Small Town Girl

by Ann H. Gabhart

  “Rosey Corner people?” Jay glanced over at her with raised eyebrows.

  “Especially Rosey Corner people. The better you know people, the harder it is to put up with them sometimes.”

  “Then maybe it’s good I’m not from Rosey Corner.” He hesitated with his eyes straight ahead before he said, “But I wouldn’t mind getting to know a few Rosey Corner people better.”

  “Which people are those?”

  She looked across at him, but he kept his eyes on the road as he answered, “You already know the answer to that.”

  “Sometimes I don’t think I know any answers.” She stared out the windshield at the road the same as he was doing. “Or even the right questions to ask.”

  “But you know some you want to ask me.” He kept the smile on his face, but his hands tightened on the steering wheel.

  “Maybe,” Kate said. “You probably have things you’d like to ask me too.”

  “I’ve been asking you that ever since Mike’s wedding.”

  She glanced over at him with a puzzled look. “What’s that?”

  “How about we elope?” He grinned over at her. “So far I haven’t gotten anything but reasons we can’t.”

  “When I think you’re serious, then I might give you an answer.”

  “What makes you think I’m not serious?”

  “A girl knows.” She squeezed her hands together so tightly that her fingers hurt. “I’m beginning to wonder if you’re ever serious about anything.”

  “Serious,” he said. “Sounds like there could be a serious question behind that. Do I have to come up with a serious answer?”

  “I guess that’s up to you.”

  He didn’t say anything then, maybe waiting for her question. She stared at her hands while the silence between them suddenly seemed louder than the noise of the engine chugging along, taking them who knew where. She did have questions, but she wasn’t sure she should ask them. Why did she think she had to know all the answers? Why couldn’t she just let things slide along? What was it about her that made her think she could always make things work out the way she wanted? She had plenty of experience to prove that wasn’t true, but surely it would be better to know where she stood than to feel this awful uneasy wondering. Better to face the truth, whatever it turned out to be.

  That’s the mistake she’d made with Carl. Not being honest with him and telling him straight out they weren’t a couple. She’d made sort of the same mistake with Mike. Not being honest with herself and seeing how much he loved Evie and accepting that nothing could ever change that. She had never wanted that to change. Not really.

  None of that mattered now anyway. She hadn’t been in love with Mike any more than she’d been in love with Carl. But how she felt about Jay Tanner was different. This feeling consumed her. It shot through every nerve in her body until just the thought of him set her skin to tingling.

  She hadn’t wanted to fall in love with him, but her heart hadn’t cared when her brain said he was a charmer. Instead, she’d stepped into the moonlight with him and been lost to that charm. Even now with him gripping the steering wheel and staring straight ahead as though afraid to look toward her, she wanted to reach over and touch his hand. Connect with him. Let him know how she felt. But did he want to know?

  A better question to answer might be, did she have the courage to tell him? She moistened her lips. She was not a coward. She’d been ready to go against everybody in Rosey Corner for Lorena. She’d never run from Fern, even when the woman was doing her best to scare her. That wasn’t to say she’d never been scared. But she’d done whatever had to be done. She could do this.

  She separated her hands and spread her fingers out on her skirt. Relaxing them one by one. She was opening her mouth to just blurt something out when he put on the brakes and turned off the road through an open gap in the fence and bounced across a field to stop behind a barn.

  “Is this where you worked?” Kate looked out the window. “Where’s the house?”

  “It’s over the hill. We’ll go on up there in a few minutes and you can meet Mrs. Franklin. She’s a nice lady. But if you want serious answers, I need to look at you while you’re asking the hard questions.” He turned toward her and gripped the seat top behind Kate. “All right, I’m braced and ready. Ask away. Anything except what’s my middle name. I don’t tell anybody that.” He started to smile, but then straightened his lips out in a flat line. “And I will be serious. I promise.”

  She stared down at her hands again. “I don’t know what—”

  He interrupted her. “First, you have to look at me. Eye to eye.” She looked up and let him capture her eyes. “Now just say what you want to say, Kate.” He hesitated a minute as though having to force out his next words. “If you’re wanting to tell me to get lost, then tell me.”

  “Tell you to get lost?” She couldn’t hide her surprise. “I thought maybe you wanted me to get lost.”

  “Never.” He moved his hand off the car seat to stroke her cheek with the back of his fingers. “Why would you think that?”

  “Then why haven’t you kissed me—really kissed me—all week?” That was the question she most wanted to ask. “Didn’t you want to?”

  He looked puzzled as his hand stilled on her cheek. “Did you want me to?”

  “Oh yes.” She threw all caution to the wind, throwing open her heart to him. “Oh very definitely yes.”

  “You are so beautiful, Kate. I’ve never known a girl like you.” When she started to say something, he put his fingers over her lips. “Wait. Let me finish. I am so very afraid of doing something wrong.” He moved his fingers across her cheeks as if memorizing the feel of her skin. “So afraid I might hurt you. That I won’t be good enough for you.”

  A little spark of anger ignited inside her. “Did Mike tell you that? Is that what you talked about out in the yard on Thanksgiving?”

  “He didn’t have to tell me,” Jay said. “I knew already. I’m not good enough. You do deserve a man like him instead of somebody like me.”

  “I like somebody like you, Jay Tanner.”

  He smiled then. “Is that the best you can say?”

  “Some things are better not said too soon.”

  “And some things you have to trust to the winds of chance and see what happens. Things like this.” He gripped her shoulder and scooted toward her.

  She met him halfway. This time there was no moonlight. There wasn’t even any sunlight. The clouds were thick and gray. But the magic was there, sparkling inside her. What difference did it make that she didn’t have all the answers? She didn’t even know the questions to ask. But she knew what felt right, and it felt very right to have Jay’s arms wrapped around her, his lips on hers, demanding and getting a response.

  When she pulled back to draw in a shaky breath, he kept his eyes on her face. “The winds of chance are being kind to me.” He sounded almost as breathless as she felt before he pulled her close against him.

  She thought then about telling him she loved him, but something held her back. He wasn’t saying the words. Maybe it was too soon. Who knew what tomorrow would bring?

  “Look.” He pointed toward the window. “It’s snowing.”

  Fat snowflakes were settling softly on the windshield. The air around the car was white with them. Kate pulled away from Jay. “Maybe you should get the car out of here before we get snowed in.”

  “Snowed in with you sounds pretty good.” Jay tipped her face around toward his to kiss her again. But this time he didn’t pull her into his arms. Instead he jerked open the car door and grabbed her hand to help her slide across the seat and behind the wheel.

  “What are you doing?” She laughed as she stumbled out of the car.

  “Have you ever seen such beautiful snow?” But his eyes weren’t on the snow. They were on her. “I think Fern would tell us to dance, don’t you? In the music of the snow.”

  And so she stepped into his arms to glide with him through the snowfla
kes falling around them. Wrapped in silence. Wrapped in love. The snow wouldn’t last. The flakes disappeared as soon as they hit the ground and already the cloud that was sifting the snow down on them was drifting away. But still they danced. Embracing the moment.

  Tomorrow would be soon enough to worry about tomorrow.

  23

  The last Sunday in November, Jay got up and ready for church. He could handle an hour of Mike’s preaching. It could even happen that he’d feel something in his heart. For sure, his heart was awake and singing every time he was around Kate. Kate would be at church. Maybe the church words would sound different to him with a heart open to feeling. That’s what Mike had always told him. That all he had to do was open up his heart and accept the Lord’s love. If he could lay his heart open for Kate, then maybe it would be possible to feel this other love Mike was pushing at him. A greater love, he called it.

  Mike felt it. He knew the exact day he’d let the Lord take over his heart. He’d told Jay the story a dozen times. Kate felt it. Her whole family felt it, even Birdie. None of them had actually told him they did. Not like Mike had over and over. But it was easy to see them all gliding along the path of faith without worrying a bit about the troublesome rocks that might trip up an unwary person.

  Years ago, he told that worry to Mike, and Mike had found some verse in the Bible to read to him. Something to do with angels lifting a believing man up to keep him from dashing his foot against a stone. He’d said the Lord might send an angel to watch over Jay. When Jay laughed at the chances of that ever happening, Mike had stomped away and stayed mad for days. They were both so much younger then. Mike sure of angels and the Lord, Jay not sure of anything.

  But now Kate was smiling at him. Dancing with him. Maybe loving him. She could be angel enough to hold her hand out to him and get him to take that step up on the path of faith with her. She hadn’t asked him what he believed, but he sensed that was one of the questions that had been circling in her head last Thursday when she’d ridden with him to the Franklins’.

  They had gone by the Franklins’ house after their dance in the snow. Mrs. Franklin had hopped up and down and clapped her hands when she opened the door to see them on the porch. She plied them with cookies and tea while showing them the pictures of the grandchildren she’d gotten in the mail. Jay even caught a smile on Mr. Franklin’s face as they sat around the woodstove and talked.

  Or maybe Jay was so ready to smile, he imagined everybody else just as ready. Sitting in church beside Kate and Birdie, he wasn’t even bothered when he kept noticing Alice Wilcher staring at him from across the church. Definitely without a smile.

  Mike looked his way more than once after he wound up his sermon and the congregation stood to sing the final hymn. But Jay stayed in the pew. He might wish he could be as sure the Lord was in control as the good people around him, but wishing something didn’t make it true. Nor could borrowing feelings bury anything worthwhile in his heart. For now, it would have to be enough for Mike that he was sitting in his church. That he was wondering. That he might be listening for that knock on his heart’s door every preacher he’d ever heard preach claimed he could hear if he would only listen.

  December came in with a bitter wind. The war news was more of the same, mostly bad. Draft notices were still going out. That’s why Jay got the job at the feed store in Edgeville. One of the hands had gotten his summons and left for the Army.

  Every afternoon when Jay came back to Graham’s after work, he expected to see an envelope waiting for him with his name on it. It would come. His number would pop up eventually, but each day the draft notice delayed was a good day for Jay. A day when he could clean up and go to the Merritts’ house and let the warmth of family love beckon him in. A night when Kate would walk with him down off the porch to tell him goodbye. Neither of them felt the cold as they embraced in the shadows.

  Every night before he left, he asked her to elope. Each time she looked up at him, the contours of her face soft in the dark shadows of the night, and laughed. An enchanting laugh that wound down into his heart and settled there with joy. He knew she would never elope, but it was easier to say that than to tell her he loved her. And he did love her. He had quit even trying to argue that he shouldn’t, that he wasn’t good enough for her. He wasn’t. He would never be good enough for Kate, but that didn’t keep him from loving her. Or her from loving him.

  She didn’t say the words out loud either, but her eyes told him. Her lips surrendering to his told him. In time one of them would have the courage to say the words aloud. Until then they’d let their love dance in the air between them as they remembered the moonlight and snowflakes.

  When Sunday rolled around again, Jay got up to go to church the same as the Sunday before. The pews didn’t feel a bit hard when he was sitting by Kate.

  Graham gave him a raised-eyebrow look when he put on his suit. “Looks like somebody might be getting religion.”

  “Everybody tells me it’s a good thing to have.” Jay slicked down his hair before he looked over at Graham. “You want to go with me?”

  “What is it today?” Graham studied the calendar he had tacked to the wall over the table. It had a picture of the Edgeville Bank on it. “December 7th. Could be the right Sunday for church, but I generally hold off till the second Sunday.”

  Jay put down the comb and checked how he looked in the little mirror he’d tacked up on the wall over his cot. Graham didn’t have one. He claimed he hadn’t had any need for a mirror since around 1920.

  “Most people here in Rosey Corner go to church every Sunday.” Jay turned from the mirror toward Graham.

  “That’s a fact,” Graham agreed. “Aunt Hattie’s even got Fern going more times than not. Aunt Hattie can be a powerful preacher when she takes a mind to straighten somebody out.”

  “What about you?”

  “I ain’t got much interest in preaching.”

  “Or listening to preaching either?” Jay asked.

  Graham tilted back in his straight chair until it leaned against the wall. “If you want to know something, why don’t you just ask it straight out?”

  “What makes you think I want to know something?”

  “The way you’re sniffing around the question like Poe around a hole he’s afraid a snake might pop out of. Old Poe don’t take kindly to snakes.” Graham narrowed his eyes on Jay before he went on. “You’re wanting to know if I’ve got any belief in this old heart of mine for the good Lord. Maybe because you’re feeling some strange stirrings in your insides when Preacher Mike brings down the Word. Feelings you’re some afraid of or I miss my guess.”

  Jay sat down on the cot and rested his elbows on his knees as he looked down at the floor. “Could be you’re not missing your guess.”

  Graham pulled in a breath and let it out slowly. “The good Lord and me, we came to an understanding a long time ago. He said I could go sit in with his other children in the church buildings now and again and that other times I could just worship wherever I happened to be. It’s my belief the Lord isn’t near as picky about where that worshiping takes place as some church folks would have you think.”

  Jay looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, from what I read in my Bible about him while he was walking around down here, he ended up worshiping in some uncommon places himself. With that short little fellow, Zacchaeus, after he told him to come down from his tree. You remember that story, don’t you? Or at a wedding changing water into wine. I’m thinking that might raise some eyebrows here among the Rosey Corner church folks these days.”

  “I know the Bible stories,” Jay said. “I was at church every time the doors were open until I got out of school and took off on my own. My aunt and uncle were strong on religion.”

  “Must have lacked some in practicing what they preached.” Graham sat forward and the front legs of his chair banged against the floor. Poe raised his head and gave him a woeful look for disturbing his sleep. “But it’s li
ke this, boy. Every man, woman, and child has to come to the Lord on his own. Somebody might lead you there. A preacher might give you a few prods, but nobody can believe for you. Not me. Not Preacher Mike. Not that sweet little Lorena who would believe for everybody if she could.” He leveled his eyes on Jay. “Not Kate. Some things a man has to do for himself, and deciding what to believe is one of them.”

  “I want to believe. Because of Kate.”

  Graham’s lips turned up in a sad little smile. “You’ve got to want to believe because of you.”

  Jay kept looking at Graham. “I’m in love with her.” He was surprised at how easily he said the words.

  “I know that.” Graham’s smile got warmer. “I do evermore know that. And I’ll send up a little prayer for the both of you this morning while you’re over there worshiping in the church house and I’m here worshiping next to my stove keeping my old joints warm.” He pulled his watch out of his pocket and gave it a long look. “You’d better head on out if you aim to get there before they go to singing.”

  The woman at the piano was already banging out the first chords of the opening hymn when Jay went in the church. He started to slip into one of the back pews. There were empty places. But then Kate was looking over her shoulder at him and he marched right up the aisle to ease into the pew with her and her family. Could it really be possible that he might belong there? Or was he only dreaming? Nothing good had ever lasted for him.

  Kate gave his hand a quick squeeze of welcome as she started singing “Bringing in the Sheaves.” He could be one of the sheaves, he thought as he began to sing the familiar words with her and the rest of the congregation. A sheaf of the harvest. A sinner come home. Maybe today would be the day he’d hear the call, but right then all he could hear was the way his heart was pounding because Kate’s shoulder was rubbing against his arm.

  They set a place for him at their Sunday dinner table. It was just the family today. The family and him. Mike seemed more accepting of him being there at the Merritts’ table. Jay hadn’t walked the aisle during the invitation, but maybe just showing up for church two Sundays in a row was enough to convince Mike he had changed. That maybe he’d left behind the heathen thinking that kept him wondering about things that a good churchgoer didn’t question. Like if the Lord was all powerful, how come he let wars happen? How come he let people go hungry? How come he took away a little boy’s mother when that little boy needed her so bad?