The Glorious Prodigal (6 page)

Then she stepped back and said, “Tomorrow I’ll marry you.”

****

The two of them were married the next day by the pastor of the small church. She had not understood how Stuart had managed to obtain the license, but he had been gone all day, and they had been married at four o’clock. He had taken her out to the finest restaurant in the city, and now they had come back to the honeymoon suite he had insisted on.

Stuart had stepped outside for a moment, and Leah still couldn’t believe she was now actually Mrs. Stuart Winslow as she unpacked her small carpetbag. A few minutes later the door opened, closed, and Stuart stood before her. He had his violin case in his hand, and he flashed her a quick grin.

“Mrs. Winslow, I have a special wedding present for you.”

His cheerful expression relieved her. She sat down on the bed and waited.

Stuart winked at her and said, “A wedding present for my new wife.” He took the violin out, tucked it under his chin, and began to play. He played so softly that no one in the next
room could have heard it. It was such a beautiful tune. There was a poignancy and power to its lilting melody that warmed Leah’s heart. Somehow as she listened, Leah could not keep the tears from her eyes. When he put the violin back in the case, he came over and sat down beside her for a moment. “I just wrote it today,” he said. “It’s for you.”

“What’s the name of it?” Leah asked, brushing the tears from her eyes.

“Leah’s Song.”

“Oh, Stuart, how beautiful!”

Stuart rose, put out the light, and took her in his arms. “I haven’t written the words to the song yet, but I’ll write them as we live together.”

As he kissed her, Leah could hardly believe the happiness that flooded her heart as she held on to him fiercely.

“By the time we’ve been married fifty years,” he whispered, “it’ll be a very long song.”

As she nestled into his strong arms, she heard herself crying out, “Never leave me, Stuart.”

And then his voice came to her. “I never will. What we have is forever.”

Leah felt more tears gather in her eyes, but she turned and whispered, “Yes—it’ll be forever!”

CHAPTER THREE

First Anniversary

Thanksgiving had always been a special holiday for Leah. Some of her earliest memories were of those times when she was little more than a toddler, following her mother around in the kitchen. She always associated the season with the smell of turkey roasting in the oven, spicy pumpkin pies, and the bustle of getting everything ready at the same time.

Now Thanksgiving had come again, the end of her first year of marriage, and she had risen from bed determined to cook a Thanksgiving dinner that Stuart would never forget—their first together as husband and wife. She moved carefully, for the baby she carried was only a month away from entering the world. She was swollen and her face was puffy, but she ignored the discomfort as she moved around the kitchen, then reached up to get a large mixing bowl from a top shelf. The effort, slight as it was, brought a grimace to her face. Her pregnancy had been difficult. She had not complained, but she had felt guilty. She knew all too well how little patience Stuart had with any kind of distress she might speak of.

Getting the eggs out of the icebox, she cracked four of them and then beat them with a fork until they were light yellow. She added the pumpkin that Annie had cleaned and put it in a bowl and then stirred it with a wooden mixing spoon. From time to time she added cinnamon, ginger, and allspice as she continued to stir. Finally she poured half a cup of molasses and a cup of milk into the bowl. She was just getting it all
mixed together when a voice behind her said, “Now, whut you think you’re doin’?”

Guiltily Leah held up the spoon and said defensively, “I’m making pumpkin pudding for dinner.”

The black face of Annie Waters was a study in disgust. She was a large woman—not overweight, just big—in her middle thirties. She came quickly across the room and snatched the spoon away from Leah. “I done told you you ain’t cookin’ today! I reckon I’m able to do all the cookin’ around dis here place!”

“But, Annie—”

“Don’t you ‘But, Annie’ me! Dr. Morton done tol’ you to do nothin’ but lay in dat bed!”

“But I get so tired of the bed, Annie.”

“Then you go set down in the parlor in that big easy chair. You hear me?”

“All right, Annie, but bring the pecans in. I can crack them for the pecan pie.”

“I ain’t studyin’ no pecan pie! You just get in there and do what I tells you!”

Subdued, Leah moved slowly into the parlor. She had become very fond of Annie Waters and her husband, Merle, who had been on the farm for five years. Merle, a big bruising man and strong as a bull, did the outside work, and Annie did a great deal of it, too. During Leah’s pregnancy, however, Annie had become housecleaner, nursemaid, cook, and all other things.
I don’t know what I would have done without Annie,
Leah thought as she made her way into the living room. She sat down slowly and carefully in the overstuffed chair and propped her feet up on the hassock with a sigh of relief. She stared down at her legs, which were swollen, and a moment of fear came to her. Dr. Morton had called on her daily during the pregnancy, and often he had waved his thick forefinger in her face, saying, “If you want to keep this baby, you’ll stay in bed. Let Stuart and Annie take care of you.”

Picking up the composition book that she used for a journal, she took her pen and began to write.

For a moment she paused, and a quick memory came to her. She knew if she looked back over her entries for the past year, since the day she and Stuart got married, she would find many similar entries.
Stuart gone to play for a wedding. . . . Stuart gone to play for the opening of a new building. . . . Stuart invited to play for the inauguration of the governor.

She sighed at the remembrance of so many nights alone and continued to write:

She continued writing for some time. It was a means for her to express her deep feelings, since Stuart was away so much.
These past three months she had been a very lonely woman. The first few months of her marriage had been nothing but constant joy. Stuart had stayed with her, and they had enjoyed doing everything together. He had turned down hundreds of invitations, it seemed, to go away and play, but then something had happened between them, and she could not understand what it was. At first he accepted a few invitations to play, and soon he was away more and more.

She flexed her fingers and then wrote:

****

Annie turned at the sound of the door slamming and watched as Merle clomped across the floor and dumped an enormous armload of wood into the woodbox.

“Well, is that all the noise you can make?” she said sharply.

“I don’t know how you expect me to put wood in a box without makin’ no noise.” He came over suddenly, and her back was to him. He put his arms around her and squeezed as he lifted her clear off the floor.

“Put me down, you silly man!” she said sharply, but he held her there until she began to giggle. “You hear what I tells you? Now you put me down!”

“Woman, you just get sweeter every year.”

Merle was an enormous man, six feet four and weighing over two hundred fifty pounds. His strength was proverbial in the Lewisville area. He picked up loads no other man could even think of lifting. Once, he picked up a whole bale of cotton and carried it twenty steps just to win a bet. His skin was a glowing ebony and his hair nappy, and a deep inner peace glowed through his warm brown eyes.

“How Miss Leah doin’?”

“She ain’t doin’ no good.”

“Ain’t that too bad. I glad we’s had our chilluns easy.”

“
We
had our chilluns! Where do you get that
we?
”

“Well, you had ’em easy, then. Does that make you feel better?”

Merle stood over her, watching as she cooked the Thanksgiving meal, and finally she turned and said, “Where’s Mistah Stuart?”

“Why you ask me that? It ain’t none of my business. Why you always jumpin’ on me for somethin’ I never done?” Merle was peeved, but he saw that Annie was perturbed. “I know,” he said. “It’s bad, ain’t it?”

“She don’t really know what Mr. Stuart’s doin’.”

Merle shook his head sadly. “I guess it’s best she don’t know about his carryin’ on.”

“Well, this is Thanksgivin’, and it’s their weddin’ anniversary. I want you to go find him and bring him home.”

“Me! How am I gonna bring him home if he don’t wanna come? He’s the boss.”

“Knock him on the head and bring him home.”

“I can’t do that!”

“You’re big enough.”

“Where we gonna go after he throws us out?”

“He ain’t gonna do that. He’s guilty as a sheep-killin’ dog.” Annie was filled with indignation. She had grown to love Leah Winslow with a motherly affection, and now she reached out and grabbed Merle’s arm. “We gotta do somethin’,” she said.
“You know how he is. He won’t even think about comin’ home until he’s dead drunk. Now you go fetch ’im.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

“You go find Mr. Ace. He keeps up with him, and you bring him back. You hear me? Don’t you come back without him.”

“I’ll do the best I can, but how you expect a black man to boss a white man around is more than I kin see.”

“If you can’t do nothin’ else, you go to his mama. She’ll figure out some way.”

“She already done got her heart broke over that man.”

“Well, it’ll just have to be broke a little bit more, ’cause I ain’t havin’ my baby in there without her husband on their first anniversary. Now git!”

****

The sun was high in the sky, almost at the zenith, as Ace Devainy caught sight of the beginnings of Mapleton. He was whistling a tune, as usual, but he stopped abruptly as the first shacks on the outskirts of town came into view. The air had a sharp bite to it, for it was a cold Thanksgiving. “I expect we might get some snow,” Ace muttered aloud. He sat loosely on the seat of the wagon, clucking occasionally at the matched team of bays that paced in a sprightly fashion down the rutted roads. A late rain had come and churned the roads into a red gumbo, and then the cold weather had frozen it again. The frozen ruts caused the wagon to bounce along in time, making Ace swear softly as his teeth clicked together.

Unhappiness scored Devainy’s homely face as he slowed the team down. He pulled his soft wide-brimmed hat off and ran his hand through his yellow hair. His stormy blue eyes reflected the agitation he felt inside, and he muttered once, “I’d rather do most anything than try to drag Stuart away from his fun.”

He sat up straighter as a memory flashed across his mind of the massive form of Merle Waters, who had come to his room earlier. Merle’s black face was embarrassed, but his eyes
were determined as he had explained his mission. “Mr. Stuart needs to be home, Mr. Ace. Annie done sent me to get you and to find out where he is. I got to try to bring him home.”

Ace had understood the black man’s own agitation. Merle was certainly big enough to simply put most men under his arm and walk away, but it wouldn’t do in the south for a black man to behave like that.

“I’ll fetch him back, Merle. You go tell Annie that I’ll have him there before dark.”

“He might not want to come, suh.”

“He’s comin’ whether he wants to or not.”

Now as Ace guided the wagon down the single main street of Mapleton, his jaw hardened and he nodded, speaking to himself, “He’s comin’ all right, whether he likes it or not. Why does he have to act like this?”

He had a fairly good idea of where to find Stuart, so he drew up in front of a saloon on a side street, tied the horses, and went inside. He was greeted at once by an old friend of his, Betty Marrs.

“Well, Ace, look at you!” Marrs was a hefty woman, and she wore more cosmetics than necessary. She came over to give Ace a hug. “Sit down and have a drink.”

“Before noon? I reckon not.”

Marrs laughed. “I’ve seen the time when the hour of day wouldn’t matter to you, Ace. You’re gettin’ old.”

“Reckon you’ve got somethin’ there. A man’s got to grow up sometime.”

The words seemed to disturb Betty Marrs. She heaved a big breath and said, “I guess you’re right, Ace. What are you doing over here?”

“Looking for Stuart.”

“He’s down at Cora’s house.”

“I thought he might be. I hoped I’d catch him here.”

“He’s been in and out, but mostly he’s with Cora. You know what’s going on between those two?”

“None of my business, Betty. I’ll see you later.”

Leaving the dingy saloon, Ace climbed up into the wagon and drove it slowly down the street until he pulled up on the east outskirts of town in front of a freshly painted frame house. “Whoa,” he said, and when the horses stopped, he sat quietly, wondering how he should handle the situation. “I wish it could be easy,” he murmured. “But with Stuart I doubt it. He never did like to be bossed around.” Reaching under the wagon seat, he pulled out a box and opened it. Inside was a .44, a box of shells, and a leather-covered blackjack. Ace had bought the revolver and the shells, but he had taken the blackjack away from a gambler who wanted to argue about the call of a card in a poker game. He had seldom thought of it and never carried it, but now he slipped it into the back pocket of his overalls. Pulling his hat down, he stepped out of the wagon, tied the horses, and walked up to the front steps. He knocked loudly, and for a long time, it seemed no one was there. He banged vigorously on the door and said, “Cora, open the door!”