“Ye ken how long it took us to get from our castle by the river to my Granddad’s place?” he asked. Janie nodded her head, focusing her eyes wide with awe on his face to keep from getting dizzy watching the trees whizzing past. “Weel, in this automobile we coulda made the trip in less than an hour.”
Benji didn’t think her eyes could have gotten any wider, but they did. “Of course, that would be if had paved roads. We also have other, um, automobiles in different configurations that can go over rough terrain.”
Benji shifted in his seat, turning around as far as he could to face her. “Janie, I have lots to show ye, but I really would like to do it as yer husband. If we have a small ceremony, we can do it soon. I dinna want to wait fer ye to be my wife. I dinna want to chance ye changin’ yer mind about me,” he pled sincerely, then added a grin, hoping to get one from her in return.
“Jest try and get rid of me,” she said, and relaxed, just a little, into the comfortable seat. “I’d stay with you, married or not, but I really would like to be marrit,” a big grin appearing with the word marrit.
The baby nursing earlier was comforting, had felt great, but only reminded her that there were more pleasures she and Benji would be able to share: but only if they were legally married. “How long do we have to wait?” she asked timidly, hoping that she could be heard over the roar of the road moving away from under them.
Billy answered, “We’ll be home—your new home, too—in about twenty minutes. I’ll make a few calls, call in a few favors, get Mom to take you shopping for a dress, and send Benji to get something a little less ragged,” he finished dryly, putting his finger through the hole in Benji’s shirt sleeve. “Bullet?” he asked.
“Musket ball,” Benji replied with a shrug. “No good guys were hurt. James is a good shot,” he added, in a tone that said, ‘Not now; I’ll tell you about it later.’
“How are you doing back there, Janie?” Billy asked, then added. “It’s okay if I call you Janie, isn’t it?”
Jane nodded her head then realized that he couldn’t see her. But he could; she looked up and saw his reflection smiling at her in the little mirror in the middle of the big window in front of him and Benji. “You just seem like a Janie to me—tough, but real sweet, too, aye?”
Jane blushed as Benji answered for her, “Aye, verra much aye,” then reddened a bit himself as he realized that he was thinking of her sweet kisses. “How much longer?” he asked to change the subject and settle down the excitement that was starting to stir in his pants.
“Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” Billy chanted in a childlike voice. “Gee, Benji, I didn’t think I’d hear that until Mac was bigger.”
Billy squinted in emotional pain at the remark. He still wasn’t sure that this was going to work, Benji the biological father so close to his son. Surely, there would be feelings that would start to grow, at least on Benji’s part.
“Aye, he’s sure to be a talker. I mean, it isna like ye arena. Lads do tend to take after their sires, aye?” Benji said, then patted Billy on the shoulder, letting him know with the words and the touch that he wasn’t going to lay claim to the boy.
Billy sniffed back the tears of relief at the acknowledgment. “Aye,” he replied sweetly, “but they’re also influenced by friends,” he added, and patted Benji on the thigh.
“Friends fer life and more,” Benji said, as he put his large hand on top of Billy’s. “If I’m his godfather, then that means yer my godbrother, if there is such a title. I’ll be there fer anythin’ ye need, but I willna take him from ye, I promise. He’s yer son.”
Billy sniffed again, nodded in appreciation, swallowed the lump in his throat, and then found the profound words to wrap up the awkward conversation, boldly proclaiming as he pulled into the driveway, “We’re home!”
“Looks like that lawn finally filled in,” Benji said, his voice cracking slightly as he tried to override the tears he had just gulped. He wasn’t sure if they were tears of joy from the cataclysmic discovery that he had a child, or sadness at the sudden, abysmal loss of him, his firstborn child, just a few seconds later. He exited the car, pushing down the sweet and bitter bile gurgling in his throat, and concentrated on getting Jane extracted from her mysteriously twisted seatbelt. Yes, he had missed the first few months of his biological son’s life, but he would be there for him as a godfather. And, God willing, he’d be there for the births of the many children he and Janie would have together.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Billy asked, as he shifted Mac to his other hip, allowing his free arm to gently guide Benji’s open side toward the house, not that he needed the help.
Benji clutched Janie tighter to him with his other arm and planted a firm kiss on the side of her brow. “Of course, I am; I’m getting’ marrit today!” he crowed, realizing halfway through the feigned glee that it had become genuine. “Will ye be my best man?” he asked Billy. “I mean, ye are my brother now, aye?”
“Aye,” Billy replied brightly. “And, if you care to get acquainted with your godson, I’ll just slip inside and make a few phone calls. You know where everything is. Just go ahead and take the guest room and get your bags…” Billy paused in his banter and took a step back, looking anew at Benji and his fiancée. “You don’t have anything to unpack, do you?”
“Not unless ye want us to run around in our birthday suits,” Benji joked. He glanced over at Jane and saw the confused look on her face. “Birthday suits are what yer born with: no clothes. I dinna think he wants us to take our leave naked,” he whispered.
“No,” Jane said, as she shook her head. “This may not be much, but I think I like wearing clothes now.”
Jane smiled sweetly at Billy when she noticed that what she had said, didn’t make any sense to him. “Benji made this for me,” she said, and fingered the edge of her blue calico drape. “The,” she groaned the word, “master I had before Benji didn’t think I deserved to wear clothes. He thought I should earn them. However,” she took a deep cleansing breath and divulged reluctantly, “I wouldn’t do what he wanted me to do, so I decided I’d rather run around in nothing but a scrap of leather than…”
Billy held his hand up with the gesture to stop. “I get it. However, I think you deserve a proper wedding dress. White maybe?”
Jane inhaled as if to speak, but didn’t know what to say. “Of course,” Benji answered for her. “She’s pure and earned it. Now, wasna there a women’s side to that big and tall clothin’ store that ye took me to?”
“Yes, and as soon as my dear mother gets back from the hospital, I’ll have her escort Miss Janie to the boutique.”
“Bibb is okay, isna she? I mean, ye said there was no more cancer…” Benji asked fearfully.
“Oh, she’s fine. She just went to check on one of our girls. April went into preterm labor, so they put her on some sort of drip…”
Billy realized that Jane didn’t know what he was talking about. “Janie, my mother, Bibb—you’ll meet her when she gets back—has a home here for women who are pregnant and don’t, um, have a man or a family to take care of them.” Billy bit his lip as he thought about whether to tell her that this place was a safe and sane alternative to women getting abortions. He shook his head, realizing that she didn’t need to know about the culturally accepted, but hideous practice of birth control. “So, we become our own family here. April, one of my sisters as I call them, started to have her baby early. We now have medicines, good medicines, that can get dripped into the woman’s body so the baby can stay inside of the mother and grow until he or she is big enough to be born.”
Billy didn’t have to ask if she understood: he could tell she did. “When the bedrest doesn’t work, you have special teas that help the womb be still?” she asked to make sure she did understand.
“Exactly! Now Benji, are you familiar with modern diapers?” Billy asked, as he showed Benji into the brightly painted nursery, the walls covered with photographs of lions, elephants, and other wild critters al
ongside their pastel animated characterizations. “Oh, and here are the wipes and the trash. Now, I really do have to make those phone calls or you’ll have to wait another day.”
Benji took his non-baby laden hand and comically shoved Billy out the door. “If I canna figure it out, Janie can. Now out, out!”
“Wait! I need Janie for just a minute, and then she’ll be right back. Come on, dear. Let’s go to my office,” Billy said, his arm out to accept hers.
Jane looked shyly at Billy, then grinned at Benji, and put her hand on his chatty new brother’s arm. She wasn’t used to touching people, but he was family, just like James and Leah, Jody and Sarah, Evie, Wallace, Jenny, and all those babies. She would be happy to have more kin.
Jane walked arm in arm with Billy down the hall to his wood paneled office, the walls adorned with a series of strange, colorful pictures. Billy saw her confused look. “Those are ultrasound pictures of Mac before he was born. They can take pictures of the babies, even before they come out, now. And that’s his birth mother, Autumn. She was a wonderful person, my first sister.” Billy sniffed back the unexpected tears. “She would have stayed with us here to help the other sisters if she had lived. She liked Benji, but she wasn’t his fiancée or girlfriend. She was just someone whose life he saved by giving his body. But Janie, he didn’t give her his soul. I can tell by the look in his eyes when he sees you that you’re the only one he wants. And, from what I know of him from when he was here before, there has never been anyone else in his life. You, my dear, are getting a pure man. He deserves to wear white at his wedding, too.”
“Yes, I’m glad he saved her,” Jane said sincerely. “and I’m glad she gave you her child, but I’m confused. Benji said something about a Peter and having a baby and…” She didn’t know how to finish her question, but by the uneasy look on Billy’s face, he understood.
He shrugged his shoulders, both of them this time, and explained as simply as he could. “God made us all different, inside and out. He made you black on the outside and me gay on the inside. Benji likes you because you’re a woman. You like him because he’s a man. I don’t like women that way, but I do like men, one in particular. Peter is my husband, although we call it ‘partner for life’ in some areas of this country. Just like people didn’t think you were a complete, normal human being worthy of being married in your time, I’ve had the same problem here because I’m not the same as some of the people who make, or made, the laws. There are bigots still, Janie, it’s just they hide behind their holy books and old ways. They say that Peter and I are less than they are, that we’re sick,” Billy added a circular finger movement around his ear indicating ‘cuckoo,’ “but I’m just the same as you and Benji and everyone else.
“It’s getting better all the time, though. Janie, some people may still shun you or be rude to you because of your dark skin color, but you can walk into any restaurant—that’s a tavern—in this town, and they’ll serve you food just like a white person. It took a long time for that to change. It was only fifty years or so ago that a few black men sat at a lunch counter, tavern, right here in Greensboro, refusing to leave until they were served a meal. They were brave men and won the right to eat alongside of white folks and did it without anyone being hurt, without wars or lynching or… Janie, you’re free here in this time. Both you and I are still going to have to deal with mean people who think they’re better than you and me because we’re not the same as them, but we really are.”
“You mean we’re the same, but different?”
“We’re all people, and we’re all different, but God made us that way on purpose. He does not make mistakes. He wants us all to get along. So, sometimes we have to put up with the rudeness, cruel words, and hopefully nothing else, but we can’t let it make us mean.”
Jane nodded then her tears started to fall. “I know; that’s what my mama told me: You have a kind heart; don’t let them make you mean.” Jane wiped her tears on the back of her hand and asked, “Does this mean that you’re my brother now?”
“Real soon, sweetie, real soon. Now, where were you born?” he asked.
“Africa, I think,” she replied uncertainly, “but I don’t know where. Benji said it’s a big place.”
“Yes, it is, but no worries. Okay, when,” he shook his head, realizing that a birth year would be of no use. He couldn’t write down a year like 1762. “Um, do you know how old you are?”
“No, but I’ve, um, been a woman for,” Jane tapped her fingers on her thumb on one hand and then started on the other, “for nine years.”
“Cool; that means you’re about twenty years old, or close enough. Do you know what season, I mean was it summer or winter or…” Billy saw the confused look on her face turn into embarrassment. “How about a springtime birthday, say April 25th, and 1983?”
Jane looked back and forth. “Um, what year is it now?” she asked innocently.
“Twenty thirteen, that is, the year of our Lord two thousand and thirteen… Oh, shit, sit down!” he ordered when he saw her reel. He pushed the spare chair toward her. “Put your head between your knees and good girl,” he said; she knew what to do.
Jane composed herself, took a deep breath, and then sat up cautiously. “I never thought about the number of the year before. I was just going forward in time to a good life, where the color of my skin didn’t matter, and Benji and I could get married. I, I’m sorry.”
“Well, I think I have enough information to get you some documentation. I already know about Benji. You see, he was born in the 18th century, too, and I had to help him get both a driver’s and a contractor’s license when he was here last year. Hey, I’ll bet you’re hungry. There’s a basket of fruit on the table to tide you over until I can make a proper meal. Just give me twenty minutes in here, a half hour, tops.”
Benji and his little charge arrived at Billy’s doorway just as Jane was ready to leave. “Hungry?” he asked, ready to lead her to the kitchen. He had heard about the snack bowl offer. “We have a few fruits here that I dinna think ye’ve ever tasted. How about ye, little man,” he asked baby Mac. “Are ye old enough fer fruit?”
“You can mash some banana for him,” Billy hollered, as he stuck his head out the door, “Oh, sorry about that, mate,” he said to the man on the phone. “I just got a new babysitter, and he doesn’t know what Mac can eat. Now, remember when…”
“It looks like Billy is workin’ on yer papers,” Benji said.
“Papers?” Jane squeaked, too horrified to say any more.
“Oh, no, no, no, NO!” Benji exclaimed. “Not ownership papers: a birth certificate so we can wed. I ken it seems crazy,” he said, as he rolled his head around, eliciting a giggle from both Mac and Janie, “but they want a paper sayin’ that yer alive. I mean, I suppose they have their reasons, but it’s obvious that yer not a child and are old enough to wed. Yer sure big enough,” he joked, happy to hear her laugh again. “Lord, I dinna think I’ll ever tire of hearin’ ye happy,” he said as he placed his free hand on her cheek.
“Well, as long as you’re nearby, I’m sure I’ll be happy and stay happy. Now, what’s this?” Jane asked, pointing at, but afraid to touch the yellow claw-like configuration in the middle of the wooden bowl.
“Bananas: they’re good fer ye and good tastin’, too. Here, take,” Benji inhaled deeply as he voiced the baby boy’s name for the first time, “Mac,” then continued, “and I’ll get a bowl and some eatin’ utensils.”
Jane sat down with Mac. Benji brought the dinnerware to the table, pulled off a banana, showed it to her, and then waved it in front of the boy’s face, laughing with the child as he grabbed at the elusive golden fare. “Ye like these, aye?”
Mac answered with more giggles, hand waving, and straining against Jane’s arms, his tiny fingers reaching for the food.
“Ye see, this is how yer supposed to peel a banana,” Benji said, as he illustrated the task. “Ye pull it apart here, not where it was attached to at the bunch. At least, that�
�s how my monkey friend showed me. Ooh, ooh, aah, ahh.” Benji added a monkey face and scratching under his armpits to his ape impersonation, and they all giggled and chortled.
“Janie, I really dinna plan on havin’ a baby first,” he apologized, suddenly somber, “but I couldna give up the chance to be in his life now that I’ve met him. I hope ye dinna mind…”
“Jest try and take him away from me,” she said with a smile. She put both arms around her charge and rocked him back and forth, and placed a kiss on the top of his fuzzy head. “From what Evie said, this will be the only way we’ll get a blue-eyed, red headed child. Godson,” she asked, “what is a godson?”
“It means I’ll be there to take care of him should anything go wrong with his parents, and even if they’re still alive and healthy, I’ll be a part of his family. Almost like a…a…a,” Benji struggled for a word or description. He didn’t know if she knew the word ‘substitute,’ and didn’t want to embarrass her if she didn’t.
“Like your grandfather? He wasn’t your father, but you still loved him, and he was special to you.” Jane broke off a piece of the banana, took the fork from the table and mashed the pale fruit into the bowl, smiling sheepishly when she saw that she had found the right analogy. Benji was speechless, but nodded his head in agreement.
“Here you go, Mac; try this,” she said, offering the mashed fruit.
“Now you,” Benji said. He held the peeled banana near her face, offering her a taste. “A kinder, more gentle and forgiving woman I’ve never met.” He snorted and said, “And I had to travel 230 years and fight a dozen men to get ye! But, ye were worth it. I hope I never disappoint ye again.”
The Great Big Fairy (The Fairies Saga Book 4) Page 32