Still House Pond (16 page)

Last evening whilst Manda was in the shed, preparing the eggs for market, here the old biddy came putting her two cents in.

“Ye missed a spot.” She held up an egg with the tiniest bit of downy fluff stuck to one side.

Manda took the egg, wiped it clean, and handed it back, admiring her own patience.

“This here's a pullet egg,” Miss Remy croaked in her odd, rusty voice. “Do ye know the difference?”

“No, I can't say I do.”

Remy sorted through several eggs. “See here? See the zigzag mark on the end of this hen fruit? That quirl means this here's a rooster.” She held out one egg and then another. “This smooth one is a pullet. Most likely you'll find a dozen pullets to every rooster.”

Like Manda cared. She shrugged.

Miss Remy took the hint, backing slowly out of the shed on her crutches.

Manda breathed a sigh of relief.

Miss Remy stopped. “Ye might need to know that iffen ye ever plan on raising chickens. Else you'll have a yard full of roosters and no laying hens.”

As soon as Miss Remy was out of sight, Manda helped herself to a dozen eggs she left out of the count. Her conscience told her not to, but she ignored the still, small voice. What did it matter? There were plenty, and no one would ever know.

Manda thought of last night's conversation as she headed to town. It struck her funny bone, and she laughed. She wouldn't mind to be the lone pullet in a yard full of roosters right now. She could just see them strutting around in that frozen-toed rooster way, hoping she would notice their particular beauty, hoping she would pick one of them to set up housekeeping with. Well, with any luck, today would be the day she decided what rooster she wanted in her henhouse.

“Giddyup,” she called to Chessie, slapping the reins before she remembered the eggs and slowed the horse to a trot.

As luck would have it, the grocery store where she sold the potatoes and the eggs was on the alley beside the hotel. That was where she had spotted the music man the last time she was in town. The Cream Station was on the next street over. It would be easy enough to walk down the narrow passage with the cream. Although there were several folks sitting on the bent-willow benches that fronted the hotel, she was sure no one would think twice about her choice to do just that.

Manda placed the empty potato basket in the buggy and tested the lids of the tin cream cans, making sure the ride from home hadn't loosened them. Then, leaving Chessie secured to the hitching post outside the grocery, she strode with purpose down the murky alleyway. Despite herself, her heart quickened as she approached the garbage bin where she had watched the exchange of moonshine.

She flinched and stepped back when a rat as big as a squirrel darted up the side of the large container. The vile thing teetered on the lip of the bin, its beady eyes seemingly trained on the buckets of cream. The rat's whiskers twitched, and its clawed feet scrambled to keep from losing its perch.

Manda set the buckets down and picked up a rock. She flung it at the bin. The rock pinged off the side and landed in the dust at her feet. To her ears it sounded loud as gunshot. Nervously, she looked around, sure she would attract a crowd. But nothing stirred in the dark shadows—nothing except the rat, whose long, hairless tail disappeared over the side of the sour-smelling bin.

She picked up her tins and walked on, keeping her eyes focused on the light at the end of the alley. A movement there caught her eye. Someone waved a small brown flag. The flag shifted in and out of view like a taunt. Moving closer, she could see the flag was actually a small brown paper package.

Suddenly a man blocked her way. The middling man put his arms behind his back. “You looking for something?”

“I, um . . . I, uh . . . I found the button,” she stammered, making no sense to her own ears.

“Did you now? Well, fancy that.” He swayed gently on his feet just like the dancing daisies last Sunday. She could not look away. He was dressed in pressed dungarees and a stiff-collared boiled shirt. A black cravat was knotted at his throat. His boots were pointy-toed and polished. His dark jacket was like a suit coat, but he wore it open. He smelled faintly of alcohol and rich spices. “Whatcha got in the buckets?”

“Cream . . . I was headed to the Cream Station.”

His tongue darted out, and he licked his bottom lip. “Let me help you with that.” He smiled.

She stared.

“You stay right here,” he said as he relieved her of the buckets.

She did. Her feet were frozen to the spot. It didn't take long for him to come back. As he rounded the corner of the building, he folded a paper bill and stuck it in his pocket. He placed a few coins in her palm. She didn't even count, just dropped them into her linen sack.

He took her hand and with his thumb massaged the red print left by the handle of the cream bucket. “Hands like this ought not to be doing heavy lifting.”

He pulled her along by that same hand until they were halfway down the alley, just where the trash bin sat. The bin was not snug against the wall. He went in there first, leading her.

“I got a little something for you,” he said, taking a small package from his coat pocket and tucking it into her purse. “You ought to be careful where you leave things.”

“I will,” she said.

He caught her chin and tipped her head. His eyes were black and hot, like the last bit of coal smoldering in a fireplace. “Is there any other little thing I can do for you?”

Her blood had turned to water and her knees to jelly. She had not one smidgen of will left. What could she do but close her eyes and offer herself?

His kiss exploded in her brain and coursed through her veins like liquid fire. She felt the rough brick of the wall press against her back and was glad for it, else she would have surely fallen in a heap.

The very air surrounding her seemed thick with his presence. If she had a spoon, she could have tasted him. He put his hands on the small of her back and pulled her close. He kissed her mouth, her cheeks, her fluttering eyelids, and the soft triangle at the base of her neck where her pulse beat wildly. Then, quick as a vapor in the morning sun, he was gone, leaving her stunned and trembling.

She didn't note the garbage bin nor the metallic skittering sound of the rat's claws as it scavenged bits of rotting food. She didn't see the gloomy shadowing of the alleyway nor fear she might be seen. She stood for several minutes settling herself. Now she knew—she knew what love felt like.

Coming out from behind the bin, she looked up and down the alley. It seemed like everything was off-kilter, like the world had tilted. But she had to go to the Cream Station and claim the tins. She couldn't go home without them.

A woman came out from the back as Manda stepped into the store. She wiped her hands on a linen towel and took her place behind a waist-high counter.

“I've come for my tins,” Manda said.

“Two, right? I've got them washed for you.” The woman leaned her ample bosom on the counter. “Listen, miss, you don't want to be messing with that—”

Manda cut her off. “My tins, please.”

The lady put two clean buckets and two clean lids on the counter. “Forewarned is forearmed.”

“I didn't ask for nothing but my tins,” Manda said, seating the lids on the small buckets. She marched out the door. She could feel the woman's eyes burning a hole in her back. “Old maid,” Manda muttered under her breath, “withering on the vine.”

Her anger fueled her as she took the long way down one street and back up the other where the buggy waited. No way was she walking down the alley so the busybody could run to a side window and watch her every move with her prying eyes.

This time the middling man was playing a mouth harp in front of the hotel. There were a few folks leaning against a banister, listening. As she passed, he made a long sound like that of a train whistle with his mouth against the harmonica.

Manda felt like he had just told the world she was special. She put the tins in the buggy beside the empty potato basket and unwrapped Chessie's reins from the hitching post. As she watched him from the seat of the buggy, he slapped the harmonica against his leg and commenced to play “Fair and Tender Ladies.”

She guessed it was their song.

16

Sunday evenings were special in the Pelfrey household. Supper was whatever was left over from dinner. There were no chores other than what were absolutely necessary, like milking the cow and feeding the chickens. Manda wouldn't be back until Monday morning, and Remy generally spent weekends in her own cabin.

Copper loved these times when it was just she and John with their children. In the winter they would pop corn and gather at the hearth. John would tell stories or she would read from
Treasure Island
or
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
or some such book, always ending with a Bible story. But in the summer, like tonight, they sat on the porch and enjoyed the dimming of the day.

Lilly was sitting on the top porch step in her long nightgown, brushing her hair with the silver-backed brush from the vanity set Alice had given her. She did a hundred strokes every night.

“What memory verse did your Sunday school teacher give you this week?” Copper said from her rocking chair.

Lilly huffed. “It's from the First Epistle General of Peter, chapter 5, verse 9.”

“Don't be smart-mouthed when you're talking about the Bible, Lilly Gray,” Copper said, then softened. “Would you like me to read it to you before it gets too dark?”

“I won't need it. I'll be going to church with Aunt Alice and cousin Dodie next Sunday.”

“Why does that exclude your memory verse?”

Lilly slapped her brush down on the step beside her. “Because I won't have to recite the verse in Sunday school. Nobody will know the difference.”

Copper was glad John was out in the yard chasing lightning bugs with the little kids. He wouldn't like Lilly's disrespectful tone, and the last thing Copper wanted was discord with her eldest tonight. “You don't learn your verses for your teacher. You learn them for your own instruction.”

“I know that.”

“Lilly . . .”

Lilly jumped off the step and put her vanity set on the rustic grapevine table beside Copper's chair. “I'll brush your hair while you read it to me. How's that?”

“I believe I left the Bible on my bedside table.”

Back with the Bible, Lilly stood behind the rocker, removing pins and combs from Copper's hair. She lined them up beside the hand mirror set on the table.

“What book does Peter follow?” Copper asked.

“Peter follows James. James follows Hebrews. Hebrews follows Philemon.”

“Lilly Gray Corbett, there's no getting the better of you.”

Lilly pulled the brush through Copper's hair. “I like to know things. Read the verse, Mama.”

“I'm going to read verses 7 and 8 first. They set the stage, so to speak. ‘Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.'”

“This is your verse. Verse 9. ‘Whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world.'”

“What's
staid fast
supposed to mean?” Lilly worked a tangle with the comb. “Those two words don't go together. Sounds like Peter is saying slow down and hurry up.”

“
Stedfast
, not
staid fast
. It means to be firmly fixed in place. I believe this Scripture admonishes us as Christians to remember that we will be visited by the same afflictions that befall others.”

“Like the verse that says it rains on the just and the unjust alike.”

“Exactly. Here's what verse 10 says, ‘But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.'”

“Maybe my teacher picked 1 Peter 5:9 for Kate. So she'd be steadfast with her toothache.”

“Oh, dear. I thought she was better. Mrs. Jasper didn't mention it when we talked again this morning about your going to the depot on the coach with them.”

“She's better. It doesn't hurt all the time. Hand me the rattail comb.”

Copper handed the long, thin-handled comb over her head.

“Mrs. Jasper is going to take her to the dentist when they're in Cincinnati. Kate's scared. She's never been to the dentist.”

“I wonder if Mrs. Jasper knows there's a dentist coming to town. He bought the old law office.”

“Do they really knock your tooth out with a hammer and a cut nail? That's what Kate told me.”

“Barbers used to do that. They were sort of like dentists, and they called it tooth-jumping. I'm sure the new dentist is much more humane.”

“Good thing it's not a front tooth,” Lilly said. “That'd be awful. I'm sure glad I'm going to Aunt Alice's and not to the tooth-jumper.”

Copper winced. “Ouch. Be more gentle.”

“Your hair is so twirly, it's like trying to unknot a clematis vine. Hold up the mirror.”

Copper peered in the mirror at the long strand of hair Lilly held up. “I've never been described as ‘twirly' before.”

“I meant it as a compliment. Why didn't I get your beautiful hair instead of Jack? Boys don't need to be pretty.”

Copper laid the Bible on a bench, then patted her lap. “Come here.”

“I'm too big.”

Copper patted her lap again. “You're never too big to be my baby.”

When Lilly snuggled down, Copper held the mirror in front of Lilly's face. “Do you like the girl you see there?”

Lilly pulled the mirror closer. “She's kinda pretty. But I wish I looked like you.”