[Troublesome Creek 01] - Troublesome Creek (29 page)

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Authors: Jan Watson

BOOK: [Troublesome Creek 01] - Troublesome Creek
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“How do you know that?” She sniffled and wiped her nose on the back of her mitten. “How do you know Remy’s ma wasn’t eating?”
“I seen it for myself. She was chawing tobacco to dull her hunger and giving what food she had to her children, not to mention me.” He tamped the earth with his hands and put the stones back in place.
Copper blushed. “You’re so good, John. I always rush to judgment.”
“Think we should say a little something?”
She took his hand, and he followed her lead as she knelt before the ledge rock. “Dear Lord, please welcome this baby, Angel, into her eternal home. Be with Remy and her wandering family and grant them peace.”
They walked back out into a day filled with sunshine so bright that Copper had to blink against the glare. They washed their hands in the splash of the spring, then drank their fill of sparkling cold water.
“Why aren’t you wearing the gloves I knit you for Christmas?” she asked as she pulled on her own warm mittens.
“I don’t want to mess them up.”
“You sure you like them? I didn’t do a very good job. They were kind of lumpy.”
He looked at her straight on. “I cain’t figure you ever doing anything that wasn’t good, Pest.”
“Why, John Pelfrey, you just paid me a compliment.”
“I don’t know about that—”
“That’s a good thing,” she interrupted.
“Well, all right then. I’m glad.” He made a step of his hands and hoisted her up into her saddle. “I’ll wear them gloves next time.”
He rode ahead of her as they made their way home. He stopped once to shoot a couple of squirrels to take to her father. She didn’t hurry to catch up as she usually did. She hung back so she could watch the way John moved in the saddle, so she could remember how it felt to hide her face against his chest.
Something had happened between them in the cave. She had some things to think about.
CHAPTER 18
 
Grace pulled her apron up over her arms and shivered in the early morning chill. She could hear Will banging about in the barn, preparing for a day of work, as she stood there on the porch.
Time is going too fast,
she fretted.
Laura Grace is sixteen now, and the boys are six. They’ll be gone before I know it.
What would become of her daughter? Will needed to talk to Laura Grace. . . . After all, the plans they had made affected her too. Following many long discussions, she and Will had decided to leave Troublesome Creek. Grace wanted in the worst way to give her boys an education, and Will agreed. Laura Grace would be all right if she never left the mountains—so would Willy for that matter—but it was no place for Daniel. He was so frail, and he lived inside his mind. How would he ever learn to cope with life if all he ever knew was Troublesome Creek’s backward ways?
They wouldn’t leave until Laura Grace came of age at eighteen, unless Will persuaded her otherwise. He was adamant that she be allowed to make her own decision. He said he’d tell Laura Grace when the time was right, but Grace wondered when that would ever be.
Grace still could hardly take in Will’s acquiescence to her desires. They would come back to his home place, Will and she, once the children’s educations were secured. She couldn’t ask him to stay away from Troublesome Creek forever.
Grace scanned the mountains that surrounded her. How could they even contemplate leaving Laura Grace here? Of course, the girl had the skills to survive. She could kill and dress a squirrel as well as an eight-point buck, catch a mess of catfish with nothing more than a bent pin and a wiggle worm, and put up blackberry jelly so clear you could see through it.
But,
Grace thought,
I wanted so much more for my sister’s daughter.
Tightening her apron around her arms, Grace couldn’t help but worry.
What a creature her father and I have wrought. What will become of her?
Her brow knit in frustration.
It’s that young man, that oily Henry Thomas, sniffing around last evening with a flask of instant courage in his back pocket—that’s what’s upsetting me. His wanting Laura Grace to go to camp meeting with him tonight. Well, I sent him packing. I couldn’t bear it . . . her with one of those Thomases. His poor mother, old at thirty-five, always pregnant, her teeth rotted out . . .
Grace shook her head.
Why did I waste all that time teaching Laura Grace needlepoint and Shakespeare when I should have been teaching her how to keep her sanity while having twelve babies in twelve years?
She let the apron fall. “I’m being an old mother hen this fine July morning,” she said aloud. “Here it is half-past five and I’ve not started breakfast.” She bent her head and closed her eyes.
“I leave it to You, Lord. You know what’s best. But please make a way to get Laura Grace off this mountain.”
“Mam?” Laura Grace’s voice cut across Mam’s thoughts. “Something wrong? It’s not like you to talk to yourself. I’ve got biscuits in the oven.”
Grace turned as the screen door slapped behind her daughter. “I was thinking of you,” she said, her voice soft, almost a prayer still. “How proud I am of you. And I was praying for you. I know the Lord will bless you.”
“I was praying too, Miss Grace,” Will teased as he swung a full bucket of milk onto the porch. “I prayed for some fried eggs and a rasher of bacon and some honey for my biscuits.” He held the door for her as she stepped in from the porch.
“You didn’t have to milk, Daddy,” Laura Grace said. “I was coming.”
“Molly came in early this morning,” he replied. “She barely had time to get to sleep over her feed before I was done.”
Laura Grace lifted the milk bucket. “I’ll take this to the springhouse and get some honey from the cellar.”
 
Copper swung open the heavy door and laughed at how frightened she had been of the gloomy cellar as a child, especially in the early spring when the potatoes had long, white sprouts sticking out of their eyes and the apples were all withered like the dried heads of dead cannibals. Mam made her do it anyway, frightened as she was. She had to give Mam credit; she’d taught Copper a lot—like how to face her fears. Copper was sure that was a lot more important than anything she’d ever learn in boarding school. Thankfully, it seemed like Mam had given up on that idea. At least she wasn’t pushing it anymore. She and Daddy always had their heads together these days, but they didn’t seem to be plotting against her.
Kneeling on the packed-dirt floor, she pulled the heavy earthenware crock from under a shelf. The wooden lid was stuck tight with dried honey, so she pried it off with a butter knife. The crock was nearly empty. There was only a little piece of honeycomb left. Cutting off a pinch, she chewed the sweet while she puzzled over the changes in her parents. Lately they’d even started taking walks together after supper, and once Copper caught them holding hands. Sweet as the honeycomb, Copper thought, and it made her smile to think so.
She hoisted the crock to her hip and carried it to the porch, where she scraped the last of the honey into a saucepan and took it to the kitchen.
 
“This would be a good day to hunt for a bee tree,” Daddy announced as he mopped honey from his plate with the last of his biscuit. “It’s going to be hot as blue blazes, so the bees will be carrying water to their hives. They’ll be easy to follow.”
“I don’t know, Will.” Mam sounded worried. “You might get back too late for church service tonight.”
“Where is it we’re going tonight, Daddy?” Daniel asked, pushing his food around on his plate with his fork.
“Daniel,” Mam cautioned, “you’ll not be going anywhere if you don’t finish your breakfast.”
As Mam turned her back to pour more coffee into Daddy’s mug, Copper watched a whole mouthful of Daniel’s egg and half a biscuit disappear into Willy’s mouth—Willy looking out for Daniel again.
“We’re going to a brush-arbor meeting, Daniel,” Daddy explained, sipping his coffee. “It’s just church outdoors.”
“Who’s holding the service?” Mam asked.
“Some revival preacher from down in Tennessee,” Daddy replied, standing and pushing his chair under the table. “I’ve heard he really stirs folks up. You kids hurry up if you’re going bee hunting with me.”
Bee hunting sounded like fun to Copper. It was one of her favorite things to do, maybe because she was so good at it. She secured her hair under Mam’s black bonnet, turning this way and that as she looked at her reflection in the mirror over the washstand. She’d learned a lesson the previous summer when bees from a swarm had tangled in her bright red locks, having mistaken her for a beautiful flower. That’s what Daddy said anyway, after he’d dunked her in the creek to dislodge the stinging insects.
“Now—” she tightened the strings under her chin—“there’ll be no bees in my bonnet.”
Willy and Daniel jumped up and down on the porch, excited that they could go along. Copper disagreed, afraid they would scare the bees away, but Daddy reminded her that she had learned to beeline when she was their age. So she had reluctantly dressed them in long-sleeved shirts and overalls, tying a string around each pant leg, then spent several minutes searching for their shoes.
Willy clomped around, protesting loudly that his shoes were too little and made his toes turn under. Mam said he could either wear his shoes or stay home with her.
“I’m sorry, Mam. Why, my toes are too numb to hurt,” Willy backtracked. “I sure don’t want to step on a bee and have my foot swole up like an old bullfrog. Come on, Daniel,” he called. “Daddy’s fixing to leave us.”
Daddy led the way to the creek. Copper knew exactly where he was headed—a sandbar where bees liked to gather water. She’d seen them there herself just the day before.
“Why do bees need the water, Daddy?” Daniel asked.
“Bees keep their honey in wax combs. If it gets too hot the wax melts and the honey runs out, drowns the queen, and destroys the nursery full of larvae.”
“What’s larvae?”
“Baby bees,” Willy answered knowingly.
“Why don’t they put the baby bees on top of the comb?”
“Because, Daniel,” Willy said, “then the babies would fall in the honey when the wax melted and they’d all be dead.” He cupped his hands in the creek water and took a drink.
“That must be why bees are mad all the time,” Daniel said, as if he’d finally puzzled out a mystery.
“They’re not mad, Daniel—” Copper ruffled his hair—“just busy.”
“Do dead baby bees go to heaven, Sissy?”
“Daniel,” Willy answered his brother, “ain’t it the land of milk and honey?”
“Boys, did you come to talk or to hunt?” Daddy warned.
“Hunt,” the twins echoed.
“Then you’d best be still. You’ve scared off a passel of bees already. I think you need to watch an expert.”
Copper stood still, one hand raised as if in salute, and watched as a buzzing bee landed lightly on the water at her feet. He drank his fill, then skimmed along the surface before he was aloft, flying toward a grove of thorny locust trees on the creek bank. Pivoting gracefully, she watched until the tiny creature was out of sight, then walked to the spot where he disappeared and stood quiet guard. There she waited until the next water-logged insect flew past. She marked its direction with her eyes and tiptoed there, her track straight as an arrow in flight.
Thus the hunt continued: bees buzzing, Copper watching and tracking, the twins and Daddy observing and following, until at last Copper waved the boys to her side. There in an old hollow sycamore, thousands of bees worked feverishly over their hive. The music of their labor was like that of an angry fiddle, and the rich smell of their nectar hung heavy in the air. Sporadically, dozens of bees would break away from the rest and dance drunkenly in the air, only to regroup and settle again with the mass on the tree.
The boys stared transfixed at the dangerous, undulating colony when all of a sudden a bumbling, stick-breaking, leaf-mashing ruckus signaled the entrance of another intruder into the closely choreographed world of the honeybees.
Daddy clamped his hand over Willy’s open mouth. “Don’t move. Don’t even breathe,” he whispered.

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