The Springsweet (15 page)

Silent for a long moment, Emerson seemed weighed with thought, some struggle on his brow. Inside, I wavered, because I had spoken my heart plainly—I did want his hands on my face, his lips tenderly on mine. But I couldn't bear to fall for him only to discover later that the magic was all we had.

Finally, Emerson let go of my hand, and I admit, I despaired. But he pushed his hat back on his head and stood, offering a hand to me. I took it, and he pulled me rather more close than he should have, but I forgave him that when he said, "Very,
very
sorry?"

I pushed him away with my shoulder, swallowing my laughter. "You awful thing."

"Come back Wednesday," he replied.

And for the first time in a year, I had a reason to count the days again.

***

Come morning, Birdie flitted as much as one could flit in a soddy. She hummed as she dressed Louella, laughing when the buttonholer slipped, instead of cursing it like she usually did.

"Just fry some of those eggs," Birdie told me. "There will be biscuits and coffee when we get there, I imagine, and we'll spend the rest of the day sewing or cooking. Nobody's going hungry today."

I nodded, cutting off the tiniest slice of salt pork to grease the pan. Birdie's excitement seeded the atmosphere, and I couldn't help but share it. I had heard of a barn raising but never seen one. I understood it was half frolic, half Herculean feat—a great deal more would happen than just the building of a barn.

The men would raise the walls, hopefully by nightfall, with boys running their errands. We women would cook and can and, most importantly, trade information. No doubt there would be news from back east, as well as clever recipes and tricks we'd learned on our homesteads.

And what made me tremble was knowing it would be West Glory's first chance to hire me as their springsweet. The notices had been up long enough to draw interest. We'd know by sundown if anyone thought my gifts might be worth two dollars a scry.

Straightening, Birdie gave Louella a little push. "Take your apron and go pick me four green tomatoes, the biggest you can find." Then to me, Birdie said, "If we slice them thin and fry them, we should have a respectable enough dish to offer."

"I'm sure it will be fine." I nodded, taking an egg and cracking it swiftly. I started to reassure her that they couldn't expect more than what we had to offer, but instead I screamed.

A fleshy, bloody mess quivered in my pan. It was an awful thing, contorted and foul smelling, and I clapped a hand over my mouth.

Far more sensible than I, Birdie plucked the pan up and emptied the mess directly into the fire. She said without accusation, "I take it you didn't candle those eggs."

"I brought them in fresh last night!" I pointed to the rest lying in the bowl and looking like innocents when plainly, horrifying monsters lurked within. "How could they have turned already?"

Birdie glanced at the heavens, perhaps begging strength. "They're fertilized. I'd say by the look of them, they would have been chicks in another two weeks."

Opening the front door, I fanned myself with it, but my stomach roiled again and again. Honestly, I wanted to compose myself. I wanted very much to smooth myself over, but no amount of reasoning within soothed me. Reason could hardly contend with the grip of raw, base horror.

With no time for my dramatics, Birdie plucked up the bowl of eggs and shoved them into my hands. "I suggest you go dispose of these."

I thrust them away from my body, holding them at arm's length. I'm sure my panic came through quite clearly when I asked, "How?"

"Put them in the compost," Birdie said, pouring salt in the frying pan to scrub it clean. She moved so efficiently that what she said next sounded reasonable on first consideration. "Break them up with a stick so they don't explode."

But only nearly.

"Explode?!"

"Zora!" Birdie put the pan down hard. "Quit being a hysterical ninny. We still need breakfast, and we've got a long walk ahead of us."

How ashamed I was at that moment. I kept my tongue and slipped outside, still carrying the bowl as far from me as I could manage.

Of all the things to set me to screaming like a child, it had been nothing reasonable. No, I could endure any number of trials-—whole weeks' worth of meager meals, dirt floors and robberies, forced courtship and apparent abandonment—but I had been reduced to terror by bad eggs.

***

I let Birdie and Louella walk ahead of me, which was some feat considering how short Louella's legs were. Perhaps I thought to indulge in sullenness, and to be fair, I kept quiet for the whole of the walk. But once I caught sight of the barn raising, I couldn't bear to sulk anymore.

By my estimation, the Baders were doing quite well. Their house was made of gleaming new lumber, the windows glass, and the door fitted with a screen to let air through during the day. Fencing marked off part of their plot, protecting several cows and four spindly calves.

I noted a chicken coop, and a hog run, a pony cart, and a plow. They had tamed the prairie for a mile at least, a wheat field still green and tender stretching toward a copse of trees in the distance. That land was especially green, no doubt lining the creek that snaked through their property and ours.

But that wasn't their only water. They boasted a new metal pump beside the house—drawing water from the depths, no doubt it rose pure and clean and clear. They had claimed a very lucky piece of land in the run, indeed. Plenty of water, plenty of good earth.

Now I understood why Birdie had fretted about slicing our green tomatoes thin. In Maryland or Oklahoma, we all did our best to keep up appearances, but how could we seem anything but poor neighbors compared to all this?

"All right, we're here," Birdie said. "Knock that puss off your face."

It seemed she and Mama both possessed a preternatural sense of all things occurring behind them at all times. Once, when I was very small, I had stuck out my tongue at the back of Mama's head, and she promptly sent me to stand in the corner.

Since I could only imagine what sort of punishment Birdie might visit on me for the same, I put on a smile as we walked into the cloud of West Glory women spread across the lawn.

"Birdie, look at you," a ginger-haired woman said, already opening her arms to pull her in. "And look at those tomatoes. They came in early! What's your secret?"

"Prayer," Birdie replied. Then she directed the woman toward me. "Caroline, this is my niece Zora. Zora, this is Caroline Edwards. She's the one who keeps me in laces and crinolines to stitch."

I offered my hand. "It's good to meet you, Mrs. Edwards."

"Likewise, I'm sure. I'll have to introduce you to my nephew," Mrs. Edwards said, pulling Birdie toward the heart of the ladies on the lawn.

"She's got a beau," Birdie said, casting me a look that dared a denial.

Though I'd hardly contradict an elder in mixed company, I simply answered with a smile. Theo wasn't my beau, but if it kept Mrs. Edwards from foisting her nephew on me, I thought I could, this once, let the lie stand.

In quick order, Mrs. Edwards managed to introduce both Birdie's early tomatoes and me to what seemed like a hundred smiling women. Almost all of them—all but the children, it seemed—were married, and when I looked toward the men as they started work on the barn, I realized we were quite outnumbered.

I watched them spreading out, selecting tools and considering a barn that, at the moment, was hardly more than a skeleton. They looked like geese, a flock of white muslin shirts and dark trousers. I was entirely amused, however, to see a shock of emerald green among them.

Theo had rolled up his shirtsleeves and bound his hair back, and it seemed that his waistcoat was cotton, a concession to the day's labor. Still, he seemed too rarefied by half among them.

Beside Emerson, he positively gleamed.

My heart jumped twice, once in seeing Emerson, and the second in seeing him approach Theo. But whatever words they shared, they were pleasant enough. Theo's smile never faded, and Emerson gestured comfortably, as if they were old friends indeed.

I was surprised to see how closely matched they were in height, for Emerson seemed impossibly tall when I looked up at him, and I'd never had that impression of Theo. They were a strange pair-—refined and rough but both, I realized, entirely beautiful in their own ways.

"Already goggling at the boys," Mrs. Bader said, slinging an arm around my shoulders.

She, like Birdie, was hardly older than I was-—I guessed at most a few years, because she had twins, three years old, rolling around the lawn with Louella.

Her pert nose crinkled when she smiled, and she leaned her head toward mine. "Do you see that handsome devil there with the goatee? That's my husband."

It was charming, how infatuated she seemed to be with him-—and admirable. I followed the line of her gaze and then laughed when I realized said husband was stretching himself on the barn frame, showing off for his pretty young wife. "You're a very lucky woman, Mrs. Bader."

"Fff, call me Suzannah," she said. She tugged me along, offering conspiratorially, "And come help me can. It's pickles and relish today-—that's not hard at all.
And
we've got the best view of the raising."

I hated canning. It was tedious, precision work that just as often ended in an explosion as it did in a good bottle of preserves. But Suzannah had a lively air to her, her brightness refreshing. And it was good, I mused, to see new faces and hear new voices. To do new chores while enjoying the sunshine and, I admit, the view.

"Now," Suzannah said as she handed me a cloth, "while I get this to boiling, tell me everything interesting about you."

Sitting on the little wood stool by the fire, I started wiping the lids clean. My gaze drifted back to the barn, where nails were finally set to wood and hammers began to drum. "Well, I'm from Baltimore. I haven't got any brothers or sisters..."

"I heard you rode into town first thing of a morning with Emerson Birch," she said, cutting directly to gossip I had no idea had been circulating. "Tell me if I'm prying, but where on earth did he find you?"

"On the road," I said, choosing my words carefully. "I had meant to walk to town, but he spared me that."

"I see, I see," Suzannah all but chirped. She kept her voice low, a confidential sort of tone. "The coach came in but an hour late, and you didn't turn up until morning, so we were wondering..."

Bright spots of heat stung my cheeks. Finding a very stubborn spot to scrub, I measured my answer. "I had gotten quite a ways on my own. By the time Mr. Birch—"

Giggling, Suzannah repeated teasingly, "
Mr.
Birch. So formal! But go on, go on. I'm sorry. I'll button my lips right now."

I could barely remember where I'd left off. "Ah, well, I ... It was dark, so he took me home."

"He didn't!"

Leaning toward her, I insisted, "It wasn't untoward in any way whatsoever! He ... he gave me his bed, and he—"

"Slept on the floor at your side?" Suzannah puffed up with a delighted breath.

I do honestly believe if I'd had a pin, I could have popped her. And the worst of it was that she didn't have a hint of maliciousness. Though I couldn't trust she wouldn't repeat my story, as she was entirely a stranger, I got the impression that she was simply starved for entertainment.

But I lied—and I don't know if it was to spare Emerson or Birdie or even my own vain self—but I looked into Suzannah's sparkling brown eyes and said, "Oh no. He took the rifle and slept in the buckboard."

"Did he really?" Suzannah brushed her skirts back and tossed another stick on the fire. She seemed just as delighted with that answer as she would have been with a more salacious admission.

I nodded, offering her the box of cleaned lids. "Yes, and then he carried me straight to my aunt's in the morning."

Suzannah sighed, the sigh of a thoroughly satisfied gossip. "What a story; you should marry him so you can tell your grandchildren how you met. Or maybe that's what I'll tell my grandchildren. They won't know the difference!"

Gently extricating myself, I said, "I'm going to check on my cousin, I'll be right back."

"I'll be right here," Suzannah sang, and I didn't doubt her one bit.

***

As I worked my way through the stations, I felt myself stripped inch by inch. Though all the women here had come from somewhere else, every one of them had developed a directness that both fascinated and terrified me.

"Now, you're the one who does the water witching," Mrs. Rubert said, catching me between stations.

She was an older woman, her face gently lined and her hair steel gray. She wore it loose, the way the little girls did, only the sides pinned back with jet combs. On account of her age, I felt duty bound to sit with her a moment, which meant I found myself basting quilt squares as I talked.

Threading a needle, I nodded. "Yes, ma'am. Do you need a well?"

"Me? No, pet, I live in town. I'm set as set can be." She worked her end of the quilt with precise fingers. I was a fair hand at it myself, but Mrs. Rubert's stitches were so even, so straight, that I marveled. "I just wanted to know how you did it."

Reaching for a luxurious square of cornflower velvet, I thought about her question, then shook my head. "I'm not sure, to tell you the truth. When I close my eyes, I hear my own heart beating. And from there, it's as if ... I'm listening for another one. When I finally hear it, when it matches mine, I look out and see a flickering light. That's where the water is."

Mrs. Rubert made a soft, incredulous sound. "Well, I'll be."

There was nothing I could possibly say to that, so I kept my silence and reached for another square. After a moment, Mrs. Rubert slipped her pin into the border and looked up at me. "We had a fella come through last summer, claimed to be a rainmaker."

My brows lifted in surprise. Though my ability had come to me late and strangely, hundreds claimed to share it. Throughout the country; for that matter, throughout history. But I had never heard of a rainmaker before—just as I had never heard of anyone pulling the water to the surface, though I had done that. I was sure of it.