Stealing home, p.21
Stealing Home, page 21
Fair enough, he says. He puts the money back in his pocket then holds his hand out to shake mine. Just like he did that first day I met him. Course that time he was payin me to tote his bags but I'm seein a whole different world between bein paid to work and bein paid to play. He tells me to keep the rest he's paid me and I don't want to but he says I could always use it to buy some-thin nice for my mama so I agree.
Then we both say everythin we have to say. Except for the questions. He asks me if I am still gonna play ball here and I say I'll be here and play as long as people will pick me. I ask him how much longer he's gonna be here in town and he says just long enough.
Neither of us want to ask the next question. The one about what's gonna happen then. Now's not the time because it seems like we're two brand new people just meetin each other. So I say good-bye and he does too but not before askin me to come by a little earlier in the afternoon tomorrow to get me some battin practice. Because he promises that one day I'll get a hit.
ELLIE JANE
When she and Ned reached her front door, Ellie Jane turned and asked the same question she'd asked the evening before.
“Ned, would you like to stay for supper?”
“Is your father home?”
“No, he's at the station.”
“Then I'd love to.” He smiled what she had come to identify as the “prince” smile. Charming and controlled, warm and reassuring, it gave the inflection to his words that his voice could not.
That's what she'd noticed during these days as the two circled round and round each other like two birds in a yard. Rather than impressive displays of color and plumage, Ned called to her with his face and his hands. He beckoned her with wide-eyed appreciation whenever she came into view. When she spoke, he leaned in, closing whatever space lingered between them, never wavering in his concentrated study of her mouth, her eyes. His hands—ever fluid— moved in constant accompaniment to the lyrics of his speech, making each conversation a kind of dance. Little by little, she learned a few steps until, in times like this simple front-porch invitation, there seemed little distinction between the voice and the hand. In fact, once they'd crossed the threshold into her parlor, she couldn't remember if she'd heard his answer or seen it. She might as well have been as deaf as he was for all it mattered. She simply knew.
It was late, nearly seven o'clock, and the dusk falling on the street outside seeped into the dark Voyant parlor. Ellie Jane moved expertly through the semidarkness, moving to light the lamp on the end table near the window. The heavy drapes were still open, the view slightly obscured by the sheer curtains behind them. She drew the curtain aside, just enough to peer through the clear glass and see Duke and Morris engaged in what seemed to be a very serious conversation.
It wasn't long before she felt Ned beside her, reaching his own hand higher than hers, leaning close to look out the same window. “Quite a pair, aren't they?”
Because they could not stand face-to-face, she didn't answer, but then the question didn't beg a response. It was just a statement, a little truth spoken to tie them all together—the two in the parlor, the two in the street.
“Do you think he loves you?”
She shook her head, slowly, clearly.
“Do you love him?”
She twisted her body to face him. He was gazing above her head, out the window, so she lifted her hand and touched his face, feeling the tension in his jaw. He seemed to be fighting for control, so she waited until he looked down before she shook her head again and whispered, “No.”
He closed his eyes and captured her hand, turning his face to bury his lips in her palm.
The current from his touch raced up her sleeve, threatening to bust the line of tiny buttons that stretched nearly to her elbow.
“Duke told me—” He gripped her hand tightly to him.
“I'm so sorry,” she said, pleading.
“—he kissed you.”
He couldn't see her, so she shook her fist, just a little, trapped as it was, and when he opened his eyes she waited until he was fully focused on her face.
“It didn't mean anything,” she said, resisting the urge to shout.
“Of course it does.” He released his grip and she felt like she'd been dropped to the floor.
“No!” And this time not only did she shout, she grabbed his arms to hold him in place. “It doesn't matter!”
But it did, to him, she could tell. Any hope she had that she'd be able to put such wanton behavior behind her disappeared in the pain in Ned's face.
“Oh, my.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “What you must think of me.” In the resurgence of her shame, she brought both hands to cover her face and wailed. “It was a moment of weakness. I was thinking of you, but he was just so—”
Somewhere behind her jumble of words she heard his voice. How long he'd been talking, she didn't know, but when she peeked above her fingers, he was smiling down at her.
“It matters because I love you, Ellie Jane.”
“You do?” She pulled her hand away and tried her best to look irresistible.
Apparently, she succeeded.
His kiss was soft and warm, gentle and chaste against her lips. She felt a certain heat spreading through her body—not the rolling explosion that rocked her the night she kissed Duke, or even the electric current from a few minutes ago, but a slow, steadily growing fire, melting her from within. Every bone turned to wax, dripping down inside, hardening into a relentless ball at her core, then starting all over again.
It ended too soon, in the middle of a melting moment. When Ned drew his lips away, she kept her eyes closed and tried to follow, opening them only to find that he stood tall above her, looking down with eyes that, even in the growing shadows, held flickers of all that had nearly consumed her.
“I've waited six years to do that,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I couldn't even get you to look at me.”
“No,” Ellie Jane said, harnessing all those lonely years behind her question. “Why did you wait?”
He bent low and placed one more quick kiss on her lips. “I didn't have a choice.”
She was moving toward him again when she heard the latch on the door. Instead of falling into Ned's arms, she ducked beneath them, sending him into a full spin. By the time Duke walked into the parlor, Ned and Ellie Jane were standing respectably side by side, betrayed only by the fluttering curtains and her sharp, shallow breath.
Duke stopped short at the edge of the carpet. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Of course not.” Ellie Jane smoothed her skirt. “I was just about to start supper.”
“In the parlor?”
No good could come of pursuing this conversation, so Ellie Jane simply said, “Excuse me” and headed for the kitchen. There was a pot of spring vegetable soup—left over from last night—on the stove. She touched the side of the pot and found it was still warm. Pop must have stopped by for supper before going to the office. It wouldn't take long to get it boiling again.
Ellie Jane took a long match, lit the burner, and gave the soup a stir. A taste brought to her lips told her it was good, but not special, and she wanted something delightful for this night's dinner.
She took a dish of hard-boiled eggs out of the icebox, peeled them and extracted the yolks, mashed them, and mixed them with the yolk of a fresh egg and a little flour. By the time she'd rolled this mixture into several little balls, the soup was boiling, and she plopped each one in, careful of the splatter. Then she washed her hands and set about tearing chunks from the round loaf of Irish soda bread she'd brought home from the bakery yesterday and placing them in the towel-lined basket in the middle of the table.
She pulled three bowls down from the cupboard and set the table, adding a pitcher of water and a cut glass dish of olives. Then butter. Then salt and pepper. In between each addition, she made a detour to the door, laying her ear against it. No conversation seeped through, which was odd because she couldn't imagine Duke Dennison sitting quietly with anybody for any length of time. Not even Ned. So right after the salt and pepper, before the fetching of spoons, she opened the swinging door just a crack —enough to see into the parlor.
“Mr. Dennison?” Silly question, really, given that he wasn't there. But Ned was. He'd littered the coffee table with little slips of paper and was carefully peeling another off a bundle held in his hand.
Ellie Jane hadn't yet caught his eye, so she had this moment to look at him, soft in the lamplight. She'd never tried to picture anybody sharing her life here with her father, but Ned Clovis was as much a fixture as anything, and in this new light, he fit.
“Did you call?” Duke bounded down the final steps and into the peaceful scene.
Ned looked up, glanced at Duke, then brought his eyes on Ellie Ja ne.
“I, um, just wanted you to know that supper will be on in a few minutes.”
“All right.” Duke sat next to Ned on the sofa, and Ellie Jane noticed for the first time the sheaf of papers clutched in his hand.
“What are you two up to?”
“Stats.” Duke held up one of the slips. “Ned's been keeping track of it all. Who's played what, if they hit, how they hit—”
“Fascinating,” Ellie Jane said, barely able to recall the outcome of the game that ended less than an hour ago. “And what do you intend to do with all this information?”
Duke held up the papers. “Compile it, here. Get it all in one place.”
“I see.” Suddenly, the two men in the parlor seemed more like overgrown boys. “And why are you doing this?”
Duke and Ned turned to each other, then back to Ellie Jane. Ned shrugged, and Duke said, “It's what we do.”
She had no argument for that, and frankly she didn't care, but returning to the kitchen seemed like a lonely option.
“Tell you what,” she said, “put that away for now, come eat supper, and afterward you can work at the table. The light's better in here, anyway.”
Ned picked up his papers, putting them in meticulous order before handing them over to Duke. The two of them walked past as Ellie Jane held open the door. She somehow resisted the urge to touch Ned as he walked by, but she could not ignore the wide, satisfied grin he gave her as he did so.
“And no baseball talk at the table,” she admonished for no good reason except to see if they would obey.
And they did.
The meal was companionably silent at first, just the clink of spoons against the bowls. She thought she noticed a slight hesitation when Ned encountered his first egg ball, but it passed with what she swore was a wink as he took a chunk of the bread and dipped it into the broth.
“You are a very good cook.”
Duke, sitting opposite Ellie Jane, kindly said nothing.
“Thank you.” She sent a pointed glance at Duke, just in case. “I try to avoid meat whenever possible.”
“Oh.” Ned lifted his bread. “This is good too.”
“I bought that at the bakery.”
Ned pointed at the dish of peach preserves and raised an eyebrow.
“Mrs. Finneworth gave those to me.”
As if on cue, both men reached for the dish, Duke a little more eager.
The olives?
Ellie Jane would never have believed it possible to point sarcastically, but Ned did, so her answer matched his tone. “God. Then the cannery. Then the grocer.”
There was a small ripple of laughter around the table, then back to the quiet. When the last crust of bread was slathered with the last of the preserves, Ellie Jane cleared the table. She made a pot of tea and poured the rest of the hot water from the kettle into the sink before sprinkling in soap flakes and adding cold water from the tap. She washed and rinsed each dish, setting them to dry on the drainboard.
The men talked quietly behind her, filling in the tiny boxes drawn on the paper with all sorts of letters and numbers.
“Struck out twice, swinging.”
“Walked in the first inning.”
“Bats right. Throws right.”
“Hit a double, got thrown out at third.”
At one point Ellie Jane turned around, her soapy hand on her hip. “How in the world do you know all of this?”
Ned pursed his lips and tapped his forehead. “I remember everything.”
She was drying and putting away the last of the bowls when the parlor clock struck nine. Usually she was upstairs in her room by this time, her hair taken down, brushed and braided, her Bible open to the day's reading. She and her father rarely had guests, and certainly none that stayed until this late hour, which left her at a loss as to what good hostess etiquette required. Ned showed no sign of leaving, Duke no signs of asking him to, and by this time it was unclear as to which guest belonged to whom.
“My goodness,” Ellie Jane said, relying on the ancient feminine art of dropping a hint, “it certainly has gotten late, hasn't it?”
Neither man replied.
“Well, then. I suppose I'll just go into the parlor and do a little reading.” At least that part of her evening routine could get done.
Wary of the idea of even walking to her bedroom with two bachelors in the kitchen, Ellie Jane went to the bookshelf beside the desk and found her mother's Bible. She opened the front cover and saw the dates listed.
November 10, 1877—Married: Floyd David Voyant and Claire Eloise Mitchell
September 9, 1878—Born: David Jonathan Voyant
October 15, 1881—Born: Elijah Jane Voyant
October 25, 1881—Died: Claire Eloise Voyant
None of this was new of course. When she was a very little girl, Ellie Jane would often take her mother's Bible and simply hold it close to her, loving not only the stories within it, but also the stories of this very book. Her father told her that Claire would take this book to bed with her every night and read—sometimes for hours— with Floyd sleeping beside her. When she was bearing her children, she'd held it to her breast until the midwife wrenched it away, and she'd gone to her final sleep with it resting by her side.
Tonight, though, this front leaf held a melancholy twist Ellie Jane never considered. Her parents had less than four years together before Claire Voyant died.
“Four years,” she said out loud, and her heart heard an echo from just a few hours ago.
Six years.
Six years, Ned had loved her. Well, he hadn't actually said that he loved her all that time, but like so many other unspoken words between them, she simply knew. Six years—two years longer than her father had loved her mother. And, after all this time, her father had never loved again. Written as it was in the front page of this Bible, it seemed like such a little bit of time when indeed, it was so much more. It was an entire life, entire lives, really, changed and created and left as legacy.
She took the Bible over to the wing-backed chair next to the lamp and turned up the light a wee bit. She'd been reading in the book of John, but tonight something new tugged at her, and she put her finger in the page marked by her mother's tasseled bookmark and opened to the fourth chapter of Ecclesiastes:
Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
She read the verses over and over, marveling at her reflection within the words, how very alone she'd been just weeks ago. Tonight she couldn't get the men out of her house fast enough. This, admittedly, made her blush at the heat generated at the thought of “when two lie together,” but that was chased away by the image of the threefold cord. She and Duke and Ned in the kitchen this evening. She and Duke and her father on others. Duke and Ned and Morris playing a makeshift game long before the town joined in.
She cocked an ear and heard a third voice coming from the kitchen. Low and deep, the voice she pulled from her earliest memory. Her father must have come in through the back door as he often did when he came home late. Soon his voice broke away and he was beside her in the lamplight.
“You're up late, Ellie.” He bent to kiss her offered cheek.
“We have company.”
“I see that. What are they doing in there?”
“Stats.”
“And why, exactly?”
Ellie Jane shrugged. “It's what they do.”
“Well, at this hour, they need to do it another time. It's getting late.”
“You tell them, Pop. I don't have the heart.”
He winked at his daughter, stood upright, and walked into the kitchen.
Knowing the situation was well in hand, Ellie Jane stood too, leaving her mother's Bible on the table. She had just turned down the lamp when the door to the kitchen opened, outlining Ned in the light coming from the kitchen.
“I've been asked to leave.”
“Oh,” she said, startled. “I figured Pop would have you leave by the back door.”
But of course he hadn't heard her, and he would not have understood her in these shadows. Any moment he might turn back and leave through the kitchen rather than risk making his way through in the unfamiliar room. Thinking, woe to him that is alone when he falleth, Ellie Jane reached through the darkness and grabbed his hand.
Fingers intertwined, they moved together, until they were at the place where this evening began. The front door. The front porch. And a kiss in the moonlight full of promise.
25 May 1905
8:16 a.m.
TO: Mr. Donald Dennison
Picksville, Missouri
FROM: Dave Voyant
Chicago Times-Herald Offices
Duke—
The owners request your return. Selee and
Chance want you on the field 29 May to
practice. On the roster 2 June. Guess you
are ready after all. HA! HA!
Hope all is well. Have NBL contact with
