Morning Glory (15 page)

“I had a little money of my own,” he clarified, since she hadn’t bothered to count the egg money and he didn’t want her thinking he’d spent any of hers. He could tell by her expression the thought hadn’t entered her mind. She smiled into the bluebird’s painted eye, her own shining with delight. “A bluebird... imagine that.” She pressed it to her heart and beamed at Will. “How did you know I like birds?”

He knew. He knew.

He stood watching her, feeling ready to burst with gratification as she examined the bird from every angle. “I just love it.” She flashed him another warm smile. “It’s the nicest present I ever got. Thank you.”

He nodded.

“See, boys?” She squatted to show them. “Mr. Parker brought me a bluebird. Isn’t it about the prettiest thing you ever saw? Now where should we put it? I was thinkin’ on the kitchen table. No, maybe on my nightstand—why, it would look good just about anyplace, wouldn’t it? Come in and help me decide. You too, Mr. Parker.”

She bustled inside, so excited she forgot to hold the screen door open for Thomas to scramble inside. Will plucked him off the step and got chocolate on his shirt, but what was a little chocolate to a man so happy? He stood just inside the kitchen doorway with the baby on his arm, watching Eleanor try the bird everywhere—on the table, on the cupboard, beside the cookie jar. “Where should we put it, Donald Wade?” Always, she made the boy feel important. And now Will, too.

“On the windowsill, so all the other birds will see it and come close.”

“Mmm... on the windowsill.” She pinched her lower lip and considered the sills—east, south and west. The kitchen jutted off the main body of the building, a room with ample brightness. “Why of course. Now why didn’t I think of that?”
She placed the bluebird on a west sill, overlooking the backyard, where the clothespoles had been repaired and now stood straight and sturdy. She leaned back, clapped once and pressed her folded hands against her chin. “Oh, yes, it’s exactly what this place needed!”

It needed a lot more than a cheap glass figurine, but as Eleanor danced across the room and squeezed Will’s arm, he felt as if he’d just bought her a collector’s piece.

If Will had been eager to make improvements around the place before his trip to town, afterward he worked even harder, fired by the zeal to atone for a past which was none of his making. He spent hours wondering about the people who’d locked her in that house behind the green shades. And how long she’d been there, and why. And about the man who’d taken her away from it, the one she said she still loved. And how long it might take for that love to begin fading.

It was during those days that Will became aware of things he’d never noticed before: how she hadn’t hung a curtain on a window; how she paused to worship the sun whenever she stepped outside; how she never failed to find praise for the day—be it rain or shine—something to marvel over; and at night, when Will stepped out of the barn to relieve himself, no matter what the hour... her bedroom light was always burning. It wasn’t until he’d seen it several times that he realized she wasn’t up checking on the boys, but sleeping with it on.

Why had her family done it to her?

But if anyone respected a person’s right to privacy it was Will. He needn’t know the answers to accept the fact that he was no longer laboring only to have a roof over his head, but to please her.

He mended the road—oiled the harness and hitched Madam to a heavy steel road scraper shaped like a giant grain shovel, with handles like a wheelbarrow, an ungainly thing to work with. But with Madam pulling and Will pushing, directing the straight steel cutting edge into the earth, they tackled the arduous task. They shaved off the high spots, filled in the
washouts, rolled boulders off to the sides and grubbed out erupted roots.

Donald Wade became Will’s constant companion. He’d take a seat on a bank or a branch, watching, listening, learning. Sometimes Will gave him a shovel and let him root around throwing small rocks off to the side, then praised him for his fledgling efforts as he’d heard Eleanor do.

One day Donald Wade observed, “My daddy, he didn’t work much. Not like you.”

“What did he do, then?”

“He puttered. That’s what Mama called it.”

“Puttered, huh?” Will mulled this over a moment and asked, “He treated your mama nice though, didn’t he?”

“I guess so. She liked him.” After a moment’s pause, Donald Wade added, “But he din’t buy her bluebirds.”

While Will considered this, Donald Wade voiced another surprising question.

“Are you my daddy now?”

“No, Donald Wade, I’m sorry to say I’m not.”

“You gonna be?”

Will had no answer. The answer depended on Eleanor Dinsmore.

She came twice a day—morning and afternoon—pulling Baby Thomas and a jug of cool raspberry nectar in the wagon. And they’d all sit together beneath the shade of her favorite sourwood tree and relish the treat while she pointed out the birds she knew. She seemed to know them all—doves and hawks and warblers and finches. And trees, too—the sourwood itself, the tulip poplar, redbud, basswood and willow, so many more varieties than Will had realized were there. She knew the small plants, too—the gallberry and snow vine, the sumac and crownbeard and one with a lovely name, summer farewell, which brought a winsome tilt to her lips and made him study those lips more closely than the summer farewell.

Those minutes spent resting beneath the sourwood tree were some of the finest of Will’s life.

“My,” she would say, “this is gonna be some road.” And
it would be all the charge Will needed to return to the scraper and push harder than before.

The day the road was done Will whispered his thanks into Madam’s ear, fed her a gold carrot from the garden and gave her a bath as a treat. After supper, he and Eleanor took the boys for a wagon ride down the freshly bladed earth that rose firm into the trees before dipping to link their house with the county road below.

“It’s a beautiful road, Will,” she praised, and he smiled in quiet satisfaction.

The next day he tightened up a wagon, replaced two boards on its bed, hitched up Madam and took his first load of junk to the Whitney dump. He took, too, a note from Eleanor, and Miss Beasley’s eggs, plus several dozen more and five pints of cream, one which never made it farther than the library.

“Cream!” Miss Beasley exclaimed. “Why, I’ve had the worst craving for strawberry shortcake lately and what’s strawberry shortcake without whipped cream?” She chuckled and got out her black snap-top coin purse.

And though Will checked out his first books with his own library card, just before he left she remembered, “Oh, I
did
find some pamphlets on beekeeping while I was sorting in the back room. You need not return these.” She produced a mustard-yellow envelope bearing his name and laid it on the desk. “They’re put out by the county extension office
... every five years,
mind you, when the bee is the only creature on God’s green earth that hasn’t changed its habits or its habitat since before man walked upright! But when the new pamphlets come in, the old ones get thrown—useful or not!” She blustered on, busying her hands, carefully avoiding Will’s eyes. “Why, I’ve got a good mind to write to my county commissioner about such outright waste of the taxpayers’ money!”

Will was charmed.

“Thank you, Miss Beasley.”

Still she wouldn’t look at him. “No need to thank me for something that would’ve gone to waste anyway.”

But he saw beyond her smokescreen to the woman who had difficulty befriending men and his heart warmed more.

“I’ll see you next week.”

She looked up only when his hand gripped the brass knob, but even from a distance he noted the two spots of color in her cheeks.

Smiling to himself, Will loped down the library steps with his stack of books on one hip and the yellow envelope slapping his thigh.

“Myyy, myyy... if it isn’t Mr. Parker.”

Will came up short at the sight of Lula Peak, two steps below, smiling at him with come-hither eyes. She wore her usual Betty Grable foreknot, lipstick the color of a blood clot, and stood with one hip permanently jutted to hold her hand.

“Afternoon, ma’am.” He tried to move around her but she sidestepped adroitly.

“What’s your hurry?” She chewed gum as gracefully as an alligator gnawing raw meat.

“Got cream in the wagon that shouldn’t be sitting in the sun.”

She smoothed the hair up the back of her head, then, raising her chin, skimmed three fingertips down the V of her uniform. “Lawzy... it’s a hot one all right.” Standing one step below Will, Lula was nearly nose to navel with him. Her eyes roved lazily down his shirt and jeans to the envelope on which Miss Beasley had written his name. “So it’s Will, is it?” she drawled. Her eyes took their time climbing back up, lingering where they would. “Will Parker,” she drawled, and touched his belt buckle with the tip of one scarlet nail. “Nice name... Will.” It took control for him to resist leaping back from her touch, but he stood his ground politely while she tipped her head and waggled her shoulders. “So, Will Parker, why don’t you stop in at the cafe and I’ll fix you a ni-i-ice glass of iced tea. Taste good on a hot one like this, mmm?”

For one horrified moment he thought she might run that nail straight down his crotch. He jumped before she could. “Don’t think I’ll have time, ma’am.” This time she let him pass. “Got things to do.” He felt her eyes following as he climbed the wagon wheel, took the reins and drove around the town square to Purdy’s.

That woman was trouble with a capital T, and he didn’t
want any. Not of it or of her. He made sure he avoided glancing across the square while he entered the store.

Purdy bought the cream and the eggs and said, “Fine, anytime you got fresh, just bring ‘em in. I got no trouble getting rid of fresh.”

Lula was gone when Will came out of the store, but her kewpie doll act left him feeling dirty and anxious to get back home.

Eleanor and the boys were waiting under their favorite sourwood tree this time. Will gravitated toward them like a compass needle toward the North Pole. Here was where he belonged, here with this unadorned woman whose simplicity made Lula look brassy, whose wholesomeness made Lula look brazen. He found it hard to believe that in his younger days he’d have chosen a woman like
that
over one like this.

She stood, brushing off the back of her skirt as he drew up and reined in Madam.

“You’re back.”

“Yup.”

They smiled at each other and a moment of subtle appreciation fluttered between them. She boosted the boys up onto the wagon seat and he transferred them into the back, swinging them high and making them giggle. “You sit down back there now so you don’t tumble off.” They scrambled to follow orders and Will leaned to extend a helping hand to their mother. He clasped her palm and for the space of two heartbeats neither of them moved. She poised with one foot on a wagon cleat, her green eyes caught in his brown. Abruptly she clambered up and sat down, as if the moment had not happened.

He thought about it during the days that followed, while he continued improving the place, scrubbing walls and ceilings, finishing the plastering and painting walls that appeared to never have seen paint before. He put doors on the bottom kitchen cabinets and built new ones for above. He bartered a used kitchen sink for a piece of linoleum (both at a premium and growing scarcer) with which he covered the new cabinet top. The linoleum was yellow, streaked, like sun leaching
through daisy petals: yellow, which seemed to suit Eleanor best and set off her green eyes.

She grew rounder and moved more slowly. Day after day he watched her hauling dishpans and slop buckets out to slew in the yard. She washed diapers for only one now, but soon there’d be two. He dug a cesspool and ran a drainpipe from underneath the sink, eliminating the need for carrying out dishpans.

She was radiant with thanks and rushed to dump a first basin of water down the drain and rejoice when it magically disappeared by itself. She said it didn’t matter that he hadn’t been able to find enough linoleum for the floor, too. The room was brighter and cleaner than it had ever been before.

He
was disappointed about the linoleum for the floor. He wanted the room perfect for her, but linoleum and bathtubs and so many other commodities were getting harder and harder to come by with factories of all kinds converting to the production of war supplies. In prison Will had read the newspaper daily but now he caught up with world events only when he went to the library. Still, he was aware of the rumblings in Europe and wondered how long America could supply England and France with planes and tanks without getting into the fighting herself. He shuddered at the thought, even as he took his first load of scrap metal to town and got a dollar per hundredweight for Glendon Dinsmore’s “junk.”

There was talk of America actively joining the war, though America Firsters—among them the Lone Eagle, Charles Lindbergh—spoke out against the U.S. drift toward it. But Roosevelt was beefing up America’s defenses. The draft was already in force, and Will was of age, healthy and single. Eleanor remained blissfully ignorant of the state of the world beyond the end of their driveway.

Then one day Will unearthed a radio in one of the sheds. It took some doing to find a battery for it—batteries, too, were being gobbled up by England to keep walkie-talkies operable. But again he bartered with a spare can of paint, only to find that even when the battery was installed, the radio still refused to work. Miss Beasley found a book that told him how to fix it.

The particular hour he coaxed it back to life, “Ma Perkins” was on the air on the blue network. The boys were having their afternoon nap and Eleanor was ironing. As the staticky program filled the kitchen, her eyes lit up like the amber tube behind the RCA Victor grille.

“How ‘bout that—it works!” Will said, amazed.

“Shh!” She pulled up a chair while Will knelt on the floor and together they listened to the latest adventure of the widow who managed a lumberyard in Rushville Center, U.S.A., where she lived, by the golden rule, with her three kids, John, Evey and Fay. Anybody who loved their kids as much as Ma Perkins was all right with Eleanor, and Will could see Ma had gained a faithful listener.