Chapter 3--The Letter
"Here’s the last sack, Rose," grunted Aunt Mary, dragging the sack across the porch one-handed.
Their mule, His Highness—as Aunt Mary called him—stood patiently for once. Rose took a chance, and dropped his reins, and ran to help her aunt.
"I told you I’d get that, Aunt Mary. Mr. Johnson’s told you not to be jostling that arm. At her feet, Shadow danced excitedly. The dog loved to ride in the wagon. The plethora of strange scents along with the change of scenery kept the dog’s nose sniffing and his tail wagging the entire trip.
"You reckon we ought to take those spools of thread, too?" Aunt Mary questioned from the porch, holding her broken left arm protectively with her right. Tugging the heavy sack of laundry had set it to aching again, but was determined to help Rose as much as she could.
It had been such a stupid accident, and couldn’t have come at a worse time, with a wagon-load of sheets from the hotel in the back of the wagon to do. Her shoes caked with red Georgia clay, she’d slipped on the edge of the mud-coated wagon wheel trying to step up on the wagon and fell backwards in the middle of the muddy street, a quagmire of late February-soaked clay.
Thank goodness, Ben Johnson, the blacksmith, had seen her fall and came to the rescue, setting her arm for free. That was five weeks ago. Thank goodness for Rose, too. She had single-handedly hauled the water, for all the mountains of sheets, and this latest load was ready to take back.
The laundry should have been delivered two days ago, but March had not gone out like the traditional lamb, but instead, went kicking and screaming, dragging soaking rains they didn’t need down upon their heads along with it‘s stormy exit. The wagon track was bad enough in the best weather. Mary silently prayed it hadn’t eroded more since those rains and made it nearly impassable.
"Well, winter’s almost gone." Rose wrinkled her freckled forehead in thought a moment while she pondered whether it was worth it or not to take the bag of homespun thread they had been working on for the last week with them to trade or sell.
" I don’t know if anybody’d be wanting any more. Everybody’s running out of everything. I don’t know if they’ll have anything to even trade us for it, but I don’t reckon it’d hurt to take it along. Lucy Bridgers said women have been using it to make crocheted lace to sell in Savannah. Ain‘t many women can afford silk anymore."
Rose picked up the heavy sack of laundry, and staggered to the wagon with it, rolling it over the side of the buckboard. Truth to tell, she’d be glad to see the last of that thread. It made her back ache every time she even thought of the heart-breaking work of walking those destroyed fields picking cotton that had came up volunteer last year, where once her father’d had cotton planted as far as the eye could see.
How anything had survived Sherman’s March to the Sea, had been a miracle she and Aunt Mary had been grateful for when they’d seen those cotton bolls open last fall amidst the ravaged fields of waist-high weeds.
Working like the slaves her parents had once owned, they had gathered those bolls. They had picked it. Carded it. Spun it into thread. They peddled it while either picking up laundry or delivering it. The few pennies they got for the thread, or traded for food, candle stubs they could melt down to make more, lard to make soap, or other items people had to trade helped get meager scraps of meat, or soup bones from Isaac Snodgrass, the kind old Jew who had bought Griffin‘s General store and added a butcher shop onto the side of his store.
He had traded them the meat scraps for their home-spun thread, which his wife Esther hand-dyed, and used to make beautiful embroidered shawls and baby bonnets to sell to those fortunate few who could afford them. Between selling their thread, and doing the laundry of those better off than themselves, they had survived the winter.
Dreams of finding a husband and home had slowly disappeared when the dreary months had passed with no answer to her advertisement. Rose had watched their meager supplies to live on over the winter disappear, while she had waited for a letter, any letter, until now Rose and Aunt Mary found themselves closer to starvation than they‘d ever been, with the coming of Spring; her hopes long gone of ever getting an answer. It had been money wasted they could have well used to better purpose.
The only thing that had kept them from literally starving to death was the mustard, collard, and turnip greens that had sprouted, volunteer, in those forsaken cotton fields among the weeds and stray cotton bushes.
Vegetables from abandoned, once closely tended, garden plots of their former slaves, had gone to seed long ago. Those seeds, scattered by the winds, grew where they fell. They mostly fell in those war-ravaged fields. Rose, and her Aunt Mary had gathered them gladly, though they’d been a flavorless meal, without even a hint of pork fat, most of the time, to season them with, but they had survived.
It was nearly noon when they reached Piney Creek. The morning chill had been chased away by a warm April sun, and Rose had slipped her shawl off hours ago. She grabbed it off the wagon seat and re-tied it before stepping down from the wagon outside the hotel. It was going to be awkward helping Aunt Mary down without disturbing her broken arm, and was glad of Ben Johnson’s assistance as he slopped his way across the muddy street when he saw their arrival.
"Mornin’ Mr. Johnson," called Aunt Mary from up on the wagon seat.
"How’s the arm, Mary?" Ben asked, squinting up at her, one calloused hand shading his leathery face against the sun.
"Good Morning," echoed Rose, tying His Highness’s reigns to a hitching rail.
"Mornin’ Rose. How ya’ll been getting along?" Ben answered, both hands firmly around her aunt’s waist, as she backed awkwardly down off the wagon.
"We’re doin. Can’t complain," answered Rose, heading to the back of the wagon.
"Thank’e kindly, Ben," said Aunt Mary, a little breathless from her exertion and being touched so intimately, when she reached the muddy ground. She smiled weakly, fighting pain, and adjusted the sling which had shifted during her descent from the wagon. She gritted her teeth silently against the throbbing in her arm where she had disturbed it while adjusting the sling.
"Takes time fer bones to knit, Mary," commented Ben kindly, having noticed her grimace of pain. "That wuz a bad break you got. Healin‘ alright?"
Without asking permission, he examined the fingers sticking out of the sling, looking for swelling or discoloration. This caused Aunt Mary to blush over the top of his grizzled head as he bent close to her hand. She was close enough to see several frizzled ends of curls where sparks had singed his hair.
"It pains me some. But I’ll live, I reckon." Aunt Mary shifted away from the kindly blacksmith. "Ain’t no need to fash y’self with it. Y’ve done more’n enough, already." It had been a while since she found herself standing so close to a man.
There was an intimacy in being close enough to see those singed curls, and she felt the heat rising from her throat and spreading across her cheeks. She eased her fingers out of Ben’s grip and turned towards the back of the wagon to hide an unfamiliar blush.
"Don’t try to do that by yourself, Rose," Aunt Mary admonished, lifting her skirt with her good hand out of the mud as she squelched to the back of the wagon where Rose had dragged the bulging bags of clean sheets.
"Go tell Mr. Goodman we’re here with the washin.’ He’ll send Travis out to help tote‘m in."
A bell tinkled merrily over her head when Rose stuck her head through the door of the hotel. Aware of her muddy shoes and hem, she stopped there, not wanting to track mud onto the intricately-designed rug placed invitingly just inside the door.
Mr. Goodman, bald pate gleaming in the lamplight, looked up at the sound of the bell. "There you are, Rose. I was wondering if your aunt had been able to finish the laundry, with the weather and all." He graciously didn’t mention Aunt Mary’s broken arm, knowing good and well it had been Rose who had done the laundry.
"Yes, Sir. We managed." Rose struggled to answer, her senses overwhelmed by the smell of cooking drifting through the room. The smells were making Rose dizzy with hunger and it was hard to think clearly.
"Aunt Mary said to ask if you’d have somebody as could help us with the un-loadin‘ of it," She managed at last over the smell of beef roast and apple pie, finding it hard to answer with such delicious smells wafting through the air.
"Travis," Mr. Goodman called over his shoulder. "Get on out here, boy. Lady needs some help unloading a wagon out front."
"Comin,’ Pa," Rose heard from somewhere beyond the counter where Mr. Goodman had went back to sorting mail.
A curly-haired, pimple-faced teen, presumably Travis, rammed his way through a red velvet curtain behind the counter, and strode across the room, grinning sheepishly at her with a partially-eaten wedge of pie clutched in one meaty paw. With one huge bite, the boy stuffed the rest of the pie in his mouth as he walked past her out the door, setting the bell to tinkling merrily again.
Rose, her stomach knotting, hated Travis, in that moment. Green with envy, she begrudged him that greedy bite of pie. Her eyes, emerald shards of ice, glared at him as he passed. However, Mr. Goodman’s next words made her forget any thought of either the ill-mannered Travis, or pie.
"I got a letter here for you, somewhere, Rose," Mr. Goodman tossed at her, preoccupied with his mail sorting, so he didn’t see the sudden color coming and going under the smattering of freckles on her pale cheeks. A wave of dizziness and hope washed over her like a flood of icy rain. Her legs didn’t feel like they could hold her up much longer. Grimacing against the trail of mud she had to be putting on the beautiful carpet with every step, Rose tip-toed across the room to a wicker chair usually reserved for guests, her eyes never swerving from the handful of letters Mr. Goodman was thumbing through.
"I know it’s here somewhere," his words taunted, as he put down one stack of mail and started sorting through another. He paused to scratch his bald head, flashing a sweat-stained armpit in his shirt at her. Rose automatically thought vinegar and salt would get that out, and almost said the words out loud, before she caught herself. Lord A' mighty, she thought. "I’ve been doin’ way too much laundry."
Perched on the edge of her seat, she felt the tension pinching her between her shoulder blades like a pair of pliers. Rose ached to run over and snatch the letters out of Mr. Goodman’s fumbling fingers. How long did it take to find one letter, her mind screamed. Inside her gloves, she felt her palms sweating. Her toes began to ache where she had them curled inside the shoes she had traded a ball of thread for last month. They had belonged Bonnie Johnson, Ben’s wife, and they just didn’t fit right. They made her feet lean to the side, and pinched her toes.
"Ah, here it is," Mr. Goodman announced, holding the letter up in the air like a trophy. "No wonder I couldn’t find it. I’d put it in with your aunt’s wash money."
It seemed like two miles on an uphill grade, traveling the distance between her chair and the counter where Mr. Goodman stood, and Rose felt like she was bogging through thick mud the entire way. Her freckles stood out on her face like black dots, yet her face felt like it was on fire as she reached out trembling hands for the precious missive. Letting out a pent up breath, Rose curtsied politely.
"Thank y’kindly, Mr. Goodman." Rose felt like her smile had to be frozen it was so stiff as she went through the motions of politeness. "I ’preciate you lettin’ me use y’hotel for an address," said Rose through stiff lips, wasting precious time with courtesies she really wanted to spend racing off to some quiet corner so she could tear open the letter. It weighed so little--no more than a feather, really. Yet, it contained all her hopes for the future; depending on the words written inside.
"Will it be aw’right with you if I sit over here t’read it, Mr. Goodman?" Rose forced another smile, while hiding her trembling hands, clutched so tight to the letter it was in danger of being crushed, in the folds of her skirt.
At his absent nod, Rose retraced her steps, her muddy shoes forgotten, back to the chair, and sank into it, and stripped off her gloves. She tore open the letter with trembling hands. There were two sheets of paper enclosed. The first was a letter from the newspaper.
Dear Miss McGregor, We would like to thank you for placing your advertisement with us. We are pleased to forward to you such a kindly response to your ad, and wish you the best of luck for the future. Your obedient servant, James Worthington, Editor in Chief Savannah Sentential.
Rose had to pause. She was getting light-headed. She couldn‘t get enough air. Damned the stays Aunt Mary insisted she wear. They didn’t allow deep, cleansing lungfuls of air. She needed them desperately, too, at the moment, as sickening fear gripped her, snatching her breath away.
She knew now on that next page she would face her destiny. She let out her breath, and took another before letting the first page slip silently out of the way to expose the words that would shape her future.
Woodrow N. Rice
Yankton, Dakota Territory
To the Young Maiden who placed advertisement number three in the October 30, 1867 issue of the Savannah Sentential:
Rose re-read the words. Yankton. Dakota Territory. The words, so foreign-sounding, fairly shouted at her of their exoticness. Where in the world, she wondered, was Dakota Territory? Was it even in America?
She mouthed the words, Woodrow Rice. she whispered. Woodrow Rice, she repeated the name, feeling the sound on her tongue, liking the way is slid around in her mouth. She could get used to that name. It was a good name. Satisfied, she went back to her reading.
Greetings:
First of all, due to the time since you placed the advertisement, and due to the virtuous qualities you espoused in your ad, I cannot imagine you not having already been spoken for. If that is the case, then please allow me to extend my sincerest wishes for your future happiness.
However, if you are yet unattached, and are still heart-whole, when you receive this letter, I would consider it a great honor, if you would consider my suit for your hand.
You mentioned you desired a good moral man of any age. I presume from this statement, you would be unopposed to accepting the hand of an older man. Honesty compels me to admit I will be forty-nine, come October 2, of this year. I hope you do not consider this too old. Though not a young man, I am in good health, and am looking forward to many more years here upon the earth, if God so allows. I have much to offer you materially in place of a lack of youth, and would be honored to share all my earthly possessions with you, should you be willing to honor me with your hand in marriage....
There it was, the words in black and white, that Rose had dreamed so long of hearing. Unable to contain herself any longer, Rose jumped up and tore out through the hotel door, intent on sharing her good news with Aunt Mary, knocking Travis, who was just coming through the door with a bag of laundry on each shoulder, back onto the stoop with a startled oath from both of them. The bags of laundry and Travis flopped onto the muddy stoop with a dull thud. Travis sat staring up at Rose like she had lost her mind. And, perhaps she had.
"Oh, Lawd A’mighty, Travis," Rose apologized profusely, her face aflame, trying to help Travis up. "I shore didn’t mean to do that. I do apologize."
"Just git out’ta way," Travis grunted, as he rolled over on his knees and struggled to stand. His rump in the air, stretched tight over his wool pants, threatening to split them, pulled his too-short shirt up to display a thin white line of pimply backside. Rose, her face flaming anew, flinched away from the sight; jerking her hands away from the bags of laundry like they were a hot rock.
"I c’n git it," Travis boasted, his face the color of the pimples dotting his cheeks.
Suiting actions to words, Travis gave a loud growl low down in his throat, and stood up, his neck muscles straining, the bags of laundry swaying precariously for a moment, before Travis found his balance. He grinned at Rose, a proud, egotistical grin, that split his pimply face like a half moon, revealing a disgusting piece of doughy pie crust still stuck between his teeth.
Rose dropped her eyes from the repulsive sight.
"Looks like your making a habit of attacking men for no good cause, Miss McGregor," sneered a voice behind Rose.
Whirling away from the sight of Travis strutting cockily through the hotel door, she stopped dead in her tracks, her mouth gone dry. Silas Farthingham sat haughtily staring up at her from his fancy, maroon and yellow gig, he’d pulled up beside their wagon in the muddy street.
"I was just coming out to your place to deliver these papers," he snarled sarcastically, pointing to the papers Aunt Mary clutched in her hand with his whip.
His horse stood stoically, one mud-coated foot raised daintily out of the mire of the street. On the carriage seat beside Silas, sat a pale-faced young woman in a Puce bonnet, her haunted eyes peeping out at Rose from the depths of the ruching of her bonnet brim. Carrie Underwood, Rose thought, shocked at the change in her former friend.
Her family had owned the plantation just up-river from their own. Rose had heard her family had lost everything. Carrie had changed so much, Rose almost didn’t recognize her. Little more than skin and bones, Carrie perched on the seat like a scrawny crow, a pitiful shadow of the laughing, rosy-cheeked girl who used to coming for tea at Mon Repose. Rose felt a moment of pity for Carrie, as she met those haunted eyes. A look of understanding passed between the two girls that spoke volumes about the sufferings they had endured.
Rose looked away from that retched creature, letting her gaze slide her past Silas to Aunt Mary and Ben Johnson. Ben stood with one white-knuckled fist gripping the back of the wagon. His other arm steadied Aunt Mary. Ben glared at Silas with such a look of pure hatred that his gaze alone should have stabbed Silas straight through the heart. Aunt Mary stood as if turned to stone. Her gaunt face seemed to have aged ten years since Rose had went into the hotel.
"What papers?" Rose demanded. A barely-contained fury turned her eyes a dangerous shade of ice green as she turned back towards Silas. What evil had Silas perpetrated now, Rose wondered silently.
Silas, his greased-down black hair glinted in the sun as he cocked his head at an insolent angle, his steel-blue eyes raking Rose from head to foot. Rose clutched her letter to her chest instinctively, feeling dirtied and naked by that filthy gaze. Finally, he slid lustful eyes slowly back up Rose’s body and met the ice of her eyes. She felt like a snail had crawled over her body leaving a trail of slime in its wake. Time was meaningless when those two opposing gazes locked in silent combat.
He was enjoying himself, Rose realized and stiffened her spine. "What papers?" she demanded again, her voice slicing the air like a saber.
Silas’s eyes snapped and sparked, feeling a tightening in his loins at the sight of that proud beauty defying him with her eyes, despite her sorry attire, and straightened circumstances. He wanted her with a desperation that threatened his very manhood.
To humble that proud beauty, to break that haughty spirit, eat at his insides like a canker. It infuriated him that even now, facing certain ruin, she glared her hatred down at him, and he was determined not to be the first to break the deadlock of wills. An anger such as he had never know gripped him in that moment. He lashed out her in the only way he could.
"Why, your aunt’s eviction notice, of course," he sneered, watching the play of emotions on that freckled face. "You really should pay more attention to delinquent tax notices, you know" Silas was mollified to finally win the battle of wills as Rose tore her horrified, wild-eyed gaze away from him and back to her aunt.
Aunt Mary’s death-like, gray face was all the confirmation Rose needed to verify the truth of Silas’s proclamation.
"You filthy bastard." Rose lashed him with her icy glare once more. "I’ll see you dead and in hell before you’ll set one foot on that place," she vowed.
"Tsk, tsk, Rose," Silas taunted. "Threatening me in public? In front of witnesses? I could bring charges on you, for that, you know." Silas purred, pausing a moment to let that sink in before continuing. "But, I understand you’re upset. Of course you are. I do apologize for the inconvenience to you and your aunt." His eyes met those of Rose’s again, his eyes triumphantly blazing that he was anything but sorry for the inconvenience to her and her aunt.
"I feel benevolent today. Congratulate me." Silas turned his attention to the dejected woman beside him, who shrank, if possible, even further into her bonnet when Silas put an arm around the cringing woman beside him. Rose shuddered when she saw Carrie’s face turn an unbecoming shade of scarlet, that clashed horribly with the puce bonnet, from the unwanted intimacy of Silas’s arm around her scrawny shoulder.
"Allow me to introduce my wife. Mrs. Silas Farthingham."
If possible, Carrie’s face became even redder, but paled suddenly when Silas’s arm slid up and down her arm in a suggestive caress. Rose, unable to witness Carrie’s humiliation, closed her eyes. But, jerked them open again in horror at Silas’s next words.
"You have seven days, he announced coldly. "If you’re not off My property," Silas paused for effect. "By then... I will personally throw you off...." Silas’s words lashed her like the whip he brought down viciously on the back of his unsuspecting horse, who lurched forward, jerking Carrie backwards and knocking her bonnet off.
Rose stared in horror at the bruise covering almost half of Carrie’s face as the carriage rolled slowly away. Silas’s parting words, thrown back at her over his shoulder, "And, I’ll do it with the greatest of pleasure," repeating itself over and over in her head like an echo in a well.
The strangled cry, "Rose!" from her aunt, jerked Rose around with a start. "Aunt Mary," she screamed, leaping off the stoop towards her aunt as she watched Aunt Mary slowly crumple, unconscious, towards the muddy street. Only Ben Johnson’s arms broke her aunt‘s fall as he swept Aunt Mary up in his arms, and lurched towards the stoop with her limp body.
****
Rose stared forlornly out the window of the room where Mr. Goodman had directed Ben to take Aunt Mary.
Eliza came to stand behind Rose and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "She’s gonna be all right, Rose," Mrs. Goodman said quietly. Eliza brought with her the scent of burnt feathers she had used to revive Aunt Mary. "I gave her a little laudanum. She’ll sleep now. Ya’ll are welcome to spend th’ night. No charge. I’ll have Travis bring a tray up." She squeezed Rose’s bony shoulder. "Feels like you could use a good meal," she said on a lighter note in an attempt to get a response from the stricken girl.
"Thank'e kindly, Mrs. Goodman," Rose responded automatically in a flat voice. "I don’t know how we’ll ever re-pay y’ for yer kindness to us."
Eliza felt sobs shaking the scrawny shoulders beneath her hands, and enfolded Rose in her arms. "There now, Rose. It’ll be all right," she comforted Rose with the lie, knowing full well the precarious situation Rose and her aunt were in, and she knew Rose knew it, too.
"Try to pull yourself together for Mary’s sake. She needs you now."
Rose made an effort to stop the sobs that seemed to be coming from her breaking heart like a dam bursting. She reached up to wipe away her tears with the back of her hand, and felt the letter graze her nose.
The letter! Rose thought. She’d forgotten all about it. It was still clutched in her hand. Rose blinked away her tears and started trying to smooth out the wrinkled wad of paper in her hand.
Eliza, seeing Rose pulling herself together, gave the girl’s shoulders another squeeze, while she kissed the girl’s wet cheek tenderly. "You read your letter. I’ll go git a tray ready and send Travis up with it. I hope it‘s good news. You and Mary shore could use some."
Rose, looking up at last, a rosy blush adding a little color to her face, gave Eliza a watery smile. "It might be, Mrs. Goodman. It might be."
Saying that, Rose went back to hand-pressing the wrinkles out of the paper spread out over her knees. Eliza watched the girl for a moment, then quietly left the room.
Rose, once she heard the door close, snatched the letter up and searched the letter for where she’d left off reading earlier.
"Though not a young man, I have much to offer you, should you be willing to honor me with your hand in marriage...." she re-read.
I have my own place, free and clear, as it proved out this year, out here in Dakota Territory, in the Black Hills area. It is fine bottom land on the Belle Fourche (pronounced Foosh) River. My home may not be a mansion, but it is roomy enough for two, and we can add on any other rooms you fancy, as the need arises.
Rose felt herself blushing when she read, "As the need arises." It was a delicate inference to needing extra rooms for a growing family. The thought of having a baby of her own to hold, was a pleasant moment’s thought, as she ignored how that imaginary baby would come into existence.
Rose had never heard of a place called Dakota Territory, but it had to be someplace out west, and that was just what she had wanted. Right now the thought of leaving a ruined south, full of men like Silas Farthingham, who fed on the misery of a once proud people, sounded like a dream come true for her.
With a fluttering of hope, that she needed so desperately at the moment, Rose drank in the next words of Woodrow Rice’s letter.
I am a moral man. I thought I’d let you know that, as it seemed important to you. But you might as well know right off, that I don’t have much patience with waiting. Especially as my future is hanging in the balance, waiting for your reply.
So, if you will do me the honor of becoming my wife, please telegraph me--collect--as soon as possible, just to get an old man out of his misery, one way or the other.
Send your reply to:
Woodrow Rice
In care of Ike Jorgenson
Yankton, Dakota Territory
He‘ll see that I get your telegram. I figure you won‘t get this letter before the end of March, travel being what it is since the war. I hear the railroads and bridges are all gone. You may have to come by boat, as far as Texas, anyway.
How on earth would she ever get to someplace named Dakota Territory,? Rose wondered, a knot of fear of the unknown settling under her ribs. She tried picturing getting Aunt Mary on a boat, a train, and God only knows what other mode of transportation to get someplace she never heard of to marry a man she had never met. Could she do it? Would Aunt Mary do it? Her spirits sank at the complications involved in making such a trip--with Aunt Mary, because Rose decided, glancing over at the bed, she wasn’t going without her. With a heavy heart, Rose took up reading the letter again.
If your answer is yes, after you telegraph me, please make arrangements to go to my sister by marriage in Savannah.
Here is her name and address:
Mrs. Lillian Duckworth,
417 Peachtree Lane,
Savannah, Georgia
I have written her to be expecting you, and have sent her sufficient funds to cover your trip out here, with a little to spare for any unexpected things you might need for the trip.
It gets mighty cold out here in the winter, I want to warn you now. But a prettier country, God never made on this good earth.
I am glad you are fond of animals, as I own a cattle ranch, although I would like to introduce sheep, here also. I have a small flock of them started, but it will be a few years before they amount to anything. Of course, I also have chickens and geese, and a few pigs, too. So, being as you are fond of animals, I should have enough of them to keep you happy here the rest of your life.
Chickens and geese, thought Rose, her mouth watering just thinking about them. And, pigs, too! The thought of ham, bacon, and fresh pork roast was almost more than Rose could bear.
It would be worth about any hardship to get there just to taste ham again. Rose thought, and found herself day-dreaming of a smokehouse hanging with fragrant hams, ropes of smoked sausages, and fat sides of bacon.
She re-read that part of the letter several times, just to convince herself the words were real. Finally, it started sinking in, and hope of a full belly, blossomed in her heart. Rose looked at Aunt Mary, and imagined seeing her aunt’s gaunt cheeks growing fat and rosy on those delicacies in her husband’s smokehouse.
Her husband. That thought brought Rose back down to earth with a crash, as a vision of Carrie Underwood, her bruised face pale in the sun, flashed in front of her eyes. Soberly, she finished reading the letter.
I ain’t much for fancy words, but, God as my witness, I promise I’d do right by you as a husband. I want to lay any fears you might have about that to rest. I know you don’t know me, and my word is all I can give you at the present time. I hope it is enough.
I don’t know what else to say, except, unless I hear otherwise, I remain,
your betrothed,
Woodrow Rice.
PS I always was fond of red hair. WR
Rose glanced over at the bed where her aunt lay sleeping. Her starved face so gaunt and sunken and gray, she looked more like a starving corpse than the aunt she knew and loved. Aunt Mary needed to git away from here, too. But, what would Woodrow Rice say to having an extra mouth to feed--should she decide to go? Would he be so willing to take on an unknown bride, if she had a widowed aunt attached to the package?
Rose stood up, her back stiff with determination. There was only one way to find out.
Flying down the stairs, she rushed up to the counter, startling Mr. Goodman who was bent over behind the counter.
"Mr. Goodman," Rose asked, causing Mr. Goodman to pop up from behind the counter like a jack out of the box.
"How’s Mary?"
"She’s sleepin’ right now. And I shore do appreciate you puttin’ us up this-a-way.
"T’weren’t nothing, Rose. The room’s just sittin’ there. Is there somthin’ I can do fer you?"
"Maybe. I shore hope so. How do y’send a telegram?"