In the months he and Elise had been together, Janson had never once done more than hold her in his arms and kiss her, and, though she sometimes brushed against him, or pressed close when they kissed, and once had even sat on his lap for a moment, he knew she did not understand the things she made him feel and want when she was in his arms. She was a lady, and a nice girl, the girl he was going to marry—he could not ask her to give in to the things he wanted, the things he needed, even though they would not be married for perhaps a year or even longer into the future. Nice girls did not do those things until they were married, he told himself, and Elise was a nice girl. He would be her husband one day, and then he would know what it felt like to touch her and lie with her and know her as no other man would ever know her—until then he would have to wait. He might wonder if she knew about men and women and the things that happened between them, and if she ever thought of what it would be like once they were wed—but nice girls did not think about such things, and Elise was a nice girl. And he should not be thinking about it himself, either.
Janson’s body ached that Sunday afternoon from the hours he had put in in the cotton fields the day before, as he walked to where he and Elise were to meet that afternoon. He had allowed himself to sleep late that morning, the straw mattress having felt too good, and the rest too needed, to give it up too easily and venture out to church services as he knew he should have done—besides, the things he had been thinking and feeling about Elise in the past days had no place in a church. She would be sitting in the choir of the big Baptist church at the end of Main Street in town, singing her hymns, offering her praises, and that was where she belonged. He belonged in his shabby room, on his straw mattress, trying to forget the thought of her soft skin and her bright hair and—
He sat on the ground with his back against the rough bark of a pine tree, and stared across the red dirt road at the field of sharecropped cotton waiting there to be picked—work, that was what it looked like to him, hours of dragging a pick sack behind him, bending and picking until his back ached. Elise would say that it was pretty, with all the fluffs of white—that was the difference between them. He could picture her now, sitting in her church choir, looking lovely in a robe as white as the cotton. His body ached, and from more than the hours of work—and he should not be thinking those things. Elise would never understand.
There was the sound of a car coming along the road, causing him to get quickly to his feet and move back into the cover of the trees. It would be difficult to explain why he was waiting here in such a deserted spot, should anyone other than Elise find him. It was more than likely that it was her in the car coming toward him, for this was a little traveled road, but he knew it was better to be safe than to have to worry with coming up with excuses that he was not prepared to give. They had been using this spot to meet for weeks now, the road being one deep within Whitley property, and one that was rarely used, and even overgrown in places. Janson could cut across country and reach it easily, but Elise usually now came by car.
J.C. Cooper and her father had both been teaching her to drive Whitley’s Model T, as had Janson over the past several weeks whenever he had the time, and she had at last become safe enough at the wheel for her father to allow her to use the car on outings. Whitley thought she used it in order to visit J.C., which was exactly what she intended that he think, but she used it instead to meet Janson. J.C. had proven himself a true friend to them both time and again over those weeks, helping in this deception and in others; and, though Janson sometimes still found himself jealous of J.C., for the time that the younger man could spend with Elise teaching her to drive the Tin Lizzie, and for the shared past they had together, he knew there was no reason for that jealousy. Elise was in love with him, and J.C. was in love with that hellcat Phyllis Ann Bennett—how that had ever happened, Janson could not understand; but, then again, he would look at himself, and at Elise—
The car came to a rolling stop a few feet from where he stood hidden among the trees. He waited—it was Whitley’s Model T, but he could not see the driver as yet. After a moment the door opened, and Elise stepped out.
Janson smiled to himself, noting how the sun shone in her red-gold hair, and then he stepped out into the road. Her face brightened the moment she caught sight of him, erasing the slight worry that had been there only a second before, and then she rushed around the car and into his arms, happy, he knew, just to be with him.
“We have the entire afternoon! Everyone thinks I’m with J.C., and I’m not expected back until supper time!” she said in a rush, her arms around his neck. “I have something to show—”
But he silenced her words with a kiss before she could finish what she had been about to say. She pressed close against him, and he felt his body react, his mind somewhere lost in the scent of her hair, the softness of her skin, the feel of her against him—he shouldn’t allow himself to feel these things. He shouldn’t—
But they were feelings he could not stop.
It was a long moment before the kiss ended, and, when it did, he buried his face in her hair, a tension evident in his body that Elise could feel in her own. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder, glad for the moment that he could not see her face—then he released her and moved a step away, making her feel a sudden distance between them that was more than the space that held them apart.
He would not meet her eyes for a long moment as she stood staring at him, but instead ran the fingers of one hand through his black hair, his eyes fixed on the ground somewhere near her feet. “You have trouble gettin’ away?” he asked, his voice low and throaty as he spoke.
“No, I just told them I was going to meet J.C.”
“You said you had somethin’ t’ show me?”
“Yes—”
He raised his eyes at last and looked at her directly, and she felt the color rise to her cheeks—he knows what I’m thinking, she told herself. He stared at her for a long moment expectantly, seeming to be waiting. She lifted her chin and met his gaze—I know what you’re thinking as well, she told him silently.
He looked away again. “Well—you gonna show me?”
She turned without a word and started toward the Model T, but stopped after a moment when he did not follow, and turned back to look at him. “Well, come on.”
He followed her to the car and opened the passenger side door for her—she had known he would drive now that they were together, for he seemed to prefer to now that he was no longer teaching her to drive, whether out of a lack of faith in her driving skills, or out of a desire to protect his masculine pride, she did not know or really care. There was so little time they could be together now, and so many other more important things on her mind to be concerned about.
She got into the car and waited until he slid in under the steering wheel. “Just drive straight ahead. I’ll tell you when to turn—”
He did not speak, and she watched as he pulled down on the lever on the steering column and pushed the low-speed pedal, setting the Tin Lizzie in motion with a jerk. He drove in silence, barely even nodding his head as she indicated to turn onto a narrow, almost-overgrown dirt road to the left, seeming now to be lost somewhere in his own thoughts. She sat watching him for a long moment, unable to think of anything to say to bridge that silent distance between them. She felt he was pushing her away, and she felt somehow cheated—love was not supposed to put a distance between two people, she told herself, but was supposed to bring them only closer together.
The car jounced over deep ruts washed in the roadbed as she had him pull off onto a second, even narrower road, but soon came to a stop, dead-ending before a small, unpainted shack deep within the back part of her father’s land. She watched Janson’s face as he stared at it through the windshield, his eyes moving over the rough boards long-ago weathered to a dingy gray, the rusting tin roof, and the weed-choked yard. When his eyes came back to her she smiled and got out of the car,
then crossed the overgrown yard, picking her way carefully for fear the brambles would tear her stockings, until she was standing on the sagging front porch. When she looked back, she found Janson standing beside the car staring at her.
“Come on, there’s no one here,” she called, then opened the door and entered the house without waiting for him.
His look of confusion changed to surprise as he reached the open doorway and stared inside at the room before him. The tiny single room of the house was spotless, its walls swept clear of cobwebs, its hearth clean of ashes, its floor swept and mopped until her back had ached and a small blister had risen on her third finger. There was a small table in the center of the room, its one short leg braced up by a narrow shim of wood, a spotless tablecloth now covering its splintery surface, and two mismatched straight chairs flanking its sides. Against the near wall was an aged and warped kitchen cabinet; across from it an old rope bed topped by a straw mattress, its tick newly washed and sun-dried, and now filled with fresh, sweet-smelling straw she had brought here herself. The quilt that covered it was old but colorful, scavenged from the attic at her father’s house, its colors matched only by the bunches of wildflowers she had placed on the table and on the mantlepiece above the fireplace.
“Who lives here?” Janson asked as she took his hand and drew him into the room.
“No one. Alfred, Stan, and I used to play here as children, but I doubt anyone else has been here in years now.”
“But, who—” He motioned with one hand toward the flowers and the tablecloth.
“I did. The furniture was already here; all I did was clean up a bit.”
“You did?” He smiled, moving farther into the room, looking first at the table, the quilt, and then turning back to her as she came near.
“I wanted us to have a place to come to be together, where we wouldn’t have to worry about someone seeing us or telling Daddy—” She put her arms around his waist and stared up at him, happier in that moment than she had been in months, just with the delight the little room had brought to his face. “No one ever comes out this way; Daddy says the land’s not good enough to put in cotton, and he hasn’t tenanted it out since I was a little girl—it may be on his property, but it’ll be all ours when we’re here. No one would ever think to look for us out here.”
He reached up to brush her hair back from her eyes, and smiled down at her, the fingers of his hand trailing lightly down over her cheek. “If you’d ’a told me what you were doin’, I could ’a helped.”
“I just wanted to do it myself—it’s suppose to be the wife’s job to do the housecleaning, isn’t it?”
“Wife?” he said, smiling, both his arms moving down to her waist to hold her against him.
“I am going to be your wife, aren’t I?”
“You sure are.” He looked at her for a long moment, then bent to brush his lips against hers before lightly touching them to her cheek.
When his lips came to hers again, she pressed closer into his arms, feeling her heart speed up as he drew her even more tightly to him, his fingers tangling in her hair after a moment to draw her head back, his lips finally leaving hers to trail over her cheek, then to her neck and down, lightly touching her skin. She clung to him, wanting, as so many times before, never to leave his arms, never to—
He released her suddenly and turned away, leaving her breathless and wanting. She reached for the back of the nearby straight chair and clung to it, staring at him as he moved a step away to stand now with his back turned almost to her, a tension between them such as she had never felt before.
“I—I’m sorry—” he said, a hoarse sound in his voice. “I—I shouldn’t have—” He fell silent for a moment. “It’s just that, sometimes I—” He sighed and shook his head.
“I know,” she said, quietly.
“You cain’t—” He turned to look at her. “You’re a lady; you can’t understand what I feel, what I need, what I—” He looked away again and ran his hands through his hair. “I wish we was married,” he said quietly.
“So do I,” she said, but he did not look at her. “It’s not really very fair on you, is it? If you were in love with anyone else other than me, you could already be married, and you would still be able to work and save the money to buy your land back.”
“I couldn’t be in love with nobody but you,” he said, bringing his eyes back to her. “I wouldn’t want t’ be, even if I could.”
“I know.”
He was silent, looking at her, his eyes saying more than any words ever could—suddenly she understood, and perhaps she had all along. Perhaps that was why she had created this place where they could be together. She stood staring at him, meeting his eyes, knowing—she wanted to be his wife. She wanted to please him and share with him and remove this distance that was forever between them. Her father could not deny them this—Janson could take her as his wife. She could be part of him today in every way but name only—and she would have his name as well, when they could at last leave here together.
She moved to stand just inches from him, looking up into his green eyes, feeling a touch of fear move through her—but that would not keep them apart. There was nothing that would keep them apart any longer. “Janson, make me your wife,” she said, meeting his eyes. “Let me do for you the things a wife does for her husband—”
He opened his mouth, and she thought for a moment he would speak, but he only continued to look at her, his eyes moving over her face. She felt the color begin to rise to her cheeks and she moved into his arms, pressing her face to his shoulder, feeling his arms tighten around her. He kissed her hair, holding her against him. “You don’t know what you’re sayin’,” he said softly, his lips in her hair.
“Yes, I do—”
“No—” he looked down at her and she lifted her head to meet his eyes. “You don’t.”
For a moment she could only look at him and love him all the more, knowing that he did not think she understood. “Yes, I do,” she said, her eyes moving over his face. “I want to please you. I want to be part of you—”
“Part of me—” His words trailed off and he stared at her for a moment, something going on behind his eyes that she told herself she understood. “You understan’ about men an’ women?” he asked her quietly, his green eyes moving over her face. “You know what a man an’ woman do t’ please each other?”
Elise felt the color begin to rise to her cheeks again, and she moved closer into his arms, pressing her face against his shoulder so that he could not look at her. “Yes—”
She felt his lips touch her hair. “That’s what you want t’ happen between us?”
She pressed her face even more tightly to his shoulder. “Yes—”
His fingers gently lifted her chin, making her look at him. “You want me t’ take you?—you know what that means?”
“Yes—” she said, looking into his eyes.
“Are you sure? I don’t want you t’ be sorry after we’ve—”
“I’d never be sorry for loving you.”
“But—are you sure? Once we’ve—” but his words trailed off, his eyes searching hers, concerned that she understand, that she be sure.
“I am sure—Janson, make me your wife; make me be part of you—”
He looked at her for a moment, his fingers gently touching her cheek, his eyes holding her in a way they had never held her before. “You are part of me,” he said softly. “You’ve always been part of me—”
A touch of fear moved through her as he gently swung her into his arms and carried her toward the bed a moment later, fear at what would happen between them, and of what he would think of her afterward—but then she was lying on the quilt and he was beside her, leaning over her, the backs of his fingers trailing lightly over her cheek as he looked down at her. “I’m gonna be part ’a your body, Elise,” he said softly, looking at her. And she re
alized that she was trembling.
She lay in his arms afterward, the soft afternoon light casting shadows on the wonder that was his body. He held her, his fingers lightly stroking her side, his eyes on her in a way that told her how much he loved her.
“I love you,” he said softly, as if reading her thoughts.
“You do?”
“Yes, even more than before.” He leaned closer and kissed her, his lips lingering with hers for a time before her looked at her again. “You ain’t sorry it happened, are you?”
“I’d never be sorry for this. Are you?”
“No. I wanted you for s’ long. I just never thought—” He let his words trail off.
“Do you think any less of me now, because we have?”
“You know better’n that,” he said, a smile touching his lips. “I’d wondered if you knew about all this. I didn’t know how much your ma’d told you.”
“She didn’t tell me much,” Elise said.
“She told you enough.” And Elise left it at that.
“It really doesn’t make you think less of me, with us not being married yet?” she asked him again after a moment.
“Don’t even think about that. You an’ me are meant t’ be t’gether. Married or not, it don’t matter.”
“But, you’ll still marry me, won’t you?” She propped up on an elbow to look at him.
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