Morning Glory

Chapter 1

August 1941

The noon whistle blew and the saws stopped whining. Will Parker stepped back, lifted his sweat-soaked hat and wiped his forehead with a sleeve. The other millhands did the same, retreating toward the shade with voluble complaints about the heat or what kind of sandwiches their wives had packed in their lunch pails.

Will Parker had learned well not to complain. The heat hadn’t affected him yet, and he had neither wife nor lunch pail. What he had were three stolen apples from somebody’s backyard tree-green, they were, so green he figured he’d suffer later-and a quart of buttermilk he’d found in an unguarded well.

The men sat in the shade of the mill yard, their backs against the scaly loblolly pines, palavering while they ate. But Will Parker sat apart from the others; he was no mingler, not anymore.

"Lord a-mighty, but it’s hot," a man named Elroy Moody complained, swabbing his wrinkled red neck with a wrinkled red hanky.

"And dusty," added the one called Blaylock. He hacked twice and spit into the pine needles. "Got enough sawdust in my lungs to stuff a mattress."

The foreman, Harley Overmire, performing his usual noon ritual stripped to the waist, dipped his head under the pump and came up roaring to draw attention to himself. Overmire was a sawed-off runt with a broad pug nose, tiny ears and a short neck. He had a head full of close-cropped dark hair that coiled like watchsprings and refused to stop growing at his neckline. Instead, it merely made the concession of thinning before continuing downward, giving him the hirsute appearance of an ape when he went shirtless. And Overmire loved to go shirtless. As if his excessive girth and body hair made up for his diminutive height, he exposed them whenever the opportunity arose.

Drying himself with his shirt, Overmire sauntered across the yard to join the men. He opened his lunch pail, folded back the top of his sandwich and muttered, "Sonofabitch, she forgot the mustard again." He slapped the sandwich together in disgust. "How many times I got to tell that woman it’s pork plain and mustard on beef!"

"You got to train ’er, Harley," Blaylock teased. "Slap ’er upside the head one time."

"Train her, hell. We been married seventeen years. You’d think she’d know by now I want mustard on my beef." With his heel he ground the sandwich into the dry needles and cursed again.

"Here, have one o’ mine," Blaylock obliged. "Bologna and cheese today."

Will Parker bit into the bitter apple, felt the saliva spurt so sharply it stung his jaws. He kept his eyes off Overmire’s beef sandwich and Blaylock’s spare bologna and cheese, forcing himself to think of something else.

The neatly mowed backyard where he’d ransacked the well. Pretty pink flowers blooming in a white enamel kettle sitting on a tree stump by the back door. The sound of a baby crying from inside the house. A clothesline with white sheets and white diapers and white dishtowels and enough blue denim britches that one pair wouldn’t be missed, and a matching number of blue cambric shirts from which he’d nobly taken the one with a hole in the elbow. And a rainbow of towels, from which he’d selected green because somewhere in the recesses of his memory was a woman with green eyes who’d once been kind to him, making him forever prefer green over all other colors.

The green towel was wet now, wrapped around the Ball jar. He folded it aside, unscrewed the zinc lid, drank and forced himself not to grimace. The buttermilk was sickeningly sweet; even the wet towel hadn’t managed to keep it cool.

With his head tilted back against the bole of the pine tree, Parker saw Overmire watching him with beady mustardseed eyes while stretching to his feet. The jar came down slowly. Equally as slowly, Parker backhanded his lips. Overmire strutted over and stopped beside Will’s outstretched feet, his own widespread, firmly planted, his beefy fists akimbo.

Four days Will Parker had been here, only four this time, but he knew the look on the foreman’s face as if the words had already been spoken.

"Parker?" Overmire said it loud, loud enough so all the others could hear.

Will went stiff, slow-motion like, bringing his back away from the tree and setting the fruit jar down by feel.

The foreman pushed back his straw hat, let his forehead wrinkle so all the men could see how there was nothing else he could do. "Thought you said you was from Dallas."

Will knew when to keep his mouth shut. He wiped all expression from his face and lifted his eyes to Overmire’s, chewing a piece of sour apple.

"You sayin’ that’s where you’re from?"

Will rolled to one buttock as if to rise. Overmire planted a boot on his crotch and pushed. Hard. "I’m talkin’ to you, boy!" he snapped, then let his eyes rove over his underlings to make sure none of them missed this.

Parker flattened both palms against the earth at the sudden jolt of pain. "I been there," he answered stoically.

"Been in Huntsville, too, haven’t you, boy?"

The strangling sense of subjugation rose like bile in Parker’s throat. Familiar. Degrading. He felt the eyes of the men measuring him above their half-formed, prepotent grins. But he’d learned not to talk back to that tone of superiority, and especially not to the word "boy." He felt the cold sweat break out on his chest, the sense of helplessness at the term calculated to make one man look small, another powerful. With Overmire’s boot exerting pressure, Will repressed the awful need to give vent to the loathing he felt, sealing himself in the cocoon of pretended indifference.

"They only put the tough ones in there, ain’t that right, Parker?" Overmire pushed harder but Will refused to wince. Instead, he clamped a hand on the ankle, forcing the dusty boot aside. Without removing his eyes from the foreman, Will rose, picked up his battered Stetson, whacked it on his thigh and settled the brim low over his eyes.

Overmire chuckled, crossed his burly arms, and fixed the ex-convict with his beady eyes. "Word came down you killed a woman in a Texas whorehouse and you’re fresh out for it. I don’t think we want your kind around here where we got wives and daughters, do we fellows?" He let his eyes flick to the men briefly.

The fellows had quit rummaging through their lunch pails.

"Well, you got anything to say for yourself, boy?"

Will swallowed, felt the apple skin hitting bottom. "No, sir, except I got three and a half days’ pay comin’."

"Three," Overmire corrected. "We don’t count no half days around here."

Will worked a piece of apple peel between his front teeth. His jaw protruded and Harley Overmire balled his fists, getting ready. But Will only stared silently from beneath the brim of his sorry-looking cowboy hat. He didn’t need to lower his eyes from Overmire’s face to know what his fists looked like.

"Three," Will agreed quietly. But he hurled his apple core out beneath the pines with a fierceness that made the men start their rummaging again. Then he scooped up his towel-wrapped jar and followed Overmire into the office.

When he came back out the men were huddled around the time board. He passed among them, sealed within a bubble of dispassion, folding his nine dollars into his breast pocket, staring straight ahead, avoiding their self-righteous expressions.

"Hey, Parker," one of them called when he’d passed. "You might try the Widow Dinsmore’s place. She’s so hard up she’d probably even settle for a jailbird like you, ain’t that right, boys?"

Jeering laughter followed, then a second voice. "Woman like that who’ll put her card up in a sawmill’s bound to take anything she can git."

And finally, a third voice. "You shoulda stepped a little harder on his balls, Harley, so the women around here could sleep better nights."

Will headed off through the pines. But when he saw the remains of someone’s sandwich, left amid the pine needles for the birds, hunger overcame pride. He picked it up between two fingers as if it were a cigarette, and turned with a forced looseness.

"Anybody mind if I eat this?"

"Hell, no," called Overmire. "It’s on me."

More laughter followed, then, "Listen, Parker, y’all give crazy Elly Dinsmore a try. No tellin’ but what the two of you might hit it off right nice together. Her advertisin’ for a man and you fresh outa the pen. Could be there’s more’n a piece o’ bread in it for y’!"

Will swung away and started walking. But he balled the bread into a hard knot and flung it back into the pine needles. Stalking away, he shut out the pain and transported himself to a place he’d never seen, where smiles were plentiful, and plates full, and people nice to one another. He no longer believed such a place existed, yet he escaped to it more and more often. When it had served its purpose he returned to reality-a dusty pine forest somewhere in northwest Georgia and a strange road ahead.

What now? he thought. Same old bullshit wherever he went. There was no such thing as serving your time; it was never over. Aw, what the hell did he care? He had no ties in this miserable jerkwater burg. Who ever heard of Whitney, Georgia, anyway? It was nothing but a flyspeck on the map and he could as easily move on as stay.

But a mile up the road he passed the same neatly tended farm where he’d stolen the buttermilk, towel and clothes; a sweet yearning pulled at his insides. A woman stood on the back porch, shaking a rug. Her hair was hidden by a dishtowel, knotted at the front. She was young and pretty and wore a pink apron, and the smell of something baking drifted out and made Will’s stomach rumble. She raised a hand and waved and he hid the towel on his left side, smitten with guilt. He had a wrenching urge to walk up the drive, hand her her belongings and apologize. But he reckoned he’d scare the hell out of her if he did. And besides, he could use the towel, and probably the jar, too, if he walked on to the next town. The clothes on his back were the only ones he had.

He left the farm behind, trudging northward on a gravel road the color of fresh rust. The smell of the pines was inviting, and the look of them, all green and crisp against the red clay earth. There were so many rivers here, fast-flowing streams in a hurry to get to the sea. He’d even seen some waterfalls where the waters rushed out of the Blue Ridge foothills toward the coastal plain to the south. And orchards everywhere-peach, apple, quince and pear. Lord, what it must look like when those fruit trees bloomed. Soft pink clouds, and fragrant, too. Will had discovered within himself a deep need to experience the softer things in life since he’d gotten out of that hard place. Things he’d never noticed before-the beginning bloom on the cheek of a peach, the sun caught on a droplet of dew in a spiderweb, a pink apron on a woman with her hair tied in a clean white dishtowel.

He reached the edge of Whitney, scarcely more than a widening in the pines, a mere slip of a town dozing in the afternoon sun with little more moving than the flies about the tips of the chicory blossoms. He passed an ice house on the outskirts, a tiny railroad depot painted the color of a turnip, a wooden platform stacked with empty chicken crates, the smell of their former occupants rejuvenated by the hot sun. There was a deserted house overgrown with morning glory vines behind a seedy picket fence, then a row of occupied houses, some of red brick, others of Savannah gray, but all with verandas and rocking chairs out front, telling how many people lived in each. He came to a school building closed for the summer, and finally a town square typical of most in the south, dominated by a Baptist church and the town hall, with other businesses scattered around, interspersed by vacant lots-a drugstore, grocery, cafe, hardware, a blacksmith shop in front of which stood a brand-new gas pump topped by a white glass eagle.

He stopped before the office of the town newspaper, absently gazing at his reflection in the window. He fingered the few precious bills in his pocket, turned and glanced across the square at Vickery’s Cafe, pulled his hat brim down lower and strode in that direction.

The square held a patch of green grass and a bandstand wreathed by black iron benches. In the cool splash of shade beneath an enormous magnolia tree two old men sat, whittling. They glanced up as he passed. One of them nodded, spat, then returned to his whittling.

The screen door on Vickery’s Cafe had a wide red and white tin band advertising Coca-Cola. The metal was warm beneath Will’s hands and the door spring sang out as he entered the place. He paused a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dimness. At a long counter, two men turned, regarded him indolently without removing their elbows from beside their coffee cups. A buxom young woman ambled the length of the counter and drawled, "Howdy. What can I do for y’, honey?"

Will trained his eyes on her face to keep them off the row of plates behind the counter where cherry and apple pie winked an invitation.

"Wondered if you got a local paper I could look at."

She smiled dryly and cocked one thin-plucked eyebrow, glanced at the lump of wet green terrycloth he held against his thigh, then reached beneath the counter to dig one out. Will knew perfectly well she’d seen him pause before the newspaper office across the street, then walk over here instead.

"Much obliged," he said as he took it.

She propped the heel of one hand on a round hip and ran her eyes over the length of him while chewing gum lazily, making it snap.

"You new around these parts?"

"Yes, ma’am."

"You the new one out at the sawmill?"

Will had to force his hands not to grip the folded paper. All he wanted was to read it and get the hell out of here. But the two at the counter were still staring over their shoulders. He felt their speculative gazes and gave the waitress a curt nod.

"Be okay if I set down a spell and look at this?"

"Sure thing, help yourself. Can I get ya a cup of coffee or anything?"

"No, ma’am, I’ll just…" With the paper he gestured toward the row of high-backed booths, turned and folded his lanky frame into one of them. From the corner of his eye he saw the waitress produce a compact and begin to paint her lips. He buried his face in the Whitney Register. Headlines about the war in Europe; disclosure of a secret meeting between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, who’d drafted something called the Atlantic Charter; Joe DiMaggio playing another in his long string of safe-hit games; Citizen Kane, starring Orson Welles, showing at someplace called The Gem; the announcement of a garden party coming up on Monday; an advertisement for automobile repair beside another for harness repair; the funeral announcement of someone named Idamae Dell Randolph, born 1879 in Burnt Corn, Alabama, died in the home of her daughter, Elsie Randolph Blythe on August 8, 1941. The want ads were simple enough to locate in the eight-page edition: a roving lawyer would be in town the first and third Mondays of each month and could be found in Room 6 of the Town Hall; someone had a good used daybed for sale; someone wanted a husband…

A husband?

Will’s eyes backtracked and read the whole ad, the same one she’d tacked up on the time board at the mill.

WANTED-A HUSBAND. Need healthy man of any age willing to work a spread and share the place. See E. Dinsmore, top of Rock Creek Road.

A healthy man of any age? No wonder the millhands called her crazy.

His eyes moved on: somebody had homemade rag rugs for sale; a nearby town needed a dentist and a mercantile establishment an accountant.

But nobody needed a drifter fresh out of Huntsville State Penitentiary who’d picked fruit and ridden freights and wrangled cattle and drifted half the length of this country in his day.

He read E. Dinsmore’s ad again.

Need healthy man of any age willing to work a spread and share the place.

His eyes narrowed beneath the deep shadow of his hat brim while he studied the words. Now what the hell kind of woman would advertise for a man? But then what the hell kind of man would consider applying?

The pair of locals had twisted around on their stools and were overtly staring. The waitress leaned on the counter, gabbing with them, her eyes flashing often to Will. He eased from the booth and she sauntered to meet him at the glass cigar counter up front. He handed her the paper, curled a hand around his hat brim without actually dipping it.

"Much obliged."

"Anytime. It’s the least I can do for a new neighbor. The name’s Lula." She extended a limp hand with talons polished the same vermilion shade as her lips. Will assessed the hand and the come-hither jut of her hip, the unmistakable message some women can’t help emanating. Her bleached hair was piled high and tumbled onto her forehead in a studied imitation of Hollywood’s newest cheesecake, Betty Grable.

At last Will extended his own hand in a brief handshake accompanied by an even briefer nod. But he didn’t offer his name.

"Could you tell me how to find Rock Creek Road?"

"Rock Creek Road?"

Again he gave a curt nod.

The men snickered. The smile fell from Lula’s sultry mouth.

"Down past the sawmill, first road south of there, then the first road left offa that."

He stepped back, touched his hat and said, "Much obliged," before walking out.

"Well," Lula huffed, watching him walk past the window. "If he ain’t a surly one."

"Didn’t fall for your smile now either, did he, Lula?"

"What smile you talkin’ about, you dumb redneck? I didn’t give him no smile!" She moved along the counter, slapping at it with a wet rag.

"Thought y’ had a live one there, eh, Lula?" Orlan Nettles leaned over the counter and squeezed her buttock.

"Damn you, Orlan, git your hands off!" she squawked, twisting free and swatting his wrist with the wet rag.

Orlan eased back onto the stool, his eyebrows mounting his forehead. "Hoo-ee! Would y’ look at that now, Jack." Jack Quigley turned droll eyes on the pair. "I never knew old Lula to slap away a man’s hand before, have you, Jack?"

"You got a right filthy mouth, Orlan Nettles!" Lula yelped.

Orlan grinned lazily, lifted his coffee cup and watched her over the brim. "Now what do you suppose that feller’s doing up Rock Creek Road, Jack?"

Jack at last showed some sign of life as he drawled, "Could be he’s goin’ up to check out the Widow Dinsmore."

"Could be. Can’t figger what else he’d of found in that newspaper, can you, Lula?"

"How should I know what he’s doin’ up Rock Creek Road? Wouldn’t open his mouth enough to give a person his name."

Orlan loudly swallowed the last of his coffee. "Yup!" With the back of a hand he smeared the wetness from the corners of his mouth over the rest of it. "Reckon he went on up to check out Eleanor Dinsmore."

"That crazy old coot?" Lula spat. "Why, if he did, he’ll be back down in one all-fire hurry."

"Don’t you just wish, Lula… don’t you just wish?" Orlan chuckled, bowed his legs and backed off the stool, then dropped a nickel on the counter.

Lula scraped up her tip, dropped it into her pocket and dumped his coffee cup into a sink beneath the counter. "Go on, git out o’ here, you two. Ain’t givin’ me no business anyway, sittin’ there soppin’ up coffee."

"C’mon, Jack, what say we sashay up to the lumber mill, do a little snoopin’ around, see what we can find out."

Lula glared at him, refusing to break down and ask him to come back and tell her what he learned about the tall, handsome stranger. The town was small enough that it wouldn’t take her long to find out on her own.

By the time he found the Dinsmore place it was evening. He used his green towel to wash in a creek before going up, then hung it on a tree limb and set the fruit jar carefully beneath it. The road-if you could call it that-was steep, rocky and full of washouts. Reaching the top, he found himself sweating again but figured it really didn’t matter; she wouldn’t take him anyway.

He left the road and approached through the woods, standing hidden in the trees, studying the place. It was a mess: chicken dung, piles of rusting machinery, a goat chewing his cud on a back stoop that looked ready to drop off the house, outbuildings peeling, shingles curled, tools left out in the weather, a sagging clothesline with a chipped enamel kettle hanging from one pole, remnants of a weedy garden.

Will Parker felt as if he fit right in.

He stepped into the clearing and waited; it didn’t take too long.

A woman appeared in the doorway of the house, one child on her hip, another burrowing into her skirts with a thumb in its mouth. She was barefoot, her skirt faded, its hem sagging to the right, her blouse the color of muddy water, her entire appearance as shabby as her place.

"What can I do for you?" she called. Her voice sounded flat, wary.

"I’m lookin’ for the Dinsmore place."

"You found it."

"I come about the ad."

She hitched the baby higher onto her hip. "The ad?" she repeated, squinting for a closer look.

"The one about the husband." He moved no closer, but stayed where he was at the edge of the clearing.

Eleanor Dinsmore kept a safe distance, unable to make out much of him. He wore a curled cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes, stood with his weight-what there was of it-on one bony hip with his thumbs hitched in his back pockets. She made out scuffed cowboy boots, a worn blue cambric shirt with sweat-stained armpits and faded jeans several inches too short for his lanky legs. There was nothing to do, she guessed, but go on out there and take a look at him. Wouldn’t matter anyhow. He wouldn’t stay.

He watched as she picked her way around the goat, down the steps and across the clearing, never taking her eyes off him, that young one still riding her hip, the other one tagging close-barefoot, too. She came slow, ignoring a chicken that squawked and flapped out of her path.

When she stood no more than ten feet before him she let the baby slip down and stand by himself, braced against her knee.

"You applying?" she asked smilelessly.

His eyes dropped to her stomach. She was pregnant as hell.

She watched, waiting for him to turn heel and run. Instead, his eyes returned to her face. At least she thought they did from the slight lifting of his hat brim.

"I reckon I am." He stood absolutely still, not a nerve flinching.

"I’m the one placed the ad," she told him, so there’d be no question.

"Figured you were."

"There’s three of us… nearly four."

"Figured there were."

"The place needs work."

She waited, but he didn’t say he figured it did, didn’t even glance sideways at all the junk in the yard.

"You still interested?" she asked.

She’d never seen anyone could stand so still. "I reckon so." His britches were so loose she expected them to drop over his hipbones any second. His gut was hollow. But he had wiry arms, the kind that look as strong relaxed as flexed, with veins standing out in the hollows where the flesh was palest. He might be thin, but he wasn’t puny. He’d be a worker.

"Then take your hat off so’s I can see you one time."

Will Parker wasn’t fond of removing his hat. When he’d been released from prison his hat and boots were the only things they’d returned to him. The Stetson was oily, misshapen, but an old friend. Without it he felt naked.

Still, he answered politely, "Yes, ma’am."

Once the hat was off he stood without fidgeting, letting her get a gander at his face. It was long and lean, like the rest of him, with brown eyes that looked as if he worked hard to keep the expression out of them. Same with his voice; it was respectful but flat. He didn’t smile, but his mouth was good, had a nice shape to the upper lip with two definite peaks, which she liked. His hair was a dirty blond, the color of a collie, shaggy at the back and around his ears. The front was plastered against his brow from his hatband. "You could use a haircut," was all she said.

"Yes, ma’am."

He put his hat back on and it hid his eyes again, while from beneath its shadow he took in the woman’s worn cotton clothes, the sleeves rolled to the elbow, the soiled skirt where her belly was fullest. Her face might have been pretty, but looked old before its time. Maybe it was just the hair, flying around like goose grass from whatever moored it at the back of her neck. He took her for thirty, maybe, but thought if she ever smiled it might take five years off her.

"I’m Eleanor Dinsmore… Mrs. Glendon Dinsmore."

"Will Parker," he returned, curling a hand around his hat brim, then catching his thumb in a back pocket again.

She knew right off he was a man of few words; that’d suit her just fine. Even when she gave him the chance he didn’t ask questions like most men would. So she went on asking them herself.

"You been around here long?"

"Four days."

"Four days where?"

"Been workin’ at the sawmill."

"Workin’ for Overmire?"

Will nodded.

"He’s no good. You’re better off workin’ here." She glanced in a semicircle and went on: "I been here all my life, in Whitney."

She didn’t sigh, but she didn’t need to. He heard the weariness in her words as she scanned the dismal yard. Her eyes returned to him and she rested one knobby hand on her stomach. When she spoke again her voice held a hint of puzzlement. "Mister, I’ve had that ad up at the sawmill for over three months now and you’re the first one fool enough to come up that hill and check it out. I know what this place is. I know what I am. Down below they call me crazy." Her head jutted forward. "Did you know that?"

"Yes, ma’am," he answered quietly.

Her face registered surprise, then she chuckled. "Honest, ain’t you? Well, I’m just wondering why you ain’t run yet, is all."

He crossed his arms and shifted his weight to the opposite hip. She had the shoe on the wrong foot. Once she found out about his record he’d be marching down that road faster than a roach when the light comes on. Telling her was as good as putting a shotgun in her hands. But she was bound to find out eventually; might as well get it over with.

"Maybe you should be the one runnin’."

"Why’s that?"

Will Parker looked her square in the eyes. "I done time in prison. You might’s well know it, right off."

He expected quick signs of withdrawal. Instead Eleanor Dinsmore pursed her mouth and said in an ornery tone, "I says to take that hat off so’s I can see what kind of man I’m talkin’ to here."

He took it off slowly, revealing a countenance wiped clean of all emotion.

"What’d they put you in there for?" She could tell by the nervous tap of his hat brim on his thigh that he wanted to put it back on. It pleased her that he didn’t.

"They say I killed a woman in a Texas whorehouse."

His answer stunned her, but she could be as poker-faced as he. "Did you?" she shot back, watching his unflinching eyes. The control. The expressionlessness. He swallowed once and his Adam’s apple bobbed.

"Yes, ma’am."

She submerged another jolt of surprise and asked, "Did you have good reason?"

"I thought so at the time."

Point-blank, she asked, "Well, Will Parker, you plan on doing that to me?"

The question caught Will by surprise and tipped up the corners of his lips. "No, ma’am," he answered quietly.

She stared hard into his eyes, came two steps closer and decided he didn’t look like a killer, nor act like one. He was sure no liar, and he had a workingman’s arms and wasn’t going to gab her head off. It was good enough for her.

"Okay, then, you can come on up to the house. They say I’m crazy anyway, might’s well give ’em something to back it up." She picked up the baby, herded the toddler along by the back of his head and led the way toward the house. The toddler peeked around to see if Will was following; the baby stared over its mother’s shoulder; but the mother herself turned her back as if to say, do what you will, Will Parker.

She walked like a pelican, swaying with each step in an ungainly fashion. Her hair was dull, her shoulders round and her hips wide.

The house was a tacky thing, atilt in several directions at once. It looked to have been built in stages, each addition blown slightly off level by the prevailing wind of the moment. The main body listed northeast, an ell west and the stoop east. The windows were off square, there were tin patches on the roof, and the porch steps were rotting.

But inside it smelled of fresh bread.

Will’s eyes found it, cooling on the kitchen cupboard beneath a dishtowel. He had to force his attention back to Eleanor Dinsmore when she put the baby in a high chair and offered, "How about a cup of coffee?"

He nodded silently, venturing no further than the rag rug at the kitchen door. His eyes followed as she fetched two cracked cups and filled them from a white enamel pot on the iron cookstove while the blond child hid in her skirts, hindering her footsteps.

"Leave off now, Donald Wade, so I can get Mr. Parker his coffee." The child clung, sucking his thumb until at last she reached down to pick him up. "This here is Donald Wade," she said. "He’s kind of shy. Hasn’t seen many strangers in his life."

Will remained by the door. "Howdy, Donald Wade," he said, nodding. Donald Wade buried his face in his mother’s neck while she sat down on a scarred wooden chair at a table covered with red flowered oilcloth.

"You gonna stand by that door all night?" she inquired.

"No, ma’am." He approached the table cautiously, pulled out a chair and sat well away from Eleanor Dinsmore, his hat again pulled low over his eyes. She waited, but he only took a pull on his hot coffee, saying nothing, eyes flickering occasionally to her and the boy and something behind her.

"I guess you’re wondering about me," she said at last. She smoothed the back of Donald Wade’s shirt with a palm, waiting for questions that didn’t come. The room carried only the sound of the baby slapping his hand on the wooden tray of the high chair. She rose and fetched a dry biscuit and laid it on the tray. The baby gurgled, took it in a fat fist and began gumming it. She stood behind him and regarded Will while repeatedly brushing the child’s feathery hair back from his forehead. She wished Will would look at her, would take that hat off so they could get started. Donald Wade had followed her, was again clinging to her skirts. Still feathering the baby’s hair, she found Donald Wade’s head with her free hand. Standing so, she said what needed saying.

"The baby’s name is Thomas. He’s near a year and a half old. Donald Wade here, he’s going on four. This one’s going to be born just shy of Christmas, close as I can reckon. Their daddy’s name was Glendon."

Will Parker’s eyes were drawn to her stomach as she rested a hand on it. He thought about how maybe there was more than one kind of prison.

"Where’s their daddy?" he inquired, lifting his eyes to her face.

She nodded westward. "Out in the orchard. I buried him out there."

"I thought-" But he stopped.

"You got a strange way of not sayin’ things, Mr. Parker. How’s a body supposed to make up a mind when you keep closed up so?" Will studied her, finding it hard to let loose after five years, and especially when she stood with her children at guard. "Go on, then, say it," Eleanor Dinsmore prodded.

"I thought maybe your man run off. So many of ’em are doin’ that since the depression."

"I wouldn’t be lookin’ for no husband then, would I?"

His glance dropped guiltily to his coffee cup. "I reckon not."

"And anyway, Glendon woulda never dreamed of runnin’ off. He didn’t have to. He was so full of dreams he wasn’t here anyways. Always miles away dreamin’ about this and that. The two of us together, we had lots of dreams once." The way she looked at him, Will knew she harbored dreams no longer.

"How long’s he been dead?"

"Oh, don’t you worry none, the baby is his."

Will colored. "I didn’t mean that."

"Course you did. I watched your eyes when you first come up here. He’s been dead since April. It was his dreams killed him. This time it was the bees and his honey. He thought he’d get rich real fast making honey out in the orchard, but the bees they started swarmin’ and he was in too much of a hurry to use good sense. I told him to shoot the branch down with a shotgun, but he wouldn’t listen. He went out on a branch, and sure enough, it broke, and so did he. He never would listen to me much." A faraway look came into her eyes. Will watched the way her hands lingered in the baby’s hair.

"Some men are like that." The words felt strange on Will’s lips. Comfort-either getting it or giving it-was foreign to him.

"We sure were happy, though. He had a way about him." Her expression as she spoke made Will sure it had once been Glendon Dinsmore’s hair through which she’d run her fingers that way. She acted as if she’d forgotten Will was in the room. He couldn’t quit watching her hands. It was another of those soft things that got him deep in the gut-the sight of her leafing through the baby’s airy hair while the child continued with its biscuit and made gurgling sounds. He wondered if anyone had ever done that to him, maybe sometime long before he had memory, but he had no conscious recollection of ever being touched that way.

Eleanor Dinsmore drew herself back to the present to find Will Parker’s eyes on her hands.

"So, what’re your thoughts, Mr. Parker?"

He glanced up, refocused his eyes. "It don’t matter about the kids."

"Don’t matter?"

"I mean, I don’t mind that you’ve got them. Your ad didn’t say."

"You like kids then?" she asked hopefully.

"I don’t know. Never been around ’em much. Yours seem nice enough."

She smiled at her boys and gave each a love pat. "They can be a joy." He couldn’t help wondering at her reasoning, for she looked tired and worn beyond her years, having the near-three she did. "Just make sure, Mr. Parker," she added, "’cause three’s a lot. I won’t have you layin’ a hand on them when they’re troublesome. They’re Glendon’s boys and he woulda never dreamed of layin’ a hand on them."

Just what did she take him for? He felt himself blush. But what else was she supposed to think after what he’d revealed out there in the yard?

"You got my word."

She believed him. Maybe because of the way his eyes lingered on Baby Thomas’s hair. She liked his eyes, and they had a way of turning soft when they’d light on the boys. But the boys weren’t the only consideration.

"It’s got to be said," she went on. "I loved Glendon somethin’ fierce. It takes some time to get over a man like that. I wouldn’t be lookin’ for a man ’less I had to. But winter’s comin’, and the baby, too. I was in a fix, Mr. Parker. You understand, don’t you?"

Will nodded solemnly, noting the absence of self-pity in her voice.

"Another thing." She concentrated on Thomas’s hair, stroking it differently, distractedly, her cheeks turning pink. "Having three babies under four years old, well-don’t get me wrong-I love ’em something fierce, but I wouldn’t want any more. Three’s plenty to suit me."

Lord a-mighty, the thought hadn’t crossed his mind. She was almost as sorry-looking as her place, and pregnant to boot. He needed a dry bed, but preferably not one with her in it.

When she glanced up, Will Parker glanced down. "Ma’am…" His voice croaked. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Ma’am, I didn’t come up here lookin’ for…" He swallowed, glanced up, then sharply down. "I need a place is all. I’m tired of movin’."

"You moved a lot, have you?"

"I been movin’ since I remember."

"Where’d you start from?"

"Start from?" He met her eyes, puzzled.

"You mean you don’t remember?"

"Texas someplace."

"That’s all you know?"

"Yes, ma’am."

"Maybe you’re lucky," she commented.

Though he shot her a glance, the remark went unexplained. She merely added, "I started from right down there in Whitney. Never moved farther than from the town to the top of this hill. I reckon you’ve been around, though."

He nodded silently. Again, she found herself pleased by his brusqueness, his lack of curiosity. She thought she could get along quite well with a man like him.

"So you’re lookin’ for a dry bed and a full plate is all."

"Yes, ma’am."

She studied him a moment, the way he sat on the edge of his chair, taking nothing for granted, the way he kept his hat brim pulled low as if protecting any secret she might read in his eyes. Well, everybody had secrets. Let him keep his and she’d keep hers. But she sure as shootin’wasn’t going to strike up an agreement with a man whose eyes she hadn’t even seen in the clear light. And besides, suppose he didn’t want her.

He was a vagrant ex-con; she poor, pregnant and unpretty. Who was the bigger loser?

"Mr. Parker, this house ain’t much, but I’d appreciate it if you’d take your hat off when you’re in it."

He reached up slowly and removed the hat. She lit the kerosene lantern and pushed it aside so they need not look around it.

For long moments they studied each other.

His lips were chapped and his cheeks gaunt, but his eyes were true brown. Brown as pecans, with blunt black lashes and a pair of creases between well-shaped brows. He had a nice knife-straight nose-some might even call it handsome-and a fine mouth. But so sour all the time. Well, maybe she could make it smile. He was quiet-spoken-she liked that. And those arms might be skinny, but they’d done their share of work. That, above all, mattered. If there was one thing a man would have to do around here it was work.

She decided he’d do.

She had fine-textured skin, strong bones and features that, if taken one by one, weren’t actually displeasing. Her cheekbones were slightly too prominent, her upper lip a little too thin, and her hair unkempt. But it was honey-brown, and he wondered if with a washing it might not turn honeyer. He shifted his study to her eyes and saw for the first time: they were green. A green-eyed woman who touched her babies like every baby deserved to be touched.

He decided she’d do.

"I wanted you to see what you’d be gettin’," she told him. "Not much."

Will Parker wasn’t one for fancy words, but this much he could say: "That’s for me to decide."

She didn’t fluster or blush, only pushed herself out of the chair and offered, "I’ll get you more coffee, Mr. Parker."

She refilled both their cups, then rejoined him. He wrapped both hands around the hot cup and watched the lamplight play on the surface of the black liquid. "How come you’re not afraid of me?"

"Maybe I am."

His glance lifted. "Not so it shows."

"A person doesn’t always let it show."

He had to know. "Are you?"

In the lanternlight they studied each other again. All was quiet but for Donald Wade’s bare toes bumping a rung of the chair and the baby sucking his gooey fingers.

"What if I said I was?"

"Then I’d walk back down the road the way I came."

"You want to do that?"

He wasn’t used to being allowed to speak his mind. Prison had taught him the road to the least troubles was to keep his mouth shut. It felt strange, being granted the freedom to say what he would.

"No, I don’t reckon so."

"You wanna stay up here with the whole bunch of them down there thinking I’m crazy?"

"Are you?" He hadn’t meant to ask such a thing, but she had a way of making a man talk.

"Maybe a little. This here what I’m doing seems crazy to me. Doesn’t it to you?"

"Well…"

She sensed that he was too kind to say yes.

At that moment a pain grabbed Will’s gut-the green apples catching up with him-but he wished it away, telling himself it was only nerves. Applying for a job as a husband wasn’t exactly an everyday occurrence.

"You could spend the night," she offered, "look the place over in the morning when the light is up. See what you think." She paused, then added, "Out in the barn."

"Yes, ma’am." The pain wrenched him again, higher up this time, and he winced.

She thought it was because of what she’d said, but it’d take some time before she’d trust him in the house nights. And besides, she might be crazy, but she wasn’t loose.

"Nights are plenty warm. I’ll make you a shakedown out there."

He nodded silently, fingering the brim of his hat as if anxious to put it back on.

She told her older son, "Go fetch Daddy’s pillow, Donald Wade." The little boy hugged her shyly, staring at Will. She reached for his hand. "Come along, we’ll get it together."

Will watched them leave, hand in hand, and felt an ache in his gut that had nothing to do with green apples.

When Eleanor returned to the kitchen, Will Parker was gone. Thomas was still in his high chair, discontented now that his biscuit was gone. She experienced a curious stab of disappointment-he’d run away.

Well, what did you expect?

Then, from outside she heard the sound of retching. The sun had gone behind the pines, taking its light with it. Eleanor stepped onto the sagging back stoop and heard him vomiting. "You stay inside, Donald Wade." She pushed the boy back and closed the screen door. Though he started crying, she ignored him and walked to the top of the rotting steps.

"Mr. Parker, are you sick?" She didn’t want any sickly man.

He straightened with an effort, his back to her. "No, ma’am."

"But you’re throwing up."

He gulped a refreshing lungful of night air, threw back his head and dried his forehead with a sleeve. "I’m all right now. It’s just those green apples."

"What green apples?"

"I ate green apples for lunch."

"A grown man should have more sense!" she retorted.

"Sense didn’t enter into it, ma’am. I was hungry."

She stood in the semidark, hugging Glendon Dinsmore’s pillow against her swollen stomach, watching and listening as another spasm hit Will Parker and he doubled over. But there was nothing more inside him to come up. She left the pillow on the porch rail and crossed the beaten earth to stand behind his slim, stooping form. He braced both hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. His vertebrae stood out like stepping-stones. She reached out a hand as if to lay it on his back, but thought better of it and crossed her arms tightly beneath her breasts.

He straightened, muscle by muscle, and blew out a shaky breath.

"Why didn’t you say something?" she asked.

"I thought it’d pass."

"You had no supper, then?"

He didn’t answer.

"No dinner either?"

Again he remained silent.

"Where did you get them apples?"

"I stole them off somebody’s tree. A pretty little place down along the main road between here and the sawmill with pink flowers on a tree stump."

"Tom Marsh’s place. And good people, too. Well, that’ll teach you a lesson." She turned back toward the steps. "Come on back in the house and I’ll fix you something."

"That’s not necessary, ma’am. I’m not-"

Her voice became sharper. "Get back in the house, Will Parker, before your foolish pride pushes your ribs right through your thin skin!"

Will rubbed his sore stomach and watched her mount the porch steps, treading near the edges where the boards were still good. The screen door whacked shut behind her. Inside Donald Wade stopped crying. Outside, night peepers started. He glanced over his shoulder. The shadows lent a velvet richness to the dusky clearing, disguising its rusted junk and dung and weeds. But he remembered how sorry it had looked by daylight. And what a wreck the house was. And how worn and lackluster Eleanor Dinsmore looked. And how she’d made it clear she didn’t want any jailbird sleeping in her house. He asked himself what the hell he was doing as he followed her inside.