As the years had passed, a pattern established itself, without being planned or discussed, in the Aimes household. Frankie, because she was hearty and strong, began to do the heavy work of the farm, while Tim had no choice but to take over the running of the household. By the time Frankie was fourteen, she could plow a furrow as straight as her father. By the time she was sixteen, she could put in a full day sawing wood or breaking new ground.
Of course, the reversal of roles between Tim and Frankie had some hidden costs. Tim grew more dependent and less decisive, and Frankie’s assumption of a male’s role went deeper than just doing a man’s work. She entered puberty and passed through it without gaining any of the feminine graces or insights that come to girls with mothers. Frankie lived far out in the country, worked hard at all times, and passed from being a girl to being a woman—in form, but not in spirit.
Tim had seen some of this as he watched his sister grow, and now as he sat there watching her, he said suddenly, “Are you going to go to the dance over at Henderson in two weeks?”
Had he asked her if she were going to China, Frankie could not have been more surprised. “Why, I can’t do that, Tim!”
“Why not? You need to have some fun once in a while.” A bitterness touched his lips, and he added, “You sure don’t get any around here!”
Frankie, for all that she was three years younger than her brother, had a strong maternal instinct. She got to her feet, went to the sink, set down her plate and cup, then came to stand beside him. Brushing his unkempt hair into place, she said, “I have lots of fun, Tim. This afternoon I’m going fishing on the pond.”
Tim shook his head and turned to face her. “You never go to dances or do any of the things young girls do. How are you going to ever find a husband, Frankie? You’ve got to think ahead. Someday you’ve got to get married and have a home and children of your own.”
Tim’s words disturbed Frankie, and she threw up a defensive shield. Laughing lightly, she said, “I’ve got you, Tim. Taking care of one man is enough for me.”
“It’s not the same thing.” Tim’s thin face was haggard, and he shook his head. “I’ll never do anything, but I want to see you have a good life, Frankie. Why, you…you’ve become little more than a hired hand around this place. Pa will work you to death if you don’t get away.” He cast a pleading glance at her. “Go to the dance.”
Frankie spoke nervously. “I…don’t have anything to wear…and I can’t dance, anyway.” Then her voice dropped to a whisper. “Besides, none of the young men want me, Tim.”
It was the most revealing statement Frankie had ever made to her brother, and Tim wanted to put his arm around her and comfort her. Instead he said, “Frankie, you’ve got to make an effort. Buy a dress; learn to dance. You’d be pretty if you’d do what the other girls do. Men would notice you; I know they would.”
But the years had ground something into Frankie that could not be changed by simply putting on a dress. Somewhere along the line she had packed away the dreams that most girls had and now was resigned to the fact that she always would be different. Instead of regretting her life, she took pride in her physical strength and her ability to keep up with most men. That was what fulfilled her and satisfied her, and it was enough. At least, that’s what she told herself.
But no matter how content she believed she was, she could not stop the dull pain that would sometimes overwhelm her when she saw a young couple together, walking hand in hand, laughing into each other’s eyes. Nor could she rid herself of the longings that would come to her unbidden—longings to be loved, cherished, and accepted as she was by one man who cared for her above all else—longings that could still keep her awake at night as tears coursed down her face and soaked into her hard pillow.
Only once had she let those longings come to the surface. With Davey Trapper. She had met him while out hunting several years ago. His surprise at finding a young girl in the woods had been evident—as had his amazement at her ability with a rifle, for she was a far better shot than he. When Davey asked her to help him learn to shoot better, she could not find a valid reason to refuse such a simple request. And so they spent the afternoon hunting together, and by the end of the day, Frankie suddenly found herself with a friend—something she had never before experienced. She was careful, however, never to mention Davey to her father. She had no doubt that he would not approve.
Frankie and Davey went hunting together often. They would meet in the woods, then go tramping through the wilderness, talking and growing ever closer. Before long, Frankie found herself thinking about Davey more and more. His quick smile and laughing eyes were a balm to her heart in all its weariness. And she grew more and more certain that here, at last, was a man who loved her despite the fact that her dress and manners were different from those of other girls.
Certain, that is, until that day in the woods when her fragile confidence came crashing down around her. The memory still brought a blush of humiliation to Frankie’s cheeks whenever she let herself think of it—which she seldom did. She had worked up the courage to tell Davey her feelings, but instead of smiling and taking her hands—as she had imagined he would do—he had stared at her, dumbfounded. And then he had started to laugh.
“Oh, Frankie, that’s some joke!” he’d hooted. “You almost sound serious!” One look at her stricken face had put an abrupt end to his laughter, and his eyes had widened in shock. “You…you are serious,” he’d said in disbelief. Desperately hurt, Frankie had only been able to stand there, fighting to keep the tears that clamored at her eyes from sliding down her cheeks. An uncomfortable silence had fallen over the two. Finally Davey tried to stammer out an apology, to explain that she was a “right capable hunter and a good pal,” but that he’d never really looked at her as a woman.
They had finished their hunt—Frankie never shirked her responsibilities to her family, and they needed meat—but the usual talk and laughter were glaringly absent…and Frankie’s one friendship died a painful death. That was the last day she ever saw Davey.
And it was the last time she had trusted her heart.
Now she smiled at her brother and said, “It’s too late for me, Tim. I’ll be fine the way I am.”
Suddenly the girls bounded into the room, loudly demanding breakfast. They had been protected by both Frankie and Tim from the pressures that had made their lives so hard. Now, though, as Frankie looked at her young sisters, she thought, They’ll learn pretty soon that Pa has no use for girls. I wish they didn’t have to!
The cold weather was to hold on for the rest of the month, but ferment heated up the political climate in both the South and the North. It was Jefferson Davis, then a senator from Mississippi, who had broken the news to President Buchanan that Major Anderson was at Fort Sumter, adding, “And now, Mr. President, you are surrounded with blood and dishonor on all sides!”
Buchanan wanted only to keep clear of the problem of Fort Sumter, so he did nothing, waiting for Lincoln to assume the burden. On January 5, 1861, General Scott sent the Star of the West, a merchant vessel, with 250 troops to reinforce Major Anderson at Sumter. But on January 9 the ship was driven off by cannon fire from a South Carolina battery and had to make her way back home with the troops. All that Scott had accomplished was to pour oil on the fire. Robert Barnwell Rhett, the fire-eating editor of the Charleston Mercury, wrote that “powder had been burnt over the degrees of our state, and the firing on the Star of the West is the opening ball of the Revolution. South Carolina is honored to be the first thus to resist the Yankee tyranny. She has not hesitated to strike the first blow in the face of her insulter.”
Frankie read about the struggles in the paper, how the Southern states began to coalesce, with Mississippi voting eighty-four to fifteen in favor of secession. Then on January 10, Florida joined Mississippi and South Carolina. A day later, Alabama left the Union. Other states were certain to follow.
Frankie had left to go hunting on that same morning, hoping to bring back a deer
. She rose at dawn, saddled her mare, and rode ten miles deep into the hills, where she bagged a fine six-pointer a little after noon. By the time she had loaded the buck and made her way home, the shadows were beginning to lengthen. As she rode up to the house, her father stepped outside and came to inspect the kill.
Silas Aimes was a big man, standing slightly over six feet and weighing over two hundred pounds. Years of hard work had hardened his muscles and turned his features heavy. He was only fifty, but his gray hair and lined face made him look several years older. He glanced at the deer, then at Frankie. “Get him with one shot?”
“Wasn’t too hard.” Frankie shrugged. “He came up twenty feet away.” She started to lead the horse away from the house, saying, “I’ll have time to dress him out before dark, Pa…,” but then paused, for another man had stepped outside the house and walked to the edge of the porch.
Silas glanced toward the visitor, then stepped over to take the reins of Frankie’s mare. “I’ll do that. You go get cleaned up. Tim’s got supper started.” He hesitated, then added, “Mr. Buck’s going to take supper with us.”
“Howdy, Miss Frankie.” Alvin Buck owned the farm that joined theirs—a large farm that covered over seven hundred acres, including the timber. He was forty-six years old, and a widower with five children. “You always bring back your deer, don’t you, now?”
Frankie nodded. “Do my best, Mr. Buck. But I miss once in a while.” She moved up on the porch and entered the house, followed closely by her father’s visitor. “Smells good, Tim,” she said with a smile. “I’m starved.” She went upstairs, washed in cold water, changed clothes, then ran a comb through her stubborn curls without looking in the mirror. When she went downstairs, she found the girls helping Tim with the meal.
“Sit down here and rest up, Frankie,” Buck said, nodding toward the seat next to him. “I brought the latest papers along from town. Thought you might like to read up on how the war’s going.” Buck was a short man, no more than five feet nine inches tall, and very thick. His huge limbs filled his trousers and shirtsleeves so tightly that they looked like fat sausages. He had a round, florid face with small dark eyes and an incongruous rim of hair around his bulletlike head. He was wearing, Frankie noted, what seemed to be new clothes, but she seldom saw him dressed in anything but overalls, so she could not be sure.
She sat there growing drowsy before the open fire, listening as Alvin Buck read items from the paper and commented on them from time to time. Frankie answered in monosyllables and was almost asleep when her father came in. “Supper ready?” he asked.
“Soon as you wash up,” Tim said. When this task was done, they sat down to eat, Silas at the head of the table, with Tim at the other end and Sarah and Jane at his right, which placed Frankie and Buck on his left. Most of the conversation concerned farming matters, with some speculation on what the South—and the new president—would do.
Frankie listened as the men talked, commenting mostly to Tim on how good the food was. Once she felt Alvin Buck’s knee touch hers, but she moved at once, hardly noticing.
After supper Silas said, “Sarah, you and Jane do the dishes and clean up.”
“Oh, I’ll do that, Pa,” Frankie said, but her father shook his head. “Let the younguns do it. They don’t do enough work as it is.”
The evening was a long one for Frankie. She sat with the others, taking little part in the talk, until, about eight o’clock, Tim set the girls at the table. “Time for your schooling,” he said firmly.
“Pa, I’d better go put Julie in the barn. She might drop her calf tonight, and I don’t want her to do it out in the cold,” Frankie said.
“I’ll just go along with you,” Buck said quickly. “Got to be on my way home, but I’ll help you with the cow.”
Frankie looked up with surprise but said only, “Well, it’s not much of a job, but come along if you want.”
She put on her heavy coat, and the two of them left the house. “Won’t snow again for a few days,” Buck observed. “Hope we have an early spring. I’m going to break fifty acres of new ground. Need to get an early start.”
A pale moon illuminated the barnyard, and Frankie had only to speak to the cow, who followed her into the barn. When she had put some feed in the box, she turned to go but found her way blocked by Buck’s stocky form.
“Been a’wantin’ to talk to you,” he said. His small eyes were bright and eager in the lamplight, and there was something about his manner that made Frankie grow still and alert. “You know, it’s been pretty hard on me and the kids, losing my wife like I did a couple of years ago,” Buck went on. “Got so much land it takes all a man can do to get the crops in. ‘Course, my boys are big enough to do a man’s work, but Ellie’s too young to keep house much, especially with the baby hardly out of diapers.”
A brown rat that had sought the heat of the barn suddenly poked his head out from between two boards, and Frankie frowned. “Rats been bad this winter over here. You bothered much with ’em, Mr. Buck?”
“What? Oh, well, we keep a dog and some cats,” Buck said. “Sure wish you’d call me by my first name, Frankie.”
Again a slight warning went off inside the girl, and she shook her head. “Pa would thrash me if I did. He taught me to call people Mister and Missus.”
“That was when you was a little girl, but you’re a grown woman now, Frankie.” Buck grinned suddenly and added, “And a right purty one, too!”
Frankie had never been good at handling compliments, mainly because she hadn’t had much experience receiving them, so she tried to change the subject. “Well, guess I’d better get back—”
But Alvin moved closer and suddenly reached out and seized Frankie by the arm. “You’re a woman, sure enough, and I been thinking how wasted you are. Not married, I mean.”
Panic shot through Frankie—and shame, for there was a light in Buck’s small eyes that was not right. She tried to break away, but he was a powerful man, and he only laughed deep in his chest. “You ain’t never had no doin’s with men, have you, Frankie? Wal, that’s good…but a man like me can teach you all you need to know!”
With that, Buck jerked Frankie into his arms and, before she could react, kissed her full on the lips. Revulsion swept over her and her skin crawled, for there was something feral about the man. With surprising force, she fought clear of his embrace.
“Don’t you ever do that!” she spat out, furious. “I’ll tell my pa!”
“Go right ahead,” Buck said with a nod and a pleased expression on his face. “He won’t be mad. I done talked to him. Only proper thing to do—see a gal’s pa before asking her to marry.”
“Marry!” Frankie shook her head and spun around to flee from the barn, dodging Buck as he reached for her again.
“You’re just scared,” he called after her. “Which is what a gal’s supposed to be, but you’ll like me better after we git hitched!”
Frankie ran to the house but could not bear to go inside and face her father, so she turned to the left and, for the next half hour, walked along a narrow trail that led to the nearby river. Anger and shame rose within her, and she wanted to scream and beat her fists against the bark of one of the huge oaks that lined the path.
When she got to the river, she walked along the bank, able to see by the moonlight, staring morosely at the glittering black water as it flowed silently along. The sibilant sound of the wave at the brink of the stream seemed to soothe her nerves, and finally she turned back to the house.
Pa won’t let him come around, she thought, drawing a deep breath. He wouldn’t want to lose me. But when she stepped inside the house, one look at her father’s face told her she was wrong.
“Guess Alvin told you—about marrying up with you.”
Her stomach tightened into a knot, and she struggled to keep her voice steady. “I—I can’t do it, Pa!”
“I guess you will, girl.” Silas’s voice was hard, much the way it was when Frankie had heard him speaking to stub
born animals. She knew, all too well, that if the warning note in his voice was not enough, he would beat them.
“You’ve got to get married sometime, Frankie,” her father said. “Only natural thing for a woman to do. And I won’t have you runnin’ off with some worthless boy. Now Alvin’s a little older than you might like, but he’s a steady man.”
“Just let me stay here, Pa,” Frankie pleaded. “I’ll work lots harder!”
Her father continued as though she had not spoken. “And there’s this we got to consider: Alvin’s farm joins mine. If you marry him, one day his place will be yours. Then we’ll have one of the biggest and best farms in this part of Michigan.”
“I just…can’t do it, Pa!”
Silas laid his eyes on her, and she saw with a sinking heart that there was no softness in them. “I say you will, and that’s the end to it.” He moved away from her, but when he got to the door leading to his bedroom, he turned to add, “Alvin’s in a hurry. Guess it might as well be soon. You and him can go to town first of next week and see the justice of the peace.”
Frankie had not cried in front of her father for years, but now tears ran unbidden down her cheeks as she stared at him dumbly. Some faint trace of compassion stirred inside Silas Aimes as he studied the girl, then said, “Well, it won’t be so bad, Frankie. You’ll get used to it.”
Then he turned and left her alone—more alone than she’d ever been in her entire life.
CHAPTER 7
THE RUNAWAY
The third step from the bottom squeaked loudly, so Frankie carefully skipped it and was able to make the journey from the second floor silently. Her father was a heavy sleeper, but she took no chances. She wore wool trousers, as usual, and her heavy coat over a man’s shirt. The suitcase she carried was old and patched, and it bulged at the seams, for she had stuffed into it all it would possibly hold.
Appomattox Saga Omnibus 2: Three Books In One (Appomatox Saga) Page 7