It was not the week that Kitty had thought it would be. She spoke to herself about it on that first morning. The things you imagined would happen never did come true, and she was a little old now to expect them to. She broke off that thought with a look around her room, and glance through the bathroom door where a very tall man stood shaving by the sink. Well, maybe there was a reason she had begun to look for fairytale endings. Wiping the smile from her lips she turned her mind from what she had foolishly expected – the Hattie of her childhood returned to care for her – and looked straight on at what she had received – a colored family that she hardly knew trying to wrangle a new life in a place where no one had any idea what to make of them.
Kitty was a little surprised when her first visitor that Friday was Annie Dillon. Fridays were a busy day at the Long Branch, but there was Annie driving up in a buggy while she and Hattie were still washing the breakfast dishes. Annie whirled in the back door to empty her arms of a stack of paper-wrapped bundles on the kitchen table so she could throw them around Kitty. "Dressmaking!" she declared, and began tearing open the paper to reveal a dress length of dark blue calico dotted with tiny white and pink flowers, and a bolt of soft cotton muslin that announced itself loudly but soundlessly as underclothes. Spools of matching thread and tiny dark buttons scattered themselves among the torn paper.
"I'll take care of your horse, miss." Caleb said quietly as he slipped out the back door, but he wasn't sure anyone heard him, and Cairo was right on his heels.
The long dining room table where Kitty had never served a meal was soon put to use for cutting fabric. By the time the men of her household peeked through the kitchen door, and then trudged down to the cookhouse for lunch, all four women were seated around the kitchen table basting seams in the bright light from the kitchen windows.
Annie left before three with an impatient twirl. "I can't stay, Kitty. You know that. Probably shouldn't have come, but I just had to be here. I can come back on Sunday."
"Sleep in, Annie. You know you'll need to," Kitty told her, but Annie just pursed her lips and shook her head before hugging not only her stepmother but Hattie and Carolina as well before she stepped out onto the back porch. Caleb helped her into the buggy and settled a fur rug around her. It wasn't snowing, but it was getting colder.
"She always like that, Miss Kitty?" Hattie asked as she returned to her seat at the table and picked up the sleeve she was gathering.
Kitty laughed. Annie had, as always, lifted her spirits. "She is." Turning to Carolina she told the girl that she didn't need to keep working on the dress, but could just as well get some of the clothes from Kitty's trunk that needed altering.
Carolina shook her head. "I can do this. I have plenty of clothes that don't fit too badly, Miss Kitty, and Mamma has nothing but what she is wearing. It was kind of Miss Annie to think of that right off."
Kitty wasn't sure it that was a cut at herself for not thinking of Hattie's state, or a compliment to Annie, but her attention turned when Hattie commented stolidly, "Ain't the first time I ever been turned away with just the clothes on my back, honey. I'll manage."
"When?" Kitty asked. She laid her sewing on the table and turned to stare at the older woman.
"Juneteenth." Hattie replied. She bit off a thread and then began pinning the gathered sleeve onto the bodice.
"Where were you, Hattie, when the war ended?"
"I was keepin' house for Mister Beaufort, Miss Kitty. Your grandfather. Me and Caleb, we was the only ones left out there. I cooked and cleaned and Caleb, he took care of the horses. Cairo, he was barely more than a baby."
"And my grandfather tossed you out?
"Yes, ma'am, he did. I was washin' dishes in the kitchen and he called me out to the yard. I went. I remember I was wearin' an apron. I had a dishtowel in my hands, and Cairo clingin' to my skirt. He yelled for Caleb, and he came walking out from the stables. Neither of those boys had shoes on, Miss Kitty. Massa' pointed down the driveway towards the road and told us to get movin'. Said the Union soldiers done set us free and he wouldn't have us on his place another minute."
Kitty took her eyes off Hattie's face and picked up her sewing. "How did you feel about that, Hattie?"
"I was glad, an' I was scared. 'bout equal I guess. I started to head back for the house, to get my things, but Massa he just pushed me towards the drive. I asked, couldn't I get my clothes? 'an he said I was lucky to have what I was standin' up in. I wasn't goin' t'argue with him. I picked up Cairo and I put out a hand to Caleb…" Hattie smiled then, and shook her head. "Only time I ever knew my boy to backtalk a white person, Miss Kitty. He stood there and he scowled at Massa' Beaufort and he said he wasn' goin' nowhere. Said he didn' care what happened in the house but somebody had to be there to feed and care for those horses. That got him a lick across the face that sent him sprawlin' on the ground." Hattie shook her head at the memory. "That man began a'cussin' and a'cursin' like fury. Said no black boy was gonna tell him he couldn't take care of his own horses. He kicked Caleb somethin' fierce, and I done grabbed the boy and pulled him up and away. And down the road we went."
Carolina, who had clearly heard this story before, kept her eyes on her sewing, but raised her voice, "All the years you had worked for him, mamma, and he turned you off with nothing."
"We didn't work for him, child. We was owned by him. I had my own self for the first time in my life, and I wasn't about to turn back." This was clearly an old argument. Carolina's face was set and her lips pursed. Hattie sighed. "Sometimes I wish you understood, little girl. But no matter what I tell you, you don't. Then sometimes I'm glad you don't have to." She turned to Kitty, "What we gonna fix those men for dinner, Miss Kitty? I better be startin' on that."
As soon as the women started clearing up their dressmaking, Cairo slipped in from the chill back porch and started in to cook. Hattie fell smoothly to helping him, but there was no place for the other two. Carolina tried to retire to Hattie's bedroom but Kitty drew her into the big living room with it's two fireplaces, and they sat up close to the front windows using the late afternoon sunshine for their stitching.
It was natural for Kitty to start off conversation with a compliment. "You sew as well as you speak, Carolina. Where'd you learn?"
Carolina gave her a smile. There hadn't been many of those. "I learned to speak at school, Miss Kitty. Cairo did as well, but he did not put as much effort into it as I did. Miss Woodhouse, our teacher, she came from Boston and she gave us elocution lessons. She told us if we learned to speak correctly that people would treat us with respect." She raised her eyes from her sewing to meet Kitty's. "It was not true, of course. It is impossible for a white person to respect a Negro. Most of the children did not have an interest in learning to speak, but I did. Miss Woodhouse gave me special time after school. I read poetry and read aloud from the Bible. The other students scoffed at me, but I did learn."
"Yes. You certainly did. Why?"
Her eyes back on the tiny double seam she was taking in the bodice, Carolina answered coolly, "Even then I was planning on getting away. Not speaking like a colored girl was one of the first steps."
That opened a vista of other questions, but before Kitty could ask a one, Festus was coming in the front door with barely a knock. She had been pretty sure they would see him today, and pretty sure it would be in time for a meal, but the interruption was not timely. Kitty put aside her sewing and rose with her face set in a smile to greet him warmly.
Dinner that night was a little more relaxed than the night before. Festus tucked into Cairo's elegant meal with gusto and plenty of praise. Both Matt and Kitty had been raised in the south. There were things you said, and things you didn't say, to colored people. Festus, from the back hill country of Missouri, knew no such social niceties. His conversation was frank and his questions overly personal. Somehow, though, all of the family except Carolina warmed to him quickly and answered his queries with more information than either Matt or Kitty had been able to extract from them.
Caleb seemed particularly interested in Ruth, and asked Festus several times where a mule might be available in the Dodge area. While that led to a number of long stories, and an offer to introduce Cairo to several locals who might have a mule for sale, it also led to the question of why Cairo wanted one. "You're a'livin' on the best horse ranch in Ford county, Cairo. Now why do you be wantin' a mule? You need to go somewhere, why Matthew here will loan you a horse."
Cairo shook his head to that. "A black man can't just be seen driving a horse, not a good horse like the ones here, Mr. Festus. I'd get picked up by the law sure as sure, and probably go to jail for horse stealing. Or end up hanging from a tree."
Festus turned to Dillon at that. "Now, Matthew, you go on an' tell him things don't work like that up here in Kansas."
But Matt did not. "He could ride one of my horses in to town, or drive a wagon. Most of Dodge likely knows his family is out here with us now. But he wants to drive up north of Hays to Nicodemus, and sorry as I am to admit it, he's right. A local law man might well pick him up, or someone not the law who didn't like to see him with a good horse, or someone who wanted the horse and didn't mind killing a colored man for it."
"Well, that's not right, Matthew. What we gonna do about that?"
"I don't know, Festus. You going to loan him Ruth? I can mount you while he's gone."
"Naw, I ain't gonna do that." Festus turned back to Cairo and slapped him on the shoulder. "I'll just go on up there with ya. Ruth don't mind pullin' a wagon, and Matthew will loan us a buckboard. We'll just start off tomarra' mornin' and head on up to that black town you been talkin' about." This matter settled Festus returned to his enjoyment of cobbler Hattie had concocted from canned peaches and wide strips of sweet, browned dough.
"Will you come with us, Caleb?" Cairo asked his older brother.
But Caleb shook his head. "Not this time. I stay here with Mamma and Carolina. Jus' in case anythin' happens." He turned to address Matt. "And Mr. Dillon I'd be grateful if you'd come out t' the stables after dinner. I put that little grey mare in a stall this afternoon. Doan like what I see. I think maybe she drop that foal early. Maybe too early to live."
And that broke up the meal at once as the two horsemen headed out for the barn. Hattie started collecting dishes to wash, and Festus sat at the table telling tales and feeding himself what was left of the cobbler straight from the pan.
Matt and Kitty retired to their room with some relief a little later. Festus, as usual when he stayed with them, slept in the bunkhouse, and Caleb slept in the barn with the young mare.
It was cold, and Matt wore one of the long-tailed night shirts that Kitty had made him. It still seemed odd to him to wear nightclothes to bed. Most of his life he'd either slept in his clothes, or his underclothes, or in nothing at all when he came to Kitty's bed. But he certainly wasn't going to snuggle up to her wearing flannel drawers and a sweaty undershirt – even if they weren't as tattered as they had been in earlier years. He made up the fire in their small fireplace, blew out the light, and tucked himself in beside his wife.
"You know Caleb and Cairo have been sleeping on the floor in Hattie's room?" he asked, pulling her closer and warming his cold hands against her bottom.
"Yes. I told them to take any room they wanted up here, but they didn't. Thought they might go down to the bunk house, but they didn't do that either."
Matt sighed. "I don't think they'd be welcome in the bunk house. Most of our men were hired by Jake, and they're southerners – or were. Two or three fought for the Confederacy."
"Bat?" she asked him, naming their foreman.
"No. He's from Missouri, and he spent the war here at Kincaid with Jake. He was pretty young then. Just a little older than Jake's boys."
That drew a sigh from Kitty. There was a stone on the low hill above the ranch house in memory of two brothers, killed in the same battle, but fighting on different sides. "Would Bat object, do you think? If you sent them out to the bunkhouse to sleep."
Matt gave that some thought. "No. But he wouldn't want to force his men to share space with them. It wouldn't work well. Either Tobe would quit, or I'd have to fire him. Better to leave things as they are."
They were both warm by now, and beginning to be aroused. "I'm sorry you got shut out of the house all day," Kitty told him, nibbling his neck.
"I had plenty to do," Matt said, beginning to lever her flannel nightgown up over her hips. "And it let me take Caleb and Cairo down to the cookhouse and see how that went."
He shivered as she licked his ear and then sucked lightly on the lobe. "How did that go?"
His fingers were busy with the buttons at the front of her gown as he replied, "About what I expected." And then his mouth was busy too and there was no more time for talk.