Romancing Olive

by Bush, Holly

  “It’s alright, Daddy. This year’s crop will be better. Miss Wilkins said that we don’t always know why things turn out like they do but we can always be sure of one thing. That our Mama loved us and I know you love us too.”

  Jacob’s head hung and he hated that his son bore the grief of his failures. He looked down at the boy’s legs and saw bony white knees sticking out of patched pants. Jacob grabbed Luke and squeezed and Luke hugged him back with all his might.

  “Does Miss Wilkins have to leave?” Luke whispered into his father’s ear.

  “Why, son? Do you want her to leave?” Jacob asked looking into Luke’s eyes.

  The slim shoulders shrugged and he tilted his head. Jacob wondered what was going through his boy’s mind.

  “She’s nothing like Ma,” the child replied.

  “No, she’s not.”

  “But,” Luke began and looked down at his hands as they twisted in his father’s shirt, “but it was kind of nice having her here today. We sang songs and she cut cloth and showed us the slates she bought each of us to learn our letters.”

  Jacob knew guilt gripped the boy, admitting that he had warmed to the woman, not his mother. How lonely are these young ones for the feminine touch that even spindly old Miss Wilkins had in her hands. He pictured Peg’s face as she ran to the woman’s arms. Bony arms without a doubt, but gentle arms reeled his daughter in with a hug. And Jacob recalled the little things Margaret had done for the children that he would have never thought of. Things that would have never occurred to him. Kissing every skinned knee. Smiling with encouragement at the smallest victory. The things mother’s do without conscious thought. The reasons that God in his wisdom had made women, mothers. Mary’s rebuke stung the most, though. The girl barely spoke, half afraid she’d lose her bed and board. She must have felt the children’s shame in the pit of her being to gather the courage to lash out so at Jacob. He stood; holding Luke in his arms and went to the porch. He watched their faces turn to him and he took a deep breath.

  “Miss Wilkins?”

  “Yes, Mr. Butler?”

  Jacob looked out over the horizon and back to the huddled group. Without meeting an eye, he whispered, “You can keep the clothes, children.”

  “What did you say, Mr. Butler? We can’t hear you,” Miss Wilkins said.

  Jacob’s shoulders rose and lowered slowly and he sucked air through his front teeth. This dag blamed woman wasn’t going to make this easy, he saw.

  “The children can keep the clothes.”

  Peg’s face lit up and she started to her father but Miss Wilkins’s hand stilled her. “Do you have anything else to say, Mr. Butler?”

  “Alright, I was wrong, Miss Wilkins. And . . . well thank you.”

  “Apology accepted, Mr. Butler.” She sent the children to clean up and held her head stiffly, staring at him. She broke the gaze and walked primly past him. “Wash up for dinner, Mr. Butler. Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”

  Jacob scowled, kicked the dirt and mocked her words back to her. The old biddy, he thought.

  Chapter Three

  “Mary, please do not begin eating until the prayer is complete. John, please use your fork,” Miss Wilkins said.

  Jacob looked up at her as he released his children’s hands from prayer and watched her evenly repeat her instructions. Her voice did not raise, nor did her eyes as she quietly reminded the children of their manners. The meal was hot and filling and Jacob watched Miss Wilkins neatly dab her mouth.

  “Mr. Butler, I would like to begin instructing John and Mary and I hope you will allow me to include your children. Have they had any formal education?” she asked.

  Jacob clenched the metal of his fork between his teeth as she inquired after his children’s schooling. He evenly met her gaze and slowly pulled the utensil from his mouth.

  “Their mother taught them.”

  “Fine. Good. We will have a starting place then. Mary, what grade are you in?” Miss Wilkins asked and smiled at her niece.

  “Hardly went to school,” the girl said.

  “Why?” Miss Wilkins asked as she lay down her utensils.

  Mary sopped bean drippings with her biscuit. “Ma said it was too far to haul me every day.”

  “What did your father say?”

  “He took me a couple a times but then I had to walk home. I told Ma I didn’t want to go back,” she added.

  “You walked from town?” Miss Wilkins asked.

  Mary nodded and stared at her plate. “Pa taught me some though.”

  * * *

  Olive regarded Mary and wondered if it would ever sound natural to hear her brother James referred to as ‘Pa’. It was hard as well to hear that her brother had done little to educate his children. “Your father was quite the scholar when he was young. I’m sure you’ll pick up your studies quickly. John,” Olive said and turned to the boy, “Would you like to know how to write your name?”

  The child’s eyes widened and the hair Olive promised herself to wash, hung in his face. His head slowly swung from side to side. She wondered about her brother’s youngest child. He had yet to speak and although clearly frightened at the bank when the cowboy had spoken to him, he seemed happy when in Jacob’s home. He followed Luke as if attached by an invisible thread to the boy. Otherwise John was glued to his sister’s side. But Olive had not heard a word uttered. She vowed to speak to Mary and find out what the girl knew of her brother’s silence. Olive’s hand went slowly to her temple as she contemplated all the problems she faced in order to get these children back to her home in Philadelphia.

  “Mr. Butler? Do you have a bath tub?” Olive asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Mary will you begin doing the dishes? I have water boiling and I would like to start with some haircuts before you take your baths, children.” Olive said.

  * * *

  Jacob had watched the worry grow on Olive Wilkins’s face when she addressed her nephew. He felt for the boy as well. The day Jacob found the children in their home after their mother’s death, John was huddled in a corner, staring blankly at some far and away spot. Mary had screamed and fought him but John limply allowed himself to be carried to the wagon.

  Jacob looked at Olive Wilkins now while the children howled and she turned a deaf ear. She went from subject to subject, issue to issue, so quickly, Jacob wondered how she kept it straight in her head. Jacob agreed that Luke indeed did need a trim and sat the squirming boy on the table. Miss Wilkins produced a small pair of sewing scissors and cut away. She revealed her concentration by sticking her tongue in her cheek and holding it there while she studied the boy’s hair. Snip, snip, Jacob heard while he watched Luke and listened to the protests and moans. When she was finished, Jacob thought a different boy sat on the stool than his own son, Luke.

  “Now, John,” Miss Wilkins said and turned to her nephew, smiling.

  John’s eyes were wide and fearful and he cried until Jacob held him in his arms so his aunt could cut his hair. She stood close to Jacob and tilted her head, wondering, he supposed, where to begin. The soft summer scent of lilacs hit Jacob’s nose and he was transported back to his childhood home and the smell the breeze brought through that kitchen window. Olive Wilkins’s dress was unwrinkled, the collar still stiff and he wondered how she managed to look so neat amidst the chaos of his house. As she trimmed and smiled, Jacob watched her hands as they moved through the task. Long, lean fingers, nearly white and he studied the veins of blood that moved through them. Loving hands, lovingly wading through dirty, dark hair, touching the child’s face as she went. Convincing the boy, with her touch that he had nothing to fear. As she bent close to trim the hair around John’s ear, Jacob found his face inches from her hair. And he could not stop the image of her brushing that hair as he spied through the window the day of her arrival.

  “All done,” Miss Wilkins declared.

  John touched his ears, as if wondering if they were still attached.

  “Mary, why don
’t you let me trim the back of your hair, too,” Miss Wilkins asked.

  “Why?” the girl said.

  “I don’t know, Mary,” Miss Wilkins said as she sighed, “maybe just because it would look nice and we could pull the top back with a ribbon for church on Sunday.”

  “We’re goin ta church?” Luke asked.

  “Well, of course, children,” Miss Wilkins stated in the no nonsense fashion, Jacob was getting accustomed to.

  “You can trim my hairs,” Peg said quietly.

  “Sit down, then, little miss,” she said.

  Peg’s eyes darted but she smiled a smile that Jacob knew meant she loved the undivided attention she was receiving. Miss Wilkins trimmed an uneven inch or two and looked up to Mary.

  “Come sit down. Please Mary,” she said.

  The girl shrugged and her aunt trimmed her long hair as well.

  “What about Daddy? His hair’s long, too,” Luke asked.

  “Oh, no, children,” Jacob said and shook his head.

  Miss Wilkins studied him. “You could really use a trim, too.”

  “I cut my own hair, thank you.”

  * * *

  Olive shrugged, turned from Jacob Butler and asked, “Mary, is the water boiling?’

  The girl nodded and Olive sent Mr. Butler and the boys to the barn. Peg stripped and Olive lifted her into the tub. She scrubbed hair and ears, elbows and knees and when Olive pulled the dripping, shining child from the water she turned to Mary. “You’re next.”

  “I ain’t bathin’.”

  “I’m not bathing,” Olive corrected. “And yes, you are bathing.”

  Olive watched Mary look at the tub and then string a blanket between the water and the door.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mary. You are old enough to want some privacy. I’ll comb Peg’s hair on the bed while you bathe,” Olive said.

  Mary stepped behind the blanket as she eyed the window and doors. Olive heard the girl’s clothes come off and the splash of water as she stepped in the tub. A half an hour passed, Peg’s hair was drying and still Mary had not gotten out of the water.

  “Mary, you’re skin will be wrinkled if you don’t get out soon,” Olive called out.

  Mary emerged wrapped in a blanket and Olive marveled at how beautiful her niece was. Olive dug down deep in her still unpacked bag and produced a small tin with holes on the top. “Would you like to use some of my talc?”

  “It feels so good,” Peg whispered and rubbed her arms where the powder lay.

  Olive stepped behind the blanket, added hot water to the tub, stripped and sank in. Oh, God, she thought, I never realized how good a bath could feel. When the water grew cold she stood and dressed and called out the door to Jacob Butler.

  * * *

  Jacob stepped into the steamy room and looked at his little Peg, clean and fresh and her hair, shining. Mary’s hair was wavy and the girl looked amazingly relaxed and well . . . pretty. He had never noticed, he supposed through the grime and the scowls.

  “Can you empty the tub, please? I want to get the boys bathed,” Miss Wilkins asked.

  Jacob dumped the tub and Miss Wilkins refilled it as Luke and John looked on in horror. “Off with those clothes,” she said.

  “Do I hafta, Daddy?” Luke whined.

  “Yes, you do, Luke. And you too John,” Jacob said.

  The protests died into a water battle and Jacob listened while Miss Wilkins fought six hands, with Mark in the water too, and the kitchen floor became a sopping mess. When she finally produced three wet, howling boys, Jacob dried them and dressed them.

  Jacob studied this woman, so full of contradictions. She seemed so timid and quiet and yet she commanded these troops with a firm hand. She had to be exhausted, he thought, both mentally and physically and he gave her credit for being made of sterner stuff than he had first thought. Miss Wilkins’s hair hung to her waist and even though long, it waved and curled at the ends. As she dried her glasses, he noticed the resemblance to her brother and his children. And she too, with her hair down and damp and no glasses, was pretty. I wonder why she never married, Jacob thought.

  “Now, everyone at the table, please,” Miss Wilkins instructed. Peg ran to take a seat. The woman produced primers and slates and soon had each child copying their name from the letters she had drawn at the top of the board. Mary harrumphed and slouched but Miss Wilkins coaxed the girl into reading a story.

  “Mr. Butler? May I speak to you outside?” Miss Wilkins asked as she pushed John’s chair closer to the table.

  Jacob closed the door in wonder as the children listened to Mary read and compared slates and the smell left in his nose was clean and innocent. The smell of a child bathed.

  “Yes, Miss Wilkins?” he asked.

  “Why do you think John doesn’t speak?” she asked from the shadows the dim light threw from the cabin window.

  Jacob shrugged his shoulders and guided her down the porch step. “Truthfully, I never noticed if the boy spoke much before but he sure isn’t talking now. No, I don’t know why.”

  “Is there a doctor in town?”

  “Yeah,” Jacob said. “Doc Hunter.”

  “I’m going to take John to see him then on Monday. Maybe there’s a physical reason. I should ask Mary, I suppose,” she said as she tilted her head to the sky.

  “Don’t be hard on yourself, Miss Wilkins. You can’t fix a lifetime of problems in two days.”

  Jacob watched her drying hair curl around her face as she studied the darkening landscape. She looked down then and sighed.

  “I just never, ever, in my wildest dreams imagined the conditions they lived under. The pain. The . . . the . . . I would’ve have come if I’d known. The letters from James painted an idyllic picture of a quaint farm and a happy family.”

  Jacob saw misery and guilt and worry line her face as the shadows of night descended and she shook her head. “It wasn’t your doing. And its not you’re fault,” he said.

  Miss Wilkins met his eyes and declared softly, “Whose fault is it then? Who more than their blood relatives? I failed them.”

  Jacob watched a shiver run through her. “Are you chilled?” he asked.

  “No, Mr. Butler, I’m not chilled. I’m angry.”

  “Anger doesn’t solve things. Sometimes nothing does. Except time.”

  “But I could have come sooner,” Olive Wilkins said and stepped back from him, fists clenched. “Why didn’t I Mr. Butler? I’ll tell you why. I’ve lived my life; my whole thirty-five years reading books and watching other people live their life. And now, here, those children bear the brunt of it. I buried my nose in a book and my house and my cat and failed them miserably. I made quilts for charity’s and ignored the questions and the doubts I had. I painted a picture of domestic tranquility and never dreamt these children were living, do you hear me, Mr. Butler, living a Dickens tale.”

  Jacob’s head inched back with her near hysteria, as she asked and answered her own questions and he knew there was nothing to convince her otherwise. He watched as she calmed herself, righted her dress and shook her head.

  “All you can do now, Miss Wilkins, is love them and maybe the past will right it’s self,” he said.

  “Yes, of course you’re right. I’m terribly sorry you witnessed my outburst.” Olive Wilkins turned and walked to the porch.

  Jacob pulled the tobacco from his pocket, rolled a quick cigarette and leaned against the tree, suddenly grateful for two minutes alone without the demands of children and the farm. Olive Wilkins was a puzzle that was for certain. Hot and cold, she blows from ranting and raving to apologizing. He figured he’d never before met such a moral, upright individual. Other than his own mother perhaps. Miss Wilkins was stiff looking sometimes and judgmental sounding too, all done up in black, until she smiled at one of the children. That smile transformed her into an attractive looking woman. And after her speech, just a few moments ago, Jacob knew her harshest judgments she reserved for herself.

  When he
entered the house, he was amazed at the picture before him. Miss Wilkins sat with the children at her feet, except Mary, and read aloud from a book. The children listened and Mary pretended she didn’t as she leaned against the fireplace. Not a sound could be heard but the melodic tones of Olive Wilkins’s voice as she made characters come alive through another’s words. Soon Peg’s head was nodding and Miss Wilkins closed the book.

  Luke’s eyes were barely open as he begged to hear more.

  “Tomorrow, children,” she said softly and carried Mark to his crib. Jacob nodded to Miss Wilkins as he picked up the boys and carried them to the loft in the barn.

  * * *

  Sunday morning arrived and Miss Wilkins had the children ready for church and Jacob was proud as he looked over the reasonably clean and well-dressed group. Jacob had trimmed his hair and bathed and was in his best shirt. He had not been to church since Margaret’s death but when he quietly told Miss Wilkins that he would wait in the wagon, her eyebrows raised and she pursed her lips. Without an ounce of remorse, he imagined, she threatened to tell the children he wouldn’t be joining them. Luke, John and Peg were so excited about the outing, laughing and talking and Mary kept touching her hair where Miss Wilkins had pulled it back with a ribbon. Jacob grumbled but followed as the little ducks clamored for Miss Wilkins’s hand on the church steps. Mary was visibly nervous as she saw a group of children her age turn and stare and Jacob caught her eye.

  “You look fine, Mary,” he said.

  She blew out a nervous breath and went into the church as Jacob held the door. They were seated in a pew and Jacob watched as heads turned and whispers escalated before the reverend stepped into the pulpit. Miss Wilkins held her head high, smiling and nodding and cooing to Mark.