Courting Miss Hattie (7 page)

Reed fidgeted in slight embarrassment. "It wasn't my idea to do it this year. Miss Hattie says she wants to do some more farming before I buy her out. She says she's going to miss it and wants a real challenge before she gives it up completely."

"Do you believe that?" Clive asked.

Reed shook his head. "Truthfully, I think she's doing it as kind of a wedding present for me and Bessie Jane."

"I'd rather have a quilt," Bessie Jane said.

"Seems like a pretty expensive present to me," Sid commented.

"I told her I couldn't let her do that," Reed said as a smile stole across his face. "She told me that I can't
let
her do anything, and that I would do well to remember that it's her land and her money."

Mary nodded. "Hattie's independence has always been something she valued."

"You could have just refused to do it,"
Cal
said.

Reed laughed at that suggestion. He remembered their argument distinctly.

"Listen, Plowboy," Hattie had said to him, "I want a rice field. I've been hearing you talk for years about a rice field, and I've decided that I want one." She folded her arms across her chest, her stance and expression saying that she could be just as stubborn as he was. "You're not the only farmer in this county who believes that cotton is not the most dependable crop to market. If we can grow rice on this ground, I'm for growing it."

Reed tried to interrupt her, but she held up her hand, determined to speak her piece.

"You're planning to buy me out in a crop or two. I won't be getting any chance to farm after that. I'll be spending my time tending livestock. I think before I give it up completely, I'd like to know what it feels like to have my own rice field."

"I don't believe you, Miss Hattie," he said, the sincerity in his tone underlined with disapproval.
"You
would have sold this land years ago if you hadn't known that I wanted to buy it. You've been more a friend to me than a business partner, and I know you could have leased this land to a half-dozen other men for cash money, not a share of the crop. You've done a lot for me, Miss Hattie—really too much."

"I haven't done anything that I didn't want to do," she insisted. "Now what I want to do is grow me a rice field. And for the life of me I can't understand why you're against it, since it's you that put the idea in my head in the first place."

"You're just doing this for me and Bessie Jane."

"I
was
doing it for you and Bessie Jane, but I'm so blasted mad about it now, Plowboy, that if you don't build me a rice field, I'll find somebody else who will!"

Smiling at his family, Reed said, "Miss Hattie has her way of getting what she wants. It's not a sweet and winsome way, like a lot of ladies, but it seems to work just as well."

 
CHAPTER
 
4

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T
he south field of the Colfax farm overlooked the homestead, and as Reed walked the ground he intended to plow, he couldn't seem to stop his gaze from returning to Miss Hattie's house. She was hanging clothes on the back line. Although at this distance he couldn't see anger in her movements, he feared it was there.

Catching his shoe on a sharp edge, he knelt beside the piece of limestone that had worked its way to the surface. As he began to pull the craggy intruder out of the topsoil, he remembered asking Hattie's father, "If we plow this ground every year, how do these stones get in here?"

The older man's eyes had lit up like sparklers, and he'd smiled his big, toothy smile, just like Hattie's. "Why, they grow here!" he'd answered. "Bad boys come by here in the fall and sow these fields with gravel. By spring, we've got full-grown rocks!"

It was the thing that Reed had most appreciated about Old Man Colfax—his sense of humor. He remembered that long-ago day when he was just eight years old and Henry Colfax had
come to the
Tyler
farm. He'd eaten dinner with them and told so many funny
stories,
the family could hardly eat for laughing.

When he got around to business, the talk had been a bit more serious. "My little gal, Hattie, now she's a fine worker," he said with obvious pride. "But she's thirteen now, and I'm thinking that it's time she stayed about the house and took to perfecting her woman's work. When a man comes looking for a wife, he don't usually ask how well she can plow."

Everyone laughed at that, and Reed's father easily picked up on the direction of the conversation. "What
you're needing
is a plowboy," he said as he glanced around the table at his sons. "A youngster that's willing to work for meals and a bit of pocket money could learn a lot about farming, I suspect."

"I'm talking more than pocket money," Colfax corrected him. "For a steady, hard worker I'm thinking fifteen cents a day. Not a man's wages, but enough for a boy to lay aside something to buy his own piece of ground sometime."

To Reed it sounded like a fortune. He looked around the table and watched as his older brothers considered the idea. He saw no need to hesitate. "I'll do it, Mr. Colfax," he said, causing everyone to look at him in surprise. As the next to youngest of the
Tyler
boys, Reed was not exactly what Colfax had in mind.

Before anyone could say so, he quickly continued. "I know I still don't have my growth," he said evenly, "but I'm strong for my size and a hard worker. I'll be there every morning at sunup without fail, and Mama can tell you
I ain't never sick
."

Mr. Colfax studied him for a moment as if trying to size him up. Reed felt a nervous sweat bead on his upper lip. He was not as big or as experienced as his brothers, but he managed to be accepted as an equal by using his brain. He searched it now for assistance and found a way to prove himself. "I'll tell you what, sir," he said. "You let me work for you for a month for no wage at all. If you think I ain't strong enough or I don't suit, you just say the word, and I'll be up and gone, no hard words or bad feelings. You won't lose
nothing
, and I'll get the chance to show you I can be a good hand."

The silence at the table seemed to extend forever, and Reed surreptitiously wiped his palms on the thighs of his denim overalls.

His father finally smiled and nodded. "My boy Reed is smart as a whip," he told Colfax. "He's not too big yet, but he's growing, and he's a quick study. I suspect he'd make you a good worker."

Colfax considered it for a minute longer,
then
offered his hand across the table to Reed.
"You
come on over in the morning," he said. "None of this working for free, though. I'll pay you your wage and try you for a couple of weeks. If you can't do the work, then I'll be looking elsewhere, and you can come ask me again next year when you've got a bit more meat on you."

"Thank you, sir," Reed
said,
shaking his hand in what he hoped was a manly and businesslike manner. "I don't think you will ever be sorry."

Reed smiled as he laid the piece of limestone at the edge of field with the rest of the rocks he'd found. He was sure Old Man Colfax hadn't been sorry. No boy had ever worked as hard as Reed that summer, or tried so hard to remember everything he was told. He always recalled that blissful summer without the strain and sweat, but with that surge of self-satisfaction that comes with accomplishment.

From the first day, Mr. Colfax and young Miss Hattie had treated him like family, praising him when he did well and straightening him out when he needed a
setdown
.

As he finished his survey of the ground, his gaze strayed again to the house. It was still hard for him to believe Hattie was actually interested in Drayton. He was not exactly a ne'er-do-well, but Reed thought him a poor farmer. He had a good piece of land, but he worked it to death—taking, taking, taking from the soil and never giving a thing back. He'd heard that cotton yields were down on Drayton's place, and he wasn't a bit surprised. He had warned Drayton that if he didn't start rotating his crops, he was going to wear out the soil. Drayton had dismissed scientific fact as "newfangled ideas."

Hattie could never put up with a backward ignoramus like that, Reed was sure. Thinking that, it was understandable that he had taken the first opportunity that morning to tease her about her bald, dimwitted, snuff-dipping beau. He cringed at the memory of his callousness.

"Mr. Drayton is a fine Christian man," Hattie had said, her cheeks blazing with fury. "I should think you would have better things to do with your time than investigate my personal friendships."

Reed had taken the
setdown
with good grace. Of course, he had no cause to intrude in Hattie's personal life, but
Ancil
Drayton? He just couldn't see it.

* * *

Spring was definitely upon them. The trees were heavy with new buds, and little patches of green were determined to take over the tired straw-colored landscape. Birds were chirping, frantically trying to organize their building projects so that their eggs would have a place to rest. Bees droned softly in the noonday sunshine, looking for the first blossoms of the wildflowers.

Walking up the path to where Reed was plowing, Hattie studied the man as she drew nearer. His loose brown trousers couldn't disguise his long, thickly muscled thighs that made his walk a study in controlled power. His faded calico shirt was tucked loosely into the narrow waistband of his trousers, and the suspenders that crossed his back and lined his chest emphasized the breadth of his shoulders. A well-worn, wide-brimmed straw hat shaded his flashing eyes and welcoming smile.

He stopped plowing and came to meet her, quickly relieving her of her bucket and offering his arm as she picked her way through the coarse furrows at the rim of the field.

"You being so close to the house today," she said in explanation, "I brought you a bit of hot food."

He nodded his thanks. "Why don't we see what my mama packed in this dinner pail?" he said, grabbing his lunch from the side of the plow seat where he'd secured it. "Between the two of these, there ought to be enough for you to join me."

Hattie recognized an olive branch when she saw one, and with a nod of acceptance took him up on his invitation to lunch.

There was no picnic tablecloth or romantic view. Reed led Hattie to the shade of a small blackjack tree that had managed to flourish at the edge of the field. Seating
themselves
, Hattie opened his lunch while he opened hers. With exclamations of appreciation and expectation, they shared Hattie's warm pork chops and gravy and his mama's cold fatback and greens. Both women had packed pickled okra, and Reed declared it an abundance of riches.

"I was out of line this morning, Miss Hattie," he said as they settled down to eat.

She waved his apology away. "Don't go trying to make up to me like I'm some fragile flower," she said. "I jumped off the handle this morning for no good reason. Truth to tell, I suspect it is a mite funny about Mr. Drayton coming round to court me. I'm not exactly a winsome girl these days."

Her smile was bright, but Reed knew she wasn't feeling as charitable as she made out. "I think I didn't express myself too clear, Miss Hattie," he said seriously. "It's not that I think it funny that a man would want to court you. I was just surprised that you'd be interested in a man like Drayton. I wouldn't think you two would have a thing in common. He's not the kind of farmer your daddy was, and he has all those children."