Prayers for Sale (9 page)

The idea of traveling all the way to Colorado with the hope of matrimony struck her as foolish. But it amused her, too, and as she folded the letter and returned it to its envelope, Ila Mae smiled, grateful to Martha for a few minutes of pleasure. She would write tomorrow, refusing her friend’s offer.

Ila Mae did not sleep well that night. She awakened several times to remember the letter and the likeness of Mr. Comfort. As she lay in the dark, the possibility of her moving to far-off Colorado seemed remote, and she would tell
Martha so. But when she awakened in the morning after a few hours’ sleep, she believed that leaving Tennessee was a wise course. Why should she stay? She had no family, and before too many years passed, she would wear herself out with the heavy farmwork. There was Sarah’s grave, but it was a place of death. It was in Ila Mae’s heart that Sarah lived. And Billy, too. Billy had told her once that if anything ever happened to her, he wouldn’t want to live where he was reminded of her every day. Remembering that, she felt that Billy was telling her it was all right to move on.

Ila Mae thought about Colorado all that day. And the next. She didn’t reply to Martha’s letter for a week, and when she did, Ila Mae told her friend that she was willing to give Colorado Territory a try.

She wouldn’t take Mr. Comfort’s money, however. Ila Mae was determined to pay her own way, so that she would not be beholden to anyone. She would look him over and decide for herself—and appraise the other men in the camp, as well. And if none of them suited her, she would find a way to make a living on her own. Surely there was a need for a woman who could cook and launder, sew and quilt and even make bonnets. Did women hunt for gold? Perhaps she, too, would find a gold mine. Before Martha’s letter had arrived, Ila Mae believed she would spend the rest of her life as a caretaker of the past. But now she saw a future, one with a husband and maybe children. Besides, a move to Colorado would be an adventure. Ila Mae had not realized until then how predictable, how ordinary her life had become.

As soon as Martha’s response to Ila Mae’s reply arrived, asking how soon she could leave, Ila Mae sold her farm to a
neighbor and made arrangements to go west with a group of gold seekers. Many in the South were heading for the gold fields to make a new start, so finding a wagon train to join was not difficult. Ila Mae agreed to travel with a man taking a sickly wife and two small boys to Colorado, sharing their wagon and victuals in exchange for cooking and tending the children. Because there was little room in the wagon, the man grumbled when Ila Mae insisted she be allowed to take more than her trunk. But she threatened to outfit her own wagon rather than leave behind her tender possessions—the Friendship quilt her friends presented to her just before she left, each one of them working a Churn Dash block and signing it, and the quilt frame and candle cupboard, both made by Billy.

The family she traveled with left her in Denver, where Ila Mae found a freighter leaving for the Swan River. He was a large man, who needed the wagon bench for himself, but he said he would take Ila Mae along if she and her accumulations could find a place among the freight.

Ila Mae arrived in Middle Swan in a chill rain, wrapped in the Friendship quilt and huddled on top of a mountain of provisions. The camp did not impress her. It was raw new, the log buildings thrown up like jackstraws along a mud trail, and not a one of them was painted. Neither flowers nor grass softened the houses, and there were no trees, only stumps where the pines had been cut down for firewood or building material. She wondered if flowers grew in that high, cold place, for she could not imagine living without them.

She had never heard so much noise. Freighters yelled as they flicked their whips at burros blocking the trail, and the
burros protested in their honking bray. The thud of axes and scraping of saws swept down the mountainsides, along with the clatter of waste rock as it was dumped into yellow piles that spilled out of mine openings high above town. The miners added to the frenzy, yelling instead of speaking. The sounds of fiddles and singing came from three saloons housed in the finest buildings in the town. The excitement was different from the calm, lazy ways of White Pigeon, and Ila Mae was swept up in it.

As luck would have it, Martha was standing in front of the assay office, her husband and Mr. Comfort in tow, just as Ila Mae’s freight wagon came to a stop. They had come each day for a week, hoping to be there when Ila Mae arrived. When Martha saw her friend, she whooped and rushed to her, skirts dragging in the mud.

Ila Mae glanced past Martha at the two men, and she saw right away that Mr. Grove was indeed a handsome-made man. And Mr. Comfort had a pleasing look. He was not quite as tall as Ila Mae, but he was shaven and wore clean clothes. She was suitably impressed—more than Mr. Comfort must be with her, Ila Mae thought, considering her bedraggled appearance. She was vain enough to wish she could have washed her face and dried her clothes before meeting him.

Martha didn’t wait for Ila Mae to get out of the wagon but climbed in beside her and hugged and kissed her. Then after the men helped them out of the wagon, Martha took hold of her senses and said, “And this is my dear husband.”

Ila Mae smiled and tried to curtsy, but her wet skirts nearly pulled her down. So did her surprise, for the shorter
of the two men stepped forward and took her hand. In the name of peace, she didn’t know how she could have been more confused. Martha had told Ila Mae that her husband was the man on the right in the tintype, but she must have meant
Martha’s
right.

“
You’re
Mr. Comfort?” she asked the handsome man, who stepped forward and bowed a little, taking her hand. His eyes were merry with amusement, for he understood at once that Ila Mae had expected him to be the short Mr. Grove.

He looked her up and down, taking in her miserable state, and said, “And you are a little wet hen. Welcome to Middle Swan, Hennie.”

The name made her smile. It was a new name for her new life. And so she buried Ila Mae, and at that moment, Hennie determined to marry Mr. Comfort if he would have her. She had hoped for a good man, a solid man, but she’d never expected one who would make her laugh. Or would make her tingle with wanting the way she had when she first glimpsed him. Perhaps he would even be a man she could love.

There was no courting, no walking to church. Jake showed Hennie his cabin, and she remarked on the orderliness of it. He told her he wasn’t a rich man and wasn’t likely to be, because he didn’t believe he had the luck for it. But he’d work hard, he promised. She didn’t need to worry about that. And he’d do the best he could to take care of her.

Still, Jake Comfort was a complicated man, and in those few days they allowed themselves to know each other, Hennie learned that he had a dark side. He was too fond of whiskey, and he had memories of the war that haunted him,
made him jump when he heard a loud noise. He said he didn’t sleep well.

“My first husband was a Confederate,” Hennie told him.

“Martha said as much. I enlisted for the Union. What are your sentiments?”

“I never wanted the war. I didn’t care who won. I just wanted it to end.”

Jake nodded, satisfied with the answer. “War’s a terrible thing. I don’t intend to ever fight again.” His eyes glinted, and he turned away, pounding his fists into a jackpine. Hennie had seen soldiers in White Pigeon who struggled with things in their heads, and she stood quietly, waiting, until the darkness lifted from Jake. “I’ll not inflict my war on you,” he said.

“Mr. Comfort, I would not want a husband who closed himself off to me.”

“War’s not something to be shared.”

“War’s griefs are.”

“I said I’ll keep my demons to myself,” Jake told her harshly, and Hennie said no more. She knew when a subject was closed.

A day later, he warned Hennie, “A mining camp’s a hard place for a woman.”

“I’ve come from a hard place for a woman,” Hennie responded. “At least, in a mining camp there’s hope.” She loved that about Middle Swan—the hope as well as the excitement, the belief that with the strike of a pick, a person might find a fortune. What she liked best about a mining camp was that it had no past.

“I come with encumberments,” Hennie told Jake, for she
had picked up what the wagonmaster called a stray on the trail west. Jake would be taking on more than just a wife. But Jake replied that he would take Hennie even if she’d come with a wagonload of children, chickens, and dogs.

Less than a week after they met, Jake took her into a grove of aspen trees and got down on one knee, taking her hand. “Hennie, it would please me more than a diamond ring if you would marry me.”

Hennie was so happy she didn’t know anything. They were wed that afternoon, Martha and her husband standing up with them. Hennie’s wasn’t always an easy marriage, and she wondered more than once if she should have insisted the time they talked about war that Jake share his memories with her, because they haunted him until the day he died. Hennie believed she might have helped him if she’d understood his terrors. Still, it was a fine marriage, as good a marriage as ever was, and Hennie never regretted coming to Colorado. She’d been given a second chance at life, and she thanked Jake for it—and Billy, too, because Hennie always believed that Billy had showed her the way.

Nit clapped her hands together and said she’d never heard anything so romantic, even on the radio. “Your stories comfort me,” she said. She finished off her thread and cut it with Hennie’s scissors, then looked through the window at the sun high in the sky and remarked, “I better get gone.” She paused a moment before she stood up, her brow furrowed in concentration. “I wanted to ask you something else.” Nit bent her head over the quilt, and Hennie couldn’t see the
girl’s face, only her shining red hair. “How come you to have that sign about selling prayers if you don’t sell them?”

Hennie chuckled. “That’s another story, but it’s a short one, and I’ll tell it. Jake and I had been married three or four years when I told him I was so happy that I had nothing else to pray for. ‘Why,’ says I, ‘I’ve got prayers to sell.’ He was so tickled by what I said that he made the sign for me and nailed it to the fence. It was a joke, but every now and then somebody like you comes along asking for prayers, and like I told you, no money will buy them, but I’m happy to say them for free. I’ve never lost anything by giving it away.” Hennie secured her needle in the quilt, then stood and helped Nit with her coat, walking her to the door. “I’ve got an abundance of prayers.”

“Do you say them in church?” Nit asked.

Hennie studied her a minute. “I say them wherever I am. I’m not well acquainted with the church in Middle Swan anymore. I have not stepped foot inside for some time.”

The old woman thought Nit was going to ask the reason for that, because the girl looked at her, pausing in the doorway and staring intently at Hennie. But Nit seemed to have a sense about things, and instead, she asked, “Do they work? I mean to say, does the Lord answer your prayers?”

Hennie shrugged. “The Lord takes His time, more than He ought to if you ask me, but He answers most of them.”

The old woman watched as the girl went through the gate and disappeared down the trail. “You answer my prayers for other folks, but You’re not always so quick on mine,” Hennie muttered, looking heavenward. The Almighty hadn’t kept Billy or Jake safe. And there was Sarah’s death that troubled
her yet. Now she had the quandary about moving away from Middle Swan, and of course, there was that other business that had gone on so long and left the pricker on her heart. She’d have to deal with that before she left Middle Swan, for it had to be settled. She didn’t want it to vex her in Fort Madison. No, not all of Hennie’s prayers had been answered.

Hennie Comfort smiled to herself at the orderliness of the Pinto All-Cash General Store & Mining Supply. That Roy Pinto was as persnickety as a woman. Everything was in its place behind the U-shaped counter, and the places hadn’t changed since Theodore Roosevelt was president. The first time.