Skyward. Mary Monroe Alice
Читать онлайн книгу.
cringed inwardly at seeing him scrape the burnt edges from the toast. He had a sleepy look about him with his tousled hair and heavy-lidded eyes. He looked so boyish she had to stop herself from calling out “Eat up!” the way her aunts had when she was growing up and fiddling with the food on her plate.
“That’ll be him,” she replied.
Harris set his elbows on the table. “Lijah,” he concluded before slathering the blackened toast with jam.
Ella felt another swift flush of embarrassment at the sorry breakfast and quickly returned to the kitchen and poured herself a fortifying second cup of coffee. She’d already been up for hours. The first one up, she’d showered quickly in the single bathroom, then dressed in jeans and a thick navy sweater in record time. The house felt strange to her and she’d fought off a sudden attack of homesickness and doubt as to why she’d ever left home in the first place. But she marshaled her will, focused on the task at hand, then went in search of a broom and dustpan. She’d found a butcher’s-style apron hanging on a hook in the kitchen and the broom behind the kitchen door. Tools in hand, she went directly to the woodstove. As she’d suspected, the stove had long since gone cold to the touch.
Woodburning stoves were commonplace in Vermont and in no time she’d swept the ashes, dumped them outdoors and revved up a good fire with wood she found in a basket on the front porch. Then, after washing her hands, she thought it high time to make better acquaintance with the kitchen. The north was in her blood, after all, and a chill in the morning air energized her.
Now, looking around the kitchen, Ella thought again how it really was a pathetic little room. Everything was out of proportion. The miniature Roper stove was so small she’d bet it had been pulled into service from a camper. In contrast, the porcelain farm sink was deliciously enormous. It stuck far out from the narrow, dark green Formica counter like a full-term belly on a thin woman. It would be fine for washing big pots and produce, and she wondered if Marion hadn’t bathed in it a few times over the years. There was also the tiny refrigerator—sans mice—an ancient toaster with a dangerously frayed cord and beautiful hand-hewn wood cabinets that looked so heavy she hoped the wall wouldn’t collapse under their weight. All in all, a challenge to even the most capable cook—which she was not.
Ella sighed, hoping she’d find a few good cookbooks in the bookshelves to steer her through the ordeal. She was about to add a dollop of milk to her coffee but stopped, seeing how little was left in the jug. She thought Marion would likely want some when she awoke, and with a resigned sigh she put the remaining milk in the fridge. Frowning at her cup of jet-black coffee, she joined Harris at the table.
“We need milk,” she said, taking a seat.
“I’ll go shopping today.”
“No need. I can go, once you tell me where the nearest grocer is. I’m good at directions, as you can tell,” she added with a slight smile. “We’ll need to work out some kind of system for shopping. A budget and all. I expect you’ll give me a weekly allowance?”
“If that works best for you.”
He wasn’t much of a talker, but he was trying to be amenable. “I got up early and took a look around. I made out a list of things we need,” she said, pulling a sheet of paper from her apron pocket. In two tidy columns, she’d started to list all manner of groceries, sundries and cleaning supplies she’d need to get the job started. In fact, she could feel the caffeine racing through her veins and couldn’t wait to roll up her sleeves. She very much wanted to make a good start.
“Of course, I want to ask you what kind of meals you and Marion prefer, and what kind of things you hate, like onions, peppers, that sort of thing. You’re not allergic to anything?”
“No, but Marion’s not great with vegetables. Especially not okra.”
She laughed. “I wouldn’t know an okra from a collard green, anyway.”
“Oh.”
Ella thought it sounded more of a groan than a comment. She tapped her fingers on the rim of her cup before setting it down and folding her hands on the table. “Mr. Henderson, I suppose now’s the time to tell you I’m not the best cook.”
He looked up with a worried expression.
“It’s just that I grew up with my aunts, you see,” she hurried to explain. “They own an inn and they just love to cook. My aunt Eudora is a master chef. She can make a béarnaise sauce that would send you swooning. And her desserts!” Ella rolled her eyes. “Not to be believed, all made with fresh Vermont cream and butter.
“Aunt Rhoda is a baker. She has no interest in anything but breads, rolls, cakes, pies and the most delicate pastries. She always smells of sweet flour and has these big strong hands that can knead out a kink in your shoulders as readily as a glob of dough. They received a four-star rating from Fodor’s,” she added with pride.
Harris was now looking at her with an air of hopefulness. Realizing what he was thinking, Ella shook her head and smiled sheepishly. “So, you see, there was nothing left for me to do but clean up after them. That’s what I’m good at. Cleaning. Really, I know more household hints than Heloise and my specialty is getting rid of germs. I’m organized, too. Even as a little girl I could take charge of the pantry, and let me tell you, I ran a tight ship at the hospital.” She glanced around the room, narrowing her eyes in speculation. “And I can see I’ve got my work cut out for me.”
“But, you do know how to cook?” Concern deepened the creases in his long forehead.
“Sort of,” she confessed. “After all, I’ve lived on my own for years.” She refrained from telling him that, other than the hospital cafeteria, she existed mainly on food that came out of boxes, the freezer or from care packages from the aunts. “My aunts taught me the rudiments, of course. I mean, I can boil water and I know what bake and fry mean. I figure with a good cookbook, how hard can it be?”
Harris looked at the congealed, undercooked bacon on the plate like a condemned man.
“This Lijah,” she asked, eager to go back to the earlier subject. “Does he work here?”
“He’s the fellow I was telling you about. The one who carried that eagle in his bare arms? Had to be him coming out of the cabin, that cagey old coot,” he added, the affection in his eyes belying the scold in his tone.
“You didn’t know he was there?”
Harris shook his head. “He’s a strange man, decent and hardworking, but it’s an unusual situation. He lives in St. Helena, but he followed this eagle north to its nesting area. They have this…relationship, I guess you’d call it.” He paused, recollecting the night he came upon Lijah standing outside Santee’s pen, anxiously peering in. “It’s a rare and beautiful thing to witness, actually. He says he’ll stay only as long as his eagle does. I doubt he expected to stay this long. Then again, he didn’t expect for his eagle to get shot, either. I’m not sure where he’s staying, or even how to reach him, for that matter. When I asked him about it, he just said, ‘I do all right.’ I accepted that and let him be. He’s Gullah.”
Ella shook her head, not understanding what that meant.
He leaned back in his chair, stretching long legs in jeans under the table. “Gullah is both a local culture and a language descended from enslaved Africans. I guess you could say it’s a legacy that was born during the slave trade, flourished on the plantations and, because of the isolation of the Sea Islands, survives to today. You see evidence of the culture all throughout the Lowcountry. The sweet-grass baskets, hoppin’ John, music.” He smiled with recollection. “Every once in a while I hear Lijah slip into Gullah when he’s talking to the birds—especially that eagle he likes to think is his. I can’t understand most of what he’s saying, but I’ll be damned if the birds don’t.” He shook his head, chuckling softly at the memory. “They sit and listen like children with a bedtime story.”
“Does he come around often?”