Unto These Hills (11 page)

“Let’s walk.” Daniel’s fingers intertwined with mine and, in comfortable silence, we strolled up Main Street, past the movie house and the mill executive’s residences, which were roomier and nicer than ours. We passed the big Turner house, where Tack lived. The past week back home had been like a dream.

Tonight, it seemed I had a new set of eyes. Everything looked new and bigger than life somehow. It was as though I’d never been to our favorite place before. Park Pointe marked the village outskirts, the beautiful, triangular oasis laid with lush carpet grass, now in winter a soft buff, where benches beneath stately oaks and dogwoods beckoned and welcomed one to stop and rest. Wordlessly, Daniel and I sank onto one nestled up to a lone, huge white oak.

The park, painstakingly groomed and preserved by Tucapau Mill’s maintenance crew, hosted an array of occasions, from textile awards, civic and church group meetings, to the Boys Scouts, and picnics. Adjoining it was the village baseball field.

“It’s beautiful, Daniel,” I said, gazing about me. “Remember what you once told me? I like to pretend this is ours, this spot, with a lovely cottage right there in the middle, underneath those giant oaks.”

Daniel’s fingers laced with mine and I loved the way his callused palm stroked my tender one. It stirred something deep inside me, dormant until recent days. “Someday, you’ll have it,” he said softly, remembering his earlier promise.

“Su-ure,” I murmured, sighed, then slid him a smile that came from that deep, deep spot inside me reserved just for him. “But I appreciate the thought. I’m becoming more a realist every day I live. These village folks would never agree to turning this lovely park it into a residential site. Why, the Boy Scouts would
scalp us
!” I laughed, gesturing toward the log Scout Hut on the north corner of the site.

Daniel didn’t laugh. “All things change.” His gaze locked with mine. “All things. Someday,” he said solemnly, “your house will set right here.”

I think it was then, in that moment, with his eyes ablaze with a tender, fierce protectiveness, that I began to think of him as Daniel, my Lion-Man.

~~~~~

I couldn’t bring myself to tell Gladys about Harly’s coming on to me that day over a year earlier. Living in Chicago, I’d not had to deal with it. Now, things were different.

She’d warned me and, somehow, I felt inexplicably guilty for what happened that day when she was away. I didn’t want her to know of my stupidity but superceding that was my reluctance to hurt her. So I avoided her.

I met Doris, Jack Melton’s fiancée. She wasn’t Renie but — she was nice. There would, I realized, never be another Renie — her uniqueness could never be plagiarized.

I first noticed trinkets showing up in Sheila’s pocketbook during my senior year at James F. Byrnes High, which accommodated not only Tucapau but Lyman, Jackson, and Fairmont mill hills as well. When I asked her one day where she’d gotten the money to buy lipstick and mascara, she gave me a smile I’d seen on her face before. With a thudding heart, I recognized it from bygone days, when she’d flirted with everybody, charming them with her cuteness.

“Where does she get money?” I asked Francine, who still rested frequently through the day. Her schooling was over. The initiative would never again arise. I’d gone to work at the hotel. Pressed to keep up with my studies, I took the afternoon shift. Daniel and I scrimped and put back like squirrels preparing for winter. Our wedding was only three months away. While I was in Chicago, Daniel had continued to save, managing to lay aside a pretty good nest egg for our future. He gave it to me to start a joint savings account in the bank.

“She’s got a little thing going with the boys, Sunny,” Francine said, propped up on pillows, hands-on-hips, as in
don’t you know anything?

“Oh, no, Francine.” I dropped into a kitchen chair I’d shuttled into the room

“’Fraid so, Sunny.” Francine’s voice softened. We’d grown closer in recent months. Maturity can do marvelous things for sibling relationships. “That’s why I don’t want any kids.”

I narrowed my gaze at her. “You don’t mean that.”

She raised an eyebrow over eyes too cynical, too hard. “Oh but I do. I don’t wanna take a chance on lettin’ kids down like Mama did us. I got too much o’ her in me, Sunny. You know that.”

I couldn’t argue with that. But still. “You’ve got a lot of time to change your mind.”

“Don’t hold your breath.” She winked at me, taking my breath with a mannerism so
Mama.

~~~~~

The fragrance of baking cornbread set my mouth to watering.

“You still gonna have your reception here, darlin’?” Daisy asked, holding out a fresh, hot buttered corn muffin to me. I took it and bit into it, taking a minute to get my breath between maid duties. I sat down in a hotel dining room chair and slid off my white maid’s shoes for a moment, wiggling my toes to shed fatigue.

“Mmm. You make the best cornbread in the South, Daisy.” I licked melted butter off my fingers. “Yes. I’m still planning on having my wedding reception here.”

“An’ the weddin’ at the Meth’dist Church?”

I nodded. I was also sewing my own wedding gown. I’d worked on it for months, using the heavy-duty machine in the hotel’s little upstairs mending room. I took the money for pattern and cloth from the bank account. Daniel’s idea.

After leaving Chicago, I’d begun attending services at the Tucapau Methodist Church where my daddy’s cousin, Wayne Acklin, now pastored. Emaline, true friend that she was, attended there, too. One reason being her boyfriend, John Davidson, now attended Asbury Seminary and would eventually pastor in the Methodist Church.

Anyway, I couldn’t go back to the Pentecostal church because of Gladys, whom I still avoided. She was too, too intuitive not to sense something if I was around her long.

“My cousin pastors there,” I told Daisy. “I want you to help me plan the food.”

“I be glad to help out. My labor being free o’charge, darlin’. That’ll be my weddin’ present to you and that honey o’your’n.”

“Aww, Daisy,” my eyes misted, “you don’t have to —”

“It done. So hesh up.” She slid me that mischievous grin of hers and enfolded me in her long golden arms for a huge hug.

~~~~~

My shift from Pentecostalism to Methodism was akin to an abrupt grind-down gearshift from race car-high to mountain-climbing low. I missed the freedom and exuberance of the Pentecostal brethren. Most of all, I missed the toe-tapping lively music that kept even the fussiest of babies enraptured.

Today, with song leader Ernie North laid-up with the flu, Pastor Wayne filled in badly. I’d always known my daddy’s musical pitch wasn’t the best and now I knew it was genetic. Even Daniel, who usually took little note of such, raised his brows at me during the hymn
It Is Well With My Soul,
indicating it
wasn’t.
Cousin Wayne’s voice crossed a wolf’s bay at the moon with an octogenarian’s audible yawn.

His wife, Lula, seemed unaffected by the racket and sang along like she was surrounded by the Byrnes High Glee Club. I decided then and there to take some hot potato soup to Ernie and pray especially hard for his recovery.

Pastor Wayne’s four kids — ages four to ten — lined the front pew like stair steps. Matthew, Mark, Luke and Rachel. All four heads sprouted thick amber-toned hair with degrees of natural curl, ranging from Matthews’s Afro to Rachel’s lustrous waist-length waves. The curly tops bobbed to and fro, up and down constantly during the service. Not hugely, just more like busy insects on the perimeter of a picnic.

Some of the members shot irritated looks their way but Lula seemed as impervious to that as she was to her husband’s tone-deafness. She sat planted like a stalwart bookend next to little Rachel while ten-year-old Matthew bookended the other side of eight-year-old Luke. Mark, the middle child seemed, characteristically, the best behaved of the bunch. Remembering some of my psychology, I wondered if it was birth order that determined it or if he’d simply inherited his mother’s placid genes. Which led me to ponder again spoiled Cousin Alvin’s impassiveness — if genetic, it had leap-frogged over Aunt Tina and Uncle Talley.

Daniel watched the kids for amusement, his eyes smiling and I knew he thought of our own children, yet unbirthed. He took my hand and squeezed, sliding me a look that confirmed my suspicion. Joy floated through me like warm bubbles that, when full, burst, flooding me with happiness and contentment.

Emaline and John sat with us. I was glad our two guys liked each other. Had they not, ours would have been a hard row to plow, Emaline’s and mine. Halfway through preaching, Emaline leaned to whisper in my ear.

“Cornelia is moving to Cowpens next week. Needs to move closer to help her sick mama.”

My eyes rounded in shock. Cornelia, our capable pianist, leaving? I surreptitiously looked around. To my knowledge, nobody else there could read a note of music. Oh, how I wished I could.

Pastor Wayne caught me in the church vestibule after the service ended. “Say Sunny, do you by chance know anybody who plays piano well enough to take Cornelia’s place?” My throat constricted at his resemblance to Daddy. How I missed him.

“Yes, I do,” I said without hesitation. “Ruth Bond. She lives on the other side of the river on Pine Street. Number ten.”

Wayne’s frown eased. He patted my arm. “Thanks, Sunny.”

~~~~~

“Are you
crazy?
” shrieked Aunt Tina, glaring at me across the supper table as though I were a simpering idiot. “Ruth Bond can’t play
in church.”

“And why not?” I shot back, ignoring the fact that I had to share these walls with this woman until I married. “She’s really good. You ought to hear her —”

“I don’t care if she plays like
Eddie Duchin
, she’s not fit to play in church.”

“That’s not fair, Aunt Tina.” I sensed Nana stirring restlessly in her chair at the other end of the table — Aunt Tina occupied the head, with Alvin at her elbow. “Ruth is a good mother and —”

“She ain’t married.” Aunt Tina’s flat reply blasted my temper right out the top of my head.

“Neither are you.” The words bypassed my brain and shot right out my mouth.

The hissed intake of her breath could have been heard over at the Taylors. “How
dare you!
” Then she totally shocked me by bursting into tears and fleeing the kitchen. The
slam
of her bedroom door reverberated throughout the house.

Silence around the kitchen table hummed and sizzled after her abrupt departure. Sheila’s eyes riveted to her plate. Tim’s danced with hurt and anger — at Aunt Tina. Timmy, always my champion.

“You shouldn’t oughta said that to’er,” Nana scolded. “You need to go apologize.”

I gazed at her, stunned. “For
what?”

“You know she’s touchy about Talley leavin’ ‘er for that girl.”

I stared at Nana for long moments. “All the more reason she should have more compassion. She shouldn’t’ve said what she said about Ruth Bond, Nana.”

Aunt Tina burst back into the kitchen. “You compared me to that-that
whore?
I can’t
believe it
.” She stared at me as though I’d grown fangs

“Don’t call Ruth that,” I said through tight lips.

“That’s what she
is,
Sunny,” Aunt Tina fairly hissed, hands planted on hips. “If it looks like a dog and barks like a dog —”

“I don’t have to listen to this.” I stood and strode from the room.

“You come back here!” Aunt Tina screamed as I slammed through the front door and headed blindly down the steps and across the street to Doretha’s. “That’s
fine!”
shrieked Aunt Tina to my rigid, retreating back. “
Don’t come back! Don’t ever come back. Y’hear? Never!”

“What’s the matter, Sunny?” Doretha took me in her arms as soon as I burst through her door with tears streaming down my face. “C’mon in my room,” she said in her soft way that always comforted me.

I glimpsed Berthie, brow wrinkled as she gazed at me from the kitchen table, where she sipped coffee. Most of her moments were lucid. This being one of them. I read concern on her face. Tom Taylor sat across from Berthie, elbows on table, huge hands clasping coffee cup, never raising his head to acknowledge us. I suppose my emotional state made him uncomfortable. I didn’t care.

“Hey, Sunny,” Daniel called, a smile already forming as he spotted us from the kitchen, where, at the sink, he ran cool tap water into a glass. His smile dissolved instantly. “Hey, what’s wrong?” The glass plunked into the sink, water forgotten as he rushed to my side. His big hand cupped my chin and surveyed my features. I despised the fact that my lips continued to wobble.

“C’mon,” Doretha gently tugged me through the door to her room and firmly closed it behind Daniel. “Sit down, ya’ll,” she gestured toward her bed as she took a straight wicker-seated kitchen chair and lowered herself onto it. “What’s wrong, Sunny?” she softly queried. She folded one scrawny denimed leg beneath her.

It all poured out — Aunt Tina’s ugly outburst, my defense of Ruth, and the horrible replies. When I finished, out of breath and trembling, the two of them remained silent for long moments. Doretha broke the silence. “You really do
love
, don’t you, Sunny? I mean — you
really
love ever’body, dontcha? You ain’t puttin’ on, are you?”

I snuffled and peered at her through bleary eyes. “No,” I croaked, mildly surprised at the question. “I’m not putting on. Why would I?”

“’Cause most people here in Tucapau wouldn’t own up to likin’ Ruth Bond.” She gazed quietly at me, her heart in her gray eyes. “You know I’m tellin’ the truth. That makes you different. I don’t mean bad different, now, so don’t’ go thinkin’ that. Ain’t I tellin’ her the truth, Daniel?”

My gaze swung to Daniel, seated beside me. He nodded, his gaze averting mine.

Some little alarm went off inside me. Daniel was entirely too silent. Too detached. For the first time ever, my tears did not touch him. In fact, he seemed almost brooding.

“Do you think I’m wrong to love Ruth Bond?” I whispered, gazing at him. “To defend her?”