In a Heartbeat - Elizabeth Adler [47]
“Happy birthday, son.” His pa, Farrar, punched Ed’s shoulder lightly.
Outward displays of affection, hugs and kisses and such, were not part of mountain folks’ lives. They were a reserved people, and the punch on Ed’s shoulder from his father, and the shy birthday embrace from his mother and her smile as her rough hand sleeked back his thick dark hair, were enough to fill his heart.
As the youngest boy, he had always been the final recipient of hand-me-downs. Inevitably, by the time clothing descended from the eldest, Mitch, on through Jared and then Jesse, even hard-wearing denims were worn into pale ragged areas at the knees and seat, which his ma had to reinforce with patches. Not that that made Ed the scruffiest lad in school. There were others from even poorer hardscrabble families. At least his ma kept their clothing scrupulously clean, despite the fact that there was no running water in the house.
She would scrub away on a metal washboard perched over the galvanized tub out on the back porch. Her two daughters, Grace and Honor, helped her, one feeding the clothes into the heavy iron wringer while the other turned the handle. Then they would hang them on the line to dry in the wind, and later fold them carefully, ready for ironing.
Today, being a Monday, was meant to be a washday but Ellin had been stymied by the rain falling in torrents from a low, leaden sky. The wind had gotten up too, gusting through the tall pines, the mountain ash and poplars, rattling the branches and sending early cascades of leaves onto the rough ground. She was surprised, therefore, to hear the sound of a car coming up the hill. She wondered who would turn out on an evening like this, with the wind threatening to topple trees, it was that fierce, and the rain so hard the streams overspilled, turning the steep lane into thick mud that grabbed a vehicle’s tires and hung on to them, tight as kudzu.
His ma and pa and Ed turned as one, as the vehicle crowned the hill and jolted over the rutted yard. Ellin recognized the forest-green Jeep immediately. She threw an apprehensive glance at her husband. “What’ll Michael Hains be wanting now?”
“Guess,” Farrar replied laconically.
“But you already told him no.” There was a worried note in her voice, an uneasiness. Hains wanted to purchase their land. Her husband had told him no twice already, but Hains was not the kind of man who took no for an answer. He operated on the principle that what he wanted he got. It had worked all his life and he saw no reason why it should be different now.
Michael Hains owned the town of Hainsville, which he had renamed after himself. He owned the gas station, the hardware store, and the grain and feed, as well as Hains Haberdashery, where Ellin had purchased Ed’s birthday shirt and denims. Plus the grocery store, the pharmacy, the barbershop, Hains Auto Body Repairs, and the Dew Drop In Drive-in. He even owned the redbrick town hall, for which the town paid him an annual rental. But Hains’s influence extended much farther than his own personal town. He also owned all the land surrounding Hainsville, some two thousand acres of it, sharecropped by men who worked their lean bodies too hard in order to pay his annual dues. Only one person came out of Hainsville a winner, and that was Michael Hains.
Now he wanted their land. They had been mystified as to why until Farrar had heard the rumor, whispered in his ear by Mule Champlin, the blacksmith who also ran the hardware shop. Mule never got Farrar’s business in the blacksmith shop; most men around there shod their own horses—they couldn’t afford to pay Champlin’s prices. Anyhow, Mule had told him that Hains and a property development company were planning to build a new community, with a shopping mall and a golf course, as well as cheap, thrown-up-in-a-hurry housing. Mule also told Farrar why they needed his land. It was to be the center of the new golf course.
“Evenin’, Mr. Hains,” Farrar said now, hands thrust in his overall pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels.