Wanton Angel (26 page)

Webb’s eyes went round. “The oven?” he echoed.

Bonnie smiled and laid both her hands on his shoulders in a reassuring gesture. “A very small baby needs help to stay warm,” she said.

Lizbeth’s laugh was chimelike. “Genoa told me that her brother set up an awful fuss over that baby one day, thinking that she was about to roast the little darling!”

The reminder of Eli, however amusing, dampened Bonnie’s spirits. She dared not allow herself to remember their lovemaking in that elegant big-city hotel, so she tried to imagine what Eli would think of Lizbeth when—inevitably —he was introduced to her. Miss Simmons was very attractive, and she was unattached. And so was Eli.

Suddenly Bonnie wasn’t so sure that she wanted this pert, laughing woman for a friend.

When Lizbeth had finished her coffee, she brought her shopping list out of her handbag and extended it to Bonnie.

Bonnie hesitated. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from any of the—the ladies of the town?”

Lizbeth’s smile was almost blinding. “Oh, yes—indirectly. I’ve had several written invitations to tea.” The smile faded to a look of sympathy. “Genoa told me how they treat you, Bonnie, and I don’t think I want to know them. Imagine going to the bother of having one’s groceries shipped in from Colville just to avoid shopping in your store!”

Bonnie was surprised and, for a moment, hopeful. But there had been other newcomers before Lizbeth, some of them initially quite friendly, but they had soon given in to
the persistent remonstrations of the Club. “You know, don’t you, that I was a hurdy-gurdy dancer at the Brass Eagle?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Bonnie saw Webb stiffen, the back of his neck going ruddy.

Lizbeth was undaunted by this bit of scandal. “Oh, yes, Genoa told me that, too. Here, let me see that list again—did I forget to write down hairpins and ink?”

Bonnie surrendered the list and began gathering the items she could remember from it. Lizbeth helped, seeking out other necessities herself. “You ought to give those biddies a little of their own medicine,” she said cheerfully, when Bonnie was ringing up the charges at the cash register.

Knowing that Lizbeth was referring to the members of the Club, Bonnie frowned. “How could I do that?”

Lizbeth’s pansy-black eyes danced. “Have you a big piece of paper, by any chance, and some colored chalk?” she countered.

Bonnie tore off a long strip of butcher paper from the roll at the end of the counter and produced a nubbin of blue chalk. For a time, she’d used a blackboard to post special prices.

Spreading the large piece of paper out on the countertop, Lizbeth bent over it, forming big letters and coloring them in with the smidgen of blue chalk, which stained her fingers.

Curious beyond all bearing, Bonnie nonetheless went back to the stove. Webb greeted her with a mournful look and a rousing sneeze.

When Lizbeth had finally finished her task, she turned around, beaming, holding the paper up for Bonnie to read.
NO MEMBERS OF THE FRIDAY AFTERNOON COMMUNITY IMPROVEMENT CLUB MAY TRADE IN THIS ESTABLISHMENT
, the decree proclaimed.

A slow smile spread across Webb’s face, but Bonnie was baffled. She simply stared at the paper, wondering what use it would be to warn away shoppers who were already sworn never to set foot inside her store.

The irrepressible Lizbeth carried the paper to the front window and spread it out in full view, completely covering a display of canned goods. She even went outside, without her cloak, to read the sign through the rain-dappled glass
and gauge its effect. She was smiling, if wet, when she came back inside.

“I daresay that will put a bee in their bonnets!” she said buoyantly. “Stuffy old things!”

Bonnie was still puzzled. “I don’t see how—”

Lizbeth raised the hood of her bright red plaid cloak and gathered up her carefully bundled purchases, ready to leave. “Just wait, Bonnie. Just wait.” With that, the teacher made her departure, disappearing into the gray drizzle of the day.

It was closing time, and Bonnie pulled the shades and locked the doors. Katie was upstairs, preparing supper, and Rose had fallen asleep on her blanket on the floor, holding her doll close.

“Won’t you stay and eat with us, Webb?” Bonnie asked, putting Lizbeth and that silly sign out of her mind. “Katie is a very good cook, you know, and she’s made chicken and dumplings for dinner.”

Webb looked reluctant and, at the same time, patently miserable. His finely shaped nose was red and so were his eyes, and he continued to shiver inside his blanket. “I wouldn’t want to be any bother—”

Bonnie bent and lifted Rose, blanket, doll and all, into her arms. The little girl’s head fell against her shoulder in sleepy abandon. “Bother? I thought we were friends, you and I. Besides, you’re coming down with something and I can’t send you back out into that rain without some warm food in your stomach.”

Somewhat sheepishly Webb stood up. He was as tall as a mountain and yet, in that moment, huddled inside his blanket, he resembled a little boy more than a man. “Earline will have something ready—” he began, but when he saw the reaction Bonnie tried to hide, his words fell off in midsentence.

“By all means, Webb, risk your death of pneumonia,” Bonnie said coolly, “but don’t disappoint Earline.”

Webb looked delighted. “Are you jealous?”

Bonnie turned away quickly, not wanting him to guess that she was indeed jealous, but not of his relationship with Earline. It was Eli she was worried about. “Either accept my invitation or turn it down, Webb Hutcheson,” she called
over one shoulder, as she carried Rose Marie up the stairs. “One way or the other, it doesn’t matter to me.”

Webb stayed.

The stewed chicken, topped with light dumplings, was delicious. Everyone enjoyed it except Rose Marie, who kept nodding off to sleep in her highchair. Finally Bonnie excused herself to put her daughter to bed.

When she returned to the kitchen, Katie was heating water for dishwashing and Webb was clearing the table. Bonnie paused in the doorway, strangely touched by the sight. Despite the incident that had taken place in that very room, only the night before, she knew there was no better, gentler man in all the world. What perfect good sense it would have made to marry him, tend his house and his garden, prepare his meals—but when it came to love, Bonnie had no sense.

She took a dish towel from the peg and dried bowls and spoons and cups as Katie washed them. Webb lingered at the table, drinking the coffee Bonnie had poured for him in silence.

When the dishes were all washed and put away, Katie gave Bonnie an eloquent look that clearly asked whether she should stay or go. Knowing that the girl longed to bury herself in yet another book, Bonnie nodded that she could go.

Katie cast one worried glance at Webb and left the kitchen to read in her room.

Bonnie poured coffee for herself and sat down at the table, across from Webb. One kerosene lamp flickered between them, giving the room a coziness so sweet that it tugged at Bonnie’s heart.

Webb sighed, turning his coffee cup between his hands. “What I did last night—it changed things between us, didn’t it, Bonnie?”

It would have been so easy to blame breaking the sham engagement on that. There would even have been a degree of justification in it, Bonnie’s part in the matter aside. But she cared too much for Webb to pretend. “I’m not sure things have ever been truly right between us, Webb,” she said.

“You’re going to say you can’t marry me, aren’t you?” Webb asked gruffly, and then, poor dear, he sneezed again, with such violence that Bonnie started.

“Dear me,” she hedged, as he brought out his handkerchief. “You are catching a terrible cold!”

“I don’t want to talk about my cold!” Webb barked through his handkerchief. “Are you going to marry me?”

“I’m surprised you still want me, after all the talk about my trip to Spokane.” Bonnie searched within herself for the courage to be honest with Webb, to hurt him this once so that he would be free to find real love with some other woman, love to last him a lifetime.

Webb wadded his handkerchief and stuffed it into his trouser pocket. “Don’t be surprised,” he answered, his gaze direct. So painfully direct. “I’d want you even if I caught you with McKutchen myself.”

Bonnie ached.
Tell him,
demanded the still, small voice within her.
Tell him now.

But she couldn’t. “Webb, that’s dreadful! You’re the kind of man any woman would be proud to have as a husband, and you should have more pride!”

His eyes still held hers. “I have no pride where you’re concerned, Bonnie. I’d crawl, if I had to.”

Bonnie’s hands were knotted together in her lap and her heart pounded in the base of her throat, all but choking her. “Don’t say that!” she whispered brokenly. “I’m not worthy of that—nobody is!”

Webb was rising out of his chair, putting on his damp suitcoat. His hair was curly from the rain and the sight and scent of it gave Bonnie a pang. “I love you,” he said, in that quiet way of his, and then he kissed the top of Bonnie’s head and left by the kitchen door.

Bonnie laid her head in her arms and did her very best not to cry. How terribly ironic it was that she so wished she could love Webb Hutcheson and, at the same time, hoped and prayed that he would find someone else to care for.

“Things are in a fierce muddle, aren’t they, ma’am?” Katie asked gently, from nearby.

Bonnie lifted her head, saw that the girl was measuring tea leaves into the yellow crockery pot. “Yes, Katie. They are.”

“There was lots of talk while you were gone,” Katie confided, without looking around. Her small back was stiff with indignation. “Those old hens. As if they’d ever made an effort to improve the community! Everything good’s been done despite them, by Miss Genoa or Mr. McKutchen or you!”

“I haven’t done anything,” Bonnie sighed, wishing that she had. The misery in Patch Town might have ended long ago if she hadn’t been so selfish, so caught up in the Cinderella aspects of her marriage to Eli McKutchen. How thoughtless of others she’d been then, wearing beautiful clothes, eating fabulous food, spending money as though it was her due. Why hadn’t she demanded that Eli do something about Patch Town then? Had God taken Kiley away to heaven to punish her for caring so little about the people of her own class?

“You have,” Katie argued forcefully. “You never deny anybody medicine or food, even though most of them can’t pay.”

“It’s the least I can do, Katie,” Bonnie sighed. Her shoulders drooped and she felt so tired, so old. “I forgot about those people when I married Eli. I abandoned them.”

“What could you have done?”

“I’ll tell you what I could have done,” Bonnie said bitterly, furious with that thoughtless girl she had once been. “I could have demanded that Eli make Patch Town a habitable, decent place. I could have insisted—”

“Would he have paid you any mind, ma’am,” Katie challenged softly, “or would he just have patted you on the head and dismissed you, like you’ve told me he did when you said what you thought of the war?”

The teakettle whistled on the stove and Bonnie got up to pour hot water onto the leaves of orange pekoe inside the yellow pot. Katie’s words had given her pause. “I don’t know,” she confessed in a faraway voice.

Rain lashed at the windows and the roof, as if determined to get inside the warm kitchen and chill it, and a flash of lightning filled the room with an eerie glow. “Mr. McKutchen is a fine man,” Katie observed seriously, “but he’s nothing more than a man, is he? And men don’t put much stock in a woman’s opinion when it comes to practical
matters. It might be that your husband would have gone right on ignoring how things were in Patch Town, no matter what you did or said.”

Bonnie carried the teapot and two cups to the table and sat down again. “Yes,” she conceded, “but I didn’t even try. That’s what bothers me, Katie. I didn’t even think to bring the subject up.”

Katie poured tea for herself and for Bonnie. She was determined to lend comfort, it appeared, no matter how awesome the task might prove to be. “You can’t go back and change that time, ma’am. It’s gone forever, so why grieve over what you did or didn’t do?”

Why, indeed? But Bonnie did grieve. And when she was alone in her bedroom, except for a soundly sleeping Rose Marie, she got out the music box Eli had given her and opened its lid. The strange melody flowed sweetly through the darkness, and Bonnie yearned for a time that would never come again. A dream time that had perhaps never really existed at all.

E
VEN THOUGH MOST
of the townspeople had already endured a two-hour sermon at the First Presbyterian Church or an equally lengthy mass at St. Jude’s, the Pompeii Playhouse was packed that Sunday afternoon, when the community met to hear what Eli McKutchen had to say. The union people, of course, were also present, standing at the back of the theatre and even in the aisles.

As mayor of Northridge, Bonnie demanded the right to sit on the stage, with Eli, Seth and Forbes. Forbes had apparently been reinstated as manager of the smelter works, and Bonnie observed to herself that his face was healing nicely.

The women in the audience watched Bonnie with open hostility in their countenances. It was clear enough that they considered her title a mere sham—which it undeniably was—and resented what they saw as pure presumptuousness. In truth, Bonnie only wanted an opportunity to be heard.

As Eli approached the hastily improvised lectern, however, she began to lose confidence. The mayoralty was only a token office, even when held by a man. Bonnie’s appointment had been nothing more than a drunken jest, perpetrated by the town council. What was she doing, sitting up
here in front of God and everybody? What could she say that Eli or Seth or even Forbes wouldn’t say first?

Eli began to speak, and there was not a trace of nervousness in either his stance at the rickety packing-crate podium or in his voice. He offered a soundly built cabin to every smelter family, along with an eight-hour workday. He promised that each man could buy his cabin, if he wished to, and thus be assured of a place to live in old age. There was a stir at this announcement, for such security was almost unheard of among men who earned their living by the might of their backs and their hands.