Buckeye Dreams (3 page)

Her sister nodded and closed her eyes. Her breathing was ragged for a minute or two. It became shallower and shallower, and Katherine gently grasped Mary’s shoulder as Dorothy Kirby left to go to her reward.

Tears flowed freely down Katherine’s face as she sat down on the edge of the bed and held Mary as she sobbed.

Oh Father
, she prayed,
dear Mary has lost so much. Keep Daniel safe and let this sad war come to an end. Soon
.

Bootsteps sounded on the stairs, and Katherine rose, standing protectively over Mary who still sat on the bed. A huge, gruff-looking man filled the doorway, and fear gripped Katherine as she saw the rifle in his hand.

But Mary knew the stranger. “Mr. Carr,” she said calmly, far more calmly than Katherine thought her capable of just a few minutes after her sister’s death. The older woman stood, handkerchief in hand.

Surprised, he said the name almost under his breath. “Mary O’Neal!” Clearing his throat, he took his straw hat from his head. Long strands of gray hair tumbled clumsily into his eyes and he immediately pushed them back. “Mrs. O’Neal, I—I wasn’t expectin’ you.”

“I understood from Ruth Decker you were helping Dolly run the farm.”

Mr. Carr nodded. “Yes, that’s right. Since that rascal Toby took off.”

“I’ll thank you not to speak ill of the dead, Mr. Carr.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled gruffly and nodded toward the bed. “How’s your sister?”

“Mrs. Kirby has passed,” Mary said softly as she turned back to her sister. As she did so, Katherine thought she caught a brief gleam in Elijah Carr’s eye.

“If you want to gather up a few things, I’ll wait outside for you.” His voice strained not to sound eager.

“What on earth for?” Mary asked suddenly, turning from her sister.

“Well …,” he began hesitantly. “Thing is … Dolly promised the farm to me.”

Mary stared at him. “I’m quite sure that must be a misunderstanding. Dolly would never give up this land. Joseph always intended it for the boys.”

“Jonah and Toby are gone, Mary. Died fighting the war.”

“But Daniel is still alive and well, Mr. Carr.” She walked up to him. He towered over her, but she paid him no mind. “I read a letter from him this morning. He’s with General Grant in Petersburg.”

“Daniel always had a head for book learnin’. He was already an instructor over at that college of his. He was never a farmer. Dolly said, with Jonah and Toby gone, he would most likely sell me the land.”

“Dolly said that?”

“She surely did.”

Mary looked at him carefully. “Be that as it may, whether or not to sell the land to you is for Daniel to decide. And until he comes home, we’ll stay right here and keep the farm going.”

Katherine took a step forward to stand right behind Mary, backing up her words. She grasped the older woman’s hand and squeezed it. She had no idea how to run a farm, but she was more than willing to try.

Her movement attracted Mr. Carr’s attention, and he looked at Katherine as if just noticing her. “Who are you?” he asked gruffly.

With a pounding heart, she raised her chin. “My name is Katherine Wallace, sir.”

At the sound of her voice, Mr. Carr glared at Mary. “What do you mean bringing a filthy little secesh up here? Dolly most likely died of shock from you letting her step foot in her house.”

Mary glared right back at him. Secesh, short for secessionist, was a word they had both heard spoken in anger far too often since coming north. Mary thought it a cruel name, but Katherine felt it was an accurate one.

“Miss Wallace is my dear friend, and I had my sister’s permission long ago to bring her here.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Dolly would have more of a fit if she could see the state the farm is in right now.”

Mr. Carr looked uneasy. “Been hard,” he finally muttered. “When she took ill, she insisted on stayin’ here. I’ve been goin’ back and forth to take care of my lands, too.”

“So you were at your farm all morning?”

Carr looked at Mary rigidly. “Had business up in Delaware this morning that wouldn’t wait.” His excuse that he’d had to drive nearly nine miles to the county seat clearly did not convince Mary. “She made me go,” he said defensively. “Said she’d be just fine.”

Mary’s shoulders fell wearily. She seemed either out of arguments or too tired to continue sparring with him. She turned and sat down next to her sister’s still form. “I guess I should thank you for being so neighborly after Toby left. Thank you.”

Mr. Carr approached her, giving Katherine a hard look as he brushed by her.

“I’m sorry Dolly’s gone. Let me take you back to my house. You could stay there a spell… .”

“No thank you. We have the farm to look after.”

The man gritted his teeth in silent frustration.

“But if you would be so kind,” Mary continued, “as to take Ruth Decker’s horse and buggy back into Ostrander, I would appreciate it. And please call on Reverend Warren on your way by Mill Creek Church. I need to lay my sister to rest.”

Mr. Carr nodded and, without so much as a glance at Katherine, left the room. Presently they heard the distinct sound of a wagon pulling away from the house.

“Father, forgive me for disliking that man,” Mary murmured.

Katherine looked at her questioningly, but her friend said nothing more.

Instead, she leaned forward and folded Dolly’s arms across her waist. She then grasped the patchwork quilt and gently pulled it over her sister’s body. “We’ll talk later, Katherine. For now, we need to get ready for Reverend Warren.”

K
atherine tossed in her bed for what seemed like the hundredth time. In spite of all she had done and been through today, sleep refused to call on her. Too many thoughts ran through her mind.

To begin with, Mary had insisted on her using one of the unused rooms upstairs. One of her nephew’s rooms. It hadn’t seemed proper, but where else would she sleep? The barn? She supposed it simply felt odd to be sleeping in a man’s bed. Mary had thought she would be most comfortable in Daniel’s room and insisted he wouldn’t mind. She would have felt much more comfortable in Dolly’s room, but that would need airing out. And besides, she thought,
Mary should have her sister’s room
.

Mr. Carr had spoken to Reverend Warren as Mary had asked, for the reverend and his wife, Minnie, soon arrived to help her with all the arrangements. They had been kind and sympathetic toward Mary, but the couple seemed to keep Katherine at a polite distance. At least they were a tad warmer than Ruth Decker.

She played with a thread in the quilt that covered her. She had kept herself busy in the kitchen while Reverend Warren spoke to Mary, and she had rounded up the loose chickens while Mary and the reverend’s wife laid Dorothy out in the parlor. Making herself as scarce as possible was all she could think of to avoid the discreet coldness of the couple. In light of their behavior, alongside Ruth Decker’s, she could only imagine how people would treat her at the funeral on Saturday.

She rolled over and stared at the ceiling. When she had insisted on coming north with Mary, she had not really thought about how people would treat her. In retrospect, she realized she had latched on to the silly notion that the North was a sort of wonderland where everyone was warm and friendly and welcomed strangers with open arms. How could she help it? Mary had been the standard she had used to measure all Northerners.

The anger and suspicion Katherine aroused had come as shocking as a slap on the face. The instant any Northerner heard her voice, it was assumed she was either a secessionist or, worse, a Southern spy.

I was a fool to think people would assume otherwise. Mary warned me it might be this way, but I was so happy to be coming to the North… . Why shouldn’t people be suspicious? The war certainly isn’t over yet. Oh why didn’t I just stay put?

She put a hand to her eyes and sighed deeply. She couldn’t stay and live a life she didn’t want with a family who had never wanted her.

Andrew Wallace, Katherine’s father, had never forgiven her for not possessing her mother’s beauty and vivaciousness. His only daughter’s shy and studious spirit only irritated him. As far as he was concerned, her only value to him lay in whom she married. Her brother, Charles, had always blamed her for their mother’s death. Annabelle Wallace had died giving birth to her. And her father’s sister, Aunt Ada, had always contended that it was downright shocking that the Wallace family could have conceived a drab little nothing like Katherine.

But God opened a wide window for her when the O’Neals became the Wallaces’ neighbors the year Katherine turned thirteen. John O’Neal had inherited a prosperous plantation and was connected to a very old South Carolinian family. Therefore, they immediately had standing in the community despite the fact they were Yankees.

She and Mary had become fast friends at the picnic held to welcome them, and when Katherine was sent off to school in Columbia, she corresponded regularly with Mary. The older woman became the mother Katherine had always longed for. It was Mary whom she confided in, Mary who led her to a deeper relationship with Christ, Mary who had shown her the ills of slavery.

Katherine smiled sleepily.
Thank You for my dear friend, Father. Thank You for bringing us here safely
… . She yawned as weariness crept over her. Folks here would surely come around once they got to know her. Closing her eyes, she drifted off to sleep.

“Katherine, do you hear me?”

Katherine awoke to find Mary sitting at the edge of her bed, gently shaking her awake. She reached for her jaw. It was wet. She pulled her hand away and saw not blood but tears, which fell free and fast down her face. She looked up at her friend. Moonlight reflected in Mary’s motherly eyes and brought the young woman out of her nightmare.

“Chloe?” Mary asked gently.

Katherine nodded, and the older woman handed her a handkerchief.

“I’m so sorry I woke you,” she said as she propped herself on one elbow to dry her face.

“Don’t worry yourself over that.”

Mary smoothed Katherine’s hair, tucking in loose strands that had come loose from her long braid. “Seems like you had that dream a number of times on our journey back.”

Katherine lowered her eyes.

Mary put a finger beneath her chin and lifted her face until their eyes met. “God knows you had no intention of doing what you did. His Son’s blood covers all sin.”

“But what about Chloe? I never got to tell her how sorry …” Fresh tears filled Katherine’s eyes.

“I’m sure wherever she is she has forgiven you.”

Katherine nodded, but even though she knew Mary was right, she still felt guilty. She had only wanted the best for Chloe, the young slave woman who had been her only friend through her lonely childhood. Teaching Chloe how to read had been Katherine’s way of setting her free. Katherine, then sixteen, hadn’t really cared that it was against Southern law. Her father may have controlled the young woman’s body, but Katherine knew if she was educated, at least her mind could go wherever she wished.

How could she have been so foolish as to have let her emotions get the better of her? But the things her father had said that evening at dinner … Even now his horrid, ugly words rolled back and forth in her mind, causing her to shake with anger. If only she had kept her tongue, Chloe would never have been beaten senseless and Katherine would have no scar to mar her face.

She sighed and looked at Mary. Chloe hadn’t been the only one affected by her rash actions. “How did Thomas take it when I left?” she ventured. Her father had sent her off to Charleston for six months after the incident.

Mary hesitated. “It was hard for him.”

“I’m sorry, Mary. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings … and Thomas’s. Father said you bewitched me.”

Mary said nothing, and Katherine knew she was trying not to say what she felt. She had hoped Katherine would one day truly become her daughter by marrying her son.

That had been Katherine’s hope as well, but any chance she may have had with Thomas was dashed when her father forced her to break off all communication with the O’Neals. And he made arrangements to make sure it would stay that way. For the past seven years, Katherine had no contact with them until the night she and her aunt were forced to find refuge with Mary after their house had been destroyed.

“That’s all water under the bridge now,” Mary said finally. “I just hope your father and your brother made their peace with God before the war took their lives.”