by Vivi Holt
He strode into the dining room, looking around the crowded kitchen with pleasure. He hadn’t had much chance to keep the new place clean, and was glad the visitors had straightened up, making the room glow with warmth and homeliness.
The table was set with a glazed ham, green beans, creamed potatoes, moist cornbread alongside a golden cake of butter, black-eyed peas, carrots and plenty of greens. Brent’s mouth watered at the sight of it. He hadn’t seen that much food in one place since the last family Christmas at his parents’ ranch in 1887 – before his father and mother died, before the heartbreak of staying had gotten too much and he’d sold it all to start over elsewhere …
He shook himself, smacked his lips and sat with the rest of the group. The children sat wherever they could find a place in the living room, on kitchen stools and on the floor.
“Would you say the blessing please, Brent?” asked Mary.
“Of course.” Everyone bowed their heads. “Heavenly Father, thank You for this food and the hands that prepared it. Thank You for kindly neighbors and rich farmland … and new beginnings. Bless all we eat to our bodies. Amen.”
“Amen,” the chorus resounded, and Brent beamed at the sound of it. He liked having a house with noise in it again. He’d had too much quiet of late, and was worried he’d almost forgotten how to socialize.
Those around the table quietly passed the dishes, sharing with those around them. The women bustled between the rooms, serving steaming spoonfuls of the delicious food onto the plates of hungry children and making sure everyone’s cups were full to the brim with strong coffee, cool spring water or – for a few of the men – Kentucky sipping whiskey.
Brent took an enormous bite of warm cornbread dripping in butter and smiled. Thank you, God, for good friends.
7
“Oh God, I don’t truly believe that You’ve abandoned me, honestly I don’t. I don’t know why I said that and I’m sorry I did. It just seems as though nothing will go right for me, like I’ve lost everything in this world that there is to lose. I could really use Your help. Please, would You show me a way forward? I just don’t know what to do.” Christy unfolded her hands, opened her eyes and stood to her feet beside her neatly made bed.
Summer was well underway and she was no closer to finding a solution to her problems. Her father’s will was still being contested, she still had no job or money to speak of, and even the letters from Candice, brimming with tearful encouragement, were no longer able to buoy her flagging spirits.
She regarded her reflection in the looking glass, smoothed her hair and pinched her pale cheeks. Then she trudged down the stairs to breakfast.
Meredith and Morty greeted her warmly as she sat at the dining table in their small kitchen. Though the food smelled delicious, she had no appetite. Morty smiled at her, his well-waxed handlebar moustache framing his wide mouth. His thinning hair was combed evenly across his scalp and his grey eyes twinkled happily. “Come now, my dear, you’ll fade away,” he said, handing her some toasted bread.
“I just can’t seem to eat much.” She did nibble slowly on the bread.
Meredith and Morty looked at each other. Meredith’s hair was curled into a tight bun at the back of her head and she wore a plain brown dress and white pinafore with small red rosebuds splashed across it. “Christy dear, we have to talk to you about your future,” she began. “We’d like you to stay here with us. As you know, our children are grown with families of their own, and our house has been awfully quiet ever since they left.”
Christy stopped eating. “I would love to stay here. Your house is very warm and welcoming.” She smiled at the couple.
The pair looked at each other again before Meredith continued speaking. “But you’re a young woman, and like our own children you should be out in the world, starting a family of your own. You just don’t seem … happy. We worry about you.”
Christy looked at her plate. Now her appetite had left entirely. “Oh,” she said.
“Dear, we don’t mean to upset you,” Meredith said quickly, reaching over to pat Christy’s arm. “Of course you can stay here as long as you need. We just don’t want you to be stuck here all on your lonesome. I’ll tell you what – why don’t I help you write letters to your friends back home? You can reach out to them and see who might offer you money or lodging. Maybe something will come up – you never know until you ask.”
Christy nodded. “That sounds like a good idea.”
“We’re happy to help you in whatever way we can, you know that,” said Morty. “We just don’t want you to lose hope.”
“Thank you,” Christy whispered, a wave of grief and loneliness filling her heart. She stared out the window at the brilliant flowers in the front garden as they waved in the summer breeze. It seemed to her that hope had been lost a long time ago.
The weeks passed quickly, and Christy’s heart began healing. She enjoyed her time with Meredith and Morty and had slipped seamlessly into sharing their comfortable life with them. But she hadn’t heard anything hopeful from her friends back in Philadelphia concerning a possible job or place to stay. “I’m beginning to think no one cares at all!” she said one morning to Meredith while they made her bed together. “Another day without a single letter!”
“Give it some more time, my dear,” Meredith said. “It can take a while for people to sort things out.”
Christy shoved the corner of the sheet beneath her mattress and straightened it despondently. “It’s as though no one’s concerned that I’ve been left all alone. They don’t even write to express their sorrow at Mam and Daddy’s passing. Candy is the only one who’s written back, and she can’t convince her parents to let me stay with them.” She thought she might cry just thinking about it. She straightened her back and smoothed her dress.
“Just wait a little longer,” Meredith said gently. “It hasn’t been so very long.” But she knew that if help was likely to come from Philadelphia, it would’ve arrived already. She just didn’t want to say so to Christy. The poor girl would need to make other plans for her life. “Why don’t you come to the mercantile with me? You can help me pick out the ingredients for dessert tonight?”
Christy brightened a little. Nodding, she said, “That would be wonderful. I need something to take my mind off my troubles and you know how I love to bake.”
The Fair Deal General Store was a bright, cheerful place, its shelves lined with groceries, linens, fabrics, shoes and farming supplies. A person could find whatever he or she might need and even a few things they never knew they wanted within its hewn-timber walls – and what they couldn’t, they could order specially. It was Christy’s favorite place in Topeka outside of the Pokes’ home, reminding her of Wanamaker’s huge store back in Philadelphia where she and her mother used to shop, only smaller.
At the entrance to the store was a notice board holding flyers about various happenings around town, or missing and lost items. One particular stack of cream-colored flyers with thick black lettering caught Meredith’s eye. “Christy, dear,” she said, turning the young woman around so that she didn’t see the board. “My back is aching a little – could you go fetch the rest of the ingredients while I speak with the clerk for a moment?”
“Of course, Meredith,” Christy beamed. “I’ll take care of everything.”
Meredith watched Christy leave, then turned back to face the notice board. Yes, she had seen right ― there in big, bold letters were the words:
Mail-Order Brides Wanted!
Meredith inched closer so she could read the small print beneath the heading. She’d forgotten her spectacles, and it was becoming so bad that she couldn’t read a line without squinting these days. The flyer was for an information night to be held the following Tuesday, and encouraged local young women to come and learn more about becoming a mail-order bride.
It seemed that Destiny had placed the notice there for her to see. Why, this could be just the thing to get Christy out of danger! Her eyes widened as she read the r
est of the note. There were men out West who wanted brides right away. Christy could be one of them. She’s pretty enough to make any man happy!
Meredith glanced over her shoulder to make sure Christy was still busy elsewhere, then took a flyer and stuffed it in her pocket. I’ll wait for the right moment, then tell her about it. But I think our prayers may have been answered!
That afternoon, as Christy helped Meredith bake a yellow cake with chocolate frosting for dessert, Meredith asked, as casually as she could manage, “Christy, my dear, have you thought about what you might do if your friends don’t reply to your correspondence?”
Christy sifted flour into the bowl. “Mam wanted me to sit the teaching examination, but now I can’t afford to. Why?”
“Christy, you’re a woman full grown ― old enough to make decisions for yourself. What is it you want to do?”
“I don’t know. I’m nineteen years old, but I don’t feel grown. I don’t want to be on my own, but I’m really too old for anyone to take me in and care for me. And yet I feel as though I’m too young to support myself.” She sighed. “I really don’t know what I want – only that I feel lonely and lost.”
“You’re old enough to marry, my dear.”
Christy’s eyes stretched wide. “Marry? Meredith, who would I marry? I don’t know any unmarried men out here. I mean, I see men around town and I say ‘good day’ to them, but I don’t really know any well enough to marry.” She looked at the floor, her cheeks flushed red.
Meredith straightened her back and dusted the flour from her hands. “You only need to know one, Christy. And you just haven’t met the right one yet, is all.”
“Do you think I will find someone someday, Meredith?”
“Of course you will, my dear – as sweet and pretty as you are.” She reached into her pocket, took out the flyer and handed it to Christy. “And there are men out there looking.”
Christy’s eyebrows arched as she read the sheet. “Why … I could never do such a thing! Marry a man I’ve never met?”
Meredith’s face turned serious. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, my dear. But this might be your best option. I’m afraid none of your friends are going to help you, and you can’t count on your family in Ireland. The men in this program are supposed to be good men – it says here that they’ve all been interviewed and vetted. At least go to the meeting and ask them about it. They might help put your mind to ease.”
Christy nodded. “Okay. I will go to the meeting. But I can’t imagine tying myself to a man I’ve never met.”
“Perhaps a family is what you’re really searching for. You feel lonely, afraid, uncertain of what to do. A husband could be the answer to your prayers.”
Christy pondered Meredith’s words. It was true – she missed having a family. She didn’t want to live on her own, and she didn’t know how to make her own way in the world without a penny to fall back on. Yes, she would go to the meeting and see what they had to say. There wasn’t any harm in finding out more.
8
Bonnie McCloud was a pretty middle-aged woman with blonde hair, brown eyes and as thick an Irish accent as Christy’s mother. In fact, from outside the church meeting hall, the woman’s voice sounded so much like Mrs. Hancock that Christy froze in the darkness. She was already nervous enough about the meeting, and needed a few moments to regain her composure. She sat down on a stone wall beside the church gate to think.
Maybe she should turn around and head back to Meredith and Morty’s place – this whole idea was ridiculous. Who marries someone they’ve never even see before? But if she didn’t do this, what was she to do? She had no one to turn to, nowhere to go. She couldn’t continue the journey to California or become a teacher – she didn’t have the money – and even if she could, she’d still be alone in the world. However, she could put her fate in God’s hands and pray that she’d be matched with a good man who could give her a warm and loving home.
Christy stood to her feet, dusted off the back of her skirt and walked into the church hall. Mrs. McCloud was already telling the young women sitting on folding chairs about the mail-order bride program, so she hurried over to an empty chair and sat, smoothing the front of her dress and folding her hands in her lap.
“ … The men we match you with are all checked carefully by one of our offices. They’re each interviewed and have to provide character references from people who know them. I can assure you, they are hard-working and can provide for a family. And they’ll pay for you to travel out to meet them. These men want to get married, but there aren’t a lot of women out West. Many towns have no women of marrying age at all.
“Of course, you’re free to return to Topeka if you don’t wish to go ahead with it once you arrive, but I would encourage you all to give it a try. We have placed hundreds of girls like you throughout the West, and most are happily married, raising beautiful families in their new homes. They write to tell us how much their new situations suit them, and they are usually well pleased with their husbands.”
Christy listened with interest. Maybe this would to be a good option for her after all – a home with a loving husband and a family of her own. Hearing about it stirred a longing deep in her heart that had been buried when her parents died months ago. She wiped stray tears from beneath her eyes.
At the end, she stood with the others to pack the folding chairs away, then joined the line of girls in front of Bonnie who wanted to sign up. When it was her turn, she gave Mrs. McCloud her name and details. But after everyone else was done, she asked to speak to her in private, and confessed her misgivings about the scheme.
“The men in the program are thoroughly checked, Miss Hancock ― the agency makes sure they all have enough income to support a family, no criminal history, no dissipating habits. They’re good men.”
What about love? Christy thought. The agency can do nothing to ensure I’ll actually love the man they match me with, or he me. What does money mean if we have no feelings, no attraction, to each other? But she was too embarrassed to talk about such a thing as love with the older woman. Mrs. McCloud would probably think her immature to even consider such things. After all, the way she’d spoken of it, marrying was about finding a home and security, not romance. That’s what her mother had always told her as well.
She dare not ask for anything more than that. Perhaps she wasn’t even supposed to. Mam had often told her to get her head out of the clouds, that marriage wasn’t a fairy tale and that she would do well to settle for a good man who could provide for her. So that’s what Christy had prayed for over the years.
But the things she asked for, even prayed for, were quite different from what she truly wanted. It felt like a lifetime since the incidents on the train. She had done a lot of growing in the meantime, but inside she was still that girl who watched the fields of flowers passing by the train window, daydreaming about the things she’d left behind and what was to come.
Mam’s voice rang loudly in her memories: “Christy, if you can find a man who’s honorable, a good provider and will take care of you, you can’t ask for better than that. Love is a luxury most women can ill afford. Daydreams will leave you cold and lonely, my girl.”
So the following morning when Christy awoke, she dressed quickly and looked at herself solemnly in the mirror. She took a deep breath, ran down the stairs and said to Meredith, “I’m ready. I’m getting married.”
Within three days, everything was organized. Christy had been matched with one Brent Taylor, a farmer in the Indian Territory. Not that far west of Topeka after all – more south than west, really. Compared to going to California, it would be a short trip.
Mrs. McCloud gave her a letter that Mr. Taylor had written to greet his future bride. In it, he said that he’d been lonely ever since his fiancée had died three years earlier in a riding accident. More recently, his parents had passed on, leaving him completely alone on the extensive property in Kentucky he’d inherited from them. He’d decided to sell it a
nd start a new life in the West, recently claiming forty acres in the Unassigned Lands of the Indian Territory near a town called Newton.
So he’s an orphan too, Christy thought. At least he’ll know some of my pain. We’ll have that in common.
She picked up her quill, dipped it in the inkwell and held it poised above the blank sheet of paper on the table in front of her. What should she write to a man she’d never met, but whom she would soon be married to?
Dear Mr. Taylor,
I was so very pleased to hear from you. Thank you for sharing with me about your family. I too have lost my parents and understand what it is like to be alone in the world.
From your description, your new ranch sounds lovely. I don’t have much experience with country life, having spent most of my childhood in Philadelphia. We did have a chicken coop in our backyard, but otherwise I don’t know much about caring for animals.
You asked me what I like to do. I love to play piano, garden, bake and read.
Mrs. McCloud is arranging for me to travel to you next week, so you will no doubt receive this letter shortly before I arrive. I look forward to meeting you at the train station. I have bright red hair – that may help you recognize me.
Kind regards,
Christy Hancock
Mr. Taylor’s letter had stated that he would meet Christy at the station with a bunch of daisies on the day arranged for her to arrive. She shut her eyes as she folded it and placed it in her luggage, next to the letter from her mother. She took her own letter to Brent and placed it in an envelope, ready to mail.