Hummingbird (44 page)

She knelt and opened the lid of the basket and began taking food out while he dropped to his knees, bracing his hands onto his thighs.

"Miss Abigail, I have to beg your forgi-hiveness," he hiccupped. "I said I-hime no beer drinker, but the bo-hoys took me in hand. I thought it'd be good business to mingle with the boys a li-hittle."

She was embarrassed by the entire scene, but still there was something unblamable about his tipsy state.

She remembered all too well how easily she herself had gotten that way on a "thimbleful of champagne."

She suddenly couldn't find it in her heart to be angry with him.

He sat with head hung low, hands still grasping thighs—a disconsolate drunk having a staring contest with the ground between his knees. Now and then he would quietly hiccup behind closed lips. She went about calmly laying out their food.

"I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have left you alone like tha-hat."

"Here. If you eat a little something, those hiccups will stop."

He looked at the piece of fried chicken she extended as if trying to identify what it was.

"Here," she repeated, gesturing with the drumstick as if to wake him up. "I'm not angry."

He looked up dumbly. "You're naw-hot?"

"No, but I will be if you don't take this thing and begin eating so people will stop staring at us."

"Oh… oh, sure." he said, taking the drumstick very carefully, as if it were porcelain. He bit into it, looked around, then stupidly waved the piece of meat toward a clump of gawking people as if signaling, "Hey there… how's it goin'?"

"You know, I really don't like beer," he mumbled to the chicken.

"Yes, so you told me. And as I told you, something just seems to come over people out here on the Fourth of July."

"But I shouldn't have drunk so much."

"Something good seems to have come of it though, hasn't it? I believe you've had your initiation today and now you truly are an accepted member of the community."

"Do you really think so?" He looked up, surprised.

"When you sat down here do you remember what you said? You said something about
the boys
insisting you have another beer."

"Did I say that?"

"Yes you did, just as if you were one of them."

He raised his eyebrows foolishly and grinned. "Well now, maybe I am, maybe I am." Then after a long pause, "Wouldn't that be somethin'?"

"I have a feeling that at first some of the men around here took you for the usual high and mighty easterner… and a peddler to boot. That combination doesn't always meet with the approval' of Stuart's Junction's businessmen. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually set you up to see if you'd pass their rites."

"Do you think so?" He continued to ask dumb, rhetorical questions but she could not help smiling because he was obviously abashed at his state… and it was funny in its own way.

"Oh, I'm only guessing. Don't be alarmed. If they did set you up, it'll be for this once only, and my guess is you already passed muster."

"Do you think so?" he asked again, in the exact dumb tone he'd used all the other times.

"Well, you got some business handled in between beers, didn't you? Or wasn't that what all those raised glasses were all about?"

"Come to think of it, I did." He looked astounded.

"Well then, where's the loss?"

Even in his drunkenness he was touched by her magnanimity. "You're being awfully understanding, Miss Abigail, considering how embarrassed you must have been during the bidding."

"Would you like to know a secret?" she asked.

"A secret?"

"Mm-hmm." She tilted her head sideways, a mischievous look in her eye. "Today was nothing compared to the year that Mr. Binley bought my picnic basket."

"Bones Binley?" he asked, amazed. His mouth hung open, displaying a bite of chicken.

"Yes… one and the same."

"Bones Binley bought your basket?" The chicken fell out and she hid her laughter behind her hand and came up smiling.

"Aha. It sounds like a tongue twister, doesn't it?" There was no artful coyness in her admission whatsoever. It simply seemed easier for her to erase his discomfiture and have a pleasant day than to hold him responsible for the teasing of the townspeople and the fact that they'd coerced him into getting drunk.

"Bones Binley with the tobacco and the brown teeth at the feedstore all day long spitting?"

It
was
funny, although she'd never seen it as funny before. She rocked forward on her knees, smiling, chuckling as she remembered. "It's funny, isn't it? But it wasn't then. He… he bought my basket and nobody teased him at all. It was horrible, just horrible, walking through the crowd with him. And he's looked at me with cow eyes ever since."

"Musta been your fried chicken that did it." He was sobering up a little bit by now, but was still elevated enough to laugh at his joke. Then he sucked at his greasy fingers and they happened to be both laughing when another contingent came past with a basket of their own. Frank Adney waved to David as he passed, calling, "Sounds like she's not too mad after all, eh, David?" Then he tipped the brim of his hat up briefly at her. "No hard feelings, Miss Abigail?"

"None at all, Mr. Adney." She smiled back. Frank was surprised to see what a pretty woman Miss Abigail actually was with that smile on her face and laughing the way she was. He mentioned so to his wife, and she agreed as they moved away.

Miss Abigail, watching the Adneys move on, felt suddenly more a part of the town than ever before.

David, watching her, felt expansive and wonderful. In two short days he'd melded into both the social and business environment of Stuart's Junction with an almost magical smoothness, and it was all due to her support.

"Miss Abigail?"

"Yes?" She looked up.

"I love this chicken, and the deviled eggs too." What he really thought he loved was her.

Suddenly she realized that all of this was simply too, too enjoyable and that she should not be encouraging him with smiles and laughter this way.

"You've lost your suit jacket somewhere," she observed.

Looking down at his chest he acted surprised to find it clad only in shirt and tie. "It's out there somewhere." He waved the chicken at the world at large. "It'll be around when I need it. It's too hot anyway for all that. Don't you want to take your jacket off?"

Informality breeding familiarity, she knew she shouldn't. But it was ghastly hot, and she'd been schooled by Jesse to rid herself of her too-rigid proprieties. She tried not to think of how pleased he'd be if he could see the change in her today. "It is awfully hot," she said, beginning to shrug the garment off.

David quickly used his napkin and walked on his knees, coming to help her out of it.

"Yes, that's much better," she said, laying it across the top of the picnic basket, swiping a hand upward from the nape of her neck to tuck up absolutely nothing; her hair was perfectly in place.

He had finished eating but still felt very mellow from the beer and stretched out on the grass, relaxed. He wondered how it would feel to lay his head in her lap. Instead, he said, "Tomorrow I'm supposed to go up to the logging camp and put in an order with Morneau for some lumber at the mill. But I don't know where it is for sure."

"It's about halfway up that ridge over there," she said, pointing and squinting, conscious of his eyes on her.

He liked the way the shade dappled her forehead when she raised her head to look at the ridge.

"Would you…" he began, but stopped. Should he simply invite her out for a ride or tell her he needed her help to find the place? She seemed to shy away from anything personal, but as long as he kept things on a business basis, she was more amenable. "Could you come along and show me where to find it?"

She wanted to say yes, but said instead, "Tomorrow I must do the ironing."

"Oh," he replied flatly. He lay there considering her while she began to pack up the remnants of their meal. Finally he said, "If it didn't take you all day maybe you could make it in the afternoon?"

She was pleased about one thing regarding the beer: since he'd been under its influence he'd stopped stammering. It almost made her break down and say yes, but again she realized she had no right to involve herself with him, not anymore.

"No. I simply can't make it at all," she said crisply, continuing to fuss with the picnic basket.

Rebuffed, he immediately sat up. Her abrupt changes of mood confused him. A minute ago she'd been very amiable, but suddenly she became cold and terse, refusing to look at him.

"I said before that I didn't expect you to follow me hand and foot through this entire opening up of the business, and now here I am, asking you again, the first thing. I shouldn't have asked."

Once again she felt irritated by the way David extended his invitation. Even though she knew better than to encourage him, she wished he would not always dream up an excuse to be with her. Female vanity, she chided herself, remembering the way Jesse had goaded and teased her into taking her for a ride. She put Jesse firmly from her mind, wishing he'd stay away.

As if to make up for his transgression, David asked, "Do you want some ice cream?"

But she was preoccupied, irritated with herself for leading David on, and at David for not being manly enough to lead her on. It was all very confusing.

"Do you?"

She came out of her maunderings to find him standing beside her She blinked once, hypnotically. "What?"

"I asked, do you want some ice cream," he repeated. "It's ready." He was handsome and polite and unassuming, and she stared up his body for a moment, confused by the sharp comings and goings of feelings she experienced for him.

"Yes, please," she said, sorry that she'd snapped at him.

The smile was gone from his face as he turned and limped away, only to remind her again of Jesse limping away from her down the street the last time she saw him.

David was thoroughly confused by Miss Abigail since he'd come back to Stuart's Junction. Her quicksilver mood changes were totally different from the steady, sweet woman she had been before.

There were times when he swore she liked him—more than liked him—and other times that cold light would come into her gaze, making him sure that she cared nothing at all for him.

But he was reminded again of what she could mean to him when he was served ahead of the children who'd been waiting their turns around the ice cream churn. The whole town seemed to treat him solicitously! Even the fat woman who scooped out ice cream and served him out of turn.

"You tell Mizz Abigail I picked them peaches myself last fall. Tell her Fanny Hastings says she brought a real swell feller here when she brung you," the ingratiating woman said, her dimples disappearing into her plump cheeks.

He thanked the woman and picked his way back to Miss Abigail, wondering what mood she would be in now.

He stood above her, smitten all over again with her cool, calm ladylike demeanor, studying her breasts beneath the high-necked blouse.

"Fanny Hastings says to tell you she picked the peaches for the ice cream herself."

Abbie looked up and reached for his peace offering, knowing by the look in his face that he thought he'd done something wrong, something to upset her, when it was she who continuously upset herself these days. And because he truly had done nothing wrong, and because Jesse DuFrayne refused to free her from the grip of memory, and because there was such a whipped-pup look in David's eyes as he offered her the streaming ice cream, she said, "Mr. Melcher, I believe I'll have time to show you the way to the mill tomorrow after all."

His face was immediately transformed into cherubic radiance. She realized when he smiled so quickly, so joyfully, how little it took for her to make him happy. Gratitude and admiration shone from his eyes at each little bit of attention she showed him.

This man, she realized, could be manipulated by nothing more than a smile. It should have been a heady thought, but it left her inexplicably unexcited. Still, she made up her mind she would be nice to him for the rest of the day, because he did not deserve to suffer the consequences of her constant thoughts of Jessy DuFrayne.

"Let's go watch the tree skinners choose up sides," she suggested, reaching a hand up to him. Like a grateful puppy, he helped her to her feet, his expression one of devotion.

David Melcher's initiation had only begun with the morning draught session and the subsequent bidding on the picnic baskets. Being the subject of much conjecture, he was greeted profusely wherever he and Miss Abigail went. Each greeting was enhanced in cordiality by the offer of a mug of beer, and just like that morning, David found his hand filled with a sweating glass through the entire afternoon, through no wish of his own. It was understood that Miss Abigail would not drink beer, but the mere fact that she accompanied David while he did seemed to make Miss Abigail more human in the eyes of the citizens of Stuart's Junction. At times she was actually seen smiling and laughing, and the townswomen took note of this, poking their elbows into one another's ribs, winking. And hour by hour, David became increasingly inebriated, and more thoroughly accepted.

Before the end of the day, Miss Abigail too felt herself accepted in a way she'd never been before. The women included her in their plans for the next meeting of the Ladies of Diligence Sewing Circle, gave her an apron and a spatula when the pie eating contest took place, kept her in their cheering circle when David participated with their men, and took her by the elbow as they moved to the more rowdy contests.

David participated in everything—the sack jousting, pole climbing, Indian wrestling, and even the tobacco spitting contest. And he was a miserable failure at everything he tried. But only if success was measured by the official contest results, for in goodwill he was the greatest achiever of the day. The fact that he tried all the contests, in spite of his lost toe, in spite of his limp, in spite of the fact that he was assured of a loss even before he started, endeared him to the men. And the fact that he had wrought such a change in Miss Abigail endeared both of them to the women.