Joelle's Secret
Authors: Gilbert Morris
© 2008 by Gilbert Morris
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 978-0-8054-4728-6
Published by B&H Publishing Group
Nashville, Tennessee
Dewey Decimal Classification: F
Subject Headings: MALE IMPERSONATORS—FICTION
GOLD RUSHES—CALIFORNIA 1840–50
FICTION
to Johnnie
A SOFT CUSHION OF snow had fallen over the plains of western Tennessee, and as Joelle Mitchell guided her black gelding over the unbroken carpet of glittering flakes, she studied the landscape that surrounded her. The snow had softened the outlines of the hills that lay to Joelle’s left and of the tall pines that stood on her right. The ground itself glittered like millions of tiny diamonds as the afternoon sun caught the brilliance of the landscape. The snow also brought a silence to the flat country, cushioning the sound of the horse’s progress.
Glancing over her shoulder, Joelle surveyed the trail broken by her horse, the single sign of human occupancy on the smoothness of the pristine carpet. Obviously no one had been out on the road before her, and since the road to River Bend was seldom traveled in the dead of winter, this came as no surprise.
Leaning forward, Joelle patted the horse’s neck, saying in a conversational tone, “Well, Blackie, how do you like the snow?” She laughed as the gelding lifted his head and snorted. “You do, I see. Well, I do too. I read a book once about Europe where the snow comes in drifts ten feet high all the way up to the eaves
of the house. That would be like being buried alive, wouldn’t it now?” Again the gelding blubbered between his lips, and Jo leaned forward and stroked the silky neck. “You wouldn’t like it that deep and neither would I. This is just right.”
Joelle Lynn Mitchell was “almost seventeen.” She always stated her age that way as if that formula would make her. She sat easily in the saddle, her back straight and her eyes constantly searching the road ahead and the trees on each side.
She was not a beauty in the classic sense of the word; her features had strength rather than prettiness, which dismayed her. She had studied other girls and found her own face too plain, yet her features were attractive. She was a full-figured girl with long auburn hair that reached all the way to her waist when she let it down. Her eyes were deep set and wide spaced under long, dark eyelashes. The color was an unusual gray-green that sometimes took the background of whatever clothes she wore. Her face was square-shaped, and her mouth wide. Her chin had a stubborn cast, and she held it up in such a way that seemed to challenge people at times. Her ears were small and set close to her head, and her strong hands were roughened by hard work—cutting wood, plowing, and breaking horses.
Suddenly Blackie humped his back and gave a sideways lurch, almost taking Joelle off-guard. She caught herself, pulled the reins tight, and then laughed. “You’ll have to do better than that, Blackie.” She leaned forward once again and pulled a burr out of the jet-black mane. “But I like a horse that’s got a little meanness in him.” She continued to stroke the horse’s neck and was tall enough to reach almost to his jaw without leaning forward.
“You know, Blackie, for a long time I was afraid I wouldn’t have any figure at all. Remember how skinny I was?” Blackie whickered, assuring her that he certainly did remember, and she laughed. A memory slipped into her mind of a conversation she had had with her mother when she was fourteen. She had been staring at herself in the mirror with displeasure, and her mother had caught her. “What are you frowning about, Jo?”
“I don’t have anymore figure than a rake handle,” she had said. Her mother had put her arms around her and held her tight and had whispered, “You’re just late developing. I was the same way. I cried myself to sleep many a night because the other girls got their figures sooner than I did.”
The memory stayed with Joelle along with a tinge of sadness, for her mother’s sickness had brought her down so that she had little of her early beauty left. She kicked Blackie into a run, mostly to get rid of the sadness, and delighted in the smooth pace of the gelding. As his hooves threw up snow in a small cloud, she leaned over the pommel.
A memory of her thirteenth birthday flashed into Joelle’s mind. Her father had grinned at her at the breakfast table and said, “Well, it’s your birthday. You expecting a big gift, I suppose?” He had often teased her like that, she remembered, and then he had laughed and pulled her to her feet. “Come along, Punkin. Your present’s out here.” She had followed her father, and she remembered, even as Blackie sped along the cushioned road, how he had led her to the barn and said, “There’s your birthday present, Jo.” Joelle had stared at the black foal, blacker than the blackest thing in nature, with disbelief—and joy. Her throat had filled and grown thick, and she had turned
and embraced her father, holding him tight. “Thank you, Pa! It’s the best present anybody ever had!”
The thought of her father, dead now for three years, was sharp and keen as any knife as it worked along her mind. Her father had taught her how to ride, hunt, and run the farm. Sadness crossed her features, and she shook her head, forcing herself to think of something else—anything else but the loss of the man who had been her father.
Ten minutes later she entered River Bend, the only town she had ever really known. She had once been to Memphis when she was very small, but all she remembered was that it was a busy place with more people than she knew existed.
River Bend was easy to fathom. It was a small town with no more than two hundred inhabitants. The main businesses, all single-story wooden affairs, occupied the main street—a blacksmith shop, livery stable, and hardware store on one side, and on the other side a bank, a series of shops, and two saloons. As was usual in November, there was little to do for those who farmed or raised cattle, so the hitching racks in front of the saloons were full.
As Joelle guided Blackie down the middle of the street, she passed a few people who gave her a wave and called out. She smiled and returned their greetings. A short, stubby young man in overalls ran up to her. “Hey, Jo, hold up!”
Joelle smiled, for Jerome Ross was one of her favorites. They were the same age and had attended school together. He patted Blackie’s neck, and his round face beamed as he looked up at her. “You goin’ to the dance Saturday night over at Blevins’s, Jo?”
“I don’t think so, Jerome.”
“Aw, you never go anywhere, Jo. You ought to get out more.” Jerome winked lewdly—or so he thought, although the wink was more ludicrous than lewd. “You ought to get yourself a steady feller—like me.”
Joelle leaned down and pulled Jerome’s hat down over his face, laughing at him. “Sadie wouldn’t like that. She’s got you branded like a heifer.”
“She ain’t neither!” Jerome replied indignantly. “But even if I’m took, the country’s full of young fellers.”
“Full of gophers and possums too.”
“Well,” Jerome grinned, pushing his hat back up, “if I get tarred of Sadie, I’ll come over and set on your front porch.”
“My stepfather would furnish the reception.” Even as she spoke, a change took place in both their expressions. She knew they were both thinking of how Burl Harper had beaten young Will Conners nearly to a pulp when he had come trying to court her.
“You ought to go to the dance. It’ll be fun. You need to get out more.”
Joelle shook her head and said, “You have a good time. Tell Sadie if she’s not good to you, I’ll take you away from her.”
She kicked Blackie lightly, and he picked up his pace. She dismounted in front of a faded, weather-beaten sign that said “Dr. Phares Raeburn.” She tied Blackie’s lines loosely to the hitching post, leaped onto the board sidewalk, and entered the office. There was no one in the outer room so she opened the back door and called out, “Dr. Raeburn, are you here?”
“Come on in.” Joelle entered to see Raeburn sitting in a worn, cane-bottom rocking chair. A stove beside him held a
battered, blackened coffeepot, and he said, “Take some of that coffee, girl. It’s cold as a well-digger’s toes out there today.”
“I believe I will.” Joelle found a cup among the four on the shelf and noted that none of them had been washed. She rinsed it as best she could, wiped it with her handkerchief, then poured the black liquid in. “It looks like tar,” she said.
“If you don’t like my coffee, don’t drink it,” Raeburn snapped.
She smiled and tasted the coffee. It not only looked like tar; it more or less tasted like it too.
“Set yourself down there, girl, and gimme some juicy gossip. Since Julie Ann got sick, I ain’t been able to keep up with it.”
“How is she?” Julie Ann Massey was the woman who served as nurse for River Bend. She had been down with pleurisy lately, and Doc Raeburn missed her. As Joelle sat there, Raeburn, an observant man, studied her face. He had delivered her and had enjoyed watching her grow up from an awkward, long-legged yearling into a shapely, tall young girl on the very brink of mature womanhood. As she sipped her coffee, he leaned back and asked, “How’s your mother, Jo?”
“Not too good. I wish you’d come out and see her.”
“I’ll probably be out that way tomorrow.”
“Have you got any medicine I could give her?”
Heaving himself out of the chair, Raeburn walked over to a shelf that contained a variety of bottles of different shapes and colors and carefully removed a small bottle with a brown liquid. “I want you to give her a teaspoon of this five times a day. Early in the morning. Late at night especially.”
“What is it?”
“It’s medicine. What’d you think?” He spoke with all the force he could, but he saw Joelle watching him and knew that she saw through his words. She got that from her dad—he was that way.
“How much do I owe you, Doc?”
“Nothing. Bake me a pie sometime.”
“What kind?”
“Any kind.”
“I’ll do it. Much obliged for the medicine.” She gave him a brief smile, then left the room. Raeburn stared at the door, and a few minutes later his wife, Bertha, came in.
“Was that Joelle I saw leaving here?”
“Yes, it was.”
“How’s her mother?”
“She’s not going to make it, Bertha.”
Bertha Raeburn put a sack on the table and poured herself a cup of coffee. She held it for a moment without tasting it and said, “That sorry husband of hers hasn’t helped her. If Charles Mitchell had lived, he’d have taken better care of her.”
“You’re right there.”
They both were silent. Then Bertha gave her husband a direct look. “Joelle’s afraid of Burl.”
Instantly Raeburn looked up. “She tell you that?” he demanded.
“No, she didn’t tell me, not with words. But you watch her when he’s around. Watch her eyes. She never takes them off of him. She’s scared to death of him.”
Raeburn began to rock and after a few seconds muttered bitterly, “She’s probably got good reason.”
* * *
AS SOON AS JOELLE entered Thompson’s General Store, she took a deep breath. The smells were always good—the sharp, acrid pickles in the barrel by the counter, the onions hanging from a wire along the roof, and the leather harnesses. She walked up to a big, hammer-headed yellow tomcat on the counter who stared at her with round, golden eyes. She stroked his blunt, scarred head.
“You’ve been fighting again, Jackson.” She continued to stroke the big cat and then smiled. “You’re too romantic. You need to leave those lady cats alone and stay out of fights.”
“He won’t do that.” Daniel Thompson, the son of Jesse Thompson, the store owner, had appeared from the back room, carrying a box. He put it on the counter. “Good to see you, Jo.”
“How are you, Daniel?”
“Fine as silk. Can I get you something?”
“I need sugar and coffee and some kind of canned fruit.”
Daniel quickly assembled the small order, then reached into the glass-covered candy case and scooped hard candy into a small sack. “There. Eat this. It’ll make you sweet like me.”
The two stood there talking. It was a pleasant moment in Joelle’s life. She and Daniel Thompson, along with Jerome, had been good friends all through school. She was not surprised when he said, “How about going to the dance with me Saturday night over at Blevins’s? I hear they’re going to have some good music there.”
“I don’t guess so.”
“Why not? I’d be proud to take you.”
“Harper would never let me go.”
Daniel noticed that she never called her stepfather anything but his last name. His full name was Burl Harper, and Daniel knew she called him Harper to his face too. He reached out and pinched her arm. “Why, you’re getting to be an old maid. You’re almost seventeen. Other girls your age, like Betty Summers, are already married and have a baby.”
“You saw what Harper did to Will Conners when he tried to court me.”
“Well, I ain’t scared of him,” Daniel said loudly. He was a tall young man but thin. Burl Harper, sliced down the middle, would make two splinters like Daniel.
“You should be.” She hesitated, then said, “I am.”
Daniel stared at her, not knowing what to say, and Jo knew instantly she had said too much. She smiled. “You have a good time at the dance.”
She paid for the items, went outside, and walked down the street. She put her purchases in the saddlebags, mounted in one easy motion, and left town.
As she rode home, Joelle was burdened for her mother and afraid for herself. “I’m worried about Ma, Blackie. She never gets any better, and I’m afraid she’s going to die.” She had long ago started talking to her horse—perhaps because she had so few people to share her thoughts with.
Blackie nodded and glanced back toward her with his dark, liquid eyes. He had learned to recognize the tone of her voice better than most people could. “I don’t know what I’d do—if she dies.”
She didn’t speak to the gelding again, and finally, as she approached the farm, she remembered how much she had loved
this place when her father was alive. The snow reminded her of his last winter. He had built a monstrous snowman, and she and her mother had helped. Finally they had made snow cream out of snow, vanilla, and sugar, and she had eaten until she had been half-sick. That was the last good memory she had stored of her father, and she, as always, tried to push it out of her mind. For a long time she had courted memories and tried to store them up, but she had discovered they made her sad, and now sometimes they would come uninvited. More than once tears had come to her eyes as she remembered her father . . .