Courting Miss Hattie (6 page)

Mary Nell obstinately ignored the direction to wash, and Hattie just let it go. If the girl was willing to eat with dirty hands in the hopes of causing trouble, Hattie thought, she was just going to have to be disappointed.

The four boys had the look of hard-worked farm children.
Ancil
, Jr., "A.J.," was the oldest, only ten months younger than Mary Nell. Luke was ten but was already taller than his older brother and had the look of
Ancil
more than any of the other children. Fred was seven. Most of his front teeth were missing, and that brought him a good deal of teasing all around. Buddy was barely two. His little blond curls and bright brown eyes captivated Hattie. This child would never remember his natural mother, she mused. More than any of the others, she could become the little boy's mother.

Quickly putting a stop to such errant thoughts, she glanced up at
Ancil
, grateful that he couldn't read her mind.

"Fried chicken is my absolute favorite," he said, surveying the spread. Along with chicken, there were mountains of mashed potatoes, candied carrots, field peas, turnip greens, and a big bowl of pickled beets.

"In another month I should have something fresh from the garden," Hattie said, a note of apology in her voice. "This late in the year, we just have to take pretty much what's
left."

"That's what Mary Nell tells us,"
Cyl
said. "We've been eating nothing but corn bread and black-eyed peas for nigh onto
a
month."

Ancil
laughed as if
Cyl
were exaggerating, but Hattie could tell by his flushed face that there was a good deal of truth to the story.

"Well, I certainly have more than my share," she said casually. "I always put up more canning than I can eat. Before you leave,
Cyl
, I'll take you down to the cellar, and you can pick out whatever you want."

"Me too?" young
Ada
piped up.

It was the first words Hattie had heard the little girl speak, and she was delighted. "I'm thinking,
Ada
, that I still have a couple of pints of plum butter down there. Would you be interested in taking home some plum butter?"

All around the table faces lit up in anticipation, and Hattie knew she'd said the right thing. Even Mary Nell seemed to perk up.

Ancil
said grace, and at his "amen," it was as if a gun had been shot off for a race. Every child instantly reached across the table for something.

Attempting to maintain a semblance of order, Hattie picked up the platter of chicken and handed it to
Ancil
, on her left. He easily mimicked the method, and with a little coaching for the boys, the dishes were soon passing clockwise around the table in a civilized fashion.

"This is fine cooking, Miss Hattie,"
Ancil
said, pointing to his plate with his chicken leg. "Preacher Able told me that you set quite a table, but I never imagined anything so downright tasty."

Hattie demurred with an
embarrassed
thank-you and tried to control the stain of flushed pleasure in her cheeks.

"Is this goat's milk?" Fred asked.

She nodded, and the boy made a face. "I hate goat's milk!"

Hattie struggled to think up an appropriate response, but
Cyl
took care of it for her. "Taste it, Freddy. It ain't nothing like the milk we get at home. This is plumb good."

The boy picked up the glass, still unsure, and took a tiny sip of the despised liquid. His eyes widening in pleasant surprise, he gulped down half a glass. "This is good!" he exclaimed. "You sure this is goat's milk?"

Smiling, Hattie assured him. "I milked her myself."

"It sure
don't
taste like the milk we get," Luke said.

"Yeah," Fred said. "The milk we get tastes like snot!"

Hattie nearly choked on her biscuit.

"Fred!"
Ancil's
stern admonition wiped the smile off the
boy's face.

Covering her shock with a slight cough, Hattie tried to diffuse the embarrassment at the table. "Is your goat's milk getting ropey, Mr. Drayton?" she asked, hoping to bring the conversation back to
practical farming concerns.

"I don't really know, Miss Hattie," he admitted. "I guess it is.
I
don't drink the stuff myself, and Mary Nell takes care of the milking, of course."

Turning to the
older girl, Hattie was careful to keep a friendly
smile on her face. "Are you having trouble with your milk, Mary Nell? Is it coming out stringy?"

"It ain't made
nobody
sick," the girl said defensively.

"Oh, no," Hattie said. "Ropey milk won't hurt you, but it doesn't taste all that good. It
happens when the place where
you're keeping the goat has gotten dirty. Goats are naturally clean animals and won't eat from a dirty trough or a fouled floor if they have any choice at all. Once you get the goat cleaned up and her quarters whitewashed, that stringiness will go away in a week's time."

Mary Nell raised her chin in defiance. She was definitely not taking any advice or instruction from Miss Hattie. "I got six children to clean after, and I sure to the Lord don't have time to be cleaning after some goat."

"Mary Nell!"
Ancil
raised his voice for
the second time
during the meal and gave Hattie a look of genuine discomfort at the poor behavior of his offspring.

Hattie smiled reassuringly at him, while thinking that this courting business was a bit trickier than she had expected.

* * *

"When
Ancil
Drayton helped Miss Hattie into that buggy, I swear Reed's jaw dropped nearly down to his belt buckle." Cal Tyler's description of his brother brought a round of laughter to the dinner table.

Andy, the
Tylers
' youngest at fifteen, had his own comment. "Reed just wanted Bessie Jane to see for sure that he still had all his own teeth!"

Even Bessie Jane, sitting a little self-consciously amid the boisterous
Tyler
clan, giggled at that.

"Watch it, squirt!" Reed said, giving his youngest brother a look of unspoken menace.

"I told Reed that Miss Hattie would jump at the chance to have a man court her," Bessie Jane said, "but he was sure she wouldn't look twice at
Ancil
Drayton."

Reed turned to his father. "Have you seen the silt that comes off his stretch of the creek?"

The elder
Tyler
nodded gravely. "Muddy runoff is a sure sign of poor planting and sick soil."

"You're not telling me
nothing
," said George, the brother just older than Reed. "I have to live downstream from that cracker. His best topsoil floats into my drinking water. And the fishing from that creek gets worse every year he lives there."

"Be careful who you're calling a cracker, young man," Mary Tyler admonished. "There are those who say the same thing about us."

"Yeah, Mama,"
Cal
said. "But the boys and I make sure they only say it once."

Everyone laughed again. Laughter was not an unusual occurrence at the farmhouse Clive and Mary Tyler had built on the small rocky rise on their forty-acre cotton farm. Six of their nine children were there that day for Sunday dinner. The long pine table was crowded with the grown
Tyler
children and their wives and husbands. Outside, the grandchildren, who'd been fed first, were running and screaming in a game of tag.

The three absent
Tylers
were Clifford, who had headed off to
Texas
five years earlier, Betty, the oldest girl, who was married to a druggist in
Cape Girardeau
; and young Harry, who'd died of diphtheria when he was eleven. Only Reed, Andy, and Marybeth still lived at home. Andy was too young to be on his own, and Marybeth was simple in her mind. She would probably never leave Mama and Pa. Cal, who ran the
Tyler
farm these days, had built his wife a little house of their own at the foot of the hill. George and his wife, Clara, had a place near Clara's folks. Emma's husband, Sidney, owned one of the biggest farms in the area and had a part interest in the local cotton gin.

Reed would be leaving home soon. That was why he'd brought Bessie Jane to dinner with him that day. But he was still so surprised about Miss
Hattie,
he could hardly speak of anything else. "She's twice the farmer he is," he said. "It's just impossible for me to understand what she could see in a man like Drayton."

Emma laughed at her brother's dismay. "I agree with Bessie Jane. What she sees is a chance to have a husband and children."

"That's what all women want," Bessie Jane said firmly.

Reed shook his head, clearly convinced Bessie Jane had it all wrong. "Miss Hattie would never be interested in a man like
Ancil
Drayton," he said with absolute certainty. "Miss Hattie would never really be interested in any man. She's not like you or your friends, Bessie Jane, and she never was. She's always been self-sufficient and independent."

"You men are so silly," his fiancée said. "Of course she wants
Ancil
Drayton. She wants any man she can get!" Bessie Jane shook her head in dismay at the
thickheadedness
of men. "She
is
different from me and my friends. She's ugly. She's so
ugly,
no man would ever give her a second look. Now finally, old snuff-smelling Drayton with his seven brats has taken an interest in her, and she'll jump at the chance to marry him if he offers."

"You don't know Miss Hattie."

"I know Miss Hattie a good deal better than you do, apparently. Why, that old maid would stand on her head on
Main Street
if she thought it would get her a man!"

"Bessie Jane!" Reed's voice rose in anger.

"I think we've had enough of this," Mary Tyler said. "Miss Hattie's business is certainly none of ours."

"What puzzles me," Clive said, looking curiously at his son, "is why you find it so difficult to believe she would take up with Drayton. Your own sisters used to bring around every worthless, no-account dandy in the county, and it didn't surprise you a bit."

Reed stared thoughtfully at his father for a moment but was saved from having to answer when
Cal
piped up, "Thank God only Emma married one!"

The dinner progressed cheerfully, each brother and sister eager to tell the latest news and hear what was happening with the others. Dessert was being passed around when the conversation drifted back to Reed.

"Well, I've got a new project going this year," he told the group. "You'd better listen up, Sid." He nodded to Emma's husband. "Miss Hattie and I are putting in rice down near Colfax Bluff."

"Rice?"
Cal
repeated. "Reed, what are you talking about?"

"You know that rice field I've been thinking about since I got back from that year with Uncle Ed? Well, we're going to give it a try."

Clive smiled broadly. "Why, son, that's the best news we've had all day! You get a good crop of rice this year, as well as the cotton, and you'll be able to buy that place, won't you?"

"Yes, sir," Reed answered. "That's what I'm hoping."

Sid raised a hand to disagree. "I admit to knowing absolutely nothing about rice," he said. "But
it's
sure not like corn, where you just throw a couple of seeds in the ground and get out of the way while it grows. It takes a lot of trouble to grow rice."

"True," Reed said. "That field by the river is a natural, but growing rice means controlling the water. We'll have to drain it before we sow it, then flood it until the grain's near big enough to cut, then drain it off again."

"That's going to mean a lot of fancy equipment,"
Cal
said.

"We'll need a pump and at least two floodgates. I'd want it to be divided into at least four cuts. That means levees and locks."

"Can't those things be built?" Clive asked, though be knew the answer.

"Not without money," Sid interjected,
then
added pompously, "And I hope you're not thinking to use any of mine, 'cause I'm not interested in any crazy farming schemes."

"Sidney Tucker, don't you speak to my brother in that manner," Emma fussed at him.

"
It's
okay, Emma," Reed said. "I won't need any of your money, Sid. Remember, I'm the sharecropper. It's not my farm. Miss Hattie's got her own money."

"It's your idea, Reed," his father said. "It always has been. Are you telling me that Miss Hattie's going to pay for all of it?"