Wedding Ring (23 page)

Fate liked to write her. She knew he took a long time composing the letters he sent. There was never a mistake, no words crossed out, no places where he ran off the page. She imagined him copying his words over and over until he got them just right. Ever since he had gone to Chillicothe for training, he had written once a week, telling her about his fellow recruits and the camp, how cold it was in Illinois and how much he missed seeing her. Cuddy picked up the letters in town and faithfully brought them back to her. She had kept every one.

Last night’s letter had been a bitter disappointment. Fate’s three-week leave, reward for three grueling months, had been canceled. He was to board a train for Long Beach, California, where the battleship
Oklahoma
was berthed, and he was to begin his naval career as an apprentice seaman.

Their marriage would be delayed indefinitely.

Helen had known they wouldn’t be able to start their life together right away. Fate had to settle into the navy for a while before she could join him. She understood that, and besides, she had responsibilities here. But she had always counted on Delilah being with her when the pastor blessed her marriage to Fate, and she knew her mother had counted on it, too. Now, with Delilah’s health rapidly worsening, she knew that simple wish would be denied them both.

Outside the kitchen window, crocuses bloomed along the path to the barn. She loved spring, particularly after a hard winter, but the next months seemed to stretch in front of her like a prison sentence.

At noon she rang the dinner bell for Tom; then she took a tray up to her mother again. She had checked on Delilah twice, and both times she had been sleeping. Now she took the tray to her bedside and gently shook her shoulder. “Mama?”

Delilah’s eyes opened, and she stared for a moment; then she smiled. “I was having the nicest dream.”

“I’m sorry I woke you up, then.”

“I was with your granny, in a meadow filled with wildflowers.”

“Next time take me along.”

“I don’t think you want to go there, Lenny. Not for a long time yet.”

Helen didn’t know what to say. More and more often, her mother talked about heaven and going home. Her religious convictions were strong, much stronger than Helen’s own. Helen was glad the thought of heaven gave her mother comfort, but it gave her none at all. No matter where Delilah went, she wouldn’t be here with her daughter.

Delilah struggled to sit, and Helen propped pillows behind her and smoothed the pile of quilts that covered her. These days Delilah was always cold, and the number of quilts mounted daily.

“I brought you corn bread and milk,” Helen told her. “And some stewed apples, too. You can’t keep up your strength if you don’t eat.”

“You best leave it and go down and feed Tom. It’ll take me a while, but I’ll eat every bite.”

Helen felt encouraged. “I’ll be back up just as soon as he’s eaten.”

“You eat, too, and take your time. You got to keep up your strength, too. Your granny told me to tell you that. She said you’ve got to stay strong, and you’ve got to stay calm and not worry. She said things have a habit of turning out right.”

Helen stared at her mother. Delilah’s cheeks actually had a little pink in them, a welcome change from the bluish tinge that had deepened ominously in the past weeks. “What things?”

Delilah smiled a little. “She said to get your hope chest all ready.”

Helen hadn’t yet told her mother that Fate couldn’t get leave before he shipped out. Delilah had too many problems to burden her with more. Presented with this opportunity to set the record straight, Helen left the room instead. Let Delilah believe something good was about to happen. If it had brought a little color to her cheeks, so much the better.

She scrubbed floors in the afternoon and did a few more outside chores that didn’t require long stretches of time away from the house. Cuddy would be home earlier tomorrow afternoon, and she could do a little washing then, and maybe get a start on planting potatoes in the vegetable garden while he sat with Delilah. A neighbor dropped by with an apple cake and left word that she’d seen Helen’s Aunt Mavis in town yesterday, and Mavis had said she would be visiting in the morning.

She made ham pot pie, Delilah’s favorite, for supper, simmering a ham bone from Sunday dinner with carrots and onions all afternoon as she went about her chores. When Cuddy arrived and Tom came in from the orchard, she removed the bone and shredded what meat hadn’t already fallen into the broth, then she rolled pastry dough she’d mixed earlier into a thin layer and cut it into squares, adding them to the broth until they were cooked.

She was delighted when Delilah arrived at the table on Cuddy’s arm. She looked pale but rested.

“I could smell it cooking all the way upstairs,” Delilah said. “And didn’t it smell good?”

“Nobody cooks as good as you, Ma,” Tom said, “but Helen does all right, don’t she?”

Helen beamed at the unexpected compliments.

Most of the time there wasn’t much conversation over meals. Everyone worked hard and ate heartily, whether the table was spread with something special, like it was now, or simpler fare. But tonight Cuddy talked about people he’d seen at the feed store that day, and Tom told them how the sheriff had raided a still up on Massanutten Mountain and brought it back down to Woodstock strapped on the running board of his car. Two days later the lawyers who frequented that particular still had it hauled right back up again—or so the gossips said.

Cuddy waited until the end of the meal before he turned to Helen. “I got a telephone call at the store real early today, Lenny Lou.”

There were no telephones yet on Fitch Crossing Road, and even if there had been, the Stoneburners would have done without. Everybody knew that old Mr. Fuchs, who owned and ran the store, frowned on using the telephone for personal business, so phone calls to Cuddy at the feed store usually meant bad news.

Helen had just started clearing the table. Now she sank back to her chair. “Somebody died?”

Her father grinned. “Not hardly.”

She waited, but she realized he wanted her to guess. She tried to imagine who might have called him there. “Did Minnie have her baby?” Her cousin Minnie over near Front Royal was only seventeen and working on her second child, but that hardly seemed a reason for using the telephone.

“No, that weren’t it.”

She looked to Tom for help, but he shrugged. Delilah obviously knew, because she was smiling.

“Well, what was it, then?” she said. “I don’t have any more guesses.”

“It was about a wedding.”

She tried to think who might be getting married, which cousin lived so far away he or she would have to call with the news. Only when she realized that both parents were beaming sunshine in her direction did she understand.

“Fate?” she asked, crossing her hands on her chest. “Did Fate call you?”

“He did. He’ll be right here late this evening, and he wants to marry you tomorrow evening, right here in the parlor. They give him three days, on account of him doing so good on his training. One day to get here, one day to go back, and one day to stay and get married.”

She thought about what a sacrifice this was, how Fate would get back to Illinois just in time to make the endless train trip out to California. He was doing this for her, and for her mother. Tears filled her eyes. “Right here. Will the pastor come?”

“I already asked, and he says yes. And Mr. Fuchs says Fate can drive his car to Woodstock tomorrow to get the license.”

“Is there time to tell anybody?”

“Mr. Fuchs, he let me call your mama’s sisters, and they’ll get the word to everybody faster than any telephone could. Anybody who can come, will.”

She knew they were having the wedding at home so that Delilah could be there. She had stopped going to church weeks ago because the trip took so much out of her.

“It won’t be fancy,” Cuddy warned, “but you’ll be a married woman.”

Helen thought of the dress she’d wanted to make and hadn’t, of the way she had let her hair go after Fate’s departure, of the ragged state of her nails and the garden soil embedded so deeply in her hands it was an indelible stain.

She thought of the man she loved, the only one she ever would.

“I don’t want fancy, I just want Fate.” She got to her feet. There were dishes to clear and a wedding to plan. And suddenly she had enough energy to conquer the world.

She was standing by the front gate late that evening when the Claibornes drove up in their old farm truck. They had agreed to pick up Fate at the station in Woodstock, a surprising act of generosity. He would bunk with Tom tonight, and tomorrow night, well, she wasn’t sure she was ready to think about tomorrow at all.

She hadn’t seen him in three months, but the moment he swept her into his arms, her shyness disappeared. He kissed her, and she kissed him right back for so long that she wasn’t sure she remembered how to breathe once they’d finished. She stepped back and avidly examined him. He wore a white hat—he’d told her in one of his letters they called it a Dixie Cup—and a blue sailor’s uniform covered by a thick wool peacoat. His hair was shorter than she’d ever seen it. As she watched, he scooped off the hat and stuffed it in the pocket of his jacket.

“You look wonderful, Fate.” She grabbed his hands. “You never looked better.”

“You look wonderful, too. Beautiful. Even more beautiful than I remembered.”

The night was cool, and the wind ruffled Helen’s hair, but she didn’t want to go inside yet. She wanted him all to herself. “I couldn’t believe it when Daddy told me you were coming after all.”

“I had to do some fancy talking, but they let me do it because of your ma.”

“She’s livelier than we’ve seen her in weeks. The wedding means so much to her.”

“And how about you? What’s it mean to you?” he asked with a grin.

“Well, it just means the world, that’s all.”

“To me, too.”

The shyness returned. She knew she wasn’t beautiful, even if he’d said so. But this man loved her. He had traveled here to marry her, against the odds. Tomorrow they would be husband and wife. Tomorrow night…

“I kept thinking about you the whole time I was away,” he said. The words were measured, as if he’d practiced them the way he practiced his letters to her. “I know I’m lucky to have you, Helen. But I promise I’ll do everything I can to make our life good. I don’t know where we’ll have to go, but wherever it is, we’ll be together. I’m sorry I’ll be taking you away from your family, but we’ll come and visit as much as we can.”

She thought of her family and the farm, to which she was whole-heartedly devoted. Then she thought of the wide world beyond Fitch Crossing Road and the many sights and sounds she had never even hoped to experience. Fate Henry was giving her more than just himself. He was giving her a new life and new opportunities, and once she could, she would embrace them without reservation.

“I want to be with you, wherever you are.” She squeezed his hands. He pulled her into his arms again and kissed her hungrily. The weight she had carried for so many months lifted. One life was ending, yes. But another was about to begin. This was what her mother had wanted for her. This was what seeing Helen safely married had really meant to Delilah.

“T
he next day was busy, the way you’d imagine it to be considering that we had just that one day to make it all happen. Turned out my Aunt Mavis had made me a dress. I guess you’d think it was nothing special, but it was about the prettiest dress I’d ever seen, pale ivory with little teeny violets sprinkled all over it. Rayon, too, all the way from a store in Washington, D.C. And my Aunt Sally bought me a real pair of nylons. A whole dollar and a quarter they cost her, which in those days was a lot of money. I still remember. My first pair, and the only ones I ever had ’til well after the war, too.”

Helen signaled Tessa to hand her the quilt. She turned it over, then over again, until she found what she was looking for. She had known, even then, that her wedding dress would not hold up to serious washing, but after Fate left for California and the
Oklahoma,
she had decided to use a scrap of the fabric provided by her aunt for one piece anyway.

“Here it is,” she said. “Or what’s left of it. Not much to see anymore.” There was nothing much there except threads tacked to the batting by the lines of Nancy’s quilting.

Nancy had listened to the story with rapt attention. She was sixty, well past the age when romance was supposed to thrill her, but clearly this was no ordinary story. Not to her. Helen was ashamed it had taken so long to tell it.

“You had the wedding right here?” Nancy asked.

“Inside, right there in the parlor. Mama had Tom move her quilt frame down to the fruit cellar, and we set up as many chairs as we could fit. The pastor stood in front of the windows, with me and Fate facing him. Fate wore his uniform. So many people came that they was standing all the way into the dining room and beyond.”

Helen stared off into the distance, watching that night unfold again. “Everybody brought food. You never saw so much good food. Mama cried, and so did Aunt Mavis. After the pastor was finished with us, they cleared out the chairs, and the men brought out their instruments. We had a regular string band, and the music and singing and cutting-up went on until it got too late and people remembered they had to work the next morning.”

“Did you and Fate—Dad—stay here that night?”

Helen glanced at her daughter. “Too much ruckus. No, Obed and Dorothy let us have their little cabin, over at Dorothy’s parents’ home place. The cabin’s gone now. There’s a big chicken house sitting right where it used to be. Back then it wasn’t much, but it was quiet, and we could be alone.”

“That was your only night alone together?” Tessa asked.

Helen was surprised, but her granddaughter seemed as interested as Nancy. Tessa had forgotten to keep her distance. Helen thought that was another good sign.

“Well, we weren’t exactly alone,” she said. She peeked at Nancy and Tessa, and saw their frowns. She wanted to laugh. It had taken this long, she guessed, to laugh about what had come next.

“You want me to tell you, don’t you?” she demanded.

“May…be.” Nancy didn’t sound quite sure. “Unless it’s too personal.”

“The heck with that,” Tessa said. “We’ve gotten this far. I want the rest.”

“What about that rice?” Helen said. “Even brown rice gets soft after a while, don’t it?”

“After supper, then,” Tessa said. “I’ll go make the stir-fry.”

She disappeared into the house. Helen looked at her daughter. “Fate kept his thoughts to himself, just the way Tessa does. And when he loved somebody, he loved them with everything in his heart. She’s like him in that way, too. In lots of ways. I knew it the moment she was born.”

Nancy shook her head slowly. “You’ve never even hinted at that. Didn’t you think I wanted to know?”

Helen reached out and touched her daughter’s hand. Just the briefest touch. “Until now, I just didn’t feel up to telling you.”

Fate and Helen sneaked away from the music and the backslapping and the crying children. Obed had given Fate the keys to his old Model T, and for once it started without kicking and cursing. They were a mile down Fitch before either of them breathed easier. The only person they’d said goodbye to was Delilah.

“She looked so happy,” Helen said. “Like she was all lit up inside. Does she look sicker to you? Since you been gone, I mean?”

He was quiet for a long time. “Helen, you got to love every moment you got left with her. But even if she’s gone by morning, this night, well, it would have meant everything to her. She’ll die happy now.”

She knew that was his way of making her face the truth. But gently, with kindness. He had always been gentle.

She didn’t say anything until they were nearly at the cabin. She knew they had to park at the bottom of the hill and walk up. The road into the farm was bad enough. They each had a bag with things they would need that night, and after he helped her out of the car, he took both bags and held out his hand. They started up the hill, following a well-worn, moonlit path.

The night was chilly, and Helen shivered. Dorothy had warned her the cabin was always cold, and that even though she and Obed had banked the hearth fire before they left for the wedding, it would probably have burned out by now. If they were lucky, there would be a few coals to start another.

Fate lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, and she felt immediately warmer. The stars were a flickering, cloud-dusted canopy, and even though she was a little concerned about what awaited her inside, she was also anxious just to have Fate to herself. Since his arrival, they had been surrounded by activity and family, with very few private moments.

They stopped at the door, and Fate set the bags on the narrow porch floor and flipped a primitive latch. “Your pa told me I’d better not forget this.” Before she could respond, he swept her off her feet and into his arms; then he nudged the door with his shoulder and stepped over the threshold.

“Put me down,” she squealed. “I’m practically as big as you are!”

“Not nearly as strong, though,” he teased. He set her on her feet, and before she could say another word, he kissed her. She clung to him, only stepping away reluctantly when she realized a frosty wind was sweeping through the open front door.

“If there was anything left of the fire, there won’t be now.” She shivered again and rubbed her hands up and down her arms. She had refused to wear her shabby old coat and cover her new dress.

“I’ll get it burning again.” He pulled her close once more, kissing her forehead; then he headed for the fireplace.

Helen got the bags inside and closed the door, latching it from the inside so it would stay that way. She had a moment to look around while Fate tended the fire. The cabin was one room, with stairs leading to an open loft where the bed must be. In the style of many old cabins in the valley, the fireplace and chimney were in the center.

The whole place was no bigger than a minute, but she was immediately envious of her brother and Dorothy, because the cabin was theirs, at least temporarily, and they could live in it together. Even though there were spaces in the chinking between logs, and the windows had gaps around the frames that had been stuffed with newspaper, Dorothy managed to keep it spotless. There were no cobwebs hanging from the rafters, no dust on the rag rug dotted floor.

“Come here and get warmed up,” Fate said.

She joined him, holding out her hands as the fire began to flicker, nipping at the freshly split logs Obed had left for them.

“Your family’s something special,” Fate said. “I used to wish they were my family, too.”

“Now they are,” she said, slipping a slightly warmer hand into his.

“The Claibornes did all right by me. These are hard times. They took me in, even when they didn’t have to.”

They had taken him in, yes, but Helen knew how hard he’d had to work for his keep. She could not forgive the Claibornes for treating Fate so differently from the way they had treated their own son.

“You haven’t told me hardly a word about Ohio and your training,” Helen said.

“We’ll have a whole life together for me to tell you things.” He turned her to him, and she went willingly. “I’ll tell you anything you want. Only later.”

She had expected to feel shy. She didn’t. She felt beautiful and desirable and lucky. As the cabin warmed—and so did they—and as he finally led her up the stairs to the loft and undressed her, she felt like she was just beginning to understand happiness.

Afterwards they lay in each other’s arms, fitting together under a pile of old quilts as if they had always slept that way. Helen stirred and sat up after a time; then she swung her feet to the floor and stood.

“Where’re you going?” Fate asked sleepily.

“Nowhere important. Go back to sleep.”

She felt her way to her bag and dug through a few things to the very bottom, where she pulled out what she’d completed of the wedding ring top. She went back to the bed and spread it over Fate, crawling in beside him and pulling it over her shoulders, too. It was their wedding quilt. Maybe she hadn’t finished it yet, but she wanted to remember they had used it this night.

She drifted to sleep. The darkness deepened.

Then the cowbells began to ring. The front door rattled, and men began to shout.

Fate muttered something but didn’t wake up. Helen sat up and began to shake him.

“A belling,” Helen said. “Tom and Obed promised they wouldn’t!”

But by now Fate was awake. He stumbled to his feet and began pulling on his clothes. “You best put on something, too, Helen. They won’t be satisfied ’less we come down.”

“Can’t you make them go away?”

“You know I can’t.”

She didn’t have time for modesty. The latch was nothing more than a slender piece of wood on a leather thong. Enough jiggling and the door would fly wide open.

She was in her slip and robe when the latch gave way. Fate had his undershirt and pants on, and one sock.

“We’re coming to get you!” Feet tramped on the steps, and Gus and Obed emerged.

“You promised!” she wailed.

“Sorry, Lenny, but better me than everybody without me.” Obeddi didn’t look sorry at all.

She heard women’s voices calling her, and despite herself, she smiled. Fate didn’t look upset, either, although goodness knows he needed some sleep, since he had to leave for the train station first thing the next morning.

Outside, someone was banging on pots and pans, and the cowbells continued to chime. The men pretended to wrestle Fate, but it was all for show. They disappeared down the stairs, and, sighing and tightening the belt on her old flannel robe, Helen followed.

Outside, her brothers and their friends, her cousins and their friends, and every neighbor just a shade younger than her parents, were waiting. Everyone hooted and applauded when she arrived, and the clanging got louder.

“Now, Helen, you gonna cooperate or not?” Gus Claiborne asked.

She glared at him. As far as she was concerned, Gus Claiborne was one step below a rattlesnake. “I’m not getting in any old wheelbarrow, and there’s nowhere to push one up here, anyway!”

“We got something else!” Gus pointed down the hillside, and Helen saw what awaited them. An old hay wagon hitched up to the Claibornes’ team and filled to the top with hay.

“You don’t come, we’ll tie him up and throw him in,” Gus shouted. “And he’ll have to go without you.” The clanging got louder.

Helen began to laugh. “We got but one night together before he ships off to California, and you want us to spend it in the hay?”

A series of ribald jokes flew through the air. She knew this was a sedate “shivaree” compared to some, where the groom was kidnapped and left tied up by the side of the road. She threw up her hands. “I’ll go.”

They were escorted by the crowd, pots banging and a washtub adding a deeper bass note to the clatter.

Fate helped her into the wagon, but she still fell face-first into the hay.

He laughed and fell in beside her, burrowing down and pulling her with him.

The hay wagon began to move, and as they circled the farm, then went for a slow ride down the road accompanied by shouts and bells and back again, Fate and Helen cuddled close.

Nancy tried to picture Helen’s description of the wedding and the belling. The house she had grown up in—this very house, where Helen had been married—had always been silent and somber. She supposed that, when she’d been a girl, scattered relatives and neighbors had visited, but not often and not for long. Helen had never been a welcoming hostess. She had been too busy, too tired, too remote, for socializing. Nancy couldn’t remember one festive moment, one holiday filled with the exuberant love of family and friends. She had always felt cheated.

Now she waited for the rest of the story, until she realized Helen was finished.

This was every moment of the time her mother and father had had together.

The three women had come back out to the front porch after the stir-fry supper to hear about the rest of Helen’s wedding day. Twilight had deepened; the mosquito repellent had been passed around their small circle like a Shenandoah communion cup. Now the story had ended.

“You got your start that night in that old cabin,” Helen said. “Your daddy left just after dawn to catch the train back to Illinois, then on to California. He wrote me as often as he could after that, even though they were out at sea a lot of the time. I couldn’t reach him when Mama died a month later, but they wouldn’t have let him come back, anyway, since he was doing more training. We had her funeral at the church, but she’s buried up there on the hillside, where she wanted to be.”