Chapter 8
“WHY, LOOK AT YOU, MRS. DUNHAM,” Calla said a minute later, pulling Josephine back to the present. “So plumb tuckered you can hardly keep them eyes open. Let’s get you where you can rest.”
Josephine gave herself a mental shake, the disturbing images gradually fading. “Please, call me Josephine. And I insist on helping you with the dishes first. The one who cooks should never have to clean up alone.”
“Now that’s a kitchen rule I like . . . Josephine. I’m Calla Jenkins, but you call me Calla. I always welcome an extra set of hands.”
Water heated quickly on the cast-iron stove, heat emanating from its intricately patterned sides and doors, and they set to work.
“Thank you again for dinner, Calla. I haven’t had food that delicious since I don’t know when.”
Calla winked. “I’m thinking you were just hungry.”
“I was that, but the truth remains.”
“And just so you know, I don’t know how y’all do it where you hail from, but here at Miss Mary’s? We call the noon meal dinner. And this here meal is supper.”
Josephine nodded. “Then thank you, Calla, for supper.”
When they finished a while later, Josephine stretched the drying cloths over hooks along the wall while Calla retrieved bedding from upstairs. Josephine peered after her through the open doorway leading into the dining room. The door to the foyer beyond stood open as well.
Treading quietly, she found the foyer dark and still. Distant snatches of muted conversations floated toward her from behind closed doors, the only light issuing from an oil lamp burning low on a table in the corner. She felt like she’d stepped back in time.
While oil lamps weren’t foreign to her, she was simply accustomed to more modern amenities.
Electric streetlamps and streetcars were commonplace in Atlanta and considered indispensable by most. Electricity powered many of the homes, her family’s home among them.
Occasionally, power interruptions in the evening plunged parts of the city into darkness.
But within two or three moments, backup gas-powered generators would send light flooding back across the city in a golden haze.
She crossed to the front doors and peered into the night. Rain fell in soft sheets, moisture gathering on the windowpanes until the world beyond turned murky and blurred. Dodge Coburn’s wagon was gone, and the single kerosene streetlamp at the end of the walkway struggled to push back the darkness.
Thoughts of Sarah tugged hard, as did the desire for something familiar. But at least the mounting panic inside her had quieted by a degree. Lynchburg felt another world away. And for good reason. But being a world away from the world she’d known wasn’t a bad thing. For now.
She glanced at her left hand, grieving the loss of her mother’s ring. Where had it slipped off? On the road somewhere between here and Tullahoma? Or maybe when she’d scampered down from the wagon about to be sick. It could be anywhere.
She’d seen the doubt in Miss Mary’s eyes when the woman had glanced at her empty left hand. The absence of the wedding ring definitely did not play in her favor.
The glass on the door was cool to the touch and, grateful no one was around, she briefly pressed her injured cheek against it.
She glanced up the stairs to the second-floor landing, watching for signs of Calla.
Seeing none, she peered into the den to the left of the hallway and found her gaze drawn to the large bookcase on the opposite wall.
Even in the dim light of the oil lamp, she saw books of all sizes and widths filling the shelves, and wondered which book Dodge Coburn’s daughter had chosen. Was the girl old enough to read? Or perhaps Miss Mary had a collection of picture books for the very young.
Comforting scents of binding glue and ink dried on paper lured her closer, reminding her of the library in her family home—when she caught the image of an older woman in a portrait on the wall.
Only, the portrait moved, and she realized with numbing sobriety that she was looking at her own reflection.
She stepped closer, the empty eyes looking back almost ghostly. She angled her face from side to side. The bruising on her cheek, jawline, and around her eye had grown more pronounced, as had the swelling. But even with the mirror’s chipped and faded silver backing, the reflection did not lie.
Only that morning, though it seemed far more distant, Miss Anthony had issued a solemn warning in her speech, challenging fellow suffragists to prepare to pay a high price for freedom and equality.
Like countless women before you, many of you will be called upon to bear the marks of this struggle, both inwardly and out.
So stay strong, my sisters. Arm yourselves with courage, and lean into the eternal strength that far exceeds your own. Because you will need it.
With the fire of Miss Anthony’s delivery still resonating inside her, Josephine swallowed hard, the truth of her situation bearing down. “I just never thought it would happen to me,” she whispered, her voice familiar yet the face staring back anything but. “Or that the price would be so dear.”
She gently fingered the deepest cuts, the blood long dried, the flesh still tender. The scarring on her face should have been the least of her concerns, she knew. But despite everything, the heartbeat of vanity still fluttered down deep.
She turned away from the mirror and crossed to the shadowed bookcase, and ran a hand along the spines of the books, wishing she could make out the various titles to know if any were ones she’d—
“Looking for something specific, ma’am?”
She whirled around at the voice behind her. A man, seated in a chair in the darkened corner, book in hand, stared, a small oil lamp casting its anemic glow on the table beside him.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am, if I startled you. T’weren’t my intention.”
Her pulse still pounding in her ears, Josephine attempted to speak normally. “I didn’t realize anyone was in here. I’m sorry for intruding.”
His outstretched hand slowed her hasty retreat.
“First off, you didn’t. Intrude, I mean.
I was just drinking in the quiet of the night and letting my supper settle.
Me and Mr. Ben-Hur—” He held up the book.
“We meet here in Miss Mary’s front parlor from time to time to confer and .
. . ruminate together. And considering I just learned today about his creator’s demise, I thought a visit tonight was appropriate. ”
Seeing the half-empty glass on the table beside him, she wondered if the man had been drinking in more than just the quiet. Yet she felt a touch of sadness. “You’re saying Lew Wallace has died? The author?”
The man, mid-to-late fifties, she guessed, nodded, his salt and pepper goatee nearly touching his vest. “Nigh onto a month ago, it seems. Funny how you can grieve the passing of someone you never met yet still feel like you knew, simply through the words they put to paper.”
He took a long drink, a mantel clock she hadn’t noticed before slowly ticking off the seconds.
His waxed mustache nearly eclipsed his upper lip, and his finely tailored suit revealed a man attentive to detail.
One who valued the importance of making a good impression.
Which begged the thought . . . What must he make of her?
And had he heard her speaking to herself a moment ago?
Discomforted by the thought, she hoped not.
“Well . . . I’m sorry to have disturbed you, sir. I’ll leave you to your visit.”
“You ever read him?”
Nearly to the door, Josephine paused. “Have I ever read the novel Ben-Hur?” she asked, the teacher within her reacting to the abbreviated fashion in which these people spoke. Not altogether lacking appeal, the dialect did lack the finished quality she attempted to instill in her students.
His slow smile gave the impression he knew exactly what she was thinking. “That is precisely what I am inquiring of you, Mrs. Dunham . . . most recently of Tullahoma.”
Josephine eyed him, already having gathered from his comment about supper that he’d been at the table when Dodge Coburn first brought her in.
He’d obviously caught Dodge’s introduction.
The man had a mischievous quality about him.
Flirtatious, in a way, though not inappropriately so.
More like charming, in a backwoods Tennessee sort of way.
And his accent. Definitely of the hills and hollers but sprinkled with a sophistication he seemed to command at will.
“Yes, I have read Ben-Hur. Several times, in fact.”
He leaned forward. “So it was to your liking?”
She didn’t have to reach far for one of her favorite quotes from the novel, memorization being another habit her parents had instilled in both her and her brother.
That, and she routinely assigned the novel for reading and discussion with her older students.
“To begin a reform, go not into the places of the great and rich; go rather to those whose cups of happiness are empty—to the poor and humble. Chapter five, I believe, if memory serves.”
“Well, well . . . I have, indeed, met my match.” He rose, and, to her surprise, stood a good three or four inches shorter than she, though his knee-length black frock suit coat lent him a taller air.
“I am impressed, Mrs. Dunham, if you don’t mind me saying.
” He made a show of clearing his throat.
“Every age has its plenty of sorrows; heaven help where there are no pleasures.”
Finding it an odd quote but nonetheless remembering the thought in the novel, she gave a nod. “Well done to you, sir.”
He drained his glass, set the book aside, and retrieved a wide-brimmed ivory country squire hat from the back of the chair. “We don’t get us many visitors through these parts, ma’am. I surely hope our paths cross again while you’re here.”
“Thank you, sir. That’s most kind of you.”