I did, too, sometimes, but not on account of her carrying-on. I could watch her rave and scream from sun-up to midnight without batting an eye, but I thought it best not to let on that I was not afraid of her, nor that I cared so little for her contentment. I had my bed and board to think of, after all. I found the easiest way to deal with Miss Ann was to let her think she was getting her way, and if I could do that, and still go about my business on the sly, so much the better. I’ll take peace and quiet, if it comes cheap enough.
I was watching her, though, all the time. Looking to see where that little spot of weakness lay within her. If you intend to hurt someone, it’s best to find out where hitting them will do the most good. I studied her posture, checking for a sign of tautness in her neck that would show she was fixing to set at Tom again, once she got her second wind, but she was slumped against him with her face pressed against his chest, making little kitten noises, while he stroked her hair.
They didn’t take any more notice of me after that, so I went away to see to the chickens.
Later on I heard that Tom had gone off to see Dr. Carter to get treatment for his ailment, same as Ann did. R.D. Hall said that Tom was in a bate about his affliction, and claiming he would “put through” whoever gave it to him. But he never did any more than just complain about it. As far as I could tell, Tom’s tempers were like summer storms: quick and hard, but gone in a flash, leaving no trace they’d ever been. Women’s anger is different. We burn long and slow, and you may never see the flames, but that doesn’t mean it’s over.
Wilson Foster’s place is a five-mile walk from the Melton farm, over in German’s Hill, just past the Caldwell County line. Ann swears that Tom Dula makes the journey every few nights, leastways she’s afraid he does, so I reckon all that marching in the infantry got him used to the exercise. Or maybe he’s just like a sorry old dog that will travel clear across the county to find a bitch in heat. Making that five-mile walk afforded me a deal less pleasure than it would Tom, but I set my mind on doing it every week or so anyhow, taking care to arrive in the early evening so as to be gone by the time Tom made his rounds.
It’s a good thing that James Melton is an able shoemaker as well as a farmer, for I must have worn out half a deer hide in shoe leather, walking those muddy paths in the April mists to reach German’s Hill before full dark. The damp cold seeped all the way to my bones, and plastered my hair against my cheeks, but I was set on going, not for the joy I’d find at journey’s end, but for another kind of joy altogether.
When I could get my chores done, I’d set out at earliest twilight, and count on reaching the Fosters’ place in time to help Cousin Laura get supper on the table, which meant, of course, that I would be asked to help them eat it. I didn’t mind peeling potatoes and frying up apples, because if I had stayed to eat with the Meltons, I would have had to do all the cooking, instead of just helping out by doing half of it. Besides, I judged that Cousin Laura was more apt to talk when she was too busy fixing supper to think overmuch about what she was saying to me. I hoped she would get to talking and all but forget that I was there, and then I would learn what secret it was she was fluffed up over, like a broody hen.
If I put my mind to it, I can gentle people the same as I’ve seen some drovers do to horses. Soft words, no quick movements, and never a hint of judging them or being riled. People in these parts are not, by and large, trusting souls, and the War has made them even more leery of strangers. When we came of age, Laura, Ann, and I, strangers-in uniform or not-meant trouble. We saw barns burned and livestock stolen. Ordinary farmers got bushwhacked and left on the road with their throats cut, murdered by one side or the other, as if which side had done it would have counted for anything. I reckon all of us learned to give as good as we got, and to take whatever we could from them that had more than we did. But the War was over now, and maybe some folks were letting themselves forget what they had learned about the danger of trusting people. Anyhow, I wasn’t a stranger to Laura Foster, for all that we didn’t grow up together. I was kin. And if you can’t trust your kinfolks, who can you trust?
Why, nobody.
I wouldn’t forget that lesson, and I figured I’d give her cause to remember it as well.
So I told her how lucky she was to be so thin and pretty. Scrawny passes for pretty while you are young, and it puts people in a good mood to be warmed with praise; though you would be wasting your time to try it on me, for I can always see the truth through the whitewash.
I let her talk by the hour, it seemed like, about how life was passing her by while she was stuck in her daddy’s house, taking care of his young’uns like a hired girl.
I sat beside her at the table, peeling puckered winter apples, and nodding my head in agreement every time she stopped to draw breath. I remembered to pat her hand and pull a sorrowful face when her tears spilled over on to her sallow cheeks. Laura was making stew for dinner, same as she did most nights, because watery flour and potatoes is the best way to make a smidgeon of meat feed a slew of people. Two skinned rabbits lay on the table beside the flour bowl, looking to me like stillborn babies, but that was a comment I kept to myself.
“T’ain’t fair.” Laura’s voice was shaking, and I saw tears plop in to the stew pot.
“It is hard lines on you, Laura,” I told her, for it was plain what she wanted to hear. “You have put in enough of your youth taking your mama’s place in this house, and it’s only right that you should have a chance to make a family of your own.”
“Well, it is,” she said, wiping her wet face with the back of her hand. “And I mean to do just that before too long. You wait and see.”
“I’m sure Mrs. Dula would welcome another daughter about the farm, though she already has one of her own. But Tom’s sister is a grown girl now, and she’ll be out and gone before too long, I’ll warrant.”
It had been a stab in the dark, and when Laura stopped stirring the stew and turned to stare at me, open-mouthed, I saw that I had guessed wrong, and I hastened to set it to rights before she remembered herself and stopped confiding. “Of course, I don’t know what anybody would want with Tom Dula, for all that our cousin Ann sets such a store by him. I guess you could hope to live long enough for him to inherit that land, if the taxes don’t claim it first, but if it’s up to him to run the place, it will fall to ruin about his ears one of these days.”
She tossed her head. “I ain’t studying about Tom Dula, Pauline. He’s all right to pass the time with, ’cause Lord knows there ain’t nothin’ else to do around here, but going over to the Dulas wouldn’t hardly be a change from where I am now. Just swapping one dirt farm for another, and waiting for hard work and childbed to take me off, like it did my mama.”
It seemed to me that she had just ruled out mankind in general with those true words, but I judged she was not bright enough to work this out for herself. It was only Tom she was set against, and not the male sex in general. Laura thought she was going somewhere, and I wanted to know where.
I tried again. “Anyone can see how good you are at taking care of young’uns. There’s more than one widower in these parts with motherless babes to raise, and a tidy little farm in need of a helpmeet. Any of them would be glad to take you to wed.”
Laura shook her head. “I have had enough of other people’s children. And enough of hill farming, too. I want to get clean away from here.”
I couldn’t afford to make any more wrong guesses about what was in her mind. We were near to the secret now, and she would be like a broody hen a-guarding it. I cast my thoughts about, trying to light on some man who would be able take care of her without having a farm to rely on. The local gentry did not figure in my calculations. There were rich men enough, even in Wilkes County, but Laura’s soiled reputation had spread in whispers about the settlement, and I knew that no doctor or landowner would bother with a penniless girl who was damaged goods. Even if she had been beautiful, they’d not have troubled to marry her, and beautiful she was not. But I doubt she had ever been five miles from home, so there was no use thinking of anybody farther afield than the settlement.