“I need to go find Hanna.”
“No, you’re not going to see her again,” he said with a firm grip on my shoulders.
My first reaction was to laugh at him and then the anger returned. “You can’t stop me from seeing her.”
His next words caught me totally unprepared, “I rather doubt this Miss Wesley will have much interest in seeing any of us again, Mathew.”
I reached out for him, grabbing his arms and trying to keep myself from hitting him. “What have you done? You haven’t hurt her?”
“No, of course not,” he said. “I’ve only asked your brother to escort her home and on the way to explain to her the facts of the situation.” He calmly reached to loosen my grip on his arms.
“The facts?” I had to ask, my mind swirling with the sequence of events and wondering how Hannah could possibly be reacting to all of this. How would I ever be able to explain what had happened and how my family had treated her?
At that moment one of my father’s men came up and whispered something in his ear. He nodded and then turned back to me. “I want you to come with me for a moment,” he said, and then he was walking away through the crowd, assuming I was following him. Instead, I turned and went quickly through the house and out the front door. I had to go to Hanna and try to salvage the wreckage my family had created. The driveway was packed with cars parked at all angles and my car was out closer to the road since we had arrived so late. I began walking down the drive toward West Paces Ferry Road and closer to the street I found the black sedan parked on the lawn. I started it and was beginning to put the car in gear when my side window was suddenly blocked. My father’s bodyguard, William, was standing there. He opened the door and reached in to stop me. I tried again to shift the car, but he grabbed my arm and pushed me back against the seat.
“Mr. Coulter, there’s no need to get all excited here,” William said. “Your father asked me to find you. He has some business the two of you need to deal with.”
I knew that trying to get away was useless. This goon would never allow me to ignore my father’s orders. I looked up at his scowling face and heavy brow and thought how ridiculous he looked in a dinner jacket, the muscles in his neck bulging at the restraint of the white collar of his shirt. I felt desperate to get away and to find Hanna, but knew I would have to wait.
I got out of the car and followed William back up the drive toward the house. He was carrying a small lantern and he turned onto a path that led around the house and down a hill to a creek that ran through the back of the property. We had walked for several minutes before I saw the gas light that illuminated a small clearing along the creek where a gazebo had been built to sit and enjoy the quiet tranquility of the running water and surrounding woods. I could see two men standing in the screened structure and as we got closer I saw my father was there with another man I didn’t recognize. William stopped at the screened door to hold it open for me and I limped up the steps. I felt a numb helplessness as I went over to stand next to my father.
The man that was with him was also dressed for the evening and must have been one of the guests. He was a smaller man than the imposing Samuel Coulter and he had a desperate, fearful expression on his face. Another of my father’s men I hadn’t noticed at first stood off in a corner. My father didn’t look up to acknowledge me, but instead continued to stare at the man standing in front of him and then finally he said, “Mathew, this is Walter. He works for Lenny over on the West Side.” Lenny Morgan was one of my father’s top associates in the business. Neither of us made any effort to greet the other. My father continued on in a slow cadence. “Walter has been trying to branch out a bit on his own lately…”
“Mr. Coulter,” the man named Walter said with panic in his voice, but my father cut him off.
“Walter thinks there is enough business out there for him to start setting up some of our customers with his own product and cutting our prices.”
I watched as the hulking William walked around me and moved over to stand behind Walter. The man was visibly shaking and even in the dim light from the clearing I could see the sweat beading on his face and running into his eyes. He used the sleeve of his black dinner jacket to try to wipe it away.
“Really, Mr. Coulter, you don’t understand.”
“Oh, I understand completely, Walter. I’ve had to deal with punks like you for years. I give you an opportunity and you get greedy and think you’re smarter than me.” I could sense the anger building in my father’s voice. He moved over so he stood only inches away from the man’s face. “If I let you get away with this, how could I run my business? Every asshole in Atlanta would think they could screw with me and steal from me.”
Walter tried to speak again, but only stuttered something unintelligible. I looked down and saw a small puddle of urine starting to leak out from his right pant leg onto the wood floor of the gazebo. You could smell the sickening scent of fear and piss on the man.
My father noticed it, too. “My god, man! You disgust me!” He backed away and nodded to get his man’s attention. William moved up close behind Walter and I watched as his arms came up, one with a hand across the man’s mouth to silence him, the other with a long knife that shined in the low light of the gas flame. He held the knife up near the man’s face and let it drag down over his cheek and then up near his right eye. Then my father moved closer and suddenly threw his entire weight into a punch that caught the man flush in the gut. Unprepared for the blow and desperately preoccupied by the knife at his face, he doubled over in pain. I could hear his breath blow out in a rush of air. William put the knife away and then turned the man around and held the back of his head as he brought his knee up viciously into his face. I heard the bones in his nose shatter as he wailed out in pain and fell to the floor. Holding his face, blood gushed out between his fingers and dripped on the floor. Everything happened quickly. I was so surprised and sickened I wasn’t even able to respond. I started to back away toward the door and watched as my father’s man moved in and began kicking him unmercifully in the stomach.
My father reached out to stop me. “You need to know what the world is like out there, son. We have to look out for ourselves because there are assholes like this around every corner that want what we have and will do anything to take it.”
There was a vicious hate in his voice and the distorted look on his face was terrifying. The violence of the moment was so sudden I was stunned in disbelief. The man’s blood flowing out and across the wood floor took me suddenly back to times in the War when such a sight had become so commonplace that men rarely stopped to notice or even care. We lived with blood smeared on our faces and hardened beneath our nails. Violence and brutality became a part of our daily journey from one horror to the next.
My father’s voice became muted and distant in my brain. I managed to pull away and stumbled through the screen door and down the steps, my head pounding and nausea rising in my gut. I tripped on a root in the path and fell face forward. Trying to catch myself, I felt a searing pain as my hands and face scraped along the stones in the path. I got up and started off again through the darkness. With no ligh,t I was soon off the path and into the heavy woods, branches slapping at my body and face. Then I heard the sound of the band suddenly coming through the heavy underbrush. I saw a few lights from the back of the house and the party. I veered to the right to avoid the crowds and continued to stumble along, trying to make my way around to the front of the house to find a car and get as far away as possible.
I made it back to the front drive. In the lights from the porch I looked down and saw my hands were cut and bleeding from my fall and blood had splattered down the front of my white shirt from the wounds I could feel throbbing on my chin and cheek. I staggered through the parked cars and eventually found my own. This time no one stopped me and I was soon out on the road and drove away.
At first, I didn’t even think about where I was going. I just wanted to get the image of the atta
ck I had just witnessed out of my head. The sickening horror of it exploded again in my mind and I pulled the car over onto the shoulder. The car skidded to a stop in the loose gravel. I opened the door so I could puke out the bile churning in my gut. It came in waves and seemed to go on and on. Finally, I was able to sit back in the seat to try to get my breath. When I opened my eyes, I could see myself in the dim light in the rearview mirror. My face was swollen and bleeding. My eyes were flushed with tears from the puking and dark circles spread out beneath them. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I felt my heart pounding in my chest and my lungs aching to get air.
I’m not sure if I passed out or fell asleep, or how long I was out. I was startled back to consciousness by a passing car that honked because I had left the car door open. They had to swerve around me. I put my hands on the steering wheel and all the images of the night came back to me. Then I thought of Hanna and I knew I had to go see her. I pulled the door closed and drove out into the night.
Hanna lived in a small apartment above a garage behind one of the big houses down in Ansley Park, closer in to downtown Atlanta. Somehow, I managed to drive there without crashing even though I was barely aware of the road or the traffic around me. I parked out on the street in front of the house and walked back up the drive. A small light was on next to the door to her apartment at the top of a set of stairs that led up the side of the garage. I knew I needed to see Hanna, to hold her and tell her I loved her and wanted to marry her. The fact I was bleeding and looking like I had been run over by a truck was the furthest thing from my mind.
As I reached the bottom of the stairs the door opened above me and I looked up with a feeling of relieved expectation. I started to speak, but then a man came out of the door. In the light, I could see it was my brother Jess. He was putting his jacket on and he had his back to me when Hanna came out. I stumbled back into the shadows and watched as she came into his arms and kissed him. She was dressed in a white silk robe and stood there in bare feet kissing my brother. He pulled her robe open and I could see her nakedness as he put his arms around her waist. Then they were talking in whispers and laughing. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I backed further into the shadows hidden by a large bush at the side of the garage and I felt myself sinking again into that abyss of darkness and betrayal.
Later as I drove through the night, headlights blinding as cars passed, I saw the images of my brother holding and kissing Hanna Wesley continuing to repeat in my mind. All I could feel was numb and empty inside. Their betrayal had been absolute and crushing and I had been unable to move or speak. I had stood there in the darkness of the bushes as my brother came down the stairs and walked away down the drive. I heard the engine of a car start and drive away and then the door above me closed and the light was turned off. As I stood there in the darkness I was overwhelmed by the shame of not confronting them. I should have run up the stairs and lashed out at my brother and told Hanna what a whore she was. I should have gotten all of the bitterness and emotion out, but instead I had hidden helplessly in the darkness like a schoolboy who couldn’t stand up for himself.
It was the shame in all of that, I suppose, that bothered me most that night as I drove out of Atlanta.
Chapter Five
The car seemed to drive itself. I suppose I knew where I was headed before I had any conscious sense of my destination. My mind was locked on the scenes from earlier that night, the murderous rage in my father’s eyes and the lustful and betraying look of the woman I thought had cared for me. I drove through the town of Columbus, Georgia and then on into Alabama and down through Eufaula and Dothan, when the sun began to show the faintest glow of light from the coming morning over my left shoulder. It was then I first realized what my destination had been from the beginning.
By the time I reached the Florida border the sun was up behind me and in a little town called DeFuniak Springs I stopped for gasoline and some food. My hands and face still ached from my fall the previous night. The blood had dried and was a dull brown on my skin and clothes. The people in the restaurant I limped into were more than a little taken aback by my soiled tuxedo shirt and bruised and bloody face, but they brought out the food without a word. After getting directions from my befuddled hosts I kept on heading south on the narrow road through heavy wooded swampland. Only a few farms and logging camps along the way broke the relentless isolation of the wilderness and the further I traveled, the road continued to deteriorate beneath me. When I got south of Freeport, the way was not much better than a wide sandy trail. I followed it along the eastern edge of the Choctawhatchee Bay to the ferry at Jolly Bay. As I waited for the ferry to return I got out of the car and looked out across the water to the south. It was a deep blue from the reflection of the clear skies above and the west wind kicked up a light chop on the surface. A large flock of ducks flew in low and landed along the tall marsh grasses near the shore. An old man sat in a wooden fishing boat a few hundred feet offshore and he caught two fish in the short time I stood there watching him.
When the ferry pulled up I drove onboard for the ride across the shallow bay to Point Washington, a little town that had grown up around the lumber business. There was a small store there so I stopped in to buy something cool to drink and some food for the rest of the trip. A large woman stood behind a counter and helped me. Her complexion was dark-skinned, almost native. Her face was impassive and she gave nothing more than a nod in response to my requests. When it was time to total my purchases, I sensed her staring at the state of my clothes and the visible wounds on my body. They had iced cola drinks in a cooler and some pickles and sausages on the counter that I gathered to purchase. There was a phone and with permission and some money placed on the counter, I called a friend in Atlanta to say I was going down to the beach and would appreciate being able to stay for a while out at his family’s cottage. He immediately acknowledged I could stay as long as I liked. The family wouldn’t even be down this year because they would all be off to Europe for the summer. He told me where the key was hidden out in the outhouse behind the cottage. I asked him not to let anyone know he had heard from me.
Out behind the store there was a sawmill, unpainted and weathered with stripped tree trunks stacked high all around and pallets of rough lumber over in another part of the clearing in the trees. A painted sign over the main door read Bidwell Mill.
It was midday by the time I was back in my car and the ruts in the road were growing in size. The car bounced and jostled in the loose sand and I couldn’t make much more than five or ten miles per hour. I sensed I was getting closer to the shore by the smell of salt and fish in the air. My wheels began to lose grip and the car swayed and lurched as I accelerated to keep from getting stuck. The engine whined as I tried to keep going, but I knew it was hopeless as the wheels continued to dig deeper into the soft sand.
Then I was stopped and the engine stalled. Suddenly it was very quiet. Only the sound of a few birds up in the heavy live oak trees broke the silence. Sitting there looking out ahead, I kept both hands on the wheel, breathing deeply, trying to get a sense of where I was and how I was going to keep on. Finally, I got out of the car and walked around it, looking at the rear wheels stuck up to their axles in loose sand. The sun was beating down hard now and motion above caught my eye. I looked up to see a gray hawk sweep in lower for a better look and then flare away at the sight of me. The bird lifted up easily on the air currents and continued on its flight, looking ever vigilantly towards the Earth for its next meal.
Sitting down on the front fender of the disabled Ford I wiped the sweat away from my eyes and tried to consider my situation. I wasn’t entirely sure how much farther it was to the little village of Grayton Beach. The directions I’d been given by the reluctantly quiet woman back in Point Washington had been fairly simple and I felt I was getting close. Some time ago my friend had described Grayton Beach as not much more than a few random and rustic cottages built into the white sand dunes and sea oats along the
Gulf of Mexico. It was the solitude he had described, I suppose, that had stuck in my mind.
I started off walking down the road. Tall pines and live oak trees grew thick on each side. I hadn’t gone more than a few hundred yards when I was startled by what sounded like some large animal coming through the brush off to my left. Backing up a few steps, I contemplated my options. If it was a wild boar I could run and climb a tree before its lethal tusks made short work of me. Or perhaps it was just a deer that would spook away when it came into the clearing of the road and saw me.
I was certainly not prepared to see a large brown horse burst out through the underbrush from a narrow trail and onto the road with a young woman seated up on top. I noticed her hair first. It was long and black and floated out behind her in the soft trace of breeze that was blowing. Her skin was dark like a polished mahogany wood. She wore denim pants tucked into high black boots that had a dusty coat of sand and a loose white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The horse noticed me before she did and bolted sideways, causing her to rein in the big animal. Then she saw me and as our eyes met there was no sense of fear or alarm in her face, just a calm expression of confusion as I imagine my appearance was a bit strange and unexpected for the remote northern shores of Florida. She settled her horse and walked it over closer to me. Then she started to laugh, which surprised me even more. Trying to stifle her snickers, her voice was soft and calm, “You appear to be a bit lost.”
I stood there speechless, looking at this girl, too tired to find a response. She slowly climbed down from her mount and held the reins in her left hand as she walked up to me. The dried blood on my face and hands and all over my clothes must have been somewhat concerning to her because she stayed just far enough away to be able to jump back up on top of that horse if she had to.
Grayton Winds Page 5
