. The red and gold leaves were bright against the deep blue of the sky. Cotton clouds floated above them. The talk at the store was more about the World Series and Joe DiMaggio’s hit total for the baseball season than the war. People did talk about how Carl’s mother was worried sick about Carl going off to the Navy, while sometimes casting a curious eye toward Kate, but she simply pretended not to notice.

  She was getting very good at pretending. So good that sometimes even she didn’t know when she was pretending and when she wasn’t. She laughed with the people at the store as she measured out their beans or penny nails. She talked her mother into emptying a couple of shelves for books—not to sell, but to exchange or loan out like a tiny library. When her father wasn’t at the store, she pumped the gas or tried to. Most of the men jumped out of their cars to do it themselves after she set the pump. They did let her wash their windshields while they filled their tanks.

  In ways, everything was the same. In other ways, everything was different. Evie was Mrs. Mike Champion, the preacher’s wife. Carl was gone. Alice Wilcher did her best to jab Kate with every tidbit of news about Carl when she came into the store. That didn’t bother Kate as much as the way the girl went on and on about Jay Tanner. It was more than plain that Alice had succumbed to Jay’s charms. She hinted that the feelings were mutual.

  “A girl knows,” she told Kate on Friday morning when she stopped by to get a loaf of bread for her mother.

  “Knows what? The kind of bread her mother wants?” Kate smiled to take some of the bite out of her words. But the fact was, she’d never been overly fond of Alice Wilcher. The girl was only a little older than Tori, but half the time she acted as if she didn’t have good sense. Now thinking she was going to catch the eye of Jay Tanner was proving that triple.

  But then, maybe it was Kate who was fooling herself. Maybe Jay did like Alice or at least was leading her on enough to make her one of the brokenhearted girls he would leave behind in Rosey Corner.

  “Very funny.” Alice gave Kate a look before going on airily. “What a girl knows is when a man is interested in her. She can sense it.”

  “So you and Jay been doing things together?” Kate kept her voice neutral as she straightened the candy bars next to the cash register. A last-second temptation for their customers. The penny candy and bubblegum were on the other end of the counter.

  “I see him every day after school.” Alice fluffed up her hair.

  “I guess you’ve been going by Mrs. Harrelson’s then. Do you think Graham will ever get that poor woman’s house painted?” Kate tried to change the subject. Let Alice have her fantasies. What difference did that make to Kate? She had plenty of her own, none any truer than Alice’s.

  “Oh, I’m sure they will, now that Jay’s there doing most of the work. He’s always up on the ladder painting the hard-to-reach places while that crazy old Graham watches more times than not.”

  “Graham’s not as young as he used to be.”

  “He’s not the only one.” Alice gave her a pointed look as she waited for Kate to ring up the bread. Kate’s mother was in the back of the store helping old Mrs. Jenkins gather up the groceries she needed. Lorena was playing jacks in the back room. If Kate stopped to listen, she could hear the jack ball bouncing against the floor.

  “Are you talking about me?” Kate managed a laugh as she took Alice’s money.

  “Well, you have to admit that most of the girls your age here in Rosey Corner are married. And look at Ruth Ann Wilson with one baby already and another on the way.”

  “Ruth Ann told us she was expecting again the last time she was in the store.” Kate picked Alice’s change out of the cash register drawer. She took her time while silently repeating her mother’s rule to always be nice to the customers, whether they deserved niceness or not. “Her little girl is cute as can be. Ruth Ann lets me hold her while she gets her groceries.”

  “I didn’t figure you liked babies.”

  “Oh?” She handed Alice her change and put the bread in a sack. “Why in the world would you think that?”

  “The way you spurned poor Carl and after the two of you had been a couple since forever.”

  “We were friends. Never a couple.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she was sorry she’d wasted her breath on Alice.

  “You must have forgotten to tell Carl that.” Alice dropped her change down into her coin purse.

  “Maybe I did.” Kate gripped the edge of the counter. She needed to keep her hands occupied before she grabbed an onion or something to throw at Alice’s head. “But some things you just think people should know.”

  “Are you saying you never led Carl on? Made him think you were going to marry him?”

  Kate relaxed her grip on the counter. She brushed her hands over the smooth wood as though clearing spilled flour from its surface. “What I’m saying is that I never thought we were a couple. You’ll have to ask Carl what he thought.”

  “Well, now, that won’t be too easy, will it? Although I did promise to write to him. Several of us at school did, since we figured you wouldn’t be writing him and the poor boy, going off to the service and all.”

  “That’s really nice of you, and I’m sure Carl will find a girl to make him happy.” Kate kept her smile steady as she fixed her eyes on Alice’s face. She’d never noticed before how there was something slightly off center about the girl’s nose. May
be from poking it in everybody else’s business. She might have kindly advised Alice of that fact, except her mother and Mrs. Jenkins were coming toward them. So instead she said, “Maybe even you, after you write him all those letters.”

  Alice laughed a little as she picked up her sack. “I’d rather have my boyfriends closer to home than . . .” She hesitated. “Where did he say he might go?”

  “Hawaii,” Kate supplied.

  “Right here in Rosey Corner suits me better.” Alice’s lips turned up in a smirk. “Where Jay Tanner just happens to be.”

  Kate’s mother gave Kate a warning look as she set Mrs. Jenkins’s basket of groceries on the counter.

  Mrs. Jenkins, who couldn’t hear thunder, peered toward Alice and said, “A tanker blew up? Here in Rosey Corner? I knew putting gasoline in tanks was a bad idea.”

  Kate bit her lip to keep from smiling as she turned away from Alice and began ringing up the old lady’s groceries. Mrs. Jenkins was a sweet little woman, but conversations with her could fly off into some weird directions. Kate let her mother handle this one.

  She patted Mrs. Jenkins’s hand. “No, no, Stella. Nothing’s blown up. Yet.” Kate’s mother sent another look Kate’s way, before smiling over at Alice. “How’s your mother, dear? I haven’t seen her out for a while.”

  Alice answered with as few words as possible as she hurried out the door. Maybe worrying about those gas tanks out in front of the store blowing up.

  Kate picked up the groceries to carry them home for Mrs. Jenkins. There was no way the little woman with her shoulders humped over from her many years could carry them herself. Lorena deserted her jacks game and caught up with them out on the road. She liked Mrs. Jenkins.

  Mrs. Jenkins put her hand on Lorena’s head and asked, “Where were you hiding? I didn’t see you at the store.”