“I know you’re the rector, Josiah,” Cal said patiently. “I’m not trying to take your place, merely to offer assistance. I’d be happy to do anything, as a deacon or in whatever capacity you’d like. When I left, this place was crying out for an assistant rector.”
Maxwell’s arms folded over his ample belly. “I got nothing for you to do here,” he insisted. “I reckon I’d sooner work with the devil himself.”
“You wouldn’t consider consulting the vestry first, before giving me your final answer?” Cal asked, referring to the lay governing board of the church. “I’m willing to wait until they can meet.”
“I’ll just bet you are,” said Maxwell with an ugly laugh. “You waited three years after the war was over to come home, didn’t you? I guess that makes you a patient man. But the vestry isn’t going to vote any different, so you may as well forget it.”
Cal thought about explaining his loss of memory, then dismissed the idea. Chances were Maxwell had already heard that part, too, and didn’t believe it. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Cal made himself say in a calm tone. “Well, I’ll see you on Sunday, then, Josiah.”
“I wouldn’t bother, if I were you. Folks see you come in, they’re apt to leave. They don’t hold with worshippin’ alongside a’ traitors.”
Cal just stared at him for a moment before turning on his heel to go. Back in the narthex, he encountered a drawn, haggard woman dressed in mourning black, who looked faintly familiar.
“Good mornin’, ma’am. Aren’t you Miss Lucy Snow? Cal Devlin,” he explained, when the woman just stared, gaping, at his eye patch. “It’s nice to see you again,” he said politely, while thinking inwardly that Annie had spoken the truth when she’d said Lucy was a wrinkled-up prune.
The woman’s blank stare turned to narrow-eyed outrage. “Don’t you even speak to me, you blue-bellied devil!” she snarled, and swept on past him with a swish of black bombazine.
So he wasn’t even welcome in his own church, he thought. Perhaps it was just a matter of time, of being patient while people he’d ministered to learned to trust him all over again. Perhaps he’d have to work on the Devlin farm for a spell, training and selling horses with Sam. Cal liked horses well enough, he guessed, and Sam would welcome his help, though he didn’t actually need it. But even as Cal considered the appealing prospect he knew it wasn’t for him. He wanted something of his own to do.
He mounted Goliad outside the stone church and headed down to the post office. He’d promised Mercy he’d see if there was a letter from Abilene from her father, the Reverend Fairweather. And Annie wanted some yellow thread from the mercantile. Now there were two good places to determine if his reception at the church was going to be typical of the whole town.
The post office was just a small frame building, hardly big enough for the clerk and three chattering ladies who occupied it, two of whom were enormously fat and identical in all respects, including the number of chins they possessed. The Goodlet twins? Sam had told him back in Abilene how the twins were no longer the buxom charmers who’d once competed for his attention.
Conversation ceased as he entered the post office. “Good morning, ladies,” he said, bowing before stepping up to the counter, where the clerk favored him with a basilisk glare.
The third woman put a net-gloved hand up to her mouth as if Beelzebub had just spoken to her.
“Well, I never,” murmured one of the twins.
“The nerve of some people!” sputtered the other, setting her chins wagging.
Cal smiled grimly at the Wanted poster on the wall, suppressing the urge to ask Leticia what she’d “never” and Alicia whether she meant he’d had a lot of nerve not to be dead.
“What do you want, mister?” demanded the goggle-eyed clerk, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. It was as if he hadn’t been the prize pupil in Cal’s catechism class before the war.
‘’Nothing much,” he said pleasantly. “Just wanted to see if my sister-in-law, Mercy Devlin, had any mail waiting.”
The clerk looked through a stack of letters. “Yup. Here,” he said, shoving one of them across the counter at him, then staring pointedly toward the door.
Cal took the hint, feeling the women’s eyes on him all the way out the door and hearing the buzz of talk begin once he was safely out of the building. On to the mercantile, then. Since it was just three short blocks, he left Goliad tied to the post-office hitching post.
He passed the Bonny Blue Flag Saloon, remembering that it had been merely the Bryan Saloon before the war. He was thirsty, but kept on walking. Maybe he’d stop in after he was done with his errand. Stepping off the plank sidewalk and into the dusty street to allow two more ladies to pass, he tipped his hat, but they merely stuck their noses in the air and sailed on, their bustles sending their skirts billowing in their wakes.
Sitting on a weathered bench outside the Bryan Mercantile and Emporium was a trio of idlers.
“Well, if it ain’t the prodigal son, returned from the dead,” began one, whom Cal recognized as the livery owner, a man who had never darkened the door of the Episcopal church, nor, it was well known, of the Baptist church, either.
“Eww, I thought I smelled something” jeered another man, stopping his whittling to eye Cal.
“You did, Asa. A no-good skunk,” the third man chimed in.
“Good day, gentlemen,” Cal said evenly, and went on in. He heard the creak of the boardwalk as they rose to follow him. Apparently he wasn’t even going to be allowed to purchase Annie’s thread in peace.
As his sight adjusted to the dim interior of the mercantile, he noticed a pair of ladies studying a bolt of blue calico. He nodded to them, hearing one of them gasp as he turned toward the proprietor. The latter was standing behind the counter, favoring him with the glare Cal was now becoming all too familiar with.
“What do you want?” the man said.
“Just some yellow thread for my sister, Mr. Ames.”
“Yella? He wants yella thread, did you hear that, Asa? Ain’t that the appropriate color fer him t’buy?” chortled one of the idlers behind him.
“What kind of yellow, Devlin? We got two-three shades here,” the proprietor said, fishing around in a case and holding out several hanks of thread.
“Oh, I expect he’ll take coward yella!” the liveryman announced, before Cal could say anything.
Cal felt his temper fraying. He didn’t want to raise a ruckus, not in a store or in front of ladies, but he didn’t think this trio of no-goods was going to be content to let him go without one. He knew as a man of the cloth, even an unemployed one, he ought to just continue to ignore them, but he wasn’t sure how long he could. Turning his cheek had never been his strong suit.
“I’ll take that one,” he said, pointing at random to a hank of thread the color of the daffodils that came up in February here. He laid a five-cent piece on the counter, not even waiting to see if he had paid too much. He just wanted to get out of there before these idlers made him do something ugly in the confines of the store.
“Bill, I guess he’s too yella to say anythin’ to ya,” jeered Asa, just as Cal was turning around.
“No, I’m not,” he countered. “I’ve just been raised not to call you what you are in the presence of ladies,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the two women, who were already shrinking back against the far wall, watching them.
They let him get all the way out of the store and halfway down the street before they challenged him again, but Cal could feel them following him, like a pack of wild dogs waiting for the right moment to attack. He kept walking, his head held high, his back straight. He had never been a coward, and