Margaret Brownley (27 page)

Marshal Armstrong came running down the street with Timber Joe not far behind.

Timber Joe fired his rifle while the marshal pulled Mrs. Hitchcock off one of the men. “Get up! All of you,” Armstrong bellowed. “Now what’s going on here?”

Everyone began to talk at once, fingers pointing every which way.

Marshal Armstrong soon ran out of patience. “Not another word out of any of you!” he ordered.

After the marshal restored order and hauled Mrs. Taylor and Appleby off to jail to cool their heels, Caleb tended to the injuries. Nobody was seriously hurt, though several sported impressive black eyes and more than a few had cases of wounded pride.

After most of the brawlers had left, Lucy returned to her makeshift studio. Barrel joined her, hand on his swollen jaw.

“Did you have Caleb look at that?” she asked.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” he said, moving his mouth as little as possible. “I just wish I knew what I was fighting for.”

“Women’s right to vote,” she said.

“In that case I’m more than all right. Brenda won’t mind me fighting as long as it’s for a good cause.”

She glanced at the broken signs and banners in the middle of the street. “I don’t think fists and name-calling are going to get women the vote.”

Barrel followed her gaze and shook his head. “Any idea what will?”

“I’m afraid not, but there has to be another way.” Ever since 1776, when Abigail Adams asked her husband “to remember the ladies,” women had been fighting for equal rights. So far they’d had little success. “I just know they’re going about it all wrong.”

Nodding, he drew several banknotes from his pocket and handed them to her.

Thinking he wanted his photograph taken, she tried giving some back. “This is too much. Not even big-city photographers charge this much.”

“Oh, I don’t want my photograph taken. That’s the money Brenda and I have been saving to build an opera house.”

“In Rocky Creek?” She didn’t want to discourage him, but she couldn’t imagine anyone in town attending an opera.

“We won’t be putting on operas. At least not for a while. We’re just calling it an opera house to give it respectability.”

What he said made sense. The word
theater
was synonymous with bawdy entertainment.

“We’ll put on plays, vaudeville acts, and minstrels. Don’t tell her I told you, but Brenda has quite a flair for acting.”

“Does this mean you’re going to sing?” she asked. Barrel sang in the choir but he still hadn’t completely overcome his stage fright.

He shook his head. “I used to say God gave me a great singing voice but forgot to give me the courage to use it. But Brenda said I was wrong. God didn’t forget. He just doesn’t want me to sing on stage. He has bigger and better plans for me. I think I finally found out what those plans are.”

“Barrel, I’m so happy for you.” She sighed. “I am. I just wish . . .”

“Wish what, Lucy?”

“I just wish I could figure out what God’s plans are for me. It seems like every door keeps slamming in my face.”

He indicated her camera. “You have a gift, Lucy, but I suspect your vision for photography is too limited.”

“What do you mean?”

“I once thought that the only way I could use my talents was to sing on stage. I now know God had a bigger plan for me. I can do more than sing. I can produce and direct operas and that was something I never even considered. God has a plan for you too. I’m convinced of it.”

“But how do I know what that plan is? God hasn’t answered my prayers.” So far every job application had been turned down.

He tapped her forehead. “Maybe your shutter isn’t open wide enough to see God’s plan for you.”

“My shutter?” She couldn’t help but laugh. Like David, her friend spoke in terms he thought she could best understand. “So you think I just have to open my mind and I’ll know what his plan is for me?”

“Not just your mind. When looking for heavenly answers, you have to open your eyes and ears—everything. Now I know that my vision of God’s plan for me was too narrow. The answer was there all along. I was just too blind to see it.”

“I’m so glad you found your answer, Barrel.” She looked down at the money in her hand. “I can’t take this—I can’t. This money belongs to you and Brenda.” She tried stuffing the notes in his pocket but he stopped her.

“We’re not giving the money to you. We’re giving it to God. As for the opera house, we’ll get it built. It’ll just take us a little longer.”

“I’ll help you,” she said. “Just as soon as we build the church, we’ll work on that opera house of yours.”

He tried to smile but ended up grimacing instead. His jaw was now more blue than red. “I’ll hold you to that.”

After he left, Lucy felt unsettled and restless.
God, do you have a plan for me?
She was relieved when the pastor and his wife, Sarah, drove up in their wagon and she could push her troubling thoughts aside. They had both children with them.

“What happened here?” Pastor Wells asked, referring to the scattered pieces of torn banners and signs that littered the street.

“The Suffra-Quilters and that . . . that ridiculous men’s group had a disagreement,” Lucy explained.

Pastor Wells nodded. “The Society for the Protection and Preservation of Male Independence was at it again, huh? Looks like war.”

“We came to have our pho-graph taken,” Sarah said. She held eight-month-old Matthew in her arms.

Lucy was touched. She knew how much Sarah disliked posing for the camera. “That is very kind of you, but I can’t possibly accept your money. It’s my fault the church burned down.”

“Now you mustn’t blame yourself,” Sarah said.

Pastor Wells gave Lucy an odd look. “Lot of that going around lately.” He took his infant son from his wife’s arms. “Surely you won’t deny us the pleasure of helping to rebuild the church.”

“O’ course she won’t,” Sarah said.

“What’s a pho-graph?” three-year-old Elizabeth asked.

Pastor Wells smiled down at his little daughter. “A photograph is like putting something in God’s pocket. The camera captures a special moment and holds it safe.”

“Is this a special moment?” Elizabeth asked.

“Whenever we’re together it’s special,” her father assured her.

Sarah smiled up at her husband and turned back to Lucy. “Have you had much bus’ness?”

“A little,” Lucy said. “Not as much as I had hoped for.”

“Do you like my dress?” Elizabeth held out her skirt with both hands. She was dressed all in white with a blue satin ribbon tied around the middle.

“I
love
your dress,” Lucy said, smiling down at the pretty round face. She tickled Matthew under his little chubby chin and he burst into a wide, drooling smile.

Pastor Wells sat on the chair facing the camera and held Matthew on his lap. Sarah and Elizabeth stood on either side of him.

“I think we’re ready,” Wells said.

Lucy ducked beneath the black cloth. “Say Rocky Creek backwards,” she called out.

“Rocky Creek backwards,” Elizabeth said, and everyone laughed, even little Matthew.

Lucy gazed through the camera at Sarah and her family and a lump caught in her throat. She imagined she could see a halo of love around them like the ring around the moon on a clear winter night.

Would she ever have a family of her own? Know that kind of love and acceptance, even safety? The thought coming out of nowhere filled her with longing.
Oh, David
. . . she missed him so, missed his teasing smile, the tilt of his head, the feel of his lips . . . She tried pushing the painful memories away but they were like rocks in her head that refused to budge.

She swallowed hard and grasped the air bulb. Squeezing it was like squeezing her own heart. Much to her horror, she burst into tears.

“We’re all done,” she said, trying to hide her weepy eyes, but Sarah was all over her.

“Oh, Lucy. You poor thing. Don’t you worry, none, you hear? We’re gonna build the biggest and best church in all of Texas.”

The mere mention of the word
church
made Lucy’s tears flow faster.

“Don’t cry now, you hear?” Sarah continued. “That ole fire was prob’bly the best thin’ that happened to this town. It’s forcin’ people to work together and use their God-given talents. Why, I wouldn’t put it past God if it was his plan all along. Don’t you agree, Justin?”

Before her preacher husband could get a word in edgewise, Sarah continued, “Why, just this mornin’ Ma told me her plan to sell baked goods. Even Jenny agreed to give a portion of her store profits to the cause.”

Sarah’s efforts to make Lucy feel better had the opposite effect.

“I’m so sorry,” Lucy said, her guilt practically choking her. “You and the pastor worked hard on the church. I thought I was doing what God wanted me to do but . . .” She kept talking, barely stopping for breath. “Had Monica been seriously injured, I would never have been able to forgive myself . . .” A sob shuddered through her. She swallowed in despair but the lump in her throat remained.

“You poor thing,” Sarah said, tears welling in her eyes.

Seeing her mother upset, Elizabeth started to cry too.

Not wanting to be left out, Matthew let out an ear-piercing wail.

Known for calm in the face of crisis, Pastor Wells jiggled his son up and down and stared at the three bawling females in dismay. He looked about as close to panic as a man could possibly look.

Twenty-one

A man imagines himself more handsome than his photograph;
a woman believes herself more homely.

– M
ISS
G
ERTRUDE
H
ASSLEBRINK, 1878

L
ucy waited for almost an hour after Sarah and her family left, but the street remained deserted. Since half the town had gone home to nurse their injuries, her chance of selling more photographs looked slim.

She counted the coins in her box and sighed. There was nowhere near as much money as she hoped for. At this rate, it would take forever to raise enough to rebuild the church. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day.

She began to pack up her equipment just as a man dressed in a black hat and long cape stomped up the steps to the boardwalk. Thinking he was one of her father’s customers, she ignored him until he sat down on the chair in front of her camera.

“Do you wish to have your photograph taken, sir?” she asked.

The man lifted his head and pushed back his dark hat.

“David!” A warm glow washed over her. She glanced anxiously at the window of the merchandise store but could see no sign of her father.
Please don’t let him look outside
. “What are you doing here?”

“I asked you to meet me at the mission.” He narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t come.”

“I . . . I’ve been busy.” She indicated her camera with a wave of her arm.

“I need your help,” he said. “More important, I need you to trust me.”

“I want to,” she said truthfully. If only she could ignore the niggling doubts.

“Barnes was alive and well when I left him.” He studied her as if to weigh her reaction. “That’s all I can tell you.”

“Some people think you blame him for being shot.”

“He didn’t do me any favor running that photograph and lies in the paper,” he admitted. “But if I wanted to do him harm, that would have been the least of my motives.”

She frowned. “What . . . what else did he do?”

“We can’t talk here.” Someone rode by on a horse and David pulled his hat down.

She drew in her breath. Except for the Owen boy, Skip, on the boardwalk spinning his hoop, the street was now deserted, but that could change at any moment. “You best go.”

He stood and tossed a handful of gold coins in her money box. Leaning toward her, he whispered in her ear. His lips brushing against her flesh sent ripples of warmth down her spine. “The mission—one hour.”

She turned her head to look at him and his nearness took her breath away. “I—”

“Please.” His eyes pleaded for her to trust him; his voice demanded so much more.

He made it impossible to say no. “All right, I’ll meet you,” she said.

The sound of her camera startled her. Skip Owen peered out from beneath the black cloth and grinned. “I’m older now,” he said by way of excuse. “I just had a birthday and now I’m ten.”

He looked about to dive under the cloth again but Lucy leaped forward before he had a chance. “Not old enough to know you can’t take two photographs with the same plate,” she said, though she didn’t have the heart to scold him.

He grabbed his hoop and ran.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with him.” Shaking her head, she turned back to David.

He watched the boy with a strange expression. “He’s only ten? He looks . . . young. When I was that age . . .” His face darkened. “I don’t think I was ever that young.”

“I wasn’t much older when my mother died,” she said. She hadn’t felt young then either. Instead she had felt like she carried the whole world on her shoulders.