My darling Addie,
I have to leave you, sweet girl, to prove I’m the man you deserve. I’ll come back. Promise you’ll wait. We both have this picture of a perfect day. We’ll have more days like this. I’ll carry this picture over my heart everywhere I go until I’m with you again. Wait for me? If you do, it’ll mean everything.
All my love forever,
David
I read the letter three times real quick, then count the words David wrote long ago. Seventy. That’s how many words Mama held on to cause they mattered. 1917 is on the back of the picture like on the letter. That’s near the end of the Great War that Daddy don’t go to cause his feet was flat. Mama don’t marry Daddy till 1918, and the next year Brother come along.
All my love forever, David. No sweeter words have I ever read. David asked her to wait. Mama had a perfect day. She had a picture to prove it, and somebody to wait for who won’t a Eli.
Questions swirl in my head. Did David die in the war? Did Daddy know about David? If he did, was he jealous? I never know a boy to write words soft enough to break a heart, or tack to the bottom of a drawer.
I read the letter again and learn it by heart, David’s words to Addie in the blue dress. Mama maybe thought she took this secret to her grave. Now it’s mine. I put the letter and picture back in the envelope. I press the two tacks back in the holes. I put the letter back on the bottom of the drawer. I slide the drawer closed.
I lay my fingers on the blue cloth in my crazy quilt. Funny, what started out as one question about this scrap of blue now growed to a long list of questions I’ll never get answers for. Every time Mama looked at that blue, it told her what could have been.
Then, I lay my fingers on Susie Domer’s rose I cut from her shawl and stitched to my quilt long ago. My stitches won’t as neat as Mama’s, but they hold okay.
? ? ?
Like I planned that autumn so long ago when Susie and me was sixteen, her shawl—left at the bend in the river where good girls don’t go—told a lie her daddy believed. She shamed her family. Her daddy said he couldn’t show his face with a daughter who don’t know right from wrong. She gave away the milk for free when the cow’s the prize. She got beat by her daddy’s hand is what she got, then she got sent away for good. She don’t take that shawl with her. How could she with all the trouble it brought her? She left it at church on the back pew, like a going-away present for me. I cut out that rose like she cut out my heart.
I remember thinking back then, The hurt will stop when Susie leaves town. The hurt will stop when Thomas shows me his dimple again. But Susie left and Thomas turned off his dimple. He stayed in a sour mood over a second-rate girl with a lisp who didn’t know how to bake a pie.
For a while, I watched for him at church, but he turned so dull over time, I hardly knew he was there when he come. Then he was gone off the mountain for real. I don’t believe it when somebody says he went and married Susie Domer. That thought makes me sick.
That same bad feeling I had with Susie Domer is one I have for Miss Kathleen Shaw. Nobody steals what’s mine without payback. That big woman stuck a chunk of ice in my chest when she got Brother to say her name special from the start, her old like him and a jasper to boot. A plan starts private in my head, then digs deep in my brain and takes hold like greenbrier.
Miss Shaw likely got her own kind of shawl—it just looks different. I’ll find it and use it against her. She’s a slick one though. Said right out loud she was fired from her job so she don’t shame easy. How do I lay blame on somebody who don’t have the good sense to be guilty? I gotta get close to this one. Brother once preached on know thine enemy. This is the right time to do that.
? ? ?
I head to the Rusty Nickel with a short list of supplies scribbled on a scrap of paper. Mooney might be open and he might not, but it’s not supplies I need.
I come to the schoolhouse and look in the windows at a odd sight. The children twirl and whirl with their arms up and out, and old Miss Shaw does the same thing. Even through closed windows I hear their voices singsong, Autumn leaves are falling down, falling down, falling down. Autumn leaves are falling down, yellow, red, orange, and brown!
At the end, little heads drop from sight as bodies fall to the floor and giggle. Then the door flies open, and boys and girls with rosy cheeks spill out and swirl past me. I’m shot through with envy at simple joy that won’t mine, and anger grabs me so tight I can’t breathe. Miss Shaw finds me in the yard with my lungs not working, and I gasp for air. She takes my arm.
“Prudence, please come inside and rest. You look like you’ll faint.”
Against my will mostly, she pulls me up the steps into the schoolhouse and tells me to sit. I stay put and watch while she crosses the floor, dips me a glass of water from the spring bucket, comes back, and wraps my fingers round the cup. She lifts it to my lips, then sits close to me, looks down on me. Charity pours outta her sad cow eyes.
“You feel better?”
I wanna claw them pity eyes out of their sockets.
“I’m fine, Miss Shaw.” I hold it together. Don’t want feelings to spill over the edges.
“Kate. Please call me Kate.”
I open my mouth to say her name, then close it. Her name don’t slide over my lips easy cause my mouth is dry even with the sip of water.
When I stay quiet, she looks at the paper in my hands and says, “You have a list to get at the Rusty Nickel. May I help? Is Mooney even open today?” Miss Shaw stretches her neck out and looks out the window. I see a mole under her chin and a crease of dirt in the fold of skin.
“I manage on my own.” I set the line of my lips firm. “If he ain’t open, that’s okay.”
“Looks like you’re in luck. The door is open. I’ll walk over with you. I need to pick up a couple of things myself.”
Lord, if that woman don’t pull me to my feet and walk me down the steps, gabbing on!
“Never did thank you for your help the day I arrived. Your directions were perfect.”
Is she funning me? I made her walk the creek to her cabin on her own that first day, and I been careful not to say a civil word to her since.
She’s gonna be a tough nut to crack.
We walk in the Rusty Nickel and Mooney says, “Hello, ladies,” and I don’t answer. I pick up stuff I don’t need and pretend to read my list and wait while Billy Barnhill pays for his dipping snuff and Grapette soda. I stand back cause he stinks. He always looks like he crawled out from under a rock. He’s Roy Tupkin’s shadow, so seeing him by his self makes him look lost. He leaves without a word or tip of his hat, then Miss Shaw starts yammering to Mooney.
“Thank you for helping with Roy Tupkin the other day.”
“No need to say a thing, Kate.” Mooney calls her by her familiar name.
“He was outta line is what he was.”