Author: Ramona Levacy Billingslea

The evening sun blazed a canvas of purplish-red across the sky as Bess stood in the backyard and breathed in the clean scent of the clothes hanging on the line. She had volunteered to take them down in part to escape the cloying atmosphere inside the house.

No, that was the wrong. The happy whistles Agnes made as she cooked and cleaned, the photos of Daniel and Judd roping calves and winning at rodeos hung on the walls, the piano with its worn keys, were all the trappings of a normal life. Only Bess, whose world had been one of mere survival for too long, would find the Taylor house oppressive somehow.

Jethro loped over to her, nudging Bess’ thigh with his strong, square head. She patted the slick fur, flexing her fingers across the ridges of the bloodhound’s thick bones. “Such a good boy,” she told him.

“He doesn’t like just anybody,” Judd’s voice said from behind her.

She felt her back stiffen and her momentary peace evaporate. She took a deep breath and continued with the clothes line, hoping that if she ignored him, he would just go away. The cicadas began their chirping song. A breeze kicked up the sand that was everywhere around them. She could feel him standing beside her, smell the musk scent of his cologne and something that seemed to be all Judd, a mix of leather and the earth.

Finally, she couldn’t stand the silence anymore. “Are you out here to interrogate me some more?”

He cleared his throat. “You deserve the benefit of the doubt, I suppose.”

She turned to look at him, not sure she had heard him correctly. He was looking out toward the horizon, his thick jaw clenched, the vein at the base of his neck pulsing. Bess doubted he could maintain treating her civilly, but did she really have a choice?

“Truce, then?” she pushed through tight lips.

He crossed his arms and sighed. “A mother-to-be deserves a safe environment, whether she’s related to me or not.”

Bess took the last shirt off the line and started to bend to pick up the full basket. Her hands collided with Judd’s, and she pulled back as if she had been scalded. He chuckled and headed back into the house without waiting for her. Bess stood with her heart beating rapidly in her chest, wondering why the irritating man flustered her.

When she stepped into the kitchen, Agnes was already ironing the shirts, trousers and dresses that had been flapping in the wind since early afternoon. She had a perfectly serviceable gas dryer in her laundry room, one her boys had purchased for her on the occasion of her sixty-fifth birthday, but she preferred the smell of the sun in her clothes, she’d told them. And so, the appliance sat gathering piles of the magazines Agnes collected to donate to various mission projects.

She looked up at Bess and smiled that toothy grin which promised warm oatmeal on cold winter mornings and sturdy hands to tuck one in at night and nodded toward the nearest kitchen chair. “I wanted to ask you about our Dr. Warren, Bess,” she said. “He’s been our family doctor since the boys were born. I thought we’d make an appointment for you next week, if that’s all right.”

Bess shifted on the chair and chewed her lower lip. The only doctors she’d ever seen were brusque critics with cold hands who couldn’t be finished with her quickly enough. “I hadn’t really planned on seeing one,” she mumbled.

Agnes’ hands stilled. She studied Bess for a long moment so that the younger woman felt as if Daniel’s mother was reading into her very past. “The last thing Dr. Warren would ever do is make you feel judged. He really cares about his patients and will come to their aid at all hours of the night. I don’t think the man has had a warm supper in forty years.”

Bess rubbed her belly. “I’m sure the baby is healthy. I feel just fine.”

“But don’t you want to be sure, dear? There’s no need to have any surprises. I can assure you of that. When Judd came, I was so long in labor, Dr. Warren had to perform a C-section.”

Bess smiled. “So, he was stubborn from the womb, then?”

Agnes chuckled, then waved her finger at Bess. “No distracting me, now, girly. I want you to see a doctor. Let’s make sure you are as healthy as you feel. Would you prefer a female physician?”

Bess’ head jerked up. “They have female doctors?” she asked. As soon as the words left her lips, she wanted to bring them back again. Of course there were female doctors. Now, Agnes would know that Bess barely had a high school education.

But, Agnes didn’t poke fun or even acknowledge Bess’ stupidity. Instead, she kept her face passive and simply repeated, “Would you prefer a female doctor, Bess? Many women are more comfortable with one these days.”

Bess glanced around the kitchen, with its chipped but clean white cabinets and avocado-green counters. She had only been in this house for a few days, but already it was the closest thing to a home that she had ever experienced. Using the doctor Agnes preferred seemed a small enough thing to do.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’ll see Dr. Warren.”

Agnes went back to ironing. “Good. I’ll call his office first thing in the morning.”

The doorbell rang, and a few moments later Judd walked into the room, followed by a balding young man and a thin, blond woman. Agnes introduced them as her pastor and his wife. Michael and Michelle Jones. Bess forced a smile to her lips. She’d had even fewer reasons to like religious people in her life than doctors.

“We look forward to seeing you on Sunday,” Mrs. Jones said, smiling so that her round cheeks puffed into two red balls.

Bess glanced at Judd, who was studying the tablecloth as if he couldn’t even look at her. She had been on the verge of making an excuse not to go to any sermon, but the thought that skipping was exactly what Judd would expect her to do made her re-think her decision.

“I look forward to being seen, then,” she said, satisfied when Judd’s head jerked up, caught her eyes briefly and skidded to the screen door.

The couple stayed for supper, discussing the next summer’s mission trip to Guatemala, the upcoming Christmas pageant, and the church’s need for more volunteers to teach the children’s Sunday school. Bess kept her eyes mainly on her plate and tried not to think about the well-meaning men and women who would come to the orphanage and preach about Jesus and then go home to their love-filled houses without realizing that the soul was the last concern of a young heart that didn’t know what it meant to belong.

When they finally left, Agnes went straight to bed, leaving Bess sitting in the living room alone when Judd came back inside after seeing the couple to their car. He sat down in a chair across from Bess, his posture reserved and perfect. One long finger tapped the edge of the chair, and the silence of the room lengthened.

“It’s almost killed my mother, losing Daniel like that,” Judd said. “He didn’t even write to tell us he’d married.”

“You hadn’t wanted him to enlist,” Bess nodded. “I guess he was punishing you.”

“Guess. You don’t know?”

Bess squared her shoulders. “It was a whirlwind romance.” She bit her lip, hating the disbelieving look Judd did nothing to hide. So much for his truce. “If I am going to stay here, I suppose I owe you some sort of explanation. My story isn’t exactly pretty.”

He held up a hand. “You look tired, Bess. Go to bed.”

Before she could register her shock, he stood, smoothing his hands on his thighs and shaking his head at her look of disbelief. “Your marriage certificate checks out,” he said. “Besides, Agnes deserves to hear your story, don’t you think?”

Bess swallowed. “Yes, but she hasn’t asked me for it.”

He didn’t even blink. “Well, when she does.”

“You’re so sure she will?”

He smiled. “I’m sure you’ll tell her, eventually.”

As she made her way to the bedroom, thinking about the kind way Agnes managed her household, getting even the dogs to behave without raising her voice, Bess figured that Judd was probably right. Before all was said and done, Bess was almost guaranteed to empty herself to the other woman.

The only problem was that once the words began, Bess feared that her emotions would spill out and swirl around her until she was lost inside the black hole of sadness that was her life. What would kind Agnes do then?

Bess slept for the first time in a long time without images of her boyish, blond husband lying in a pool of blood waking her to a cold sweat. Some days, the fact that she’d ever met a man like Daniel, much less been married to him, seemed more like a dream than reality.

She had been working at a laundromat, where she also did alterations, living in a one-bedroom apartment she shared with three other girls in order to make ends meet. The roommates had gone to a country and western bar for the evening, where they worked at flirting for their drinks and enjoyed dancing to the easy rhythms.

Daniel had walked into the bar looking like a movie star with his tall Stetson perched at an angle on his buzz cut, his body lean and fit. All the girls stared as if they’d never seen a man before. Bess, nursing the only beer she’d planned to drink all night, watched him stride to the bar and thought she’d never seen a man more confident.

The last thing in the world she had expected when Daniel spotted the group of women ogling him was that he would walk right up to their table and ask Bess to dance. She followed him into the simple two-step, her skin tingling where his warm hand held hers.

From that moment, they had been inseparable. She loved to hear about his youth, about early mornings fetching eggs from the chicken coop and feeding his mother’s rag-tag collection of strays, the ones who wandered into the yard and found themselves housed in large pens where they could safely be dogs. He talked about his mother with a soft voice that made Bess feel as if she were wrapped in a warm blanket. He worshiped his brother Judd so that Bess pictured a man seven-foot tall and built like a tank, impenetrable.

She never spoke about her past, only about her dreams, which were simple but so far from reach. She wanted to know what it meant to have a family. She wanted to go to sleep at night without wondering if she’d have money for food the next week. She wanted her own bed, one she didn’t have to share with another girl and even then only on a rotation schedule so that no one slept on the floor every night.

Daniel didn’t believe in intimacy without wedding vows, and so Bess really wasn’t all that surprised when, after a particularly intense kissing session, he proposed they go to the courthouse the next day to see about a license. It had been a muggy night, with the dark sky twinkling a thousand stars and the ocean making its own music as the waves spit foam toward the blanket they had laid on the brawny sand.

“I ship out in a couple of weeks,” he told her, his breath warm against her ear, sending shivers down her neck and spine. “I love you, Bess.”

She couldn’t say the same. She wasn’t even sure she knew what love really was. But, Daniel was so handsome and so very kind, much kinder than any of the other men she’d ever been around. It seemed poor sportsmanship to deny a man who was headed off to war, anyway.

So, they’d been married three days later, and Daniel had splurged on a room at the Hotel Galvez, an elegant building with thick carpets and decorations that oozed money. Bess had leaned more heavily on Daniel’s arm as they walked through the fancy lobby, feeling shabby in her clean but out-of-fashion dress suit, hoping silently that no one noticed the scuff marks on her sensible heels.

—

A knock sounded on the bedroom door, pulling Bess from her memories. She didn’t want to get out of the warm bed, so she called out. The door opened wide, and Agnes stepped into the room, a tray laden with food in her hands.

“You slept straight through the night, dear,” she explained as she approached the bed. “You must be famished.”

Bess pulled herself up against the headboard, her mouth salivating at the sight and smell of pancakes and biscuits, eggs and bacon. Her eyes grew wide.

Agnes chuckled. “You just eat what you want and don’t worry about the rest.” She walked over to the window and pulled the curtain aside, letting in a bright shaft of light. “Would you like some company, or do you prefer to eat alone?”

She couldn’t know that Bess had eaten more meals in the quiet of her own mind than in the company of other people. Still, she felt her old defenses go up around her. The sooner she let people in, the sooner they were back out of her life again.

As if she could sense the indecision in the younger woman, Agnes stepped closer to the bed. “I’m anxious to hear about my Daniel.”

Bess forced a smile on her face and nodded.  This was going to be tricky, but she’d known that before she’d boarded the bus back in Houston. If Judd knew just how little Bess had known of Daniel before marrying him, he’d probably boot her out of the house regardless of what Agnes had to say about it. She had plenty of practice telling people what they wanted to hear in order to survive. Somehow, this situation felt different.

“Eat,” Agnes ordered when Bess sat perfectly still on the bed. Because Bess thought the older woman might pick up the fork and start feeding her as if Bess were a child, she dug into the stack of pancakes and took a large bite. “Those were my Daniel’s favorite,” Agnes said.

Bess nodded, savoring the buttery, fluffy perfection in her mouth. “For good reason,” she said, then, “I like dogs, too.”

The older woman smiled, and her teeth flashed a blazing white against her deeply tanned skin. “I’d let them all roam free if the coyotes wouldn’t get them. I’m lucky my sweet husband, God rest his soul, let me put those pens up. Daniel’s job was to feed them every morning. Did he tell you?”

“There you are,” a deep voice interrupted their conversation, and Bess looked toward the door, where Judd stood scowling at her. “The pastor’s wife is on the phone for you, Mom. I think it’s about the meal on Sunday.”

Agnes motioned for Bess to continue eating as she rose and left the room, and Bess hoped that she would close the door on her way to the phone, shutting out the tall man with his black eyes. Unfortunately, Judd took the opportunity to step further into the room, where he crossed his arms over his chest.

Bess laid her fork on her plate and took a deep breath. “Look, it’s pretty obvious you don’t want me here, but this situation,” she motioned to her belly, “isn’t going anywhere. I can do this alone, but this baby is going to be better off if I don’t.”

He shifted on his feet and sniffed. “You do look a touch pale, kind of like you’ve been living under a rock.”

She snorted. “Oh, I like that. I’m sure you think I crawled out from the gutter and scammed your brother into marrying me, too! Your mother is right. The two of you are nothing alike.”

He clenched and relaxed his fist, then harrumphed.  “I’m alive, for one thing.”

Bess had had enough. She focused her most intimidating glare on him, studying his stature from the top of his head to the tips of his shiny boots. “If you can call it that,” she spat.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and jangled the change in them, making a light clinking sound in the tense atmosphere. Then, his shoulders dropped just a smidgen and something like a grim smile played across his thin lips. “Daniel always had a soft spot for stray things. You’re right. The baby deserves to be born in a healthy environment. But, I’ve got my eyes on you. Depend on it.”

Before she could respond, he spun on one heel and stalked out of the room. Bess felt the baby move inside her, distracting her from the spiral of fear that the encounter sent up her spine. A tear escaped her, dropping onto her bump of a belly, staining the faded flannel of her gown, a sign of weakness she could ill afford.

She swiped at her eyes and blew the air between her lips to stop the pain. Judd Taylor wasn’t the first bully she’d had to deal with in her life. One particularly large boy in the home still had a light scar under his right eye where the metal chair she’d lobbed at him made contact and sliced open his cheek, splaying blood across the polished white rec room floor.

A laugh exploded from her chest as she imagined Judd Taylor with the syrup from her pancakes running in trickles down his head. If it weren’t for the baby in her belly, she’d have dumped her entire breakfast on top of the man.

As it was, she was going to do her best to avoid him for now. And once the baby was born and she was physically recovered, well then, she was perfectly able to take care of herself. And she would worry about what was best for the baby when it was finally living outside her body.

She refused to acknowledge the voice that kept telling her even the taciturn Sheriff would make a better parent than little orphan Bess, the laundromat queen. Avoiding that voice got her out of the bed, forced her into Agnes’ company, where she searched for every chore to keep her busy until she fell into the bed again in the early evening, enjoying another deep and dreamless sleep.

(Okay, so in a moment of craziness I decided to take on the challenge of writing a novel in a month and sharing the experience with you. If you are usually reading my blogs on Christian living, don’t give up on me. Instead, you can safely ignore any posts labeled with the NaNoWriMo tag if you have no interest in reading a novel in progress. For the rest of you, I hope you enjoy reading this first draft of a new novel that I literally plan to write a new segment on each day for the month of November. Your comments can even help me determine just where the story goes. Thanks in advance for joining me on this journey.  –Ramona)

Bess pulled at a loose thread sticking out from the frayed edge of her jacket, trying hard not to look at the profile of the taciturn man in the driver’s seat beside her. Judd Taylor was lean and muscular with a face only a mother could love, all sharp angles and rough like leather. She hadn’t expected to find her brother-in-law when she walked into the small town’s police station looking for her husband’s family. But, as she fumbled through her explanation of why she was looking for the Taylor family, Judd had pushed past the receptionist and demanded to know just who Bess was.

The hand she held out to show him the marriage certificate, along with the telegram from the Defense Department, shook visibly as he snatched the papers from her and studied them with black eyes that flashed fire. Judd had taken two deep breaths before he nodded toward the office labeled Sheriff and then waited to follow her into it.

The door closing behind him snapped, causing Bess to jump. She placed a protective hand on her protruding belly and took her own deep breath.

Judd sat down behind his desk and stared at her until Bess was forced to look away. “We had the funeral two weeks ago,” he finally said, his voice hard like flint. “Where were you?”

Bess swallowed at the bile that rose in her throat. “Your brother was such a good man,” she said. “I didn’t have the bus fare then, for the funeral.”

Judd grimaced. “If you’re expecting to find a million dollar spread, you need to know Daniel was prone to exaggeration.” Before she could react to this insult, he added, “Is the child his?”

Bess placed her hand on her belly and glared at the intimidating man. “I’d ask why else you’d think I was here,” she said, proud that her voice didn’t waver, “but you’ve already made that clear. I thought your mother would want to know. I don’t really have anyone else.”

He raised a bushy eyebrow, which only piqued her temper. “Are you even old enough to drive?”

Bess pulled on one of her blond curls, an abundance of which clung to her head in a pixie cut. “I’m 20-years-old, as if that’s really your business.” She turned toward the door. “This was a mistake.”

For such a tall man, he moved like lightening. He was standing in front of the door, his hands on his hips. “Agnes will want to know you,” he said grudgingly.

Agnes was Daniel’s mother. He’d talked about her on warm evenings in Galveston as he and Bess had sat out on the seawall and watched the foamy waves crash into the sand. Theirs had been a whirlwind romance. Daniel had married Bess just two weeks before he was shipped out to Vietnam in a justice of the peace office just off the strand. A month later, Bess finally visited a doctor to verify she was pregnant. And now, before her pregnancy was even six months along, her husband was dead, killed taking a randomly-numbered hill that his unit gave back to the enemy just two days later.

Without another word, Judd had led Bess to his patrol car, opened the passenger-side door for her and then eased behind the wheel to drive her to the family homestead. He glanced at her now as the car turned off the paved highway onto a caliche road that wound through cotton fields and past a large chicken farm whose pungent odors wafted through the car and caused the nausea to rise in Bess’ throat.

“You look a little green, Mrs. Taylor,” Judd told her, snarling her name as if he had to rip it from his throat. “Could it be that you’re a city girl?”

She had lived on her grandfather’s hardscrabble farm and then in the sterile, crowded environment of the children’s home. For several hard months when she turned 16, she’d even lived under a bridge on the outskirts of Houston with a group of other teenagers trying to avoid the evening ward whose hands groped and breath stank.

Judd Taylor didn’t need to know anything about any of that, however. “You try being pregnant,” she shot at him and crossed her arms over her chest.

He made a noise that might have been a chuckle, except Bess was sure he never even smiled. He pulled into a dirt drive and wound his way a half mile up it before reaching a single-story house that sprawled across the landscape amidst several animal pens and weathered tin sheds. A black and brown bloodhound bound up to the car, his deep-throated barking ringing through the car windows.

“Jethro is more bark than bite,” Judd told her, stopping the car and opening the door in one fluid movement.

Bess took a few deep breaths. Before she could get out of the car, the screen door to the house opened. A tall, thin woman stepped out into the yard. Her silver hair was pulled into a tight bun on the top of her head. Her skin was deeply tanned and stretched tight across her bones, which seemed to push out at all angles from her head to her large feet. She wore a decade-old day dress, a faded yellow, that swung around her ankles. She said something to Judd which Bess couldn’t hear. Judd pointed toward the car, pushing the cowboy hat he wore to the back of his head, revealing his cold, black stare.

Agnes placed a hand to her mouth and practically ran to the passenger side of the car. Before Bess could do anything, Agnes pulled open the door and bent inside the car to embrace Bess in a boney hug. When she pulled away from Bess, both women had tears in their eyes.

Bess struggled out of the car and stood beside the other woman, doing her best not to look toward Judd, who presumably stood studying her as if she were a criminal suspect.

“At least you’re glad to see me,” Bess heard herself exclaim before she could still her tongue.

Agnes laughed, a deep, healthy sound that was almost like music. “Don’t mind Judd, dear. He and Daniel were practically opposites in almost every way. I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now. It takes my Judd a while, but once he warms up to you, he’s the best friend you could have in this life.”

“I hope it’s all right that I came,” Bess said. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

Agnes was pulling her gently toward the house. “Of course you’ll stay here. I want to see my grandbaby grow.”

They were even with Judd then, who made another noise deep in his throat.

“I am used to hard work, Mrs. Taylor,” Bess said, forcing herself to look Judd straight in his black eyes. “It won’t take me long to settle. I should have a job by the end of the week.”

“How do you plan to get to this job?” Judd barked. “You may not have noticed, but we aren’t exactly within walking distance to town.”

Agnes slapped at her son’s arm. “There’s plenty you can do just making sure I get a healthy grandchild, Bess,” she said. “But, enough about that later. You must be tired. Where did you come here from?”

Now that she was finally at her destination, Bess felt her nerves and tiredness catch up with her. “I’m sure you want to know all about me and Daniel, Mrs. Taylor. I’m afraid there may not be all that much to tell.”

Agnes shook her head and laid her hand on Bess’ back, rubbing it so that Bess felt strangely comforted. “You just get yourself some much-needed rest for now, child. Let me show you your room.” 

She walked Bess down the long hall and stopped in front of a room just as Judd exited it. There was a twin bed with her small suitcase placed on top of it. A simple nightstand and large armoire, along with a wooden rocking chair completed the furnishings. The walls had once been a vibrant green but had long since faded. A two-year-old Farmer’s Almanac calendar was the only thing hanging on the walls. Somehow, Bess thought, the room was exactly as she had imagined it would be. 

“If you need anything, you just holler, ” Agnes said from behind her. “My room is just across the hall there, and Judd’s is just next door.”

Bess swallowed. She hadn’t realized the dreaded man lived with his mother. 

“Somebody has to work the cattle and manage the men,” Judd said as if he had just read her mind. 

Bess felt her cheeks grow hot. “It’s a lovely room. Thank you.” She stepped inside and turned before closing the door. 

“Supper is generally around seven, if the criminals behave,” Agnes told her, smiling kindly so that Bess’ chest squeezed in response. 

Bess nodded and closed the door without looking at Judd again. Still, as she closed her eyes after changing into the one flannel gown she owned, she was troubled by images of the tall, muscular Sheriff who was sure to make the last months of her pregnancy a real hell.