Shelter from the Storm

by Patricia Rice

  Her gentle admonitions did not strike the same chords of guilt and shame that they used to. Ever since he had learned that his hard-earned wages went to buy his father’s whiskey and pay his gambling debts, Cash had not been able to look at his father in the same way.

  Things had never turned out well for him because he drank and gambled, not because his lovely wife was a woman of color. Cash wished there were some way to make his mother see that, but she would never hear a word spoken against the proud Southern gentleman who had broken all the rules to marry her. He would have to be grateful. He had a name, he supposed, for all the good it did him.

  He kissed his mother good night and sat down to his birthday dinner of cold beans and stale cornbread. To ease the hatred burning inside him, Cash conjured up the pastel vision of Sallie Kincaid stopping to speak with him today. Someday he would be richer than the Kincaids, have a bigger house than Stone Creek, and marry a woman like Sallie. Maybe he would even marry Sallie. She was pretty enough to make people forget who he was, and the whole town of Stone Creek would have to look up to him with respect.

  Then let his father try to steal his wages.

  Chapter 2

  Laura came out of the dry-goods store with a small bundle of needles and thread in her hand. Now that she was nine, Aunt Ann had promised her very own sewing box if she could complete hemming Sallie’s new gown. Hemming was boring, but the sewing box would have nice new scissors and measuring tape and chalk, and with the scraps she had saved from the dress, she could create an elegant gown for her doll. She already knew what the gown would look like, and her fingers itched to start.

  Franz patiently rose to his huge feet as she stepped out to the brick walk. The main street of Stone Creek had recently been paved with Macadam’s new surface, reducing the level of mud and dust considerably. But the presence of a constant stream of horses and carriages on Court Day had contributed more than the normal share of refuse on the street. Laura turned up her nose in distaste at the odor.

  She glanced around for some sign of Henry in the confusion of men and horses. Aunt Ann would probably have fainted had she known her niece had gone to town on Court Day, but Henry wouldn’t tell and no one else would miss her. If she were to finish that hem, she had to have thread. And Henry’s errand to pick up a repaired bridle had seemed fortuitous. What difficulty could she get into in just a few minutes?

  Men from throughout the county came to town on Court Day. Small farmers in jeans and hickory striped shirts mixed with the wealthy landowners in linen coats and silk waistcoats discussing the upcoming election and Cassius Clay’s latest outrage. All along the main street vendors set up stands touting patent medicines and other nostrums. A tooth doctor had set up his booth on one corner, and a pair of minstrels strummed banjos on another for the coins thrown in their hats.

  In front of the courthouse there was a lively argument going on over the price of a horse, and similar transactions would occur throughout the day. By evening, whiskey and tempers would have erupted into enough brawls to fill the tiny jail, but the day was young yet. Laura tapped her small booted foot to the lively tune of the minstrels and waited for Henry to return. She found Court Day rather exciting.

  Despite the earliness of the hour, loud voices and shouts from a crowd down toward the tavern attracted her attention. With more curiosity than wisdom, Laura wandered in that direction. She didn’t know what men liked to fight about, but Uncle Matt was always full of tales of the latest feuds.

  Politics seemed to be the most popular argument, and even Uncle Matt got stirred when the neighbors started arguing elections and such. There seemed to be a mighty to-do every time the issue of slavery was brought up. Since the Great Compromiser, Henry Clay, had died two years ago, the arguments had grown more vociferous, and Henry’s distant cousin Cassius seemed to be the instigator of most of the turmoil. S

  Laura didn’t understand much more than that. She knew Uncle Matt’s Henry and Jemima were slaves, but they were far better off than some of the white folks in town. That was what Uncle Matt said, and she had seen the truth of that with her own eyes.

  As she drew closer to the brawl, Laura saw that the crowd seemed to be surrounding a man on a horse who was shouting incoherently and wielding a whip. She recognized Mr. Watterson from the farm next to Uncle Matt’s, and her nose turned up in more distaste than she had displayed at the odor emanating from the street.

  Watterson was a fat, florid-faced man of uncertain temper, at best. Henry and Jemima stayed out of his way when he came to visit because his way with slaves was not gentle, even when they were not his own. Rumor had it that he’d had to sell off all his house servants to cover debts, and the few field hands seemed to be dwindling rapidly. Since he’d had to advertise runaways numerous times in the last few years, the cause of the dwindling number remained vague. Most of his work was done by hired help, and if possible, he treated them worse than his slaves, since they were worth nothing to him.

  Shouts of encouragement mixed with voices of protest as the whip descended again, and Laura felt a sickness in the pit of her stomach. No animal should be treated so cruelly. How could those men stand idly by and behave as if this were another cockfight? At least the cocks were equally armed. A man with a whip against a defenseless animal was no such thing. She was only nine and small for her age, but she would tell the nasty man to stop it. Even Watterson couldn’t lift a hand to a Kincaid.

  The crowd shifted as she approached, and Laura gasped in horror at the sight finally revealed. No animal stood beneath the thunderous lashes of that whip, but a boy coated in blood. Her fingernails dug into her palms as the whip sliced through the air once again, laying open another stripe on the boy’s broad shoulder. The boy had tried to grab the whip as it whistled past him, but the blow knocked him to the ground. Before he could rise, the whip struck again, tearing open what remained of the shirt across his back.

  “Damned disobedient young pup! Who do you think you are, swearin’ out a complaint against me? I’ll teach you who’s boss here. Your pa owed me a heap of money before he died, and you’re going to pay back every cent if you have to work till you drop!” The exclamations were accompanied by the slash of the whip, crippling the skinny boy, who still tried desperately to regain his feet.

  “Someone orter stop him before he kills the boy,” one bystander protested laconically, spitting a wad of tobacco juice toward the street.

  “He’s just white trash, and not all white at that. Watterson’s got the right on it. He ain’t got no call to be filin’ a complaint against a man who gives him room and board.”

  Sick to her stomach, fury steaming out her ears, Laura contemplated kicking the ignorant yokel who spoke, but her soft leather boots wouldn’t have much effect. Fists clenched in pain as the whip struck again, she shuddering as if she had been the one struck,

  Laura knew what she had to do to stop this horror, but she closed her eyes and prayed first, hoping Papa would hear her. When he had given her Franz, her father had taught her all the commands that Franz knew, but there was one she had been forbidden to use except in dire danger. She had never used it and did not know how it would work, but she felt her father would understand if she tried it now.

  Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes and cried, “Kill, Franz, kill!” and pointed in the direction of horse and rider.

  Laura didn’t know how the dog would differentiate among the many, but she prayed her father or the good Lord above was watching over her. Someone had to put an end to this travesty.

  Franz dashed loyally in the direction indicated. Before any could stop him, the huge black animal hurled forward and fastened his massive jaw around Watterson’s thigh.

  The man’s high-pitched scream scarcely reached Laura’s ears as she dodged into the crowd to grab the boy lying sprawled in the street. The men around her were more intent on the spectacle of Watterson fighting the devil-dog than on his hapless victim. Laura tugged the boy’s arm and he lifted a blood-stre
aked face dazedly. The dark eyes cleared quickly at the sight of the young girl still in her brown winter velvet pulling at his arm.

  “Come on, we got to get out of here,” she commanded, tugging again as if her small frame could lift him from the street.

  Rage and fear overcoming the torment of his body, Cash found his feet and dodged through the crowd at the heels of his avenging angel. Several men shouted warning of his escape, but Watterson was beyond caring. Fighting the unyielding jaws of the dog, he reached for the pistol he always carried in his jacket pocket on Court Day.

  Laura’s back jerked at the sound of the shot, but she did not turn or falter in her footsteps. She had a destination in mind, and she did not swerve from it. In the face of such courage, Cash could do no less than follow, although instincts acquired in years of ill treatment screamed a protest. He needed to steal a horse and ride out of town before Watterson came looking for him. Instead, he raced after the tiny figure darting down a side alley.

  Heedless of the dirt and trash littering the carriage alley behind some of the town’s larger residences, Laura lifted her skirts to aid in running and glanced over her shoulder to be certain Cash still followed. He was limping badly and blood poured from a cut over his forehead, but he was right behind her, his long legs keeping pace at a distance.

  She opened a back gate leading into a small garden behind a converted carriage house, once the grand residence of a polished barouche. The driver’s quarters and eventually the entire building had been converted into a cottage and office for the town’s only physician. The elderly and once wealthy owner of this magnificence had gladly accepted Dr. Broadbent’s offer to purchase the empty carriage house. It now had a respectable entrance to the street, but Laura preferred this rear entrance under the circumstances.

  She was panting as she pounded on the office door, and as Cash caught up with her she unceremoniously threw open the door and entered before any could answer her knock.

  The odors of alcohol and formaldehyde mixed with the scents of lemon and some other sweet-smelling concoction as Laura lunged into the stifling room the doctor had partitioned off for his laboratory. The man bent over a microscope looked up with dismay and disapproval until he registered Laura’s tear-streaked face. When the blood-caked boy stumbled through the door, he immediately set aside the machine.

  “Laura, run into the house and have Kate bring us some hot water. You, boy, come with me.”

  Relieved that someone of competence had taken control of the matter, Laura ran to do as told. Dr. Broadbent was young, and many of the older people refused to consult with him, but Uncle Matthew knew his family and had brought him out to the farm to treat various injuries and sicknesses among the household and servants.

  Laura liked the serious young doctor, who always took time to laugh and talk with her, and she had taken to visiting with his sad-eyed wife whenever she had the opportunity. Sallie had informed her that Mrs. Broadbent had consumption and was sad because she couldn’t have children, but Laura understood little of that. She just knew Kate was one of the kindest people she knew.

  Between them they managed to carry the heavy pitcher of water to the office, where Dr. Broadbent had taken Cash. Stripped to his trousers, Cash sat bravely on the cot, flinching only when the doctor applied soap and antiseptic to his wounds. As Kate unwound bandages and found ointments, Laura quietly in a corner out of the way, trying desperately not to think of Franz.

  “I’ll have the devil who did this,” the doctor gritted out between clenched teeth as he applied needle and thread to the skin gaping over Cash’s eye. “He should have been strung up long ago. The man’s inhuman.”

  “If they didn’t string him up for killing Caleb, they sure won’t do anything over the likes of me.” Mentioning the slave over whom he had filed the complaint, Cash glanced to the corner where Laura sat apparently forgotten in the bustle. “That was a mighty big dog. You reckon it might have got away?”

  Laura’s eyes lit with sudden hope. “Do you think he might? I better go see.’’

  Before she could leap to her feet. Kate caught her shoulder and held her down and Dr. Broadbent frowned sternly at the pair. “Neither of you is to go out in that street again today. Laura, is your uncle here? I’ll send someone for him.”

  Laura shook her head. “Just Henry. He’s at the harness-maker’s.”

  Only a look passed between husband and wife before Kate hurried off to send someone after the black servant. Laura appeared ready to cry again as she glanced toward the door.

  “Couldn’t I just go look, Doctor? Franz may just be hurt, and he’ll be looking for me.”

  “I’ll go. Watterson will be healing himself at the saloon. I’ll find him.” Cash started to rise from the cot.

  “I’ll take a switch to you myself if you try any such damned fool thing.” The doctor shoved him back down. “Laura didn’t sacrifice her dog just so you could go back out there and get yourself killed. I don’t even want to know how that child got mixed up in this thing. I’ll have a word or two for Matthew Kincaid before this is over, but right now the two of you will sit right where you are. Henry will look for the dog.”

  Cash’s jaw set stubbornly, but whether in defiance or against the pain, it wasn’t easy to tell. He suffered in silence while the physician started on the long stripes across his shoulders.

  In the interest of politeness, Laura offered, “I heard your mama died, Cash. I’m sorry. She was a nice lady.”

  Cash grimaced as the antiseptic went over another cut. “That Mrs. Kincaid’s idea to send the fruit? It was mighty kind of her.”

  This was a polite euphemism to cover up what they both knew Laura shouldn’t have done. Laura had been the one to visit the tar-paper shack, not Mrs. Kincaid, and the thought of sending fruit would never have occurred to the vague woman inhabiting the upper rooms of Stone Creek.

  Laura kept up the polite facade in front of the doctor. “It’s the least that we could do.” Lapsing into childish honesty, she added, “I don’t know why people always send food. I don’t remember being very hungry after Papa died.”

  Dr. Broadbent snorted and looked over his spectacles at the small girl wrapped in silks and velvets in the corner. “Food feeds the vultures who show up after any death. It saves the mourners from needing to provide for them.”

  “Jonathan!” Kate entered in time to hear her husband’s cynical comment. “They’re just children. You mustn’t speak so.”

  “My apologies, madam,” he answered with a hint of irony.

  “The boy has gone to fetch Henry,” she continued, satisfied, “and I’ve fixed up the bed in the back room. You will want to watch him for fever, won’t you?”

  Cash jerked beneath the doctor’s hand, attempting to slide away. “I’m obliged to you, but I got no money to pay, and I’d better be getting along before Watterson comes looking for me. I don’t want to cause no trouble for nobody.”

  Broadbent’s fingers dug into the boy’s shoulder and held him without effort. “Watterson won’t come near here if he values his life. I’ve threatened to file charges against him before. This time I’ll do it, and he knows it. You’ll stay, and when you’re better, you’ll help around the place to work off the debt. I heard you’re good with horses, and I’ve been thinking of replacing that old mare of mine.”

  It was like handing a peppermint stick to a baby. Cash sat down and looked warily at his benefactor. His lean dark face had never learned to smile, and suspicion was its most common emotion.

  When the doctor ignored his reaction and continued to work on the multitude of welts, the boy glanced to Laura’s corner. The sight of her huddled form surreptitiously wiping away a tear relaxed the tautness in his shoulders to a degree. A new look of shrewd intelligence appeared on his grimy face.

  “I already filed charges. I’m supposed to be over to the courthouse today. He killed Caleb and he damn near killed me before this. I don’t let no man get away with that, begging your pardon, ma�
��am, sir.” He dodged an apologetic glance to the doctor’s pale-faced wife.

  “No jury from around here is going to find against a landowner like Watterson when a boy like you is pressing the charges. You’ll only cause yourself more grief. Count whatever your father owed him as paid and leave it at that, for now. When you’ve got your full growth and made something of yourself, then you come back and right the wrongs. Learn patience, boy.”

  Cash’s mouth set in a grim line, but he seemed to be absorbing this advice and filing it away for future reference. Laura listened in amazement as he dropped the subject of his enemy and broached another.

  “I’m real good with horses and I’m a hard worker. These cuts won’t slow me down. I can start work today, if you want. Maybe after I show you how much I can do, you could give me a small wage. I don’t mean to be beholden to nobody.”

  “Your mother told me she’d taught you to read and write and do figures. That’s the hardest work you’ll do until these gashes are healed. You’ll earn your keep, don’t worry, and you’ll get fair wages when you’re ready to earn them.”

  The buggy and a terrified Henry arrived in the back, and Laura ran to the old black servant’s arms as he exclaimed and held them out to her. The tears that she had been holding back streamed down her face now that she had the comfort of solid arms around her. Henry glanced up to the questioning eyes watching this performance and shook his had sorrowfully

  “C’mon, Miz Laura, we take you back now. We let Marster Matt take keer of things.”

  Laura looked up in horror. If Uncle Matt knew Henry had taken her to town on Court Day, he would have a proper fit. She shook her head until her loosened bonnet fell. “Oh, no, you mustn’t say a word. We’ll say Franz followed the carriage. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  Henry nodded slowly, his eyes brimming at the sight of her brave tears. “I’m feared so, Miz Laura. It was real quick-like. He didn’t suffer none.”