Mali and Hal turned once again to face forward. They gave each other quick, knowing looks before Mali focused on guiding the horses.
Yes, Hal decided as he turned to study the local scenery, he would attend church with Mali and share dinner with her family. He would find a reason to have business in San Jose once or twice while she stayed with her sister so he could come and visit her. He suspected when he asked Nancy Forsythe this coming Sunday for permission to court Mali, she wouldn’t object. And, when the time was right—a time he intended to be sooner rather than later—he would ask Mali for her hand in marriage.
Hal hoped if he ever met up with Joshua after his life was over, Joshua would harbor no hard feelings about him marrying Mali. If he did, Joshua had no one to blame but himself. He was the one who’d thrown the two of them together.
Hal shifted again so his arm once more supported Mali’s back. To his delight, Mali scooted closer so their hips and legs rested against each other. He felt her relax until her body nestled to his. For the first time since the war, he felt a sense of contentment envelope him.
“The horses behaving for you, Mali?”
****
“I’m doing fine, Hal. I’ll turn them back over to you just before we turn off to my sister’s place.”
As the two lapsed back into silence, a feeling of gratitude flowed through Mali. It wrapped around her like a warm wool blanket. Mali offered Joshua one last thought.
Thank you, Joshua. You were right. He is a good man.
About the Author—Zina Abbott
Zina Abbott is the pen name used by Robyn Echols for her historical novels. She currently lives with her husband in California near the “Gateway to Yosemite.” She enjoys any kind of history including family history. She is a member of Women Writing the West among other writing associations. When she is not piecing together novel plots, she pieces together quilt blocks.
Hearts in Harmony
Patti Sherry-Crews
A secret love, a Valentine's Day dance, and a plan that can’t go wrong…or can it?
The directive was whispered directly into his ear. Voice like harp strings and tinkle bells, scented with roses and chocolate. He could feel a breath tickle the fine hair of his cheek like a light breeze on a summer night.
Long lashes shot open, exposing bright blue eyes. Harmony Benjamin Franklin Buchanan flew out of bed, tossing aside his quilts and planting bare feet on the ice cold floor. Shivering, he high-stepped it across the room in his red union suit, long legs bending at the knees up toward his chest. Today, he remembered to duck his head before it hit the low, slanted ceiling of his bedroom, which was something of a triumph right there, because usually he started his morning with a rude knock to the head. He was still getting used to his ever-growing body.
He quickly slid into the same clothes he’d worn yesterday, which being cold and stiff were of little comfort, and smelled of horse, besides. Still, he had a big smile on his face.
He was already out the door when he thought better of it and returned to his room to splash cold water on his face at the wash basin. He ran his hand over the black stubble on his chin but decided he could get away without shaving. That he had to shave was a nuisance—now the novelty had worn off. With a few quick movements of his fingers, his unruly mass of black curls were whipped into some semblance of order.
Foregoing the stairs, he slid down the banister and landed with a thud, shaking pictures on the wall of the front hall. He pulled his sheepskin coat and wide-brimmed hat off his peg by the door.
“Harmony? Is that you, or are we keeping cattle in the parlor now?”
His mother appeared in the doorway, her wool dress covered by an apron but sporting a couple of flour hand-prints, anyway. The apples of her cheeks were pink from working over a hot stove, and her strawberry-blonde hair had already begun to escape from the bun at the back of her head. He knew that by evening, her hair, as fine as a child’s, would be fluttering around her face, more out of the knot than in.
“Mornin’, Ma. I’m in an awful hurry.”
“Where you off to so early?”
“I got to go into town on an errand.”
“You come have your breakfast, first. Look at you! I swear you grew an inch overnight.”
She said that most mornings. The smells of bacon, strong coffee, and baked biscuits were in the air, but Harmony wasn’t even tempted. He just wasn’t hungry. Didn’t imagine he’d ever need food again, now that he’d got this idea in his head.
“What errand? What about your chores?”
Harmony pecked her on the cheek and bounded out the door before he got caught up in more idle conversation. The grass, covered in a silver coat of frost, crunched under his boots on the way to the stable. The windmill in the yard was spinning in the stiff wind, singing out its squeaky, creaky tune. In the summer when he slept with his window open, Harmony liked to listen to the sound, composing songs around it.
But this morning it was a brittle, cold day. He imagined he looked like a fire-breathing dragon in a story book with smoke coming out of his nose when his breath hit the cold air.
He took one last look back at his house to make sure he’d remembered to close the door, which was something he was likely to forget to do. The tin roof of the low, dormered house was dull in the gray morning light. The wide veranda surrounding the ranch house was showing signs of wear, he could see. He’d have to attend to that. He doubted his parents took notice of something as mundane as a cracked railing.
The roads that were muddy yesterday after a relatively warm and sunny day were frozen into ruts and rises. The hooves of his horse clomped sharply on the hard ground. A raw wind blew across the Texas plains, but he didn’t notice its bite. The sky was a silvery blue with strands of white clouds, moving fast. The clouds cast rolling shadows across the grasses of the plains, changing the colors from yellow to dull ochre.
A song came into his head, and he sang out as he rode. His father, an accomplished musician on many instruments, was choir master, and his mother was the pianist for any function in town. In fact, his parents were the music in these parts. Harmony knew a song for every occasion.
When he passed a herd of longhorns, he stopped singing. His eyes lingered wistfully over the animals. But even seeing these cattle that may or may not have once belonged to his family didn’t dull his mood for long. Other images replaced the beasts in his head. A girl with bright eyes and lips as plump as pillows came to mind. The smile returned to his face. He went on, singing his happy love song.
****
The town was starting to come to life at this early hour, and he nodded greetings to his neighbors bustling across the dirt roads and wooden boardwalks on their own errands. Harmony kept his head low, avoiding eye contact so as not to be drawn into conversation as he tied off his horse and strode to the mercantile store. A bell on the door tinkled to announce his entrance. He bypassed the jars of penny candy without even a glance, and made his way to the display stand set on a table.
Last week when he was here with his sister, Melody, she whooped with delight over the array of Valentine’s Day cards. He’d hardly paid any attention to her at the time, but this morning the memory of that day, which he’d tucked into the back of his mind, came calling.
“I’ve never seen such beautiful cards in all my life! Why, if a man gave me one of these, I’d know he meant business,” she’d said.
It gave him pause to think of his younger sister, at the ripe old age of thirteen, thinking about men; but then, she always was older in her head than in her body. Smart, too. She was born with wisdom and sense.
Harmony closed his eyes and ran his finger above the assortment of cards without touching them. But when his finger came to rest over the one that sent such a tingle up his arm and right to his heart, he knew this was the card he was meant to give Alice. He opened his eyes. The robin’s egg blue card was covered with cut-out paper lace, and in the center was a round medallion with a bouquet of flowers. A
scroll ran across the medallion reading, “To The One I Love.” He held it to his heart. His sentiment, exactly.
He was well on his way out of town with his purchase when he turned around. “Dagnabbit!”
Back in the store, he bought a second card for his sister. He was mounting his horse when he remembered his mother.
“You appear to be making sweethearts as fast you as can buy cards for them. You better slow down, son,” the shopkeeper, Mr. Morgan, said to him the third time he bought a card.
When he handed him his change, Mr. Morgan squeezed the end of his nose twice. Harmony smiled at the gesture. It was one of their private jokes. But then a familiar loneliness invaded his heart, and the smile faded.
Chapter 2
Harmony sighed. The voice that had urged him to buy the card was silent on the subject of what words to fill it with. He decided to put his words down on ordinary paper first, before committing anything to the pristine card. As he looked down on the mess of scratched out sentences before him, he congratulated himself on the forethought not to ruin the card with mistakes. Nothing he’d said so far even began to express his feelings.
The sound of music came from the room his parents called “the music room,” which was really the second parlor. Mother was knocking out a ballad on the piano, and father was singing in his rich tenor. Harmony knew they’d be wrapped up in there for a couple of hours, and he could work undisturbed.
He stuck his finger out and touched the window pane, where a shimmery glaze of frost bordered the bottom. The warmth of his touch immediately melted a section of the ice, sending a small scale of the stuff sliding down the window in a trail of water. With his fingertip still on the glass, he melted a heart in the frost.
“What are you doing?”
At the sound of his sister’s voice, Harmony obliterated the heart into a shapeless blob. When Melody stepped into the light cast from the oil lamp, he put his arm protectively over his work.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, ‘nothing’? You’ve gone all red. Must be something,” she said, sitting at the table across from him.
Melody rested her heart-shaped face in her hands and looked at him with her big brown eyes. He knew she’d never let it go—and maybe he could use a woman’s help.
“I’m practicing what to say on a card.” He looked down at his large hands. “A Valentine’s Day card. For a girl I like.”
“Why Harmony Buchanan! Aren’t you the dark horse? Who is she?”
Harmony squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his head. “Alice Ketchum.”
“Oh, she’s ever so nice! You’d make a wonderful couple. I didn’t know you liked her anymore. The two of you used to be inseparable, but you barely speak to her anymore. Does she know you’re sweet on her?”
Emboldened, he met his sister’s gaze. “She does not. I’ve had feelings for her for a long time. We used to be best friends. I could tell her anything. But now, she’s turned into this beautiful woman…I can’t seem to get a word out of my mouth when I see her. My head fills with cotton wool, and my mouth gets dry as sand. I’ve made such a muddle of it! She barely looks in my direction anymore. And I don’t see her as much now we’re done with school—which makes it worse. But then, I thought I could tell her in a letter…and if she knew how I felt, and remembered all the times we had fun together when we were kids...”
“Sounds like a bad case of love bug bites. What are you going to say?”
He raked his hands through his hair. “I have no idea.”
“Want some help?”
“Yes,” he said, relieved that she’d offered.
“Can I see the actual card?”
Harmony’s eyes darted over to the doorway, making sure his parents weren’t around before he pulled the card from out of the pages of the book he’d hidden it. Melody gasped.
“How beautiful! So delicate!”
“Yeah, though it sits an empty vessel. I still have to pour my heart into it. What does a lady like to hear?”
“Well, you should compliment her on her looks, naturally. That would be a start.” Melody bit at her thumb nail, eyes raised to the ceiling. “But you have to talk about her other qualities, so she knows you’ve really noticed her. Not only her…packaging. Look like you’ve made a study of her. But not so much a study that you alarm her with your desperation.”
“Where do you draw the line?”
“For instance, tell her you like the way she walks, but don’t say you notice that when you follow her home.”
“I do that sometimes.”
“Keep that activity to yourself for now. Maybe later she’ll think it’s cute you were following her around, but to say so too soon might put you in a bad light. Tell her what a fine mind she has. Maybe recount some story to illustrate the point.”
“She is real smart. Alice is a good cook, too. Whenever she brings food to—”
Melody straightened up. “Do not compliment her cooking. Or her housekeeping. If a man told me that in a love letter, I’d think he was going to put me to work. You want to keep her head in the clouds at this stage. When are you planning to give this to her?”
Harmony wiggled his eyebrows. “I thought I’d slip it into her coat pocket during church services.”
“Too risky. What if it falls out? Or worse, what if she opens it in front of everyone? Why don’t you just hand it to her?”
He glanced away. “I can’t do that.”
“All right. Mail it to her. There’s nothing a person likes better than to get a post. A letter sent to her address with her name on it. It makes the receiving of it more important, especially if someone in her family gets the post first and says, ‘Why look, Alice, you got a letter!’ Then when she sees it’s from you, and how you made the effort and all to—”
“She won’t know it’s from me. I’m not going to sign it.” He said, tapping the side of his nose.
Melody slapped her hands on the table. “Then why send it? What is the point of telling a girl a fella is sweet on her and then keeping the most important fact—the fella’s identity—a secret?”
“No look, I got a plan! She’s a smart girl and she likes her mysteries. We used to play detective, and set mysteries for each other to solve. You should see her face light up when she solves a mystery.”
He made an approximation of Alice’s face, jutting his chin forward and smiling a triumphant grin.
“When you were ten! She may not think it’s so much fun, now. You’re going to put that girl through the torment of looking at every man in town and wondering if he’s the one. And if she never solves the mystery, then where are you?”
“Listen up. I’m going to tell her how I’ve loved her forever, and tell her I’ll make myself known at the Valentine’s Day dance. I’ll be there first, and as soon as she walks through the door, I’m going to fix her with a look like this,” he said, pausing to show his sister his serious look, which he’d been practicing in front of a mirror for days.
He stood up and cocked his head to one side. He lowered one eyebrow while he raised the other. That move had taken a lot of practice.
He took a step toward Melody. “Then, without taking my eyes off of her, I will slowly cross the floor and hold out my hand to her, like this,” he said, bowing and holding out his hand. “And I’ll say, ‘Alice, will you be my partner?’”
Melody clutched her fists against her chest, eyes wide with excitement. “That’s a good plan, Harm. You’ll get her worked up into a frenzy wondering who her admirer is, so she’ll be in a fever-pitch by the day of the dance. And then, you step in all manly and romantic.”
Harmony let out a big breath, feeling pleased with himself, and sat back down in his chair where he adjusted his paper, ready to write. His sister looked at him expectantly. His eyes darted back and forth. She knitted her fingers together and leaned forward to glance at the paper before him. She frowned. He tapped his chin like he was watching words form in his mind. She nodded with encourageme
nt. Finally, Harmony blew out his cheeks.
“Nothing. I have nothing. Apparently, I’m not good at romance.”
Melody’s face fell. “All right. Let’s try something. Give me the paper.”
Gladly, he pushed the paper toward her. “Oh, thank you! You’ll know the right thing to say.”
“No, I’m not going to say anything. She knows you. She’ll see right away it’s not you speaking. I want you to start talking. Tell me how you feel about her, and why. I’ll write down the important bits, and then we’ll piece them together to form your declaration of love. Just talk. Say anything that comes to your mind.”
“Well, all right.” He blew out his cheeks again. “From the very first time I saw Alice, I was smitten. The teacher told us we had a new pupil, and in walked this chubby little thing—”
“I’m not writing that down. Don’t start out calling a lady chubby.”
“She wasn’t a lady, then. She was only eight. But she was real pretty, standing there in a blue dress, holding her lunch pail, looking like she was afraid we’d hog-tie her. Her hair was in plaits, and I remember wondering what you’d call that color, because it was red in some light, but brown in other. And sometimes golden. I used to study her hair all day, sitting behind her thinking ‘what is it you call that hair color?’ Because that’s the thing about her: you can’t define Alice in just one word.”
“Auburn.”
“What?”
“The color of her hair is called auburn.”
“Auburn, huh? Well, okay, her eyes, then. Sometimes they’re green and sometimes they’re brown. You can’t pin her down—”
“Hazel. Her eyes are hazel, and so are both green and brown, one color showing more to advantage depending on things like what color dress she’s wearing,” said Melody, sucking in her cheeks knowingly.
Harmony crossed his arms over his chest and scrunched his forehead. “Those words may be close, but they don’t cover the range. Anyway, that first day I wasn’t thinking so much about her hair color. What I noticed first about her was how alone she looked. I heard she’d lost both her parents and was sent here to live with her aunt and uncle—who knew nothing about children, not having any of their own. They always scared me, because they’d look at us children like we were Indians on the warpath. So I worried how Alice was getting on. I walked up to her one day at recess and gave her a gift that was special to me.”
Lariats, Letters, and Lace Page 17