Close to noon, Ellis came home. She was making her midday meal, not really sure if she should or shouldn’t. His breakfast had gone uneaten, but she had hoped that by preparing it for him, it would somehow draw him home. Clairey had waited until it was good and cold before she’d cleared the plate away. Now, she wiped the flour from her hands with her apron as he came through the door.
He paused there in the door frame, clutching his fists in his pockets, his broad shoulders hunched, blocking out much of the light coming in from outside. When she saw him, she knew that something was terribly wrong from the look of ill-concealed despair that he wore upon his countenance. But she couldn’t find the courage to ask. The possibilities terrified her.
“Ellis,” she whispered. “You look like you done seen a ghost.”
He walked deliberately to her, taking his hands from his pockets and gripping the sides of her face, gentle but firm. She had no choice but to look into his eyes, and his gaze was direct and intense, haunting really.
“I’m your man, ain’t I?” he asked. “Ain’t I your man?”
“Ellis what happened?” She talked low, betraying her emotions with the fear in her voice. “You’re so cold.”
“Ain’t I your man?” he persisted.
“Yeah, Ellis, you’re my man.” Her lips quaked as she said it.
He saw this, and his eyes changed from an intense severity to tender and compassionate. He felt sorry for her in that moment, for all that she had been through. It hurt his heart to think on it. If he could have, he would have changed it all, made it right for her. But he was only a man. He did not possess those powers.
“Why you wanna go and leave?” he asked. All the time it had been between them, and they had never discussed it. He had never had the courage to find out until then. Maybe it was him. Maybe he was the reason that she did not want to stay. It could have been that she merely didn’t want to be his wife. That she had discovered what everyone else already knew: that he was not worthy of being loved, that he was not capable of being cherished. In which case, Ellis’s bruised and weakened ego could not bear that truth. His mind, which had earlier felt as if it might collapse, would surely not survive that bit of knowledge.
“Ellis? Tell me what troubles you,” she entreated.
Because of her lack of an answer to his direct questioning, his shoulders seemed to drop, and he felt that his fears were confirmed. At that point, he should have let her go, should have walked away, but there was still so much that needed saying. He attempted to fight back his feelings, working over what he had just seen with Fergus and now what he was feeling with Clairey, and his voice cracked when he said, “I’m worn out, Claire. I’m just so worn out.” He sighed deeply, a ragged, painful sound.
Ellis pressed his forehead to hers, the thought of his handkerchief tucked away with her things making him brave. “I’m tired of carryin’ on like I don’t want you. Like I don’t feel nothin’ when I see you.” When he said it, there was a great relief that flooded over him, a weight that was lifted. A release of all the pain and anguish he was feeling. Good or bad, come what may, he had managed to say what he was thinking. He had at least made the effort.
Tears spilled from her eyes. “Ellis, what’re you sayin’?” she cried, resting her hands against the front of his coat and pushing away from him so that she could see his face clearly.
“I don’t wanna make you stay if you don’t wanna. But I don’t want you to go if you feel the same as me. It’d be foolish to do that.” He paused, watching her to see if what he was saying was sinking in. “I love you is what I’m sayin’, Claire. I don’t wanna go on without you. You talk of leavin’, and I just can’t stand to think on it. There ain’t nothin’ I wouldn’t do to have you.” He leaned in against her and whispered against her skin, “I love you. I do.”
“You don’t mean it.” She shook her head in disbelief.
“It’s true. I wanna be what you need. I wanna give you all that you want. And I want you to feel the same. If you wasn’t here, I don’t got no reason to call it home.”
She was crying, trembling in his arms, all her strength gone. He held her firmly, keeping her legs from giving way beneath her as she sagged against him. “Shh,” he breathed. “Don’t cry, Claire. Don’t go and cry. I don’t want you to never cry again.”
“I saw her. I saw her with my own eyes, that girl you woulda had if it wasn’t for me. You was talkin’ to her. I saw.”
“There ain’t nobody else. Nobody but you,” he insisted.
He thought of Dulcie Mae, of the fire he had felt when he was with her, of how it had burned itself out and became ash, leaving him nearly spent. But then Clairey had come into his life. She had been constant. She had been devoted and true to him—the flame that burned long and low, warming him even through the coldest night. She had stood by him even after she had discovered who his mother was, how he had no father. Would Dulcie Mae have done the same? The answer was in her rejection of him when he had offered her marriage. His journey to loving Clairey had been slower, but it had grown deeper and more endearing than he’d ever imagined.
“Why are you sayin’ all this to me now?” She sobbed. “Why?”
Ellis cleared his throat, trying to dispel the emotion he was feeling, and hoped that his voice would be steady, that it wouldn’t break. “Fergus is dead,” he said.
“What?” she gasped. Her eyes grew wide in shock.
“Died at his own hand.” He paused for a moment, the terrible visions of Fergus lying prostrate on the snow flooding his mind. “I s’pose he figured ain’t life worth livin’ if he don’t have the woman he loved. And I ain’t of a mind to make the same mistake,” he said. “I ain’t gonna let the woman I love walk away without a-tellin’ her how I feel.” He cupped her face in his hand, his eyes studying her intently. “So here it is, Claire. You’re the only one ever really knew me, and I’d be nothin’ if you’s gone.”
“Ellis,” Clairey cried. “If you mean it, I won’t go nowheres. If you really mean all that you done said, I’d be so pleased.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and drew herself up to him, kissing him hard on his mouth, letting her emotions pass from her lips to his.
“I do mean it,” he promised.
“Ellis,” she whispered. “I love you. I do. Heart and soul, you got me.”
Ellis was overcome by emotion as he sighed. He put his lips to hers, brushing them again and again, holding her as close to him as he could, wanting nothing more than for their bodies to dissolve into one another. “I’m your man, and you’re my woman, Claire. And I’ll never want for nothin’ with you by me.”
Part VI: Reaping the Harvest
Chapter 28
Fall of 1939
WHEN HE WAS BORN, he came out with his eyes wide open, looking like he was in shock or wonder, or maybe both. He didn’t cry right away like most babies. Ellis said it seemed as if he were trying to take everything in, awed by his new world, not wanting to miss a moment of it. The boy was very much like Ellis had been, sober and intent from the beginning. They called him Jimmy. Jimmy didn’t look a bit like his pappy, Jim Hooper, but he was named for him.
As he grew, he was told stories of his pappy, of the life he’d lived, of the man he had been. Ellis would sing the same songs—the one of the pony and the cart, and others his father had sung to him—and Jimmy would beg for him to sing them again. Although he would never meet his pappy, he knew him just the same. Everything that Jim had taught Ellis would be passed onto Jimmy. And, in time, Jimmy would pass that knowledge onto his children. In that way, Jim Hooper would live on forever.
There were times when Ellis thought on it, and then he would grow melancholy and ponder over his life and what it all meant, who he was and where he was going. There would always be some part of him that was incomplete. One thing was certain in his mind, though, Jim had saved him. Jim had loved him, just as a father should. He understood that more than ever now that he had a child of his own. Sure, Jim had made
mistakes, had been very human, but Ellis hoped that he might do as well at raising his own boy.
It didn’t fully dawn on him what Jim had done for him until one day when he was in town. Clairey was looking through the window of a shop that displayed bolts of fabric in the front of their store. Ellis liked to pamper her, mostly because she still was not used to it, and her reaction was always one of genuine pleasure.
He whispered in her ear, “Why don’t you go on in and have a look, maybe get yourself somethin’.”
She smiled and shrugged. “I shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll take Jimmy to the truck, and you go on in for a look-see. If you find somethin’ you fancy, why, you go on and get it.”
“You don’t care?” she asked, touching his face with a brush of her fingertips.
“No, I don’t mind. Come on, Jimmy,” he said, taking the boy by the hand. “You and me’ll go for a walk.”
The boy trustingly slipped his small hand into his father’s big one while clutching in his other hand a wooden horse Ellis had whittled for him.
They were walking along the storefronts, peeking in the windows occasionally, when the three-year-old tripped on his shoelace and fell. He cried some as Ellis bent down to pick him up and dust him off.
“We need to tie your lace,” Ellis informed him, already busy at the task. He wiped Jimmy’s eyes. “All better now. No more cryin’.”
He hoisted the boy onto his shoulders, which delighted Jimmy, who seemed to forget all about his banged knee. He was too happy with the prospect of riding so high to be concerned over recent misfortunes.
The two of them came up to the grocery. Ellis hadn’t stepped foot in the place since he had given the clerk a beating. He heard the bell jingle over the door, and out came a woman that had troubled his mind for several years now.
She looked very much the same—the sad expression, the broken look in her eyes. She wore an old calico dress with her graying hair done up in a bun. It seemed everything about her was faded, the color washed away, leaving her drab, leaving her dreary and worn. Her handbag dangled from her forearm as her free hand pumped a fan stamped with a voting advertisement. She stood just beyond the door, waiting.
Ellis stopped in his tracks, working over whether he should approach her or if he should alter his route and avoid her altogether. It had been she, that night at the barn dance, that had taken his face in her hand, that had examined him with an intensity he still could not forget. It wasn’t that he thought on it often. Quite the opposite. She was an unsolved mystery but inconsequential enough to be put out of mind. Only sometimes he thought on it, but just long enough to think it was odd, and then dispel the memory to the back of his brain.
The woman did not notice him as she stood there, trying to cool herself with her fan. She seemed distant from him, in her own world, functioning apart from the here and now. And as Ellis stood there observing her, he thought on who she was and what she had seen in her lifetime. Had she been pretty when she was young? Did she grow up on a farm or in town? Did she have both a father and a mother, or was she, like him, an orphan? For a moment, the mystery deepened. He thought maybe he should approach her after all, try to start up a conversation that might eventually lead to how she knew him, why she had spoken to him at the dance.
He watched her there until a man came out of the store to claim her. It must have been her husband from the familiar way they interacted. He took her by the arm with the distinct attitude of ownership. They belonged to one another. She looked up at him, and Ellis couldn’t tell what she might be thinking. Was it a smile or a grimace?
Just as he was ready to walk away, he caught sight of the man. The stranger had finally turned toward him, and Ellis felt the blood drain from his face. Like looking into a crystal ball that foresaw the future, Ellis was looking at a man that could have been him in thirty years. The same face, weathered by time, the same hair, peppered with gray—the man was a duplicate copy but for the aging he had undergone over his lifetime. The goose bumps rose on Ellis’s skin, and he got a sudden chill. It was then, as he stood there dumbly with his mouth slightly open, that the woman caught his eye.
When she made eye contact, he understood. She had known all that long time. She had known that Ellis was more than a stranger. Ellis was seeing his father for the first time. No longer some abstract notion, some no-name, no-face specter that haunted his dreams in waking and sleep. It was a man of flesh and bones. His real father. She saw that he’d seen, and she looked hopelessly lost, utterly devastated. There was a pleading in those eyes that made him feel something—he didn’t know what—but something that was deep and agonizing.
They were very close then, just ready to pass him by as he stood with his feet rooted to the spot. The tug of war going on in his head prevented him from any action. Just as he was ready to turn and run and get out of that place, Jimmy dropped his horse, and it fell to the ground just in front of Ellis. Like a fool, he could not move. Like an imbecile, he could not make his limbs work in their proper fashion.
The stranger—his father—stopped and thoughtfully bent over to retrieve the horse. He straightened upright with the slow careful movements of an older man.
As they exchanged glances, an understanding, a spark of recognition, passed between them. Ellis knew that he knew too.
The older man handed the horse back to Jimmy. “There you are, son,” he said, addressing Jimmy.
Jimmy accepted the horse with a “Thank you, mister,” and the man moved on.
Ellis stared after him until he had gone several feet. When he found his voice, it sounded strange even in his own ears. “What’s your name?” he called out, a ring of desperation in his voice.
The man paused and slowly turned around to face him once again. He didn’t answer right away, perhaps contemplating whether he should or not. Then he hollered back, “Artie. Artie Brown.” He watched Ellis briefly with a look of longing and sorrow and remorse all in one. He had lived a long time with this knowledge, and there hadn’t been a day that hadn’t passed with the thought of it somewhere in the back of his mind; it was all on his face, and Ellis saw it, recognized it for what it was. Then he ducked his head down before he spun back around and continued on walking with a slow, deliberate shuffle, walking away in the opposite direction. Ellis never saw him again.
What makes a father? A name? A face? The genetic code which he bestows upon his offspring? All that he is, all that he will ever be, is a direct result of how he has been raised.
Ellis had become what Jim had trained him up to be. It was simply the law of the harvest. He remembered faintly Jim Hooper’s tender voice in his head admonishing him: “You reap what you sow, boy. You sow good, you reap good. You sow bad, and by and by, you gonna reap it too.”
Special Thanks
Thank you so much to all of those who have helped make this book possible: my parents; my wonderful husband, without whom nothing would be possible; my friends who willingly read early drafts; Kathy Summers for extensive edits and talk fests; my book group gal pals for reading and feedbacks. I am grateful as well to everyone involved from Omnific Publishing: Lisa O’Hara, Alicia Stevens, Traci Olsen, and everyone else behind the scenes! I would not be who I am without all of you.
About the Author
Born and raised on the flatlands of Central Indiana, Tracy moved to the highlands of Utah at the age of nineteen. She quickly discovered that her brand new, top-of-the-line hiking boots were a waste of good money because she was never quite able to acclimate to the altitude in the Rockies. Tracy claims to suffer from a type of disorientation she attributes to altitude sickness to this day. It seems to be a permanent affliction.
Her husband Benjamin cohabitates in a home with Tracy and the four beautiful but precocious children they lovingly created together. Although to others, their home may seem alarmingly chaotic, it is an insanity of their own making.
Check Out These
Titles From Omnific Publishing
Contemporary Romance
Boycotts & Barflies and Trust in Advertising by Victoria Michaels
Passion Fish by Alison Oburia and Jessica McQuinn
Three Daves by Nicki Elson
Small Town Girl and Corporate Affair by Linda Cunningham
Stitches and Scars by Elizabeth A. Vincent
Take the Cake by Sandra Wright
Pieces of Us by Hannah Downing
The Way That You Play It by BJ Thornton
Poughkeepsie by Debra Anastasia
Burning Embers by Hannah Fielding
Cocktails & Dreams by Autumn Markus
Recaptured Dreams and All-American Girl by Justine Dell
Once Upon a Second Chance by Marian Vere
The Englishman by Nina Lewis
Tangled by Emma Chase
16 Marsden Place by Rachel Brimble
Sleepers, Awake by Eden Barber
The Runaway Year by Shani Struthers
Historical Romance
Cat O’ Nine Tails by Patricia Leever
Burning Embers by Hannah Fielding
Good Ground by Tracy Winegar
Romantic Suspense
Whirlwind by Robin DeJarnett
The CONduct Series: With Good Behavior and Bad Behavior by Jennifer Lane
Indivisible by Jessica McQuinn
Between the Lies by Alison Oburia
Paranormal Romance
The Light Series: Seers of Light, Whisper of Light, and Circle of Light by Jennifer DeLucy
The Hanaford Park Series: Eve of Samhain and Pleasures Untold by Lisa Sanchez
Immortal Awakening by KC Randall
Good Ground Page 27