Promise of Yesterday (2 page)

“What can we do for you?” Miss Jenny asked.

“Least you can do is offer up a name,” Marylu suggested in a hard, impatient tone.

But despite the hard clip to her voice, his brown eyes never wavered from her. He raised his hands to his chest and patted. His lips moved to shape two syllables.

Marylu watched in spite of herself and caught on right away to what he was trying to express. “Chest-er. Um-hm. You must be right proud of yourself thinking up a way to tell people that one.”

He sent her a melodramatic wink that nevertheless rolled a pleasing sensation through the pit of her stomach. Maybe it wasn’t that cold fried egg after all.

Miss Jenny snapped her fingers. “Chester Jones! You’re here to pick up the order for Mrs. Lease. She mentioned sending someone over.”

Chester’s grin went huge, and he nodded, showing a set of bright whites.

“Let me get that for you.” Jenny did an about-face and disappeared into the storage area. Chester’s attention swung back to Marylu, starting another strange roiling in her stomach. She tried to ignore the intensity of his gaze and focused, instead, on the huge chip on his right front tooth. “Miss McGreary’ll get your order right off, but you don’t set one foot on this here clean floor.”

Chester’s lips pressed together in ill-concealed mirth and he lifted his very muddy booted foot, eyes daring her. Marylu gave him a hard frown.

He took a step forward, eyes locked on her. Then he took another. Crumbles of mud left vague outlines of his boots on the planks.

“You get!” Marylu lunged and yanked up the broom she’d used earlier. She lifted it high and swung it.

Chester put his hands up as the broom came down.

“Marylu!”

She froze, lowered the broom, and waited for her employer to chastise her further.

Chester’s eyes were as wide as his smile.

“He’s picking up an order for a customer,” Miss Jenny reminded in the gentle tone that stirred remembrances of her mother’s.

Chester bent and slapped his knee. A coarse sound issued from his throat, the unmistakable garble of laughter.

“I’m sorry, Miss Jenny,” Marylu said, all the while her fingers itching to give the man another dose of the broom.

Jenny handed the package over to Chester and walked him to the door.

Mud fell off his boots in chunks now. Clutching his package to his chest, he turned and looked beyond Miss Jenny and straight into Marylu’s eyes. He winked at her and left.

When the door closed behind him, Miss Jenny turned and stared at Marylu, a strange look in her pale blue eyes.

Marylu set the broom aside. “What you thinkin’ on so hard?”

“I’ve never seen you act that way before.”

“Never had a man so ornery before.”

“No, no. I mean, there’s a glow about you….” Miss Jenny smirked and crossed her arms. “I think I hear the popping of grease in a hot skillet.”

Marylu rolled to her side. Sleep would not come. Maple syrup eyes and a grin full of vinegar kept invading her thoughts and making her heart beat harder. She sure liked what she’d seen of the man, but Miss Jenny’s comment rubbed her wrong. Hot grease indeed!

She squeezed her eyes shut and willed her body to relax. In only a few hours she would need to be at Antrim House, a hotel across the street from Jenny’s dress shop, cleaning up the rooms.

Upstairs.

Twelve steps.

Her knees ached just thinking on it.

Her right knee did better than her left, what with the injury that had happened all those years ago. Scrubbing floors always woke up the pain. Shifting positions didn’t help ease the hurt neither. She decided to get herself up and start on breakfast. Miss Jenny wasn’t a big eater, but the rest of the “family,” as Jenny liked to call them, could put away some food. Old Cooper ate like a man condemned to death and scheduled to hang.

Marylu lumbered into the kitchen and worked some firewood into the box of the cookstove. A light shuffling made her jump and spin.

Cooper White stumped his way to the table and sat down.

“Good morning to you too, old man.”

Cooper lifted drooping eyes to Marylu. “None of your lip, woman. Why don’t you get some coffee going?”

“I ain’t your woman.”

“Could be.”

Marylu crossed her arms, invigorated by the morning word toss. “Not till I’m stiff and cold.”

“I don’t figure I have long to wait then—you being as cold-hearted as they come.”

She flicked open the coffeepot as much to check its contents as to hide the grin erupting. Cooper was ancient. Near to fifty-five by her best guess. If she married him, she wouldn’t have to wait long to be a widow. But a year over thirty didn’t mean she was desperate, her only regret being she’d probably not see any beautiful black babies of her own. Sobered a bit by the sad thought, she pointed at the empty water bucket. “You scoot yourself and get some water.”

Cooper got to his feet, slow as a slug in salt. He returned as she finished grinding the coffee beans and set the full bucket on a stool. “Now can I get some coffee?”

Marylu ladled some water into the coffeepot, added the grounds, and set it to heat. “You’d think you’d have learned yourself some patience by now.” She used a linen to protect her hand and opened the firebox to stick in a couple more pieces of wood.

“Too old to be patient. Gotta hurry and get things done before no more time’s to be had.”

Marylu wiped her hands and sat down across from Cooper. “You still getting your night scares?”

He lifted tired eyes to hers. “I’ll never forget that time. Thought that man was gonna shoot us dead. Then when he didn’t and he told us we was going south, I wished he would have.”

Marylu sat up straighter. “Seeing you all was the hardest thing …” The silence stretched long between them. Images of that night fifteen years ago flared to life in Marylu’s head.

The wagon had rolled into Greencastle upon the Confederates’ retreat from Gettysburg, full of black-skinned strangers with fear in their eyes and guards surrounding them. Marylu remembered watching Miss Jenny’s mama and papa taking in the pitiful sight. She also knew, before they ever started whispering, that they were forming a plan to help the blacks, just as they, for years, had helped those who came to them in the night to escape to the North.

“You were a brave woman,” Cooper interrupted her thoughts. “When that horse reared up, I thought you was done for, but you just did what it took.”

“Except where those hooves snapped on my knee. Still aches.”

Cooper nodded. “Reminder of what you done. Brave woman. Still are. Got more sass than most. Guess living with Miss Jenny’s family made you feel that brave.”

Marylu dropped her hand to the table and speared Cooper with her eyes. “Not brave. I just knew what was right. There’d been enough suffering from them Rebs looting the stores as they came through town the first time. Had all our people runnin’ farther up north.”

“Those of us still ‘round won’t ever forget what you done.” Cooper’s eyes took on a faraway gleam. “When you came out right under that chaplain’s nose with Miss Jenny’s daddy and that other man …” He shook his head.

She wrestled for something to distract Cooper from the subject of that night and the wagon full of slaves she’d help to free. Only God’s strength had helped her then, as it helped her now. No matter how the slaves had hailed her as their hero and dubbed her “Queenie,” she had only done what had to be done. The fact that she’d lost her heart in the process didn’t matter none. Most had forgotten Walter. He was a moon that would never rise again, and Marylu didn’t want to think on him. Didn’t do any good. Just like taking the reverence to heart of those that she had helped free didn’t leave her quite comfortable.

Cooper slapped his leg. “I told the whole story to Chester, and he just smiled and nodded like he does—”

Marylu’s back snapped erect. “Chester?”

Cooper chuckled. “That’s right. The mute. He wanted to meet you real bad. Said he’d heard the story even way down in South Carolina about a black woman freeing her own.”

She ignored that and focused on his apparent familiarity with the black man. “Mute he might be, but he can hear just fine.”

“Heard he stomped on your floor and got your temper to flarin’ pretty hot.” He slapped his leg. “Wished I’d seen that. Not often a man gets one over on you.” Cooper loosed a chuckle. “He was right impressed with you and the story of you saving all of us, Queenie.”

Marylu frowned. “Don’t call me that. I was as scared as you all were that night.” She cast an eye toward the coffeepot and used it as an excuse to move from the table.

“And what about them years you worked in the railroad?”

“Miss Jenny’s papa did that. Was my job to keep Miss Jenny safe.”

“That’s not the way Miss Jenny tells it.”

“She wasn’t even eight when we started. You taking her word over mine?” Marylu poured coffee into two tin cups and set one in front of Cooper. “Don’t you have a garden to tend or something?”

Cooper eyed the window and the peek of sunlight lightening the sky more with each passing minute. “Guess so. Good time to work when the heat’s not so much.”

As the older man sipped on his coffee, Marylu realized her only way to learn more about Chester was to pry it out of Cooper. The trick was to do it without his knowing she wanted to know. “How’d you find out that Chester muddied my floor?”

Cooper’s smile showed few signs of teeth. “Told me. Not so much with words as with his hands and face. He’s something else.”

“Where’d he come from?”

The older man scratched his scantily bearded face. “Jumped him a boxcar and road in. Got himself some kin hereabouts.”

“Kin? Up here? What’d he go down south for then?” Cooper cocked a brow at her. “Why you so interested?” Marylu puffed up. “Ain’t interested a speck. Can’t a body make some conversation? He’s new in town. Don’t that stir the curiosity of most?”

Cooper slapped his leg and spit a laugh.

She snapped a hard look at him, which made him laugh all the harder. “Ain’t you got a garden to hoe?”

Cooper got himself vertical in a painful unfolding that took a full minute to happen. He’d been worked hard in the fields all those years before escaping north. It made him seem older than he really was. But he didn’t complain. His eyes took on a gleam as he looped a finger through his coffee mug. “I’ll let Chester know you’re wanting to know about him.”

“You best not, Cooper White.”

The sound of his laughter dimmed only when the door shut behind him.

Chester Jones shook the water from his head and buried his face in the towel. The water felt good to his skin. It was a welcome contrast to the warm pond water in the South where he used to do all his bathing under the mammoth branches of an ancient oak, streaming with moss.

He eyed himself in the mirror of the washstand. No matter how much he dabbed his face with water, he’d never be able to wash away the redness brimming his eyes. He shivered as the sounds of his dream twisted and taunted his mind. A familiar dream that by turns kept him awake or shattered a sound sleep.

Lord, help me. Cleanse me of these scares. Clean me up
.

Clean like the days before he’d left home seeking a life apart from his mama and siblings. No use sticking around when they had all those mouths to feed. He’d made himself believe that was his only reason for leaving. Truth had come with maturity and suffering. Reality being he’d left because he was nine parts rebellious and one part wanting to scratch the itch to travel.

He’d been a fool to leave the only security he’d known all his life, all the promise that his yesterdays and his youth had held. Staying north would have saved him the stripes on his back and the long hours in the fields, but he hadn’t listened to his mama. Hadn’t allowed himself to soften at her crestfallen expression when he’d announced his decision to leave home. In his head, he could still see the hurt in her eyes. The fear. All for him. If he had expected tears at his announcement, he should have known better, for his mama was too strong a woman to spill salt all over the place, no matter the depth of the heartache.
I failed her, too, didn’t I?

He filled his lungs and released the breath in a long, measured exhale. Was no use talking to God. No use talking at all anymore. But he’d come to this state to see his mama and sister, the only kin he knew of, the rest scattered by his father’s sudden death. His family’s noble sacrifice for the North that his father loved, fought, and died for as part of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment.

He died a braver man than me
.

Chester straightened and tried to shake off the gloom that permeated his mind. He had to put the past behind him and figure out a better way to get people to understand him. Some understood him better than others. Like the fine woman he’d seen in the dress shop. Surely she had sass aplenty. He’d heard many stories of how she’d set free a wagon full of slaves captured in Gettysburg. Even on the run he’d heard the stories. Among blacks, stories of heroism were transferred from one wagging tongue to another, faster than any mail service.

He had delayed heading west to Mercersburg, where his mama and sister lived, in order to meet Marylu Biloxi. Chance had brought him face-to-face with Cooper the day he’d gotten off the train. It had taken Chester a week to discover that the man knew Marylu. He even lived in a little house out back of the one Marylu lived in with her friend and employer, Jenny McGreary. As soon as Cooper discovered his passion for building furniture and such, the old man had taken him straight to the owner of Antrim House and got him a job. Mr. Shillito’s recent purchase of the hotel, and his plans to renovate, meant job security.