Heartwarming novel
“… Reading about the Crenshaw household made me feel like I was at a close neighbor’s cozy home full of love, struggle, and all the drama that
pops up in between…”Filled with the rich emotions and evocative characters that readers have come to expect from Emily Sue Harvey, Homefires is a poignant novel that will steal readers’ hearts.Don’t miss it at over 50% off the regular price!
Homefires
by Emily Sue Harvey
17 Rave Reviews
Kindle Price: $2.99
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Here’s the set-up:
Emily Sue Harvey’s second novel, Homefires, is the story of Janeece and Kirk Crenshaw, a couple married just after their high school graduation who set out to make a life for themselves. It is a life marked by surprises, none more dramatic than when Kirk receives his “high-calling” and becomes a pastor. It is a life marked by tragedy, the most heart-rending of which is the death of one of their children.
And it is a life marked by challenges: to their church, to their community, and most decidedly to their marriage. And as the fullness of time makes its impact on their union, Kirk and Janeece must face the question of whether they have gone as far as they can together.
5-star praise for Homefires:
Loved this book!
“…I loved the detail of their lives….Can’t wait to read more by Emily Sue Harvey.”
Inspiring story
“What an emotional, spellbinding book!…There is so much to be learned from this book…Wonderful, wonderful read!!!“
an excerpt from
Homefires
by Emily Sue Harvey
PROLOGUE PRESENT
The gravedigger has been at it for at least an hour now. I watch from my car, across the road from the church cemetery where generations of my family rest, separated by six feet of sod from May’s warm sunshine. My father’s foot marker flanks the newest mound. The digger toils as I observe, experiencing a grief no less than when the earth first opened for the faraway casket that will, tomorrow, change its resting place to here. Twenty years have not dulled my loss. The little village church, where I learned about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, overlooks the activity maternally, as she did me when I was a small child.
Melancholy thick and black as old used motor oil floods me and the little girl inside yearns to resurrect. She flounders toward a time when truth was what the preacher said and Mama and Daddy made everything all right. To when the Holy Trinity simply was and Heaven was as real as MawMaw’s Sunday kitchen feasts. To when loving felt so good, it was like getting feather-tickled all inside and bore no risks.
Risks. That comes with the homefires I keep burning. Homefires. Such an innocent word.
The shovel’s ping against rock jolts me. A small gust of warm air flavored with honeysuckle and tiger lilies ruffles my hair and I inhale deeply, my dull gaze following a jagged stone spooned from earth’s gaping hole.
Fact hits me broadside – there is no crawling back into childhood’s shelter. Tears gather to blur and mix earth tones.
Thwump. I blink away moisture. The shovel now lies beside the earthen orifice.
The gravedigger’s shoulders square off with the red-clay horizon. He pauses to loosen a black scarf tied around his head and uses it to wipe his wet brow. Gloved hands grab hold of firm sod and sinewy arms hoist him up, up until his dirty broganed foot swings over the earth’s solid edge and he laboriously climbs out. He turns stiffly to wave at me – a small gesture like the tip of a hat that says, ‘it’s finished.’ For him, it is. Not for me. For me, it just begins.
I hear his pickup’s roar as it fades into the distance. I settle my arms over the warm steering wheel, loosely hugging it.
Another beginning. The thought does not lift me. Rather, grim resignation seeps into me.
I take a deep breath and sit up straighter. Thing is, this time, I know I can do it. The old paralyzing fear now has little power over me. I learned long ago not to say, “I could never live through that.” Seems either Fate or the Devil himself eavesdrops because most of those nevers came to pass. Little by little, over the years and through circumstances, that curious, finely tuned mechanism inside me grew more and more resistant to threats and dangers. I’m not saying I’ll never be afraid again – like I said before, I avoid the word never.
At the same time, I know one thing as well as I know oxygen’s necessity: nobody else can give me peace. I alone am responsible for it. Another truth: a higher power has and will keep me sane and alive through anything that befalls me.
I shove sunglasses over my small, tilted nose, my best facial feature. The genetic thing that sculpted mine small and straight and – to quote my daughters – spared them from the large Romanesque nose dominating their father’s squared off face, softened only by a Kirk Douglas chin cleft.
Kirk Crenshaw: my hero. Kirk calls me a romantic. I suppose I am. Sometimes, he says it like it’s good. Other times, when his words seem edged in cedar, they are more an accusation.
“I’m tired of apologizing for living,” I’ve said to Kirk more than once, because that’s what it is – living. Being. My otherworldliness is both blessing and curse. Lord knows I’ve tried and tried to harness the thing that lopes away with my imagination. Just when I think I’ve got it licked, I find myself, mid-task, drifting off to some faraway time or exotic place and writing scintillating dialogue…until Kirk snaps his beautiful male fingers in my face and mutters, “Earth to Janeece…earth to Janeece. Where are you?”
I usually end up apologizing. Then, I resent it.
Because Kirk doesn’t apologize for living. Ever.
Yet, I refuse to be a scorekeeper.
I’d rather work on me. It’s easier. Safer.
The spiritual me knows I must forgive to be forgiven. Another part of me is on guard against a vulnerability that hovers, has hovered over me, for as long as I’ve breathed.
And today, for some reason, that placelessness lusts for me. I push the button that raises the car windows and then flip the air conditioner on high, suddenly irked with my stupid, excessive introspection. Air’s too heavy as it is.
“You take things too seriously, Janeece,” Kirk loves to say, adding, always, a sharp little tweak to my nose or chin. “Let’s talk about something lighter.” I turn my head quickly to the side, muting some irritated response.
Perhaps I am too serious. Perhaps it’s just Kirk’s way to preserve levity and drive back any need to analyze himself. Kirk loves to soar above troubled waters.
I don’t know.
All I know is that I love my husband. That, too, is unalterable. I should know. I park my car at the cemetery and walk slowly to the open sepulcher
Inhaling earth’s fecund smell, I blink back tears that blur the chasm. The open grave, the dirt…it’s too real…too, too real. I didn’t think it could “ever hurt this much again.
I was wrong.
PART ONE
“To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the Heaven.”
Ecclesiastes 3: 8
1960-1973
CHAPTER ONE
“A time to love and a time to hate.”
Kirk Crenshaw and I graduated from Chapowee High on Monday and wed on Saturday. That we were broke as convicts had no bearing on our full-blown, genuine church wedding. Shoot no. Mill village friends and family swarmed like a colony of ants in the little Chapowee Methodist fellowship hall, arranging food offerings, while my two attendants decked me out in the ladies rest room.
“You’re so beautiful, Sis,” sighed Trish, my thirteen-year-old sister, whose bottomless, soulful eyes reflected the robin’s egg blue of her bridesmaid dress. Her fingers fluttered gently over my bridal veil as Callie’s not so gentle hands grasped the zipper of the candlelight white satin and lace wedding gown and tugged hard.
“Suck in,” she hissed and commenced to Saran-wrap me in my pastor’s wife’s size six gown. Mrs. Hart had weighed one hundred ten pounds when donning it for her own wedding. “Eleven years and four children later, it would, she declared, take two angry, strong armed wrestlers to squash and stuff her into it. A couple of inches shorter than hers, my one hundred seventeen pound, five-foot-three frame packed into it solidly. “Just barely,” groaned Callie, my co-maid of honor, who shared this role with Trish. She stepped back and, hands on saucy hips, surveyed the hemline.
“My spike heels you’re wearing take up almost all the extra length.”
“Almost. Lord have mercy, I’ve starved five pounds off in order to wear this thing,” I grumbled as the seams seized my flesh. My reflection in the church restroom’s long door mirror did not reveal my discomfort and I found when I relaxed, it wasn’t so bad. After all, the festivities would be over in a couple of hours.
My buddy Cal’s five-foot-eight, Ava Gardner-incarnate presence usually dwarfed and paled me, but today, it didn’t. “Spittin’ image o’ Doris Day,” Cal muttered, fluffing her wild, shoulder-length dark-mahogany mane while “her sultry brown eyes surveyed me like a chemist’s through a microscope.
“Yeah, right! With these D-cup hooters and dishwater bland hair.” I trailed my hands over the snug bustline to the cinched waist. Yet…I angled another look at the mirror. My short sun-streaked hair fluffed becomingly from overnight pincurls. Strawberry pink lipstick glazed my lips and a light brush of Cal’s Max Factor Plum Heat rouge focused my features rather nicely. I had to admit, today, I felt pretty.
A thrill shot through me at the thought of Kirk in black tux and blue ruffled shirt.
While Cal and Trish fussed with their hair and makeup, I meandered into a Sunday school room of my home church, needing solitude to rhapsodize. I raised the window then perched gingerly on a bench next to it, letting memories waft in on the fragrant, cooling, June honeysuckle breeze.
Kirk, my knight in shining armor, rode onto my horizon atop a cut down peach flat, a clattering Beverly Hillbilly’s version, startling and scattering all my romantic dreams of him – Mr. Right, a John Saxonish stranger who kidnapped me to his penthouse where he ravished me, then forced me to elope with him. ‘Course, I knew that should I succumb to fornication, I’d not only inhabit Hell in the hereafter but would immediately become earthly discarded slop, which surpasses leftovers and is only good for hogs.
Such was the aftermath of underground sex in the fifties. Partly mine was spiritual restraint, but in large part, it was because of my dad, hovering next to God-almighty in my conscience cranny, watching. And Joe Whitman, with his regal bearing and no nonsense confrontations was a force I cared not to reckon with. His sunny William Holden good looks – which endured into his sixties – evolved, with provocation, to stony Walter Matthau, freezing me mid-stride. No, I did not want to displease him by being loose like Callie.
Anyway, I smiled today, thinking about the night not far into our courtship, when Kirk – not John Saxonish at all – and I nearly crossed the line. We’d parked in a remote corner of thickly wooded Crenshaw forestland, the only collateral standing between them and destitution – hiding from Daddy and the world. “Tell me about your family,” I’d coaxed and settled my head against his solid shoulder.
He did. Seemed once it started, it tumbled out like a slotmachine gone crazy, all of it – his dad’s alcoholism, his mom’s subjugation, his sibling’s insecurity and anger and the poverty, the near squalor. He finished in a voice as low and rough as velvet embroidered with thorny vines. I recognized behind the timbre of those words a pulsating, palpable anger. Eclipsing his mortar-set face, green eyes blazed into darkness. A chill rippled up my spine.
The car radio’s dim light cast his features into starkly hewed lines and angles while its speakers oozed rhythm and blues from Ernie’s Music for Lovers out of Cincinnati and I wondered who is this person? for the first time divining that our differences made us virtual strangers. Then he turned his head, caught my gaze and smiled, in a blink dispelling the harshness from his features as he turned me into his arms and began to kiss me.
The night seemed different, more urgent. Soon, I found myself lying beneath him in the seat and for the first time, felt Kirk’s hardness against my belly and it was like getting slammed there with a warm, slushing current and everything went white-hot. God knows, I’d always berated girls for being “that way” and pooh-poohed the idea that one gets “carried away” with passion, and here I was, my hormones gone crazy, my limbs gone liquid and my breath coming in spurts. And poor Kirk, in a frenzy, all hands and lips and pelvis, nearly incoherent. And my brain kept saying “stop, stop, stop” while my body kept screaming “Yes! Yes! Now!”
They were new, the volcanic rapids carrying me away from rationale, away from me, whose velocity pinned me to that seat like a gnat against a cyclone. I don’t know where it came from, the strength to say “stop, Kirk.” Probably from the deep down me who knew I could hide from Daddy and the world but not from Him. It was a mere wisp of sound Kirk seemed not to hear.
The next “No, Kirk. Stop!” carried more momentum and he halted as if startled from a feverish trance to sudden wakefulness. Kirk quickly disentangled himself, apologized profusely, then spread-eagled his arms and plastered his red face to the steering wheel for a long time. His abashment matched my own.
Later, we talked. Both virgins, we agreed that neither wanted to consummate our union outside of marriage. From that time, despite incredible chemistry between us – his look or touch always melted my bones – we honored our commitment to chastity.
Today, on our wedding day, my eyes misted at the wisdom of that decision because what had developed between us was love in its purest form.
Golden afternoon sunlight spilled over the heart pine vestibule floor, where Daddy fiddled with his blue shirt ruffle. “Does it look too sissy?” he muttered out the corner of his mouth, his features stricken with apprehension.
“You look just like a movie star,” I whispered, “Only better-looking.”
He relaxed, became Daddy again. Strong. The rock beneath my wobbly, stilettoed feet.
I clutched his arm and felt his hand squeeze my icy fingers. Lordy, was I nervous. Then I saw the groom’s party enter the front of the church, filing to stand before the pulpit. Horace “Moose” McElrath, a barrel of a fellow with corkscrew dark curls and eyes so smiley half-mooned I had yet to detect their color, took his honored place at Kirk’s side. As usual, his turkeynecking chuckle – always present when Moose was nervous – pressed a very latent giggle button deep inside me.
Daddy felt me shaking and gazed worriedly at my lowered head. “You okay?” he asked, patting my hand. I drew in a deep breath and brought the uncharacteristic mirth-seizure under control, nodding.
Then I really focused on Kirk. Another fierce thrill flared through me. Lordy – how did I ever not think him handsome? His loosely waved, wheat blond head glistened, awash with afternoon sunrays pouring through stained windows. From that distance, past one hundred heads, with me nearly hidden behind attendants, his gaze sought me out, found me. The connection – hokey as it sounds – szzzzzzed.
In a single heartbeat, I was back on my porch, nearly two years earlier, that evening Kirk’s contraption had idled to a halt before my mill village house, where I rocked and sang gustily along with Fats Domino’s Blueberry Hill drifting through my bedroom window. Moose, my friend from English class, hopped off the passenger seat and chatted with me when I moseyed to the curb – actually a front yard easily spanned in four giant steps – to join them. I quickly labeled the wiry, sun-bleached guy the Quiet One, who sat behind the wheel of his peach flat, his gaze studiously transfixed to something beyond that bug-splattered windshield.
“What you guys doin’?” I’d asked.
“We been fishin’,” Moose replied, grinning.
“Catch anything?” I slid a glance at the Quiet One.
“You kiddin’?” Moose yuk-yukked. “We eat all our Vienna Sausages and crackers and drunk all our Cocolas, then left. Lookin’ fer girls, hey, Kirk?”
The Quiet One merely grunted. Or did he? Feeling bad for Moose, I quickly said, “Moose, did you ever learn how to conjugate them danged verbs?” We laughed and guffawed over that because Moose usually copied my homework paper.
The driver of the vehicle remained statue still, arms akimbo, eyes straight ahead like a horse wearing blinders. Frozen, yet relaxed in an odd sort of way. Curiosity ambushed me.
“Who’s he?” I asked Moose, not caring what the other guy thought since he wasn’t even trying to be polite. Least he could do was speak to me, concede that I existed. So my question was in the same pretend-he’s-not-here category as his silent disregard.
“Kirk Crenshaw,” Moose offered glancing curiously at his buddy.
“He’s in my homeroom.” I’d just recognized him. “Hey! You’re in my homeroom.” Let him ignore that. A thing that truly nettled me was disdain. It pounced against this thing inside me that simply must placate everyone. Fact was, I felt compelled to befriend every danged person I met and would, in fact, have taken them home with me had Daddy been more social-oriented.
For the first time, the wheat blond head turned to acknowledge me and his hard mouth curved slightly, as if in amusement, or annoyance, I couldn’t tell which. “Yeah?” he muttered, as in “so what?” Little did I realize that he waved a red flag before me, with his Elk majesty and male mystique. I knew so little of myself in those young days that it was much later before I recognized what that flag represented. Challenge.
Monday morning in homeroom, I watched Kirk Crenshaw’s brisk entrance just before the bell. His carriage bordered on cocky. But wasn’t. His energetic presence affected me, as did his crisp, freshly pressed shirt and slacks – slacks that showcased firm buttocks and long slender legs. It wasn’t that he was all that good-looking, though with wavy sun-bleached hair, his rugged features weren’t bad. Kinda nice, I decided, in a tousled, inexplicable way. It was something in the way he moved, like harnessed steam, smooth yet forceful. Even the way he shoved his hands in his pockets, infinitely male, held me rapt.
Later, a prickly ‘being watched’ sensation moved me to suddenly swivel in my desk to face the back of the room, catching Kirk’s study of me. Spring-green eyes, set amid olive complected features, startled me with their intensity, making my stomach turn over as a warm feeling trickled through me like summer branch water.
I smiled. He smiled back, his gaze never wavering. Then a strange phenomenon occurred. The tough guy blushed. Yeah. He really did, though his eyes never left mine. And that blush changed my whole perspective of Kirk Crenshaw.
Today, across the church, I smiled at him. He smiled back. De ja vu. Only this time, his blush was because a whole danged church full of villagers eyeballed him flirting with me.
I moved down the aisle to a slightly out-of-tune piano’s rendering of the Wedding March, thankful for Daddy’s strong arm to hang on to. Else, I’d surely have tripped over the long gown or turned my ankle in Cal’s danged heels. All those eyes on me terrified me senseless. Scrutiny – my worst scenario. The veil helped me feel a tad hidden, but each step was like those in a nightmare where one is partially paralyzed or mired up in quicksand. Even the lush greenery and white mum arrangements, vivid against the crimson velvet-dressed seats and floors of our little village church, blurred before me.
Then, Callie’s wink caught my attention – her “va va vooom, babyyy” one. And Trish gazed at me so dewy eyed you’d have thought I really was Cinderella in my borrowed Victorian cut finery. Moose – whose tux tugged in all the wrong places – looked ready to burst with joy, furiously swallowing back another yuk-yukk.
Kirk – well, Kirk’s hot look instantly converted my cold fear into anticipation.
Soon, I stood at the altar and Daddy placed my hand in Kirk’s, rushing tears to my eyes as I realized the significance of the gesture. Despite my father’s “under the thumb” controlling disposition, he’d always been a good, caring daddy. At least I knew Daddy, could predict him almost to the T. He was actually giving me away. What – I wondered in a heartbeat of panic – was I trading him for?
Kirk’s strong fingers squeezed mine, almost painfully, revealing his own state of nerves. And a certain danger. Adrenaline shot through me. Now where did that come from? Danger. I sucked in a deep breath, feeling kinda off the wall. Thank God only I knew how off-the-wall I could be. Preacher Hart’s voice moved in and out of my overcast reverie, “….gathered together…join this man and this woman….”
Man and woman…man…Did I really know this man? At times, I was certain I did. At others, I was equally certain I did not.
Mrs. Tilley, the pianist and soloist, burst into Whither Thou Goest, her humongous bosom heaving with emotion, predictably bending my eardrum by going sharp on the high notes. The giggle-button war commenced warbling inside me and I clamped my teeth together and gazed into Kirk’s solemn face for focus. He gazed back, as somber as I’d ever seen him, and I no longer heard the cracked operatic vibrato.
The pastor resumed…“Whom God hath joined together…”
Joined together. My breath hitched and Kirk’s fingers nearly crushed mine.
“I now pronounce you man and wife…”
In the next breath, Kirk was kissing me. No turning back.
The thought flitted through my mind like startled ravens. And was gone.
“I miss Chuck,” I murmured between greeting wedding guests. Kirk gave me a sympathetic hug, knowing how I adored my older brother, whom he’d never met and from whom I’d not heard a word in months—during which I alternately wanted to hug him and slap his blasted face.
MawMaw, Papa, my Uncle Gabe and his wife Jean, a Chapowee girl, embraced Kirk and me in the church fellowship hall and chatted with my stepmother Anne. Papa, Teddybearish in his one and only church-going brown suit and tie, hugged me tightly, then whipped out his brown handkerchief to wipe suspiciously misty blue eyes. MawMaw was gussied up in a new cotton floral dress. Her eyes, so like Mama’s, puddled unashamedly with tears. A moment before leaving, she whispered in my ear, “Now you’uns can come’n see me and Papa, Neecy.”
I nodded, dodging a deeper analysis of my screwed-up family today. “Gabe told me he’d landed a good job at the Enka Plant near Asheville, North Carolina,” I said, brightly changing subjects, “and would be moving there the next week. Sure hate to see him go.” Gabe was my late mom’s only sibling.
“We’ll probably be moving there, too,” rasped MawMaw, emotionally. “Gabe needs lookin’ after, with diabetes and all. Jean works fulltime and I’ll be helpin’ them out all I can.” My heart sagged. Here, just when I’d not need Daddy’s permission to visit them, they were moving two hours away. I felt a bit betrayed. But what with all the wedding festivities, the feeling passed. More than ever, I missed my mom, who’d died when I was eleven, Chuck, fifteen, and Trish, five.
Daddy kept conveniently busy speaking to everybody else except my grandparents – his former in-laws, whom he’d succinctly cut from our lives one week after Mama’s death because MawMaw had spoken ill of him within his children’s hearing. I viciously pushed the thoughts away. I had to pigeonhole my priorities today. Simply had to. I refused to let loved ones’ hateful unforgiveness spoil my wedding day.
“The flowers look so pretty.” I smiled desperately at Kirk and he squeezed my hand. Somehow, he understood. His IRS refund check paid for the floral arrangements. Our wedding was lovely yet inexpensive. Relatives and ladies of Chapowee’s Methodist Church had prepared food for the reception, which was the way of “Mill Hill folk, whose reward for generosity was the change of pace provided by a bona-fide church wedding. Heck, we’d invited nearly the whole danged village.
Daddy and Anne, whom Dad had married in my twelfth year, hugged us. “We waited till the line cleared out,” Anne said, eyes reddened from sentimental tears, surprising me with the depth of her feelings.
“Where’s Grandma and Grandpa Whitman?” I addressed Daddy, knowing full well he’d excuse his own flesh and blood’s flaws, setting my teeth on edge.
“Ma said her rheumatism is acting up. Said to tell you they’re sorry they can’t be here.” Daddy’s gaze begged me to understand. I looked away and quickly moved to another subject, knowing Grandma Whitman always went any danged place she truly wanted to. Knowing, too, that she probably hadn’t sent me that apologetic message.
“Only Chuck’s missing,” I said, almost gratified to see hurt spring to Daddy’s eyes. Almost. In the next breath, I was hugging him, wanting to erase the hurt. Lord have mercy, today, my emotions felt tossed about like dead leaves in a whirlwind.
Chuck, my handsome brother, who left home a mere three years after Mama died to “see the world,” actually to flee Dad’s dominion of him, left the family in a goshawful mess. ‘Course, I couldn’t blame all the mess on him but what part he’d sullied, he’d done a bang-up job. I’d watched them pit wills, my zany, adventurous sibling and my logical dad. Daddy’s trying to tether his impulsive firstborn was like trying to hold on to a squirming, greased pig.
Sad thing was, I knew theirs was a battle neither could win and neither knew how to back off. One wintry day, following another shouting match with Daddy, Chuck quit his mill job and disappeared. I cried for weeks while Daddy ranted and roared until he ran out of steam, then grew eerily quiet. After that, up until this very day, I’d remained Daddy’s primary parental salvation, with him dedicating himself to overseeing every aspect of my life, especially my social diversions, which, during my teens, had peaked.
Today, a part of me rejoiced to escape Daddy’s sometimes suffocating restrictions and accountability. Another tiny part grieved being loosed from that same tight rein, one that included “infinite, tender care and concern.
But only for an instant. On its heels came a rush of joy so great I thought I would surely explode.
“Neece?” Cole appeared at my side in his little white tux with short pants, tugging at my skirt. “Wuv ‘oo,” he whispered, his hazel eyes huge with awe and humility. I loved Anne’s and Daddy’s offspring as though I’d personally birthed him. Had since I’d first laid eyes on him.
I stooped and gathered him in my arms, choking back tears – knowing I’d be leaving him behind. How I’d miss him being there first thing in the morning, seated at the breakfast table, fork in hand, hungrily watching me cook. We hugged fiercely. He puckered and gave me a big juicy kiss on the lips.
“I love you, too, Cole. Thanks for being my ring bearer. You did great!” And he did.
“Hey, buddyroe,” Kirk winked solemnly at him as he returned with cups of punch.
Cole flashed us a huge grin, then scampered to join some cousins at the refreshment table. Though Kirk tried hard to hide it, I knew he was jealous of my close bond with my little brother. He wasn’t unkind to Cole, he simply wasn’t affectionate with him. Thought him “spoiled.” Fact of the matter, Kirk was and still is a territorial ol’ cuss.
It hurt, his coolness to Cole. But Kirk’s good far outweighed his flaws. So I managed to hide my disappointment and take it in stride.
“Come on, you guys!” Callie gestured hugely from the refreshment area, bare toes poking from beneath her blue hem. Well I hope n’ I never… I slowly shook my head, grinning that she’d already shucked her shoes. Cal’s earthiness was unquenchable. “Hey ya’ll!” she bellowed, “Time to cut the cake!”
Cal caught the bridal bouquet, nearly knocking Trish over in her pursuit.
“Not fair,” Trish shrieked, giggling. “She’s already getting married in two weeks.”
“All’s fair in love and war, doncha know? ‘S th’ way the mop flops.” Cal smugly clasped the arrangement to her bosom then shoved it into Roger Denton’s hands. Her fiance flushed magenta and struggled for decorum, as was customary following Cal’s jinks. Even today, after lukewarm congratulations to Kirk and me, Roger’s gaze avoided ours. Only our love for Callie kept Rog and me civil toward one another. Only Kirk’s love for me made him tolerate either of them. Though, I have to hand it to Kirk – he relented for Cal to be in our wedding party, conceding that mine and Cal’s lifelong bonds were unbreakable.
I felt Kirk’s arm slide around my waist and tighten possessively. “Whatcha say we do a disappearing act?” he whispered in my ear, raising goosebumps all over me.
Without so much as a fare-thee-well, he grabbed my hand and we took flight.
CHAPTER TWO
Matrimony pulled me from the quicksand of non-belonging, a thing I’d not fully recognized until I stepped into my own house. And I thought how here, I would keep my own homefires a’burning. My very own.
Here, I belonged.
For though Anne and I developed a close friendship during those last two years under Daddy’s roof, I’d never regressed to my former assured dug-in self. It wasn’t her fault nor Daddy’s; it was simply something altered in me by God only knows what all but, most certainly, what began with Mama’s early death.
I’ll never know if things would’ve been different had Kirk not come along because he did and he gave me the greatest of all gifts: strong arms to hold me and this home called ours.
“Hey!”
I blinked my eyes, irritated at Kirk’s fingers snapping at the end of my nose as I gazed mistily through our window into a dusky blue-gray sky whose horizon slowly oozed peach and crimson. I jerked the venetian blind string to, first, close out the world and second, to vent my annoyance at his fingers’ abrupt snap that always exploded over me, setting off my high-strung nerves.
“Where were you just now?” he asked, taking off his black tux coat, his heavy-lidded eyes glimmering with what I thought was amusement but suddenly realized was more. We’d chosen to forgo other choices to spend our honeymoon here, in our little village dwelling, only a couple of blocks from Daddy and Anne.
“Hmm?” he persisted in his velvety roughness and began to undress me with fumbling gentleness. I promptly assisted him.
“I was thinking about the wedding – ” My voice caught when his hands boldly touched my skin in formerly forbidden places. Next thing I knew, we were between new white sheets, naked together for the first time, glorying in freedom, in the rightness of it all and we began to laugh, hugging and rocking back and forth, side to side, kissing and laughing and kissing… until the laughter stopped and primitive urges, long, long denied, emerged.
Kirk stopped and gazed down at me. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
In answer, I pulled his head down and kissed him. The discomfort I felt soon gave way to the excitement of unfolding wonders and because of Kirk’s tender concern, the consummation would not be completed until later that evening.
Instead, he playfully tugged me from the bed. “Get dressed, woman. Cook me some dinner.”
We quickly pulled on cut-off shorts and matching white and Crimson Chapowee High pullovers and, excited as three-year-olds, invaded our sparkling, sunny-colored kitchen with its free-standing white cabinet and chrome and yellow dinette set, pulled out shiny new pots and pans and commenced cooking a fantastic dinner.
Kirk peeled potatoes and sliced them for potato salad, his first cooking venture. I showed off my fluffy buttermilk biscuits, lumpless gravy – learned at age nine from MawMaw – and crispy, juicy Southern fried chicken, compliments of Anne’s tutelage. We topped off the meal with Kirk’s favorite dessert, Banana Pudding with golden toasted meringue icing.
As I put dishes in a sink full of hot soapy water, I felt Kirk move to stand behind me, wrapping me in his arms, his hands doing magical things to my bosom. “Kirk!” My breath caught in my throat as he smoothly turned me into his arms and up against his arousal.
He kissed me deeply, leaving me breathless and clutching at him.
“I never knew,” he muttered huskily, “that flour on your nose could be so sexy.”
“Mmmm.” I rubbed against him. “That move is pretty sexy, too.”
He looked into my eyes, his turning dark as the night. “Let’s go see,” his voice was raspy as a corn cob, “what we can do about it.”
The kitchen became our home’s hub, where we relaxed and chatted, listening to Fats or Johnny Mathis while delectable aromas wafted from the oven and frying pan. It was during those lingering intimate moments that we began to delve past yet another layer of self.
Each day brought surprises. Kirk gazed at my bowl across the dinette, clearly shocked. “You mean you eat sugar and cream on your oatmeal?”
“You mean you don’t?” I shot back, equally astonished at his mound topped only with butter. After a moment of silent impasse, we burst into laughter. Kirk later divulged that the Crenshaw’s plain oatmeal was to spare the expense of sugar. Nor did they drink milk in their coffee for the same reason. I began to really see the Crenshaw’s poverty level.
Food made togetherness ours. The morning hours, before Kirk went to his second-shift mill job, passed swiftly because we slept late and ate brunches concocted with creative zeal, anything from sausage and pancakes to pot roast and potatoes, didn’t matter, it was all fun and adventure.
Today was beef stew we’d cooked from a Good Housekeeping cookbook, a shower present of mine. “It’s delicious,” I spooned the last bite from my plate.
“It’s great,” Kirk agreed, sipping his ever-present coffee contentedly. “Though I’d like to let it simmer for another twenty minutes next time.”
“Think so?”
“Yeah. Needs to tenderize just a mite more.”
“Mmm.” I smiled at him.
He leaned forward on his elbows, gazing at me as though seeing something for the first time. “What’s behind that smile?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“Oh…just that everything is so perfect.” I drew on my iced tea glass and sighed. “You’ll never know how much it means to me to have a place that’s truly mine. It’s hard to explain.”
Kirk reached across the table and took my hands in his. “I love you so much, honey,” he murmured, frowning with the effort to verbalize his feelings. “The fact that you didn’t have a mother to care for you made me love you even more.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, growing a tad uncomfortable with the pity I heard in his voice. “I guess I did okay, considering.” I thought of sad-eyed Trish – then pushed away the thought.
Kirk’s laser turquoise eyes pinned me with a look I’d seen sporadically – an unreadable, dissecting gaze that did not let up simply because I grew fidgety. “Anne…” he hesitated, uncertain, then forged ahead, “Anne’s okay – least she’s been nice to me. But she doesn’t treat you and Trish like she does her own kid.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” I said, desperate to dispel his claim. “Cole’s a baby and – ”
“Look,” Kirk held up a hand. “Let’s just drop the subject. You don’t want to see…”
“I think we should drop the subject.” I gave Kirk an appealing look and reached for his hand.
His large, beautiful square fingers curled with mine. “I’m sorry, honey,” he said. “I don’t mean to hurt you. Ever.”
“It’s just that – Kirk, family is so important to me. And it seems that those most important to me – I lose them.” I shrugged awkwardly, fighting back tears.
“What if you had a family like mine?” Kirk’s eyes glimmered suddenly with dark humor. “A sot for a daddy and a mama who doesn’t see anything but her misery? And brothers and sisters who wouldn’t spit on each other if they were all on fire. Living in a house where Christmas went by unnoticed.” He chortled. “I’d have died for just a box of chocolate-covered cherries, y’know? God a’mighty, I love those things. And there were never any hugs or ‘I love yous.’ We just survived. Yanked up by the hair o’the head. You want to talk about mess, we’ll talk about mess.”
We both cracked up. That always did it when I got soppy and sentimental about things I couldn’t change. Kirk could always dredge up down-dirty real scenarios from his life, which were infinitely more desperate than anything I’d ever experienced.
“Anyway,” he spoke as he moved around the table, took my hand and pulled me up and into his arms, “this – us – we’re family now. And I won’t leave you. I’ll always be here for you, Neecy,”
“And I’ll always be here for you, Kirk. You’ll never have another Christmas without chocolate-covered “cherries. That’s a promise.”
… Continued…
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Homefires
by Emily Sue Harvey
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