by Ron Rash
“I’ve got money,” he told Lucy. “It’s the getting to where I can spend it that’s been the problem.”
That night as he lay in his bunk, Sinkler pondered the plan. An hour would pass before anyone started looking for him, and even then they’d search first along the road. As far out as the prisoners were working, it’d take at least four hours to get the bloodhounds on his trail, and by the time the dogs tracked him to Asheville he’d be on a train. It could be months, or never, until such a chance came again. But the suddenness of the opportunity unsettled him. He should take a couple of days, think it out. The grit in the gears would be Lucy. Giving her the slip in Asheville would be nigh impossible, so he’d be with her until the next stop, probably Knoxville or Raleigh. Which could be all for the better. A hotel room and a bottle of bootleg whiskey and they’d have them a high old time. He could sneak out early morning while she slept. If she took what her husband had hidden, she’d have enough for a new start, and another reason not to drop a dime and phone the police.
Of course, many a convict would simply wait until trail’s end, then let a good-sized rock take care of it, lift what money she had, and be on his way. Traveling with a girl that young was a risk. She might say or do something to make a bluecoat suspicious. Or, waking up to find him gone, put the law on him just for spite.
The next morning, the men loaded up and drove to where they’d quit the day before. They weren’t far from the farmhouse now, only a few hundred yards. As he carried the buckets up the road, Sinkler realized that if Lucy knew the trail, then the husband did too. The guards would see the farmer in the field and tell him who they were looking for. How long after that would he find out that she was gone? It might be just minutes before the husband went to check. But only if the guards were looking in that direction. When the time came, he’d tell Vickery this well was low and the farmer wouldn’t let him use it anymore, so he had to go back down the road to the widow’s. He could walk in that direction and then cut into the woods and circle back.
Sinkler was already drawing water when Lucy came out. Primping for him, he knew, her hair unpinned and freshly combed, curtaining a necklace with a heart-shaped locket. She smelled good too, a bright and clean smell like honeysuckle. In the distance, the husband was strapped to his horse, the tandem trudging endlessly across the field. From what Sinkler had seen, the man worked as hard as the road crews and had about as much to show for it. Twenty years older and too much of a gink to realize what Lucy understood at eighteen. Sinkler stepped closer to the barn and she raised her mouth to his, found his tongue with her tongue.
“I been thirsting for that all last night and this morning,” Lucy said when she broke off the kiss. “That’s what it’s like—a thirsting. Chet ain’t never been able to stanch it, but you can.”
She laid her head against his chest and held him tight. Feeling the desperation of her embrace, Sinkler knew that she’d risk her life to help him get away, help them get away. But a girl her age could turn quick as a weather vane. He set his hands on her shoulders and gently but firmly pushed her back enough to meet her eyes.
“You ain’t just playing some make-believe with me, because if you are it’s time to quit.”
“I’ll leave this second if you got need to,” Lucy said. “I’ll go get his money right now. I counted it this morning when he left. It’s near seven dollars. That’s enough, ain’t it, at least to get us tickets?”
“You’ve never rode a train, have you?” Sinkler asked.
“No.”
“It costs more than that.”
“How much more?”
“Closer to five each,” Sinkler said, “just to get to Knoxville or Raleigh.”
She touched the locket.
“This is a pass-me-down from my momma. It’s pure silver and we could sell it.”
Sinkler slipped a hand under the locket, inspected it with the feigned attentiveness of a jeweler.
“And all this time I thought you had a heart of gold, Lucy Sorrels,” Sinkler said, and smiled as he let the locket slide off his palm. “No, darling. You keep it around your pretty neck. I got plenty for tickets, and maybe something extra for a shiny bracelet to go with that necklace.”
“Then I want to go tomorrow,” Lucy said, and moved closer to him. “My bleed time is near over.”
Sinkler smelled the honeysuckle and desire swamped him. He tried to clear his mind and come up with reasons to delay but none came.
“We’ll leave in the morning,” Sinkler said.
“All right,” she said, touching him a moment longer before removing her hand.
“We’ll have to travel light.”
“I don’t mind that,” Lucy said. “It ain’t like I got piddling anyway.”
“Can you get me one of his shirts and some pants?”
Lucy nodded.
“Don’t pack any of it until tomorrow morning when he’s in the field,” Sinkler said.
“Where are we going?” she asked. “I mean, for good?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I was notioning California. They say it’s like paradise out there.”
“That’ll do me just fine,” Sinkler said, then grinned. “That’s just where an angel like you belongs.”
The next morning, he told Vickery that the Sorrelses’ well was going dry and he’d have to backtrack to the other one. “That’ll be almost a mile jaunt for you,” Vickery said, and shook his head in mock sympathy. Sinkler walked until he was out of sight. He found himself a marker, a big oak with a trunk cracked by lightning, then stepped over the ditch and entered the woods. He set the buckets by a rotting stump, close enough to the oak tree to be easily found if something went wrong. Because Sinkler knew that, when it came time to lay down or fold, Lucy might still think twice about trusting someone she’d hardly known two weeks, and a convict at that. Or the husband might notice a little thing like Lucy not gathering eggs or not putting a kettle on for supper, things Sinkler should have warned her to do.
Sinkler stayed close to the road, and soon heard the clink of leg chains and the rasp of shovels gathering dirt. Glimpses of black and white caught his eye as he made his way past. The sounds of the chain gang faded, and not long after that the trees thinned, the barn’s gray planking filling the gaps. Sinkler did not enter the yard. Lucy stood just inside the farmhouse door. He studied the shack for any hint that the farmer had found out. But all was as it had been, clothing pinned on the wire between two trees, cracked corn spilled on the ground for the chickens, the axe still on the porch beside the hoe. He angled around the barn until he could see the field. The farmer was there, hitched to the horse and plow. Sinkler called her name and Lucy stepped out on the porch. She wore the same muslin dress and carried a knotted bedsheet in her hand. When she got to the woods, Lucy opened the bedsheet and removed a shirt and what was little more than two flaps of tied leather.
“Go over by the well and put these brogans on,” Lucy said. “It’s a way to fool them hounds.”
“We need to get going,” Sinkler said.
“It’ll just take a minute.”
He did what she asked, checking the field to make sure that the farmer wasn’t looking in their direction.
“Keep your shoes in your hand,” Lucy said, and walked toward Sinkler with the shirt.
When she was close, Lucy got on her knees and rubbed the shirt cloth over the ground, all the way to his feet. Smart of her, Sinkler had to admit, though it was an apple-knocker kind of smart.
“Walk over to the other side of the barn,” she told him, scrubbing the ground as she followed.
She motioned him to stay put and retrieved the bedsheet.
“This way,” she said, and led him down the slanted ground and into the woods.
“You expect me to wear these all the way to Asheville?” Sinkler said after the flapping leather almost tripped him.
“No, just up to the ridge.”
They stayed in the woods and along the field�
��s far edge and then climbed the ridge. At the top Sinkler took off the brogans and looked back through the trees and saw the square of plowed soil, now no bigger than a barn door. The farmer was still there.
Lucy untied the bedsheet and handed him the pants and shirt. He took off his stripes and hid them behind a tree. Briefly, Sinkler thought about taking a little longer before he dressed, suggesting to Lucy that the bedsheet might have another use. Just a few more hours, he reminded himself, you’ll be safe for sure and rolling with her in a big soft bed. The chambray shirt wasn’t a bad fit, but the denim pants hung loose on his hips. Every few steps, Sinkler had to hitch them back up. The bedsheet held nothing more and Lucy stuffed it in a rock crevice.
“You bring that money?” he asked.
“You claimed us not to need it,” Lucy said, a harshness in her voice he’d not heard before. “You weren’t trifling with me about having money for the train tickets, were you?”
“No, darling, and plenty enough to buy you that bracelet and a real dress instead of that flour sack you got on. Stick with me and you’ll ride the cushions.”
They moved down the ridge through a thicket of rhododendron, the ground so aslant that in a couple of places he’d have tumbled if he hadn’t watched how Lucy did it, front foot sideways and leaning backward. At the bottom, the trail forked. Lucy nodded to the left. The land continued downhill, then curved and leveled out. After a while, the path snaked into the undergrowth and Sinkler knew that without Lucy he’d be completely lost. You’re doing as much for her as she for you, he reminded himself, and thought again about what another convict might do, what he’d known all along he couldn’t do. When others had brought a derringer or Arkansas toothpick to card games, Sinkler arrived empty-handed, because either one could take its owner straight to the morgue or to prison. He’d always made a show of slapping his pockets and opening his coat at such gatherings. “I’ll not hurt anything but a fellow’s wallet,” he’d say. Men had been killed twice in his presence, but he’d never had a weapon aimed in his direction.
Near another ridge, they crossed a creek that was little more than a spring seep. They followed the ridge awhile and then the trail widened and they moved back downhill and up again. Each rise and fall of the land looked like what had come before. The mountain air was thin and if Sinkler hadn’t been hauling water such distances he wouldn’t have had the spunk to keep going. They went on, the trees shading them from the sun, but even so he grew thirsty and kept hoping they’d come to a stream he could drink from. Finally, they came to another spring seep.
“I’ve got to have some water,” he said.
Sinkler kneeled beside the creek. The water was so shallow that he had to lean over and steady himself with one hand, cupping the other to get a dozen leaky palmfuls in his mouth. He stood and brushed the damp sand off his hand and his knees. The woods were completely silent, no murmur of wind, not a bird singing.
“You want any?” he asked, but Lucy shook her head.
The trees shut out much of the sky, but he could tell that the sun was starting to slip behind the mountains. Fewer dapples of light were on the forest floor, more shadows. Soon the prisoners would be heading back, one man fewer. Come suppertime, the ginks would be spooning beans off a tin plate while Sinkler sat in a dining car eating steak with silverware. By then, the warden would have chewed out Vickery’s skinny ass but good, maybe even fired him. The other guards, the ones he’d duped even more, would be explaining why they’d recommended making Sinkler a trusty in the first place.
When the trail narrowed again, a branch snagged Lucy’s sleeve and ripped the frayed muslin. She surprised him with her profanity as she examined the torn cloth.
“I’d not think a sweet little gal like you to know words like that.”
She glared at him and Sinkler raised his hands, palms out.
“Just teasing you a bit, darling. You should have brought another dress. I know I told you to pack light, but light didn’t mean bring nothing.”
“Maybe I ain’t got another dress,” Lucy said.
“But you will, and soon, and like I said it’ll be a spiffy one.”
“If I do,” Lucy said, “I’ll use this piece of shit for nothing but scrub rags.”
She let go of the cloth. The branch had scratched her neck and she touched it with her finger, confirmed that it wasn’t bleeding. Had the locket been around her neck, the chain might have snapped, but it was in her pocket. Or so he assumed. If she’d forgotten it in the haste of packing, now didn’t seem the time to bring it up.
As they continued their descent, Sinkler thought again about what would happen once they were safely free. He was starting to see a roughness about Lucy that her youth and country ways had masked. Perhaps he could take her with him beyond their first stop. He’d worked with a whore in Knoxville once, let her go in and distract a clerk while he took whatever they could fence. The whore hadn’t been as young and innocent-seeming as Lucy. Even Lucy’s plainness would be an advantage—harder to describe her to the law. Maybe tonight in the hotel room she’d show him more reason to let her tag along awhile.
The trail curved and then went uphill. Surely for the last time, he figured, and told himself he’d be damn glad to be back in a place where a man didn’t have to be half goat to get somewhere. Sinkler searched through the branches and leaves for a brick smokestack, the glint of a train rail. They were both breathing harder now, and even Lucy looked tuckered.
Up ahead, another seep crossed the path and Sinkler paused.
“I’m going to sip me some more water.”
“Ain’t no need,” Lucy said. “We’re almost there.”
He heard it then, the rasping plunge of metal into dirt. The rhododendron was too thick to see through. Whatever it was, it meant they were indeed near civilization.
“I guess we are,” he said, but Lucy had already gone ahead.
As Sinkler hitched the sagging pants up yet again, he decided that the first thing he’d do after buying the tickets was find a clothing store or gooseberry a clothesline. He didn’t want to look like a damn hobo. Even in town, they might have to walk a ways for water, so Sinkler kneeled. Someone whistled near the ridge and the rasping stopped. As he pressed his palm into the sand, he saw that a handprint was already there beside it, his handprint. Sinkler studied it awhile, then slowly rocked back until his buttocks touched his shoe heels. He stared at the two star-shaped indentations, water slowly filling the new one.
No one would hear the shot, he knew. And, in a few weeks, when autumn came and the trees started to shed, the upturned earth would be completely obscured. Leaves rustled as someone approached. The footsteps paused, and Sinkler heard the soft click of a rifle’s safety being released. The leaves rustled again but he was too worn out to run. They would want the clothes as well as the money, he told himself, and there was no reason to prolong any of it. His trembling fingers clasped the shirt’s top button, pushed it through the slit in the chambray.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Yes, I guess you could call them that, Mr. Ponder answered when Donnie asked if he’d brought back any war souvenirs. This was eight years ago. Mr. Ponder was already an old man then, his hearing almost gone along with half his teeth. He had a bad hip too, which was why he hired Donnie and me to paint and shingle his farmhouse, paying two fifteen-year-olds half what a grown man would work for. We’d ride our bikes from town and be there by eight. Quitting time was supposed to be five, but a few extra minutes always passed before he came out and told us to stop. Funny how that watch of his runs slow only at quitting time, I’d tell Donnie. That old man won’t cut you much slack, Ben Reece at the hardware store had warned. But it paid more than cutting lawns.
Our only break was thirty minutes for lunch. We’d sit on the porch and eat what he brought out, usually bologna sandwiches and chips, cans of Coke to wash it down with. He’d eat with us, but never said much except to complain about spilt paint or bent nails. Part of it was him being near
ly deaf, but Ben had told us Mr. Ponder had never been outgoing, even before his wife had died. All that summer we were out there, no one but the mailman stopped by, and all he did was stick a few bills and advertisements in the rusty mailbox and drive on.
But this one day, Donnie said something about joining the Marines when he turned eighteen, and Mr. Ponder started telling us about fighting the Japanese in World War Two. On them islands you weren’t even a man anymore, he told us. It’s a wonder any of us could come back and be human again.
It was an unsettling thing to listen to, not just the stories about men burned alive and bodies blasted up into trees but how Mr. Ponder told it, not in the bragging way you might expect, or angry and hard-eyed. His voice was soft and he looked at us the whole time almost tenderly. When he finished, Donnie and me looked down at our half-eaten sandwiches, not sure what to do or say, waiting for Mr. Ponder to finish his sandwich or complain about something we hadn’t done right, but he kept sitting there in the chair across from us. His eyes were damp. I looked over at Donnie and saw he was thinking the same thing as me—that if someone didn’t say something, Mr. Ponder might start crying right in front of us. Donnie asked if he’d brought back anything from the war. Like souvenirs, I mean, Donnie stammered. That’s when Mr. Ponder said he guessed you could call them that and Donnie asked if he’d like to show us. After a few moments, he said maybe we should see them and we went into the front room. A battered footlocker was between the TV and couch, and Mr. Ponder took some magazines off the top and opened it.
Donnie whispered that he bet it was a Japanese pistol or knife, that or a sword or flag. Mr. Ponder fumbled around in the locker a few more moments until he found what he wanted. He lifted a pint jar, and his gnarled hand held it out before us. It was one-third filled with what looked like gold buttons. Think about what a man has to become to do such a thing, he told us, and then that man be back home a year before it felt wrong. I’ve thought many a time to bury them, but I never can do it. It’s like that would be getting off too easy somehow. He had placed the jar back in the paper bag. Anyway, Mr. Ponder had told Donnie and me, the next time you see one of them war movies that makes it all seem a lark, think about what’s in this jar. Then he’d placed the jar back in the locker. The rest of the summer he never said another word about war or much else.
