Like the warmth of winter candlelight cast across a beloved, worn book, he was. What he did was blazing with boldness when Jackson Lovett plucked my courting candle out of the dirt, carried it up the porch, and stuffed it into his pocket that night.
“Cussy Mary,” he’d said. “I’ll be needing this for my daughter when she gets her first courter.”
I stood. “You?”
From behind his back, he pulled out a fisted posy of pretty blue-eyed Marys.
“If you and Honey’ll have me?”
There was a promise in his voice, hope in his eyes, and a lick of stubbornness in his face.
“Me and my babe have ourselves everything we need right here, Jackson Lovett.”
With his other hand, Jackson reached out and took mine. I pulled it free and turned away, afraid, crossing my ugly blue hands under my arms. Afraid of the feelings running through me.
From her stall, Junia nickered into the coming night. Out in the yard, Jackson’s steed blew back. Frogs and other night critters trilled and beckoned the cooling darkness, rolling into my discomfort.
Jackson set the wildflowers on the wood railing, circled to face me, gently clasping my hands.
“I ain’t accepting charity, Jackson.” I untangled our hands again and turned to go inside. “I don’t need it. I have myself a respectable position, a proper life with my books. And I will make it a good one for me and Honey.” I grabbed the door latch.
“Cussy Mary.” He stepped closer, put a finger under my chin, seeking my eyes, trying to lock us together. “The WPA makes exceptions for married women now, and I’ll see to it you get permission to tote books. You and those books are a shining light for our people. For me.”
I’d heard, but still I pushed him away with mistrustful eyes.
“I read the paperwork,” Jackson said. “Despite those ladies down at the Library Center who were none too helpful when I told them why I wanted to—for you.”
I could see Harriett’s and Eula’s pinched, confused faces, their reddening cheeks and tight-fisted envy.
“Cussy, I went to your papa and sought his permission to give you a proper courting, to ask for your hand.”
Wide-eyed, I spun to face him. “You…you went to Pa?” I asked, surprised Pa hadn’t gone to him to wheedle a courtship.
“Sure enough. The first time, after you brought those books to my hill, the second was after I saw you at the Library Center. There was a third after a certain mule ate your flowers.” He cleared his throat. “A fourth and fifth. Your pa turned me down six times in all. Six times.” He held up six fingers, wiggling them, and shook his head.
“Six?”
“And there wasn’t going to be a seventh, and I had to explain just that to Elijah Carter,” he said firmly. “Same as I did with those fussy library ladies at the Center when they tried to keep the paperwork from me.”
“Why would you marry a Blue?”
“I told your papa I love you, and I’m telling you now, and I’ll damn sure nail that surety to every Kentucky crag, post it on every town door. I love you, Cussy Mary. And I will love our children, blue or white, it matters none.”
Forever I’d let the darkness and brokenness live inside—let others keep it there. His words were as fine as any prayer, and I wanted so bad to fall into his arms and get the salvation, but after accepting for so long what other folks thought of me, it was easier, safer not to.
“I promised your papa I would love and protect you and the babe. I promise you this now.”
To think that the baby could be safe, protected, was what every Kaintuck mama longed for in this wild, unforgiving land. Still, I had my route, my books, and I felt a safeguard, a necessity in those treasures, and found my own strength like no other.
“I give you my word—my absolute love,” he said. “Cussy—”
I placed a steadying hand on the splintered board of the old cabin where I’d been born, raised by my folks, the one who was no longer here and the ill one who barely remained.
“No, Jackson, I can’t. I won’t leave my pa sickly and alone.”
“There’s room on the mountain for Elijah—all of us.”
Ever so gentle, he ran a thumb over my cheek.
The pain of poverty, years of shame, scorn, and loneliness paled, and I tried to break free and grasp the hope, embrace this wonderful, odd sentiment called love.
“I love you. You. And I mean to be the good man you deserve and promise to become the better man that you’ll make me. I want to sit by the hearth every night, read to our young’uns, and grow old together. Please”—he held out his palm, waiting, his words wrapped in a strangeness I’d never heard—“Cussy Mary, be my bride and leave this dark hollow. Come up to the mountain with me.”
In that moment, I looked into his eyes and know’d he meant the tender words, every one of them. And I know’d I wanted to be on that mountain with him forever.
He pulled me to him, pressed the promises onto my lips, setting them afire in roaring reds and oranges.
“For my beautiful book mistress,” he whispered, plucking up the flowers and pressing the sky-blue and white velvet blossoms into my hands.
Weren’t a single soul who’d ever breathed words like that to me, ever uttered or saw me as anything other than a color, an ugly color—and said so too—or ever made me hear it as a truth. But Jackson Lovett did. And for the first time in my life, the ugliness vanished, and I felt a light dance in me and rise out of the darkness.
“Marry me?” he asked.
I heard a pureness in his proposal, the prayer from his heart, and a certainty that he’d been saving it a lifetime and just for me.
“Marry me, Cussy Mary, and I promise to spend every waking breath trying to be worthy of you.”
My voice became strangled with tears. I could only nod a feverish yes.