Marrying Stone (30 page)

Meggie glanced nervously toward the cabin door as if looking for help. Roe ought to be coming in for his meal soon. She didn't know whether to wish he would hurry or that he would never come.

She grabbed up a tin plate from the shelf. "I don't know if I should take a plate of this out to Jesse or help him come in to the table."

Onery reached across the table and stilled his daughter's hand with his own.

"Meggie, are you married to that feller now, or are you two still pretending?" he asked again with a quiet intensity that was disconcerting.

Meggie raised her chin. "We're still pretending."

Onery's eyes narrowed. He folded his arms across his chest and stared at her, his expression belligerent. "I ain't liking that, Meggie-gal. I ain't liking it at all."

Ignoring his words, she began dishing up a generous portion of the frog legs into her father's plate.

"I thought that Roe to be a pretty fine feller," Onery
continued. "But it sure don't sit well, him playing fast and loose with my youngun."

"Now don't get ole-outraged-papa on me," Meggie told him. "I'm a grown woman as you well know. I can make my own mistakes and considering the mistakes you and Mama made, well, I reckon that I'm due some."

"Maybe you are, but that doesn't mean I can let some sweet-talking city slicker take advantage of your good nature."

"No, Pa, don't," Meggie said too loudly. She dropped the serving spoon into the skillet and splashed hot grease across the clean oilcloth.

Her father looked at her sharply and she deliberately moderated her tone, but the words still trembled in her throat. "He's already asked me to wed him, Pa, and I wouldn't. So that's the end of it."

"You wouldn't?"

Meggie shook her head. "There was just no sense in it."

Onery raised an eyebrow in displeasure before tucking his napkin into his shirt collar. "It makes a good bit of sense to me."

"Pa, he's from another place and he's going back there," she explained. "I'm from here and I ain't about to leave."

His brow furrowing in puzzlement, Onery eyed her curiously. "I thought that's what you wanted, Meggie," he said. "I thought you wanted some furriner to come and take ye from this mountain."

"That was just a dream, Pa. Just something for me to set and ruminate about." She sighed heavily as if she had just left all her childish fancies behind. "I won't never leave this mountain. I won't leave you or Jesse. Truly, I don't long for far-off places, except just to see them. I love this mountain and the mists in the woodlands and the changes of season. My life is here and my family, too. I won't never be leaving Marrying Stone."

Her father nodded thoughtfully. "Then maybe Roe could take it in his mind to stay."

"I don't want him to," Meggie said adamantly. "He's got his own work in the Bay State. If he was to stay here he'd need another string for his bow. Granny's right about that. There is no call for scholars in the Ozarks."

Onery shook his head in exasperation. "The feller's been doing pretty good work 'round here. I suspect we can afford to keep him. But, Meggie, this is not the thing that ye ought to be a-dwellin' upon. How he makes his living has not a thing to do with his duty to you. Don't you remember, I couldn't make my living as a fiddler on this mountain neither. But it didn't mean I wasn't willing to lend my hand to farming or try something different for the sake of your mama."

"There is just no sense in that, Pa, no sense in it at all."

Onery huffed in disagreement. "Seems to me that you two have done crossed the line of deciding this thing with common sense, Meggie. Now you've got to decide with your hearts. You love this man, don't deny yourself that on the grounds that it ain't good judgment or that he don't owe ye no happily ever afters. Love is rare enough in this life that when you come acrost it, you'd best grab ahold, little gal, and hang on for dear life."

"I didn't say that I love him."

He eyed her skeptically.

Meggie picked up the knife and began sawing away at the light bread with the energy required for butchering a hog. "Pa, I done what I done with him. And I ain't sorry about it. I pure-dee liked it. But I ain't about to marry Roe Farley and you, nor no one else, is going to make me."

"Ye might be carryin' a babe."

"If I am then I am. It makes no difference."

Onery cursed under his breath and looked with dismay at the young woman who was his daughter. "Just like yer mama," he complained.

FROM THE JOURNAL OF

J. MONROE FARLEY

June 16, 1902

Marrying Stone, Arkansas

A more beautiful place to spend the springtime than this mountain, I cannot imagine. Wildflowers bloom everywhere and food is in abundance. The woods and creeks are full of game and fish and even in the hottest part of the day the weather is quite bearable.

Almost unassisted I have finished the cabin room add-on. Yesterday I cut the doorway into the back of the main cabin. I can't express the tremendous sense of satisfaction that I felt when I nailed the last shake shingle to the roof. It must be the same feeling a master has upon completion of a piece of music. This little room is something I created, and unworthy as it may be, it is mine. I am thinking to build something else before I leave at the end of summer. A privy for this homestead would be a fine luxury.

The collecting continues to go very well. Now that I am considered somewhat as a part of the family, everyone is only too eager to be of assistance to me. I am recording so much in fact that I begin to run short of cylinders and may be forced to leave the mountain earlier than anticipated. The diversity of the repertoire I have encountered is startling. A scholar could spend years on this project.

THE RAIN CAME down, not in spurts or drizzles but full drenching all morning long. Roe and Jesse were in the woodshed riving cedar shakes for the roof of the planned privy. The activity was simple, monotonous, and requiring great spurts of pent-up energy. Perfect for Roe's current frame of mind. He set the froeward rending ax carefully at the right width of the cedar block. When he slammed the blade through with a burl maul, he twisted the froe handle to split the board with the grain. It was a skill that had taken more than a couple of days to perfect, but now Roe did it easily as he allowed his mind to wander.

His privy plan called for a four-by-four post and beam shed with diagonal bracing set on skids. The skids could be used to move the outhouse to another site when necessary. Onery Best was not impressed by the idea, considering it an unnecessary luxury. But Meggie had been pleased.

"Oh, wouldn't it be grand," she had whispered in that breathy, dreamy way he'd seen so little of lately.

If Meggie wanted an outhouse, if she thought having it was something grand, then Roe would make certain she got one.

He'd spent the bulk of his waking hours the last few weeks thinking about Meggie Best, what she might want and how he might provide it for her. While his mind should have been filled with excitement at the growing collection of Elizabethan music that was to be the centerpiece of his fellowship presentation, he found his thoughts and his eyes constantly strayed to the barefoot woman who had shared an evening of passion with him in a bed of clover.

"My foot's just as good as new now," Jesse told him.

Roe glanced up a moment from his work and nodded. "I'm glad to hear that, Jesse." He turned his back to his work and his thoughts once again to his fancies. But the young man did not.

"I 'spect I'm about as well as I'm gonna be," he continued a little more loudly than was necessary.

Murmuring agreement, Roe split another shake of cedar as he turned to his own thoughts. Meggie hardly had a word to say to him these days. In fact for the most part she pretended he was not there at all. The days immediately following their illicit night were awkward for both of them.

Clearly, Onery had guessed and was not at all pleased. How Meggie prevented her father from coming for Roe with a shotgun, he didn't know. But he hadn't, and he and Meggie had settled into a quiet, polite coexistence; however, sometimes when neither of them had a guard up, their eyes would meet across the room, and it was there once again. The shattering intimacy they shared had not dimmed with time but had grown into something stronger, sterner, more formidable.

"You forgot, didn't ye?" Jesse said.

Puzzled, Roe hesitated at his task and looked up. He was hardly aware that Jesse was present. "Forgot what?" he asked.

"You forgot about what you tole me the night we went giggin' and drunk the donk."

Roe stared for a long moment, trying to recall what he might have said to Jesse, then he simply smiled and shook his head. "I may have forgot. That donk does take the brains out of a man, doesn't it?"

Jesse didn't return his smile, but bent to his own work. Roe might have returned to his own task, but the aspect of the young man's movements was slow and sad. Something was definitely wrong.

"What is it, Jesse?" Roe asked. "What did I forget?"

He shrugged. "It don't matter."

Roe stopped his work completely, resting the froe against the cedar block, and walked over to Jesse's side. "Tell me, Jesse," he said.

Jesse smoothed his pale blond hair out of his eyes, but he didn't immediately answer.

At his hesitation, Roe continued, "I thought we agreed that friends tell each other the truth."

That caught the young man's attention and his blue eyes looked directly into Roe's brown ones.

"Yep, that's what we said."

"Well, I think that not saying anything at all is a bit like telling a lie."

Jesse considered his words for a long moment. "Yep, I guess ye could say that."

Roe grinned. "So tell me, Jesse my friend, what did I forget?"

Jesse became somewhat flustered. His cheeks turned bright pink and he dropped his head to stare at his own bare feet.

"What is it?" Roe prodded.

When he finally spoke, Jesse's voice was so low Roe had to strain to hear the words.

"You said that maybe we could visit the widder."

"The widow?" Then in a flash of remembrance, he recalled their conversation.

Roe had spent so much of the last weeks thinking about his own problems, he had forgotten about Jesse's.

"The Widder Plum, I tole you about her," Jesse said. "She
ain't really a widder the fellers says and she'll let a feller play fast and loose with her fer some fresh-killed game or a trinket from Mr. Phillips's store. I ain't never seen her, but fellers say she's pretty and kindy young. Course, they said that when I was still shorter than Meggie, so I reckon she cain't be so young no more."

"I remember now," Roe said. "Jesse, I'm sorry that I forgot, but yes, I clearly remember it now."

Jesse looked up at him. "Was it just donk talking or do you think I could maybe…"

"Well of course, Jesse," Roe answered. "It's just that—"

"Just what?"

"Just… I don't know." Roe was surprised at his own hesitation. "It just doesn't seem like as good an idea as it did that night."