O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [124]
“No kids yet?”
“I don’t think they can.”
Willow was being grim. Amanda tickled her hard.
“That’s a little something you got around your waist. Anything in the oven.”
“No, just a spread from sitting and reading contracts. I think little Matthew will be enough for us.”
“He’s gorgeous.”
“All little chocolate drops and pickaninnies are gorgeous . . . until they take their first walk alone.”
“You and Jefferson all right?”
“It’s hard not to love Jeff Templeton,” Willow said. “And Mama sent me off with the right words.”
“Which were?”
“Don’t marry up with a man with the idea you’re going to change him. This is not a generation for black men. Jeff is great at what he does and can hardly keep up with his orders. A lot of white people would like to go into partners with him and his brothers. Jeff just wants to stay small and safe. I’m being a real bore.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I just get weary of the everlasting moral malnutrition,” Willow said.
They were quiet. Often the quiet spells were as good as the talky ones.
“What happens after your month here with Zachary?” Willow asked at last. “You’re flirting with losing your head.”
“The only thing I’m going to lose, I want to lose so badly I can hardly stand it.”
“The two of you never made love?”
“Silly, isn’t it?”
“That’s crazy. When you leave Nebo, what then?”
“We don’t know.”
“Shit!”
“I just feel the same about Zach as you do about Jeff. I’m not going to change Zachary O’Hara. The Corps has been good to him and he’s dying to pay his dues. He’ll be going to a new post. He wants sea duty. It’s a Marine badge of honor. I can’t follow him on sea duty and he’ll probably be gone at least a year, fifteen months.”
“Jesus, baby,” Willow said. “You going to marry?”
“Can’t without permission and that’s Father’s last line of defense. Zach will be long gone by my twenty-first birthday. I’ll never go back to Inverness. I’ll wait for him, someplace, maybe start a small academy.”
This time Amanda received the tickles and tickled back, and they tickled and tickled until they were breathless and flopped.
“I felt so much love tonight,” Amanda whispered.
“Ned says it’s got to do with your hugs. You hug from head to foot.”
“You’re a silly billy, Willow.”
“While we were waiting for you to get here, Ned told me about the first time you came to Nebo. We were nine or ten. Ned was sitting on a stump sweating. The drought was wilting his stunted corn and sorrows had all started to pile up. Losing his kids to the world and the earth was cruel and he was all but broken. He said you came up to him and wiggled up on his lap, put your arms around his neck, and laid your head on his shoulder and told him, with nary a word, that you understood how sad he was. And you knew why he was so sad and it made you sad as well.”
“If Ned only knew how cold, how cunning, how manipulative I can be. I have inherited my father’s habits and a great deal of his bad intentions,” Amanda said, “but the moment Zach touched me at the casino I was unable to resist him any longer and the rest of it didn’t matter. All I want is to love him.”
Willow wanted to say that she wished she was able to love like that and she wanted to say she was glad Amanda had become a compassionate woman. She had once thought Amanda would never find someone she loved more than Amanda.
. . . but Amanda was so tired. She peeped out a tiny snore, curled into Willow’s arms, and slept.
• 39 •
THE CRÈCHE
Several Days Before Christmas—1891—Baltimore
It had been an excellent year for the Kerr Shipyard, yet Horace was not content. The first trials and shakedown cruise of the Vermont were highly successful. It was perhaps the finest warship ever built in America. It was a powerful announcement to the world of America’s new might: a ten-thousand-ton warship. As the year came to a close, every dry dock was laying new hulls and every inch of Dutchman’s Hook buzzed with activity.
The nation was tied together by rail and great riches were steaming in from the