“Well, Aunt Mary,” she answered, a swagger in her tone akin to the way some men hooked their thumbs under their suspenders when they were proud of themselves, “I reckon I was born to be a farmer.”
A smile hovered around Aunt Mary’s finely shaped lips. “Is that so?”
When her father came to collect her, she said, “It was wonderful, Daddy,” and looked at her great-aunt with hopeful eyes. “Next summer, Aunt Mary? In August—during harvest?”
Mary laughed, exchanging a glance with William. “Next summer, in August,” she agreed.
Chapter Fifty-one
In the next few years, she was to overhear many arguments under the kitchen window in regard to her annual two-week visits to Howbutker.
“William, can you believe your aunt’s letter? How dare that woman ask us to send Rachel to her for the summer! How selfish can she be? I don’t see enough of my daughter as it is, and here she’s asking that we let her have Rachel for her entire vacation!”
“Not her entire vacation, Alice. Only the month of August. Aunt Mary is nearly seventy years old. Why can’t we humor an old woman? She’s not going to live forever.”
“She’ll live long enough to steal my girl from me. She’s driving a wedge between us, William. I’m so tired of hearing Aunt Mary this, Aunt Mary that. She never speaks of me in that adoring tone.”
Under the window, Rachel listened, her conscience squeezed in contrition. No, she never did, she admitted. She heard the hurt in her mother’s voice and vowed she’d show her more love and appreciation. But, oh, please, Daddy, let me go to Aunt Mary and Uncle Ollie for August.
The argument ended in a compromise that nonetheless left her mother tight-lipped as the family car pulled away bearing Rachel to Howbutker for the month requested. It was Rachel’s fourteenth summer. The agreement, laid out by her mother, was that she could spend this August with her “daddy’s kin,” but next summer the whole family would go on a trip together with “no Howbutker, no Somerset, and no Aunt Mary.”
It was during her fourteenth summer that Rachel first laid eyes upon Matt Warwick. She had often heard of Mister Percy’s grandson, but he was always visiting his grandmother in Atlanta during the two weeks she was in town. Matt’s mother had died of cancer when he was fourteen, and his father had been killed before that in a war. She remembered feeling sorry for the boy who’d been orphaned but considered him lucky to live in Howbutker and be looked after by such a wonderful old man as Mister Percy.
Her father said that Mister Percy was immensely rich—a lumber magnate—with large timber holdings all over the country and Canada. Matt was learning the family business and taking to it like a sail in an ocean breeze—rather like her, she thought. He was supposed to be handsome and likable and unaffected, and she was eager to see what all the praise was about.
They met at Matt’s nineteenth birthday party. Rachel had a new dress for the occasion, selected with Uncle Ollie’s unerring eye. It was a dress of white piqué scalloped at the neckline and hem and set off with a green sash belt. Rachel had never owned such a dress. She felt very ladylike and grown up in her first stockings and abbreviated high heels with her hair dressed specially for the party in a cascade of white daisies and green ribbons.
Aunt Mary and Uncle Ollie were waiting at the foot of the stairs when she came down, both gazing at her in pride and affection. Rachel beamed back, tamping down a niggling guilt at the memory of her mother’s accusation: You think you’ve become too good for us, Rachel.
No, Mama, that’s not so!
Don’t tell me you don’t prefer being with your rich aunt and uncle in that big mansion of theirs to living with your mother and daddy in our little house—or that you don’t favor that snooty little burg of Howbutker over Kermit.
Oh, Mama, you’ve got it all wrong! I love both places.
She could not convince her mother that her feeling for Uncle Ollie and Aunt Mary in no way lessened the love she had for them. Uncle Ollie was the sweetest man alive and made her feel special, while Aunt Mary understood and appreciated her love for the land in a way that her mother never could. And as for the mansion on Houston Avenue… from the moment she’d seen it, she’d felt she’d returned to a place she’d known before, a place that seemed to have waited for her. The roses and honeysuckle, the fish pond and gazebo, the house with its elegant sweeping staircase and hushed, luxurious rooms… all felt as familiar—as much hers—as her home in Kermit and her room next to her six-year-old brother’s. And she felt she’d been connected to Howbutker all of her life, though she didn’t know why. Howbutker’s red-bricked streets, southern-inspired architecture, and mixture of black and white residents were as different from her hometown of Kermit as water from sand. When she’d mentioned this strange phenomenon to her father, he’d said, “You’ve come home, Rachel. This house and town are the birthplace of your heritage.”
I can’t help it, she thought as she descended the staircase. This is my home, too, and Aunt Mary and Uncle Ollie are the grandparents I never had. I belong here.
Uncle Ollie extended his arm to her. “It’s like looking at you, Mary Lamb, when you were fourteen.”
“I can’t remember ever being that lovely,” Mary said in her soft voice.
“That’s because you never noticed,” Uncle Ollie said.
The party was held on the grounds of Mister Percy’s massive ancestral home, Warwick Hall. It was a huge affair to which everyone who knew and liked Matt was invited: old and young, rich and poor, white and black. When they arrived, they were led across the tented lawn cooled by giant fans to Percy Warwick and Amos Hines standing next to a young man in a white dinner jacket. So that’s Matt Warwick, Rachel thought curiously, prepared to be disappointed. Until she had come along, Mister Percy’s grandson was the only child in Aunt Mary and Uncle Ollie’s lives. It would have been understandable if they had viewed him through rose-colored glasses.
But they had not exaggerated. Matt stood as tall as his grandfather, with the same athletic build, though his similarly handsome face was a little more unevenly put together. He had the same relaxed manner and easy way with a smile as Mister Percy, but there were differences that made her curious as to who should take credit for his clear blue eyes and bumper crop of light brown hair. Not his silver blond, gray-eyed grandfather, that was for sure. She knew nothing of his parents and had never met his grandmother, who lived far away in Atlanta. She knew only that when he took her hand, a shock went through her and something inside burst into being like the sudden unfolding of a cotton blossom to the morning sun.
She hugged Amos first, whom she thought of as Abraham Lincoln, her favorite president, and then Mister Percy, staring at her oddly. Uncle Ollie cleared his throat and turned her toward Matt in an obvious attempt to draw her away from his grandfather’s transfixed attention. “Matt, my boy, this is Mary’s great-niece, Rachel Toliver,” he announced needlessly. “She’s always come to us the two weeks you’ve been with your grandmother in Atlanta, so you two have come and gone on opposite trains, so to speak.”
For some reason, it was an unfortunate remark. Uncle Ollie immediately reddened, and as enraptured with Matt as she was, she couldn’t miss the looks traded between Aunt Mary and Mister Percy and the slight loss of color beneath their summer tans. That’s when Matt smiled and shook her hand. “Well, in a few years, I’ll have to make sure I’m on the right inbound train.”
He was simply too smooth for her and she too inadequate to deal with the blitz of his engaging grin and the flash of male appreciation in his blue eyes. She withdrew her hand and lowered her gaze, retreating into fourteen-year-old adolescence, too self-conscious to care whether he thought her gauche and immature, certainly not ready for the figure-flattering dress and high heels.
“Granddad was not exaggerating when he said you’re the spitting image of your great-aunt,” Matt went on as if he hadn’t noticed. “Think you can handle being that pretty?”
“As well as you can handle being
as handsome as your grandfather,” she rejoined, shocking herself. It sounded smart-alecky, but she’d meant it as a compliment. To her relief, the group laughed and Matt seemed impressed. He touched a fingertip to the dimple in her chin and she felt anointed, as if a prince had laid his blade across her shoulder.
“Touché,” he said, “but I’d say you’ve got a tougher job than I have. Nice to have met you at last, Rachel Toliver. Enjoy yourself.” He smiled and left them to join a group of his University of Texas classmates, among them a number of sophisticated coeds, and Rachel felt as if the sun had disappeared from the sky.
They spoke again, briefly, at the punch table. “When are you going home?” he asked.
She blinked. Home? But she was home. “Tomorrow, I’m afraid.”
“Why ‘afraid’?”
“Because I… don’t want to go.”
“You’re not homesick?” he asked.
“Yes, I am. I miss my family, but I… miss Aunt Mary and Uncle Ollie, too, when I’m not here.”
He gave her his easygoing smile and handed her a cup of punch. “Well, don’t think of that as being a problem. Think of it as how lucky you are to have two places to call home.”
She must remember to express it that way to her mother, she thought, marveling at his wisdom.
On the way to Houston Avenue, Aunt Mary asked casually, “What did you think of Matt Warwick?”
She replied without having to think of her answer. “Sensational,” she said. “Simply sensational.”
Aunt Mary pressed her lips together and made no comment.
Chapter Fifty-two
The next August, as agreed, Rachel accompanied her parents and Jimmy to Colorado, where they vacationed at a dude ranch high in the Rocky Mountains. The temperature was a welcome change from the 110 degrees usual for the month in Kermit, and the scenery was so awesomely beautiful that attempts to describe it on postcards ended in frustration. Rachel, however, gazed up at the snowcapped mountains, felt the cold lake breezes fanning her face, and thought of the cotton ready for picking at Somerset and sweat standing on her skin. She had turned fifteen.
“You miss it, don’t you,” her father stated in his quiet manner beside her.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
She returned to school feeling an unfamiliar emptiness, as though some sustenance vital to getting through the school year were missing.
“We can’t do this to her anymore, Alice,” she heard her father say as she turned on the faucet beneath the kitchen window. “It’s like… it’s like a light has gone out inside her.”
“I’ll speak to her,” her mother said.
Alice chose the next Thursday night when William was working late at the store and Jimmy was down the street at a friend’s house. She slipped the drying towel from Rachel’s hands and directed her to a kitchen chair. “Sit down, Rachel. I want to talk to you.”
Rachel tensed at her mother’s serious tone and stiffly obeyed. “Yes, ma’am?”
Her mother drew her hands into her own, still warm from washing dishes. She gazed deeply into her eyes and said, “Rachel, I’m going to ask something of you that will break your heart as well as mine.”
Instinctively, she tried to draw her hands away, but her mother held on. “You love us, don’t you?” Alice asked. “Especially your daddy?”
“Especially all of you,” Rachel said.
“And whatever your decision, I want you to agree to keep this discussion our secret. Your father is never to know what we talked about tonight. Do you promise?”
Pinpoints of stars, like the kind she sometimes saw when she hit her head, swirled alarmingly in her mental vision. “Yes, Mama,” she said in a small voice.
Her mother hesitated, and Rachel recognized a look that always betrayed a struggle with her conscience. “Honey,” she began, rubbing her hand up and down Rachel’s arm, “I’m sure you know that as things are now between you and Aunt Mary, she’s pegged you as the heir she thought she lost when her little boy died.”
“Heir…?”
“To carry on in her place when she dies—to keep the Toliver tradition going.” Alice squinted an eye as if unsure of whether Rachel sincerely did not understand her meaning or was playing dense.
Rachel blinked rapidly. She, Aunt Mary’s heir? She’d already decided to go to Texas A&M University to pursue a degree in agriculture, with hope that Aunt Mary would give her a job after graduation, but… take her place when she died? Inherit Somerset?
Alice leaned closer. “It’s plain as a cow patty on the lawn at a garden party that she intends for you to step into her shoes, Rachel. Why do you think she continues to buy more land?”
Rachel answered promptly. “Because Somerset is played out. After this harvest, she’s going to let it lie fallow until next year when she plants it in corn and soybeans.”
She spoke with pride. For the first time in its history, Somerset was to be under another crop besides its steadily declining cotton production. Aunt Mary was “branching out” and had Rachel to thank for it. Over her summer visits, her great-aunt had listened with interest when she’d described the cultural requirements of her vegetable garden, and last year Aunt Mary had turned to her land manager and said, “My great-niece has inspired me to change the character of Somerset, a feat no one else has managed. The land is spent for cotton. It’s time I recognized that.”
But Aunt Mary was still a cotton planter, and she had bought several thousand acres of ranch land near Lubbock and Phoenix, Arizona, to put under cotton, calling her holdings Toliver Farms. The purchases had upset Alice, who declared she was “emptying the coffers so there won’t be a plug nickel left.”
Eyeing Rachel sternly, her mother said, “That’s not the reason. If you hadn’t come along, she’d have been satisfied to get what she could out of that plantation of hers, played out or not. But no, now she has a reason to buy more land and equipment at the expense of what should be going to your father when she dies. She’ll be what so many ranchers are around here—land rich but cash poor. Are you getting my drift?”
Rachel nodded. Now she understood fully the gist of her parents’ arguments over the years. Her mother had expected Aunt Mary to leave the plantation to her father, who would then sell it. She felt a rush of nausea. Fearful of her mother’s growing anger, she ventured timidly, “So what if she leaves everything to me? Would that be so bad? I’d share everything the land produces with you and Daddy and Jimmy….”
“Your daddy would never let his family live off his daughter,” Alice said.
“Why not? Other kids help out their parents.”
“Because your daddy doesn’t feel entitled to anything produced from Toliver land, that’s why. He’d never take a cent.”
Rachel was thoroughly bewildered. “Why?”
Alice released her hands and sat back. She tapped her fingers on the table in an apparent effort to decide whether she could trust her. Finally she said, “When your father was seventeen, he ran away from Aunt Mary and Uncle Ollie, that’s why.”
Rachel couldn’t believe it. Why would her father run away from two of the most wonderful people in the world?
“You don’t believe me, do you.” Alice read her doubt. “Well, he did, honey, and I’ll tell you why. Your great-aunt tried to make him into a cotton planter—a Toliver like herself—but your daddy didn’t take to the family calling. He hated farming. He hated Somerset. He hated what was expected of him, so he ran away to the oilfields in West Texas. That’s how he ended up in Kermit.”
Rachel’s mouth had dropped open. She’d always assumed that after he’d married her mother, he’d remained in Kermit because it was her hometown.
“Your father may be poor, but he’s proud,” Alice continued. “That’s why he’s never allowed his aunt to help us. To give Aunt Mary credit, she’s offered. He’d feel the same toward handouts from you. Now I’m going to fill you in on a few other family secrets that I’m sure Aunt Mary’s not passed along with the Toliver
history she’s rammed into your head.”
Abruptly, as if needing fortification, Alice got up to fill her dinner glass from a pitcher of tea on the counter. She wrenched ice cubes from a tray and popped them loudly into the glass, spooned in sugar, and stirred with a vengeance. Rachel watched in trepidation. Jiminy Crickets, what was she going to tell her?
Her mother sat back down without having tasted the tea and continued. “Long ago when we first took you to Howbutker to meet your great-aunt, she promised your daddy that at her death, her estate would be sold and the proceeds left to him. Her will was all set, she said. You were an infant. She told him to take you home and forget about Somerset—that there was a curse on the land….”
“A curse?” Rachel felt herself grow as cold as her mother’s tea glass.
“A curse, Rachel. She never explained to your daddy what she meant by that, but she told him to be glad that you and his future children were free of the plantation. I swear it on my papa’s grave that’s what she told him.”
Rachel wanted to clap her hands over her ears. She couldn’t bear to hear her mother talk of Aunt Mary dying or a curse being on Somerset.
“I’m telling you this,” Alice went on, “because ever since then, I’ve been counting on her to keep her promise to your daddy. It’s been like a rainbow in the sky.”
Rachel asked in confusion, “But… I don’t understand. What’s the difference between inheriting the proceeds from the land and… and living off its profits?”