17

J.C. Cooper sat in the front parlor of the Whitley house that following afternoon after Sunday dinner, pointedly trying to ignore the remarks William Whitley was making—but it was getting harder to ignore them, harder to ignore them, and also harder to ignore the complacent man who sat there staring at him as he made thinly veiled comments about J.C. and the life he had already chosen to have for himself.

“A young man has to be careful when it comes to thinking about his future,” Whitley said for the second time, his eyes directed at J.C. and Elise where they sat only a short distance away on the parlor sofa. J.C. stared at him, not speaking—he had known this was coming, had known from the moment he had first been invited here to Sunday dinner. Whitley would never miss the opportunity to once again try to push a match between his daughter and J.C.—but it was a match J.C. was determined to have none of, a match that he would never have, no matter what it was this man wanted.

“If a man makes a mistake when he’s your age, it’ll haunt him the remainder of his life—you may not believe that now, but it’s true, and it’s the same thing I’ve told my own sons.” Whitley patted his stomach with satisfaction, his eyes moving from J.C. to Elise, and then back again. J.C. clenched his jaw with irritation, wishing there were some way now that he could leave the room, and the house, without his leaving being the height of rudeness—but there was no way. He was stuck here, stuck here to listen to William Whitley’s rude remarks and broad hints concerning J.C.’s relationship with Phyllis Ann, when the relationship was none of Whitley’s business in the first place. J.C. was quite capable of handling his own affairs without interference from anyone, least of all from William Whitley—all the man wanted was to get his hands on the cotton mill anyway, J.C. told himself, and William Whitley was more than willing to sell his daughter in marriage to J.C., or to anyone else if he had to, to assure that.

But J.C. was not buying. For the first time in his life he knew exactly what it was he wanted, and he knew that he could have it. Phyllis Ann might be spoiled and bad-tempered and unpredictable, more so than he had ever dreamed possible, but still he loved her, as he had always loved her, as he always would. He might love Elise as a sister—but it was Phyllis Ann that he was in love with, often beyond reason or sanity he well knew. He had seen her faults and imperfections; he knew they were there, but he loved her still in spite of them all. Her father had done nothing all her life but teach her violence—now all J.C. wanted was to teach her love. All he ever wanted was to teach her love.

He had never been so surprised or so happy in all his life as he had been the day of the Fourth of July picnic, two months ago now, when Phyllis Ann had approached him. She had flirted and toyed with him, as no girl had ever done before in his life—and, later, as they were parked in his car in a deserted spot on a country road, they had taken each other. Even in his inexperience, he had known that he had not been the first, but that did not matter. She was loving him, letting him love her as he had dreamed of doing on so many nights when he had awakened in his bed in a cold sweat, and that was all that was important.

That had been the most wonderful day of his life, a day that he had thought would never be—but it had become the darkest day possible for her. She had returned home from their closeness only to be met by her father’s drunken rage. He had beaten her, hurt her horribly, and she had at last had to kill him in order to save her own life—and, even now, J.C. wondered if it had not been his own fault. If he had only had more courage, if he had only been more of a man, he would have walked her to her door that night to ask for her hand, and, in doing so, he might have prevented everything.

But at least the violence was over for her now, the hurting, and she would never have to face such a horror again. J.C. had been at her side from the moment he had been told, offering her condolence and help, and feeling vastly inadequate to provide either—and then she had needed him. For the first time in his life, someone had really needed him, not for his father’s money or the Cooper name, but for something he could offer from inside himself. There had been arrangements to be made, people to notify, and he had taken care of all that. He had handled matters concerning the business and the many sharecropped and tenanted farms, and had done his best to shield both her and her mother from the more curious and morbid side of their neighbors. From that day on he had openly courted Phyllis Ann, squiring her about publicly, using his own family’s good name in order to lessen the damage done her own; and finally the talk had died down, at least to his own hearing. She had come to ask his opinion only more and more over the weeks, to seek his advice, and, the more she had leaned on him, the more he had dared to allow himself to believe that she might really love him.

And then he had met with the darker side of her nature. Over the weeks since her father’s death, he had almost allowed himself to forget the girl who had laughed at him and tormented him all his life. He had almost forgotten the selfish, spiteful, mean-tempered creature with an acid tongue and a liking for hurting other people. The Phyllis Ann he knew now was nothing like that; she was soft and beautiful, and she thought well of him—and then her temper had come over some stupid incident, and words he had never thought to hear a woman say, and a viciousness and a cruelty such as he had never seen before. He had been unable to look at her, to see her, and to know how wrong he had been. And so he had walked out.

Days later, days that had been the loneliest in his life, she had called to apologize, once again the sweet, gentle girl he was in love with.

But he had never again been able to forget the Phyllis Ann he had seen that day, and again and again she had returned. There were days when he thought he could no longer live with the wild swings of her moods, days when he thought he could take no more of her viciousness, her sharp-tongued cruelty, or her self-centered, spoiled demands—but there were also days when she was soft and loving, clinging to him when they lay together, and looking at him in a way afterwards that told him that she did love him. He often still thought of ending the relationship, but he knew that he could not, and that he never would. He loved her, in spite of her very nature, or maybe because of it; he loved her—not the spiteful woman with the acid words and cruel nature, but the girl inside of her, lost and alone, a girl brought up on nothing but hatred and violence and pain. He knew that he saw something inside of her that few other people saw, a vulnerability and an innocence that had been hurt too many times to ever trust or love anyone freely again. He knew that she loved him, as much as she could love anyone. And he knew that he loved her. She had somehow given him a sense of self-worth and value, a sense of being needed. She was his lover, amazing him with a world of sensation beyond anything he had ever imagined—and she had brought something out of him that had been totally unexpected, even by himself, a strength and a self-reliance that had surprised even him, and a sense of maturity and confidence that had been lacking all his life.

Yesterday she had told him never to come back if he saw Elise today, or if he had dinner at the Whitley house—but he knew that he would go back to her. He loved Phyllis Ann, though he often wished he did not, and he intended to spend the remainder of his days with her, in spite of the opinions of people like William Whitley. Even in spite of Phyllis Ann herself if he had to.

Mrs. Whitley was fidgeting now with her knitting in a chair not far from where her husband sat. She stared at Whitley, her eyes never once leaving his face, almost as if she were trying to draw his attention and silence his words. When he lit a cigar and drew in on it heavily, she began to cough, quietly, but rather deliberately, until he silenced her with a look that would have at one time frozen J.C. in his tracks, then, almost without pausing for breath, he continued on with some portent of doom for J.C. should he continue with making a bad match.

J.C. glanced toward Elise where she sat beside him, wondering again if she felt as uncomfortable as he under her father’s proddings, but he realized suddenly that she seemed to be paying little attention to anything that was being said around her. Her eyes kept wandering toward the mantle clock, as if there were some other place she ought to be. Until today she had always seemed embarrassed and ill-at-ease with her father’s less than tactful matchmaking, but it seemed now as if it mattered little to her, as if something had changed, and as if something else mattered a great deal more. Her thoughts were clearly elsewhere, her mind occupied as she glanced again toward the mantle clock and unconsciously fingered the long strand of beads that hung about her neck.

“A lot of young men don’t realize what an important decision it is they’re making in choosing a wife,” Whitley said, staring at them through the blue haze of smoke around him. His eyes moved to Elise, then back to J.C. again with meaning. “They let feelings and other things that some women can stir up in a man make the decision for them—” Mrs. Whitley’s head rose sharply, but her husband seemed not to notice, or to care. “A man’s got to use good, common sense in making the most important choice in his life. He’s got to marry with the future in mind—but there’s many a man who’ll spend more thought at breeding his livestock than he will at what sort of brood he himself might sire. You’d never consider breeding just any heifer with a prize bull, or a blooded bitch with a mongrel hound, now, would you?”

Mrs. Whitley’s face had drained of color, her eyes set on her husband’s face as if she could not believe what she herself had heard him say. She looked quickly toward the two young people, then back to Whitley again. She cleared her throat loudly, her cheeks starting to redden, and opened her mouth as if she were about to speak, but no words came out.

J.C. tightened his hands into fists—the meaning was clear, and, at last, Whitley had gone too far. Until now J.C. had tolerated his comments, knowing them for what they were, but no more. He would ask Whitley to step outside. He would ask Whitley to step outside, and then he would—

But he caught sight of Elise at the edge of his field of vision, and then turned fully to look at her, surprised to find that, instead of embarrassment as he had expected, there was an absolute fury in her eyes. Her jaw was set, her teeth clenched tightly, her blue eyes angry as J.C. had never before seen them in his life. She looked almost as if she wanted to strike her father, almost as if she wanted to scream and yell in fury—but instead she held her control, her own hands tightening in her lap, a muscle working slightly in her jaw. She refused to allow the anger to explode as it so obviously threatened to, but, instead, only further tightened the control over herself, staring with something very near to hatred at her own father.

There was something wrong here, something very wrong, J.C. told himself, something far beyond the self-serving pushings and insulting comments that Whitley was making. J.C. had never before seen anyone in such angry control, and he felt somehow responsible for it, and for the tension that now filled the room. He knew that he had to get Elise away from her father before that control could break—and he knew that every word the man spoke now only brought that possibility closer.

“Elise, perhaps you’d like to go for a walk?” he asked, interrupting her father’s words mid-sentence.

“Yes, I’d like that very much,” she said, through teeth that were still almost clenched.

J.C. glanced at Whitley as he stood, seeing the obvious delight on the man’s face—pompous ass, he thought, and led Elise from the room.

She seemed to relax almost the moment they left her father’s sight. J.C. watched her, seeing the tension drain away as they walked from the house and out onto the front veranda. She hooked her arm through his and led him down into the yard and out across it without stopping, until they left sight of the house. They entered the woods, walking slowly arm-in-arm until they reached a clearing there, and then they stopped.

J.C. sat down on a stump, watching her as she bent to pick a wildflower. The angry, forced control was gone now, and she seemed once again the carefree girl he had known all his life, talking about mischief they had made as children. He relaxed as well, feeling the comfortable familiarity of her words. They had both changed greatly from the children who had broken the kitchen window and then lied so poorly to cover it. He was a man now, and she a woman—but still there was that comfort of experiences shared, the familiarity of a face long known. There was a feeling of kinship with her, of family, as he had felt with few other people.

“Your father doesn’t give up easily,” he smiled and remarked, absently adjusting his glasses with one hand as he watched her.

“No, but I wish he did.” There was a sigh, a feeling of sadness and wishing about her for a moment. “I really wish he did.”

“Well, he’ll have to give up on me—”

“Don’t you know by now that he never gives up on anything?” She smiled—rather bitterly, J.C. thought.

“He can’t very well keep trying to get the two of us married once I’m married to someone else, can he?”

Her smile was immediate, genuine, and very happy for him. “You’re getting married? That’s wonderful!”

He grinned. “I think so.”

“Phyllis Ann?” Her face became speculative.

“Yes.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing—”

“So do I.” There was doubt, but only a bit, within him.

“You’ve been in love with her all along, haven’t you, since we were children?” she asked, smiling again. “I think I’ve always known, in a way, how you felt about her.”

“Yes. I don’t think I can ever remember not feeling like this.” For once there was acceptance of his decision and his choice. Elise might not like Phyllis Ann, and perhaps with good reason, but still she respected him enough to honor his feelings. She was genuinely happy for him, wishing him nothing but the best in the future, no matter what her feelings might be for Phyllis Ann. Her acceptance and well-wishes felt good—from everyone else he had received only arguments, resistance, and even pity. Elise was different; even after everything else, she was still his friend. “It’s nice, for once not to have someone tell me that I’ve lost my senses,” he said.

“People giving you a hard time?”

“Pretty much. I guess they can’t seem to understand how I feel. I know Phyllis Ann; I know how she is, and I still love her. No one else seems to be able to see in her what I see. She’s not a bad person; she’s just had a rough time of it, with her father and all. I think we can be happy. I really do. She’s—” There came a sound from behind him, a movement in the woods, the loud crack of a branch, cutting short his words. Elise’s expression changed quickly. She was looking past him now and through the trees, her mind obviously more on what she saw there than on what he had been saying. J.C. turned and looked, thinking for a moment that he saw movement there, but unsure. “I thought I heard something—”

“I didn’t hear anything—” she said, too quickly it seemed. There was a nervous pitch to her voice now, and her eyes showed a sudden preoccupation when he looked at her again. “So, when’s the wedding? Have you proposed to her yet?” But her eyes moved past him again and back to the woods even as she spoke.

“Not yet, we still have some things to work out—” Once again the sound of movement came from the woods behind him. J.C. started to turn, but Elise’s words caught him:

“Are you going to have a big wedding?” She was flustered. Her voice was nervous, her manner strange as she stared at him, her words rushed, showing her agitation.

“I don’t know yet; it’s according to what Phyllis Ann—” The crack of a twig underfoot, slight but echoing in his ears—there was someone in the pine woods behind him, someone Elise recognized and wished for him not to see. He was certain of it. It had to be—

“I know I heard something that time—” he said, rising to his feet.

“I—” She seemed suddenly at a loss for words, torn for a moment somehow between him and whoever or whatever it was there in the woods behind him.

J.C. turned and looked again through the trees, catching for a moment a glimpse of blue among the greens and browns—it looked as if someone had quickly moved behind a tree, so brief was the sight. He looked back to Elise, seeing a resignation in her eyes.

“Janson—” She called past him and toward the woods, looking in the direction of the creature he had seen for a moment. “Janson, come on out—”

J.C. stared at her for a moment, and then turned back toward the woods in time to see a man in faded overalls step from behind the trunk of a large tree. It was one of the Whitley farmhands, a man J.C. had seen about the place and in town before, but whose name he had never noted. The man was tall, with black hair and a dark complexion that seemed darkened even further still by sunburn and exposure to the weather. He stared at them for a moment, as if unsure, and then came toward them, walking past J.C. and to Elise’s side. He looked down at her for a moment, and then turned again to look at J.C. with a pride such as J.C. had never before seen in any man.

Elise reached up to put her hand on the man’s arm, bringing his green eyes back to her for a moment, and she smiled up at him, a look in her eyes that spoke more clearly of love than any words ever could—J.C. felt a moment of shock as he watched them; Elise was in love with a dirt farmer. He knew it before any words had to be spoken. Elise Whitley, William Whitley’s daughter, was in love with one of her father’s farmhands—with a man who had sunburnt skin and calloused hands and a shirt that looked as if it had once been a guano sack; with a man who worked in the dirt and sweated in the sun, day in and day out, just to feed himself—Elise Whitley was in love with someone she should not possibly be in love with.

Then he was suddenly angry with himself. He had no right to pass judgement on Elise for how she felt; he had already had enough of people passing judgement on him for his choice in Phyllis Ann.

Elise was looking up at the dark man as J.C. watched her, her feelings written clearly on her face. “Janson, this is J.C. Cooper, the friend I’ve told you so much about, and, J.C., this is Janson Sanders.” She looked at J.C. for a moment, and then back to the man at her side. “This is the man I intend to marry—”

J.C. felt another brief moment of shock—Elise married to a farmhand. Then he was over it. He held out his hand, looking into the man’s pale green eyes as they came back to him.

Janson Sanders stared down at his hand for a moment, seeming somehow surprised by the gesture, then he reached out and shook it. He nodded his head, not speaking, then brought his eyes back to Elise.

She smiled reassuringly and patted his arm. “J.C. is one of the best friends I’ve ever had. We can trust him.”

The man turned to look at him again, distrust still in his eyes. After a moment he nodded his head slightly, seeming somehow satisfied with her words.

“Trust me?” J.C. asked, looking from one to the other.

“We can’t take any chance of Daddy finding out about us, J.C. You can’t breathe a word of this to anyone.” Elise’s expression was serious. J.C. felt himself nod, which seemed to satisfy her. “Daddy’s made it clear that we’re to have nothing more to do with each other. He—he’s gone to great lengths to keep us apart already, so we’ve been having to meet in secret. If he knew about us, he would—” For a moment her words fell silent. She shook her head. “We can’t let anyone know how we feel about each other; Janson would never be safe if Daddy ever found out—”

“You don’t think that Mr. Whitley would—”

But her words cut him short. “I don’t know what he would do, and I don’t want to find out—J.C., he’s capable of things that I never dreamed—” Again there was silence. She looked up at Janson, and, after a moment, continued. “We’re going to leave just as soon as we have the money to start a life somewhere else on. Until then, everyone has to believe that we can’t even tolerate each other.”

J.C. stared at her for a moment, trying to absorb all that she had said. Mr. Whitley could be obnoxious, pushy, and overbearing, but J.C. had never before considered that he might be dangerous—but, then again, men like William Whitley could be capable of doing almost anything to insure that they have what they want, and Elise seemed genuinely frightened. J.C. knew that her father would never allow her to marry a man like Janson Sanders, and that he might do almost anything to prevent that from happening—anything short of murder, and, J.C. wondered, looking at them now, if he would even stop at that. “I understand,” he said at last. “I won’t tell anyone about you—”

Janson put an arm around Elise and looked down at her, and it occurred to J.C. that they looked somehow right together, no matter how different they might be. Now he could well see why Elise had been so enraged at her father’s remarks about keeping the blood lines pure, and he felt an even greater anger at Whitley.

“If there’s anything that I can do to help, all you have to do is ask,” he said, watching the dark man with his patched and faded overalls, and this girl who was long ago more sister than friend. “Anything at all—” Love more often than not had nothing to do with proper choices and good, common sense, J.C. told himself—it had everything to do with feelings and passions and pleasures beyond any right or reason. Everyone had a right to that. Everyone—whether their choice was a man who wore patched overalls and sweated in the sun—

Or if it was a girl with a bad reputation, a ruined name, and an often unpredictable nature. And J.C. Cooper would do anything to assure that.

Janson worked harder during those hot fall weeks than he had ever worked before in his life, harder even than he had in those last difficult years of trying to hold onto his land. The cotton harvest had begun, the first bolls breaking open in the green fields to leave the land peppered over with white. Sharecropping families on the Whitley place and throughout the County had already begun to pick the fields they cropped on halves, and, as Janson watched them out among the rows of cotton, it only strengthened his resolve—he would never take Elise to a life such as that. She would never be one of the many farmwives out among the cotton plants; she would never see her children, children sometimes as young as three and four, picking from first light to darkness, picking until backs ached and fingers bled, ignoring school and learning and play and all that children should know, to drag long pick sacks down the rows of cotton, filling them only to empty them and return to the rows again—Elise Whitley would never know a life such as that. Their sons might pick and hoe and chop cotton—but they would do it on their own land, with their own crop, a crop they would never lose half of each year just for the use of land and mules and seed. He owed Elise that much. And his parents. And himself as well.

He picked more cotton during those hot days than did any other hand on the Whitley place, though he knew he could get by with less—running liquor for Whitley could have distinct advantages, but they were advantages he rarely made use of. He went to the fields each morning with the other hands, and picked cotton just as they did, dragging the pick sack down the rows until his shoulders ached and even his mind was tired. He took on extra farm chores whenever he could find them, and made whiskey and hauled liquor anytime Whitley had a need—always there was money he could make, money he could put away toward the day when he and Elise could at last leave here together; and work, work that could exhaust his body and his mind, and that could help the days to pass. There was so little time they could be together now, and so many hours in between when he tried so hard not to think about her, for thinking about her always made him want things he should not be wanting—but the wanting would not stop.

In the months he and Elise had been together, Janson had never once done more than hold her in his arms and kiss her, and, though she sometimes brushed against him, or pressed close when they kissed, and once had even sat on his lap for a moment, he knew she did not understand the things she made him feel and want when she was in his arms. She was a lady, and a nice girl, the girl he was going to marry—he could not ask her to give in to the things he wanted, the things he needed, even though they would not be married for perhaps a year or even longer into the future. Nice girls did not do those things until they were married, he told himself, and Elise was a nice girl. He would be her husband one day, and then he would know what it felt like to touch her and lie with her and know her as no other man would ever know her—until then he would have to wait. He might wonder if she knew about men and women and the things that happened between them, and if she ever thought of what it would be like once they were wed—but nice girls did not think about such things, and Elise was a nice girl. And he should not be thinking about it himself, either.

Janson’s body ached that Sunday afternoon from the hours he had put in in the cotton fields the day before, as he walked to where he and Elise were to meet that afternoon. He had allowed himself to sleep late that morning, the straw mattress having felt too good, and the rest too needed, to give it up too easily and venture out to church services as he knew he should have done—besides, the things he had been thinking and feeling about Elise in the past days had no place in a church. She would be sitting in the choir of the big Baptist church at the end of Main Street in town, singing her hymns, offering her praises, and that was where she belonged. He belonged in his shabby room, on his straw mattress, trying to forget the thought of her soft skin and her bright hair and—

He sat on the ground with his back against the rough bark of a pine tree, and stared across the red dirt road at the field of sharecropped cotton waiting there to be picked—work, that was what it looked like to him, hours of dragging a pick sack behind him, bending and picking until his back ached. Elise would say that it was pretty, with all the fluffs of white—that was the difference between them. He could picture her now, sitting in her church choir, looking lovely in a robe as white as the cotton. His body ached, and from more than the hours of work—and he should not be thinking those things. Elise would never understand.

There was the sound of a car coming along the road, causing him to get quickly to his feet and move back into the cover of the trees. It would be difficult to explain why he was waiting here in such a deserted spot, should anyone other than Elise find him. It was more than likely that it was her in the car coming toward him, for this was a little traveled road, but he knew it was better to be safe than to have to worry with coming up with excuses that he was not prepared to give. They had been using this spot to meet for weeks now, the road being one deep within Whitley property, and one that was rarely used, and even overgrown in places. Janson could cut across country and reach it easily, but Elise usually now came by car.

J.C. Cooper and her father had both been teaching her to drive Whitley’s Model T, as had Janson over the past several weeks whenever he had the time, and she had at last become safe enough at the wheel for her father to allow her to use the car on outings. Whitley thought she used it in order to visit J.C., which was exactly what she intended that he think, but she used it instead to meet Janson. J.C. had proven himself a true friend to them both time and again over those weeks, helping in this deception and in others; and, though Janson sometimes still found himself jealous of J.C., for the time that the younger man could spend with Elise teaching her to drive the Tin Lizzie, and for the shared past they had together, he knew there was no reason for that jealousy. Elise was in love with him, and J.C. was in love with that hellcat Phyllis Ann Bennett—how that had ever happened, Janson could not understand; but, then again, he would look at himself, and at Elise—

The car came to a rolling stop a few feet from where he stood hidden among the trees. He waited—it was Whitley’s Model T, but he could not see the driver as yet. After a moment the door opened, and Elise stepped out.

Janson smiled to himself, noting how the sun shone in her red-gold hair, and then he stepped out into the road. Her face brightened the moment she caught sight of him, erasing the slight worry that had been there only a second before, and then she rushed around the car and into his arms, happy, he knew, just to be with him.

“We have the entire afternoon! Everyone thinks I’m with J.C., and I’m not expected back until supper time!” she said in a rush, her arms around his neck. “I have something to show—”

But he silenced her words with a kiss before she could finish what she had been about to say. She pressed close against him, and he felt his body react, his mind somewhere lost in the scent of her hair, the softness of her skin, the feel of her against him—he shouldn’t allow himself to feel these things. He shouldn’t—

But they were feelings he could not stop.

It was a long moment before the kiss ended, and, when it did, he buried his face in her hair, a tension evident in his body that Elise could feel in her own. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder, glad for the moment that he could not see her face—then he released her and moved a step away, making her feel a sudden distance between them that was more than the space that held them apart.

He would not meet her eyes for a long moment as she stood staring at him, but instead ran the fingers of one hand through his black hair, his eyes fixed on the ground somewhere near her feet. “You have trouble gettin’ away?” he asked, his voice low and throaty as he spoke.

“No, I just told them I was going to meet J.C.”

“You said you had somethin’ t’ show me?”

“Yes—”

He raised his eyes at last and looked at her directly, and she felt the color rise to her cheeks—he knows what I’m thinking, she told herself. He stared at her for a long moment expectantly, seeming to be waiting. She lifted her chin and met his gaze—I know what you’re thinking as well, she told him silently.

He looked away again. “Well—you gonna show me?”

She turned without a word and started toward the Model T, but stopped after a moment when he did not follow, and turned back to look at him. “Well, come on.”

He followed her to the car and opened the passenger side door for her—she had known he would drive now that they were together, for he seemed to prefer to now that he was no longer teaching her to drive, whether out of a lack of faith in her driving skills, or out of a desire to protect his masculine pride, she did not know or really care. There was so little time they could be together now, and so many other more important things on her mind to be concerned about.

She got into the car and waited until he slid in under the steering wheel. “Just drive straight ahead. I’ll tell you when to turn—”

He did not speak, and she watched as he pulled down on the lever on the steering column and pushed the low-speed pedal, setting the Tin Lizzie in motion with a jerk. He drove in silence, barely even nodding his head as she indicated to turn onto a narrow, almost-overgrown dirt road to the left, seeming now to be lost somewhere in his own thoughts. She sat watching him for a long moment, unable to think of anything to say to bridge that silent distance between them. She felt he was pushing her away, and she felt somehow cheated—love was not supposed to put a distance between two people, she told herself, but was supposed to bring them only closer together.

The car jounced over deep ruts washed in the roadbed as she had him pull off onto a second, even narrower road, but soon came to a stop, dead-ending before a small, unpainted shack deep within the back part of her father’s land. She watched Janson’s face as he stared at it through the windshield, his eyes moving over the rough boards long-ago weathered to a dingy gray, the rusting tin roof, and the weed-choked yard. When his eyes came back to her she smiled and got out of the car, then crossed the overgrown yard, picking her way carefully for fear the brambles would tear her stockings, until she was standing on the sagging front porch. When she looked back, she found Janson standing beside the car staring at her.

“Come on, there’s no one here,” she called, then opened the door and entered the house without waiting for him.

His look of confusion changed to surprise as he reached the open doorway and stared inside at the room before him. The tiny single room of the house was spotless, its walls swept clear of cobwebs, its hearth clean of ashes, its floor swept and mopped until her back had ached and a small blister had risen on her third finger. There was a small table in the center of the room, its one short leg braced up by a narrow shim of wood, a spotless tablecloth now covering its splintery surface, and two mismatched straight chairs flanking its sides. Against the near wall was an aged and warped kitchen cabinet; across from it an old rope bed topped by a straw mattress, its tick newly washed and sun-dried, and now filled with fresh, sweet-smelling straw she had brought here herself. The quilt that covered it was old but colorful, scavenged from the attic at her father’s house, its colors matched only by the bunches of wildflowers she had placed on the table and on the mantlepiece above the fireplace.

“Who lives here?” Janson asked as she took his hand and drew him into the room.

“No one. Alfred, Stan, and I used to play here as children, but I doubt anyone else has been here in years now.”

“But, who—” He motioned with one hand toward the flowers and the tablecloth.

“I did. The furniture was already here; all I did was clean up a bit.”

“You did?” He smiled, moving farther into the room, looking first at the table, the quilt, and then turning back to her as she came near.

“I wanted us to have a place to come to be together, where we wouldn’t have to worry about someone seeing us or telling Daddy—” She put her arms around his waist and stared up at him, happier in that moment than she had been in months, just with the delight the little room had brought to his face. “No one ever comes out this way; Daddy says the land’s not good enough to put in cotton, and he hasn’t tenanted it out since I was a little girl—it may be on his property, but it’ll be all ours when we’re here. No one would ever think to look for us out here.”

He reached up to brush her hair back from her eyes, and smiled down at her, the fingers of his hand trailing lightly down over her cheek. “If you’d ’a told me what you were doin’, I could ’a helped.”

“I just wanted to do it myself—it’s suppose to be the wife’s job to do the housecleaning, isn’t it?”

“Wife?” he said, smiling, both his arms moving down to her waist to hold her against him.

“I am going to be your wife, aren’t I?”

“You sure are.” He looked at her for a long moment, then bent to brush his lips against hers before lightly touching them to her cheek.

When his lips came to hers again, she pressed closer into his arms, feeling her heart speed up as he drew her even more tightly to him, his fingers tangling in her hair after a moment to draw her head back, his lips finally leaving hers to trail over her cheek, then to her neck and down, lightly touching her skin. She clung to him, wanting, as so many times before, never to leave his arms, never to—

He released her suddenly and turned away, leaving her breathless and wanting. She reached for the back of the nearby straight chair and clung to it, staring at him as he moved a step away to stand now with his back turned almost to her, a tension between them such as she had never felt before.

“I—I’m sorry—” he said, a hoarse sound in his voice. “I—I shouldn’t have—” He fell silent for a moment. “It’s just that, sometimes I—” He sighed and shook his head.

“I know,” she said, quietly.

“You cain’t—” He turned to look at her. “You’re a lady; you can’t understand what I feel, what I need, what I—” He looked away again and ran his hands through his hair. “I wish we was married,” he said quietly.

“So do I,” she said, but he did not look at her. “It’s not really very fair on you, is it? If you were in love with anyone else other than me, you could already be married, and you would still be able to work and save the money to buy your land back.”

“I couldn’t be in love with nobody but you,” he said, bringing his eyes back to her. “I wouldn’t want t’ be, even if I could.”

“I know.”

He was silent, looking at her, his eyes saying more than any words ever could—suddenly she understood, and perhaps she had all along. Perhaps that was why she had created this place where they could be together. She stood staring at him, meeting his eyes, knowing—she wanted to be his wife. She wanted to please him and share with him and remove this distance that was forever between them. Her father could not deny them this—Janson could take her as his wife. She could be part of him today in every way but name only—and she would have his name as well, when they could at last leave here together.

She moved to stand just inches from him, looking up into his green eyes, feeling a touch of fear move through her—but that would not keep them apart. There was nothing that would keep them apart any longer. “Janson, make me your wife,” she said, meeting his eyes. “Let me do for you the things a wife does for her husband—”

He opened his mouth, and she thought for a moment he would speak, but he only continued to look at her, his eyes moving over her face. She felt the color begin to rise to her cheeks and she moved into his arms, pressing her face to his shoulder, feeling his arms tighten around her. He kissed her hair, holding her against him. “You don’t know what you’re sayin’,” he said softly, his lips in her hair.

“Yes, I do—”

“No—” he looked down at her and she lifted her head to meet his eyes. “You don’t.”

For a moment she could only look at him and love him all the more, knowing that he did not think she understood. “Yes, I do,” she said, her eyes moving over his face. “I want to please you. I want to be part of you—”

“Part of me—” His words trailed off and he stared at her for a moment, something going on behind his eyes that she told herself she understood. “You understan’ about men an’ women?” he asked her quietly, his green eyes moving over her face. “You know what a man an’ woman do t’ please each other?”

Elise felt the color begin to rise to her cheeks again, and she moved closer into his arms, pressing her face against his shoulder so that he could not look at her. “Yes—”

She felt his lips touch her hair. “That’s what you want t’ happen between us?”

She pressed her face even more tightly to his shoulder. “Yes—”

His fingers gently lifted her chin, making her look at him. “You want me t’ take you?—you know what that means?”

“Yes—” she said, looking into his eyes.

“Are you sure? I don’t want you t’ be sorry after we’ve—”

“I’d never be sorry for loving you.”

“But—are you sure? Once we’ve—” but his words trailed off, his eyes searching hers, concerned that she understand, that she be sure.

“I am sure—Janson, make me your wife; make me be part of you—”

He looked at her for a moment, his fingers gently touching her cheek, his eyes holding her in a way they had never held her before. “You are part of me,” he said softly. “You’ve always been part of me—”

A touch of fear moved through her as he gently swung her into his arms and carried her toward the bed a moment later, fear at what would happen between them, and of what he would think of her afterward—but then she was lying on the quilt and he was beside her, leaning over her, the backs of his fingers trailing lightly over her cheek as he looked down at her. “I’m gonna be part ’a your body, Elise,” he said softly, looking at her. And she realized that she was trembling.

She lay in his arms afterward, the soft afternoon light casting shadows on the wonder that was his body. He held her, his fingers lightly stroking her side, his eyes on her in a way that told her how much he loved her.

“I love you,” he said softly, as if reading her thoughts.

“You do?”

“Yes, even more than before.” He leaned closer and kissed her, his lips lingering with hers for a time before her looked at her again. “You ain’t sorry it happened, are you?”

“I’d never be sorry for this. Are you?”

“No. I wanted you for s’ long. I just never thought—” He let his words trail off.

“Do you think any less of me now, because we have?”

“You know better’n that,” he said, a smile touching his lips. “I’d wondered if you knew about all this. I didn’t know how much your ma’d told you.”

“She didn’t tell me much,” Elise said.

“She told you enough.” And Elise left it at that.

“It really doesn’t make you think less of me, with us not being married yet?” she asked him again after a moment.

“Don’t even think about that. You an’ me are meant t’ be t’gether. Married or not, it don’t matter.”

“But, you’ll still marry me, won’t you?” She propped up on an elbow to look at him.

“You proposin’ t’ me, Miss Whitley?” he asked, grinning up at her.

“Janson!”

He laughed, and then smiled at the hurt look that came to her face. “You know I’m gonna marry you—did you really think I wouldn’t?”

“Well—”

“Ain’t no way I’d give you up, especially now.”

She relaxed, resting her head against his chest. He kissed her hair, and drew her even closer. She could hear his heartbeat, feel the rise and fall of his chest with his breathing.

“You’re more my wife right now than any weddin’ could ever make you, but I want it all legal an’ proper.”

“So do I—Mrs. Janson Sanders—” she said, dreaming of all the days ahead.

“Elise Sanders—”

She smiled to herself and kissed the warm skin of his chest near where her cheek rested. “Did I please you?” she asked, then felt the vibration of his laughter against her cheek. “Don’t laugh at me, Janson.” She looked up at him.

“I ain’t laughin’ at you,” he smiled, reaching to stroke her hair for a moment. “Course you pleased me—couldn’t you tell?”

She smiled and pressed her face to his chest again, feeling her cheeks color with the intimacy of memory. He lay stroking her hair. She was silent for a moment, thinking.

“I wasn’t the first, was I?” she asked at last, not looking up at him.

She heard his sigh, felt it where her cheek rested against his chest. “Elise—” There was reluctance in his voice.

She looked up at him. “I want to know—I wasn’t the first; you’ve been with other women, haven’t you?”

There was silence, lasting only seconds, but seeming to her to stretch into forever. “Yeah—but you’re th’ only one that’s mattered—”

In spite of her brave words, she had not wanted to know. She pressed her face to his chest again, her mind rejecting the image of anyone else ever having known him so intimately, of anyone else ever having touched him or loved him—of any other woman ever having lain beneath him, loving him, holding him as she had done, taking him as part of her body.

He seemed to sense her thoughts, gently easing her over onto her back to look down at her. She moved to cover her breasts with her hands, but he took her wrists and gently drew them away. “No—” he said, his eyes moving down to touch her as his hands had touched her before. “There ain’t no place for bein’ shy between us no more—” He kissed her lips lightly, then bent to touch his lips first to one breast, and then to the other. He looked down at her again, releasing her wrists and stroking her cheek with the back of one finger. “You b’long t’ me now, an’ I b’long t’ you—it ain’t never been like that with nobody else. It couldn’t be—”

“Have you—since we’ve known each other—” She could not finish the words.

“No. I ain’t wanted no other woman since th’ day I met you. I knowed that you was th’ woman I was meant t’ be with.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, I did.” He kissed her and then drew her into his arms and held her. She rested her head on his shoulder, thinking—‘the woman I was meant to be with.’ Yes, they had been meant to be together; they had always been meant to be together. She looked down the length of his body, to the part of him she had now also taken as part of herself—she remembered the way he had held her, the things he had whispered, the feel of him inside of her; no, it could never have been the same with anyone else. He belonged to her, and to her alone. He belonged to her, and nothing else mattered.

She began to gently trace comfortable patterns on the warmth of his skin, enjoying the feel of his chest beneath her fingers—she wanted to touch him there, where she had touched him earlier, but she still hadn’t the nerve. In a few days, or a week, when they were more comfortable together, she would touch him just as she wanted to touch him, with no shyness between them; she would know his body, as well as she knew her own, and he would—

Her fingers touched the healed scar at his right shoulder. She had seen it earlier, but in the heat of what he had made her body feel, she had almost forgotten. Now she traced her fingers over it, noting the jagged outline, the pink scaring different in tone from the surrounding skin. She had never in her life seen the results of a knife wound, but she imagined that it would look something like—“Janson, what happened to your shoulder?” she asked, looking up at him.

“My shoulder?”

“Yes, the scar.”

“It ain’t nothin’.” But his jaw set even as he said the words.

“But it looks like it was. It looks almost like—” But suddenly she knew. She could see it in his eyes—her mind raced back to the night he had fought Ethan Bennett in order to protect her, and the sight of the two men struggling over the broken bottle that could so easily have ended Janson’s life. But if he had been hurt this badly then, she would have known; even in the state she had been in, she would have known. And this scar seemed so much older. So much—“Janson, who stabbed you?” she demanded, concern filling her.

“It don’t matter,” he said. “It was a long time—”

“It does matter! It matters to me! You could have been—”

“But I’m all right, and—”

“What happened?”

“Elise—” She could tell from the tone in his voice that he had no intention of telling her.

“I have the right to know! If you had been—” But he only stared at her in silence. “After what we just—” She let her words trail off. “Who was it?” she asked after a moment, her voice quieter.

He sighed, the reluctance never leaving his face, but, after what seemed to her an eternity, he finally spoke. “It was Buddy Eason.”

“Buddy Eason—one of the Easons where you come from, the family who own so much of the County, it was one of them?”

“Th’ old man’s gran’son.”

“But, what happened? Did you get into a fight? Did you—” But she could see it in his eyes. “It was over a girl—” The words came as a statement.

“Elise—”

“Damn it, tell me! I’m not a child! You fought over some—” But suddenly she realized, looking into his eyes—if the knife had struck any lower; if the man had stabbed him again—

She shuddered and moved closer into his arms, pressing her face to his chest and holding him close against her—he could have died even before they met. She might never have known—

She shuddered again.

But he misunderstood.

“Elise, you don’t understan’. There ain’t no other woman that’s ever mattered t’ me. It ain’t nowhere near th’ same.” She looked up at him and tried to speak, but he would not allow it, gently silencing her words, his eyes showing a concern that he make her hear, make her understand. “We b’long t’ each other—an’ you’re my wife now, just the same as if we was married; we’re one flesh, just like th’ Bible says, that a man’ll join unto his wife an’ they’ll be one flesh—”

“Janson, I know—the only thing that matters is that we’re together, that we’ll spend the rest of our lives together, that we’ll be married ‘’til death do us part’—”

“No, not like that—” he said, easing her over onto her back and leaning over her, “not ‘’til death do us part.’” He looked down at her, something in his eyes that was such a part of her—God, she had never thought it possible to love someone so. To love someone as if he were more her than she herself was. “Dyin’ won’t stop th’ way I feel about you; it couldn’t stop it—our souls ’re gonna live forever; I wouldn’t want t’ live forever if I couldn’t be with you—”

She looked up into his green eyes, tears coming into her own. “Do you believe in heaven, Janson?” she asked him quietly after a moment.

He gently touched her cheek, his fingers trailing over her skin. “I b’lieve in us,” he said simply. And she understood.

Hours later that evening, Elise sat brushing her hair before the dresser in her bedroom. The room behind her, reflected in the mirror, with its huge, white-counterpaned bed, its papered walls and tall windows, now seemed a lonely, uninteresting place compared to that small, one-room house where she had learned love that day.

She smiled at her reflection, thinking that she even looked somehow different now. Her family had been blind to the change in her, their chatter floating mindlessly about her at the supper table as she had quietly replayed the events of the day in her mind—oh, what a glorious day it had been, and what a wonder it was to become a woman.

Janson’s touch, the scent and feel of him, was still fresh in her mind as she ran the brush through her bobbed hair—he had kissed her body, touched her, held her in ways she had only dreamed of before. He loved her—he had whispered the words over and over again as they had held each other. She belonged to him, as she would always belong to him, and the memory of that belonging made her blush slightly even now as she smiled at her reflection—and he belonged to her in just the same way as well.

She sat the brush down and went to stretch out on the white counterpane of the bed, closing her eyes and losing herself to the memory of his touch, to the memory of the warmth of his body moving inside of her. She drew a pillow from under the counterpane and down into her arms, hugging it close, pressing her face to its sun-dried freshness, needing him, wanting him as never before. He had promised her they would be together for always.

She opened her eyes and stared at the white ceiling overhead—if only always would begin.

Janson lay in the darkness of his small room, watching the shadows that played over the bare, unpainted walls—he had sat and stared at Elise’s window long after her light had gone out, unmindful of the cold ground on which he sat, or the slight chill in the autumn night around him. It had seemed important just to sit and watch the house where she slept, knowing she was safe and warm and protected within those walls that held him out. Just sitting and watching had made him feel closer to her—she was part of him, part in every way, as she always would be.

The door to his room creaked quietly open. Janson did not move, but just lay still on his narrow cot, watching the moonlight reflect in Elise’s red-gold hair as she entered the room and closed the door quietly behind herself—somehow it seemed now that he had known all along she would come. That he had only been waiting.

He watched as she lifted the shapeless white cotton nightgown over her head and laid it aside. She brushed her bobbed hair back from her face, her body golden and perfect in the moonlight that reflected through the dingy single window of the room. She came into his arms on the narrow cot, not speaking, but just bringing her lips to his.

It seemed somehow that their bodies melted together. He could feel her thoughts, hear her heartbeat, the gentle sounds of her breathing. Her hands were touching him, bringing him to life—he could feel the warmth of her skin against his, the gentleness of her body, the giving in her, and the need. She gasped softly as their bodies joined, and she held him close, clinging to him as the pleasure came, and holding him afterward as he cried from the sheer joy of loving her.

He was home—there in her arms, he was at last home; and neither William Whitley nor the devil himself would ever take her from him. His death would be assured if her father were ever to find her here—but somehow that did not matter; there were some things in life he was willing to die for. There were some things in life any man would be willing to die for.