Plots and Pans (34 page)

He scrubbed and carted pots and pans, peeled potatoes, took on some of the latest night watches, and above all remained unfailingly polite. She and Desta would’ve crumpled into heaps long ago if it weren’t for Quincy’s unassuming assistance and quiet camaraderie.

So when he struggled his way through a speech about his brother losing his hat, Jess was horror-struck. From what she gathered, Tucker already took the older Creevey brother to the township a couple miles up the trail. But the shopkeeper there had an unflinching reputation for refusing to do business on the Lord’s Day, no matter how important the person or how great the need. From the fear on Quincy’s face and the few facts Jess knew about the dangers of exposure, the need was great indeed.

“Can you stay here and pass out coffee and splatterdabs to the men as they come in?” His nod was eager and apprehensive all at once. It tugged at her heart.

“Then I’ll take the buckboard into town and make sure this gets handled, quick as can be.” She glanced over to where her aunt stood, eyes narrowed in speculation. “Miss Desta might come with me, if you’re sure you can handle things on your own?”

“She can’t go ridin’ into town on her lonesome, son.” Desta shook her head. “No stickler of a storekeeper who balks at sellin’ needful things to honest folks on account of the day of the week will take kindly to requests made by an unescorted woman.”

“Isth fine,” Quincy assured them. “Go holp m’ brosther.”

“It’s a big job we’re trusting to you, but it’s a big job you’ve trusted to me. So I figure that makes things even,” Jess called over her shoulder, hoping to build the boy’s confidence as she and Desta took off.

“Smart boy,” her aunt approved when they reached the buckboard and found the team already hitched and waiting. They wasted no time hopping aboard and setting off.

For some moments in life, timing turned out to mean everything. Jess knew that full well even before she’d raced into the shipping office, desperate to book passage to America, and discovered that if she’d arrived even three minutes later, she would’ve missed meeting the captain of the vessel. At the time, she’d called it luck and gone on her way.

Now, after weeks spent with Aunt Desta, Tucker, and even some time spent with Ed, she knew they would call it something else. Divine providence sounded awfully presumptuous to Jess, but at the same time there was something comforting in the idea that God went ahead and arranged little appointments in a person’s life. It seemed intensely personal, and at the same time, it fit in with the way He didn’t seem to step right up and show Himself to people anymore.

From what she’d been reading in Papa’s Bible, and what she increasingly remembered learning as a child, in olden days gone by He used to show up more often and in spectacular ways. That seemed to have ended with the New Testament. Jesus came to earth, went home to His heavenly Father, and they both stopped making house calls.

This was the part she had trouble with. Jess never had much patience with waiting, and even now she didn’t understand how she was supposed to believe if someone really wanted to be close with her and bring her home, they kept her an ocean or an entire world away. With nothing but some aging letters bound in leather or tied in a ribbon to keep her company when she felt alone.

Maybe that’s why she’d latched on to the idea of divine providence. It fit better with Desta’s ideas about how God’s plans could be comforting instead of constricting. Maybe it wasn’t about making your own way in life. Maybe it was more about the way your life could be used to help someone else. This morning she aimed to test that idea.

“Almost feels like I’m headin’ for church.” Desta gave a little laugh. “Does my heart good to think I’m on my way to a meeting with the Almighty this morning, even if we don’t see a single pew.”

“Maybe we’re on our way to a meeting He arranged,” Jess ventured.

“Might could be.” No longer laughing, her aunt looked at her with an approval Jess rarely enjoyed from just about anyone. “We’ll find out soon as you stop this here wagon.”

“Here we are.” She pulled to the side of the street and jumped down, hitching the horses and looking along the main drag. At the northern end stood a small, whitewashed building with a spire stretching from the roof. “Look, Aunt Desta. Just like you hoped for. Sort of surprising they have one in such a small place.”

“Don’t question the building.” Desta looped her arm through Jess’s and headed toward that spire. “Question the people you find inside until you find someone who can help!”

“Wait a minute, Aunt Desta.” Jess had to dig her heels into the ground to effect a stop. “Aren’t you supposed to find help within a church even when there’s no one you can see?”

“No doubt ’bout it. But you can find that same source of help anyplace, Jess.” Her hand tightened its clasp, as though trying to press her words as deep as she could. “It’s one of the beautiful things about God. No matter where you are in life, He’s willing to meet you if ‘n you do yore part by comin’ to Him in prayer.”

“All right.” Jess squeezed her aunt’s hand in return.

As they walked down the street, Jess heard someone shout her name. She peered in the space between two buildings and spotted Tucker heading her way in a hurry, with a blond boy in tow who could only be the other Creevey. Neither one of them looked very happy.

“Jess! Desta! What are you doing here?” Tucker turned the question into more of a demand for an explanation than anything else.

“Quincy asked us to come help. He’s handing out splatterdabs this morning while we rustle up another hat for his brother, here.”

Jess smiled at the silent young man, whom she suspected suffered from the same lisp as his brother. “Desta and I think the best chance we have is to head to the church, ask for help, and hope for guidance.”

“Fair enough.” The men fell into step alongside them. “We already paid a visit on the shopkeeper. He roared a refusal, shut the door in our faces, and snuck out of the building to get away from us. Your way, at least you get to go to church!”

The sound of voices raised in a hymn greeted them through the open door, and they followed the song inside. A handful of half-filled pews faced a plain wooden podium, where a man with more enthusiasm than talent led worship.

Jess smiled as she moved forward, looking for a pew with room enough to fit all four of them. Only the empty front row offered enough space. She pushed aside her discomfort at walking past the entire town, obviously late for service, and forged ahead.

When the song ended, it seemed everyone finished at a different time—on a different note. When the final, quavering voice died away, the man up front raised a hand as though bidding people to halt. Jess couldn’t say whether or not he was a preacher—he wore no cleric’s collar—but he obviously exerted the authority here.

“Before everyone gets to their feet and finds their way back out the door, why don’t we take this chance to thank our visitors for joining us this morning?” He gestured toward them, making Jess blush. “They might have missed the message, but they don’t need to miss the feeling of finding fellowship so far afield. Am I right?”

From the sounds of the response rising behind them, Jess thought he’d wrangled an agreement. He must’ve thought so, too, because his cheerful grin grew even wider before he spoke again.

“Let’s take this opportunity to pray over these folks, asking God’s provision for their journey and safe travels until they reach their destination!”

T
ucker pushed past his disappointment that they’d missed the message—it would’ve been a much-needed bright spot in a dismal day. A dismal drive, in truth.

He snuck a sideways glance at Jessalyn, smiling to see her place her Stetson so carefully on her lap. She was chock full of funny little quirks like that. Men removed their hats, but women usually kept their heads covered in church. But to Jess, respect for her hardworking Stetson—and the people who’d have to see around it—outweighed feminine pride.

Tucker found good cause to be grateful for lack of vanity. Jess had plenty of pride and more feminine charms than she knew what to do with. If she ever figured out a way to harness the power of that smile of hers, well …

For a girl so rough-riding and rule-breaking as to pass for a cowman—if only in a driving downpour—Jessalyn Culpepper sure turned out to be a looker. Even now, as she sat in a shadowy church pew sporting split skirts and a Stetson instead of frilly skirts and a fancy hat, she shined. What little sunlight squeezed through the single window above the door sought her out, gleaming golden along her mussed-up braid.

The preacher’s voice pulled his attention back where it belonged. It sounded like he was wrapping things up. “Let’s take this opportunity to pray over these folks, asking God’s provision for their journey and safe travels until they reach their destination!”

From your lips to God’s ears
. Tucker bowed his head, then realized he wasn’t praying along with the church because Jess grabbed everyone’s attention.

“I’m sorry to interrupt.” Jess jumped to her feet so everyone could hear, shaping the words with those high-fallutin’, parsed-and-proper syllables they’d taught her in England.

Until now Tucker hadn’t realized how much he liked it when she did that—and how much
more
he liked knowing that she did it less the longer she spent back home.

“But an introduction like that was too tailor-made to resist trying it on for size!” Her joke met with appreciative laughter from the audience, but Tucker understood the earnestness behind it—and her purpose as she parlayed the preacher’s words into a plea for Porter.

“I’m being honest. When your … leader, here, spoke of fellowship, provision, and safe travels, I couldn’t quite believe it! Those three things brought us here, searching, to see if God would provide the means for this young man to continue safely on our travels.”

Jess reached down and tapped Porter’s elbow, so he stood up with her and faced the audience. The light filtering through that one window went from golden glow to silvery halo at her command, bathing Porter’s white-blond hair with angelic light. Even with his hair sticking up in a hundred different duck-fluff directions, it gleamed bright enough to make some of the women gasp with admiration.

“Bow your head,” she whispered from the corner of her mouth, so slick and sly no one but he and Tucker heard.

Porter obeyed, bowing his head to reveal the stripe of angry red slicing through the gleaming crown. Holding his hands clasped in front of him, his head bowed low at the front of a church, the posture turned him into a portrait of wordless suffering—and, better yet, silent supplication.

She’s brilliant
. Tucker marveled at how easily Jess snagged the spotlight and turned it on Porter’s problem. Alone, Tucker hadn’t swayed the shopkeeper. Jessalyn herself might have managed it, but she’d taken no chances. Instead, she marshaled the entire township to her side.

“Through no fault of his own, this fine, hardworking young man stands here, suffering. A stampede cost him his hat.” She held up her own. “I know it doesn’t seem like much, but a simple Stetson provides vital protection from the elements. Exposure for even a day does damage, as you can see. Even one more day and he could fall victim to far worse.”

“So soon?” Tucker recognized the quavering voice of the music lover who’d drawn out the last warble of worship.

“Absolutely.” He decided it was time to stand alongside his crew and offer up his authority on the subject. “Exposure to the elements doesn’t mean one risk. Extreme heat. Dehydration. Sunstroke. Any one of these kills. Combined, they can cost a man his life in a matter of hours. I’ve seen it firsthand.”

By now folks were shifting in their seats, darting glances toward the dour shopkeeper before turning to the man who’d led them in praise. But for all the shuffling and glancing, no one spoke up.

“We aren’t looking for a handout.” Tucker raised his volume, and the stakes. “The worth of a life can’t be measured, but I am fully prepared to be more than generous in return for the gear this young man needs.”

“It ain’t about the money!” The shopkeeper lumbered to his feet, shaking his head like a crotchety old mule. “This is the Lord’s Day, and around here, we make it a point to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, like the Good Book tells us.”

“The Good Book also asks us to be kind, love one another, and treat others as we wish to be treated.” Jess stepped in to soften the altercation. “You wouldn’t want you or yours left to the mercy of a blazing summer sun.”

Far from looking convinced, the man puffed out his chest even farther. “You don’t have the first idea what a man like me wants, and it ain’t seemly for an upstart of a girl to try and guess.”

The women in the room burst into distressed exclamations and angry murmurs. If he hadn’t been pinned in behind the pews, Tucker would’ve stepped forward. For now, he held his ground while Jess stiffened her spine and stared the man down.

That’s my girl
. Tucker didn’t catch the thought—it caught him.
To help Ed look after … like I promised Simon. She’s not
mine. He tried to correct it, but now that he’d claimed her in his mind, the idea spread. Trying to dislodge the feeling made his chest tight.

Lord, is it possible You brought Jess back before Ed and I would have for this purpose? Not so she could mourn her father and rebuild her life as part of the Bar None family, but so she could become such an important part of mine?

Tucker tried not to look too dumbstruck, glad she’d drawn attention to herself so his stare wouldn’t seem so strange. He poked back at the idea that just about knocked him down. Instead of agreeing or denying, he decided to open himself to the idea.
Mine?

As he pondered, he watched her. Plainspoken and plainly dressed, Jess possessed the sort of beauty most women went out of their way to fake. But once a man got to know her, he could look past all that to the true appeal of Jessalyn Culpepper: that everything about her, from the way she looked to the way she acted, was absolutely genuine.