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  They managed to get through supper without any further insults or even conversation from the Clanahans. Anna volunteered to help Dolly clear the table and serve pie and coffee.

  As everybody else praised Dolly’s dessert, Mrs. Clanahan only poked at hers with her fork. “What on earth is this?” she finally said.

  “Why—it’s—it’s a pie,” Dolly said. “Made with fresh strawberries and sweet whipped cream on top—my grandmother’s recipe.”

  Mrs. Clanahan smirked at her. “Guess I should’ve expected a hillbilly dessert from a hillbilly hotel.”

  For the third time, crystals tinkled above, so much so that one broke free of the old chandelier and landed squarely in the center of Dolly’s table.

  Si slowly pushed back his chair and stood up. “Mr. and Mrs. Clanahan, I’m gonna have to ask you to get your things and leave our home.”

  Anna saw Dolly’s mouth fly open.

  “What?” Mrs. Clanahan exclaimed. “Are you nuts?”

  “Get your things and leave our home,” Si repeated.

  Mr. Clanahan remained slouched in his chair. “We’re not about to leave,” he said to his wife. “We’re paid up through the end of the month.”

  “Dolly,” Si said, “please go and get their money.”

  Dolly hurried away from the table and returned with the Clanahans’ payment, which she laid on the table in front of them.

  Mr. Clanahan snarled at Si. “And what if we don’t feel like leaving?”

  Si spun around and walked out. When he returned to the dining room just a minute or two later, he was carrying his shotgun, which he loaded and cocked right there. Everyone else—including Mrs. Clanahan—pushed away from the table and moved to the opposite side of the room. Anna’s heart, which was already racing, skipped a beat when Jesse stepped in front of her, shielding her from any stray shotgun shells.

  Mr. Clanahan only sneered at Si and leaned back in his chair.

  Si took aim and blew one of the legs off the chair, sending his unwanted guest tumbling backward onto the floor. Now Mr. Clanahan was scrambling to stand as he watched Si reload.

  “Here now!” the man from Nevada said, backing up and holding his hands out in front of him as if to stop the next shell coming out of that barrel. “There’s no call to get excited.”

  “I’m not excited,” Si calmly said as he kept walking slowly and steadily toward the obnoxious couple, aiming the shotgun squarely at them. He backed them all the way to the stairs. “Get up those stairs and get your things,” he said. “If you’re not outta this house before Dolly’s grandfather clock chimes again, I’m comin’ up there, and this time I’ll aim higher.”

  The Clanahans glanced at the clock and then ran all over each other hurrying upstairs to gather their belongings. Before the clock could strike again, they came racing back down with their suitcases. Dolly had retrieved their abandoned money from the dining room table and handed it to them as they fled out the front door. She led her other guests back to the table to finish their dessert, but Si and his shotgun stayed on the front porch till the troublemakers were completely out of sight.

  Anna looked around the table and could see that everybody was still a little unraveled when the man of the house came back to his place to finish his pie. “This is an especially rich one, Dolly,” Si said after he took a couple of bites. “I’m mighty sorry about what I did to your mama’s chair, but don’t you worry none. I can fix it.”

  “I know you can.”

  The boarders were quiet as everybody tried to regain their composure and finish their dessert. Finally, after a long silence, Dolly asked, “What tipped you over, Si?”

  He looked up at her and said, “Nobody disrespects your fine cookin’, Dolly—and I mean nobody.”

  Dolly shook her head and smiled. Then she looked around the table. “Would anybody care for seconds?”

  “I reckon I better,” Joe said quietly. “Till he runs outta shells.”

  The Chandlers and their guests all burst out laughing. Even Jesse had to chuckle at the wry man from Mississippi.

  “No need to worry, Joe,” Si said. “Ammo’s mighty pricey these days. Got to use it sparingly unless I’m shootin’ at somethin’ I can eat, and you don’t look very appetizin’ to me.”

  “I’d be tough as an old crow,” Joe said.

  “Dolly would definitely have to work you into a stew,” Si told him. “Gentlemen, would you be so kind as to lend me a hand out at the well house?”

  Joe and Harry immediately pushed back from the table. “We’d be honored,” Harry said. Jesse looked puzzled but followed suit.

  “What’s wrong with your well house?” Anna asked as the men stepped outside.

  “Nothin’,” Dolly said with a sigh. “Except that Si keeps his homemade spirits out there.”

  “You make him keep it outside?” Anna asked.

  “I do. I won’t have any spirits in my house. Nothin’ stronger than my muscadine wine, which I believe to be more like the wine in the Bible and not likely to cause intoxication—don’t you think?”

  “Oh, I agree,” Evelyn said. “Where did you say you keep it?”

  CHAPTER

  three

  “Dolly, m’dear,” Si called into the kitchen, where his wife was making a fresh pitcher of lemonade.

  “In here, Si.”

  “Come with me. I’ve got somethin’ to show you.”

  She followed him through the dining room and into the front hallway, where he stopped. “We’re goin’ into the parlor,” he whispered. “But don’t say nothin’ while we’re in there because the windows are open. I just want you to see what Anna and Jesse are doin’ on the porch.”

  Dolly and Si walked quietly into the front parlor, where they could look out the windows and see Anna and Jesse sitting next to each other in rocking chairs. The young couple would go for minutes on end rocking in silence before one of them would make a feeble attempt at conversation and the other would struggle to reciprocate.

  “Did you enjoy the message today?” Anna asked.

  “I did. He’s a good preacher.”

  Silence.

  “What did you think of the music?” he asked.

  “Oh, I loved it. Never heard anything quite that lively in church.”

  Jesse nodded. More silence.

  Si motioned for Dolly to follow him back to the kitchen where they could talk.

  “That was downright painful to watch,” Dolly said.

  “I know. What we gonna do about it?”

  “I don’t know what we can do. Those two have plumb forgot how to talk to one another.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Si said.

  “Why, they’ve got no idea how to enjoy each other anymore.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “And they’re young! They ought to be havin’ the best time!”

  “Tell you what. Let’s take ’em to the slough. We’ll be away from everybody else, enjoyin’ some of the prettiest spots in the county. Maybe if we can give ’em somethin’ to talk about, we can help ’em find their way to a conversation. And them rocks in the creek’s mighty slippery. He’ll prob’ly need to hold her hand.”

  Si, Dolly, Jesse, and Anna left their shoes on the creek bank and stepped into clear, cold water that was about a foot deep. The creek bottom was ideal—soft but firm enough so that you didn’t mire up.

  As they reached a shallower stretch of the creek, Si said, “Dolly, you’d best hold my hand goin’ over these slippery rocks—wouldn’t want you to twist your ankle or anything.” Dolly took his hand and glanced over her shoulder just in time to see Jesse taking Anna’s.

  “This is the prettiest creek I’ve ever seen!” Anna exclaimed.

  “It sure is a nice one, Si,” Jesse agreed.

  The Tanyard was a beauty, crystal-clear water seamlessly flowing from deep to shallow and back again, accommodating a lush, wooded landscape as it drifted along. The section they were wading now was far beyond the lake. Here the water was shallow an
d swift, flowing over flat rocks as big as coffee tables.

  “Right up yonder around that bend, there’s a little slough that’s great for fishin’—or swimmin’, dependin’ on your mood,” Si told Jesse over his shoulder.

  As they neared the slough, Dolly winked at her husband and said, “You better not let me slip and fall in like I did last time, or I’m not fixin’ you a bite o’ supper.”

  “Better hang on to ’em, Jesse,” Si said as he put his arm around Dolly and looked out over the perfectly oval pond that bowed out from the creek. “Unless you’re a better cook than I am, we need to keep our ladies dry.”

  Jesse put his arm around Anna and helped her wade a little closer to the spot—about eight feet wide—where the creek spilled into the slough.

  “Man, Si,” Jesse said. “When you pick a fishing hole, you don’t mess around.” The water was like glass—smooth and clear—forming an idyllic pool, sunny and bright at its center with overhanging shade trees around the edges. It was about fifty yards across.

  “She’s somethin’, ain’t she?” Si said with a big smile.

  Dolly, who had never once fallen into the slough, looked into the clear, gleaming water. She gazed at a reflection—Jesse with one protective arm around his wife and the other pointing to a jumping fish so that Anna wouldn’t miss any of the magic this place held. And it held plenty.

  CHAPTER

  four

  On Dolly’s front porch, Anna handed Jesse his lunch and watched him walk down the steps. Halfway to his pickup, he turned around, came back on the porch, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Wish me luck?”

  Anna laid her hand against her face. “They’re lucky to get you,” she said. Then she watched him drive off to his first day on a new job and, they both hoped, to a new life.

  When he was out of sight, she went back upstairs to make their bed and tidy their room. That’s when it hit her: she had absolutely nothing left to do but feel homesick.

  Hurrying downstairs, she found Dolly washing the breakfast dishes. “Let me dry?” Anna asked.

  “Oh, heavens no!” Dolly said. “You’re not payin’ rent money so you can dry the dishes.”

  “Please, Dolly? All my life I’ve been getting up at five every morning to milk a cow and feed chickens and cook breakfast and wash the dishes. I’ve never known an idle day, and I don’t think I can stand one just now.”

  “Alright then. Grab that dish towel over there. But after that, I want you to take a little time to wander around. This ol’ loop is perfectly safe—you can consider ever’body here your neighbor. And you can wander the creek down behind the lake. Just watch for snakes and don’t go too far into the woods.”

  “Okay,” Anna promised as she began drying and stacking the dishes. “Do you have many snakes around here?”

  “In warm weather we do, but most of ’em’s harmless. Just remember—the bad ones tend to have a spade-shaped head.”

  “I don’t think I want to get close enough to a snake to judge the shape of its head.”

  “Ha! I see your point. Watch where you step and you’ll be fine. Let’s talk about somethin’ more pleasant. Tell me about your family.” Dolly grabbed a handful of silverware and dropped it into the soapy water. “Are they all from Illinois?”

  “Just about,” Anna said. “Jesse’s folks and mine have lived in the same town forever—farmers on both sides.”

  “What do y’all raise?”

  “Corn mostly—and winter wheat.”

  “You got any brothers and sisters?” Dolly asked.

  Anna nodded and smiled. “All brothers—four of them. Mother says that if I hadn’t finally come along, she would have spent her whole life washing overalls and mopping up after muddy farm boots.”

  Dolly nodded. “That sounds about right. Men are men and there’s not a thing in the world we can do about it.” She eased all the glasses and coffee cups into the soapy water.

  “Dolly,” Anna said, “I couldn’t help noticing that right before the Clanahans left, the chandelier sort of . . .”

  Dolly laughed. “I guess it’s a little spooky the first time you witness it, but Little Mama—she was my grandmother—always said her house could talk. Si and all the other men in the family say it’s just old walls and floors settlin’. But I believe a little part o’ what we give to a place stays with it forever. Little Mama and my mother both loved this house as much as I do. I like to think that when they passed, they left some o’ that love and maybe a little o’ their wisdom behind. It’s the two o’ them I hear when this house goes to talkin’. Feels like they’re reachin’ down from heaven and wrappin’ their arms around me.”

  “Would you tell me about the house—when it was built and when your family moved here—if you don’t mind my asking, I mean?”

  “Oh, heavens no, I don’t mind!” Dolly rinsed two coffee cups and handed them to Anna. “My Granddaddy Talmadge was a sawyer from Talladega County, Alabama,” she began. “He met Little Mama at a church supper right after the war—he fought at Chickamauga—and told her on the spot that he meant to marry her. Now, Little Mama’s daddy was a judge, very prominent, and he told Granddaddy Talmadge that until he could build her a suitable house, he could forget any notions of matrimony.”

  Dolly picked up a china tureen and slipped it into the sink, swirling her dishrag inside to clean away any trace of the breakfast grits.

  “Well, that was all it took,” she went on. “Granddaddy Talmadge made up his mind that his sawmill would become the biggest in Alabama, and it did, even with all he had to contend with during the Reconstruction. He used the money he made from his lumber business to buy a thousand acres o’ farmland here—and this ol’ house, which was built sometime in the 1840s. Oh, it was in terrible shape—sat abandoned for years before he bought it from the county—but he knew he could bring it back. All the lumber he used to restore it and to build that big mule barn you can see out the window there—it was heart pine, every bit of it. He had some of his men at the mill saw all that lumber and haul it down here on huge drays pulled by mules. Once the judge saw the restored house with its double porches and pretty bannisters, he consented to the marriage.”

  “That’s so romantic!” Anna said.

  Dolly smiled. “I reckon it is. The original horse barn was still here when he bought the house—that’s what Si turned into our skatin’ rink. If you was to rummage around in the attic over there, which used to be a hayloft, you’d prob’ly find a bridle or a saddle, along with his spare skates and Co-Colas. A lotta the furniture in the house was also here when Granddaddy Talmadge bought the place. Little Mama thought it was so fine that she wouldn’t let him get rid of any of it.”

  “So the original owner built the skating rink—the horse barn, I mean?” Anna asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you know anything about him?”

  “Now that’s quite a story. But I haven’t got the foggiest notion how much of it’s true, so I oughtn’ to be a-tellin’ it.”

  “Please tell me—I love old stories.”

  One by one, all the serving pieces went into the dishwater as Dolly told Anna about the mysterious stranger who had built the Talmadge home place.

  “Well . . . this much I do know is true. The house was built by a man who called himself Andrew Sinclair.”

  “Called himself?”

  “I’ll get to that in a minute. Nobody around here knew anything about him, and they’d never heard of anybody with that name. He just showed up outta nowhere, rumored to be buildin’ a fine house and horse barn and puttin’ a lotta money into the offerin’ plate at the Presbyterian church every Sunday. Won him plenty o’ friends in the congregation—particularly the ladies, who thought him a mighty handsome fella. His colorin’ was very dark and there was something European to his accent, they said—just a little tinge of it. I don’t have to tell you—or maybe I do—Alabama women lose their minds over anything European. Near ’bout every girl in that church set h
er cap for him, but it was the only one who didn’t chase after him that caught his attention. Ain’t that just like a man? By and by, Andrew Sinclair asked the minister, Reverend O’Dwyer, if he might call on his youngest daughter.”

  “He wanted to court the preacher’s daughter?”

  “Well, I can’t say I blame him. Catherine O’Dwyer was a beauty. There’s a portrait o’ the family hangin’ in the vestibule o’ the Presbyterian church—you can see for yourself. And that ol’ cuss of a preacher—prob’ly a sin to say that—people said he was as ambitious as a Philadelphia lawyer. Couldn’t hitch his daughter to a rich man fast enough. Wasn’t long after the weddin’ that the Presbyterians started buildin’ the grandest parsonage this little town had ever seen. It’s still there—right behind the church and almost as big. Now, that much is true.”

  “What about the other part—the part that might be true?”

  “Well, it’s like this. Andrew Sinclair didn’t know or care a thing about farmin’, so he couldn’a been the son of a South Carolina planter, as he supposedly claimed. But what really got folks talkin’ was the way he came to the rescue durin’ a ferry crossin’ right before he married Catherine. The whole Presbyterian congregation had boarded the Coosa River ferry for a camp meetin’ in Talladega County. The water was high that spring and runnin’ mighty swift. When that boat got away from the ferry captain, Sinclair took over and started shoutin’ all kinda river boatin’ commands to the crew. He saved the entire Presbyterian church from drownin’. But as grateful as they were, they all had to wonder—how’d he know how to handle a boat that size in a river so swift?”

  “Did they ever find out?”

  “That’s where the speculation comes in. Some people said Sinclair married Catherine just to get a foothold in the community. Others said he was in love with her from the start. We’ll never know because the two of ’em disappeared on their wedding day—and likely drowned in the Coosa River.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  “They left the house like they had stepped out for a walk or somethin’—supper table looked like it had just been set—and they were never seen or heard from again.”