A Bride For The Asking -- (on hold)

Chapter 24--The Confrontation

Oh Jesus, Michael thought. It was worse than he could have imagined. One hell of a hornet’s nest would be stirred up the minute he stepped out into the light.

 Michael braced himself and set his teeth. He might as well get this over with before his ma came out of the house. Michael heaved a heavy sigh and stepped out of the barn.

Two things happened almost simultaneously. His Uncle Woody spotted him and his face lit up like Christmas morning.

“Michael,” he smiled, sliding his hands reluctantly from around his wife’s dainty waist. He reached his hand out towards his nephew.

Michael witnessed the stunned look replace the welcoming smile on his uncle’s face, when a cry of anguish ripped its way out of his wife’s throat from behind him.

“You!"  She screamed. "You bastard!"

Her voice hadn’t changed a bit. Michael cringed inwardly; recalling that voice from his troubled dreams.  He surveyed the range of emotions chasing each other across her features like flickering sunlight through a forest of tall pines. Saw the moment she realized the true awkwardness of the dilemma of their predicament.

He flinched when she raised accusing eyes up to him and turned milk-white.  Clutching futilely at his uncle’s shoulder, she began to topple forward. Michael had never seen a woman faint before. He stared in dismay as her hands slid slowly down his uncle’s shirtfront as if she were melting into the ground.

“What the hell?” Uncle Woody demanded, turning back to Rose in time to catch her before she hit the ground.

“Rose,” he cried out. He swooped his wife up into his arms as easily as if she weighed no more than a small child. He strode to the back of the wagon and laid her in the bed.

Michael and his pa stood frozen, barely daring a glance at each other. Uncle Woody darted his brother and nephew a quick probing squint. 

“Don’t just stand there, Ennis,” he yelled.  “Go get Pearl, for Christ’s sake.” Then he swept his eyes to Michael. “Get me a bucket of water,” he ordered curtly.

His look promised there would be answers forthcoming, before he dropped his gaze back down to his wife.

“Rose. Rose. Can you hear me, my love?”

Michael fled from that tender scene into the comforting darkness of the barn. His pa was a creature of habit. The water bucket was hanging on the same nail it had hung on when he was a boy. Michael grabbed the bucket and ran around the side of the barn to dip it into the nearest trough of water.

“What’s wrong with her, Pearl?” he heard his uncle demand of his ma as he hurried around the end of the barn with the bucket of water. His uncle’s voice sounded frightened and unsure of himself, something Michael never remembered hearing from his uncle before.

“Land’s sake, Woodrow,” his ma huffed as she waddled her way over to the wagon to the chorus of faint creaks that Michael wasn’t sure if he heard, or just remembered from his childhood.

“She likely just needs her stays loosened.” His mother whispered loudly enough to his Uncle Woody that Michael heard it halfway across the barnyard.

He saw his ma look down her nose at the pale face of the girl with obvious distaste. He felt a sudden sympathy for his uncle when his face darkened perceptibly under his tan.

“Best get her in the house out of the sun, so I can loosen them for her,” his ma sniffed begrudgingly. It dawned on Michael suddenly that his mother didn’t like the girl. Michael set the bucket down on the edge of the wagon bed and stepped back.

“Here’s the water, Uncle Woody.”

“Where’d you get that, out of the horse trough!” his ma grumbled, flashing her eyes at him accusingly.

“Uh,” Michael stammered.

“Never mind,” she patted him on the arm, as if she had just recalled he had been gone ten years, thus could afford to be kind.

His Uncle Woody scooped up his wife and strode off towards the house without a word. Michael followed his uncle with his eyes.

“This is a fine how-do-you-do,” his mother sniffed again, and then started towards the house on Uncle Woody’s heels.

Michael wiped his hand across his eyes and shook his head.   “You have no idea, Ma,” he said following his mother’s stiff back to the house. He tried to ignore the faint squeak, that sounded for the world like a duck call, coming from somewhere in his mother’s vicinity.  "You have no idea in the world," he sighed.

Michael thought about his mother and Rose.  If his ma hated her now, he thought miserably as he stepped up on the porch and dropped down on the nearest bench. He reached for his pipe, needing its comfort suddenly. Just wait, Ma, he thought, shuddering. Just wait.