Promise of Yesterday (6 page)

Chester took two steps in the man’s direction before the shadow sunk down the wall and landed in a heap. Snuffles indicated the first stirrings of slumber that would, Chester had no doubt, lead to an all-out snore session. He poked the heap with his bare foot. Nothing. He reached down and grabbed the man’s arm, startled to realize the form was that of a black boy. His mind flew over the possibilities. He stooped to wedge his shoulder beneath the boy’s armpit and guide him to his feet.

The stranger must have woken long enough to understand what was being asked of him, as his movements became independent. Chester limped with the semiconscious man to his door, shoved it open with his toe, and barely got the boy through it before he lost his grip. He tried to catch his breath and hoped all the while that the noise he’d made didn’t waken the only patron present on that floor this evening. Thank goodness they were in the room at the end of the hallway.

Chester took the time to light the two candles at either end of his room. He pulled the candleholder closer to the boy’s face. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Chester knelt beside the young man and slapped him lightly on the cheeks. He didn’t get a response and really hadn’t expected one. He rose and grabbed his shirt, balling it up to make a pillow for his visitor’s head. Sleep would be the best thing for now.

Chester sat on the edge of his bed and stared at the too-thin form and the pants frayed around the hem. He blew out the candles, more bothered than he wanted to be by the still form of a drunken youth whose weakness for drink had him wandering around alone.

“You’re looking tired.” Marylu swept Chester from head to foot the next morning as they worked in the same room, Chester bent over a drawer that tended to stick. “You must have stayed up working on your alphabet.”

He nodded, eyes brightening, and held up a finger. He turned the drawer upside down and used his index finger as a pencil to write the letter A, followed by the rest of the alphabet.

Marylu watched his progress with satisfaction. When he got stuck on Q, she spoke the consonant and wrote it on the drawer bottom. Chester tried to imitate her. When he lifted his face, she shook her head. “Remember, the stick goes this way at the end. The other way makes the letter a G.”

He tried again, more diligent in his determination than any other person she had ever tried to teach. When he kept writing the stick in the wrong direction, she shifted to stand behind him. She placed her hand over his, her index finger pressing against his to show the direction of the tail of the Q.

His face was inches from hers. A sudden wave of heat gripped her and made her yank her hand away and stand straight. He seemed not to notice her quick retreat. Again he made the circle of the letter and began the line, pausing at the bottom in uncertainty.

Pulling air into her lungs, she leaned forward, doing her best to maintain more distance between them. “Now over to the right and up.”

He nodded and finished the letter. He repeated it then went on to finish the alphabet again, but Marylu stopped watching the letters and focused on his hands. His face. The curious little scar over his right eye.

He reminded her of Walter. Not in looks, but in the fact that he was needy. Walter had needed care and the courage to continue what he’d started. He had been near death when Miss Jenny’s family had freed him, along with the others. With Marylu’s knee strained, and a bone in her ankle broken by the horse, she had determined to keep a vigil by Walter’s bed in the hidden room, surrounded by all she needed to care for him through the day. And as their bodies healed, their hearts became knit together.

Likewise, she knew the close proximity to Chester, night after night of teaching him to read and cipher as she planned, would do the same. Over the years of teaching others, she had seen the emotion, almost near worship, that her pupils often lauded her with. In their minds, she had given them a wondrous gift. But despite that, none of the handful of men she had taught had been one she could love, so she had shrugged off their adoration. Chester was a man she could love. Maturity would make her take the path slower than she had with Walter, and with more thought, but first she must choose whether or not to take the path at all. She must not forget the stain of murder was upon him.

When Chester waved a hand in front of her face, she realized she had not only missed his command performance but she’d also been staring at him, lost in her thoughts. Again, she felt the heat rise up her neck and suffuse her cheeks. She took a step back, suddenly confused and afraid.

Chester’s soft expression went quizzical and tense. He rose to his feet, a head taller than she. He opened his mouth then closed it.

“I–It’s time we be getting back to work.” She willed her voice to have some steel. The soft brown orbs stared down at her. Through her. “That drawer’s not going to finish sanding itself.” A foolish thing to say, and she regretted the rebuke in her tone.

Chester knew fear when he saw it. He saw it in front of him now. Every line of Marylu’s face spoke of uncertainty and doubt. Words pushed to his tongue and demanded release, but he could only make noise, so he sought to alleviate her panic with his hands.

Not even her firm rebuke about the drawer deterred him. He advanced on her, and she shrank back a step. He raised his hand slowly and touched hers, the one she held to her cheek. He pulled her hand away, spread his fingers, and pressed it to his chest, where he knew she would feel the strong beat of his heart. His free hand rose to caress her cheek, drawing from courage born of his newfound abilities and the certainty of his feelings.

She did not pull back at his touch. Her eyes slid shut, and her lower lip trembled. He saw the tension rise in her shoulders, and her eyes snapped open, glassy with unshed tears. “I don’t even know you. You don’t know me.”

He let his hand fall away and shrugged his shoulders to transmit his unconcern.

She shook her head, and a single tear spilled down her cheek. She swiped it away and bolted for the door and out of the room, leaving him to stand alone and wonder if the failure had been his for revealing his feelings too soon or hers for allowing whatever dark fear she held to separate her from the courage to love.

Somewhere, somehow, she had been hurt. He was certain of it. And if he hoped to love her, he must prove himself worthy of that love. For the first time in a long time, he thought he might have the courage to do just that.

Marylu avoided the room where Chester worked the rest of the morning. She moved as fast as she could from room to room, complete with her cleaning in record time, except for the room where Chester still sat, the frame of the chest of drawers lying on its side, his dark hands running over the wood in search of rough spots to sand.

She turned from the open doorway, thankful he had not noticed her. She brushed her hand across her brow, the gesture bringing Cooper to mind. She needed to check on him and today, this moment, welcomed the diversion. Anything to take her mind off Chester and the raw emotion that had swelled inside her breast at his touch.

She was too old for love, she decided. Besides, she couldn’t get attached to someone who might be a murderer. Marylu pressed a hand to her stomach and wondered, though, what it would be like to love and be loved. To have the children she’d always dreamed of.

She chided herself for such fanciful imaginations. She was Miss Jenny’s friend and she could never leave her friend alone.

Chester finished work on the chest of drawers before putting away the tools and sweeping the floor clean of wood dust. In his head, he planned out how to approach making the table Mr. Shillito had asked him to create. He needed more nails to complete the job.

Standing the broom in a corner, he bent to collect the debris, inhaling deeply of the wood dust and shavings, a scent he never tired of. He had worked with wood for years. Even on the plantation, he’d preferred the feel of the warm wood to the labor of picking cotton. His master had seen his skill and taken him from the fields to work with Sam, a boy not much older than his own seventeen years.

Stroking the smooth surface of the completed chairs brought back the good memories of Sam. The days they’d worked together as friends. Before Sam’s jealousy had sucked dry the fountain of friendship.

Chester allowed himself the briefest moment to grieve for the bond of brotherhood they had shared. Or he had thought they shared. He should have seen Sam’s weakness in the way his friend talked of others, and known it would be the way he would talk about him behind his back. Or even in the way Sam’s face had grown dark when the master’s wife praised Chester’s creations more than Samuel’s.

But he hadn’t seen it until it was too late and the knife of betrayal had not only stabbed him in the back but also cost him the loss of his tongue.

The euphoria of confidence he’d felt the previous evening crashed. With heavy steps, he crossed to the trash receptacle and dumped the debris. Brushing his hands together, he decided to take a walk. Maybe he’d head over to Hostetter & Sons’ Grocer, where he had first discovered Cooper, to see if the man’s cough had cleared up.

He kept his eyes to the ground. Wagons rattled past on the road, and he kept close to the right side. When he shuffled into the town’s square, he raised his eyes to the tall clock tower on top of the bank. It touched the underbelly of dark clouds scuttling through the sky.

“You looking for that lazy, no-account Cooper?” Chester raised his eyes to find Cooper’s friend, Russell, wrestling a huge crate to the edge of a wagon bed. “I reckon he’s at home playing ‘possum for Miss Jenny.”

Chester arched his brows in question.

“Miss Jenny says to me this morning that he’s got himself a cough. She was picking up tea for him. Can you believe that?” Russell steadied the crate, not showing the least discomfort at having several hundred pounds balancing on his shoulder. “Prob’ly got those women waiting on him like he some king.”

He might have talked tough, but Chester also saw the worried frown that wiped away the sting of the words. Cooper had told Chester Russell was one of the men on the wagon that night. They’d been good friends for years, and from what Chester had observed that first week of his arrival as Cooper took him around town, the two harped at each other every chance they got.

Chester widened his eyes, then clutched at his chest and pretended to drop over.

The black man hunched down a bit, distributing the weight of the crate onto his back. He chuckled. “Yeah. It’d be just like him to leave on out of this world so’s I have to handle these crates by myself.”

Chester grinned and waved at the man, his spirit bolstered by Russell’s bent toward having fun at Cooper’s expense. He followed the train tracks along Carlisle Street, bracketed by residences and businesses that must have had their share of rattling windows and train whistles. He couldn’t imagine living so close to such a racket.

He made a left onto Madison, and Miss Jenny’s house came into view. It would be good to visit with Cooper. But for all the man’s chatter, Chester often sensed a hollowed-out sadness deep down in the man’s spirit. Or maybe that was just a reflection of his own sadness.

Chester kept his eyes averted from those along the road, mentally practicing the letters Marylu had taught him. He moved his lips to form each one. His ragged tongue lifted and curled over each letter, though he never tried to give voice, knowing they would be little more than guttural murmurs. Sounds that felt, and sounded, so foreign and ugly.