“Now get up!” Caroline ordered. She put her hands on her hips. “And stop actin’ so foolish!” She waited for her orders to be carried out. But Val didn’t get up. She lay there not moving. From where I sat, I couldn’t see if Val’s eyes were open or closed, but I could see the look on Caroline’s face. “Val?” Caroline said, and her voice was changed. “Val!” She knelt over her stricken friend. “ ’Ey, Val . . . Val, you all right? Val!”
I got up and headed toward them to see if I could help. Caroline turned as I approached, but she said nothing. She just looked at me. I looked down at the girl Val. Her eyes were closed. I checked under her jaw with my fingers and found her pulse was strong. I didn’t figure Val to be bad hurt, just knocked out. I pulled away and said to Caroline, “I think she’ll live.” Now, I don’t know if it was the look on Caroline’s face at that moment or what I had witnessed of this striking young woman that made me tease her, even though I wasn’t a teasing kind of fellow. “You don’t tell, I won’t tell.”
Caroline glanced at me, finding no humor in my words, then back at the motionless Val. She softly patted at the girl’s face. “Come on, Val, get up. Val, you know I ain’t meant to hurt ya, so you wake up now.” It was an order, and it seemed from her tone she expected to be obeyed, but Val still didn’t move.
“Maybe a wet, cold cloth might help,” I suggested. I took out my handkerchief, went to the creek and dipped it in. I squeezed out the water and brought the handkerchief back to Caroline.
“Thank ya,” she said without looking at me as she kept her eyes on her friend. She dabbed the handkerchief over the stricken girl’s face.
Soon Val began to groan. She sat up slowly with her hand holding her jaw and glared accusingly at Caroline. “What ya do t’ me?”
“Nothin’ you ain’t deserved,” declared Caroline unremorse-fully. “Here, come on, get up. I’ll help you back t’ the church.” Val stood shakily, without even noticing me, and Caroline put her arms around her waist to support her. Then she looked at me once more. “I’ll let my papa know you here. He’ll be ’spectin’ you for dinner.”
“No, I wasn’t going to—”
“He’ll be ’spectin’ you,” she repeated. “I’ll tell him.”
“Thank you,” I said, and smiled.
She didn’t smile back. She turned with Val and went back toward the church. I watched them go.
When I met up with Sam Perry, I told him what I had tried to tell his daughter, that I was heading back to Vicksburg and wouldn’t be staying for dinner. Sam Perry, however, wouldn’t hear of it. “You done come all the way out here and now you leavin’ without Sunday dinner?” he questioned. “No, suh! You comin’ on home with me!”
I protested, but Sam Perry insisted. Now, I know if I had had a true mind to leave, nothing would have persuaded me otherwise, but the truth was I was wanting to be with a family again. I had been without mine for so long. Sam Perry told me his family had gone on ahead of him to take care of chores, and that he had a bit of church business to settle before he headed home, and he asked me if I didn’t mind waiting. The wait was fine with me, seeing that I was a bit nervous about sitting down to dinner with folks again.
It took Sam Perry about an hour to finish up at the church, and it was then I learned he was on foot, so I walked too, holding the reins to the palomino. Sam Perry, as soon as he had seen Thunder, looked him over and gave his approval. “Heard ’bout him and them races you and him been winnin.’ He’s a fine horse, all right,” he said. “I know animals, and he’s mighty fine.” For some reason, his approval pleased me.
As we walked, I found myself very much enjoying Sam Perry’s company. He was a storytelling man, and a good one at that. The minutes passed quickly and almost before I was ready, we were at Sam Perry’s farm. The house was small and had the look of a sharecropper’s shack. There was a shed to one side of it and the two buildings were connected by a breezeway. I figured the smaller structure to be the kitchen. Several long-legged boys sat in the breezeway. “Ya know my boy Nathan,” said Sam Perry. “Them other two is Elliott and Jonah. Boys, this here’s Mister Paul Logan.”
I nodded at the boys and they did the same toward me.
“You boys now, y’all come on down and take this fine horse of Mister Logan’s t’ the pasture. Give him some water and feed.”