The Unplowed Sky Read Free Page B

won’t be down for breakfast. I’d be pleased, Hallie, to have your company at the table.”
    She was already untying her apron. “I’m leaving. Right now.”
    â€œMy dear young woman”—he reached into his pocket and handed her a gold piece—“will this sweeten your temper?”
    â€œI’ll take it for wages,” Hallie said and marched upstairs.
    She quickly packed the large suitcase with all she possessed. Patent leather dress-up slippers and her winter clothes were at the bottom, with the small cedar box with brass hinges and lock that held some favorite recipes and all she had of her mother’s: a plain gold wedding band, two embroidered handkerchiefs, an ivory-handled manicure set in a green velvet roll-up case, and The Book of Common Prayer , handed down from the Episcopalian grandmother, Harriet Wilton, for whom Hallie was named. It comforted Hallie to read the prayers and offices though she’d never seen an Episcopal church, and its practices seemed as mysterious as those of the Roman Catholics.
    On the bed, she spread out her pleated blue-green rayon best dress, her other two everyday ones of green plaid gingham and checked blue chambray, two nainsook slips, nainsook bloomers, a pair of satinette for best, two broadcloth brassieres, one pair of treasured silk stockings, two pairs of cotton lisle, two ruffled, flounced muslin nightgowns, and three white aprons. She wrapped her toothbrush in a clean everyday handkerchief and tucked it in the side, along with her comb, brush, and curling iron.
    All the while, tears of angry humiliation dripped on her belongings, unless she smeared them away. How dare Quentin Raford! If Daddy were alive—
    Jackie had waked and watched her with solemn eyes, hugging Lambie close. “You—you going away, too, Hallie?”
    â€œNo, honey!” She stopped and hugged him. “But we’re going somewhere happier than this—somewhere you can play and be around nice people.”
    Beggars can’t be choosers, especially not with a five-year-old along, but Hallie hoped she was right.
    Look at the beautiful big trees, Jackie!” Hallie wiped the little boy’s flushed hot face with her handkerchief and smoothed back the dark hair that was plastered to his forehead. “When we get to the bridge, we’ll rest awhile and put our feet in the water. Won’t that feel good?”
    â€œDon’t know. Are we goin’ to find Mama?”
    â€œNo, honey.” Hallie tried to keep her tone cheerful though she gladly could have wrung his mother’s soft, dimpled neck. “She had to go away. It may be a long time before we see her again—”
    Jackie dug his fingers into Hallie’s wrist and his brown eyes, so much like their father’s that they stabbed Hallie deep, were wide with fear. “She—she won’t die and go to God-in-Heaven like Daddy?”
    â€œNo, goosie! Your mama’s fine. But she had to go away and just couldn’t take you with her.” Not many men would want a five-year-old stepchild on a honeymoon. But to refuse to have him at all—and for that spineless woman to agree!
    Hallie dropped her suitcase and Jackie’s carpetbag beside the road, picked up the tired little boy, and carried him to the creek. Wetting her handkerchief, she washed his face and helped him off with his shoes so he could curl and uncurl his toes in the water while perching on the hull of an old cottonwood trunk.
    They had walked perhaps three miles. It must be five more to town. As she gave Jackie the rest of their bottle of water, Hallie wondered whether they dare drink from the creek. She had expected to pass farmhouses, but the two facing the road had been deserted, the windmills taken away.
    By some grace, the buffalo wallow they had just passed had escaped plowing even during the war, when thousands of acres of thickly entwined, deep-rooted prairie sod, graze first