Behold, this Dreamer. Charlotte Miller

you’ll marry—”

      “And just who is that?” There was annoyance in Elise’s voice—she already knew what was coming.

      “Oh, he fits the bill, all right, little one—except for the tall and handsome part—and I doubt he’ll ever write you love letters, for I’ve never heard him put two words together sensibly in the same sentence in all my life. But he’s rich, all right, and he’ll be a college man—”

      “If you mean—”

      “Everyone knows you’ll marry J.C. Cooper—James Calvin—” Phyllis Ann said, a note of singsong in the last two words. “The County says you’ll marry James Calvin. Your daddy says you’ll marry James Calvin—” there was a sudden change in her tone, as if she were speaking to a very small child, “—and you’re such a good little girl, you always do what your daddy says, don’t you?”

      Elise sat up angrily. “I have no intention of marrying J.C., and you know it!” But Phyllis Ann only laughed, and Elise knew that she had gotten the response she had wanted. Phyllis Ann was right anyway—everyone did think she would marry J.C. It had seemed a foregone conclusion in the County from the moment Hiram Cooper and his wife had produced a son, and William and Martha Whitley had produced a daughter. The Whitleys were the biggest cotton growers in the County, and the Coopers owned a half interest in the Goodwin Cotton Mill—it was a match made in heaven, or in the banks, a match that could not be passed up: Elise Whitley was to marry J.C. Cooper; her father said so—and he was determined to make sure that the marriage took place.

      William Whitley intended to have the other half interest in the Mill once Hiram Cooper’s partner, old Mr. Bolt, retired or finally died. The Whitleys produced more cotton than any other place in the County, and, once William Whitley owned a half interest in the cotton mill, with his daughter securely wedded to the other half, there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind who was the most powerful man in all of Endicott County—if there was any doubt even now.

      Elise knew everyone expected her to marry J.C.—that is, everyone but her and J.C. themselves. She and J.C. had been reared together, had played together as children, and she loved him just as she loved her brothers—they had climbed trees together, had gotten into fist fights, and had even broken the kitchen window once, which J.C. had taken the whipping for, though it had been she who had thrown the rock—dear, gentle J.C.; but she would not marry him. No matter what the County said. No matter what her father said. And no matter what Phyllis Ann Bennett said.

      “I think James Calvin will make a perfect husband for you,” Phyllis Ann was saying now, sitting up on the bed and grinning at her—oh, how Phyllis Ann had always loved to torment and bedevil J.C., which he had always tolerated with a characteristic good nature. She had even taken to calling him “James Calvin” of late, telling him he was much too mature now to go by the more-familiar “J.C.” he had grown up with—how delighted he had been, how flattered; and how she had laughed at him behind his back for that delight.

      “I have no intention of—”

      “Oh, I think you’ll make a perfect couple. He’ll give you a houseful of little four-eyed Coopers—I bet you’re really looking forward to the wedding night—”

      “Oh, shut up!” Elise snapped, and Phyllis Ann began to laugh. Elise got up from the bed and started across the room for the door, but stopped short, remembering they were not allowed to leave the room even to go into the remainder of the dormitory. She sat down in a chair near the door instead, turning her eyes to stare at her friend again. Phyllis Ann laughed only all the harder, flinging herself back on the bed with her arms outstretched, and laughing until the mattress shook beneath her.

5

      Every muscle in Janson’s body ached as he walked toward the barn his second Saturday on the Whitley place. He was tired, tired through to his soul, he told himself, having struggled all day long against an iron pry, urging on a stubborn team of mules as they strained against their trace chains, doing everything he could to uproot a stump that had been firmly planted in the red Georgia clay for generations—that was still there, sitting dead center in the middle of a field he was clearing on Whitley’s orders for cotton planting the next spring.

      His back and shoulders ached from having thrown his weight against the iron bar all day, straining against it, even as the mules strained against the chains wound around the stump—even as the stump stayed in the ground, stubborn, immovable as the Earth itself. Blisters had risen on his palms early in the morning, only to be rubbed off and left raw and open as the day wore on. They hurt even now as he walked home in the growing darkness, but he paid them little heed. He did not have to look at them to know they were red and raw and even bleeding in places—they were a working man’s hands. They had looked this way before. They would look this way again.

      He left the road that led away from the Whitleys’ store and cut across country, going through a section of the thick pine woods and toward the clearing where the barn and his small room stood. It was a drafty, lean-to affair he had been given in exchange for the rent just deducted from his wages. Haphazardly attached to the back of the building, with only one small window and a door that did not fit properly into its frame, it had already proven itself to be a cold place to sleep during the long winter nights. The black cast-iron stove he used to both cook his simple meals and to heat the one room did little to fight off the drafts that blew in around the door and in between the poorly-fitting boards in the walls—but the noisy and rusting tin roof that stood between him and the rain, and the ill-fitting walls that kept out the worst of the cold, were a welcome to him; and they were his, thanks to the rent that had been deducted from the wages he had just been paid. It was not a fine place such as the Whitleys lived in, this tiny room with only the one kerosene lamp for light, and the gaps in the walls that the wind whistled through at night, but it was his for now, and it would do—it would do until he could go home to his land and to that house he dreamed of most every night now. It would do.

      He came clear of the woods and crossed a field of dry cotton plants, going toward the barn, and then around to the back and to the room that sat attached there. He almost stumbled over the single, cane-bottomed straight chair that sat just within the doorway as he entered, but righted it, then moved to light the kerosene lamp on the table at the side of the sagging rope bed.

      The flickering yellow light showed bare, unpainted walls, an ancient chifforobe with a cracked and fading mirror, the narrow cot where he slept, the single chair, the splintery wooden table, the black stove—there were few other things lying about, just the Bible with its worn and cracked leather cover, the heavy, hand-pieced quilts Mattie Ruth had given him, the black, cast-iron skillet she let him use, the few clothes folded and put away in the chifforobe, and his shoes beside the bed.

      He shivered with the cold and moved to build a fire in the stove, knowing it would be a time before the room would be warm and the heavy, damp chill in the air would be driven away. He kept his coat on and sat down on the narrow cot, thinking of what he would cook for his supper—bacon and eggs, for he was too tired to fool with much more. But it would still be a time before the fire in the stove would be hot enough to cook on.

      He stuck one hand in the pocket of his coat and pulled out the few coins that were his pay for the work he had done since he had been on the Whitley place—ten days work, and he held it all in the palm of one hand, minus what had been taken out for the rent on this room, and for the charge he had been forced to run at the store. Doing chores for Mattie Ruth in the few hours he had free from Whitley’s demands had allowed him her home cooking at times; chopping wood for one of Whitley’s sharecroppers had given him eggs in return, butter, and a little flour, but still there had been food to buy, kerosene for the lamp, and thread to patch his overalls with. He had watched his charging carefully, worrying over every penny he knew would have to come from his wages in the end—how hard it had been to decide to part with even one of those few, precious coins, as he had to do today in deciding to place the telephone call to Eason County.

      He knew his grandparents would be worried about him, wondering where