5

Jed snapped off a hunk of cinnamon stick and dropped it into the mug of hot water. Breaking something felt good. He fumed inwardly about not thinking of something to say to Miss Cantrell. She was a single lady who couldn’t be courted, but he should’ve formed words to tell her good afternoon.

Josiah gave another deep cough from the bedroom. He hadn’t stopped for an hour.

Griffin sat in a rocker next to the hearth and stared at the few glowing embers in the dying fire. That had always been Jed’s spot between supper and bedtime. “You gonna find a way to make that kid shut up?” Griffin grumbled. “Or is none of us gonna get any sleep?”

Jed spooned a dollop of honey into one of dinner’s leftover bowls. He added a drop of vinegar, a crushed garlic clove, and a few sprigs of lemon balm. “You said you slept on the streets. Surely it was noisy there at times.”

Griffin jerked his head. “Well, I ain’t there now.”

Thomas tapped on Jed’s arm. “He’s coughed like this before.”

Jed stirred the concoction. “If he’s not better in the morning, he’ll stay home from school and you’ll stay with him.”

Thomas’s shoulders slumped. “If I get up first thing, can I go get a book to read from Miss Cantrell? I’ll hurry back. She says she gets there early if we ever want to practice our handwriting or spelling.”

“Let’s see how the morning goes. We got a lot to do.” Jed dipped his little finger in the mixture and took a taste. Didn’t seem as bad as he remembered.

“What’s that?” Thomas’s nose wrinkled. “Looks funny.”

Griffin stood and peeked over Jed’s shoulder. “Looks disgusting.”

“Something my grandmother used to make. Coats the throat; soothes the roughness. Worked for me every time.”

“Josiah likes honey,” said Thomas. “Is that grass?”

Jed scooped a small heap onto a spoon. “Not exactly. Some kind of plant or herb, although my mother might’ve called it a flower.”

“My ma fed me broth from a little salt pork one time when I got sick,” said Thomas. It was the first time the child had spoken of his family. The lantern cast a light on his profile. The boy’s face looked longer and his expression seemed to fade away to a painful memory from long ago.

Jed carried the mug and the spoon into the bedroom.

Thomas followed.

Josiah sat up when they entered. His blond hair had matted down. He drank some of the cinnamon tea Jed held out. Jed moved the spoonful of honey closer. The lad opened his mouth again and then plopped his head back onto the pillow.

“Does it hurt when you cough?” Jed asked him.

Josiah mumbled that it didn’t and then rolled onto his side.

“Well, let that coat your throat for a minute.”

Thomas laid down next to him and pulled a thin cotton sheet over Josiah’s shoulders.

“Make sure he drinks the tea. The cinnamon helps fight a sore throat.”

Jed returned to the parlor to tell Griffin to douse what was left of the fire and crawl into bed, but he stopped at the threshold. Griffin’s head had fallen to the side, and his chair no longer rocked. Normally by now they would’ve all been fast asleep. Jed shoved his hands in the front of his trousers. The list of fixings at the shop would pile onto the next day if he didn’t get an early start. But he felt drawn to do something he hadn’t done for years.

From the top shelf of his wardrobe he pulled down a wooden box that held the leather-bound journal he had been given years ago. He brushed the cover and smoothed off the dust.

Jed remembered the day he got the journal. The evening before he was to board the stagecoach, his father called him into the parlor after his siblings had gone to bed and told him he had something special to give him. Jed opened it with great anticipation. With seven children and a fruitless business, gifts from his father didn’t come often, if at all. His mind whirled with what lay inside. A new slingshot to replace his broken one. Perhaps a sharper pocketknife or maybe even a razor for when he started to shave.

The crackle from the fire was the only sound as Jed thrust open the lid. His chest tightened as he recalled his response to what lay inside.

A leftover from his father’s store. Most likely something he couldn’t sell. A leather-bound artist’s pad of paper. Men wanted whiskey and guns, pocket watches and new wagon wheels. Women spent their time in the milliner’s store next door. Customers looking for stationery and quilled pens had dwindled considerably since the war.

Jed’s father explained that although Jed couldn’t read or write, he loved to draw. Like his mother, he never got the hang of how letters formed sounds and the sounds made words. It puzzled him how others could figure it out so easily. He hated school. The reading. The handwriting. The elocution drills. More than one teacher shook her head in frustration trying to get Jed to read. So, the first time his mother said he could stay home with her and work, he did.

His mother and father asked that he send pictures about his new journey and where God led him. As tears welled, his mother asked that he send a drawing home every week. She forced a smile and told him maybe he could return for a visit every now and again, although she knew that may never happen.

Jed’s first inclination was to chuck it into the fire. But the thought of a lashing or two across his bottom stifled that notion. But he didn’t attempt to feign a polite response either. Without opening the journal, he pushed the box toward his father.

Disappointment showed in his father’s face before his eyes cast to the floor. Conrad Green looked to have aged ten years in that moment.

His mother leaned forward and placed her hand on Jed’s wrist, but he brushed her arm away. Although his heart could be unappreciative and resentful, that was the only overtly unkind act he ever showed to either of his parents.

The memory wouldn’t be so painful if that wasn’t the last evening he spent with his father. Jed didn’t speak to either one of them the next morning, purposefully biting his tongue to punish them for sending him away. And for the lousy gift.

Jed received a telegram less than a year later. His father had died. His mother never knew the cause, just that he had chest pains in the middle of the night. Jed never sent any drawings to his parents, although he thought of them and his siblings every day.

But his father had written, expecting him to find someone to read the letters to him. Although illiterate, Jed stubbornly refused to do that. He also hadn’t been bitter enough to throw them away. He leafed through those envelopes, now tinged with yellow. Despite the faded ink, he was observant enough to identify his father’s neat and precise penmanship.

His father loved to write and talk. He had told Jed that words held power to unlock the soul. But Jed had always viewed his father as a lazy man. He and his brothers made trips to the well and cut and stacked the firewood. Mother and the girls worked the herb and vegetable garden, did the mending and the laundry, and cooked the meals. Father worked at a store selling papers and gabbing with townsfolk. Too bad he couldn’t earn a better living with his storytelling.

Jed picked up the leather artist pad and ran his fingers along the edge. He had never noticed the whip stitching detail or the embossing on the cover. He wondered if his father pulled the item off the shelf or had placed a special order. Jed would never know the answer. But he did know that his father was a decent man who loved God with all his heart. And he had loved Jed.

He and his mother never spoke about that last night before his departure. And when he hurried home after his father’s death she didn’t pester him about not sending pictures or some kind of word that he was doing all right. Jed was full of regret at the funeral. Clusters of mourners gathered at the gravesite. He was a memorable man, funny, witty and charming. Quite the opposite of Jed.

But Jed began correspondence with his mother after that. He asked a neighbor, Mrs. Jenkins, to write for him. His life was so routine and dull he couldn’t think of anything worthy enough to put on paper. Sometimes he’d catch Mrs. Jenkins smile, and he wondered if she took liberty to add a few nice words that Jed never conjured up on his own.

Years later, his older sister found those envelopes in the bottom of a trinket tin on their mother’s dresser after she’d passed. Their mother had loved getting letters. And then, his sister returned the pages to him.

He picked up the lantern and moved it to the kitchen table. The chair squeaked as he pulled it back to sit down. Griffin moved his head but fell back asleep. With a rush of anxiety, Jed opened the journal. The pages creaked with the stiff binding. He fingered the crisp sheets.

Traces of color caught his attention. He flipped back until he found it. His father’s handwriting sprawled the length of the inside cover. His arms grew weak from the guilt that coursed through him. Jed would’ve looked at that thirteen years ago had he bothered to look.

His heartbeat slowed. He examined each word carefully and swallowed hard. He made out some of the letters. Except for the last two words. Those were easy. And they matched those inscribed in Thomas’s book from his mother.

He placed the letters in the wooden box. Maybe he would have all of them read to him someday. But at least he had them, and they served as reminders of a past filled with great joy and deep regret. Jed slapped the book shut. And for the first time since his mother’s death, tears welled in his eyes.

~*~

Dripping from an unusually warm mid-September day, Jed wiped the sweat off his brow with his sleeve. Grit from the fine dirt brushed his skin.

Griffin sat on the edge of a stool between the forge and the bellows and pulled on a piece of jerky. “When am I gonna get to beat on something? I feel like hammering after watching you do all this day after day.”

Jed half chuckled. “When I say so. But it’ll be soon enough.” He pounded the tip of the hot metal until the orange glow lost most of its color.

“Doesn’t look like you’re doing much there.” The boy paid attention.

“I’m drawing out the iron.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I flatten the iron and then pull it to stretch it out. These shawl pins are a sore spot to make.”

“Then why do it?”

“Mrs. Beauregard wants one.”

Griffin shifted his weight. “She gonna pay ya in real money? Or you gonna give it to her for a half sack of cornmeal?”

“The apple butter and biscuits you’ve eaten every day this week came from her.” Jed removed the prong from the fire and placed the iron on the anvil. He gave three more deft hits with his hammer. “She makes a good corn chowder too.”

“Why don’t you just tell ’em you only take money? That’s what I’d do.”

“Makes no difference. If I get money I turn around and buy food. It all comes out the same.”

“I’d want money. Ain’t never had much.” Griffin ran his hands over his knuckles. “Just what I won.”

“Appreciate what you have, and the Lord will give you more.”

“I don’t know about that. Maybe she’s just sweet on you.” A mischievous smile was plastered on Griffin’s face.

“That woman is about as wrinkled as Methuselah. And mean too. Always got her nose in somebody’s business,” Jed said.

Griffin slid off the stool and pumped the bellows. The boy was starting to get the hang of what to do without being told. “So, not the woman of your dreams.”

She doesn’t exist. Jed pushed the coals around. Griffin’s comment stirred something within him, but he ignored it.

“So why you ain’t got a woman?”

“You said you won money. How’d you do that?” Jed looked up.

Griffin returned to the stool and crossed his arms. His eyes twinkled. “Fightin’.” So that was the story behind the cuts on Griffin’s lips and cheeks and his red and swollen knuckles.

“I was one of the best on the streets. Only lost a few. But they were bigger’n me.”

“You’d take them out for their money?”

“No.” Griffin walked to the other side of the forge. “I ain’t no stealer. They asked me to fight. Said if they liked what they saw they’d toss money at us. When the fight was over, we’d pick up our loot. If the other was too broken to get up, the winner would take it all. Just the way it is.”

Jed placed the iron on the edge of the anvil and hammered at an angle to form the curve for the pin.

Griffin dug the toe of his boot into the dirt as his face hardened. “Sometimes I’d shove a coin or two into the loser’s pocket if I thought he deserved it. Someone did that for me once. Or at least I thought it was the fighter. Maybe it was somebody just watchin’. I woke up a few hours later and could barely move. When I finally got up, there was a sack next to me with an apple, a hunk of stale bread, and a piece of dry meat.”

“You said they asked you to fight.” Jed turned the iron over and gave it a few more swift hits. “Who exactly are you talking about?”

Griffin shrugged. “Not sure who they were. Men in nice clothes mostly, although some were drunks. An older kid twice my size stole a blanket and some food I had stashed. They saw me take him down, and the next morning found me on the streets. Woke me up, fed me, and told me if I’d fight in the alley while people watched they’d feed me again. So, I snatched that idea real good.”

“How often did you do that?”

Griffin shrugged. “Started out every now and again. Then it became several times a week. I slept in the same area so they’d know where to find me. If they didn’t come for a few days and I got hungry, I’d go looking for them. They were nice to me, but I could tell they weren’t men to be reckoned with. Later that fall I saw two of them get taken by the sheriff outside the market area.”

Jed wondered who the men were and how much money they made staging brawls. “So, you like to fight, then?”

“I didn’t at first. But I didn’t go hungry. Neither did my buddies.”

“Where are your friends now?”

Griffin’s face paled. His gaze drifted across the shop, though he didn’t appear to look at anything. He shuffled toward the door, unlatched the gated rail, and sauntered out.

Jed went back to work.