Courting Miss Hattie (5 page)
"You're like family to me, Reed, you know that."
Her words were almost painful in their sincerity. Reed knew that she had no one. "No, Miss Hattie," he said. "The answer is no." His voice was stern, his decision final. "When I can get the money together to pay for this land, then I'll buy it. As long as I don't have it, it'll be your land."
Hattie knew there was no sense in arguing
that
any further. Once Reed set his mind to something, he could be as stubborn as a
so
much as a piglet in charity. He just had to make more money on the farm.
As the solution came to her, her eyes brightened with excitement. "How about a second crop?" she said.
"What?"
"If you raise a second crop to sell, you'll make more money this year. Maybe enough to pay for the farm."
"What kind of second crop are you talking about, and where would we raise it? We're using every piece of good ground on the farm now."
"Not
every
piece of good ground." Her voice was almost teasing now. "A farmer, for whom I have great respect, told me that those wasted acres out by the bluff could be planted in rice."
CHAPTER
3
T
he breeze that ruffled Hattie's skirts as she sat nervously in her buggy was a chilly one from the north. She gathered her shawl more closely around her shoulders and chanced a self-conscious glance at the man sitting next to her.
Ancil
Drayton smiled broadly, his ruddy face beaming with obvious delight. "The weather is plumb dandy these days, eh, Miss Hattie?"
She nodded in agreement and tried with some success to gather up a bit of her misplaced gumption. At church,
Ancil
had suggested he drive her buggy while the children follow in his wagon. It was a perfectly reasonable idea and would give them time alone to get acquainted, but Hattie had found driving away from the church, with every eye in the place focused on her, extremely disquieting. Now, after traveling at least a mile, she had been unable to string three words together in respectable order.
"If this sunshine keeps up,"
Ancil
continued, "I may be able to start plowing next week sometime."
"Reed's already started," she managed to say. At least if she could keep him talking about farming, she thought, she'd be able to offer something to the conversation. She had no idea what courting couples talked about, but she suspected that farming was not a choice subject. It was, however, the only subject, other than the Bible, that she felt she could discuss with any semblance of knowledge.
"That Reed Tyler is a good boy."
Ancil
said. "You've been real lucky having him work your place. He's going to make a good farmer one of these days."
Hattie smiled proudly. "Reed is already a good farmer. And you know
,
he doesn't work for me anymore. He's leasing that land on
a sharecrop
."
Ancil
nodded. "It's a shame old Clive Tyler didn't make much of his place. All
them
kids going to have to make their own way, get their own land. I'll
be wanting
to give my own boys a start when it comes time for them to be out on their own."
"I suspect that's what all parents want," Hattie said. "To give their children a better chance than they had."
Taking a deep breath for bravery, she worked up the courage to look
Ancil
full in the face. He was smiling and unthreatening. He was tall, maybe too tall, and that gave him a lean and gaunt look. His thinning reddish-brown hair began far back on his forehead, and he'd parted it low on the right side and combed it up and over. Hattie suspected that the fringe of well-oiled hair used to cover his shining head had to be a foot long. His red mustache was neatly waxed and curled only slightly on the ends. His big brown eyes, twinkling with just a hint of the devil, were his most attractive feature, shaded by eyelashes that were long and thick and amazingly red. His pleasant and friendly smile, the slight gap between his two front teeth, appealed in a boyish way. He was clean and neat in his Sunday suit, and Hattie had to admit she was favorably impressed.
Dressed in her own best ivory lawn shirtwaist with a green gabardine skirt, she hoped his opinion was similarly positive. She knew her shoulders were a little broad, but that gave the impression that her waist was smaller than it actually was. Bonnets were her preferred headdress, but that morning she wore a little round straw hat with an excessively wide brim, to which she had pinned a large bow of Irish lace.
"Hope cotton will make something this year,"
Ancil
was saying. "You know, Miss Hattie, it's not just whether you can get a good crop but how much they're paying for cotton that makes a good year."
She resisted the temptation to tell him that she knew as much about farming as he did. She should show him how capable she was, she reasoned, not take to bragging on
herself
. "They've had a real mild winter down in the
Deep South
," she said. "That won't be good for their cotton, so perhaps prices will be higher this year."
Ancil's
eyes widened with surprise and a hint of appreciation. "Is that so? Well, that is good news for sure, Miss Hattie."
Arriving at the Colfax farm,
Ancil
drove the buggy right up to the front door. After securing the handbrake, he hurried around to help Hattie down. Unused to such gallantries, she was almost down by herself before he could reach her. He offered his hand, and she placed her own in his. A little thrill coursed through her at the sight of her hand looking so small and feminine within his.
"The boys and I will take care of the horses," he offered politely as he escorted her to the front porch. "Mary Nell and the girls can help you get the dinner on the table."
"That will be nice," she said, hoping it was true. She called his three daughters to join her in the house as she watched
Ancil
tell his sons to lead the horses to the barn.
Ancil's
daughters were attractive girls, although a bit pale and quiet. Mary Nell, the oldest child, was thirteen, and Hattie already knew that the majority of the housework and the raising of the children had fallen to her. She assumed she and the girl would have a good deal in common, both having taken on adult responsibilities at an early age.
She smiled a welcome at the girl, but it was returned by a look of sullen dislike that surprised Hattie in its intensity. She quickly opened the stove and stoked the fire, making mental excuses for Mary Nell's behavior. "What would you like to do to help, Mary Nell?" she asked, determined to ignore the young lady's bad manners.
"I wouldn't like to do nothing," Mary Nell replied. "I been cooking all week for this bunch, and I thought I'd be getting the day off coming here." She glanced at the stove where most of the cooked meal sat waiting to be reheated. "It
don't
look like you need my help much anyway. I'm going out to sit on the porch." Turning her back on Hattie, she flounced out to do exactly that.
"Oh, don't mind her, Miss Hattie," the second of
Ancil's
daughters said. "Mary Nell's just an old sour persimmon. We don't pay her
no
mind
nohow
."
Hattie smiled with relief at this girl. "Would you like to help me? You are
Cylvia
?"
The girl offered Hattie a hand to shake, smiling a gap-toothed smile like her father's. "Just call me
Cyl
, like everybody else. This here is
Ada
," she said, indicating the pretty little cotton-haired child at her side. "
Ada
's
four her next birthday, and I'm nine, so I
sorta
take care of her."
Shaking
Ada
's
hand also, Hattie greeted them both with a polite howdy-do. "Would you two like to roll out the biscuits for me?" she asked, picking a task that had been her favorite when she was young.
"I sure would!"
Cyl
answered. "I
ain't never
done it before. Mary Nell did it for Mama afore she died, but since then, Mary Nell says corn pone is easier, so we never have
no
biscuits."
"It's really easy," Hattie said. "I'm sure both of you will be able to do it. Why don't you just wash your hands at the sink?"
Cyl
turned hers over and looked at them critically. "Mine ain't hardly dirty, ma'am. Papa made us all take a bath last night. Mary Nell
like
to had a fit about it, saying it weren't necessary."
Hattie was horrified, but she reminded herself that these poor motherless children probably had little direction at all. "I always wash my hands before I touch the food," she said quietly. "If you're clean, then the food you cook is also clean, and cleaner is healthier on a farm."
Cyl
shrugged in genial acceptance, and with Hattie's help both girls had soon washed their hands at the kitchen pump.
As Hattie directed them in the rolling and cutting of the biscuits, she hacked the chickens apart and put them to frying in the big iron skillet. With pleasure she listened as
Cyl
talked a blue streak. The youngster seemed to have something to say about pretty near everything, and Hattie found her delightful and entertaining.
Little
Ada
was allowed to have the last bit of biscuit dough to play with, and the child was positively gleeful.
"She
don't
talk much,"
Cyl
explained. "But she's real pleased with that dough. She
don't
got much toys, only her paper dolls."
"Do you collect paper dolls,
Ada
?" Hattie asked, hoping to draw the pretty child out.
Ada
only smiled and nodded.
"I
cuts
them myself, from the Sears and Roebuck for her,"
Cyl
said. "She must have near a hundred that she keeps in an old cigar box under the bed."
"How nice for you," Hattie said to
Ada
. "I would love to see your collection sometime. Would you show me?"
The little girl's eyes gleamed with pleasure as she nodded vigorously, her white-blond curls bouncing.
The biscuits were a perfect golden brown when the Drayton family found their places around Hattie's dinner table.
Cyl
bragged about how she and
Ada
had made the biscuits, and Mary Nell kept her nose in the air, not about to speak to anyone.
Ancil's
boys had to be prompted to wash their hands, and
Ancil
followed them with an apologetic smile for Hattie. She smiled back, hoping to convey that she understood how difficult it was for him raising seven children on his own.
