After Eli

by Terry Kay

  Rachel scrambled from the bed. She pushed Michael, shoving him, and stumbled to Sarah, gathering her in her arms. Sarah’s body shuddered. Her arms squeezed around her waist. She began to swing her shoulders angrily, pounding against her mother. Rachel held her, burying her face.

  Then, suddenly, Sarah relaxed. She let her face rock against the pillow of Rachel’s shoulder and she began to sob quietly.

  “Baby,” Rachel whispered gently. “Baby—”

  Michael watched the scene intently, nervously. He had made the mistake that he feared—a single blunder of eagerness. His mind flashed to the visit of the sheriff and the phantom voice urging him to run. Now he had no other choice. He could not kill them. Killing them would be his blood signature to guilt. He wondered what would be said between mother and daughter. He needed to think.

  “Rachel,” he said softly.

  “No,” Rachel answered. “Just—just go on. Leave me with her.”

  “Yes,” he said. He walked past them into the living room and lifted his coat from the wall peg and opened the door and left the house.

  * * *

  Her face was warm against her mother’s shoulder and Sarah rested with her eyes closed. She breathed evenly as Rachel stroked her hair and rocked her like a baby who had had a frightening dream.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” Rachel whispered. “You know that, don’t you? I—you know your mama’s sorry, don’t you? I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. Nothin’. Sometimes I—I don’t know how to say it; sometimes I feel like givin’ in. That’s what I was doin’. Givin’ in. I’ve missed your daddy. For a long time I’ve missed him. I was givin’ in.”

  Sarah snuggled closer to her mother. She nodded into Rachel’s shoulder.

  “Mama,” she said quietly, “I been with him, too. Did you know that, Mama?”

  Rachel’s body stiffened. Her hand trembled on Sarah’s neck. She remembered the birthday party, and the jealousy that had been only partly hidden in Sarah’s eyes.

  “He—he said it was me, Mama,” Sarah continued. “He said it was me he wanted.” She paused, then added, “But I knew it was you. I—I could tell, the way he’d be lookin’ at you. I knew it. I don’t know why I knew it, I just did. Sometimes, when we was workin’ out in the field and I’d carry him water, he’d talk about how good you was. He said you was a friend, somebody who understood who he was.”

  “Shhhhhhh,” Rachel said gently. “Hush, baby. You have to know there’s them kind of men, Sarah. He’s a—a hurter. I guess I always knew he was. I guess I knew it from the first, the day he was bit by the snake.”

  “Why, Mama? Why? Why’d he have to do it?”

  “It’s his way,” Rachel answered. “He’s one of them people that hurt you, and you let him hurt you because—because you can’t help it. It’s like—it’s like a gift with him.”

  “What’s he want, Mama?” Sarah asked innocently.

  “I don’t know. Maybe just to prove somethin’. Maybe it’s because of the money people keep sayin’ your daddy hid. He talked about that some, after the Benton boy ran away.”

  Sarah pulled from her mother’s shoulder and looked at Rachel. Her eyes were swollen and moist.

  “He used to tease me about diggin’ for buried treasure, puttin’ in the fence,” she said. “I never thought about them stories, about Daddy.”

  Rachel brushed away the hair from Sarah’s forehead with her fingers.

  “Don’t be thinkin’ about them things,” she whispered.

  “Mama?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was there any money? Did Daddy leave some here, and you been keepin’ it?”

  Rachel smiled. She caught Sarah’s face in her hands.

  “If there was any money, baby, it’d be yours, for when you need it,” she said. “Just think of it as somethin’ your daddy made up.”

  A door closed in the house and Rachel lifted her head to the sound. She instinctively pulled Sarah close to her.

  “Michael?” she said. “Is that you?”

  She heard footsteps cross the living room. She knew it was not Michael; it was Dora.

  “Dora,” she mumbled to Sarah.

  “Mama—”

  Dora stepped into the room and looked at Rachel and Sarah on the floor, huddled beside the fallen quilt curtain.

  “Sarah?” Dora said. “What’s goin’ on?” She stepped closer.

  “Nothin’, Dora,” Rachel replied curtly.

  “Nothin’?” Dora asked. “Where’s Michael? What happened, child? Tell me.”

  “Nothin’ happened, Dora,” Rachel said firmly. “Leave us alone.”

  Dora stepped closer and stood above them. Her face turned suspiciously to look at the room. She saw the bedcovering thrown aside. Her eyes drifted back to Rachel and she glared at her opened gown.

  “You let him at you,” Dora said coldly. “You let him lay with you, ain’t that it?”

  “Dora, leave,” Rachel commanded.

  “Get away from her, Sarah,” Dora shouted angrily. “She’s been whorin’ with him. She’s been whorin’.” She caught Sarah and dragged her away from Rachel.

  Rachel twisted on the floor and jumped to her feet. She grabbed Dora by the shoulder and turned her forcibly, pulling her away from Sarah.

  “Get out! Get out of here,” she snapped. “She’s my child. You been tryin’ to take her away from me for years, but she’s mine, damn you.”

  Dora stood, staring, her face ashen in the dim light of the room. Her lips curled into a sneer and her chin quivered.

  “The child found you layin’ with that man,” she said quietly. “Ain’t that it?” Her voice rose. “Ain’t it? You been layin’ with that man, and she found you. I know it.”

  Rachel’s hand lashed out, slapping Dora across the face.

  “We both been layin’ with him,” she shouted. “You hear that? We both been layin’ with him. That’s what you want to know, damn you. And don’t tell me you ain’t been wantin’ the same. I’ve seen you lookin’ at him, wishin’. Wishin’ he’d touch you.”

  Dora’s face changed. It aged in a sad hurt. She placed her arms across the front of her gown, in an X, as though covering her breasts. She looked at Sarah and her mouth opened and closed. Tears began to well in her eyes. She turned and ran from the room.

  “Dora,” Sarah called. “Aunt Dora.”

  Dora did not answer. She stumbled blindly through the living room to the door leading into the kitchen. She pushed with her shoulder against the door and it opened quickly and she fell through it. She looked around as if lost. The room was hazy. It swam in her head like an uncontrolled dream. She could feel tears sliding over her face and she put out her hands and began to follow the corridor leading from the kitchen. Her fingers walked the wall until she touched the door to her room. It was open and she turned inside the room and slammed the door behind her. The sound echoed throughout the house like the crack of a gunshot. She leaned heavily against the door with her back. Her hands dropped to her sides and spread open against the door paneling. She threw her head back and her mouth opened and her face twisted into a contortion of great pain. Then she pushed away from the door and fell across the room to her bed. She crawled over the bed until she reached the nightstand beside the headboard. She lifted her Bible and turned onto her back, holding the Bible close to her chest and staring into the ceiling. Then she opened the pages and carefully removed the paper shamrock. She dropped the Bible and it slipped from the bed to the floor. She held the shamrock above her and looked at it, and then she pulled it to her and rubbed it tenderly across her face, over the ridges of her lips. She breathed on it softly. The tears streamed from her face and down her temples and into the pillow. Then she again held the shamrock above her and began to tear it apart—deliberately, carefully. And the tiny paper bits fell from her fingers onto her face.

  * * *

  Rachel sat on the floor with Sarah, holding her in a blanket. It was nearing sunrise. Outside a rooster crowed arrogantly, a
nd Sarah moved against her mother.

  “You know, Sarah, it’s true,” Rachel whispered.

  “What is, Mama?”

  “What Eli used to say,” Rachel replied. “He used to say his baby was his wife made over, a baby Rachel, he said. He used to say no child was ever more like her mother.” She paused and smiled. “Maybe it’s not as true as I’d want it to be, but that’d make me happy when he said it,” she continued. “Oh, that’d make me happy. I guess that’s somethin’ I missed more than anythin’ else about Eli not bein’ around. He was a sight around you. Last time he was around you—that was a long time ago, now—he kept callin’ you his sweet angel. You had a doll then and, oh, Eli was a spoiler with you. One time, when you was just a baby learnin’ about things, Eli woke us both up about this time, about sunrise, and we all went tiptoein’ to the kitchen window. He said he wanted to show us the prettiest sight in the whole world. You remember that? It was a bunch of wild canaries. They’d lit out by the woodpile. The prettiest yellow birds you ever saw. Singin’ and chatterin’. First time I ever saw any wild canaries. And the last time. Funny. Now that I think of it, it’s funny. Eli said they was wanderin’ birds. Never stayed long enough for people to see them.” She paused and pulled Sarah closer. “He left home soon after that,” she said. “Just up and left.”

  Sarah lifted her head in surprise.

  “I remember that,” she said. “I do, Mama. Yellow birds. I thought it was a dream, maybe. I never guessed they was real.”

  Rachel nodded.

  “Mama, what’ll we do now?” Sarah asked suddenly. “About him?”

  “Nothin’,” Rachel replied. “It’s over. We’ll let it be at that. He won’t be comin’ back.”

  “What if he does?”

  “We’ll tell him to go.”

  “Did he have to kill Owen?” Sarah asked hesitantly.

  “I don’t know, baby. Don’t think about it.”

  “But I do, Mama.”

  Rachel thought of Owen Benton. She thought of the story Michael had told. She thought of the doctor and the grief she had seen in his eyes.

  “So do I, baby,” she confessed.

  21

  SMOKE FROM THE chimney was a blue curl against the shell white of morning. It was as thin as a string and rose high above the house and spread into a veil, like a net of silk.

  Michael knew the fire in the house was hot: pine kindling and hardwood. It was a quick fire on a clean grate and it would warm the kitchen and the heat would drift into the living room and along the corridor leading to Dora’s and Sarah’s rooms. The smell of coffee would be heavy.

  Michael pulled the collar of his coat around his neck. He squatted beside a bush in the hem of the woods above the house and crossed his hands inside his coat, with his palms pressed against his chest. The night had been cold and he could not have a fire.

  He did not know what had happened at the house, but he was calm. It was finished and he would not again be a fool. He would wait, be patient. From the distance, he was safe. He did not have to run. He smiled. He did not want to run. Not without Eli’s money, and the money was there, in the house. He would not leave without it; if he did, it would be a failure—a small failure—and it would linger with him. Rachel had hidden it with cunning. It was not in the quilts, as he had believed, but it was near her. Not even Eli could have found it. Eli, he thought. Was it the reason Eli left? Angry because he could not find the money he had stolen and given his wife? It would have been a fight, all right. Enough to make a man take a fit and storm out, if not kill her.

  He looked over the roof line of the house to the hills opposite him. He wondered if Tolly Wakefield was there, waiting, watching. Tolly Wakefield was suspicious, but he had nothing he could prove. He was an annoyance, nothing more, Michael thought. Still, if Tolly Wakefield interfered with him he would split him open like a melon.

  The door of the kitchen opened and Michael moved forward against the bush. Rachel and Sarah hurried across the yard to the barn lot. He watched as Rachel bridled the mule and led it to the fence. Sarah climbed the fence and straddled the mule and took the reins from her mother and rode away toward Floyd Crider’s house. He was puzzled. Why Floyd? What would she tell him? There was nothing to say, except to confess the intimacies, and they would never do that.

  * * *

  Rachel knocked lightly on the door leading into Dora’s bedroom.

  “I want to talk to you, Dora,” she said.

  “It’s your house,” Dora replied from inside.

  Rachel opened the door and entered the room. Dora sat in a chair beneath the window, over which the curtain had been pulled. She was still dressed in her gown. She held her Bible in her lap.

  “Dora, I’m sorry for what I said, what I done,” Rachel told her.

  Dora looked away. Her hands played over the gold-edged pages of her Bible.

  “I can’t live your life for you,” she mumbled. “It ain’t for me to say. You’ll have your judgment, like he will, like everybody else.”

  “I know that,” Rachel replied quietly. “But I don’t want to talk about that. I’ve got to tell you somethin’.”

  Dora did not answer. She sniffed the air and waited.

  “I sent Sarah up to Floyd’s on the mule,” Rachel said.

  “What for?”

  “I remembered somethin’ this mornin’.”

  “What?”

  “Michael, he—he said he killed Owen because Owen was cuttin’ at him with the knife he stole when he run off at the jail.”

  Dora stared at her. She did not have to ask the question.

  “It wadn’t the truth,” Rachel explained. “Michael had the knife on him the night before that happened.”

  “How do you know?” Dora asked bluntly.

  “I saw it. It was in his pants leg. When we was havin’ supper, he leaned back and I saw the top of it. I remember it because I’d seen it before, when he was carvin’, and that was the first time I ever saw him wear it on his leg.”

  Dora sat forward in her chair.

  “Maybe they was two knives,” she said.

  Rachel shook her head.

  “There was only one. It was that one. He let me hold it one night, when he was carvin’. Said it was the only one in the world like it. Said a man from England made it special for him.”

  “Didn’t you think nothin’ about it?” Dora demanded. “He’d told us about the boy stealin’ the knife.”

  “I don’t know,” Rachel admitted. “I didn’t. I just didn’t. It didn’t come to me until this mornin’, when Sarah was askin’ why he killed Owen.”

  Dora stood and walked to the table beside her bed and placed the Bible on it. She looked at the shredded pieces of paper shamrock scattered across her pillow.

  “What does it mean?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rachel said. “Tolly—Tolly didn’t believe him. I could tell.”

  Dora remembered Tolly’s silence and the way his eyes had stayed on Michael. She thought of Sarah, alone.

  “And you sent Sarah out by herself?” she asked angrily.

  “She’s on the mule. I told you.”

  “What’s she supposed to be tellin’ Floyd?” Dora said bitterly.

  “That Michael run off. We don’t know why. He just up and left. I told her to tell him I’d feel better if he’d come over and help me check and see if he took anythin’.”

  “You should of told me before she left,” Dora snapped. “It ain’t right, her bein’ out there by herself. You tell her about the knife?”

  “No,” Rachel answered. “I—I couldn’t.”

  Dora thought of Michael with Sarah, whispering soft, soothing promises, taking her.

  “What if he catches up to her?” she asked.

  “He won’t do anythin’ to her. Anyway, she’s on the mule. He won’t catch her.”

  “What he won’t do is come back here,” Dora said coldly. She moved to her dresser and began to pick among her clothes.


  “What you doin’?” asked Rachel.

  “I’m goin’ to take the gun and go after her.”

  “Dora, there’s no need in that.”

  Dora turned to Rachel and stared hatefully at her.

  “It’s somethin’ I’m doin’,” she said. “Ain’t nothin’ you can do about it. That girl may be from your own flesh, and she may have sinned her way right into Hell with that man, but she’s mine, too. I ain’t lettin’ anythin’ happen to her, if I can help it.”

  Rachel knew it was senseless to argue with Dora. Dora was angry. And Dora’s God was angry.

  “All right,” she said softly, and then left the room.

  * * *

  Michael saw Dora leave the house carrying the shotgun. He nodded to himself. She was after Sarah, to protect her. Dora knew. Dora knew it all. And she would gladly kill him. Poor Dora. She had been such a fool, such an ugly bitch of a fool, following after him like a child. Now she knew and she wanted to kill him. But she had left Rachel alone in the house. He settled against a tree and rubbed against its rough bark. He was pleased with himself. He had waited and the waiting had rewarded him. He was not like other men, he thought. Other men would have panicked.

  * * *

  He saw her through the kitchen window. She sat at the table, holding a pan of beans that she snapped methodically. She seemed serene. A trace of a smile that was cupped in memory rested in her face and her eyes floated over her moving hands as though gliding in a fantasy. He looked around him, then stepped to the door and opened it quietly.

  “Rachel,” he said.

  She looked quickly to him. Her eyes widened and then softened. She smiled warmly.

  “Michael,” she replied. “You’re back.”

  She placed the pan of beans on the table and moved to him, folding her arms around his waist and turning her face into his chest.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” she whispered. “I been hopin’—”

  He pulled her close and held her.