Fields Of Gold (8 page)

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Authors: Marie Bostwick

BOOK: Fields Of Gold
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She also wanted to know about the father. I didn't want anyone to know about that, ever. I couldn't bear to think of people imagining Slim and me together. It would have made it all so sticky and cheap. Instead I invented a boy I'd met when we went to visit Mama's cousins in Kansas. I said he couldn't marry me because he'd been engaged and gotten married before I knew about the baby.
“He was engaged?” Ruby piped, scandalized and intrigued. “Eva, how could you!”
“Well, I didn't know it at the time or I'd have never gone out riding with him.”
Ruby clucked her tongue and sighed a sigh of sympathy and delicious shock. At least if I had to tell her a lie I was glad it was one she could enjoy.
“Gosh, that's so awful—how he took advantage of you.” Ruby sighed again and shook her head as curiosity overcame concern. “Was he handsome, though? What color were his eyes?”
I made up more stories. I marveled at how easily she believed my lies, much more easily than she'd have believed the truth. For once I was thankful that I'd been made so imperfect and twisted that it would never occur to people that someone as straight and beautiful as Slim could want me.
“I can't believe it. I still just can't believe it,” Ruby mused. “You don't even look fat or anything.”
“I had to put a safety pin in the waistbands of my skirts last week. Guess I'll be big as a house soon.” I pulled up my blouse to show her how my secret child was pushing, taut and swelling, under the coarse fabric of my skirt.
Ruby smiled and instinctively, without thinking to ask permission, reached out her hand to lay it on the tiny bulge. Reverently, as though not to wake the baby, she whispered, “What is it, do you think? A boy or girl?”
“I don't know. I guess there's no way to tell for sure.”
“My mama says there's a way,” Ruby reported solemnly. “You take your wedding ring, put it on a chain, hold it over your stomach, and if it swings in a circle it's a girl, but it swings in a line it's a boy. 'Course,” she faltered, “you don't have a wedding ring, so I guess we'll just have to wait.”
“I guess so.”
But, I did know. I was sure of it. I
knew
I was carrying a son. The same way I'd known Slim when he walked into our house, though we'd never spoken a word, I knew our son. He was inside me, part of me, and when I closed my eyes I could see him, tiny and translucent, curled inside the watery protection I'd instinctively made for him, cushioned and cradled so completely that the blows of the world would seem only a buoyant swell to him. How was it that other women didn't know who it was they carried inside?
Lying in bed that night I felt him move for the first time. A ripple, not a push. A silky spool of bubbles unwound inside me, rising and skating along the skin of my stomach. I lay my hand over the bulge of my abdomen and felt him swim, knotting himself under the heat of my hand, the way a cat searches out a sunbeam on a cold winter morning.
The life in him was pulsing and unmistakable. My strong, beautiful boy—as restless as his father, as faithful as his mother, as helpless as a kitten and too unwise yet to realize it. Our destinies were connected in a way that was entirely new to me, but strong and right. At that moment I realized protecting him and raising him would be the focus of my life. The cold winter would never touch him, capricious life never scar him. Everything I'd ever wanted for myself dimmed to a vague memory, a dream barely remembered upon waking from a dark night.
I smiled to myself and moved my hand to another spot on my stomach just to feel him flutter and glide as he swam and balled himself under a new fountain of my warmth. I whispered to Slim in the darkness: “Feel our boy, he's floating already; nothing will weigh him down. He's the best of us both.”
But the words bounced back to me, empty in the cold, slicing darkness. Slim was too far off to hear me. As weeks stretched to months he moved just a bit farther off every time I reached for him. Now, when I wanted him more than ever, he was just a stretched fingertip beyond my grasp. It wasn't forgetting or distance of time that set him back; it was fear. The pull of memory was more compelling than he could bear, and so he had wiped it away in a full, absolute sweep that sometimes haunted him, an amazed observer of his own self-absorption. I could see him, though, in that strange new compartment of my mind that hadn't seemed to exist before I knew Slim. I saw him there like a reflection in a glass, clear and sharp in one untouchable dimension. He crouched, shivering in the cold night under the wing of a plane, staring at the stars, too thickly engulfed and tortured by ungratified ambition to remember the sound of my voice because that's how he had decided it had to be. The choice to burn brightly was a straight, seldom used path that left no room for regret or divergent routes.
Looking back on it, I wonder that I didn't feel angry, deserted, betrayed. I suppose I'd have hated him if I'd been able to convince myself he had deceived me. As it was, I remember only a deep sense of regret, more for him than for me. He was going to have so much and miss so much. The things we want have to be paid for. The price he'd paid was peace. Mine? My price was to stand on the dark side of the one-way mirror, seeing, anticipating, suffering, and knowing, but invisible and ineffectual—like a witness to a car accident shouting warnings that can't be heard over the roar of the motor and the sound of wheels skidding on gravel. It was too painful a scene to return to daily.
Mama had said, “You go on, and you live your life,” so I did. I dropped a gauzy curtain over the glass to obscure the view, though I knew that nothing in my lifetime would make the reflection go black. Forgetting was not to be one of my gifts. That would have been too easy and too hard.
“We're all together, baby,” I whispered to my unborn son. “You won't see him, but he'll be there, a part of you, the part that longs for and believes in something golden beyond the horizon. That's the thing we share. It makes us a family, connected, you see? You and me and him, now and for always.” I pulled the quilt high over my nose and mouth and pulled in gulps of cold, silent air and gave it back again, my breath an incubating warmth in the cocoon of blankets covering us.
 
“There now,” Mama crooned, “he's all clean and dry and ready to meet his mother.” Gently, as though the slightest tap would shatter him, she handed me a soft nest of flannel that protected my son.
I pulled back the blanket to see his face. Two dark blue jewel eyes stared solemnly up at mine, searching, as though he were as curious about me as I was about him. Looking at him warmed me straight through. Suddenly, a place in my heart I'd never known existed opened, filled, and spilled over, soothing all the sharp points of my life and answering, for that moment at least, all the questions I'd never even known to ask.
“Oh!” I whispered in wonder, “Look at you! You're perfect!”
“He is that.” Dr. Townsend snapped his black bag shut with a flourish that spoke of a job well done. “He's big and strong and about as alert as any newborn I've ever seen. You won't need to make up any tonics for this boy, Miss Eva. If every child in town were as healthy as this, I'd probably be out of business.” He leaned down to take another look at the baby before turning to me with a wink. “Not bad for homemade, young lady. Not bad at all. Almost as pretty a baby as you were when I delivered you.”
Mama stood at the end of the bed and beamed. “You did fine, Eva, just fine. Never saw such a beautiful baby, and you were so brave. You'll see, he'll be a good baby because of it.”
“He's good already,” I breathed. “Look at those beautiful eyes. He's the one I've been waiting for all my life, but I didn't know it until just now.”
We all stood for a minute more admiring my son until a tentative knock broke the silence and Papa spoke in a stage whisper from the other side of the door, “Is everything all right? Can't I come in yet?”
“Of course you can, Seamus. I was just leaving,” said Dr. Townsend, picking up his bag and opening the door to reveal Papa's anxious face. “Sorry to keep you waiting so long, Seamus. Another hour and I swear you'd have worn a hole in the floor pacing, but, I think you'll find it was worth the wait.” He shook Papa's hand. “You have a beautiful grandson.”
Mama showed Dr. Townsend to the door, and Papa sat next to me on the bed. I handed him the tiny bundle, and Papa held his grandson tight in his arms. His eyes shone bright and wet as he examined the angelic face and hands and arms, murmuring wonderment over the baby's perfect, tiny form. Beaming with delighted wonder, he crooned, more to the baby than to me, “Oh, he's lucky, is this one. You can see that just by looking at him. He's like a magic charm that will rub off good luck to everyone he touches.” Papa looked up at me and nodded profoundly. “You see if I'm not right, Evangeline. I know these things, just like I knew about you the day you were born, how you were meant for something special, and now look what you've gone and done. Here he is, my darling girl: our lucky star.”
Chapter 4
May 1927
“
A
re you sure you'll be all right, Papa?” I asked uncertainly. “I'm not all that set on going. You and Mama could go instead and I could stay with Morgan.” I stood in front of the mirror fiddling with a hat pin, accidentally stabbing myself in the finger while studying Papa's reflection instead of my own.
“Go on, go on,” he said, waving me off impatiently. “We'll be fine. Won't we, Morgan?”
Morgan nodded, shaking his blond curls over his forehead and pulling his finger out of his mouth to give me a wide grin. “We'll be fine, Mama. Papaw's goin' to show me how to play mumbley-peg, ain't you, Papaw?” Papa gave Morgan a little nudge with his knee to remind him that this had been a secret.
“Papa!” I scolded. “He's too young to be throwing mumbley-peg. He'll cut off his fingers.”
Papa made an exasperated face. “Bah! He'll be four in just a few more days.”
“May nineteenth,” Morgan piped in.
“That's right,” Papa affirmed. “So, don't get your dander up, Mother Hen. Besides, I wasn't going to let him throw it. I was just going to show him how.” He turned to Morgan with his eyes gleaming and his brogue thickening like it did whenever he was telling a story. “Sure now, me boy, when I was your age, I already had a knife of me own, and me brothers and I, we'd use them to hunt snakes in the old country. Huge, slithering serpents they were, as long as my arm.”
“Papa,” I said reprovingly, “you know there aren't any snakes in Ireland.”
“Not
now
there aren't,” he said solemnly and nodded to the knife held in his hand. I grinned at the joke I'd heard a million times before, then we broke into loud laughter, and Morgan joined in, more from fellowship than understanding.
Mama came out of the bedroom wearing her good Sunday dress and coat. “Goodness! What a racket. Eva, you ready to go?”
“Ready,” I knelt down and planted a kiss on Morgan's smooth forehead. “Be good, now. And”—I shot a warning glance at Papa—“remember, absolutely no mumbley-peg. No knives. No shotguns. Nothing dangerous. I mean it.”
“Fine, have it your way, then. No knives,” he huffed, his eyebrows drawing into a single, bushy line before a new idea brightened his expression. “Say, Morgan! You ever chew tobacco?”
“Seamus, that's not funny,” Mama accused good-naturedly as she opened the door. I laughed at Morgan's bemused expression and turned back to give him still another good-bye kiss.
 
Mama drove our Ford like an expert, with superb control and a little faster than you might have supposed if you judged her by the fussy bunch of false cherries she'd pinned to her coat collar.
Our new used car was a great source of pride to us all and a measure of how well things had gone on the farm the last few years. Crops had been so good we'd been able to make improvements on the farm and buy some modern conveniences for ourselves, though I suspect some of our newfound riches came from the savings Papa had earmarked for my education; there was no need to hoard pennies anymore. We could finally afford to get hooked up to the power lines that ran down the county road, and, first thing, Papa bought Mama an electric mangle. It ironed everything so quick and neat, we got the laundry done in half the time. But the car was the most exciting purchase we'd ever made. I'll never forget the day Papa chugged up to the house, shouting and honking the news that he'd bought Mr. McCurdle's Ford at a bargain price. He couldn't have been any happier if his name had been Rockefeller. It seemed like the twenties were indeed roaring, even in Dillon.
Though Papa bought the car, Mama was the better driver. He was always too busy looking out the window and exclaiming over the beautiful day or the freshly plowed fields to bother much with keeping his eyes on the road. I was more like him. The passenger seat suited me fine.
I leaned my head out the window and took in the endless mural of clear, black sky, pricked with stars, felt the spring wind on my face, and smelled the loamy freshness of the newly turned earth and sprouting wheat. I breathed the perfect night deep into my lungs and sighed contentedly.
“What are you thinking, Eva?”
“About how lucky we are. The night Morgan was born, Papa said he'd bring us luck, and he was right.”
“Well, I think we might give the good Lord some credit, too,” Mama said piously, “but, yes, I think you're right. We have everything we need and then some.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “just about everything.” To myself I thought,
There is no point in asking for more.
If I sometimes stood outside on a summer afternoon and searched the hot, empty sky for a glint of sun on a sapphire wingspan, or if I woke from a dream crying, my hands clutching the air for something that had seemed so solid the moment before, if the sight of young couples walking hand in hand through town made me cross to the other side of the street where I wouldn't have to watch, then the sound of Morgan's chortling laughter as he roughhoused with Papa, or the feel of his soft, cunning hand wrapped in mine pulled my heart back from the heavens and filled the empty places. Most of them.
Slim had said he'd come back, and he meant it at the time, but I'd always known he wouldn't. From the first day, I'd prepared myself to be alone forever. Most of the time I succeeded, but the reality of loneliness was a harder road to walk than it had seemed when I'd released Slim to his future. At unpredictable times he would still appear in my mind, waking or sleeping. I could see him, hear him, but that was all. In a way, that was sadder than not seeing him at all. Sometimes, at the oddest moments, moments when I should have been happy, I was suddenly pierced through with loneliness, because, at those times, being happy didn't seem to make much sense if I couldn't share it with Slim.
I berated myself for wanting too much, especially on such a beautiful night, when things were going so well. Times were good. The crop was in, and my son was healthy, happy and smarter than any four-year-old I knew. Slim had popped into my life for an instant and disappeared, but at least I'd had an instant. Some people never even got that. I had my beautiful boy, loving parents, and a good home for us all. And as if that wasn't enough, now it seemed that my quilting hobby was about to become a real little business.
One day, while I was studying some photographs of Monet's paintings in one of Papa's books, I got the idea you might make a quilt the same way, blending small splashes of color into a larger, richer scene. I dug though dozens of scraps of blue, aqua, turquoise, sapphire, cobalt, and teal until I had enough cloth to design and piece together a watercolor lily pond of my own. Morgan and I gave it to Ruby for Christmas.
When Ruby's rich Aunt Cora came visiting from Dallas, she made the biggest fuss over the quilt and wanted to buy it. Ruby explained it was a gift and not for sale, but she introduced us, and Aunt Cora ordered another one “just like it.” The fussy old lady said she'd pay me fifty dollars! I accepted her offer but explained I couldn't make it exactly the same as Ruby's.
“Quilts are like names, Miss Cora. It's important they match the personality of the person they belong to. Otherwise, they'll never quite fit, no matter how pretty they are. You let me think on it a bit. I'll make a quilt just with you in mind, and if you don't like it, you don't have to take it.” She agreed, and I worked hard and finished the quilt in two months.
It was a garden scene, with bougainvillea and gardenias and hibiscus, flowers I'd never seen except in books, but as I cut and stitched and pricked my fingers I could smell a sweetness in the air that seemed to float in from far-off trade winds. When it was finished I embroidered my name and the date on the back in purple thread and shipped it off in the mail.
About two weeks later, I received a manila envelope from Dallas, fat with checks and a letter from Ruby's aunt.
Dear Miss Glennon;
I can't tell you how happy I am to have received my quilt at long last. It is more beautiful than I could have imagined. You were right to insist on designing one just for me even though I pressed you so to make a copy of dear Ruby's. I have always loved gardens and flowers. There is nothing that brings me as much peace as kneeling in my flower beds, working the earth and finally seeing the fruits of my labor in full bloom. How did you know I raise gardenias? How beautifully you've captured them in color and cloth! Now I shall sleep surrounded by elegant white blossoms even in winter. Thank you so much.
I have enclosed letters from three of my friends, Mrs. Pryor, Mrs. Byrd and Miss Shelton, who would also like to commission quilts from you. Please find enclosed three checks for $25 (as a deposit) along with a $50 payment for my own quilt. At my suggestion, the ladies have sent photos of themselves and letters to give you a bit of information about their backgrounds so you can “think on” the type of quilt you want to design for them. I told them not to expect the finished product for at least six months as I know how many hours you put into each creation. Several other friends have also expressed interest, but I have suggested they wait until these first three are finished so you are not overwhelmed by the work.
Please give my regards to dear Ruby and to your family. Thank you again, Miss Glennon, for your beautiful work. You wield your needle like an artist's brush.
Affectionately,
Mrs. Cora Shaw Daniels
Personally, I thought she went a bit overboard with the “artist's brush” comment, but I was flattered by her praise and only too happy to make some money of my own. Most of the money went into a bank account I'd started for Morgan. I tried to give some to Papa and Mama to help with expenses, but they wouldn't accept a dime. Instead, I was doing some little things to treat them. I'd bought a new pair of boots for Papa, and now I was taking Mama to town for an ice-cream sundae and a movie. It wasn't much, but I wanted them to know how much I appreciated all they'd done for me and Morgan.
It was pleasant sitting at the drugstore counter with Mama and watching her eat ice cream, delicately spooning the last swirls of chocolate out of her parfait dish without even a clink of spoon on glass. I thought of how she'd lived all her life without any little luxuries, and now here we were, fine as anybody in town. Two months before I hadn't had five dollars to call my own and now, all at once, I was practically rich.
“Eva,” Mama said, interrupting my daydream, “it's almost time for the picture to start and you've hardly touched your sundae. Better hurry up before we're late.” She relished a last dribble of chocolate syrup. “My, that was delicious! Thank you, Eva.”
“Mama, out of my next quilt money I'm going to buy you a dress. I bet you never had a store-bought dress in your whole life.”
“No, I haven't,” she confessed, “but then again, I never really needed one—still don't. You save your money for little Morgan; you might need it someday. Things look fine now, but that can change in a moment; crops fail, doctors' bills come due. You've got to be ready for everything.”
“Oh, Mama. Don't be so pessimistic! I saw in the paper where Oklahoma and Kansas are some of the best areas in the country for business,” I lectured between gulps of strawberry ice cream. “New people moving in all the time, and more and more land being bought up for farms. There's four hundred times more wheat being produced here than there was just ten years ago.”
“I'm not a pessimist, Eva. I'm a realist. Are you finished? Let's go. I don't want to be late for the picture show.”
We hustled over to the theater, and I bought a bag of popcorn for us to share. The theater was small and lacked the elegance of the movie house I'd seen on our trip to Oklahoma City years before. There was no balcony, no gilt angels peering down from the proscenium, but it was pretty fancy for Dillon, with seats upholstered in red plush and armrests of polished oak. As it was Saturday night, the theater was full, and we saw several people we knew. One or two acknowledged Mama with a surreptitious incline of the head, though most pointedly ignored us. I was still considered a disgrace by most people in town. Their obvious contempt made me feel ashamed, and I sank a bit lower in my seat. However, for every inch I retreated, Mama rose up two, her face looking as determinedly proud as I'd ever seen it. I was relieved when it was time for the show to start, the red velvet curtain pulling back to reveal a gauzy white scrim. As usual, the projector started playing while the scrim was still closed, showing images behind that looked slightly fuzzy and dreamlike.
The cartoon and the newsreel were shown before the feature. Mrs. Poole, whose husband owned the theater, sat at a nearly in-tune upright piano, banging out marches, or rags, or dirges depending on the mood of what was being projected on the screen. Mama and I sat in the darkness munching on popcorn and laughing at the cartoon. When the newsreel began, I couldn't help but lean forward in my seat. It seemed like all the news was about aviation that day, at least that's all that I remember of it.

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