The Amethyst Heart

by Penelope J. Stokes

“Skills? Don’t talk to me about skills, boy! I got eyes, ain’t I? Any fool can see that you ain’t got the strength to do a man’s job.” He closed the gap between them, keeping his gaze focused on the good side of Harper’s face. “My answer is no, and that’s final. Now get along with you. Go back to wherever you came from.” Tarbush’s mouth twisted in a leering grin. “Maybe come Halloween, you can find yourself a job—at least for one night. And you won’t even have to buy a mask.”

  Harper turned to go. His heart lay like a dead weight in his chest, but mentally he reprimanded himself for the hope that had brought yet another disappointment. Tarbush might be stubborn and ignorant and foulmouthed, but the truth was, he wasn’t much different from the dozen other employers Harper had approached over the past two weeks. Some were less offensive, to be sure, but their answer was always the same: No.

  In fact, Harper had to admit that he preferred Tarbush’s crude candor to the thinly veiled disgust of the more polite ones. At least with Tarbush he knew where he stood. The man couldn’t stand to look at him, couldn’t believe that a fellow as scarred and broken as Harper Wainwright might have something of value to offer to his construction business—or to society in general. Freak, Tarbush had called him. Nobody’s gonna hire a freak.

  Harper limped along Main Street toward Jefferson Davis Avenue, where Noble House stood. As soon as the big two-story house came into view, his spirits began to lift. Here, at least, he didn’t have to cover his face. Here he didn’t have to apologize for who—or what—he was. Here he had meaningful work, even if it only bought him room and board.

  And here he had the blessing of Miss Amethyst Noble’s company.

  Harper thrust the pleasurable thought from his mind. Amethyst was a lady, and no real lady would give a second thought to the likes of him. She was always nice to him, of course, pleasant and hospitable and even friendly. But he couldn’t let his heart run away with his head. He would only be setting himself up for more disappointment, and he had experienced quite enough of that emotion since returning from the war. Besides, what did he have to offer her? A broken body? A wounded soul? A future filled with constant ridicule?

  Harper let his mind drift back to the year before his enlistment, when his thoughts were consumed with the affections of another woman. Dorothea, his beloved, his betrothed. The fairest flower of the Mississippi Delta. He had adored her, written love poems to her, sent her letters every day from the front. And she had responded in kind, proclaiming her love for him and her eager acceptance of his proposal of marriage.

  When he had been released from the hospital and discharged, Harper had gone directly to her, hoping against hope that she could find the inner resources to deal with the difficulties that lay ahead for them. Love, he had been told, could overcome the worst of challenges. Love conquered all. Love gazed with full acceptance at the inner soul, not at the outer appearance.

  It had taken only the briefest of moments for Harper to realize that all the world’s platitudes about the power of love were so much drivel. One glance at Dorothea’s face told him everything—the way she averted her eyes from his twisted features, the way she tittered with that high, nervous laugh when she couldn’t think of anything to say, the way she resolutely steered the conversation away from any discussion of their impending wedding.

  In the end, he had given her the easy way out. Rather than making her face her feelings, he had lied, telling her that he himself had second thoughts about rushing into marriage.

  They had parted with the promise that once Harper was settled and had a job, he would write to her, and they would begin afresh to explore their relationship and see where it led. But neither of them, Harper knew, had any intention of keeping that promise.

  The problem with a broken heart, he discovered, was that it didn’t break cleanly, with a nice even edge that could be glued together so that the seam barely showed. It splintered like crystal stemware into a million tiny shards—sharp fragments that could never be reassembled, invisible slivers that cut you even when you couldn’t see them. Rather than take on the impossible task of fitting them back together again, it was better just to sweep up the pieces and toss the lot into the trash.

  That’s what Harper had done—or so he thought, until he came face to face with Amethyst Noble. From deep in the recesses of his soul, his discarded heart began to beat again—faintly at first, and then with more assertiveness. Despite his best intentions, he couldn’t seem to control the way his pulse accelerated when she came near. His stomach fluttered, and his blood pounded in his ears. And all the while his mind was shouting, No!

  This inward battle was, he knew, far more dangerous than any enemy fire he had faced at the front. And the potential for being hurt—even maimed for life—was greater, too. He could live with his physical disabilities, could look himself in the mirror every morning and see a man rather than a monster. As long as he kept his emotions closely guarded, he might be able to live a relatively fulfilled existence. But if he gave his heart free rein, he was bound to end up as scarred on the inside as he was on the outside. He had taken a chance on love once, and it turned out to be a thorny, pain-ridden path culminating in a devastating dead end. He wasn’t about to go down that road again.

  He paused at the sidewalk leading up to Noble House and gazed at the big white planter house. Two weeks, and already he thought of it as home. His place of safety and refuge, a healing sanctuary for his soul. . . .

  “Freak!”

  The shout behind him drew Harper’s attention, and he turned. Three little boys, not more than eight or ten years old, stood on the other side of Jefferson Davis Avenue pointing and yelling in high-pitched voices.

  “Freak! Freak! Freak!”

  Instinctively Harper brought his hand up to the scarred right side of his face. He took a step toward the children and motioned for them to come closer.

  “I’m not a freak,” he said in a low voice, hoping to calm them. “I was scarred in the war, you see, and—” He lowered his hand and reached out toward them.

  Three sets of eyes grew round as saucers, and an expression of horror twisted the grimy little face of the oldest one.

  “You ARE a freak!” the boy yelled. “You’re mean and nasty and EVIL!”

  “What’s your name, son?” Maybe Harper could reason with this child, find a way to make him listen.

  The lad puffed out his chest with obvious pride. “Billy Tarbush,” he answered with a sneer. “What’s yours? Scarface?”

  Harper winced inwardly as the disheartening truth registered in his mind. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the boy reach down and scoop up a handful of rocks from the side of the road.

  “No, wait—” he began.

  But it was too late. The Tarbush boy sent a stone flying in Harper’s direction, and the younger ones, taking their cue from the leader, followed suit. “Freak!” they hollered. “Get out of town, you freak!”

  A jagged rock found its mark, hitting just under Harper’s left eye. He recoiled from the blow and felt a warm wetness oozing down his cheek. But when he put his fingers to the wound, he was surprised to find the blood mixed with his own tears.

  “Go home, boys,” he murmured sadly as he turned and moved out of range of their missiles.

  That old poet was right, he thought as he walked slowly up the sidewalk. Stone walls do not a prison make. A broken body and a burned face could incarcerate as well as the stoutest iron bars.

  Exhaling a ragged sigh, Harper pushed back the tears and wiped the blood from his cheek. This was his lot in life, his cage. He hadn’t done anything to deserve such imprisonment, but none of that mattered now. Win or lose, he had no choice but to play with the hand fate had dealt him. If he kept to himself and shored up the vulnerable places of his soul, he’d be all right.

  Even a freak could learn to be strong.

  27

  Pharisees and Publicans

  Harper Wainwright proved to be a godsend in more ways than Amethyst c
ould have imagined. Despite his bad leg and crooked arm, he turned out to be an absolute genius when it came to renovations. Single-handedly he divided the back parlor into two smaller apartments, each with its own sitting room and small sleeping area, and a shared bathroom. Then he set to work on the coach house, and before Amethyst knew what was happening, she had five rooms available for rent.

  “So, what do you think?” Harper asked as he put the finishing touches on the sign and attached it to the lamppost in front of the house.

  Amethyst stood back and admired his handiwork. It was a carved wooden plaque, painted white with green letters that matched the shutters.

  NOBLE HOUSE

  Quality Room and Board for Patrons of Distinction

  “I think it’s perfect,” she declared. “Absolutely perfect.” She hesitated for a moment, then asked the question that had been plaguing her for weeks. “Harper, you applied for a job at Tarbush Construction, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  His voice was low, and his tone said he’d rather not talk about it, but Amethyst pressed on. “I don’t understand. I’ve watched you work around here. You can do anything. You’ve got a real gift for building and renovation. Why on earth wouldn’t Mr. Tarbush hire you?”

  Amethyst watched as a cloud passed over his features. He turned the scarred side of his face away from her. “I believe Mr. Tarbush had . . . ah, no available openings at the time.”

  “That’s nonsense!” she blurted out. “On the square yesterday I heard him complaining about his crew. He had just hired three new men, he said, but they were lazy white trash who didn’t know a hammer from—” She stopped suddenly and felt heat rise into her neck. “Well, you know.”

  Harper gazed to one side but did not respond.

  Amethyst felt a white-hot stab of rage run through her. “Do you mean to tell me that he refused to hire you because of the way you look? That is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. Why, you could work circles around him and most of his crew, and do a better job at it, too!”

  Harper cleared his throat. “But that’s not the issue, is it?”

  “Then tell me, please, what is the issue?”

  He turned and faced her squarely. “Look at me, Amethyst. Really look. What do you see?”

  “I see a kind and gentle man who’s an absolute wonder when it comes to building things.”

  “Maybe. But what Tarbush sees is a freak, a deviant who frightens children and causes women to faint. What he sees is a liability to his business.”

  “Then he’s a fool.”

  Harper gave a crooked little half-smile. “You’re a strong woman, Amethyst—and, I might add, an opinionated one.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “But you don’t understand the way of the real world. You expect people to respond out of compassion and kindness. They don’t, you know. They usually react with selfishness and bigotry. They see somebody like me, and they’re disgusted. Or they walk away with a smug sense of superiority, thanking God in heaven that they’re not like me.”

  “The Pharisee and the publican,” Amethyst mused. “But which one was justified in the eyes of God?”

  “God’s judgment doesn’t matter,” Harper responded flatly. “At least not down here on earth. Someday, maybe, it will. But right now I have to deal with people who don’t much care what God thinks of their reactions.”

  He paused for a moment, and a look of pain crossed his face. “You know what the townspeople are saying about you, I suppose.”

  “That we’re running a freak show?” Amethyst gave a little snort. “They can talk all they like. It’s my house and my decision.” She grinned at him. “Last week a fellow down at the hardware store confronted me. Said I had obviously inherited my grandfather’s penchant for taking in strays and mutants. I considered it high praise.”

  “You might not, if you were the stray or the mutant.”

  The rebuke stung, and Amethyst fell silent, considering his words. She had gone into this venture with a certainty that the Lord had called her to it, but clearly she had a lot to learn.

  At last Harper broke the silence. “I think I may have found a couple of new boarders for you,” he said as if the previous exchange had never happened. “I ran into them yesterday while I was job hunting. One, named Pete Hopkins, lost both legs and is in a wheelchair. The other, Rodney Powell, was blinded in an explosion. Think you can take them on?”

  Amethyst jumped to the challenge, grateful for the change of subject. “If you don’t mind sharing the bath, we could put Mr. Powell in the other parlor room. It’s small and compact and easy to get around in. Mr. Hopkins could take one of the rooms in the coach house. How long would it take you to build a ramp to the back door?”

  “One day should do it, if we have enough wood for the job.”

  “I’ll tell Silvie to stock up the pantry. Bring them on.”

  Word got around faster than a scandal with the preacher. Six weeks after the renovations were complete, Amethyst had a full house—five men, all casualties of war whose lives had been turned upside down by their disabilities.

  Amethyst mentally ran through the list. Pete Hopkins, the amputee, was a huge, bearded fellow with an infectious laugh and a quick wit. Steven Bird, in braces and on crutches, never got the point of Pete’s complex stories and always had to have them explained to him. Larry Summers, with one arm gone and the other hand distorted into a claw, needed help feeding himself—a task Silvie readily accepted with grace and good humor. Rod Powell jokingly complained that since he was blind, he should have Silvie’s help, too, although he was quite adept at anything he tried and quickly learned the layout of the house as well as his own apartment.

  And Harper, of course. Dear Harper. Without so much as a word of discussion, he had adopted the role of man of the house. He made repairs, looked for ways to improve the place to make life easier for the others, and appointed himself Chairman of Morale. In Harper’s presence, no one could use the word crippled or descend into self-pity. Amethyst had seen him, on various occasions, joke, cajole, or shame the men into accepting their situations and making the best of them. And he took every opportunity to remind them all how blessed they were to have a home like Noble House.

  Before long, everyone adjusted to the schedule and began to settle in. The problem was, they seemed too settled, to Amethyst’s way of thinking. They were underfoot all the time—playing chess in the front parlor, raiding the pantry for midnight snacks, singing along as Rod Powell played popular tunes on the piano.

  At last she sat down with Harper to have a little talk.

  “Harper, I don’t mean to be hard-handed, but these fellows have to find work. I’m not worried about getting paid, mind you—I know they have their pensions, and no one has been late with the rent. But they’re—well—”

  “They’re driving you crazy?”

  “I wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but yes.”

  Harper leaned across the dining room table. Amethyst couldn’t fail to notice how he turned his face away, or sometimes put a hand up to cover his scars. The realization disturbed her; she wanted him to feel accepted and cared for. She wanted them all to feel that way, of course, but—

  But Harper Wainwright was different.

  Amethyst had tried to tell herself that she simply appreciated all he had done to get Noble House ready for its new mission. She reasoned that she would naturally feel closer to him than to the others—after all, he had been the first to arrive at her door and had been here the longest. And he was, as she had told him on numerous occasions, gentle and kind and infinitely competent.

  But that wasn’t the whole truth.

  She had never been in love, and wasn’t sure she’d recognize the emotion if it came up and smacked her in the face, but she was beginning to think that her feelings for Harper Wainwright represented more than mere friendship, or appreciation, or sympathy. The way she tended to get flustered around him—the way her insides fluttered unco
ntrollably. The way her eyes sought him out in a roomful of people. The way her heart pumped a little faster when she heard his distinctive limping step coming across the front porch. She felt deliriously wonderful and sick to her stomach all at the same time.

  The problem was, Harper had given absolutely no indication that he shared any of those feelings. If anything, he avoided her gaze and limited his contact with her to meals, when everyone else was there, or times like this, when they had a particular problem to solve. He wasn’t cold or unfriendly toward her; he simply treated her with the same courtesy he offered everyone else. It was as if he were locked away somewhere, in a world she could neither enter nor understand, as if—

  “Amethyst? Are you listening?”

  Amethyst looked up. “I’m sorry, Harper. What were you saying?”

  “I was saying that the fellows are looking for work. Rod thought he had convinced Mr. Mansfield at the hotel restaurant to hire him to play the piano during the dinner hour, but apparently the job fell through at the last minute. Pete and Steve and the others have been in town nearly every day, following up every lead they can find. But it’s the same old story—nobody’s hiring, not for any kind of work at any wage. Not in town, not at the college.”

  Amethyst struggled for a moment to clear her mind and focus on Harper’s words rather than the strange, soft expression that filled his eyes.

  “So,” she said after a minute or two, “what we’re dealing with is not just a few isolated bigots, but a whole town paralyzed by prejudice.”

  “So it seems.”

  A rush of energy exploded through Amethyst like fire in her veins, sweeping aside any personal concerns. She recognized the sensation immediately—the exhilaration of the challenge. The intoxication of the Cause. A massive injustice was happening, and she couldn’t—wouldn’t—sit idly by and let it go on. It was time for action.

  “Give me a few days,” she said with a slow smile. “I think I just might come up with a plan.”

  “What kind of plan?”