Mackinnons #02 For All the Right Reasons (51 page)

“No. Not as yet, anyway. But I always say, time will tell.”

“Yes, you always do,” Jemima agreed, “and you’re always right.” Jemima took another look. “Do you suppose she’ll tell anybody what she’s doing back?”

“It would be a frosty Friday before she’d do that, I’d wager.” Clarabelle looked at Jemima in a smug way. “But we could form a little welcoming committee and mosey on over there.”

“Do you think we should?” Jemima asked, her eyes widening.

“Don’t thump a free watermelon. That’s opportunity knocking over there. Of course we should go.”

The blue calico promptly laid aside, the two ladies departed the dry goods store and marched, single file, across the porch. But about the time they stepped into the street, Carter Mayberry pulled up beside the hack and offered the object of their attention a ride to Council Springs.

That drew the two women up short. With fallen faces they watched Carter and Old Mr. Fogelberg load Katherine’s bags into Carter’s wagon, then help her into the wagon.

“Well, flip my garter if that don’t beat all!” Clarabelle said, her hands clamped on her hips as she watched their opportunity ride out of sight. “She always did have the luck of a Baptist—always up to something but you never could catch her at it.”

“Well, I’ll swan!” said Jemima, following Clarabelle’s lead and clamping her hands on her hips and doing her best to look exasperated.

“Come on,” Clarabelle said. “Standing here in the middle of the street like two fools is about as useless as a bug arguing with a chicken.”

While the two women made their way back to the dry goods store, Katherine was talking to Carter Mayberry.

“There’s something about coming home,” she said as they drove from Groesbeck toward Council Springs and the Simon place. “To know it again after a long absence…how to explain?” she said with a sigh. Then, shaking her head, her hands clasped together and resting on her knees, “There’s nothing quite like it.”

“I’ve only been away from home once and that was for the war,” Carter said. “When it was over, I was so dadblasted happy to be home again—and in one piece—that I swore then I’d never leave again ‘til they carried me out in a pine box.”

Katherine looked at Carter. Folks in town said he was so thin he had to stand twice to cast a shadow. He did look pretty thin, even to her, his long body folded in the seat in what she could only describe as a comfortable slouch, the reins riding easy in his slack hands, his neck thrust forward as if he were trying to get a whiff of what was being cooked for supper. She thought how fortunate it was for her that Carter had spied her getting off the hack from Waco and offered her a ride. “I’m much obliged to you, Carter, for the ride. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t come along when you did.”

“Heck, Miz Katherine, it ain’t out of my way none to come this way. Glad to be of help.” Carter slapped the broad back of his mule and the mule kicked, then went back to his same leisurely pace. Katherine closed her eyes for a moment and tipped her head back, enjoying the warm sun on her face, listening to the steady
clip, clip, clip
of the mule that seemed perfectly spaced between the rhythmic creak of the back wheel. How she had missed this place. She opened her eyes just as Carter put a quid of tobacco in his mouth, which meant what little conversation they had heretofore enjoyed was now over. Seeing Carter chew that tobacco—well, it reminded her of Adrian. She closed her eyes again, remembering the day she asked Adrian why he had taken up that nasty habit. “Why not?” was the only answer he gave.

Still curious, Katherine had gone one step farther and said, “I never took you for one to take up the habit.” Then glancing at him covertly, she added, “I can’t picture you being happy chewing tobacco for the rest of your life.”

“I don’t plan on chewing it forever. I’m just waiting for some pretty little thing to come along and ask me, kinda sweetlike, to stop.”

They bounced along the long stretch of country road in silence, Carter chewing and taking an occasional spit, and Katherine drinking in every inch of the countryside, like she was committing it to memory.

She thought of herself in comparison with her mother at her age, picturing her standing at the kitchen stove with two young babies playing on the floor behind her. Katherine guessed she would have to resign herself to the fact that she would be the dried-up type, more spinster than married woman.

She made herself stop thinking about that. She was young and healthy and had a passel of things to be thankful for and she would probably live to a ripe old age.
Lord willing and the creek don’t rise
. Besides, it was a glorious day and she was home. If everything would fall into place after that. She was home. Every leaf seemed a bit greener, every breath of air a bit fresher than it had been before. Home. A place to come to. Home. A place that never turned you away. She clasped her hands together in excitement, watching the countryside she knew so well pass like so many turned pages in an oft-read book. She closed her eyes, knowing by heart every mile of the way—every turn in the road, every gate, every watering trough, every barn and pond. More than once she found herself looking back to the day she had left here, thinking she would never return.

They rattled on down the road, past Mrs. Knight’s ruffled drawers drying in the warm spring breeze, past the dead hackberry overgrown with woodbine that dangled fragrant as lilac water over the curve in the road. Then came the old Hempstead place, with Granny Hempstead in her usual spot, rocking on the front porch while she cracked the tough pods of last year’s okra to free the seeds for planting this season. And then they bounced past the McFarlane place, and even from where she sat, Katherine could see it must have been a good year, for Mrs. McFarlane had brand new white ruffle curtains fluttering in her kitchen windows. When they passed the Webster place, little Tommy Webster was leading a parade of five of the Websters younger than him, each of them waving a Texas flag as they marched. Much to Tommy’s irritation, they broke ranks to run to the fence and wave, and Katherine waved back. But the minute they topped a rise and her home’s chimney came into view, something warm and rich as chocolate flooded her soul.

Carter must have sensed it was a moment special to her, for he pulled the mule up and sat a spell while she took everything in.

“Coming home sure is nice,” she said.

“Yep. My ma always said home was the one place you could go to where they had to take you in.” He slapped the mule and they went on down the road.

The house still looked the same, shabby and in need of paint, but it was infinitely more dear to her now. And surrounding it were the yellow-green fields, brushed with the faintest haze of lavender-blue as the bluebonnets were beginning to bloom. There was the curving road, the staggering sweep of stately pecans, the overgrown garden needing the attention of a plow, the fences that always needed mending, the old sow wallowing in the mud with a passel of new piglets squealing at her side. And further over was Clovis, standing beside a hackberry crowded with mistletoe, his ears splayed to each side, his eyes half-closed as he soaked up the warm sun beating against his thick black hide, and on the fence behind him sat the peacock with his tailfeathers drooping into the nurse pen where the calves chewed the ends until they were ragged and bare.

They came to the place where the road cut off to the Simon place. “I’ll get out here,” she told Carter.

“Don’t you want me to take you on up to the house?”

“No, I want to walk. It’s only a short piece.”

“What about your belongings?”

“We’ll drop them here. I’ll come back for them with the wagon later.”

“Tell you what, you go on and get out and I’ll drive your belongings on up to the house. That’ll save you having to hitch up the wagon.” He gave her a teasing smile. “Who knows? You may have forgotten how to hitch up a mule by now.”

“Who knows?” she repeated with a laugh. “I might have.”

She watched Carter mosey on up the road, biding his time, in no hurry to get to the house and unload her things. A few minutes later she waved to him as he passed by. “Good to have you home again, Miz Katherine.”

“Why, thank you, Carter. It’s nice to be back. It really is.”

And that was the gospel if she’d ever heard it.

She walked into the barnyard, seeing the wagon drawn up in front of the barn, blocking one of the double doors. Sacks of seed and mash were stacked in the back. Over near the woodpile was a new mound of wood shavings. The sight pleased her for it meant Fanny Bright was still here, looking after the place, and from the looks of things, she had either found another hired hand, or was keeping up with things on her own. Turning toward the house, Katherine had just walked through the back gate when the back door opened, and with a shriek of laughter, Fanny Bright hurled herself down the steps and came hurrying toward her. “If you aren’t a sight for sore eyes,” she said. “What are you doing back so soon? Where’s Alex?”

“I’ve left him.”

That drew Fanny up short. “You mean as in for good?” Katherine nodded. “Bless my soul, Katherine! You didn’t!”

Again, Katherine nodded. “I did. It’s over between us, Fanny.”

“Hold on, now. How can it be over when it hasn’t even had enough time to get started?” She gave Katherine one of those suspicious,
sideways
looks of hers. “Something ain’t right here,” she said. “I smell a rat in the woodpile.” Narrowing her eyes, she looked long and hard at Katherine, seeing the brightness in her eyes. If she had ever seen a body who looked like they were fixing to swell up and bawl, it was Katherine. “Now, don’t you go measuring that snake before it’s stretched out dead,” she said, her arm going around Katherine in a consoling manner. “You come on in the house now, and tell ol’ Fanny all about it. What’s done ain’t done until you say it’s done.”

“This time I think it’s done, Fanny—plumb tuckered out, give out and done in, as the old man said.”

“I thought the old man said, fizzled, farted, and fell?”

Even that didn’t make her laugh. “Must have been a different old man,” was all Katherine said, and she said it so morosely that Fanny laughed. Her little gal might be down, but she wasn’t done in, no matter if she was feeling lower than a snake’s belly right now.

Fanny opened the door and followed her in. “Well, we all get too soon old and too late smart, but don’t you be forgetting the man who sits on a red hot stove will rise again.”

“And the stove is going to get hotter when everyone starts asking questions.”

And ask they did. Over the next few weeks, Katherine felt she had explained her reasons to half of the curious folks in Limestone County. She found herself praying the other half would hear it through the grapevine—or any other way besides from her. It hurt too much to talk about it, and she knew as long as she talked about it she wouldn’t forget. “I just don’t understand,” she said to Fanny one afternoon. “Why hasn’t word gotten around to everyone by now? Surely I can’t be that interesting.”

“I think that old busybody Clarabelle Dudley might have something to do with that,” Fanny said. “From what I hear, she and Jemima Tidwell aren’t content to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“Clarabelle isn’t a bad sort. She’s just bored.”

“Oh yes, that Clarabelle Dudley is a fine, fine woman. Why, she can bear another’s misfortune like a true Christian,”

Katherine laughed. “Not even Clarabelle can talk about this forever. She’ll wear out sooner or later.”

“I ‘spect so. But you know how some things move slower than coal tar running uphill backwards. Folks tend to talk a thing to death, waiting for something better to come along.”

Katherine figured Fanny was right, and decided to put her mind to reacquainting herself with her home, getting her mind on farming again, and losing herself in her work. Her first discovery was that Fanny had done a good job of taking care of things while she had been gone. She hadn’t as yet found a permanent hired hand, but she had found one that wasn’t. “Old Festus Maxwell has been helping me out some, in exchange for a few meals. ‘Course he and that old mule of his are both so old, they only have one speed.”

“I’ll place an ad or two,” Katherine said. “If that doesn’t work, I may have to go to Dallas or Ft. Worth. Has Karin looked for anyone in Waco? That’s much closer.”

According to Fanny, Karin was so busy with Will Burnett that she didn’t have time to be bothered with the farm. “You handle it as you see fit, Fanny,” is what Karin had said.

“But she did give me a large sum of money. Together with the money you sent from California, and what I had left from the sale of my place—well, we could be calling ourselves prosperous right now—if we were prone to pat ourselves on the back.”

It was early spring and there was enough work to be done for five men. Katherine had been taught at an early age to depend upon herself, to do what needed to be done and to make the most of what one had. To keep her mind off Alex, Katherine worked hard from sunup to sundown, running a sod cutter over the soil, harrowing it, then seeding—doing too many tasks a woman had no business doing, and Fanny told her so. “We’ve always been able to trade off work with some of the neighboring men for those jobs. There’s no need to kill yourself.”

At first, self-pity and grief were so keen she could think of nothing but backbreaking work as a form of punishment, a self-fashioned hair shirt she could wear at will. As the days passed, one behind the other, little stretches of peace and security began to fill the void and the pain gradually gave way to a sense of loss.

Katherine hired a man from Corsicana to help with the farm and things settled in nicely. She had been back at the old Simon place a good month before Karin got word and hurried over from Waco to inspect the changes and find out, straight from the horse’s mouth, what it was, exactly, that brought her sister back to Texas.

Katherine felt her newfound sense of peace and security flag a bit when Karin arrived, marching into the house amid a flouncing of lavender ruffles and announcing that her sister “was a bigger fool than she had ever in her wildest imaginings imagined.”