I Shall Be Near to You(3)

I am off the stoop and across the yard, moving fast as I can through the snow, glad to escape Mama and Betsy. Chickens flap and squawk out of my way because they know better. At the barn, my hand stops on the rough cold metal handle of its sliding door. I can’t believe the voices coming from inside.

‘It’s good wages, Sir,’ Jeremiah says, and my hand won’t move on the handle, not for all the world, no matter how fast my heart pounds, not before I know why he’s come. ‘A hundred and fifty dollars for joining plus regular pay after.’

‘Seems to me there’s a damn sight more important things than money,’ Papa says, high and mighty like he knows best.

‘Well, Sir’—Jeremiah uses his polite voice—‘a man can’t live without money. I aim to buy us a farm, supposing you agree. The Army’s paying.’

I want to laugh to hear him say us after waiting two days. After I’ve been convincing myself I was wrongheaded for all my wishes about Jeremiah.

‘I’m sure Rosetta’ll have something to say about that,’ Papa says. ‘She knows every farm in this valley.’

‘We’ve got ideas, Sir. Rosetta’s the only girl I ever met who cares about farming the same as me.’

It’s like Papa don’t hear Jeremiah talking proud about me. He asks, ‘You ain’t got the money to support a wife, why you aiming to get yourself one?’

There’s a funny strangling sound before Jeremiah says, ‘It was mostly Rosetta’s idea, Sir, getting married now. Before—’

Whatever tool Papa’s working on fixing clatters to the ground. He’s laughing. ‘Well, don’t she just beat all. Been near to the death of her Mama, but that girl’s the best farmhand I ever had. Can’t imagine hiring a better one, but I suppose if it’s her idea I can’t say no.’

‘Thank you, Sir.’

Hearing how Jeremiah has spoken for me, I lose track of my feet and slip right there on the icy snow, clutching at the barn door handle to keep from falling.

There’s footsteps in the hay and I scramble, running to look like I’ve come straight from the house, throwing off my dirty apron and shoving it beneath the lilacs that are no more than sticks jutting straight up out of the snow.

I skid on the stoop’s frosted planks as the barn door opens. Out walks Papa, clapping his hand on Jeremiah’s shoulder. Jeremiah is taller than Papa and his legs don’t look so spindly no more. He is wearing his Sunday best to come calling, nicer than anything my Papa has ever worn, but it don’t hide how his arms are thicker than Papa’s.

‘Rosetta,’ Papa calls when he sees me shivering. ‘Looks like you got yourself a nice young man here, says you’re after marrying him and now he’s trying to make it right by asking my permission.’

When he climbs the steps, I tell him what I told Jeremiah, the thing he will understand most, not all the things I’m feeling.

‘I don’t want to be no spinster, Papa. And if he goes off—’

Papa squints. Then his hand is on my head, messing my hair, and he says, ‘Then I guess we might as well tell your Mama, ease her mind on one account anyway.’ He points at Jeremiah, opening the kitchen workroom door. ‘You stay for dinner.’

It is warm inside and we three squeeze in among the butter churn and the washtub and Mama’s spinning wheel. Jeremiah’s heat is behind me and I turn to smile at him, his ears looking wind-chapped when he says he’ll stay.

‘I imagine you two got things to be discussing, now you’re fixed on each other,’ Papa says. He sits down on the bench and pulls off his work boots, the soles almost worn through. ‘How about I’ll head in, get Mama working on another plate for supper, and you two can sit right here until it’s ready?’

I nod. Right before he goes in the door, he turns back and adds, with a shrug and a glint in his eye, ‘But then, you can’t be upset if it turns out I can’t keep the news to myself.’

After Papa goes, we stand as close as we can get, looking everywhere but each other, like we are strangers, like there must be some new way of talking now everything is settled between us but we don’t have the knack of it yet. When Papa’s voice comes through the wall, rumbling too low to make out the words, Mama trills back like a bird and I don’t need to hear what she’s saying.

‘She’s pleased,’ I say, and look at Jeremiah full on.

‘And what about you?’ he asks, a smile starting. ‘You pleased too?’

I throw my arms right around him then, squeezing tight.

‘What took you so long?’ I ask, my ear to his chest, his heart pounding as loud as mine.

‘That’s all you got to say?’ he says, and cocks his head to look down at me, the smile gone.

‘I thought you weren’t coming! I been waiting for near on three days now and—’

‘You counting Sunday?’

I draw back. ‘Course I’m counting Sunday. You didn’t ask my Papa on Sunday, did you? Made me wait most the day Sunday, all day Monday, and now it’s supper on Tuesday. That seems like something close to three days from my way of thinking.’ Without my telling it, my hand has pulled free and got itself on my hip.

‘It ain’t so simple as just asking, Rosetta.’ He reaches out, tickling at my hip, working to gather my hand back into his.