Her own father had seemed in a good humor as they left the train station, laughing, joking as she had rarely heard him joke in all her life—but she already knew it was all for J.C.’s benefit. She sat between them on the front seat of the Ford, her father taking up more room than was necessary, just so that she would have to sit even closer to J.C.—she knew what was happening, knew that her father was again trying to thrust her and J.C. together, just as he had tried to do so many times in the past. He had never once made any secret of his plans for her—but they were plans Elise was determined she would have none of.
She stared through the front windshield throughout the ride home, feeling as if her teeth might be shaken from her head at any moment by the rattling, bouncing Model T her father persisted in driving—how she hated that car, but she knew that she could have expected nothing less than for him to have come to the station to pick her up in the ugly, balking thing, instead of in the Studebaker Big Six President, or even in Bill’s Packard. Why her father insisted on driving the ugly, black monstrosity of a motor car she could not understand, for he could well afford to drive a Cadillac, or a Stutz, or a new Packard, or even a lovely new LaSalle such as the one Phyllis Ann’s father drove—Elise knew he thought it made him appear frugal, money-wise; but in her opinion it only made him look tight, and more than a little bit stingy, which was more often than not her opinion of her father anyway.
J.C. sat beside her, cringing away as a deep rut in the clay roadbed bounced her over against him. He seemed to be a thousand miles away now, staring out the window of the car at something that seemed to hold his interest—he had fled almost as soon as they reached the house, nearly falling down the front steps in his haste to be away. Her father stopped him in the front yard before he could reach his car, yelling out from the veranda in a commanding voice:
“We’re expecting you to supper tonight, son—”
“Y—yes, sir—” J.C. had answered. “I—I’ll be here—” But his face clearly said that he would rather be anywhere else on the face of the earth other than at the Whitley house that night.
Her father’s attitude had changed the minute J.C. was gone. They were left alone in the wide hallway, her mother having left them to check on the preparations for dinner. Elise watched him as he closed the heavy front door on the sound of J.C.’s car driving away, noticing a peculiar set to his shoulders as he turned to look at her again.
“What have you done to J.C. to scare him so?” she asked, but he did not answer, staring at her instead for a long moment, a hard, almost calculating expression in his eyes.
“You’ve got to be more inviting to the boy,” he said at last. “You said hardly more than two words to him on the drive home.”
For a moment, Elise could only stare at him. “Inviting?”
“Hell yes, inviting!” he yelled, taking a step toward her. “You’ve got to pay a man some attention, show him a little life, flirt with him—”
“I have no intention of flirting with—”
“I don’t give a damn what your intentions are; I’m telling you what you’re going to do. You are going to pay that boy some attention, be nice to him, flirt with him—and you’re going to be married to him before this year is out—”
“I am not going to marry—”
“Oh, hell, yes you are!” he yelled, cutting her words off. “For once in your life, you are going to do what I tell you to do. You thought you were real smart, getting yourself thrown out of that school—well, I think it’s about time you—”
“I am not your property to be bargained off in a business deal!” she yelled, enraged. “I’ll choose the man I marry, when I choose to marry, and I’ll do it with no help from you!” She turned and started toward the staircase, but he grabbed her by the arm and spun her back around to face him.
“You’ll do what I say, even if I have to beat you black and blue to see that you do it!”
Elise lifted her chin, meeting his gaze—it was a familiar threat, but one he had never carried through on. “Go ahead and do it; I still won’t marry J.C.!” she yelled, but his face only hardened all the more. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet, his hand hurting her upper arm as he held her still before him.
“You are going to be nice to that boy; you’re going to show him some attention, get him to court you—and you are going to marry him. I’m tired of you always causing me trouble, thinking you can do anything you want, never listening to anyone—you are going to marry J.C. Cooper, and then you’ll be his problem—”
“And you’ll be one step closer to owning part of his daddy’s mill!” She threw the words at him, unable to stop herself, but he only stared at her, a set, determined expression on his face.
“That’s not any concern of yours,” he said, the inflection of his voice never changing. He released her with a slight shove that sent her toward the staircase. “Now, get upstairs and unpack. Put on the prettiest dress you’ve got and fix yourself up; the boy’ll be back here for supper in a few hours.”
For a moment Elise only stared at him, not moving.
“Get going, goddamn it!” he yelled, taking a step toward her, and she turned and ran up the stairs, for once in all her life unsure as to whether he might not actually strike her.
Now she sat staring at her trunks these hours later, unwilling to get up and cross the room to them to begin to unpack, for, once she finished her unpacking, she would have no choice but to go back downstairs. She had been called down to dinner what must now have been hours ago, but had not left her room—she just wished she had never come home. She had no intention of marrying J.C. Cooper, not even if there was some way that her father could make him ask her. J.C. was not in love with her, and, though he was dear and sweet and one of the best friends she had ever had in growing up, she was not in love with him either. She could not imagine spending the rest of her life with him, sleeping beside him, touching him—no, she would find some way to change her father’s mind. There had to be something she could do, something she could say that would—
But she knew her father too well. William Whitley wanted the cotton mill, and he would have it, even if he had to have it at his daughter’s expense.
She sighed and got up from the bed to cross the room to the first of her trunks. There was no use in delaying any longer. In her father’s current mood, he would never allow Mattie Ruth to come up to help her, and it was unlikely he would even allow her mother to come and keep her company, for, if he would, Martha Whitley would already have been up to see her daughter. Elise was being left alone to think—but she had been thinking for hours now, and could still come to only the one conclusion; she could not marry J.C. Cooper, no matter how badly her father might want it. It was her life, her future, and she was not going to spend it with J.C.—it was 1927 after all, and parents no longer had the right to arrange marriages for their daughters, barter them away in matters of state or business or custom. That was archaic, something from a barbaric past when women had been nothing more than property to be used to the greatest advantage by husband, father, or lover—and Elise Whitley was none of that past. She would make her own decisions, choose her own husband, live her life exactly as she chose to live it—and damn any man who tried to tell her differently. After all, that was the manner of things these days. That was the reason why young flappers were being arrested the country over in their one-piece bathing costumes, why they were smoking and drinking and carrying on in all manner of ways—they were very much the same sort who had won women the vote only seven years before, the same girls who now had cut their hair and shortened their skirts and brought out their rouge compacts.
Elise Whitley prided herself that she was that sort of girl. Her father and any other man be damned, she would live her life as she chose to live it—the only problem was, her father was accustomed to having his own way. Very few times in his life had he not gotten exactly what it was he wanted—h
e expected it. And William Whitley could be very hard to get around. Very—
There was a sound outside her door, and then a light tap, and her brother, Stan, stuck his head into the room. “You want some company?” he asked, with a smile that made her suddenly feel as if she had come home. She laughed, motioning for him to come in.
“Sure, if you’re not afraid Daddy will—”
“He just left to go into town with Bill,” Stan said, not having to hear the remainder of the thought. He came into the room to lightly touch her cheek with his lips, then went to sit down on the bed, watching her as she began to unpack. He seemed so much more grown up now than he had the last time she had seen him, even taller, though that had been the matter of only a few months before. He watched her for a moment through his round-rimmed eyeglasses, as she began to take dresses from one of the trunks and put them away in the tall chiffonier that stood against one wall of the pink, rose, and white room; then he began to talk, telling her of all the things that had happened on the place in the time since she had been away.
It felt so good just to hear his voice, so familiar—for a time it seemed almost as if she had never been away, never had to make the awful choice between herself and a life-long friendship, never had to go through the embarrassment of being asked to leave the school, never had to come home to her father’s impossible demands—why couldn’t he just understand? Why couldn’t he just see? He was her father; he had to want the best for her, and, surely, he had to realize that J.C. was not that “best.” He knew that she did not love J.C.; that J.C. did not love her—the mill was his dream, not hers; and, for all she cared, the damned thing could rot to the ground. In fact, at the moment, she wished that it would. Wished—
Stan was saying something that broke into her thoughts, dragging her attention back to the conversation. “—says he thinks you ought to marry J.C., that having a husband and children might settle you down—”
“Settle me down—who said that!” she demanded, stopping halfway across the room with a dress over her arm. She turned back to stare at her brother—settle her down, indeed! How dare anyone suggest that she needed settling down!
“Janson—Janson Sanders. He’s a new hand Daddy hired back during the winter.”
A farmhand! A farmhand had dared to suggest— “Just who does this farmhand think he is?” she demanded angrily.
Stan shrugged. “He’s my friend. We talk a lot. He’s taught me all about—”
“And this farmhand thinks I need settling down, does he?” Elise asked, interrupting her brother’s words.
Stan nodded. “He said that he thought a man’d do you good, get the ‘flighty ideas’ out of your head, as he calls them. That, if J.C.’s man enough, he’ll be able to handle you—”
“Handle me?” she yelled. Handle her—as if she were some spoiled child to—
Apparently someone needed to teach this farmhand some manners—flighty ideas, indeed. The man needed to be shown his place, taught some respect for his betters. Of all things, for a farmhand to—
“—he said that he didn’t think a good spanking would do you any harm, either—”
“He—oh—!” Elise yelled, furious. “How dare—” She stamped her foot and slung the dress she had been carrying across the foot of the bed, too angry to even finish the thought. “Just exactly where can I find this farmhand?” she demanded.
Handle me, indeed—a good spanking—need a man to settle me down, my foot! This farmhand had the unmitigated nerve to—oh, but he was going to find out he was not dealing with a small child. He was going to well find that out before she was through with him. She would put this Janson Sanders in his place.
The man must have sensed her presence, for he turned and met her eyes the moment she rounded the corner of the barn that afternoon. He had been at work before the small room Stan had told her he lived in, chopping stove wood with some sort of ax, his shirt discarded in his supposed privacy and hanging over the back of a nearby cane-bottomed straight chair. He seemed immediately taken aback at the sight of her, moving to take up the faded workshirt and pull it on over the crossed galluses of his overalls. “I’m sorry, miss. I figured I was by myself, an’—”
“Mr. Sanders?” Her voice sounded harsh, just as she intended it to.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m Janson San—”
“I would like to know just exactly who you think you are?” she demanded, then watched as a look of confusion came to his face, a face darker than she had ever before seen on any white man.
“Ma’am?”
“Telling my brother that you think I ought to marry J.C. Cooper, that you think a husband would get what you call the ‘flighty ideas’ out of my head, saying that you think I need a good spanking—just exactly who do you think you are to say something like that about me?”
“I reckon’ I know who I am,” he said, buttoning up his shirt and returning her stare.
“Well, in case you need reminding—you, Mr. Sanders, are a farmhand—” She flung the words at him with as much derision as possible, and watched him raise his chin defensively. “How dare you presume to meddle in my life?”
“I wasn’t tryin’ t’ meddle in your life,” he said, his eyes never leaving her face.
“I’ll have you know that I can handle my own affairs on my own, without any help from someone like you, thank you very much—”
“Seems like you’re doin’ real good at it, too, since you just managed to get yourself throwed out ’a school all by yourself—‘thank you very much.’” He gave her own words back to her, making her only angrier.
“You don’t know anything about me or my life! How dare you—”
“I guess I’ve seen enough spoil’t young’ns in my life t’ know one when she’s standin’ right in front of me,” he said, interrupting her words as he stared at her. “It’d probably do you good t’ marry J.C. Cooper; that is, if he’ll have you—who knows, he might not be too interested in raisin’ a spoil’t brat for a wife, once he thinks about it—”
“How dare you!” Elise gasped. “I could have my father put you off this place for talking to me like that!”
But he only stared at her in response, the green eyes oddly out of place in the dark face. “Git on back up t’ th’ big house where you belong, Miss Whitley,” he told her, reaching again for the ax handle. “I ain’t got time t’ fool with you. I got work t’ do—” He started to turn back to his work. When she did not move, he looked back at her. “I said, git!” he said louder, taking a step toward her, and she scrambled away, actually afraid for a moment that he might strike her.
She was surprised to hear him mutter: “Rich folks—” as she walked away, and so furious that she did not care what it was he meant with the words.
“Is there something wrong with the food, Elise?” her mother asked a few hours later as the family sat around the large table in the dining room of the great house.
Elise looked up from the plate she had only barely touched all through supper. “No, it’s fine.”
“You’d never know it, to see how you’re picking at it now.”
“I guess I’m just not hungry,” she answered, then watched as her mother’s eyes flicked first to J.C., and then to Elise’s father. Martha Whitley fell silent, and Elise forced herself to eat a bite or two of the meal Mattie Ruth had prepared for them before her mind wandered away again, too filled with her own thoughts to be concerned with food.
Her grandmother’s antique lace tablecloth decorated the table before her; the lovely Coalport china that was usually displayed in the glass-fronted china cabinet in the corner sat now at each place setting, her mother’s best pressed-glass water goblets—but the elaborate preparations for his benefit seemed to be lost now on J.C. as he sat at Elise’s side, his eyes on the almost-untouched plate before him. He had hardly eaten a bite throughout the entire meal, and actually looked even mo
re uncomfortable than Elise felt, if that were even possible. Her father was watching them both, smiling contentedly to himself every so often—he had enough food in him now to make him more affable than he had been earlier in the day, and he was now putting on his best airs for J.C.’s benefit. At least, perhaps, supper would end in peace.
Her brothers seemed unaware of the tension that sat at the table. Bill had a section of folded Columbus newspaper before him, from which he made occasional comments about some recent and rare remark President Coolidge had made. Alfred was eating too fast, afraid he would miss some radio program, and Stan was talking, as he always seemed to be doing, though he knew the others at the table only rarely listened.
Elise picked at her own food, her mind occupied with things other than conversation—she could not stop thinking about the ill-mannered farmhand she had argued with earlier in the day. She had almost told her father how the man had talked to her several times already since returning to the house, but somehow she found she could not—how dare anyone talk to her in such a manner. The man had called her a spoiled brat, had said that she needed a man to settle her down, someone to get the “flighty ideas” out of her head, and had even told her brother she could do with a good spanking—no one had ever spoken to her in such a manner in all her life, and now to have a lowly farmhand of all people to—
But she could not tell her father. He would tell her she should know better than to have anything to do with one of the farmhands or sharecroppers on the place, and she could not bring herself to tell him that the man had said he thought she ought to marry J.C.—no, thank you, she had enough problems on that front already without adding the opinions of a farmhand to her father’s arsenal. Of all things for a farmhand to—
He could not be more than a couple of years older than she was, and yet he had talked to her as if she were a small child today, had called her a spoiled brat—it infuriated her even now, to think that someone so far beneath her had dared to—
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