A Place of Peace Read Free

father would nod slowly and let him borrow whatever tool he had come for, all the time watching the boy and the way he looked at Melinda.
    Once, the boy had actually dared to speak to her on one of his visits.  She had been out in the garden bringing in a bucket of peppers when she saw him coming up in the Johnsons’ wagon.  He had been in the fields that morning, and she could see his red and shining face from down the road.  He wiped his sleeve across his forehead before he jumped off the wagon when it rolled to a stop next to her. 
    “Can I help you with that bucket, miss?” the boy said.  Melinda guessed he was a little bit younger than she was, and he hadn’t yet  gotten over that awkward stammer  boys had when speaking to someone of the opposite sex.  She never heard him stammer when he spoke to her father.
    “It’s alright,” Melinda told him.  “It’s not heavy, and you already look like you’ve done quite a lot of work today.  I wouldn’t want to tire you out.”
    He stood there and a deep silence settled over them.  Melinda shifted her bucket to her other hand, not knowing if the boy was going to say something else.  The boy just stood there, as if the power of speech had just left him.  He reminded her of some people she had seen in church: the ones who had been filled with the holy spirit and stood there, amazed and thunderstruck.
    “Have you come to look for my father?” she finally asked, breaking the awkwardness between them.  The boy seemed jarred out of his trance.
    “Yes, ma’am,” he said.  “Mr. Johnson sent me down here to see if I could get some of his tobacco knives.  Mr. Johnson had two to break this morning.”
    “That’s too bad,” said Melinda as she began to walk toward the house.  The boy began trailing beside her.
    “Yeah,” said the boy, eager to continue talking.  “Just chopping along and they just snapped in half.  I was thinking if Mr. Johnson had some slaves up here, my work would be a lot easier, and he wouldn’t have me doing all the hard work.”
    “Why is that?” she asked, genuinely curious.  They were almost to the back porch of the farmhouse.
    The boy laughed.  “Because, everyone knows if you got slaves, you can work them longer and harder, and if they refuse,” he grinned and made a flicking motion with his arm.  “You just beat ‘em.”
    Melinda turned pale at his comments.  The thought of anyone beating anyone, especially slaves, turned her stomach.  Even though she lived in Tennessee, their farm didn’t have slaves, and neither did any other farms she knew of.  There were some down on the bigger plantations closer to Nashville, but they were too poor up here to afford them, and even if they could, she didn’t think they would.
    “That is a cruel thing to say,” she told the boy.  “What gives anyone the right to do that?”
    The boy shrugged and fell silent.  Melinda saw he was visibly crushed by her sharp tone, and she had perhaps said her words with a angry voice, and she felt sorry for him.
    “I’ll get my father for you,” she said, leaving him standing at the door.  “Good afternoon.”
    That had been the last time she saw that boy.  Frank Johnson had told her father the boy had enlisted up in Gallatin.  Melinda’s father had grown quiet at the news, and Melinda knew at that point, her father was leaving her.
    Now it was April, and the crows were eyeing the small corn plants with anticipation.  Melinda dusted off her long skirt as she walked through the fields.  She held her broom over her shoulder like a sword, and when she looked back over the field, she didn’t think she had done such a bad job planting all she could.  There were the tomato plants, although she made a mental note to pay special attention to those in the morning, and there were the rows of corn that stretched almost the entire length of the field.  Next to them were the pepper plants and the watermelon vines.  Not much yet to see