Smoke River Bride (14 page)

He tramped up to the front door and into the small house she had transformed from four gloomy, gray walls into a sunlit haven of peace. Every time he walked inside, that fear bit into his gut. All of this—his wife, his wheat field—could be wiped out in a single second.

The house seemed unnaturally quiet, and then he remembered Leah was visiting Ellie Johnson, the schoolteacher. He had thought about taking Teddy fishing for trout in Swine Creek, but the boy had already made plans with Harvey Poletti, the lad who’d bloodied his nose a month ago. He knew he should
spend more time with Teddy, but maybe it was better for his son to make friends.

Restless, Thad roamed through The kitchen, the living room and finally, against his better judgment, ended up in the bedroom. The quilt, the pillows, even the striped yellow window curtains smelled like Leah, a lemony scent with a hint of soap. Hell, he loved everything about her.

He stalked out onto the front porch and strained his eyes in the direction of the road. He needed to do something to keep his mind off Leah; maybe he’d ride over to the Halliday place and ask about Matt’s new colt. Teddy’s birthday was coming in April. It didn’t take a genius to figure out his boy wanted a horse of his own.

Teddy’s eighth birthday fell on a dry, warm day in mid-April. Matt Johnson had brought the roan colt over on a lead the night before, and Thad had hid it in the barn. He could hardly wait until morning.

At breakfast, Leah poured him a second mug of coffee and he leaned forward in his chair to fold his hands around it.

“Teddy, could you help me out this morning?”

The boy’s face brightened. “Sure, Pa.”

“Go on out to the barn and, um, check Lady over before Leah rides into town today.”

The boy gobbled down the rest of his pancake and streaked out to the door to the barn. He returned in under a minute and threw himself into Thad’s arms, knocking the mug of fresh coffee all over the breakfast table.

Leah did not care. She laughed while she mopped up the spill and exchanged looks with Thad. Hidden behind a hay bale in the new colt’s stall was a brand-new boy-size leather saddle.

Teddy was so excited he could not stop talking. “Pa, he’s just the most beautifulest horse in the whole world and I’m gonna call him Red and please kin I ride him today?”

Thad sent Leah a grin. In that moment she realized how long it had been since she had seen him smile. He had been so preoccupied lately both she and Teddy were feeling more than a bit neglected. At least, she thought with resignation, they had each other, and Teddy’s insults weren’t as barbed. Yesterday he’d said her hair looked like “rotted corn silk,” but he’d set her hairbrush to dry in the sun, as she’d asked.

The spring weather grew warm, and then
hot as the sun beat down on the fields. Thad spent a good deal of time watching his wheat grow taller, and while it made him feel good, at the same time an uneasiness fluttered in his belly; it felt like a flock of chickens with a fox in the yard. Somehow he figured that if he could maintain control over his wheat field, that meant he could control other uncertainties. That he would not be destroyed by some catastrophe that might snatch Leah away from him, as it had Hattie.

The only thing he could do to protect himself was not care so much about her. He was trying to distance himself from Leah, but it sure wasn’t easy. At night he ached to touch her, to envelop her strong little hands in his, to twine his fingers into the shiny black hair spilling over her shoulders.

His fear of losing her was so gut-deep he wondered if he could ever shake it. He couldn’t talk about it; mostly, he guessed, because he didn’t really understand it himself. Every evening he managed to roll away from her and try to sleep while she lay breathing quietly, expectantly, in the dark.

All he knew for sure was that he didn’t know how much longer he could keep this up.

W
hen the ruts in the town road dried into a navigable washboard, Leah decided one warm Saturday afternoon to brave the Ladies’ Knitting Circle. Would she be accepted by the group? What should she wear? What should she say?

Stuffing down her anxiety, she resolutely saddled up Lady and slowly rode the mare to Verena Forester’s shop in town, wearing her best long skirt and ruffled calico shirtwaist, and a tentative smile. After tying the horse to the hitching rail in front of the barbershop, she hesitantly climbed the stairs to the dressmaker’s second-floor apartment.

“Leah!” Ellie Johnson rose at once and embraced her. “I’m so glad you are joining us.”

Jeanne Halliday smiled a welcome from her chair across the room and gestured to the empty place beside her. Verena gave her a cold-fish stare and Darla Weatherby, seated next to Ellie, refused to speak or to meet Leah’s eyes.

Last in the circle was eight-year-old Noralee Ness, daughter of the mercantile owner, who sent her a shy nod. Surprisingly, the girl had come without her mother or her twin sister.

Leah smiled at her. “Hello, Noralee. I did not know you could knit.”

“Yes, ma’am, I can. Mama taught me last Christmas when I was in bed with the chicken pox.”

Her spine rigid, Verena perched on a ladder-back chair near the refreshment table. “Tea, ladies?” When the dressmaker had poured tea into all the delicately flowered cups, Ellie rummaged in her knitting bag and produced a tin of sugar cookies, which she passed around.

The women talked about patterns and yarn colors and trim, their conversation peppered with a good bit of gossip. Darla reported that her mother had traveled to Saint Louis to visit her ailing sister and had brought back scandalous
postcards, some with pictures of the new opera house. Ellie reported on her students’ interest in holding a spelling bee.

Noralee chattered on and on about school, dropped a number of stitches and finally lapsed into silence. Verena inspected the girl’s progress at the end of every finished row and corrected her errors none too kindly. Leah pressed her lips closed and held her tongue.

After the first hour, talk turned to Smoke River and the townspeople. Jeanne Halliday announced that two new foals had been born at the Double H ranch, which she and Colonel Halliday owned. Ellie hesitantly asked about Thad’s wheat crop and what he hoped to harvest come summer. Her husband, Matt, was thinking about planting a wheat field next year, but he was waiting to see how Thad’s crop fared this year.

Darla Weatherby spread the lacy black shawl she was working on across her knees and inspected Leah’s half-finished scarlet muffler with undisguised disapproval.

“Red is so…bright, don’t you think?” Darla said.

Leah looked up. “It’s for Thad. So I can see him easily when he comes in from the fields at night.”

“From his
wheat
field?” Darla sneered. “You know what they’re calling it, don’t you? ‘MacAllister’s Disaster.’”

“I heard it was ‘Thad’s Madness,’” Verena interjected.

Leah straightened. “No, I had not heard what they are calling it. For Thad’s sake I hope it will soon be ‘MacAllister’s Triumph.’”

“Hah!” Verena snorted. “Everyone knows wheat doesn’t do well this far south. Thad’s brain is addled, has been ever since Hattie—”

“Hush, Verena.” Ellie cut her off.

“Well, it’s true,” the dressmaker persisted. “Just look what he did last December, marrying again scarcely a year after—”

“Verena! Do hush up!”

“And now he’s planted wheat,” Verena sniped. “The man’s addled, I tell you.”

Addled! Under her knitting Leah twisted her hands. Thad was anything but addled. Troubled, perhaps, but not addled.

A thick silence fell. “More cookies?” Ellie offered quickly. The schoolteacher rose and passed around the tin box; Noralee took three and sent Leah a sympathetic look.

Her heart pounding with hurt and fury, Leah folded the half-finished red muffler on her lap. “I am sorry that some of you—” she
looked directly at Verena and then at Darla “—that some of you feel my husband has been foolish. However, I do not believe he has. Throughout history, all innovations have come from someone who was willing to try something new.”

Five sets of eyes were riveted on her. Drawing in a shaky breath, she plunged on. “And about Thad’s remarriage. Thad is a good man. He loved his wife and it is unfortunate that she died, but I am his wife now, and I am a good wife to him.”

She lifted her chin. “Besides, who are you to judge the private lives of other people?”

Verena sent Leah a look full of daggers. Darla gulped and stared down at her lacy shawl. Ellie and Jeanne nodded at Leah in approval and even young Noralee Ness sent her a furtive smile.

Leah stood up. She could not leave Verena’s apartment fast enough, but she managed not to race for the door. She swept down the wooden stairs and out onto the plank walkway where she had tied Lady. She jammed her knitting into the saddlebag and yanked the lead rope free. Lord in heaven, she needed a swallow of whatever it was Thad drank at night.

She had her boot halfway into the stirrup when she glanced over the mare’s broad back and caught sight of something that made her breath stop and her jaw go slack.

“Third Uncle?
Third Uncle!
Is that really you? What are you doing here in Smoke River?”

The approaching little, rounded figure stopped short. He wore an impeccable Western-style suit and overcoat of dark gabardine, a white shirt and a bow tie of crimson silk. On his arm swung a jaunty red umbrella.

“Ming Lei? Niece Leah? I not recognize.”

Leah gulped. “Third Uncle, how did you get here? And why have you come?”

The man’s rolling gait took him around the horse to where she stood. “I come on train.”

“From Portland? From San Francisco?
All the way from China?”

“Yes! From Canton on ship. From San Francisco in train. Long trip with much smoke in cars.”

Leah reached out and touched the man’s shoulder. She had never particularly liked her mother’s youngest brother; he had opposed her mother’s marriage to Father, and afterward he had treated his older sister like a fallen woman.

“Third Uncle, Ming Cha, how did you find me?”

The black eyes twinkled. “Chinese Presbyterian Mission in city. Not hard to trace.”

“But why?” she persisted. “Why have you come?”

“Times not good in China,” he explained. “I sell shop in Luzhai. Start business here in Land of Gold.”

Dumbfounded, Leah stared at the man. “Uncle, you cannot sell ground dragon horn and cherry ginseng elixir here in the West.”

“Do not want to,” he said with a grin. “I start baking business. You know, cake, cookie, even pie. I go to apprentice school in San Francisco and learn how.”

“But Third Uncle, how could you leave China? It was your home!”

Her relative’s round face sobered. “My family all gone since your mother, Ming Sa, die. You only family I have left.”

Leah’s senses began to spin. She reached for Lady’s bridle, closed her eyes and hung on. This was too much to absorb; perhaps it was only a dream.

“I must offer you hospitality,” she began.

“No need. I stay in hotel, like real Western
shopkeeper,” he said happily. “Tomorrow I look for place to open bakery.”

She did not know whether to laugh or cry. Now there would be not one but two Chinese people in town. She suppressed a groan. She could just see the expression on Carl Ness’s face.

She struggled not to smile. God forgive her, she hoped she would be there to watch when the mercantile owner met jolly, stubborn Third Uncle.

She rode home in a daze. At supper she explained to Thad and Teddy about her uncle’s arrival, and sat dumbfounded on the dining chair while Teddy peppered her with questions.

“Is he a real Chinaman? From China, like you?” The boy could hardly wait to see him. “Does he wear funny clothes? Does he talk Chinese talk?”

A week passed. The weather grew hot and then hotter still. The sun seared everything. Leah irrigated her kitchen garden with buckets of used wash water, and spent the stifling afternoons sewing muslin shirts for Teddy and Thad and light seersucker skirts and lawn shirtwaists for herself.

And no matter how oppressive the weather,
or how unsettled her nerves, each Saturday she saddled Lady, rode into Smoke River to visit the Ladies’ Knitting Circle, and purposefully drank tea while the ladies gossiped. Once she made a plan, she stuck to it.

Her mother always said “A drip of water wears away the hardest stone.” Perhaps that was how she had endured years of being called the White Devil’s woman. Leah resolved she would not stop her own efforts until the “stone” wore away.

Today, instead of having to defend Thad’s wheat-growing venture, she had to answer pointed questions about Third Uncle and his bakery.

“Yes,” she acknowledged in as calm a voice as she could manage, “my uncle has come from China.” And yes, he was planning to open a store—a bakery.

Over violent objections from Whitey Poletti and Carl Ness, Third Uncle—or Uncle Charlie, as he now wished to be called—had managed to rent the space next to Verena Forester’s dressmaking shop. And the mercantile was now becoming the focus for what Leah recognized as growing unease on the part of Smoke River townspeople.

Uncle Charlie was undeterred. Blithely he
set to work building shelves and storage bins, apparently unconcerned about whether he was accepted or not. Independent to a fault, in Leah’s opinion, Uncle Charlie would accept no help or advice from her or from Thad; but each Saturday, Leah brought him a basket of vegetables from her now-thriving kitchen garden, or some squares of cornbread.

At first, Uncle Charlie could not find a boardinghouse that would accept a Chinese man, and Rooney Cloudman was the only man who would stand next to him at the bar in the Golden Partridge Saloon. But with what Leah came to recognize as his typical persistence, Uncle Charlie moved into the tiny room at the back of his bakery and began collecting discarded pieces of furniture.

Slowly the bakery began to take shape. Leah helped Charlie paint the interior walls of the bakery a buttery-yellow, and she spent one entire Saturday washing the tall windows in front with hot water and vinegar. A handsome new Windsor stove came by Wells Fargo wagon from Portland, and then two glass-fronted display cases were shipped by rail all the way from San Francisco.

Both items met with glowering disapproval from the townspeople, but Uncle Charlie ignored
them. However, Leah saw young boys lobbing stones at the windows one afternoon, and when she flew out of the store to stop them, their mothers met her with stony, unrepentant faces.

To Leah’s relief, no matter what verbal abuse the barber and the mercantile owner heaped on Charlie, the sunny little man paid no attention.

The dry summer heat increased, and along with it came sharper and more angry objections to Uncle Charlie’s presence. Leah began to see that what had started as the townspeople’s unease over the bakery venture was escalating into outrage, exacerbated by the growing realization that the farming community was experiencing a severe drought.

Carl Ness resented Uncle’s presence not only on the main street but anywhere in the community, and he was unpleasantly vocal about it. “Go back to China where you belong,” the mercantile owner muttered. “No damned Celestial’s gonna bake
my
cakes.”

At the following Saturday knitting circle, Verena Forester plunked her teacup on its saucer and remarked in a piercing, acid-laced voice, “You let one foreigner in and when
you’re not looking, you’ve got all their relatives, too.”

The remarks stung Leah, but they did not daunt Uncle Charlie. Sometimes Leah wondered if her uncle was deaf.

She, however, was most certainly not deaf. And as the hot, searing weeks of summer progressed, tempers and frustrations mounted. Every single gathering of the Ladies’ Knitting Circle ended in an uproar.

Verena always started it. “That man has no business coming here to Smoke River. There isn’t another Chinaman within a hundred miles, except for the railroad crew over in the next county, and they’ll be gone come winter.”

Each time the seamstress lashed out, Leah remembered what Teddy had told her about the pies Verena had brought when Hattie had died. And what Verena had apparently meant to Thad before his marriage to Teddy’s mother.

“Charlie came because the last of his family is here,” Leah replied quietly. “Charlie is my uncle. My mother’s youngest brother.”

“Well, then, why don’t you both go back to China where you belong?” Darla snapped out the question and the others—except for Ellie
and Jeanne, and even Noralee Ness—nodded their heads in agreement.

Leah decided at that moment that she would not be polite and refuse to respond, but that she would not back down, either. “I would not be welcome back because my father was not Chinese. Besides, my father did not want me to stay in China all my life. He wanted me to come to America.”

“One wonders why, since you are obviously Chinese,” Verena spit.

Leah paused to calm herself. “I am only half Chinese. The other half is American. My father was an American missionary.”

It went on and on until tempers wore thin and hurtful words began to fly. Leah finally excused herself and escaped down the stairs, but all the way to the boardwalk she could hear the rising voices, like a hive of angry bees.

Some days, like today, she wondered whether her mother had really believed in the power of water dropping onto stone. Part of Leah wanted to give up and hide herself away in Thad’s house for the rest of her life. But another part deep inside made her grit her teeth and come into town the next Saturday, and the next, and the one after that.

No matter what, she would keep moving forward with her plan to become part of Smoke River.