Quick-eared like an owl, Billy said, “Yeah, I heard all this before. Gonna get your Little Rock gentleman with his big fancy house and slaves. Can’t wait to see how you get around owning slaves. You know how Paw feels about it.”
Sarah shrugged. Paw might rail against slavery. Butler might decry it as immoral. And, raised the way she’d been, the notion of it left her uneasy. But enough to scuttle the deal? Well, she’d have to attend to that problem if and when she encountered it.
And, by all that was holy, she’d have nice clothes.
Especially her dresses, many of which would be imported from Paris. Paw had bought her an imported dress the time he’d taken her to Little Rock. Real royal-blue silk from Paris. The lace had been from Belgium, and the collar and trim had been velvet. Though she’d outgrown it, she still had it up in her trunk. She’d figured she’d work on Paw to find her something before the fall trip.
Assuming Paw could get time from the war to take her like he’d promised. That it was now August, and no word—
“Damn all Friday!” Billy called. “You worthless today, or what? We’re trying to water the crops.”
She cut another channel in the ditch bank. “You swear like that again, I’ll have Maw whip you with a green willow switch, Billy Hancock.”
Across the ditch, hazelnut trees gave way to the forested slope, thick with maple, oak, hickory, and gum. Farther along, the giant mulberry trees beyond the field marked the yard around the two-story Hancock house. Behind it, a grove of pines and sumac obscured the old cabin. In the flat above the river stood the corrals, barns, tobacco fields, and stables.
“Gotta do something to get your attention,” Billy muttered. “You already wasted more of your life dreaming about living in a fancy house than you’ll ever spend living in one. And what is so exciting about this theater that Mrs. Pennoyer is running in Little Rock? You went on about it all through breakfast. It’s just people pretending to be other people.”
“You’ll never understand.”
Billy’s old yellow dog, Fly, lay in the shade beneath a tangle of honeysuckle and scratched as he dealt with a pesky flea. The yellow dog was a mongrel with light brown eyes. Sarah considered him more trouble than he was worth, but he kept the raccoons and deer from raiding the corn. Unfortunately crows and cutworms were a perplexing reality entirely beyond the old dog’s comprehension.
Sarah checked her water and stepped off the distance to the next row. The midsummer sun burned down hot on her back, baking the faded blue of her worn and threadbare cotton dress.
But what if Paw couldn’t take her this year? She’d be near to eighteen when he finally got around to it. A whole ’nuther year!
“What’s the matter?” Billy asked as she halfheartedly attacked the ditch bank with her hoe. “Yer not pinin’ away for that Hank Adamson, are ya? He sure as spit ain’t never going to own no fancy brick house in Little Rock. That’s gospel, I tell you.”
“Lot of good it would do me if’n I was. You bloodied his nose a’fore he left for General Pearce’s state army.”
“Some soldier he’ll make,” Billy muttered. “Three years older than me, and I didn’t even dust up my britches whaling the tar outta his hide.”
She slashed angrily at the soil, cutting a channel. “You’ve gotta stop it, Billy. He wasn’t doing no harm.”
“Oh? Why’d he want you to give him a token?” Billy propped his shovel, callused hands cupped over the handle top. He cocked his head so the August sun illuminated his battered straw hat and the insolent set of his shoulders. His half-squinted blue eyes studied her skeptically.
“Lots of soldiers carry tokens, something to remind them of home and people who care for them.”
“You care for him?” Billy screwed his face up and spit. “He’s not worth toad suck. Shifty, that’s what Hank Adamson is. And lazy. And not only that, I figger all he was after was a kiss. Maybe more. Up at the tavern I heard how soldiers talk. If’n he was all so high and honorable, what was he doing, sneaking around trying to talk to you?”
“He was afraid you’d thrash him.”
“Guess there’s more sense in him than I thought.”
“Billy, you … you infuriate me!” She hammered the hoe blade at the water, splashing it. “The only callers I get are the ones that Maw and Paw bring by. I’d like the chance to get to know some boy, that’s all.”
“Oh, like Shirley Winston? She’s sixteen and married, sure nuff. ’Course Jackson Darrow, uh … ‘got her with child,’ ain’t that what they say? And now what? Darrow, he done gone off to war. Probably gonna get his ass shot off and kilt. Then where’s Shirley at? Widowed, with a baby, that’s where. And what upstanding gentleman is gonna marry her and take her off to Little Rock to live in a big house?”
He shook his head, adding, “Paw left me in charge. Ain’t no man gonna sweep my sister off her feet and leave me looking like a three-fingered fool.”
Sarah fought down the burning rage. “Billy, ain’t no man in these parts gonna sweep me off my feet.” The last thing she wanted was to end up trapped in Benton County! But how was she going to learn how to enchant the right man without a little practice?
“I’m here to see to it, sis.” He gave her a blue-eyed and deadly look. “And it’s not just your honor. It’s that new rifle Paw promised. Ain’t nothing gonna get between me an’ a new rifle.”
She glared at him. “Why can’t you run off to war like Danny Goodman?”
“And leave you at the mercy of all them rascals from up at Elkhorn Tavern, the tannery, and clear down to Van Winkle’s mill?” He shook his head, grabbed
