Together Apart Page 10

  Dru, still sitting on the floor, arm still raised, looked up to Clarice. "Would you mind terribly if I took the villainous role?"

  Clarice's grin said it all.

  The remaining roles were decided by drawing slips of paper from one of Elizas many hats, save for one. Rosa, with her parents' permission, had agreed to dance in one of the later scenes. I drew the role of the narrator, which suited me just fine.

  We went through the play that first night, sitting in our chairs, each girl reading her assigned lines from the script. There was a lot of giggling—from everyone but Dru. Dru was stone-faced serious and slipped into her character as if into a pair of perfectly fitting though sharply pointed shoes.

  Every Wednesday evening after that was given over to rehearsals. Each rehearsal brought changes to the script, until, when I finally got it right, there were as many handwritten lines as there were typeset ones. And each rehearsal brought changes in Dru. It was as if once in character the real Dru disappeared—poof! She'd snap at the other girls when they missed a line or exited left instead of right, and she was especially hard on Clarice, the one girl least likely to complain. It got so bad on one particular evening that I walked up to Dru, pretended to rap on her forehead as if it were a door, and asked, "Dru, are you in there?"

  Dru stiffened, but just as quickly relaxed. "I'm sorry, Hannah. I've been awful, haven't I? I just want everything to be perfect, but I promise I'll be good from here on out."

  She wasn't as snappish with the other girls after that, though her eyes got a lot of exercise from rolling about.

  ***

  Two weeks before the play was to begin, the handbills had been printed, posted at Fowler's, and sent home with every woman, town or farm, who had visited the resting room or shopped at our market. The costumes, stitched together by some of the regular visitors to the resting room, were nearing readiness.

  ***

  One week before the play was to begin, the stage had been set. The raised floor in the resting room, from which the Judge had once passed down his verdicts, worked perfectly. When the girls weren't on stage, they could slip into the laundry or indoor necessary to change costumes or wait for their next cue without being seen by the audience.

  We'd taken down the heavy velvet draperies that hung at the wide windows in Elizas parlor and strung them on a taut rope above the front edge of the stage. Mr. Tinka and Isaac had threaded and looped the rope about a series of pulleys, allowing the curtains to be opened or closed, half to one side and half to the other. Bed sheets, wires threaded through the hems, hung at either side and across the back. At stage left the sheets draped around a paneless window that hung, and sometimes swayed, from wires attached to the ceiling; at stage right, a door was mounted in a footed frame Isaac had ingeniously designed and hammered together.

  ***

  The Sunday afternoon before the play was to begin, I slipped out to the barn where Papa was tending to Hap's injured hoof. I knelt in the straw near him, drew in a deep breath, and then said, "I'd like it if you could come to Eliza's on Wednesday evening, to see our play."

  Papa didn't turn to me.

  "I wrote the play, Papa, and I'd like for you to be there."

  Still nothing.

  "The play is about the blizzard. It's about how hard it was on everyone."

  Papa stopped salving. His spine stiffened. "It's not right to make light of folks dying."

  "The play isn't like that, Papa. I've tried hard to honor those who lost their lives, but it's also about those who sur vived, about life going on. You'll see for yourself if you come."

  He reached up and patted Hap's haunch. "Hay will be ready to cut come Wednesday. Likely be in the fields until dark."

  I got up off my knees then, brushed away the straw clinging to my skirts, and said, "Guess I'd better be heading back."

  I was almost to the barn door when Papa called out, "Tell James I said he should hitch up Hazard and drive you back to town. Sun's setting earlier now, and a girl oughtn't be walking the roads after dark."

  It took me a moment to steady myself.

  ***

  Two evenings before the play was to begin, Isaac's mother walked into the resting room. She carried a well-worn leather valise that was nearly the color of the angry bruise on her cheek. I hurried her into the print shop, where Isaac and Eliza were finishing up the play programs. Isaac, on seeing the bruise, became a bull in a cramped corral. He paced back and forth, repeatedly ramming one fisted hand into the palm of the other and saying, "I'll bust his jaw."

  "Busting a jaw never solved anything," Eliza said.

  "Then I'll bust his gut."

  Tears welled in Mrs. Richards's eyes. "If you go after him, then he's won—turned my sweet boy into a mean cuss of a man."

  Isaac stopped his pacing, stopped his fist-slamming, and his face went soft as he slid an arm across his mother's shoulders. "Don't cry, Ma. I'm not like him. I'll never be like him. I promise I won't, but you've got to promise me that you'll not go back, that you'll stay here, where I can keep you safe."

  Mrs. Richards sniffed and nodded.

  Isaac looked to Eliza then. "That'd be okay, wouldn't it, if my ma stayed here with me?"

  "Of course."

  "You're so kind," Mrs. Richards said, "but I'll not stay unless I can pay my own way. I've heard tell that women here in Prairie Hill pay good money to have someone come to their homes and do their ironing."

  Isaac and I shared a glance and a thought. Isaac's mother had forgotten one thing. If she was seen about town, eventually Mr. Richards would find out.

  "You can worry about that in a couple of days, Ma, after your bruise loses its color. Until then, until Mr. Richards cools off, you'd best lie low."

  And so Mrs. Richards went into hiding with Isaac.

  ***

  The evening before the play was to begin, Dru and I were carrying the last of the chairs in from the main house. Dru set her chair down at the end of a row, then said, "We've had a telegram from Mother. Auntie's health is much improved, so Mother is returning home, which means that I'll have to sneak here on the sly."

  "When do you expect her?"

  "We can't be sure. The telegram ended in the middle of one of Mother's long-winded sentences. Whatever day it is, it will be too soon."

  "A whole summer too late, from what I hear," Mrs. Callahan's voice boomed. It took only four strides for her to cross from the door to where Dru and I were standing. "I arrive home from an exhausting journey, and the only one there to greet me is the hired help."

  "Her name is Clarice, Mother."

  "Don't take that tone with me, young lady. Sniveling girl wouldn't tell me a thing. Had to find out where you were and what you've been up to from the Reverend Cobb's wife. Working here like common trash, socializing with my friends' hired girls, and mixing with vulgar foreigners. You've shamed me, Dru. I'll not be able to hold my head up in this town ever again."

  I took a step back from the heat in Mrs. Callahan's voice. Dru caught up one of my hands and laced her fingers in mine.

  "It's not only farm women who come here, Mother, but women from the town as well. Why, I don't believe there is one among your friends who has not visited the market, Mrs. Cobb included."

  Mrs. Callahan's hand slapped over her heart. "I go away for but a few months, and the whole town backslides in my absence. This is Eliza Moore's doing. She's filled your head, corrupted the better women in this town, with her blasphemous political tripe. I'll put a stop to this place before the week is out."

  Mrs. Callahan took hold of Dru's arm and yanked her toward the door. Dru's grip on my hand was so strong that I was pulled along with them like we were three children in a game of Crack the Whip.

  "Did I hear my name?" Eliza said, rushing in from the print shop.

  "Indeed you did," Mrs. Callahan hissed. "But don't worry, I'll speak it no more, nor will my daughter."

  "Why don't you come with me to the parlor, where we can discuss this in private, as
one sensible woman to another."

  "This is not a social call. I am here to remove my daughter from your grasp. You are nothing more than a thief, robbing other mothers' cradles to fill your empty one. And I know about you, met a society woman from Boston in the Pullman car of the train. She told me you were a street beggar when the Judge's mother took you in. And she wasn't in her grave a month when you weaseled your way into her sons affections."

  Isaac, who had been down in the cellar feeding coal to the boiler, walked into the resting room just then. His face was dusted with soot, making his startled eyes appear twice their size.

  Dru leaned into my ear, whispered, "I'll be back, I promise," then released my hand. "Let's go, Mother," she said, then took up her mother's elbow and guided her toward the door.

  "Dru, tell me you've not been consorting with that wild-eyed boy. Tell me it isn't so."

  "Of course not, Mother. He's nothing but Eliza's stable boy." And then they were gone.

  "Are we in trouble?" Isaac asked.

  "Could be," Eliza answered. "When Mrs. Callahan gets riled, there's no telling what she might do."

  I turned to Eliza. "Those things she said to you were so cruel and untrue."

  "She meant to hurt, yes, but much of what she said is true. Harlan's mother did take me in. She sent me to the finest schools, treated me like a daughter."

  "That gives her no right to call you a beggar."

  "That part is true, as well. I was a beggar, going around to the back doors of the wealthy, begging my supper. When you are hungry, you do what you must do. I wasn't much younger than you, Hannah, the day Harlan's mother opened her door and pulled me in from the pouring rain. Within the hour, she'd filled my empty belly and opened her heart and home to me. Harlan was older, away at college those first years. It wasn't until I'd grown to be a young woman that he took an interest in me and I in him. Oh, how the society tongues did scandal-wag. They were so vicious, Harlan decided to move his law practice west. We chose Prairie Hill because it sounded like such a pleasant place."

  The pieces fitted together like squares in a quilt. Eliza's being so different from the other wealthy women in town. Wanting to change the laws so other girls didn't have to slave in sweatshops or beg their suppers. Her taking me in when she'd already hired Isaac.

  ***

  Later that evening, badly in need of a few moments of calm, I asked Isaac if he would mind going for a short stroll with me. "I don't know," he said, rubbing his chin. "Are you sure you want to consort with a stable boy?"

  "Only with the most handsome of stable boys," I answered.

  Isaac grinned and slipped his hand into mine.

  Outside, the Tinkas were sitting around their campfire, even Carlos, who was fast regaining his health. Romantic music flowed from Mr. Tinka's fiddle strings. Isaac and I, still holding hands, stood behind them for a time. How lucky the Tinkas are; I thought. Mother, father, children, all together, not broken apart like my family, like Isaac's and Eliza's families. I felt the old sadness settling in. Not tonight, I scolded myself, then tugged Isaac toward the rear of Eliza's property.

  The prairie beyond was as dark as the sky. One wouldn't have known it was there except for the wind threading a whisper through the grasses and its dew-dampened scent. I might have been caught up in a moment of forgetfulness, if Isaac hadn't beat me to it. He let go of my hand, reached into his hip pocket, pulled out his harmonica, and began to play a lovely and vaguely familiar tune of his own. I did not try to stop him.

  "Hannah music," he said when he'd finished.

  "Hannah music?"

  "I used to watch you, when you were out on the prairie, and I made up harmonica tunes to match the way you moved."

  And then I remembered. The faint music I'd sometimes heard, that I'd thought had come from inside my head, had been made by Isaac all along. A shiver, warm not cold, passed through me. It was that same shiver I'd once thought shameful. But I felt no shame that night, only joy.

  I was about to ask Isaac to play another of his Hannah tunes when there came a shout of "Who goes there?" from the direction of the Tinka campfire. Turning, I saw that Mr. Tinka was on his feet, heading toward the stable. Isaac stuffed his harmonica back into his pocket, took up my hand, and held it extra tight.

  We stood there in the dark, waited and listened until Mr. Tinka, shrugging his shoulders, returned to the fire.

  "We should go inside," I said.

  Isaac sighed. "I suppose we should."

  ***

  I was tending the market late that next morning, when Clarice rushed in. Her face was damp with perspiration. "Mrs. Callahan has me running all over town," she said when she'd caught her breath. "Telling the women of the Betterment Society of an emergency meeting at the Callahan house."

  "Dru?" I asked.

  "Mrs. Callahan's mighty mad, has forbidden Dru from ever coming to the resting room again, but before I left, Dru told me to tell you that she promises to be here even if she has to sneak out her window. It's Carol that can't make it."

  "Oh, I hope Carol's not ill?"

  "No, but her mother is, and Carol has gone along home to help out. Whatever shall we do?"

  "I'll think of something."

  Having more stops to make, Clarice soon excused herself.

  What to do? Carols character wouldn't make an appear ance until late in the play, though it was an important role, with more than a few lines. I couldn't ask one of the other girls—there wasn't time. Eliza? No, she had more than enough work behind the scenes to keep her busy, frazzled busy. After whittling down the choices, I was left with only one. I would have to take on both Carol's role and my own.

  ***

  Thirty minutes before the play was to begin, all the girls except Dru were backstage. I didn't panic, but if I'd been wearing an apron my hands would have been knotted in it.

  ***

  Fifteen minutes before the play was to begin, my family arrived. I watched the door as they filed in—Mama, Hester, Lila, Megan, Jake, James, and Joey.

  Jake and James found leaning room against a wall where a group of boys and young men already leaned, Mary's fiancé and Rusty Farley among them.

  Joey tugged my skirts. "Mama says me and Megan gets to see a puppet show."

  "That's right, a puppet show just for children. No grownups allowed."

  "Oh, boy."

  I motioned to Cass, whose sisters had agreed to entertain the youngest children, and she led Megan and Joey behind the curtains. From there they would be climbing the stairs to the nursery on the second floor, which Eliza had so generously offered.

  "I'd like to sit in the back if you can find me a place," Mama said.

  Like church, the chairs in the back were filled, though no one was sitting on the velvet settee, so I directed Mama there. When she and Hester and Lila were seated, I asked, "Did Papa bring you?"

  "He's here, but I couldn't persuade him to come inside. Said he'll wait for us in the wagon."

  If I hadn't been so disappointed, I might have been amused by this shift in the wind. Always before it had been one of us waiting for Papa in the wagon.

  ***

  Five minutes before the play was to begin, Dru made good on her promise. I wanted to take her aside, say something comforting, but when I approached her, she waved me off, saying she needed to be alone, to get into character.

  ***

  Thirty seconds before the play was to begin, I stepped through the part in the curtain and stationed myself at the left side of the stage.

  ***

  Five breaths before the play was to begin, I nodded to Flossy and Mrs. Farley, the signal that they were to dim the room's gaslights.

  ***

  Three breaths before the play was to begin, I nodded to Mr. Tinka, who was seated in the front row with his family. He tucked his fiddle under his chin and raised his bow.

  ***

  Two breaths before the play was to begin, feeling a hiccup coming on, I pictured a coffin.


  ***

  One very deep breath before the play began, I looked to the transom. I nodded and smiled.

  Issac

  WHEN HANNAH SENT ME THAT LAST LOOK, MY HEART DID A somersault. Ma, standing on a chair beside me, must have seen the look, too. She reached over and patted my arm. Mr. Tinka fiddled a breezy mood, and Hannah, looking as pretty as I'd ever seen her, began the narration.

  "Long ago, in the far away, flat as a flapjack, prairie land, there lived The Sisters Wind. One sister, Fair Wind, was kindly and shy, while the other, named Wild Wind, was brash and quarrelsome.

  "There were in the same land peasants living in thatched cottages. Of the two sisters, the peasants loved only Fair Wind, for she sang a peaceful song. Never had she torn thatch from their cottage roofs nor broken the limbs from their precious few trees nor sent them chasing after their bonnets and caps, all the things Wild Wind was fond of doing. At the very least, Wild Wind was considered by the peasants to be a bother. At her worst, and winter was the season when Wild Wind was her most wicked, she was considered an abomination.

  "When time began, the Sisters Wind shared the throne, taking turns performing their appointed tasks. Wild Wind scattered seeds from one corner of the land to the other, dried the mushy spring soil, and hurried migrating geese, north or south, depending on the season. Fair Wind provided the breeze, cooling the peasants' brows in summer's heat, giving glide to butterflies. As time passed, however, Wild Wind grew more and more jealous of the peasants' love for Fair Wind, until her jealousy soured to bitterness and greed. Of late, she has taken to locking Fair Wind away in the castle's dungeon. Only when Wild Wind finds herself in need of a rest does she allow her sister to sit upon the throne.

  "Let us go there now—to the throne room of their castle, in the dead of winter."

  The pulleys I'd rigged up hummed when Eliza tugged the ropes to open the curtains. In the center of the stage stood the Judge's leather wing chair, which Mr. Tinka and I had hauled in from the main house. Flanking the chair were two back-breaking potted ferns from Eliza's parlor. The working girls, wearing aprons that had been cut and stitched together from rough burlap, were busy at their chores. Cass and Gertrude worked their brooms; Imogene and Mary, their feather dusters. Sadie was lounging on the throne, admiring her fingernails. Inga, playing the role of the castle guard, stepped on stage and hollered, "Enter Wild Wind."