Heaven Sent (19 page)
"You're going to Sallisaw?" Myrtie's eyes were as big as saucers. "Will you take the train and everything?"
"Of course," he said, smiling at her charming sense of wonder. "What good is it to have trains, if you don't ride on them?"
"Oh that's wonderful," Myrtie said. "I've never ridden on a train, but I think it would be glorious." She flung her arm dramatically, barely missing the gravy bowl, but continued without noticing. "Does Hannah get to go with you?" she asked excitedly.
Hannah blushed with embarrassment. She quickly began assuring Myrtie that she had too much to do and that it would not be possible for her to go, when Henry Lee cut into her explanation.
"Of course Hannah will go," he told them. "It wouldn't be very much fun to go on a trip and leave my bride at home."
Hannah blushed at his words. Henry Lee made it sound like a wedding trip and she was sure it wasn't that, or maybe it was. She wondered if he had decided to forgive her for the trick and make her his wife in fact. A tiny flutter of anxiety and excitement skittered through her mid-section. She hoped that it was true, and that he would finish the wonderful journey that he had started last night.
The talk around the table about the upcoming trip continued, but Hannah didn't have a word to add. She was lost in daydreams. She imagined being beside Henry Lee on a train around strangers. Everyone who saw them would know they were husband and wife and none would guess how it had happened. They would all think that the handsome man beside her had married her for love. She suddenly realized how badly she wished that it were true. Involuntarily, a sigh escaped her lips. All eyes turned in her direction.
"Well, Henry Lee," her father said, "it seems we are boring your bride with our conversation."
"Oh no," Hannah insisted, "I was just woolgathering a bit." She felt Henry Lee's eyes upon her, questioning and curious.
"What kind of wood are you thinking to use?" Farnam asked him. "You think pine or maybe oak?"
Henry Lee chewed slowly. "I truly haven't decided," he finally answered. "I sure like the look of walnut, but it'll take a lot of wood. I might use walnut for the places that get the wear and a soft wood like pine or spruce for the underpinnings. It really depends on what size you want, I guess."
"What about the size?" the older man asked. "We just want what fits comfortably in the church."
"That's not what I mean," Henry Lee explained. "Do you want five long benches, where you get in and out on the sides. Or more like the big city churches, ten short benches, five on each side, with the aisle running straight down the middle."
"Which do you think?" the preacher asked him.
"Well," he answered thoughtfully, "five long benches would be the quickest, cheapest, and the most practical."
He glanced over at Hannah to see her reaction. "But the aisle up the center would sure be prettier. It would make a person feel welcome the minute he stepped in the door."
"Oh Papa!" Myrtie exclaimed, "you've got to have an aisle down the center for weddings. You can't have the bride just walk down one side of the church!"
The reverend smiled at his youngest daughter indulgently. "We could do all the weddings like your sister's. Just move the benches out altogether, let everybody stand, and the bride can walk wherever she pleases."
"Oh Papa, you're impossible," Myrtie complained.
"I think your daughters are right," Violet said. "It will look more like a church with an aisle up the center. And it will be easier for the sinners to make their way down to the front. I think you should consider it."
The preacher ran a hand through his hair thoughtfully for a moment. "How much more do you think it will cost?" he asked Henry Lee.
Henry Lee considered for a bit, glancing over at Hannah again as if weighing a decision concerning her.
"How long you been preaching here, Brother Farnam?" he asked.
"About five years," he answered. "What does that have to do with it?"
"Well, Reverend, I'm a little bit behind on my tithe. I'm thinking that the cost of the pews for the new church might begin to catch me up a bit."
Henry Lee glanced over at Hannah for her approval and saw that she was both very surprised and pleased.
"Now, Henry Lee," Hannah's father replied shaking his head. "I couldn't let you do that, it's too much."
Henry Lee felt a lump of cold dread settling in his stomach. To be refused his offer of charity would be unbelievably humiliating.
"Couldn't or wouldn't?" Henry Lee asked him. "I want to do it, Reverend, unless you don't think the fruits of my labor are acceptable in God's house."
It was a direct challenge to his father-in-law. Like Cain, Henry Lee was presenting his offering. Would the preacher think that money earned making and selling whiskey was unfit to be used to adorn the church?
Reverend Bunch only had to think for an instant. It was his belief that God looked past the man that people see and saw straight to the heart. Somehow the reverend knew that Henry Lee's heart was in the right place.
"Henry Lee, speaking for the whole community, we very gratefully accept your generous gift of time and money for our church."
CHAPTER
9
T
he midmorning sun peeped into the cave where Henry Lee had located his still. The barrel of sweet mash he'd made in the sunshine behind the pigsty now sat next to the spring ready to be worked. Henry Lee was so familiar with the whiskey-making process that he didn't have to give it a lot of thought, but today he was unusually distracted.
Since the discussion over Sunday dinner, he had continued to feel like a liar and a hypocrite. He knew now that he should have told her right away about what he did. He suspected that she would be angry at first, but she'd just need time to get over that. What she wouldn't get over was hearing it from somebody else after having made a fool of herself.
He was very grateful that her father hadn't given him away. He'd always thought the preacher to be an honest and fair man, now he decided that he also excelled as a father-in-law.
Thinking how fortunate he was in his choice of relatives, Henry Lee gently set the barrel on the washbench next to the spring. The sweet water, chilled from its hiding place in the ground, flowed out of the wall down into a sparkling little pool about the size of a small washtub. Then it seeped back into the ground beneath the pool, to reemerge near the base of the bluff where it joined the creek. It seemed tailor-made for the needs of a moonshiner and Henry Lee was more than happy to take advantage of it.
He cautiously loosened the top of the barrel. The content, now fermented to a sugar, was a potent material. As he carefully lifted the lid he moved back away from the fumes. The aromatic substance gave him a headache when he worked with it, and he knew the concentrated effluvium in the barrel could be dangerous.
The sickly sweet smell of the fermented mash permeated the cave. Henry Lee stepped out to the ledge area for some fresh air.
Gazing down at his cabin, he saw Hannah outside gathering wood for the stove. He enjoyed just watching her. Even from this distance he could distinguish her purposeful stride. It seemed she never sauntered or rambled, she was always headed in some direction. Always busy making his house more of a home. He glanced down at his shirtfront and ran his hand along the sleeve. It was strange how she made his old work shirt look and feel better than some of his dress shirts. It was easy to tell that she took pride in the way she kept house, the way she cooked, the way she laundered the clothes, and her skill with a needle.
He smiled thinking of what she had said on Sunday. At the time, he had been mostly concerned about her finding out about his moonshining, but now he was able to remember more of her words. That all work was important work. He was sure that she must believe it, as he watched her head into the cabin with an armload of wood for the stove. She worked practically every minute of every day without a sigh or complaint. Things needed doing, so she did them. She didn't expect a good life to be handed to her on a platter. She meant to build that life herself, brick by brick. He continued watching the house, as if he could see her inside, and he smiled to himself. Many times he'd felt pride in his own work, a sense of accomplishment at what he was able to do on his own. This sense of pride in someone else's work was a new emotion.
While he watched the house, a trickle of sweat headed down the back of his neck and he swatted at it with his handkerchief. As hot as it was outside today, it must be intolerable in the house, cooking.
* * *
Hannah was, at that moment, thinking almost the same thing. She piled the load of wood
in
the crate near the stove and wiped her brow.
She should have set this all up outside, she realized, but she would have needed help moving the table and equipment and she hadn't wanted to bother Henry Lee. It wasn't that she thought he wouldn't want to help her. She just wanted to do things by herself, to show him how much she could accomplish without troubling him.
The bushels of vegetables that he'd brought from
Singing softly as she worked, she thought about last summer when she'd done this with Violet and Myrtie. Canning had been both a trial and an adventure. She hadn't been sure about taking charge. It was obviously the job of her stepmother. But Violet had been as wiling to take her orders and to follow her directions as Myrtie. When Violet had started to remove the jars from the scalding water and set them to dry, Hannah had stopped her.
"You'll burn yourself," Hannah had told her, "let me do it, my hands are rougher than yours."
Violet
had
laughed. "Gracious, Hannah," she'd said. "A woman ten years younger than me could not possibly have rougher hands." Hannah remembered, however, that Violet had smiled. She had been pleased by her stepdaughter's accidental compliment.
Hannah glanced down quickly at her own hands now. They were large, with long fingers and tidily kept short nails. There was no wedding band, she thought sadly, thinking of the tiny delicate ring that wouldn't go past her knuckle. She had never thought much about having pretty hands or wearing a ring. It had never seemed important. Somehow, now she thought it was. She recalled glancing up in church to catch Henry Lee looking at her hands. What had he thought? Was he still sorry that she forced him into marriage? Had he wished she were prettier?
She blushed with pleasure as she thought back on the night he had come home drunk. She was still embarrassed and amazed at the feelings Henry Lee could invoke in her. She remembered the look on his face when he had exposed her breasts. She crossed her arms in front of herself as if to shield herself from his eyes. She wondered why she had not felt the need to do so that night. Somehow it had seemed so wonderful to be exposed to him. She wanted him to see her. She wanted him to want her, to touch her again like he had that night.
