High Hearts (3 page)

“Geneva is a healthy, happy, young woman, and she’ll shine at her own wedding.” Poofy cooed.

“I gave birth to a plain girl, but she’s the best horseman in the whole country. What good will it do her?”

“A great deal, honey. She and Nash will continue Henley’s breeding programs. She’s going to make a good wife, and her skill with horses will serve her well. Just you wait and see.”

In a moment of anguish, Lutie squeezed her sister’s bejeweled hand. “Poofy, I don’t want the world to rudely cross my threshold. Not tomorrow! Not on my baby’s wedding day.”

Poofy sighed a great sigh and kissed her sister’s freckled hand. Lutie smiled. “I wish you’d stop that damn sighing! It sounds like respiratory martyrdom!”

The clouds nearly touched the treetops. A strange light seemed to shine through them this early evening. Geneva and Di-Peachy skipped over the green, spring lawn. A few brave crocuses popped up their heads and the forsythia threatened, but winter and spring still played tug-of-war. Easter was eleven days ago and spring seemed late. The magnificent stable, the pride of the Chatfield family, loomed in the half-light like a candle.

Normally Geneva would wander into the stable. If she wasn’t on a horse then she was around them. But tonight she skirted the stables and made for the slave quarters. These faced the stable instead of the main house, which was the custom. Each quarter was a two-story, frame dwelling with a pitched roof and a front porch. Behind each house was a garden. Since Henley Chatfield concentrated on horses rather than crops—he had hay, of course—he could streamline his business to thirty slaves and the various children produced. In the number one house resided the powerful Auntie Sin-Sin. Sin-Sin was aide-de-camp to Lutie. She didn’t so much seize power as she accreted it. Of course, Lutie never addressed her as Auntie Sin-Sin which would indicate that both women were growing old. They’d each die before they’d admit that. However, Geneva and Di-Peachy had to address Sin-Sin as Auntie, her due respect.

“Auntie Sin-Sin! Auntie Sin-Sin!” Geneva shouted as she ran.

The door to the white house opened, and Sin-Sin barked, “Couldn’t stand it no more? Well, get in here. Both of you get in here.”

Geneva thundered across the porch. Di-Peachy was more dainty about it.

“My bones’ll rust in this weather.” Sin-Sin closed the door. “Sit by the fire, missy.” She turned to Di-Peachy. “You, too.”

The house was full of pots—big red pots, little bright green ones, a black one with snakes on it, another one filled with sunflower seeds. You could barely move but for bumping into a pot. The pot of honor, a blazing cobalt blue, sat square in the middle of a well-made table.

“Don’t you come in here with the searching eye, missy.”

“Auntie, I wouldn’t do that,” Geneva protested.

“Ha! I knowed you since you was in your mama’s belly. I can still box your ears! Don’t weasel me.”

“Can’t I have my wedding present now?”

“No! You turns around and get right out of here if you’re goin’ to start that.”

“Just a peek?”

“Next thing, you’ll be wanting to speak at the groom. You pay heed to superstition. That’s old wisdom. Don’t trifle with it.”

Di-Peachy grinned.

“Tell me about your husband, Auntie,” Geneva said teasingly. They’d heard about Marcus Armentrout a million times.

“I promise to obey the man but before I finish, it was cussing, honey.” She slapped her thigh and laughed. Sin-Sin couldn’t abide taking orders from anybody, any color. Even Lutie carefully phrased her “requests.”

Geneva fixed her eyes on the cobalt blue pot. “I’ve got to find something blue.”

“That’s not it,” Sin-Sin replied. “Borrow a blue garter from your brother.”

Di-Peachy poked the fire. “We were hoping you could tell us something about the wedding night.”

Sin-Sin’s eyebrows darted up to her peacock blue turban. She always wore a scarf around her head, reserving red for Christmas and special occasions. Once Lutie gave her a white silk scarf from Paris. When Sin-Sin didn’t appear wrapped in it the next morning, Lutie’s feelings were hurt. Finally Sin-Sin
told her that white was for when one died. She put the scarf in her small dresser, top drawer, and instructed Lutie to wrap her in it should the Lord call her first. Lutie agreed, secure in the knowledge that Sin-Sin was indestructible.

“Your momma kept that to herself?”

“Mother and I don’t talk very much.” Geneva said this without rancor.

“Well, your momma is a Chalfonte, honey, and they run to brilliant, and your daddy, he’s a Chatfield, and they run to practical. You take after your daddy. But Nash—he’s almost like your momma. He has a rhymin’ turn of mind.”

“You do like him, don’t you, Auntie Sin-Sin?”

“Like him? Why I think he’s the best young man in this entire county!” Geneva’s relief was so visible that Di-Peachy laughed. Sin-Sin growled at Di-Peachy. “Soon enough, you’ll be moonin’ about some buck, too.”

“Never!” Di-Peachy was emphatic.

Sin-Sin polished the pot with the snakes on it.

“I mean it, Auntie.” Di-Peachy’s eyes crackled like the fire.

“Girl, every man sees you wants you—Mr. Nash and Mr. Henley being excepted naturally. Sooner or later you gonna fall!”

“I will never, ever fall in love, and if I do, may God strike me dead.” This was said with such force that both Geneva and Sin-Sin stared at Di-Peachy. Di-Peachy warmed to her subject. “I’ll never be the slave of a slave!”

“Watch your mouth,” Sin-Sin warned. “Losing most the light. You two best burn the wind gettin’ back to the big house.”

“But tell me about the wedding night!”

“Thass the best part!” Sin-Sin laughed.

“Does it hurt?” Geneva tried not to sound as anxious as she was.

“Sometimes it do, sometimes it don’t. But the first time is, well, hard on the nerves.”

“My monthly shows up when it shows up. Half the time, I don’t get it at all. What if I can’t have children? Oh, there has to be another way to do all this.” Geneva nearly wailed.

“That’ll even out when you gets older. See that big green pot over there? That’s the baby pot. When you wants a baby, you come on in here and we rub the pot.”

“What if you don’t want a baby?” Di-Peachy inquired.

“What’s got into you, Miz Peaches? I never heard such talk.”

Di-Peachy shut up. Sin-Sin’s raptures over her pots and their magical impregnating qualities were a tried and true topic. If she launched into it, they’d never get out of there. “Geneva, let’s go before it gets black as pitch.”

A silver softness enshrouded the back meadows. The two girls walked side by side. Di-Peachy felt displaced by Nash. She’d run the new frame house Nash’s people built on the seven hundred acres Henley gave the couple. As it adjoined Henley’s own land, the breeding operation would go on as before. She’d watched Auntie Sin-Sin and Lutie, so Di-Peachy knew she could run an estate. She’d have to or Geneva would wind up in the poorhouse. Geneva didn’t know jack shit about running a house, and she didn’t care. All Geneva cared about was horses and Nash, though Di-Peachy wasn’t sure in what order. Nash was smart enough, but he was a dreamy sort. Some of his poems had been published in the literary journal at the University of Virginia, where he attended with distinction. Di-Peachy hated that he could attend school, but she could not. She was smarter than these white people, and it drove her deeper and deeper into a frozen rage, frozen because she dared not express it. Why did Geneva have to fall in love and spoil everything? At least when it was the two of them, life was tolerable. Now she’d have to take orders from Nash and worse, watch Geneva take them, too.

A pack of black and tan hounds tore across the deep meadow, baying in metallic, thin voices. The moisture in the air seemed suspended like tiny pearls.

“My God, where’d they come from? Nobody hunts with black and tans around here. Not for years.” Geneva gasped and stopped talking. Twenty-some riders blasted hard on the hounds. The horses glided over the pasture, muscles straining. Geneva didn’t recognize any of the riders. A straggler on a magnificent seventeen-hand gray rode up to her.

“Ladies.” He swept an old-fashioned cap off his head.

He was a big man, and his shirt, open almost to the waist, revealed a torso that could have been carved by Michelangelo. His boots were also old-fashioned. They could have covered his knee, but were rolled over once. He looked like a
cavalier. Possessed of an enigmatic radiance, he spoke to Geneva. “Each person you kill is a soul you must bear like an unseen weight.” He clapped his hat back on his head, wheeled the huge horse away from them, and sped off as silently and swiftly as he came.

Geneva felt a chill. He was swallowed in the noctilucent mists.

Di-Peachy pulled on Geneva. “Let’s get out of here.”

“They’re crazy. You can’t foxhunt in this weather. There’s no scent.”

Geneva froze. She stopped and shivered. “Di-Peachy, that was the Harkaway Hunt! They come for you when you die or at a time of great crisis. Momma said she saw them when my little brother Jimmy died.”

Di-Peachy, a fervent rationalist, wanted none of it. “We’ll ask people at the wedding.”

Geneva seized Di-Peachy’s left arm. “No! Don’t say anything to anybody! Whether you believe the Harkaway Hunt legend or not, plenty of people around here do. They’ll take it as some omen—what with conditions.”

“All right, Geneva, all right.”

“ ‘Each person you kill is a soul you must bear like an unseen weight,’ ” Geneva said, repeating his prophecy. “I’m not going to kill anyone.”

“Forget it. Maybe it’s indigestion.”

“I’ll never forget it—and neither will you.”

Di-Peachy pushed Geneva forward. She wanted to get back. The two raced toward the big house. They were glad to finally see it, anchored on the edge of the meadow like a great ship laden with treasure.

The clouds, to spite Lutie’s entreaties, hung fat with rain. It was a matter of time until they spilled it over yet another cool April day. The Chatfield house hummed, an overexcited hive. The servants scurried about, sticking ribbons into the twisted, dried grapevines which were wrapped around the stairway and the mantelpiece. Others groomed the carriage horses until they shone like patent leather. Lutie determinedly set about her morning Bible lesson. No day, no matter what day, could begin without a reading from the Bible. The inscription from Ephesians on her
Episcopal Church Almanac
was Redeeming the Time, and she wasn’t going to waste a precious second. Today’s lesson was Judges 2:1-11 and Luke 22:31.

Henley, tall and slender like his daughter, read: “And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land; ye shall throw down their altars: but ye have not obeyed my voice: Why have ye done this?”

From the kitchen Sin-Sin’s bellow catapulted Lutie and Geneva out of their seats. “You’re so dumb you ain’t even ignorant!”

Lutie went to see what all the fuss was about. Geneva, Di-Peachy, Poofy, and T. Pritchard Chalfonte escaped by every available exit. Henley smiled and closed the Bible. He couldn’t keep his mind on the lesson anyway. He quietly left as well and walked down the hall toward his daughter’s room.

Sin-Sin was throwing salt on the cook, Ernie June. Scattered on the floor of the kitchen were the pieces of a beautifully glazed red pot.

Lutie roared in. “What goes on here!”

Sin-Sin blindly continued to throw salt at Ernie June. Ernie June, not the easiest person to get along with, behaved herself remarkedly well for her. She slung whole handfuls of pepper at Sin-Sin.

“Put back your skin, witch,” hollered Sin-Sin.

“No more than yourself, and pepper will catch you jes as good.” Another handful dotted Sin-Sin’s white apron, starched stiff and placed neatly over her black dress.

“How can you give in to vile superstition when I’m having my morning Bible reading?”

“It be true. She’s a witch.” Ernie June spat. “When a witch starts to shed her skin, you throw pepper—”

“Salt!” Sin-Sin commanded.

“—pepper to catch her.”

“Now you’ve got two messes to clean up, Ernie June,” Lutie said.

“Three, after I clean up the floor with you!” Sin-Sin started for Ernie.

“Sin-Sin, I have enough on my mind today without you cuttin’ a shine.”

Sin-Sin put the salt shaker down, but folded her arms across her ample bosom. She wasn’t giving in yet. “I made a lucky pot for Miz Geneva. Ernie June with her big brown eyes and feet to match done tripped me as I was comin’ into the kitchen with my weddin’ present.”

“You wasn’t lookin’ where you was goin’!”

“You so fat, Ernie, that half of you is in the next county.” Sin-Sin relished this particular insult since she had kept her figure. It was true that Ernie’s elbows appeared as dimples in her arms.

“When a man got his arms around me, he knows he got somethin’.”

“A lardass, thass what he got.”

“Will you two stop it!” Lutie yanked a pan from overhead where it hung on a big, wrought-iron hook. “Someone is going to have a flat head!”

Sin-Sin, carefully not looking at Lutie’s eyes, untied the sparkling white handkerchief around her neck and shook it out. Ernie June yanked open a closet door and pulled out a broom. As she walked past Sin-Sin, she pulled the end of Sin-Sin’s turban. Sin-Sin kicked her in the butt.

Lutie brandished her pan. “I’ve got a daughter gettin’
married at noontime, and why do I have to contend with two crazy girls in my kitchen!”

Ernie began to vigorously sweep up the mess. Sin-Sin picked up her pot bits.

“Ernie June, don’t tell anyone that you broke Geneva’s wedding pot.” Lutie now spoke soothingly.

Ernie scowled at Sin-Sin, whose face was flushed with both anger and sincerity. “You ’spect me to believe ’bout yo’ old pots?”

“Remember, Ernie June, Geneva does share Sin-Sin’s belief in the magic of pots. If she thinks her marriage pot has been broken, it won’t sit well with her.” Lutie quickly spoke before they started fighting again.

“You always takes up for her.” Ernie pointed the broom at Sin-Sin.

“I am not taking up for her. I am trying to keep the peace with little help from either one of you!”