The Soldier's Lady (32 page)

Micah laughed lightly and stroked her hair. The wonderful quiet contentedness of love settled upon their hearts. There was but one more thing burning on Emma's heart to say.

“Please . . . don't leave, Mister Duff,” she whispered. “Not now. I think my heart wud like ter break ef you did!”

“Emma . . . Emma,” Micah whispered, “when will you ever be able to stop calling me
Mister
Duff?”

“I's try . . .
Micah
,” said Emma softly with an embarrassed smile.

Katie and I were out walking when we saw Micah and Emma coming toward us in the distance. As they drew closer we saw that they were walking hand in hand.

We looked at each other with our mouths hanging open, then we started running forward. Emma saw us and now left Micah and ran toward us. We met laughing and talking excitedly like three little girls!

“Emma, Emma,” exclaimed Katie, “what happened?”

“Dis good man,” said Emma, beaming as she glanced behind her, “he says he loves me, Miz Katie! How dat kin be, I don' know. Almost like a miracle, ain't it? I thought he had taken a fancy ter you, Mayme,” she said to me, “an' now he says he loves me!”

“Oh, Emma, we're so happy for you!” I exclaimed. And I truly was.

Katie's smile was as big as Emma's, and she now gave Emma a big hug. The next instant we were all three in each other's arms laughing and crying all at once.

Emma stood back, giving us each a look and a smile that melted our hearts, a look of such love and gratitude like I'd never seen. Then she turned and ran back to Micah, who opened one arm wide to receive her. They continued toward us, his arm around her shoulder, Emma's head contentedly leaning against him.

I turned and looked back toward the house. Jeremiah was standing there watching.

I gave a little wave and left Katie and went to join him. I walked straight to him, put my arms around him and rested my head against his chest.
He reached around and held me close.

“Isn't that wonderful to see, Jeremiah,” I said, “—Micah and Emma like that? Who would have imagined it?”

“I had a feelin' 'bout it,” said Jeremiah, “though at first I wuz afraid he might take you away from me.”

“What!” I said, laughing and standing back to look in Jeremiah's face to see if he was serious.

“Well, he's a mighty handsome man.”

“No more than you, Jeremiah.”

“An' you an' he . . . that is, well . . . bein' around Micah made me wonder ef I wuz good enuff fo you.”

“Jeremiah Patterson!” I said. “What kind of talk is that? You're not just good enough for me, I love you—so let's have no more talk like that.”

“I'll try,” he said.

Again I embraced him and we were quiet for a minute.

“Did you really think that?” I asked more seriously.

“For a spell,” he said. “I couldn't help comparin' myself ter him.”

“I'm sorry, Jeremiah,” I said. “I'm sorry I didn't realize
you were feeling that way. I suppose I was caught up in . . . I don't know, just enjoying getting to know Micah as a person and talking to him. I didn't realize what it must have looked like to you. Katie even thought I was falling in love with him. But when she asked me if I was, I had to stop and think, and it made me realize that I wasn't, and that you were still the one I loved. I didn't think that maybe you were seeing the same thing Katie was. I am sorry.”

“Dat's all right, Mayme. Everythin's all right now.”

T
HE
R
IVER'S
C
LAIM

31

S
ummer was approaching and it started to get hot.

One particular day came and you could tell from the moment the sun came up that it would be a hot and muggy day. Micah had said nothing more about leaving Rosewood, and we were all glad of that.

By ten in the morning it was ninety degrees. At noon it was over a hundred. Not a breath of wind came from anywhere. What work there was to be done we got finished by lunchtime and no one felt inclined to go out in the hot sun after that if they didn't have to. Everything would take care of itself until milking time came late in the afternoon. Only Uncle Ward had the energy to venture outdoors. He rode into town to make a withdrawal at the bank and pick up our mail.

Emma was still going out to the river a lot. She had been doing so ever since that day she would never forget. Usually she went alone—to pray or sing. It was obvious that her baptism, and now her
growing love for Micah, had changed things so deep in her heart that she was still trying to grasp it. I think she went to the river every day or two—to sit as the river flowed slowly past her, to try to figure it all out, but also just to let it sink yet deeper into her heart.

“You want ter go dab dose feet er yers in da ribber, William?” said Emma to her four-year-old son as we sat around the table in the kitchen about noon.

“Dat I do, Mama!” replied the boy eagerly. “Kin we go now?”

“We'll go right after lunch,” answered Emma.

Forty minutes later, the tall slender black girl and chubby little boy of tan complexion walked away from the house hand in hand. I went to the door and watched as they crossed two fields of green ripening stalks whose cotton we would all help pick later in the summer.

Back when Emma had first come here she hadn't been much use to anyone and she knew it. Though she had been the oldest of we three girls who were thrown together by the war and had to figure out a way to survive alone, Emma had needed more taking care of than both Katie and me combined.

But she had grown and changed in the four years since she found her way here. And new and even more far-reaching kinds of changes were now stirring in Emma's heart. A look of peace and self-assurance was gradually coming over her face. More often these days, rather than the most talkative, she was the quietest member of the Rosewood family around
the kitchen table, sitting content to listen, watch, observe.

Emma's soul was coming awake.

Emma sat down at the river's edge and eased her bare brown feet into the shallow water as William ran straight into it.

“You be careful, William!” she said. “You stay near me, you hear. I don't want ter be havin' ter haul you outta dat water yonder cuz I can't swim so good.”

Whether William was listening was doubtful. But he was in no danger yet, for the site where Emma had been baptized was out in the middle and the sandy bottom sloped away toward it gradually. He ran and splashed about within four feet of the shore, to no more depth than halfway up his fat little calves, laughing and shrieking without a care in the world, until he was wet from head to foot. Emma watched with a smile on her face.

In this season of peace and happiness in her life, Emma was not thinking of the past, nor of dangerous secrets she possessed whose danger even she herself did not fully recognize. She was thinking of the wonderful now and the bright future. She was thinking of Micah Duff.

Emma had just begun to get sleepy under the blazing sun and had lain down on her back, when sudden footsteps sounded behind her from some unknown hiding place in the brush bordering the river. Startled but suspecting nothing, Emma sat up and turned toward the sound. Three white men ran toward her, two bearing big brown burlap bags.

Before she could cry out, one of the men yanked her to her feet. Emma cried out in pain as the second man pulled her arms behind her. The third went for William, threw the open end of one sack over his head, and scooped the boy out of the shallow water.

“Mama!” William howled. But the next instant he was bundled up, then clunked on the head and thrown over the man's shoulder.

Terror unlike she had ever known clenched at Emma's heart. She screamed at the top of her lungs, struggling and kicking frantically.

“You let him go . . . William . . . git yo han's off me . . . help—somebody . . . Miz Katie, help! Mayme!”

“Shut up, you fool!” yelled one of the men. But even two of them were hardly a match for her. Emma writhed and kicked with every ounce of survival instinct she possessed. As one tried to take hold of her shoulders and force her to be still, Emma's teeth clamped down onto his wrist like the vise of a steel trap.

He cried out in pain and swore violently as blood flowed from his arm. He whacked Emma across the side of the head with the back of his hand. But it only made her scream louder.

“Help!” she shrieked in a mad frenzy. “Git away from me . . . William, Mama's here . . . help! Miz Katie . . . dey's got William. Help!”

Two hands took hold of her head from behind, and the next instant a handkerchief was stuffed into her mouth, muffling her cries. She was lifted off the ground, kicking and wildly swinging her arms about. The three men now made clumsily for their waiting horses and struggled to
mount with the two unwieldy bags.