Love Comes Home (33 page)

“Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful?” Miss Myrtle held her hands up against her cheek.

A nurse’s aide rolled a wheelchair into the room to take Kate down to the door. Another nurse bustled around Miss Myrtle. Jay followed them in. He interrupted the nurse taking Miss Myrtle’s blood pressure to give the old woman a hug.

“Fun meeting you, Miss Myrtle.”

“That’s Auntie Myrt to you children.” Miss Myrtle raised her eyebrows at him. “That sweet Lorena, she said I could be an aunt.”

“Welcome to the family, Auntie Myrt.” Jay grinned over at Kate. “Can’t have too many aunts, now can we, Kate?”

In the car on the way home, Jay said, “Birdie knows how to collect family.”

“She does.” It would have been the perfect time to tell him about Miss Myrtle remembering the man named Birdsong, but she didn’t. She needed to think about it first. Maybe
talk to her mother. But all that could wait until after Aunt Hattie’s funeral.

“I’m glad Birdie took a liking to me and wanted me in her family.” He reached a hand across the seat to grasp hers. “I’m glad you took a liking to me too.”

“Everybody likes you, Jay. You’re a charmer.”

“You’re the only girl I ever wanted to charm.” He squeezed her hand. “We’re going to be all right.”

She looked out at the road, stretching away from them, taking them home. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, we are.”

31

C
lay came in from the field before noon. The sun was shining and the ground was in perfect shape for planting, but some things were more important than getting the corn seeds tucked in their rows. For days, he’d jabbed the corn planter tip into the freshly worked ground and released the seed over and over until at night that’s all he could see when he closed his eyes. Long rows waiting for the seed as the sound of the handles of the planter chug-chunking open and closed echoed in his ears.

He didn’t mind the job, tedious as it was. The sun was in his face and the good smell of dirt in his nose. He was connected to the earth in the same way his father and his father’s father and countless generations before them had been. Tilling the ground, planting the seeds with hope for a harvest, praying for rain in season. A time to plant. A time to reap.

A spring day like this first day of May begged a man to be in the fields. Especially with rain in the forecast. Not that those radio weathermen always got it right. Clay could pay attention to the turn of a maple leaf in the wind, the dew on the grass, or the call of the rain crow and be right as often.

If the weather held, he’d get the corn in before the end of the week. But planting was through for the day. His mother wanted to pay her respects to Hattie Johnson. All of Rosey Corner would pack the church for a last goodbye to the little black woman who had helped so many Rosey Corner babies into the world.

The minute Aunt Hattie walked into a house, she brought calm with her. Clay’s mother said Aunt Hattie had healing hands, but Clay wondered if it wasn’t her healing prayers that mattered more. The first time he heard her pray was a revelation to Clay. He didn’t know a person could just look up and start talking to the Lord. His mother prayed, but she did it in her quiet corner. And he never heard his father pray out loud, although he was a churchgoing man. But when Aunt Hattie prayed, it was like she pulled up a chair to the Lord’s kitchen table to ask him for a few helpings of mercy. Helpings she had full confidence of getting.

Clay had tried to pray that way while he was planting corn. He needed answers. Paulette thought she had his answers. She brought sugar cookies by the house on Monday evening. They sat out on the bench in the yard near the dogwood tree he’d dug up out of the woods for his mother after his father died. It was in full bloom, a burst of white that shouted spring.

The evening had been pleasantly cool to Clay after the day in the fields, but Paulette pulled her sweater tight around her and leaned toward Clay. He hadn’t taken the hint to put his arm around her. He supposed he should have. But hugging a girl shouldn’t have anything to do with should-haves, but more to do with want-tos.

They’d talked about church, about the movie, about the cookies, about the tree frogs coming out early. And all Clay
really wanted to do was go in the house, eat the supper he hoped his mother was keeping warm for him, and fall into his bed. He liked Paulette. He did. But he didn’t love her. He wasn’t ever going to love her.

The next day, as he walked the long rows planting corn, he decided he had to tell her that. It wasn’t fair to let her think she could capture his heart. He’d given his heart away already and whether, in time, he ever managed to reclaim enough of it to fall in love again, he didn’t know. But it wasn’t apt to happen anytime soon.

He wouldn’t bother Victoria anymore. She’d been plain with him. She told him to go away. Until she told him different, that’s what he would do.

But that didn’t keep him from thinking about her. She’d be at Aunt Hattie’s funeral. While the whole community had called the little woman Aunt Hattie, the Merritts had claimed her as part of the family. She cooked and cleaned for old Mr. Merritt, who ran the store before he left Rosey Corner some years back. Folks said he went to Oregon and married a woman half his age. Aunt Hattie stayed on in his house, keeping it for him in case he decided to come back to Rosey Corner. Folks gossiped some about that. They’d gossip even more now if that crazy Lindell woman kept living there.

People liked to talk. Plenty of them were talking about Mr. Merritt digging Aunt Hattie’s grave at the church. Mr. Merritt didn’t care that folks said the graveyard there was for white people only. He went to a called meeting of the church deacons and told them straight out Aunt Hattie had a right to six feet of ground at the church she had attended faithfully for more than sixty years. A couple of the deacons said that didn’t change the fact she was colored and they thought
it would be more fitting for her to be buried in the colored cemetery just this side of Edgeville.

Clay’s mother had heard all the talk when Aaron took her to the store the day before, where they found Graham Lindell behind the counter trying to take care of customers. Victoria’s sister, the one married to Pastor Mike, was there too, but Clay’s mother said she was useless as a flyswatter in a swarm of bees.

“Guess she has reason, being so far along with her baby, but she might as well stayed home on the porch swing for all the help she was,” his mother had said last night at supper. “If Victoria hadn’t come in, I might still be there trying to pay for my groceries. But I shouldn’t be fussing. Not with the hard times that family is seeing this week. Poor Kate, they say she nigh on died when she lost her baby. That would have been a bitter pill for Nadine and Victor. Can you believe it was that Fern Lindell that helped her?”

“Hard to imagine,” Clay said, just to let his mother know he was listening. Or at least pretending to listen. At the first mention of Victoria, his mind had flown off, chasing after her.

“They say Fern went to the church and helped the men dig Aunt Hattie’s grave. It’s just a good thing Pastor Mike came in and set Willis Combes and Marvin Best straight on where Aunt Hattie was to be buried. The very idea that she couldn’t lay in our graveyard when she’s lived among us all these years, catching our babies and healing the sick. Reverend Winston’s too new to the church to know how to handle things like this.”

“Who’s preaching the funeral?” Clay reached for the last piece of chicken, but Aaron snagged it first. The boy was never full these days.

“Pastor Mike. He’s finally looking better. That boy came home from that German prison camp naught but skin and bones.”

“At least he came home,” Clay said.

“True enough.” His mother looked across the table at him. “There’s not the first reason for you to feel guilty because you’re breathing and Victoria’s Sammy is not. Folks die and those who are left go on. I did and she will too.”

“You haven’t remarried.” Clay had never given thought to his mother remarrying, but maybe he should have. The other kids around the table suddenly got quiet as they waited for their mother to say something.

“The good Lord sends me another good man like your father, I might think on it.” She poured Mary some water and buttered Willie’s bread. “You children don’t need to look so worried. I doubt there’s a man out there willing to take on this crew. So eat your potatoes before they get cold.”

Beside Clay, Mary leaned over to kiss his arm. “We’ve got Clay.”

“Yes, indeed, a good brother to you.” Clay’s mother looked around the table at her children. “We’ve made out since your daddy passed on. The good Lord has provided our needs, and if he were to send a new husband my way, it would take some considering before I’d take him up on the offer, as old as I am.” She laughed, but then her eyes settled back on Clay. “But your Victoria is in the spring of life. It would be good for the Lord to supply her with a husband for all the years lying ahead of her.”

Your Victoria.
He’d liked the sound of that even if there wasn’t any truth to it. Now as he cleaned up for the funeral, he should be thinking about Aunt Hattie and how Rosey
Corner was going to miss her, but all he could think of was how he’d see Victoria in less than an hour. A man shouldn’t think about courting when he was getting ready for a funeral.

That’s what he wanted to tell Paulette when she caught him before he went in the church. She said a friend was saving them a place. But instead he told her he had to sit with his mother to help with the children.

“Willie gets restless when the services go on too long.” Clay kept his eyes on Paulette, but it took effort not to look around for Victoria.

“Your mother doesn’t need help.” Paulette hooked her hand under Clay’s elbow and tugged him toward the church door.

Clay glanced around, relieved most of the people were already inside. He didn’t want to embarrass Paulette. “I’d better sit with my family today.” He eased his arm away from her hand.

Red raced across Paulette’s cheek bones. “You’d sit with Victoria if she asked you.”

“She won’t ask me.” Clay kept his voice low.

“You’re right about that. She’s never going to ask you to do anything.” Paulette’s voice rose with each word.

He held his hand palm out toward her the way he might try to quiet Lillie or Mary. “Listen, Paulette, this isn’t the time or place for this. I’ll come by later.”

“Don’t bother.” Paulette spun on her heel and headed toward the church door.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re right there.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “You’re as sorry as they come and you’ll end up an old bachelor living in your mother’s house all your livelong days.”

He stood where he was and felt as sorry as she thought
he was. An old bachelor. If that’s how it turned out, so be it. Could be there were worse things than being a bachelor. Like marrying the wrong woman.

He didn’t realize Victoria’s sister and her husband were behind him on the walk until the man spoke. “Afternoon, Clay.”

It was obvious they’d both heard Paulette’s parting shot, but they looked too deep in their own troubles to give his problems much thought. Kate was pale as dandelion fluff and leaning heavily on her husband’s arm.

“I’m sorry about the baby,” he said, and then worried he shouldn’t have mentioned the baby. Maybe they didn’t want to talk about it. “And about Aunt Hattie too,” he added awkwardly.

Kate lightly touched his arm. Even her fingers looked too white. “Thank you, Clay.”

He moved aside to let them go into the church first. She looked in need of a seat. But just as Paulette had stopped and looked back, so did she. “Don’t give up on her, Clay. Please.”

“On who?” Clay said.

But music started up inside and she turned back toward the church without answering. She didn’t have to answer anyway. He knew. His Victoria.

He followed them up the steps and through the doors. The church was full, but his eyes sought and found Victoria on the front row. Dare he let hope spread its wings in his heart yet another time?

32

T
ori saw Paulette come back in the church. Alone. She didn’t watch her all the way down the church aisle, but it was plain to see she wasn’t happy. Even after Tori turned her eyes back toward the front of the church where Aunt Hattie’s casket sat, she could hear Paulette and her friend whispering. She couldn’t hear what they were saying. She didn’t want to hear what they were saying.