The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,94

was getting too complicated for words.

“Son, have you decided what you’re gonna call yourself?” Minna asked.

Baby Boy straightened up and stepped away from his mother’s touch. He needed to act like a man when he took a man’s name.

“I’m gonna call myself Isaac,” he said. “After my pa.”

Isaac felt the ground swaying at his feet, and then his spirit rose inside him so high that at that moment if he’d suddenly taken flight, he wouldn’t have been surprised.

“Why, Baby, I think that’s a wonderful idea.” Minna threaded her fingers through her husband’s hand and squeezed gently for comfort.

“Come on, preacher, let’s do it,” Isaac said suddenly. “Where do we go and what do we do?”

“We’ll be needin’ water to sprinkle on his head,” Minna said. She remembered seeing her younger sisters and brothers christened back home in Massachusetts.

“How ’bout some peach juice?” Baby Boy asked. “It was right tasty, and there’s plenty left in the can inside.”

Before anyone could stop him, he’d bolted for the store to retrieve the can from Matt Goslin, and not a grown-up among them could bring themselves to stop his intent. It was, after all, his christening. He should be able to have it done the way he wanted.

Eulis leaned against the hitching post to still his rolling belly. “This is a fine mess,” he whispered.

“Suck it up,” Letty whispered back, and goosed him in the ribs to make her point just as Minna turned to them and smiled.

Eulis wiped the sweat from his brow and nodded. “Right hot for this time of year, don’t you think?”

Minna smiled as Baby Boy came back with his juice.

Eulis accepted the can with all the dignity he could manage, and right there in the middle of the street in Lizard Flats, Baby Boy Jessup changed his name with a sprinkling of peach juice and the blessing of a man who, until yesterday, had only used the word of God in profanity.

“I christen thee, Isaac… uh, what’s your last name, sir?” Eulis looked to Isaac for an answer.

“Jessup.”

Eulis nodded and repeated. “I christen thee Isaac Jessup. And, uh… let no man put asunder.”

Letty groaned then muttered beneath her breath. “That’s for weddings you dolt.”

But the Jessups didn’t seem to mind. And when Eulis sprinkled another dollop of peach juice on the child’s head for good measure, there wasn’t a dry eye among the family from Crawler’s Mill.

For lack of something else to say, Eulis suddenly lifted the can of peach juice in a toast.

“To young Isaac Jessup,” he said, then took a sip from the edge, careful not to cut his lip on the jagged opening.

As if it were every day that a preacher baptized with a can of peach juice, the can was passed from hand to hand with dignity as if it had been a magnum of champagne.

Each witness to Baby Boy’s emergence from the chrysalis of childhood into manhood sipped from the tin. When it came to Isaac, the father, he had to swallow tears before he could swallow the juice.

Eulis beamed. It was over and he hadn’t messed up yet. “Congratulations, young man. It’s been a pleasure to meet you.”

Baby Boy threw back his shoulders and tilted his chin. “My name is Isaac.”

Minna cupped the back of her son’s head. “Come along home, young Isaac. You and your pa have a lot of work to catch up on, and you’ve got a week’s worth of schoolin’ that you missed.”

“Yes, ma’am,” young Isaac said proudly.

“Yes, ma’am,” his father echoed, and winked at his wife.

About the time that the Jessup family was leaving Lizard Flats, Miles Crutchaw was pulling his team and wagon to a halt in front of the White Dove Saloon.

“Whoa!” he cried. The mules slowed and then stopped.

He wrapped the reins around the handbrake and then smiled down at the woman sleeping in his lap. Truly was not a woman accustomed to the trail, and had suffered greatly through the trip from Sweetgrass Junction to Lizard Flats. She’d been bounced and bruised until Miles had taken pity and cradled her on his lap.

As he watched her, Truly sighed and then started to stretch, and as she did, came close to falling out of her dress. The once-yellow satin was now nearer in color to dusty butter and her henna-red curls had come down long ago and hung around her face in wild abandon. The rouge that she wore on her cheeks and her mouth had long since disappeared. She’d never been so mussed, nor