Krista's Prompts - 3. Prompt 350

Prompt 350: Use the following in a story – farmer, bluebells, a toad, a pond, and a book.

Abigail snuck away from her afternoon chores. Clearing the rocks from the plowed field and dumping them into the hollow. Tomorrow the family would be planting the garden and corn to feed them and their livestock through the winter. She had wanted a break, her feet were sore, tired, and dirty. So she found herself at her favorite place on their three hundred acre homestead.

A pond shaded on one side by a large willow, the cool breeze coming up from the river that bordered their land was refreshing. After scaring a lazy toad, sunning itself on a rock, she sat down and pulled out a palm novel her Aunt Lorie Sue brought in from the city up north. Apart from her Grandmother Marthie’s Bible this was the only other book she had. She hadn’t seen Lorie Sue since last spring. It would be awhile before the dirt roads dried out from the winter snow enough for her car to reach the storehouse road, she doubted she would see her aunt this year though, seems times were getting harder on people with the war. People were staying closer to home, fretting over their sons that wanted to enlist and travel across oceans to fight a war in Europe. Living in the middle of nowhere, a town nestled around the river. Sam’s general store, the church, a schoolhouse, and a post office made up the small town half a day's walk away. Everything else was homesteads and farmers’ fields. Their own was freshly plowed and waiting for planting.

This is where Abigail grew up, only leaving the farm to visit the doctor for Government sponsored vaccinations when they made it down this far south. Then for a revival across the river one summer when rain was scarce and the river got so low a body could cross it without fear of drowning in the muddy rapids.

She had already fed the old milk cow Bossy Jean, the clucking chickens, fussing with the old black hen over her eggs before the old mean thing would leave the nest to join the rest of them for their morning feeding of dried corn and a little grain. She knew her time was short. There would be a bawling baby or her mother would come hollering for her to fetch more water from the river. She would be helping her mother fix supper for her father and her older brother after they got back from rounding up the sheep, they had been grazing in the timberlands all winter where the snow hadn’t covered the ground. Now that grass was growing again, her father would be rounding them up. Keeping them closer to home so the ewes wouldn’t wander off and lamb where foxes and stray dogs would get them before they were strong and big enough to run with their mothers.

Abigial had worried that her older brother Jack would enlist, always wanting to stretch his legs and see more than just their farmland. He had talked quietly as they waited for the sun to set about leaving Kentucky for the factories up north. Where money could be made in a factory and not in a mine where their father worked for a short time. After saving up for years, he married and settled on the farm where he grew up. This place was full of people like that. The mines were scary, people died working them often. So when they could leave, they did and on hard times, wouldn’t go back. Even if that meant coming close to starving. It was hard living here, determined by the weather and determination, but even then death could strike anytime.

The graveyard hill held three of her sisters. A set of twins, born two months too early, in the dead of a long winter. They would have been older than her, when Father and Mother had very little. They died in the birthing though and it had nearly killed her mother. The other, died after being bitten by a copperhead on her way to the school house one unseasonably warm spring day that brought everything out to enjoy the sun. Little Sue, named after her Aunt, was the one Abigail mourned as she had been with her on their way to school. It happened so many years ago that she could scarcely remember her now, but wished she had another girl close to her age to talk to. All her brother liked to talk about was leaving and that had caused her heart to hurt bad enough.

Being seventeen, she knew she was quickly becoming a burden on the family. She should be married and starting her own. The girls she grew up with were all on their second or third baby, working their own land, tending their own homes. It was her father, Silas that kept her close and stopped the quarreling her mother had about becoming an old maid, when men wouldn’t marry her if she wanted them to. Or reduced to an old hussy like the older unmarried women, that liked to tempt men away from their wives when they had too much to drink.

They didn’t know that she had written a letter to the man she loved. He had enlisted when the war was still a rumor that finally reached their little town. She hadn’t heard from him, though. When a letter came to his family, saying he had died in a train accident on his way to the west coast she privately mourned him. His name was Lee, but like Jack, his mind was only on leaving, so he never would have settled for her. They buried him in Kansas, where he died. An unmarked grave, just a white wooden cross. His family never would have the time to travel that far to see him and she never would either. The sadness she felt when she thought of him wasn’t because he was dead, not anymore, but the thought of him never getting his true freedom would bring the tears to her eyes. It was a black sin for the heart to want something so badly, especially for something so far out of reach. Only God was supposed to fill those holes and nothing else. She had to believe that Lee would have been happy where he got to and not worry about the short time he had away from their town on the river.

Not wanting to think of him she opened the small book and started reading from where she left off the night before. She was just getting to the part she enjoyed when she heard a twig snap nearby. Startled she looked around. It was such a faint sound she knew it couldn’t have been her mother or Jack. They would have called out her name long before they got so close. When she saw a rabbit come into the clearing, its big eyes focused on her. It wanted to make its way down to the pond to drink, but she was in the way. Instead it hopped around her and disappeared into the thicket behind the willow. Smiling she leaned back against the trunk, her toes still dipped into the cool water.

“I thought I’d find you here,” a voice said from just to the side of the willow. For the second time she jumped and whirled toward the sound. She knew the voice instantly, William Thompson stood peeking around the trunk of the willow at her. “When you weren’t out in the field picking rocks with Jack.”

“Jack is back from the sheep gatherin?” Abigail asked her heart skipping when he stepped around the tree into her full view. His shirt was open at the collar and his overalls had fallen off one of his shoulders. A patch of black hair and tanned skin was visible and she looked away feeling the flush coming to her cheeks.

“Been back awhile,” William said his voice careful. Knowing it wasn’t right for them to be alone like this. It would be a scandal, they weren’t friends.

“Jack send you to fetch me?” She asked slipping the small book into a pocket of her apron. It was made from a feed sack, for outside work that didn’t need to be washed like the cotton one used for cooking and work around the house.

“No,” William answered and that’s when she noticed the crooked smile on his face a dimple forming on one side of his cheek. His face was dirty and sweaty after a hard morning already. Spring and fall were the busiest times of year for the people here. It would be awhile before they could all sit and catch their breaths. “I brought you somethin.”

“What?” Abigail asked searching his hands. One was hidden behind his back. When they were younger he would hide toads or garden snakes like this. To scare her when she asked. William remembered the deceptive trick after noticing her eyes widening. He wanted to laugh, but instead he slowly moved his hand out from behind him to show her the small bouquet of flowers.

“I thought they were too pretty to be ate up by Jonie Smith’s two milk goats,” William said, his hand shaking slightly when he noticed her blue eyes dart to the five pretty flowers in his loose fist.

“Jonie Smith’s bluebells, she orders them every year from a catalogue,” Abigail said eyeing the flowers. “You steal them?”

“It was either me or the goats,” William shrugged and Abigail knew he didn’t feel a bit sorry for stealing the flowers. “They match your eyes.”

“Do they?” Abigail asked her face flushing again. Unlike Jack and Lee, William never talked of leaving. She had never allowed herself to be around him much, he was always wild and people said he wasn’t right for a good church girl like her to court with. She had to admit that she agreed. He played the guitar, but they were never hymns, but his own songs. On still fall and winter nights, she could hear their family from her room on the second floor. All of them played an instrument of some kind, he could play the fiddle too, but when he did, it always seemed sad. So she would cover her head with her feather down pillow to drown out those nights his fiddle music found the air and came to her. It was all she could do to keep from crying. She had never heard music so sweetly sad.

“I think they do,” William said his nerves nearly getting the better of him. He wanted to be cruel and tell her to take the flowers or he would toss them into the pond. So he could get away from the feeling she wouldn’t accept the gift. Her acceptance of them meant more to him than the thought he put into them. He was haunted by those eyes that never seemed to look at him anymore. He couldn’t help thinking that all his childhood meanness had lingered in her thoughts of him.

“They’re lovely, I’ve always liked stopping in to see Jonie’s flowers,” Abigail said holding her hand out for them. His heart leaped in his chest when her smaller hand, dirty from the rock picking, but still so beautiful to him came towards him. When his fingers brushed her’s he saw the nervous smile as their touch lingered until she managed to grip all the flowers not wanting to drop any of them. He watched her quickly break the uneasy contact and he smiled when she brought the small bouquet to her nose and inhaled. “You shouldn’t steal though.”

“The goats would be in them, they get them every year,” William said shrugging as he tried to steady his own racing heart.

“The goats don’t know what stealin is,” Abigail said smiling up at him. He watched her slide the book back out of her apron pocket. She gently plucked one of the flowers from the stem and flipped to the back of the book and slid it in for safekeeping. The gesture nearly made him bolt from underneath the shade of the willow so he could rejoice. He never cared for another girl like he did Abigail and her heart was all he wanted.

“Think of it as me saving their beauty a little while longer,” William said watching her nervously playing with the rest of them. He wanted her to braid them into her hair like she did the wild flowers. It wouldn’t have been good though, bluebells didn’t grow wild here. Everyone that saw her would know where they came from.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. Her lavender blue eyes found his dark brown ones and she smiled carelessly now. She was only a year younger than him and Jack. He wanted to kiss her, but knew he would only scare her if he tried. The touch of her hand in his was a leap the two wouldn’t make easily again. He already missed the feeling he had when her hand rested in his. He was already thinking of ways to get her to touch him again. “I need to get back.”

“I do too,” he said cursing silently that their days were so full of work. He had his own sheep to count and look over to see how many of the ewes were pregnant and about to drop lambs. She would finish picking rocks from the garden before beginning supper. Maybe since he helped Silas and Jack round up the sheep they would invite him in for supper, but he doubted it.

He wanted to reach his hand out and help her stand, but she was moving so quickly and his gesture too late. He dropped his outstretched hand back to his side when she turned to face him. Her braid was falling free from her bonnet and her face showed signs of sunburn.

“Goodbye William,” she said her voice barely a whisper.

“See you around, Abigail,” he said, his manners getting the better of him. He wanted to keep her under the shade of the willow longer. Anything he said though, would have been a lie. A manipulation and he knew she was better than both. So he nodded his head as she stepped by him and smiled after she took off in a run, her braid bouncing between her shoulder blades. Looking down he saw the rest of the bluebells lying on the ground where she had left them. He walked over and plucked one of the flowers off the stem and put the delicate flower into his shirt pocket across his heart and walked back around the willow tree towards home.