Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

This last weekend was the start of the fall book market season; I spent three days in Giddings, Texas, as one of the local authors invited to participate in the yearly Word Wrangler Book Festival – which is sponsored by the local library, and supported by practically every civic institution in Giddings, including the local elementary and high schools. Last Thursday, the first day of Word Wrangler, certain of us authors volunteered to go and visit schools for readings, or to just talk about writing. This year, I visited three middle-school classes, to talk to sixth graders about writing, the stories that they liked, and what they could write about. I like doing this with fifth and sixth grade students, by the way – they are old enough to read pretty well, but not so old as to be jaded by the whole ‘visiting writer/storyteller’ thing. The kids were lively and responsive; it helps that they were being taught about plotting, about the narrative voice, and how to create a story. In each class of about twenty or thirty kids, I would guess that two or three are terrifically keen on creative writing, another eight or ten are interested, and the remainder are not completely indifferent. I went around and asked each student what they liked to read the most; adventure stories seemed to be most popular, followed by mysteries. Two boys in separate classes were enthralled by World War II stories. Horror and fantasy seemed to be about equally popular; and there was one girl with quite gruesome taste in exotic forms of murder. Well, it takes all kinds, and I am not her analyst; she’ll most likely grow out of it, once puberty really takes hold …

Then I went around again, asking each one what they would write about; what story would they want to sit down and write. For those who couldn’t think of one, I gave them a character and a situation, and encouraged them to go to town. And one more thing I told them – it is perfectly OK for a writer starting out to venture into scribbling fanfiction. You like a certain movie, book, TV series, videogame, are interested in that world and those characters? Take the characters you really like or identify with and write them a new set of adventures in that fictional world. Saves the time and trouble of building a whole new world from scratch … and isn’t imitation the sincerest form of flattery? Go and do it; practically every writer I know did the same. I certainly did; and the reams of juvenilia is something to eventually be consigned to the shredder by my literary executor. Just be careful when unleashing revised fanfiction into the world – chose the venue carefully and file off all the identifying serial numbers. Otherwise, it’s excellent practice, I told the kids; the literary equivalent of training wheels when learning to ride a bicycle.

I’ve been publishing independently since 2007; the first big wave of independent writers, although there were a small number of specialists in the decades before that. There were always writers publishing their works in a small way, mostly through arranging a print run with a local printer and bookbinder, but that method usually cost more money than was available to those of us in that big wave in the mid ‘Oughts’. The development of publish on demand, the ability of printers to do small print runs at a reasonable cost, the rise of Amazon, the popularity of eReaders, and the disinclination of the establishment publishing houses to continue backing midlist authors while pursuing only huge blockbusters … that all left the field wide open to indy writers like the ones I spent last weekend with. It astounded me all over again how very good, and professional the books at Word Wrangler looked. The covers of most books – and they covered the range of kids’ books through adult fiction; adventure, mystery, western, historical – all looked as good as anything produced by mainstream publishers. There is such a wealth of good reading available, through independent and small publishers, and readers in places like Giddings know it very, very well,  

From Luna City 3.1 – 9-11+15

“I know that it’s been fifteen years as of last Sunday,” Coach Garrett mused thoughtfully, hardly taking note of the beer in front of him. “But sometimes it’s as clear to me as if it was yesterday.”

It was a perfect, autumn afternoon – a Friday afternoon in mid-September, just beginning to turn cool. The VFW had visitors’ night on Fridays, and now Richard sat outside with Joe Vaughn and Coach Garrett, at the splintery picnic table under the massive sycamore tree that shaded the back of the VFW.

 “You were there in New York, weren’t you, Coach?” Joe drank deep from his own beer. “You saw the Towers go down, up close and personal. Man … it was bad enough watching on TV in real time.”

“Another life,” Dwight Garrett shrugged, but something in the look of that otherwise undistinguished, middle-aged countenance warned Richard to embrace tact and circumspection in his further comment.

“It was a splendid day for me,” Richard ventured, reminiscent for the world of just a little ago, but gone as distant now as the Austro-Hungarian empire. “I know … the irony of it all. An evening in Paris – it was mid-evening. I had just won my first cooking contest, and signed with a talent agency. Some of my old Charterhouse pals and I popped over to Paris to celebrate my excellent prospects. We were drinking in a bar in the Rue d Belleville, and wondering why they had a telly on, and tuned to some high-rise disaster movie. It didn’t seem all that big a thing, not at first. The penny didn’t drop until we saw the headlines in the newspapers the next day. In my defense, we were all enormously pissed that evening.”

“I’ll bet your hangover was epic,” Joe said, not without sympathy. “I was at Fort Lewis. First assignment to the Second Battalion … just driving into work, when it came over the radio. Airplane crashed into the World Trade Center tower. Swear to god, everyone thought it must be one of those little private airplanes, ya know – like a Piper Cub or something. The top sergeant said, ‘Oh, man, they must have gotten hella lost!’ And then someone turned on the breakroom TV, and there was this big ol’ gash in the side of the tower and the smoke just pouring out… Top said he remembered hearing about a WWII bomber hitting the Empire State Building, but that was in a fog. Two big honking silver buildings – we just couldn’t understand at first how it could happen by accident.”

“It was such a beautiful morning,” Dwight Garrett nodded. “Cool, crisp … not a cloud in the sky. I had played a concert at the Alice Tully the night before, so I slept in. Gwen … my wife didn’t wake me up when she left for work. She left a note for me … that we should meet for supper at Morton’s on Washington Street, just around the corner, when she was done with work that evening.”

“Didn’t know you were a married man, Coach,” Joe said, and Dwight Garrett sighed.

“Oh, yes – I left it late, sorry to say. Gwen and I were married for six years and three months. A dedicated career woman, and a divorcee with two sons she raised herself. We met at one of those musical soirees associated with a Mozart festival. Gwen was in finance. Did you ever notice that maths and music are deeply intertwined in some people? Anyway, we had a nice little condo in Tribeca, a stone-throw from where she worked.”

“And?” Richard prodded. He had visited New York often enough during the high-flying years of his career as a globe-trotting celebrity chef, and had only the vaguest notion of where Tribeca might me. It was not his favorite city on the American continent; that would be Vancouver, or perhaps Miami. New York was too crowded, too … vertical for his taste.

“She worked at Cantor-Fitzgerald – in the North Tower,” Dwight Garrett replied in perfectly level, dispassionate tones. Joe drew in his breath sharply, but said nothing, and Coach Garrett continued. “Even asleep, I heard the sirens – but so ordinary a sound in the city, I just went back to sleep. Until Gwen’s son Jeff called from White Plains. ‘Where’s Mom?’ he said, ‘Did she go into work, today? Turn on the TV – there’s a plane that hit the building she works in, all the top floors are on fire, and she’s not answering her cellphone.’ I told him to calm down. I’d walk over to the WTC and find her, make sure she was safe, and that everything would be all right …” He took a long draw of his own beer, calm and meditative, as if he were telling a story of another persons’ experience. “The sidewalks along Vesey Street were full of people looking up towards the towers – both of them just gushing smoke. Like water coming out of a fire hydrant. I started walking as fast as I could. I could see nothing moving on the street, but fire engines, lined up as far as I could see, once I got close. I kept trying to call Gwen. I thought sure that they would let me through the barricades once I explained. The South Tower fell before I got to the end of the block. It was … like a tidal wave of black smoke, dust, soot. A policeman yelled at us to run like hell. A bunch of us on the sidewalk ran into the nearest place – a coffee shop on Vesey, to escape it.” Coach Garrett shook his head, slowly. “Outside that window it turned as black as you could imagine. And the lights went out. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face for about five, ten minutes. That policeman was in there, too – he had a flashlight, but it didn’t help. When we came out everything was grey, covered with thick grey dust. We were all covered in it, too. Needless to say, they wouldn’t let me come anywhere near the North Tower. There were too many people. And I think they were already afraid that the North Tower was going to fall as well.”

“Did you find your wife?” Richard ventured. Coach Garrett shook his head.

“No. Not that day, or afterward. Nothing left – everything and most everyone on the floors just above the impact site were essentially vaporized. I accepted right away that she was gone forever, nothing to be done. No good going to the morgue or hanging around as they excavated the pile afterwards. It was almost as if our marriage had been a wonderful, fleeting dream, and she had never been …  except for the boys, of course. And her clothes and things in the condo. It was just so … curious, how it happened out of the clear blue in the blink of an eye, on so ordinary day.”

“Sorry, man,” Joe said, after a long moment. “I never knew about your wife, and all of that. That why you left New York and came home to Texas?”

Coach Garrett nodded. “I couldn’t stay. Not without Gwen. The pile of rubble burned for months. The whole place smelled of smoke and death. I packed a suitcase and took the express to White Plains a few days later. I signed the condo over to Jeff and his brother, rented a car and drove back to Texas. I meant to go back to Kingsville … but heard about a job teaching music here. It seemed like a good way to start fresh.”

“You do what you gotta do,” Joe agreed. “Another, Coach? My treat.”

“Sure thing, Joe,” the older man finished off his beer and looked into the distance; the blue, blue sky and the leaf canopy of the sycamores just beginning to turn gold and brown. “There’s one thing I do regret about Gwen. I wish that I hadn’t slept in – that I had fixed her breakfast, kissed her, said that I hoped she would have a good day, and that I loved her. I never for a single moment thought that she would suddenly just not be there. Love shouldn’t end that way, on the flip of a coin.”

“Nope,” Joe agreed, and to Richard, it looked as if Joe had suddenly made up his mind about something. “You want another, Rich?”

“Only if you’re buying.” Richard replied.

“Cheap limey bastard,” Joe grumbled.

Home delivery – the latest trend to hit retail and grocery outlets – is a boon to sick people. I say this as someone who caught the current flu last Thursday. Here I was, innocently going about my usual routine, although I did note than on Thursday morning during the ritual Walking of The Doggles, that I was sniffing and sneezing; as if something had gotten caught in my sinuses. Innocently, it all seemed to pass; at mid-day my daughter and I went up to Bergheim in the Hill Country to meet with a small book club who had done me the honor of choosing the first of the Adelsverein Trilogy as their book selection of the month.

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(Yes – for reasons, Minnie will say ‘no’ to the question that Pres Devereaux asks of her, after she has recovered from injuries in the dreadful carriage accident in the previous snippet.)

Within a week, Minnie was able to leave the bed and sickroom and dress herself with the aid of Annabelle, for her broken arm was still splinted and bound. It was Tuesday, Susan’s customary at-home day. Hepzibah fussed at her to rest and not overexert herself; which attention Minnie found at once endearing and exasperating.

“I’m not a child, Hepzibah – and not entirely incapable of caring for myself!” Minnie complained. She was seated at the dressing table, having combed out her long hair, but it was Annabelle weaving her hair into a long braid and pinning it up into a bun. Hepzibah had remade the bed with clean linen, and was folding up Minnie’s nightgown and wrapper, laying them in readiness on the smooth coverlet. For some curious reason Hepzibah had begun to treat Minnie, and to a lesser degree, Annabelle, in the same proprietary manner that she treated Susan’s daughters. 

“I done doubt that, Miz Minnie – it’s only been a week since you wuz feelin’ better. An’ if you have a relapse, don’t you go on blamin’ anyone but yourself.”  Annabelle’s eyes met Minnies’ in the mirror, a shared look of amused resignation in them.

“I will ensure that our dear invalid doesn’t overexert herself, Hepzibah,” Annabelle inserted the last of several hairpins into Minnie’s coiffure, and regarded her handiwork with an air of satisfaction. “There! Are you ready to go downstairs? Mr. Devereaux presented his card this morning – along with the usual tokens of his regard for you and dear little Charlotte … although my own suspicion is that he wished to observe and confirm for himself that you are well-recovered from your little adventure with the smashed carriage …”

“Carried you in his arms all de way from out Stony Creek ways,” Hepzibah interjected, with a shake of her head and with tones which combined awe and disapproval. “Even do’ a waggoneer brought y’all back the last couple mile… Miz Minnie, dat is a devotion mos’ powerful. You take care, you hear me? Marse Devereaux, he a man to be reckoned with – an’ careful, like. Like a flame in a powder-mill!”

With that dire prophetic statement, Hepzibah collected the most aged flower bouquets from the room and absented herself, her petticoats swishing with emphasis. Minnie looked into the mirror again, as Annabelle pinned a lace and linen house-cap over Minnie’s hair.

“Honestly, Minnie – she is so forward!” Annabelle lamented. “A woman of that color and station! I wonder how Susan endures such presumption!”

“I wonder also,” Minnie confessed, after a moment. “But it comes to me that women of determination and ability, no matter of what color, or station in life; they can exercise power, in any way that they can. It’s the power of the queen on the chessboard, you see. Hepzibah may be a slave, owned as certainly as Mr. Devereaux owns his prized carriage horse. But she is skilled in household management; dear Susan depends on that skill … and that is Hepzibah’s entrée into power.” Minnie laughed a little, as the certainty of this realization came to her. “Subtle power within the household, you see. Cousin Susan desires her household to run smoothly and well, for the love of My-Dear-Ambrose … and Hepzibah manages all that very well. And being a privileged house slave, she is afforded a certain degree of authority. Being a woman, she demonstrates that to other women. As well that she has probably supervised Susan’s girls from the time they were in the cradle. Still … her position is perilous.”

“How so, dear,” Annabelle ventured. “As near as I may see, there is much affection between Susan and Hepzibah – and not misplaced in the least.”

“Because as dear as Hepzibah may be to Susan and her daughters, as skilled as she might be in managing a domestic establishment,” Minnie adjusted the set of the lace fichu at her throat, and yielded up her seat at the dressing table for Annabelle to make adjustments to her own afternoon attire, “Her comfortable existence in this house hangs on chance…”

“As does the existence of every woman not blessed with a secure and independent income,” Annabelle settled herself before the mirror and began taking the pins out of her own hair. Minnie, feeling suddenly tired – although she would never admit this to Annabelle or to Hepzibah save under the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition – sat on the side of the bed and waited for Annabelle to finish with her own toilette. She continued, feeling as if she had been given the answer to a small puzzle. “Suppose that My-Dear-Ambrose fell into debt, through some mischance. Although honestly, I do not think he has ever felt the least bit reckless in his life, unlike some gentlemen of the South that I might mention. But suppose that he did, for the purposes of my argument. And by some further mischance, he died, leaving Susan in debt to creditors. She would have no choice; she must sell all those assets of value, just to keep herself from poverty and starvation. It is a wicked choice presented to her … but a household of slaves present the most substantial block of value to an estate, as such it stands under the slave system.”

“That would be … wicked!” Annabelle considered that prospective event, outlined by Minnie, who continued, remorselessly.

“Yes, it would be. But it would be a solution to a temporary market reversal. That quadroon child whom Miss Van Lew purchased, on the occasion of our excursion into the Shockoe Bottom? She was a natural daughter of man dealing in … what was it? Rice, I think. She was a child, indulged and loved, or so Miss Van Lew informed me – but when all was reversed upon the death of her father, her value was all in the marketplace. I am certain that Susan feels the most tender regard for Hepzibah; but what Hepzibah must know, although she might be able to tell herself otherwise – is that she can be sent to the Shockoe Bottom slave markets and sold. Perhaps with regret on the part of the family that are all but blood her own. But she can be sold. And that … that is a cruelty. A cruelty which must weigh heavily upon those who have the intellect to think on it, overmuch.”

“I see,” Annabelle set down her hairbrush, and met Minnie’s eyes in the mirror. “Malignant, is it not? The whole of the peculiar institution? I vow that we shall be more dedicated abolitionists after this visit than we ever were before.”

“There is much to be said for observing the monster with your own eyes, rather than at a comfortable distance and in a church pew, listening to the Reverend Slocomb,” Minnie ventured. “Perhaps I might do lectures on that subject … oh, to groups of ladies,” she added hastily, upon seeing Annabelle’s expression of utter horror, reflected in the mirror.

“Public talks?” Annabelle pushed in the final pin to her own coiffure and settled the brief lace and lawn widow’s house-bonnet over it. “Really, Minnie – that just won’t do! You have a social position to uphold! You can’t just go about giving public talks! Why, anyone might attend! What would everyone think? What would the Judge have said about that?”

“That the cause, my conscience and the occasion demand it,” Minnie replied. “I imagine that the same was said to Papa-the-Judge and to Cousin Peter in their youth when the matter of revolution against King George first came about. ‘Oh, think of your social position! Rebel against our King? Why, we’d never!”

“I suppose that you are right,” Annabelle admitted with a sigh. “Still, I consider what social cost we may have to pay amongst those whom we think of as friends and kinfolk, should we come out foursquare in public for abolition of the noxious practice.”

“There is always a cost for doing right, ‘Belle,” Minnie replied, feeling quite comfortable in that statement of which – to her – was obvious. “And if they should think the worst of us, in opposing slavery, and putting all the energies and resources that we have to bear against it … then, such persons were no true friends of ours!”

“Would you cast off dear kin from your regard,” Annabelle still appeared troubled in her mind, as she stood from before the dressing-table mirror. “Those who have tendered us hospitality and their fond regard – their deepest affections, their care for you, for us both. Especially after your unfortunate accident…”

“I admit, my dear – that Susan may feel that I have betrayed her hospitality,” Minnie took up her light shawl, a woolen thing from India, woven as finely as the flimsiest lawn fabric and colored in bright and exotic patterns. “But the vileness of the peculiar institution! I cannot remain silent for long, when silence implies approval.”

“Courtesy demands a tactful silence under this roof,” Annabelle reminded her. “There; are you ready for Susan’s callers? When you tire, dear – you can easily make your excuses.”

“I am not the least bit tired,” Minnie insisted. “Of being confined to a bed in this chamber. Otherwise I hunger for social diversion; thirst for it, like a man on a deserted island!”

Annabelle tilted her head, hearing some slight noise from downstairs – a door opening and closing, distant voices in the entry hall.

“Your diversion has arrived, I think!” she replied, and she and Minnie went downstairs to Susan’s parlor – there to see Pres Devereaux, with his hat and gloves beside him on the divan. He was alone, sitting bolt upright on the divan. He stood up readily – with eagerness, even – as Minnie and Annabelle entered the parlor. His eyes seemed to burn a more vivid blue in his tanned face, as he clasped Minnie’s hands with tenderness in his.

“My dear Miss Vining!” he exclaimed. “I am lost for words, in telling you how happy I am to see you recovered! I … and your friends here were … that is, we were … I called every day hoping for good news of your condition.”

“As you can see,” Minnie replied, unaccountably warmed by his obvious regard and relief. “I am well enough to take part in Susan’s social whirl … and I have such pleasant memories of our chess match…”

“I will call on you for a match as soon as it may be arranged,” Mr. Devereaux enthused – and Minnie noted that he only released her hands with reluctance. “In the meantime … if you are sufficiently recovered, would you take a turn around Mrs. Edmond’s garden with me? I have … well there is a question to ask of you, a question that I feel would be best asked in private…” for some unfathomable reason, Mr. Devereaux seemed nervous, uncertain. Minnie couldn’t begin to fathom why.

“The sunshine will be most welcome to me,” Minnie replied, “And the sight of Susan’s roses …although,” she added hastily. “The flowers that you have been sending to us are … they are most welcome, but poor substitute for a garden in summer.”

The tall French doors opening from the parlor onto the front verandah stood open, admitting that slight breeze which stirred the window hangings, and brought the faint scent of jasmine and honeysuckle. After weeks indoors, confined to bed, the out of doors drew Minnie irresistibly. Everything seemed impossibly large, lush, colorful. Mr. Devereaux offered her his elbow, and she leaned on it with good grace, feeling something of the same feeling of being sheltered and protected, as she had felt when he carried her away from the scene of that ghastly carriage accident. The garden, even a little wilted in the heat of late summer, still reflected the anxious care which Susan’s outdoor slaves took of it; spent blossoms dead-headed and removed, leaves and twigs swept from the greensward, the rambling jasmine and roses pruned and trained to arches and trellises. Minnie felt her spirits reviving, as her strength returned

“I have not been able to thank you properly for your care,” she ventured finally. “Looking after Charlotte and I, on that day. I think that I shall not be able to ride with confidence in a carriage again for some time, knowing that you are not present.”

“Would you, Miss Vining?” This appeared to cheer Mr. Devereaux. “Indeed, I am honored by your trust and regard. It makes the question that I mean to ask of you an easier one to venture, knowing that you think of me in that degree.”

“And what question might that be?” Minnie looked at him sideways; he was so much taller than she, all she might see of his countenance was his profile against the sky above, the sky which in summer was so very like the color of his eyes.

“Come. Let us sit under this trellis,” He led her towards the pergola at the bottom of the garden, heavily hung with pale pink roses, which had shed tender velvety petals underneath, like gentle confetti on the benches set underneath. He took out a handkerchief – one of those vast and useful man’s articles, not a dainty little wisp trimmed with lace – and swept some invisible dust off the bench before the two of them sat down upon it, side by side. “Mrs. Edmonds’ garden is a treasure, is it not? I have found it to be so very restful. Of all the gardens on Church Hill … hers is the most accomplished in design. Every aspect rewards the eye and the senses…” his words meandered off into thought, and Minnie wondered where they had gone, with some impatience. Charlotte and her mother would be in the parlor soon.

“You had a question which you wished to ask of me?” she chose in favor of asking directly; Minnie had no gift for social subterfuge, especially when it came to the male of the breed.

“Yes… of course.” Pres Devereaux appeared to hesitate, and then to plunge ahead, like a horse to a race. “Minnie … Miss Vining. Would you do me the honor of consenting to marry me?” “What?” Minnie gazed at him, in mixed shock and sheer disbelief

(While on a carriage excursion and chaperoning her young cousin Charlotte, who is being courted by Pres Deveraux, Minnie is involved in a dreadful carriage accident.)

She couldn’t breathe. All the air was sent from her lungs by the force of that fall over the side of Mr. Devereaux’s Tilbury gig. A constellation of exploding stars blotted out the sky overhead, and Minnie felt herself suspended between not being able to draw a breath and a white-hot agony exploding up to her shoulder and down to her hand, and from her head, which had struck the road with cruel force. Somewhere, a woman was crying out in alarm. She sounded very young, panicky – Minnie felt herself lifted, as limp and powerless as a rag doll in the grip of something. She couldn’t think, only felt – and what she felt was pain, pain and more pain.
“Miss Minnie! Wake up, open your eyes – speak to me!” a voice begged – a somehow familiar voice. A man. Authoritative … and for some curious reason, frantic in concern.
Minnie obeyed the command to open her eyes, although her sight was somewhat baffled by … oh, yes, the brim of her bonnet, now crushed and disarranged, and a flood of something sticky and warm on her face, wetting the collar of her dress. And this was the countenance of … oh, yes – she fished in her dis-jangled memory for a name. Mr. Devereaux, the handsome and raffish adventurer … presently courting the very young Charlotte Edmonds.
Yes. She was supposed to have been their watchful chaperone.
Minnie struggled to recall – yes, an aggravating and contrary man, a whirligig of opinions posed for nothing more than to harass and torment … but he … he was a man … and Minnie fished for knowledge and insight in her present torment.
A man who waged a war on a chessboard and was the most gallant when losing to a mere woman.
“She’s bleeding so awfully!” the younger voice exclaimed in horror – Charlotte; yes, that was Charlotte, daubing ineffectually at Minnie’s forehead with a dainty handkerchief smeared horribly red. Mr. Devereaux replied,
“Her head struck a large rock on the ground, I believe – and it is well known that such injuries always bleed out of all proportion … Miss Minnie, please speak to us!”
“Wha … h’ppened?” Minnie stumbled over the words. It hurt to speak.
“A runaway team, on the road!” Charlotte exclaimed. “The driver could not control them – he had fallen from the wagon, and the wagon struck Mr. Devereaux’s gig … they kept on going! And now the wheel is utterly smashed! What are we to do, Mr. Devereaux? What are we to do, since we are all this way from town? Surely, Cousin Minnie needs a doctor at once!”
“Miss Edmonds, calm yourself, I beg you.” Mr. Devereaux sounded as if he barely maintained control of his emotions, Minnie thought through the pain in her head and shooting up her arm like bolts of white-hot lightning. “Take your shawl and spread it out on the grass over there … good. Miss Minnie – forgive me if this causes you pain…”
“Hurts,” Minnie gasped, but with recovering her breath and voice. “My arm. The left. I … cannot move my fingers without pain … I fell with it under me…”
Mr. Devereaux’s strong fingers palpated Minnie’s arm, and the burst of white-hot lightning intensified, almost to the point of Minnie losing awareness entirely.
“I fear that one of the bones in your arm may be broken, my dear Miss Minnie!” he exclaimed in a whisper. “But I beg you – do not be stoic on my behalf. If you would cry out, or faint … I cannot bear that you would suffer in silence to spare my – our feelings. I would … Yes, Miss Edmonds – is Minnie’s shawl still in the gig? You must fetch it, girl – she must be wrapped closely, against the bodily cold that attends upon sudden injuries such as this. And find me … find me a straight stick, a length or branch sufficiently strong to construct a splint…”
Minnie felt a new warmth on her face as Charlotte bent over her – the girl was crying, and her tears splashed upon her own face. Useless! Minnie’s own intellect raged. Don’t be such a silly-billy, child! Do as Mr. Devereaux has asked, and be quick about it!
Now she felt herself to be lifted – Mr. Devereaux’s strong and steady arms underneath her shoulders and be knees both. He stood, lifting her from the dusty road as easily as she would herself have borne up a small child … He must be very strong, Minnie’s disjointed intellect observed, over the searing pain in her skull, and the white-hot agony in her arm.
Charlotte had gone away. Gone… gone somewhere. Minnie neither knew or cared. When she was aware again, and strictly enjoining her scattered thoughts to obey, she lay on her back, on something rather softer and more yielding than the hard and dusty road. Within her vision, Mr. Devereaux was tearing strips from a handkerchief – a large man’s handkerchief, of a rather more useful size and material than Charlotte’s wispy bit of lace. Or maybe it was a cloth napkin… Minnie’s thoughts went wandering again.
“Cold,” Minnie whispered, for she found herself shivering, in spite of the warmth of the day. Charlotte appeared, her face pale against the bright sky.
“I found your shawl, Cousin Minnie,” she said, sounding as if she were trying to be brave and not succeeding very well at it, as she tucked the folds of it around Minnie. “Mr. Devereaux has unhitched his horse from the gig – the poor thing was frightened to death, nearly – but unharmed. Which is good, as Mr. Devereaux paid a goodly sum for him. Once he has splinted your poor arm … we are going to walk back towards town, with him carrying you and I leading the horse. He says there should be someone along this road with a wagon, once we are closer…”
Minnie tried to thank the child – she still shivered, even when Mr. Devereaux removed his coat and added that to the shawl. He knelt next to her, with a small flask silver in his hand.
“Miss Minnie,” he ventured, with the gravest of expressions on his face. “I am prepared now to splint your arm, but I fear that it will briefly prove to be agonizing in the extreme … if you are not of committed temperance principles, might I persuade you to drink a little of his brandy? It’s for medicinal purposes, after all, and while it will not abolish pain entirely, it will take a little of the edge from it.”
Minnie brought herself to nod in acquiescence; he uncapped the flask and held it to her lips while she sipped. It tasted …warm, warm and fiery. The pain ebbed a little in her head, leaving her feeling a little as if she were floating, floating up into the sky like the little tufts of cotton-white cloud.
“I’m going to bind up your arm now,” Mr. Devereaux warned her. “So that the broken ends of bone will not grind against each other. Ready?”
Minnie nodded acknowledgment and set her teeth as Mr. Devereaux laid gentle fingers on her arm, murmuring instructions to young Charlotte.
Think of the clouds, she commanded herself. Look at the clouds, and think of nothing … no, think of the chess pieces, obedient and passive on the board. There was no pain. Chess pieces felt no pain. Breathe deep, look at the clouds and think of Mr. Devereaux’s marvelous chess pieces.
Oddly enough, this method of mental diversion proved effective; she did not banish the pain of a broken bone so much as she succeeded in setting it aside, in removing it from her immediate attention, although a sharp movement as Mr. Devereaux secured the last knot – perhaps that of the broken bone ends settling into place – nearly broke that adamantine concentration on the floating clouds overhead and figures of ivory. Upon the final knots being tied, securing her arm to a length of scrap wood – was it a broken bit from the Tilbury gig’s hood? She rather thought so – Mr. Devereaux cleared his throat.
“Are you ready, Miss Minnie? We should not have to walk very far before encountering help … this is not a well-traveled road, but in about half a mile, it runs into one…”
“You might take the horse,” Minnie suggested, faintly. “And leaving us, ride ahead and beg for assistance…”
“I will not think of abandoning you, or Miss Edmonds,” Mr. Devereaux insisted. “Not under any circumstances would I leave you alone. No – we return together, no matter how slowly may be our progress! Not another word, Miss Minnie; I will not hear any argument.”
Saying so, he stooped and lifted her into his arms once more, swathed in shawls and coat. Curiously, Minnie found this of considerable comfort. She hurt in every limb and sinew – but Mr. Devereaux would not abandon them all and take the horse. It felt as if she were part-floating, carried in tireless arms, until she floated away entirely into the sky and was aware of nothing more.