Smoke River Bride (17 page)

She struggled to steady her breathing. “I am a sensible woman who cares about you.”

To her surprise, he kissed her thoroughly. His firm lips, and the scratch of his afternoon whiskers, warmed a hollow ache below her belly. When he lifted his head, he looked at her so long she wondered if she had flour on her nose.

In the next moment he was out the front door, and she heard his boots thud down the porch steps.

“Wish Pa’d taken me with him. We were s’posed to go fishin’, but I guess he forgot.”

“He could not take you with him, Teddy. Your father wants you to be safe tonight. With me,” she added.

“Oh. Okay. I guess it’s not so bad, bein’ with you, Leah.”

Not so bad?
Was that acceptance she heard in the boy’s words? Even approval?

Before dark fell, Leah washed up the dishes and Teddy dried them; then they walked out to the barn and he helped her saddle Lady. When she had mounted, Teddy scrambled up in front of her. She did not want Thad’s son more than an arm’s length away from her at the town meeting tonight.

“Golly, Leah. I’ve never seen tar ’n’ feathers on anybody.”

“Hush, Teddy. You do not want to see such a thing.”

In the hour it took to reach town she thought about the look on Thad’s face after he’d kissed her. Oh, how she hungered for more of Thad. Much, much more.

She also thought about the ugly situation that awaited them. Her husband was courageous, even gallant, to volunteer to keep Uncle Charlie safe. She knew that Thad had stood up for her in the past, and that it had cost him bloody knuckles and bruised ribs.

She could not help thinking that Verena Forester would never need such protection.
No doubt Verena had never, ever felt she was an outsider.

A confrontation at the town meeting would drive Thad even further away from her. Was she costing Thad more than he was willing to pay?

She bit her lip until she tasted blood.

T
he town meeting was held in the large room in back of the barber shop. When Leah and Teddy walked inside, the noise was so deafening Teddy clapped both hands over his ears.

Screaming children raced around the perimeter until they were corralled by their parents. Townspeople stood nose to nose, shaking fingers in each other’s angry red faces, until finally Carl Ness divided the crowd into two opposing groups facing each other on opposite sides of the room.

People found seats on whatever they could seize—extra chairs from the barbershop, empty barrels, wooden fruit crates with colorful labels pasted on one end, even cushions tossed down on the plank floor.

Leah shared a splintery apple crate with Teddy. “Golly, the whole town’s here,” he whispered. “Must be a hund’erd people.”

Across the room, people were packed so tight they could scarcely move. Only a few drifted to the side where Leah sat with Teddy—Ellie and Matt Johnson; Jeanne and Colonel Halliday and their daughter, Manette. And—Leah’s eyes widened—hulking, overweight Ike Bruhn.

Ike Bruhn? What was he doing on their side?
She thought he hated the Chinese. Thad was just now recuperating from the beating Ike and Whitey Poletti had inflicted last week.

Near Ike sat Sarah Rose, owner of the white clapboard boardinghouse at the edge of town, and Rooney Cloudman, her boarder, along with Harvey Pritchard and his wife, from the Lazy J ranch five miles out of town. And old Mrs. Hinksley, a retired schoolteacher from Portland who boarded with Mrs. Rose with her sister, Iris DuPont. Ike’s fiancée, Cleora Rose, sat across the room among the Nesses and the Polettis and everyone else opposed to Leah’s Chinese uncle’s presence and his bakery.

Leah counted only thirteen people on her
side, and that included children. She lost count of the number on the opposite side.

“Where’s Pa?” Teddy whispered. Leah scanned the gathering, but Thad’s tall, lean form was nowhere to be seen.

“I do not know. He left the house early to find a safe place for Uncle Charlie in case…” She could not bear to finish the thought.

Carl Ness began banging a makeshift gavel on the small table before him. “Order,” he yelled. “Come to order.”

Carl’s wife, Linda-Lou, sat on his right. To his left perched their twins, Edith and Noralee. Leah noticed that Noralee was staring fixedly at her shoes.

Whitey Poletti sprawled behind Carl in an old barbershop chair, his white-blond hair slicked back with hair tonic. Sitting slumpshouldered as he was, the paunchy Italian resembled an oversize rag doll.

Carl stood up, hooked his thumbs in his front pockets and puffed out his bony chest. “I called this here meeting ’cuz of something important that’s come up in Smoke River. Something that affects all of us.”

A murmur of discontent circled the room. Undeterred, the mercantile owner continued. “Up till a couple of months ago, our town’s
been a pretty nice place to live. Now we’ve got us a problem.”

Harvey Pritchard stood up at the back of the room and stuck both thumbs in his bib overalls. “Vat iss this problem?”

“The problem,” Carl retorted, “is Charlie’s Bakery. You’d know that if you and the missus came into town and visited the mercantile more often.”

“Yah? Who iss Charlie?”

A ripple of anticipation followed the farmer’s query. “He’s a damn Celestial,” Carl said, his voice tight. “You know, a Chinaman!”

Pritchard restraightened his bib overalls. “And vat has he done?”

Whitey Poletti shot to his feet. “Clean out yer ears, Pritchard. The Chinaman’s opened a bakery, right next to my barbershop!”

“Ah, iss good idea, yah? Get shave and haircut and bring home cake.”

The crowd laughed. Poletti grew red in the face. “But this here Charlie is a Celestial!” he shouted. “An immigrant! His real name is Ming Chow or somethin’.”

“So vat? I and my wife, ve are immigrants, too. Ve are Dutch. My wrangler, he is fullblooded Nez Perce, and my cook, Maria, she comes from Mexico.”

Whitey snorted. “Ya know, Pritchard, you live so far outta town you don’t keep up with things. I said Charlie is a
Chinaman.”

Talk broke out all over the room and the barber plopped back onto his chair. Carl lifted his gavel and had to rap the block of cedar on the table three times before the buzzing voices fell silent.

“Anybody else not up to date on what’s happening to this town?”

“Hell, yes,” shouted Matt Johnson. In his slow, easy way, the rangy federal marshal got to his feet. “What’s the big panic over a bakery?”

“A
Chinese
bakery,” a woman shouted.

“Run by a Chinaman,” someone else yelled. “We’re not gonna stand for it.”

Another woman’s voice pierced the clamor. “You let one foreigner move in and next thing you know you’ve got one on every street corner.”

The marshal waited for quiet. “I can’t see the problem,” he drawled. “Unless he bakes bad cakes.”

“Siddown, Johnson,” Carl snapped.

Matt eyed the mercantile owner and raised one dark eyebrow. “You won’t forget it’s ‘Marshal Johnson,’ now, will you?” he said
in his low, steady voice. “Just thought I’d remind you all that this is a peaceable meeting. Everybody gets to speak his mind but nobody throws a punch.”

“Go back to Texas!” someone yelled.

A familiar female voice rose again. “First thing you know there’ll be Chinese wives in town and Chinese kids in our school.”

Another voice added to the clamor. “The Chinese will take over everything.”

Leah sighed. Verena Forester had an abundance of opinions.

“Send ’em back to China!” another woman chimed.

Leah clenched her fists in her lap. This was wrong. Wrong! How could a whole town punish an innocent man just for being Chinese? She had seen it in Luzhou when someone “different” was forced to leave the village. But here, in America? Her father had taught her that America was the land of the free. No one could force Uncle Charlie to leave town.

Could they?

Someone lifted Teddy off his perch and sat down next to Leah.

“Thad!”

He settled Teddy on his lap. “Don’t worry about Uncle Charlie,” he whispered. “He’s
safe.” He surveyed the roomful of bickering townspeople. “Anybody here get out of line yet?”

“Carl Ness and the barber are the worst so far,” Leah murmured. “Marshal Johnson is trying to keep everything legal.”

Thad cocked his head. “They all sound crazy to me. Bigoted and uninformed.”

A high-pitched tirade poured out of one woman’s mouth. “Everyone knows the Celestials bring disease, and God knows what else—inedible food, strange potions, pagan rituals…”

Thad sighed. “Yeah, that’s Smoke River, all right. Small towns have their shortcomings.”

A man at the back leaped onto an overturned fruit crate. “There’s millions of ’em in San Francisco already! The Chinks are gonna take over our towns and cities…our whole country!”

“Ignorant and close-minded,” Thad murmured. “I’ve had just about enough.” He set Teddy on his feet and stood up.

“Mr. Chairman?”

Carl Ness boggled at him. “Mr. MacAllister, did you wish to speak?”

“I sure as hell do. Let’s get our facts straight
before we go off half-cocked and do something we’ll regret.”

A sullen silence fell over the crowd.

“To begin with, Ming Cha—Uncle Charlie—is just one man. He’s only about five foot four and he’s way too shy to threaten anyone.”

“But there’ll be others,” someone yelled.

“That’s fine with me. We’ve got plenty of room in this country.”

“Oh, yeah? Then let ’em go somewhere else.”

Thad raised his voice to reach the back of the room. “We’ve got bigger problems in Smoke River than one new bakery. With the drought this summer, more than half of us are going to owe the bank more than we like to think about. We should be thinking about real problems, not whether one Chinese man opens a business.”

“Well, hell,” a male voice shouted. “You’re married to a Celestial, so you can’t say otherwise, can ya?”

“Sure, I could say otherwise,” Thad said in a controlled voice. “But I would be wrong. It’s just plain damn wrong to make one of us less important than another, and taking away someone’s right to a peaceful life in a peaceful town is wrong.”

“Are we gonna listen to the fool of a man who planted
wheat?”
someone else yelled. “Wheat! Now, I ask you, does that make sense?” The speaker waited a heartbeat. “Well, neither does Thad MacAllister!”

“How come Charlie Ming-something came to Smoke River in the first place?” someone called out. “Whose uncle is he, anyway?”

Thad pinned the gaze of the speaker, a gangly man with long arms he was still waving.

“My wife, Leah, is Charlie’s niece.”

“Don’t make no nevermind, MacAllister. It’s Charlie we’re talkin’ about, not yer wife. Besides, she’s not so welcome, neither, seein’ as how she’s a Chinese immigrant, too.”

“Hold on a minute,” Thad said in a suddenly menacing tone. “What’s wrong with immigrants?”

“They don’t fit in!” someone answered. “Your wife’ll never last in our town. You just watch. She’ll bolt and run when the going gets tough.”

“Is that right?” Thad said with a laugh. “Then you don’t know my wife.”

“Miz MacAllister’s only half Chinese,” a woman sitting in back shouted. “This Charlie person is one hundred percent Chinaman.”

“Question is,” someone yelled, “what’s a
foreigner doin’ opening his business in our town in the first place?”

Before Leah was even aware of moving, she was on her feet, her teeth clenched, ready for battle.

Thad took one look at her, settled back on his seat and lifted Teddy onto his knees. “Go get ’em, honey,” he murmured.

“Yeah,” Teddy echoed. “You kin do it, Leah. You’re real smart. Go get ’em.”

Go get them?
Her mouth was so dry she could not swallow.

But her husband and her stepson were right. Someone besides Thad had to fight for Charlie.

She wiped her damp palms on the front of her flounced muslin skirt and faced the crowd.

I
pray the Lord will help me. I cannot do this
. This was worse than anything she had faced in Luzhai. This wasn’t a gang of rock-throwing bullies; it was a whole town full of adults who hated her and Uncle Charlie.

In the front row of the restless crowd opposite her, Leah spotted Noralee Ness seated on an apple crate. The girl’s hands were clamped to the edge of the box and her eyes were wide.

Noralee looked back at her, expecting her to say something. The girl’s father, Carl Ness, was waiting for her to make a fool of herself. An almost feral grin spread across his narrow face.

Before Leah could unclamp her jaws, Teddy reached out and gave a swift tug on her
muslin skirt. She bent down and he cupped his hands and spoke into her ear.

“Remember what you taught me, Leah. Don’t let ’em know you’re scared.” He looked up into her face for a long moment and then gave her a thumbs-up.

Leah gasped out a laugh.
For heaven’s sake, what a grown-up thing for the boy to do
. Thad must have put him up to it.

No, she realized in the next instant. It was Teddy who would remember those words. Not Thad, but his son.
Teddy wanted her to know he was on her side
. Leah’s throat ached.

Carl Ness’s impatient cough reminded her She was standing before a throng of angry townspeople, some of whom she did not even know. she must speak out, and She must do it now.

Suddenly she was unsure what to say. She knotted her fingers together, sucked in air, began to speak. What came out of her mouth surprised her.

“Were all of you who live in Smoke River born here, in America?”

Her question was met by some hesitant nods and more than a few grumbled no’s.

Struggling to keep her hands from shaking,
she faced the barber. “Mr. Poletti, where did you originally come from?”

Pleased at being singled out, the barber beamed. “From Napoli. Bee-yoo-tiful Napoli, in Italy.”

“You came from Italy to America?”

“I sure did. On a big white ship.”

“How about you, Mr. Pritchard? Where do you come from?”

“Amsterdam. Is in Holland. My wife and I, ve are Dutch,” he said proudly.

“Mr. O’Brian, what about you?”

The red-bearded man stood up and bellowed, “Ireland, God bless ’er. The Emerald Isle. Came to work on the railroads.”

“I am from Chermany,” said an older woman next to Mr. O’Brian, her accent pronounced. “Both me and
mein
sister.”

All at once eight-year-old Noralee Ness shot to her feet and purposefully stalked over to Leah’s side of the room.

“Noralee!” her father snapped. “You get back here.”

The girl spun to face him. “I can’t, Papa. I’m real sorry, but what Miz Johnson taught us in school is right. In America, everyone is equal.”

The mercantile owner’s face flushed purple. “When I get you home, I’ll—”

“Stop it, Carl,” his wife ordered. “She’s right.”

Taking a deep breath, Leah resumed her questions. “How about you, Mrs. Rose?”

“I sailed from England, dearie. My family had a pig farm in Yorkshire.”

Leah turned her gaze on the oversize man who had beaten up Thad and Uncle Charlie. “What nationality are you, Ike?”

“Svedish,” he roared. “But my fader, he come from Denmark.”

“My husband, Thad, comes from Scotland.” She waited two heartbeats. “And I was born in Luzhai, in China.”

“Oughtta go back there!” someone yelled.

“What’re you tryin’ to say, lady?”

“Only this,” Leah replied. She waited until it grew so quiet she could hear Thad’s breathing behind her. “Do any of you feel you are better than anyone else in Smoke River?”

“Guess not,” a gray-bearded man grumbled. “I got more hair than ever’body else in town, but that don’t make me better’n them, just different.”

Harvey and Iris Pritchard chose that moment to march across the room to Leah’s side,
followed by white-haired Granny Bolan. “I come from Russia,” the old woman said with pride as she sat down next to Ellie and Marshal Matt Johnson. “My name used to be Bolansky.”

Leah nodded. “It must be obvious then that all of us here are different in some way.”

Heads nodded and suddenly Leah felt a wave of courage wash over her. She raised her head. “But this is America,” she shouted in the strongest voice she had ever used. “We are all kinds of people, with all kinds of backgrounds. We all have the same rights because that is what this country stands for.”

“Ya, it sure does,” someone interjected in the silence.

Leah squared her shoulders. “And those rights include the right to live where we choose. To live here, in Smoke River.”

A sprinkling of guess-so’s and maybe’s came from her audience.

Leah raised her arms to include both sides of the room. “If you do not believe all of us here in Smoke River have these rights, stand up!”

Not one person moved.

She sucked in a long breath. “Now, about Ming Cha, my uncle Charlie. Charlie looks
different from most of us, and that is because he is Chinese.”

“Yeah,” someone yelled. “But he sure makes good cakes!”

“So what? He’s a Chinaman!” another voice responded.

“What you really mean,” Leah challenged in a voice she didn’t know she possessed, “is that Charlie doesn’t look like everyone else in Smoke River?”

“Yeah, he’s got slanty eyes.” This came from one of Ellie’s students.

“And he ain’t white, like the rest of us.” This came from the back of the room.

Old Mrs. Bolan next to Ellie banged her cane on the floor. “Well, what of it?”

“By golly,” a bent, gray-bearded man spluttered. “I dunno as it makes a lot of diff’rence what color his skin is. He makes the best blackberry pie I ever tasted!”

The opposing sides of the room began slinging comments back and forth.

“No damn Chinaman’s gonna show his face in our town!”

“Why not? He’s got as much right as anybody.”

“Oh, yeah? Prove it!”

“Don’t have to,” a schoolmate of Teddy’s screamed. “It’s in the Constitution.”

“Sez who?”

“Sez Miz Johnson, that’s who.”

“No woman speaks for me, you son of a gun!”

“She’s the schoolteacher. She oughtta know! She oughtta speak for all of us.”

At that point, Marshal Johnson rose to his feet. “Folks, I’m reminding you again that having freedom of speech means everyone can say whatever crazy thing they want, but there’s to be no violence.”

Leah sank onto the fruit crate. She had said what she had to; now she could only watch and listen.

The heated shouting match went on for another half hour. In the middle of the uproar the Williams family and red-bearded Mr. O’Brian stalked deliberately over to Leah’s side of the room.

Finally Carl Ness, his narrow face splotchy with rage, jumped to his feet and banged down his gavel so hard the cedar head flew off and clattered onto the floor. A man grabbed it and raised his arm to throw it into the opposite crowd.

Marshal Johnson heaved his tall frame upright
and in an instant complete quiet settled over the room. “Let’s keep it peaceful, folks.”

Colonel Wash Halliday, Jeanne’s husband, rose immediately and raised one hand. “I move we vote on it.”

“I second the motion,” the marshal said quietly. “That’s democratic as hell. Vote no, and Uncle Charlie’s bakery goes. Vote yes, and it stays.”

“But either way,” Colonel Halliday added, “Charlie has a right to live in Smoke River. Right, Marshal?”

Johnson gave a decisive nod. “Absolutely damn right.”

Colonel Halliday pinned the mercantile owner with a look that could wither cornstalks. “Right, Carl?”

“Hell, no!” Carl yelled. “I’m never gonna agree to—”

His wife jabbed him in the ribs and he shifted uneasily. “Oh, all right,” he grumbled. “When ya put it that way, I guess he’s got a right.”

“That’s real smart of you, Carl,” the marshal said with a grin. “I’ll set up a ballot box at the mercantile. We’ll vote on Tuesday about whether Charlie’s bakery stays. That’s all. Have a peaceful night, folks.”

Thad and Leah mounted their horses in silence and headed back to the ranch. Teddy rode in front of Thad, talking excitedly about the evening’s event. Leah, still shaking from her speech-making ordeal, could not say a word.

They rode side by side for a mile without speaking, and then, where the town road split, Thad caught her bridle and leaned his large frame close to hers.

“I’m proud of you, Leah.”

A warm flush washed through her. He was really proud of her? For some reason she wanted to cry.

He said nothing more, just rode on. Teddy’s chatter brought only an occasional noncommittal grunt from his father.

Leah tightened her hands on the reins. Sharp darts of anxiety were beginning to jump in her stomach. What was Thad really thinking? Finally she could not stand his silence one more minute.

She cleared her throat. “Where did you take Uncle Charlie during the meeting?”

Thad snorted. “You mean where’d I hide him from the tar and feathers? I took him up to Verena’s.”

“Verena’s!
Verena’s?
Verena’s apartment is right above the meeting hall!” Angry words bubbled up, but Leah forced them back.

“Thought he’d be safest in the bosom of his enemies, so to speak. Verena never knew he was there. She’d already gone down to the meeting.”

Disbelief welled inside Leah. “Thad, how could you?”

“Why the hell not? Charlie loved it. He made tea in her fancy flowered teapot and even scrubbed off her stovetop.”

Leah stared at Her husband. If she lived ten thousand years, she would never plumb the mysteries of this man. Her mind whirled with questions.

“Why Verena?”

“She’s an old friend, Leah. She may be outspoken, but Hattie always liked her.”

Hattie! An unwelcome heat flooded Leah’s cheeks. She hated to admit it, but she was jealous! Jealous not only of Hattie, but of Verena Forester. Blindingly, stupidly jealous. Suddenly ashamed, Leah felt her face flame. With an effort she kept her eyes on the mare’s thick mane.

“There’s nothing to be upset about, Leah. Verena didn’t know anything about providing
a safe haven for Uncle Charlie. Then I took Charlie to the jail.”

“The jail?”

“Now, don’t get all riled up. The marshal let Charlie sleep there on a cot so he could keep an eye on him.”

Leah bit her lip. That would be just like Thad—do something unexpected and think she would understand.

Another question nagged at her. If Verena had been interested in Thad, why did he not marry her? Was it because of Teddy’s dislike? Verena would have made a fine housekeeper. Why had he sent for Leah?

She wanted reassurance from Thad that he wanted
her
, not Verena. Now as never before she hungered for some indication that Thad cared for her, despite his preoccupation with other things.

If Thad did not care…

But she couldn’t think about that now. Instead she pressed her lips together and resolved to keep silent.

For the moment, at least.