Walks the Fire (31 page)

Hortense Griswall was nice. She was really nice. The first day of classes, she wore a nut-brown calico dress adorned with a gold clasp engraved with the initials H.G. in fine script. Expertly sewn tucks covered the entire bodice of the dress from the high neck to the perfectly fitted waist. The hem swept the floor at just the right length.

Unfortunately, in spite of her meticulous wardrobe and perfectly coiffed hair, those who described Hortense with Christian sensitivity could only expound upon her being so nice, so well groomed. Bobby Miller, who at the age of six had sported no Christian sensitivity, had said it when Hortense, also aged six, had smiled at him in hopes that he would invite her to the May Day celebration. “You’re real nice, Hortense, but I don’t wanna go with you. You’re just too ugly.”

But she
was
nice. Hortense never complained. Although she found primary classes a bore and young children very trying, she was an excellent teacher.

Only a little older than LisBeth, Hortense wanted to resent LisBeth’s loveliness. But she found she could not, for the girl was unpretentious and, after her initial grumblings to her mother, honestly eager to learn.

So Hortense Griswall plodded through elementary grammar with her five small students, refreshed her toilet at noon, and then swept into the afternoon, her energies renewed for the conjugating of Latin and French verbs with LisBeth King.

One night long after LisBeth had gone to bed, Jesse and Augusta were startled by an urgent tapping at the door. “Who’s there?” demanded Augusta, reaching for her husband’s rifle, which she kept over the door.

“Tom, ma’am, Tom Mason.”

The rifle was returned to its place over the door, and Augusta let Tom in.

“Land sakes, Tom, you nearly scared us both to death! What do you want at this hour?”

Tom looked down, embarrassed. “Miz Hathaway… you got any more rooms? Any room at all? I’m sick to death of the varmints that we gotta share that soddy with! I went to turn in tonight and a snake fell outta the ceiling and curled up right on my cot! Please, ma’am… anything’ll do. Even a bedroll on the floor… just so I don’t have to sleep in no dirt houses anymore!”

Jesse was already moving the rockers away from the fireplace. Augusta read her meaning. “Well, now, Tom, all the beds are taken, but if you’re set on it, you can sleep here by the fireplace.” The young man nodded gratefully and reached outside the door to grab what proved to be his bedroll. He had known Miz Augusta would never turn him away.

The two women bid him goodnight. When they came down at dawn to begin breakfast preparations, Tom was out back milking the cow while LisBeth put on coffee and mixed up biscuits.

Augusta chortled, “Well, now, this may be a man that’s worth somethin’ after all! First one I ever met,” she said, adding abruptly, “except, of course, for Mr. Hathaway.”

“And Joseph,” LisBeth reminded her.

“And Joseph,” Augusta agreed.

When breakfast was finished and the diners scooted their chairs back to head for their work at the capitol building, Augusta proffered a plan. “Any of you men interested, I need a two story addition on the back, here. Joseph’ll have all the timber cut by next month. You can all have room and board and your choice of a new room for as long as you like if you decide to stay in Lincoln.”

“I’ll set up the foundation, Miz Hathaway.”

“I’ll help Joseph cut timber if he’ll tell me where to find him after supper.”

“I’m good at carpentry… hangin’ doors and such.”

By the time the men had gone out the door, Augusta’s addition was well underway. She nodded with satisfaction. “We’ll cut a door here,” she said, outlining the new doorway on the back wall of the cabin. “Narrow hall, three rooms down, three rooms up. Stairway right on the other side of this wall—convenient for you and me. When the addition’s done and the rooms are all rented, we’ll bump out the other side of the kitchen for you and LisBeth to have new rooms, then I’ll take over your room for my private sittin’ room. It’ll be kind of a hodgepodge building, but it’ll serve us well.”

“Augusta,” Jesse said, “I appreciate your being so generous, but as hard as I can work, I’ll never be able to pay for the construction of a wing just for LisBeth and me. Please, don’t feel obligated to do such a thing.”

“Now, Jesse King, you listen to me. You two are the closest thing to family I have, and if I want to see you comfortable, you just hush and let me be happy doin’ it! Sometimes I’m all bristles and quills, but don’t think I don’t appreciate them prairie flowers that LisBeth brings in for every supper table. And don’t think I don’t know that you put extra care in them quilts and comforters you made for all the beds in this place. Land sakes, woman! You more than earned a new room,” Augusta turned her back to Jesse and swept the floor vigorously as she croaked. “You’ve both earned a special place in this hard old heart. So you just hush and let me do what I want. I own this place, and I’ll build on to it if I want to!”

Jesse patted Augusta’s ample back and said softly, “You don’t fool me one bit, Augusta Hathaway. You’re all bluster and bother, but I see through it. Inside there’s a golden heart just waiting to show itself. I thank the Lord for letting
me
see
it.”

Augusta was suddenly serious. “I wish I could see inside
you,
Jesse King. You’re all civility and manners. You never raise your voice. It drives me crazy. Haven’t you ever been so mad or sad you wanted to scream? How is it you’re always so… far away?” Augusta’s clear blue eyes met Jesse’s. Jesse looked over her friend’s shoulder. On the back of her rocker by the fire was the quilt that told her story: the log cabin, the broken dreams, the wagon wheels, the Indian tepees, the True Vine who had carried her through it all.

She whispered, “Oh, I’ve had my moments.” Loneliness made her yearn to share the story with Augusta. Fear held her back. What would Augusta think? Would she understand? Jesse looked back at the unflinching blue eyes that still questioned. She stiffened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and shut Augusta out.

Augusta dropped her hands from Jesse’s arms with a sigh, “But you can’t talk about it, can you? Your kind never can. There’s fire behind those gray eyes. I see it, Jesse. I’m a good judge of people, and there’s a lot more to you than you let on.” She sighed again before abruptly changing the subject. “Now we’ve got to get to those chokecherries or the men’ll have twenty-minute chokecherry pie for lunch.”

“What’s that, Aunt Augusta?” LisBeth came in with a bouquet of flowers for the table.

“Why, that’s chokecherry pie with the pits left in. It takes twenty minutes to eat one piece!” Augusta’s laughter boomed.

Jesse’s eyes crinkled at the corners and she winked at LisBeth. “That’s one way to keep the boarders from eating more than their share!”

The three women joined in the now-familiar preparations that they would repeat day after day, week after week, month after month, while Lincoln’s boom continued, Hathaway House grew, and Joseph Freeman’s livery stable and blacksmith shop met the needs of travelers from near and far.

Twenty-six

A naughty person, a wicked man, walketh with a froward mouth. He winketh with his eyes… Frowardness is in his heart, he deviseth mischief continually.
—
Proverbs 6:12-14

By 1868, the population of Lincoln
had grown from thirty to five hundred. Augusta crowed, “One hundred forty-three houses, Jesse, and we’ve got our first bank now. God bless James Sweet and N. C. Brock and their new stone building!” The newspaper rustled and Augusta leaped out of her chair. “And Hathaway House needs a change too. Enough of this frontier log cabin, Jesse. We’re going to have brick! And a fancy dining room, not just these plank tables anymore.” Augusta grabbed a pencil and began making notes in the margin of the paper.

Jesse and LisBeth smiled at each other over Augusta’s bowed head.

“Joseph!” she shouted, “Joseph!” Joseph came hurrying in, mopping his brow. Augusta began to share her plans. “Now, when you have time, Joseph, could you locate that stonemason that’s been working for George Atwood and ask him to stop in?”

“Happy to, Miz Hathaway. I just finished shoeing the bay mare. She’s rented out tomorrow, and she seemed to be draggin’ that off hind foot a bit. Got her all fixed up. She’ll put on a fine show trottin’ through town.”

Augusta scowled. “I suppose Winston Gregory again?”

“Yes’m.”

“I wish that varmint would take his business elsewhere!”

“Well, Miz Hathaway, his money’s just as green as anybody’s.” Joseph was uncomfortable. He knew where the conversation was leading.

Jesse chimed in, “He treats you like a slave, Joseph.”

“Where he come from, Miz King, I
was
a slave.”

“But you’re free now, Joseph,” Jesse answered.

Joseph stared back at Jesse levelly and bared just the tiniest piece of his soul. “You know it, and Miz Hathaway knows it, but they ain’t many others that seems to remember it, ma’am. I may be free, but I ain’t free enough to turn down a white man’s business just ’cause he’s high-falutin’.”

Jesse knew it was true. Joseph snapped his exposed soul shut and left to hunt down the stonemason. Jesse returned to her quilting, Augusta to reading the paper aloud. LisBeth sat at the table pretending to darn socks, but her mind was not on the task at hand, for LisBeth had been up town today, and upon exiting Patton’s Drug Store, she had been the recipient of a Winston Gregory smile.

“Winston! Winston Gregory, come here!” the shrill voice could be heard up and down the block, and no doubt Winston Gregory heard his mother’s summons well before he answered. He was, however, absorbed in the dime novel he had secreted in the barn out back.
Mother can wait
.
After all, I’m not her slave!
He inwardly lamented the loss of their slaves. The last two had been sold in Nebraska City, because the stupid Nebraskans wouldn’t abide slavery in their territory.

“Such a sensible institution,” his mother had complained, “but then your father thinks we simply must take advantage of a new city. Although how I’ll ever keep up without Betsy, I’ll never know.” Lillia Gregory had waved her lace-edged handkerchief in despair and closed her eyes, a martyr to her husband’s wishes.

Winston’s father, Randall Gregory, had been a vigorous, ambitious lawyer, with plans to make a great name for himself. He had inherited wealth from his father’s landholdings but wanted to make his own way. Nebraska Territory held the key to future social position that he could earn on his own merits. So Randall broke his mother’s heart, took his ample inheritance, packed up his whining wife and their spoiled son, and headed west. He had the good sense to settle in the boomtown of Lincoln and the bad fortune to die shortly after erecting an imposing mansion on the corner of 13th and J Streets.

The instant her husband’s funeral was over, Lillia Gregory began packing her trunks and making plans to return to civilization. All that remained was to sell the house, and a land agent had assured her that that could be settled by mail. Winston shared his mother’s passion to return to “real society,” but then that dark-haired beauty outside the drug store caught his eye.

Winston had smiled. She smiled back. He followed her home and sniffed audibly when he saw where she lived. Too bad. The daughter of the maid at Hathaway House. His prospects brightened.
Not material for a wife but maybe perfect for a little fun before leaving town. Why not?

On Sunday, Winston Gregory amazed his mother by offering to accompany her to church. He was dashingly handsome in his best suit and hat. Just as he was helping his mother down from the rented carriage, Jesse and LisBeth walked by. Winston tipped his hat and bowed. LisBeth blushed. Jesse nodded, pressed her lips together, and hurried inside.

Sitting in their usual pew, the two women waited for the service to begin. Winston Gregory ushered his mother to the same pew. “Ladies, may we join you?”

Jesse forced a smile and slid down to make room. Lillia sat stiffly and offered no greeting. It was, after all, not necessary to acknowledge the existence of the servants in town. Winston sang much too loudly and gave too much when the offering plate was passed. Jesse put in her meager gift and was miserable.

Back at the Hathaway House, Jesse and LisBeth joined Augusta in preparations for the early afternoon meal. Hathaway House offered only one meal at 3:00 on Sundays, in deference to the Lord’s Day and at Jesse King’s insistence. Augusta’s faith wasn’t a bit threatened by the earning of money on the Sabbath, but Jesse insisted that they somehow honor the Lord. Augusta had flatly refused to close the hotel kitchen.

“You just can’t do that, Jesse. It’s not good business.”

“Good business honors the Lord, Augusta. Anything else is worthless.”

Augusta had long since learned that Jesse’s cool exterior was easily ruffled in matters where her faith in what was right before God was challenged.

“Compromise, Jesse,” Augusta urged. “We won’t close, but we’ll offer only one meal. Didn’t the Lord eat on the Sabbath? Surely he’d understand that we can’t just let our boarders go hungry!”