A Flickering Light Read online

  A sound escaped from his mouth. He pulled her to him then and she yielded, let the door slam shut. He pressed her head into his chest, tendered his fingers on the back of her neck, making her aware of each tendril of hair loosened. He held her as though she were fragile glass. His hands burned through her cotton blouse until she could feel the pads of his flesh moving slowly down her back and settling at her waist. She had not worn her corset. Her heart raced. She trembled.

  “I’m not a good man, Jessie,” he whispered. She didn’t know how long they’d stood in silence, listening to the breathing of their bodies. “I’ve left my son standing on the porch, begging me to take him. I refused him. To be alone with you. I’m old enough to be—”

  “Shh.” She stepped back and put a finger to his lips. Strange feelings screamed through her body like a spring freshet strong enough to tumble rocks and send them over the precipice into the Mississippi. He had acted first. He, too, felt whatever it was that had driven her from him and now threatened to pull her back. “It doesn’t mat—”

  He kissed her then, his lips sweet and soft enough to make her heart fold like a feather pillow, sinking into comfort. He would never know that this was her first kiss, the first time she’d felt lips on hers of someone who was not her mother or father, touching her with love. This was more than affection. So much more.

  “I’m not good either,” she whispered, breaking away but keeping her cheek to his. She whispered in his ear. “I know that ending this will hurt more than I can ever imagine. And it will have to stop. I know that. But somehow…somehow, Mr. Bauer—”

  “Fred,” he said, his voice hoarse. “You must call me Fred.”

  “I can’t… I want… We shouldn’t talk as though we—”

  “Anybody in there?” A man’s voice followed by a loud pounding on the back door separated them like the Red Sea parting. Has the man been pounding long? Did we not hear it? Has he seen us?

  Fred—she would ever after think of him as Fred—opened the door as Jessie moved back into the kitchen shadows.

  “All right if I look at your touring car?” the man said. “I was walking by and saw you pass me and pull in here. Quite a machine. Runs well, does it?” He tapped his fingers to his hat when he noticed Jessie. “Missus,” he said, nodding.

  Fred stepped out to show him the touring car. She heard their voices as from a well, echoing and far away. Her limbs felt weak. Her heart slowed. Who is he? She could hear Lilly’s voice saying to her, Are you mad?

  Maybe she was.

  Too Much Exposure

  “WE’D BEST LOAD THE CAR,” FJ said after the man had had his fill of specifications, patted the fuel tank, looked under the hood, and even sat in the leather seat as though he planned to drive away. Finally, the man tipped his hat and went on down the walk. FJ didn’t look at Jessie when he came back inside, couldn’t let himself look at her. He would apologize, but he feared desperately his own weakness, that he would be unable to finish his apology when he faced her again and would instead sweep her to him, clinging to the softness and strength he knew was there, the fire of passion so long missing from his life.

  Thank goodness the man had come by when he did! Inner voices argued with him, told him to drive by and pick up Russell before they headed out. Russell’s presence would protect them. But he was deaf now. Deaf. He made his voice gruff. Cleared his throat. She spoke first.

  “I’m not going to let anything happen, Mr. Bauer. FJ.” He smiled at her. “Fred,” she croaked, then stiffened her spine. “Mr. Bauer.” She kept a safe distance from him. “I understand. I really do. I’m going to work for Ralph. I’ll be gone by next week, once Voe returns. So this, whatever this is, is nothing. Nothing to worry over.”

  She would keep this professional and be in control. Good.

  “I’ll need to leave,” Jessie said. “We won’t see each other except in passing on the street.” She didn’t pose it as a question. “Nothing will come of that kiss, I know. You have commitments. I won’t come between them. I won’t let that happen. I’m not that kind of woman.”

  “I know you’re not.” He felt disappointed, though he didn’t know why.

  “It’s just that I have longed to kiss you, to comfort, to feel your face against mine.”

  “Jessie—”

  “In a week it will be over. I’ll be out of your life and you out of mine.”

  He moaned and reached for her again, but she stepped back into the shadow. She put her palms up to ward him off. “Working for Ralph will keep me, keep us, safe. I’ll pile up rocks there, enough to build a wall against the path to you.”

  “The path is already there.”

  “After this week, we won’t walk on it,” she said.

  “But let’s have this week. Please.” She looked in pain. He was giving someone else he loved pain too. His wife, his children—he had to think of them.

  “We can pretend that—”

  “No pretending, not anymore, Jessie. What is, is.”

  “But we don’t have to act on it. So we’ll be all right.”

  “We’ll be all right,” he said. He wondered if she believed him.

  “We need to go,” she said then. “Voe…” She pointed to the kitchen clock.

  “Right.”

  She straightened her narrow shoulders, and he thought he saw something shift inside her, tense her face and make her blue gray eyes widen. She is so beautiful.

  “I have several ideas for poses I think you might like. I’m quite good at posing.”

  “Jessie, I didn’t mean to hurt you. Not ever, not with what I said about you having a studio of your own. If those were words that made you want to leave here, then—”

  “I take good care of my feelings. They haven’t been wounded in the least. Let’s go get Voe married.”

  She sounded as though she really meant it. He would cling to that.

  Jessie wondered if he was frightened of her, not sure she’d be strong enough to prevent this rush of feeling from moving too far. She was frightened herself as she stepped up into the car. Fred closed the door behind her. He smiled and she made herself turn away. She had to assure him that this euphoria would fade. She’d be safe from the strength of her feelings. She wanted to imagine that they might last longer, that she and Fred had a future, but the truth was, they did not. They had only one week where they could just be comfortable with each other, sate the longing that each felt for the other—not by doing anything either would ever regret but by sharing time together, proving to themselves that they could care deeply without ever threatening a marriage vow or the safety of their souls. It would be a harmless caring, a careful affection, nothing more. She wouldn’t let it be anything more.

  It wasn’t easy to talk as they drove. The wind rushed across their faces, and she was glad for that. The day sang of joy. Even the weather celebrated a new bride and groom’s love. She felt…envy for Voe, who wouldn’t have a mere week of bliss with Daniel but instead had the promise that it could go on forever.

  Timing. It was all about timing.

  At one point, when the tires slipped into the ruts they’d been straddling on the dirt road and back out again, she was thrown against him as a cloud of dust whooshed up into her face. She straightened, coughed, then shouted as she could, “Can we stop and put the top up? It might help a little.”

  He’d done so immediately, apologizing through nervous movements as he did. “I should have considered. Good thing the camera’s in a case. Is your skirt ruined? The ruts tend to pull the wheels toward them whether the wheels planned to go that way or not.”

  She’d stepped out of the car to stretch her legs and shake the blanket of the dust. “Not unlike life.” Jessie laughed. Her laughter calmed him, and he smiled.

  “Not unlike one’s life exactly,” he said. “We get on the road and just keep going, thinking we can avoid the ruts, but of course we can’t.”

  “No. There are always challenges of some kind. But we have time,” Jessie sa
id.

  “What do you mean?” He looked alarmed again.

  “I meant we don’t have to try to go full speed in your car. We have time to reach the farm and still set things up.” She lifted her locket watch. “It’s not even nine, and we can’t be that far. Voe said their farm was right off the road and they’d tie long scarves to the gatepost so we’d be sure not to pass it.”

  “Right. Of course that’s what you meant.”

  Jessie unwound the scarf she had around her hat, tossed the hat into the back. She used the ends of her fingers to push up her hair. She was glad she’d worn the smaller-brimmed hat because otherwise she might have taken flight like a bird with the wind rushing through the auto. He tied the scarf for her to protect her jacket, touching her neck, letting his fingers linger along her jaw. He bent to kiss her, but she moved away. It took all the strength she had.

  They got back into the car, which had sat idling. Now they were out of the sunshine, but it did seem to Jessie that the wind was less swirling as they drove. And he’d slowed, reducing the dust that had started to shroud her. Eight hundred dollars could be better spent on a good horse, a buggy, and extra glass plates rather than on a touring car, she thought.

  The creek lay at the bottom of a slope of the driveway, and he sped up to plunge through it, the speed propelling them up the bank. Jessie squealed and laughed out loud, and he took one hand off the wheel and pulled her scarf to him, stealing a kiss on her check as they lifted over the rise and rolled into the yard, scattering chickens as they approached the house. He’s a risk-taker too.

  They arrived with plenty of time to spare. Jessie told Fred she’d go in to help Voe and that it would be useful if he walked around the house seeking possible settings for the wedding party photographs.

  He had a grin on his face. “I think I can manage that much. Should I wait until you return before I open the camera case?” He clicked his heels and saluted her as though a commander had just given him an order. He meant it to be funny, she was certain, but it cut her.

  She had started into the house, turned, and didn’t speak the sentence loudly but enough so he could hear. “Don’t…don’t treat me like a child,” she said. He scratched at his mustache in that way he had but kept his tongue.

  Voe’s mother wrapped her in a hug when Jessie entered. She introduced people sitting at a large round table. “Now we’ve got to get you off to Voe. She’s a bucket of bees this morning, and I don’t think they’re the honey-making kind. At least we’re this far. I don’t know why that girl has gone up and down with the dates.”

  “She said it was to have time for relatives to arrive and to make enough food.”

  “Oh, pawh. I fix meals four times a day for ten threshers. It wasn’t for me she delayed.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Jessie said.

  “Who’s the gentleman casing the house?” someone asked. Jessie thought he was probably one of Daniel’s cousins from the looks of him, with the big blond head and blue eyes. He stared out through the kitchen window.

  “That’s Voe’s boss,” someone else answered, a tallish man with a long mustache that draped down either side of his wide mouth. “Voe’s a photographer. Or was until Daniel up and took her away.”

  “I’m only going away for a week,” Voe said, coming out of the bedroom.

  “Daniel certainly won’t let you work after that.” This from yet another young man. “Women belong in one place and one place only and that’s—”

  “The kitchen,” her mother interrupted.

  “Well, that’s what I intended to say, Auntie. What was you thinkin’ I was gonna say?”

  Mrs. Kopp blushed. “Oh, pawh,” she said, swatting a towel at him. “Take this apple pie and put it outside on the table.”

  He raised his hands in protest. “Women’s work!” he said. “You wouldn’t want to be sissifying your own nephew, now, would you?”

  “No one would ever mistake your size-twelve feet for a sissy’s,” Mrs. Kopp told him. “Do as you’re told.”

  “Come on, Jessie,” Voe told her. “The rest of the girls are waiting in here.”

  “You are coming back after the honeymoon, aren’t you?” Jessie asked her as the girls padded down the hall.

  “Oh sure. I wouldn’t dare leave you and Mr. B. alone for more than a week,” she said. She elbowed Jessie to show she was teasing. “And I know you’re anxious to start your new job.”

  Jessie wished she were.

  “How come, I mean, why have you postponed the date so often, Voe? Are you having second thoughts?”

  Voe stopped. “Maybe I was,” she said. “To be with the same man forever and ever? After having two and three beaus at one time? I wasn’t sure I was up to the promises I’ll be making, you know? But my ma said it was a treasure to find someone who makes you laugh on your down days and can cry with you in joy. Dan does that. I’d be a fool to let him get away, then. Wouldn’t I?”

  Jessie stood near Voe on the women’s side of the parlor when the wedding vows were spoken. Daniel looked scared as a fox caught with his paw in the chicken house just as the lights came on. Only this was a fox who knew he was in the right place at the right time. His eyes warmed as he looked at his soon-to-be wife. Jessie could see his face more easily than Voe’s. She could see the men’s side if she looked at an angle, noticed Voe’s grandfather seated in a high-back chair. She kept her eyes forward for the most part and listened to what the minister had to say. She pushed back thoughts about Fred and the morning kiss that was as much hello as good-bye; she pushed down the ache at seeing Voe and Daniel’s happiness.

  Voe’s minister spoke to the crowd about the holy state of marriage and how these two people could keep those vows to be faithful and obedient to God and to each other. He emphasized “to each other.” Some had kept the vows for seventy-five years, he assured them. “Let your goal be that you two will be together until death parts you from this earth.”

  Jessie felt her face grow warm with shame. She was one of those fallen women that Ralph Carleton talked about, someone needing her soul cleansed. She was a woman who ignored a man trying to keep his vows to another. What kind of woman am I?

  The minister kept the message short because people stood in the parlor, and the aroma of Mrs. Kopp’s cooking and the neighbors’ contributions, all of which filled the table outside the open window, wafted over them like a silk scarf blowing gently in the wind, luring them to sustenance.

  Daniel boomed out his vows and Voe hers, and when the minister said Daniel could kiss his young bride, he lifted Voe off her feet at the waist and held her to him as though she might fly away if he let her down. People applauded and cheered, and Jessie clapped along with them, though tears pooled in her eyes. She was happy for Voe, glad she could feel that. She looked for Fred, tried to catch his eye to see if he might be thinking the same thoughts as she. What she found instead was the face of Voe’s brother, Jerome, staring back.

  When the pastor sent the couple out, Jessie followed close behind, along with a blond-haired man who was Daniel’s older brother. His wife had been introduced to Jessie in the bedroom where the women had congregated to help Voe dress, and she’d learned there that it was Thomas whom she’d be standing up with. She took Thomas’s arm, and he led her outside. “For pitures, then?” Jessie nodded, resisted the urge to correct his pronunciation.

  Fred already waited outside. He’d set the camera up just beyond the porch. “Everyone stand up there, as many as you can. Thank you,” he directed. “Voe and Daniel, on the second step, and Jessie and—Thomas, is it? Yes, you stand just behind them, in the middle of the crowd there. That’s good. Thank you.”

  People muddled around, moving into position, laughing. Jessie grabbed Thomas’s hand. “Let’s take the second step, and Voe and Daniel, you cuddle on the first step. We’ll be off to the side on the step above you but still look as though we’re flanking you both.”

  Jessie could see Fred frown when he looked up from the c
amera. “Just take one this way,” she shouted. “Don’t you think this will work well, Voe?”

  “You’re the poser,” Voe told her. “Any way you want it is all right with us, isn’t it, Danny Man?”

  Daniel’s face burned red up through his ears. His brother clapped him on the back and said it was every man’s wish to be called a man by his bride. “Not in public,” Daniel said.

  “Oh, especially in public,” Thomas told him to general laughter.

  Fred signaled he was ready and asked people to look toward the camera and at the count of four he would take the shot. He took it at three, to everyone’s groan.

  “Now let’s get some family photos.” Jessie elbowed her way past Voe and stood in front of the wedding party, her back to Fred. She began directing the immediate Kopp-Henderson family members to the table, where women of the Herold church had been fanning flies from the food. “Just settle down like you were going to eat,” Jessie said. “Then every other one lean forward or out so that I can see each of your faces. Go ahead and pick up a fork or something. A biscuit about to go into your mouth. Make it natural.”

  “Don’t you start eating,” Voe’s mother warned. “There’s more to come, and it hasn’t been prayed over yet.”

  Jostling and joking continued until all were settled enough, and Jessie walked behind them as though playing Duck, Duck, Goose, tapping shoulders, saying, “In, out, in, out,” indicating which way to lean. When she got to Jerome and said, “Out,” he reached behind his neck and grabbed her wrist. “I’m in,” he said. “Aren’t I in with you?”

  “You’ll always be in my heart, Jerome Kopp,” Jessie joked.

  “I will?”

  “My artichoke heart.” The guests laughed. “But never in my dreams.” Those sitting next to Jerome elbowed him. “Now keep your head back out so we can catch you in the camera.”

  “What else do you catch with that camera, Miss Jessie?” he said. “Your very own photographer?” Jessie felt her face burn as she wiggled her hand free of his and kept herself from looking at Fred.