by Pamela Morsi
"I'm learning that," Henry Lee answered. "Your green tomato pie was as good as any apple or peach I've ever eaten, but there wasn't a bit of sweetness to it. Kind of like your temperament this morning," he teased. "Are you still feeling poorly?"
Hannah's cheeks burned as she assumed that he referred to her monthly indisposition.
"I'm feeling much better now," she answered truthfully and deliberately changed the subject. "I overheard some gossip at church, and it put me in a bit of an uncivil frame of mind."
Henry Lee steeled himself for her reaction. She had heard about his business, he wished again that he had already told her himself. At least, if she was going to cause trouble about it, he would have been more prepared.
As a part of his business, Henry Lee had dealt with his share of angry customers who were priced out, delivered late, or otherwise dissatisfied with his whiskey. He decided to handle Hannah the same way he did them. Let her yell and complain all she wanted, he'd keep his voice low and agreeable and eventually she'd talk herself out. She had a right to be angry, but she'd come around after a bit and see that the business would be good for her and their family.
"Tell me what happened," he said gently.
"I just get so mad sometimes," she explained. "Some people are just irredeemable hypocrites."
"Oh?"
"Well." Hannah reconsidered. "They might not be irredeemable, but they certainly are beyond my forgiveness today."
Henry Lee took a deep breath, hoping for the best. "What did these unforgivable hypocrites do?"
Hannah didn't want to embarrass Henry Lee or make him feel unwelcome in the church, but she wanted him to know that the opinion of some was not her opinion, and that she intended to change the opinions of all. She decided to modify the truth so as not to hurt his feelings.
"I overheard two old gossips commenting on how you weren't a regular churchgoer before we married, and suggesting that you are more of a sinner than they."
Hannah missed the conflict of emotions that raced across Henry Lee's face as she continued. "The problem is that they really don't know you. To them, just because you didn't live in Kansas or Nebraska with the rest of us, you are somehow suspect. I have come to know you, in the last few weeks, and I know that there is no question that you are a fine, respectable Christian man. Why you weren't accepted into the congregation immediately is a complete mystery to me!"
Hannah turned to him and smiled brightly. "I don't want you worrying about a thing, I'm going to straighten everything out. I intend to tell each and every person in that congregation what an upstanding gentleman you are. Why, most of them wouldn't dream of trading with the Negroes or having friends visit who are Indian or crippled. You are a better Christian than all of them, and I definitely intend to tell them so."
Had she turned to glance at her husband at that time, she would have seen his look of horror. Not only was she unaware of the truth, she was forming plans to make herself look like the biggest fool in the Twin Territories.
"Hannah, I don't think you should do that."
"Oh, yes, I should!" she insisted. "It's the truth and it's time people knew it. Why, I admit myself, that before we married, I thought you were some kind of ne'er-do-well. I never heard anything good about you. The way people talked I thought you spent all your time going to parties and such."
Henry Lee was stung with her confession. She had thought him worthless, good enough to give her child a name, but nothing more. She'd married him so her sin wouldn't taint any of those fine men in her church. His hurt hardened into anger. If she thought those women at the church were hypocrites, she was certainly the pot calling the kettle black.
"Hannah, I don't care what those people think of me." His jaw was set stubbornly and his speech defiant. "I know what kind of man I am, and I've learned to let the judgments of other people wash right over me. If those church people learn to accept me as I am and respect me, well that's fine. If they can't do that, well that's fine too. I'm not going to let you try to make people accept me. That's not my way. Understand this," he finished with an undertone of anger, "I am what I am, and I don't care what they think."
"But," Hannah argued, "I care what they think. They've been my friends and family all my life and I want them to like my husband."
"Oh, I see," he answered, allowing the sting of his anger to surface as he passed the reins into one hand and ran the other distractedly through his thick black hair "You don't care for my sake, just for your own. You want a respectable husband! Well, maybe you should have made your wedding plans a little bit more carefully!"
Hannah was surprised at his anger and embarrassed that he'd brought up that awful trick she had played in the wellhouse. She could understand why he was still angry about that. But all she wanted was for the church people to be able to appreciate him. Why did he seem so intent on maintaining a reputation that he didn't deserve?
"I'm not thinking of myself, Henry Lee," Hannah insisted as she tentatively reached out to touch his sleeve. "These people are wrong about you and they need to see the error of their ways. I fully intend to explain, very lovingly, that the congregation has not been as neighborly or as generous as you deserve."
"No," Henry Lee's voice carried authority, "you will not speak to anyone about me at all. I forbid you to discuss me with the congregation of Plainview Church or with anyone!"
Hannah was shocked at his vehemence. "Surely you don't mean to forbid me, Henry Lee?" she asked, removing her hand from his coat and laying it primly in her lap. "I'm only doing my Christian duty."
"Your duty, Mrs. Watson, is to follow the wishes of your husband. I have said that you will not discuss it and you will not discuss it."
Hannah was stunned into speechlessness.
Henry Lee drove into the yard rushing his horses and with his anger barely under control. Pulling up to a stop near the back door, he quickly pulled on the hand brake and jumped down from the wagon. Reaching up to Hannah he grabbed her around the waist and set her on her feet with more force than was actually necessary.
"And another thing," he said in the same harsh demanding tone. "I don't want to see you in this ridiculous breast binder again. It makes no sense to torture your body because you're afraid that your husband might get a good look at you!"
Chapter Eleven
Henry Lee Watson handled his outbursts of temper by busying himself with something else. Hard work was his solace and he indulged wholeheartedly in it after their return from church.
He had planned to start cooking the mash, but the calmness and patience necessary for good whiskey making were lacking in his current mood. His mother had always said that when she was angry or sad, you could taste the bitterness in the food she cooked. Henry Lee figured the same would undoubtedly apply to moonshine whiskey. With his blood all riled up and pounding through his veins, he wouldn't be able to take the time and care that made his corn liquor so fine.
With that in mind, he spent the afternoon doing a task that flourished with anger, chopping wood. He needed to sweat and pound that inanimate stump to release the choler that was churning inside of him.
Her former opinion of him rankled, but more than that he was angry at himself. He knew why she had married him. He should be beyond being bothered by it. He didn't want her child to be an ever-present barrier between them. The child existed, the child was not his, she married him to give the child a name. Knowing the facts, it was past time to let that anger go. He remembered how it was with his parents. Whenever they fought, whether it was over money, or his father's drinking, or predicting the weather, no matter how the argument started, before it was over Skut would bring the circumstances of Henry Lee's birth into the fray.
As Henry Lee plowed through a piece of post oak, he remembered his father's angry words. "I'm saddled for life with some soldier boy's mixed breed brat 'cause Miss Molly couldn't keep her damn drawers on."
Even in retrospect, Henry Lee still burned with the embarrassment and humiliation. A lo
wlife like Skut Watson felt free to look down on him because his father was just some man that got between his mother's legs.
Slamming the axe down and through the wood he swore to himself Hannah's child would never suffer as he had suffered. He would never think himself to be discarded by his father and a shame to his mother. That child would never know that Henry Lee was not his parent. He would talk to him, teach him what he knew about whiskey and wood. Show him how to plow a straight furrow and judge a good horse. The child would never hear a word of doubt about his heritage, unless Hannah told the child herself.
The idea that she might do that, that she might think that the child would rather know himself fathered by someone other than Henry Lee momentarily rekindled his still glowing anger. No, he decided, Hannah wouldn't do that. And he would be such a good father to the little one, Hannah would see that she had made the right choice. She would just have to learn to stay out of things that didn't really concern her. And she'd have to learn to live with a man who made his living with moonshine whiskey. If that didn't suit her, it was just too bad. Angry she was bound to be when she found out, but she'd adjust. Henry Lee just wished that she already knew. But in his present mood, he'd botch the entire confession.
Sunday dinner in the Watson household was uncustomarily quiet. Henry Lee noticed both the sumptuously prepared meal and the mild-spoken and demure wife with the enticingly curvaceous figure. He realized that Hannah was making every effort to placate him. He wasn't sure if he should thank her or apologize. In the silence between them, Henry Lee concentrated on the making of the whiskey. That was something that he understood. Whiskey making was an art, but it did not demand self-assessment, and it never got its feelings hurt.
Tonight he would begin the distillation process. The mash had to cook over an even, gentle fire for three or four days and would have to be watched almost constantly around the clock. The fire must be kept hot enough to make the vapor without cooking down, but not so hot that it carried too much steam, or it might scorch the mash. In the extreme heat of the still, pressure built up fast and the danger of explosion was very real.
Normally, he would take his supplies up to his cave and just live there until the whiskey was done. With Hannah here, she would expect him to come for meals and to sleep in the cabin at night.
He had no idea what kind of excuse he could use for his absence. At least they weren't sharing a bed. That would have made it even more difficult to explain.
Getting up from the meal, he complimented and thanked her politely, and then brought her a bolt of sturdy cotton calico in a dark blue print.
"I got this for you over at Ingalls. I was figuring that you'd be needing a new traveling dress for our trip to Sallisaw.''
Hannah accepted the material with almost reverence. It looked to be a fine piece of cloth, peacock-blue with pattern of pale gray, almost silvery, leaves running diagonally from the bias. Although calico did not come as dear as it once had, she knew that her husband must have paid a good bit for it.
“I've got a lot of work to do around the place, if we are going to be gone for three days," Henry Lee told he "I'm going to rig you up a dinner bell out here on the back step. When you've got a meal ready, or if you’re needing me for something, you just clang that old bell few times and I'll be right here."
"Of course," Hannah answered, wondering what kind of work he would be doing, and why he wasn’t asking her to help out.
"With the heat being like it's been," he went on, turning slightly away so that he wouldn't have to actually look her in the eye, “I've been thinking to set my bed up outside somewhere."
“You're going to sleep outside?" Hannah was incredulous.
“Can't draw a decent breath in the house this time of year," he explained lamely. “But don't you worry for a minute. If you need something, you just bang on that dinner bell and I'll be down here in a flash. No need for you to be afraid around here."
"I'm not afraid of anything," Hannah said. But she had run her husband out of his own house, and that was the thing that frightened her most.
It was late in the evening before Henry Lee got the still operating. The big copper pot, looking much like a giant teakettle, sat on a grate above the fire. He filled the pot with the sour mash and sealed the lip on with putty.
Attaching the extra-long teakettle-like spout to a long spindly copper coil called a worm, Henry Lee ran it from the still and into a half barrel placed so that the cool water from the spring would pour over it. From there the coil wound its way into a large earthen jug.
As the mash cooked, the alcohol vapor would escape by flowing down the worm. As the vapor passed through the cold coil it would condense into liquid and drip into the earthen jug.
The drops arriving from the wedding batch were still singlings, and singlings were not fit for drinking. In some cases they were outright poison. The still would be cleaned and the singlings would be run through another time to make doublings, or drinking whiskey.
Although it was necessary for the distiller to be at the still constantly to ensure that nothing untoward happened, there was not really a great deal of work involved. All he did was watch the fire and listen to the liquor drip into the jug.
To pass the time while cooking the wedding batch Henry Lee had brought to the cave half a stack of cut pine lumber. He was going to attempt to copy a piece of furniture called a Dufold that he had seen in the Sears & Roebuck catalog.
By day the Dufold looked like a settee, totally innocuous. But at night, the back folded down and the seat folded out to form a bed. Henry Lee had decided that this would be ideal for his room at the cabin.
He was still embarrassed that Hannah's father had seen him bringing his cot into the house. He couldn't imagine what the preacher had thought, but no one else was going to suspect a thing. The Dufold would ensure that.
He examined the pictures closely in the light of the fire. It would take some hardware and more upholstering than he was wont to do, but he thought he could build it—and for a lot less money than they were asking in the Sears & Roebuck catalog.
Hannah also spent a very productive evening. She had taken a small corner of the pretty calico and was soaking it in a pailful of water and a teaspoon of sugar of lead, to make sure that it was colorfast. Then she'd searched through her sewing chest for the perfect pattern. The bolt was a good dress length with enough material for two waists and a skirt. Since the bodice of a gown wore out more swiftly than the length, it was commonplace to make a dress last twice as long by having the skirt do double duty.
The style she selected for the skirt looked somewhat plain from a distance, but it was slightly gored and fit a bit snugly at the hips, flaring at the hemline. The waist was gathered, but most of the fullness was concentrated on the sides and in the center of the back, where a small soft pad could be inserted for a hint of a bustle.
It was an extremely flattering shape, and Hannah who had never cared much about her clothes other than their cleanliness, was suddenly excited about wearing it.
For the bodice she picked out a mannish new style with pleats over the shoulders and a tailored collar. I would need a silk tie of sorts and Hannah rifled through all her scraps and ribbons trying to find something that would make the right contrast. She'd almost given up when she remembered her straw bonnet.
Quickly shifting through the boxes and wrappings she pulled it out and removed it from its tissue protection. It had come from the Montgomery Ward catalog. Myrtie had seen it and just couldn't live without it. She'd pestered her father until he finally agreed to put it in the next order that he sent. When it came, she had been heartbroken. It hadn't occurred to her that her coiffure would never fit under the tiny little headpiece. After several days of experimentation she'd finally given up and handed it over to Hannah whose severe hairstyle could be accommodated by the stylish lacing of straw.
Hannah had hardly worn it. It was saucy and attractive, but it sat back, framing the face, and didn't shade one ra
y of midday heat. The purpose of a bonnet was to keep the sun off a woman's face, and Hannah had no use for anything that didn't do its job.
Laying the silk trim tie ribbons against the calico now, a pleased smile broke out on Hannah's face. It was absolutely perfect. The pale blue silk turned silvery next to the calico. A modiste couldn't have made a better match.
With a cheerful little laugh, she started to remove the trim from the bonnet, but stopped herself to try it on one more time. Hurrying to the mirror, she admired herself. It wasn't really such a bad little hat. It gave her face some of the same fullness she noticed when she'd had her hair down. Perhaps she shouldn't discard it?
She thought about how smart the silk ties would look with the tailored bodice. When the solution came like a lash of inspiration she giggled out loud. She'd use the silk for the necktie and re-trim the bonnet in the matching calico.
"Those Muskogee ladies will think I'm from St. Louie!" she warned her mirror with a laugh.
After two days of seeing Henry Lee only for a few minutes at mealtimes, Hannah had begun to believe that perhaps Henry Lee actually did despise her, even though he'd bought her the gift of calico. For breakfast, dinner and supper she would clang the bell by the back step and within a few moments he would arrive to eat. Rarely did he say more than a couple of words; he wolfed down his food and headed back out the door.
She had tried to draw him into conversation, but he would not be drawn. She asked numerous ridiculous questions for which she already knew the answers, in the hopes of involving him in the house and yard. He simply replied that she should do what she thought best, and seemed unconcerned that she was suddenly helpless and without opinion.
Henry Lee's concentration was obviously focused elsewhere. Where she did not know.
When she heard a horse arrive in the middle of the afternoon on the third day of Henry Lee's withdrawal she was just grateful to have someone to talk with.
The news, however, was not good. The visitor was Young Newt Hensley, Newton's second boy and a member of Elijah Brown's Negro church. Old Man Hensley, Newt's grandfather, had passed away that morning while hoeing weeds in the garden. Young Newt was sent to see if Henry Lee would make the old man a coffin.