Promise of Yesterday Read Free Page A

the sky more with each passing minute. “Guess so. Good time to work when the heat’s not so much.”
    As the older man sipped on his coffee, Marylu realized her only way to learn more about Chester was to pry it out of Cooper. The trick was to do it without his knowing she wanted to know. “How’d you find out that Chester muddied my floor?”
    Cooper’s smile showed few signs of teeth. “Told me. Not so much with words as with his hands and face. He’s something else.”
    “Where’d he come from?”
    The older man scratched his scantily bearded face. “Jumped him a boxcar and road in. Got himself some kin hereabouts.”
    “Kin? Up here? What’d he go down south for then?” Cooper cocked a brow at her. “Why you so interested?” Marylu puffed up. “Ain’t interested a speck. Can’t a body make some conversation? He’s new in town. Don’t that stir the curiosity of most?”
    Cooper slapped his leg and spit a laugh.
    She snapped a hard look at him, which made him laugh all the harder. “Ain’t you got a garden to hoe?”
    Cooper got himself vertical in a painful unfolding that took a full minute to happen. He’d been worked hard in the fields all those years before escaping north. It made him seem older than he really was. But he didn’t complain. His eyes took on a gleam as he looped a finger through his coffee mug. “I’ll let Chester know you’re wanting to know about him.”
    “You best not, Cooper White.”
    The sound of his laughter dimmed only when the door shut behind him.

    Chester Jones shook the water from his head and buried his face in the towel. The water felt good to his skin. It was a welcome contrast to the warm pond water in the South where he used to do all his bathing under the mammoth branches of an ancient oak, streaming with moss.
    He eyed himself in the mirror of the washstand. No matter how much he dabbed his face with water, he’d never be able to wash away the redness brimming his eyes. He shivered as the sounds of his dream twisted and taunted his mind. A familiar dream that by turns kept him awake or shattered a sound sleep.
    Lord, help me. Cleanse me of these scares. Clean me up
.
    Clean like the days before he’d left home seeking a life apart from his mama and siblings. No use sticking around when they had all those mouths to feed. He’d made himself believe that was his only reason for leaving. Truth had come with maturity and suffering. Reality being he’d left because he was nine parts rebellious and one part wanting to scratch the itch to travel.
    He’d been a fool to leave the only security he’d known all his life, all the promise that his yesterdays and his youth had held. Staying north would have saved him the stripes on his back and the long hours in the fields, but he hadn’t listened to his mama. Hadn’t allowed himself to soften at her crestfallen expression when he’d announced his decision to leave home. In his head, he could still see the hurt in her eyes. The fear. All for him. If he had expected tears at his announcement, he should have known better, for his mama was too strong a woman to spill salt all over the place, no matter the depth of the heartache.
I failed her, too, didn’t I?
    He filled his lungs and released the breath in a long, measured exhale. Was no use talking to God. No use talking at all anymore. But he’d come to this state to see his mama and sister, the only kin he knew of, the rest scattered by his father’s sudden death. His family’s noble sacrifice for the North that his father loved, fought, and died for as part of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment.
    He died a braver man than me
.
    Chester straightened and tried to shake off the gloom that permeated his mind. He had to put the past behind him and figure out a better way to get people to understand him. Some understood him better than others. Like the fine woman he’d seen in the dress shop. Surely she had sass aplenty. He’d heard many stories of how