“All right, if that’s the way you want to be. I’m not fooling around, but suit
yourself. Pay me no mind. If you don’t want to have your own farm, your own
land, I can’t force you to.” She turned to leave.
She was at the door when he asked, “What land?”
She spun around, her face lit up. “I knew you’d do it!” She managed to keep
her voice low, though she felt like shouting.
“I ain’t said I’m a do nothin’,” he said as she approached.
“Oh you will, once I explain. But that might take a while and . . .” She paused
and nodded toward the front room of the store and Mr. Bellinir. “He knows I’m
back here with you, so I shouldn’t stay too long.” She frowned. “I thought
maybe we could meet down by the river, but it’s so cold. How about in the
Congregational Church? Reverend Dixby doesn’t keep it locked, does he?”
“Nah.” Mourning shook his head. “But you don’t wanna be talkin’ ’bout
nothing secret in there. Reverend Dixby got a nose what way too big. He see you
goin’ in there after me, take him ’bout three and a half minutes to call a town meeting on us. But I got a place we can talk. Nice and warm, too. I got the key to
Mr. Carmichael’s office and he gone over to Strickley. Ain’t gonna come back till late at night. I’m a go there first, through the back door, and get the stove lit
up. Then you come knock on the front door and wait a bit ’fore you let yourself
in. Anyone see you, they gonna think him or Billy Adams be in there and
hollered out for you to come in.”
“How long should I wait before I come?”
“Don’t matter. Few minutes.”
“Is it all right for you to leave work now?”
“No mind to him when I be doin’ this, long as it get done. I’m a tell him I gotta fix your stove. Poor old Mrs. Hardaway can’t cook nothin’ – door keep fallin’ on her foot.”
Olivia nodded and turned to leave. From the middle of the store she called
over her shoulder, “I’ll tell Mrs. Hardaway you’ll be right there,” and then said
goodbye to Mr. Bellinir. He barely nodded, his attention focused on his ledger, though Olivia suspected he paid more mind to what went on around him than he
let on.
She paused outside Killion’s General, glimpsed Mourning coming out onto
the sidewalk, and slipped into her brother’s store to wait. This was the most excitement she’d had in years. She nodded to Avis and milled around the
shelves, helping herself to some of the peppermint candies he kept in a glass bowl on the counter. When she went back outside wisps of smoke were curling
from Mr. Carmichael’s stovepipe. Olivia did as Mourning had told her to and
found him sitting on one of the two chairs next to the stove. She settled opposite
him.
“Okay,” he said. “What land you got to give away?”
“You remember my Uncle Scruggs, don’t you?”
“Lorenzo? What used to be the Post Master?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, I ain’t never gonna forget him. I been standin’ right behind him the day that horse took into his head. I seen it all.”
“Well, maybe you don’t know that before he came back here, he was a farmer.
He and his wife Lydia Ann had a place – eighty-acres. Right on the bank of a river with good fresh water. He dug a cellar, built a cabin over it, put up a barn,
