A Man for Temperance (Wagon Wheel) Read Online Free Page B

A Man for Temperance (Wagon Wheel)
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hands were clean, and he had evidently used his fingers for a comb. His coarse, black hair was too long, and she made a note of that. “You can sit right there. I’m not going to have this discussion every time we eat. If you want to eat at my table, you’ll wash first.”
    Brennan opened his mouth to argue, but then the smell of the food got to him and he nodded in a surly fashion. As soon as he seated himself, he reached for the chicken, but her voice caught him. “We’ll thank the Lord for the food, Brennan.”
    Brennan stared at her, then slumped down and refused to shut his eyes. Temperance shut her eyes and said, “We thankThee for this food and for everything which You provided. In Jesus’s name we’re grateful. Amen.”
    “Is it all right if I eat now? Or are you gonna preach a sermon and take up a collection?”
    “That will do!”
    Brennan loaded his plate until it would hold no more. It looked like a small mountain. He worked his way through the food, eating like a starved wolf, and his manners were the worst Temperance Peabody had ever seen. He snorted and groaned and grunted and even paused once to spit something onto the floor. Twice she started to call his attention to his manners, but then she decided any hope she had of improving this wild man would come slowly.
    She tried to carry on a conversation, asking him about his past, but got only monosyllable answers and grunts or shakes of the head. Finally, when he had demolished half of the sweet potato pie and washed it down noisily with coffee, she said, “Come on. I want to show you the work to be done.” He got up and followed her outside. She watched as he rolled a cigarette expertly. He did it with one hand, it seemed, licked the middle, and twisted the ends in one smooth motion. Pulling a kitchen match out of his shirt pocket, he lifted his leg and struck it on the outside of his thigh, then threw the match on the ground. “All these fences are going to have to be repaired. They all need work. The troughs are leaking. Tomorrow you can work on that, but the main thing is spring plowing.”
    She turned to him and saw resentment in his eyes. Something had painted shadows on his face and had laid silence on his tongue. It had branded his solid face with rebellion and loneliness. “You do know how to plow, don’t you?”
    “Spent the first ten years of my life looking at the hind endof a mule. Thought I’d seen the last of it, but here I am again.” He drew on the cigarette, blew a perfect smoke ring, then dropped the cigarette and ground it into the earth with his boot heel. “Here I am doing what I said I’d never do.”
    “One more thing,” she said. “I don’t like my help drinking during working hours.”
    Brennan turned to face her, looking down at her with a strange expression on his face. “You ever been married?”
    The question caught Temperance off guard. “Why—no, I haven’t.”
    “I didn’t figure so. Easy to see why.”
    His words angered her. “You shouldn’t talk like that.”
    “You like to push at a man, Peabody.”
    “Most of the men I’ve seen need pushing.”
    Her words touched him, and there was a feral wildness in him. For a moment something like fear came to Temperance. She was alone with this man who had a violent streak in him. Her eyes widened, and she had to resist taking another step backward. He was a limber man with amber eyes half-hidden by the drop of his lids. He had a looseness about him, and the sun had scorched his skin, putting layers of tan smoothly over his face. All his features were solid, and his shape was the flat and angularly heavy build of a man turned hard by time and effort. She could not read his eyes for they were empty mirrors looking out at nothing. He made Temperance nervous, and she said, “Breakfast will be on the table at five o’clock. Remember, I’ll expect you to do no drinking on the job.”
    Brennan watched her go and, when she was out of hearing, muttered a

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