Casteel 05 Web of Dreams (40 page)

I might have turned a little pale. I don't know. But Luke's mother stopped smiling and looked reproachfully at him. He dropped my suitcase and embraced me.
"I'm going to build you a real nice one, Angel. You'll see. And it won't be for all that long anyway. Why in no time, I'm going to have enough money to start a home in the valley."
"You know anything about makin' a rabbit stew?" Annie Casteel asked. I looked up and saw her lift two dead rabbits by the ears out of a small ice box. I gasped and swallowed hard. "Well, after I skin 'em, I'll show ya my ma's recipe."
"Ma makes the best rabbit you ever tasted," Luke said.
"I never ate rabbit, Luke," I said swallowing back my gasps.
"Then you're in for a treat," he replied. I nodded hopefully, took a deep breath and looked around me. Luke's mother and father were about the poorest people I had ever seen, yet when I looked at Toby Casteel, I saw a bright, happy smile on his face, and when I looked at Luke's mother, I saw pride and strength. I was confused, tired, and frightened. Life had thrown down another challenge just when I thought I was beginning a magical life of happiness. But I saw there was no time nor place for tears here. There was only work, the battle to survive. Maybe there was some good to be had. Maybe I would grow stronger, leaner, tougher, so I could face down the evil in the world we had just left.
"Someone's got ta peel those taters," Annie Casteel said and pointed at a bushel of potatoes on the floor.
"I'll do it," I volunteered, even though I had never done it before. She looked at me skeptically, which only made me more determined. "Where's the potato peeler?" I demanded. Luke's mother smiled. "We ain't got no fancy tools, Angel. Just use that pocket knife there and don't cut too deep.
"Luke, ya go an' put Angel's things behind the curtain."
"Behind the curtain? But where are you and Pa goin' to sleep?" Luke asked with a look of concern.
"We'll do fine on the floor pallets. We've slept on 'em before, right Pa?"
"That ain't no lie," Pa said.
"But . . ."
"Now don't go arguin' about it, Luke. If I know ya, ya'll be startin' fer a baby right away. Suspect ya might have already," she said gazing at me as if she had the power to see my pregnancy in my face. "All Casteels are made in beds," she added. "I'm hopin' and prayin' that's always gonna be true."
"All right, Ma." Luke pulled back the curtain to reveal a big brass bed with a saggy old stained mattress over coiled springs. What a difference between that and even the bed in the cheap motel we had slept in last night, I thought; but it was to be our first marriage bed. It would have to do.
There couldn't have been two more different worlds than the world of Farthinggale Manor and the world of the Willies. I had set out to run away from Farthy and I had come so far it seemed that my mother and Tony and all that I had left behind were on a distant planet in another solar system. I was shocked and afraid, but I was determined not to go back.
Despite her rough manner of speaking and critical eyes, I found Annie Casteel easy to talk to. She really listened when I spoke, absorbing the story of my life with interest and amazement on her face. Of course, I didn't tell about Tony's raping me. Luke wanted me to keep the secret of my pregnancy even from his parents. Annie wanted to know why I had run away and I explained that my mother's new husband had been making advances and my mother blamed it all on me.
"Without a Daddy who cared and a Mother who believed me, I felt lost and alone and decided to leave. I was on my way to my grandmother's when I met Luke and fell in love," I explained. She nodded and passed me the carrots to scrape and wash clean. But when I told her about the portrait dolls and Angel, she insisted I stop working and take Angel out of the suitcase so she could see something that fine and expensive. Her eyes lit up with pleasure.
"When I was a little girl, my pa had to whittle me a doll out of a thick branch. I never had anythin' dainty and sweet, and I never seen nothin' like this, even in the store windas down in Winnerrow. And then, after I got married, I had no cause ta buy one fer I had six boys and no girls. After a while, I gave up tryin' ta have a girl.
"I hope when Luke and ya have a baby, it's a girl," she said and I saw that this tough, hard woman of the Willies could be as soft and gentle as any woman I had met. I felt sorry for her, sorry that her life was so hard and there were so few opportunities for her to be a woman, to dress up and be pretty, to keep her skin soft and let her fingernails grow.
"I hope so, too, Annie," I said. She stared at me a moment and then replied.
"Ya call me Ma," she said, and I smiled. "Now let's get this stew cookin'. If I know them two, they'll be brayin' like mules fer somethin' ta eat sooner than ya think."
"Yes, Ma."
I used an outhouse for the first time in my life and sat down at the small plank dinner table and ate something I had never dreamed of eating. But it was delicious. After dinner, Pa played his banjo and Luke and he sang old mountain songs and drank
moonshine. I saw they were both starting to get tipsy. Pa got Luke up to do a jig and then he did one himself. After a while Ma bawled them out for acting stupid. Luke looked at me quickly and I shook my head. it was enough to sober him up quickly.
Just before we went to bed, Luke and I sat out on the porch and listened to the sounds of the forest-- the owls hooting, the coyotes howling and the peepers croaking in the swamps. 1 did feel a sense of peace and security sitting with Luke, holding his hand and looking up at the stars, even though I was miles from civilization as I had known it and living in a shack.
When we crawled under the quilt together, I hugged and kissed Luke lovingly. He was stirred, but he didn't take me the way a husband should take his wife.
"No, Angel," he whispered. "We'll wait until after you have the baby and I've given you a proper home and we can sleep and make love away from anyone else's ears."
I knew what he meant. The old springs squeaked even when we just turned toward and away from each other. On the other side of the curtain, Pa snored, and under the floorboards, just as Ma promised, the hogs snorted and the dogs whimpered. Something scratched at the wooden piers. I heard a cat hiss and then, all was as still as it could get with the wind whistling through the trees and the cracks in the floor and walls of the small cabin. Pa's moonshine put Luke to sleep very quickly. It took me a while longer, but I finally closed my eyes and slept my first night in the Willies.
In the morning Luke got up bright and early and drove down to Winnerrow to get that carpentry job. Pa was working with some farmer named Burl, building a new barn with him and earning some money. After breakfast, Ma sat down to continue her crocheting. I decided to take a washcloth, pail and detergent and do what I could to clean up the cabin. Ma seemed amused by my efforts, but when she came back in and saw how I had cleaned the windows and shined up whatever appliances she had, she nodded with approval.
Afterward, she took me out to her small garden and I helped her weed while she talked about her past, what life was like for her growing up in the Willies. She told me about her other sons, Luke's brothers, and I saw how upset she was about two of them being in prison.
"We're poor and we never put on airs," she said, "but we always been honest folk. 'Cept, of course, for the moonshine, but that ain't the government's business anyway. All them revenuers is tryin' ta do is protect the big businessmen, who make licker and sell it for outrageous prices. Folks up here could never afford it and would have none if it wasn't fer the moonshiners.
"Not that I approve a drinkin', mind ya. It's what got ma other boys inta trouble. I jist hate ta see some poor Willies man hunted down fer makin' his own whiskey. Understand, Angel?"
"Yes, Ma."
"Um," she said watching me work. "Yer jist might make a Willies wife yit. At least yer don't mind gettin' yer hands dirty."
It was funny how that made me feel proud. I thought about the expression on my mother's face if she could see me now. She would die if she touched something dusty in Farthy, but here I was with my fingers in the soft, cool earth. And I didn't feel all that worse for it, I thought. But I did want to look pretty for Luke when he returned from his first day of work in Winnerrow.
"But it's all right to clean my hands up later and maybe rub in some of that lotion I brought with me, isn't it, Ma?" How she laughed.
"Of course, child. Damn, don'tcha think I'd like ta look like one of them fancy, rich Winnerrow women?"
"Well, maybe I can help you do that, Ma," I said. "Let me brush out your hair later and you can use some of my hand cream."
She looked at me oddly.
"Urn," she said. "Maybe."
She seemed afraid of the idea, but she let me do it, let me brush out her hair and trim it some. Then we took out her best dress and one of my nicer ones and got ourselves as dressed up as we could to greet Luke and his father when they returned from work. Pa came home first.
"What's this?" he said when he saw us on the front porch as dolled up as we could get. "It ain't Sunday, is it?"
"Now Toby Casteel, it don't have ta be Sunday fer me ta look decent, does it?" Ma snapped. He looked pinched and confused, turning to me to understand what he had said that got her to bite at him so quickly. "It wouldn't hurt ya ta clean up and put on some decent clothes fer dinner once in a while yerself. Yer still a handsome man."
"I am? Well now, I guess that's true," he said winking at me.
"Oh, it is, Pa," I said and his face lit up. He went behind the cabin and bathed in rainwater and then got into some of his best clothes, his "Sunday clothes." The three of us sat on the porch and waited for Luke's arrival.
Not long after, we heard his truck grinding its way over the rough mountain road. Every once in a while, he pressed down on his horn.
"Uh-oh," Ma said. She flashed a look of warning my way. My heart began to pound. What was it? What did it mean?
Luke came tearing into the front yard, his horn beeping. Then he hopped out of the truck without closing the door. He had a six-pack of beer clutched to his stomach, three of the bottles already emptied.
"It's celebratin' time," he cried and laughed.
"What in tarnation . ." Pa said.
"Confound him," Ma spit.
Luke stumbled around, smiling stupidly. Then his eyes focused clearly on the three of us, all dressed up.
"What the. ." He pointed at us as if there were someone standing beside him. "Look at them . . . what the . oh, yer all celebratin' too."
"Luke Casteel," I said standing up, my hands on my hips. "How dare you come home like this? First, you could have driven the truck off a cliff or something, and now you look so foolish, I could cry."
"Huh?"
"Tell him," Ma coached.
"Here we are getting started, making things work, and you come home drunk." I spun around, tears streaming down my face, and rushed into the cabin.
"Huh?" Luke repeated.
I flopped on our mattress and cried. Moments later, a much more sober Luke Casteel followed me in. He knelt beside me and stroked my hair.
"Oh, Angel," he said. "I was just celebratin' for us. I got the job and found out I could buy lumber at a discount when I'm ready to start our new home."
"I don't care, Luke. If you have something to celebrate, you should wait for us to celebrate it together. I told you I was concerned about your drinking and you promised to cut down. Now this happens."
"I know, I know. Oh, I'm so sorry," he said. "I'm going to take the remaining bottles of beer and heave 'em off the cliff," he vowed. "And if you don't forgive me, I'll heave myself off after 'em."
"Luke Casteel," I cried turning to him. "Don't you ever talk like that. Ever!" My eyes flared. I could see how surprised he was.
"Boy, are you beautiful when you get real angry," he said. "I ain't never seen you this angry, but I don't want you to be angry. I promise," he said raising his hand. "I won't do any more drinkin' and drivin'. Will you give me another chance?"
"Oh Luke Casteel, you know I will," I said, and we hugged and kissed.
"I got some lumber in the truck," he said. "And I'm goin' to start on your outhouse right now."
I followed him out and watched him start to unload. Ma flashed me a look of approval for sobering him up so quickly. Then she turned to Luke.
"What's that lumber fer?" she asked him.
"Angel's outhouse," he said and that made Ma and Pa Casteel laugh.
"Go ahead, have a good one on me," Luke said, "but when you see it, you'll stop."
Luke did put all his love for me in his work and he built as pretty an outhouse as could be. Afterward, he painted it white and insisted that we call it a bathroom instead of an outhouse. Ma teased him whenever she could.
"I'll be pin' ta ma outhouse. I mean, bathroom," she would say and Luke would swing his eyes away and shake his head.
Summer passed into fall. Luke made other improvements on the cabin, trying out some of the carpentry skills he was learning. He built Ma some cabinets and shelves and reinforced the porch and the porch steps. He closed up some of the leaks in the walls and floor, but his job in town began to take up more and more of his time. Pretty soon, he was coming home after dark and he was dead tired, almost too tired to eat dinner. Sometimes he would have whiskey on his breath. Whenever I mentioned it, he claimed he had to have a snort or two in order to get through the day.
"He's trying to get the work of two men out of me, angel," he told me one night after dinner. We would take a walk down a path through the woods that led to a clearing on a ridge overlooking the valley. It gave us a breathtaking view. We could see the lights of houses for miles and miles. "All the Winnerrow businessmen eventually take advantage of the Willies people," Luke explained. "I'm holding down my temper because I want to get started on our own home as soon as I can, but it's gettin' harder and harder."
"I don't like you drinking up your troubles and frustrations, Luke. Can't you find a different job?"
"There ain't that many jobs for us mountain folk. That's why I left the Willies so many times."
"I've been thinking, Luke. Maybe I should try to get in touch with my daddy. He owns a steamship company and I'm sure he would have a good job for you."
"What kind of a job? Working in the engine room of an ocean liner and bein' away from you most of the time?"
"I'm sure he could give you an office job, Luke."
"Me? An office job? I'd feel like a wild squirrel put in a cage. No sir, not me. I need the outdoors or the excitement of the circus, which is even a freer life."