He laughed and then pulled out a white hankie and patted his face. He put it back in his pocket and took out a dime and a nickel and put them on the table. Coffee was a nickel, but I knowed he could add two nickels together, so I never said nothing to him about leaving too much money.
“Albertina, would you like to take a walk?”
When we got outside, the day had turned colder. I shivered and pulled my shawl around me. A wind come up, sharp, and my eyes got to watering.
Bernard looked at me. “Thinking about your mother?” he said, and before I could answer, “You needn’t be ashamed of your grief, my dear.”
I like to busted into tears. Nobody except Mama herself talked to me tender like that, and not very often, in fact hardly ever. I felt like I was in a dream. It hit me all the sudden what it meant to fall in love, and I felt like I could fall in love with this man. I felt light-headed. I swallowed back tears.
“Should I take you home?” he said.
I shook my head. “Do me good to walk.” I blinked my tears away. Was this what it was like, being looked after?
After a little bit he said, “There is something I’d like to talk to you about. See how you feel about it.”
“Well then,” I said.
He stopped and looked at me. “I know your situation. I understand you will soon need—well, a home. For you and your two sisters.” He laid his hand on my arm.
I looked down at my shoes. There it was. And now that it was in front of me, why, I felt like I wanted to take off and run. Getting married seemed like a harebrained notion. He seemed nice, sure enough, sweet even, maybe the sweetest man I ever met, but I didn’t hardly know him. His hand on my arm felt peculiar.
“I have a small inheritance, including my home in Millard,” he said. “On my income, you would not live in luxury, but I can provide some comforts.” He pulled back his hand. “Albertina?”
I thought about Opal and Dacia. If I got the willies thinking of myself married to a nice man I liked, how was I going to marry anybody?
I made myself look him in the face. “You a drinker?”
He smiled then. “Only a glass of sherry. In the evening. Not to worry, my dear.”
I didn’t know what sherry was, but I reckoned—only one glass.
We took up walking again. I heard him stop his breath several times like he was going to say something, but he hesitated. Finally, he said, almost whispering, “I would not trouble you.”
“Trouble?” I whispered back.
“You know.”
I felt a catch in my throat. “You mean . . . ?”
He kept on trudging, leaning forward like he was walking against a storm, but the wind wasn’t blowing that hard.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh.”
Just then a man in boots and overhauls walked by and brushed his leg against my skirt. When he was well by us, I said, half to myself, “No children?”
He smiled. From what he’d likely been told, maybe he reckoned I didn’t want none. Lord knowed, I’d had a hard time of it, and likely it wasn’t over yet, especially with Dacia still to finish raising. But never once had I thought I didn’t want no children when the time come. Tell the truth, it never occurred to me. Now I tried to picture it, me getting on in years, my twenties, my thirties, Dacia and Opal grown and gone, and me without no children of my own. I just stood there, taking it in. Not wanting children would be like not wanting food or water or air. To me, it wasn’t natural.
Now as far as the coupling, that part I didn’t know much about except for watching the livestock. The way the Bible talked, though, it seemed like people, even women, took pleasure in it, the way they defied the Commandments to lay with the one they desired. Thinking this, I blushed deep red.
“Ah, Albertina, all this is a bit much for you, isn’t it?” Bernard said. “We can talk again. Let me get you home.”
I was too shocked to ask him how come he wouldn’t lay with me, or couldn’t. I didn’t know was he born that way, did he have an accident, or what.
We parted without me saying one way or the other would I marry him. But I did let him put his cheek on mine when we said good night, and it was soft and sweet, and his hair smelled good.
* * *
As I laid in bed that night, sleepless, my thoughts went back and forth. There would be comforts for the three of us girls—comforts, what a wonder!—and Dacia and Opal, why, Bernard could teach them things I never could. And he acted so kind-hearted. I thought about Mama and Daddy and whatever it was Daddy done that made us pack up and leave Kentucky. I thought about the hollering that’d went on between them, and how Daddy liked his drink, and how Dacia’d told me Mama didn’t want her children no more. I didn’t believe what Dacia said, of course, but maybe if Daddy’d treated Mama more kindly she might’ve felt different and done different in some kind of way.
Against all that, no children of my own.
When I woken up in the morning, I knowed I couldn’t marry Bernard, and it was foolish to even consider it. Of course I wanted children—everbody did—and I reckoned I would want relations with my husband, too, once I got used to it.
But Bernard had taught me something. What he taught me was, besides taking in my sisters, the man I married had to look me in the eye when we talked, and me not feel prickly. And I had to feel like there was a chance I could fall in love with him. I wasn’t going to settle for no less.
I didn’t have no idea how or where I was going to meet this man, or even if there was one. And I didn’t have much time. William and that woman—Dora was her name—why, they was planning to get married in the spring, and it was coming up Christmas already.
Chapter 10
Alta Bea come over to the house one morning long about mid-March. It was a breezy day, so I was taking down the curtains to hang out on the line and beat the dust out of. I was standing on a chair when she come in.
“Don’t stop on my account,” she said. “The girls in school?”
I nodded. “Bring me that basket, would you?”
She pushed it with her foot. “Did you like either one of those farmers William set you up with?”
“Only met the one so far.” I pulled the rod down and started sliding the curtain off into the basket. “He didn’t have much to say.”
The twins was standing in the corner, leaning on each other, staring at Alta Bea.
“Where is his place?” she said.
“South of the river. Good bottom land. Grows alfalfa hay, besides wheat, and runs cattle.” I dropped the other curtain into the basket and sneezed from the dust.
“How did he seem?” She was talking to me, but I seen she was smiling at the twins. They didn’t say nothing.
“Where’s my manners?” I said. “Let me get you some coffee.”
“I can’t stay.”
I climbed down off the chair. “James, John, go outside and play. Go on now.”
“Cold out there,” one of them said.
“Go on now. Do you good.” The boys put on their extra shirts and slumped out the door.
“I really can’t stay,” Alta Bea said. “I just came by to ask you to go to a dance with me Saturday night.”
I carried the chair over to the other window. Dacia’d heard at school that Alta Bea had started gallivanting around, and her mama was trying to get her to settle down. I wondered did she drink when she went out, and what-all went on. I was troubled for her reputation. “Don’t like to leave the children alone of an evening,” I said.
“Dacia’s old enough to watch them. You said so yourself.”
There wasn’t nothing to say to that. I climbed up on the chair and loosened the curtain rod.
“You’d be doing me a big favor,” she said. “I’m supposed to meet this man there, this son of a friend of Mother’s, and I don’t know him. You know what that’s like.”
I sighed.
“If you’re with me—you know,” she said.
“Where’s it at?”
“You’l
l go? That’s wonderful. I’ll pick you up.” She gathered up her things and left before I could say any more.
* * *
“A dance?” Dacia said. “What for?”
I opened a hairpin with my teeth and poked it in my hair. “Me and Alta Bea. I’m keeping her company.” I eyed the cup of coffee I had there on the table, but I reckoned it was cold by now.
“What about me?”
“You can watch the children. We won’t be late.”
“Alta Bea,” she said, wrinkling her nose. She took aholt of the hairbrush and pulled a handful of hairs out of the bristles. Then she stretched out her arm and let them float to the floor, following them with her eyes like a cat.
“You’re just gonna have to sweep that up tomorrow.” I felt around my head and added another pin.
“Daddy says there’s something wrong with her. Crazy as a hoot owl.” More hairs.
I drunk a sip of coffee. Cold, like I thought. I got up and went to the stove, and when I come back with the coffeepot, there was a couple hairs floating in the cup. “How’d them hairs get in there?”
She set back and folded her arms. “Damn if I know.”
Just then come a knocking at the door. “I don’t have time right now to rebuke you, Lucky,” I said to Dacia.
“You’ve got a big stain on the back of your skirt,” she said. “Looks like you wet yourself.” She lifted the hairbrush and fluffed her side hair with it.
I suspicioned she was lying, but I twisted myself around and checked it anyhow. Wasn’t nothing there.
Alta Bea opened the door and walked in. “You ready? Hello, Dacia.”
Dacia stood up and walked toward the door. “I gotta go to the backhouse,” she said. “Don’t leave till I get back.” She stopped and said to Alta Bea, “I gotta watch the children. Somebody in this house has to take care of them.”
Alta Bea give her a half smile. “You’re so sweet to oblige your sister.”
“Huh.” Dacia tossed her head and went out the door.
“You look awful pretty,” I said to Alta Bea.
She shook her head. “That girl.”
“She’s a pistol, sure enough,” I said. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Me and Alta Bea walked arm in arm into the Sullivan County Men’s Fraternal Hall. I’d heard about these dances, but I never had been to one before. After the cold night air, it was hot inside, smoky, and the music and people talking made a racket. There was people dancing, and the old wooden floor creaked and cracked, and there was a hissing sound as people shuffled their feet.
My lips felt dry. I was looking around for the punch bowl when I seen this man playing the fiddle onstage. I watched him for a minute, and something happened inside me that’d never happened before. I told Alta Bea, “That one’s mine even if I never get him.”
“What?” she said, though I knowed she heard me. Her mouth was wide open.
“The one playing the fiddle.” He looked to be in his late twenties, and he was scrawny and nearly bald, but he had a smile that went all over his face, and he closed his eyes while he was playing and seemed like he was transported.
Alta Bea told me she happened to know the man’s name—Sam Frownfelter—because he played for weddings around town. Alta Bea’s mother loved weddings, and seemed like she never missed one. She often talked about the fine wedding she’d put on for Alta Bea when the time come.
“He available, do you know?” I said.
“Well, he may not look like much, but I’ve heard he’s a ladies’ man.”
I took her arm. “Where’s the punch? I’m thirsty.”
After a little bit the band took a breather, and I followed the fiddler out a side door. My heart was pounding.
I seen him standing by himself smoking a cigarette. I walked right up to him and asked him did he have another one. He looked me up and down, and dug in his shirt pocket. “I never knowed a little girl that smoked,” he said, but he lit it for me anyhow.
I pulled the smoke in my mouth—I knowed better than to draw it into my lungs—and blowed it out. It tasted awful. “I ain’t no little girl, I’m sixteen.” Just turned.
“Don’t look but thirteen.”
“I been around.” I tried to make my voice low and womanly.
He laughed. “No, you ain’t.”
I throwed the cigarette on the ground and mashed it. As I was walking away, he said, “Don’t go off in a huff now. What’s your name?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” My heart felt squeezed. I wasn’t the kind to act smart-alecky, and I didn’t even know, was I doing it right or just looking the fool.
Later on, back inside, Alta Bea said to me, “He’s watching you,” and I knowed who she meant. But I only glanced at the stage ever little bit.
Me and her, we stayed till the last song, and we tarried a while by the door. He come out carrying his fiddle in its case. Another man, with light-colored hair, kind of stocky, was with him—the banjo player.
“Hello there, Bertie,” the fiddler said. To this day I don’t know how he found out my name. A thrill run up and down me.
“This here’s my friend Alta Bea Snedeker,” I said.
He nodded and reached out his hand to shake hers. “Sam Frownfelter.” He stood there staring at me.
Then his friend shook our hands and introduced himself as Harold Satterfield. Now Harold, he had a deep dimple in his chin—first man I ever saw that had one—and I thought of a saying Grandma Sweet had: “Cleft chin, devil within.” I didn’t like the way he looked at me, like he was calculating. He struck me as the kind of man makes a good salesman. Kind of man you got to watch yourself around.
After me, he looked at Alta Bea. He said to her, “You ladies have a way to get home?”
“You have a way to get us home?” Alta Bea said quick. She used a tone of voice I never heard her use before.
“One buggy and two mules.”
“That should be enough,” she said. Me, I stood there like a stone. So did Sam.
It was Sam’s buggy, so him and me set on the springboard, and Alta Bea and Harold got in the back. Sam told me he had a draying business, hauling sundry items in town and between towns, with a wagon and a team. Besides his music.
Before we got home, he managed to ask me out for a date the next day. If Alta Bea heard, she never give no sign of it.
I never found out who the man was she claimed she was supposed to meet at the dance. I reckon that was a tale she told.
* * *
The next day I left Dacia in charge of the children, saying I was going to wash a lady’s windows in town. Then I met Sam behind Karlsson’s dry goods store, where he rented three rooms in the back. Karlsson, the man who owned the store, he was Sam’s biggest dray customer.
I didn’t want nobody to know I was seeing Sam. I reckoned my big brothers, why, they would find some reason not to like him since they never picked him out. They wasn’t boys no more, and they imagined they should run things. It felt like I was doing wrong, seeing Sam behind their backs, but I done it anyhow. Daddy, I never paid no mind to his feelings no more, not since the day he hung John for a joke and I stabbed him with the hay fork. But me being sixteen, he could get the law after us if he took it into his head.
Sam was setting in the buggy when I walked up, and soon’s he seen me, he hopped down and took my basket of food and put it in the back. Then he helped me up, set down, and tipped his hat. Now we was setting side by side on the springboard, and when he tipped his hat, he tipped it to the front like he was tipping it to the mules. “Good morning, Miss Bertie,” he said. I could tell this was his way of doing something a little bit funny to ease my mind, seeing’s as how we didn’t hardly know each other yet. I liked he did that. Alta Bea was right—he wasn’t very good-looking. But he had a way about him that wasn’t like nobody I ever knowed before. Maybe a little like I pictured Daddy if he wasn’t drunk all the time.
Now Sam turned to me and smiled. Deep lines spread out
from the corners of his eyes—seemed like they went all the way to the top of his forehead and down the sides of his cheeks to his mouth. I never knowed nobody had a smile like Sam’s. It was like the sun come out.
He put on his hat and clucked to the mules, and we set off.
The cold wind had let up in the night, and it was a sunny day for March, with a little heat in the breeze. A beautiful day for a picnic.
Me and Sam, we got to talking about our kin, and I told him I had charge of my little sisters. I started off with Dacia. “You should hear her when I go out,” I said. “ ‘Where you going? Is that what you’re wearing? You putting on powder? You gonna comb your hair?’” I realized I was making it sound like I went out all the time, which I had only done two times—once with that farmer—but Dacia made a fuss about it. When I got back, she also peppered me with questions. “He smell good? What’d he say? What’d you say? He hold your hand? He kiss you?” But I didn’t see no need to tell Sam about that.
“What about the little one?” he said. “She like the boys, too?”
It took me aback, what he seemed to understand about Dacia already. “Oh, Opal, she’s a caution,” I said. “Always making something. I said, if she had two sticks and a sand burr, she’d make something. But sewing, that’s what her heart inclines to. She’ll set down and cut up material without no plan nor pattern, seems like, and it’ll come out. Never seen the like of that child.”
“Whoa, mule, hold up.” One of the mules was shying away from a tall Jimsonweed, and Sam reined him back in.
I wasn’t there to ask him, “Would you be a good father to my sisters? Would you be a good husband to me?” I was there to find out them things, but you don’t find them things out by asking directly. You have to sniff it out like a dog does.
Pretty soon he said, “River suit you to eat?”
I nodded. “Opal, one day I come into the room, and she was setting there talking to the material. ‘Now don’t you bunch up like that, I don’t want to see no puckers.’”
We both laughed.
“I’ll say one thing,” I went on. “If she darns your sock, you’ll never raise a blister where the mend’s at.”
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