****
“I don’t think I need to carry this cane anymore.”
“Yes, you do,” Emily said bossily. “You know what Dr. Bradford said.”
The two were out walking along the sidewalk, and indeed James was making much better progress under the loving care of his new family than he had in all those months in hospitals. He scarcely had a limp now and protested that his leg felt strong enough to support his weight. The coughing had dropped away until it was only on rare occasions that it still troubled him.
They stopped at the curb, waiting until a truck passed, and watched as the wind picked up a pile of leaves, whirled them into a funnel shape, then rolled them onto the curb. The leaves hissed as they scooted across the ground, and the smell of woodsmoke was in the air, for some people were still burning leaves.
“Is Wes driving you crazy yet, James? He has certainly latched on to you,” Emily said.
“He’s a fine kid. I never saw a better one. When he fills out, he’ll be a big man.”
“I think he’s so cute,” Emily said. “So tall and lanky now. He’s not as good an athlete as Jared was, but he’s very good at photography.”
“I wish I knew more about photography so I could talk to him about it. He knows so much, it’s hard to carry on an intelligent conversation.”
Another bunch of leaves suddenly swirled by them, striking at them almost like a snake, and Emily looked up at the sky. “I think it might snow soon.”
“It doesn’t snow much here in Richmond, does it?”
“Hardly ever, but I love it. I’d like to live where the snow gets three and four feet deep.”
“That’s fine for the first day when it’s coming down,” James said. “Very pretty. But the next day it turns to slush, and you can’t drive your car down the road, and everything is frozen up.”
“Where did you experience cold and snow like that?”
“In upstate New York where I grew up. I went out many days when the pump was frozen, and we had to thaw it out.”
Emily shot a curious glance at him, for he rarely spoke of his youth. She wanted to know more about his family and his growing-up years, but she had discovered that he was as good at evading talk on that subject as she was at eliciting it. “Do you feel like going to a high school football game this afternoon?” Emily offered instead. “Richmond High is playing their archrival, Petersburg.”
“Yes, I’d like that,” James said.
“Do you like sports?” she asked.
“Never had time for them much, but I could get addicted, I think.”
“Jared was so good at everything. Everyone said he could have been a professional baseball player, and he was good at football and basketball, too. Just any kind of sport.”
“I remember once our company was sent back from the front line for a little rest. We got a baseball team together, and another company did the same. Jared was the pitcher. I don’t think the other team got a hit that day, and it seemed he could hit everything they threw at him.”
“Did you play, James?”
“They put me in the outfield where I couldn’t do any damage.” James smiled at the thought. “With Jared pitching, no balls ever came my way. I still remember that day. There weren’t many like it.”
“You didn’t like the army, did you?”
“I hated every minute of it—except for a few times like that,” James added quickly. “I wasn’t a good soldier.”
“I don’t believe that,” Emily protested.
“It’s true enough. Some men were cut out to be good soldiers, and others, like me, just weren’t.”
Emily considered his words as the two walked along, and finally she said abruptly, “Have you had a lot of girlfriends, James?”
Her remark caught Parker off guard. He laughed aloud and shook his head. “What makes you ask a question like that?”
“Because that’s the sort of thing girls are interested in, of course. Did you?”
“One or two,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
His offhand remark piqued Emily’s curiosity even more, and she reached out impatiently and squeezed his arm. “Tell me. I want to know.”
“I would think I had about the same number of girlfriends as you have boyfriends.”
“Oh, that’s no answer!”
“I don’t think I had any girlfriends as charming as Buck Leatherwood.” Parker suddenly laughed at the startled expression on her face. “Wes told me about it.”
“That was awful! And he was awful.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it? I got the bare bones from Wes, but I like to hear you talk.”
“Oh, I don’t want to talk about that,” Emily said. But when he insisted, she told him the whole story and ended by saying, “Dad should have taken a strap to me. I deserved it.”
“I can’t see your father doing that.”
“Come on, let’s go home. We’ll want to get a big lunch if we’re going to go to the game.”
****
Emily enjoyed the football game immensely. Since she had graduated, this was the first time she’d been back at her old school. It was fun being in the high school stadium again and showing off her date. James had worn some of Jared’s clothes, and all of the girls in the senior class, and even younger ones, watched her and James avidly. Many of them came up to be introduced, but Emily managed to get rid of them rather efficiently.
“You’re very popular with your girlfriends,” James observed. He was sitting beside her in the stadium, wearing a blue wool jacket that Jared had been very fond of and a pair of gray flannel trousers. He turned to study her and saw that she had not appreciated the remark. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did I say something out of order?”
“Oh no, but they’re not coming because they like me. They just want to meet you.”
“Me? Why, they’re children.”
“How old are you? I never asked.”
“Twenty-three. An old man, Emily.”
“Oh, you’re decrepit all right. That’s why all these silly girls keep flocking around hoping you’ll notice them.”
James shook his head. “I feel like I’m a hundred years old. They all look like babies to me. Of course,” he said quickly, “you’re much more grown-up than they are. How old are you now? Seventeen?”
“I’ll be eighteen in January.”
“An old, old lady.” James reached over and took her gloved hand and squeezed it. “Some man’s going to get a prize when he gets you. I hope you’ll let me sing at your wedding.”
“Oh, don’t be foolish!” Emily laughed and turned her attention back to the game, not quite sure how to respond to James’s remark.
As the game progressed they both cheered loudly when the home team made a good play and groaned when they made a bad one. Richmond finally lost the game in the last minute, and groans went up from everyone in the stands. “They lost!” Emily cried out. “They lost!”
“Well, it doesn’t matter eternally, does it?”
Emily turned and saw he was smiling at her, and she had to laugh. “No, it doesn’t matter eternally. I can’t even remember who won when we played Petersburg last time.”
“Sports are one of those aspects of life that are existential.”
Emily liked James’s use of big words. “I know what that means,” she said.
“Of course you do. You’re a smart girl.”
“You mean,” she pursued the thought, “that they are important while they’re going on but not afterward.”
“Like eating a steak. Nothing is more important than eating that steak, but the next day the steak’s gone, and you’ve got to eat another one. Most things are like that.”
“Not everything, though,” Emily said. She took his arm as they left the stands and walked around the track. She was very much aware of the envious stares of her girlfriends and said, “Look, they’re all positively green! Put your arm around me.”
“What’d you say?”
“
Put your arm around me,” Emily whispered. She waited until James had done so, and when she looked at him, her eyes were bright with laughter. “That ought to do them!”
“Emily, you are something!” He kept his arm around her until they walked outside, and then they met Wes at the car.
“Let’s go out and celebrate,” Wes said at once. “Hey, you’ve got your arm around my sister.”
“I made him do it,” Emily said. “I wanted to make all the girls jealous of me.”
“Well, let’s go out and celebrate.”
“But we lost,” Emily protested.
“Then we’ll celebrate losing.”
They went out to a favorite diner and had hamburgers and sodas and donuts, then finally went home. Wes said, “Come on up, James. I want to develop some film.” Wes had made his own darkroom in a small spare room in the attic, and he lured James up every chance he got.
“You go develop them and show them to me when you’re done. I’ll never learn that stuff. I’m not the scientific type,” James grinned.
“All right, but I want you to see them. They’re going to be great. I’m going to send them off to a contest.”
“He’s really crazy about photography, isn’t he?” James said, turning to Emily.
“Yes,” Emily said. “Oh, I hate to go in.”
“Getting pretty late.”
“I know, but I hate to go to bed.”
“Are you afraid of the dark?”
“Oh no, don’t be silly! Just afraid I’ll miss something.”
They were standing on the porch, and the twenty-watt bulb cast feeble shadows. He turned to study her face and said, “That’s just like you, Emily. You’re afraid you’ll miss something. You enjoy life better than anybody I’ve ever known.”
Emily felt warm at the praise. “What a nice thing to say!”
“It’s the truth,” James said.
“Let’s not go in yet,” she said. She laughed suddenly and asked, “What did you think of Frances Dalton this afternoon?”
“I don’t remember her. Which one was she?”
“She was the one in the white coat who kept trying to get you to leave me and go with her.”
“Oh yes. She was rather persistent.”
“She’s the prettiest girl in Richmond. She can get anybody she wants.”
“No, she’s not the prettiest girl in Richmond,” James said. He grinned at her and said, “I think I’d argue that point.”
He did not elaborate, but Emily knew he was paying her a compliment. “Oh, you’re just being nice. I look at myself in the mirror every day. My face is too wide, and I have this dumb red hair.”
“Jared told me you didn’t like your red hair, but he loved it.”
“Did he say that?”
“Sure did. Lots of times.”
“He always told me that, too,” Emily murmured. “But I thought he was just trying to make me feel better.”
The two talked for a while, and James teased her mildly about her age. “Don’t try to be old so quick. You’ve got the world in the palm of your hand, Emily. You’re going to have a great life.”
The two were standing in the yard, and the stars shone brightly overhead. It was one of those nights that brought out the stars like clusters of diamonds flung out across the sable background. Emily turned to him and said, “Sometimes I get—” She could not finish and had to bite her lips, and she looked down.
James suddenly understood her problem. “You’re still grieving over Jared, aren’t you?”
“I guess I always will.”
“He was a good man. The best I ever saw.” He hesitated, then said, “I haven’t told you this, but I was with him when he died. And the last thing he said was, ‘Tell Emily I love her.’ ”
The words seemed to break Emily Winslow apart. She began to tremble, and her body quaked. She leaned against James, and he put his arms around her.
“It’s all right to cry. I do it myself sometimes.”
Emily clung to him fiercely. The sobs racked her body, and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her in a protective fashion.
Finally the spasm of grief passed, and she stepped back. “Thanks, James,” she whispered.
He watched her as she went inside, and he shook his head as if in reproach before he followed her through the front door. They quietly said good-night to each other and her parents before going to their separate rooms.
Emily went to bed at once after putting on her pajamas and reading her Bible. She lay in the darkness, and for a long time she thought about what James said were Jared’s last words. The pain of her loss was still like a knife, and she wondered, Will I ever get over this? Can I ever accept it? And then she tried to sleep, but for a long time she lay awake. The last thing she remembered was James Parker holding her and comforting her.
CHAPTER NINE
A New Job
“How in the world did you get this shot, Wes?” James Parker held up an enlargement and considered it with something close to amazement. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Took me a long time to get that one, James.” Wes moved closer and squinted at the photograph of a red-tailed hawk descending with widespread wings and claws. Beneath the raptor was a rabbit that had been caught in the act of making a desperate leap away from the death that awaited him. The details were so sharp that the markings on the hawk were clearly visible.
Wes leaned back and said with satisfaction, “I noticed that old hawk always hunted in the afternoon in a field out close to my grandparents’ house. The place was full of rabbits, and I could see the hawk snagging them, but they were always too far away to get a picture.” Wes’s eyes glittered as he said, “What I did, James, was start putting out food for the rabbits—carrots and lettuce and stuff they like. I got them trained to come to that same spot almost anytime. Then I made me a little blind out of saplings and camouflaged it with leaves so that it’d look just like a bush to the hawk. Well, I sat there until I thought my rear end was going to get paralyzed.” Wes grinned, and his warm brown eyes glowed. “I got him, though. At first I saw him circling overhead, and then he dove like a rock.”
“Did he get the rabbit?”
“Why, shoot no. He missed. That rabbit jumped sideways, and the hawk missed by about a foot. To tell the truth, I was glad to see that. I’m always on the rabbit’s side. I like to see ’em get away.”
Parker studied the picture and shook his head. “It’s a fine photograph.”
“I entered it in a photographic contest in New York. Had to send in a ten-dollar entry fee, but if I win, the prize is the best camera made.”
“Well, I can’t imagine anyone else doing a better job than this.”
Wes smiled back, and the two continued to talk. The walls of Wes’s room were decorated with photographs, mostly his own. Many were of his family, but he had a number of wildlife photos as well—a deer, a bobcat, a wild pig, and a variety of birds that he had captured with his lens.
Finally Parker said, “It’s nice to be good at something. You think you’ll be able to make a living as a photographer?”
Wes’s young face hardened with determination. “I’m going to do it or bust,” he said. “You wait and see if I don’t!” Then a grimace turned his lips upward. “I wish I was as good at my schoolwork as I am at taking pictures.”
“You having trouble?”
“Sure am.”
“What subjects are bothering you?”
“Well, all of them, to tell the truth. Emily helps me with English, so I scrape by there, but this bookkeeping course is giving me fits.”
“Let me see what you’ve got. Maybe I can help.”
Wes’s eyes lit up. “You know something about bookkeeping?”
“Well, I worked as a bookkeeper for a while.”
Wes immediately dug his books out, and soon the two were sitting close together at Wes’s desk. They worked for a considerable time, and finally Wes said, “Well, it’s plum easy the way
you explain it, James.”
Parker smiled as he said, “I wouldn’t think a bright young fellow like you would have any trouble. I think you’ve just got your mind on other things.”
“Guess you’re right about that. Mostly on pictures and cameras and stuff like that.”
Later on in the day Wes explained to Emily how good James was at bookkeeping. The two of them were sitting in Emily’s room, where Wes had come to ask for help on his English lesson. “Why, he’d be a great teacher. Old Lady Simms talked for a solid hour about how to work this problem,” he complained. “When she got through I didn’t have an idea in the world what she was talking about. But James, why, he sat down there and in fifteen minutes made it just as clear as air.”
“I wonder how he learned bookkeeping.”
“He said he worked as a bookkeeper for a while.”
Emily considered Wes for a moment, and then she tapped her chin thoughtfully. “A bookkeeper—that might be something we could use.”
“Use for what?” Wes asked.
“Oh, nothing. Look, don’t you see you’ve got a misplaced modifier here?”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
Emily suddenly giggled. “Well, look. You say, ‘He was a tall man with gray hair and a mustache named Billy.’ ”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I never heard of a mustache being named Billy.”
“I didn’t mean that! I meant the man’s name was Billy.”
“That’s right. So your modifier’s in the wrong place.”
“Shoot! If I can talk, I don’t know why I have to take English. All right. Go over it one more time, Emily. I’ve got to pass this course or Dad will kill me!”
****
On Sunday morning Emily talked James into going to church with them. She liked to sit as close to the front as she could. The rest of the family liked to sit farther back, but she insisted that James come with her to the third row center. He looked around uncomfortably and said, “Do you always sit so close to the front?”
“Yes, I like to sit up close. Don’t you?”
James rubbed his chin. He was wearing a suit Aaron had bought for him. The two had gone shopping that week and had come back with a complete outfit. Emily thought he looked very handsome in the warm brown lightweight wool suit, shiny brown shoes, and a tasteful tie that showed against his white shirt. She was wearing an apple green taffeta dress that complemented her hair. The dress had a fine white Georgette collar and a stylish throw-tie belt that looped around and dangled in front. She had been pleased when James had told her how much he liked her dress.
The Amazon Quest (House of Winslow Book #25) Page 10