The Soldier's Wife. Cheryl Reavis
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road. A cold wind blew off the mountain, and her hair swirled about her face. She pulled her shawl tighter around her and listened intently, but she couldn’t hear or see anything that might have caused the birds’ alarm. Even so, her heart pounded with fear.
“Please,” she whispered, and it occurred to her that all her prayers since Thomas Henry went off to war had come down to that one word. She felt it with every bit of strength she had whenever she thought of him, or the girls, or herself.
Please.
She took a quiet breath and waited. She was so tired of jumping at every little sound and shadow, of being hungry, of being on a mountain ridge alone.
“Thy will,” she whispered. “Thy will, not mine.”
For nearly four years she’d lived in the Garth family cabin with Thomas Henry’s two younger sisters. His mother, a kindly but frail woman, had died less than a year after he’d left. He had been gone so long! Sayer wondered if she would even recognize him when she saw him again. And how strange it was. Of late, in her mind’s eye, he always looked the way he’d looked when he was a boy. She could barely remember the dashing young soldier she had so hurriedly wed. The truth was she’d been too ill at the time to remember much of anything. She knew that he had suddenly appeared at her bedside early one bright Sunday morning and had informed her uncle, John Preston, and his wife, Cecelia, that he would be bringing a preacher that very afternoon, and ill or not, he intended to marry one Sayer Preston before he marched off to war. He wouldn’t be put off and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Sayer gave a quiet sigh because the truth was she didn’t really know if she remembered the incident or if she only knew about it because people who claimed to have been there had told her. She could recall the illness easily enough, the fever, the way her body had ached and sunlight had hurt her eyes and made her head pound so. She knew that she had said yes to Thomas Henry’s proposal and that she had worn a freshly starched and ironed—and far too big—nightdress borrowed from her aunt. It was much more elaborate than anything she’d ever owned. There were tucks all over the bodice and around the sleeves at the wrists. And so much lace—lace on the nightdress and the intricately tatted lace of the Spanish shawl she’d been covered in for decency. She remembered the beautiful butterfly-and-iris pattern of the shawl and the cedar-and-lavender smell of it—but not much else. She must have said the right words when the preacher asked, because their names—and the preacher’s—were written in the Garth family Bible, along with the names of two church-member witnesses. She thought that Thomas Henry’s mother had attended the ceremony, and the cook and the two hired girls had been allowed to come—which was only fitting since Sayer had spent so much of her time in their company.
But what she remembered so clearly had nothing to do with the wedding at all. What she remembered was a long-ago wagon ride from the railhead to the mountain house, and the way a boy named Thomas Henry Garth had stared at her the first day they met, stared and stared until she’d wanted to cry. She was used to living in her uncle’s house all but unnoticed—unless someone—her aunt Cecelia—decided she had done something wrong—and she hadn’t known how to withstand the scrutiny of this fair-haired boy with the gentle brown eyes. She remembered, too, the first thing he ever said to her.
I won’t bite you.
After a moment of forcing herself to return his steady gaze, she had been certain somehow that he was telling her the truth. He would never hurt her, and that belief was reinforced every summer because of the way his face always lit up when the train bringing her uncle and her aunt—and her—finally arrived at the railhead.
Thomas Henry was the one person in this world she knew she made glad, not because of anything she did or didn’t do, but simply because she existed. All through her childhood he had never missed waiting for the train, and he’d always brought a secret gift for her—some dried apples and cherries or pieces of honeycomb wrapped in brown paper, and once, when they were both nearly grown, a pencil—just in case she might like to write him a letter once in a while.
The pencil had alarmed her at first, but he had immediately understood.
“You just write to me if you feel like it,” he said. “Tell me what it’s like living in a town. I’ve never even been to a big town with a railroad through it. I won’t write back,” he hastened to reassure her. “It might cause...” He hadn’t finished the sentence, but she had known what he meant. Her aunt would never allow it. She knew that, but she had already begun arranging in her mind all the things he might like to know about the place where she lived—the ferry that crossed the river and the trains. He’d especially want to know about the trains, what kind and how many. She could count the whistles she heard in the daytime and at night and give a good estimation of that.
Remembering her forbidden enthusiasm for the plan suddenly made her smile. She had been pleased with all his gifts, but she had truly cherished that cedar pencil. What little was left of it she now used to write to him while he was away fighting in the war, because it made her feel some kind of connection to him, and she sorely needed that.
She sighed. Why couldn’t she remember his face? Not long after he’d left, he’d written that he had had a daguerreotype made and had sent it to her. The daguerreotype had never arrived, and it seemed to her now that she very much needed it.
She stood watching the path a little longer, until she was certain that no human had disturbed the mourning doves. A sudden snippet of memory came to her after all. Thomas Henry, leaving her almost immediately after the wedding ceremony, taking her hands and pressing a kiss on the back of each one, despite the onlookers. And then he’d winked, the way he often did when no one was looking, and pulled the blue ribbon from her hair, the closest thing she’d had to a bridal veil. He’d stuffed the ribbon into an inside pocket in his uniform. “Now, don’t go and forget me,” he whispered in that teasing way he had. It had made her want to laugh and cry all at the same time. And then she’d given him the only cherished possession she had—a small Bible that had belonged to her mother.
“I can’t take this,” he said, clearly moved that she wanted him to have it.
“It’s so you’ll know,” she whispered.
“Know what?”
“Know I won’t go and forget you.”
No, she thought now. She would never forget him. It was only his face she had trouble remembering. She knew in her heart that she might not have survived her illness if not for God’s grace in the form of the gift Thomas Henry Garth had offered her. Marriage to him had given her a sincere hope for a better life. It was true that so far that life had been hard, but she thanked God every day for it. Thomas Henry had left for a seemingly unending war, and she had remained in the mountains, never regretting for a moment that she hadn’t returned to Salisbury with Uncle John and Aunt Cecelia on the train. She looked toward the cabin. Both of Thomas Henry’s sisters were dancing around trying to stay warm while they poured limewater into the pans of shelled corn to make hominy. Hopefully, some of it would actually hit the corn.
Amity was eight, and Beatrice was ten, and they both had the Garth brown eyes and curling honey-blond hair. Since Thomas Henry’s mother had died, they had been both a great responsibility and a great help. Sayer went out of her way to make sure they were aware only of the latter. She didn’t want them to ever feel the way she had felt in her uncle’s house. Her real worry was that she was neither brave enough nor strong enough to keep them safe. She believed she might have long since given up trying to hang on to Thomas Henry’s land if not for them. They were the true Garth family legacy until Thomas Henry came home again, and she hoped desperately that she wouldn’t fail them.
The winters had been particularly hard, and she had no doubt that they would have starved if it hadn’t been for old Rorie Conley, who lived atop the ridge on the other side of Deep Hollow. It was a short distance to Rorie’s cabin as the crow flies, but a hard trek down into the hollow and back up again to the other side on foot. The big sack of shelled corn she’d brought them on the back of a mule would last them for a while, and Sayer had taken great pains to make sure both girls understood that they were not to tell anyone—anyone—where