The Promise Read Free Page B

high with coal. ‘I like how you play the piano,’ Oscar told me once, ducking with shyness. He had stopped me on the lawn at Central High School as I was leaving with a few of my classmates. Oscar was tall and lanky, and his eyes were a deep green. My friends teased me and called him the coal man’s son but I was flattered by his compliment and by the admiration in his voice. There was something else, too. In spite of his shyness, he was direct and without guile, qualities that set him apart from most of the boys who escorted me home from school or who signed my dance cards at cotillions.
    Several months after Oscar had stopped me on the lawn, I realized that I hadn’t seen him at school. I made roundabout inquiries. Oscar’s father’s cough had worsened and he’d died from a lung disease. Oscar was now the coal man and supported his mother and his younger sister and two brothers. During the spring of 1887, though, he found the time to attend my public recital. Just as I had walked out onto the stage at Music Hall, I saw Oscar slip into the back row. After, he waited for me in the lobby. ‘Listening to you takes me someplace else,’ he said. ‘Someplace new.’
    The coal man, I reminded myself. He was charming in an unpolished way, but he was not like the young men with whom I kept company. His suit was too small. His white shirt, although clean and pressed, was worn at the cuffs. Coal dust was ground into the skin around his nails.
    The summer of 1888, between finishing high school and starting at the music conservatory, I caught glimpses of Oscar at the Saturday evening concerts held at Lakeside Park. He was often alone, while I was usually with other young women, my former classmates from Central High. Alma, my cousin who would marry Edward a few years later, was one of these friends. Oscar would tip his hat to me and I’d nod, my smile faint as my friends teased. ‘Unrequited love,’ they said about him. ‘He’s always admired you. But …’ That one word was enough to dismiss Oscar Williams. We came from homes with pillared entrances and tall arched windows. Our fathers wore starched collars and their shoes were polished to a high gleam. Oscar was not one of us.
    That September, I received a letter from him, surprising me.
    Dear Miss Wainwright,
    I have left Ohio and am Making my Own Way as a Hand at the Circle C Ranch. It is 22 miles south and west of Amarillo, Texas. It is Hot here and Flat. There is Not Much in the way of Trees. Some of the Fellows here are Mexican. They are Teaching Me the Tricks of the Trade. Anything is better than hauling and shoveling Coal.
    Sincerely Yours,
    Oscar Williams
    I had not intended to respond. In five days, I was to leave for Oberlin College in northern Ohio, but out of politeness I wrote him a brief note.
    Our correspondence continued for several years with months of silence between letters. I graduated from college and joined the ensemble in Philadelphia. Oscar left Amarillo, moved to Galveston – There is Water on all Sides, he wrote – and found work on a dairy farm. Eventually he bought the dairy and when that happened, he proposed marriage. That was six years ago, and my response had ended our correspondence. Now, in a fit of panic and unable to sleep, I wrote to him.
    March 30, 1900
    Dear Mr Williams,
    It is with fond memories that I think of you. My goodness, you have been in Galveston, Texas, for so many years now. Have you forgotten your Dayton friends? I trust that all is well with you and that your dairy business thrives.
    I have returned to Dayton to enjoy the company of my mother. She is well, as am I. I do, however, eagerly await the balmy days of summer. Do you recall Lakeside Park? And the concerts by the river? The newspapers report that the concerts will resume in early June. I wonder if the bands will be the same as the ones that once delighted our hearts.
    Sincerely yours,
    Catherine Wainwright
    April, and more bills. I sought distraction and