Rush Page 3

  “But it’s Sunday.” Finn crossed his arms and dared me with his eyes. “You can’t be working today.”

  “Since when have you become concerned about what not to do on Sunday?” I crossed my arms as well. “You’ve never been one to care much about those things.”

  Finn ran long, slender fingers through his curly red hair—hair that enjoyed charting its own course most days. When he grinned, his cheeks took on a deeper hue. “Ever since Arthur Turney down in the printing department informed me the only way I can see his daughter is if I’m a church-going man.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Told him I’m a regular attender. I figure the Lord understands those wee lies when it’s in the interest of love.” Finn winked and gave me a lopsided grin.

  “Love?”

  “Who knows? But she sure is bonnie. Never thought I’d see the day, but I might head over to Central Church this morning.” He nodded as though approving his own idea. “If nothing else, it would have made me mum proud. Why don’t you come along? Maybe we can learn a thing or two.” He snapped his fingers. “Ay, Elizabeth might have a friend for you.”

  “No thanks.” I rubbed my chin and contemplated the idea of love, doubting it was in the cards for me. “There’s plenty to keep me busy without complicating my life with a woman.”

  “They say the church has an electric chandelier. Imagine that.” Finn joined me by the window. “And those stained-glass windows you can see when you walk down Newbury Street. Bet they’re even prettier from inside.”

  “You’re quite a salesman, Finn Allaway,” I said while mentally questioning his new fascination with church. “But save it for Miss Turney.”

  Finn turned serious. “You know, Daniel, God didn’t intend for us to be alone.”

  I stepped back and surveyed my friend. He stood a head shorter than me with blue eyes the color of the ocean on a clear day. I hadn’t noticed before, but suddenly it hit me that the boyish face Finn wore when he bounded into the newsroom of the Globe to ask for a job four years ago, had transformed. The once disheveled young man—who looked like he always used his fingers as a comb and wore clothes traveled in for weeks—had held fast to a black, leather box. It soon became apparent it was his only possession of any value—a Number 1 Kodak box camera.

  “Not sure what to make of you this morning. You’re acting like you’ve been hearing directly from God Almighty Himself.”

  “My dear friend.” Finn shook his head slowly, the usual indication he was ready to impart his wisdom. “I don’t need to hear from God to know that a laddie needs a lassie.” He started for the door but stopped and looked back at me with a sly grin. “I just feel it in me bones.” With that, he slipped out the door.

  I smiled in spite of myself. Finn was a charmer for sure. Perhaps there was a thing or two to be learned from him.

  CHAPTER 5

  Mary ~ Porch Talk, July 30, 1893

  July was ready to slip away, taking its last breath on the hottest day of the year.

  I blamed my lack of motivation on the heat. However, it was obvious I was stagnant, unsure what to do about the future of my depleted family, a thirty-two-year-old single mother with a six-year-old son. Beyond the two of us, my family extended only to my mother, Louisa—the one I was on my way to visit two streets to the west, as was my routine each Sunday afternoon.

  “Any news?” A woman of select and often poignant words, my mother sat on the front porch, rocking methodically as the warped boards creaked beneath her prized chair.

  “And hello to you as well.” The three steps leading to the covered porch seemed nearly insurmountable in the heat. “Keeping cool?” I wiped my brow with the back of my hand and fixed my eyes on the pitcher of lemonade on the small table beside her.

  “Any news?” Mother repeated with an added shake of her head. As always, her silver hair was pulled into a tight bun at the base of her neck. Her brown eyes loomed large in comparison to her petite nose. If she hadn’t blinked, she would have been mistaken for a chickadee, delicately perched on a high branch, surveying the scene below.

  “The lemonade looks delicious, especially on a warm day. And, no, I haven’t heard from him.” I picked up an aqua canning jar, one of an assortment that Mother always kept on the small table in the event a neighbor might want to join her for a refreshing drink on a sleepy afternoon. Mother swore the canning jars were the best invention ever—thick, sturdy, and tight-lidded for canning peaches, jams, and applesauce. And even better as a drinking glass. She bought a case of twenty-four “Ball blue” from a catalog and had them shipped from the Ball Brothers’ Company in Muncie, Indiana.

  Funny though, as little as she spoke—compared to other women who measured good conversation with the amount of talk and often gossip—friends found my mother’s company a priority, even if it was just sitting and watching the sun slip behind the rolling hills in the distance. Mother was like a sweet-smelling lilac bush attracting the bees.

  I settled into the other rocking chair. “How are you feeling? You didn’t sing with as much enthusiasm this morning in church.”

  “Where’s Wesley?” She rocked forward, planted her feet on the boards to cease the motion, and glanced up and down the street.

  “He’ll be along in a few minutes. He’s throwing a ball with the Patterson boy. Maggie Ann’s going to walk him over here in a bit.” I leaned over and placed my hand on my mother’s. “You didn’t answer me. Are you feeling well?”

  My eyes followed the blue veins that meandered along her wrinkled skin. Like uncharted rivers through rugged land, my mother’s hands reflected her history, her determination to persevere through the adversity that chased her much of her life. In turn, my skin was deceivingly smooth and mostly unmarred. Until lately, the chasm between my mother’s years and my years seemed to be widening as old age beckoned her to its doorstep. But now, admitting the possibility that my husband wasn’t coming home, I had aged like sour wine.

  “I’m fine, Mary.” She turned her slight body and placed her other hand on top of mine. “It’s you we should be worrying about.”

  My mouth opened to object, but how could I lie to my mother? Her wide-open eyes, though draped with sagging lids and defined creases at each side, were the same eyes that watched me take my first steps and sleep restlessly with the fever as a child. Those eyes smiled over my shoulder into the mirror as her nimble fingers braided my hair on my wedding day. My mother’s eyes were the ones that wept along with mine on the two separate days we buried Thomas and Henry, my twins and her grandsons. Now, gazing into her eyes, I realized they had become reflecting pools, forcing me to look directly at my plight—an abandoned wife and mother alone in a man’s world.

  I cleared my throat and gripped the arms of the rocker. “Mother, I’m going to do the Run. Even if Tuck isn’t back in time.” There, it was said. I settled back in my chair, nodded to myself, and looked straight ahead, waiting for her response—and silently daring her to argue.

  The silence unnerved me. When my head turned in her direction, she was staring straight ahead with the corners of her wrinkled lips turned up slightly.

  “Mother, did you hear me?”

  “Oh, I heard you, child.” Her methodical rocking was like a ticking clock, moving forward yet going nowhere. “I’m not surprised a bit.”

  “Hmm?” I sat forward and searched her face. “How so?”

  “Because you’ve been making your own way since the day you were born. Nothing is ever going to hold you back from your dreams.” She gave me a knowing look. “I’m going to worry something fierce, and I’ll miss seeing you on a whim, but you need to do this. Even if Tuck does show up in two weeks’ time and you do the race together, it’s your spirit that’s pulling you that way.”

  “What a surprise. I thought you would protest for sure. Tell me I was crazy to think of trying to stake a claim by myself.”

  “I’m not saying it will be easy. I’m not even saying you’ll be successful.
” Mother stopped rocking and sat forward on the edge of her chair. Her serious tone drew me into her next words. “Mary, a person has got to do what the Lord is calling her to do. If you really believe this is what God wants for your life, then you have to go.” She lifted her forefinger and pointed it toward the sky. “Sometimes you don’t know what He wants for you and from you until you stretch yourself further than you ever imagined you could fly.”

  My own words wouldn’t come as my mind pondered the most words my mother had spoken in sequence in quite a long time. It had never crossed my mind that any of this idea to participate in the Cherokee Strip Land Run had anything to do with God. It was a discussion that had become more serious over the last few months between Tuck and me. The thought of staking claim to one of the thousands of plots was enticing, even though money was hard to come by. Up front was a fourteen-dollar filing fee. After five years of proving we were settled on the land, we’d have to pay two dollars and fifty cents an acre. One hundred and sixty acres of our own sounded like a dream. It had become a reality for others, most recently in the Run near Guthrie, Oklahoma, in the spring of 1889, in the unclaimed land the government had taken from the Indians.

  Tuck and I spent many nights whispering to each other in bed, out of earshot of our son. We could build a home, plant crops, and start a new life with Wesley. We’d leave behind the unsteady jobs Tuck occasionally picked up and then lost days later. Most importantly—like protecting precious belongings in an heirloom cedar chest—perhaps a new home would help us store away the memories of a family of five that had tragically been reduced to three. But as I rocked faster, the realization surfaced like the bubbling hot springs to the north—my family was now two.

  “You are most certainly aware,” Mother added as she refilled my glass, “that husband of yours isn’t making a living for you. If not for my Sunday meals, you’d be as skinny as a stick.”

  I grinned in response but knew there was truth to her statement. Tuck brought in very little money, and the house we rented from Mr. Hudson, the owner of the general store, was out of his generosity to provide a modest home for our family. His kindness had been accentuated with chocolates and caramels given to Wesley for sweeping the store a few times a week. For cleaning up spills and scrubbing the baseboards, he treated him to a handful of something none of us had seen the likes of before—pink-and-white candy with black licorice inside. Good & Plenty, special ordered from Pennsylvania.

  Yes, it would be safer, more logical, for an abandoned mother and young son to remain where life was familiar and predictable—where there were good people and plenty of love and extra hands to raise a child. But even sweet-smelling apples, dangling from branches and dancing with bees, knew when change was coming. For me, like the unstoppable coming and going of the seasons, change was in the air.

  CHAPTER 6

  Daniel ~ Change, July 30, 1893

  The long walk through elm and maple-lined pathways in the Common was refreshing as a gentle wind blew in from the ocean. In my mind, the morning’s conversation with Finn replayed over and over. Why was I not the one giving him advice about life—especially women?

  Eloise. She had not entered my thoughts in many years. Maybe when another attractive, dark-haired woman passed me on the street or sat in my vicinity at a restaurant, only then I’d think about what my life would have been like if she had said yes to my proposal. The pressure from her established Bostonian family to “marry well” had eventually trumped any true love she had for me.

  For quite some time, she was infatuated with my artistic abilities to paint landscapes that made us dream of faraway places, or when I composed a still life that seemed as though we could reach out and pluck a ripened grape. But we were in our early twenties, and there was little money to show for my talent as an artist. My company had been a temporary diversion for her from the proper etiquette, rules, and expectations she was accustomed to. Eventually, she set her sights on familiar territory and sailed that direction with the wind at her back.

  Soon after her rejection, my work at the Globe began. Ironically, my first assignment was to illustrate a nuptial banner to hover above a photograph of Eloise and her new husband in the local announcement section of the paper. Hoping to shake off humility’s sting, my determination rose to establish a professional career and make a good living. Relinquishing precious time with my brushes and palette knives, I picked up pen and ink and attended to the business of others’ lives. After that, I only met my easel and palette on an occasional Sunday afternoon or in the late and lonely hours when even sleep wasn’t my companion.

  If I wasn’t painting, it was usually Finn who put me—and even the most tight-necked supervisors at the Globe—at ease with his keen sense of humor and infectious gut-laugh. But lately, neither Finn nor even the methodic stroking of the canvas to layer in a mesmerizing sunset could calm the restlessness in my soul. Like the old sea captains yelling orders in the harbor as the clouds rolled in, my senses told me a change was coming.

  Though for me, it wasn’t a change in the weather that made my bones ache like the leather-faced captains talked about as they downed another shot of whiskey or pint of beer in one of the taverns lining Marshall and Union streets. It was something far deeper. The change coming my way was surely intended to go directly toward my heart.

  I stared up at the dense tree canopy and noted the menagerie of green-toned leaves. Though they would be brilliant shades of deep ochre, crimson, and orange in a few months’ time, they would soon die and float listlessly onto the path. Even in the lingering warm weather of summer, I wrapped my coat closer, tucked my chin, and prayed that whatever change was coming, it would not be after my soul.

  CHAPTER 7

  Mary ~ News, September 3, 1893

  Mother and I spent a good part of the afternoon in our porch chairs watching Wesley climb the crab apple tree in the neighbor’s front yard. With great care, he plucked the fruits not yet snatched by the birds and aimed for jars and buckets he had placed in various positions in the grass. To his credit, his accuracy was quite good. A distant plunk rang out each time he hit his target.

  According to the pastor—and my mother—Sundays were meant for relaxing and thanking God for all our blessings. So, while Mother rocked and most likely thought about those things, fear swelled in my chest. How could Tuck leave us? The question plagued me. I had been so forgiving with his drinking, and only God knows what else.

  With the approach of Sheriff Murphy on his horse, anger joined my fear.

  “He’s a handsome man.” Mother tossed out the comment as if she spoke of the weather. “Don’t you think?”

  “I don’t trust him.” My rocking continued as I looked straight ahead to maintain my composure. The sound of the horse’s hooves slowed to a halt in front of the house, and it was impossible to ignore his arrival any longer.

  “Good afternoon, ladies.” The lawman tipped his hat.

  “Likewise, Sheriff,” Mother said. “Would you join us for the last of the lemonade?”

  “That would be fine, Louisa. Much appreciated on a day like this.” He slid from his horse and looped the reins over the fence. The horse nibbled on the crabgrass sprouting along the fence, its sorrel coloring shimmering with sweat along the saddle line and chest. Heavy boots sounded on the steps up to the porch. “Mary.” He tipped his hat again and nodded in my direction.

  “Sheriff.” I nodded back, then did my best to avoid his piercing stare.

  “Mary, would you get a fresh glass from the kitchen?” Mother’s smile appeared forced, making it clear she wasn’t asking a question. “Bring a plate of the muffins as well.”

  Rising from my chair and stepping around Sheriff Murphy took some effort. He was a tall man, and his presence filled the small porch. I opened the screen door and headed toward the kitchen, my eyes adjusting to the dark hallway after being outside most of the day. Rummaging in the cupboard for another mason jar, I took my time to fill a plate with the muffins Mother had ma
de the night before—her weekly baking ritual to have something to bring along to church for the pastor in addition to her weekly offering.

  “Why is he here?” I muttered. Be polite. After all, it’s the right thing to do.

  The spring moaned as I pushed the screen door open with my elbow. “The muffins smell wonderful, Mother.” When our eyes met, hers were squinting, brows drawn together as if she were in pain.

  “What’s wrong? Are you ill?”

  “Oh, Mary …” She pushed herself from the rocker.

  The sheriff rested his hat across his broad chest.

  Mother stepped toward me, stopped, and pushed her hands deep into her apron pockets. “Honey, you should sit down.”

  “Would someone tell me what’s going on?” My voice quivered, and my knees felt weak.

  “Your mother’s right. Best if you sit down. There’s news about your husband.”

  I eyed him, not wanting to hear what he had to say. “I’d rather stand.” My back straightened with my need for courage. “Go ahead.”

  “As you please. Mary, your husband is ... well, he’s … dead.” He shifted his weight as though waiting for my response.

  My heart pounded. My throat went dry. “That’s not possible.”

  “I just rode in from Kirksville. One of the patrons from Amos’ saloon said they’d heard of Tuck’s whereabouts. Headed over there to find out what I could.”

  My teeth were grinding as he spoke. “Why are you so interested in—”

  Mother reached her hand toward me. “Mary, the sheriff was only—”

  “It’s all right. This is hard news to hear.” The lawman shook his head.

  “What happened?” My voice was barely more than a whisper, and I still believed it was all a vicious lie.

  “The man I spoke with went West with your husband—off to Cripple Creek to catch the tail end, or what they hoped would be another gold rush in the Colorado mountains.”