by Pamela Morsi
"Perhaps you caught him at an inopportune time. You did say that he indicated he was in a hurry."
"When would have been a good time?" Pru asked. "With the gin pounding every day, it is nearly impossible to hear oneself think, let alone have a discussion."
Henrietta couldn't argue that.
"I am determined," Pru confided, "that we shall have our meeting. Somehow we will get the entire town to attend, and I will not allow Gidry Chavis or anyone else from the Commercial Club to as much as say howdy-do. If they think they can silence us just because we do not agree with them, they are in for a big surprise."
Henrietta tutted ominously.
"I don't think that you should plan such things as if expecting a confrontation," she said. "Remember the adage that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar."
"Oh, I intend to be sweet, Aunt Hen," Pru assured her. "I intend to be so sweet I'll make Gidry Chavis' teeth fall out."
"Ah, so it’s Gidry you are fighting here, not the Commercial Club," she said.
"Gidry represents the Commercial Club, just as I represent the Rose and Garden Society," she said. "If he can make it personal, then so can I."
"I'm not sure that is wise."
"Maybe not," Pru agreed. "But it is necessary. Gidry Chavis is rude and ungallant and ... and ..."
"And I would appreciate it if you would not speak that way in front of the young man's father," Henrietta scolded.
Pru was immediately contrite, glancing at Peer apologetically.
"I don't think he can hear us, Aunt Hen," she said quietly.
"Of course he can hear us," she said. "There is nothing at all wrong with his hearing."
"Except he does not appear to be listening. I'm not even sure if he is awake."
Her niece was quite correct. Peer Chavis reclined upon the fainting couch looking very pale, almost ashen in color and not at all asleep. His eyes were open and he was staring trancelike into nothingness.
Prudence had gathered all the soiled linens into a wicker basket. "Let me take these things out to the washhouse," she said.
Henrietta nodded an absent assent.
As her niece left the room, Henrietta regarded her patient with concern.
"Peer?" He made no reaction.
"Peer!" she said more sharply.
He glanced up at her then. He looked more like himself, and she released her breath slowly with relief.
"Where did you go?" she asked him
He didn't answer, but reached out with his one good arm to try to take her hand.
Henrietta grasped his palm in her own and knelt beside him. His thin, bony fingers trembled in hers, and she willed the health and vitality of her own body to flow into his.
"Where on earth did you go?" she asked again, this time her voice more teasing. "You must have been a million miles away."
She moved closer to him and laid her cheek against his shoulder.
"I always resented it when you went off places and left me here alone," she said. "Whether it was a business trip for the cotton cooperative or a three-day diversion to visit old friends. I've always hated being here without you."
She glanced up at him. His expression was dark with intensity.
"The first time was the worst, of course," she told him. "Being left in Chavistown while you went off to fight for honor and glory. I was furious when you left. You were so cocky and sure of yourself. I knew that you would be foolhardy and risk great danger. I worried about it every day."
Henrietta shook her head.
"And every day I also imagined your homecoming," she said. "Sometimes you rode up on your horse. Sometimes you alighted from the train. At times you were a hero carried upon the shoulders of other men. Occasionally you were wounded and lying upon a stretcher."
She chuckled lightly without much humor.
"But never, Peer Chavis, never in all my daydreams, did I imagine your homecoming with a new bride at your side and a child in her womb."
She moved away from the comfort of his shoulder to look into his eyes. They were bright with tears, and she felt the sting in her own.
"I forgave you for that long ago," she told him, tenderly caressing the gauntness of his cheek. "And I don't even wish that it had never happened. Your chosen wife never impressed me much, I admit. But she gave you as fine a son as a man can wish for."
Henrietta smiled with reflection, as if her own thoughts were suddenly far away.
"You know another daydream I lived with for years on end was about that boy," she said. "I used to pretend that he was my son, my very own."
Her heart lightened at the thought.
"And I know that you wished for the same thing," she said. "That's exactly how you got it into your head that he should marry up with my little Pru."
Henrietta tutted in disapproval.
"They were such a happy pair. The very best of childhood friends. Everyone knew that she loved him. And any fool could see that her tenderness would be the making of him."
She shook her head.
"But it was a big mistake to get into the thick of it like you did," he told him. "People find it difficult enough to live in paradise when God gives it to them. They are certainly not going to enjoy Eden if they get shanghaied into it, however well meant."
He could make no comment, but she knew he agreed with her.
“That's why I'm not going to say one word about this lighting up the town business. I don't care if they go fifteen rounds on the courthouse square with a fury that John L. Sullivan would envy. If those two are fated be together, I would sure like to see it come to pass," she said.
Chapter Twenty-Three
When a day started off as badly as this one had for Gidry, it only made sense that it would get worse. After losing his temper with Prudence in the morning, he remained unable to find it all day long. Young Sharpy showed up saying that he'd quit and wanted the pay that was due him. He refused to say why he had left so abruptly or where he had been all the previous afternoon.
"Walking off the job is a termination offense!" he bellowed at the boy over the roar of the machinery.
"I didn't even take a turn at the fence," the little fellow assured him soberly. "I went straight across own."
The weather was threatening rain, and a disagreement broke out in the line of farmers that nearly resulted in blows between two young hotheads.
At midday Albert Fenton came to tell him that the ladies were up to something. Another emergency meeting had been called for the evening and it looked as if they were not taking no for an answer.
"What on earth do you think they could do about it?" Gidry asked incredulously. Fenton rolled his eyes.
"You ask that 'cause you're not a married man," he answered. “They don't have to do anything. Believe me, more men can stand up to savage torture than can live with a woman who assures him that 'nothing is wrong.'"
As they headed for their own impromptu meeting with the Commercial Club, Gidry mentally berated himself for mishandling the situation. Honnebuzz was probably right about not allowing the opposition to have a voice, but he should have heard Pru out this morning. At the very least he should have treated her with courtesy.
He had been unreasonable, and he'd been angry, imagining her and her lover whiling away the hours together had simply soured his stomach. From the way he'd acted, one would have thought that he was a louse!
He needed a clear head and a respectful attitude, perhaps she was behaving immorally, but she was not his wife, his daughter, his sister. Pru was nothing to him. And he was certainly not saint enough to be able to cast the first stone.
In his future dealings with Miss Belmont, he determined to be perfectly civil and unfailingly polite. The next time he bumped into her, he was going to be genteel and amicable
He bumped into her, literally, as she was coming out of the dry goods store. He and Albert Fenton were still discussing their options, and Gidry was not looking where he was going. She was apparently perusing the
contents of her market basket and ran straight on into his chest at full gait.
She gave a little startled cry.
"Pru!" he answered with surprise, and reached out with complete altruism to steady her.
When his hands clasped around her waist she slapped at them and jerked away from him.
Her reaction was so extreme that Gidry was stung with humiliation. She made him feel as if he were a common masher attempting to accost her on a public street. Some worthless no-account cheating husband could make love to her all night long, but Gidry Chavis was not supposed to touch her, even to keep her from falling flat on her bustle.
"Pardon me, Miss Belmont," he said formally. "I did not mean to run you down."
The color in her cheeks was high as she straightened her hat and attempted to recover her dignity There was something about upsetting her prim neatness that appealed to him in a primal earthy way. He resisted the inexplicable urge to pull her into his arms and kiss her.
'Perhaps out in the Pecos men just barge through doors as they please," she informed him coldly. "But in our town, Mr. Chavis, the rule is ladies first."
Her setdown was so superior, Gidry's brow drew down in anger. He would never have allowed another man to speak to him in that fashion. And he wasn't willing to let a woman do so either. Especially not this woman.
"I did not see you, ma'am," he said with deliberate quiet. "For that I do apologize; however, I would lave assumed that a spinster would grow accustomed to gentlemen failing to notice her."
He regretted it the minute it came out of his mouth. It was unkind and untrue. Deliberate in its attempt to injure.
Prudence blanched, clearly wounded. She glanced over at Fenton and nodded to the man with embarrassment.
"Good day, sir," she said icily, and stepped past Gidry on to the sidewalk.
He followed her retreat, shaking his head with self-castigation. The very last thing that he wanted to do was to make this fight personal, but it already was.
"You know, Chavis," Fenton said, "Miss Prudence is not the best woman in town to make an enemy, then again, I guess you two got off on the wrong foot a long time ago."
Gidry couldn't argue that. She had once loved him, and he had jilted her. That should have all been in the past. But somehow it was not. It was as recent as the morning's sunrise. And knowing that she was carrying on some illicit affair just sat completely wrong with him. So much for polite and amicable. It was open hostility between them, and nothing to be done for it.
He followed Fenton into the building and within a few minutes the other members of the Commercial Club began arriving. They stood together in the organized clutter of the back room, everyone talking at once.
Cotton and the rail shipment now being readied should have been their main subjects of discussion But they were not.
"Alice says that Pru Belmont is mad as a wet hen about not being given another meeting on the lighting project," Judge Ramey said.
"Those women are up to something," Elmer Corsen agreed. "They think they've been affronted, and women don't forget that easily."
"Yes, my wife has already started the silent treatment," Henry Tatum piped in. "You'd think I'd be grateful not to hear her chatter, but the silence is far worse."
"For heaven's sake, Chavis," Peterson complained "Did you have to be so snippy with them?"
"We don't owe the opposition a platform," Honnebuzz insisted.
"When the opposition is from our wives, mothers and daughters, we'd do better to give them the platform and get it over with."
'Then you men are just going to cave in?" Gidry asked.
"You've lived out on those lonely ranges too long Chavis," Tatum said.
"He sure has," Plug Whitstone agreed. "A woman can't be fenced, led, or herded. A man just got to get tied up to her as best he can and pray she don't get a bee in her bonnet."
The other men chuckled in agreement.
"So you think we should give up the lighting project?" Gidry asked.
"Of course not," Honnebuzz answered. "What we need to do is hold our ground, but make it look like it’s not our fault."
"How do we do that?"
"Actually, it pretty’s near done," Plug Whitstone said with a chuckle. "Young Chavis done started things here. He ain't married nor got female relation of no kind. We let the ladies think that it's all his danged idea, and we just can't do a thing to stop him."
There was a whistle of appreciation from one man. A diabolical chuckle from another.
"It's perfect."
"The question is can you put up with it, Chavis?" Fenton asked. "There won't be nothing easy about having every woman in town ready to spit nails at you."
"Surely it's not every woman in town," Gidry said.
"Very nearly all of them are in the Rose and Garden Society," Honnebuzz pointed out. "And those that are not, want to be."
"Well, it won't be forever," Gidry pointed out. "Eventually they will get over it."
Plug spit a jaw of tobacco into the tin can he carried. "Yep, they say that eventually women forget. My Eulie caught me making eyes at one of them city gals when we was in New Orleans on our honeymoon. It's been thirty years ago, I'm expecting her to quit harping on it any day now."
Hoots of laughter filled the room.
"Maybe we should hear them out," Fenton suggested. "From what I've gleaned so far, perhaps they do have some legitimate concerns."
"Nonsense, Albert," Stanley Honnebuzz chastised. "How could they possibly understand anything about it? They are women after all."
"But Miss Prudence is very well read," Fenton defended. "I never talked to anyone who knew more about plants and gardening."
"Gardening she may know, but electricity she does not," Honnebuzz insisted.
"Fenton's got a point," Elmer said. "Miss Belmont is a very levelheaded woman. If she is mightily opposed to the lighting project, she must have a reason."
"That's so," someone in the back agreed.
"The year my sweet corn got tall as the house but didn't ear, it was Prudence Belmont that suggested I lime the field," Amos Wilburn told them. "I've had good crops ever since."
"Well, yes, I suppose she's smarter than your average woman," Honnebuzz conceded.
"You've talked to her, Chavis," Fenton said. "What do you think?"
Gidry hesitated, choosing his words carefully. He believed he knew full well what despicable reasons Prudence had for her opposition. But he would not, could not, by gesture or careless word, convey any hint of the sordid truth to these gentlemen.
"The woman has not conveyed to me any practical consideration that I would deem in any way worthy of discussion by this group," he replied.
Stanley Honnebuzz nodded with great self-importance.
"Just as I said," he concluded. "Its all feather-headed nonsense. If they were to be taken seriously at this juncture, it would simply give them encouragement for future interference."
There were nods of agreement on that score.
"What do you say, Chavis?" Oscar Tatum asked. "Are you ready to bring the wrath of the female population of Chavistown down upon your head?"
"I suppose, if it seems best," Gidry answered. "But Honnebuzz is a single man also; maybe he would prefer to do it."
The lawyer opened his mouth to reply, but the judge did it for him.
"Stanley is courting my girl, Alice," Ramey said. "And she is a great admirer of Miss Belmont. In fact, I'm worried that she might follow that woman's example and take up spinsterhood."
"Besides," Albert Fenton pointed out, "Prudence is already mad at you."
Gidry couldn't argue with that.
"If you're willing to take this on, Gidry," Judge Ramey said, "then we can hold fast and push our way through. But it's not going to be easy."
"Nothing involving women ever is," Plug pointed out.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Mr. Honnebuzz said that all the gentlemen of the Commercial Club were agreeable to letting us speak our pi
ece," Alice Ramey announced. "But Gidry Chavis wouldn't even hear of it. He just flatly refused."
"That’s what my husband said, too," Ethel Peterson chimed in. "The men were all for hearing us out, but Chavis was dead set against it, and they couldn't go against him."
"Inexplicable!" Mrs. Johnson exclaimed. “Totally inexplicable."
"I can't think what his reasoning might be," Alice Ramey agreed.
"He certainly doesn't know the people of Chavistown very well if he thinks that he can just bully us into doing what he wants."
"He's spent far too long away," Cloris Tatum pointed out. "Why he doesn't even look like one of us anymore."
"Those clothes," Eula Whitstone tutted. "Completely inappropriate."
"I should think he'd had enough of cattle that he'd not want to bring the smell of them into town."
That comment provoked a bevy of unkind giggles.
"Well I personally intend to give that young man the cut direct the very next time I see him," Bertha Mae announced.
"It will be no hardship for me to draw my skirts aside either," Edith Champion agreed. "Imagine the audacity of trying to bend the entire town to his will."
"Maybe his father is the richest man in Chavis County, but he hasn't even lived in this town for eight years."
"And as I recall," Bertha Mae said pointedly, "he did not leave under the best of circumstances.
Surreptitious glances were shot in Pru's direction, but she was determined to ignore them.
"You should have heard the way he talked to her at the dry goods store," Mrs. Fenton whispered. "He nearly ran her down with his rambunctious cowboy ways. And then talked to her as if she were in his way."
"Some men are just like that," Alice Ramey commented. "I personally don't have a civil word to say to that type."
Prudence ignored the conversation as best she could and surveyed the room critically. It was even more crowded tonight than the last time they met in emergency session. And unlike the previous meeting, tonight not one word had been uttered in complaint about taking them away from their families. The level of concern about the residential lighting project varied greatly among the membership. But being told that they could not have a voice in the decision making caught the ladies unawares. And the distinct possibility of a confrontation between Gidry Chavis and Prudence Belmont was apparently something that few would risk missing.