Wedding Ring (13 page)

“As all right as anyone my age can feel. And no, I haven’t seen my doctor lately, and he hasn’t given me bad news. Can’t a woman just talk without getting herself in trouble?”

“You’re sure?” Nancy said.

Helen nodded.

“I, for one, would like to hear that story,” Tessa said. “Before the whole day gets away from us.”

“I tell it, you’re not going to accuse me of something else, are you?” Helen asked.

“No.” Tessa held up the plate with the remaining waffles. “Fortify yourself, Gram. We’re listening.”

Helen took the plate. “Remember that old tale I heard when I was under the quilt frame that day? Well, in a way, it has to do with that.”

“Did you ever get to quilt that day?” Nancy asked. “You didn’t say.”

“They let me at the frame late in the afternoon. Then the next day, when she thought I wasn’t looking, my mama took out every stitch I’d put in. Not small or straight enough to suit her. But it was the last time. The very last time anybody ever took out even one of my stitches, I can tell you that.”

The Claiborne family had owned their farm just about as long as the Stoneburners had owned theirs. In years past, the families had been friends, helping each other the way neighbors in the valley always did. They had raised barns for each other, made apple butter together, along with other nearby families, butchered hogs, even attended the same church. But then Sammy Claiborne—more than half drunk on bootleg whiskey—shot one of Cuddy Stoneburner’s goats, dead certain he’d bagged a doe for the family supper table. When the truth was discovered, there was nothing offered as compensation except an apology, and even that was halfhearted.

Cuddy wasn’t one to feud with anybody, but from that moment on, the Stoneburner family shunned the Claibornes.

All except Obed.

At fifteen, Obed Stoneburner was half a head taller than his brother Tom, and more than a year stronger. He was a good-looking boy, and a smart one, too, and Delilah and Cuddy struggled not to favor him over his quieter brother. They were strict with all their children, but more often than not Obed could find a way around the rules. And Obed, who understood he was nobility of a sort, took advantage of their affection.

Obed had been friends since early childhood with Sammy Claiborne’s son, Gus. Even after their parents stopped talking to each other, the boys got together frequently to hunt squirrels or hike up into the mountains. Gus was as big as Obed, and even better looking, although not as clever in school or as popular with the other youth on Fitch Crossing.

Everybody knew that Gus had a hot temper and a mean streak. He would tease the younger children and play tricks on them until they were frantic to get away from him. Although no one had ever caught him at it, everyone knew it was Gus who left dead birds and animals impaled on the picket fence of a widow who caught him smoking and gambling in her barn.

None of this affected the boys’ friendship. Gus was an only child, and Obed was the closest thing to a brother he had.

Until Fate Henry arrived.

Lafayette Henry—or Fate, as he was called by everyone—had lost both his parents to diphtheria when he was just a baby. His father’s sister and her husband who lived in the Oklahoma panhandle stepped in to care for him, but when their tiny farm turned to dust and began to blow away, they sent Fate back east to Virginia to live with the Claibornes so they could travel farther west and look for work.

Since Fate’s mother had been Samuel Claiborne’s sister, the Claibornes had little recourse but to take the boy and finish raising him. In their own meager way, they tried to make him welcome. But Gus soon made sure Fate knew the real score.

On a particularly hot June afternoon, the twelve-year-old Helen sat on the front porch stringing beans. It seemed to her that Delilah had planted enough to feed all of Virginia, and Helen was the one required to pull every danged string and snap every danged end.

“You almost done, Lenny?” Delilah climbed the porch with a basket of freshly folded laundry on her hip. “I’m gonna pickle a bunch or two before I cook supper. They’ll taste good come February, won’t they?”

Helen was heat-dazed and ornery. The boys had finished their chores an hour ago and gone off on their own. She didn’t know where they were, but she sure wished she was with them instead of sitting there snapping and stringing. “Why’d you grow so many?” She lifted handfuls and let them dribble through her fingers. “I won’t be done with these ’fore it’s time to bring in the cow and feed the chickens.”

“It’s a busy day.”

“Not for Obed and Tom.”

“Them boys’ve been up since way before you and worked the whole time. They want to go off a little while, I don’t see no reason not to let them.”

Helen saw lots of reasons, but she knew better than to list them. She understood that her mother was training her to be a farm wife, just like her. It was Cuddy’s job to train their sons, but Cuddy was away most of the time now, and Delilah was just worn out by this late hour and couldn’t make herself stay on top of them.

“You finish those beans, and I’ll bring in the cow for you,” Delilah said, relenting a little after a glance at her daughter’s long face. “You can go on down to the creek when you’re done, wade a little if you’ve a mind to, and come home with a pail of blackberries for tomorrow’s pies.”

Helen perked right up. “Really?”

“Uh-huh. But if you dawdle, won’t be no time to get down there. No wading and no pie.”

Helen’s fingers flew after that. By three she was nearly finished. By three-thirty she had hauled all the beans into the kitchen, where Delilah had already set out vinegar and sugar to pickle them. Delilah shooed her daughter away and began scalding canning jars with water from the teakettle that was always set to heat on the wood cooking stove.

Helen felt like a canary set loose for the very first time. She took a bucket off the back porch peg, scrubbed clean and waiting for an afternoon of blackberry picking. She would harvest everything in sight, and, of course, she would eat a few, just to see if all that work was worthwhile.

Mostly she didn’t wear shoes in the summertime, but Delilah was firm about wearing shoes near the creek. People weren’t the only living things that enjoyed the shade and the water. Delilah had seen copperheads and rattlers on the creek bank, and she made sure her children were protected, even if last year’s shoes pinched their toes. Helen donned her only pair of shoes, pushing hard to get her feet inside, then set off, limping, toward the creek.

The best patch of berries was upstream from the swimming hole. Even though it was nearly four o’clock, the sun was still beating down when she got there, and she was glad she’d worn an old straw hat to shade her eyes. Without even thinking about it, she checked for snakes and stepped farther into the brambles when she saw there were none. The warm, ripe berries slid off the canes and into her bucket as if they’d known all along she was coming for them. The bucket was a third full before she moved on. When she had half a bucket she decided to take a break and wade a little to cool down. Hiking her dress over her thighs, she tied knots in the hem as she moved down to the creek; then she removed her shoes and placed them carefully on a rock.

The water was cool, not cold, but she didn’t care. The silky creek bottom oozed between her toes as she made her way downstream.

The summer had been a good one for the local farmers, making up a little for last summer’s terrible drought, which had affected even the most prosperous. The creek was higher than Helen remembered in her lifetime, although here it was only knee-deep. Cuddy had made sure all his children knew how to swim, and even when she tripped over a rock and nearly went under, she only laughed.

She’d thought she might find her brothers at the swimming hole, but there was no noise coming from that direction. If she had been older and free for the whole afternoon, that was where she would have gone. Delilah had forbidden her to swim there alone, but she hoped that one day soon her mother would relent. Then she would really have a reason to hurry through her summer chores.

Humming, she stepped on stones and leaped over a log that blocked her passage. Just as she was about to turn back and finish picking, she heard a noise.

“Psst.”

Helen stopped and listened. The woods along the creek were alive with birds and small animals rustled in the undergrowth. But this was different. The noise was more insistent.

“Psst. Over here…”

Startled she turned in the direction she thought the noise—now a voice—was coming from.

“Somebody there?” she called.

“Don’t look.”

That made no sense to her. Helen searched harder. “Who’s there?”

“I said don’t look!”

Since she’d yet to see anything anyway, she dropped her gaze to the creek. “Who’s talking to me?”

“Listen, you gotta help me.”

The voice was new to her, and the accent very unlike the accents of people in the valley. It was flatter, more nasal, and the way the boy pronounced vowels took some getting used to.

“I don’t gotta do a single thing,” she said. “Except listen to my mama and daddy and say my prayers. And who’s that talking to me, anyway? Why’re you hiding?”

“I gotta.”

“No reason I can think of.” She peeked from under her lashes. “Cept’in you done something wrong and don’t want nobody to see.”

“I ain’t done nothing. Just, just got into some trouble, that’s all.”

She lifted her head and peered around. “What kinda trouble?”

“Don’t look!”

“You tell me why, then maybe I won’t!”

There was a long silence. She’d just about decided he was gone when he spoke at last.

“They took my clothes.”

The voice was so soft that at first she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “Clothes?”

“Ain’t that what I just said?”

“Who? Who done it?”

This time the silence went uninterrupted. But Helen, the best at sums in her schoolroom, had put two and two together. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Fate.”

For a moment she thought he was joking. Maybe he thought this was some sort of game where he pretended to be something no person could rightly be. Then she realized what he meant. “Fate? That boy what’s living with the danged old Claibornes now? You that Fate?”

“Uh-huh.” He sounded miserable, as if “danged old Claibornes” didn’t even begin to describe his new family.

“Fate, huh?” She wondered what fate had brought him here to the creek and grinned at her own silent joke.

“You gonna help or not?”

Helen realized she was enjoying herself. Surely this was the most exciting thing that would happen to her for weeks and weeks. She knew better than to dismiss it lightly. “First you gotta tell me what happened,” she said. “All of it. Purt near every bit of it, anyway.”

“They made me come, told me I could swim.”

“Who’s they?” She thought she knew, but she asked anyway.

“Gus. He’s my cousin. And a boy named Obed.”

“How about Tom? He been here, too?”

“Nobody named Tom.”

Helen thought that was probably good. When her father found out what Obed had done, only one Stoneburner boy would be begging for mercy tonight. This was just the kind of mischief Cuddy hated the most.

“So they brought you here,” she said. “Then what?”

“They told me they always swum—” He didn’t finish.

Considering the state he was in now, she knew what they’d told him. “Told you they always swum naked, didn’t they?”

“Uh-huh.”

“They was lying, you know. Got caught swimming like that one time and Mama near to took the skin off their bodies. She don’t hold with it, there being girls on Fitch who might come along.”

“Like you.” He sounded absolutely miserable.

“You ain’t see no bulls, have you?”

“Bulls?”

“You ain’t swimming and avoiding something you were supposed to do, like going to church or helping a poor old widow woman?”

“What are you talking about?”

Clearly this was not going to be as exciting as the story that Becky had told at the quilt frame in the spring, but at least this one was happening to her. It was her job now to make sure that Fate didn’t end up naked in front of half the world, like the boy in the story.

“You know what they did with your clothes?” she asked.

“You think they’d tell me?”

“Guess not.” She pondered this. “Guess I’ll have to get you some others, only it’s not gonna be easy. My mama sees me, she won’t let me go back outside. She’ll make me stay inside and help with supper.”

“Please, you gotta think of a way.”

He sounded unhappy, but not afraid. And he wasn’t whining. Nobody in the Stoneburner family was allowed to whine, and complaining was against the rules, as well—except maybe a little on important occasions. Fate just wanted his clothes so he could go about his business. And he didn’t want to show the world every little piece of himself in the process.

“Since it’s Monday, my mama did her washing today.” She was putting together a plan now. She had seen her mother with a load of dry folded clothes. But she knew the routine. On a good day in the summer Delilah washed late in the morning because clothes dried quickly in the heat. The light clothes, their dresses, her father’s shirts, dried first. Delilah folded them and took them inside to be ironed that evening when the weather cooled. But the heavier clothes, like overalls or the blue work pants her father wore at the feed store, stayed on the line until suppertime. If she was lucky, they would still be there.