July 15,2023 - Good morning lovelies! Chapter 8 of this story is nearly finished and will be posted in the next few days. I thank you for your infinite patience :)

Disclaimer: I own nothing of GWTW.

Chapter 7

The rest of the morning passed peacefully with Rhett and Wade continuing to do as many outdoor tasks as the weather would allow and Scarlett and the girls busying themselves inside. Once the path was cleared it became quickly apparent that the smokehouse was a major attraction to the men folk, (Scarlett had to wonder what they were doing in there besides warming up), but they did come in for meals.

Scarlett regarded the girls when she returned inside. Rhett said she had to play with them and she knew he'd be checking to make sure she did. She thought about just ignoring the directive as usual–but then her own condition that he behave decently toward her stood in the way. She had mounds of work to do but if Rhett was going to be nice–or, at least, not nasty— as long as she bided by their compromise, it would be worth it.

She made a mid-day meal and told the girls as they all dined that she would have a new game for them that afternoon. Rhett cocked an eyebrow but said nothing, which Scarlett mused must have been difficult for him.

As the time approached she felt a certain amount of dread. She'd much prefer working out menus and the best ways to use what foodstuffs they had as frugally as possible. And this place needed a good week-long scrubbing! No time to idle with games, but the die was cast, and she had to think of something.

She was rustling through the cupboards to give the girls some dishes and a pot or two to occupy their time–a weak option, she had to admit, and one her husband would be sure to ridicule–when inspiration occurred and her eyes lit.

"We're going to play a game called Pioneers," she addressed Bonnie and Ella. "I am the mother, and you two are my children." Even to her, it lacked imagination, yet the girls seemed interested in any manner their mother was willing to engage with them.

"We will," she said slowly as she worked it out in her head. "We'll pretend we became lost in a snowstorm while traveling out west and we found this cabin." Not far from the truth, and also not very exciting; both girls nodded reluctantly. "As in Snow White," she added on impulse, and their faces perked up.

She used the momentum. "Snow White had to clean up for the dirty little dwarfs and so will we."

"Wade's a dwarf?" Ella asked in a hopeful tone that did not go unnoticed.

"Yes. And Uncle Rhett is merely a vastly overgrown dwarf." Scarlett smiled to herself as she anticipated said overgrown dwarf's reaction to this misnomer, but Ella merely seemed a bit perplexed. It was a stretch, after all.

"The lumberjacks who lived here were dwarfs, too, and that's why it is so dirty," she added. Might as well go the whole hog.

Bonnie looked from her mother to her sister, apparently gauging the acceptability of the proposed game.

"And we'll build a fort?" Ella, not one to linger on insignificant details, clapped her hands in anticipation.

Scarlett frowned. "Why do we need to do that?"

"To fight off the Indians," Ella frowned back.

She sighed. "All right, then it's two games. We'll play Snow White while we clean and then Pioneers after that."

She wet two cleanish rags in a bowl of warm water and handed one to each child. "You two can wipe down the walls and windowsills and baseboards you can reach. We have to work hard because those dwarfs are filthy."

Both girls giggled at 'filthy'.

"I'm going to climb up and look on the back of the shelves in the kitchen while you two get busy."

Ella looked at the rag and back to her mother. Bonnie looked at Ella.

"May we have new names?" Ella asked.

"Well, of course."

"I want to be called Prunella."

"Why?"

"It makes me laugh," she said, and then she did laugh, as well as Bonnie. "And it sounds like my name."

"And we can call Bonnie Baby."

"No! I want a new name too," Bonnie said, her dark brows drawn down over the almost too-blue eyes. "I'm not a baby."

Scarlett thought about calling her Victoria or Eugenia, or some variation thereof, but Bonnie had never used either name. And if Ella was Prunella then Bonnie could be–

"Bonita," she said, pulling it from a vague recollection of a Spanish word she'd heard someone use years ago. "We'll call you Bonita. It means beautiful, too."

Both girls clapped their hands then. Scarlett felt a swell of self-satisfaction.

"And Wade will still be Brother? Unless he wants to be called Dwarf." A mischievous grin twisted Ella's lips in a manner Scarlett hadn't noticed before.

"You'll have to ask him about that." Scarlett turned toward the shelves. "All right, we have the names decided."

"But what will your name be when we play Pioneers?"

"I'm Mother, of course."

"Do pioneers call their mothers that?"

"Why wouldn't they?" At the child's disappointed expression, Scarlett softened.

"You can call me Ma, I suppose," she acquiesced, wincing the entire time. "But just for the game."

Ella's eyes widened. "Ma? You'll let us call you Ma?"

A devilish smile lit her face at the further implications. "Yes, and that makes Uncle Rhett Pa."

Hilarity ensued as the girls got to work chattering, the room filled with noise as they repeatedly sounded out Prunella and Bonita but mostly Ma and Pa and Brother Dwarf. Poor Wade. Poor Scarlett.

But. oh, how it tickled them to death, and she, Scarlett had caused it! She contemplated her female progeny as she explained further plans for games to them as they cleaned, working the entire time herself, of course. She hoped they were still wound up when Rhett came in.

As if on cue the man in question entered, followed by Wade.

"Hello Pa," Ella greeted him, and Bonnie, giggling, naturally, echoed her. "We're playing Snow White and Pioneers. Mother is Ma and that makes you Pa."

"I see."

"And we have new names, Prunella and Bonita, but we call Bonnie 'Nita. And Wade is Brother Dwarf." Wade looked mildly affronted, then shrugged.

"You're calling your mother Ma?" Naturally, he would zero in on that.

"Yes, she says it's fine as long as we don't say it every five minutes."

"You could go with Maw and Paw," Wade suggested with a grin that immediately faded at Scarlett's scowl.

Rhett chuckled. "It sounds like a fine game. But who is Snow White?"

"Mother is Snow White, Pa—Daddy," Bonnie stated with no little amount of impatience. "Don't you know?"

He gave Scarlett an appraising look that made her want to smooth her hair and straighten her dress, although she refrained, with considerable effort. "I suppose you're right about that."

"I suppose I'm lucky you don't try to make me the evil queen," she all but snipped, and he only laughed in return.

The girls regaled Rhett with fairy tales and pioneers mixed in. When they told him of all the cleaning to be accomplished because of the filthy dwarfs he and Wade were, he looked amusedly at Scarlett.

"And is that all this game is? Cleaning?" He modified the amusement to shoot Scarlett a suspicious glance.

'We're making tea sets tomorrow," Bonnie offered.

Rhett lifted his brows. "And how are you going to accomplish that?"

"Mother– I mean Ma," Ella said, and Scarlett struggled not to wince, "said she could dig a bucket of clay from the root cellar walls and we would shape the cups and saucers and then you–Pa, you could bake them in the smokehouse for us. Could you do that, Pa?" Ella gave Rhett such a sweet smile Scarlett curbed the snide remark concerning the too-frequent use of game names hovering on the tip of her tongue.

Because something about the way Ella said it, so hopeful and lovely, and something about the way it sounded tugged at a forgotten chord in her heart, one she hadn't paid any attention to in a long time.

"And dolls!" Bonnie jumped up and down. "Ma said we could make dolls outta the corn husks in the old pillows. And p'haps," she twisted toward her mother and gave her the most charming smile a two-year-old had ever mustered, "p'haps, if we're good, we can make church dolls out of the worn-out pillowcases."

"You know, 'Mama' and 'Papa' might be a bit easier on the ear," Rhett said gently, regarding Scarlett's face as he did so, and the girls readily agreed; for which she felt whole-heartedly grateful.

"Me too?" Wade asked, feigning nonchalance. "Can I call you Papa? For the game," he amended quickly.

They agreed with Bonnie settling on Papa-Daddy and Rhett seemed to approve, evidently unwilling to give up being called daddy, even for a game.

The menfolk went back outside where Wade said Rhett was giving him 'man lessons' and teaching him to whittle between shoveling snow and chopping wood for the smokehouse. Scarlett took periodic breaks from cleaning and playing with the girls to practice with the bow and arrow on every trip to the privy. Which were quite frequent, thanks to Bonnie.

The next day went by in a flurry of activity. Scarlett found soap and washed the clothes from the train ride since luckily they all had one change of clothes.

Rhett came in from time to time and played with the girls while she worked, reminding her of Melly during the war. But he worked as well, keeping the fire going in the main room and the spare room, and before no time had split and stacked another wall full of wood.

She could see him splitting the wood from the kitchen window, and it got to her. She could hardly look away though he caught her staring several times.

The way his coat stretched across his shoulders—why, she didn't understand how it didn't split at the seams! And that lock of thick black hair fell down in his eyes every time he made a solid stroke with the ax.

Every. Single. Time.

His muscled arms seemed to become almost immediately bigger, how was that possible? And the beard scruff grew longer seemingly by the hour. To the point she could hardly make out the cleft in his chin; her pinky finger used to fit in that cleft, precisely. She wanted to try again, now that he had the beard, of course, only because of that, just to make sure it still fit…

Those dark, knowing eyes would be the death of her. She had to be careful. If he knew he would surely make her suffer.

Oh, hell. He knew.

She did not have time for this nonsense, she had work to do. Yet Rhett remained polite, but impervious, as he had at the resort, refusing to become anxious one minute and all but laughing at her hustling preparations the next.

"Are you ever going to hunt?" She burst out right before supper.

"Without a doubt. But I will hunt when I'm ready and the animals are out and about and recovered from the storm and bitter cold." He gave her a warning glance. "When I start you had better be prepared to cook because I intend to be prolific, and it'll be an onslaught. That's why Wade and I are spending so much time getting the smokehouse ready."

"I think I saw turkey tracks by the privy this morning." She tried not to glare as she said it.

"It's possible you did but I've decided to wait until all the wildlife is hungry enough to take chances and I can accomplish much in a short time."

She opened her mouth when he stopped her again. "It would behoove you not to harangue me regarding the matter, Scarlett."

She'd huffed and slammed her back against the rickety chair, immediately sulling up and shooting him dirty looks. She didn't dare say another thing about it. She did go back outside, however, to practice shooting the bow and arrows.

And if several arrows landed square in the middle of his precious, worthless smokehouse roof, well, a learning curve was involved in archery, wasn't it?

She stayed huffy and he remained seemingly unperturbed by it. That night and then the next she'd half expected him to find other quarters, perhaps bunking with Wade or the girls, but to her relief, their nighttime routine remained the same, sleeping side by side in that cabin bed.

Curious, though, how every night before they retired he disappeared for about half an hour into the smokehouse or root cellar, it was dark and she wasn't sure which one. It was not his usual routine at home and she couldn't figure out why he would do such a thing for the life of her.

He would come back looking quite relaxed and she wondered if he'd found some liquor somewhere, perhaps a bottle of 'shine, although she couldn't smell it on him. It could be that he was praying, but she quickly dismissed that thought.

She couldn't stay mad at him in the situation they were in, and so she let go of her anger fairly fast, at least for her. It helped that at bedtime, they talked for hours in low voices so as not to disturb Wade, who would more often than not rise and silently shut the cupboard-like door to his loft. It brought back the early days of their marriage when they were still on good speaking terms. More than that; when they still had regard for one another.

But he never made a move to touch her when they were awake. Still, when she woke in the morning, she knew he'd slept right beside her all night due to the warmth of the sheets beside her, and vague recollections of brushing against a broad, muscled body in her sleep.

Again in the morning, he'd take off out the door first thing and be gone for another half hour just like the night before, outside to the smokehouse or root cellar, even before Wade had a chance to join him. He returned looking much less tense than he'd been when he left and always washed up thoroughly before he'd even say good morning. It was beginning to grate on her nerves.

"My birthday's tomorrow," Wade announced loudly at breakfast one morning nearly a week into their stay, two spots of color high in his cheeks. They were enjoying a meal of fried apples and corn cakes with drizzles of molasses from a can Scarlett had found on a back shelf.

Everyone looked startled. "I know that, Wade," Scarlett said politely. 'I have a present for you, and so do the girls."

She'd wrapped all the cash she had in her reticule after the trainwreck up in a wallet of fabric stitched from her travel dress skirts. Bonnie and Ella were working diligently on a set of corn husk and wood soldiers with smokehouse-fired clay weapons, to the point they had temporarily abandoned their games and ignored Rhett when he tried to engage them, much to his dismay, their little heads bent studiously over the crafts.

It wasn't a plethora of gifts and nothing like they'd give back home, Scarlett inwardly fretted. They needed more, at least a fine meal to mark the occasion.

She'd saved the small, dusty jars of honey and maple syrup she found in the root cellar as well, although she really had no idea how to serve them absent a host of other ingredients.

And they just had to have something else besides the last bits of that tiresome ham and mince pie they'd been eating for days! The collard greens wouldn't last much longer, either. She'd split her share between the girls and Wade the day before at dinner, and again with Rhett at supper. He'd given her a questioning glance again but didn't speak after locking eyes with Wade, who shook his head with his lips pressed tightly together.

"What would you like to do for your birthday, son?" Rhett addressed Wade with a smile as if there were endless abounding opportunities for amusement, and they were not at all landlocked in a snowy cabin in early February by miles of deep and frozen tundra.

"I'd like to keep up with our man studies during the day," Wade said hurriedly, his color becoming even brighter. "And then at night, I'd like to hear Mother's stories."

"You mean Mama's stories," Ella corrected, and Scarlett tried not to roll her eyes.

"Wade, I don't think my stories are what you'd want to hear for a celebration–" Scarlett started.

"Scarlett's stories it is!" Rhett grinned and pounded the table, followed by the girls. It was all Scarlett could do not to bark at them to stop acting like heathens. They'd have no manners left at all by the time they got back to civilization at this pace.

She had to protest this new development. "Surely Uncle Rhett hasn't run out of ideas already–"

A loud and unmistakable gobble interrupted her as it rang out from the direction of the privy.

Before anyone could react Scarlett jumped to her feet and made her way swiftly across the cabin. She grabbed the bow and arrow bag and threw the front door unceremoniously open.

There were two toms and a hen picking at the scarce kitchen scraps and bean husks she'd deliberately spread on the ground a mere hour before.

Almost languorously Rhett followed her, reaching for his pistol. "There's no need for haste, my dear, it's not as though a turkey moves quickly."

Ignoring him, Scarlett braced one foot against the door frame, raised the bow, took aim, and let the arrow fly. It went sideways, so pathetically short of its target that the birds hardly gave it a glance and never stopped scratching.

Without missing a beat she drew another arrow and fired. It hit the largest tom square in the middle of the base of his throat.

The other birds squawked and scattered. Scarlett threw the bow down and marched along the freshly cleared path coatless and hatless. She leaned over and assessed the damage; it was a clean kill, with hardly any blood at all. She grabbed the tom by his neck bare-handed.

Scarlett hauled him up against herself with both hands, paying no heed to the rough feathers poking through her dress and returning to the cabin a little short of breath. The fowl had to weigh at least 30 pounds!

"Here," she shoved the turkey at an obviously bemused Rhett. "Now there's something for you to do during your 'man lessons'. I only ask that you don't make Wade help clean the bird for his own birthday feast."

She paused to catch her breath, fully expecting him to take high umbrage; after all, hunting is a man's job, and she'd beat him to it.

Instead, he stared at her with an impudent grin spread all the way across his face, one much too close to another he'd displayed at the bottom of the stairs at Twelve Oaks, in what felt like a lifetime ago, all but leering and looking as if he knew exactly what she looked like naked ….

Dear God. He did know exactly what she looked like naked.

Why, oh why did she have to be married to such a perverse creature, one who never reacted the way other men did to anything at all?

The grin itself gradually became less obscene. Thank the lord for small favors.

"Excellent shot, Scarlett," he finally said in the most sincere tone he'd used with her in a while.

His eyes, however, conveyed another message, and she felt her face heat up in return.

They studied each other for another beat before Rhett called for Wade to put on his coat. A mere few minutes later the menfolk departed for the smokehouse, cheerfully swinging the hefty turkey between them.

Fun Facts:

The original story of Snow White is taken from a 19th-century German fairy tale or folk tale, written by the Brothers Grimm. The German brothers known for their various folk tales and stories, published 'Grimm's Fairy Tales' in 1812, which features the tale of Snow White as story number 53. - Blackpool Grand Theatre website.

My mother used to read The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen to me and my brother when we were small children. If you were wondering what's wrong with me, now you know. A Little Match Girl is engraved in my memory forever, along with visions of shattered glass blown into the eyes of people in The Snow Queen and a sad little Christmas fir that should have been happy to live in the forest. Not to mention Snow White's stepmother dancing herself to death in those red-hot iron shoes ...

Bonnie's 'Papa-Daddy' is a nod to Eudora Welty's "Why I Live at the P.O." If you haven't read it, or haven't read it in a while, treat yourself. It is so eccentrically old-school Southern I smile like a fool all the way through it.

I've known Scarlett was going to shoot a turkey since this story began. There's a strip mall about three miles from my house, the kind made up of hot yoga places and workout gyms and dance studios. A small roost of turkeys lives in the woods behind it and an hour before dusk I walk my Pekingese there several days a week.

The turkeys wander all over that strip mall after the stores close around six pm. I've been watching them through the winter and spring while I've worked on this story. The biggest male is vocal and obnoxious. Since yesterday he's started mating-calling my dog. It isn't going over very well with the little guy, but it is kinda fun to hear.

Anyway, I googled it and wild turkeys in upstate New York get up to about 25 pounds now, but in the 1600's they were recorded as getting up to 34 pounds. Since the 1870s are somewhere in between I figure this turkey weighs 30 pounds.

A/N: Hello lovelies! I bet you thought I forgot about you but nope. I am retired and much healthier and leaving for Charleston on Saturday. If you are reading The Force then Chapter 49 will be finished up and posted sometime next week. My summer goal is to finish these tales! Thank you for your patience and readership.

If you have a moment, drop me a line to let me know you're still here. I could shamelessly use the encouragement. Peace, misscyn

Also, don't worry. Rhett has a birthday gift for Wade, too :).