by Donis Casey
“Surely you haven’t been walking that whole long way.”
Holly tore her eyes away from the pot and looked at Alafair. “No, ma’am, I mostly took the train, but I’ve had to stop for a while in one town or another and find work, until I had enough money to buy a train ticket to somewhere else.”
“Well, you’ll be glad to know that you’re almost there, sugar. Okmulgee is but eighteen miles west of here.”
Blanche was touched by the romance of Holly’s quest. “Mama, surely we can give Miz Johnson a ride to Okmulgee.”
The idea alarmed Holly. “Oh, no. Thank you, but no.” She made a move to stand up. “I shouldn’t have imposed on you…”
Alafair put out a hand. “Now, never mind, Miz Johnson. We’re glad to help if you want, but how you finish your journey is up to you.” She shot Blanche a warning look.
***
The parlor was large and high-ceilinged, full of furniture that didn’t match, with a potbellied stove in one corner and an upright piano in another. This time of year the furniture was grouped around the stove. Each chair had a small rag rug on the floor before it and a little table to its side, each covered with crocheted doilies and sporting a hurricane lamp or a candle. A large sewing basket sat beside one comfortable stuffed armchair. Holly pegged that one for Alafair’s. A tall, locked, gun cabinet sat discreetly behind an open door that led to one of the bedrooms. A partially rolled quilting frame was suspended just under the ceiling, with a half-finished quilt stretched out on it. Holly didn’t recognize the pattern.
The room was warm and homey, but as hard as she tried to stay engaged with the family’s conversation, Holly felt herself nodding off. Her head fell forward and she jerked awake. It felt like she had only been out for a minute, but the parlor was deserted except for the dog snoring on a rug in front of the settee. Someone had placed a throw pillow behind her head and a blanket over her lap. She blinked at the window. It was dark and raining hard.
She could hear voices in the kitchen and stood up. Alafair, Shaw, and Gee Dub looked up at her when she appeared in the door.
“How long have I been asleep?”
“A couple of hours, sugar,” Alafair said. “The girls have gone to bed, but you were just so worn out I didn’t want to disturb you.”
Holly pushed a stray lock of hair back over her ear. “My goodness, I must be leaving. I’m sorry to be such a bother.”
Alafair stood up and gestured for Holly to take a chair at the table. “I declare, honey, you must be worn plumb to a nub after the day you’ve had. I’ve fixed up one of the beds in the girls’ room just for you. Why don’t you head on in? I’ll bring you a pitcher of hot water so you can clean up a bit before bed.”
The offer was only sensible, considering the time of day and the horrible weather, but this was not what Holly had planned at all. The idea of spending the night in the home of strangers she had come across on the road disturbed her.
Alafair read her expression. A glance, some wordless familial communication, passed between the three Tuckers, and Shaw pushed back from the table. “Come on in to the parlor, son,” he said to Gee Dub. “Let the ladies talk.”
Gee Dub’s dark gaze lingered on Holly’s face for a moment before he unfolded himself from his chair and followed his father into the parlor.
Once the men had left, Alafair resumed the conversation in a businesslike tone. “Miz Johnson, it’s only a few miles to Okmulgee from here. I’ll take you into Boynton first thing in the morning. You can get on the train there and be in Okmulgee in less than an hour.”
“Mrs. Tucker, I can’t afford a train ticket. I need to save what little money I have so that I can eat and perhaps pay for a place to stay for a few days until I find my husband. I’ve walked here all the way from Muskogee. I can walk from here to Okmulgee. Believe me, as far as I’ve come already, an eighteen-mile hike is nothing.”
She expected Alafair to offer her the funds for a ticket and was prepared to refuse. But Alafair said, “Do you have folks in Maine who would wire you the money?”
“Not anymore.”
Alafair sensed that there was a lot more to this tale than Holly was willing to tell her. That was her lookout, though, and none of Alafair’s business. Even so…
“What if you can’t find your husband before you run out of funds, Miz Johnson?”
“I’ll find work in Okmulgee, then. Until I either find him or save enough for train fare back to Maine.”
“Well, I won’t hear of you walking all that long road to Okmulgee, a lone woman all by herself. Especially not in this weather. You’ve been lucky up to now that somebody hasn’t knocked you on the head and stole everything you own. I’d feel a whole lot better if you’d let my husband or me carry you over there in the buggy. Do you know your mother-in-law’s name?”
“Dan told me his father’s name was Fern Johnson. I remember because I thought that was odd. I don’t know the mother’s name.”
“Once you get there you can ask the operator at the Okmulgee telephone exchange if she knows of a Fern Johnson family in the area. If that don’t work out, my husband’s brother’s family lives in Okmulgee. Charles owns a sawmill and one of his sons-in-law owns a haberdashery. You have working experience and it’s plain that you have a lot of grit and perseverance. I’m sure that between the two of them they can scare you up a job of work, at least until you decide what you’re going to do.”
Holly’s expression conveyed a cross between stunned disbelief at such generosity and skepticism about this chance-met stranger’s motives. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how I can repay you.”
Alafair leaned back in her chair. “Honey, if it was one of my daughters who was in such a fix, I hope someone would be kind enough to help her. Besides, I admire your grit. You let us help you out, now. Someday God will put a lost child in your path and you can help her.”
***
After Alafair settled her exhausted guest into an extra cot in the girls’ bedroom, she returned to the parlor to find Shaw and Gee Dub with their chairs pulled up around the potbellied stove in the corner. Shaw was working on a ledger in his lap. Gee Dub was noodling around on his guitar, a quiet little ditty that Alafair didn’t recognize. Neither man looked at her when she sat down in her armchair, but she was not fooled by their studied indifference.
“Did y’all hear?” she said.
“Part of it,” Shaw admitted. “I heard her say she has no money.”
“Dad,” Gee Dub said, “who is the conductor on the Muskogee-Okmulgee milk run now? Is it still Joe Cecil?”
Shaw nodded. “Well, yes it is. As soon as Joe got back from San Antonio after the war, the gal who was filling in stepped aside and he got his old job back. Are you thinking your cousin Joe might let Miz Johnson hitch a ride to Okmulgee in the caboose?”
“He might. He let me do it once a few years back when I was heading to Okmulgee to do some temporary work for Uncle Charles in the sawmill. Maybe if I hang around the platform when the train comes through at eleven tomorrow I can catch him and bend his ear about it.” He hesitated, then plowed on. “Even if I can’t wrangle a free ride for her, a ticket from Boynton to Okmulgee is only a couple of dollars. I don’t see why I couldn’t advance her a loan.”
Alafair opened her mouth to speak, but Shaw beat her to it. “I don’t expect she’d take your money, son,” he said. “She don’t seem keen to get herself into debt.”
“Well, maybe she’d be more likely to accept the money from Mama.”
“I doubt it. Let the woman figure out her own plans, son.”
Gee Dub didn’t pursue it. Alafair picked up her mending from the side table and cast him a surreptitious glance. He didn’t usually sit up with the family for so long. Since he had come home, he had been making his excuses and heading out to the bunk room shortly after supper.
“What do you
think of our wandering lamb, son?” she said.
He looked up at her, but didn’t stop playing. “Feel sorry for her. She’s had some tough luck.”
Shaw offered his opinion. “I don’t think much of a man who’d desert his wife, if that’s what he done.”
“I’ll drive her into Okmulgee tomorrow, if she’ll let me. I’m not much good for anything else right now.” Gee Dub’s tone was casual.
Alafair shook her head. “She acts like she’s spooked about something. I’m guessing she wouldn’t feel comfortable taking a long ride with a man she don’t know. You may have found her, but now it’s best you leave her to me, son.”
Gee Dub smiled and ended his tune with a flourish. He stood up. “Well, then, if that’s how it is, Ma. I’m going to bed. I’ll see y’all in the morning.”
After Gee Dub left, the only sound in the house was the scratch of Shaw’s pencil. Until Alafair said, “I think our boy has an eye for that young lady.”
“She’s married,” Shaw said.
“He knows that.”
“Well, then.” That’s all there is to it. Shaw did not need to point out that their son knew better than to set his sights on another man’s wife. But Alafair wasn’t entirely sure that the Gee Dub Tucker who had just left the house was the same Gee Dub Tucker who had gone to war.
Chapter Six
Rain was coming down steadily now, and Gee Dub was dripping wet by the time he made it back to the toolshed-cum-bedroom. Private Moretti had made it back before him and was stretched out on the extra bunk. Gee Dub shook out his hat and coat and hung them to dry on the peg beside the door.
“I figured you’d be asleep by now,” Gee Dub said.
Moretti had something else on his mind. “Why are you keeping those cartridge boxes, Mr. Tucker?”
Gee Dub sighed and sat down on his own cot. He took his tobacco pouch out of his breast pocket and rolled himself a cigarette before he replied. “You been snooping around, I see.”
“Not hard to see those yellow boxes sticking out from under your pillow.”
Gee Dub managed a humorless laugh. “You of all people ask me that?”
“Well, maybe that’s why I wanted to come, sir. Because of what happened in France.”
Gee Dub lay down and exhaled a plume of smoke toward the ceiling. “I kind of figured that’s why you showed up. You made a long trip for nothing, though.”
“Well, maybe. But I’m here now. So you want we should go up to the house so you can introduce me to your ma and pa?”
Gee Dub turned his head to look at Moretti. God, he was young. Moretti reminded Gee Dub of his brother Charlie, though they didn’t look alike at all. Charlie was tall and broad and fair of hair and blue of eye. Moretti was a skinny, pale, dark-haired teenager who said “wooder” instead of “water” and “yinz” instead of “y’all.” But both ran headlong into action and were energetic and thoughtless as pups. He blinked at the young soldier a couple of times before his gaze slid back toward the ceiling. “I’ve been thinking about that. I haven’t even told them you’re here. I wonder why?”
“Are you ashamed of me, Lieutenant?” Moretti seemed to think that was a funny notion.
“You? No. It’s just that right now I don’t want to explain where I know you from. They’ll ask questions. They’ll want to know about France, and I’m not ready to tell them about it yet.”
“Well, maybe you’re right. Seems you ought to keep what happened over there separate from this life here.”
“Give me a couple days.”
“Don’t worry about it, Lieutenant. I’ll make myself scarce till you’re ready.”
“I hope Ma doesn’t find out about you being here before I get the chance to tell her. She’s liable to be taken aback.”
“You are the master of understatement, Lieutenant. I would like to meet her, though. I never had a ma to dote on me like yours does.”
“You were raised by your grandmother, if I remember right.”
“My grandmother and my pa raised me and my brothers after my mother died. I was just six when she passed. I don’t remember her too well.”
“Grandmas are nice, though.”
“Not mine. I don’t think she was too happy about the situation, if I tell the truth. I expect she thought she was through with child-raising. She was pretty strict with us. Made us toe the line, that’s for sure. But she stepped up when we needed her, I guess.”
Gee Dub crossed his arms under his head. “Sometimes I try to imagine what it was like to grow up the way you did,” he said to the ceiling. “Until they shipped our unit out to Baltimore, I had never seen a city bigger than Oklahoma City. I grew up playing in these fields here, and in the woods. The air is clean. I’d hate to think about my children having to play in those dirty streets of Baltimore. Of course, I expect there are some nice places in Baltimore. I never saw them, though.”
Moretti shrugged. “Pittsburgh looks pretty much the same. But kids don’t know no better. It was normal to me. My brothers and me had our fun.”
“I reckon. Still, you don’t know what you missed.”
“Never will, I guess.” He crossed his legs and grinned. “That’s a pretty girl you found.”
Gee Dub wasn’t any happier with the new topic of conversation than he had been with the old. “You don’t know nothing about it.”
Moretti’s response was mild. “Is that so?”
“Yes, Private, that is so. Howsoever pretty she is, she has other things on her mind. Like wondering if she’s still married or not.”
“But you wouldn’t mind if she’s not.”
Gee Dub smiled. He wished he weren’t so transparent. “Well, she is a pretty girl. She’s a brave girl, too. I know better than to have designs on her, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate what I’m seeing.”
“You think she’s scared of you?”
“Maybe. She’s sure careful. I’m guessing that she’s had some trouble along the way.”
“Or maybe she don’t want to like you too much, either.”
Gee Dub shook his head firmly. “Don’t even think it. No, she’s had some trouble. Over in France I saw enough mistreated women to know what it looks like.”
“And you think you can protect her?”
Gee Dub heaved a sigh. “I wish I could help her see that not all men think she’s prey.”
Moretti laughed at that. “Thing is, Lieutenant, there’s a hell of a lot of men who do think of her just that way.”
The girl in France was a teenager. She had probably been pretty once, but months of starvation and hardship had left her skeletal and hollow-eyed, with stringy black hair, bad skin, and few teeth. She still wanted to live, though. Gee Dub could tell that she did, because she was fighting the soldiers who had captured her. Not like that other woman he had come across weeks earlier, on the road to Cantigny. That woman had lain on her back in the mud, her skirt still scrunched up around her thighs, bloody. There was no helping that one. He had only been able to arrange her in a more dignified position before she died. But the girl in St. Lo still had some life left in her. And an unknown power—not that he much believed in Providence anymore—had put her in his path.
Gee Dub shook himself back into the present. Moretti’s expression was knowing. “It’s over, Lieutenant.”
Gee Dub tried to rub the gooseflesh off his arms. “It’ll never be over, Moretti.”
***
The sun was well up before Holly managed to drag herself out of bed the next morning. The old yellow dog had spent the night on the floor beside her bed and kept her company as she dressed. She had not slept so well in weeks. Not that she had wanted to give in so completely to exhaustion, but she had not been able to help herself. She expected it was because she felt safe for the first time in a while.
She made her way into the kitchen wh
ere she found Alafair at the stove, stirring a big pot of something that smelled delicious. Alafair threw her a glance over her shoulder.
“Good morning, honey. Did you sleep well?”
“I did, thank you. I didn’t realize how tired I was. Where is everyone?”
“The girls are at school and my husband has gone out to the fields. Gee Dub is off on his own business. Sit down there and I’ll fry you up a slice of mush and some bacon. You want some coffee? There’s a pitcher of milk on the table.”
Holly sat down and allowed Alafair to wait on her, still nursing the feeling that this whole situation was unreal. “I think I woke up about dawn and saw two children standing beside the bed, looking down at me. I think one of them was Grace, because she grinned at me and didn’t have any top teeth. But the other one was a boy I didn’t recognize. Maybe it was a dream, though. I drifted right back off.”
Alafair made a noise that was half amusement and half exasperation. “You didn’t dream it. The boy was my nephew, Chase Kemp. He’s living for a spell with my daughter Mary and her baby Judy on the next farm over, while Mary’s husband Kurt is still in the service and Chase’s folks in Arizona get their law business off the ground. When the weather is too cold or rainy to walk, he comes over here, and me or Shaw take all the children into town for school in the wagon. Grace decided to show her cousin our exciting guest from all the way out in Maine, and they snuck off for a good look before I caught them.”
Alafair didn’t seem to be bothered by the incident, so Holly decided she wouldn’t be, either. Alafair sat down at the table with a mug of coffee and watched Holly eat for a few minutes.
“What did you call this, Mrs. Tucker?” Holly poked at the golden slab of mush on her plate.
Alafair blinked. “That’s cornmeal mush, honey. Haven’t you ever eaten any before? Here, slap some butter on it, and try some of this sorghum.” She stood up and began to fix the plate as though Holly were a five-year-old who couldn’t manage to serve herself.