High Hearts (9 page)

“Yes, ma’am.” Ernie gloated. Her advice!

“There’s no point in that ancient-of-days cooking for Geneva. Nash brought precious little to this marriage other than his undying devotion for my daughter—and the new house, of course. I’m going to strongly encourage my daughter to move back up here. If I do that, I can’t discharge that poor cook, Granville. She can barely see. Might you find some use that won’t tax her or make her feel out of place?”

Ernie pretended to turn this over in her mind. “I can gives her sittin’ duties.”

“I knew you’d think of a solution, Ernie.” Lutie beamed.

Ernie swelled like a frog about to croak. Sin-Sin wanted to poke her in the gut and say, “Blow it out, lardguts.”

Lutie swept out of the kitchen to the hall. She put on her navy blue coat, her everyday coat with the worn sleeves and shiny elbows. Sin-Sin grabbed her heavy scarlet shawl and ambled out. The two women headed for the stable, the light snow crunchy underfoot in the shade and sloppy in the sunshine.

“Geneva won’t come back to the house,” Sin-Sin observed.

“How do you know?”

“She’s mistress of a house.”

Lutie slowed. “But it’s so much more practical for us to live together.”

“Maybe Di-Peachy can honey her into it.”

“Geneva can listen to her own mother.”

“Since when?”

Lutie shot her a glance. Sin-Sin took the hint.

The stable boys huddled inside the tack room. Only Geneva and Lorenzetto, a small-boned young man, worked outside.

Lorenzetto saw Lutie and Sin-Sin before Geneva. He bowed to Lutie, who rarely came to the stable. His eyes twinkled. “Auntie Sin-Sin, you look good in red.”

“You make a girl’s heart beat faster.” Sin-Sin favored the boy. She favored his father even more.

“Mother, Auntie, you’ll catch cold.”

“That’s why I’m here—to see that you don’t.”

“I’m fine, Mother.”

“You’re not fine. Looks like you rubbed a pencil under your eyes. You’ve suffered a sad jolt. Come on, let the boys finish up here, and you come back to the house.”

“I’ve got the dun to ride.”

Sin-Sin glowed in Lorenzetto’s direction. “You can do it, can’t you?”

“Oh, yes, Auntie!” Lorenzetto wanted the chance to work the hot-blooded dun.

“I really should be here.”

“Geneva,” Sin-Sin commanded, “you’ll do your mother no good by getting sick, and when your husband hears about it, he’ll be worried to death. Now git!”

Geneva allowed as how Sin-Sin was right. She handed the reins to Lorenzetto. He sprang on the animal like a cricket. Lutie and Sin-Sin flanked the tired, young woman and walked her back to the house. As she stepped inside the door, she broke into uncontrollable sobs.

Lutie wrapped her arms around her. “There, there, honey, this is hard for you. Come on now. Come on.” She nodded at Sin-Sin, who made for the kitchen.

“Ernie June!”

“Sin-Sin, I ain’t deaf.”

“Mix up a hot toddy for Miz Geneva and make it a strong one.”

Before Ernie could snarl, Sin-Sin was in the main room where Lutie had the distraught young woman on a davenport. Di-Peachy, who was packing her own things upstairs, hurried
down. At the sight of her friend, Geneva burst out again. “He’ll die! Five days, that’s all we had. I can’t live without Nash!”

Di-Peachy sat at the foot of the davenport and massaged Geneva’s cold feet while Lutie managed to get her boots off. Lutie patted her hands. Sin-Sin put a plaid throw over her cold legs.

“What’ll I do?”

“Courage, my darling. Courage. Men have their brand and we women have ours.” Lutie fought back her own tears.

“Miss Lutie, do I have permission to play the harp? I think we’ll all feel a little better if I do.”

The golden harp resting on her shoulder, Di-Peachy played a short Mozart piece that Geneva liked, and soon she stopped crying.

Ernie June delivered the hot toddy. Sin-Sin started to take it from her, but Ernie turned her shoulder and brushed by her. “Miz Geneva, here’s something to warm you on up.”

Geneva swallowed the huge hot toddy like a greedy child. Since she’d eaten nothing that day, it hit her with the force of a sledgehammer. Before she dropped off, she murmured, “I can’t live like this, Momma. I’d rather die with Nash than live without him.” Lutie held her hand until she fell asleep.

“Poor baby.” Sin-Sin stood up. “Blankets.” She left for the linen closet and returned with blankets and a pillow. Lutie and Sin-Sin arranged these items to their satisfaction. Di-Peachy continued to play.

“She’ll be herself by tomorrow morning,” Lutie said, assuring herself as much as the others.

Geneva awoke, miserable with a headache. Was she going blind? The world looked pitch. She groaned and noticed a layer of scarlet and gold embers in the fireplace. A grumble on the floor startled her. She reached down and touched Di-Peachy’s beautiful rump.

Geneva listened as Di-Peachy rolled over on the floor. She’d slept with the sound of that breathing from infancy. Odd that she didn’t miss Peaches one bit when she slept with Nash. Nash. My God, where was he? Maybe he was shot. Maybe a marauding Northerner wanted to start his own personal war. He crossed the Potomac and—she sat upright. I can’t live without Nash. I’ve got to go to him. If he dies, then I’ll die with him.

The exquisite grandfather clock, carefully shipped over from England in 1727, ticked in the grand foyer. Night’s silence enlarged the ticktock. Ticking away the minutes of my husband’s life, Geneva thought.

She crawled over the end of the davenport. Another cold night. She wrapped a blanket around her. How could Di-Peachy sleep? She peeked over at the curled form on the floor. My husband could be dying, and she’s asleep. Geneva walked across the foyer, the black and white marble nearly freezing her feet. The clock said 4:10. A first quarter moon smiled on the top of the clock face. She scampered into the kitchen, each footstep splitting open her head.

Ernie June would pitch a fit if she knew Geneva fiddled around her kitchen. Well, Ernie June could shut up as well as talk. Geneva figured her headache was more important than getting one of Ernie’s precious pans out of place. She poked into the huge hearth. A small flame licked up through the
ashes. She pitched on some kindling. Within fifteen minutes a decent fire warmed her blue toes. She ransacked the kitchen until she found a small coffeepot, but she realized to her dismay she’d have to stick it on the top of the new cast-iron stove. Geneva clanged and clattered. Why did Lutie indulge Ernie June with this contraption? Ernie June could hang a coffeepot over the hearth as easily as mess with this monster. Bitching furiously under her breath, Geneva slowly figured out how to get a fire going in the stove. She ground up beans, put the sweet-smelling coffee into the tin container, dropped it into the coffeepot, and slapped it on top of the stove. If only Sin-Sin would come to work early. Sin-Sin carried the cure for everything. Geneva pulled up a ladderback chair and waited by the fire for her coffee. She wondered if anyone ever died of a headache. She might be the first.

The smell of coffee snatched her from depressing reveries about her death, Nash’s death, the hellacious boredom of staying in Albemarle County while a war was being fought. The coffee perked so quickly that Geneva considered revising her opinion of the new stove.

She heaped honey in her coffee. The bees of Chatfield produced vats of clover honey. One swallow of coffee jolted her stomach into awareness. She hadn’t eaten in a day and a half. She gulped down the coffee, poured herself more, then poked around the pantry for food. Sugar cookies big as pancakes, cured ham, and yesterday’s bread tasted better than her wedding feast. Geneva ate standing up in the pantry, then realizing she would not die from headache or starvation, she carried the food to the long, smooth maple table in the middle of the kitchen.

She tossed hickory wood on the fire, and it smelled like a barbecue. Geneva felt alone in the entire world. The darkness outside the kitchen, the quiet of the house seemed to seal her inside. A scratch at the outside door startled her. She got up and opened it. Cazzie, a huge tortoiseshell cat, pranced in, a mangled rodent in her jaws.

“For me?”

Cazzie purred triumphantly. Geneva, not without some malice, decided to let the remains desecrate Ernie’s kitchen. Both she and Cazzie would vacate the premises before Ernie marched in with the ever present Boyd. Ernie hated rodents. This ought to send her through the roof.

Cazzie graced Geneva’s lap while Geneva fed her bits of ham.

The door to the dining room swung open. Eyes half-open, Di-Peachy shuffled to the coffeepot and drained the contents. Di-Peachy glared at the paltry sum of liquid. “Selfish.”

“How was I supposed to know you’d wake up?”

“You know the smell of coffee always wakes me up—that and the fact that it sounded like a blacksmith was working in here.”

“This stove, have you examined this piece of work?” Geneva pointed to the stove even as she was making another pot of coffee for Di-Peachy and herself.

“No, but I see a piece of work on the floor over there.” Di-Peachy indicated Cazzie’s prize. “Ernie June’ll turn white.” The cat ignored this comment and continued to eat ham bits.

They laughed while Geneva poured coffee for both of them. The sugar cookies disappeared along with half the ham. All the more reason to get out of here before Ernie June arrived.

“I don’t know where Nash is.”

“He knows where you are. That’s something.” Di-Peachy couldn’t fathom Geneva’s carrying on about her husband. As near as she could figure, love was a disease shared by two.

“Don’t get smart, Di-Peachy. I hate it when you’re smart. Also, I’ve got a headache.”

“Bet Lutie’s got powders around here somewhere.”

“I’ll ask her when she gets up.”

“There won’t be any fighting for some time, Geneva. Don’t worry.”

“But I’m so lonesome,” Geneva wailed. “I’m going to join him.”

“That’s wonderful. I’m going to be appointed Secretary of War for the Confederacy.” Di-Peachy licked her fingers and picked up spilled sugar crystals from the table.

“I’m going.” Geneva’s lower lip jutted forward.

Di-Peachy stared her in the eyes. “Now look here, girl, stop this foolishness about going to see Nash. Other women are in the same boat you are.”

“They don’t love their husbands the way I love Nash.” Geneva breathed passion. “I’ve thought it over. I know I can’t go as a woman. I’ll enlist as a man.”

“You are out of your mind!”

Geneva’s eyes narrowed. That was never a wise phrase to use at Chatfield. “Don’t count on it!”

“You can’t do this.”

“I can ride better than any man in this county. Better than any man in the state of Virginia! You can cut my hair.”

“You haven’t got a beard. Your voice is high. They’ll laugh you right out of camp!”

“Not when they’ve seen me ride. The South needs every one of her sons, even the boys.”

Di-Peachy, dumbstruck, stared at Geneva. She was tall and lanky. Her breasts were very small. If she cut her hair like she said and rubbed some dirt on her face—well, it was possible but crazy.

“I’ll say I’m eighteen, which is true. They’ll think I’m lying and about fourteen. But they’ll take me—once I find Nash’s regiment, that is.”

“You can’t do this to your mother.”

“My mother has Sin-Sin and you, so she’ll be fine. Mother has her marriage and I want mine!” Geneva displayed no charity on this point.

“What makes you think Nash will go along with it?” Di-Peachy slowly began to believe Geneva. “If I were your husband, I wouldn’t let you fight a war because I loved you.”

“You haven’t felt what Nash and I feel. He needs me.”

“Don’t be surprised if he sends you back.”

“He won’t. No one can make me do what I don’t want to do!” The defiance in Geneva’s face was the defiance of the South.

“Someone has to run your house and this house.”

“Mother and Sin-Sin can run anything. You can take charge of my house.”

“Geneva, this is crackbrained. Even if you get away with it, why risk being killed?”

“My place is with my husband. I took a vow before God, man, and my entire family: ‘In sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse until death us do part.’ ”

That was hard to fight. Di-Peachy folded her hands. Geneva was dead set on going. Di-Peachy couldn’t change her mind, so she might as well make the best of it and help. “Let’s get out of here before Ernie comes in. It’s dawn.”

The morning lesson was Judges 9: 1–22. Gideon finally
died but not without leaving behind seventy sons. Fortunately, this excess of progeny was not the work of one worn-out woman. Gideon disported himself amongst many wives. The Bible neglected to say how he maintained his energy. Apparently, the wives proved insufficient and he carried on with a concubine who bore him a son, Abimelech. So when Gideon went to his heavenly reward, exhausted by these earthly labors, Abimelech, no fool, killed the legitimate sons except for Jotham, the youngest son, who hid himself. Jotham, after registering complaint once out of danger, ran to a place called Beer. That’s where the lesson ended and Sin-Sin wondered if beer came from Beer.

Sin-Sin wore a string of briars around her neck to keep the chills off. As an added precaution, she put red peppers in her shoes. She enjoyed the Bible readings. If Gideon could have himself a passel of wives, she could have herself a passel of husbands. Sin-Sin liked men. She had sense enough to keep this happy idea to herself ever since Lutie had lost her delight in the male sex two decades past. Sin-Sin walked through the hallway thinking what a pity that was. God made men and women to enjoy one another, and Lutie just closed down, pulling in the shutters.

Loud cursing in the kitchen brought Sin-Sin and Lutie running. Geneva and Di-Peachy had disappeared after the morning lesson.

“Miz Lutie, Miz Lutie, I been mocked!” Ernie’s eyes bugged out, making her look like a locust.

“What seems to be the problem, Ernie June?”

“I finds a rat. Well, I cleans that up.” Of course, Boyd cleaned it up. Ernie wouldn’t touch the thing. “Now I finds half my ham gone. The one I cured with brown sugar! My cookies been et up! I won’ stan’ for it!”