Windswept (4 page)

She then stood on a stool and dowsed Nora completely with the bucket of water. Handing her a ball of soap, she said, “Now you wash. Then I’ll rinse again.”

Sputtering through a mouthful of water and shivering with its chill, Nora scrubbed away the remains of the salt water and endured Lulu’s second rinsing. When she dried herself and emerged from the barrel in her robe, she ran her hand down her damp hair. It did indeed feel softer. Turning to Lulu, she said, “Don’t people ever take civilized baths around here?”

“Oh, yes, missy, but this is faster, and you smelled like fish. Bah!”

The next day dawned crystalline with a sky so blue it defined the color, and air so fresh it seemed to have been made for that morning alone. Nora chose the early hour while her family slept to explore the garden.

She’d learned the day before that preparations for the Seabrooks to move into the Samuel Rutherford house had begun weeks before. Portia’s son Hector had tended the trees. Varieties of fruit, most of which Nora had never seen, hung heavy from pruned limbs. She recognized bananas and grapefruit but had no idea what to call the oblong green specimens and decided to find Hector later and ask him.

A vegetable garden flourished with potatoes, tomatoes and peppers. Herbs grew in boxes along the fence line, and a special place was reserved near the cistern for cultivating the medicinal plant Lulu had shown her called Aloe. “You will appreciate its qualities the first time your skin burns, missy,” she had said.

It was a practical, bountiful and peaceful garden, and Nora looked forward to halcyon days and cool sunsets in its comforting surroundings. Solitude was not destined for her this first morning, however. She hadn’t been in the garden a quarter hour when she heard a knock on the back fence gate.

She opened the gate and stared down into three inquisitive brown faces. She recognized one child as the boy, Felix, who’d pulled the donkey cart. A little girl and another boy were with him, and at the end of a short rope they were holding on to, was a white goat.

Nora smiled. “You’re Felix aren’t you? You brought our trunks yesterday.”

He seemed pleased that she remembered him. “Yes. Did I do a good job?”

“Certainly. A very good job.” It occurred to Nora that perhaps he asked the question and returned this morning because he hadn’t been paid for bringing their belongings. In all the excitement, she hadn’t thought of it, and perhaps it had slipped her father’s mind as well. “Were you paid for that service?” she asked.

“Yes, miss,” he answered. “Mr. Hyde paid me.” He worried a small stone in the street with his bare toe and grinned up at her. His eyes were like chestnuts under thick lashes. “But sometimes, if my work is thought to be very good, I get a little something extra.”

So that was the reason for this visit. “I see,” Nora said. “Your work was very good. If you’ll wait here, I will bring you a coin to say thank you.”

“Wait, miss, before you go. I want you to meet my sister and brother.” Felix took hold of the girl’s hand and coaxed her forward. “This is Esmeralda. She is eight years old.” He did the same for the boy. “And this is Ty. He is seven. Portia is our grandmother. We are the Obalu family,” he said proudly.

Bending at the waist, Nora shook hands with each of the children. She decided that large, expressive eyes and honey-toned skin must be an Obalu family trait. “It is very nice to meet you,” she said. “And if you wait, I will get Felix’s coin.”

“One more thing before you go, miss.” Felix took the rope from his brother and held it out to Nora. “You must also pay for your goat.”

“My goat? I don’t have a goat.”

“Now you do. This is your goat. Everyone on the island has a goat. This one is named Reckless, and he’s yours.”

Nora put her hand over her mouth to suppress a bout of giggles. “I’m sure he is a fine goat, but I don’t want a goat,” she said.

“But you will. Goats eat garbage. It’s the way we do things. Otherwise the island would fill up with garbage. Humans make a lot of garbage, but goats don’t mind. They eat it all.”

Nora studied Reckless’s placid face. What Felix said did make sense. She knew very little about goats, but she remembered hearing once that they ate many odd things. And this goat had a sweet, serene look about him with his interesting short horns and a wispy, almost dignified beard. She supposed it might be all right to have Reckless around. “How much must I pay for my goat?” she said, suddenly suspicious of Felix’s round, innocent eyes.

“Only one dollar fifty,” he said.

That wasn’t so bad.

“…a month. You only rent your goat. I will collect on the first day of each month.”

Still, if this was how the residents solved the problem of too much garbage, it wasn’t much to pay. “All right, then. Wait here,” Nora said. When she came back, she handed Felix two dollars and he placed the goat’s rope in her hand.

“You are very kind, miss,” he said.

The goat, which up to this time, had been the picture of docility, began to prance about uncertainly. He strained against the rope, lowered his head and butted it into the folds of Nora’s skirt. He darted back out again but with a sizable chunk of green and white striped percale in his masticating jaws.

Not another dress ruined, Nora thought. And I haven’t even been here twenty-four hours! “No, goat no,” she said, pushing at the part of Reckless’ head between his horns.

The children dissolved into fits of laughter until Felix came to the rescue. “Watch, miss,” he said, and stuck his finger in the goat’s ear. The animal immediately let go of the dress. “That’s all you have to do.”

Nora answered Felix’s self-assured grin with a smirk of disapproval. “You could have told me this goat trick before you handed me the rope,” she said.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I thought everyone knew about the ear.”

“What goes on out here?” A sober-faced Portia came through the gate and approached the children. Her fist shook in the air threatening to land on someone’s head if she were the least provoked. “What are you all doing here bothering Miss Seabrook?”

Nora immediately came to their defense. “They weren’t bothering me, really. They’re quite charming children.”

“Humph! I know how my grandchildren can be.” She cast a stern eye on each of them that Nora was certain would have stopped a charging elephant. But her face softened when she saw Reckless. “You’ve brought our goat, I see.”

The children nodded.

“Good.” She took the rope and pulled an obedient Reckless behind her into the yard. After securing the rope to a stake, she came back to the gate. “Did you tell Miss Seabrook we must keep the goat tied in the yard, or he will eat all our vegetables?”

Nora looked at all three angelic faces. “I’m sure they were just going to tell me that.”

Portia huffed again. “Then go. And stop at the market for fresh conch. Tell your mama to make fritters.”

Soon all that was left of the children was the cloud of dust kicked up by their bare feet.

“They’re adorable children,” Nora said, expecting a glow of pride to brighten their grandmother’s face.

Instead she saw a wrinkled brow. “They seem so to you, eh?” Portia waggled her finger at Nora. “Take some advice, Miss Seabrook. Never tell them that when there is still a whole day of mischief to get into.”

A whole day of mischief
? It was a weekday in the middle of February. Many free blacks up north were in school getting an education. “Why aren’t these children in school?” she asked.

“Bah! The only school on this island is for whites. And it costs money. My children learn what they can, and they get by.”

Portia went back to the house, but Nora stayed at the gate pondering the dilemma for these Bahamian children. They had so much time on their hands. They should be learning, and yet there was no school available to them. It wasn’t right. She experienced a rumbling in her stomach in response to the smell of breakfast foods coming from the kitchen house, and decided to think more about this problem later. Right now she was starved.

She had just started back inside the gate when movement from across the street caught her eye. Someone stood under a gigantic tree with a wide trunk and large roots that climbed clear to the lower limbs. The unusual tree was interesting enough, but the man leaning against it was more fascinating by far. He was dressed in a white shirt and dark pants, and when he realized she’d spotted him, he pushed away from the trunk and took a step closer to her.

He crossed his arms as she’d seen him do the day before, but this time it was a casual gesture, not a defensive one. She knew this for certain because he was smiling. Actually, he was more than smiling. His lips curled upwards in a grin of such absolute delight that she might have felt inclined to answer it with a smile of her own. But she didn’t, for she knew instinctively that his amusement was at her expense.

She didn’t know how long he had been standing there, but she felt sure he’d seen her entire get-acquainted scene with the goat. One little voice inside her told her to return to her back yard and shut the gate immediately. But another voice, one that was much more persuasive, made her stay. In fact, she even shut the gate behind her and waited near the street as he came across.

Chapter Three

Watching Jacob Proctor approach, Nora took a deep breath to calm an odd quaking in her stomach. He stopped within a few feet of her and let his gaze wander from her hastily combed and restrained hair to the ruffled hem of her striped dress. His grin which, on closer inspection, hinted more of friendly interest than ridicule spread across his face and was reflected in his eyes. Despite the amusement in their gray depths, or perhaps because of it, Nora sensed an indefinable power about the man, as if he truly could be the force her father had come to Key West to reckon with.

The sun glinted off strands of wheat colored hair that swept over his ears and brushed his collar. This also said something about Jacob Proctor. Nora rarely saw a man without his hat in Richmond, and even this seemingly small defiance of convention marked Proctor as one who did not follow rules.

He assumed a casual stance, resting his elbow on one of the tall fence posts that enclosed the family’s back yard. Still smiling, he said, “Lovely morning, isn’t it, Miss Seabrook?”

She nodded with as much disinterest as she could muster. It would be well if he knew she was concerned with more important matters than the weather. “Captain, do you enjoy watching me make a fool of myself?”

The smile grew broader. “I hardly know how to answer that. No matter if I say yes or no, it will imply that I agree that you have indeed been making a fool of yourself. That is hardly an encouraging way to begin our conversation.”

Nora glanced over the fence posts toward the house. This was a conversation she probably shouldn’t be having in the first place, and if anyone saw her, she’d pay dearly for this indiscretion later. “Then perhaps I should start it by asking why you were across the street watching me with the children.”

“I was merely protecting my business interests.”

“Oh, really? What business is that, Captain?”

“The goat you just received. It belongs to me.”

The matter of the goat was becoming more perplexing by the minute. “You mean that you are in the goat peddling business as well as your other endeavors?”

“Guilty as charged, Miss Seabrook. It’s in every wrecker’s license that he must have a
legitimate
business, other than merely saving lives and property. Another one of the decrees of our procession of judges,” he added. “Goat renting is mine. Reckless, as Felix so aptly named him, is one of fifty goats I imported from Mexico to keep up with the island’s growing population. He is an especially fine specimen, too. Always hungry, and not a picky eater. When I heard he was to be yours, I knew he would suit your needs.”

A gust of wind pulled a strand of Nora’s hair from her chignon and tossed it across her face. She retrieved it and tucked it back inside her snood, all the while aware that the captain’s gaze followed her movement. Such attention unsettled her while at the same time caused a flush of guilty pleasure to warm her cheeks. “So my father will be paying our monthly rental for the goat to Proctor’s Warehouse and Salvage Company?”

Proctor nodded. “‘Fraid so.”

Thurston Seabrook was not likely to enjoy lining Jacob Proctor’s pockets with goat money! He’d made it clear that this salvager was to be the focus of his investigation of the wrecking industry.

Proctor angled his head to better see into Nora’s downcast face. When she met his gaze, she stared into gray eyes that were alert and subtly probing, almost as if he could see more with them than most mortal humans. “If it bothers you, Nora, to tell your father I own the goat, you can always give the lease money to Felix. After all, he’s the one who brought Reckless here this morning. I just followed him to make sure he delivered him to the proper residence.”

Most of what Jacob had said faded into insignificance. Nora was more concerned that he’d just called her by her first name. In Richmond, no gentleman with such limited acquaintance with a lady would dare address her so informally. She waited, expecting to see evidence that he realized his social blunder, but what she perceived instead in the clear coolness of his eyes was bold self assurance. Captain Proctor no doubt rarely defended or apologized for what he did. “Perhaps it would be best if I say that Felix owns the goat,” she said.