She turned to look at him. “He won’t open the door to me,” she told him with a moan, as if he didn’t know.
“You come on with me now,” Ellis repeated, taking her by the arm and helping her up.
She followed him reluctantly to the truck with her shoulders sagging. She appeared to shrink before his very eyes as the weight of the moment bore down upon her. Ellis watched as she debated whether to get back into the truck. He could only imagine the struggle that must have raged within her. She had no choices. For what could a girl on her own do to earn her keep? Without her father, she was as good as dead. He watched as she resigned herself to a fate that was no longer in her hands. She climbed into the truck and watched out the window as he drove away, leaving her childhood home to disappear into the distance.
At the end of the lane, Ellis sat indecisively at the crossroad, thoroughly overwhelmed, unsure of himself and of what he should do. He knew that it was his choice, his responsibility to do what was right. He knew what his father would have expected of him; above all else, he would have wanted Ellis to do the honorable thing. There was only one option left in his mind. He pulled onto the main road, heading back toward town again.
Chapter 13
IT WAS NEAR DARK when Ellis pulled into the yard in front of his cabin. Trapper greeted them on the porch with an eager wag of his tail. He was hungry after his two days of neglect.
When Ellis hauled himself through the front door, he was more than a little relieved to be home. Indeed, he wondered why he had ever wanted to leave in the first place. Clairey was worse off than he, barely having enough energy to ascend the steps. She had been crying for the better part of the day, and with her eyes puffy and swollen, her hair a tangled mess, and the knot on her forehead now a deep purple color, she was an unsightly wreck. Every time he thought she was through with it, she would begin anew with fresh tears and stifled sobs. He had at first felt sorry for her, but now he was thoroughly annoyed.
Ellis’s first plan of action was heating the place up. He headed for the hearth in the darkness, accustomed to the place enough to know where everything was, and with his cold fingers, worked to start a fire. Then, he went to the iron cook stove and lit a fire in the firebox and put an old pot of beans on to warm. He also lit a coal oil lantern, and as he worked, Clairey stood near the door, surveying the little house as a stranger, as an unwilling guest. When the flames had caught in the fireplace and a small fire was burning, he fed it some heftier logs.
Consumed with his tasks, he had ignored the girl, waiting and unsure, until he turned away from the fireplace and saw her like a spirit, her shadow hovering on the wall behind her, her face all pale and solemn. As much as he wanted to empathize with her, all he could think was that she was the source of all of his troubles at the moment. He struggled not to be angry at her.
“Take off your coat. Take a look round if you wanna,” he offered indifferently.
She didn’t appear to want to look around, but Ellis could see she did not want to be displeasing to him either, so she took a few tentative steps further into the little house, her wide-eyed gaze falling on the wood burning cooking stove. She admired its oiled black surface then moved over to the table and stood there waiting, watching him as he went to wash his hands in a tin basin sitting on a small cupboard against the wall, a round mirror hanging above it, a leather strap for sharpening his razor blade dangling next to it.
The water was cold, and he rubbed it vigorously all over his face and onto the back of his neck before he grabbed a towel hanging from the nail on the wall and dried himself. The pot of beans took a little while to warm, and they waited without conversing until he dished them out into mugs and set them on the table along with spoons. He sat down and motioned for her to do the same. She did as he directed and picked the mug up, first savoring the taste slowly then shoveling the beans into her mouth nearly all at once. She seemed ravenous, hungry enough that she evidently didn’t care what she must have looked like as she finished them off greedily. Ellis watched her as he chewed more carefully, distracted by the sight of her consuming the beans. He thought she resembled a wild animal devouring the carcass of its prey. It was disconcerting to him. He watched with disgust as she wiped her mouth with her fingers and then wiped her fingers onto the skirt of her dress.
She hadn’t taken the old coat off. Maybe she was still cold. Maybe she was too uneasy with her new surroundings to feel that she could remove it; he didn’t know.
He finished his beans and got up from the chair. “I gotta get the truck unloaded and tend to them animals,” he explained, shrugging back into his coat. He went out to the truck and brought the food goods in, setting them in a pile at the end of the table. Ellis went back for another load, leaving the other items stacked neatly on the floor next to the door. He went out to the barn to see to the livestock, feeding and watering them, before he saw to the cow, who desperately needed a milking. When he finished, he latched the barn door, checking about the yard to make sure all was secure, then went back into the house with reluctance.
“Well, I’m beat,” he informed the girl when he came through the door, trying to avoid looking at her. “I’m gonna turn in.” He stretched his arms above his head and yawned loudly. “I can put it away proper tomarra.”
She just sat there as if she hadn’t heard him, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes darting between her hands to the empty mug before her, careful not to meet his gaze either.
He walked past her to the only other room in the house—the bedroom. It was frigid in there, and once he had removed his boots and clothes, he climbed under the pile of quilts, waiting for his body heat to warm the bed, settling in with the blankets pulled in tight around him.
After a while, she came to the doorway of the bedroom and gazed at him under the quilts. Ellis opened his eyes and looked at her. The firelight from the main room was behind her. She had removed the heavy coat, and her slight figure was silhouetted against the flickering firelight which danced in random patterns across the floor and walls.
Ellis watched as she stepped tentatively forward and then stood quietly next to the bed. She took off the clunky boots first, kicking them clumsily off and pushing them away with her toes. He watched with amazement as she unbuttoned her dress with shaking fingers, frightened half to death, and it slipped off her shoulders into a pool at her feet. She stood there in a pair of men’s long underwear—once red but now a faded dark pink—and her slouching socks. She waited for his invitation, visibly trembling, dreading what would come next.
Ellis wore an expression of surprised revulsion, his eyebrows knit together and his lips drawn down at the corners as he understood what she was doing—that she was offering herself to him. He cleared his throat before he said calculatedly, “You ortta get some sleep. It’s been a long day,” and rolled over so that his back was to her.
A few moments passed before Ellis felt her lift the covers and slip quickly into the bed, her back to his.
They lay like that, woodenly, without moving, until he heard her muffled crying again. He wasn’t sure if he should try to comfort her; he didn’t want to. Not like this. Not while they lay in the same bed. It was uncomfortable. The whole darn mess was. He did the only thing he felt he could do and tried to go to sleep.
Ellis woke in the middle of the night to throw some more logs on the fire before it burned out completely. The coals were red hot, but they were giving off very little heat until he stoked the fire and added fuel to it. When he padded barefoot back to bed, she was sleeping soundly, her face relaxed, her breathing even.
He studied her with interest for the first time since they had met, really able to look her over with a clear head and the absence of distractions. Her dark, wavy hair fanned out against the pillow. Her thick, apricot-colored lips parted just slightly in restful repose. A light sprinkling of freckles crossed the bridge of her tolerably broad nose. On the whole, her looks were agreeable. He estimated her age to be somewhere around twenty. It wa
sn’t that she was unattractive; no, it wasn’t that. Though he’d seen more beautiful women in his day, she wasn’t unpleasant to look upon. Her face was pretty enough, but her overall disheveled appearance detracted greatly from that natural beauty. Looking at her now, he had never felt so much fear, so much dread. She was his responsibility now, his burden, his wife.
This was not what he had pictured when he had imagined his wedding day. A quick wedding in town performed by a justice of the peace in his front room while the bride wept through the ceremony had not exactly been his ideal. Ellis had always thought it would be Dulcie Mae beside him in the church with a minister to perform the rights, proper and right before the Lord. Now he lay on his marriage bed, cold and miserable, wondering if he had done the right thing. Wondering if his sense of duty had doomed him. What he had wanted was to marry the girl of his dreams, to hold her in his arms and make her his. What he had gotten was an unfamiliar stranger because it was the right thing to do.
When he woke, it was to the smell of eggs, biscuits, and fried apples, the sound of sizzling bacon in the skillet. He lay there, unwilling to open his eyes, just relishing the aromas and the warmth of the quilts that piled on him in a cozy nest. Ellis had never known the tender hand of a woman, the comfort of a feminine presence. His mother had died at his birth, and he and his father had been the inadequate cooks of their household. He had never experienced the true pleasure of food prepared by someone who really knew how to elevate a biscuit from a thick, dry bit of flour to a light, fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth delight.
Clairey used buttermilk, kneading the dough with her own gentle hand, mixing it just enough to blend it, taking care not to overdo. When he sat down to the table and slathered homemade butter over it, watching it melt into the dimples of the baked dough, then taking a tentative bite and savoring the flavor that teased his taste buds, he had a brief glimpse of what heaven must be like. Clairey poured him a cup of milk from a pitcher and set the pitcher down within his reach before she moved to the stove to gather up the cast iron skillet and baking pan. She dumped them into one of the two galvanized tubs in the dry sink, scrubbing them before she dried them with a towel and put them away in the Hoosier style cupboard.
“How…how’d you do that?” he asked, holding a biscuit up and shaking it slightly at her.
She shrugged. “Flour and fat and buttermilk,” she said.
Ellis tried the apples and rolled his eyes with a groan, jabbing at his plate with his spoon. “Them’s the best apples I ever ate.”
Perhaps not used to being complimented, she stood there dumbly, with a look of bewilderment on her face, as if she wasn’t sure if he was poking fun at her or if his remark was sincere. Unable to decide which was his intention, she did not reply but turned back to her task.
“You done gone and milked the cow already?” he asked, eyeing the pitcher of milk she had left behind.
She nodded her head in reply.
Ellis could not recall the last time he hadn’t had to milk a cow in the morning. As a child, it had been his job, and being the only child there was no one else but him to do it. “That was awful good of you. I been milkin’ in the morin’ since I was big enough to carry the bucket,” he told her. “It’s a treat. A real treat that I don’t gotta do it this mornin’.”
“It weren’t nothin’,” she replied.
“I don’t mind you a-milkin’ the cow, but you keep clear of that there pig pen. That ole boar, he’s a nasty sort, and he’ll run you through just as soon as look at you. He’s good for nothin’. So I’ll be the one to feed ’em,” he told her.
“Yessir.”
“Now, don’t go on and call me sir. I’s just tellin’ you so’s you don’t get hurt or nothin’.”
“I’m awful sorry. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. I aim to stay away from them pigs, just like you tole me,” she promised.
“You’re to call me Ellis. It’s only right and fittin’ you call me by my given name. It’s only right and fittin’.”
“’Course,” she agreed in her small voice. “I’m to call you Ellis, and you’re to call me Clairey, if you’d like.”
“I got me some fencing to do,” he told her, pushing his chair back when he was finished with his breakfast. “I aim to prove up that field up yonder, clear out some of them there trees, stumps and all, but it’ll be a real fine piece of land once I got it all done. Keep a dozen or more beef cows on it to start with. Now I’ll have to barra against ’em till they fetch a price.”
Ellis surprised himself, divulging his plans to someone he’d only just met, but it seemed natural for some odd reason he couldn’t name, to share these specifics with her. Or perhaps it was his nerves manifesting themselves through mindless chatter. He couldn’t say for sure.
He wandered over to the cupboard, took out a towel, and helped himself to some biscuits and bacon, folding them neatly inside before he went to leave. He paused at the door to shrug into his coat and then added, “Got two sets of hands now. Might barra for more seed for spring plantin’ too.” With that, he slipped outside and let the cabin door bang behind him.
Ellis headed to the barn, his breath a white fog, his senses enlivened as the cold assaulted him. He stopped to collect the mule, his flatbed wagon loaded with fence posts, and his tools for the day’s work. When he emerged again, he noted the girl watching from the porch, shivering in her immense coat. Ellis chose to ignore her and went on about his business. He took Katie the mule past the house, on past the garden—barren now that growing season was over—and to the hill beyond, leaving a trail in the snow as he went.
He didn’t notice her at first, noiseless and furtive as she followed along at a distance, her feet treading softly on the white carpet left upon the grass by the storm. But then he sensed her eyes on him and the slightest movements just behind him. He turned and spotted her several yards away, a sore thumb sticking out against the colorless landscape. When he looked at her, she stopped and was still. Ellis thought that would be enough to get the girl to go away. He continued with Katie up the hill. Clairey resumed her pace as well.
Ellis was aware, then, that she had continued to tag along after him. He turned and shooed her away with his hand. “Go on!” he scolded. “Get.”
She came to rest beneath a tree, her head lowered, and it seemed as if she hadn’t heard him.
Ellis again proceeded toward the pastureland he was intent upon clearing. The ground was cold but not completely frozen. Still, the frosted earth would make the job more difficult. He was just beginning to work at a stump when he noticed her again. She was hanging back, watching him, looking timid and pathetically weak. For some reason he couldn’t put a finger to, it made him angry.
Ellis turned and confronted her. “What do you want?” he asked.
She ducked her head down and gave him a shrug. “Don’t know.”
He couldn’t figure her out. What was she pestering him for? What was her purpose in following him? He had things to do, and he didn’t want her keeping him from it.
He tried to ignore her and went on with his work. She must have grown tired because at some point, she squatted down, covering her legs with the skirt of her dress to stay warm as she continued to keep a vigil. He thought it was his imagination at first, but then it became clear that she was slowly moving in closer to him. Perhaps wanting to help but unsure if her assistance would be welcomed, she remained slightly aloof, her face red and chapped from the cold.
Meal time came, and Ellis took the biscuits and bacon wrapped in the towel and sat down on the flatbed to eat. It had been his intent to disregard her completely, just pretend that he didn’t know she was there. So he took a bite and then another. With his cheeks bulging, he chanced a glance, and there she was, her wary eyes upon him. He groaned to himself with the knowledge that he had lost the battle. How could he eat with her gawking? How could he enjoy his lunch knowing she would be staring all the while? He refused to look at her straight on as he held out his hand with a biscuit i
n it.
Tentatively, she approached. Careful and distrustful, she snatched it from his hand, turned her back to him, and shoved it into her mouth as if she were afraid he might take it back from her. When she faced him again, her jaws were so filled that she gagged a few times before swallowing.
When he went back to work, doing his best to leverage the great stump from the ground, the girl finally grew bold enough to come up next to him and assist him in his task. Ellis wasn’t sure if he was grateful or bothered by her help.
She spent the rest of the day toiling with him as he removed that stubborn stump. They managed to work up a sweat despite the cold. He was surprised by her tenacity and strength. Clairey left only to go ahead of him and prepare supper.
From then on, although their relationship was mostly built on silence or awkward exchanges, they tolerated one another, even took some unspoken pleasure in their togetherness. In the evenings, he would read from the Good Book to her. That was when he discovered that Clairey couldn’t read, that she had never had any proper schooling to speak of, although she said she “knew of them letters and such.” He himself had not had much learning past the sixth grade, but he took what he did know and shared that knowledge with her.
Ellis provided her with the few books he owned, treasures from his childhood. When he gave her Prudy Keeping House, she ran her fingers along the faded embossing on the fabric cover in awe.
“Ain’t Prudy a fine name?” she asked absently.
He remembered how Mrs. Fielding had opened up a whole world to him by giving him those same books so he could learn to read when he had been just a boy.
The other book he owned was the family Bible, impressively large and greatly worn. In the evening hours, Clairey would sit near the fire, brow wrinkled, struggling over the words of a verse for hours at a time before she would give up for the night and go to bed. But eventually, she began to catch on, and stammering and with great effort, she began to read the Good Book too. It gave him some insight into her persistence and willingness to work to have something she wanted. He admired her determination.
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