Sweetwater Run

by Jan Watson

  With the last throw, the ax sank into the wood so tightly Henry had to prop his foot on the keg and work the blade out.

  “What are you doing there, Henry?”

  With his hand still on the weapon’s handle, Henry looked over his shoulder. Ace Shelton stood there big as day, a look of surprise on his face.

  “Hey, Ace. I was just doing a little target practice. This isn’t your place, is it?” Henry’s words backed up like a crawdad trying to cover his tracks.

  “Who else’s might it be?” Ace’s voice cracked with anger.

  “Well, I don’t know.” Henry turned on the charm. “I was just out for a ride, exercising my dog here.” Daisy stood in front of Henry, a low and menacing growl rumbling from her throat.

  Ace stood with his hands on his hips. “So you take Sunday rides going around destroying other people’s property for fun?”

  With a crack of thunder, the day darkened. Clouds that had been merely streaks of gunpowder gray joined forces, obscuring the sun. What light there was turned a threatening greenish black. The air was charged with danger so thick you could almost taste it.

  Henry jerked the hatchet free, letting it hang without threat at his side. He tried a smile. “Truly, I thought this thing was dry.”

  Ace didn’t say a word, just looked at the springwater jetting out against the backs of Henry’s knees.

  Tree limbs whipped over their heads, and the first drops of rain dampened the ground. Henry turned toward his horse, dismissing Ace. “There’s nothing that can’t be replaced. I’m more than happy to pay for any damage I might have caused.”

  “I don’t want your money, mister. I want you to fix what you busted.”

  “Sure thing. Another day, though.” Henry wheedled like he was dealing with a recalcitrant child. “You’d better go on home. It’s fixing to come a gully washer.”

  Ace strode toward Henry, not stopping until he was in Henry’s face.

  Despite himself, Henry took a step backward.

  “Oh, I’m going,” Ace said. “I’m going straight to the sheriff’s office.” He raised his hand and jabbed Henry in the chest with his index finger, each poke delineating each word. “You. Henry. Thomas. Stay. Off. My. Land.” Ace was breathing heavy as he continued to threaten Henry. “Don’t think for a minute I don’t know what you’re up to.” With that, Ace turned his back and began to walk off. “And stay away from my sister-in-law,” he threw over his shoulder. “She’s too good for the likes of you.”

  Henry’s emotions swirled like the gathering storm clouds overhead. Ace’s angry wounding words took him right back to the little boy he’d been, clutching his mother’s skirts while she begged credit at the local store. Not good enough—words sharp and jagged as broken glass slashed Henry’s fragile ego. Not good enough.

  The tomahawk in Henry’s hand seemed to take on a life of its own. Just as the weapon had zeroed in on the wooden keg, it now sought the back of Ace’s head. As soon as the hatchet left his hand, Henry wished to call it back. “Ace,” he yelled in a warning already much too late and “Please, God, no,” the first prayer he’d ever uttered.

  Ace fell hard, facedown.

  Henry stood staring, disbelieving what he had done. A gorge hot as acid rose in his throat, and he trembled violently. He shook so bad he could barely walk as he followed Daisy’s lead to Ace.

  The dog whimpered, tucked her tail, and turned pleading eyes on Henry.

  Henry sank to his knees. As if observing from far away, he saw his hand go out and pluck the tomahawk from Ace’s head. Before the blood flowed, Henry could see the stark white edges of Ace’s skull plate and the bulge of Ace’s brain. With the tips of two fingers, he felt for a pulse at Ace’s neck. Nothing! Without a doubt, Ace was dead. No one could survive such an assault. He had killed a man!

  “I can’t leave him out in the open like this,” Henry said, his chest heaving in panic. Maybe he could find something to cover him with. He grabbed Ace by the feet and began to pull him toward the spring. Once he had to stop, he was so sick. “Why’d you have to come up here, Ace?” he pleaded as he dragged. “Why’d you make me do this?” Stinging rain lashed his face, then turned to hail, pinging off the ground and off his back, hard as glass marbles. He cast about for a sanctuary for Ace.

  The spring originated from under a cliff, which Ace, Henry surmised, had lined with rock. Now, grunting with effort, Henry positioned Ace’s body there out of easy sight. Next, filled with impotent rage and wild with desire to cover up his crime, he flung the barrels and reeds of Ace’s gravity flow system over the side of the mountain.

  Cursing his bad fortune, Henry followed the plumbing down the mountain as far as he dared, jerking pegs out of the ground and shoving pipe down sinkholes. Back up the mountain, his fury replaced by anguish and fear, he retrieved the tomahawk and wiped the blade on the wet grass. The rain would take care of the blood.

  “Come, Daisy,” he called, mounting the horse. He had to get to town and decide his next move. There wasn’t a chance in ten anybody would trace him back to Ace, but still he’d need to set up an alibi—maybe get out of town for a while.

  His mind churned with plans that he discarded one after another. His mind and body were superalert as if he were a warrior in battle. And in a way he was. He was in a war to save himself.

  The rain stopped as he neared town. Mud puddles steamed in the heat. Tree branches and sheared leaves littered the trail. He pulled off the road and dismounted near a creek to remove his shirt and examine his pants, looking for traces of blood. The driving rain had rinsed him clean. Still, he stooped at the creek’s edge and splashed handfuls of water over his face and hair. Catching hold of Daisy’s collar, he pulled her into the creek and scrubbed her hard. She shivered and whined but licked his face. Daisy was always on his side.

  By the time he returned to the office, his strategy was set. He’d go to the boardinghouse as usual for supper and casually drop a few hints about a meeting in Cincinnati. Near dark he’d transfer the money from his safe into his saddlebags. The tomahawk he would clean and put back in the display case. His wet and muddied clothes he’d ditch somewhere between here and Chicago—his real destination.

  Yes, that would work. Though ill and driven nearly mad by the day’s events, he rubbed down his horse and filled Daisy’s bowls. Bathed and freshly shaved, he stretched out on his cot for a moment. But every time he closed his eyes, he saw Ace fall again. His mind replayed the strange green light of the day, the splat of the ax seating itself in the back of Ace’s head, the pull of the body as he dragged it uphill, the way it collapsed, as if boneless, when he shoved it in the rock-walled aperture of the spring.

  He felt boneless himself as he walked toward the boardinghouse for supper—like he might just float away. The world had shifted on its axis in the course of a few mindless minutes on the side of a lushly timbered mountain. It seemed like arrows pointed from all directions, naming him a murderer.

  Henry’s lawyer’s mind tried to make sense of the senseless. It wasn’t murder exactly. He didn’t set out to kill Ace Shelton. If Ace hadn’t flung out his taunts, nothing would have come of it. So you could say Ace brought it on himself. Was that how a jury would see it? Henry wondered. Was that how he’d plead his own case? He hoped never to find out.

  Greasy meat loaf and lumpy squash sat heavily in Henry’s stomach as he trekked home. He barely made it to the house before he lost the meal. No matter the facts of the case, he couldn’t make it right, and he couldn’t bear his own company. He packed his saddlebags and prepared for the trip he’d mentioned casually to his tablemates over supper.

  He packed little clothing. He could buy whatever he needed in Chicago. But he wanted his shaving kit, one of his ledgers, the money of course, and the packet of soiled clothing wrapped in oilcloth. At the last moment, for reasons he couldn’t have identified, he added the barely used Bible.

  The Out of Office sign bobbed in the window when he shut the door. With a twist of t
he key, it was locked. He forced himself to walk at a normal pace as he went around to the stable. Soon as the horse was saddled and the saddlebags were secure, he whistled for Daisy.

  Down the middle of the road they went—man, horse, and dog, to the world’s eyes innocent as innocent could be. Henry wondered if he’d ever be back.

  CHAPTER 24

  MONDAY MORNING AND Cara couldn’t get started. Even her whittling basket couldn’t keep her attention. She set it on the windowsill and grabbed the broom. Ever since Big Boy planted the thought of a pardon in her mind, she’d been good for nothing. She fought to keep her emotions tamped, like a fire banked for the night, for Big Boy had warned her not to set her hopes too high. These things had to follow the letter of the law—it could be weeks or months or not at all. Cara sort of wanted to call on that lawyer fellow, that Henry Thomas, but Big Boy said wait up on that. He said sometimes it’s better not to get in your own way, and Cara knew that was true.

  While she stayed out of her own way, she prayed. Praying went along good with sweeping. The steady whisk, whisk of broom straw against the wooden floor helped put her mind on her heavenly petitions. Goodness, though, the porch was already clean as a hound’s tooth. She remembered her grandmother, her daddy’s mama, used to sweep her yard. Granny had the prettiest blue eyes and the sweetest smile. Her yard was mostly hard-packed earth with patches of struggling grass much like Cara’s own. So with broom in hand, Cara stepped out in the yard. Yesterday’s hard rain had settled the dust, but she gathered pebbles and feathers and leaves into her dustpan. Granny would be disappointed to know this was the first time Cara had tidied her front yard this way.

  Reluctantly, she hung the broom and dustpan back in place behind the door. She might as well build a fire and get to the laundry. August was fast approaching, and that meant she’d soon be elbow-deep in tomatoes and bushels of green beans. She really didn’t have time to dillydally like she’d been doing the last few days.

  But first she’d take a second to practice looking up the road. Shading her eyes with one hand, she stared hard. That was the way Dimmert would come, just over the ridge there. She meant for him to find her like this—standing and watching. As soon as she spied him, she’d take off running. He’d throw his arms around her and draw her close, and then they would kiss. Kiss and kiss like they’d never stop.

  Oh, just the thought . . . how sweet—how very sweet.

  Cara stared so hard where she expected to see Dimm she nearly missed the little boy heading her way. “Jay?” Even though he was still at a distance, she could see he was white as snow and clutching his side like he’d run the two miles from home.

  Just like in her daydreams, she ran up the road, except to Jay instead of Dimm. The boy nearly collapsed in her arms. “Jay, whatever is the matter? Honey, what’s wrong?”

  Jay bent at the waist and sucked air. “Daddy—daddy didn’t . . . Mommy’s sick . . . Pauline’s hungry . . .”

  Heavy as he was, Cara lifted Jay and carried him to the porch. She handed him a glass of water.

  The poor little thing gulped it down, then lay on the floor. “Daddy has been gone all night,” he stammered, “and Mommy’s sick with worry.”

  “You wait here while I get Pancake.” Cara sprinted toward the stable. Thankfully, Pancake was in a traveling mood.

  With Jay holding on from behind, they were soon on their way to the Sheltons’. Evidently Ace had gone off sometime yesterday afternoon and hadn’t come home. That was not like Ace at all. There had been the threat of storm, so he didn’t take any of the kids along, Jay related. And truthfully, Cara knew, Dance was so much better she could handle them alone. But still, Ace would never stay out all night. Cara’s heart was in her throat the whole trip. Please let him be home when we get there, she prayed over and over.

  The front door stood open, the screen door ajar. Merky and Wilton sat at the kitchen table.

  “I fixed them breakfast before I left,” Jay said. That would explain the oatmeal stuck to their faces and congealing in their bowls.

  Cara grabbed a rag and washed their little faces and their little hands all the while keeping watch on Dance, who sat staring into the distance.

  Cleve needed a diaper change and something to eat. He didn’t cry but sat under the table like he was too tired to move. With a clean nappy and some soothing powder, he started fretting.

  “Hey, Wilton,” Cara said while stirring milk into the last of the oatmeal, “how about you feed your brother? Did anybody go to bed last night?”

  “We all just watched for Daddy,” Jay replied.

  Cara approached Dance cautiously, murmuring words of comfort. Dance didn’t resist when Cara took Pauline and did for her what she’d just finished doing for Cleve. “Here now, Dance,” she said while helping Pauline to nurse. “Feed the baby.”

  Dance took the strong sweet tea Cara offered and drank it down. Cara buttered bread and broke a corner. “Take just a bite.”

  Dance’s eyes cleared, though they kept a haunted look.

  Cara gave the children bread and jam and poured yesterday’s milk into their cups. From the pasture near the barn she could hear the cow bawling. That scared her more than anything. Ace would never let the cow suffer from lack of milking.

  Dance clutched Pauline to her chest with one arm and with the other opened the screen door Cara had just closed. “Ace,” she yelled. “Ace Shelton, where are you?”

  Cara walked up behind her. “How long has he been gone?”

  Dance stood with her hand on the door’s handle. “It was late afternoon yesterday. He was going to check that stupid spring again.” She closed the door. “He said he’d be home in time for supper.”

  The bawling cow tore at Cara. “If I bring the cow down to the porch, do you reckon you could milk her, Dance? I thought Jay and I would walk up the mountain and look for Ace. Maybe he’s broken a leg or fallen in a sinkhole or something.”

  Dance’s face took on a hopeful color. “Maybe he has. It would be just like Ace to break a bone and leave me with all the work to do.”

  Cara found the milk bucket and a rope lead for the cow. The animal didn’t resist when she led her across the barnyard. On a sawed-off stump nearby the watering trough, Cara noticed a dirty hatchet lying on the chopping block. Ace must have killed a chicken for yesterday’s supper, but he would have washed the hatchet.

  The swish and ping of milk against the side of the bucket accompanied Cara and Jay as they left the yard. The path was narrow and steep, so Pancake was left behind. Just this side of the woods, where the trail commenced, Cara stopped to look back. Dance sat on the bottom porch step milking. The children gathered on the top step, Wilton holding Pauline, Cleve bunched between him and Merky. A flock of crows shot over the corner of the roof, cawing and dipping their black wings toward Dance and her children. An ominous foreboding chilled Cara; she had to tear her eyes away from the picture at the porch. I’ll never see them like that again, she thought.

  Jay plunged ahead, beating weeds aside with a stick. “Come on, Aunt Cara. Time’s a-wasting.”

  They climbed steadily for a time on a trail obviously familiar to Jay. Cara never would have found it without him. Now and then they stopped for Jay to exclaim over the destruction of his father’s sweetwater run. “You think a wild hog did this?” he asked, his brows knit together.

  Cara had heard of feral pigs wreaking havoc on everything in their paths, but she’d never actually seen one. “I don’t know. Did your daddy ever say anything about finding hogs here?”

  Jay looked about the trampled grass. “He’s told me stories about them. He’s going to be really mad.”

  Cara didn’t say anything. Pigs might uproot the system but in some places the pipes were missing. Hogs couldn’t carry them away. Her bringing Jay was a mistake. She should have gotten one of the men from church or the preacher to help look. It took every ounce of her strength not to run away. But if Ace was hurt, the sooner they found him the better. She stepp
ed ahead of Jay, following a path barely wide enough for one, and picked up her pace.

  At least it was cool in the shadow of the trees. She marveled at Ace’s ingenuity—running the springwater down the mountain in such a clever way. And she couldn’t help but remember the day she’d sat with him, drinking the sweet, cold water from a tin cup.

  She guessed it was forty-five minutes or so before they came into the clearing where Ace had discovered the spring. Jay headed for the busted keg, but Cara caught his arm. There was something very wrong beyond that smashed wood.

  Cara knelt down to face Jay. “I need you to ride Pancake to Aunt Darcy’s and—”

  “But I’ve got to find my dad.”

  Cara made her voice stern, and she gave him a slight shake. “Jay, I think your daddy is hurt bad. Now listen and do as I say. Take Pancake and ride to Aunt Darcy’s. Tell her to get Brother Jasper and have him bring some men up here.”

  Jay’s face clouded over. His lips trembled. “I got a bad feeling in my belly.”

  She wanted to hold him and soothe his troubles, but instead she stayed firm. “The best way to help your daddy is to go for help. Can you do that?”

  Cara watched the boy find his resolve. He’d never looked more like Ace. “What should I tell Mommy?”

  “Tell her you’re going for help. Tell her I’m staying here.”

  As soon as Jay disappeared from sight, Cara fought to find her own resolve. She kept her back turned from the opening of the spring, where she had caught a glimpse of a man’s booted foot. It seemed a million locusts shrilled from the surrounding trees, but she could still hear the dreadful buzz of the green flies she’d seen lifting and settling there like a swarm of bees.

  Queasy and shaking, Cara walked a few dozen paces away and eased herself down. The carpet of leaves was still damp from yesterday’s storm. Wrapping her arms around her bent knees, she tried to figure what might have happened. It must be that Ace had fallen. He probably went on the cliff that overlooked the spring. The storm yesterday was sudden and caught him off guard. The ground gave way and caused his fall. But wait. It could be anyone at the bottom of the cliff. Just because Ace was missing didn’t mean he was dead. It could be someone else’s sorrow lying there.