Heaven Sent (41 page)

"Maybe so, but a man takes the risks in his business and that's just the way of things."

"It might be the way of things to your mind, Henry Lee, but it doesn't have to be." Hannah felt herself growing frustrated and angry. She had grasped the bars to talk to him, but he was now pacing back and forth in the cell.

"It does have to be the way of things!" Henry Lee insisted. "At least it does for me."

"Why?"

"Look, Hannah, I like what I do. I like making whiskey. I'm good at it. You know what they say about me? They say I make the smoothest whiskey in the territory. I'm proud of that; I don't deny it."

"How can you be proud of that!"

"Hannah, it's like you said about Cain and Abel," he told her. "God establishes the work of our hands. He gave me the ability to make fine whiskey, I'd be going against my nature not to use that gift."

"God does not make thieves or outlaws, gunslingers or moonshiners! A man makes himself that and has no one to blame for his choice," she replied.

"I'm not talking blame, Hannah. I'm talking pride. I taught myself to make this whiskey. I took a little bit of corn and some half-baked instructions and I taught myself to do it. And I do it better than anybody else! My father couldn't do that. None of your upstanding farmboys could hold a candle to me. That's how I can be proud!"

"But Henry Lee, don't you see what the whiskey does? Don't you see how it ruins lives and causes trouble in the territory?"

"Hannah, you don't know a thing about it."

She bristled at his arrogant disclaimer. "I know that it destroys families! That men controlled by drink forget about their responsibilities. That the wives and children of those men never know when they can count on them. I can't imagine what it must be like to live that way, not knowing if the man who left the house sober in the morning was going to come home drunk during the afternoon. I can't imagine what that is like. But I know that
you
can, Henry Lee. Isn't that the kind of life you got from your parents?"

Henry Lee flushed with anger at her direct hit. His immediate thought was to retaliate. She hurt him, he would hurt her back. But he didn't want to hurt her. He wanted her to understand.

"Hannah," he said, taking a deep breath to steady himself. "You are a good person, a Christian person, and I know you see the world as being good and bad, but things are not so clear-cut. I am careful with my whiskey. Like I said, I'm proud of the product I make. I make sure that it's clean and it's pure. People are going to buy whiskey. Even if I don't sell it, somebody else will and that whiskey might be fouled or corrupted. It could be poison if the distiller doesn't know what he's doing."

Hannah's jaw tightened with anger. "So you're trying to tell me that you make whiskey for the good of whiskey drinkers. You're doing it as a service to the community?"

Henry Lee kicked the wall in frustration. "I'm not trying to tell you anything!" He raised his voice for the first time. "I'm trying to make you see that making whiskey is something that I want to do, that I am proud of doing, and it is not something I'm going to give up just because you don't like the idea. The whiskey business can mean a lot to both of us if you'll just let yourself think about it."

"It means nothing to me."

"It means new pews for your father's church. It means no worries about too little rain, or too much. It's not like farming, Hannah. It's much more certain. People always buy whiskey. The demand is steady, no matter the price. It means a good future for our children. You'd like to see your child go to college or start up a business or buy his own place. The whiskey gives us money that can insure that."

"What's the use of having money for your children if you can't offer them a proper example and a father who won't make them feel ashamed? Do you think any child would want to have a moonshiner for a father?"

"Oh, I see, Hannah," he said, sarcasm creeping furiously into his voice. "The question is, do you think any child would want to have me for a father?"

"Henry Lee, I didn't mean
…"

He was seething with anger. "I understand now how it is with you, Hannah. You're all ready to stand by me, to be the perfect wife and helpmate, as long as I follow your rules. All I have to do is forget about the life I've made for myself. I just pick up your morals and your ideals and you'll be willing to do me the favor of staying by my side. You didn't get yourself a churchgoing farmer, so you just take what you did get and try to turn him into what you want. Well, Miss Hannah, no thank-you very much!"

"Henry Lee, I only want what is best for you," she implored. "What's best for us."

He turned his back.

"You are not giving up the whiskey business?" she asked finally, quietly.

"No, ma'am," he answered turning, at last, to face her with anger in every line of his face. "And if that don't suit you, well, I believe you know your way to the door."

They stood there separated by bars, but also by a thousand dreams and ideals.

Hannah turned without a word and walked away.

 
CHAPTER
 
18

«
^
»

H
annah sat on the arbor swing at her father's house watching the setting sun. She could hear Myrtie and Violet in the house cleaning up the supper dishes. She should be in there helping or there were at least a million other things that she might
be
doing. Harvest time was upon them, the busiest time of the year on the farm, but lately she seemed to find more time than she needed to lose herself in thought.

She had been back home for almost three weeks. Time enough for her anger to turn to dismay and her pride to stubbornness. Henry Lee was back at his place. The gossips had made sure she knew. He'd returned from
Muskogee
only two days after she had. Apparently, he'd been right: the
marshall
didn't have enough evidence. She was glad about that. Sighing she shook her head, she hated thinking about him in that cell.

He hadn't attempted to contact her. She'd left him a note on the kitchen table saying that she was moving back to her father's home. Somehow she expected him to at least acknowledge that. But she hadn't heard a word from him.

She had certainly heard a good deal about him. She was hardly back herself when word of his arrest in
Muskogee
was prime dinner conversation in every household in the congregation. The entire community seemed to have an opinion about their marriage, and most didn't hesitate to express it. Old Maude Ruskin seemed to sum up the feelings of most of the church people last Sunday when she patted Hannah on the cheek and told her simply to "put that unfortunate marriage behind you."

Hannah discovered that, except for herself and most of the young girls Myrtie's age, virtually every person in the community had known all along about Henry Lee's whiskey business. She'd even asked her father point-blank why he hadn't told her.

He hesitated thoughtfully and then said, "At first I thought you must know. By the time I realized that you didn't, well, it wasn't my place. He's your husband," he said, as if that answered everything, "and it's really between the two of you."

That had continued to be her father's major theme on the subject. Somehow, to him, her marriage vows took precedence over all else. Her father made it clear that he thought Hannah should return to her husband. He believed it so strongly that, at first, he hadn't wanted Hannah to move back in.

"I've been helping married folks through rough times for a lot of years," he explained. "When a couple have trouble, they've got to stay and work it out. It does no one good if the wife can just pack up and go home to Daddy when things don't suit her."

"It's not a case of things not suiting!" Hannah
had
argued. "The man I married is choosing to break the law and has no intention of reforming. You can't expect me to stay there as if I approve of that."

"You'll never change a man by running out on
him,
Hannah."

"I didn't run out on him. He sent me away," she admitted in frustration. "He doesn't want to change. He says he likes making whiskey, that he's proud of what he does and that I should just accept that." She threw up her hands in disgust.
"I'd
certainly be a hypocrite if I
did."

Her father was inflexible. "You wouldn't be a hypocrite, but you might be a better wife. Lots of women have found themselves married to men who don't live by the scriptures. As long as that man doesn't beat her, starve her, or threaten her, the good wife stays right with her man and shows him by her example how to live right. She doesn't just run off and say,
'It
was all a big mistake, let's forget the whole thing.'"

"Some marriages are just
big
mistakes," she insisted, "and trying to keep something together that was never meant to be is just throwing water down a rat hole!"

"Are you saying you don't care for Henry Lee?" her father asked pointedly. "You forget, I've seen you two with your heads together. It'd be obvious to a blind man that you got feelings for each other, strong feelings."

"What I feel is relief that I've put that chapter of my life
behind
me!" Hannah
lied
vehemently.

Finally, when it became clear that the father and daughter who had once been so close were determined to remain completely opposed to the other's view, Violet intervened. Hannah was sure that her father hadn't heard a word she had said, but he listened to his wife.

"I know you are right," Violet assured her husband. "But I think these two just need a little time. Let their anger cool a bit and see what's left of their other sentiments."

Her stepmother convinced the preacher that Hannah should be allowed to have some time to think about what she wanted.

Time to think was what she got. She had trouble eating, trouble sleeping, but no trouble at all thinking. Her thoughts were constantly in action. She would recall a story that he had told her with his wide-eyed look of mischief and find herself smiling at the memory. She would imagine the sight of him working in the yard or chopping wood and a warm glow of desire would settle around her. In her mind she was talking
with
Henry Lee, working with Henry Lee, laughing with Henry Lee, dancing with Henry Lee and at night when her exhausted brain had finally given over to sleep, her dreams were writhing in passion with Henry Lee.

She rebelled at the injustice of it all. They had just begun to know each other. She thought that he could make her happy, she knew she wanted to make him happy. Why couldn't he be a farmer like everyone else? But Henry Lee could never be like anyone else.

Hannah heard a horse coming up the road, breaking into her thoughts, but she didn't even bother to turn.
It
was Saturday night, so she knew exactly who it was. The rider spoke as he trotted past on his way to the hitching post.

"Good evening, Miss Hannah."

"Good evening, Will."

She watched him dismount and wrap the reins around the hitching post before stepping on the porch. He straightened his jacket and ran a hand across his head, making sure that his hair was lying down before knocking briskly on the front door.