Morning Glory (5 page)

She served him vegetable soup, hot and fragrant, thick with okra and tomato and beef. His hands rested beside the bowl while he fought the compulsion to gobble it like an animal. His stomach seemed to roll over and beg, but he hesitated, savoring not only the smell but the anticipation, and the fact that he was allowed as much time as he wanted—no bells would ring, no guards would prod.

“Go ahead... eat.”

It was different, being told by her instead of the guards. Her motives were strictly friendly. Her eyes followed his head as he dipped the spoon and lifted it to his lips.

It was the best soup he’d ever tasted.

“I asked how long since your last meal. You gonna tell me or not?”

His glance flickered up briefly. “A couple of days.”

“A couple of days!”

“I stopped in a restaurant in town to read the want ads but there was a waitress there I didn’t particularly care for, so I moved on without eating.”

“Lula Peak. She’s a good one to avoid, all right. She been chasin’ men since she was tall enough to sniff ‘em. So you been eating green apples a coupla days, have you?”

He shrugged, but his glance darted briefly to the bread behind her.

“There’s no disgrace in admitting you’ve gone hungry, you know.”

But there was. To Will Parker there was. Just emerging from the jaws of the depression, America was still overrun with tramps, worthless vagrants who’d deserted their families and rode the flatcars aimlessly, begging for handouts at random doorsteps. During the past two months he’d seen—even ridden with—dozens of them. But he’d never been able to bring himself to beg. Steal, yes, but only in the most dire straits.

She watched him eat, watched his eyes remain downcast nearly all the time. Each time they flicked up they seemed drawn to something behind her. She twisted in her chair to see what it was. The bread. How stupid of her. “Why didn’t you say you wanted some fresh bread?” she chided as she rose to get it.

But he’d been schooled well to ask for nothing. In prison, asking meant being jeered at or baited like an animal and being made to perform hideous acts that made a man as base as his jailers. To ask was to put power into the sadistic hands of those who already wielded enough of it to dehumanize any who chose to cross them.

But no woman with three fresh loaves could comprehend a thing like that. He submerged the ugly memories as he watched her waddle to the cabinet top and fetch a knife from a crock filled with upended utensils. She scooped up a loaf against her hip and returned to the table to slice off a generous width. His mouth watered. His nostrils dilated. His eyes riveted upon the white slice curling softly from the blade.

She stabbed it with the tip of the knife and picked it up. “You want it?”

Oh, God, not again. His hungry eyes flew to her face, taking on the look of a cornered animal. Against his will, the memory was rekindled, of Weeks, the prison guard, with his slitty, amphibian eyes and his teeth bared in a travesty of a smile, his unctuous voice with its perverted laughter. “You want it, Parker? Then howl like a dog.” And he’d howled like a dog.

“You want it?” Eleanor Dinsmore repeated, softer this time, snapping Will back from the past to the present.

“Yes, ma’am,” he uttered, feeling the familiar knot of helplessness lodge in his throat.

“Then all you got to do is say so. Remember that.” She dropped the bread beside his soup bowl. “This ain’t jail, Mr. Parker. The bread ain’t gonna disappear and nobody’s gonna smack your hand if you reach for it. But around here you might have to ask for things. I’m no mind reader, you know.”

He felt the tension drain from him, but he held his shoulders stiff, wondering what to make of Eleanor Dinsmore, so dictatorial and unsympathetic at times, so dreamy and vague at others. It was only the painful memories that had transported him—she wasn’t Weeks, and she wouldn’t make him pay for picking up the food.

The bread was soft, warm, the greatest gift he’d ever received. His eyes closed as he chewed his first bite.

They flew open again when she grunted, “Humph!”

Puzzled, he watched her turn her back and move across the room to fetch a crock full of the most beautiful lemon-bright butter in the world. She came back and held it just beyond his reach.

“Say it.”

He swallowed. His shoulders stiffened and the wary look returned to his face. His voice came reluctantly. “I’d like some o’ that butter.”

“It’s yours.” Unceremoniously she clapped it down, then herself, across from him. “And it didn’t hurt you one little bit to ask for it, did it?” She brushed off her fingers and admonished, “Around here you ask, ‘cause things are in such a mess it’s the only way you’ll find it most of the time. Well, go ahead, butter your bread and eat.”

His hands followed orders while his emotions took additional moments to readjust to her quicksilver mood changes. As he bent over his soup, she warned, “Watch you don’t overdo it. Best if you eat slow till your stomach gets used to decent food again.”

He wanted to tell her it was good, better than good, the best he remembered. He wanted to tell her there was no butter in prison, the bread there was coarse and dry and certainly never warm. He wanted to tell her he didn’t remember the last time he’d been invited to sit at somebody’s kitchen table. He wanted to tell her what it meant to him to sit at hers. But compliments were as foreign to him as crocks of butter, so he ate his bread and soup in silence.

While he ate she brought out her crocheting and sat working on something soft and fuzzy and pink. Her wedding ring—still on her left hand—flashed in the lanternlight in
rhythm with the hook. Her hands were nimble, but work-worn, and the skin looked like hide. It appeared all the tougher when contrasted against the fine pink yarn as she payed it out from one callused finger.

“What you watchin’?”

He glanced up guiltily.

She adjusted the yarn and smiled. The smile transformed her face. “Never seen a woman crochet before?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Makin’ a shawl for the baby. This here’s a shell design.” She spread it out on her knee. “Pretty, ain’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Once again he was assaulted by yearning, a sense of things missed, a desire to reach out and touch that soft pink thing she was creating. Rub it between his fingers as if it were a woman’s hair.

“I’m makin’ it in pink cause I’d sure like a girl this time. A girl’d be nice for the boys, don’t you think?”

What did he know about babies—girls, boys, either one? Nothing except they scared him to death. And girls? He’d never found girls to be especially nice except maybe when they were older, when a man was sinking his body into them. Then, for a few minutes, while they stopped harping or threatening or tormenting, maybe they were nice.

Mrs. Dinsmore’s silver hook flashed on. “Baby’ll be needing a warm blanket. This old house gets plenty cold in the winter. Glendon, he always meant to fix it up and seal up the cracks and such, but he never got around to it.”

His eyes lifted to the walls with the missing plaster.

“Maybe I could seal up the cracks for you.”

She glanced up and smiled, unrolling more slack from the basket on the floor. “Maybe you could, Mr. Parker. That’d sure be nice. Glendon, he meant well, but somehow there was always something new he was going to try.”

No matter what her mood, when she spoke the name
Glendon
a softness crept into her voice, a smile, too, whether there was one on her face or not. Will supposed there’d never been a woman in the world who’d looked so sentimental when speaking his name.

“Would you like some more soup, Mr. Parker? A little might be okay.”

He ate until his stomach felt hard as a baseball. Then he sat back, rubbed it and sighed.

“You sure can pack it away.” She tucked her piece of handiwork into the basket and stood up to clear the table.

He watched her move across the kitchen, thinking if he lived to be two hundred he’d never forget this meal, nor how nice it had felt to sit and watch her work fine pink yarn into a shell design and believe that tomorrow when he woke up, he might not have to move on.

She carried Glendon Dinsmore’s pillow and quilt and led the way to the barn. He found himself again performing uncustomary courtesies, carrying the lantern, opening the screen door, letting her walk first through the littered yard.

The moon had risen. It rode the eastern trees like an orange pumpkin bobbing on dark water. The chickens were roosting—somewhere in the junk, undoubtedly. He wondered how she ever found eggs.

“I tell you what, Mr. Parker,” she told him as they walked through the moonlight, “tomorrow morning when you look the place over you might decide it’s not such a good idea to stay. I sure wouldn’t hold you to it, no matter what you said when you first come up here.”

He watched her waddle along in front of him, hugging her husband’s patchwork quilt against her stomach.

“Same goes for you, Mrs. Dinsmore.”

Just before they reached the barn she warned, “Be careful, there’s a pile of junk here.”

A
pile? That was a laugh. She sidestepped something made of black spiked iron and opened the barn door. Its unoiled hinges squeaked. Inside there were no animals, but his nose told him there had been.

“Guess this barn could do with a little cleaning,” she noted while he raised the lantern over his head and surveyed the circle of light.

“1 can do that tomorrow.”

“I’d be grateful. So would Madam.”

“Madam?”

“My mule. This way.” She led him to a wall-mounted ladder. “You’ll sleep up there.”

She would have begun climbing but he grabbed her arm. “Better let me go first. That ladder doesn’t look too dependable.”

He slipped the lantern over his arm and started up. When his foot took the third rung it splintered and dumped him flush against the wall, where he dangled like a puppet with a broken string.

“Mr. Parker!” she shrieked, grabbing his thighs while he pedaled for a toehold.

“Get back!”

She leaped back and held her breath as the lanternlight swung wildly. At last he found a solid rung, but tested the rest before putting his weight on each. She pressed a hand to her heart, watching him climb until he safely reached the loft with his elbows. “Lord, you gave me a fright. Be careful.”

His head disappeared into the dark square above, then the lantern went up with him, gilding the underside of his hat brim. Only when he stood on solid planking did he look back down. “You’re a fine one to talk. If I would’ve come down I’d have taken you right with me.”

“I reckon this old ladder’s about as rickety as everything else around here.”

“I can fix it tomorrow, too.” He raised the lantern and checked the loft. “There’s hay.” He disappeared and she listened to his footsteps thud overhead.

“I’m sorry about the smell in here,” she called.

“It’s not as bad up here. This’ll be fine.”

“I would’ve cleaned it if I’d known I’d be havin’ overnight company.”

“Don’t worry. I slept in much worse in my day.”

He reappeared, knelt, and set the lantern at his knee. “Can you toss up the bedding?”

The pillow went up perfectly. The quilt took three tries. By the third, he was grinning. “Ain’t got much for muscles, have you?”

It was the first lighthearted thing he’d said. She stood with her fists on her hips, gazing up at him while he held the
patchwork quilt. It might not be so bad having him around if he’d lighten up this way more often.

“Oh, ain’t I? I got those up there, didn’t I?”

“Just barely.”

The grin softened his face. The cockiness sharpened hers. For the first time they began to feel comfortable with each other.

He flopped to his belly and hung over the edge of the hatch. “Here, you take the lantern.”

“Don’t be silly. I been walkin’ in this barnyard since before you owned that thing you call a cowboy hat.”

“What’s wrong with my cowboy hat?”

“Looks like it’s been through a war.”

“It’s my own. It and my boots.” He waggled the lantern. “Here, take it.”

So that was why he kept that sorry-looking thing on his head all the time.

“Take it yourself,” she said, and disappeared from sight. He knelt on his haunches and listened for her footsteps, but she was barefoot.

“Mrs. Dinsmore?” he called.

“Yes, Mr. Parker?” she called from the opposite end of the barn.

“You mind my asking how old you are?”

“Be twenty-five on November tenth. How about you?”

“Thirty or so.”

Silence, while she digested his answer. “Or so?”

“Somebody left me on the steps of an orphanage when I was little.” Will hadn’t told that to many people in his life. He waited uncertainly for her reaction.

“You mean you don’t know when your birthday is?”

“Well... no.”

The barn grew silent. Outside a whippoorwill called and the frogs sang discordantly. Eleanor paused with her hand on the latch. Will knelt, gripping his thighs.

“We’ll have to pick you out a birthday if you decide to stay. A man should have a birthday.”

Will smiled, imagining it.

“G’night, Mr. Parker.”

“G’night, Mrs. Dinsmore.” He heard the barn door squeak open and called again, “Mrs. Dinsmore?”

The squeaking stopped. “What?”

Five seconds of silence, then, “Much obliged for the supper. You’re a good cook.” His heart thumped gladly after the words were out. It hadn’t been so hard after all.

In the dark below she smiled. It had been good to see a man at her table again.

She made her way to the house, prepared for bed and eased into it with a sigh. As she straightened, a faint cramp caught her low across the stomach. She cradled it, rolling to her side. She had chopped wood today, though she knew she shouldn’t have. But Glendon had scarcely managed to get the day-to-day tasks done, let alone stockpiling for tomorrow. The seasoned wood needed splitting, and next year’s supply should be cut so it could start to dry. Besides the wood, there was always water to carry. So much. And there’d be more when the new baby came and she’d have two of them in diapers.