Heaven (Casteel 1)

With Sarah acting glum and grim, each day was an ordeal to survive, except when I was with Logan, and then one terrible day when the sun was truly hot, I found him down by the river and Fanny was racing up and down the riverbank without a stitch on! Laughing and teasing him to try and catch her. "An when ya do . . . I'll be yers, all yers," she taunted. I stood frozen, horrified by Fanny's actions, as I turned my eyes on Logan and waited to see what he'd do.

"Shame on you, Fanny!" he called to her. "You're just a kid who deserves a good spanking."

"Then ya catch me an give it t'me!" she challenged.

"No, Fanny," he yelled, "you're just not my type." He turned to head back toward Winnerrow, or so I thought, and that's when I stepped out from behind the tree that had shielded me from his view.

He tried to smile and succeeded only in looking embarrassed. "I wish you hadn't seen and heard that. I was waiting for you when Fanny showed up, and she just tore off her dress, and she wore nothing underneath . . . it wasn't my fault, Heaven, I swear it wasn't."

"Why are you explaining?"

"It's not my fault!" he cried, his face red.

"I know it wasn't . . ." I said stiffly. I knew Fanny and her need to take from me anything I really wanted for myself. Still, from all I'd heard, most boys wanted loose girls with no modesty and no

inhibitions, like my younger sister Fanny, who would undoubtedly live ten exciting lives while I struggled through one.

"Hey," said Logan, reaching to tilt my bowed head so my lips were near his, "it's your type I want, and your type I need. Fanny's pretty and bold . . . but I like my girls shy, beautiful, and sweet, and if I don't manage somehow to marry Heaven, I don't want to go there, not ever."

This kiss he gave me did ring a few bells. I could hear them chiming like wedding bells ringing in the future. Mrs. Logan Grant Stonewall. . me.

Instantly I was happy. In some things Fanny was right. Lif

e did have to go on. Everybody needed a chance at living and loving. Now it was my turn.

Now Sarah took to talking to herself, walking in some unhappy dream.

"Gotta escape, gotta get away from this hell," she mumbled. "Ain't nothin but work, eat, sleep, wait an wait fer him t'come home--an when he does, ain't no satisfaction, ain't none at all."

Don't say that, Sarah, please don't . . . what would we do without you?

"Done dug my own grave with my own desire," Sarah confessed to herself on another day. "Coulda had some otha man, coulda . ."

"I'd leave, but fer t'kids." She said this to herself day and night; then she'd stare hard at Pa when he came home on weekends, only to see he'd grown more handsome (damn him, she'd mutter), and her heart would jump up in her emerald eyes, and like a stupid stopped clock whose hands had to say the same thing over and over again, back came her love for him.

Only too obviously, too painfully, Sarah's small world grew darker, grimmer. And it was I who bore most of the brunt of Sarah's frustration. Exhausted at the end of the day, I fell to my floor pallet and sobbed silent tears into my hard pillow. Granny heard, and Granny laid a comforting hand on my shoulder.

"Sssh, don't cry. Sarah don't hate ya none, chile. It's yer pa that makes her mad, but yer here and he's not. She can't yell out at him when he's not here, or hit out at him--couldn't even iffen he was here. Nobody ya don't love kin be hurt if ya yell and scream--an she's been yellin an screamin fer years an years, an he don't hear or kerr--an she don't go nowhere, so she's strikin out at ya."

"But why did he marry her in the first place if he didn't love her, Granny?" I sobbed. "Just so I'd have a stepmother to hate me?"

"Aw, Lawdy knows t'whys an t'wherefors of what makes men like they are," wheezed Granny, turning over and hugging Grandpa, whom she called Toby, with great affection. Giving him more love with one kiss and one stroking hand on his grizzly face than any of us ever did. "Ya jus make sure t'marry t'right one, like I did, that's all. An wait till yer old enough t'have good sense. Say fifteen."

In the hills, a girl who reached sixteen without being engaged was almost beyond hope, bound to be an old maid.

"Listen Vern whisperin," mumbled Sarah, keening her ears from behind the faded thin red curtain, "talkin bout me. Girl's cryin agin. Why am I so mean t'her, why not Fanny who causes all the trouble? He likes Fanny, hates her--why not jump on Fanny? Our Jane, Keith? An most of all Tom."

I pulled in a deep fearful breath. Oh, the pity of Sarah thinking about turning against Tom!

It was terrible the day when Sarah lashed Tom with a whip, as if in striking him she could get back at Pa for never being what she wanted him to be. "Didn't I tell ya t'go inta town an earn money? Didn't I?"

"But, Ma, nobody wanted to hire me! They got boys who have riding lawn mowers with vacuums that pulls in cleaves. They don't need a hill boy who hasn't got even a push mower!"

"Excuses! I need money, Tom, money!"

"Ma . . . try again tomorrow," cried Tom, throwing up his arms and trying to protect his face. "I'll never get a job if I look swollen and bloody, will I?"

Frustrated momentarily, Sarah stared down at the floor--unfortunately. Tom had forgotten to wipe his feet. "Didn't look, did ya? T'floors clean! Jus scrubbed it! An look at it now, all muddy!"