The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,51

of water.”

He pushed his hat back farther on his forehead, exposing his face. He was not much older than I. A lock of dark hair fell forward over his brown eyes.

“If you go down the track about another fifty feet there’s a path up the bank. Be careful you don’t get scratched by the blackberry briars. There’s a pump in the back of the house.” I pivoted and swept my hand toward the house.

“Thank you very much.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him climb the bank. His shoulders and head were visible above the brambles. I judged him to be six foot two, maybe three. He reached the crest and paused. Silently, I pointed toward the house. He grinned, the grin of a man used to smiling at women, and continued. I followed, watching his shoulders move under his cotton shirt.

He set his suitcase down immediately and took a long drink from the ladle at the pump. After a second deep drink, he bent lower, scooping up the cold water with his hands, and rubbed it on his face and into his hair. Addie leaned out the back door, her arms folded across her chest.

The stranger pulled a white handkerchief out of his pocket and slowly dried his face, letting us watch him. He carefully folded his handkerchief and put it back in his pocket before regarding us.

“You two must be twins?” he said after he had taken us both in.

I shook my head.

“Sisters then?”

We both shook our heads. “Cousins.” I said.

He glanced quickly from me to her. Addie nodded.

“Must surely be more to it than that,” he said, grinning again and combing his wet fingers through his hair. A current went through me; I wanted to have my hand in his hair. Then he held out his hand and announced, “Roy Hope from Kentucky. On my way home from Jacksonville, Florida.”

Addie and I introduced ourselves.

He leaned back against the watering trough, resting his hips on the lip of it. “I should be sitting in a train on my way to Kentucky instead of walking the tracks. But some lucky bum is sitting in my place.”

We nodded our interest and he launched into his story. “I’m not a mining man and where my people come from in Kentucky is nothing but mining. I was gonna make something of myself. Jacksonville, Florida, seemed to be the place for that, but it didn’t work out that way. So I’m heading back home for a while. Then I think I’ll go out West.”

I studied him—the width of his wrists, the span of his neck where it joined his shoulder. He turned his hat in his hands, smoothing the brim as he told us about his brother in Jacksonville, who fought with his wife, and their baby, who woke up at all hours of the night. His opportunities and savings that had dwindled.

“The Florida beaches, though.” He whistled his amazement. “Clean white sand, fine as powder.” He rubbed his fingers and thumb together and laughed. “And on Saturday afternoons, girls. Girls everywhere in bathing suits.”

He was even younger than I had first thought—early twenties, maybe his late teens. He had not been in the war.

I watched his beautiful mouth and straight white teeth while he relayed the details of being robbed of a suitcase and train ticket when he napped in the Charlotte depot. “So, I’m broke now, with nothing left but this.” His foot nudged the little suitcase at his side. “Nothing to do but hoof it home.” He glanced at the chopping block. “If you ladies could use some help around here, I’d be happy to split some wood for my supper . . .” He paused and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket.

Addie looked at me and raised an eyebrow as he bent his head to light his cigarette. I smiled at her and she offered him some supper. I handed him the splitting maul and a wedge.

While Addie cooked, I stood at the kitchen door watching Roy split wood. She came and stood behind me. “You just gonna stand around and watch him?”

“There are worse things a girl could do,” I said.

“And I imagine you are thinking of at least one of them.”

“I don’t think he’s real smart,” I answered, then pitched my voice up into that high scratchiness of Granny Lou’s and quoted what she had said that day at church when she saw the Clemson boy making eyes at me and