Step by step the water crept higher up her legs as she crossed the temperamental stream. She curses under her breath as she remembers how the storm came roaring on top of her. She had thrown her head up and yelled toward the heavens, “Is this you cursing me God!? ‘Cause if it is, I just want you to know that I’m staying a damn fool.”
It had been a year and two months since she walked into that wretched cottage James had “fixed up” for her. When he carried Sarah Jane over the threshhold, she nearly gasped at the sight. What lay before her was an array of color. Normally, that’s what every bride wants. A beautiful home full of the latest fashion and color schemes that matched seamlessly.
While James had done a wonderful job building the cottage’s structure and framw, the inside of the house looked like he had stood in the center of each room and just tossed paint cans about. In the living room they had walked into from the front door, Jane nearly fainted as she was greeted with shades of green and purple that made no sense being together.
It was like that in every room she walked through as James proudly showed her their new home. Patterns that have no business being together sat side by side on the quiant sette they had inherited from Sarah Jane’s grandmother.
She tried, for James’s sake, to smile and be appreciative of everything he had showed her. But, in her mind she formed a plan to put this cottage together the proper way. Their home stood as one of the first on what was now known as Main Street in town. Just two blocks away was James’s office. He was the town doctor.
When his schooling was done at the one room schoolhouse here in town, James was shipped off to one of the best colleges in the east to earn a degree in medicine. It was not what James desired to. He loved working with his hands and had intended to learn from the town blacksmith.
James’s father wouldn’t hear of it. His father was the town the doctor at the time and looking toward retirement when his eldest son, James, returned from the east with a doctorate in medicine. James was not giving a chance to choose his career. His father was a rich man, if you wanted any part of his inheritance, you did as he said.
Sarah Jane, on the other hand, was the preacher’s daughter. Just as James’s father had expectations for him, her father did for her as well. The only difference was that Sarah Jane’s mother came from a prominent family in Boston, where her parents meet, married and moved from as her father followed the calling to preach in a small western town.
When Sarah Jane was fifteen, her mother insisted she go stay the summer’s with her aunt in Boston. Sarah Jane’s mother wanted her to learn women’s etiquette and those other boring things women must do to become proper wives. Sarah Jane loved her aunt and did as her mother expected at first. However, it soon became clear to both she and her aunt that she had no interest in being a proper woman in society. Once her aunt had introduced her to the art galleries and grand town library, Sarah Jane found herself craving time in the library. She would sneak off from her etiquette lessons and escape to the library, reading for hours. She hungered for knowledge, something the colleges would not let her have purely because she was a girl.
Sarah Jane spent every summer with her aunt up until her marriage. It was during those summers that Sarah Jane learned about the law and rights of people. She became appalled as she watched trials take place in the courthouse. She was beginning to see how few the list for women’s rights were. They were nonexistent to say the least.
Sarah Jane tried marching with the women in the streets who declared women have the right to vote, but her aunt had put her foot down there. This confused Sarah Jane as her aunt was one of the women doing the marching. Her aunt simply put it this way, “I love you for wanting to fight for your rights as a women, but I will never live it down if something happens to you that my own sister does not agree with.”
So, off Sarah Jane went back to her small town in the west after the summer was over. Once she arrived, she discovered, to the delight of her parents, that she was engaged to James. Oh, how that made her boil over! She knew James quite well from the rumor mill among the young crowd. He was a drinker and could get physically brutal. She had no desire to marry him.
She told her parents all this once they were inside their small home next to the only church in town. Her papa was the preacher. She felt sure once she explained how ungodly James was, he wouldn’t allow the marriage to take place. Instead, her father told her his hands were tied. James father had too much power in town; even the town preacher couldn’t get away from it.
So, into this forced marriage she went. She was able to change the psycho decor of the cabin over time. She found herself busy with wifely duties expected of her as the doctor’s wife. Slowly, however, women started seeking her out because they were coming to her husband with broken arms and telling him how it was their husband that did it. James ignored their pleas for help.
Sarah Jane did what she could for the women until the day it happened to her. James had come home drunk from the saloon. As he fell into the front door, he noticed the floor had not been mopped. He woke Sarah Jane from her peaceful slumber and proceeded to admonish her with his fist.
She patiently waited for him to pass out. Once she did, she took a small suitcase out from under their bed that was packed and ready to go. She had made the decision after his first drunken stupor that he ever hit her, it would only be once and made herself ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
She had gotten a few miles down the road late last night before turning to cut across one of the farms that connected to the next county, where the train station was located. It just before the creek that acted as the county border that the sky unleashed it’s fury. The creek rose quickly as she crossed it, making it almost impossible do so. She raised her head, cursed her God, her family, and her so called husband.
Her stubborn strength got her on the other side of the creek. When she crested the top of the small hill just passed it, she could see the train station. She made her way there and shook the ticket master awake. Through droggy speech, he gave her a ticket for the next train, arriving in ten minutes. Sarah Jane sat herself down on the bench and tried to put herself back together as she waited. Her right eye was in a lot of pain and practically sullen shut.
In the distance, the train whistle blew. Within minutes, Sarah Jane was on a train headed east.
