Charlotte smiled when she saw Gardner approaching with a fistful of oxeye daisies, although experience told her wildflowers wilted almost as soon as they were picked and were better left in the forest. Still, small gestures were not to be disrespected. She thanked him and fetched an earthenware crock in which to arrange the small bouquet.
Soon she would need to walk to the Temple to begin preparing the community dinner, but the better part of an hour remained so she invited Gardner to join her on the porch, and placed the crock on the step where they could both admire the arrangement. Since she only had one chair—a bent-wood rocker John Wesley Wickman had made for her years ago—Gardner perched on the steps sideways so he could look up to see her as they talked.
“You’re quite the swain today,” she said.
“I’m glad you noticed.”
“Do you really still walk everywhere you go?”
“I do indeed.” “And you refuse to own a horse?”
Gardner grinned. “No horse means no additional labor to build a barn, nor grow hay or oats, nor buy saddles and tack. Simplify, simplify, as Mr. Thoreau tells us.” His grin took on a sly cast. “Besides, haven’t you heard? Property is theft.”
Charlotte laughed at his sally. “Mr. Gardner, you are an original.”
“Originality is not my goal,” Gardner replied. “I hope you understand that. My goal is to be consistent with my principles, and if that makes me an original, so be it.”
Surprised at his sudden seriousness, Charlotte nodded. “I understand. I’ve tried to do the same in my life, albeit with mixed success.”
They sat quiet for a moment in the cool evening. “Will you stay and eat with us?” Charlotte said.
Gardner shook his head. “Gatherings that size make me touchy,” he said. “I don’t know if it was the war or if it’s just my life in the woods, but I’m getting to be like Daniel Boone. Don’t want anybody within a mile of me.” He reached out to tap the toe of her shoe, lightly, twice. “Present company excepted, of course.”
The familiarity of his gesture—at once perfectly decorous and yet strangely intimate—startled her. When was the last time a man had touched her foot? Had James ever? She couldn’t remember. Charlotte realized she needed to think more seriously about Ambrose Gardner and his attentions. Up to now, she had enjoyed his gallantry for the flattering sensation of a man’s notice, but with this simple gesture she understood he was in earnest. She would have to seriously consider whether she really wished to entertain his suit or not. And she would have to be clear about it either way.
Gardner appeared not to notice her reflective silence. “I imagine people see me as a harmless eccentric for that, and I can’t argue with them. But at this point in my life, I want what I want, and I don’t much care what other people think.”
“Present company excepted.”
Gardner laughed, a riotous, rolling laugh that seemed to come through him from somewhere underground and burst into the air like half-near thunder. “Yes,” he said between laughs, “Present company excepted. I care very much what you think.”
His amusement fueled Charlotte’s, and they were still chuckling a minute later when Adam came down the road, an intent expression on his face. “Have you seen Anton?” he said to Charlotte, ignoring Gardner entirely.
“No,” she said. “Why?”
“He went off this morning and I haven’t seen him since,” Adam said. “I don’t know whether to worry or get ready to holler at him.”
“Both,” Charlotte said.
“I saw the boy this afternoon,” Gardner said. “He’s fine.”
“You did?” Adam said, turning to Gardner. “How’s that?”
“He was riding along with Charley Pettibone, heading toward town. I met them on the road about three miles up.”
“Toward town, you say?” Adam rubbed his chin. “What was Charley doing taking him to town?”
“I didn’t get the impression that he was taking him. Charley had a prisoner in the back of his wagon. I had the sense that your youngster ran across him somewhere and jumped in for the novelty.”
“Oh, you did, did you?” Adam said. “You’re a mind reader, now? And here I thought you were just out on the tramp looking for a free meal.”
“Adam!” Charlotte burst out. “What’s got into you?”
“Don’t think we haven’t noticed,” Adam continued, glaring at Gardner. “All this attention, all this charming talk. I don’t know what you think you can get out of this, but you are being watched.”
Charlotte stood up. “Mr. Gardner, I want to apologize for my son,” she said. “He’s a grown man, but it seems he’s forgotten how to talk to a guest of mine.”
“No need to apologize.” Gardner got to his feet. “I’m hard to offend, Mrs. Turner. But I believe I’ll take my leave now as I’ve still a few miles to travel today.” He tipped his hat in Adam’s direction. “Sir.”
Charlotte laid a hand on Gardner’s arm. “Please stay, Mr. Gardner. I’ll not have you leave under such disparagement.”
“I’ll let you know if I ever feel disparaged,” Gardner said. “For now, I need to return to my plantation. I am indeed on the tramp.”
“Plantation!” Adam snorted. “What do you grow on your plantation, pray tell?”
“Ticks and chiggers,” said Gardner. “Mrs. Turner, your porch is a fine place to sit, but now I depart. Save me that spot right there for when I come back through again.”
“Count on it,” she said.
He turned and was gone in an instant, his long stride taking him out of sight before Charlotte could say another word, leaving her frustrated at their failure to finish their conversation and furious at her son.
Adam held up his hand to stay her reproach. “I know, I know. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t know a blessed thing,” Charlotte said. “You only think you do.”
“We just want to protect you.”
Charlotte could tell by his shamefaced expression that he hadn’t given any thought to his words. “And by ‘we’ you mean—”
“Myself. I shouldn’t have been rude, but I don’t like that old mooch hanging around.”
“Well, I do, so you might as well accommodate yourself.” She stepped inside and closed her door, unwilling to talk about it any further.
There was much that Charlotte had wanted to ask Ambrose Gardner. His casual remark about the war, for one thing. She would have liked to have heard more about that, if he were willing to speak. When James had come home from the war, he had refused to speak in anything other than the most broad generalities, and then only when pressed. A few times in the night he had talked about specific moments, but those moments had been a jumble of fragmentary impressions, incidents and isolated names with no sense of what had been going on or what it all meant. The great event of their generation, and nobody understood it. Certainly those G.A.R. men, with their flags and parades, acted as if they possessed the true history of the war, and the Confederate veterans and claimed-to-be veterans who had slipped back into power after the war acted as if they had the full story, but their burnished reminiscences didn’t square with Charlotte’s memory. What she recalled was deprivation and worry, never-ending worry, every morning bearing the prospect of dreaded news from afar or mortal danger close at hand. Ambrose Gardner’s removal from the world didn’t seem eccentric at all after such an experience. The eccentricity would be in returning to it as if nothing had happened, as if the world could ever be put right again.
And this notion of Adam’s, that she needed protection! She would need to set that straight. Charlotte had been watching over Adam for twenty-five years and wasn’t about to let the tables turn. They’d have plenty of opportunity to fuss over her if she ever became enfeebled. No reason to start early.
It was time to walk to the Temple and start the dinner preparations. Charlotte peeked out her front window. Adam had left. Just as well, though she didn’t anticipate another confrontation. He was a thoughtless young man but not ill-spirited, and she guessed that he was already regretting his outburst.
She had forgotten the ox-eye daisies in their crock on the porch. As she started for the Temple, Charlotte looked them over. Surprisingly fresh, not the least bit wilted, despite having been carried from who knows where. Some of these wildflowers were tougher than they looked.
After dinner, Charley and Anton showed up. Charley looked weary from the long day’s travels but Anton wore the expression of a young man who had been on the adventure of his life. She watched Charley stop his wagon at Adam and Penelope’s house and take the boy inside. If anyone could smooth out the ruffles of the day, it would be slow-talking Charley, who would probably take the blame for the boy’s excursion on himself.
The next morning, Charlotte took a wagon and rode north to Oak Grove. A man named Nichols lived there, a foul-mouthed old reprobate she had known since before the war, who had somehow survived despite his penchant for raining condemnations onto whatever troop of men passed by. Nichols lived on whiskey and beans, but he built the best ladderback chairs anyone in the county had ever seen.
She tied the reins to Nichols’ porch rail and stepped onto the porch. She didn’t knock, since Nichols was frequently hung over and didn’t appreciate loud noises, but she knew he was aware of her arrival. After a long minute he came to the door.
“Good morning, Mr. Nichols,” she said.
“Well, if it ain’t the communist lady,” Nichols said. “Come to proselytize?”
“We don’t proselytize, Mr. Nichols. You know that.”
“Figured you might have changed your ways.”
“No, sir. Don’t suppose you’ve changed yours, either.”
“No, ma’am. I like my ways just fine.”
“Then we’re in agreement. You live your life and I’ll live mine.”
“You came all this way to tell me that?”
Charlotte smiled. They both knew why she had come, but Nichols didn’t like people who went too straight to business. He would turn down a cash-paying customer who rubbed him the wrong way, and Charlotte suspected that he enjoyed doing it. So the conversational dance was part of the transaction.
“Actually, Mr. Nichols, I came hoping you might have a chair I could buy. I need a good rocking chair for my front porch.”
“I thought you had a chair out there, some old twistedy-looking thing made out of grapevines or something.”
“I do,” she said. “That chair was made for me by one of my townsmen as a gift, so naturally I use it. But I don’t have a chair for company, and that’s why I thought of you. I need a good comfortable chair, one for long sits on the porch in the evening. One that will last.”
Nichols tugged at his ear. “Your porch have a good roof? I ain’t going to build a chair just to have it set out in the rain.”
“Solid roof, cedar shakes. Faces east. I sit out there of a rainy evening and never feel a drop.”
“Let me look,” Nichols said. He led the way to a shed in the back, where oak and walnut chairs were stacked to the ceiling. “Most of these are promised to somebody or another, but I may have one to part with.”
He picked his way to the back of the shed around tubs filled with thin split-oak slats, soaking in water to render them pliable. “Here we go,” Nichols said. He pulled an oak rocker from the corner and dusted it off with a rag. The chair glistened with linseed oil.
“That’s a beautiful piece of work,” Charlotte said.
“Ain’t it though?” said Nichols. I cut that tree myself, split out the outer layer for the seat and used the core for the back and posts. Takes a long time to bend that wood for the runners.”
“I expect it does,” Charlotte said. “I can see the care it takes.” They looked at the chair for a moment.
“I almost hate to part with it,” Nichols said.
“Mr. Nichols, if you’ll sell me this chair I’ll take good care of it. And you may come and sit in it whenever you please. It’ll be my company chair.”
“I might just take you up on that,” he said. “All right. I know you communists ain’t got any money, so a dollar ought to make us good.”
“I’ll do no such thing.” To his surprised look, she added, “A dollar wouldn’t honor the work. You’ll take two and no less.”
“Well, ain’t you the hard bargainer,” he said with a grin. “All right, two it is.”
She had brought the bills with her and handed them over with a flourish. Nichols helped her load the chair in the wagon, and by noon she was home, with the chair on the porch beside her old rocker, and a little table brought out and placed between them. She set the flowers on the table. There they would stay, she thought, until they either wilted or were replaced by a new bunch, and if she had to she would replace them herself. In the evenings she would sit in her old chair with the new chair empty and waiting, and she would see what happened.