Return to Harmony (2 page)

“Not really.” Jodie thought it over, then decided, “Not a lot, anyway.”

“But you did. I heard you with my own ears.” There was no real condemnation in her voice. Only quiet certainty. “If we’re gonna be friends, you have to promise never to do that again. It’s not right—it’s one of the Comman’ments.”

“Well, I’ll be,” Jodie said, using one of her father’s favorite expressions. She sank down beside the smaller girl, too astonished to stand any longer. “You really mean it, don’t you?”

“ ’Course I do,” Bethan said. “That is, if you want to be my friend. Seems like we’ve already made a good start. Friends help each other. That’s what you just did for me.”

“I don’t have many friends,” Jodie confessed, taking up Bethan’s train of thought.

“You’re lucky,” Bethan replied in her quiet and solemn way. “I don’t have any at all. Except for Dylan. And he’s my brother, so I guess he doesn’t count.”

Suddenly Jodie leapt to her feet. “What’s the matter?” Bethan asked quickly, looking around as if expecting Kirsten to descend on them again.

Jodie was already starting down the road. “Come on—it’s almost noon,” she beckoned Bethan. “I’ve got an idea. We need to hurry, though. Momma says I have to be home in time for dinner.”

Bethan rose to follow. “But where are we going?”

Jodie started to run. “The puppy needs a home, doesn’t he?”

Harmony of 1915 was a growing community, but full of traditional farming spirit. Homes were places of calm, comfort, and security. Trees were old and broad and as stately as the big central buildings around the town square. Harmony was the county seat, so the main intersection was firmly anchored by a courthouse and state building, both fashioned of gray granite. They offered a sense of grandeur and permanence to the town, dressing up the surrounding low red-brick shops in the downtown.

No one would ever think to lock their doors in Harmony. Sitting on the front porch meant folks were home to visitors. Much was made of little things—a teething baby, a new foal from a prize horse, a birthday, an anniversary. It was a way for folks to say that they cared and belonged.

It was warm for an early April day, and visitors from the countryside were already slipping into customary summer ways. Farm wagons pulled up under the great shade trees were filled with market produce covered by layers of fresh hay. Horses waited with the patience of hard workers, munching idly from feed bags and swiping at the year’s first crop of flies. Farming mothers spread out bright linens and began unpacking hampers, while their kids danced with the excitement of having pennies to buy Cheerwine and root beer and maybe even a licorice whip.

Harmony stood at the center of eastern North Carolina’s farm belt. It grew faster than other regional towns, both because it lay on the main road connecting Richmond to Fayetteville and on down to Columbia, and because the train from Raleigh to the Wilmington port stopped there. Harmony was also the farthest inland a barge could travel on the nearby Yancey River. Farming families from as far away as Greenville and Selma traveled in to sell their produce, have their chests thumped and wills made, and to search for the special dry-goods not carried by general stores in villages closer to home.

Jodie turned left behind the courthouse, scampered along a narrow dusty track, and came out in front of a long row of wooden shanties. “I sure hope he’s home.”

Bethan walked more slowly, looking around in astonishment. “I didn’t even know these were back here,” she said in a breathless voice that spoke both of the hurried trip and the shivery awe that she felt at being in an unknown part of town.

“I love to explore,” Jodie explained, stepping onto the third shanty’s narrow front porch and knocking on the door. “Momma’s always going on to me about it. She says I was born with a restless spirit.”

A querulous voice called, “Who’s there?”

“Me, Mr. Russel. And I brought a friend—two of them.” Jodie turned to where Bethan waited a safe distance away nestling the puppy and said in a low voice, “It’s okay. He used to work around the place for my daddy. But his eyesight’s gone. Momma comes back every once in a while and makes sure he’s all right.”

“That she does, that she does. Your momma’s a pure-bred saint, little lady.” Apparently the man’s hearing was just fine, for he spoke his words from somewhere within the strange little home. The screen door squeaked open to reveal a wizened old man in stained pants, suspenders, and collarless shirt. His leathery face was crowned by a mass of white hair. He squinted down at Jodie, then grinned to reveal more gaps than teeth. “Ain’t many folks who’d take the time to see how an old soldier was doing.”

“Mr. Russel fought in the Civil War,” Jodie announced.

“Ain’t nobody interested in such goings-on anymore.” The man peered vaguely in Bethan’s direction. “Come on up here close so I can get a look at you, little girl. I ain’t gonna hurt nobody.”

Bethan stirred reluctantly, but Jodie motioned her closer and spoke again. “I heard Momma tell Daddy your dog passed on.”

He turned his attention back to Jodie. “Nigh on three weeks now,” he said, a tremor in his voice. “Sure did leave a big hole in my life. That little guy was wonderful company for an old feller.”

He looked back toward Bethan as she took a pair of tentative steps his way. “What’s your name, gal?”

“Bethan, sir.” She pronouced it to rhyme with “Megan.”

“Now ain’t that an interesting name,” he commented. “Where’d your folks come upon it?”

The old man’s friendliness seemed to overcome Bethan’s shyness, and she spoke quickly. “It’s Welsh. Momma came from there— Wales, I mean—when she was a little girl. It’s part of Britain. My real name is Elizabeth Ann, but Momma shortened it to Bethan. That was her grandmother’s name. Daddy says she probably had the naming all planned from the beginning, and he wishes she’d have just gone and done it up front.”

“Bethan’s momma is used to getting her own way,” Jodie explained, reciting something she had heard her daddy say.

Bethan stared at how the old man squinted in his effort to concentrate on distinguishing the new face. “I’ve got a bad eye too,”

Bethan said frankly. “But only when I get tired. Momma says it’s lazy, and it came from Daddy’s side of the family.”

“Well, is that a fact? Let’s hope it don’t ever get no lazier,” he said with good humor but a tone of concern in his voice as well. He bent over. “What’s that you got there in your hands?”

“It’s a little puppy,” Jodie said before Bethan could answer. “Bethan found him. Her momma won’t let her keep him. And he needs someone to care for him or he’ll get hungry again. And he’s lonely.”

“That makes two of us, then, don’t it?” Work-stained hands reached over. “Mind if I hold him for a minute?”

Bethan hesitated, then with a nod from Jodie handed the puppy over, her eyes watching carefully as the elderly man scooped him in his big brown hands and held him tenderly against his stained shirt. The little puppy instantly tried to reach up and lick the wizened face. The gap-tooth grin reappeared. “Well, ain’t he a friendly little feller. Feels like all skin and bones, though.”

“He needs a good feeding,” Jodie agreed.

“And lots of love,” Bethan added, her voice carrying a hint of bittersweet.

“I’ll be giving this little feller a good home, if you decide to let me keep him,” the elderly man said with warmth. Then he added, “And mind, you can come and see him anytime you like.”

Bethan’s face brightened. “That’d be the next best thing to keeping him myself, wouldn’t it?”

“Sure would.” The old man lifted the excited little dog higher in his arms, letting the cold nose nuzzle under his chin. “And you’d be doing me a passel of good to boot. Everybody on this earth is in need of a friend.”

Jodie nodded agreement, looking in wonder at Bethan. She had never realized how true that was. Until now.

TWO

WHEN BETHAN SAT UP
in bed it was not yet six. Already the air was heavy with smells and dust and new sun. The smells always seemed stronger to her in the morning, sharp enough to smack her awake. She slid from her high four-poster bed, crossed to the window, pushed the white curtains aside, and reveled in the new day.

Everything was bright and clean and fresh and waiting for her. Even the hog pen, which Momma often complained was too close to the house. To Bethan, it seemed perfect where it was, just as Daddy always said. She liked it when her folks talked about the hogs, which was a strange thing to say about listening to her parents argue. But Daddy always said Momma only talked about the hog pen when everything was right with the world. Momma never denied it, but instead would bustle about in the way she did when she was caught out and embarrassed about something, and say that it never paid to be content. Contentment was when trouble got ready to pounce. Complaining about the hogs was as close to perfection as Momma ever wanted to come.

Bethan leaned on the windowsill and drew in deeply of the morning air. Turning back into her room, she filled herself with the odors of home—the fruit hanging heavy on the orchard trees, tobacco ripening in her uncle’s fields, the animals, and the promise of coming activities with a best friend. Today was the last day of freedom before school started again. Bethan had spent long hours planning out this final free day with Jodie. She leaned against the windowsill and said the words silently to herself,
best friend
. Sometimes she still had trouble believing it was so.

She walked over and hopped back onto her bed. It had been her grandparents’, and had a high frame topped by a thick goosedown mattress and intricately carved posts. Bethan loved the feel of the grooved wood under her fingers and the springiness. She didn’t take the time now to enjoy the slight bounce but picked up the Bible from the nearby table and settled it on her lap. She had not told anyone, but she was trying to read the entire Bible, cover to cover, in one year. Reading did not come easy to her, especially now when she was struggling through Isaiah. But then she came to, “Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see.” I’m not really blind, she mused, but I sure would like to see better.

Bethan did not want anyone to know about her Bible-reading goal in case she could not finish on time. So she read alone, pronouncing with slowness and difficulty some of the long, strange words, one outstretched finger leading the way across the page.

She closed the book and her eyes, praying as she did every morning for her new best friend.

“Bethan!” Her mother’s voice drifted upward from the bottom of the stairs. “Come on down for breakfast, honey, your father’s about ready to leave.” Then with more urgency, “Dylan! If you make me come up these stairs one more time, you won’t sit down for a week!”

Bethan scampered over to the door and called down quickly to keep the nearly inevitable from happening, “It’s okay, Momma, I can hear him—I think he’s up.”

“Then your ears are better than mine, child. You’d best be right.”

Bethan waited for her mother to return to the kitchen, then hurried to the end of the hall and entered her brother’s room. But it was not movement which she had heard, only the sound of Dylan snoring. Bethan quietly shut the door behind her and moved over to the bed. Dylan could sleep twelve hours and wake up tired. Their daddy often proclaimed that his son could sleep through the Second Coming and not even roll over. Momma always snorted at that and replied that her husband chose the strangest reasons to take pride in his family.

“You’ve made me fib to Momma,” Bethan exclaimed in dismay. “I thought you were already up.”

Bethan did what she often had to, which was pull the pillow out from beneath Dylan’s head, then bounce his shoulder up and down with both hands. If she didn’t have him up soon, their momma would be up the stairs for sure and they’d both be in trouble. “Breakfast is on the table,” she whispered hoarsely in his exposed ear.

“Five minutes,” came the mumbled reply.

Bethan shook harder, hearing the measured tread begin the climb. “I can hear Momma on the stairs,” she said anxiously.

With a speed that belied his inert position of the moment before, Dylan exploded from the covers. He reached blindly for the trousers hanging from the back of his chair, pulled them up and tucked his nightshirt’s long edge in as far as he could, snapped on the suspenders, and scrambled to the door.