Buckeye Dreams (8 page)

“No.” Daniel stepped out of the root cellar, and she followed hesitantly, startled at the gruffness in his voice. He stopped by the cows’ stalls and after hanging up the lantern, picked up one of the milking stools that sat nearby. “By then it was just a hole in the ground.” He walked into a stall and sat down. “Time we started the milking.”

In the silence that followed, Daniel could feel Katherine’s discomfort. As she quietly settled down to work in the stall next to his, he regretted being so abrupt. She seemed nervous enough around him already, and this surely wouldn’t help. After all, she hadn’t asked him anything anyone else wouldn’t have asked. But his foolish betrayal of a runaway slave when he was ten was still a sore spot for him.
It wasn’t her fault my emotions got the better of me back then
.

Within a few minutes, the urge to apologize was overwhelming. He was about to speak when her soft voice carried over from the next stall.

“Chloe was one of my father’s slaves. She and I were the same age, and we grew up together. Her mother was a house servant, so she was always nearby. Her father had been sold off not long after she was born. I had never seen slaves as anything other than automatons doing our housework, planting our fields, making us money.” She paused briefly. “I had even come to see Chloe that way. Mary taught me they were people, no different than I, with hopes and dreams and feelings and faith. I saw then how horribly wrong slavery was, and I so wanted to do something. Your aunt was teaching her slaves to read. Secretly of course. Back then it was against the law. So I began to teach Chloe how to read. Mary told me not to, and I should have listened. When my father found out …”

Her voice caught, and Daniel rose from his stool and looked over into the next stall.

The young woman sat there small and shrunken, holding a hand to her face, the milking only half done. The cow twitched her with her tail, but she didn’t notice. “My father whipped her and sold her off.” He could see the tracks her tears had made in the soft light. “I heard she escaped, but I never found out anything more.” She stopped and, looking away, began to wipe at her face. “Do excuse me, Major Kirby.”

He dug into his pocket and handed her his handkerchief. “I was ten. Some boys were teasing me, and I blurted out our secret. The man we had in hiding at the time almost didn’t get away. Fortunately, the law never found the hiding place, or else my father would have been fined and possibly hauled off to jail. We couldn’t take in any more runaways after that. The risk was too great for them and us.”

Her now-dry eyes were filled with compassion as she looked up at him.

“I never found out what happened to him either.” He and Pa had asked after the man for months afterward, as discreetly as they could. He hadn’t been seen anywhere else in the township, and they had been unable to go ask anyone further north. It had been harvesttime and all their attention had been needed at the farm. Daniel had resumed the search himself when he was at Ohio Wesleyan, but the man had never given them his name.

Thoughts of his alma mater gave him an idea. “You said Chloe escaped in 1860?” he asked Katherine tentatively.

“Yes,” she said hopefully. “In June. She was sold to a man in North Carolina.”

“Not many slaves from there made it up our way.” Since the Appalachian Mountains lay between the Carolinas and Ohio, most runaways from those states generally trekked through Virginia and Maryland into eastern Pennsylvania and up into New England. “A friend of mine from the army might be able to help. I’ll write to him and see what I can find out.” Joshua Chamberlain knew several people who were active in abolitionist activities, including Harriet Beecher Stowe.

“That’s very kind of you, Major Kirby, to go to so much trouble.”

Daniel smiled at her continued formality. “I’m no longer in the army,” he said. “And before you say it, Mr. Kirby was my pa. I would really rather you called me Daniel.”

Her kaleidoscope eyes regarded him shyly. “Then perhaps you should call me Katherine.”

D
aniel tugged at his uniform as he sat in church with his aunt and Katherine later that morning. He hadn’t really wanted to wear the outfit and draw attention to himself, but his Sunday best did not fit him quite right. Poor food and occasional illness during the war had thinned him a bit. Well, home cooking and farmwork would soon cure him.

Thoughts of plowing and planting poked annoyingly at his thoughts, and he returned his attention to Reverend Warren’s sermon. The minister was extolling President Lincoln’s virtues and exhorting the body to have faith in these uncertain times. When he quoted Proverbs 3, verses 5 through 6, Daniel rolled the verses over and over in his mind. “
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths
.”

His eyes strayed to the wooden cross hanging on the wall behind the pulpit. He couldn’t understand the path the Lord was having him take. He had been so sure being a professor was the role he was to play in God’s will. And now he was suddenly supposed to farm? Had he missed something? Had his desire to learn and his love for books clouded his judgment? After all, his preference for books had nothing to do with his abilities as a farmer. He was, in fact, a decent farmer. Not as good as his pa or Jonah, but he could easily make a good living at it. Perhaps that fact, Pa’s opposition to his schooling, and his now owning the entire farm was God’s way of telling him something he hadn’t really wanted to hear.

The reverend concluded his lesson, and the body rose to sing a closing song.

Daniel turned slightly to see if Adele Stephens and her son were still back in the second-to-last pew. They were. Daniel was determined to speak to Adele about Nate and the land she had given back to Elijah Carr. Happily, Carr did not attend church in Ostrander. In fact, as far as Daniel knew, he didn’t attend a church at all.

When the song concluded, he turned and saw Adele and Jacob had disappeared. He frowned and started to move out of the pew when he was stopped by Reverend Warren and his wife.

“It’s good to see you, Daniel,” the older man said as he shook his hand.

“Thank you, sir.” Daniel nodded to Mrs. Warren. “Ma’am.”

“We’re so sorry about your dear mother,” the gentle lady said.

“Thank you. Sir, when things are more settled, I intend to go back down to Virginia and bring Toby’s body back home.”

“Of course. We’ll have a special service for him.”

“It’s so good to have you back safe,” Mrs. Warren said. “If you’ll excuse me.” She walked over to Mary, who was already surrounded by several ladies.

Daniel glanced back toward the door.

“Are you looking for someone in particular?” the reverend asked.

“Yes, Adele Stephens. She was here for services, but I don’t see her and Jacob now.”

“Ah yes, she seems to be slipping out early lately.” Daniel noticed the man’s gaze rest briefly on Katherine, who was standing quietly off to one side. His eyes turned toward the window. “Why, there she is now, climbing into her buggy.”

Daniel saw she was just settling into her seat next to her son and, excusing himself, hurried outside. He rushed around the corner to where the young widow was just taking up the reins. “Adele!”

Adele and her son looked back. The young boy smiled and waved at Daniel, but his mother quickly turned around and directed her horse onto the dirt road.

Daniel watched them ride off. He couldn’t blame her really. It had to be hard for Adele to see him—the man who had failed to rescue her husband. Being an honest man, Daniel had carefully, yet tactfully, explained Nate’s death. He had known Adele; she would have wanted to know.
I should have gone back for him
. But even as the thought crossed his mind, the horrible image of Nate being mowed down by Confederate bullets reminded him he would only have died with his friend, leaving the surviving men to face possible recapture.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the shoulder decorations on his coat, which indicated his rank. They had made him a major for saving those men. He’d rather have Nate alive and still been a captain. He turned to find Katherine standing a little ways behind him.

“Do you know Mrs. Stephens well?” she asked.

He walked over to her, trying to read the expression on her face. “Yes, her husband was under my command in the war.”

“Oh.”

She looked as if she wanted to say more, but Ruth Decker came up at that moment. Smiling, she gave him a hug. “Daniel, I’m so glad you’re home!”

“Thank you, Mrs. Decker,” he replied.

“I saw poor Mary this morning. Said she sprained her ankle. Do you need me or May to come out and help tend to her?”

He looked at her in surprise. “Thank you, but Miss Wallace has been doing a fine job.” He glanced over at Katherine, whose eyes were lowered.

Ruth glanced at her with pursed lips. “Oh yes,” she replied. “I forgot about your guest.” She sidled over to Katherine. “I imagine with the war nearly over, you’ll be leaving us soon. Won’t that be a shame?”

Daniel frowned at the clear note of sarcasm in the woman’s voice. He found it hard to believe Ruth Decker had been one of his mother’s oldest friends.

He watched Katherine lift her eyes to the woman and calmly answer her. “I’m afraid I have no more family to return to, Mrs. Decker. Mrs. O’Neal assured me I could stay with her as long as I wanted.”

“Well, Mary is the picture of hospitality, but I’m sure you must have misunderstood,” Ruth said pointedly. “Surely you can’t mean to say you have no one you could live with. I mean, you can’t keep burdening Mary and Daniel. They run a farm, not a hotel.”

Katherine looked away with a clenched jaw and reddening cheeks.

Enough was enough. “You’re quite right, Mrs. Decker, we are running a farm,” Daniel said. “And Miss Wallace has been a great help. She was taking care of things all by herself after Aunt Mary sprained her ankle. I’ve never seen the farm look better.”

“Oh … well …” The woman faltered. She turned to see her daughter helping Mary down the church steps. “May, how considerate of you.” Giving Katherine a reproving glance, she walked over to them.

Daniel gave Katherine’s elbow a squeeze, and she looked up at him gratefully. “That was very kind of you,” she said. “But I only looked after the farm for a day and a half before you came home.”

“And you did a great job.” He smiled.

Mary was waiting at the carriage, and as they started to walk over, several people came up and offered their condolences to Daniel. He was gratified by their kind words about his mother and brothers, but he could not help but notice they simply ignored Katherine. One woman even elbowed her out of the way. First Ruth Decker, and now this? At first Katherine stood quietly off to the side, but she eventually walked over to the carriage where Mary was still waiting. It was several more minutes before he was able to join them.

He glanced over at Katherine several times on the way home. She acted as if nothing was wrong, but she was very quiet during lunch and then after helping Mary into the parlor, decided to walk down to the creek.

He joined his aunt in the parlor. After several attempts to read a psalm or two, he looked up to find Mary asleep in the high-backed easy chair, her ankle propped up on a settee. He smiled nostalgically. Dorothy Kirby had always insisted on comfortable pieces of furniture in her parlor, and that particular chair had been one of her favorites. In fact, Pa had often woken her as she sat in it on Sunday afternoons. He rose and rescued his aunt’s Bible, which had been threatening to fall off her lap.

He wandered over to the window and watched the breeze gently bend the branches of the trees along the creek. His thoughts turned to services that morning, and he shook his head. He could hardly believe the behavior of the people who had been such good examples to him as he grew up. He couldn’t recall a time when new people had not been made to feel welcome. When Adele and her brother, Erich, had come to Ostrander, the church people had gone out of their way to help them settle in. They had paid no mind to the newcomers’ German accents. But apparently Southern accents were a different issue altogether. He ran a hand through his hair. He was sick of hate and anger. Coming home should have relieved him of that.

The little mantel clock rang the hour. Katherine had been gone for a while now. He frowned. He found he didn’t like the idea of her being down by the creek all by herself, especially if she was upset.

In spite of how forward it was, the way she’d held his hand yesterday had been endearing. And just at the moment he needed to be reminded of life, not death.

He looked out the window toward the creek. He had a good idea of where she went—the place where he and his brothers had always gone fishing. Daniel glanced over at Mary, who was still asleep, and quietly left the house, making his way out to the barn. There wasn’t much hope of catching anything this time of day, but drowning a few worms was just the excuse he needed to make sure Katherine was all right.