The White Knight (21 page)

“I don't blame him. He's in love with you, and he doesn't want another fellow hanging around.”

“That's nonsense. I told you we're just friends.”

****

On Sunday night, Luke went to the Christmas pageant at Asa and Joelle's church and sat with her and Phyllis and June. The other three girls had parts in the production.

“What did you think?” Sunny asked as she ran up to Luke after the pageant.

“I think you were born an actress,” he said, much to her delight, putting his hand on her blond head.

He complimented Shirley and Gladys on their performances too when they joined the group.

As they returned from the pageant, Luke felt worn out. The trip to church had taken all his strength. He collapsed onto a kitchen stool and watched as Joelle began preparing for breakfast. She always did that the last thing at night to save time in the morning.

Luke cleared his throat. “Sunny showed me that room out in the barn yesterday. I'm moving out there.”

“Don't be ridiculous. It's freezing cold out there.”

“I'll use the little wood stove that's out there, and the old cot I found up in the attic.”

“You can't sleep in that barn.”

“I've had your bed long enough. You need your room back. I'll stay there tonight and tomorrow, but after Christmas Sunny will help me get settled out there. I'm not good for
much yet, but I do want to stay and work for a while to pay you back for what you've done.”

“You don't have to do that.” Despite her words, Joelle was secretly pleased. Phyllis had said from the time Luke came, “He'll just be another mouth to feed.” But Joelle had not believed this. She saw something in Luke Williams that puzzled her. There was strength in him but also weakness. Now she smiled at him and said, “We'll all help. We'll fix you up a nice room out there. Now, you'd better go to bed. You've had a long day.”

“I think I will. I'm pretty tired.”

Luke got up and started to leave, then turned and said, “I don't know if I've thanked you yet for saving my life, but if I haven't, I want to thank you now.”

“Why, anybody would have done it.”

“But you did it.” Luke turned and made his way to the bedroom. He quickly undressed and got under the covers. He thought for a while how much he admired Joelle Garrison. He saw a lot of her brother in the woman, and he went to sleep thinking,
I've got to help her out of this financial trouble somehow.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Surprises for Luke

Luke straightened up, leaning the ax against the stump. The sky was a hard blue stretching from horizon to horizon with only a few clouds drifting in from the west. It seemed to him that the sky was hard enough to scratch a match on. The girls had all left for school a half hour earlier, laughing and giggling as they walked to the bus stop. Joelle was working in the kitchen, and Luke had come outside to split some firewood.

Taking his eyes from the sky, he looked at his palms with a grimace. Washing dishes at a small café had certainly not prepared his hands for this. He looked at the small pile of wood he had split. Asa had sawed the trees down, and most of them were about a foot to a foot and a half in diameter, just the right size for firewood when they were split into quarters. Luke took a deep breath, picked up one of the two-foot lengths, and balanced it on the stump that served for a chopping block. After examining the log for any natural splits, he took a deep breath and swung hard, but he just nicked the edge of the log.

“Good one!” Luke exclaimed sarcastically. He righted the length of log again. “You might as well get ready. You're going to be split.” He laughed. “I'm talking to myself. I guess my next stop's the lunatic asylum.” He had always liked to split wood, and this was good white ash, the easiest of all woods to split. He grasped the ax again and swung it over his head. This time it struck right where he wanted it to, and the wood fell to each side as splinterless as a cloven rock. With a grunt
of satisfaction, Luke picked up one half, split it, and was just preparing to split the other when a voice behind him said, “Luke, you shouldn't be splitting all that wood. You're not strong enough yet.”

He turned and saw Joelle standing behind him. She was wearing a blue house dress with an old sweater buttoned up over it. He couldn't help noticing how the sweater outlined the contours of her figure.

“It won't hurt me to split wood,” he said. “I've always liked it, and this is easy wood to split. One time I went out and cut wood for my folks and I cut down sweet gum. I don't guess you've ever tried to split a sweet gum log, have you?”

“No, I never have.”

“Can't be done. Just won't split. I'm afraid I said some bad words that day.”

Joelle laughed. “Well, don't let me hear you say any of them now. Now, come on in. I've been keeping some pancakes hot for you.”

“That sounds good to me.” All the chatter from the girls in the morning was sometimes more than he could handle, so he sometimes waited until they were at school to have his breakfast. Leaning the ax up against the stump, he followed her into the house. As always, the kitchen was filled with wonderful odors of cooking. Luke sat down at the island and ran his hand over the wood. “I always wanted to be able to make things like this, but I was never much good at it.”

“It's beautiful, isn't it? Did I tell you my father made it? He was a wonderful carpenter and cabinetmaker before he got sick.”

“He did good work.”

“Where did you grow up, Luke? You never said.”

He hesitated. “Mostly around Little Rock, Arkansas. Or rather in a small town near there.”

“I've never been to Arkansas.”

“Pretty country there,” he said. “Especially up in the north in the Ozarks.”

“What does your father do?”

“He's a businessman.”

“I bet you went to college, didn't you?”

“I did, but I quit after a couple of years. How'd you know that?”

“You're better educated than most—” She broke off and looked embarrassed.

“Most hobos? I've had more chances than I deserve.”

“I didn't mean to say that.”

“Nothing wrong with it. That's pretty much what I've become—a tramp.”

Joelle shook her head, and her hair shimmered under the light of the sun that filtered in through the east window. “Don't say that. Here. You can get started on this pancake.” She put a dinner plate down in front of him with a pancake that covered the entire surface.

“That's as big as they come,” he said.

“There's another one just like it staying warm in the oven.”

Luke began to cut the pancake, and then he picked up the pint jar of syrup. “What kind of syrup is this?”

“It's maple syrup. I make it myself.”

“How do you make maple syrup?”

“You cook water, sugar, and maple flavoring together. There's not much to it. It's not as good as the real thing, though.”

Luke poured the syrup over the pancake and speared a morsel with his fork. Putting it in his mouth, he chewed it and at once shook his head. “This is the best pancake I've ever had.”

“That's quite a compliment. Here—I almost forgot to give you some sausage. We make it ourselves. It's a secret family recipe. I hope you like it.”

Luke tried the sausage and pronounced it excellent. Before he finished his first pancake, she took the other one out of the oven. “I don't know if I can handle two,” he said.

“If you're sure you don't want the whole thing, I'll eat half. That'll be plenty for me.”

As they ate, Luke asked Joelle about various aspects of the work at the Haven. She did not mention finances, but he knew she was troubled about them. It was a pleasure to sit there in the warm kitchen after being out in the cold weather. He glanced over at the calendar on the wall, which featured a big green John Deere tractor. “Can you believe it's 1941 already?”

“It is a little hard to believe. Christmas seemed to zip by, and now it's already January sixth. Do you make New Year's resolutions?”

“Not for myself,” Luke replied with a grin. “I don't need them. I'm perfect in every way. I'll make some for you if you'd like.”

Joelle laughed. “No thank you. I'll make my own. I always made them even when I was a little girl. Of course I don't always keep them, but I think it's good to set goals for yourself at the beginning of every year. Robert Browning said something about goals once.”

“The poet Browning?”

“Yes. He said, ‘Man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?' ” Joelle paused to think about what she had just said. She had a way of thinking things over that was both attractive and unusual. It was as if she tasted things with her mind as she would taste a bit of food. “I like that. A man's reach should exceed his grasp.” She laughed. “Well, I guess I know something about reaching beyond my grasp. I'm always tackling things that are too big for me.”

“You've done a wonderful job here with these girls.”

“It seems so little. Others do so much more than I do.”

“It's not a little thing. It's hard work, I know, but it means so much to these girls. I've been talking to Sunny and to Gladys. They pretty much think you hung the moon.”

“Oh, those two. They'd love anybody who showed them any attention.”

The two talked about the various personalities represented
in the group of girls as they finished their breakfast. Luke got up and carried the dishes to the sink.

“Just leave them. I'll do those, Luke,” Joelle said as he started to wash them.

“All right, then I'll go back out and split some more of that wood.”

“Wait a minute. You need some warmer clothes. Come with me.”

Puzzled, he followed her. She went into one of the upstairs bedrooms and began to pull some garments out of the closet. “These belonged to my brother, Roscoe.”

Luke stood absolutely still, for a sudden rush of memories came to him as he watched her handle his friend's clothing. He recognized the heavy mackinaw shirt in the bright red-and-white plaid that Streak had worn in Spain. Evidently he had brought it home and left it here on one of his visits.

“Let me see. These ought to do you, although you're smaller than my brother was.” Joelle held the shirt up to Luke's shoulder, and there was a sadness in her eyes.

“You were fond of your brother, weren't you?”

“We were very close. When we were growing up, we were inseparable,” she said, her eyes growing misty. “Most boys would run off and leave their sisters when they went places, but Roscoe always took me with him.” She quickly turned back to the closet and continued picking out some more clothes. She found a pair of heavy wool trousers, a hunting cap with padded flaps to come down over the ears, and a pair of heavy-duty boots. “Try these on,” she said. “See if the size is close enough.”

Luke took the clothes out to his room in the barn. He had a queer feeling as he put on the heavy clothes she had given him. He had felt closer to Streak than he ever had to any other man, and a sadness swept through him. Finally he went back to the house and found Joelle in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table looking at a photo album.

“Look,” she said in a voice tight with emotion. “Here's my brother when he was in Spain.”

Luke stepped forward, and his heart gave a little lurch. There was a snapshot of Roscoe Garrison—and beside him was Luke himself! The two of them were standing in front of a fighter plane and both were wearing helmets. He feared that she would recognize him, but she was evidently looking only at her brother.

“See the plane that he flew?” she asked. “Yes.” Luke could not speak for a time and then cleared his throat. “I know he must have been a good man.”

“Yes, he was. He had his faults, as we all do, but I loved him dearly. He's only been gone a few months, but I keep expecting him to come through the door or for a letter to arrive from him. It's just hard to believe he's gone.”

Luke could not think of a single remark to make. Regret was working in him like a razor.
It should be Streak standing here beside Joelle. Not me. If I had taken that flight, that's the way it would have been. I don't know why God didn't take me instead.

“I guess I'll go out and split some more wood,” he finally said.

“There's one thing you could do that would help me more than splitting wood,” she said, “although we'll need more wood split before too long.”

“What's that?”

“The old truck needs some work, and I'm a little worried about getting an estimate. I really can't afford any expensive repairs.”

“Well, I'm pretty good with things like that. I'll have a look at it. Can you show me where the tools are?”

Joelle put on her heavy coat, and the two walked outside. The truck was parked beside the house, but she took him out toward a second barn he hadn't been in yet. When she opened the door, Luke stopped in his tracks.

“Look at that!” he cried.

“That was Roscoe's pride and joy,” Joelle said. “It was wrecked. The man that owned it crashed it, and Roscoe put it back together.”

Sunlight was flooding the barn with the doors open and threw its gleams on the beautifully restored biplane. Luke slowly walked around it. “It looks brand-new.”

“When Roscoe was visiting at home, he spent as much time as he could out here working on it. This plane hasn't been flown in a long time now.”

“It's a beauty,” Luke breathed. He ran his hands along the side of the plane, which was painted a light silver.

“You like airplanes?”

“I guess I do.”

“He used to take me up in it. We had so much fun together.” She hesitated, then said, “The tools are over here.”