Christine’s Promise, page 1
Christine’s Promise
Prequel to the Aspiring Hearts Series
KAY MOSER
© 2016 by Kay Moser
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews. For information, please address Hartline Literary Agency; 123 Queenston Drive; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15235.
The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental or is a fictionalized account of an actual event.
In honor of Christine Carpenter Pigg,
my beloved friend and valued mentor
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Preview: Skirting Tradition
Chapter 1
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Chapter One
“There has to be a better way!” Mrs. Christine Boyd insisted as she crossed the railroad tracks that divided Riverford, Texas, into two vastly different worlds. When she did so, she left behind the dusty, unpaved roads of the slums and the hodgepodge shacks that were considered homes by the poor. “Delivering a few loaves of bread and some ham is simply not enough. And that poor child in the Jones family! His leg. . . .” She straightened her spine and pursed her lips. “It’s 1885, for heaven’s sake. Things have to change.”
Billows of red dust floated around her as she stopped and stamped her feet on the beginning of the sidewalk of the “quality” side of town. Straight ahead of her stretched an orderly, tree-lined, brick-paved street filled with neat cottages, their flower gardens proudly displaying the tired blooms of late September. To her left, however, she saw dark clouds of smoke and knew that one of the landowners nearby was burning his fields. She cringed at the thought of the choking smoke further adulterating the hot air that refused to give up its hold on East Texas. “Those poor sharecroppers,” she murmured. “They will be standing all day in the glaring sun tending a blazing fire!”
Hollyhocks, their leaves yellowed and their flowers nearly spent, and sweet-scented honeysuckle greeted her over the white picket fences as she resolutely started down the first block. She was eager to reach an oak tree that offered her a brief respite from the broiling sun. When she reached the shade of the tree, she gratefully stopped and lowered her basket to the ground. She untied the netting which she had used to cup her wide-brimmed straw hat around her face and shook it thoroughly.
“Sakes alive!” A chocolate-brown face, surrounded by white hair and beard, popped up from the flowerbed next to the fence. “Miz Boyd, what you doin’ down here so early in the morning?”
“Just running errands, Cal, but I am glad I ran into you.”
“But ma’am, you ain’t been ’cross them tracks, has you? That ain’t no place for a lady like you. What Mr. Boyd gonna say when he hear ’bout it?”
Christine smiled as she shrugged her shoulders. “Time will tell, but that is not what I want to talk to you about.”
“Miz Boyd, you look powerful hot. I better get you some cool well water.”
“No, thank you, Cal. I haven’t time. I want to talk to you about that boy they call Nobo. Who is he related to?”
“Ain’t related to nobody far as I knows. Old Nessy take care of him. I ’spect she think he be her son, but she ain’t never been right in the head since the War.”
“He has a badly infected leg that needs attention.”
“Yes’m. He done had that a long time. Ain’t likely to heal, I figure.”
“I am going to send Moses down with some ointment, and I want you to put it on his leg twice a day.”
“You wants me to do it?”
“Yes, I do. As you said, Nessy is not reliable. Will you help the boy?”
“Yes’m, I be glad to.” He leaned closer. “I already borrowed some of Miz Johnson’s yams for the boy—”
Christine heard the screen door slam, and Cal suddenly fell on his knees and started pulling weeds.
“Cal! Who are you talking to? I’m not paying you to stand around and—” Mrs. Johnson limped down the steps, shaking a broom at Cal. “Oh gracious me!” She stopped in her tracks when she saw Christine Boyd. “Why, Mrs. Boyd, I had no idea. . . . ” The gray-haired, severe-looking woman dropped the broom, brushed off her apron and hurried forward.
“Good morning, Mrs. Johnson,” Christine smiled as she retied the netting around her hat. “It is already a hot morning, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and it doesn’t help that Mr. Pritchard just has to burn his fields today.”
“Yes, I was just thinking about the poor sharecroppers—”
“Oh, they’re used to it, I figure.” Mrs. Johnson waved her hand contemptuously. “If they aren’t, they can just go back to where they came from.”
“To Europe? That’s quite a distance.”
“No one asked them to come here in the first place. I’m not going to worry about the likes of them, but you, Mrs. Hodges, you shouldn’t be out in this heat. I’ll send Cal to fetch a bucket of cold water from the well for you. Cal!”
Cal jumped to his feet. “Yes’m?”
“What’s wrong with you, boy? Blabbing your head off and keeping Mrs. Hodges standing around in this heat. Go fetch a bucket of cold water this minute!”
“You are most kind, Mrs. Johnson,” Christine interrupted, “but please don’t bother.” Christine patted the large basket as she picked it up. “I’ve brought water for myself.”
“I got the best well on this block. In fact, the biggest burden of my life is keeping the coloreds away from it. They don’t think a thing about sneaking over here in the middle of the night and—”
“I’m sure your well is very tempting indeed and so much healthier than the river water available to them.”
“No doubt, but I didn’t dig that well for colored folks to pilfer the water—”
“I am so pleased you are sharing it with those who need it,” Christine interrupted the woman.
Mrs. Johnson cocked her head and squinted at Christine.
“And I am sure I can count on you not to be angry with Cal. It was my fault he stopped working. I asked him to do me a favor.”
“You asked Cal? Why, he’s just a no-account colored. I’ll be more than glad to do the favor for you, Mrs. Boyd. What is it you need done?”
“I need someone to apply ointment to a colored boy’s leg twice a day.”
Mrs. Johnson’s head jerked back as her eyebrows shot up. “Well now, Mrs. Boyd, surely you know that no decent woman is going to touch a dirty—”
Christine held up her gloved hand. “That is why I have asked Cal to handle the situation for me.”
Silence fell between the two women, and Cal stared at the ground.
“I am sure you will forgive me, Mrs. Johnson, if I cannot stay and visit longer.” Christine smiled as she began to walk away. “I have one more stop to make, but I certainly look forward to seeing you in church tomorrow.” She looked back over her shoulder and nodded her farewell to Mrs. Johnson.
“Well, of course,” Mrs. Johnson called after her. “I don’t ever miss church. Cal! Why in the name of heaven are you just standing there, boy? If you don’t have enough work to do, I can sure find you some more.”
Chapter Two
By the time the sun cleared the horizon, the Novak family had been picking cotton two hours. Jana Novak was still haunted by the memory of her sleepy little boys, their exhausted bodies swaying, staggering after their father as he walked down the rows of cotton in the pre-dawn darkness. In spite of the humid heat, she shuddered. What kind of world allowed—no, required—boys of seven and eight to be forced from their pallet on the dirt floor of a shanty and out into a field to work before the sun even rose? She felt a tugging at her skirt and looked down at four-year-old Josef. Tears were running down his cheeks, and he was holding up his arms to her, begging her to carry him, but she doubted her own strength.
“I can carry him,” Sally offered. “He’s not too heavy.”
Jana studied her daughter’s six-year-old face. Even the darkness could not hide its gauntness, the skin stretched tight across the cheek bones, the dark shadows under the large, protruding eyes. Love surged through Jana.
“Let him walk,” her husband, Kazimir, called back without even slowing his gait. “You’re already carrying the one inside you. I don’t want you losing no more babies.”
“What about these babies?” Her shrill voice sliced through the darkness. “For heaven’s sake, Kazimir, they are children!”
He stopped but did not turn to face her. “Not any more, they ain’t.” His tone was flat, hardened. “They gotta work the fields just like I did back in the old country.”
“Kazimir. . . . Look at them. They’re hungry; they’re exhausted. They can’t go on like this. We need help.”
“I don’t see none coming, and if we don’t get this cotton picked, we ain’t even gonna have what we got. Mr. Lynch is gonna throw us off his land. Come on, boys! That sun’s gonna be up ’fore we know it.”
“Something has to change, Kazimir!” Jana shou
He whirled around and glared at her. “Well, I tell you what you do, Jana. You talk to that God of yours ’cause ain’t nobody else listening.” He pushed the boys ahead of him and turned back to the horizon. “Keep going, boys! We’re gonna start right up here. I figure we’ll make it to that old oak by noon.”
Josef whimpered, and Sally picked him up and staggered down the row under his weight.
By nine o’clock the brutal September sun had dazed Jana. Perspiration dripped down her face, burning her eyes so thoroughly she could barely see Josef sitting in the dirt close by staring blankly into space. She gritted her teeth, squatted in the dirt and mechanically reached her numb, scarred hands forward. The plants had become a blur of white, and thus her fingers had become helpless victims to the thorns. Still she worked on, mechanically wrenching the fluffy white cotton from the stalk and stuffing it into the long sack that Sally dragged for her. It was only when Sally cried, “Mama, you’re bleeding” that Jana knew she had been pierced enough to wipe her hands on her blood-dotted apron. The overseer would discount or reject cotton with blood on it. He would use any means to lower their end-of-season wages, any excuse to throw them off the land. And they had no other place to go. No one would hire them in the winter that was coming. If they lost this job, they would spend the cold months living out of their wagon in the woods.
She scrambled further down the row and kept picking.
Jana had previously given birth in inhospitable places—in the back of a wagon, in the row of a cotton field, and under a tree—but those births had always come in the warm months. Her next baby would be born in the dead of winter.
In spite of the blistering heat, she shivered violently. Sally dropped the sack and threw her arms around her mother’s neck.
“Rest, Mama!”
Jana clung to the six-year-old girl and looked around her. Her world had become a white haze, a blur of the acres of white cotton flowing into the white heat of the sun. She could barely discern small dark spots close by, which she knew to be her husband and her little boys laboring, suffering.
“God in heaven, have mercy on them,” she whispered as she dragged herself forward, squatted and reached toward another fluffy white ball. “They are children! They need rest, water, food.”
The thought of food for her children sent her mind spiraling into panic. She had lugged buckets of water from the stream to the dying vegetable garden last night after everyone else had collapsed on the dirt floor of the shanty and sunk into sleep. By the light of the moon, she had dug up the last of the yams and picked the drying black-eyed peas.
She tried to thrust her hands toward the plants, but they would not obey. They began to shake. Confusion conquered her, and she registered nothing more until she felt the jolt of her head hitting the ground.
“Get her into the shade, Sally!” Kazimir’s commanding voice broke through her mind’s numbness.
She felt someone tugging on her hands and understood that Sally was trying to pull her up. She sat, pulled her legs under her, and felt Sally’s small body under her armpit struggling to push her up. Her vision cleared slightly, and she saw little Josef lying facedown in the dirt. Panic roared through her, and she stood.
“Josef!”
“He’s asleep.” Sally panted beside her. “Come on, Mama. We gotta get you to the tree. I’ll come back and get Josef.”
“No . . . no. I can walk.” She willed her legs to move. “Don’t leave Josef.”
“I’ll bring him.”
“And the water.”
“It’s under the tree. Don’t you remember?”
Jana buried her head in her hands. God help me. I don’t remember.
“Walk, Mama.” Sally pushed her toward the shade of the oak.
Jana turned around and saw Sally pull her little brother to his feet, squat down, and pull him onto her back. Her heart broke, and tears she did not know she had left streamed down her face. Help me, God! I don’t know how to save them.
“Walk, Mama.” Bent over by the weight of her brother, Sally staggered ahead of her mother. “Please, Mama. Just walk.”
When Jana reached the tree, she sank to the ground and drank from the earthen jug of water. Her head swam, and her whole body begged to lie down, but she dared not recline for fear she would not be able to get up again. Instead, she propped her elbows on her bent knees and held her dizzy head in her hands.
Sally gave Josef a drink, then he crawled to Jana’s side, lay his head in her lap, and slept. Sally knelt at her mother’s side and solemnly gazed into her face as Jana waited for her head to clear.
When Jana could think again, she squinted her eyes against the glare of the field and watched her boys struggle to keep up with their father’s pace. Kazimir was picking cotton as if his life depended on it. And it did. His life and the lives of his family. He’s a good man. He loves us. He’s pouring out his life for us as surely as if his blood was running into that red soil. But it’s not enough. It will never be enough!
She looked at Sally’s dirt-smeared face with its eyes that were far too old for a six-year-old child. She was startled by the fierceness she found there.
“We need help, Mama.”
Jana looked down at the weakened, undernourished child in her lap and back at her sons, her children, working in the blistering sun. She’s right. Lord, something has to change. We cannot go on like this. Help us! Seconds later she knew that whatever help God had in mind, He expected her to walk toward it. To walk away from the failure of the present, the hopelessness of depending only on themselves.
She set Josef aside on the dry grass, and struggling hard, she stood.
“Kazimir!” she shouted. “You and the boys come into the shade and have some water.”
“We gotta work our way to that shade, Jana. Ain’t no other way to get this cotton picked.”
She knew it was hopeless to argue with him and redirected her attention to her sons.
“Boys, come drink some water.” The boys looked at their pa, who motioned them toward the tree. They dragged themselves toward Jana, and when they reached her, eagerly accepted the jug she held out.
“Now listen carefully, boys.” Her voice was firm. “I’m gonna go into town.”
The boys silently stared up at her, disbelief painted on their faces.
“I’m taking Sally with me and leaving Josef here to sleep under the tree. I want you boys to keep an eye on Josef and be sure y’all keep drinking water. When the sun is overhead, I want you to come eat this corn mush and beans and rest for a while. Do you understand?”
“Pa ain’t gonna let you go to town,” Norbert, her oldest, insisted.
“I don’t plan to ask him. I’m gonna find some work.”
Norbert turned on his heel and ran out into the field to his father.
Jana steeled herself as she watched Kazimir throw down his cotton sack and storm up the row toward her.
“Have you lost your mind, woman?” he yelled as he advanced on her.
“No.”
“Jsi šílený! You’ve lost your mind. Ain’t nobody gonna hire you. What’re they gonna hire you to do?”
“Wash clothes, help them with canning, clean house—whatever they need done.”
“And you think them town folk are gonna give you cash money to do that?”
“They’ll at least give me food.”
“My wife ain’t gonna go to town begging.”
Jana lifted her chin and met his eyes. “You’re right. She’s gonna go to town to work.”
“Vaše myšlení je hloupý!”
“Don’t call me stupid!”
“Jana, you ain’t thinking straight. Those town folk don’t care nothing about us. They just as soon we die out here. Have you forgotten that Mr. Lynch ain’t paid us in months?”
“Of course I ain’t forgotten.”
“Then what makes you think them town folk are gonna give you anything?”
“I ain’t gonna talk to the likes of Mr. Lynch. I’m gonna talk to the women folk.”
“Jsou právě chystá smát!”
“I’ve been laughed at before. I survived then; I figure I’ll survive again if I have to. Things have to change. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe I can find work. I won’t know till I try.” She took Sally by the hand. “We’re leaving now.”
