by KQ Salsbury
Plain Arrangement
a Simple Life, Simply Love short
KQ Salsbury
Copyright © 2013 K. Salsbury
Digital Edition: February 2013
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from Author.
Cover image licensed by shutterstock.com, Copyright conrado
Cover design by Kyndall Viscia
K Q Salsbury is a current Juris doctorate candidate with a degree in English – Creative Writing and an emphasis in poetry. A seven-time Sigma Tau Delta writing award winner, her fiction and poetry have appeared in literary magazines and have been selected by fiction communities as featured story of the month and year. Presently, she is working on preparing her first full-length novel for publication.
Acknowledgements
Dedicated to author and instructor Karen Stolz, who exemplified all that is good in a person and a talent.
Also, to a collective of internet friends who demonstrate daily that geography may be the only thing that prevents one from being surrounded by those with similar interests, the ability to respectfully accept differences, & the willingness to support dreams. Particularly Kellie, who nudged me not-quite-gently into publication.
Plain Arrangement
____________
KQ Salsbury
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 1
His family owns everything that can be owned in these parts and a fair few things that I’d wager cannot.
I come here every day.
I wait upon him, his family, and those who earn his attentions.
When I am most honest, I will admit to only myself that I wait for him.
He waits for no one.
Not the tailor, the lawyers, the letters man. Not the butcher, the baker, the undertaker.
The stable hand. The coachman.
Not even the pastor (he probably does not see this as prudent, as his soul is not in immediate peril) and nothing save a glance for the pastor’s daughter with the brown, round eyes.
He notes only the finer females of the community and they regard in him in turn.
Nary a word for the average, so I haven’t the smallest hope. No hope that he will open his eyes to all that someone in different packaging might do for him. How right one might be.
He wouldn’t entertain the notion for less than his station.
Least of all a maid he has never noted.
He does, however, pay great attention to fine ladies and misses.
Great attention.
In the garden, on the porch, behind the barn, in the room that can be secreted into from within his bedroom.
The closest I come to spending time within his chambers is when I empty the pot.
I suspect that what can be politely termed as “liberties” take place betwixt he and the ladies of the town. Or so I’d wager, if wagering weren’t a sin. They leave his company flush and giddy and disheveled. Then, the day comes that they take a proper husband and become a proper wife and the little light that once shone in their eyes when he entertained them fades away until it’s nothing but the faintest light of a fading star dropping from autumn’s chilled sky.
I fold the linens and string the ribbons near my home hearth. They are finest satin and dyed pastels. One in particular, a periwinkle, is particularly fine and I fancy seeing it put to good use.
He’ll want these ribbons for his little sister.
I know this. I know before he does.
So, I make ready.
This is what I do. I do this at holiday and I ensure a haunch of pork is reserved for when the elderly butcher his father is too kind to chastise forgets to fill the bill.
I listen to the whispers of businessmen and collect the papers he and his father will need to read. I listen to the men at market remark on crops and seeds and heifers and droughts and frosts and I slip a marked almanac near his morning coffee or barter for seeds that will be in demand. It’s all easy to do – to glean this knowledge – when no one notices you or expects you to understand much less read or write or have any use for the things that make menfolk feel important.
A spare sandwich for the blacksmith to make his rounds here first.
A slice of cake to entice the general store manager to save sugar in the back around Easter.
I make sure there is wood for his fires and potatoes for his stew and privacy for him and his conquests.
True, it is my job and most kindnesses I show benefit his whole family. They are good people and deserving.
But I cannot deny that the extra mile I literally trod most days is in service of him.
This is the only means I have, the only outlet I’m given for these pointless affections. I am unsure from whence they sprung. Perhaps it is the manner of his speech, smooth and low. Or that he thanks me when others might not. Or his smile. His smile is like the sunshine parting the clouds and warming everything down to the very soil.
I find joy in his peace and prosperity. Forgive me, but it is probably prideful of me to rejoice that I help make what he has possible.
Today is like any other day as every day is like the one before and the next will be no different.
I awaken and stir the groggy rooster on my way out.
“’Liza,” my mother says in her scratchy voice that fills our one room home. “I been ‘spectin’ yer coin fer days now.”
“Ma,” I whisper without looking back from the door, “I’m not paid for yet another three days.”
She wails and I depart to the sound of her rattling her beloved still.
I trudge to up the hillside with a basket of supplies I gathered the night prior. Today is needle and thread. Preserves. Ribbons. Lavender and lye.
The Judson’s barn door is ajar and I latch it on my rounds. Note the rusty hinge. Gather a fresh bucket and take care not to spill milk and leave a trail of flies to the back door.
Nathan is up. The past few months, for reasons known only to him, he’s taken to beginning chores before the others awaken.
More days than not, I might see him milking when I pass the barn.
He will only look up in my direction but sometimes I fool myself into thinking his eyes say ‘hello.’
Other days, I might go to gather eggs or spread feed and find the task already done. I am unsure what to make of that; perhaps he checks, as any employer might, from time to time to ensure I am performing my duties and simply completes the task since he is there.
Today, though it is still near dark, he is at the house’s edge, digging out a root that looks to threaten the foundation.
“Morning, Elizabeth,” he says without looking up as I walk behind where he is crouched. He is already dirty. I resist the urge to wipe debris from his wide shoulders.
“Good Morning to you, Nathan.” I say, somewhat upset with myself that my voice sounds so small in the open. “I will have your breakfast ready shortly.”
He nods. Pulls at the root.
“I may require a basket and an extra portion for lunch.” He stands and turns to me. I realize he means he will have a guest today. A female. Not me. Never me. I’ve practiced my response for months and I am resigned to the knowledge that it will never be me. After a moment, he continues, “Is there any reason at all that might be a problem for you?”
I straighten. Place on my mask of indifference. Steel myself not to show that it is, very much indeed, a ‘problem’ for me that he will have yet another lady guest.
I am bothered that even though I am lucky enough to not see these women or these encounters, he still manages to behave in a manner that makes it nigh on impossible for me to remain ignorant of them.
But, I know this is my problem and not his.
He has every right to see who he pleases…and I am not someone who pleases him.
“Of course not,” I say, my voice level from months of practice.
His lips purse. I wonder if I’ve not hidden my incessant disappointment as well as I’d like to think. “’Of course not,’” I think I hear him repeat in a mutter as he quickly descends back to the branch.
I vow to hide my feelings even more going forward.
Chapter 2
Inside the house, I stir the main fire and make about preparing a breakfast of biscuits and warmed ham. I want to make fresh eggs, but their yields are unusually low and I need to stretch things out. I try to do this without worrying the family. I can fill the table other ways.
There seems no benefit in alerting the family; their concern won’t motivate hens.
It is an oddity that I perform here, I am aware.
Only fitting, as I and the others like me, the other children born of this patchwork land and people, are the product of pieces. A bit of the bordering Missouri spirit to see proof in the pudding, another portion wary and wise like the few freed men that made their way into this new state, part East Coast refinement in our learning and speech thanks to a New York school marm who cannot explain to this day how she ended up here, respectful of the land like the natives who lived here before us and have not yet been driven away.
I feel more a product of the community than of my parents. It has been as if my older sister, Cynthia, and I were orphaned the day our father was felled during a Jayhawker skirmish.
In the house, the first stirrings of remaining family fill the house as I start the coffee. The mister, his father, Mr. Judson, was a noble or old money of some sort as near as I can glean. They won’t speak of their old life. I suppose it must be painful for them.
Awake and about the house now, Mr. Judson tips his hat in greeting. “Good Morning.”
“Good Morning to you as well, Mr. Judson, Sir,” I return and suppress a giggle at how odd he manages to look even now in his farmer gear. It’s not fair of me; he’s a successful wheat farmer by any standards and I of all people should judge a book by its content (or even its binding) rather than its cover.
Folks say Mr. Judson moved westward to start up a business profiting from expanding railroads, to bring that lofty New England sensibility to the likes of us out here, and to find some adventure. He rightly set his sights here, but now Kansas City looks to be winning the rails race instead.
He found out soon enough that business here is only as good as the locals can afford and that there are plenty of reasons for those who have made a life on the Plains to not give a wit about New England puffery. Soon, he turned to working his huge allotment of $1.25 an acre land. That he does to this day.
Moreover, what he probably didn’t reckon upon was the first winter claiming his fancy wife and a babe I never laid eyes upon. Mr. Harrison Judson is a fine and good man, but most days you can see the break in the spirit of his smile.
So, it was an icy eve last November – the wife didn’t last long at all – that Pastor came round to propose an arrangement. He asked my mother if she could spare a child to earn coin tending the house of the new, bereaved family.
It was a needless question as the woman who birthed me would’ve sold me or Cynthia for a close-to-fair price or a bottle of gin to any passing wagon train or riding party. Mother long ago quit caring about life and living and focused her days on brewing shine and existing in a fog.
Less for wages and more for escaping our hovel, Cynthia spends her days on the edge of town, toiling as a laundress.
On occasion, I am able to find reason to bring her with me to the Judsons’. Holidays and harvest and such. Any time I can justify an extra set of hands and kindly Mr. Judson has never balked at my requests. In fact, of late he’s even taken to suggesting I bring her along before I even had a chance to ask.
I endeavor never to forget how lucky I am to have an opportunity to work for such an honorable employer and family.
My job is to be the helpmate a wife and mother would be without the affections.
I am a maid, but no one about the varied ranches, farms, and settlements would term it as such. That’s fancy stuff for folk back east.
Around here, a real settler doesn’t have a maid. So, I’m a hired hand, officially.
Never mind that I braid little Miss Sarah’s hair or feed her soup when a cold sets in or cook or clean or mend or milk or shop or plant or…
Truly, if it hadn’t been for the general store matron pulling me aside – in hushed tones saying words that caused me the deepest of blushes and a parch in my mouth that made me at once want to drink a pond dry and never want to breathe again – and explaining in great detail that there were certain duties a wife is called upon to perform that I was not doing – I might’ve remained concerned to this very day that I might be brought to bear Mr. Harrison a new child as well.
That was a discussion of which I never wish to endure the like again.
Though it did make me more aware when the son, Nathan, was unaccounted for after a lady visitor would come calling. I cannot be sure. Nor do I want to be.
By the time I shake such lascivious musings from my head, the biscuits are done.
I dish their plates, pour coffee, and fix to disappear for clean up shortly after they emerge to eat.
Nathan beams as I hand him his plate. The others might as well. I must admit I never look.
I wish his smile was for me.
Sometimes, at home on my long stalk bed, I let myself imagine that it is.
I’ve no more than started the clean up when I have a guest. It seems, as is the case more and more often, young Sarah has a hankering for company.
“Elizabeth, can I come along with you to town tomorrow?” She bounces after me, her pigtails swinging, and I sigh at the thought of her meal growing colder by the moment.
“Miss Sarah, you know that is a question for your father not me.” I smile down at her. “You also know good and well that it is not a case of ‘can’ but ‘may’ you come.”
She pouts and sways her skirt softly. “Oh, you know he will never approve me going unless I have the best of reasons and I fear wanting to see if there are new ribbons isn’t father’s idea of import.”
“Well,” I say, and smile as I think of the items in my basket that I’ll be leaving on her brother’s sidetable, “we will have to find a way to deal with the appalling lack of fresh hair ties in another manner, won’t we then?”
She laughs and heads back to the table when I incline my head that direction.
While the family eats, I do what I can in the men’s bedrooms. Air the beds, fluff, and fold, deposit the ribbons in Nathan’s room, leave the new almanac by Mr. Judson’s chair.
“Beautiful.”
Nathan’s voice jars me from my thoughts. He leans upon his father’s door frame, appears to be observing my work, and in his hand he holds the cache of ribbons.
“Oh, yes. They are quite lovely, are they not?” I cannot help the smile at seeing him so pleased.
He rustles the shiny strips of fabric in his hand. “You do spoil her so.”
“Miss Sarah is far too sweet to become rotten from a bit of spoiling,” I say as I g
ather a few items to be laundered.
“Well, thank you nonetheless.” I feel his gaze on me as I work, no doubt inspecting the tightness of the bed corners. “If there were anyone made for spoiling, it would be you, Elizabeth.”
I can only nod and go about my day. His voice is like warmed cider and I force myself not to look back and him as I’m certain my face looks like a doe caught in a storm.
After a moment, I hear him leave the house.
This is a far finer house than any other in the area. Often, I ponder what keeps Mr. Judson from returning back to the comforts he enjoyed on the coast. I wonder why he does not take a wife if he wants to stay…but then, perhaps it is not such a mystery. He does seem to hold the memory of his wife dear; he entertains no females.
The bigger mystery, to my eyes, is why he does not rein in his son and encourage him to take a wife as he seems so opposed to do so himself. It is high time – beyond time – that Nathan take a wife, though I am certain Nathan might be as reticent to see the cessation of his social dalliances as his father is to consider replacing his own wife.
And I could get the distance to perhaps find a husband of my own and stitch a life out of the scraps I have left.
Chapter 3
I clear the dishes over the din of Sarah whining that her “Pa has no sympathy for the needs of a young lady” as he denies her permission to accompany me to the store. I smile softly with the knowledge that she will shortly be in possession of a bundle of ribbons without the arduous trip to town.
“Shopping day tomorrow?” Mr. Judson says lightly while I finish packing the woven basket for which Nathan had asked earlier. Though I know better, each sandwich and jellied roll feels progressively heavier. The final one might as well have been dipped in lead.
“That it is, Sir. Is there anything special you desire?”