Promise of Yesterday (8 page)

The women chatted a bit about their days, and Chester listened, content to be in the home and in Marylu’s presence. Before he knew it, she wielded a huge spoon over a hot dish and slipped something with a golden crust and the smell of heaven right in front of him. His stomach rumbled so loudly that Miss Jenny sent him a soft smile. He felt the heat flush into his cheeks and bowed his head.

“Now eat up,” Marylu said. “I’m going to take this broth to Cooper.”

Chester shook his head and pointed toward the back door. He pantomimed knocking on Cooper’s door, then shrugged and shook his head.

Marylu beamed sunshine down on him. “You’re right in that. I brought him inside to keep a good eye on him and so I could get some things done.”

Chester nodded and picked up his fork. He stole a glance at Miss Jenny. She winked at him and bowed her head. The blessing was short, and the whole idea of his sitting across from her and eating a supper seemed a strange dream that left him feeling both uneasy and confident. She seemed in a world of her own as she worked a carrot onto her fork, and Chester contented himself with cutting his chicken into smaller pieces with the side of his fork. Little bites he could manage, though the whole process of eating took him time.

Through the open doorway he could hear Marylu’s voice but could not make out what she was saying to Cooper. The old man’s responses were punctuated with deep coughs that even pulled Miss Jenny up straight.

Her worried eyes focused on Chester.

When he caught the worry in Miss Jenny’s eyes, he set his fork aside and clasped his hands together to indicate she should pray. His aunt had coughed like that right before she died, two years before he’d left to make his own way.

“Yes, I have. It’s just so much easier to worry than to pray.” A sigh escaped her lips. “Do you believe, Chester?”

The question took him by surprise. His mother had believed, her rich alto caressing the words of the old hymns she used to sing in the late evening after hours of washing laundry or spent tending the garden, or the hundred other tasks of day-to-day living. His father loved to hear his mother’s voice, but he never joined in, and Chester often suspected that somewhere along the line his father’s belief had been snuffed out.

Where did that leave him? Did he believe in God? Of course. He never once doubted an omniscient Spirit who created the world and everything in it. But he knew Miss Jenny’s question went deeper than that, and he didn’t know how to respond. At one time he’d been a good man who tried to respect his mama’s God, but Sam’s betrayal had shaken him. Watching the master fall, witnessing the blood … It had been too easy to hate since that moment.

His hesitation must have answered the unspoken question, but Chester shrugged and pointed to his heart then to the Bible.

“Would you like me to read it to you?”

To read. Wasn’t that the world Marylu had promised to open to him by teaching him letters? And now a white woman was willing to read to him?

Marylu bustled back into the room. “That man is the most ornery critter I’ve ever encountered.” She stopped and shot him a glance. “Make that the second orneriest critter I’ve encountered.”

Chester’s grin was huge.

“I was getting ready to read the Bible, Marylu. Will you join us?”

“I’m thinking we need to go in to the room with Cooper. Read something about hard hearts or that talking donkey of that Beulah fellow.”

“Balaam.”

“Him, too.”

Jenny rolled her eyes.

Chester swallowed hard on a piece of chicken just before his laughter reached full pitch. Jenny joined in. “Oh, Marylu, what am I going to do with you?”

Truth be told, Marylu had never felt like she felt sitting next to Chester and watching him drink in every letter and vowel. His quick mind pleased her greatly. Yet she wanted to hear him speak. If he never tried, did that mean he couldn’t?

As he bowed his head over the slate and worked on a couple of simple words, she went over the alphabet in her mind, paying close attention to how her tongue curled and worked around every letter. If she could teach him how to use what was left of his tongue, it just might work.

When he lifted his head, she inhaled a deep breath. “Let’s work on your speech.”

Chester flinched.

“It can be done. Some letters you’ll have a harder time with, but the rest you’ll catch on to quick-like.”

He nodded slowly, and she saw the smear of disbelief tighten his forehead.

She reached out and touched his fingers. “We can do it. Together.”

His eyes fell to the place where her fingers covered his. She followed his gaze. Beneath hers, the squareness of his hands dwarfed her own. She imagined the power in those hands from all the sanding and hammering, and she wondered, too, if the pads of his fingers would be rough from working with wood or smooth and … She snatched her hand away and cleared her throat. “Best we get started.”

Chester’s eyes searched hers, and she saw a challenge there. Yet she hardly knew this man and had no right to feel anything other than friendship. Not this soon. He’d come to town, the label of “murderer” hard on his heels, and other than working for Mr. Shillito and knowing Cooper, fixing him some food and cutting his hair, what did she know of him?

Sure, he stirred things in her that had lain dormant since Walter, but circumstances were different now. She had changed. Matured. And she would not give her heart away so easily. Weariness settled over her shoulders. It seemed she often chided herself with the same argument, when it would be so much easier to simply allow the feelings Chester stirred in her heart.

Marylu steeled herself and stared at a point over his shoulder. She said the letter A, then formed it with her tongue in a melodramatic way that allowed him to see how her tongue moved. He tried to imitate. The sound was garbled, but she made him try again, over and over. They worked through the first six letters.

He concentrated hard and worked even harder, doing his best to follow her directions. Seeing his torn tongue made her heart sad, and several times it came to her mind to ask him about the incident. About the rumor that he had murdered. But to watch the fervor with which he worked to regain his speech and to learn to read, she reasoned it had to be the idle talk of a bored woman. Mrs. Burns’s reputation as a gossip preceded her. And Chester had no way of defending himself against rumors, whether true or not. One day, when he could communicate better, she would ask him about it. At the quick rate with which he picked up on the alphabet and the few small words, she would not have to wait long.

The arguments, for and against Chester, ran through her head as they worked together over the next hour. And new things were added to the list of sensations and tenderness his presence stirred.

The flicker of the lantern light against his skin, smooth and dark like leather.

The way his eyes squinted when he concentrated.

And when he raised his eyes to hers after a particular triumph, the warm glow in the depths of his maple syrup gaze spilled over her like warm honey.

When they took a break from speech and went back to writing, he couldn’t seem to remember the right way to hold the pencil. She demonstrated a new way. When he couldn’t quite get his fingers into the right position, she took his hand in hers and curled his long fingers around the instrument, suspecting all along that his forgetfulness had little to do with his mind and everything to do with her touch. And she played along. On those occasions when their eyes did meet, she tried to cover what his gaze stirred by concentrating on the slate or ignoring him, but she couldn’t deny it to herself.

Evening after evening, for an entire week, they worked, and when she walked into McGreary’s dress shop that bright Friday morning and saw Mrs. Burns standing in front of the mirror for a fitting, Marylu made up her mind to draw out the woman more on the accusation against Chester.

Jenny stood with a mouthful of pins, as was usual for her during a fitting. It came to Marylu in that moment that she would have to do very little to coax Mrs. Burns to speak up about Chester. So she sidled up next to Jenny and prepared to get down on the floor to pin the hem.

Jenny stopped her and took the pins from her mouth. “I’m having trouble on that dress.” Jenny jerked her head to indicate the table behind her.

Marylu noticed the striped material of Sally Worth’s gown. The one she’d come in to the shop to have Jenny make so she could brag about her “date” with Aaron Walck. As Marylu ran her fingers over the material, she saw the ripped threads, evidence of Jenny’s frustration. Probably less over the gown than over the owner.

If Jenny didn’t want to mess with the sewing of Sally’s dress, she would certainly take over. Anything to help her friend bear the disappointment of Aaron’s choice. She took a seat and threaded her needle. The first poke through the striped silk coincided with Mrs. Burns’s first question.

“I heard you were helping that deaf boy learn to spell, Marylu. Is it true?”

Behind the woman’s back, Marylu raised her eyes from the dress, straight up to the heavens. And grinned.

Jenny jumped in to answer before Marylu could give voice. “She has, Mrs. Burns. Chester’s not deaf at all, just unable to express himself very well.”

“Yes, I know. He got his tongue cut out for murdering his master. Heard the story from one of our servants.”

By “servant,” Marylu knew Mrs. Burns meant Gladys, their black house servant. Gladys’s tongue was as well-oiled as Mrs. Burns.

“He’s a gentle soul that needs attention.” Marylu took a stab at the material with her needle. “He’s smarter than most and knows how to still his tongue quite nicely. It’s one thing I greatly admire in a body.”

Jenny cleared her throat and tugged down on the bodice of the dress Mrs. Burns modeled. She released a stream of chatter meant to distract her client from the implication of Marylu’s words.

But the burn of the woman’s audacity singed along Marylu’s arms and feet. She bent her head over her work and prayed God would help her not to break a commandment.

Marylu grunted a silent “amen” to her prayer just as the door to the shop opened again. Sally Worth glided in, and Marylu started praying all over again. She watched as Jenny turned to see who had entered the shop and applauded her friend for not allowing a trace of emotion to give away her true feelings on her rival’s presence. Instead, Marylu felt the pain for Jenny. The memory of her tears the week before turned her heart inside out all over again.

She dug her needle deeper into the material and brought the needlework closer to her face. If she buried herself in her work, maybe she could drown out the conversation that she knew, deep in her bones, was coming. Sally would shoot off about something regarding Aaron, trying to get Jenny jealous. Or in tears.

Her hands tightened on the fabric.
Lord, have mercy on my soul. Help the law of kindness to be in my tongue
.

Mrs. Burns and Sally chatted amicably as Jenny, still with pins in her mouth, continued along the hem of the unfinished gown. If not for Miss Jenny being in the middle of the thing, Marylu would have heaved herself right out of the chair and gone out back until everyone left the store, but she had to stay. Had to protect her employer from the barbs that were sure to fly and be a tongue for her friend, since Jenny’s mouth was full.

“Well,
Miss
McGreary,” Sally’s strident voice dripped, “why, you must get so filthy down on that floor all day long. How do you manage to get the stains out of your skirts?”

And here we go
… Marylu huffed and stared up at Sally’s wide-eyed innocence.

Jenny did her best to smile around the pins in her mouth.

“You work so hard,” Sally continued.

Mrs. Burns smoothed a hand down the fabric of her gown. “But she does create some lovely things.”

Marylu silently patted Mrs. Burns on the back for that bit of niceness.

Jenny rose to her feet in a smooth motion and removed the pins from her lips. “There you go, Mrs. Burns. I’ll have everything done by Monday. Would that suit you?”

“That is just fine.” The elder woman swished around in her finery a minute then headed to the back room.