A Woman so Bold

A WOMAN SO BOLD

L.S. YOUNG

SOUL MATE PUBLISHING

New York

A WOMAN SO BOLD

Copyright©2016

L.S. YOUNG

Cover Design by Victoria Vane

This book is a work of fiction.  The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Published in the United States of America by

Soul Mate Publishing

P.O. Box 24

Macedon, New York, 14502

ISBN: 978-1-68291-191-4

www.SoulMatePublishing.com

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

To my grandmother,

an iron-willed,

soft-hearted woman

if there ever was one.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks, first and foremost, to my husband, for listening to me talk about this book for four years, and for minding the baby while I revised.

To my sister, thank you for being willing to read a novel so far outside the realm of your personal taste. :)

Two valuable sources for the section on hog killing time were:
http://www.josephinesjournal.com/hogkilling.htm
and
http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/butcher-a-pig-zmaz72soztak.aspx
.

The Monticello Opera House that is mentioned when Landra visits her Aunt Maude is real, and still open to the public. For more information on this beautiful, history-laden building you can visit: 
http://monticellooperahouse.org/

Thanks to Just a Pinch Recipes for their recipe on gopher stew that I tweaked for Landra to use. (Author’s Note: gopher tortoises are now listed as Threatened in Florida and protected under state law.)

Other:

19th century social etiquette:
http://home.earthlink.net/~gchristen/Etiquette.html

Native trees:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Trees_of_the_Southeastern_United_States

Spirituals:
http://www.negrospirituals.com/index.html

“Infirm of purpose!

Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead

Are but as pictures; ‘tis the eye of childhood

That fears a painted devil.”

-Lady Macbeth

“Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer . . .”

-Charlotte Brontë,
Jane Eyre

Chapter 1

March: A Storm

Willowbend, Florida 1890

It was a fearfully windy day. The tin roof of our white-washed farmhouse rumbled from the gusts as we sat down to breakfast, and my father said, “Storm’s a brewin’!” as he pulled up to the table.

My father’s name was Solomon Andrews, but my sisters and I called him Daddy, as Southern girls have done for time out of mind. I watched without remark as he poured spirals of cane syrup over his pancakes and ham. There had been a red sky at dawn. I had pointed it out to my sister Lily as we were walking to milk the cows and murmured, “Red sky at morning . . .”

“Take warning, fair shepherdess,” she finished, smiling.

We closed the shutters on the way in to make breakfast. Any further discussion on the subject was nothing less than verbosity.

My stepmother, Colleen, sat at Daddy’s right hand nursing a cup of tea. She was twenty years his junior, a native of New England, and meek—the perfect mate to an imperious man who loved to hear himself talk. Just over a decade after marrying him—time spent toiling in a warm, wet climate, bearing a child every couple of years—she was a shadow of the blooming twenty-two-year-old who had once become mistress of our country home. It was a task to which she was ill-suited, and much of the household responsibility fell to me.

It was Saturday, which meant my younger siblings were home from school and, having done their chores, could dawdle at the breakfast table. They continued to eat their food, nonplussed by our father’s words. My eyes moved around the table to inspect their morning faces. Lily was seated at Daddy’s left. At sixteen, she was a portrait of our deceased mother, with glossy black curls falling around her shoulders, fair skin, and arresting green eyes. Her aristocratic nose did not have the snub at the end that mine did. Beside her was Edith, Colleen and Daddy’s firstborn, a quiet, bookish girl of ten, with a river of golden hair. Next came the twins, Ephraim and Esther. They were seven years old and favored their mother: round-faced, tow-headed, with tiny blue eyes. Ephraim was in the process of stealing one of Esther’s pancakes as she pulled at a ravel on the worn tablecloth.

Last, next to me, was Ezra, the youngest. He sat making a mess of the sweet potato and molasses on his plate. I reached across the table and poked him gently with my finger until he stopped. He blinked calm amber eyes at me, and I ruffled his curls. Only my elder brother Eric was missing. He was away at Florida University studying law. I myself had never been further from Willowbend than my aunt’s house in Monticello. I was both envious of him and utterly bereft in his absence; I found it unlikely he would ever return to the sandy hole we called home.

When I went to throw out the dishwater after breakfast, I saw sand racing across the green fields of cotton in white drifts. Storm clouds were gathering, creating shifting patterns of light and shadow. I went with Daddy and two of the hired men to shut the animals in the barn. This task would have fallen to Eric, had he not been away. His absence meant everyone had to do their part, as Daddy often reminded us.

Dwelling on Eric, my thoughts unwittingly flitted to his boyhood friend, Henry Miller, whose mother and sisters lived a few miles away on the farm he had inherited when his father died. He was married and lived in Tallahassee but visited them occasionally, and the day before I had seen his chaise and four rattling down the two ruts that served as our road.

I wished for Eric more than ever. “Sure is blustery today, ain’t it?” he would say. That was Eric. He always had both feet on the ground, anchored, like the ancient live oaks down by the Methodist church. He never frightened me or spoke hurtfully. I gave the barn door a frustrated kick and turned to go inside. The first drops were beginning to fall.

Back inside the house, I sat by the window in the bedroom I shared with my sisters and watched the rain come in as we did the mending. I’ve always hated mending. Give me a hoe, an ax, or a butcher knife, and my hands are steady and sure; hand me a needle, and I’ll prick myself with it as sure as blinking. I did, too, cursing under my breath and sucking the blood from my sore finger.

The gentle drizzle soon became a downpour, and the wind howled around the house so loudly it made me catch my breath. I love a blustery day, pulling at your hair and tugging your shawl right off your shoulders, but during a thunderstorm I feel like one of the half-feral cats in the barn, nervous and waiting, searching the sky for funnel clouds and the earth for refuge. Lily did not share my anxiety; her clear, green eyes were untroubled, the corner of her mouth turned up in the crooked smile, bordering on mischief, that was her default expression.

“Do you think there will be a twister?” asked Edith, excited more than anything.

“No,” I declared. “It will probably just rain a while and clear up.”

“
I
think there might be!” said Lily, a glint of mischief in her eyes.

“What’ll we do if there is?” asked Edith.

“Go into the root cellar,” I said.

“And when we come out, the house will be gone!” said Lily, her voice holding an ominous note, like a child telling a ghost story.

“Don’t frighten her!” I admonished. “You shouldn’t worry about things when you don’t even know if they’re going to happen, Edith.”

The three of us jumped suddenly as a tremendous hammering began on the tin roof.

“What is it?” shrieked Edith.

“Hail!” shouted Lily.

“Come away from the window.”

I took each of them by an arm, and we ran into the hall, closed the bedroom door behind us, and huddled against the wall. A few moments later, we were joined by Esther and Colleen, who clutched a wailing Ezra. Ephraim and Daddy were nowhere to be found. The sound of breaking glass came from the parlor, and Ezra began to shriek. Colleen shook him gently, and he screamed all the louder until I put my arms out and he retreated into my embrace.

When the storm ended, our yard was littered with limbs and twigs. One of the sand pines that were planted along our drive in double rows had fallen, and the back porch was littered with hailstones. The sky lightened from black to a light gray, as if satisfied with the devastation it had wrought, and I went in search of Daddy. I found him on one knee, looking out over his cotton fields, which were littered with crushed plants and a sea of white hailstones. He was holding a sprig of cotton in his hand. After a while, he looked at me and let it fall, brushing his hand on his trousers.

“I came to see if you were all right. Colleen is worried.”

“Ephraim and I took shelter in the barn,” he replied. “What a mess. Cotton ruined. We’ll plow it under and plant corn. May not be money to buy you and Lily a new pair of shoes or a stitch to wear this autumn, although if I know you, you’ll wrangle a dress outta the scrap basket some way or another.”

I let this comment pass. I had three dresses: a brown calico for church and social calls, a plain lavender gingham, and a white hand-me-down from Collen. It was a sparse wardrobe, but more finery than my father thought necessary for a farmer’s daughter. The real math was that I had one more than Lily, who cared little for clothes, and no more than most of the girls I knew, except those who were absolutely dirt poor.

Farming, in my mind, was a curse: the backbreaking work, the uncertainty of a crop’s fruition and yield. In spite of this, I harbored a grave respect for Daddy. His determination was not to be underscored. He’d had a good year thus far but had barely managed to buy seed for the last planting thanks to the weather from the year before. There had been as many bad years as good ones in my memory. I often wondered how he had managed to pay his hands and feed us all—during hard times, my shoes were soled with carpet, my frocks patched with old quilts, and the younger children often wore flour sack dresses and shirts—yet we had survived and then some. There were good years too, when Lily and I had fabric for new spring dresses, white sugar and flour to makes cakes, and ribbons for our hair. Everything fell to the flip of a coin, and I hated it.

As we stood surveying the ruined cotton, a lone figure on horseback came down the drive and into the yard. Even at that distance, I recognized the rider as Henry Miller. I knew his stance and the slow canter of his steed.

He pulled up just short of us and dismounted, nodding his head in greeting as he removed his hat. Henry was short and wiry, with coppery brown hair that curled on his forehead and shrewd, dark eyes that always seemed to be laughing at me. He had a country boy’s open, simple face, with clean lines, a straight nose, and a small, thin-lipped mouth that turned up at the corner when he smiled. He was not smiling that day.

“Mr. Andrews. Landra.”

“Henry,” replied Daddy.

I nodded but said nothing.

“Bad storm. Della and I been staying with the girls for Mary’s birthday. Come up to see if you got hit too,” he said.

“Of course we did,” I replied. “Do you think rain falls out of the sky in a funnel?”

Henry narrowed his eyes but made no reply to this. “My wheat’s not much better,” he continued, nodding his head at the field. “Was lookin’ to be some purty wheat.”

“Sure was,” agreed Daddy.

“Papa always said farmin’ wasn’t a sure thang.”

I rolled my eyes. Even though I had just been thinking this, it sounded foolish coming out of Henry’s mouth in his backwoods drawl.

“We take what comes to us,” Daddy murmured.

“Henry has no need to bother over what comes anymore, Daddy,” I said. “The railroad business knows no hardship.”

Henry’s father-in-law was a railroad tycoon and had secured him an apprenticeship as a brakeman. Considering that he had control of his wife’s considerable fortune, there was no need for him to work, but she wanted him to climb his way up to the position of engineer and then to buy stock. He paid tenants to keep up his family’s farm and kept his mother and sisters in relative comfort.

Once, in our youth, we had been sweethearts. We had run wild together, hopping over fences, crossing cotton fields, climbing mangroves in the swamp to lick the salt on the undersides of the leaves, stealing peaches from the tree in my mother’s garden, fishing in the springs and the creeks that meandered away from the great Withlacoochee. He had given me my first kiss among the coarse, whispering fronds of his father’s cornfield. I had loved him once, but no more.

Daddy did not reply to my remark. His eyes remained fixed on his demolished crop.

“Henry,” he said at length, “if you wanna come inside, I reckon Colleen would brew up a pot of coffee.”

“Aw, no sir. Thank you, but”—Henry glanced at me—“I’d best be on my way. G’day.”

He pulled the brim of his hat down over his eyes and mounted his skinny, black gelding.

I turned to go inside. When I reached the house, I looked back, first at my father, a small figure staring into desolation, then at Henry, a tiny form on a dark horse, nearly out of sight.

The storm had brought cold with it, and we ate a soup of leftover chicken and boiled potatoes for supper that night, with hot tea to drink and warm crumb cake with coffee for dessert. As Daddy was scraping up the last crumbs of cake with his fork, he said, “You ought to be more civil to Henry Miller.”

No one spoke. Even though he hadn’t said my name, everyone knew he was addressing me.

I stared into the dregs of my coffee and replied with firmness, “I will not.”

The younger children stared at me. Colleen was soft and pliable and would bear with much impudence, but our father was another thing altogether. He did not allow disobedience, nor disrespect. His eyes were suddenly cold beneath the bushy white brows that matched his unruly hair.

“What did you say?” he asked.

I gulped. “Henry Miller does not deserve my civility,” I replied. “He has not earned it.”

“A woman, if she be generous, does not ration courtesy as if it were scarce,” said Colleen. “It is a virtue.”

“It is not a virtue to be bestowed upon rakes and reprobates,” I replied.

“Are you contradicting your stepmother?” Daddy asked, laying down his fork.

“I am stating a fact.”

“Well, perhaps a sound whipping would teach you to keep a civil tongue in your head.”

Ephraim gave a yelp, a mixture of horror and delight. His behind often met with the lash, but hearing me threatened with a whipping was new to him.

“I doubt that very much,” I countered. “I am twenty—too old to be whipped, or to change my mind.” I sipped the last of my coffee, hoping to hide my disquiet.

Daddy accepted my words as a challenge. “Ephraim, get my belt.”

Ephraim leapt from his chair with barely concealed eagerness, delighted that someone other than himself was going to be beaten for bad behavior, delighted twofold it was me. Keeping Ephraim from running absolutely wild was often my lot in life, and he regarded me as a powerful nemesis.

Lily’s eyes were wide, and Edith began to cry. She did not share the twins’ naughty streak, so she was rarely punished and hated seeing anyone else suffer. I watched my little brother leave the room and attempted to still my trembling. I hadn’t been spanked by my father in some time, but it was not an experience one could afford to forget.

“I am your daughter, and Henry treated me shamefully,” I whispered.

“This is not a subject for the supper table.”

Ephraim returned with the belt and handed it to Daddy. He stood up and set his napkin down, uncoiling the belt. “Get up.”

I remained seated. “No.”

“Landra Elizabeth, I will not ask again.”