Heaven Sent (37 page)
He hushed her tears and kissed her lightly on the forehead. He held her close and reassured himself that there would be time enough to tell her later.
* * *
Sallisaw was a pretty little community in the foothills of the Ozarks about thirty miles west of
Fort Smith
, whose citizens were mostly fruit growers. Strawberries and peaches were the main crops, but it was good land, this corner of the Cherokee Nation, and a man could grow just about anything.
As the two stood on the train platform and surveyed the little town, Hannah sighed longingly.
"Do you think we'll ever have real little towns like this out our way?"
Henry Lee smiled at her. He understood her need for community. He felt it, too.
"Towns just take time, Hannah. There have been settlements here in
Indian Territory
for over fifty years. You can't expect
They smiled at each other, feeling a sense of accord.
"You really think that it will be this way out on the border?"
He nodded, smiling. "Our children will grow up knowing all there is to know about towns."
Hannah blushed at the reference to children. She felt a rush of pleasure at the prospect of having a child of Henry Lee's. In her mind she saw an impetuous toddler in knee pants, thick black hair and shining blue eyes. She wouldn't meet Henry Lee's eyes for fear he would see her longing there.
Henry Lee misinterpreted her evasiveness and thought her to be embarrassed about the child she carried. Pulling her into a deserted alleyway that offered a modicum of privacy Henry Lee pressed her back against the clapboard building and placed his hand on her belly, openly claiming the child for his own.
"I mean all our children, Hannah," he told her quietly, placing a tiny kiss on her forehead. "This one too."
Hannah enjoyed the loving caress but didn't comprehend his words.
"What are you saying?"
His voice soft with sincerity he told her. "The child that you carry is mine in every way but blood. I'm going to accept him as my own and I want you to know that I won't ever allow him to believe anything else."
Hannah was bewildered as she gazed into the depths of her husband's eyes. "Henry Lee, you are not talking sense. I can't be carrying a child. We haven't
…
well, you know
…
we haven't." Hannah blushed as she attempted to explain her confusion.
Looking at her quizzically, Henry Lee was more specific. "I'm talking about the child you already carry, the other man's child."
"What other man?" Hannah's voice was a little too loud and clearly shocked.
Henry Lee stood stock-still, looking at her. He would have told anyone that he was very good at getting a quick grasp on a situation. But at the present time he was struggling pitifully to figure out what wrong turn he had taken to get to the unfamiliar ground he was now treading.
"You're not having a child." It was a statement more than a question. "Hannah, why did you marry me?"
She looked at him quizzically for his strange turn of mind.
"We've been through all that, Henry Lee. It embarrasses me to even think about it, I sure don't want to have to talk about it, again. I told you I was sorry. I really never meant to do it to you."
He took her hand in his own and squeezed it gently.
"I don't want to embarrass you, Hannah. But I need to know exactly what you were doing in the wellhouse that night. You knew your daddy was going to find us, why did you let that happen?"
She tried to turn away from him. He understood that she didn't want to face him. Pulling her back to his chest, he held her close and comforted her, so she wouldn't have to look him in the eye.
"Just start from the beginning and tell me everything."
Hannah took a deep breath gathering her courage. She didn't understand why Henry Lee wanted her to confess it all at last, but she knew that she owed him this explanation for a good long while, and at least she would
be
glad to have it over and done.
Henry Lee quietly listened to her story, tiny seeds of joy timidly blooming in his heart.
"Myrtie was near grown and Papa had remarried. I didn't have any reason to be at home anymore. I wanted to marry, to have a family of my own. But I didn't have a suitor. To tell the truth, Henry Lee, I never had one, not even one," she confessed sorrowfully. "But Will Sample hung around the house all the time. I was sure that
Will
had feelings for me. He was so shy. Every time I would try to talk to him, try to draw him out, he'd get all clumsy and red-faced. I just convinced myself that he wanted to call on me, but that he was too shy to do it."
She pushed an errant lock of hair from her face, securing it behind her ear. "The months were just passing by and nothing was changing, he never tried to talk to me or sit with me, or walk out with me, and I just couldn't wait any longer. I wasn't in love with him, but I knew I could make him a good wife. I can keep a good house, you know that, and I'm a hard worker. I always have been."
Henry Lee listened to her ill-fated plan to trap Will Sample with a smile on his face and blossoming good humor. It was hard to imagine, his Hannah as a man-hunter. But it was a sure bet that it took a desperate situation and a lot of Bible reading to turn her into one.
When she finished her shameful tale, she hung her head and spoke pleadingly.
"I know you can't forgive me for mixing you up in this foolish mess."
"Forgive you," Henry Lee laughed and turned her to face him. "I don't want to forgive you, I want to thank you. Believe me, Hannah. I am a much better husband for you than Will. He's a decent, hardworking man, but the two of you together would have made the most boring couple in the territory. You need a man to bring a little sparkle to your pretty cheeks. And I am definitely the man for the job!"
He punctuated his appraisal with a series of feathery love bites to her throat. Chills of delightful fire flew down Hannah's neck as she glanced around to assure herself that no one was looking.
"You're not angry?"
"I'm elated. You won't believe what I thought your reasons were."
Hannah looked at him questioningly and he briefly explained about overhearing her conversation with Myrtie and the conclusions he had drawn.
"How could you think that of me?" Hannah protested.
"I didn't know what to think, it made sense to me. A woman with a child on the way needs a husband and pretty near any husband will do."
Hannah shook her head as if it were too much to grasp. "And you didn't mind. You thought I carried another man's baby, that I was using you to cover up my own wickedness, and you kept me anyway."
"I was crazy mad at first, Hannah, but I couldn't blame the child, I knew it wasn't his fault. After a while, when I came to care for you, well, I couldn't blame you either."
He lifted her chin and looked deeply into her eyes. He wanted her complete attention. He wanted her to understand what he was saying, so there would never be a question in her mind.
"You are my wife, Hannah. Because of that, your child would be my child, no matter the circumstances."
Hannah felt her eyes welling up with tears.
"You know what I think?" she told him, wiping away the evidence of her emotions with the back of her hand. "I think God was hearing my prayers all along, and he sent you into that wellhouse, just for me."
Henry Lee smiled at her tenderly, not willing to dispute, but wondering if God ever took a hand in the personal lives of whiskey peddlers.
To chase his darker thoughts away, Henry Lee pulled her eagerly into his embrace, his lips tenderly bearing fire to her blood.
Hannah wrapped her arms around him, tracing the strong, sinewy muscles of his shoulders and back. Kissing
him
with her tongue, the way he'd taught her, she heard a moan deep in his throat, and felt the reaction of his body pressing against her.
"Hannah darlin'," he said pulling away. "I don't think I can live until this day is over. How many hours is it until we can go back to the hotel?"
Giggling at his tone of desperation, Hannah placed her hand in his, her heart was in her eyes, as they walked down the dusty main street of the sleepy town.
"It's a long time, Henry Lee, but I've got a feeling that it will be worth the wait."
They made one stop at the telegraph office. Henry Lee had promised to send the money for the south
Tulsa
land to Morelli and he was grateful to get rid of the whiskey profits that he carried. Hannah was somewhat surprised to see such a pile of currency. She couldn't imagine why he had brought it all the way to Sallisaw to send it to
Tulsa
. As the telegraph operator counted out the cash, neither paid any attention to yesterday's date scrawled in pen across the face of one of the bills.
Feeling uncomfortable under Hannah's gaze, Henry Lee quickly asked, "Which way to the Sallisaw Table Company?"
"Just keep going right down to the end of this street, when the road curves away, that's it," the operator told him, leaning out from the counter and pointing to the west.
Henry Lee thanked him and retreated as quickly as possible, taking Hannah's arm and escorting her outside. He didn't want to make up any false explanations for Hannah, he wanted honesty between them and soon.
"You forgot your receipt!" the man called after them, but they were already gone.
The Sallisaw Table Company was a large brightly painted barn of a place at the edge of town.
Henry Lee, matching his step with Hannah's, gazed down at her. His eyes dancing with mischief, he relayed the story of the company's proprietors.
"It's owned by two brothers, Hiram and Willard Oscar. But as anyone in Sallisaw can tell you, the Oscars are more than brothers. Shortly after they came to the territory, Hiram married Nellie Winkle, a fine-looking widow a few years older than himself."
Hannah nodded, encouraging him to go on.
"Now Nellie had a pretty little teenage daughter from her first marriage. She and Hiram hadn't been married no more than a year or two before Willard, Hiram's younger brother, and the daughter, Maude, fell for each other and got themselves married."
Henry Lee hesitated in his discourse, allowing Hannah to add up the ramifications of this consequence.
"That made Hiram Willard's stepfather-in-law as well as his brother," Hannah concluded. "And it made Willard Hiram's stepson-in-law, as well as younger brother."
Smiling at her quick wit, Henry Lee continued. "When both Nellie and Maude gave birth not three months apart, the cousins born were also uncle and nephew."
Hannah shook her head in disbelief. "I bet that was prime fodder for gossip for a good long time."
"About thirty years," Henry Lee agreed. "But it wasn't such a bad thing for business. The story was told and retold so much that nearly everyone has heard of the Sallisaw Table Company."
Henry Lee regaled Hannah with the story. "It might have died down just with the passage of time," he said, "but the two boys when they grew up fell in love with identical twin sisters!"
Hannah giggled, her eyes wide with amusement. "Did that make their children double cousins or what?"
"I don't know, but it sure made the Oscar family famous in these parts."
Neither Hiram nor Willard had yet retired to rocking chairs, and both greeted Henry Lee and Hannah in the shade of a young maple outside the building. Hands were shaken all around and the prerequisite discussion of the weather completed, before Henry Lee stated his business.
"I'm hoping to make some pews for a new little church over in the
As Willard talked to Henry Lee asking what his ideas were and what kind of lumber he was hoping to afford, Hiram stood back and took the young man's measure. He seemed a straightforward, upright young man and his woman seemed clean and decent, hanging on his every word. He decided that he liked the boy. When Hiram made a decision, it was rarely revoked.
"Come on in here, boy," Hiram called to him. "Let's see what you know about wood."
Henry Lee and Hannah followed the two men into the building. The smell of sawdust was fresh and pungent, but not a pile of it could be seen anywhere. The Oscars were fastidiously clean and knew well the fire dangers posed by their line of work.
The walls and cupboards contained more kinds of saws, chisels, damps, planes, and calipers than Henry Lee had ever seen in his life and in the corner near the back window was a huge lathe run by a foot treadle. A fine piece of white oak waiting immobile in a vise, a bow saw ready at its side, was prepared to become part of a fancy chair back. A door stood open on the far wall and revealed an open area full of cut timber of all descriptions and a huge pit saw in the middle of the yard.
