Fields Of Gold (5 page)

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Authors: Marie Bostwick

BOOK: Fields Of Gold
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I reached up and pulled a strand of golden grass from his hair, “Shush. You don't need to explain. I didn't feel tricked, if that's what you're thinking. I felt ... oh, I don't know ... alive! All my veins were running hot and cold at the same time, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The truth is, I didn't want to stop it. It would have been wrong to try, like standing against a force of nature. If we'd have fought it we would have been altering our destiny somehow.”
He smiled and rolled onto his back, sliding his arms under my shoulders and pulling me close, “I'm glad. I'd never do anything to hurt you, Evangeline.”
“I believe you, Slim, but some kinds of hurts you can't help. Sometimes hurt and happiness are all part of the same package, so you'll always know it really happened. You know how when something wonderful happens people say, ‘Pinch me so I'll know I'm not dreaming'? Life is like that sometimes, a little pain thrown in so we know we aren't imagining the whole thing. The pain will help me to remember it all after you've gone.” I took a deep breath and tried to sound light and brave. “I guess that will be pretty soon, won't it?”
It made me feel better to say it first and give voice to the thought I knew was worrying him, how to tell me that even after what had happened he would have to leave. It would have been nice to lie there and imagine a life together, to pretend for a little while that we would never part, but there's too much of my practical mama in me to give in to daydreams. He shifted away from me ever so slightly, and I felt his breathing find a new rhythm, separate from mine.
“I'll go tomorrow morning. I'm supposed to fly down to Texas to do some stunts in a flying circus.” He sat up and looked me in the eye, and I knew it was because he wanted me to believe his words. At that moment, he believed them himself.
“I'll be back, Evangeline. I promise. Just as soon as I can, I'll come back, and then we'll ...” He hesitated for a moment trying to think how the sentence ended, but I could see him struggling with the choices before him. Whatever he said next would either be a lie or alter everything he'd ever envisioned for himself. I interrupted him before he was forced to choose.
“Slim, my papa and mama love each other as much as two people can. They don't talk about it, of course, but what they've got is real special. Every once in a while, though, I see Papa standing on the porch watching the horizon, and there is a lonely look comes into his eye and I know he's thinking of the sea. He misses it. He loves us, but there is this silent part of him that wonders what he might have done if only.” I sat up taller and smoothed the wrinkles out of my skirt. “I'd never want that to happen to anyone I loved. If someone I care about is going to dream about something, I'd rather it was of one more hour with me rather than one hour away so they could find out how the story might have turned out ‘if only.' Wouldn't you?”
He took my hand and pressed his lips to my palm. “I barely know you, but I love you, Evangeline. Is that possible? I don't want to go.”
“I know.” I didn't tell him that he had to go. There was no need to pretend to discuss what we both knew had been decided.
 
Papa was furious when I got home. I'd figured Mama would be the one who would want to skin me and Papa would be the one trying to talk her out of it, but nothing that day happened the way I thought it would. When I arrived, well after nine o'clock, Papa was pacing the floor and Mama was sitting calm in her chair, rocking and knitting as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. She told Papa to shush, that I was home now and that was the important thing. I explained about the airplane ride and that Slim and I had gotten to talking and lost track of the time. It wasn't a total lie. I figured they didn't really want to know the rest anyway.
“You won't let it happen again, will you, Eva?” Mama asked, more to reassure to Papa than to exact any promise from me.
“No, Mama,” I replied contritely. “I'm sorry I worried you.”
“Worried us!” Papa barked. “I was half out of my mind with worry! You try a stunt like that again, miss, and I'll take my strap to you! I swear I will!”
“Now, Seamus,” Mama soothed, “that's enough of that. You've never laid a hand on her and you know you never would, for all your bluster. There's no harm done. It's late. We'd better get to bed. Eva, we'll want to get started on those pickles early tomorrow, before the heat sets in.”
Alone in my room, I took off my shoes, dress, and slip, and poured water into the flowered basin. I lifted the sponge out of the washbasin and squeezed tiny streams of water over my skin before putting on my lightest nightdress, enjoying the feeling of the damp cotton against my body, a cool, caressing hand against my tingling new breasts and thighs. Would it last, I wondered, this burning, enlivening sensation that spilled, inside and out, over every part of me that he'd touched? Did it happen that way to everyone? Had Mama felt like this? Had stout Mrs. Dwyer who sold aspirin and cough syrup behind the counter of the drugstore? Or Corinna Leslie, Ruby's cousin who'd gotten married last April? Picturing them each in turn—canning pickles, making change, hanging laundry—I couldn't remember seeing a shadow of anything as wonderful as the awakening that surged through me.
It couldn't have been the same,
I thought.
Surely if they'd felt it, even half as strong as I did, they'd never be able to hide it.
I was glad to be alone, not because I wanted to escape Papa's anger, but because I was afraid they'd be able to read what had happened on my face. I wanted to think, to hold it all close without trying to explain it, willing myself not to remember that in the morning Slim would be gone.
I opened the window and lay down on top of the quilt Mama had helped me patch when I was only ten years old, a blue and red Ohio Star pattern. As I lay there, looking at the moon and wishing for a bit of breeze to stir the hot night air, I could hear Mama and Papa getting ready for bed in the next room. The hinges of their door squeaked in a familiar pitch, and the drawer on their chifforobe scraped against the frame just like every night. Papa always swore he was going to oil the hinges and plane the drawers, but he somehow never got around to it. I was glad. Those night sounds were like a lullaby to me. I don't suppose I'd have been able to sleep without them.
Papa's boots thumped on the wooden floor, and I could hear the sound of his voice murmuring something to Mama as he walked to the window and struggled to open the sticky sash. Then I could hear his voice as clear as if he and Mama were addressing me face to face, but of course they weren't. They'd have never shared with me the things they told each other that night.
“Just for tonight, Clare. The night air won't kill us this once. It's so hot, and I feel so restless. I'm suffocating.”
“All right, Seamus, but don't blame me if you catch pleurisy. At least come away from the window and get into bed.”
“I won't be able to sleep. I keep thinking about Evangeline, out with that boy, so late, in our field. In
our
field! I let him park his plane there, fed him at our table, lent him my tools, and he has the nerve to take my daughter up in his plane without even asking my permission. She could have been killed up there in that contraption of his!”
“But she wasn't, and everything is fine,” Mama replied factually, “so come to bed and forget about it.”
Papa grumbled as he paced. “She was so late! What could they have been doing out there that time of night?”
I could hear my mother shift under the covers and roll over to face Papa. Her voice was quiet and more patient than it had been. “Seamus, you know what they were doing. You
know
,” she urged.
“Clare! What are you talking about? Evangeline hardly knows him. Never even spoke to him when he came to dinner. Besides, she wouldn't, she—”
“Why not? Why wouldn't she? I did, Seamus. We did.”
“That was different. We were in love and we couldn't ... Well, it wasn't like this. Some stranger passing through town. We were in love. It was for life, you and me.”
“Yes, I'd known you for three days and it was for life. What makes you think it isn't just like that for Eva? Oh, Seamus.” Mama sighed, and I heard a rustling of bedclothes and then footsteps as she got out of bed and crossed the room to stand near him. I could see her in my mind's eye, her arms wrapped around Papa as he stood looking out the window, frowning at the full moon.
“Did you see her when she came in?” Mama asked. “Did you see her face and how her eyes shone? It's love for her, and for
her
it is for life, even though for them it may not be more than a night. She's your daughter, Seamus. She wouldn't have settled for less than the real thing.”
“The real thing,” he scoffed. “What would she know about that? She's a child. The real thing is with someone who'll stick around for more than a week; someone who'll be there when the crop fails, or your sight grows weak, or the baby gets sick. There's nothing fancy to real love, but you can count on it, like the earth under your feet. You don't get that with some clown in a flying circus! Oh, leave it,” Papa huffed. “I don't know why I'm letting you get me so tied up in knots over this, anyway. This is my Evangeline. She'd never waste herself on someone like that. Nothing happened,” he stated with finality. “I know it. She'll wait for the right one. I know she will.”
“The right one? Just who do you think that will be?” Mama's voice sparked with impatience the way it sometimes did when she'd burned the bread or broke a dish, but I'd never heard her speak that way to Papa before. “Seamus, Eva is all the things you imagine her to be. She's bright and beautiful,
and
she's crippled. That's part of the package. It's part of what makes her special. Why won't you see that?”
Mama's voice was cold and hard as she continued. “Her leg is twisted like a corkscrew, and no one around here is going to make her their wife, not ever. Even if they did, who would she find here? Clarence Parker? Harold Jessup or some other illiterate dolt with no imagination and no plans? It would suffocate her. No, I'm glad she was out in our field with that exciting, handsome boy with the big dreams. She deserves someone like that, someone as remarkable as she is.” She choked, and her voice lowered until it was almost a whisper. “I hope it was wonderful, Seamus. Lord, I hope it was, because it's going to have to last her a lifetime.”
Then I heard the muffled sound of Mama crying, and I knew that she was in Papa's arms, her face against his chest, wetting his shirtfront with her tears. I buried my head into the mean comfort of my pillow and wept quietly by myself. I cried because I'd never known before how much Mama loved me—not just doing her duty, but really loved me—and how love forced her to see me sharper and deeper than she'd have liked. I cried because I'd always known what she said about my being crippled was true, but like her, I'd never said it out loud because that would have made it too real, solid and visible and hard, like words on a page. Once true words are released into the air you can't ever take them back. I cried because the truth cuts so deep. Most of all, I cried because the night was nearly over and in the morning Slim would be gone.
I dreamed of Slim that night. We were back in Papa's field, hidden in a den of sweet-smelling wheat, our arms around each other. Then, without any warning, the Jenny's propellor spit and sputtered and spun all by itself, and the plane started taxiing across the field without her pilot. Slim had to run alongside and climb onto the wing to get hold of her, a rider racing after a renegade horse, before she took off without him.
I ran as best I could, limping behind them, but it was no use. I was too slow. Slim never reached his hand back to grab mine. I could see as I ran that the Jenny, which had formerly been a two-seater, now only had a cockpit for one. There was simply no room for me. I gave up the chase and stood where the little sapphire plane had rested a moment before, waving halfheartedly at its retreating shadow, my legs so heavy I couldn't move another step.
Then, just when the plane was so far away it looked like a dot on the horizon, Slim turned back and flew straight toward me, dipping his wings and waving, like the first time I'd seen him. He sailed overhead, stirring the air the way a fountain troubles still water. Reaching skyward, I caught the breeze in my hand and felt Slim in it. His power and life, the cool familiarity of his skin, the rhythm of his heart, the pull and pain of his destiny were physical reality in my hand. I had eyes in my fingertips and knew everything that was coming, though I knew I would forget it all before waking. None of that mattered.
“All right,” I consented and let him disappear into a cloud, content to wait below, remembering how it was going to be. Then in an instant he was gone, and I was alone with only the hum of the Jenny's engine to remind me that he'd ever been there at all.
The engine noise woke me. It took a moment to separate myself from the dream, though I knew for certain, sleeping and waking, the buzz overhead was real. Slim was leaving.
I could hear Mama in the kitchen, clanging skillets and making coffee. The smell of my favorite breakfast, pancakes and Virginia ham, wafted in from the kitchen, and I knew Mama had heard the plane leave too and was cooking comfort into my meal, whisking the unspoken words of understanding into the silky batter, knowing I wouldn't miss her meaning.

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