A Time for Everything (4 page)

The poor child trembled so much, young
sycamore blossoms rained upon the ground below.

“
Come on,” Isaac soothed.
“Where’s your daddy?”

“
I don’t know, sir. Mama
says he musta run off.”

“
Well, you get on back to
your mama, you hear? Don’t come back here by yourself.”

“
Yes, sir,” he said,
hanging from the safety of a sturdy limb then dropped to the
ground; his bare feet hit the leafy carpet with a soft crunch. He
took off through the trees, heading in the opposite direction of
his enemies, much to Portia’s relief.

Isaac climbed back into the buggy
while Portia settled against her seat. He turned to Mr. Franklin.
“He said his daddy ran off. Where do you think he went?”

“
Clarence? Hard to say.
Maybe he’s just looking for work. Fannie ought to take Jim to
Kentucky. Ain’t that where their people went?”

“
I think so. Woman’s got a
head harder than a chestnut. I’ll have Bessie talk to her.” Isaac
removed his hat and swiped the sweat from his forehead. “Sorry,
Mrs. McAllister. I’m afraid your tour’s not goin’ so
well.”

“
I’m fine,” she said,
staring back toward town. No more troublemakers in sight. “I’m just
glad no one was hurt.”

“
You and me
both.”

“
Well, no sense sitting
here all day.” Mr. Franklin gestured down the road. “Right down
here, about half a mile, is the Stanford farm.”

They continued down the road until
they turned onto a narrow dirt drive lined by white fences with
chipped paint. Wild blackberries and poison ivy clogged sections of
the fence. Portia recalled how fastidious Jake was with their
fencerows before the war claimed his life.

The drive wound along pastures dotted
with a few horses and cows. To their right, wintered crop fields
waited to be plowed. Portia spotted a green roof in the distance,
and as the carriage climbed one last hill, a house came into view.
They pulled up to a large, two-story home with white siding and a
porch that spanned the entire front of the house. The siding needed
a fresh coat of paint, but it still presented an admirable first
impression.

Isaac dismounted and grabbed Portia’s
bag.

Mr. Franklin offered his hand and
helped her down. “I’ll go tell Beau you’re here.”

Stiff-legged, she followed Isaac to
the porch steps. She noticed movement at a window on the second
floor. Someone of small stature peered down at her. She tried to
get a better look at the child — surely it was her new charge — but
he saw her looking and let the curtain fall. She wondered what he
was thinking at that moment. Was he frightened, excited, or perhaps
angry that another woman was here instead of his mother? She
figured she’d know soon enough.

While Isaac removed her trunk and bags
from the buggy and set them on the porch, she breathed in the
unfamiliar scents — horses, wagon grease, and what might be fried
chicken. Her stomach grumbled in anticipation.

Isaac opened the door.
“Ready?”

“
Yes,” she answered,
sounding more confident than she felt. “I’m ready.”

He removed his hat, stood
to one side and gestured for her to pass over the threshold. Portia
stared into the shadowed interior. This unfamiliar place and all
the uncertainty within would be home. At least for a while.
Ready?
No, not by a long
shot. But she reminded herself, it had to become her refuge. For
sanity’s sake, she alone had to make it work.

She took a deep breath and stepped
inside.

Beau Stanford had
just placed his best saddle on the rack when
Harry strode into the stable. He favored his bad leg again, though
he tried to hide it. He’d be injecting his preferred remedy
soon.

“
Back already?” Beau
rolled his aching shoulder to loosen the tension. Eyeing the brown
paper package under his friend’s arm, he felt the throbbing
temptation in his old wound. Numbing the pain would only be a
temporary solution, he reminded himself.

“
Obviously. And Mrs.
McAllister’s here safe and sound as you instructed. But she might
not be quite what you expected.”

“
How so?”

“
Why don’t you go meet her
yourself?” He gestured toward the new filly, who gnawed the top of
the stable door, leaving ugly ruts in the weathered wood. “How’d
she ride?”

Beau slapped too much
Neatsfoot on the seat and wiped the excess oil from the leather. He
couldn’t afford to ruin his good saddle. Setting his supplies on
the workbench, he pointed at their latest acquisition. “What
do
you
think?”

The filly shifted her weight from one
leg to the other and swung her head from side to side as if lost in
her own little world.

Harry draped an elbow over an empty
stall door. “She’ll be fine in a few days, Beau. Turn her out and
let her graze for a while.”

“
You bring me a
half-crazed horse that can’t trot to save her life, and you think
she’ll be fine? I wouldn’t trust her under Scout. How the hell do
you expect us
not
to lose money on her?”

Harry shook his head. “Nonsense!
She’ll make a stage horse or a mail runner. She gallops fine. We
can take her to market in a few weeks.”

“
We need brood mares, not
mail runners.” Beau pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I swear; I gave you one job, one goddamned
job…”

“
Beau, look,” Harry said,
flicking his thumb across a bridle hanging nearby. His voice turned
somber. “It’s gonna take time to get the business going again. You
know that. We need money now, and don’t forget we sold those two
saddle horses within a month.”

“
Fine,” Beau conceded,
“but they barely brought in enough to buy this crazy
thing.”

Beau flipped the saddle around on the
rack and oiled the other side, wishing Harry still took things
seriously like he did before that bullet took a chunk out of his
leg and before morphine addled his mind. The man could whittle down
the most tight-fisted farmers and bring back some fine stock. Being
neither brother nor kin, Harry really had no vested interest in the
business besides loyalty. Yet he had put his all into it, even more
so than Beau, to be honest. Now they were lucky if he did a
half-assed job at anything. Beau could only imagine Harry’s
acquiring process, which likely involved him buying the horse sight
unseen and gallivanting around at the nearest saloon the rest of
the day.

“
There’s a filly over in
Lockport I’m going to look at on Monday,” Harry said in that
soothing tone he employed when trying to win people over. “A
thoroughbred. She’ll be a good one if we’re lucky.”

“
I doubt it.”

“
Goddamn it, Beau, I can’t
up and shit a brood mare!”

“
No, but you can sure talk
shit.”

Harry balled up his fist and punched
the stall door. The filly reared and whinnied.

Beau’s pa, Ezra, hollered from the
stable entrance, “What’s goin’ on in here?”

“
Nothin’,” Harry grumbled
and hurried out in angry retreat.

Ezra stared after him.
“What was
that
all about?”

“
See what he brought us?”
Beau angled his head toward the new filly.

Ezra sidled up to the stall. The filly
ceased her door-chewing and belched. It smelled like rotten
hay.

“
Good Lord above,” he
said, waving his hand in front of his nose. “Her teeth are worn
down to near nubs.” He rubbed her nose, and she tried to nip him.
Luckily the old man’s reflexes were still quick, so his fingers
remained unscathed. “She’d be a waste of a bullet. What was that
boy thinking?”

“
He doesn’t think. That’s
the problem.” Beau looked down the long corridor of the stable at
all the vacant stalls. General Reynolds had raided Wilson County
and had taken most of their horses while he and Harry were off
fighting. “If you and Isaac hadn’t hid Scout and the mules, we
wouldn’t have had any stock left. But Scout can’t make foals by
himself. We need some good brood mares. Some
sane
ones.”

“
I’ll put her out to
graze. She might bring us somethin’ after she calms down a
bit.”

Beau removed his hat and wiped sweat
from his brow. Grateful as Beau was for Pa and Isaac’s
perseverance, the current problem remained, demanding attention
like a botfly on a cow’s ass.

Ezra flipped through mail he had
tucked under his arm. “Hmm.”

“
What?”

“
It’s a bill,” he
grumbled. “Taxes overdue.”

Beau wasn’t surprised. “Let me
see.”

Ezra handed him the bill, and his eyes
fell on the dollar figure.

“
Shit.”

“
Watch your language,
Beauregard. Can’t have you and Harry cursing every other breath
with a new lady living here.”

Wincing at the number of
digits in the
Amount Due
section, Beau crammed the bill in his vest
pocket.

“
What else we
got?”

Ezra opened another envelope. “It’s a
letter from Claire’s uncle.”

“
Oliver?”

The old man took his glasses from his
shirt pocket, put them on his nose, and held the letter at arm’s
length. “Looks like he’s heading back from Philadelphia in a couple
of weeks. He’s bringing Lydia.”

“
She was always a sweet
little girl.” Beau recalled some of the letters he’d received from
her since Claire’s death.
My dearest Beau…
not a day passes that does not carry with it the memories I have of
you…

“
She ain’t so little no
more,” he said with a smile. “She’s a young woman now. And you
ain’t so old yourself.”

“
Not that again.” With his
thumb, Beau instinctively touched the golden band on his left ring
finger.

“
They’ve got money and
lots of it.”

Here we go.
Gold sparkled in Ezra’s eyes, or was that the
thrill of matchmaking? Either way, Beau didn’t like it. He frowned
and plopped his hat back on his head.

“
Now don’t give me that
look, son. It’s been two years. You need to find somebody. Give
Jonathan a mama.”

“
He had a mama. And we’re
fine.” He hated the way his voice broke every time someone forced
him to talk about Claire, so he made his retreat into Scout’s
stall. The sixteen-year-old stallion was the most level-headed
Morgan he’d ever owned. He nuzzled his master as soon as he saw the
brush in Beau’s hand.

Ezra followed, thumbs tucked behind
his overall straps. “You’re not fine, Beauregard. You need a lady
to run things around here. Harry and Isaac are back with the new
teacher, right?”

“
I reckon so.” He brushed
Scout’s neck with soft, gentle strokes.

“
Portia, wasn’t it? Portia
McAllister?”

“
You’d know better than
me. I didn’t want to hire her in the first place. It’s bad enough
she’s a Rebel’s widow, but Harry says she’s not what we expected.
Is she blind or deaf or missing a leg or what?”

“
Heck if I know, son. I
ain’t met her yet, either. All I’ve seen is her letter.”

“
And according to that
letter, her husband worked as an overseer.”

“
Part-time assistant to an
overseer.”

“
Same
difference.”

“
Don’t matter what
he
was.
She’s
a former
schoolteacher. And you know Claire wanted this for Jonny until he’s
old enough for the university. I ain’t gonna be responsible for her
coming back to haunt us for not abiding by her wishes.”

“
Yeah, well when Claire
was here, we had the money for such things. Now, it’s all we can do
to keep food on the table and the few farm hands we got. With the
measly pensions me and Harry get, it’s a wonder we can even do
that. And now some Rebel woman who may or may not have some sort of
deformity will be teaching my son and running my house. What are we
supposed to pay her with? Praise?”

“
I can’t help it if she’s
the only one who replied.”

Beau huffed as he picked prickly burrs
from Scout’s mane. “Does she know Jonny’s mute?”

“
He’s not mute. He’ll come
around with the right encouragement.”

“
Still doesn’t solve the
problem of how we’re gonna pay her.”

“
If she’s so desperate
that she’s not got any kin or neighbors to stay with, she’ll
probably be grateful for the room and board alone. Let’s give her a
chance, at least. We’ve got room, and we’ll still be hospitable, no
matter how bare our cupboards are.”

“
I swear, if this is
another one of your matchmaking schemes…”

“
It’s not, so shut your
trap.”

Beau heaved a long, tired sigh. “Guess
I better head to the house and welcome the crippled up gal like a
good host should.”