Marrying Stone (11 page)

"Meggie, she don't live with the world all the time," Jesse explained with quiet seriousness.

Roe nodded, hoping Jesse would continue.

"She's kindy dreamy and such," Jesse continued. "Folks make too much of it sometime. But I just don't take no mind."

"I have no criticism of your sister, Jesse. And being dreamy is not something I see as a great fault."

"She just got riled at you 'cause you kissed her. She gets riled at me pretty frequent, too," Jesse said.

"It's not the same thing."

"Near enough. And what I do is just tease her out of it. She can get high up on her horse, but I just kid her down to a Missouri mule and she likes me fine for it. I bet she'd like you for it, too."

Roe smiled at the open, guileless young man. He wondered about Meggie Best.

By late afternoon Jesse pronounced the field sufficiently rooted for the plow. Roe, using his own stick, helped herd the now overfed hogs back across Itchy Creek to the homestead yard. Jesse was singing an old Ozark ballad in rhythm with his swings of the hickory switch.

"Lord Lovel he stood at his castle gate,

A-combing his milk-white steed,

When along came Lady Nancy Bell,

A-wishing her lover Godspeed, speed, speed."

Roe listened with pleasure as the familiar but strangely new words and tune of the song once popular in the time of Charles II were sung from memory by a simpleminded Ozark farm boy. This is why he had come to this primitive place. This is the kind of music and history that was his mission to save. This was the music that would prove his premise was true.

Silently he cursed his lack of paper and pen, but he would get Jesse to sing the song to him later when he could record it on the Ediphone. Nearly every evening Onery and Jesse would sing and play for him. But he was anxious to begin collecting songs from the rest of the community. He could barely wait for next week's Literary where he hoped to interest enough of the local people that the volume of his collection would multiply rapidly.

When the hogs began to recognize the terrain, they took off.

'They can find their own way to the house from here," Jesse told Roe. "By evening they'll all be laying in their usual spots."

As the two men approached the cabin, Jesse began to chuckle, pointing to the lines of freshly washed homespun clothing that hung upon the lines behind the barn.

"It's Wednesday washday," Jesse said.

For the life of him, Roe couldn't see what was humorous about that.

Jesse turned and walked a short way back into the woods. He knelt down on the forest floor and began pawing through the duff. Roe followed and stopped to watch him curiously.

"What are you looking for?"

Chuckling, the young man shrugged. "Oh, just whatever curious, slimy critter I can find," he answered.

Roe eyed him.

An excited fluttering occurred in the leaves Jesse had disturbed. Roe startled slightly as a small creature scurried out. Jesse managed in several tries and quick jerky movements to catch the little frightened creature. When he finally caught it, only a long blue tail flicked wildly from the bottom of his clasped hands.

"What is it?" Roe asked.

"It's a baby skink," he answered. "You want to see?"

Roe dutifully looked at the wiggly little lizard, not more than three inches long, and shook his head.

"What in the world are you going to do with that?"

Jesse only grinned as he carefully stowed the creature in his shirt pocket and secured the button. "Just follow me, frien'. We're going to have the best laugh of the day."

Sensing immediately that the skink and the laugh would somehow involve Meggie, Roe tried to get out of it. His arguments were shushed, however, as Jesse put a finger to his lips to indicate silence. Quietly following, Roe heard Meggie Best before he saw her. She was singing. And to Roe's well-trained ear, she was not particularly good at it. He might do well to have Jesse sing into the Ediphone, but he decided then and there that Meggie Best's voice would likely melt the cylinders.

As the two approached the back of the work shed, Roe could hear splashing. Apparently she was still washing clothes. Roe tried once more to ask a question. But again, Jesse cautioned him to silence. Slipping off his work boots, the young blond man climbed upon the back of the low-roofed building and motioned Roe to follow behind him. It seemed useless to try to argue. Joylessly, Roe removed his own shoes and shimmied up the roof behind Jesse.

Near the point of the pitch, Jesse gently began to wiggle a loose cedar shake from the roof. His eyes sparkled with mischief and Roe found himself grinning, too. Obviously, the plan was to drop the squiggly skink onto his sister Meggie as she worked. It was a childish prank, very much beneath Roe's dignity. But Jesse took such pleasure in these antics, he wasn't about to put a shade on his sunlight.

When Jesse got the roof open, he only hesitated a moment to grin delightedly at Roe before dropping the skink down the hole.

Roe heard the tiny splash of water, followed by a scream that could have awakened the dead as far away as New Orleans.

"Varmint!"

Jesse howled with laughter and then waving Roe to follow him, he began scurrying down the roof to make his getaway. Inside the shed, splashing and screaming were still going on. Before Roe could leave, he simply couldn't resist one look at Meggie Best attempting to kill the skink in her washpail. Grinning, Roe scooted up to the loosened shake.

He retrieved his spectacles from his shirt pocket and perched them upon his nose before peering down into the shed below him. His eyes widened.

Meggie Best was not washing clothes, she was washing herself. Standing in the round wooden washtub, Roe watched as she bent over to scoop the soaked lizard out of her bathwater. As the skink darted for the safety and anonymity of the shed's shadows, Roe was frozen with disbelief, staring at the young woman's pale, naked backside.

"Jesse Best! I'm going to murder you once and for all," she hollered as she gazed above her in the direction in which the unwelcome critter had made its entrance. When her blue-gray eyes made contact with Roe's brown ones her moment of anger became as highly charged as summer lightning and the intensity of recognition between them was almost tangible.

They stared at each other in utter silence for the longest moment, then with a wordless plea of horror, Meggie covered her bosom with her arms and dropped down into the soapy water in the tub in such haste that half of the contents sloshed out over the side. Roe jerked himself away from his peephole so quickly that he lost his footing on the cedar shakes and rolled off the roof, landing with an audible huff in the tall grass at the back of the shed.

Nothing was said for the rest of the day about Jesse's little practical joke or Roe's part in it. Hobbling slightly, Roe had apologized and made a diplomatic retreat to the woods. By evening, Meggie was holding her chin so high a good rain might have drowned her. And every time Roe caught her eye, her color brightened considerably. Roe kept his own profile suitably low. Over and over the memory of her wet and naked plagued him. He felt guilty. He was a gentleman of good breeding and he had behaved badly.

Jesse kept whatever his thoughts might be to himself.

Only Onery appeared able to see the humor in the day's events.

"I believe, Meggie-gal, you've 'bout turned the corner in this courtin' business."

If her father had been a chicken, Meggie might have gladly wrung his neck. As it was, she simply held her peace with difficulty and kept her eyes focused on the beans in her plate.

"You two boys best lay out in the morning to get back on that roof and fix all those shakes you broke loose," Onery said.

Jesse nodded without enthusiasm.

"We'll get to work on it first thing," Roe told him.

Onery gave him a long, lazy smile. "That's right good, right good. 'Cause I know you wouldn't be keen on no other fellers seeing the make of your prospected gal without so much as her josie for coverage."

Jesse giggled with delight.

Roe choked on his coffee.

Meggie looked slightly ill.

And Onery simply howled with laughter.

MEGGIE'S GARDEN ROWS were not exactly straight. But after the night she'd spent, it was a wonder that she'd managed to get them dug at all. Tossing and turning on her pallet until dawn had not made the events of yesterday any less clear in her mind. And her reaction to them was more confused than ever.

Across the barnyard, she could hear Jesse and Roe on the shed roof. Every loudly hammered blow delivered to the cedar shakes was a vivid reminder to her of Roe Farley staring down from the ceiling at her naked body. Why hadn't she screamed? Why hadn't she jumped? Why hadn't she done something besides stand mesmerized as Roe Farley looked at her?

Meggie was a modest person. Yesterday's lack of it was notable. She had stood naked before a man for a minute at least. And she knew, with all honesty, that it wasn't merely shock that had held her immobile. There had been desire. And there had been pride, too.

Blushing with dismay at her own conclusion, Meggie slammed the hoe more forcefully in the ground and drew a long steady trough in the soil.

Her body was young and strong and sufficiently feminine. Meggie had not contrived to allow Roe Farley to see her, but she was somehow pleased that he had.

Swallowing with tremulous confusion, Meggie's thoughts were spinning. She propped the hoe against the wooden washtub that, overturned, served as a sorting table for her seeds. And with shaking hands she began to wrap up the remainder of her seeds into squares of coarse sacking cloth.

She struggled to keep her mind upon her work. Cultivating the little plot of ground was difficult but important. The produce she grew here would provide the only variation from the family's diet of bread and meat. The garden itself was nearly a quarter acre, surrounded by a four-foot picket fence. The fence was no protection from birds, moles, and gophers, but it kept the hogs from routing it and was some deterrent to rabbits and squirrels. Every bit of food would be needed next winter. For that reason alone, Meggie saw fit to scold herself for her wandering thoughts.

Her life had always been this way: a battle between her dreamy nature and the burden of her responsibilities. Her father's occasional bouts with the pain in his bad leg and Jesse's simple mind dictated that, from childhood, Meggie Best take charge of her family's welfare. While her heart had been
playing
house with a cornshuck doll, her reality was
keeping
house for her father and brother. And getting food to grow in this little garden patch was essential to that.

Most of the earliest plants were already in the ground, but she always kept enough seeds for a second planting if this one washed out or died. Carefully she stowed them in a clean burlap pouch, hoping that she would never need them.

Now all that was left was to get the rest of the numerous rows of potatoes into the soil. Raising her chin with determination, Meggie vowed to get them planted today. She would not allow the unsettling events of yesterday or her dreamy nature to deter her.