Rachel

By Abbye Ayers Faurot

Rachels journey from Chipola Roads, the rural community in northwest Florida where she was born in the mid-ninteen-twenties, was so much further than the few miles it took to arrive in the small town where the highschool was located Her nave approach to life was a result of her plain-spoken, down to earth poor farm familys upbringing, where lifes rules came mostly from their understanding of the Good Book as handed down to them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 11, 2005
• ISBN: 9781467034333

Abbye Ayers Faurot

Abbye Ayers Faurot was born in the Florida Panhandle in 1924.  Her parents were schoolteachers in rural schools most of her childhood and she grew up believing that learning was one of life’s greatest offerings.  She retired from the State of Florida in 1989 and has spent most of the past 16 years gardening, painting, and recently writing as her eyes will not permit the first two activities any more.  Not being able to read, drive, or sew, she turned to writing as an outlet for her imagination.  This is the second of two novels to be published, after completion of a family cookbook and a family history of the Faurot family.

Book preview

Rachel

by

Abbye Ayers Faurot

Title_Page_Logo.ai

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations

are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual

persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

© 2005 Abbye Ayers Faurot. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 10/05/05

ISBN: 1-4208-7744-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-3433-3 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

About the Author

About the Cover

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my husband of 62 years, Billy K. Faurot, one of the greatest generation who never felt he did anything more than his duty. He lived in this period of our country’s history and contributed to it. Our family is grateful to him and his comrades who gave all they had to make us safe during our lifetime.

Thanks, also, to our children and grandchildren who have honored us with their love and support.

Chapter 1

Summertime had always been Rachel’s favorite time of year, but the summer of 1941 was the summer of her dreams. John Paul Sullivan had graduated from high school.

Graduation had been a bittersweet time, because not only John Sullivan, but so many others Rachel and Lorie had become friends with, had plans that would take them away at the end of this summer. John planned to enter the University of Florida, preparing for a career in medicine.

Some of the others were planning college careers which meant leaving home for three or four years, as there was no college for men in North Florida. Others were going to join the work force, start families, or just hang around and wait on the world situation.

Just like all other teenagers the world over, none of them had any idea what the other parts of the world not directly affecting them were like, and few cared. It was all about the here and now and how soon they could be independent of either their parents or other authority figures. They wanted to be in control for the first time in their lives – be able to say when and how they would do whatever.

John Paul Sullivan and Rachel Wilkes had become fast friends the first year Rachel attended school in town, when a bully knocked John Paul down the stairs and he hit Rachel, sending her books and his skittering across the floor of the downstairs hall.

Rachel had cried when she saw the blood on John Paul’s face and he had been smitten. She, of course, had a crush on him before they both scrambled to their feet, each concerned that the other might be hurt.

Their friendship continued for the balance of John Paul’s senior year, and all the girls who had been attracted to him backed off when they got no reaction to their overtures. The boys were nice to Rachel but were not about to poach on their favorite football star’s preserves. Rachel was oblivious to any of it, but was just happy that she had a friend to confide in and who seemed to like her as much as she liked him.

Rachel’s friend Lorie Gainey could not believe how Rachel had snatched the most popular boy on campus without lifting a finger, but Lorie was not jealous of Rachel as she had her eyes on anyone who could dance, play football, skate or swim.

So the days of school had been happy for both of the girls from Chipola Roads and their grades had not suffered at all from their romantic interests. Mr. Gainey, Lorie’s father and principal of the high school, made sure of that.

There were many other things during the spring of 1941 to keep Mr. Gainey focused on his students, and he was uneasy in his mind about all the young men in his charge, to say nothing of the twin sons who were just entering high school.

Germany was making a grab at the whole of Europe, and America had sat on the fence during the terrible takeovers of Poland and other helpless nations.

England was desperate for help in trying to stem the tide that appeared about to inundate their tiny island nation, but so far America had given material help but no troops, which was the only thing that could slow the determined march of Germany and its copy-cat satellites.

All of this was beyond Rachel’s comprehension anyway, and as her Grandpa Hurshey kept saying, We fit a war that was supposed to stop this kind of slaughter back in the teens. And now a new crop of criminals has sprung up and seem even worse than the Kaiser’s crew was. I do hope the men in our family will stay out of this ‘un. We ain’t got no business traipsin’ back over there. Them folks is gonna fight or bust, and we ain’t got no business buttin’ into hit.

Grandpa’s look was meant for Uncle Bud, who was the only one in the immediate family Grandpa was worried about. Ransome, Rachel’s pa, was too old, and Grandpa’s other son was almost so. Plus, they had families to support. Surely, Uncle Sam didn’t need to call out papas and bread-winners?

Granny Em tried to stem the tide of bitterness before it made her husband, who had served during the Great War, caused himself to have a spell. Their fathers and grandfathers had fought whenever called upon, and they had hoped at least this generation would be spared a conflict. But, from all accounts America would have to jump in and save the world yet again, as the rolling-store man had warned them this past week.

But summertime was a time for sitting about in the late afternoon, either thanking God for blessings or grumbling about what the gov’ment was doing to finish off the pore farmer, one way or ‘tother. Seemed like them folks up in Washington could come up with some of the strangest rules and regulations, most of which made no common sense a’tall, they’d say over and over.

Grandma Hurshey had her own ideas about world affairs. She always muttered about if them polly-tishuns ‘ud let some wimmin set up there and make the rules fer a change, some sense could be seen in gov’ment. You jest caint let old men decide about war. They ain’t gonna do none of the fightin’ and they think war is a sport. Ain’t any mamas that would put up with that foolishness a’tall.

Miss Emily Hurshey was suffering from near blindness but she didn’t need her eyes to know that this world situation sounded much like it had back in the teens when most of the men in her family had dropped everything and gone off to war to save the world. And what good had that done? Just changed the borders and names of a lot of the countries in the Old Country, and here they were right back at it again.

Mrs. Hurshey’s greatest concern was that Bud would go, as she knew he would and could not blame him for it. But that did not mean she could feel right about giving him up, nor that she would sleep one peaceful night while he was gone.

She just prayed each day and night that she and Pa would be able to let him go without making him feel guilty about leaving them, and that he would come back to them as whole as he was today.

Miss Emily had only voted in a few elections, and probably wouldn’t have voted at all if she had not felt that she had an obligation to vote, since those ladies she’d heard about had fought so hard for women to have the right to vote. Someone had to make them feel their efforts were appreciated, she felt.

Rachel knew that her grandmother always voted the way Grandpa decided, which usually was strictly Democratic. But she would still tell everyone how she felt about this issue or that one. Rachel secretly thought if her grandmother had been a later generation, she’d probably have run for office herself!

Politics was something Ransome and Olivia stayed out of, but they listened politely to her parents’ views. The children, however, didn’t care one way or another and tried to be elsewhere when the subject came up.

Their only political friend was the High Sheriff of the county, who had helped to put Jake and Cooter in jail. The same no-accounts who had caused Ransome to be blamed for stealing supplies at their WWI army camp in Alabama years before and had appeared in Florida to give him even more grief in recent years.

After plaguing Ransome for months, stealing his hogs and causing him to have to confess to being Lem Stephens in an earlier life, they finally got too bold with their shenanigans and were now resting uneasily in the Raiford State Prison at Starke,Florida. Ransome gave his friend Sheriff Long credit for solving the murder that put an end to Jake and Cooter’s crime spree. Ransome would have voted for his friend the sheriff for President!

Rachel had been almost fifteen years old when Jake and Cooter, the two low-lifes from Alabama who had wronged her Pa years ago when he was another person named Lem Stephens, causing him to be dishonorably discharged from the army in World War I.

She herself had become involved with the crooks when she tripped over one of them on the trail between her grandparents’ house and her parents’ after picking peas at the Hurshey farm.

For months after that incident the two had kept Ransome, Olivia and Rachel in fear of what they would do next. Rachel’s younger brothers, Billie and Frankie, were too young to really get involved very much and their parents and sister tried to protect them from the two criminals.

It was a great day in the Wilkes family when Sheriff Long had Jake and Cooter in the jail and tricked them into confessing their crimes against Ransome and the more recent crime spree in the county after Rachel’s discovery of the body on the trail.

Jake had convinced Ransome that he had killed Cooter and blackmailed him for weeks before it was discovered that the two had cooked up the story and not only was Cooter alive and kicking, but was helping Jake to steal from Ransome as well as most of his neighbors.

Their real downfall was after the discovery of a real dead man in the community, and the sheriff had figured out their involvement in that crime.

He had convinced Cooter to tell the truth about their old lies about Ransome, and to clear Ransome’s name as Lem Stephens.

In addition, Cooter had confessed that he and Jake had killed the farmer down the road for the money they thought he had buried on his property. The judge had sentenced them both to the State Prison at Raiford, and that was where they were as school ended in the spring of 1941.

As much as Rachel despised their acts against her father and others in their neighborhood, she felt that without their appearance, she’d never have known she had an aunt Ella Mae, Ransome’s sister, who lived in the tiny town in Alabama where Lem Stephens/Ransome Wilkes grew up.

So she included prayers for their souls when she thanked God for delivering her family from the clutches of Jake and Cooter. She remembered her grandmother Emily Hurshey saying that there was SOME good in everyone. She had not been able to find it in those two, but she trusted God and her grandmother to find it.

Rachel and John and Lorie and sometimes Rusty Roster or Will’em Patrick would borrow a car and go to the beach for an afternoon, or just take a picnic lunch to Look ‘n Tremble, which was just as pretty as Niagara Falls, as far as they were concerned. Anything to think this summer could go on forever, knowing it was spinning away from them faster and faster.

Rachel wanted to make the most of the time she’d have left with John before he left for school, and she was not content with notes and letters.

She approached Lorie with the idea of working either at the school or maybe the drugstore in town so that there would at least be an opportunity to talk a few times a week.

Lorie thought this was a great idea, but since neither of them knew a thing about mixing sodas or any of the other things required in the drugstore, maybe the school would be their best bet. She promised to talk to Mr. Gainey about it that very night, and was really gratified when he jumped at the idea of some volunteer help.

Volunteering was not exactly what Lorie or Rachel had in mind, but at least that would give Rachel time to help some with Olivia’s sideline of snacks for the shipyard workers, and have some time in town as well. She surely didn’t want John to think that she was chasing after him, did she?

When Rachel eventually mentioned the possibility of her being in town at least a day or two a week, John Paul was extremely pleased. He had promised his father to help him in the law office as much as he could before school started, and had been wondering if he could push his luck and maybe borrow the family car a little more often? But if Rachel were coming to town, maybe they could have lunches together! Rachel was pleased that he didn’t seem to think she was being demanding or expecting too much of his time.

This situation was working out very well, especially for Mr. Gainey, who had decided to start working on some accelerated programs at school. He’d seen the handwriting on the wall. So many of his students were going to be eager to get into the fracas in Europe.

Mr. Gainey had no doubt that America would give in to world pressures and be involved totally in the war effort within months, and he wanted all of his students to have as much preparation as possible before that time.

He knew there would be a draft. He just didn’t know how young or how old they’d decide on for the chosen ones. So, he planned on classes in math, science and world events that would perhaps help them to get as much meaningful instruction as possible. And he didn’t see a thing wrong with encouraging some boys to take classes in Home Economics, or at least that part of it dealing with cooking and nutrition!!

He realized he’d probably hit a snag or two on this project, but he intended to do it regardless, unless the School Board itself forbade it. Lorie and Rachel could be doing a good bit of the ground work for his experiment, he thought.

Both girls were practical and dedicated to whatever tasks set before them, and it would not be long before he had a program to present to the School Board. He would have time before another term of school to assign teachers best prepared to manage the new classes. His hope was that both of his twin sons and the two Wilkes boys, Rachel’s brothers, would be as eager to try something new as he’d already found Lorie and Rachel to be.

Mr. Gainey had taught school and been a principal too long for him to think that just presenting his plans to the School Board meant acceptance. After all, some of the board members had not finished high school themselves and generally thought school was a time-killing occupation for the boys until they were able to go into the log woods or handle a mule, and for girls to go to school was a complete waste of time and money.

There were no educational requirements for election to the School Board, and some of the candidates always were elected because they needed the money, little as it was.

Mr. Gainey pleaded with the School Board to rule that all children should have to attend school until they were eighteen or had graduated. But the most he ever got was that all children had to attend school until their sixteenth birthday, which meant many of them dropped out without graduating.

That was especially the case with girls, and many of them wound up married and with children before their classmates graduated. But that rule wasn’t enforced, and many boys left to work in the fields before they were sixteen, and many girls from families without boys did the same. Nobody had money to pay hired help on the farms, and it was difficult enough just to feed a family, much less afford to send them to school when there were no jobs for them even if they were educated.

Rachel was grown, so far as height was concerned. Actually, when she was twelve she felt like a giant because she could rest her chin on her grandmother’s head. But her grandmother was very short for a woman, and her husband was very tall.

Some people might behind their hands refer to them as Mutt and Jeff, but nobody so far had had the nerve to say it out loud! Rachel was mature in ways that many young women were not. But she remained almost as naïve as she had been when she first went to public school after being home-schooled through the eighth grade.

She had no idea how pretty she was, and made no concessions toward becoming beautiful other than keeping herself clean, neat and polite to everyone. She was an example for the tom-boyish Lorie, her red-haired, freckle-faced friend across the woods.

Lorie was much more out-going than Rachel, but not nearly so self-assured. She was easily miffed, easily hurt, and quick to tell anyone off who offended her. But she and Rachel never got cross-wise each other and each of them thought the other one next to perfect.

Rachel still wore her hair in a braid most times, but Lorie’s was a mass of curls and never looked combed more than two minutes. Each wished for the other’s hair.

Chapter 2

Rachel and Lorie got right into the plans for the new studies. They decided to work with Mr. Gainey, Lorie’s father, three days a week and spend the other two week days at home.

Rachel would bake pies and teacakes for her mother’s little sideline business, and Lorie would relieve her mother of some of the household chores.

Mrs. Gainey was always reluctant to have help but your own daughter wasn’t considered help, was she? To tell the truth, she thought, she didn’t even expect a lot of help out of Lorie, and was pleasantly surprised when Lorie turned out to be a very efficient housemaid!! Lorie’s justification was that she had to do it someday for herself, so she might as well learn from one who knew how.

Lorie had realized lately how much her mother really did for the family and she was trying to make up a little bit for her part in the overload. Even Rachel commented on how well she was doing with the housework, and that was really a commendation!

Rachel enjoyed making teacakes, pear pies from pears her mother had canned last fall, and even some 1-2-3-4 cakes with chocolate frosting she’d learned to make from cocoa powder. So what if it turned runny sometimes? That just made the cakes better!

She promised herself one day she’d make one of the multi-layered cakes her grandma made, wafer thin layers with the syrupy frosting poured over them while they were still warm. A slice of that cake should sell for a whole dollar, she told Olivia. But Olivia told her to hold off on the 13-layer kind for awhile. Those shipyard workers would just as soon have a slice of that plain cake with a big R-C! No point in making work for yourself when everything Olivia took to the yard was either spoken for ahead of time or gobbled up as soon as she unpacked it during breaks or lunch hours. She declared, she could almost make as much just selling her snacks as she made working on the liberty ships.

In springtime Rachel boiled green peanuts for the shipyard workers’ snacks, and in the fall and winter she roasted peanuts and pecans and made small brown paper bags full for her mother to take to the shipyard.

Rachel had a gift for wrapping or packaging that made everything look even more inviting, Olivia told her. The school received a lot of small boxes in the process of ordering supplies, and Rachel and Lorie gathered all of those up and took them home.

They explained to Mr. Gainey that they were saving the hard-working janitor from having to dispose of them!! Rachel would use these boxes to pack her mother’s snacks in, and kept a steady supply ready. What a wonder that electric range and Olivia’s Frigidaire had turned out to be, Rachel thought. Beat the old wood range by a long shot, didn’t it? But that wood range still kept them comfortable during the cold winter months, so it would stay in its place in Olivia’s kitchen, no matter how many modern appliances came about.

Rachel and her mother both were looking forward to an easier way to do the family wash, and they were already talking about getting an electric iron with their profits from the snacks.

Summer, with its warm, breezy days, was a little earlier than usual. The wild honeysuckle, or native azaleas, were winding down and leaving a teasing amount of left-over wonderful smell, just when you were afraid it was all gone. And the yellow jasmine! They had been a sight to behold along the unpaved road between home and town.

Buttercups were in all the ditches and low marshy places. Rachel and John used to pick a buttercup, hold it under the other’s chin to see if the yellow reflection signified love. Of course it always did.

Wild violets made a purple carpet in the woods and it was a chore to dodge to keep from stepping on them on the trail past the little cemetery. Both Rachel and Lorie cultivated them around the tiny graves and hoped they would come back next year.

The more fragile woods violets with their longer leaves and white blooms were harder to find, but they managed to locate them, also. Dogwood trees still held onto a few blossoms, but the beautiful green foliage was just as lovely, on the layered branches.

The girls would have liked to plant dogwood trees in the little cemetery, but they didn’t like being out in the bald sun but preferred to stay under-story to the pines.

The huge Southern Magnolia trees were laden with their heavily-scented white blossoms this time of year, and the woods around Chipola Roads had more than their share of the glossy-leafed trees that sometimes seemed to reach 100 feet into the air.

Rachel never tired of walking in those woods and enjoying the sights and smells of the forest. She had loved to take John for walks, too, and showed him the vines swinging out over the Chipola River where she, Lorie and their younger brothers had played as children. Their version of Tarzan was pretty real, as those woods had all the vines they needed to swing from tree to tree, and of course the river was full of ‘gators as well!

John was amazed that the Rachel and Lorie he thought he knew had been so brave and reckless!! He had to admit he’d have been scared to swing out over the river.

Of course they were all grown up now and didn’t do that anymore, Rachel assured John.

Rachel’s brothers, Bill and Frank, had settled into the gardening like veterans after Ransome told them they could sell whatever was left over when the family finished with it. There’s no way one family can eat all of three or four rows of turnips, the boys decided

They planted enough to sell fresh greens to Baggett’s store, and they even managed to develop a small list of housewives who were wanting fresh out of the garden vegetables, too. Most of the canned goods were not as good as fresh, and most of the cooks the Wilkes boys knew were happy to get their generous bunches of turnips, carrots, and brand new out of the ground red potatoes to cook with fresh green beans, which the boys also peddled privately.

They realized very quickly that they could get a lot more for their produce than Baggett’s paid, if they took them directly to the back door and showed the ladies how fresh they were. So, Olivia wasn’t the only one with a side-line business.

On occasion, the boys had even been invited by a young girl of a household or two to stay and help to shell the peas or beans they’d brought, but so far they’d managed not to do any of that! But they were making a reputation for themselves as hard-working, dependable young teenagers.

Both Bill and Frank were interested in Mr. Gainey’s accelerated program, and were even excited about school starting in the fall. In previous years they had wanted to stretch the summer just as long as possible.

Their attitude now was, if you have to go anyway, you might as well make the most of it and fill your head with stuff besides fishing and hunting and swinging from vines like Tarzan. Rachel had never thought she would hear such a comment from one of them, much less hear the other one agree!

The days passed much too swiftly. John and Rachel saw each other several times a week, and if they couldn’t have lunch together on the days she was in town, he would bring a note to her while running his father’s errands, and usually pick up one from her.

At least it was an opportunity to touch hands for a few seconds, and then the delicious feeling of having a note to read the first free moment. If Rachel thought Mr. Gainey was a hard task master, John thought, she should work for his father a few days!! He was surely glad he’d chosen medicine over the law, because he didn’t think his father ever had a time when there wasn’t something pressing!

At least a doctor had to go to school for about eight years, and John enjoyed learning. It was the years after that that were giving him some thought these days. How long did it take to establish a practice? Should he specialize? NO! He decided right that minute that he would be a general practitioner, and would set up his practice right here at home.

All those years of school would be plenty to spend away from Rachel and his parents, and even his daffy old Aunt Jincy, he decided. That would be something for the next hasty note for Rachel, as well.

Rachel went by the Sullivan home one day after Mr. Gainey had sent her with Lorie to the Post Office, because John had left a note on the desk they shared that he needed to give her something, but didn’t want to leave it at the school.

She had no earthly idea what he wanted to give her, or why he hadn’t just waited until their usual date on Saturday. And if he were giving her a gift so important she had to come for it, what in the world could she give to him?

When she rang the bell at the Sullivan home, Aunt Jincy opened the door before the bell finished ringing, startling Rachel. She thought it a bit odd that Aunt Jincy had come to the door, as she considered that a job for the girl who was usually there on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday schedule.

This was Wednesday, and Rachel had expected Ossie to come to the door. But she entered at Aunt Jincy’s invitation, and was told that Elna was in the sun room.

Elna jumped up when Rachel entered, followed by Aunt Jincy who explained that a young lady wanted to see Elna. For once, Rachel noticed, Elna didn’t even bother with explaining for the umpteenth time, that Rachel wasn’t a young lady, but a friend of the family, which usually caused even more explanations to have to be made. Of course she was a lady, too, Elna usually said to Jincy, but she was a friend of the family and need not be introduced every time they saw her!

A beautifully wrapped package was on the wrought iron table with glass top that Rachel always admired, and was usually covered with Elna’s recipes or current magazines or books.

Rachel always felt comfortable at the Sullivan home, because Elna Sullivan was a very gentle lady who was particularly happy to entertain a young woman who had evidently captured her only son’s heart.

John had made no secret of his feelings for Rachel from the day he’d come home from school with a puffy face and told his parents that the prettiest girl in school had saved his life and had patched him up after a bully had knocked him down the stairs and Rachel had taken the brunt of the assault by breaking his fall.

He’d told his parents he might eventually marry her to make up to her for protection of him. At that time neither Elna nor John, Sr. had taken him seriously, as their John Paul was a great tease. But the months had gone by with his only adding to his remarks about his pretty girl with her long braids and serious demeanor, frequently calling her his sweet Rachel.

He’d never mentioned any other girl in particular, so his parents had come to accept his intentions towards Rachel as being serious. After getting to know her better themselves, they agreed they couldn’t have chosen better for him if he’d asked them to.

I can’t begin to imagine what John Paul has come up with now, Rachel. He insisted this package was to be put right into your own hands. He had to leave with his father on some business down in Gainesville, so while they’re there they’ll take care of the final arrangements about school. You know he’s been invited to join his father’s fraternity? Well, he’s not really excited about that but at least that will solve his living arrangements and we’ll know he’s safe while he’s away from us. You know, I don’t know what I’d do if I had a daughter to go off to school! How is your mother coping with your idea of going off to FSCW when you graduate? Here, sit down, hon. I’m rattling on when I should stop long enough to ask if you’d like a Coca Cola or some tea or something?

Rachel thanked her, but declined. She explained to Mrs. Sullivan that Lorie had dropped her off to see what John wanted with her, and would be picking her up in a few minutes to go home.

Oh, well. I know you’re as busy as John Paul is, and y’all do have a time with trying to spend time together, don’t you? But he wanted you to have this today, and if you hadn’t been able to come pick it up, I guess I’d have been in his doghouse when he gets back tomorrow from Gainesville. That boy can be like a bulldog when he gets an idea, can’t he? But, Rachel, don’t you want to open your package? Elna sounded as curious as she was, Rachel thought.

But she just couldn’t open it now with his mother and his aunt watching. She needed to be at home, or at least at her little sanctuary the graveyard, because she had a feeling this was something very important to her and to John.

She was sorry, she explained, but Lorie would be here right away, and she had promised to be on the curb waiting for her.

Reluctantly, Mrs. Sullivan picked up the package and placed it in Rachel’s hands. All right, Rachel. I’m sorry we don’t get to see you much this summer. But when John goes to school will you come by sometimes and see us? It’s really going to be lonely without him.

Aunt Jincy asked, But where is John going, Elna? You mentioned school, when we both know he graduated from Law School years ago. Does he have to go back again?

Rachel decided it was really time she went out to the curb, and was very glad when Lorie drove up just as she reached the end of the sidewalk.

She really didn’t need to listen to John’s mother trying to explain to his aunt that he was another John entirely. She thought she’d just let her think whatever she wanted to–she generally did, anyway.

Lorie, seeing the large gift-wrapped box, said, Rachel, what in the world? Has that boy gone nuts? He’s spoil you with giving you something every time you turn around!

But Rachel wasn’t getting into this with Lorie. John actually had given her several small gifts, usually kept in his pocket until they were alone. Sometimes she told Lorie about them, but not always. It depended on how private she felt about them, and that was most of the time.

He’d given her a locket, which Lorie had seen and asked her about. He’d given her perfume a couple of times, and there was nothing wrong with Lorie’s nose, so that had to be explained. But Lorie didn’t know about the things like a pressed flower or a poem copied in John’s already doctor-looking handwriting, or a variety of pretty ribbons or pocket-sized boxes of candy, easily concealed from others’ eyes until they could be alone.

Rachel always felt guilty, eating all of the candy herself, after sharing with John, but she couldn’t see sharing her sampler candy with Lorie if there wasn’t enough for her brothers, too. Not to mention Lorie’s brothers, as well!!

Maybe some day John would give her a really big box of chocolates, and they’d all pig out on them!

They were halfway back to school to pick up Mr. Gainey before either of the girls spoke again.

What’s going on, Rachel? Why didn’t John leave the package at the office with Daddy? It must be something special if you had to go to his house to get it, and you haven’t even opened it!

You know, Lorie, he must have had this wrapped at the drug store? Because his mother doesn’t know what’s in it? I felt bad because I know how curious she was, but if he’d wanted her to know, he’d have told her, right? And maybe he would have felt stupid walking about the school with a box with ribbons on it, and would rather I went and picked it up? I don’t know. Whatever. I’m going to sit on our bench between the trees at the children’s place and open it up all by myself which is what I think he intended me to do. If it’s something I can tell you about, I will. Later. I’ve just got the strangest feeling about this. I want to see, but I don’t want to know, if that means anything to you. Trust me, it’s not an engagement ring, is it? Packed in this box, it would be big enough for an ostrich. And I can’t think what made me mention a ring, either. Must be catching, whatever ails Miss Jincy Sullivan Callahan. Poor old soul. Sometimes I could be so sorry for her, and other times she is the biggest pain in the you-know-what!

I didn’t see her today, Rachel. She always amazes me, with her pin-tucked blouses and those sweeping skirts with the ruffle on the bottom. She’s a real character, isn’t she? Tell me again what happened to her?

Well, I don’t know all the circumstances, but John did tell me that when her parents, his grandparents, objected to her marrying a young man who was preparing to go off to war nearly 30 years ago, she just decided to elope with the young man and tell them all about it after the war was over. But she was too optimistic. The weekend she spent with him at a hotel in Marianna was all the married life she ever had.

She had told her parents she was going to visit a cousin in Marianna, took the train and returned 3 days later, and told them family news and greetings from cousins and all in Marianna, and seemed to be satisfied that they had explained why she couldn’t marry a man she had not known more than a few months.

Granted, he was so far as they knew, a legitimate beau, but what man would want to marry and then leave a young bride at home to wait out a war?

"They felt she should get to know him again after he returned from doing his patriotic duty,