Walks the Fire (32 page)

“We could fix a cold lunch on Saturday to serve on Sunday.”

“And lose every single boarder to Cadman House! Not on your life, Jesse King! Now, I’ll accommodate your piety when I can, but business is business and I won’t give it away. We’ll offer one hot meal at 3:00 on Sundays, and it’ll be a great one. We’ll do something special every Sunday. But only one meal.”

Augusta would not be moved.
She’s set her jaw,
Jesse thought,
just like Homer.

Thus, the announcement in the
State Journal,
at twenty cents per line, read:

In an effort to honor the Lord’s Day and provide all with a day of rest, boarders at Hathaway House are hereby notified that only one meal will be served on the Sabbath. Boarders are invited to dine at 3:00 p.m. in the hotel dining room. A sumptuous feast will be provided.

Much to Augusta’s surprise, not one boarder complained. She attributed it to the “sumptuous feast.” Jesse attributed it to the hours she had spent on her knees, asking God to understand, and to make a way for her to honor his day.

Winston Gregory’s time was running short. The stage was to depart in only two days, and he had not yet managed to kiss LisBeth King. He had rented the best carriage from Joseph Freeman for the evening, and now he presented himself at the Hathaway House just at the hour when LisBeth was setting tables for the noon meal.

Winston cleared his throat and LisBeth jumped, wheeled about, and blushed.

“I was pleased to see you at church yesterday morning.” He saw the pitcher of water tremble as LisBeth tried to appear casual and continue pouring water into glasses. She spilled some. “I wondered if you would be available for a carriage ride this evening after dinner?”

LisBeth blushed. “I… I’d have to ask my mother.”

Winston smiled patiently. “Of course.”

LisBeth sailed out of the room, through the kitchen, and out back where Jesse was harvesting carrots from the garden. “Mother! Mother! Winston Gregory’s inside and… and… he wants to take me for a carriage ride tonight!”

Jesse stood up abruptly, shaking garden dirt off the carrots. “LisBeth King, you’re only thirteen years old!”

“But, Mother,
he
doesn’t know that. I act older. Everyone says so. I’m mature for my age.” LisBeth grew defiant as she saw her mother’s expression. She knew what the answer was going to be.

It came in a kind voice, but it was still difficult to accept. “There’s plenty of time for you to be grown up, LisBeth. Enjoy being a girl for a bit longer. I’ll tell Winston no for you.”

Jesse moved to pass LisBeth, but LisBeth held out her hand and said, miserably, “No, Mother… I’ll tell him. I knew I shouldn’t.” The dark eyes glistened, “But, Mother, it’s nice to be noticed and… to be asked. Can’t you remember when you were a girl, and the boys noticed? Wasn’t it nice?”

The question was innocent, but it brought back old pangs of loneliness, the feeling of rejection from a lonely young womanhood when no boys had noticed, and no one had asked. Jesse cleared her dry throat. “Of course it’s nice. But it’s too early. Tell Winston you’re too young,” Jesse corrected herself. “No, you don’t have to tell him that. Just tell him I said
no
, that you must work in the kitchen after the boarders eat, and when you’ve finished it will be much too late for you to go out riding.” Jesse smiled. “Make me out to be an ogre. And you needn’t tell him you’re only thirteen. I know you don’t want him to think you’re a baby.”

LisBeth gave her mother a quick hug and whispered, “I didn’t really want to go, anyway. It’s a little scary, growing up, Mama. Thanks for saying
no
.”

“That’s what mothers are for. You use me anytime you need an excuse to say no and still save face with your friends. Don’t lie, but you can make me out to be as mean as necessary if you need help.”

LisBeth retreated to the dining room where Winston waited expectantly. “Thank you very much, Winston, but,” LisBeth sighed dramatically, “Mother insists I do the dishes after the boarders have eaten. Of course, it would have been lovely.”

Winston turned his hat around in his hands and thought of an alternative. “Then walk with me after you’re finished. I’ll go out in the carriage, and when I bring it back I’ll just hang around the stable, waiting. Come out back when the dishes are done and your mother’s asleep.”

LisBeth hesitated.

“Come on, LisBeth. I’m leaving day after tomorrow. I just want somebody to talk to. It’s been lonely here… and, gee… I thought you’d understand.”

LisBeth’s heart softened momentarily, but Jesse came to the door. She had overheard, and she was angry. Green highlights blazed in her gray eyes, “We may be working class, Mr. Gregory, but that does
not
mean that my daughter is to be used for one night’s amusement when you have nothing better to do. She does
not
go out unchaperoned, sir, and I suggest you remember that, or…” Jesse cut him with sarcasm, “I’ll tell your mother what you’ve been up to!”

Winston Gregory flushed with anger, stuffed his hat on his head, and retreated.

LisBeth tried to be angry with her mother, but one look after Winston and she burst out laughing. “Oh, Mama, he was acting so grown up. I thought he was such a man, but look at him, hustling off down the street, just because you threatened to tell his mama! What a sight!” In a burst of affection, LisBeth hugged her mother. “Thank you Mama, for protecting me from ‘ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night.’ And from Winston Gregory!”

Jesse was serious. “LisBeth, somewhere, God has a husband for you. I’m certain of it. I’ve prayed for him since you were little. When he comes, we’ll know it. Until then, you must be very careful that you never give away anything that you should be saving for him. Don’t give away your dreams or your inner thoughts or your affection until you have the man who’s right.”

“Did you save your dreams for Papa?” LisBeth asked.

Jesse pondered the question and avoided answering it directly. “There’s someone deep inside every woman, LisBeth, just waiting to be loved into the light. She was there, inside me, but I didn’t know it until I met Papa.”

LisBeth saw her mother’s face change. That other smile—the one from Sundays at Fort Kearney—almost came back. LisBeth hadn’t seen that smile in a long time, and it made her ache inside. It made her want a father.

Jesse knew. “Oh, dear LisBeth, just remember, when you feel lonely for Papa, you can always tell the Lord. He has promised to be your father. He will be your guide, and he will never, ever, leave you.”

“Sometimes it doesn’t seem enough, Mama.”

Jesse squeezed her daughter’s hand. “I know, honey. Sometimes it doesn’t seem enough for me, either. But I just take a deep breath and do the next thing, and somehow it is enough. The Lord gives me the grace to go on.” With scarcely a pause, Jesse added, “When the right man comes along, he’ll fill up that place inside you that Papa left empty. It’ll fill up and overflow until you’re just bursting with the love inside you. In the meantime, don’t you give any of LisBeth King’s heart to the likes of Winston Gregory, or I’ll take a switch to you!”

Jesse attempted humor to hide sentimental tears. LisBeth was nearly grown up. Men would be calling on her and she would someday be leaving—for where?

With one arm around her daughter’s waist, Jesse added, “Now let’s get supper cooking. I promised Augusta that we’d take care of everything tonight, so she could attend that meeting up at the bank. Let’s get to it!”

Winston Gregory and his mother departed on the 7 AM. stage on Wednesday morning for Marysville, Kansas, where they were met by Lillia’s family and carted back to Missouri and civilization. Somehow, Nebraska carried on without them.

Twenty-seven

Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory.
—
Ephesians 3:20-21

“It’s finally getting syrupy, Mama,”
LisBeth called, wiping her forehead and continuing to stir the huge pot of boiling purple liquid. Jesse hastily wiped the rims of the last few canning jars and hurried over to the stove. Together, the two women ladled elderberry syrup into the jars, sealed the lids, and stood back to survey their work with satisfaction.

“Now, see? Aren’t you glad we went along to help Joseph harvest elderberries?” Jesse asked. “There’s nothing quite as rewarding as a larder full of preserves—”

“—unless it’s a hope chest full of quilts!” LisBeth finished the sentence for her mother.

Jesse laughed. “I suppose I’ve said
that
enough times, haven’t I?”

LisBeth smiled wistfully. “Every time you added a quilt to my hope chest, Mama...and there are twelve now, and all hope is nearly gone.”

Jesse’s attempt to encourage the daughter who had witnessed the weddings of each of her classmates in the past few months was interrupted by Augusta’s booming voice. “Get in here! Look at this… I never!”

Jesse and LisBeth hurried to the front room of the hotel, where Augusta stood, peering outside. The sun had gone behind a dark cloud, and the building was shaken by violent winds that came on suddenly with the roar of hailstorm. But there was no hail. As the three women watched, the black cloud passed by, and the wind quieted. In the distance, they could see the cloud seem to descend from the heavens. A few grasshoppers appeared in the road.

“Odd,” Augusta murmured. The three women returned to their chores and gave the cloud little thought until the next morning, when homesteaders began arriving in town with their unbelievable tales.

“In two hours, they were four inches deep on the ground

“I’m wiped out. They et the onions right out of the ground…”

“All that’s left of my garden is holes where they was beets and carrots…”

“They climbed up my dress… ate the stripes right out of the weave before I could beat them off and get back into the house!”

“The curtains are hanging in shreds at the windows…”

“The livestock all went crazy and ran off…”

Jesse and LisBeth prayed for the homesteaders and were thankful they were in town. The worst of the horde had passed Lincoln by, but it was the final calamity for hundreds of homesteaders. Beset by prairie fires during a drought and floods when the drought broke, having battled tornados and hailstorms, they were finally wiped out by an insect. Only a few days after Hathaway House inhabitants had witnessed the cloud going over the town, droves of homesteaders began arriving to take the railroad back east, back home, out west, up north—anywhere.

One poor woman got on the morning train that week, weeping hysterically and shouting to the disembarking passengers, “Turn back, turn back! I’ve spent a winter and a summer here. God help you all if you stay in this cursed place!” Her embarrassed husband pulled her up into the train car and gently led her to a seat, his arm about her shaking shoulders.

On Friday of that week, a rickety wagon pulled up outside Hathaway House. MacKenzie Baird shouted an unnecessary
whoa
to his ancient team—which had already stopped to drink from the horse trough on the street—and slowly climbed down from his rig. He stood for a moment, both hands on the side of the wagon, seeming to inventory its contents.

LisBeth looked out the dining room window and watched carefully. The man’s head was turned away from her. She couldn’t see his face, but she saw his shoulders rise as he took a deep breath. She saw the dusty hat removed and shaken angrily in one hand while the other hand made a fist that pounded the side of the wagon.

Before he turned to face the hotel, MacKenzie clamped the slightly oversized hat back on his head and pulled the brim down over his eyes. He scraped the mud from the bottom of his boots along the edge of the board sidewalk. Then he made elaborate inspection of the worn harness that held his team to the wagon. With a final attempt to slap the dust out of his flannel shirt, he strode into the hotel and rang the bell for the clerk.

Augusta answered the bell immediately, sweeping into the small office from her sitting room “in the back.”

The voice that LisBeth heard from her conveniently out-of-sight location in the dining room was mellow, deep. She would describe it in later years as the sound of a deep river rolling gently along a rocky gorge.
I wonder if he looks as good as he sounds,
she thought, and blushed.
LisBeth, you’re not a flirt… stop being so dramatic!
Having scolded herself properly, she continued to eavesdrop.

The voice was steady, but slightly strained. “Do you have any work available that would enable me to pay for a room, ma’am? Joseph Freeman said to check with Hathaway House as soon as I arrived in town.” The young voice faltered.

MacKenzie cleared his throat, hooked his right thumb in his suspenders and continued, “I, uh, we—that is, the grasshoppers wiped us out, and as soon as things are settled on the place and I earn enough for a new rig and team, I’ll be moving on.” He rushed to finish, “I’ll do anything honest to earn my way. I’m strong and a hard worker, but the fact is, I’ve got no way to pay for the room or the meals unless I get work.”