Marrying Stone (37 page)

ROE FARLEY HAD returned to the wedding celebration, or
infare
as it was called, with a heavy heart. Meggie had made her choice and it was very clear that even if he decided to stay through the winter it wouldn't work. His presence made her unhappy, and there was no longer a reason to delay. As he joined the noisy celebration he found that he no longer moved among the people of the community as if he were one of them. He was an observer now, an outsider. He wasn't really Meggie's husband and he never had been. He was leaving.

As the evening wore on he listened to Jesse play his fiddle. He watched the exuberance of the people dancing— some square dancing and others doing a sprightly jig that he was sure came over from Scotland and Ireland along with the music he'd collected. He watched with a half-conceived idea of involving the dancing in his study, but his heart just wasn't in it. Dutifully he checked on Onery to see that he was not overdoing things. He allowed Granny Piggott to tease him again. Pastor Jay stopped to speak to him and asked once again about Roe's father, Gid Weston.

Oather Phillips attempted a serious but stumbling conversation with him about politics. Labin Trace talked philosophically about the blending of the Christian wedding and the Marrying Stone superstition. And Roe made polite conversation with other folks on the sidelines of the dancing.

People liked him. He was accepted. But it no longer mattered. He was leaving.

Later that night he lay alone in the snug little bed that Granny Piggott had given to him and his bride and tried to make sense of his life, his future: A skunk in the wrong place, a need to gain the trust of the wary mountain folk, and a too close acquaintance with kill-devil donk had led him to this turning point in his life. And there was no way back, just one direction or the other.

It was before the first light of dawn that he heard Meggie rouse to stoke the fire. There was no reason to wait longer. He got up and slipped on his duckins and went into the main room to join her.

Kneeling upon the hearth, Meggie's honey-blond hair fell long and free down her back and glowed in the bright orange reflection of the new morning fire. The thin cotton josie that she wore hugged the contours of the body that he knew so well and that still enticed him. But this morning when she looked up at him, her blue-gray eyes weary from sleeplessness and slightly swollen from tears, his heart lurched. It was pain. It was sadness. It was disappointment. He was leaving. He was leaving Meggie Best behind.

She stared at him in silence, and then as if she could feel the emotions in his gaze, she turned her attention once more to the fire.

"I'll have some coffee ready in a bit," she said.

He nodded. "Coffee would be nice."

He glanced around the cabin. The austere, primitive room that had appeared so foreign and exotically unfamiliar only a few months ago now felt like home. A home he would never see again.

Roe hesitated only a moment before speaking the words he had come to say. "I met a drummer at the celebration last night who is staying at Phillips's store," he said. "The man is going to head out for Calico Rock this morning. I'm going with him."

Meggie looked up at him quickly. For a moment he hoped that she would beg him to stay. She needn't even beg. If she would merely ask him to or suggest that he might, then he wouldn't leave her. He would stay if she only asked.

But she didn't.

"I'll pack you some victuals in a tote," she said.

Roe waited. "So I suppose this is good-bye."

"I wish you Godspeed," she answered quietly and turned her attention to the coffeepot.

Roe waited silently beside the table as long as he could, but there was to be no reprieve. He handed her a small scrap of paper he'd torn from his notes.

"This is where you can send for me," he said. "If I'm not there, someone will know how to find me. If you need me, Meggie, I will come back."

She raised her eyes to his and nodded slowly. "I won't be sending for you, Roe."

"If there's a—" Roe glanced over at Onery's still-sleeping form upon the bed in the corner. He then whispered his next words. "If there's a baby I—"

'There isn't," she answered emphatically.

Roe nodded gratefully, but what he felt was disappointment.

Meggie measured the coffee into the water and spoke conversationally. "I'll wait a fortnight or two after you leave," she said. "And then I'll just announce to folks that I've had word that you were killed on the journey. No one will question it."

She sounded so unconcerned that it seemed almost as if she spoke of somebody else, some other man, another couple who were planning their future as if it were the plot of some romantic tragedy.

"I'll dress in black for the rest of the winter," she said. "And that will be the end of it."

The casual finality of her words was like a dousing of cold water on Roe's aching heart. He nodded at her gravely. "All right then."

She looked up at him, her face a mask, revealing nothing. "Good-bye."

It was all that she said.

Jesse, however, was not so easily placated. A quarter of an hour later he wandered into Roe's room to find him packing.

"Why are you puttin' your oddments in a poke?" he asked Roe.

Still sleep-tousled and yawning, the young man's question was mere curiosity.

"I'm leaving," Roe answered simply.

Jesse immediately was wide awake. "What do you mean, you're leaving? Where are you going?"

Roe steeled himself against the sting of shame at his own selfishness. Neither he nor Meggie had given a thought to Jesse, his grief, his loss of a friend.

Jesse couldn't be let in on the scheme he and Meggie had designed. He could never know that it was all a lie. Jesse was simple, and for him their marriage had been the truth and so would be the loss of his friend.

"You knew that I would have to return to Massachusetts at the end of the summer," Roe said uncomfortably.

The young man's expression was puzzled. "But it ain't the end of the summer. We've still got the hottest month ahead of us."

"Well, I'm sure you can manage August on your own. You know that I must present my collection of music to the fellowship committee. It's completed now, and I can be back in Cambridge in two weeks and present my material within a couple more."

Jesse nodded but still looked worried. "So you're going back to the Bay State to take your Listening Box."

"Yes, I'm going to the Bay State, but I'm leaving the Ediphone here. I'll just take the cylinders that I need. I'm not even sure what's on some of the rest of these. I'll leave these for you to play on the box for when you need to hear music, but don't feel like making your own."

Jesse sighed with relief. "If you're leaving the Listening Box, then you're for sure coming back."

"Did you think that I wouldn't?"

"Oh, no, I just seen you acting strange of late."

Roe, hating to lie, turned his attention to the gunnysack he was packing and mumbled a mildly positive sound.

Accepting his friend's word, Jesse smiled with satisfaction and plopped down comfortably on the bed. "You've been acting so peculiar lately, I was beginning to get kindy scared. I guess if you go on now you can be back for harvest," he said.

"Yes, there is certainly time enough for that," Roe answered vaguely. Guilt ate at him. His simpleminded friend was honest and open, and Roe had told him friends never lie to each other.

"Don't worry about nothing here," Jesse said. "I can take care of things 'til you get back and Pa's for sure gonna be back on his feet anyday now."

"I hope so, Jesse."

Jesse's mood had greatly improved, and he was unable to feel any worries or concern.

"You going fishing in that ocean when you get back?"

"I doubt that."

"But you will get to ride a train."

"Yes. I will be riding a lot of trains I'm sure."

"That'll be something, won't it?"

"Yes, Jesse. I guess it will," he answered with feigned excitement.

The young man was quietly thoughtful for a few moments as he apparently tried to imagine the wonders that his friend would be seeing.

"When you get back the foxes'll have their winter pelts on," he said.

"I guess they will."

"I can teach you to go hunting. Last winter Paisley let me borrow one of his dogs. I don't 'magine we can do that this year, especially after you two nearly had a fawnch last night." Jesse laughed as he recalled it.

"Paisley was in his liquor last night. I'm sure he doesn't even remember what happened," Roe assured him.

"Sometimes Pigg Broody lets me run one of his old hounds," Jesse said hopefully. "It'll be a real good time, you'll see."

"It sounds very nice, Jesse."

Roe saw in his own mind the sharp cool months of autumn with Jesse hunting foxes in the brightly colored woodlands with a borrowed dog. But Jesse wouldn't be filled with joy as he was now, he'd be grieving for a friend who would be dead by then, at least dead to him.

"And then in the winter maybe we can go to see the Widder Plum." Jesse's eyes sparkled with mischief and excitement. "Remember about me and the widder. You was thinking about it."

Roe looked up at the simple young man lounging at the end of the bed. He realized suddenly that although he had called many men his friends, he had never known friendship until he met Jesse Best.

"I have thought about that widow, Jesse," he said. "And I don't think that you should go to see her."

Jesse's smile immediately dimmed. "You changed your mind about me getting to be with a woman?"

"No, no, not really," Roe answered, only realizing the words himself as he spoke them. "I hope you do get to be with a woman one day. But lying with just any woman, just coupling with her to get some pleasure, some release; that is not what I'd want for you, Jesse." Roe hesitated, hoping the other man would understand. "When the woman is special," he told Jesse, "being with her is special also. That's what I want for you. I want you to have a woman that you can feel deeply about, a woman who feels deeply about you."

His handsome young brow furrowing in confusion, Jesse asked, "Do you mean love?"

Love. The word continued to haunt him. Jesse wanted it. Meggie wanted it. Roe wanted it, too, but he had no idea what it was or how to get it.

He shrugged. "Maybe love. I don't know much about the subject myself."

Jesse was thoughtful. "Do you think a feller that ain't smart can be in love?"

Thoughtful for only a moment, Roe answered him. "If there is anyone in this world who is capable of loving or being loved, Jesse Best, it has to be you."

Roe seated himself beside Jesse and with a gesture of camaraderie that felt as natural as it was, he slung an arm around his friend's shoulder.

"I don't want to see you waste that love on some quick, sinful coupling with a well-practiced but unfeeling female," he said. "You deserve much more. You may not be equal to other men in the quickness of your mind, but there is no one, Jesse, more human than you. Don't ever allow yourself to accept less than any other man."

Jesse studied his friend's face for a long time, not truly comprehending his words but appreciating them nonetheless.

Finally he nodded his blond head solemnly. "I suspect I understand your meaning, Roe. I shouldn't settle for eating up the chicken feed when I could wring a young pullet's neck and fry her up for supper."

Roe smiled for the first time that morning. "Yes, Jesse. I guess that is exactly what I mean."

The young man grinned back at him, his handsome,innocent face guileless and believing. "You're my frien', Roe, and friends always tell each other the truth. I won't be feasting on no chicken feed while you're gone," he promised. "When you come back, well, maybe you could help me find a woman of my own. Maybe you could look the gals over and tell me which one might take to me."

Roe didn't answer, but Jesse failed to notice as he grinned wickedly. "Is there a trick to figuring out which pullets fry up the most tender?"

Forcing a smile to his face Roe hugged his young friend tightly and then stood up to resume his packing.

Jesse hadn't noticed the cloud of unwilling deceit that covered Roe's eyes. It was from ignorance and honesty that he spoke. "If I could have whatever I want," Jesse confessed, "I'd want to be married like you and Meggie."

"Onery, I'm leaving," Roe said as he approached the old man seated on the porch.

Looking stronger and healthier than Roe had seen him in weeks, Best nodded. "That's what I heard." Onery gave Roe a long assessing look. "Don't suspect we'll be seeing you again."

"No, sir."

Rubbing his long gray beard, he sighed heavily. "It's a shame," he said. "I've been thinking about this for some time, son. Trying to figure a way for you and my Meggie to quit chewing on the middlin's and go straight for the ham butt."

"Mr. Best, I… I never intended for things between Meggie and myself to go as far as they did. And I've asked her to marry me more than once."

"I know that, son." Onery nodded, understanding.

"Meggie has made it quite clear that she doesn't want me here, and if I am going to have to leave her, I should do it soon."

"Makes sense." The old man nodded sadly. "I've always been so proud of that girl of mine. A lot has been put upon her; her mama's death, me crippled, and of course, her brother. But Meggie, she's always been the strong one and I've always been grateful that she grew up being so much like her mother."

He looked up at Roe and smiled wanly. "But at times like this I wish she'd gotten herself some of the selfishness that comes from my side of the family."

Roe didn't understand what selfishness would have to do with it, but he offered the old man what comfort he could.

"After I'm gone and she claims me as dead, she says she'll marry someone else," he said. "A woman like Meggie could pretty much get any man she decided that she wanted."

Onery snorted. "That she could. Course she never wanted none before you showed up."

Roe had no answer for that. He waited as the old man rocked thoughtfully in his chair gazing off in the distance at old Squaw's Trunk Mountain.