Angels Unaware
by Priscilla A. Maine

To my husband, Russell,

whose faith in me never wavered.

To Gina S. Fields who walks in my soul. Thanks for finding all my mistakes and

pointing me in the right direction.

To Kelley L. Pounds for her encouragement and inspiration.

You ladies are truly amazing. Thank you both for being there when I needed you most.

A special thanks to my talented cousin, Skip Rowell,

who provided the elegant cover art for this book.

Your contribution of ‘Ole Woman’ is a gift I will always treasure.

Rebecca couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t done exactly what was expected of her…until now.

"James, you and Louise act as though I’m going into the wilderness to live in a tent. Have you forgotten I have a house there?" Rebecca glanced out the window. A rented, covered wagon, loaded with her possessions, stood at the end of the walkway, ready for her departure. Now all she had to do was say good-bye to her brother and sister…again. For even at this late date, her siblings were still trying to talk her out of leaving.

"It’s been years since you’ve seen that place. How do you know it’s still standing?" A frown creased her brother’s brow. "Besides, those people are different from folks you’ve always known. They’re clannish, superstitious, and suspicious." He stacked his objections like a barricade.

"What will you do for entertainment, Rebecca?" Louise chimed, twisting her linen handkerchief about her index finger. "You’re leaving at such an awkward time. The bridge tournament is next week. Whatever will we do?" The handkerchief became damp and limp as Louise’s agitation grew. Louise could always be counted on to get to the heart of things. One more set of whist or one more garden social, and Rebecca would scream. Love for her sister stifled her protest. Instead, she laughed softly. "Where’s your sense of adventure?"

Noticing the stricken looks on their faces, Rebecca realized they were like two slices of plain white bread, filling and nourishing, yet tasteless. And she’d been sandwiched between them since birth. Then, taking pity on the pair, she tried to reassure them.

"James, you have control of my business affairs. You’ve agreed to find renters for the house, to forward my mail and bank drafts. You’ve made excellent investments with the remainder of my funds. What else is there?"

"Family," her sister replied.

"Family, Louise? You have a family. James has a family. I lost my husband thirteen years ago. Now, with Mama and Papa gone, I have no..."

"You have us. You know we love you," James reminded her.

"Then wish me well."

Social blinders firmly intact, they skirted the real reason behind Rebecca’s decision to rearrange her life. To do so would give it credence, and that, neither was willing to do. Guilt was their weapon of choice and they dished it up in double portions.

"What will our friends think? Judge Rice’s daughter going God knows where, to care for the sick and diseased, handling corrupt flesh, and washing the bodies of strangers." Louise’s plump body shuddered visibly at the thought.

"I don’t care what they think!" Rebecca stepped to the window and pulled back the lacy curtain. Jimmy Johnstone, her young driver, waited beside the wagon. "It’s time I started living for myself," Rebecca said, turning.

"Sister, that’s selfish. You should think of someone other than yourself."

"I am thinking of others! It’s for others I’m going to the hill country. There, I won’t face the restrictions of social stigma." She unleashed her pent-up passions and flung their objections back at them. "No one will know, or care, who I am. They won’t have prejudices against a woman nursing and caring for their sick. I’ll finally be free to practice what I learned so many years ago. I’ve waited so long…too long…to use it." She looked first at James, then Louise, silently imploring them to understand her need.

Louise busied herself mopping tears with her crumpled hanky. James held Rebecca’s gaze, refusing to relent in his attempt to dissuade her. This emotional tug of war would get them nowhere. Besides, they meant well and she didn’t doubt they were genuinely concerned for her safety. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so blunt with them. After all, even the missionaries, who taught her the truth about faith healing and how to care for the sick, had refused to allow her to go into field service with them. Apparently, even they had restrictions on unattached females. So be it. She would go where she was needed, on her own.

"James." Rebecca softened her voice, but held her brother’s gaze while she spoke. "Contrary to what you think or say, I don’t believe the people of Big Grassy valley won’t accept me, once they know why I’m there." She smiled faintly, hoping to draw him away from his stubborn stance. "After all, this is 1895, not the Dark Ages."

In all fairness to her brother and sister, she was also thinking of herself. She simply must share with others what she had learned. "Please, both of you, try to understand." She looked at her sister. "I have to do this. I want more out of life than to be a sponge, soaking up the leftovers of life."

Louise dabbed at her eyes and hiccuped. James threw his hands up as if in surrender. Rebecca hugged them both, dropped her house key in James’ hand, and dashed out the front door before either had an opportunity to object further.

~*~

Adjusting her bonnet and straightening the crisp folds of her gingham skirt, she nodded to the freckle-faced young man on the wagon seat beside her. With a sharp flick of the reins and a jolt, they were on their way. Her destination: the hill country of southeastern Oklahoma, Indian Territory. She should arrive there in less than a week, although she had traveled in that direction for a dozen years.

Her rented wagon bounced and swayed along the deeply rutted road. She glanced over her left shoulder for one last wistful look at the house disappearing in the distance. She’d grown up in that house. It held many memories. Within its walls, she had been loved, protected, and sheltered. But she had also been a prisoner there, shackled to a way of life that left her empty and unfulfilled.

With forceful determination, she turned to face the long, empty road ahead and sighed deeply. But not with regret. It was frustration that gnawed at the core of her soul. And lately, it had become her constant companion. Why couldn’t her brother and sister accept her decision? James harped about her leaving the security of her home; Louise fretted over the lack of society. Neither mattered to her.

With a mental shake, Rebecca dragged her attention from the past. She longed for their blessings, but with or without them, she— Her thoughts were interrupted when the wagon bounced wildly on the dusty, rutted road with a tooth-jarring jolt. Regaining her balance on the wooden seat, Rebecca placed both feet on the footwell, bracing herself against the impact of the bumps. The glossy tips of her new black boots winked from beneath the hem of her skirt, and she smiled. They were as bright as her hopes for the future.

The morning sun crawled past the treetops, casting soft shadows beneath the white oaks lining the long, empty road. Sounds of spring filled the morning air. Mockingbirds imitated their neighbors with lively notes. Squirrels bounced from limb to limb, barking at the intruders passing beneath them. Oak trees sported lacy new leaves in varying shades of green. Dogwood and redbuds struggled for dominance, providing shelter for the carpet of pink buttercups and lavender lady’s-slippers hovering beneath them.

Placing both hands on the seat, Rebecca threw her shoulders back and lifted her face toward the warmth of the sun. Today, she was setting out to fulfill her dream, forging a tomorrow and a future she could be proud of. And she would see it through, no matter what.

"They don’t understand that the farm will see my dream set in motion."

"Ma’am?" Jimmy asked.

Rebecca looked at her companion and saw confusion sprinkled among his freckles.

"Dreams, Jimmy. Don’t you have dreams?"

His confusion turned to bewilderment.

"What kinda dreams you mean?"

Rebecca suspected her smile was as warm and radiant as the April sunshine. She reached over and ruffled Jimmy’s sandy curls.

"Dreams of life, of living."

Jimmy’s confusion never wavered.

"Never mind, Jimmy. Just keep those horses headed southeast."

The way he sat, leaned forward, both tanned arms on top of his thighs, the reins held tightly between his strong fingers, told Rebecca his sense of responsibility sat heavily on his young shoulders. He shifted his position as if to ease the strain on them.

"Mr. James didn’t look too happy back there."

"No, he didn’t. But time and distance will ease his misgivings. What about your family? Any last-minute reservations?"

"You know Ma. She cried some." He shot Rebecca a quick glance. "She keeps forgetting I’m a man now."

Rebecca hid her smile. A man, indeed. He was barely two weeks past his eighteenth birthday, but she refrained from commenting on that fact.

"I hope your absence won’t put too great a hardship on your father."

"Naw, Billy can help out till I get back. Besides, we can use the extra money."

~*~

That evening they camped beside a clear, rushing stream just off the main road. While Jimmy tended the horses and gathered wood for a fire, Rebecca set up a makeshift kitchen and then made up their bedrolls. Inside the wagon, among her sparse but precious belongings, she cleared a space for her bed. Jimmy would pitch his blankets beneath it.

After watching her futile attempts to prepare the evening meal, burning her fingers in the process, Jimmy stepped into the firelight. Puffing out his chest with manly pride, he offered his assistance.

"I can handle that, Miss Rebecca."

Gratefully, Rebecca retreated from the fire, wiped her flour-coated hands on a grease-splattered apron and found a grassy patch of ground near the wagon to rest. She dipped her seared fingers into the water in her drinking glass before rubbing one of her ointments on them, chiding herself all the while for her lack of outdoor cooking skills. While watching her young companion’s efficiency, Rebecca applied her efforts to removing the heavy layer of dust coating her new boots. Her stomach rumbled in response to the aroma of fried potatoes and bacon.

~*~

Each day revealed new and amazing sights to their citified eyes. It also brought stiff joints and bruises. They weren’t breaking any records, but progressed steadily onward, traveling until the sun dropped over the western horizon before making camp.

On the third morning, they awoke to gray, heavy skies filled with dark, bulging rain clouds. Rebecca was storing their sleeping gear when she felt the ground shudder beneath her feet. She quickly turned toward Jimmy, who was hitching the team to the wagon.

"What was…?" Earth-vibrating thunder rumbled across the murky sky, stifling the rest of her question. Bolts of fiery lightning momentarily shattered the gloomy darkness.

Glancing up from his chore, Jimmy wiped fat droplets of rain from his face. "Want to wait it out?"

Rebecca scanned the heavens. The sky was getting darker and the rain falling faster.

"We’ll go on. A little rain isn’t going to stop me." She finished folding the last of their bedding. Grabbing her shawl from a nearby box, she draped it about her shoulders, then scrambled toward the front to take her place on the wagon seat and wait for Jimmy to join her.

Mud and mire hampered their progress. The rain continued to fall. For two days and nights it rained. At night, the two weary travelers crouched inside the wagon, wrapped in damp quilts. By day, they suffered the elements on the open wagon seat. Rebecca insisted they go on. Huddled beneath her quilt at night, listening to the ever-present rain, she recalled the driving force behind this trip into the hill country.

~*~

It started two years after her husband’s death. Frightened and alone without Jonathan, she drifted from one endless day to the next. Finally, she relented to her parents’ pressure and returned to her childhood home. It wasn’t long before she understood the phrase; ‘you can’t go home again.’ Life in her parents’ home was vastly different from what it had been before her marriage. They treated her like a little girl, instead of a woman married and widowed.

Soon she felt suffocated, wasted. She had to do something with herself or die. When the missionaries arrived that fall, Rebecca signed up for the nursing classes they gave. She plunged headlong into her studies and found she had a genuine affinity for the work. To see her efforts make a difference brought a joy and fulfillment to her life that had been missing for too long.

Following graduation, she applied for mission work in foreign fields. Even now, she remembered the disappointment that washed over her like waves at the rejection. The reasons given did nothing to ease her anguish. Unattached females, they said, were not taken into the field. Most had proven too unstable, unable to adjust to the rigors of life without the amenities of civilization.

So her life returned to the endless rounds of social obligations expected of a woman without a family of her own. Sunday bridge, Tuesday whist, Thursday literary discussions, and Friday garden parties. It was like being caught in a spider’s web, and the more she struggled to remove herself from it, the tighter she became ensnared.

Then, unexpectedly, her mother became ill and took to bed. Rebecca’s nursing skills were needed in a way she had never expected. She assumed the duties of a nurse, and cared for her mother until her death. Then, before the family could adjust to its loss, her papa went into a decline, joining his beloved wife shortly thereafter.

And so it had gone. Until now.

~*~

On the sixth morning of their trip, they awoke damp and chilled to find the sun weakly forcing its way from behind low, gray-bellied clouds. By noon, the rain ceased, and the sun provided a welcome warmth. Even before the thunderstorms road conditions had been nothing to brag about, now they resembled a washboard. Which did nothing to improve their progress. Still the two travelers arrived at the settlement of Big Grassy just after noon that day.

Rebecca made a valiant attempt to make herself presentable. Searching through her belongings, she found an almost-dry skirt and shirtwaist. She changed inside the wagon before they entered the settlement. Her hair, though still damp, was pulled back and tied with a matching ribbon at the nape of her neck. Stray tendrils escaped the ribbon and curled about her ears, making her appear younger than her thirty-two years. Her blue-gray eyes sparkled with jubilation when she stepped down from the wagon.

Above the dusty boardwalk, a sign reading BERTHA’S MERCANTILE AND POST

swayed in the wind.

"We’ll ask directions to the farm from here." Rebecca said. "I’ll get a few supplies, too." She gazed up and down the well-rutted road that ran through the little community.

At the far end of the street, the clang-clang of the blacksmith’s hammer rang through the midday air. Wood smoke belched from the round hole in the roof with each whisper of the bellows. Off-key notes from a tinny piano plink-plonked through the split-door of the tavern across the way.

Her attention was drawn toward the feed and seed store where a lone worker was loading several wagons. Circles of sweat marked his shirt, as well as the red bandana tied about his forehead. Without a pause in his labor, the swarthy-skinned worker appeared to take inventory of the two strangers

Rebecca ignored his rude perusal and let her gaze drift farther down the street to a church bearing a sign that proclaimed, "Welcome to the Baptist Church of Big Grassy."

Both, she and Jimmy, were exhausted and eager for the chance to stand and stretch their stiff, cramped limbs. While Jimmy placed a feedbag over the nose of each horse and tied the reins securely to the brake handle, Rebecca entered the store, hoping she didn’t look as wilted as she felt.

A bell attached to the door set up a clamor at her entrance. Halting just inside the door, a variety of sights and smells assaulted her. Every available inch of space was utilized for merchandise. Shovels, hoes, rakes, axes, and picks lined one wall near the entrance. Brooms protruded from a barrel sitting next to the door on the left. Tables laden with bolts of fabric, from corduroy to gingham, nestled next to tables heaped high with overalls, work pants, blue chambray shirts, brogan shoes, boots, calico dresses, and poke bonnets. Barrels brimmed with crackers, beans, flour, and pickles, and tins of sardines and buckets of molasses nestled side by side. Slabs of bacon, smoked and salted, hung from the rafters. On the counter, rounds of golden, tangy-smelling cheese perched next to rows of glass containers filled with tempting penny candy.

Behind the counter were numerous rows of tin containers of food. Bins of potatoes, turnips, onions, cabbages, and squash lined the back wall. The pleasant aroma of the leather harnesses hanging on the wall mingled with the spicy scent of cinnamon, clove, allspice, and garlic.

A cast-iron potbellied stove, encircled with cane-bottomed chairs, dominated the center of the crowded room. Near the back wall, next to a stairwell, a small table and two chairs nestled almost out of sight. Sitting in the center of the table was a fruit jar overflowing with pink buttercups. It was a cozy little area, but somehow out of place with the other items surrounding it. Just behind the counter, a wooden shelf divided into small squares served as the post office.

Jimmy joined Rebecca, and she watched his nostrils flare as the aroma of baking bread pervaded the room, creating a welcoming atmosphere.

"Jeez, it’s big, ain’t it?" he whispered, shoving his hands into his pockets and glancing about the room.

As if his remark conjured her up, a woman stepped from behind the green and yellow striped curtain covering the doorway at the rear of the store. Jimmy’s eyes bulged at the sight of her.

A large woman with a jovial face and large, brown, cow-like eyes stood before them. Her fiery red hair wound into a loose knot on top of her head trailed stray wisps about her crimson cheeks. She wore a bright flowered dress and a limp white apron that reached her shoe tops. Her playful smile seemed to say she found life hilarious. Large hoop earrings swung from her thick, pink ears.

"Howdy, I’m Bertha Callahan. You folks lost?"

Damp, travel-worn, and eager to be on their way, Rebecca and Jimmy stood slack-jawed and pop-eyed, gazing silently at the smiling, florid-faced woman.

Bertha appeared accustomed to the startled reaction the first sight of her five feet seven inches and two-hundred-pound frame evoked. She waited for the shock to pass while she, in turn, scrutinized the strangers.

The next half-hour passed swiftly and pleasantly with introductions and generalities while Bertha filled Rebecca’s order of supplies.

Bertha Callahan glided effortlessly about the abundantly stocked store with a natural grace unexpected in one so large. Genuine laughter and an earthy humor laced her lively banter. She regaled the newcomers with the problems of a woman alone, along with her current marital status.

According to her tale of woes, Bertha had gone through four husbands. This bit of information was imparted with a gleam in her lively brown eyes and a hint of suppressed mirth. "Seems if I don’t work them to death, I just purely love them there." Pausing, she glanced over her right shoulder at her speechless customers and added. "Except the last one. He just up and run off one day. Said he needed a rest. I ain’t seen nor heard from him since." Then, with a laugh that vibrated her mountainous frame, she proclaimed, "They just don’t make men like they used to."

The shocked silence only seemed to fire Bertha’s mirth. With a mischievous gleam in her eyes, she turned and spoke to Jimmy.

"I need a replacement for that last worthless excuse for a man. You interested, youngun?"

With a bolt and a sprint, Jimmy was out the door, red-faced and muttering something about seeing to the horses. Rollicking laughter trailed behind him.

Bertha turned to Rebecca and placed her ham-like arms on the table, a definite change of mood in her eyes. She leaned forward in her chair. "What you want with directions to the old Williams’ place? Ain’t nobody living out there."

"I intend to."

"You got a man coming to join you later?"

Rebecca noticed lines of concern creased Bertha Callahan’s broad brow. "I’m a widow," Rebecca replied, drawing herself up in her chair. "I’ll be living alone." Those words still caused pain to rip through her heart.

"The boy, he ain’t staying with you?"

"Jimmy will return home once I’m settled."

All trace of the storeowner’s former frivolity vanished while she prodded the newcomer. "You got kin in them hills?"

Rebecca shook her head, wondering what prompted all the questions.

"Then, I’d turn around and go back where I come from, if I’s you. Them folks out there don’t cotton much to strangers, and a woman alone…"

Noticing the emphasis placed on ‘alone,’ Rebecca abruptly stood, interrupting the woman’s objections.

"I appreciate your concern. But I did not travel six long, miserable, wet days to turn around in defeat before I’ve even arrived." Her voice trembled with her barely controlled emotions. Taking a deep breath in an attempt to regain her calm, she continued, "It’s mine, and I intend to live there. If faith can move mountains, surely it can make friends and neighbors of strangers. Good day, Mrs. Callahan."

The screened door slammed behind her but didn’t block out the words that followed her. "I sure hope you’re right."