Web of Dreams (Casteel 5)

"We'll do fine on the floor pallets. We've slept on 'em before, right Pa?"

"That ain't no lie," Pa said.

"But . . ."

"Now don't go arguin' about it, Luke. If I know ya, ya'll be startin' fer a baby right away. Suspect ya might have already," she said gazing at me as if she had the power to see my pregnancy in my face. "All Casteels are made in beds," she added. "I'm hopin' and prayin' that's always gonna be true."

"All right, Ma." Luke pulled back the curtain to reveal a big brass bed with a saggy old stained mattress over coiled springs. What a difference between that and even the bed in the cheap motel we had slept in last night, I thought; but it was to be our first marriage bed. It would have to do.

There couldn't have been two more different worlds than the world of Farthinggale Manor and the world of the Willies. I had set out to run away from Farthy and I had come so far it seemed that my mother and Tony and all that I had left behind were on a distant planet in another solar system. I was shocked and afraid, but I was determined not to go back.

Despite her rough manner of speaking and critical eyes, I found Annie Casteel easy to talk to. She really listened when I spoke, absorbing the story of my life with interest and amazement on her face. Of course, I didn't tell about Tony's raping me. Luke wanted me to keep the secret of my pregnancy even from his parents. Annie wanted to know why I had run away and I explained that my mother's new husband had been making advances and my mother blamed it all on me.

"Without a Daddy who cared and a Mother who believed me, I felt lost and alone and decided to leave. I was on my way to my grandmother's when I met Luke and fell in love," I explained. She nodded and passed me the carrots to scrape and wash clean. But when I told her about the portrait dolls and Angel, she insisted I stop working and take Angel out of the suitcase so she could see something that fine and expensive. Her eyes lit up with pleasure.

"When I was a little girl, my pa had to whittle me a doll out of a thick branch. I never had anythin' dainty and sweet, and I never seen nothin' like this, even in the store windas down in Winnerrow. And then, after I got married, I had no cause ta buy one fer I had six boys and no girls. After a while, I gave up tryin' ta have a girl.

"I hope when Luke and ya have a baby, it's a girl," she said and I saw that this tough, hard woman of the Willies could be as soft and gentle as any woman I had met. I felt sorry for her, sorry that her life was so hard and there were so few opportunities for her to be a woman, to dress up and be pretty, to keep her skin soft and let her fingernails grow.

"I hope so, too, Annie," I said. She stared at me a moment and then replied.

"Ya call me Ma," she said, and I smiled. "Now let's get this stew cookin'. If I know them two, they'll be brayin' like mules fer somethin' ta eat sooner than ya think."

"Yes, Ma."

I used an outhouse for the first time in my life and sat down at the small plank dinner table and ate something I had never dreamed of eating. But it was delicious. After dinner, Pa played his banjo and Luke and he sang old mountain songs and drank

moonshine. I saw they were both starting to get ti

psy. Pa got Luke up to do a jig and then he did one himself. After a while Ma bawled them out for acting stupid. Luke looked at me quickly and I shook my head. it was enough to sober him up quickly.

Just before we went to bed, Luke and I sat out on the porch and listened to the sounds of the forest-- the owls hooting, the coyotes howling and the peepers croaking in the swamps. 1 did feel a sense of peace and security sitting with Luke, holding his hand and looking up at the stars, even though I was miles from civilization as I had known it and living in a shack.

When we crawled under the quilt together, I hugged and kissed Luke lovingly. He was stirred, but he didn't take me the way a husband should take his wife.

"No, Angel," he whispered. "We'll wait until after you have the baby and I've given you a proper home and we can sleep and make love away from anyone else's ears."

I knew what he meant. The old springs squeaked even when we just turned toward and away from each other. On the other side of the curtain, Pa snored, and under the floorboards, just as Ma promised, the hogs snorted and the dogs whimpered. Something scratched at the wooden piers. I heard a cat hiss and then, all was as still as it could get with the wind whistling through the trees and the cracks in the floor and walls of the small cabin. Pa's moonshine put Luke to sleep very quickly. It took me a while longer, but I finally closed my eyes and slept my first night in the Willies.

In the morning Luke got up bright and early and drove down to Winnerrow to get that carpentry job. Pa was working with some farmer named Burl, building a new barn with him and earning some money. After breakfast, Ma sat down to continue her crocheting. I decided to take a washcloth, pail and detergent and do what I could to clean up the cabin. Ma seemed amused by my efforts, but when she came back in and saw how I had cleaned the windows and shined up whatever appliances she had, she nodded with approval.

Afterward, she took me out to her small garden and I helped her weed while she talked about her past, what life was like for her growing up in the Willies. She told me about her other sons, Luke's brothers, and I saw how upset she was about two of them being in prison.

"We're poor and we never put on airs," she said, "but we always been honest folk. 'Cept, of course, for the moonshine, but that ain't the government's business anyway. All them revenuers is tryin' ta do is protect the big businessmen, who make licker and sell it for outrageous prices. Folks up here could never afford it and would have none if it wasn't fer the moonshiners.

"Not that I approve a drinkin', mind ya. It's what got ma other boys inta trouble. I jist hate ta see some poor Willies man hunted down fer makin' his own whiskey. Understand, Angel?"

"Yes, Ma."

"Um," she said watching me work. "Yer jist might make a Willies wife yit. At least yer don't mind gettin' yer hands dirty."

It was funny how that made me feel proud. I thought about the expression on my mother's face if she could see me now. She would die if she touched something dusty in Farthy, but here I was with my fingers in the soft, cool earth. And I didn't feel all that worse for it, I thought. But I did want to look pretty for Luke when he returned from his first day of work in Winnerrow.

"But it's all right to clean my hands up later and maybe rub in some of that lotion I brought with me, isn't it, Ma?" How she laughed.

"Of course, child. Damn, don'tcha think I'd like ta look like one of them fancy, rich Winnerrow women?"

"Well, maybe I can help you do that, Ma," I said. "Let me brush out your hair later and you can use some of my hand cream."