Simple Jess Page 13

  The tenderloins, on the inside next to the backbone, were cut out next and laid in the barrow.

  Jesse cut apart the backbone near the base of the spine, separating the rib cage from the hams. The rib meat would be used for jerky. The hams would be the special prize for a special dinner.

  Once the meat was cut and loaded, Jesse pulled it to the area next to the smokehouse. He salted it all down and hung it carefully on the hooks inside. It would be left to dry and cool for several days. It was not necessary to actually smoke it, but the smokehouse was convenient for hanging it and provided protection from animals and the elements.

  It was late by the time Jesse finished his task. He was tired and his muscles ached, but in a way he felt better. He'd made a mistake, a bad mistake. He'd scared Miss Althea. He never wanted to do that. But he'd also brought her meat. It was a thing that a man did for a woman. Jesse was a man. Miss Althea was a woman. His mental acknowledgment of that stirred activity in the front of his trousers.

  "Stop it!" he whispered harshly to his own body. It did not immediately obey.

  To clean his blood splattered body and cool the ardor that plagued him, Jesse headed to the water trough. He stripped off his shirt and began washing the scent of blood and deer from his body. The cool water washed him quickly. It took more time to chill the sparks of sensual desire that made him human and male.

  From behind him he heard a soft familiar voice call his name.

  "Jesse."

  Startled, he turned abruptly and clumsily, almost tripping over the woman standing behind him.

  "Miss Althea," he said, righting himself by grasping her shoulders. A spark passed between them, like a tiny bolt of lightning. Jesse didn't know what it meant, but he saw Miss Althea's gaze fall on the naked expanse of his damp muscled chest and he was embarrassed somehow. He hastily grabbed his shirt and pulled it on. He could not, however, concentrate well enough to do up the buttons, so he just pulled his suspenders up on his shoulders to hold his shirt more or less closed. He gave a worried glance toward the front of his trousers, hoping his present condition was not obvious. The loose, homespun butternut hid a multitude of sins.

  Hastily he brought his gaze back to Miss Althea. She wasn't looking at his chest anymore, she was looking up at his face. Unlike the last time he'd seen her, she didn't look angry. Her silky brown hair was tidy again and her cheeks were no longer flushed, but prettily pink. She was standing close to him. Close enough that the strong scent of the deer that lingered around him was softened by the warm, sweet fragrance that was her own.

  "I . . . I . . ." Jesse verbally stumbled as he searched his brain for something that he'd meant to say. He had something important that he had to tell her. It was something he had planned to say to her at the first opportunity. This was the first opportunity, but he couldn't remember. He searched his brain, knowing that the words were there. He couldn't find them.

  "It's a fine piece of meat," he tried finally, pointing jerkily with his thumb to the smokehouse in the distance.

  "Yes, it is," she said softly. "And thank you very much. It's a fine deer that you and my son brought me."

  That was it, Jesse realized. He and Baby-Paisley had gotten the deer. But the little boy shouldn't have been with him. He was supposed to apologize about not bringing the boy home right away. That's what he had planned to do. He was supposed to explain that he just hadn't thought about it. That he hadn't known on his own, although he'd sensed that something was wrong. He hadn't known because nobody had told him, but now that he knew what he was supposed to do, he would always do it, next time and forevermore.

  "I'm sorry." He managed to get the two words out from the torrent of thoughts that flooded through his brain. "I made a bad mistake and I'm sorry."

  Her eyes widened and then she smiled. She looked so pretty when she smiled.

  "No, Jesse, I'm the one who made the bad mistake and I am sorry," she said.

  Jesse's brow wrinkled in puzzlement.

  "Baby-Paisley told me that you didn't really take him with you," she said. "He just followed you out there."

  "He told you that?"

  "Yes."

  Jesse nodded manfully. "He's a fine feller, that little boy of yours. Lots of times folks do things wrong and let someone else take the blame. It takes a fine character to own up to failings. You done raised that boy to be a man, Miss Althea."

  "A man? He's only a baby."

  "He helped me git the deer," Jesse said. "He followed me right out there in the woods. And we was real quiet, so he must be just a natural tracker."

  Jesse thought his words to be a high compliment. Miss Althea had a right to be very proud of her little boy. Jesse hoped that she was.

  "I thought he was some critter at first. The dogs didn't pay him no mind 'cause he's familiar to them. It was just like a man going hunting. That's what I told him and I tell you the same."

  "Baby-Paisley is much too young to go hunting," Althea told him firmly. "But I do know now that it wasn't your fault," she continued. "I blamed you and I struck you and it wasn't even your fault."

  Jesse's brow furrowed. "Oh, but I shoulda known," he protested. "When I seen him, I shoulda known that he ought not to be there."

  "How could you have known that?"

  "Other fellers would have known," Jesse told her solemnly. "And I almost knew myself. When I saw him, I thought, 'This ain't right,' but I just let it go and I'm not doing that no more, Miss Althea. I made myself a vow. When I'm thinking that something is wrong, I'm going to say so from now on. I promise."

  "Well good, but just so you know, Baby-Paisley is not allowed out of sight of the house without me with him."

  Jesse nodded. "Are you gonna whoop him?"

  Althea shook her head decisively. "I do not believe in striking children," she said.

  "It's not so bad," Jesse told her. "I been whooped plenty of times."

  "I've had my share of beatings, too," she said. "And I don't believe they really serve any purpose. Baby-Paisley is quilt bound all afternoon. I spread a quilt out upon the floor and he's not allowed to move farther than the edges of it until suppertime."

  Jesse pondered her words a moment before nodding thoughtfully. "That's pretty prime punishment for a busy little feller like Baby-Paisley."

  "And no less than he deserves," Althea answered. "I want him to be grateful for the freedom he has of the yard. And make him unwilling to risk it by straying away again."

  Her tone was stern, but loving. Just like a mama ought to be, Jesse thought. And she was pretty, too. In fact she was sure prettier than any mama on the mountain. Jesse's own mama had been pretty, he remembered that. But somehow the way he felt looking at Miss Althea wasn't at all the way he felt about his own mama.

  "Are you going to finish with being mad at him by supper?"

  Althea smiled, curious. "Well yes, I suppose that I will."

  Jesse gestured for her to follow and headed over toward the smokehouse. In a small pail of water just inside the door floated the ugly brown deer's liver that Baby-Paisley had carried in his hat.

  Althea's distaste at the sight indicated that she found it no more appealing now than she had in the woods.

  "The boy did help me get the game," Jesse said. "You slice it real thin and it'll cook up mighty fine with some onion."

  "Oh, Jesse," Althea said, shaking her head. "Neither Baby-Paisley nor I ever eat organ meat. We don't like it."

  "He'll like this, ma'am," Jesse assured her. "He'll like it better than anything that he has ever tasted."

  "And why would that be?"

  Jesse shook his head as if he didn't know. But on some level, he did.

  "It's hard to explain about, Miss Althea," he said. "Boys get tired of being boys. They want to be men. I know it seems like a hurry-up thing, he's still so little and all. But sometimes a feller just need to feel grown."

  "And helping to bring down the deer made Baby-Paisley feel grown?"

  "It sure made me feel grown,"
Jesse admitted.

  His expression took on a serious aspect as he searched his thoughts for some kind of explanation.

  "I guess I understand it better than most 'cause there ain't no feller on the mountain that felt like a boy longer than I did," he said. "And there ain't nothing so fine as feeling like a man, even if the feeling only lasts a minute or two. He don't really want to be grown yet, but it's nice to have a taste of it anyway."

  "And this stinking deer liver is going to be a taste of it?"

  Jesse grinned at her. "If you're not going to be mad at him anymore, maybe you could fix him the liver. If he don't like it, after all, and won't eat it, you can always give it to the dogs."

  She laughed out loud. "All right, Jesse Best, you win. I'm cooking liver and onions for supper tonight. Why don't you stay? That way, you can both enjoy it."

  "I'd be pleased to take supper with you, Miss Althea," Jesse answered.

  "Good," she said. "Maybe feeding you a meal will begin to make up for me slapping your face like I did."

  Jesse shrugged away the note of concern in her voice.

  "It didn't hurt much."

  "But I broke your lip," she said.

  He tentatively explored the injured area. "It ain't hardly even swelled."

  "Let me see."

  Althea stepped up right in front of Jesse and stood on her tiptoes. The touch of her small feminine hand on his mouth, so tender, so unexpected, jolted him somewhat.

  "Don't pull away, Jesse. Let me see."

  He didn't move. He couldn't. He felt frozen in place, as if his shoes were hobbled to the ground. She was warm. Sweet and warm, and the scent of her seemed to seep into his brain, making it difficult to keep thinking. Her hand was soft as it touched him. She pulled his bottom lip down and probed it gently. Jesse knew that she was just checking to see if he needed doctoring. His sister Meggie would have done the same. But it didn't feel like his sister Meggie.

  She was close. So close. Jesse took a deep breath and found out that when his chest expanded, it touched hers. He swallowed nervously and took another deep breath.

  Yes, it was her chest all right. He could feel those soft round parts of her, buried as they were beneath coat and clothes and heaven knows what else. Still, they just barely grazed the front of his only partially covered muscles. His reaction was immediate. He was hard. He told his body to stop that. His body didn't listen.

  Deliberately Jesse took another deep breath and actually inched closer to her. She didn't seem to notice. They were round. And they were soft. His hands twitched. It was only by balling them into fists and holding them tightly at his side that he managed to control them. She was close, so close. So soft. So round. So close. Her fragrance was on him like a stain or a brand.

  "It's going to be sore for a day or two, but I don't think it needs any alum or goose grease," she said.

  He felt the breath of her voice upon his neck and it raised the flesh like a prickly herb.

  Jesse was looking down into her face now, her very familiar face. Wide spaced eyes. High cheekbones. And a tiny mouth that almost seemed too small for the amount of wisdom that flowed out of it. He focused his attention on that mouth, now.

  "I cain't even feel it," he said honestly. All his sensation seemed to be settled elsewhere.

  His heart was beating faster and faster. He tried to remember what to do. There must be a memory, a caution, a rule about what action to take with these all new, so exciting feelings welling up inside him.

  Mustn’t touch. Mustn't touch, he repeated to himself. The admonition kept his hands still, but it could do nothing about the expansion in his heart.

  It was instinct that was prodding him now. Instinct, primordial and unrelenting. Had he not just promised not to ignore his instincts? Had he not just that afternoon made a vow to follow those feelings when he had nothing else to lead him?

  "Why don't you kiss it better?" he whispered to her.

  "What?"

  It was surprise that parted her lips, but his instincts took it for acceptance. He leaned his head down and she covered his mouth with her own.

  For an instant, a glorious instant, it was heaven. His first touch of feminine flesh against his own. The scent of her was more than a stain upon him now, it filled his lungs, seeped into his veins, and coursed through every part of his body. And the taste, the taste of her, was not sweet but unexpectedly tangy and tart. A taste that didn't satisfy but rather keened the appetite, making a man crave more.

  So naturally Jesse's arms went about her, pulling her close into his embrace. Feeling the soft round curves pressed tight against him. It was everything. It was wonderful. It was perfect, for an instant.

  A sound of protest came from her throat. Jesse immediately released her.

  She pulled away, taking two steps back before stopping to stare at him. Her hand covered the sweet lips he had just so thoroughly kissed. Her expression was stunned and shocked.

  "You mustn't do that!" It was a demand spoken in a horrified whisper. "You must never, never do that."

  "It seemed right," Jesse told her in a plaintive whisper. He was having trouble catching his breath and his hands were trembling. "It seemed really right."

  "But it wasn't. It was wrong," she said.

  Nervously she looked away from him, unwilling to meet his gaze. She attempted to straighten her hair. She wiped her hands upon her apron.

  "Miss Althea?"

  "I don't blame you, Jesse," she said at last, taking control of her whirling emotions. "I must have ... I must have led you astray somehow. But you must never touch me again."

  Jesse's disappointment was palpable. "Never?" That seemed impossible. To be allowed to know how wonderful it was to feel and smell and taste her and then to never be allowed that again. It was so unfair. Jesse wanted to cry. It was too unfair.

  "Never," Althea reiterated sternly. "Now . . . now go on home, Jesse. I . . . don't think you should stay to dinner after all."

  Chapter Ten

  The Literary on Marrying Stone Mountain was held every new moon Friday from spring thaw till bad weather set in. After the first snow fell that cold November in 1906 most folks on the mountain had expected that they wouldn't really have a chance to get together again until the crocus were in bloom. But the first week of December was bright and almost balmy. This special gift of good weather could be ignored by no one.

  Granny Piggott had her grandnephew, Oather Phillips, pick her up in a skid cart and bring with them her favorite rocking chair. Under her direction, he set the chair beneath the branches of a broad limbed elm near the schoolhouse, where the old woman could hear and see goings-on of whatever sort were made available.

  By right of age and sheer strength of will, Granny Piggott was the matriarch of the mountain. She'd always been a force of law among the Piggott clan and as of late she'd begun to tell the McNees what they should or shouldn't do as well. Those that resented her intrusion, namely Beulah Winsloe, could say little about it. Elders were accorded great respect on the mountain. And after all, it was Granny and her husband who had first settled this now well-peopled community. The two had come from the Caintuck as newlyweds. They'd carved a homestead out of a wilderness, raised a passel of children. Granny had buried her man twenty-five years earlier. If she looked as if she ruled the roost, sitting in her bentwood rocker and smoking her clay pipe, there was none who was about to tell her differently.

  Granny looked upon her surroundings with sharp vision that belied her aging eyes. Not much got past her; still, she looked upon this mountain, her home for so many years, as much with scenes from memory as with scrutiny of the moment.

  This wide-open space on the south side of the mountain was not cleared by man's plow or fire's wrath, but kept nearly denuded by the bulging dome of solid granite only inches under its sparsely grass-covered surface. The big rock church with its undersized whitewashed clapboard steeple stood to the east side of the open area. The church had been built by the two families that
settled the mountain, the Piggotts and the McNees. The steeple remained a subject of contention between the two. The community had decided twenty years earlier to build a bell tower for calling the righteous to the house of the Lord. The Piggott family had taken upon them the job of constructing the belfry. The McNees brothers had sought a proper bell for the community to purchase. Spending the churchfolk's entire cash savings, the McNees had returned with an enormous brass bell from a near empty Catholic monastery near Calico Rock. The bell was far too large for the flimsy steeple constructed and a near feud erupted among the congregation over whether to build a bigger tower or buy another bell. Neither side had ever triumphed in the argument and to that day the huge monastery bell sat in front of the church and the tiny steeple sat atop it.

  The west part of the clearing, near the elm where Granny sat, was occupied by the tiny one-room poled-pine cabin that served as schoolhouse during spring and early summer, before the young local scholars were needed to work in the fields. It was also the center of community activities, the church, so near it, being considered too holy a place for the fun and frolic mountain folks so often craved.

  Between these two man-made structures, both evidence of the mountain folk's grip on civilization, sat the Marrying Stone. The huge, up thrusting piece of white quartz, nearly four-foot square, had been a sacred place to the Indians who had once lived here. It was now a place that mixed superstition with religion. It was believed that God could see the spot clearly from heaven and that He personally blessed the unions declared there. Though many now professed not to believe in the stone's superstitious essence, not many who wed failed to take the symbolic jump from its summit.

  Granny smiled to herself as the remembrance of weddings past filled her thoughts. Marriage was an important sacrament on the mountain. It was a rite of passage to adulthood and a guarantee of generations for the future. Granny was a great believer in it, and wished both its joys and sorrows upon all the young people around her. Except perhaps the young man at her side. Of him she had her suspicions.