Loving Liza Jane (32 page)

“Let us pray that she will,” Clyde whispered.

“Thank you, Mr. Winthrop. I hardly know what to say.”

“No words are necessary, my dear. In fact, I should thank you for thinking of us. I’ve wanted a little excitement around this house. It’s too quiet around here most times.” He winked at her and gave her arm a little squeeze. “I know it’s hard to believe.”

Liza glanced over his shoulder at Mrs. Winthrop, who now held a kerchief to her mouth. Was the woman crying?

“Mrs. Winthrop. Will she be all right?”

He nodded and released a low chuckle. “Most don’t know that underneath that tough façade is a warmhearted woman. Perhaps this Mrs. Bartel and her daughter will be just the ticket for drawing out a little of that warmth.”

“Good night, Mr. Winthrop.”

“Good night, my dear.”

***

She had done it again. It was well past dusk, and Liza had not arrived home from school. Ben mucked out the stalls, calling himself every name in the book for caring so deeply. Two stalls over, Charlie, one of the draft horses, snorted, as if to respond to Ben’s mutterings. If it weren’t for the fact that Tanner wasn’t in his stall, he might well have taken himself to bed and forgotten Liza altogether. But even as he nurtured the thought, he knew it wasn’t true. He wouldn’t sleep until he knew the schoolteacher was safe.

The clip-clop of approaching horses had him tossing his pitchfork in the air, picking up a lantern, and walking to the barn door. In the distance, he distinguished the silhouettes of two horses and their riders, one Tanner and Liza, and the other—he discharged a heavy breath and fought down the hostility that naturally rose—Jon Atkins, who else? She’d spent the supper hour with him.

“Ben, is that you?” Jon’s voice carried over the still night air, awakening a distant owl.

Ben leaned heavily into the doorway and crossed his arms, allowing the lantern to dangle from one arm. “Who else would it be?” Ben asked. It was too late to hide his impatience. It came out clear as could be in the tone of his voice.

Jon laughed his usual good-natured laugh, obviously ignoring Ben’s jibe.

“Look who I ran into on Main Street. I didn’t think it safe to allow her to ride back from town unaccompanied.”

Ben took a moment to study Liza. Her hair had come undone, and she looked nothing like the prim and proper schoolteacher she claimed to be.

“It’s late—and dark,” Ben mumbled, his eyes trailing a path back to Jon.

Jon’s gaze tipped upward. “So it is. Sky is black as coal. Would you have a look at that harvest moon?”

Ben kept his gaze pinned on Jon. He’d be hornswoggled before he’d look at the moon at Jon’s suggestion. However, he did notice Liza sigh in wonder when she caught a glimpse of it. “It’s absolutely beautiful, Jon.”

The three wrapped themselves in a fifteen-second blanket of silence until Jon poked a hole through it. “Liza had quite a day today. She went to see Sheriff Murdock after school and…”

“What? Why did you go to the sheriff? Did Clement Bartel…” Every nerve ending jumped to life as Ben lurched forward, spooking Tanner with his sudden movement. Liza steadied the untamed brute like a regular pro.

“Why don’t you let her tell you?” Jon suggested, dismounting and leading his horse toward Ben’s house. “And since I’ve already heard the story, I’ll just go inside and help myself to your coffeepot, if you don’t mind.”

“Fine. But keep the noise down. My girls are sleeping.” Where had all this gruffness come from? But he should have known the answer to that without asking.

He was jealous, plain and simple.

***

Ben loosened Tanner’s belly strap.

“I could do that, you know,” Liza said, nervous in Ben’s company, particularly when he seemed so hot under the collar.

“I’m here, I’ll do it,” he muttered. “Tell me what this visit to Sheriff Murdock was all about.”

Liza stood at Tanner’s head, rubbing his velvet muzzle, while Ben worked. “I spotted a bad bruise on the side of Rosie’s neck today.”

Ben’s head shot up. “Clement?”

She nodded.

A cussing man would have inserted an emphatic expletive at that particular point, but instead Ben issued a silent prayer for protection over anyone that came across Clement Bartel’s path.

“So you reported the incident to Will?” he asked, hauling the saddle off of Tanner and heaving it on the tack box.

“I did. He intends to pay the Bartels a visit tonight.”

“Good. I hope he throws that boy in jail.”

Liza shivered at Ben’s acidic tone. “I agree he deserves punishment.”

“But?” Ben pinned her with his midnight eyes, and she went as still as death itself, forgetting even to breathe.

“Nothing. It’s just that you sound so, I don’t know, cold and unforgiving.”

“You want me to forgive all that Clement’s done to Rosie and her mother?”

“Well, we should all have it in our hearts to forgive. Ephesians 4:32 says, ‘And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.’”

Ben lifted his gaze to the rafters, then directed it back to her. “That was good, Teacher. Was that verse situated anywhere close to ‘Patience is a virtue’?”

She stepped around Tanner and slapped Ben playfully on the forearm, knowing he toyed with her. “You will never let me forget that, will you?”

“Not if I can help it,” he said, adding a chuckle.

“Want to know what else happened?” she asked. When he nodded, she spilled the entire story about her visit to the Winthrop home, how Mr. Winthrop had been eager to help Rosie and her mother, and even how Mr. Winthrop had craftily put his wife in her place.

Ben laughed. “Well, what do you know? The man does have a way of getting through to that hard-nosed lady, after all.”

Liza giggled shamelessly. “He claims that under her tough façade there is a soft-hearted woman, and I think that once she finds there is joy in helping others, we will all begin to see a different Mrs. Winthrop.”

“Ah, so your plan was twofold.” Ben looked around Tanner and caught Liza up with his dark eyes. “You’re something.”

He’d told her that before, and she never did quite know how to take the remark.

“Thank you. I think.”

“So—you and Jon…”

“What about me?” asked Jon, entering the barn at the mention of his name, tin cup in hand, steam emitting from the top.

Ben looked up, his face suddenly serious again. “Nothing. I see you found the coffee.”

“This stuff is so strong it almost walked to me when I called its name. Did you make this yesterday?” Jon asked, tipping the cup up to take another drink.

“Nope. I believe it was three days ago.”

Jon spat, and the black liquid flew across the barn, leaving a wet trail on the opposite wall.

***

As Liza began to tick off the days of December, she sensed an underlying current of excitement among her students with the approach of Christmas. Although the citizens of Little Hickman were mostly plain in appearance and lifestyle, there was certainly room in their hearts for the tradition of gift-giving and holiday joy.

“Can we make a paper chain to hang across the doorway, Miss Merriwether?” Lili asked over lunch one Tuesday.

Liza looked up from her desk to see more than a dozen pairs of eyes awaiting her reply. She laughed. “We’ll start this afternoon.”

“What color shall it be?” asked Samuel Thompson.

“All colors. Christmas doesn’t have to be just green,” answered Eloise Brackett, her braids still holding from when Liza had fashioned them three hours ago. Without fail, Mr. Brackett continued to drop his daughter off ten minutes before the start of each day so that Liza could see to her long brown hair. True to his word, he’d even seen that she was clean most days.

“Who’s going to hang the chain?” asked Rufus from his place in the back. Now that Clement was gone, Rufus had been slowly inching his desk forward. But now he’d reached his limit as he butted desks with Andrew Warner.

Liza picked up her cold beef sandwich and took a bite. “I would think someone tall. Why not you, Rufus?”

“Me?”

“You are the biggest and the tallest,” said little Todd Thompson.

Rufus smiled, then gulped down the rest of his water.

It was working. As Rufus Baxter’s self-worth improved, so did his grades. Liza had just finished correcting his English paper. Instead of the usual failing grade, she happily penned a large C+ at the top of his paper, and beside that, the words Fine Job!

“After we make our paper chain, can we make more decorations?” Lili asked before sinking her teeth into a shiny apple.

Liza laughed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to escape your assignments.”

That remark produced a hearty laugh from several students, Lili included.

“I’d like to make a Christmas angel,” offered a quiet Rosie Bartel. “I would hang it on my desk to remind me.”

A kind of hush fell over the classroom with her petal-soft words. “To remind you of what?” asked Lenora Humphrey.

“That God’s angel was watching over me and Mama. That’s why I come to live with Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop, because an angel told us that we should go there.”

“No kidding?” asked Gus Humphrey, his green eyes big as the round tin plate on top of his desk. “Is she joshin’ us, Miss Merriwether?”

“If she says an angel guided her to the Winthrop’s, then I will be the last to argue with her,” Liza said, praying her words were the right ones.

One thing Liza did know for sure; Rosie and her mother had never been happier, and truth was folks were talking about the change they’d seen in Mrs. Winthrop. “Why, she’s been smiling and greeting us on the street,” Liza overheard one lady say to another at Johansson’s Mercantile. “It’s a marvel what that Bartel woman and her daughter done brought out in Iris’s face. All this time, I think she wanted to feel needed.”

Although the eavesdropping hadn’t been intended, it had put a warm spot in Liza’s heart; but it also made her wonder how Mr. Bartel was faring with his boy. Since Mrs. Bartel still failed to file a complaint against Clement, the boy continued to roam free. Was he now turning his rage on his own father? But Liza supposed she couldn’t carry the weight of everyone’s burdens on her shoulders. She would have to leave some of the load to her heavenly Father.

“Then I think you should make an angel,” Lili told Rosie, her comment forcing Liza back to the present.

Liza finished off her sandwich, then urged everyone to clean up his or her area before donning winter gear and going outside for a brief play period.

At the end of the day, Liza straightened her desktop, stacked her writing tools in her ribbon-trimmed canning jar, bent to pick up several pieces of paper from the floor that the students had missed during the clean-up period, and then moved to the closet to retrieve her coat and scarf. While slipping her arms through the sleeves of her long woolen coat, she surveyed the hastily made paper chain that hung above the doors and windows.

Hanging down the front of Rosie’s and Lili’s desks were white-robed angels, looking tattered and lopsided. A sigh and a smile slipped past her lips. Liza thought they were perhaps the prettiest sight she had ever seen. Who but children knew best how to celebrate the Savior’s birthday?

She bit her lip to chase back a tear at the thought of spending Christmas without Aunt Hettie and Uncle Gideon. Limited expenses had simply prohibited it, most of her excess monies having gone into making her cabin a home. And she was just now beginning to build up a meager savings for herself. No, she simply could not afford a train ticket back East, and she certainly couldn’t imagine riding all that way to the station with Mr. Brackett again.

In truth, if she were to cozy up to anyone on a wagon seat, she would want it to be Benjamin Broughton.

She stepped out into the brisk December air and watched her hot breath form a cloud, then quickly dissipate. It was almost Christmas, a time for rejoicing. Why then did she suddenly have to fight down a lump the size of the apple Lili had brought to school that day? Moreover, why could she never seem to get the image of Ben Broughton out of her mind?

She hurried her steps to Sam’s Livery, head down to ward off the biting winds. Very few shoppers milled the streets on this particularly cold afternoon and Liza couldn’t blame them. Kentucky, although its snow accumulation was scant, could certainly boast its frigid temperatures and icy winds. She drew her collar up more snugly about her neck and started across the little alleyway that separated Little Hickman’s Post Office from Sam’s Livery. Suddenly, a giant tug on her arm jolted her backward, and the next thing she knew she was being dragged into the shadowy confines of the narrow alley.

Gasping and panting, Liza fought down bile when she glimpsed Clement Bartel’s evil eyes and sniffed the stench of stale liquor on his acidic breath. “Clement,” she cried, “let go of me.”

“Not a chance, Teacher,” he laughed hoarsely. “Not until I’m done with you.” The excited timbre of his voice, accompanied by his evil grin, scrambled her senses. She wriggled against his powerful hold but realized when he slammed her up against the wall of the livery, sending shards of pain up and down her spine, that her strength was no match. A glimmer of hope washed over her with the thought that Sam might have heard, but it quickly disappeared. With dozens of horses inside, all beating and stomping and snorting, why should Sam think a little thump against the wall was anything unusual?

“You disappoint me, Teacher. I had you figured for bein’ nicer than you turned out to be.” He cleared his throat and hurled a wad of spit at her shoe.

Liza turned her face away to avoid their close proximity. “I—I don’t know what you mean, Clement.”

He snarled and pressed her up against the wall again, his face coming so close that she felt his hot breath on her ear, smelled its acrid odor. “You went to the sheriff.”

“I had to. You pushed your sister off the porch, Clement.”

Now he cursed. “That little pig is always gettin’ in my way. She gets what she deserves. You didn’t have to go to the sheriff.”

“You beat your own mother, Clement,” Liza spat out.