Page 13 of The Heart of Bennet Hollow

Lizbeth marched up the steps of the company store.

Kit and Lacey trailed her like leaves on the breeze, as vibrant as the ones she shook from her cotton hem in the doorway.

As the younger girls brushed their own hems clean, they chattered about the new miners coming into town, summoned by Mr. Drake himself.

“Don’t you suppose it’s time to talk about somethin’ else?” Lizbeth opened the door to the building that was spiced with molasses and shaving soap.

“They’re comin’ all the way from Pennsylvania! To think!” Lacey threaded her arm through Kit’s. “Those men’ll have seen an awful lot of the world.”

“Could you imagine?” Kit skirted around an orange pumpkin on the porch, all speckled in warts. “The stories they must have to tell.”

“I hope they come before Pa’s cousin, Reverend Coburn. If I’m gonna set my sights on a stranger, I’d rather he be a miner than a minister.” Lacey flounced the ends of her rag curls as she entered the store.

Lizbeth shook her head.

“Can we look at the ribbons, Lizzy?” Kit asked.

“Look, but Ma’s made us promise not to touch. I’ve only got the two nickels for Jayne’s medicine.” The coins were nestled against the small book of poems she’d brought along for the walk home.

Lacey and Kit flitted to a corner where spools of ribbons stood out among the more sensible notions of miners’ uniforms and bolts of plain denim.

The ribbons were priced well beyond their reach so like most of the young women in town, the Bennet girls made do by dyeing strips of cloth with black walnut and goldenrod.

Lizbeth’s boots echoed hollow across the wooden floor as she approached the counter where the shopkeeper stood in his striped apron, cleaning out a metal scale beside jars of red and white candy.

“Good day, Lizzy. How can I help you?”

“I’ve come for some cough syrup. For my sister.”

“We have two kinds.” At a glass cabinet, he pulled out a pair of small bottles. “One from the Montgomery Ward catalog—their own brand. The other is Cook’s Cough Cure.”

“Is there a difference in price?”

He held up the cheapest bottle. “This one is twenty cents. The other, thirty.”

Ma hadn’t given her enough. “I’ll take the lesser. Please put it on our account.”

Warily, the shop owner opened the ledger to the name of Bennet and angled it Lizbeth’s way. Overdue. She gulped. “Pa has had extra work this week. And I can give you this to help.” She slid the nickels over and looked at the shop owner.

Compassion filled the man’s eyes and after a soft nod, he noted the price of the medicine then deducted the ten cents. An expense they couldn’t afford but with Jayne sleeping restlessly back home, it needed to be done.

“All yours.” The shopkeeper wrapped the bottle in brown paper, tied it with a string, and handed it over. “Anythin’ else that I can help you with?”

She had to ignore the way the glass jars of candy caught her eye and the dress patterns in the open catalog begged for new yards of pretty calico.

Lizbeth smoothed the front of her skirt, as reliable and plain as the wool sweater she wore.

“That will be all, thank you.” She turned to gather her sisters.

“Come along or the pair of you’ll be late for school. ”

“Why do we still have to go to school?” Kit pouted as they pushed their way back outside into the autumn chill.

“Because you’re scarcely seventeen and you’ve got a few things yet to learn. Be glad for it. Soon enough, you’ll have laundry and babies to keep you busy all the day long.”

“You say it so horribly, Lizzy. Do you think so ill of marriage?” Lacey flounced down the steps, swinging her schoolbooks.

“Not at all. In fact, I hope to marry one day, when the right man comes along.”

Lacey waved the idea away. “I’ll marry as soon as I’m able.” Lacey skipped across the road with Kit then spun the pair of them around.

Lizbeth nearly called out to her when a voice stopped her in her tracks.

“Oh, a word with you, Miss Lizzy!”

She turned on the shop porch to see the postmaster waving from his open window near the depot. Lizbeth clutched her small package and aimed that way.

At the post office window, the man leaned an arm on the ledge. “A letter just came in for your pa. Mind bringin’ it to him?”

“Of course.” She accepted the ivory envelope, which, by the feel of it, held a single sheet of paper. “Thank you, sir.”

It wasn’t until she turned away that she let herself glimpse the return address.

Rev. Coburn, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.

Lizbeth angled the letter from Pa’s young cousin up to the light. She squinted but it was no use. Instead, she nestled the envelope safely in her skirt pocket and, with the medicine snug in the other, started for home.

The schoolhouse bell clanged. Girls ran that way.

Most of the boys were already at the mine, working in the breaker.

Lizbeth glanced that direction with a heavy heart.

In part because the boys went to work so young, and in part because neither she nor her sisters had such a chance to lighten their father’s load.

Lizbeth skirted around a puddle as she crossed the road away from town.

She aimed for the lane that led toward the bridge of the New River.

She stepped over the first set of train tracks as she often did.

Never had she given the depot and its winding thread of rails much notice except for the noise that steamed into town each afternoon as trains came and went, hauling supplies to the mine or coal to distant lands.

But today, her focus lifted to the shiny train car parked just beyond a row of cargo freight.

Mr. Drake’s living quarters stood shiny and proud beneath the morning sun, nearly whispering of the wonders the car had seen as it rested on the third track.

The side nearest her boasted glittering windows.

Even the observation dome glinted in the light as though it, too, were polished and buffed with care.

How she longed to reach out and touch it.

Or to know what sights lingered aboard. Lizbeth nibbled her bottom lip as she continued to pass by.

Bright yellow filigree trimmed the car like the delicate borders of a fancy postcard.

At its very top, THE PEMBERLEY shimmered in gold paint as ornate as a king’s crown.

At the car’s tail end the word Private was emblazoned beside the door. A declaration that this was no ordinary residence and that few belonged within.

Lizbeth turned away. “No need to linger,” she whispered to herself.

None whatsoever. For at her back stood a railway car that spoke of the kind of life she wouldn’t ever understand and in her pocket dwelled a letter from Pa’s young cousin whose visit, if Jayne’s suspicions were true and this man were on the lookout for a wife, could stamp their futures forever.