Calico Brides (2 page)

There is one alone…yea, he hath neither child nor brother;
yet is there no end of all his labour;
neither is his eye satisfied with riches… .
Two are better than one;
because they have a good reward for their labour
.
E
CCLESIASTES
4:8–9

G
ladys checked the baskets on the kitchen table. Red calico bows she’d festooned with small white flowers peeked out between juniper branches. Such cheerful decorations should improve even crotchety widower Norman Keller’s spirits in the middle of the miserable Kansas winter.

Ma carried a couple of baskets to the family wagon, together with garlands of fragrant juniper branches. “Maybe it would be good if I came with you.”

Gladys came close to agreeing when she remembered the last time she had knocked on Mr. Keller’s door. The growl with which he had greeted carolers could have passed for Ebenezer Scrooge’s. “I’ll see how it goes today. I’d like to do this on my own, if I can. I’ll be back in time to help with supper.”

Grateful for the January thaw that made an outdoor project possible, Gladys buttoned up her winter coat and drew on her mittens before heading out to the wagon. When she’d decided to reach out to Norman Keller, she hadn’t considered how to keep her activities a secret. To avoid attention, she would keep her wagon off Main Street.

A few minutes later she came to a stop in front of the imposing three-story structure that Norman Keller called home. As far as Gladys knew, he was the only one who lived there. His wife had died, and his children never visited. Rather than knocking on the front door and risking Mr. Keller’s rejection before she even started, Gladys approached the house from the back. She tied the horse to the railing and carried the baskets to the wraparound porch. A closer inspection of the once-magnificent structure revealed sagging boards and peeling paint. Such neglect by the richest man in town befuddled her. She hoped he would feel better after she’d hung enough baskets for him to see one no matter which window he looked through.

As she walked down the porch, a basket in each hand, she realized she had miscalculated the number needed to adorn the rafters. She’d start from the front and work her way back. She tiptoed to the corner and put the baskets down. She returned for her stepladder, and as she carried it to the front, it bumped along the floorboards. She froze, expecting Mr. Keller to shuffle out the door to check on the noise. When he didn’t appear, she continued until she had unloaded everything in the wagon.

From the corner, she studied the overhang. With a hammer in one hand and two nails in the other, she climbed the stepstool, reached high overhead, and tapped a nail into the wood. A thin crack appeared. Would a section of the overhang split and fall? Mr. Keller wouldn’t appreciate it if she destroyed his property in the process of decorating it.

Tucking her tongue behind her teeth, Gladys waited and the nail held. Next she centered the basket handle on the nail. She stepped down to study the effect.
Good
. Setting another arrangement on the railing, she climbed the stepstool to hammer the second nail in place.

As she adjusted a couple of ribbons around the berries, she wondered what else she could do for Mr. Keller. Fashioning a few bows hardly qualified as a mission project, and she wanted to do more. She tapped the nail in and reached for the basket.

Behind her, the front door banged. “What are you doing?”

The edge of the door caught the stepstool, throwing Gladys off balance. Her arms windmilled, her feet slipped, and she fell backward.

Into two strong arms.

“Oomph.”

The arms lifted her and held her steady while she regained her footing. The basket had fallen, crushing the bows and scattering the juniper branches across the floor.

Falling into Mr. Keller’s arms wasn’t the introduction Gladys had hoped for.

Slowly she turned around to meet the man she wanted to help. And looked up…and up…and up. Long legs, straight limbs, strong arms…brown hair.

Definitely not Norman Keller.

Haydn stared at the person who had been making all the noise. Her cheeks gleamed bright red beneath a green knit cap, and brown curls bounced on her shoulders. Her mouth opened just far enough to reveal straight white teeth. This little thing didn’t weigh much more than a hummingbird. “Are you all right? Did you hurt yourself?”

“No.” She brushed her hands on her coat and glanced at the porch, covered with greens and ribbons and straw baskets. What was this stranger doing on the porch on a ladder in the middle of winter? The Old Man hadn’t mentioned any guests.

“I apologize for making such a mess.” She gestured helplessly at the scattered items on the floor. “If you give me a broom, I’ll clean it up.”

The Old Man’s pride demanded Haydn refuse. As he stepped to the side, a board moved underneath his foot, a reminder of all the repairs needed on the house. Whoever this stranger was, at least she wanted to help. “Let me get one for you.” He paused at the door. “But who are you?”
And what are you doing here?

“I’m Gladys Polson.” Shivering, she slipped on a pair of gloves. “Who are you? I haven’t seen you before.”

“I’m Haydn…” He hesitated in mid-introduction. “Haydn Johnson.” He used the name he often gave in his newspaper work.

Miss Gladys Polson was as pretty as a Christmas angel, standing there against the backdrop of the winter-white world, and whatever her purpose in coming to the house, she surely meant no harm. He smiled. “Look, it’s a miserable day. Come in and get warmed up before you do any more work.”

Her mouth opened, and he thought she was going to refuse. Tilting her head, she touched her lips with a mittened hand. “I’d like that.”

Haydn held the door open.

“Who was it making all that blasted noise?” The Old Man’s petulant voice carried across the living room.

“It’s Gladys Polson.”

“Don’t know her.”

Gladys crossed the room to greet the man sitting in the straight-backed chair by the low-lying fire. “Good afternoon, Mr. Keller. You may not remember me, but I want to introduce myself. We’re members of the same church.”

Haydn hid a smile behind his hand. The Old Man didn’t know how to respond to this force of nature. “So you were the one making all that racket out there?”

Pink tinged Gladys’s cheeks. “I apologize for the noise. I had hoped you might not hear me inside. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

She shivered, and Haydn remembered how cold the living room had seemed when he first arrived. He added a couple of logs to the fire, and soon the flames leaped merrily. “I’ll fix us some hot tea while the room warms up some.”

Gladys nodded. “Thank you.”

As she unbuttoned the top button of her coat, he started forward. “I’m sorry. Let me help you.” He stood behind her, his arms easing behind her slim shoulders, ready to take the coat as it slid from her back. This close, she smelled like rosewater and cedar needles. Draping the coat over his arm, he pulled the chair closer to the fire. “Sit here by the fire until the room gets warmer.”

She glanced at the man in the chair, huddled beneath a thick blanket. Noting her silent interest, Haydn scooted the Old Man’s chair closer to the fire.

“What the fool do you think you’re doing?”

“Putting your feet to the fire. Doesn’t that feel better?”

Scowling, the Old Man stared at the fireplace. “It’s a waste of good firewood, that fire is.”

Yes, Mr. Scrooge
. “We want our company to feel welcome, don’t we?”

Gladys stared at her hands, folding and unfolding them in her lap. “Go ahead and fix the tea while Mr. Keller and I visit.” She flashed a smile full of genuine warmth at Haydn, and he relaxed.

“Three cups of tea, coming up. I wish I could offer you some cookies, but all we have is a couple of slices of bread.” He grinned.

Walking into the kitchen, Haydn questioned why he had offered tea instead of coffee. Maybe because tea seemed like the kind of thing he should offer a lady. Hot cocoa sounded even better on a cold day, but he didn’t know how to make it, some slow process of heating milk and adding cocoa powder and sugar. He’d prefer coffee, but they only had the dregs of the pot from the morning.

He couldn’t mess up boiling water and adding tea leaves. He opened the cabinets to the usual collection of blue enamelware but then changed his mind and headed instead for the china cabinet. If he was going to entertain a stranger, even one up to an unexplained errand on the front porch, he might as well do it in style. A silver tray nestled at the back of the china cabinet; he brought out three cups and saucers that looked like they hadn’t been touched in a month of Sundays. He cleaned them with a dishrag, filled a sugar bowl, and poured fresh cream into a small pitcher.

While he waited for the water to boil, he listened to the quiet murmurs of conversation from the living room. Gladys spoke in a pleasant cadence, and the Old Man answered in short, one-word answers.

After the water came to a boil, Haydn poured it over the tea leaves in the pretty china teapot.

“I have a question of my own.” A querulous voice broke the quiet murmurs. “What are you up to, disturbing my peace and doing all that hammering on my front porch?”

T
he tray tilted in Haydn’s hands, and he righted it. Waiters and hostesses might handle trays with a single deft hand, but he kept all ten fingers on this one. His host would never let him hear the end of it if he dropped any of the china. Through the open doorway, he watched the tableau unfolding before him. The Old Man had his hands on the arms of his chair, his face set in an angry mask.

Across from him, Gladys leaned forward, perfectly at ease in this awkward social situation. “Why, I’m obeying our Lord’s command.”

“Speak up, young lady. I can’t hear you.”

“I’m obeying our Lord’s command.” The girl spoke louder and slower, as if used to speaking to someone who was hard of hearing.

“Which one is that? The one that says to trouble a man in his own home?” The Old Man waved Haydn into the room. “Come on, young man. Stop hovering.”

Haydn laid the tray on a small table with a marble top.

“Shall I?” Gladys reached for the teapot as if she was the hostess, ignoring the outburst. “What do you like in your tea, Mr. Keller?”

“A teaspoon of sugar.”

She stirred in the sugar. “The command to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.”

“You don’t live next to me.” He looked through the windows on either side of the parlor. “I would recognize you.”

“No, I don’t. How do you like your tea, Mr. Johnson?”

The Old Man looked up sharply at that, an appreciative gleam in his eyes. He covered his chuckle with a sip of tea.

“I’ll take it black, please.”

Handing the cup to Haydn, Gladys continued her explanation. “But everyone in Calico is my neighbor, don’t you see? God brought you to my mind. I realized I don’t know much about you except your name. And I thought I should remedy the situation.”

“Busybody.” The word came out under the Old Man’s breath.

If Gladys heard him, she ignored him. After she fixed her own cup of tea, adding both sugar and cream, she leaned forward and chafed her hands together in front of the fire. “A fire cheers up a room, doesn’t it?”

The temperature had risen a few degrees. The Old Man no longer looked so drawn. It was a surprise he hadn’t come down with a cold before now. Haydn would keep the fire going after Gladys left.

“You still haven’t explained all the hammering.”

Gladys’s face turned bright pink. So this question came closer to revealing her true purpose for showing up this morning. Haydn leaned forward, awaiting her answer.

“I had some bows left over from last Christmas that look good against greenery.” She dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “From what I could see from the outside, you didn’t have a Christmas tree. I thought some hanging baskets might cheer up the house.”

The Old Man harrumphed. “Seems a waste to cut down a tree just so’s to decorate a house for a couple of days a year.”

“We each may celebrate the birth of our Lord in whatever way we wish, that is true. But I didn’t notice you at church any time during December.” She batted her eyelashes, making her stinging statement into innocence reborn.

“I don’t have to go to church to know the Savior.”

“That’s true. But God wants us to love each other. It’s hard to do that if we never see each other. That’s why I’m here.” Gladys smiled, having brought her argument full circle.

Haydn felt the indictment. He, who had good reason to love the Old Man, hadn’t bothered to spend much time with him at all since he started college four years ago. This slip of a girl was practicing the heart of the law: to love the Lord God and to love one’s neighbor as one’s self.

She poured both men a second cup of tea before standing. “Now, with your permission, I will return to hanging the baskets.” She slipped on her coat and headed outside.

“Well, go after her. Make her stop.”

A smile sprang to Haydn’s lips. “What, and stop her in her God-given mission in life? You have to admit, it’s kind of sweet.” He stood behind the curtain, watching Gladys move the precarious stepstool. Soon the banging of the hammer resumed.