The Hired Man

by Lynna Banning

  He sat down heavily and tilted the chair back. “Eleanor?”

  Her stomach turned over. He sounded angry about something, but what? She flipped the French toast slices onto a platter and set it down before him. “Yes, Cord? What is it?”

  “Your front door,” he said tersely.

  Danny pounced on the platter, speared a slice with his fork and flopped it onto his plate.

  “What about the front door?” she inquired as she laid three more slices onto the griddle.

  “Ma, we got any syrup or honey?”

  “What? Oh, yes. In the pantry, Danny. Why don’t you fetch it? It’s on the middle shelf.” Maybe Cord would forget about the front door. She watched him stab his fork into a slice of nicely browned French toast.

  Or maybe not.

  “Your front door...” He paused to dribble the honey Danny had found over his plate.

  “Yes? What about my front door?” Her appetite was fast fading. The expression on his face was... Thunderous was the only way she could use to describe it. Like clouds before a storm. A bad storm.

  She couldn’t stand this suspense one more minute. “Just what is wrong with my front door, Cord?” It came out sounding more strident than she’d intended, but it certainly got his attention. She sat down across from him, folded her hands on the table and waited.

  “The door...” he said between bites of honey-slathered French toast “...should be...” He chewed and swallowed and cut another bite.

  “Should be what?” she said, her voice tight.

  He looked up from his plate with narrowed blue eyes. “Should be locked at night.”

  “Locked! Why, I’ve never locked the door in all my years on this farm! Nobody locks their door out here in Smoke River.”

  “Eleanor,” he grated. “I’m asking you to lock the door at night.”

  “Why? Give me one good reason and maybe, maybe, I will consider it.”

  Cord sent her a hard look. “Molly and Daniel,” he said. “That’s two good reasons. And you. That’s three reasons.”

  Eleanor stared at him like he had green cabbages for ears.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she shot out.

  “No, it isn’t,” he shot right back. “We’ll continue this discussion after the kids finish breakfast.”

  Danny straightened up in his chair. “But we gotta stay and do the dishes!”

  “I’ll do the damn dishes!” Cord shouted. Danny and Molly gaped at him, their eyes widening. Eleanor’s eyes narrowed. He reached out his fork for another slice of French toast and found his hand was shaking. Yeah, he was het up about her front door, but maybe he was madder than he thought. Very rarely did he allow any anger he might feel to show on the outside. It was one of the hard lessons he’d learned in prison.

  Maybe that was why he’d just drifted when he got out. He hadn’t wanted to get involved with anything that made him feel anger or desperation or...anything much at all. There was safety in being numb.

  “Very well,” she said primly. She pointedly removed his empty coffee cup from the table.

  He pushed back his chair, stood up and grabbed the speckleware coffeepot off the stove. Then he grabbed his cup out of her hand, sloshed it full and sat down again.

  Eleanor’s frown etched deep lines into her forehead. “Cord, what is wrong with you this morning?”

  Cord caught Danny’s eye. “Kids?” He tipped his head toward the back door. “Outside.”

  “C’mon, Molly. Let’s go find the kittens.”

  “No! I wanna see what’s gonna happen.”

  Danny blinked at his sister. “Molly,” he whispered. “What do you think’s gonna happen?”

  “I think he’s gonna spank Mama!”

  Eleanor made an involuntary jerk, shooed both children out the back door and moved toward the sink. When the door slammed shut, she sat back down and stared at her folded hands, waiting until Cord looked at her.

  “It’s not the door, is it? It’s something else.”

  He clamped his jaw shut. “Well,” he said after a long minute, “it is and it isn’t.”

  “All right,” she said as patiently as she could manage. “What is and isn’t it?”

  Cord swallowed a double gulp of coffee and pushed the cup around and around in a circle on the table. “I think...”

  He made an effort to keep his voice calm. Stay rational. Don’t let too much show. “I don’t care what people in Smoke River do. I think you should lock your front door at night.”

  She just stared at him, her eyes looking more like hard agates every second.

  “And the back door,” he added. “You’ve got no way of knowing who might come snooping around, Eleanor. You’ve lived a very protected life.”

  “This is something you learned at some point from people who weren’t exactly honest.”

  “That’s partly true. The rest I learned just living somewhere that’s not a little town like Smoke River. This place is...well, it’s like a little bit of heaven. Peaceful and quiet. Nothing much goes wrong here unless it’s some mercantile store getting painted pink. Most places aren’t like this.”

  She sat without moving for so long he thought maybe she hadn’t heard him. Then she absentmindedly reached for his coffee cup and downed a big swallow. “All this upset is about locking my doors?” An unexpected little spurt of laughter escaped her. “The children think you’re going to spank me!”

  He chuckled at that. “Maybe I would if I thought I could catch you.”

  He rescued his cup from her fingers and stood up to pour some coffee for her. Before he set it down in front of her he reached for the brandy bottle she kept on the top shelf of the china cabinet and dolloped some of the liquor into her cup.

  * * *

  Monday morning Cord decided he needed to go into town for another pound of nails and some hinges, and he timed his trip so he’d be riding back when Danny would be walking home from school. He had an idea. He knew Eleanor wouldn’t like it, but it was a good idea anyway.

  Sure enough, half a mile after he left the mercantile he spied the boy trudging along the dusty road, his satchel slung over one drooping shoulder.

  “Hold up, Danny.” Cord reined up his bay mare and waited. The boy looked up and his dusty, heat-flushed face broke into a tired smile.

  “Didn’t know you was comin’ to town today, Cord. You see that Miss Fanny lady at the mercantile?”

  “Nope. Wasn’t looking for Miss Fanny. Bought some nails and some sugar for your ma. Glad I ran into you, though.”

  “Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”

  Cord leaned down and spoke quietly. “Thought you might fancy a ride on Sally here.”

  Danny’s eyes lit up. “Oh, boy, would I? You mean it?”

  “I never say things I don’t mean, son. Now just hold on a minute, all right?” Before the boy could say another word he slipped out of the saddle and was unbuckling the cinch.

  “You ready to ride her?”

  “Can’t. Ma won’t let me.”

  “Maybe your ma won’t know about it.”

  Danny frowned up at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Like I said, Dan, I never say things I don’t mean.” He lifted his saddle off and hefted it onto his shoulder.

  “Golly, Cord, I don’t know.”

  “Thought you wanted to learn to ride,” Cord said.

  “Oh, I sure do, but—”

  “No buts.”

  Danny bit his lower lip in exactly the same way Eleanor bit hers. “How come you took the saddle off?”

  “Because first you’re gonna learn to ride bareback. The saddle comes later.”

  The boy dropped his book satchel in the dust and reached up to touch the mare’s nose. “H’lo, Sally. Gosh, yo
u’re real handsome, and...” All at once he looked doubtful. “How am I gonna get up there without a stirrup?”

  “Indian boys don’t use saddles or stirrups. How do you think they do it?”

  “They... I bet they stand on something so’s they can reach.”

  Cord shifted the saddle so he could make a foothold with his hands. “Step here,” he ordered. “Now, grab some of the mane and haul yourself up.” He watched the boy hold tight to a fistful of mane and clamber onto Sally’s broad back.

  When he was sitting upright, he sent Cord a triumphant smile. “What do I do now?”

  “Squeeze your knees right around her belly and let go of her mane. Then pick up the reins. You won’t fall off if you keep your knees tight.”

  “O-okay. My knees are squeezin’ like anything and I’m gonna let go of all this hair.” He lifted one hand a scant inch from Sally’s thick mane, then gingerly freed the other and grabbed the leather lines.

  “Now,” Cord said, “give her a little nudge with your heel.”

  “Can’t,” Danny announced.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m scared she’ll move!”

  Cord chuckled. “That’s what you want her to do, Dan. Try it.”

  The horse moved ahead a single step and Danny yelped. “Hell, Cord, she’s moving!”

  “Watch your mouth, son. There are some things I will tell your ma about.”

  “S-sorry.” He patted the mare’s neck. “Sorry, Sally.”

  Cord bit back a grin, turned away and headed down the road. “You know how to make her go,” he called over his shoulder. “If you want her to stop just pull back on the reins and say ‘whoa.’”

  “Hell—Golly, Cord, I don’t know...”

  But after a moment Cord heard the unmistakable clop-clop of Sally’s hooves on the road behind him. He dropped back to walk alongside the mounted boy and tried to remember how he’d felt the first time he’d ever felt a horse move under him. Scared. Proud. All “growed-up,” as Danny put it.

  Well before they reached the turnoff to the farm, Cord raised his hand and the boy brought the mare to a halt and slipped off. “You gonna mount up like you just rode in from town?”

  “Nope.” He grasped the reins and walked alongside Danny until they reached the farm. He motioned the boy to open the gate and walked the horse through.

  “Won’t Ma think it’s strange, you walkin’ and carryin’ your saddle like that?”

  “Probably. But your ma thinks a lot of the things I do are strange, like wanting her to lock the doors at night.”

  Danny chortled. “And baking pies.”

  They both laughed all the way into the barn.

  Chapter Nine

  The sound of insistent hammering stopped conversation on the porch, for which Eleanor was extremely grateful. Red Wilkins looked up from the glass of lemonade she had just poured. “Whazzat?”

  She always made sure Red had a full glass; he talked less when he was guzzling his lemonade. “My hired man is repairing the barn roof.”

  Silas Maginnis nudged his spectacles down and peered over the thick lenses at the barn. “Hope he knows what he’s doing, Miss Eleanor. Can’t be too careful about hired help these days.”

  She gritted her teeth. “More lemonade, Silas?” Silently she prayed the hammering would resume and the conversation with her two unwanted callers would stop. She could hardly wait.

  “He’s workin’ on the Sabbath, too,” Red observed. Mighty un-Christian-like.”

  Silas nodded his shiny bald head. “Mighty unhelpful, too, makin’ all that clatter while we’re out here on your porch tryin’ to be sociable.”

  At that, Eleanor almost laughed aloud. Please, she silently begged Cord. Make some more clatter. Lots more. She settled back into the porch swing and pushed it into motion with her foot. She hated being sociable.

  For the hundredth time this spring she wondered why Silas and Red and the half dozen other young men from town bothered to bring her supplies or her mail or the town gossip or come calling, since for all they knew she was a married woman. Since she had never received word of Tom’s death, in many ways she considered that she was still married, even though Judge Silver in town said that technically she wasn’t.

  She had never given even one hint of encouragement to the stream of male visitors from town, and she often wondered why they didn’t give up and stop coming. They couldn’t possibly be interested in her. Or maybe, she thought with sudden misgiving, it was not her they were interested in, but her farm?

  She checked the lemonade level in their glasses and tried to close her ears to the debate about whether goats were easier to raise than sheep. Reciting the multiplication table would be more interesting than this conversation!

  Her gaze drifted up to the barn roof, where Cord was pounding nails into a long piece of wood. It was hot this afternoon, the sun relentless and the breeze absent. Bees hummed in the lilac bush, and somewhere a mockingbird trilled and twittered an ever-changing song.

  Eleanor is bored, it seemed to sing. Bored, bored, bored!

  From his vantage point on the barn roof Cord had a bird’s-eye view of the activity on the front porch. He flipped the new board over and paused to study the two visitors Eleanor was entertaining. Town types. Pressed creases in their trousers, boots polished to a shine, shirts starched so stiff they could stand up by themselves. The fellow with the spectacles had brought the mail out from town; the other gent had brought a tin of fancy chocolates, which he was devouring along with his lemonade.

  Molly had fled to the barn to play with the kittens. Danny had groomed Cord’s bay mare and was now lounging around the yard playing marbles with himself. Cord positioned another two-by-six to replace a rotted plank and set a nail in place. He had just raised his hammer when Eleanor’s suddenly upturned face made him check his motion.

  She picked up the lemonade pitcher, pointed her forefinger at it and raised her eyebrows at him. Did he want some lemonade?

  Sure he did. But she was down there on the porch and he was up here on the roof, so he shook his head. A look of resignation crossed her face, and she turned her attention back to her visitors.

  He had to laugh. It was plain she wasn’t enjoying this social call, but he had to wonder why the men lounging on her porch didn’t take the hint.

  In the next minute he figured it out. They wanted something. Cold lemonade on a hot day? Female attention? The goodwill earned by bringing offerings of mail or chocolates or spools of thread from town?

  His hammer slowed. Or maybe they wanted her?

  He drove the waiting nail home in a single blow. When he positioned the next one, he purposely shifted his body around so his back was facing the front porch and he couldn’t see her. But he could still hear the continuous drone of the two male voices. Made him clench his jaw.

  Eleanor didn’t seem to be saying much, and that was kinda odd. Wasn’t an afternoon social call an occasion for give-and-take conversation? As far as he could tell, this afternoon was all “take” by the two gents but no “give” from Eleanor.

  He stopped pounding in nails and strained his ears to hear her voice. Nothing. Either he was going deaf or she wasn’t saying anything. What, exactly, was going on down there?

  It’s none of your business, Winterman.

  True. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t interested. He thought that over for a full minute, then corralled his thoughts and addressed himself once more to the barn roof.

  By the time he finished the repairs and climbed down the ladder, the two gentlemen visitors were gone. Eleanor had disappeared into the house and Molly and Daniel were squatting in the front yard playing marbles.

  Cord spent the rest of the afternoon mucking out the horse stalls and oiling the cracked leather saddle he’d found in the barn.
If Danny was going to ride the three miles to school instead of walking in all kinds of weather, he’d eventually need a saddle of his own and some instruction on how to take care of it.

  That night at supper an oddly quiet Danny ate his beans and corn bread in silence, and when it came time to wash up the dishes he stomped over to the sink and carelessly dropped all four plates into the dishpan at once. Soapy water splashed out onto the wooden counter.

  Eleanor jerked upright and spilled half her coffee. “Daniel! Whatever is the matter with you tonight?”

  Danny said nothing, but his rigid back told Cord something was definitely wrong. He rose, snagged the dish towel out of Molly’s grasp and mopped up the spilled coffee. Then he used the same towel to mop up the dishwater on the counter. As he did so, he leaned in close to the boy.

  “Something on your mind, son?”

  Danny lifted his chin but said nothing.

  “Okay, have it your way,” he intoned. “Just thought you might like to have a man-to-man chat.”

  At the words man-to-man, the boy’s stiff shoulders drooped. “I don’t like that guy.”

  “Who?”

  “The one with the glasses. He’s always bragging about...” He closed his lips tight and shook his head.

  “About what?” Cord pressed.

  After a long silence, Danny twisted his neck and shot a glance at his mother. “About Ma,” he murmured. “About how he’s gonna marry her and...”

  Eleanor sent him an inquiring look from where she sat at the table, and Cord picked up the coffeepot from the stove and refilled her cup. “Your boy’s got a thistle up his—Uh, got something bothering him,” he said quietly.

  “Shouldn’t he be confiding in his mother?” she whispered. She started to rise from her chair, but Cord laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “Not this time. It’s, um, man talk.”

  “Oh.” She studied Danny’s back for a minute and then shrugged. “I suspect I wouldn’t be much help with ‘man talk.’” She took her coffee into the parlor and settled on the settee. She could still see into the kitchen, but she couldn’t hear what was said.

  Cord dug a clean dish towel out of the linen drawer and ambled back to the sink. “Okay, the one with the glasses says he’s gonna marry your ma and...what?” he reminded Danny. “Marry her and what?”