Miracle in a Dry Season (3 page)

As his father moved into the workshop, Casewell noted that his limp seemed more pronounced. He’d worked briefly in the mines, but a cave-in took his only brother’s life and left him with a hitch to his gait that served as a constant reminder of what he’d lost. John swore he would never mine again, and he’d held to that promise, even in years when the farm lost
steadily and the income from a few months of mining would have been welcome.

Casewell saw the limp but knew better than to mention it. His father didn’t leave much room for weakness in himself or in others. He would not have appreciated his son noticing his discomfort.

“Your mother is over at the house fussing about,” Dad said, drawing smoke deep into his lungs. He exhaled. “I told her you’re a grown man able to take care of yourself, but she never could leave well enough alone.”

Casewell nodded, smiling to himself. If Emily Phillips were content to leave well enough alone, his father probably wouldn’t have lived this long. She’d insisted Dad do the exercises that helped him regain the use of his foot. She’d made the garden stretch in the years when income from the farm was thin. And she’d traded her needlework—embroidered pillow slips, handkerchiefs, and baby gowns—for staples like sugar and coffee when the Thorntons had extended as much credit as they could. Casewell doubted his father knew what lengths his mother had gone to in order to keep the family going and knew no one would dare tell him.

“What’s that you’re working on?” he asked.

“A cupboard for the Talbot sisters. I plan to have it done before their birthday. It’s their gift to each other.”

“Don’t know what two old ladies need with new furniture.” He pinched the ember from his cigarette and dropped the stub in his breast pocket. “They’ve made do this long.”

“They have,” agreed Casewell, knowing better than to get into a drawn-out discussion about the advantages of improved storage for two women approaching seventy.

“Got anything an old man can do?”

This was a new development in their father-son relationship. While his father approved of Casewell being a carpenter, he’d not shown much interest in the work itself. In the past few months, he’d begun stopping by to lend a hand. Casewell didn’t mind. His dad didn’t have much to say, and he enjoyed the quiet companionship with a man whose love he’d never been sure of.

“You can sand down that door front,” Casewell said, pointing with his chin. “I pulled the pieces with the nicest grain.”

“So I see,” he said.

They worked in silence for a time. Dad cleared his throat.

“Before I forget, your mother wants you to come to dinner this evening. She heard you ate Sunday dinner with the Thorntons, and I reckon she wants to know all about that niece of theirs staying with them.”

Casewell smiled. “Sounds good.”

“Reckon Emily will be about done messing in your business,” he said. “Good work on that cupboard, son.”

“Thank you, sir.” Casewell supposed that was about as close as he’d ever come to hearing his father say he loved him.

That evening Casewell joined his parents for a meal of beans and corn bread. The beans had been cooking all day with ham hocks, and the cornmeal was ground from the Phillipses’ own corn. His petite, dark-haired mother with the smiling gray-green eyes called this a poor man’s supper. It didn’t take her long to broach the subject she was most interested in.

“So tell me about Delilah’s niece,” she said to Casewell.

“Well, she sure can cook,” he said and helped himself to another wedge of corn bread.

“That’s a fine thing in a woman, to be sure,” Mom said. “But what is she like?”

“She’s pretty—yellow hair and blue eyes, I think. She didn’t have a whole lot to say, but she seemed pleasant enough.”

His mother sighed. “Like pulling teeth. Doesn’t she have a child?”

“Yup, a funny little sprite. I think maybe I talked to her—Sadie, it is—more than her mother. She showed me her doll.” Casewell racked his brain to think of something that would be of interest.

“And the father?” she urged.

“Don’t rightly know,” Casewell said. “The child said something . . .” he trailed off, fearing he was wandering into something too much like gossip.

“Said what?”

“Well, she’s just a child. There’s plenty of reasons for a woman to be visiting family without her husband.” Casewell folded his napkin and shoved back from the table a notch.

His mother was not so easily dissuaded. “And how long are they staying? There’s a rumor . . .”

“Enough, woman,” Dad said. “You’ll have to run down the other hens if you want to gossip about this new girl. Come out on the porch with me, son.”

Casewell obediently followed his father while his mother began tidying the kitchen. Once outside, Dad fished the makings for a cigarette out of his breast pocket. He held a paper in one hand and shook out the tobacco from a tin with the other. He rolled the cigarette in a single motion, with the practice of years. He licked the edge to seal it and gave one end a twist. He struck a wooden kitchen match on a post and began puffing. His gnarled fingers were yellowed where he’d held a thousand cigarettes.

Casewell, like most of his peers, had experimented with smoking as a boy. He’d tried corn silks and grapevine and finally tried the real thing when his friend Carl stole the makings from an older cousin. Casewell wanted to smoke like his father, his grandfather, and his dead uncle, but he never could get the hang of it. Smoking didn’t impress your friends when you were hacking and choking. He finally gave up trying and now was grateful a love for tobacco didn’t drive him out on the porch all through the day and in all kinds of weather. His mother didn’t allow smoking in the house, and Dad respected her in that.

“So this girl is good lookin’, is she?” he asked.

“I suppose so,” Casewell said. “But there’s likely a husband somewhere, and even if she’s a widow, there’s sure enough a child. That’s a whole other kettle of fish.”

“True enough. Still, you’re about the right age to think of settling down, and seems like no one around here has caught your eye. Though I’ve seen more than one try it.” He slanted a look at Casewell. “It’s a man’s duty to find a good woman who can raise his children in the fear of God. And your ma probably wouldn’t mind a grand-young’un or two.”

This was quite possibly the longest speech Casewell had ever heard his father make. And he was surprised the man seemed to advocate for him to get involved with a woman he barely knew.

Casewell wanted to marry and have children. He thought of it often. But no woman had quite come up to his standards. He was looking for a God-fearing woman who would keep the house and raise well-behaved children. She needed to be smart enough to carry on a good conversation with him and to teach the children until they were old enough for school.
He’d taken notice of a young lady or two over the years. Even now he recognized that Melody Simmons probably wouldn’t mind if he came calling, but pretty as she was, she was kin to the worst moonshining clan in the county. He aimed to stay clear of that bunch. And he certainly didn’t want a woman with notions about working outside the home. Lately it seemed like all the women his age either married young or were “liberated.”

The country was changing rapidly. While the Korean War had ended, Joseph McCarthy had the whole country on alert for Communists, and that Marilyn Monroe was setting a terrible example for women everywhere. Such things seemed very far away to Casewell. There were places back in the hills where folks still didn’t have electricity or running water. Casewell didn’t have a television set, though his parents had one, and he’d watched a few programs with them. He liked the westerns—
The Lone
Ranger
and
Dragnet
—where the good guys won out in the end.

Casewell leaned against the side of the house and fished out a toothpick. “You’re right, Dad, it is time I settled down, but even if this Perla is available, there’s more to it than that.”

“Right enough. Just thinking out loud.”

After that the two men stood in silence and watched the light fade from the pasture and the woods. A deer walked into the far edge of the field and grazed her way down toward a pond. Casewell would have been willing to bet she had a fawn stashed somewhere nearby. But you’d never see it. He’d walked right up on fawns that he didn’t see until he almost stepped on them. Nature knew how to protect her young.

At home that night Casewell found himself replaying the afternoon he’d spent with Perla and Sadie. There wasn’t much to it, but what he did remember agreed with him. Perla behaved
like Casewell tended to think a woman ought. She’d been mostly quiet, tending to her daughter and the meal. And as he’d noticed before, she was easy on the eyes. Now that he was beginning to think of Perla as perhaps more than just a guest passing through, he realized that he’d done very little to engage her in conversation. He and little Sadie had talked more than he and Perla did. Well, if Perla’s visit lasted long enough, he’d have to remedy that.

3

T
HE
FOLLOWING
S
UNDAY
, Pastor Longbourne invited Casewell to play along with George and Steve during the service. They struck up a rousing version of “I’ll Fly Away” that had even the staid Presbyterians tapping their toes. He saw Sadie stand up and dance a little before her mother coaxed her back into the pew. After church, the musicians were swamped by well-wishers, and Casewell watched Perla climb into the Thorntons’ car as townsfolk blocked his path to the door.

That afternoon he went to see the Talbot sisters so that he could get their opinions on a few finishing touches for their cupboard. After giving him the information he needed, Liza and Angie insisted he stay and visit with them. They produced a pot of tea, and Casewell found himself sitting on a sprung sofa, trying to balance a teacup on his knee. With his mother’s Sunday dinner in his belly and the twins’ prattle in his ears, he had a hard time staying awake.

Casewell tried to pay attention as Liza turned her blue flannel eyes on him.

“We’re not fond of gossip,” she said. “But since you’re a single man, you probably ought to know about that Perla Long.”

Casewell jolted awake.

“Now, Liza,” cautioned Angie, “we oughtn’t to say anything until we know for sure that she’s a harlot. It could just be mean talk over a pretty woman.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Liza said. “Just because Melanie Saunders says she’s never been married doesn’t make it true.”

“And the Bible is clear about carrying tales,” Angie said.

Casewell felt as if the sisters were playing a game of badminton as they gently batted their bit of gossip back and forth in front of him. Angie turned to Casewell and gave him a tight smile.

“Pay no attention to us,” she said. “Scandalous stories travel faster than plain ones, and we have no business telling you anything we’re not sure of. Perla is probably a lovely young woman and Melanie Saunders is jealous.”

Casewell had a dozen questions but didn’t see his way clear to ask any of them. Liza apologized and turned the conversation to peonies and whether the ants they attracted were necessary to make them bloom, or if it was safe to knock the little pests off. As soon as he could do so politely, Casewell told Liza and Angie he’d have their cupboard for them by Thursday and took his leave.

He pondered what the sisters had to say about Perla. He was strongly opposed to gossip, but he couldn’t very well unhear what the Talbots had said. He also couldn’t think of a way to determine if what they had hinted at was true, short of asking Perla herself, and that he would not do. Casewell toyed with the idea of dropping some hints around his mother so that she might be inspired to do a little digging, but that felt wrong,
too. Regardless, he found Perla Long somewhat less attractive at bedtime than he had when he’d awoken.

Casewell worked hard to finish the Talbot sisters’ cupboard that week. The unfinished thank-you project for Perla and Sadie sat on the corner of his workbench. He worked around it for a couple of days and then packed it into a crate and pushed it under the bench. He’d get to it once the paid work was out of the way.