“Step back.” The father laid a large hand on the teen’s shoulder. “I’ll handle this.” He placed himself between the brothers. “Duncan, you shouldn’t repeat unfounded rumors. I think you need to apologize to Ella Dessa. Then git over by that tree.” He pointed to a bent pine edged out over the bumpy path, reminiscent of an ancient Indian trail marker.
The boy pressed his thin lips together. Tinges of crimson dotted his smooth cheeks and his eyes flickered toward Ella, as if judging her silence and reaction.
“It’s no matter,” she blurted out and surprised herself. She didn’t want Duncan forced to apologize. All she longed to do was to scurry away and hide. How could it be true?
“Duncan?” Ephraim pointed one more time.
The redheaded teen chose to defy his father. In a show of agitation, he rubbed a hand over his face and his hair, but kept his narrowed eyes on her. “I don’t like him. Maybe, his daughter needs to know what a skunk he is. He’s a liar!”
“Duncan McKnapp,” his mother said, obviously mortified.
Ephraim’s large hands grabbed Duncan by the shoulders and sent him stumbling toward the bent tree. “You do what I said, boy!”
“I’m sorry, Ella Dessa.” The woman’s face paled. “Our son, Duncan, has been upset lately about a girl he liked. She had to move away, so he’s miserable.” She wiggled her hand at the younger children huddled close by. “Go with your papa. I’ll catch up.”
Ella’s head ached. She couldn’t speak—only stare at Duncan’s rigid back. Her thoughts spun in circles. Pa’s got a new woman? Who?
Inez unknotted a heavy shawl looped about her waist, lifted it to her shoulders, and tightened it across her narrow chest. Her hasty movements said she fended off more than the chilly breeze signaling the setting of the sun.
Grace momentarily paused and told Ella good-bye. Her lovely eyes showed regret for what her belligerent brother had done. “Pay him no mind,” she whispered. “He’s always in trouble.”
Ella grudgingly realized Duncan’s frank words helped her understand her pa’s strange absence. She had known a tight spot, out of the ordinary, ate at him. He had said as much—stating he had to make a decision. It explained his preoccupation and his final gift of the new boots. The boots had soothed his inner debate between right and wrong. An involuntary shudder skittered over her shoulders. She hung her head, shielding her eyes and feelings.
Her pa had stolen gold out of her mama’s trunk and commenced to move on with his life. It was as if she ceased to exist, not worth any consideration. Instead of expecting to be slapped or yelled at after the funeral, she had accepted her pa’s deliberate silence and absence. Now, for the first time, she couldn’t decide which was worse—fearing abuse or the knowledge she was of no importance.
Inez’s hand rested on her shoulder, but Ella didn’t acknowledge the compassionate touch. Instead, she lifted her head and considered the children clumped together in a somber huddle near their father. Most waved, but Anna just stared at Ella, her wispy blond hair blowing across her face.
“Ella Dessa, you were alone last night?”
Another woman? Who? Mama’s jest buried.
Questions swirled in her head. She felt nauseous.
“Honey?” The woman’s fingers pressured her shoulder.
It felt as if a log crushed her lungs. She gulped a shallow breath. It hurt—hurt to suck in air.
“Please, go.” She didn’t care how rude she sounded. “Pa’ll be home soon,” she said, ignoring the lie.
Her head hurt. She sought to understand it all. He said he wasn’t coming back. But would he bring the woman to live in their home? What were his last words? Her mama was a tramp? A person owed him a debt. Her mama? But he had said he wasn’t obligated to—her mama’s offspring.
“Ella Dessa?”
“I’m fine.” She moved her head from side to side and erased the shattering questions. Her pa’s final words made no sense.
Inez insisted on hugging her one more time. “We’ll be back to check on you. Understand? Is there anything you need right now? Food? We have plenty on the mule. It’s in wrapped packages.”
She pushed away. “No, we’ve—I got food. Pa brought some home today.”
“That’s good.” Inez’s lips formed a quivering smile. “You’re a beautiful, brave girl.”
Jim still held the mule’s reins.
His mother’s hand touched his shoulder before she walked away.
The family group disappeared. The air grew cool. Clouds enclosed the leftover sunlight spotting the ground.
“Your family has gone.” Ella shivered.
“Do you need someone to talk to?”
“No.” She bowed her head, avoiding his searching gaze.
Her heart was shredded. It felt the same as when the inexperienced panther had ripped open her flesh. With Granny Hanks’ herbal knowledge and her mama’s unwearied attention, she had escaped a death-threatening infection.
But what about now? She had no one.
The scars wouldn’t go away—ever.
Now, dissimilar scars would disfigure her heart and soul. How much more could she endure? She longed to run to the top of the hill, fling herself on the rock-strewn grave, and die.
“They’re leavin’ you.” She took two steps toward the cabin.
“Listen to me. I’m sorry for what Duncan said. He shouldn’t have blurted that out, and I’d like to beat him with my own hands.”
“That’d be stupid.” She glared at him over her shoulder. “He’s your brother.”
His eyes darkened to a charred gray, mirroring his heated mood. “He don’t have a lick of sense when it comes to people’s feelings. I might give him what he deserves, after I get him trapped in our barn. That’s how we take care of our brotherly differences.”
“Don’t do that.”
“You’re a pretty girl and shouldn’t have to be hurt by Duncan or anyone.”
Flinching, she covered the scars with her right hand. Wish he’d walk away with the rest. She never felt uglier or more rejected.
He touched her arm.
She whirled on him, her bare feet kicking stones. “I knew ‘bout Pa and his woman.” The barefaced lie felt good.
“You did?”
“Yes. He’s bringin’ her here—soon. Tell your family I said ‘thanks for the candy.’” With pretended poise, she lifted her chin. Unexpectedly, she wanted him to think of her as unshakeable. Once again, she intentionally turned her back on him. Her left hand still clutched the precious sticky candy.
Jim clicked his tongue to the mule.
Tears dripped off Ella’s chin.
The large family vanished like a dream. Not even their mixed voices floated on the wind.
She ran toward the cabin, paused in the doorway, and stared at the deserted surroundings. She hadn’t dreamt the whole episode. The candy told her it had happened.
Ella tried to catch a hint of distant voices. But all was quiet. Pa wouldn’t be home. However, she could pretend. She could tell herself it was just too late for him to ride a horse along the treacherous, cliff-edged path.
She laid the candy on the pine table and licked her fingers. The sweetness tasted heavenly, but she resisted gobbling the candy. She secured the door for the night and pressed her sticky palms against her cheeks.
“Poor, Mama. I hope she don’t know ’bout Pa and his woman.”
The growling of her stomach caused her to think of eating the minced meat pie. She knelt on the floor, stirred the hot coals with a charred stick, and added split logs to the glowing embers. The forgotten pie had charred on one side. She pushed chunks of deer moss and strips of peeled bark under the smoldering wood and blew on the coals.
Flames licked upward and ran along the curling bark until they caught on the side of a dry log.
She dug at the pie with a fork. The edge opposite the fire remained edible.
Her thoughts turned to ways to get through the winter. The low stack of firewood,
wedged between two saplings, wouldn’t be enough for the cold months. Pa hadn’t split all of the felled trees. Full logs still lay haphazard on the uneven ground outside. What he had split would last a couple weeks. It posed a problem she didn’t know how to solve.
She counted the days since the burying. Eight? Slowly, she tapped her fingers on the palm of her hand and recounted. No, ten. It was almost October. The first flush of color in the leaves would deepen in the cooler weeks ahead. Winter loomed.
The fire’s light left the corners of the room dim and chilly. She pulled on a ragged coat, discarded by her pa, and lit a tallow candle. After placing the flickering light in a holder, she sat on the floor near the fire and ate the soft parts of the pie.
The radiating heat felt soothing. She pulled her bare feet under the full skirt of her dress and snuggled deeper into the oversized coat. Its weight over her shoulders felt much like a friend’s arm draped about her. She sighed and laid aside the burnt pie tin and her fork.
Her thoughts drifted over the events of the afternoon and the surprise visit of the McKnapp family. The older son’s face readily came to her mind. She hugged herself and smiled. Jim had been very nice.
The family’s big.
“There’s Grace,” she spoke aloud. “Jim … Samuel and little Phillip. That makes four. Peggy, Anna, and Josie. Then Duncan. Eight.” Her words accompanied the snapping of the fire.
I wish I were older. Jim might think I were pretty, if’n I kept my scars hid.
She stared at the flames. In her head, she still heard her mama’s trembling voice as she read scripture. The evening of her twelfth birthday Mama waited until pa left the cabin and then disobeyed his strict order about Bible reading. She read the sensual words of “The Song of Solomon” aloud to Ella. Tears had imprinted red lines the whole length of her mama’s bruised and swollen face.
“This is real love.” Mama had ignored a bloody cut on her bottom lip and whispered, “A man and woman are made to love this way. Don’t accept less, like I were bound to. My pappy wouldn’t let me wed the man which loved me.”
“Why?”
“Pappy forbid him to come near me. He brought Mam and me up here in these hills to hide. Jacob, your pa, lived over the ridge. He came ‘round, staying to visit. He were older and kept staring at me. Pappy knew he wanted me. There weren’t no one else because I had shamed my family. Jacob married me.” She gave a hiccupped sob.
Ella had snuggled up against Mama’s shoulder, careful of the new bruises down the length of her arm.
Her mama had continued to talk. “Pappy and Mam died three months after, while crossing Halfpenny’s swollen creek. I never got forgiveness from Pappy. Then you were born. Life got worse.” Regret had etched her words with pain. “My true sweetheart wouldn’t have hit me. He loved me like what this says.” Her finger had tapped the forbidden pages of Solomon’s writings.
“Will a man love me, Mama? With the scars on my neck?”
Mama had cupped her face with warm hands. “Yes, and he’ll never belittle you about them.”
Sliding her fingers over the disfiguring scars on the left side of her neck, Ella tracked them downward, to where they ran across her collarbone, and curved toward the breastbone. She could hide most of the scars with a high-collared dress, but she only possessed one. There remained a few of her Mama’s skirts and blouses. They were much too big. She didn’t feel skilled enough to rip out seams and take them in.
She could try wearing her long hair draped across the left side of her neck and shield the scars from inquiring eyes, but it meant she’d never wear her hair up, like a grown woman. Sighing, she tugged her fingers through a clump of tangles. She felt ashamed the whole McKnapp family had caught her appearing so unkempt.
Grace was elegant, and her name mirrored her movements. Her exposed white throat had revealed no painful blemishes.
Ella wrapped her arms around her bent knees and watched the orange and scarlet flames. She knew a forlorn and cold pallet awaited her in the loft, but her heart took comfort at the remembrance of her surprise visitors.
“They don’t lack for talkin’, with so many. Why, they must talk way into the night. I wish I had a sister—a girl like Fern.” She paused and thought of her friend, but her cozy reflections shattered as she recalled part of the earlier conversation.
Inez spoke of Duncan’s girl being sent away.
Her pa mentioned a name. McKnapp?
The voice was the same. The hand holding Fern’s slender wrist had reddish-blond hair sprinkling the top. The sight of Duncan’s hand and bare forearm—as he rubbed at his face—flashed into her mind.
It was him. The black pants!
She whimpered as her fortitude crumpled. Why did Duncan want to hurt her with words? Why had Pa abandoned her? God seemed to have left her alone to suffer.
“Mama, please help me!”
Chapter 10
The sputtering metal lantern hung from a misshapen iron hook on the wall. Jim led Sada through the doorway of the barn, and distorted shadows hopped sideways along the rough interior. He tied the mule in an open stall and watched his papa fork dried corn leaves to two half-grown calves secluded in a square pen.
“Papa, the steep path to Huskey’s cabin wasn’t kind to Sada. She limped home. Perhaps, we need to use one of the other mules for packing.”
The older man grunted. “She’s like me. Got leg problems.” He set aside his pitchfork and went over to pat the mule’s skinny rump. “I’m going to trade the two young mules and get horses. We’ll keep Sada because we love her so much.”
Papa pushed Sada to one side in the narrow stall and loosened the hand-woven strap under her belly. He shoved his hands and muscular forearms under the makeshift collection of leather bags and sacks and lifted the jumbled assortment. With a grunt, he tossed all of them over the top of the short wall and faced Jim.
“Keep her in tonight. I heard a wolf on the back slope. Most likely an outcast and loner. I’m not worried about the other two mules. They got kick left in them—not like me and Sada.”
“Papa, I think the red wolf’s injured.”
“Makes him more dangerous. He can’t hunt. He’s starving.” His papa patted the leather bags. “Why don’t you fetch these to Mother, since Duncan’s made himself scarce?”
“He hides when it comes to work, plus he knows he hurt that girl. He’s ashamed.” Jim scratched the mule’s forehead, nervously cleared his throat, and spoke what was on his mind. “Papa, Jacob left Ella Dessa alone last night. And most likely tonight.”
“Seems so.” Papa’s thick eyebrows wedged themselves into a crowded frown. “I don’t care for the man’s innards. Jacob’s soul is dark. Can’t see how any woman would want him. I know the Good Book says to love thy neighbor, and he just buried a second wife, but that man’s been a problem since he came here, almost fifteen years ago. Just like last winter when we all helped him clear his side field. He borrowed my dry land sled. He didn’t return the favor when Stauffer needed logs hauled. He’s lazy.”
“Duncan hates him. Jacob’s seeing another woman—with his wife barely cold in the ground.”
“But it gives Duncan no reason to treat another person bad, such as he did Ella Dessa. It’s awful Manfred believed Jacob’s sick story at the time of the burying and sent Fern packing. I never saw such a heart-broken woman as Nettie Stauffer is now—having lost another daughter to her husband’s pride. The woman’s wasting away with grief this week.”
“Manfred’s strict.” Jim tinkered with the sweat-darkened halter on Sada’s head. “But Papa, there’s more to the story.”
“What? What are you not telling me?”
Jim realized he had slugged open a hornet’s nest, and the outcome wouldn’t be nice. He wished he hadn’t started the conversation. “Well, Jacob talked to the men at the time of the funeral. And then …” He kicked at a pile of matted corn fodder and turned away from the stall. He knew the time for keeping his mouth shut was past.
&n
bsp; “Spit it out, Jim. I know you can’t hold things in. Not even your temper. Spit it!”
Jim folded his arms across his chest, half against the cold creeping through the walls of the barn, and half against the sick feeling in his stomach.
“Jim, does this have something to do with Duncan?”
“Today, while you and Mother stopped to call on Velma, us three older ones went to Beckler’s General Store. Grace went inside to purchase dress material. We stood outside. Jacob swaggered past us with that woman on his arm! Duncan made a snide remark to me about Jacob not waiting until his wife was cold.”
“Ahh, Duncan didn’t. Why would a son of mine say that? It’s none of his business.”
“Well, Jacob heard him. There were men nearby, talking to the smithy. Jacob got in Duncan’s face, yelled, and spouted off about what he says he saw near the spring the day of the funeral. He then told everyone it was Duncan with Fern.”
His papa faced him with hands knuckled-down on his wide hips. “One of my sons harmed her? Took advantage of her?”
Jim shrugged and muttered, “That’s Jacob talking. But I just wondered about it. That day of the burying, Duncan left here when the day chores were done, right after the morning meal. Everyone else was sick.” He saw his papa’s face redden and swallowed his next words.
“Go on.”
“Well, he came back while you helped Mother tend to Peggy and Phillip’s fever. Near about dark, as I remember. He came down here to the barn and started plaiting a new whip. I saw the light from the lantern, so I walked out and helped him straighten the leather.”
“He didn’t say where he’d been?”
“Naw. He acted uneasy, quieter than usual.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“At the time, I didn’t pay much mind to it. I was still feeling sickly. He takes off quite often, and he had completed his chores. I just figured he’d been out hunting or such.”
“Tell me Jacob’s actual words. What did he say today?”
The Girl Called Ella Dessa: Will she ever be cherished for the inner beauty beneath her scars? Page 10