Free Courting Morrow Little: A Novel by Laura Frantz

down.
    "Careful, Morrow, don't step too near the edge. Just hand
me another sheaf."
    She did as he bid, aware of the tobacco's pungent leaf, a painful reminder of pipes and kinnikinnik and unwelcome visitors.
She didn't like coming to the barn now. Doing so brought back
her meeting with the Shawnee. Her eyes drifted to the haystrewn floor where she'd faced him, and she nearly winced.
Hindsight made her rue she'd not stayed stalwart but had run
like a rat for cover. How much better it would have been if she'd
mastered her angst and spoken to him instead. Pa would have
been spared her tears, and their questions about Jess might
have been answered.
    Half an hour later, with tobacco dust in her hair and sweat
streaming, Morrow descended the loft ladder in dire need of a
bath. Dismissing the copper hip tub half hidden by the corncrib,
she considered the river. Beyond the open barn door, summer
itself seemed to issue an invitation. With a quick word to Pa, she
made her way down the trail with soft soap and clean towels,
fighting trepidation all the way. The water was at its warmest
in late August, a beguiling sapphire blue that looked like the
sky turned upside down. Everything else was dry and dusty,
the brown earth wrinkled from lack of rain, a few trees already
turning a pale gold.
    She paused at a fork in the trail, torn. The path she usually took led to the laurel and the half-hidden canoe and Trapper
Joe's. The other was overgrown, a tangle of brush and vines and
abandonment. Perhaps ... She shut the thought away, only to
take it up again when she was partway down the familiar trail.
Perhaps one has to face one's fears in order to banish them. Should
she return to the place where it had all began? A place not even
Pa would go?

    She battled a full five minutes, the shadows of the giant elms
and oaks lengthening all around her, her eyes on the old trail that
begged to be taken. With a tentative step, she started making her
way as best she could, the hum of insects all around her. Briars
and thornbushes scratched her bare arms and ankles, but she
kept on, thirsty with curiosity. The old way wandered around a
towering sycamore and a thick stand of laurel, as if testing her
memory, before expending itself on the broad riverbank.
    This was the place she'd last been with Jess all those years ago.
Only it looked nothing like she remembered. Since then the river
had cut a different path, and the boulders along its banks, once
big as cabins to her childish mind, now seemed impossibly small.
Her eyes lingered on the far shore, breathtakingly beautiful in
the reddish-gold light. An abundance of grapevine wended its
way with abandon, following the course of the river. It beckoned
to her like something out of Eden, forbidden fruit, as if taunting
her inability to swim. But how hard could it be?
    Jessamyn had been a fine swimmer, and it had been Pa who'd
taught him. She remembered how they'd frolicked on this very
spot. Both of them had teased her and tried to pull her under
back then, but she preferred to watch them from the sandy
shallows. Sometimes she'd hold her breath as they disappeared
under the calm face of the river for long periods, only to resurface and tease her further. The memory saddened her ...
made her bold.
    She stood unsteadily and stripped to her shift, the river rock slippery beneath her bare feet as she waded forward. The sun
touched the water with a final golden finger before hiding behind
the treetops. She was up to her shoulders now, the water cold, the
current moving past her arms and legs with a pulsing rhythm.
She looked back to see her clothes lying where she'd left them,
a small, insignificant pile of linen and a limp hair ribbon.

    She kept on, her feet soon leaving bottom. Jess had taught
her to dog-paddle, and the jerky movements came back to her
now. She was almost halfway across but frightfully out of breath.
She didn't remember it being this hard,