Today’s post continues my series of scenes that were cut from the book A Place of Her Own before its publication. In each of the scenes from my point of view I always started at a particular special place on the farm, where my thoughts would lead me to Martha and her situation. Then I would open Martha’s next chapter in the same location with her remembering back to her story. The editor found this too contrived, which it was. We changed that format. But I still like some of the descriptions of the places, like this one, and I believe my traipsing across the farm to these places, and thinking of Martha at each one, helped me get closer to her, even if many of those descriptions were cut. Clip…..

My kids’ good old dog William resting with me on the bluff.

Photo by Robin Loznak

The bluff, September 2010. I hopped onto the outcropping of large flat boulders overlooking a steep drop to the valley floor. Moss formed a patchy carpet on the stones, tufts of grass filling the crevices. I smiled. The bluff brought back memories of games my sister, Nancy, and I used to play. We would lie down at the edge of the overhang and keep watch on happenings below, filling our minds with imagined danger and excitement.

My daughter Carisa, with me today, stepped up beside me. An entire summer had passed since last I wandered the hills and fields of the farm seeking special places Martha might have walked in order to know this new land of hers.

Now it was fall. The first fall rains had come, but it was supposed to be clearing again, heading into the usual warm Indian summer. Dark gray clouds boiled overhead with a few bits of blue offering promise. Our coats still felt damp from the shower that caught us on our way here. I thought about Martha and the wanderlust that brought her to this place–her husband’s, but probably hers as well. What kind of danger and excitement did she face?

The soft, moist air wrapped around us as we stood on this hillside overlook, screened by the oak and myrtle trees that enclosed the bluff, giving it a pleasant feeling of seclusion, as if we could see out but might be comfortably hidden from any watchers outside. A young twisted oak stood directly out from the rimrock, offering glimpses between its branches of the lower fields and the wide green river flowing gently past. A grassy bench of land swept up from the bluff to the right, while a bank rose sharply behind, adding to our sense of enclosure.

In years past my sister and I used to take a trail to get here, a narrow animal trail that bit into an almost perpendicular hillside on our left. This time Carisa and I had taken the newer, easier route from the other direction, coming up a steep logging road, the Tree Farm Road, where a sign on the gate marked our designation as a certified Tree Farm.

In fact, before I could start the rough draft of this book I had to stop and write a new timber management plan and have the operation reviewed in order to be certified as my father had been. More than once, farm needs would pull me away from this story focused on the farm.

Did Martha come up here? Did she stand on these mossy rocks and contemplate the journey of her life that brought her to this lovely wilderness so terribly far from home? Whatever happened to her parents, Thomas and Maxy Poindexter? I doubt she ever saw them after that trip to Illinois for the birth of Leonora, a birthplace recorded by multiple census records that let me know Martha made the trip to have the child there. . . .

Questions haunted me as I plunged forward with this project. With other books, I’d often had the eerie feeling that stories were coming to me from somewhere–or someone–outside myself. I would set up a framework and ideas would flood in. That feeling hit much stronger this time, as if the messenger were closer to me. I wished whoever was sending these messages would refrain from flooding me with them at four in the morning. But I knew well that state of openness on the edge of sleep before the doubts of an awakened mind rose, letting the stuff of dream and spirit enter in.

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In the third outtake from Martha’s story, A Place of Her Own, the scene takes place at the end of Chapter 5, “Home and War,” showing Martha’s visit back in Illinois with her parents. It’s the good-bye scene with the parents, which I found had many similarities with the greeting scene for that visit, the wording so alike I was struggling to show the difference, then realized I could simply summarize the scene at the beginning of the next chapter and cut 559 more words. And no more struggling over pesky words that wouldn’t come together for me. So, clip…..

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The horse and rider at right will look familiar to folks who’ve seen the book jacket of A Place of Her Own. I pulled this out of the old photo on the cover. It shows Martha and Garrett’s eldest son Cap outside Martha’s house at the farm, and I put it here to reflect an image. In my research I found no photo of Garrett, although military records and family legend describe him well enough that I can easily imagine him resembling Cap. And both men were known to be excellent horsemen. As Martha rides away with Garrett in the scene below, I draw from this image to envision him.

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Garrett could not be held back more than a day and Martha had to face the wrenching pain of separation again, this time with her family, who’d grown even more dear to her during this visit. After tearful good-byes all around to her siblings and their families, she walked with Garrett down the little trail to the small cabin in back, holding Nora tight in her arms.

When Ma opened the door, Martha smiled, wishing for a smile in return and seeing only a flicker. “We have to go now, Ma.” Her mother wouldn’t quite look at her, wouldn’t reveal either warmth or coldness in her clear gray eyes.

“Mam-ma,” Nora said, waving her arms, and Ma reached out to take the child, holding her close and nuzzling the feathery blond hair. Ma took the child to Pa, who was sitting on the bed, and let him hold her.

“How’s my girl,” he said, pulling a handkerchief from his pants pocket to wipe the corner of his eye.

When he looked up at Martha, she sought the flash of warmth she’d seen from time to time, when he seemed to forget how angry he was with her, but like Ma he appeared to be hiding behind a mask, making his face difficult to read. She would have reached down to embrace him, but he held the child as a shield. Finally she took Nora in one arm and patted his shoulder with the other. “Good-bye, Pa.” He looked so weak. Would she ever see him again? But Ma was strong. Maybe another day they’d have time to put their differences behind them.

Garrett spoke up finally, his voice taut. “Good-bye, then.”

Martha gave her ma a one-armed hug, still seeking her eyes, but Ma kept her focus low. For the briefest moment she did look up, and her pain struck Martha. Tears glittered. Martha leaned forward to press a cheek against hers, then drew away. “I love you, Ma–and you, Pa. I . . . really have to go now.” Her voice broke on the last words, and she turned away, following Garrett out to where Newt held their horses.

Garrett mounted first and reached for Nora, perching her on the saddle in front of him. “She’ll be safer here.”

Nora’s shriek rent the air. He tried to soothe her, but she reached for her mother, tears washing her bright red face. She wasn’t having a bit of this arrangement. “I’d better take her with me,” Martha said.

Garrett’s jaw tightened, but he waited for Newt to help Martha onto her sidesaddle, then handed the screaming child to her. Martha did her best to tuck the child on the saddle in front of her. This was going to be a long ride.

They bid Newt good-bye, waved to the others waiting on the porch, and rode out, Nora still shaking with soft sobs. Martha could scarcely contain her own emotions. With every step the horse took, she was moving farther and farther from her beloved family. She looked back once, and blinked at the tears. Would she ever see them again? Ever heal the breach with her beloved ma and pa? Or had time ended all chance of that? She turned and glanced at Garrett, then Nora, ahead to her future, and didn’t want to answer those questions.

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