[Troublesome Creek 01] - Troublesome Creek (17 page)

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Authors: Jan Watson

BOOK: [Troublesome Creek 01] - Troublesome Creek
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Oh, well. That’s fodder for another day.
Pushing the tangled hair from her eyes, she realized she must look a sight. “I can’t go milk like this,” she muttered. “I’ll scare Molly to death!”
The least she could do was tame her hair. Where was her scarf? The rosebush where she’d tossed it earlier in the day gave off a musty perfume when she shook its brown and drooping blossoms. Copper scratched her head. “Willy? Daniel? Have you seen my blue bandanna?”
“No, Sissy, but since you’re looking for things, have you seen Mam’s biscuit cutter? Me and Daniel’s in trouble ’til we find it. What I want to know is, why does everyone think we’re always the guilty ones?”
“I can’t imagine,” Copper answered, rolling her eyes. “What’s that behind your back?”
“Apple butter. I snuck some,” Willy confessed boldly. “Do you want a bite?”
Copper turned toward the barn, calling back, “No, I’ll wait for supper. I’ve got to go milk. Want to help?”
 
Grace watched Copper and Willy walk toward the barn and then went about her business, retrieving her wooden bread bowl from the curtained-off pantry. She kept flour sifted with baking powder and salt ever ready so all she had to add was an egg-size dollop of lard and a splash of milk. She stirred the mixture until dough formed, then sprinkled a circle of flour on the kitchen table. Dumping the dough out, Grace kneaded it with the heel of her hand. She patted it until it was about half an inch thick and reached for her biscuit cutter, only then remembering it was gone. Flour smudged her brow as she wearily rubbed a hand across her eyes and rummaged in the pantry for a small tin can to make a new cutter.
What was to become of the girl she’d raised and had such high hopes for? Laura Grace was already taking on a womanly figure, and the young men were beginning to notice. Just last Sunday there’d been a scuffle in the churchyard between John Pelfrey and Henry Thomas, both wanting to walk her home.
Next, Laura Grace would be in trouble like her mother had been. Oh, that had been a terrible time. Their father so sick and Julie sneaking around, pleasing herself instead of helping Grace take care of him. And then, of course, Julie left with Will with never a thought of what she left Grace to bear alone. The neighbors all talking—first about Julie, then about her father. They said he killed himself, but she knew better. He died of a broken heart; he’d quit living when her mother passed on, though it had taken him years to die.
But there was still hope for Laura Grace. She simply had to think of a way to get her off the mountain.
“Lord,” she talked to God as she worked, “sometimes I despair for my children. The boys take things and then deny it. Laura Grace sasses and has no repentance. Give me strength.”
After cutting the biscuits and putting them in the oven, Grace went to the mirror over the washstand and wiped flour from her face with the hem of her apron. Her eyes stared back through eyeglasses as round and thick as nickels, the bridge of her nose eternally red from where they rested. Sometimes she didn’t even recognize herself anymore. A familiar despair wrapped around her and blocked the light as effectively as the brooding mountain outside the door. She needed air. She wrenched up a window and propped it open with a folding screen.
Will had installed windows all along the front-room wall when she carried the twins. No easy task, for he’d had to saw through logs put in place nearly a hundred years before. But she hadn’t been able to stand the oppressive darkness in the low-ceilinged room . . . the feeling of weight. She washed those windows with vinegar water every Friday and polished them with newsprint. When he finished the windows, he’d added two bedrooms for he knew she needed privacy.
Suddenly Grace wrinkled her nose at the smell of something burning.
The biscuits!
She rushed to the kitchen and pulled them from the oven. She’d have to scrape the bottoms when they cooled. Sighing, Grace shook herself as if flinging off her cares and finished her family’s supper—biscuits with fresh apple butter and glasses of milk for her and the children, plus leftover fried chicken for Will. Men had to have meat.
Moments later, Will opened the screen door; the boys followed close on his heels. “My, something smells good,” he said. “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”
“If I was a horse, I’d be wild so’s you couldn’t eat me, Daddy.” Willy neighed and pranced around.
“Then I’ll take this old plow horse.” Will scooped up Daniel and nuzzled his belly. “Mrs. Brown, what would you take for this give-down horse? I’d like to have him for supper.”
She pasted on a smile and played the game. Her husband and children deserved better than the mood she was in. “Oh, kind sir, he’s not for sale. He lives in my house and eats apple butter on biscuits.” She turned her back and tucked her handkerchief back into her pocket.
After supper, after the dishes, and after the boys were tucked in bed, Grace had a moment to herself. She stared out the dark window, although she could see nothing outside. The jars of apple butter she’d canned stood as straight as soldiers along the windowsill. The cellar held food enough to feed her family all winter, and she knew Will would keep them supplied with fresh meat when they needed it. Through the reflection in the glass, she watched as he slowly rocked in his chair in front of the fire. The Bible that had belonged to his father lay open on his lap. She was embarrassed to remember how she’d once supposed he couldn’t read.
She took her dishrag and wiped the already spotless kitchen table, gazing at Will from the corner of her eye. He was a good man, she knew, kind to his children and considerate to her, and every Sunday without fail he saw that his family was in church.
So what’s wrong?
she wondered.
What’s wrong with me?
Why couldn’t she be happy with him and with the life God had given her? She had so much more than many women, but hard as she fought it, she couldn’t keep her own guilt and resentment at bay.
Laura Grace entered the room, her braided hair tucked for sleep under her nightcap, and leaned over Will’s shoulder to look at a Scripture he underlined for her with his finger.
Grace felt her emotions roil at the sight. Try as Grace did, Laura Grace never approached her with the same ease. She gave him a peck on the cheek. “Good night, Daddy,” Grace heard her say before she came across the room to lay a piece of paper with Luke 6:45 printed in a tidy script twenty-five times on the table.
“Well done,” Grace said as she appraised the work. “Now, what do you say?”
“I’m sorry, Mam. Good night.” Laura Grace kissed her on the cheek as she had her father.
Grace’s fingers traced the little kiss when her daughter left the room. A sudden sadness brought tears to her eyes. How close she was to losing Laura Grace in one way or another. She tapped the paper against her chin. What could she do to make things right? Boarding school was the answer, she knew, but how was she to change Will’s mind and how was she to make Laura Grace believe?
She pressed both hands into the small of her aching back. Maybe she’d get a letter from her friend Millicent soon. It seemed like a lifetime ago when they attended teachers’ training school together. Now Millicent and her husband owned a school in Philadelphia that catered to the finest families. Grace had been anxiously waiting to hear if they would take Laura Grace as a boarder. She cleaned her spectacles with her handkerchief. There would be more time to worry about that on the morrow. Will was banking the fire. It was time to get to bed.
 
Later that week, Copper was sweeping the porch when she heard the distinctive
clip-clop, clip-clop
of the postman’s mule, Sweetie. She hung her broom on a nail by the screen door and called inside, “Here comes Mr. Bramble!”
Mam bustled out with her embroidery scissors and took her seat in her rocker, while Willy and Daniel ran to the road with water and an apple for Sweetie. “Don’t dally, boys,” Mam called. “I’m anxious to see the post.”
Mr. Bramble didn’t hand the mail to the twins, however. Instead, he handed Sweetie’s reins to Willy and walked toward the porch. “How do?” he said. “Mind if I sit a spell?”
“Please do, Mr. Bramble,” Mam replied as he handed her a stack of mail and newspapers wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. When Mam cut the string, the paper dropped to the floor, a puff of wind sailing it across the porch like a boat. “Laura Grace,” Mam ordered, “fetch Mr. Bramble a glass of water.”
He drank the cold well water straight down. “Miz Brown, c-can I beg a favor?” he stammered, eyes downcast.
“Of course,” she answered, handing the opened packet of mail to Copper. “How can I help you?”
Copper took the mail inside and dropped it on the kitchen table, one ear cocked toward the screen door, trying to keep a peg on the conversation. She could see Mr. Bramble take a battered envelope from his pocket and slowly withdraw a paper as thin as onionskin from it.
“It’s this here missive, Miz Brown. I can read print real good, but this is some kind of foreigner writing, I suspect. You, being educated and all, are the onliest person I figure could decipher it—besides the postmaster, that is—and I didn’t hardly want to bother him.” He leaned toward Mam. “See, he marks my parcels before Sweetie and I set out. Will’s number, 23, never changes.” He underlined it with a dirty fingernail. “Will Brown, 23. I got my route stuck in my head.”
Copper kept out of sight. It wouldn’t do for Mam to catch her eavesdropping. She watched as Mam adjusted her rimless glasses and took the piece of stationery from Mr. Bramble.
“Why, Mr. Bramble,” Mam said, “it seems this is from your cousin Maynard in Oklahoma. He writes in a beautiful cursive.”
“Well, that proves me right,” Mr. Bramble replied. “I knew it was foreign. Otherwise I could have read it.”
Stifling a giggle, Copper bumped the table, knocking the letters and newspapers to the floor. She picked them up as Mam read of dust and grasshoppers and dry wells. A slim brochure illustrating a school caught Copper’s eye. A school in Philadelphia . . . a boarding school. Anger flushed her cheeks as she scanned the pamphlet.
Mam’s already decided. She’s going to send me away!
Mr. Bramble took his leave while Copper neatly stacked the scattered mail. Seething, she secreted the brochure in her apron pocket.
“Beholden, Miz Brown,” she heard him say over the ringing in her ears. “If I can ever do anything for you, just holler.”
“Would you like me to reply to your cousin for you, Mr. Bramble?”
“I’ll need to study on it awhile, ma’am. Once you get a government job everybody thinks you got the funds to nurse ’em. I need to see what I got extra ’fore I send cash money to a body I ain’t heerd from in nigh on twenty years.”

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