Chapter 10

Mira stiffened when Gordon took her hand. She wanted to pull free, to run away again as she had from Miss Ophelia's parlor, but one could not escape from a moving train or take back words spoken. The very thought of those audacious words kept a fire burning in her cheeks.

She breathed in and out slowly and forced her arm to relax. When she did, she was surprised to like the feel of her hand in Gordon's. He had such sureness about him. He didn't seem to be filled with doubts as she was. But then, hadn't she done her best to sound absolutely sure of her path into the unknown?

Sourwood would not be unknown long. Gordon was not unknown. They had been friends of a sort in school. They could be friends of a different sort now. Love might be too much to expect, although she had heard some claim love at first sight. Such always seemed unlikely to her, but she could hope they could like one another.

She could like Gordon. She did like Gordon. He had shocked her with his proposal. Could that be only last Sunday? In less than a week her life had been turned upside down. She had never been impetuous. Yet here she was, her hand in a man's hand she had just demanded marry her.

He had asked first. She twisted her lips sideways to hide the smile that wanted to pop out on her face. Marriage was no laughing matter. Cleaving together as the Bible said. She eased her thoughts away from the marriage bed. She had admitted to being afraid. Of everything. Even Gordon. She should have never said that. She should have not said anything about cleaving. One flesh. That sounded wayward. What must he think of her? Yet he had taken her hand.

She gave herself over to the warmth of his hold. Her hands were always cold, but now she felt surprisingly warm. Comforted. Maybe a man sure of his path with the Lord had an overflowing well of comfort to share.

Still, it was best to turn her mind to things other than marriage right now. Better to think about the place that would be her home, the children she would teach before she had time to become a mother.

What if it turned out she couldn't conceive? She mentally shook her head to stop her thoughts from shooting off in another wayward direction. Focus. Think about the children in her dreams. Schoolchildren. Think about them.

"Tell me about the school."

He looked as relieved as she felt to talk of something other than their impending marriage. "You will love the children." He tightened his fingers around her hand.

"Have they been to school?"

"A few left Sourwood to stay with relatives where they were close enough to walk to a school. But most have not."

"What ages are they?"

"All ages."

"With one teacher?" A little of her fear reared back up. How would she have lessons for all ages?

"It's a one-room schoolhouse, but don't worry. The older children help teach the younger ones. That makes the teaching easier and the learning better."

"If you know what you're doing."

He smiled. "You are a teacher. You will know what to do."

"Are there books?" Her own books were packed in her trunk that she could only hope was somewhere on this train, but she had no primers for beginning readers. She would have to make word cards and arithmetic cards too.

"The churches donated some schoolbooks. We'll make it work."

She liked how he said "we." So many things they needed to make work. She couldn't worry about what books she had or didn't have until they got to Sourwood. That would be time enough to plan how she would teach. Once she met her students.

"All right. What about the children? Tell me about them."

Gordon's face lit up. "They are much like children anywhere, I suppose. There's this one boy, Joseph, who comes every day to see if he can do something for me. And not in hopes of making a penny. He's only six, but he fetches water from the creek and hunts firewood for me. He likes Bible stories."

"Does he have brothers and sisters?"

"He's one of seven. Two sisters younger than him. Three brothers and a sister older."

"A few families like his will overflow a one-room schoolhouse."

He laughed. "Some families have more children, but they won't all be in school since some are babies and others past school age."

"Yes, of course." Even so, Mira had an unsettling image of how full the school might be. Another worry to leave until later. "All right, I know about Joseph, helper and Bible story lover. Tell me about one of the girls." In Louisville, the girls were generally happier about school than the boys.

"There is Ada June. She is very eager to learn to read."

"Ada June. Does she have a big family too?"

Gordon's smile faded. "She doesn't have any family. Her mother died when Ada June was five. After that, she's sort of been bumped around to first one place, then another. Now she stays with a woman named Dottie Slade if she's not out in the woods. Nobody keeps track of her."

"What about her father?"

"She's never had one of those."

"What do you mean? A child has to have a father."

"True, but some fathers don't accept their responsibilities."

"That's shameful." Mira frowned.

"True, but it happens." Gordon huffed out a breath. "Things weren't easy for Ada June even when her mother was living, or so I've been told. Sarai was always a loner, never cared the first whit what people said. Seemed she just showed up one spring day when she was well along with Ada June. Most people figured she had followed the father to Sourwood, but if so, she never made that known. an old man named Leathers, who was the nearest thing they had to a preacher before I came to Sourwood, let her live in a cabin on his place way up in the hills."

"Perhaps he was Ada June's father."

"All this happened before I came to Sourwood, but from what I've been told, Arvin Leathers was such a Christian man, nobody could believe that."

"But what happened to Ada June's mother?" Mira asked. "Sarai, didn't you say?"

"Yes. From what I've been told, she either stopped eating or perhaps had nothing to eat. That winter was a bad one. I assume Mr. Leathers had been seeing to Sarai and Ada June, but he had passed on the summer before."

"You'd think someone would have checked on them."

"Of course they should have, but for whatever reason, nobody did." Gordon looked grim as he went on. "A man running his traplines one snowy winter morning found Ada June beside her mother's body. The girl was half-frozen, but she still ran from him. He caught her, wrapped her tight in his coat to keep her from fighting him, and carried her down the hill."

"Poor child." Sadness welled up in Mira at the thought of the girl waiting beside her mother in the cold.

"Yes. After her mother died, she stopped talking. Didn't say a word until after I came to Sourwood."

"So you helped her find her voice?"

"Not me. The Lord. The people had sort of given up on her ever talking or at least decided to let her be. She still doesn't talk much."

"You say she wants to learn to read. She must have told you that. What changed for her?"

"I'm not sure. Perhaps the excitement of having a chance to learn pulled her out of her shell. That and having a dog. Bo is always with her and having him has helped Ada June. Then on most Sundays, she slips into the church to stand in the back. When I see her there, I can almost feel the Lord showering down love on her." Gordon paused a moment and then went on. "The Lord can touch a person's heart even when they try to hide from him."

Mira blinked away tears at the thought of how alone the little girl must have felt. Hadn't she felt the same after Edward died? "How could a dog help her start talking again?"

"I don't know. Maybe by giving her more courage. Anyway, she and her dog started showing up whenever I walked to this or that house. At first she'd just trail along behind me. If I stopped, she took off for the woods. So I began to merely slow my steps and sing. Usually ‘Jesus Loves Me.' One day she started singing with me." Gordon's voice broke a little. "I wanted to shout hallelujah. I didn't for fear of frightening her, but my heart was full of thanksgiving."

"And that was a beginning." Mira knew the joy of those kinds of beginnings from working with her students.

"Yes, a beginning. She still doesn't talk much to me or anyone else, but she seems to be pulled toward the written word. That's why she keeps asking about a teacher." He looked directly at Mira. "She will be a happy student."

"I think I love her already."

"And she will love you." Gordon turned in his seat toward Mira. "Some people are easy to love."

"And some are not," Mira whispered, but she didn't look away.

"I will pray for ease between us and promise you will never have reason to fear me." He took her other hand.

Her heart began racing and the noise around them seemed to fade away until it was only her and Gordon. When he continued to look at her, waiting as he must have waited for Ada June to speak, she pulled in a breath for the same kind of courage that little girl must have needed. "I will do the same and that you will never be disappointed in me."

A frown flickered across his face. "That could never be. The Lord has put us together for good. Not bad."

She nodded without saying anything, even as she silently prayed he was right.

"We'll be in Jackson soon. I know a preacher there. He can marry us. Not today, but tomorrow before we go on to Sourwood."

She managed not to jerk her hands free and shrink from his words. She had said this was what she wanted. Somehow she would follow it through even if her feet were itching to run.

"We can stay with Pastor Haskell tonight. In the morning, I'll find a wagon to take us on to Sourwood. It's a rough road and, in places, no road at all."

His gaze was intent on her face. She knew her eyes had widened, even as she tried not to look frightened at the plans he was speaking.

"You will like Pastor Haskell and his wife, Stella. I am just as certain you will like the people in Sourwood." He gently caressed her hands. "Can you think of it as an adventure something like the story of Ruth and Naomi in the Bible? Ruth had to be apprehensive going into the unknown to live with a people foreign to her."

"Your people will be my people," Mira murmured.

A smile broke out on Gordon's face, making her remember the schoolboy she'd known. Then he started singing. "Jesus loves me, this I know ..."

Without thinking about it, Mira joined in. "For the Bible tells me so."

Their voices singing the children's song blended in with all the noise around them as sunshine pushed through the grimy train window and fell on their joined hands. Fear of the future still poked her, but she suddenly knew she had the courage to keep riding this train with Gordon Covington.