Behold, This Dreamer

by Charlotte Miller

  They had sent Elise off to the same boarding school Martha had attended as a girl, hoping she might settle down and get the new and radical ideas out of her head in her time away from home. Then Phyllis Ann had enrolled there as well, and they had been forced to content themselves with the idea that perhaps the school would have a beneficial effect on both girls.

  But it had not.

  Now they were both being sent home, expelled, disgraced, accused of cheating. Martha knew her daughter well enough to know Elise would never have been the one to cheat, as did William—but still she worried at the reception Elise might receive from her father once she reached home. William could be bad-tempered, unpredictable; Martha could only hope there would be time for his temper to cool before Elise could arrive.

  William was pacing back-and-forth before the marble fireplace now, and Martha looked up from her needlepoint to watch him, wondering what was going on in his mind. Worrying—sometimes she almost did not trust her husband.

  He stopped in his pacing for a moment and turned to stare at her, something in his dark eyes that made her uneasy.

  “What is it, William?” she heard herself ask almost before she thought.

  He remained silent for a moment, continuing to stare. “This just might work out after all,” he said, his eyes never leaving her. “It just might.” He stared at her for a moment too long for comfort, and then turned and left the room, going out into the hallway and toward the back of the house, the door to the library closing behind him only a moment later.

  Martha stared after him for a time, letting her needlepoint come to rest in her lap for a moment. The look she had seen on his face just before he had left the room would not leave her mind—there had been no anger there, no rage, as only a moment before; there had been only something very close to determination.

  And, somehow, that worried her all the more.

  J.C. Cooper stood in the front parlor of the Whitley house the next morning, nervously waiting for William Whitley to come downstairs. He pushed his glasses up off the bridge of his nose and shifted from one foot to the other, knowing he had gotten here too early—William Whitley had called the evening before and had asked him to stop by here for a moment on his way to school this morning. J.C. would be graduating in only a matter of weeks, and he ought to know well enough by now what time school began, which was more than an hour from this, but he had wanted to get this over with. He had slept very little the night before, worrying, dreading this meeting—he did not like William Whitley; in fact, he could barely even abide the man. Whitley terrified him, with his aggressive personality and his plans for J.C.’s future—but J.C. could never seem to tell him no. That was why he was here an hour early to a meeting he did not even want to attend.

  He pushed his glasses up again and shifted to the other foot, waiting, wishing he were anywhere else on the face of the Earth other than where he was at this moment—what could Whitley want of him? But he knew what Whitley wanted; what it was he always wanted.

  William Whitley entered the room behind him, with a slam of the door and a loud: “Hello, son!” to the boy.

  J.C. jumped slightly, startled, and pushed his glasses up again. “Hello, sir.”

  Whitley came toward him and clasped him on the shoulder, his round face even more florid than usual. J.C. looked at him, and became only more nervous—the man was smiling. J.C. did not like his smile; it always looked more like a leer.

  “Have a seat, son; have a seat.” Whitley motioned to a richly brocaded settee nearby, and J.C. sat, then cringed into the back of the sofa as Whitley sat down beside him and slapped him on the knee familiarly. “I’ve got some good news for you, son, some really good news.”

  “Sir?” J.C. rubbed his knee unconsciously—he hated to be called “son,” especially by this man. It never boded well.

  “Really good news—Elise will be returning home soon. This school nonsense of her mother’s did not quite work out as we had hoped. The two girls should be home in only a matter of days—”

  J.C. sat forward, suddenly attentive. “Phyllis Ann and Elise are coming home?”

  Whitley’s smile changed into a broad grin. “They sure are, boy. They sure are.”

  J.C. was smiling now as well. This news was worth facing even this man for—Phyllis Ann was coming home, after so many month, and she would be here in only a matter of days.

  Whitley was watching him. “I knew you’d want to be the first to know, son,” he said. “I knew you’d be glad to have Elise back home again.”

  “When will they be here?” J.C. asked, ignoring the tone in Whitley’s voice, the meaning. He knew it well enough by now.

  Whitley’s grin broadened even further. “Why, you’re an eager one, aren’t you, boy?” he laughed, slapping J.C.’s knee again.

  J.C. ignored the familiarity, too wrapped up in his own thoughts and feeling to care what it was the man did. He had been in love with Phyllis Ann Bennett for as long as he could remember. She had been the one beautiful, unattainable dream before him all his life, from the time he had been a little boy first pulling her pigtails for attention, and getting beaten up by bigger boys for doing it; to the feverish dreams he had about her now most every night. When she had gone off to school, he had felt as if the world would end—what if she met someone else in Atlanta and fell in love? What if she decided to never come home at all? What if—

  When she and Elise had come home in December for the Christmas holidays, he had almost wept with joy. He had seen her at church, had watched her from the choir all during the time he should have been listening to the sermon, and had even gotten a moment to speak to her at the Christmas party Whitley had thrown; a party supposedly to celebrate the season, but in reality, as everyone there knew, designed to throw J.C. and Elise together for at least a time.

  But he had seen Phyllis Ann, had talked to her, had watched her through the evening. She had smiled at him, had tweaked his cheek, had called him “James Calvin”—he knew she was making fun of him; he always knew. But it did not matter. He was in love with her; she could make fun all she wanted.

  Then she had gone back to Atlanta, and his world had stopped again—but now she was coming home. She was coming home, and now he might have the chance to tell her how it was he felt, the courage to—

  “I was thinking you might like to come with me to meet the train Friday,” Whitley was saying.

  “Yes, I’d like that,” J.C. answered, almost without thought—Friday; it seemed like such a long time away. Such a long time.

  “Good . . . good . . .” Whitley’s grin was self-satisfied. He sat back and sighed contentedly. “Well, son, let me tell you that I’m glad to see how happy you are about this. But, then again, I knew you would be. I knew you would—” He smiled and nodded complacently. “You have my full blessings in this, boy. Sixteen’s a good courting age for a girl, and it’s a good marrying age, as well.” He patted J.C.’s knee and nodded, almost fatherly. “You get a girl when she’s good and young and you can train her up to be the way you want her to be—it makes for a good wife, marrying young—”

  J.C. stared.

  “Yes, I think it’s about time for you and Elise to start planning that wedding of yours. And, like I said, you’ve got my full blessings, son, my full blessings.” He patted J.C.’s knee again, then startled him with a loud laugh. “Who knows, boy! You and Elise might make me a grandfather in a year or two!” He clasped J.C. across the shoulders and gave him a hug that was meant to be fatherly.

  J.C. squirmed out of the embrace and swallowed hard. He pushed his glasses up off the bridge of his nose and stared at Whitley—he should have known this was coming. It always came—but he had never before been given outright permission to marry Elise, or to be the father of her children; and he did not want it. He could never marry Elise—Elise was quiet walks and playing together as children and telling her things he could
never tell anyone else; she was the sister he had never had—but Phyllis Ann was passion and fire and love and all the things J.C. had dreamed about all his life. He wanted Phyllis Ann, loved her, needed her—but William Whitley planned an altogether different future for him, just as he always had. J.C. swallowed hard and tried to force the words to come, the refusal—but silence filled the room, broken only by the ticking of the mantle clock, until Whitley spoke again.

  “I’m really glad we had this talk, son,” he said. “Really glad.” And J.C. Cooper felt as if his fate had been sealed.

  7

  The plowshare cut through the rich Georgia clay, splitting it aside in waves of fertile red. The man and the animal at work in the field moved almost as if they were one, sweating and straining against the plow in the hot noontime sun that late April day as William Whitley watched from the relative shade of the interior of the Ford Model T he more often than not persisted in driving. He puffed at his cigar and took another drink from the corn liquor he had brought with him—it was a very rare occasion when he drank, but this was a special day. Today he was celebrating—today he was celebrating the future.

  Rarely in his lifetime had he been more pleased with himself than he was at the moment, and the talk he’d had that morning with J.C. Cooper had put the final touch on his day. He had taken a potential problem, a potential liability, and had turned it to his advantage—how furious he had been with Elise for her having managed to get herself thrown out of school and sent home months ahead of schedule, but he realized now that it was probably the best thing that could have happened. There was no need to wait the more than two years it would take before she graduated from school for her to start her life with young Cooper, and Martha’s dreams of college for the girl were completely out of the question anyway; education was wasted on a girl, and, besides, William had much more important things for his daughter in mind, things that had little to do with school books and learning.

  Elise would marry J.C.—William had known that almost from the first moment the nurse had told him Martha had delivered a girl those sixteen years before. Elise would marry J.C., and in doing so she would guarantee her father the things he had wanted for more years in his life than he cared to remember.

  J.C.’s family was of the old, landed southern gentry, proud, wealthy, of even higher social standing than William’s own—but that was not the reason William wanted his daughter to marry J.C. Cooper. The Coopers owned half of the Goodwin Cotton Mill, and, as such, were a part of the most profitable business venture in all of Endicott County, and for several counties around. William might grow more cotton, work more sharecroppers, own more land, than did anyone else in the County—but it would take a share of that Mill, a fifty percent partnership, to guarantee him that he was the most powerful, the wealthiest, man in all of Endicott County. For years William had tried to buy into that partnership, but neither Hiram Cooper, nor his aging partner, old Mr. Bolt, would sell—then Cooper had produced a son, and Martha had given William a daughter, and William had seen the opportunity. Sooner or later old Bolt would retire and sell, or simply die, and his share of the Mill would finally come up for sale. With Elise married to J.C., William would be guaranteed the first chance at that share—and it was a chance he would have, even at the cost of his right arm, or his daughter, if that need be the case.

  Elise could do far worse than young Cooper for a husband anyway, William told himself. The boy was from a good family; he would be wealthy, well-educated, and tolerant; and he would never lay a hand on her in anger or in violence. William had been pleased, and more than a little bit surprised, to see how excited and eager the boy had been that morning at the knowledge that Elise was coming home so soon, and he could almost pity the boy as well, for, once William had his daughter off his hands for good, she would then be J.C.’s problem—his problem, then and forevermore.

  William knew J.C. Cooper would present no problem of himself in the weeks and months to come, but Elise could be another matter altogether. She could take it into her head to do just about anything. She had no interest in J.C.—William knew that—but still he was not about to let the whims of a sixteen-year-old girl ruin the plans he had so carefully laid for so many years. Women never knew their minds in such matters anyway; they talked of love and courtship and romance, when marriage was more often than not best a partnership, a merger, a profitable business arrangement for all parties concerned—but Elise’s opinion in the matter was of little concern anyway. For once in her life she would do exactly as she was told, even if William had to beat her daily to keep her in line—it was all for her own good anyway, he told himself, studying the glowing tip of his cigar for a moment. It was all for her own good. William would soon have his troublesome daughter off his hands once and for all, married to his choice of husband—and someday his grandsons would own the Goodwin Cotton Mill, thanks to his foresight now. Elise would thank him then; he knew that. She would thank him then.

  William took another drink from the corn liquor and returned to watching the plowman at work in the field, fancying for a moment that he could almost hear the creak of the wooden hames and leather collar, the patient plodding sounds of the mules’s hooves on the soft, red earth. The animal snorted and brayed, its ears moving back and forth in rhythm to its slow steps as it pulled the plow down the newly cut furrows. The man seemed to handle the animal well, keeping tight control over the plow lines looped about his shoulders, issuing the monosyllabic commands the mule best understood: “Gee,” or “Haw,” for direction, with “Whoa” at the end of a newly plowed row, then “Git-up” with a slap of the plow lines to start the animal down the next.

  The man’s forearms below the rolled-up sleeves of his faded workshirt showed muscles knotting beneath dark-tanned skin. A crushed and battered hat shaded his face and neck from the direct noonday sun, its sweat band already showing through dark stains of perspiration. He wore faded and patched overalls, and a shirt that looked as if it had originally been a guano sack, as did many other of the farmhands at work in the lower part of this field and in others—but there the resemblance ended. The overalls, though faded and worn, had been clean when the work had begun that morning, the shirt mended. The man’s skin was darker than that of any other of the sunburned farmers at work in the fields, his hair black and straight—he still looks like a Gypsy, William mused to himself, watching as Janson Sanders guided the mule onto unbroken ground and began to cut a new furrow into the red earth, the man handling the plow and the animal with the patience and knowledge born from years of experience.

  William had never had an Indian on the place before—but, then again, Janson Sanders seemed different from most men in a great many ways. William had been pleased almost from the beginning with the boy, more pleased than he had ever thought he might be. At first there had been the worry that the boy might present a problem of himself with that pride that seemed almost inborn in him, but, in the almost four months since, William had been pleasantly surprised to have found himself with one of the best farmhands he had ever had on the place. The boy did not say much; he kept to himself and did his work, and he had made few friends in the months he had now been on the place—and that had taken on important meaning in the past few days.

  William puffed at his cigar and watched the boy through the haze of blue smoke that hung within the car, noting how he handled himself, as well as how he handled the plow and the animal. Janson Sanders was a strange one, staying mostly to himself in the little time he was not working, doing odd chores for Mattie Ruth and Titus Coates, or for other people in the area, earning whatever little money it might bring him, taking in eggs or meal, kerosene or lard or butter when there was no money to be had. He seemed to take on whatever extra work he could find to do—cleaning out a barn or a chicken coop, mending a roof, cutting stove wood, splitting rails for fencing, plowing, clearing land—the kind of work seemed to matter very little to him, the pay all important, whether that pay be
money, or fresh meat, or even flour.

  William had wondered often what it was the boy might do with the money he earned from his wages and from the numerous other odd jobs he could find for himself to do. He seemed to spend very little on himself, buying only the bare necessities at the store, trading work for them instead whenever possible; he did not even seem to have a woman to spend it on—he could even have it all buried in the barn, William mused to himself, thinking over the possibilities. But the boy earned his pay; he did his work and kept his nose clean, and he could do with the money whatever he wished—he could bury it, or burn it, or do whatever it was that someone like him might choose to do with it, for at the moment that mattered very little to William Whitley. That mattered so very little.

  William took another drink from the corn liquor, and then sat for a moment considering the sunlight as it glinted off the surface of the whiskey remaining in the jar—it was good whiskey, distilled from the finest corn mash in the area, made by one of the last of the good, old-time moonshiners still left alive in that part of Georgia. It was a dying art, whiskey-making, as William well knew. It had been killed by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and Prohibition, and all the shouting preachers who sought to tell a man he could no longer have a drink; killed by the bootleggers themselves, in their greed for profit at the cost of quality in the years since Prohibition had made stilling such a lucrative business, until many a bootlegger nowadays would no longer even drink the liquor he himself had made—but William did not worry about the quality of the corn liquor he drank. There would be no violent headaches from it, no sickness, no death, as from much of the bootleg that was sold these days. The corn liquor in that jar was possibly some of the best in that part of Georgia; and William should know—the corn and malt it had been distilled from had been grain grown on his own land, and the old man who had done the stilling had been one of his own people; even the copper in the still and the rock in the furnace belonged to him. If Prohibition had done nothing else in the past seven years, it had at least made a much wealthier man of William Whitley.