Courting Miss Hattie (22 page)

As they stepped onto the porch, she knew he was going to kiss her. She was ready. A wild flock of fluttery moths seemed to have made a home in her stomach, but she was excited about kissing
Ancil
. She wanted that strange, pleasantly anxious sensation she'd felt with Reed to happen again. Thinking about the feel of Reed's lips against her was distracting. It made her pulse beat rapidly and an uncustomary giddiness
steal
through her. By kissing
Ancil
, she thought, all her imaginings would soon be about him.

Ancil's
monologue on his years of youthful rabble rousing stopped abruptly as he placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her close. Slowly, as if he expected her to run away, he leaned down and placed a kiss on her lips.

Almost immediately he began to straighten, and Hattie was disappointed. A peck was nice, but was that all? Perhaps because of her previous hesitance he didn't think a peach would be welcome. Before her courage could desert her, she wrapped her arms around his neck, and opening her lips, just as Reed had showed her, she gave him a warm, eager peach.

Ancil
obviously liked it. Sucking in his breath with a hiss, he pulled her tightly against him. Instead of answering her gentle suction with like tenderness, though, he ground his mouth against hers, shifting it back and forth like an unlatched gate. The taste of snuff was unpleasant, but the rough and forceful grasp on her shoulders was worse. Feeling choked and pressured, Hattie jerked away from his unpleasant kiss.

"Well, well, well," he said, smiling smugly. "You are full of surprises, Miss Hattie." Wrapping his arms around her waist, he jerked her back to him, pressing her against his chest. "Still waters run deep, huh?" he whispered against her neck.

Managing to disengage
herself
from his arms, Hattie was not sure exactly what to say, but for some reason she very much wanted to slap that self-satisfied expression off his face. She resisted, however, and said haughtily. "I think it's time you should go home, Mr. Drayton."

Still smiling broadly,
Ancil
wasn't offended by her change of heart in the slightest. "Yes, ma'am," he answered, his politeness clearly pretense. Doffing his hat he added, "It's been a pleasure."

Hattie thought that was to be the last of it when to her horror he reached around her and gave her backside a big possessive pinch. She cried out in pain and alarm, but he only chuckled.

"'Night, Miss Hattie," he said as he stepped off the porch and walked cockily to his horse.

She stared after him with her mouth open in disbelief until he was out of sight, then reached back and rubbed the bruise he'd bestowed on her left buttock.

 
CHAPTER
 
12

«
^
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T
he wind blew against the barren top of the hill overlooking the church,
billowing
the women's dark skirts and whisking away the sound of voices raised in song.

"Could my tears forever
flow,

Could my zeal no languor know,

These for sin could not atone;

Thou must save, and Thou alone
…"

Hattie kept her voice strong and steady as she gazed at the young blond man who stood staring sightlessly at the plain pine box that contained the body of his father, now free from the pains of flesh.

It was Preacher Able who had come by with the bad news. Following Hattie's advice, he'd gone to the
Leege
shack to check on the old man. Drawing each breath was a challenge to Jake, and the dying man's contact with the here and now was completely broken. He spoke only to his lost wife and occasionally his long-dead mother. It was obvious he was seeing his last,
and the preacher decided to stay beside the brave and frightened young man who took such tender care of his father.

"He wasn't a bad man, Preacher," Harmon had insisted during the long night. "It was the drink that took away his dignity, his hope."

The preacher nodded, and Harmon continued to talk, sharing memories of his childhood, before his father lost his direction and headed so far away from his friends and family.

Harmon had spent the bulk of his grief by the time Jake
Leege
drew his final breath, just before dawn. His son lovingly closed his eyes. Jake
Leege
had only stopped breathing that night. He'd lost his life years before.

As Preacher Able related the bare bones of the story to Hattie, she was already mobilizing to help Millie prepare the funeral dinner. "There won't be many that show up," Hattie said frankly. "But the young man deserves to see a spread to rival any in town."

Preacher Able agreed, but leaving the logistics of the occasion to the womenfolk, he turned to wave as Reed drove up, carrying a brand-new porch swing in the back of his wagon. "Morning, Preacher," Reed said. "What brings you out here so early?"

"Actually, I was looking for you, Reed."

Jumping down from the wagon, Reed asked with curiosity and concern, "What's happened?"

"Jake
Leege
passed away last night." The preacher paused to allow a moment of reflection. "With the heat like it's been the past few days, I think we'll probably need to bury him first thing tomorrow morning."

Reed nodded, thinking about Harmon. Jake
Leege
was no big loss to the earth, or so Reed would have thought a couple of months ago. As Harm's friend, though, he grieved. "Do you want me to be a pallbearer?" he asked the reverend.

Preacher Able nodded. "I asked Harmon who he wanted, and you were the only one he could think of."

Nodding sorrowfully, Reed thought of the irony that such a fine hardworking man didn't have enough friends to be pallbearers at his daddy's funeral. "I'll get my father and brothers," he said, already formulating plans.

"Hattie is going to help Millie set up the dinner," Preacher Able told him, "so I suspect everything will turn out just fine. Somebody ought to be with Harmon tonight when he sits with the body."

"I'll stay," Reed said. "I'm not much god at talking, but I can sit up as late as the next man."

The preacher nodded.

Reed looked at Hattie, still standing on the porch. "I'll go find the pallbearers this morning and then go over to Harmon's shack. Is he making the coffin himself?"

"Yes," the preacher said. "He told me he could take care of it."

Reed turned back to Hattie. "I'll stay over there tonight,
then
have my father come over early in the morning while I go back to the house to change. You get all your coking ready, Miss Hattie, and I'll come by and pick you up about
eight o'clock
."

Hattie opened her mouth in surprise, but before she could say a word, Preacher Able piped up. "Hattie can take care of herself, Reed. Besides, you'll
be needing
to pick up Bessie Jane."

Reed looked at the preacher stupidly,
then
realized what he'd just said. Of course Reed would take Bessie Jane to the funeral. She was the woman he was to marry. For a moment, he was speechless with his own foolishness. He'd forgotten Bessie Jane's existence completely. "Sure," he said finally. Glancing at Hattie, he shrugged. "I don't know what got into me. I'll be picking up Bessie Jane, of course."

Hattie nodded, furious with herself for the rush of excitement that had flashed through her.

"I'll send my brother Andy over to help you," Reed added. "I know you'll be fixing a ton of food, and you can't manage that by yourself."

"I could ride over to Drayton's place and ask him to help you," the preacher suggested.

"No!" Hattie answered much
to
quickly. "He didn't care much for
Leege
," she added lamely, "and if he went, he'd have to get all the children ready."

So Reed's youngest brother had loaded the buggy for her, and now she stood next to him as the last words of the graveside hymn faded away.

She couldn't see Reed, who stood to her right about four or five people down. She had seen him when they'd driven up. He was incredibly handsome in his dark suit, but he looked tired and worn from his long night without sleep. Bessie Jane was beside him, and if possible, she looked even more drawn and pale than Reed. Hattie was surprised. She couldn't recall ever seeing Bessie Jane less than lovely.

Harmon never glanced up at any of them, his gaze firmly focused on the coffin as the preacher intoned about eternal life and giving up the body. He'd already said god-bye to his father. In the long last nights of his life, Jake
Leege
had without a word between them parted amiably with his only son.

It was not his grief over the past that kept Harm staring at the coffin, but his fear of the present. If he raised his head and looked across the grave, he would see her. Bessie Jane was within his line of vision, as beautiful in grief as in joy, and he could not risk even glancing at her. If they exchanged just one look, the whole community would know how it was between them, how it had been, how it would be again with half a chance. Allowing
himself
that one look could ease a lot of his pain, but what was in his heart was not for public display. He would not have the love they shared become another morsel for gossipmongers. He kept his eyes down, and in his heart he pleaded with her for love and comfort.

After the final benediction, the crowd began to move away. Most stopped briefly to give their condolences to Harmon. Having both the preacher's wife and Miss Hattie meant that Jake
Leege's
funeral would not be stinted. Many of the church members now filed past Harmon, offering in death the kind words they'd never offered in life.

With Andy at her side, Hattie hurried to the buggy and then to the
Leege
shack. She'd been there earlier in the morning to leave the victuals. The place needed a god scrubbing, but she hadn't been able to do that with a room full of mourners and a body
laid
out on the table. She hoped to have time to make a few cosmetic changes before the funeral dinner.

Enlisting Andy in her plan, she soon had the place swept out, the windows washed, and the furniture dusted. Flowers that had been left with bowls of butter beans and steaming
yeastrolls
now brightened the drab corners of the room, papered in newsprint.

Harmon arrived in the preacher's buggy with Millie and Able. The
Tyler
family pulled in right behind them, then Reed and Bessie Jane with her parents in the
Turpins
' two-seater surrey. Hattie went immediately to Harmon as he stepped on the porch. She gave him a motherly hug for courage, then handed him a glass of lemonade.

Harm smiled, embarrassed but pleased by her gesture, and followed her orders to take a seat on the porch and drink his lemonade.

Within minutes, nearly everyone who'd been at the graveside had arrived to partake of the meal. Hattie was to busy serving food to look up but remembered to keep sending glasses of lemonade to Harmon. In her vivid memories of the funerals of her parents, she recalled needing to do something with her hands to keep control of her feelings. Sipping lemonade was the best occupation she could offer the young man.