Lynna Banning - The Courtship

Behind her, she heard the two young women whisper together, and then a soft giggle. They were talking about her. She could feel it in her bones. Pain swallowed up her envy.

She had lived here in Dixon Falls ever since she was fifteen years old. Eleven full years, and she still felt like an outsider. Oh, people were polite enough; no one had ever been unkind to her except for schoolboy bullies years ago. But somehow she felt separate from everyone else, as if she didn’t belong.

She closed the door of the mercantile on the happy laughter of the two women, punctuated by Mr. Mercer’s deeper tenor voice. “Right this way, ladies. Allow me.”

An empty feeling yawned in the pit of Jane’s stomach. I feel so alone.

In the next moment, she felt her spine stiffen. Jane Charlotte, you stop that this instant. Don’t you dare go all mooney over your lot in life! Just because Papa is gone and Mama isn’t well doesn’t mean you are any less than you were before, does it?

Certainly not. She’d had private tutors, had studied history and Latin and Greek grammar, took years and years of piano lessons from Mama. She knew how to serve tea and plan a dinner party—everything a proper young lady should know. She was Ready.

But ready for what? What was it all for? She’d lived all these years in suffocating isolation. A bell jar. She’d never been allowed to join the other young people at socials because they “weren’t the right sort,” Papa said. She was never allowed to walk into town unless Papa accompanied her. No friends ever came to call. She had been so lonely growing up she hadn’t wanted to grow up!

But she had. She’d gone right ahead and done it, and before she knew what had happened, she had turned into an old maid.

Her steps slowed. Was this some kind of punishment for coming to live in a town full of Yankees?

She unlocked the door to her shop, surveyed the dim interior, and rocked back on the heels of her black buttoned leather shoes. She would need a kerosene lamp, even in the daytime. And a stove of some sort to heat her sadiron. And…

She gazed at the tiny space, small as a shoe box. At least it was clean. The air still smelled faintly of soap. She would bring the long cheval dressing mirror from the upstairs bedroom and Aunt Carrie’s bust form. What amazing foresight her mother’s older sister had shown when she insisted that the padded dressmaker’s form come west with them. Jane had used it ever since to fashion new garments for herself out of her mother’s old gowns. She used the illustrations in Godey’s Ladies’ Book for inspiration, and the fabrics had lasted through many remakings. She knew the styles had grown outdated over the years, the skirts too full, the tops too ornate, too stiff and formal for a small dusty town in Oregon. She always looked different. Out of place. And the townspeople still called her Queen Jane.

“But no more,” she vowed. It would be sheer joy to work with something crisp and new from the mercantile! With her first earned dollar, she would send for the latest edition of Godey’s book. “And,” she announced to the silent cherry sewing cabinet, “since I cannot any longer use our dining room table, I will need a cutting board. A nice big one. Propped up on…what?” she muttered to herself. She hadn’t the faintest notion. Barrels? Stacked-up old trunks?

“Sawhorses! Yes! Now where can I find—”

“Beggin’ yer pardon, Miz Jane…”

Jane whirled to see Lefty Springer standing in her open doorway. “Mr. Springer.”

“Lefty, ma’am, remember? Mose down to the blacksmith shop, he’s a pretty fair carpenter. Bet he’d cobble you up a pair of sawhorses quicker’n a frog snaps flies.”

“Of course! The perfect thing. Oh, I do admire a man who can think.” She headed for the door, then stopped dead in the middle of the room. She couldn’t go traipsing around town, down to the blacksmith’s shop, without an escort; it just wasn’t done. Mama would have a fit.

“Mr…. Lefty, I am so glad you came visiting this morning. I need your help.”

The old man beamed.

And when Mrs. Evangeline Tanner and Miss Letitia Price stepped through the mercantile doorway and onto the board walkway, they gasped and pointed.

“Well, did you ever see the like!”

“Queen Jane and that old one-armed freight wagon driver!”

Jane rested her fingers on Lefty’s extended good arm and was skipping—skipping!—across the street in the company of an old man who couldn’t stop grinning.

Rydell counted out ten dollar bills and handed them through the cage to the trim, gray-haired woman on the other side. “There you are, Mrs. Manning.”

The woman folded the bills into her black crocheted bag and smiled at him. “Thank you, Mr. Wilder. Now, you’ll remember to come on out and meet my granddaughter sometime, won’t you? She’s come all the way from Kansas City to visit for the summer.”

He watched the woman’s small black shoes move toward the bank entrance and shook his head. Only yesterday it seemed, Mrs. Manning’s daughter, Eula, had moved back East to be married; now Eula had a grown-up daughter looking to do the same thing. All of a sudden, he felt old.

And left out in an odd way. He’d sent Josiah, his bank clerk, home to be with his wife. The young man was so nervous at the prospect of their first child he was useless this morning, but—Rydell had to laugh—he himself wasn’t much better. All morning he’d done nothing but think about Jane Davis.

A small grimy fist appeared on the counter before him. “Kin you save this for me, mister?” The fingers unfolded to reveal a single copper penny.

Rydell leaned forward. A round freckled face peered up at him, wide blue eyes questioning.

“You want to deposit this in the bank?”

“Yessir. Else my brother’ll grab it from me. Will you save it for me?”

“Sure thing, son.” With a chuckle he slid the coin into a bank envelope. He’d not been much older than this when he’d started saving pennies, only there hadn’t been a bank then. Rydell saved all his earnings in a pickle jar secreted under his mattress.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Tommy. I helped the Queen Lady down the street set up a sawhorse ’n she done paid me.”

The Queen Lady? Did he mean Jane? He dipped the pen in the inkwell and scribbled on a piece of notepaper.

“Okay, Tommy, here’s your deposit receipt. When you want your money, just show it to the clerk.”

The boy nodded, and the round face disappeared.

A sawhorse? He’d step down the street and investigate, but he couldn’t leave the cash drawer unattended. He’d wait until noon, when he could lock up the safe.

Customers drifted in and out for the next hour, and Rydell’s curiosity grew. What the devil did Jane want with a sawhorse?

The clock on the wall tick-tick-ticked toward twelve. At one minute before noon, Tommy’s freckled visage reappeared at the counter.

“Mister, I got ’nother ’posit to make.”

Rydell reached for the envelope marked Tommy. “How much this time?”

“One big an’ one little. Here’s the little one.” He plopped another penny onto the smooth wood surface, and Rydell added it to the envelope.

“’N here’s the big one.” With both hands he lifted a tiny ball of orange fur and set it on the smooth oak surface. “It’s lost. I found it in the alley back of the livery stable, but if I take it home, my brother’ll steal it for sure.”

Rydell eyed the clock. “Okay, Tommy. I’ll take care of it.” He scooped the purring kitten into his coat pocket, where it curled up and burrowed its nose into a corner seam.

“Thanks, mister.”

Rydell sent the under-clerk to lunch, closed up the safe, and locked the front door of the bank. Then he headed up the street to see what Jane was up to.