Read Online Across a War-Tossed Sea by L.M. Elliott - Free Book Online Page B

assess the clouds. Then he turned to Wesley. “How about you find Chuck and then you two go ask Ed if his sons can catch the Greyhound from the shipyards this weekend. I’ll cover the bus tickets and pay wages and a half if they can work both days, all day, including Sunday, until every scrap of hay is baled, every cornstalk is shredded, and the wheat is planted and the fields put to bed for the winter.”
    â€œYes, sir!” Wesley answered.
    Mr. Ratcliff turned to Bobby. “But even with Ed and his sons, I’ll need your help to get everything done in time.” He made eye contact with each boy, one by one. “All of yours—Robert, Ronald, John, James—this weekend.”
    They all nodded solemnly, even the twins.
    â€œMight send me to the poorhouse,” Mr. Ratcliff muttered, “but it’ll keep me from hiring POWs.” He smiled at his wife. “All right?”
    Mrs. Ratcliff let go of Wesley’s hand to hug her husband.
    Out in the yard, Wesley went around and around trying to locate Charles. He wasn’t in the grape arbor, or the woodshed, or the smokehouse, or the orchard, or down by the chicken houses. Wesley searched the barn, climbing into the hayloft, where once he’d caught Charles and Bobby choking on hand-rolled chicory cigarettes. Charles was simply nowhere to be found.
    Maybe he’s gone as far as the river, thought Wesley, starting for the path that wound through the woods to the pebbly banks of the James. He knew the river was where Charles often went to hurl rocks when he was mad, gaining some satisfaction from the enormous splashes they made in the choppy waters. Sometimes Charles even waded up to his knees and gazed east down its murky, urgent waves, saying that beyond their view the river gaped open to be five miles across and gushed into the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic beyond. “That way’s home,” he’d tell Wesley, as the waves lapped hard against his legs so that Charles had to brace himself against the tide’s push.
    Once, Charles even speculated that he could float a raft down to Hampton Roads if he caught the tides right. “Just like that Huck Finn did the Mississippi,” Charles had said, more to himself than to Wesley. “Bet I could do it in a night and climb onto a ship without anyone seeing me in the dark.” Charles had stood for a long time, as if in a trance.
    Remembering that episode, Wesley stopped himself. Charles wasn’t going to listen to him if he were in that kind of mood. And he was sure to be. Wouldn’t it be better for Wesley to actually have good news to tell Charles for once, like that he’d prevented Mr. Ratcliff from bringing in POWs by talking to Ed?
    Suddenly, Wesley felt rather important. He turned and jogged toward the old sharecroppers’ cottage where Ed and his wife, Alma, lived.
    Twilight was dropping as Wesley came to Ed’s four-room cottage. Half log cabin, half whitewashed board, its happiest feature was a long ramshackle porch across its front that doubled its size. A long neat line of white river rocks marked the path to the front door, which Alma ringed with marigolds in the summer. She worked hard, long hours as a maid at one of the old river mansions down the road, but when Alma was home, the scent of something good cooking always greeted Wesley as he passed on the way to school. Sometimes she even handed the Ratcliff boys biscuits to eat on their way.
    â€œIt’s okay,” Bobby reassured them when Wesley and Charles worried over taking food from someone who clearly had so little. “She misses her own children. It makes her feel better.” Alma’s four sons were all grown and long gone about their own lives.
    Wesley saw a sudden glow inside the cottage as Alma or Ed lit a kerosene lamp for the evening. Good, they’re home, he thought, and picked up his pace. As he reached the porch, he heard a cranking sound, then the