Blessed Assurance by Lyn Cote Page B

Mrs. Bolt, who launched herself at him like a lovesick adolescent.
    He imagined himself telling the “prim” schoolteacher that a bar owner had better manners than she. But why hadn’t anyone explained to the redhead that while no man turns from the attraction of a pretty woman, no man ever desires to be the object of such a blatant pursuit? Mrs. Bolt embarrassed herself and him every time they met.
    He clenched his jaw as though forcing back these words while he swabbed the bar with a washcloth, tidying up after lunch.
    The heat from the blistering, noon-high sun weighed down the stagnant air of the saloon. One of the drunks lifted a hand. Lee grimaced to himself as he picked up the whiskey bottle, then walked toward them.
    The odor of whiskey no longer made Lee’s mouth water. Instead it made his pulse jump as though he needed to run. This and the fear of greeting Linc with alcohol on his breath kept him dry as their Chicago drought. Nothing must come between Linc and him.
    He poured each of the drunks a shot of whiskey, suddenly swelling with a deep repugnance. How had he let himself start work here? The walls around him suddenly felt like a trap. He wished to be anywhere—no, not anywhere. He longed to be in Jessie’s backyard.
    In his mind’s eye, he pictured her image from last evening. For the very first time, Linc had hit a ball over the back fence. Jessie had leaped to her feet. Because of the heat, the top buttons of her high-necked black blouse and the buttons at her wrists had been loosed. Her wavy hair had come a little undone and wisps of hair curled in the faint perspiration all around her temples.
    When he glanced to her face, he had been captivated by her animation. Her pinched look of stern widowhood, which he had disliked, vanished. In that moment, he’d glimpsed the sweet, happy woman she’d been before she’d put on widow’s black.
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    Jessie held herself rigidly, not allowing her spine to touch the back of the pew, the way her stepfather insisted a lady sat. To her right sat her mother, stepfather, and their twin sons. Jessie had tucked in Linc at her left to limit her stepfather’s scrutiny of him. If she did anything her stepfather didn’t like, he’d snatch her mother and half brothers away home and ruin the day. This worry kept Jessie on poisoned pins and needles.
    With the congregation, Jessie stood to sing. Her mind kept slipping back to Susan, who’d stayed home from her own church to prepare Linc’s birthday meal. Thank You, God, for Susan.
    Her mind deserted the church where she was singing and took her back five years to the day she had first met Susan. That Sunday morning she had walked to the Negro church, on the South Side in a warehouse along the lakefront, where the congregation met. Too poor to purchase pews, the congregation stood except for a few older men and women who sat on ladder-backed chairs at the front. Jessie hadn’t anticipated that being the only white face in a room filled with dark faces would make her feel so conspicuous.
    Unconcerned, Linc, only three then, toddled away from Jessie’s side, forward to one of the few older women who was without a child in her lap. In silent request, he held up his arms and the older woman bent, picked him up, and settled him on her navy skirt.
    Around her the congregation began singing, “On that great getting up mornin’, Hallelu, Hallelu…” The people around her swayed to the rhythm. Thunderstruck, she’d never heard such voices, lyrics, melodies, such joy! They stirred her beyond her imagining—awakening her blood, setting it to flow rich and sure through her veins, awakening her spirit from its deep mourning.
    The old preacher at the front led the congregation in song, his voice was cellar-deep, grave, powerful. The mood of the music shifted and a song about dying swirled into her heart. They sang this plaintive question: “Were you