This is Adam (Lightwood History Collection Book 4)

by Brainard Cheney

  “Oh, yes!” she daubed her brow with her handkerchief. “Kiger Steele.” She had not got the report straight and had forgot, too. “What was that about?”

  He continued, without altering his attitude or tone of voice. “H-he had a long tale to tell. I-I don’t know whut to make of it. He puts out to me that Mr. Hinshaw Slappy and Mr. Oswald Paley, in touch with the Yankees; that this feller, Paley, has writ to Mr. Lincoln; that they havin’ truck with ‘em!” He glanced up at her briefly, without shifting. “I don’t know whut the truth is,” he said, tensing a little, as if he were listening to the sound of his own voice, “I sho’ don’t! Mr. Paley, he might have writ ‘em a letter with some sort of scheme up his sleeve. I wouldn’t put nothin’ past him. B-but I kain’t think of anything much, any proposition of his’n, Mr. Lincoln apt to be taken in by.”

  Mrs. Hightower’s eyes had widened as Adam talked on and she lifted a hand and felt for her glasses at her left shoulder. “Paley!” she murmured, her breath quickening. Jerkily she zipped the glasses up and down on their chain. “Do you think Mr. Lincoln would listen to such a man?”

  “W-wouldn’t seem so, but you kain’t never tell, kain’t never tell.” He turned himself about carefully, as if balancing on a plank.

  There was open alarm on her pale face. “My Heavens, Adam! What could Paley propose to Mr. Lincoln?”

  “I don’—I don’t know, Mrs. Hightower,” he said balefully, glancing up at her. His eyes showed a pain, of which he was not conscious. “But that man sho’ would like to git his hands on your clay!”

  “But,” she broke out, “Lincoln has always seemed less interested in the clay than, than”—she faltered, lifting her gaze above his head. “Than other things.”

  “Y-yessum,” Adam said, his eyes following her, now in conscious, questioning pain. “How’s that?”

  She frowned, meeting his gaze, hers still remote. “Well, until it came out that the field might be on a lease lot Mr. Lincoln would hardly talk about exempting it,” she said ruefully.

  “Yessum!” There was tense pressure in Adam’s stuttering and he shifted heavily. “Did you ‘gree to anything, any time?”

  “Well, let’s see—it seems so long ago that we talked about it!”

  “Yed—yessum!” His stammering was a steam drill.

  “He said if he exempted the Wyche field, he would have to exempt three other fields, that somebody could lease the field from me and put up a sawmill down there and cut his timber, without any way to catch them, or stop them. . .Why, Adam?”

  “He did?”

  She lifted her eyebrows, continuing vaguely, “Yes. He talked about another way of handling it, handling it another way. But then you all said the field was on a lease lot. And it wouldn’t make any difference! I don’t know. . . .”

  Adam’s pain made him grimace and he turned away. She must have, he said to himself, not finishing, not needing to finish the thought. After all she was just a woman and didn’t know about things. Lincoln could trick her. Maybe she agreed to it, not meaning to! He began mopping and walking back and forth again. What did that crazy dream he had last week mean, anyhow? His mother had been cryptic when he told her about it. “I done told you, once,” she said, “you’ll recognize it when you come to it!” She probably just couldn’t figure it out. What connection could Mrs. Hightower have with Hannah or Hannah’s Island? That lighthouse business? What are they going to turn on about this land deal? And how could he, Adam, have a part in it? He shrugged and glanced over his shoulder. Did she say something? In his preoccupation, he had forgotten her for a moment. “I don’t know’m!” he said, in a lifted, sing-song voice, just in case she had. It reminded him of Kiger’s voice and he recalled his own words of advice to Kiger about a nigger getting in the middle in a white-folks contention! “Don’t know whut to make of this thing. I sho’ don’t!” Now Adam did not have to be guarded or listen to his voice any more. His conscience was clear. She wasn’t talking, he would not talk, either. “I kain’t tell what’s up. I don’t doubt that Paley writ a letter. But maybe they just fishin’ for whut they kin ketch!”

  She looked at him, puzzled. “But what is Kiger after, Adam?”

  “Yessum.” Adam’s teeth chattered.

  “What did Kiger tell you?”

  “Well-‘um, h-hit didn’t make too much sense.” He consulted the distance of the street beyond the fence evasively. “You know they all think I got some connection with the Yankees a-puttin’ off the deal . . . .Maybe Kiger just playin’ me along with his talk to see if’n I won’t tell him something. I don’t know’m!” He returned to his preoccupied pacing.

  Heaving a sigh and wiping her mouth of perspiration, Mrs. Hightower revived her spirits with a shake of her shoulders. “Well, anyhow,” she said briskly, “we ought to hear something soon from Mr. Lincoln.” She looked at Adam until he turned his head. “I have written Mr. Lincoln a registered letter. He will have to sign a card to accept it. At least we’ll know that he gets it. And surely he will answer it.”

  Adam cleared his throat. “Whut’d you tell ‘im this time? If ye don’t mind a-sayin’.”

  Mrs. Hightower began frowning, but turned it into a smile. “Oh, I told him, I told him, he had better come on down here and close out the deal, before we all backed out,” she said, passing it off as a jest. She regarded Adam’s watchful gaze self-consciously. “Mainly, I tried to get him down here!” She shut her eyes tight then, for a long moment, and opened them wide, facing Adam resolutely. “I told him, Adam,” she said, with great firmness, staring, staring hard at the quiet, informed, unshaken, ginger-colored face of familiar reality. But the words wouldn’t come and she shifted her gaze, laughing nervously. And then, in a different tone of voice, with—they both fully realized—different meaning, she continued, “I told him I would sell him everything at a bargain price, if he’d come on right now and close it out!” Her shoulders slumped and she shrugged. Her words were only a joke! “I’m getting so worn out with this thing!” she added plaintively.

  “Ain’t we all!” Adam laughed, in the same rueful way. “It’s done gone on too long! Too long! Gittin’ me scared the thing kain’t be brought off. It’s got to where I’m havin’ bad dreams ‘bout it!”

  But Lucy would not, could not leave the subject of her effort. Her face sobered, sharpened again. “Adam?” she said distraughtly, her lips drawing tight, her eyes staring darkly, “Adam?. . .”

  But he did not hear her. It was, as if the same compelling spirit possessed him, too, as he stood, rooted to the foot of the steps, staring into the depths of the open hall, with bright vacant eyes. Lincoln’s letter. The widow’s deal. Make Kiger produce it, if they have it. That would settle it, one way or the other! Settle it! His face flushed darkly.

  A third time she said, “Adam,” but it scarcely sounded like her voice, and plainly her attention was with her averted gaze, staring, staring back up the aisle toward a boy and a dark doorway, hearing a familiar voice say: Everybody did the best they knew how; don’t question the ways of the Almighty!

  “Yessum?” he answered hollowly.

  And the voice that was scarcely her voice went on, without willing it, saying, “Marse joined the church last night!”

  Finally moving out of his tracks, Adam said, “Y-yesum, whut’d you say?”

  And, looking down at him, her eyebrows lifted, daubing perspiration at her temples, she responded. “I was saying—Oh yes, I was saying, what will we do, Adam?” And after a moment’s silence, she added, “Maybe we’d better pray over it.”

  But Adam shrugged and turned away.

  21.

  ADAM NOSED the narrow green punt out into the current. Here, with an overhead sun on the river’s flat surface, the light cut out the picture sharply. And, in front of him, though six feet away, Adam could detect movement at the throat muscles from the back of Kiger Steele’s lean neck. Was Kiger uneasy?

  Adam dug the heavy paddle into the yellow water, pushing the boat against the
current, toward a far swamp-lined bend in the course. Maybe Kiger knew enough about those letters to make him uneasy!

  He, Adam, had negotiated this fishing trip, through a Corinthian lodge meeting. Kiger was cold to his idea at first. It took two weeks to work it out. They were on their way to the swamp up above Burnt Island, where Paley and Slappy were cutting timber. There Kiger would meet Paley and pick up the letters, while he stayed with the boat. Then they would angle back across the river to land below the Island and go out to the Bright’s place. Adam had agreed that he would take Peter Bright’s word for what the letters said. And Adam had given Kiger the grip on his telling the widow nothing about it.

  He switched the paddle to his left hand. But Adam didn’t have confidence in old man Peter any more. And Adam had made further arrangements. He had primed Marse to meet him out at his cousin Bright’s that afternoon, as if by accident. He had laid the ground carefully, though he had not told him all of the reason why. If Marse was there and he demanded that they let Marse see what was in the letters, it would be hard for them to deny him. And, if the letters did show that Mrs. Hightower had wobbled over holding on to the Wyche field and it came to it, then he might get Marse to help him uphold his mother’s hands. Adam pushed the end of the cord-bound fishing poles out from under his foot. The truth was he did not believe that Mr. Lincoln wrote them anything in a letter saying he would deal with them. A Yankee would be too sharp for a thing like that! And he doubted now that there was anything about a side deal with the widow, either. Why would he tell them! Still Adam had to know. He gazed intently through the clear noonday at the steadily enlarging wall of gray-mantled cavernous trees at the river bend. He had to know!

  Kiger picked up a tin bucket by the handle and held it up, turning half around on the seat limberly, his dark profile convolved in a gold-toothed grin. He said, “Night crawlers. We might do a little fishin’, sho’ nuff. After we git our other business wrapped up.”

  Adam nodded. But he got the way that Kiger kept looking him over, while he talked. . . .Kiger was uneasy! Why? Adam released the end of the paddle to take a swipe at his wide straw hat, pulling the brim down lower over his eyes, against the glare. This was a chancy piece of business for everybody! But it had to be done. His shoulder muscles knotted as he held the blade behind the boat for an instant at the end of his stroke, to keep straight. His gaze searched the water front along the low-lying shore, pried into the caves of dimness among the gray-boled trees. He could feel a firmness of muscle on the top side of his stomach that registered his own excitement.

  The mistrust and meanness around this land deal had got so thick anything could happen.

  He lowered his glance to the boat. All right, suppose Paley and Slappy didn’t have any such letters as Kiger had lined out to Adam! What then? He had certainly foreseen this possibility. Would they try any rough stuff on him, up here in the swamp? No. Too many. Too mixed. Paley was sure to have some sort of letters out of Lincoln. It would be easier and foxier to them to try to bluff it on the letters with old man Peter’s help.

  Adam changed over his paddle, deliberately tipping the surface to skeet up water as he went to sink the blade in the river again. Some of the spray reached Kiger and his long back collapsed in a nervous shudder. “Sorry!” Adam sang out foggily. “This heavy paddle of your’n!” He made the stroke good, pulling the paddle through. Yeah, Kiger was anxious. . . .Adam measured his strokes. And the fishing poles! How did they come into it? A cover up? Alibi? He saw the black lettering beyond Kiger on the side of the shallow boat. Yeah, the Green Ghost. It would be easy for the Ghost to shake a fellow off of his back!. . . But what good would that do? He could outswim Kiger and Slappy and Paley, all put together. And they knew it.

  They rounded the bend. A few moments later, there was a slight muscular rhythm through Kiger’s body and he turned back to Adam again, this time from the other side, pointing into the distance. “You kin pass the island through the cut and save ‘bout a half-mile of paddlin’!” he called out, eyeing Adam once more.

  Adam nodded, still more puzzled. They were a good half mile from the cut and it would take him a quarter of an hour against this current to get there. But Kiger couldn’t wait fifteen seconds to tell him—and take another look! Steadily Adam climbed the river, with his measured strokes. He searched far and near, reviewing every incident, from the first fishing trip to the up-coming moment, yet he could not account for the secret anxiety in Kiger. This tightened his own nerves.

  When he and Kiger had landed at the steamboat wood racks on Persimmon Bluff and Kiger had gone off into the swamp toward the distant sound of axes, Adam’s nervousness increased. He left the boat and got under the bluff, squatting in the cavity that high water had cut into its base. Hinshaw Slappy was a good shot with that twenty-two rifle, from behind a tree! He didn’t have much nerve, but it was hard to say what a fellow would do when he thought he could get away with it. Looking about him, Adam picked up a few sticks of wood that had fallen in loading the steamboats and laid them beside him. They would have to come in here to get him. And he would put up what resistance he could.

  When Kiger returned, Adam came out from under his cover warily, moving away from the boat and coming up on top of the bluff behind a tree that gave him a protected view of the whole surroundings. But he saw no living thing, save the lank, swinging figure of Kiger and a couple of swamp hogs. He joined Kiger on the bluff and walked a step ahead of him back to the boat. He got in, moving to the bow and facing the shore, when he sat down. “You want to pull’er awhile, Brother Kiger?” he said, keeping the trees around the edge of the clearing in his eye. And so he sat, as Kiger paddled out into the current, turning downstream and angling for the other bank to take the cut on the far side of the island. The scene remained solitary and serene, as they moved out of gunshot range across the water. Kiger’s strain had caused him to guard against the white men waylaying him. Even though it didn’t’ make good sense!

  At the bottom of his circle of vision, Adam saw that Kiger had not been relaxed by his visit with Paley. He was silent and still seemed preoccupied. More so than any paddling called for. Abruptly, Adam leaned forward. “Did ye git ‘em?” he said, sharp and quick, looking into Kiger’s face with snake eyes.

  Kiger was bent forward, pulling his paddle through. His lean freckled cheeks stitched and he soughed automatically, on an expiring tremolo, “Ye-a-ah!. . .” As he lifted his paddle, he broke away and fixed his gaze on its movement and even a second stroke, completing it with graceful care, before he looked up at Adam again. He had got himself in hand by then. “Brother Atwell,” he said with even a jocular note in his voice, “you ought to know by this time that Kiger Steele usually gits whut he goes after!”

  Adam’s eyes glimmering, withdrew. Seemed like Kiger meant more than he said! He nodded and lifted his face to Kiger again. “They must have been farther away than it sounded like, from the time it took ye?”

  But Kiger had his pace set by now. He took a couple of strokes before he replied. “They weren’t right there with the woods sawyers. Took me awhile to git aholt of ‘em.”

  Adam continued to sit facing him, staring at the opaque water reflectively, repeating for his mind’s ear the sound of Kiger’s voice when he had exclaimed, Ye-a-ah. He was convinced that Kiger was still deeply uneasy. But why? If the letters were a bluff, it would be for Peter Bright, not Kiger to make the bluff. Adam shook his head and took hold of the gunwales of the punt and, leaning forward, put a foot behind him on the other side of his seat. He carefully faced about on the cross plank to ride forward in the boat. They were half way across the river.

  When they were a couple of hundred yards nearer the other bank and still some distance above the island, a voice sang out from the shore. “Who’s that you paddlin’ for now, Steele?”

  Adam jerked his head, his eyes walling out as he searched the vine-bush-and-tree tangle. But, after a moment, he called back good-humoredly, “I heard you, Mr. Jawn, but I kain�
��t pick you out in the wilderness!” Then he did discover the tranquil, bronzed scaley face of John Hightower amid the green boughs of a leaning sycamore tree. “There you be, in a sycamore tree!” Adam laughed. “Didn’t know you ‘uz in this country even! It’s good to see you! How’s the fishin’?”

  Kiger seemed slow to speak but he greeted him, too. Adam began to sense complications. John Hightower would be staying with the Brights. He called out again to him. “Mr. Peter’s up ‘bout the house, I reckon?”

  “Naw! No, he’s not.” Mr. John answered, on a note of levity. “Mr. Peter’s with me!. . . He’s right up the river there, in the bight.”

  Adam professed astonishment. “Naw! Hit kain’t be, Mr. Pete’s fishin’! How’d you toll ‘im off down here to the river?”

  “He’ll go every once in a while,” Mr. John called back.

  Adam could see him fully now, sitting on the trunk of the big sycamore, which extended almost horizontally out over the river. “Le’me see your string!” he said, to continue the pleasantries.

  “They’re down there in the water.”

  “You mean they ain’t ever bin took out’n the water!” They both chuckled. The boat was near enough now for Adam to employ a speaking voice. “We were coming over here to see Mr. Peter. . . .On a little business.” (He paused long enough to indicate its privacy.)

  Mr. John pulled up his line to look at the hook. “Well, Pete’ll be back here.”

  Shifting tense buttocks on the plank seat, Adam came to a decision. What did he have to lose, letting John Hightower prove the letters for him, now that his own arrangement had gone awry! Mr. John didn’t like the widow, but he wouldn’t knowingly do her in. Of course, Peter Bright could wrap him around his finger. But he would hardly try to get him to tell a lie. Adam twisted about to look at Kiger. He said gruffly, rapidly, “You heard whut he said! Old man Peter may not be back here for a couple of hours. I’d just as soon get Mr. Jawn to prove those letters for me?”