“Do you think they’d let me stir it?” Fran looked up at Ben.
“I don’t see why not.” She looked so eager Ben couldn’t keep from smiling at her.
Something about this woman grabbed at him the way no other woman ever had. She was different. Different wasn’t always good, but with Francine it felt good. She had a way of looking at everything here with fresh eyes.
His view of it all should be fresh too after so long away, but what he kept seeing anew were all the wrong things about the mountains. Barefoot kids because they didn’t have shoes. Men going to work the mines or moonshining against the law because that was the only way to make money. A place where a stretch of dry weather might mean going hungry come winter without the vegetables put up in the cellar. His ma worked dawn to dark to see that their cellar was well stocked.
He wanted to be home. He was home, but a restless feeling kept scratching at him. He needed to figure out what tomorrow held for him. Funny how he hadn’t worried about that while he was in the army. Then his whole focus had been on surviving to get home. He hadn’t thought about what he’d do once he was here. He hadn’t considered how changed he would be from the boy who had left for the war.
He’d seen the world outside the mountains. Serving in the army opened up opportunities. He could go to school on the GI Bill, but diplomas didn’t count for much in the hills.
What was it his pa used to say when Ben started worrying a problem like a dog licking a sore? You don’t have to know the last step. Just the first one. You and the good Lord can figure out the rest of it on the way.
Today was a gift. Each day was. Plenty of soldiers’ only trip home was in a body bag. They never had the chance to open the gift of this day or stand next to a pretty girl and see their world through her eyes. Best to stop fretting about tomorrow and grab hold of today.
He nodded toward one of the women stirring the cane juice. “I can ask Miss Jessie over there if you can have a turn. She used to go to church with us before she moved across the way to where her daughter lives.”
“Everything is family up here, isn’t it?” Fran looked a little wistful.
“Don’t you have family?”
“My mother. Dad died and Mother remarried a year ago. So I have a stepfather, but I hardly know him.”
“No sisters and brothers?” Ben couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.
“Nope. But I always wished I did.”
“I’ll loan you mine. I figure in a week or probably before a day was over, you’d be sending them packing back up the hill to me.”
“I’d give it a try with Sadie and Woody, but I’m not sure I could get Nurse Dawson to go along with the idea. Especially if they brought those new pups with them. Sarge is winning her over, but I can’t see her taking in a Bruiser.” Fran laughed. “But what about this stirring? You think I can do it?”
“I think you can do anything you set your mind to.” Now why did he say that? He believed it, but a man didn’t have to let every livelong word out into the air.
“There have been times I’ve wondered about that.” Her smile faded for a moment, but then came back brighter than ever. “But I would like to know how to stir sorghum.”
“We can make it happen.”
He tapped Miss Jessie on the shoulder. When she looked around at him, she propped her paddle across the tin trough to give him a hug. “Ben Locke, if you ain’t a sight for sore eyes. I hear’d you was home from the war. I prayed for you ev’ry night. Along with all the other boys over there.”
“Thank you for that, Miss Jessie. Times were I needed those prayers.”
“Could be what brung you home. And now that you’re here, it’s time you settled down.” She gave him a look over. “I got a pretty little granddaughter what’s got grown since you been away. I bet she’d make eyes at you.” The woman grinned up at him and then noticed Fran beside him. “And looka here. You must be one of Mrs. B’s nurses. Come for a look-see at our sorghum stir-off.”
“I’m Nurse Howard.” Francine held out her hand.
Miss Jessie laughed and pushed Francine’s hand to the side. “We do hugs round about here, child. You at a stir-off, you have to abide by mountain rules no matter how far away you come from. You ain’t one of them English nurses from across the ocean, are you?”
“No, much closer than that. Cincinnati.”
“That ain’t so far. Jest over the river in Ohio. Some of my folks went up there to work in the munitions factories during the war. Settled in. Ain’t come back down this way yet awhile.” She shook her head. “I can’t imagine not having these hills around me.”
“It’s a beautiful place.” Fran stepped back from the hug, taking some of the green stain of the juice with her. “I love the mountains.”
And that’s what Ben liked best about Francine. She might not be a mountain girl, but she was here because she wanted to be. Now he just had to decide if he was there for the same reason. He couldn’t believe he was even wondering about that. He was home. With his people. His roots went deep. And yet . . .
He pushed those thoughts aside as he watched Miss Jessie show Francine how to stir the squeezings without sloshing any out.
“You got to get some shoulder into it,” the woman told Francine. “But keep back from the fire. Don’t want to catch your skirt tail on fire.” The woman laughed. “Reckon you don’t have no worry about that in your men’s clothes.”
Francine laughed with her as she worked the paddle.
“Don’t skip the corners,” Miss Jessie warned. “And you gotta keep that scum skimmed off.”
By the time Francine turned the stirring paddle back over to Miss Jessie, the woman was ready to claim her as a granddaughter too. Everywhere Francine went, her smile won over people.
After they ate the meal laid out on planks set across sawhorses, the first batch of sorghum was declared done and the syrup poured into jars. Then a couple of men passed out short bits of stalk for the children and anybody else who wanted to scrape the cooked syrup off the sides and bottoms of the tin cooker. Ben lined up with Francine to get a taste of the sweet molasses. He hadn’t enjoyed a stir-off this much since he was Woody’s age. All because of the woman beside him.
They were sitting on the tailgate of his truck in the shade, licking the last of the sweet syrup off the stalks, when a gunshot went off over close to the woods. Then somebody was screaming.
The sound of the gun shook Ben. For a few seconds he was back on the battlefield with men dying around him. Where it was up to him to keep them alive.
“Was that—”
“Gunfire.” He jumped off the tailgate, his eyes searching through the people. He spotted Sadie clinging to his mother’s skirt, while Ma was doing the same as Ben. Searching through the people to let her eyes touch on the ones who mattered most to her. And there was Becca with some other young women.
Then Jeralene was running toward them. Blood on her sleeve. “Nurse. You’ve got to help him. Woody’s been shot.”
Ben couldn’t move. He’d seen too many boys die. He couldn’t bear to watch his brother be one of them.