Crown's Jewel by Cynthia Toliver

Author:Cynthia Toliver [Cynthia Toliver]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780595604258
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2008-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

Crown was finishing off a cup of coffee and a half-decent plate of cracklings and oats Jewel had managed to cook. At the rumble of the wagon, he glanced across the table at Jewel only to find her looking back at him with surprise. The only people who came within a hundred yards of his place were the dead and the grieving. Crown walked to the front door, slipping his coveralls over his shoulder with each long stride. It had been over six months. Still, Crown wondered nervously whether Nate Comeaux had come to collect his boy. He pushed the door open cautiously. To his relief, the wagon was full of Colored folk.

Crown leaned against the door jamb and held the door slightly ajar. A buxom girl with a broad grin and a raucous voice bounded onto the porch. Crown recognized her as one of his own tenants, though to his recollection, he had yet to see her do any work.

Without introduction or a customary hello, the girl pronounced, “I come for Jewel. Granny Giddings said ya’ll’d had more ‘n enough time to git to know each other.” She eyed Crown defiantly and called past him to Jewel as though he had no right standing in his own front door.

“Jewel, it’s cousin Lenetta. Come on to church.”

“You’re Jewel’s cousin?”

“You deaf? That’s whut I said ain’t it. Come on now, Jewel. We ain’t got all day.”

“That all right with you, Crown?” Jewel asked sweetly.

Crown looked back to see Jewel slip into the bedroom. He stood holding the door uncomfortably while Lenetta looked him over like she’d already made up her mind he wasn’t fit for Jewel.

It felt like forever before Jewel stepped out of the bedroom wearing the blue dress. She sidled up to Crown smelling like lilac powder. He might have mistaken her for a comely young woman if she weren’t barefoot with a fat peppermint in one hand and a silly grin on her face.

“Lawdy, Jewel, where’d you git that dress?”

“Crown bought it for me from the town sto’. Ain’t it purty, Lenet? Ain’t it the purtiest dress ya’ll eva saw?”

Jewel dipped under Crown’s arm and out onto the porch. She twirled a time or two and for a moment, Crown thought she looked pretty too.

“It’s purty, Jewel,” Lenetta echoed Crown’s admiration. “Now come on. We go’n’ miss Deacon Bibee and that’s the best part.”

“It all right with you, Crown?”

But Lenetta swept her off the porch with a defiant look at Crown that dared him to tell Jewel any different. He shrugged his shoulders and watched them ramble down the road in that rickety wagon full of Sam Giddings’ nieces and nephews and Jewel.

He had all day to consider Jewel’s people and their strange ways. They’d dropped her on him months ago with narry a word in between. Then suddenly they appear on his doorstep, just when he’d settled in, getting used to the two of them. He suspected that Mae had orchestrated the whole thing, leaving him alone with Jewel just long enough for his body to overcome his better judgment.

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