“I love you and I want you to be my wife, Annie Martin,” I said, my heart beating at double time. She just stared back at me with that beautiful grin on her face and the longer she stood there speechless, the more I thought she was going to turn me down for being such a strange and pathetic character. “A proposal is usually followed by an answer,” I said.
“Mathew Coulter, you are an original,” she replied.
“And is that a good thing?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s a very good thing… and yes, I will marry you!”
I took a deep breath and sighed with great relief before kissing her again and holding her tightly, not wanting her to ever get away. I took a ring out of my pocket that my mother had given me years ago. It had belonged to her grandmother. I tried to keep my hands from shaking as I took her hand in mine and slid it on. She looked at it and smiled and then kissed me again. “I love you, Annie,” I said.
But, there was another matter that needed to be dealt with and for some reason I couldn’t let the elation of the moment linger. She could see the concern on my face.
“And what’s the matter?” she asked. “Was that not the answer you were hoping for?”
“No, of course not,” I said. “There are some things back in Florida I need to take care of.”
“In Florida?”
“I’ll only be gone for a while, but it’s something that has to be done.”
“I assume this is about your second family down there,” she said. “It’s Sara Dalton, isn’t it?”
“Yes, she’s in trouble again and I’m very concerned about her little daughter,” I said. “Something needs to be done.”
“So, you ask me to marry you and then tell me you’re going to run off to Florida for another woman?”
“You know that’s not the case,” I replied. “Sara has gone over the edge again and someone needs to deal with her.” I continued to explain what Palumbo had told me at lunch.
When I had finished, she said, “I understand, Mathew. I suppose it’s why I love you, but I’ll be damned if I can truly understand why at times.”
Chapter Thirty-five
I made arrangements at the office to take a short leave, much to the consternation of my editor. In the end, he told me my job may or may not be waiting for me when I returned. The next morning, I was on a train to Florida. It took nearly three days to make the trip. I finally got a ride on a boat out of Panama City to run over to Point Washington. I knocked on the Bidwell’s door late that night. They were, of course, surprised to see me, but welcomed me in. Rebecca was there and I was amazed how she had grown up and matured. I could see why Headley was still smitten. I found out her brother, Jonas, had eventually given up hope of ever catching Sara Dalton’s eye, which was obviously for the best. He married a girl from up in DeFuniak Springs. He moved there and built a house for them and he was working for a construction company.
When I asked about Sara and Melanee, Rebecca’s face turned grim. “I’m truly afraid for little Melanee, Mathew,” she said. “I’ve offered to have her stay over with us for a while to give Sara a chance to get back on her feet. It’s that man she’s hooked up with.”
“Who is this guy?” I asked.
Eli Bidwell said, “We don’t know much about him, other than he’s from over in Tallahassee. He was a merchant sailor but he got put off his last boat and he’s nothing but trouble.”
Rebecca’s mother, Priscilla, spoke for the first time. “Every day he comes over here for supplies, I feel like I need to take a bath after he leaves. How in the world Sara puts up with him I’ll never know?”
The Bidwell’s made up a spare room for me and offered to drive me into Grayton Beach the next morning. I slept very little, trying to think what I could possibly do to help Sara and Melanee Dalton. I also wondered about what I had left behind back in New York.
When morning finally arrived, I had at last fallen asleep and Eli had to wake me. I splashed some water on my face and threw my things in the back of his truck. We rode mostly in silence as I thought about what sequence of events may lie ahead. Eli asked me a few questions about James Headley’s feelings for his daughter. I did my best to reassure him Jimmy was a good man and had nothing but the best intentions. In the back of my mind I was hoping that was indeed the case.
We pulled into town around ten that morning. I asked Eli to drop me at the Headley’s place. Dark clouds were blowing in fast from the west, an angry purple and dark blue, the wind swirling about and pushing the trees in all directions. When we drove by the Beach Hotel the doors and windows were closed and no one was about. I thanked Eli for the ride and told him I would probably be heading out in a day or two. I asked whether it was okay if I called him from the hotel for a ride back. He said yes, and then before he drove away went on to say, “You need to be careful Mathew and you let me know if you need any help.”
I unlocked the Headley place and put my bags in the back room. The old place was blistering hot, having been closed up for so long, but comforting and haunting at the same time as the memories of my time there came back to me. I opened all of the windows and doors and let the cooler wind from off the Gulf blow through the screens. I looked at the old table I had toiled at for so long in writing my book. It sat there empty and seemingly neglected.
After all of the time coming down from New York to think through the situation, I still didn’t know what I was going to do. Finally, I just decided to go and see for myself. As I walked over to the front door to leave, I saw Sara and Melanee coming up the steps onto the porch. I walked out to meet them. Sara held Melanee’s hand and helped her up the stairs. I was shocked at how gaunt the woman’s face and body looked. She was slight to begin with and had seemed to lose even more weight. Dark circles hung low beneath her eyes and her skin had a sickly pallor. I also noticed a large bruise on the side of her neck and I felt my anger welling up to the surface again.
Melanee was a good head taller than the last time I had seen her and as she reached out in front for the porch railing, she said, “Mathew, it’s you, isn’t it? When Momma said someone was over at the Headley’s, I knew it was you.”
“How are you, kid?” I asked, and she walked carefully over across the space between us with her arms held out. I knelt down and gave her a hug and she clung to me like she would never let go.
“Mathew, I’ve missed you so much,” the little girl said. I looked up at her mother who stood there without speaking. She was having a hard time standing steady and her gaze was distant and indifferent.
“Hello Sara,” I said as I stood up, holding on to Melanee’s hand. I could see she was having a difficult time focusing on me.
“Welcome back,” she finally said, and her voice was weak and almost a whisper.
“Mathew, you have to come over,” Melanee said. “Champ and Maggie are here. They’ve finally come back and you just have to see them.” When I looked down at her to answer, I could see she also had an ugly bruise on her forearm.
“Sara, what’s happening here?” I said, trying to contain my anger and holding up her daughter’s arm for her to see. She tried to understand what I was showing her, but her head wavered back and forth and I thought she was going to fall. I stepped over and grabbed her arm to steady her. I could smell the drink on her breath. I looked down at Melanee and asked, “How did you hurt your arm, honey?” Her face tilted down and I lifted her chin up. “Tell me what happened, Melanee.”
“It was Farley,” she said slowly and cautiously. “He got mad at me again.”
I turned back to Sara and I finally lost my composure. “How in hell can you let anyone treat your daughter like this?” Again, she looked right through me in a drunken blur. Then over her shoulder I saw a man coming down the street. He was a large man, dressed roughly in old and dirty work clothes, the shirt sleeves rolled up high to reveal big arms. As he came closer, I could see he was staggering a bit, having trouble walking in a straight line. His face
was unshaven and his hair was oily and uncombed. When he saw me holding Sara’s arm I saw a fury build in his eyes and his fists clench.
“This must be Farley?” I said. Sara turned and saw him coming and then pushed me away, a fearful look on her face. A flash of lightning on the horizon was followed by a low rumble of thunder a few seconds later. The sky out toward Destin was almost black in the middle of the day. I turned and opened the screen door and helped Melanee inside. “I want you to go in and sit over on the couch for a few minutes, honey,” I said, and she touched her way along the furniture and then sat down. I came back out and this Farley fellow was just coming up the steps, his face bright red in anger.
“Sara, who the hell is this asshole?” he said. She didn’t answer and I pushed her over to the side with my arm to stand right in front of the man. He was also clearly drunk and then it started to rain and the thunder crashed again. I told Sara to go inside and I pushed her in that direction when she didn’t respond.
“Get your hands off her you piece a shit!” he spat.
“Sara, just get inside,” I said again, and then with all the force I could muster, I rushed at the man and grabbed him with both hands by the front of his shirt and just kept pushing him backwards until we were both falling through the air and down the steps. I landed on top of him on the planked walkway and I heard his head smack on the boards and the air blow out of his lungs as he gasped to get his breath back, a stunned expression across his face. Before he could begin to recover I hit him as hard as I could with a wild punch that came from as far back as I could manage in my frenzy. I felt the bones in my fist break against his nose and cheek and I screamed out in pain. I hit him again in spite of the white-hot jolt of fire that shot up my entire arm. His eyes went blank as blood started pulsing out of his smashed nose. I grabbed the hair on the top of his head with both hands and started pounding the back of his skull against the wood planks as hard as I could. There was a roar in my brain that wasn’t the thunder. It was a frightening rage I hadn’t felt since a night many years ago in France. I knew, even in such a crazed state, that I was going to kill this man named Farley with no thought or concern for the consequences.
Then I heard a shrill scream behind me and Sara was pulling at my shirt, yelling for me to stop. I kept on, and she was slapping me on the back of my head and screaming at me to stop. I suddenly felt exhausted and was out of breath. I stopped banging the man’s head and he lay there motionless beneath me, his eyes open, but not seeing, blood covering most of his face and all over my hands.
I sat back and tried to catch my breath. I could hear Sara crying behind me. The rain started down harder and splashed in the dry sand and on the boards. The rain caused splotches in the blood on the man’s face and soon it was running down his cheeks and pooling on the walk. Lightning crashed almost directly above us and the thunder clap was deafening, almost an explosion. I looked back down at Farley who was now moving some and for the first moment of rational thought, was grateful I apparently hadn’t killed the sonofabitch.
I watched in the pouring rain now as the man was able to get to his knees. He held his head down as blood poured from his nose, splashing down into the rain puddles. Sara ran over to him and helped him up. I was so stunned and charged from the attack and what I had done, I couldn’t react or even move. Sara helped him to his feet and held her hand up over his nose to try to slow the bleeding. It ran down her thin wet arms and on to her clothes. She yelled back for Melanee.
I finally reacted and said, “No, she’s staying with me.” Sara looked at me for a moment. I could see her begin to think clearly for the first time and she didn’t protest. She tried to get Farley moving back toward the hotel, but he almost fell when he tried to walk. He yelled out something vicious and unintelligible in my direction and then Sara was able to turn him and get him moving away toward the street. I went up and sat on the porch, stunned and breathless.
Then the sights and sounds of the French battlefield were, again, all around me and men were yelling. My friend Billy was at my side running with me and he was knocked over by another wounded man. I reached down to help him up and we kept running. Our ranks were growing thinner as men fell and others slowed in the face of the terrifying barrage of fire from the German line.
Billy and I both dove into a large hole formed from a shell explosion. We fell on a German soldier, wounded and left to die. He was as surprised as we were, but still conscious enough to try to defend himself. He had a pistol in his hand and he shot my friend dead through the forehead before we had even a moment to realize what was happening. As Billy fell face down, unmoving in the mud, the gun swung in my direction and I saw the German’s face in the distant light from a flare. It was covered in grime and blood and only his eyes seemed alive in a body that was twisted and broken and near death.
A sudden rage surged through me and I moved before I could even think or grasp what had happened. I hit the man across the face with the butt of my rifle. His jaw and teeth shattered and his eyes went blank and distant as he fell back against the dirt wall of the shell hole. I hesitated for a moment as the pistol fell from his hands into a puddle of muddy water near his feet. He lay there motionless, but the roar of rage and anger in my head was so strong it dulled all other sounds of weapons and men’s screams. Without thinking, I took the butt of my rifle and smashed it into his face again and again until it no longer resembled a man. Then I fell back, breathless and crying and yelling out all at the same time.
Shells exploded all around me, lighting up the sky and leaving my ears ringing. There were sounds of machine guns in the distance and bullets whizzing by my head. I was growing more frantic in the desperation of not knowing where I could go to escape the chaos around me. I looked down one more time at the crumbled body of my friend, Billy Gregory, and then at the dead German. Suddenly all that mattered was getting away from all of the slaughter. I scrambled up over the edge of the shell hole, stumbling in the mud and dropping my rifle. I started back to where I thought our line had been and then up ahead I saw a soldier, an American soldier, staggering and about to fall over. There was shouting off to my left, and I saw men looking over the edge of an embankment, waving their arms at me and yelling words I couldn’t understand. The man ahead of me fell to his knees and I felt compelled to go to him. Still running, I reached down and put my arms around his chest and pulled him with me as I stumbled and fell to the ground.
I don’t recall the sound of the explosion, only the compression of air and dirt flying in my face as we were both hurled across the ground and then lay in a heap together. Before I lost consciousness that night, my last memory is of the lifeless face of that man staring back at me.
The pain in my right hand was throbbing and I was still gasping for breath, a rush of adrenaline still coursing through my veins causing a strange rush and light-headedness. I heard Melanee crying behind me again and I got up to go back inside the cottage. I turned to see Sara and Farley were managing to stagger their way along the road back toward the hotel. It was at that moment it occurred to me this certainly was far from over and my next encounter with this man named Farley would be much worse.
Chapter Thirty-six
The rain continued to clatter down against the metal roof and Melanee was sitting beside me on the couch, curled up and whimpering. I reached over to try to comfort her. She slid over and put her arms around me and buried her face in my chest. We sat there together, listening to the storm crash above us, my mind trying to make sense of what had happened and what may lie ahead.
Suddenly, I jolted up and realized I had fallen asleep, not knowing if it had been for a minute, or hours. My first thought was the storm seemed to be raging even more fiercely outside and then I realized Melanee was no longer with me on the couch. I looked around the room and yelled out for her. I went into both bedrooms, but she was gone. A sickening fear churned up in my gut and I yelled out again for her, but my words were lost in the roar of the storm. I went ou
t onto the porch and, again, there was no sign of her.
I ran down the steps across the yard. The rain was pouring down in sheets that rushed down the street on the wind. The sky was still dark and foreboding and lightning crashed all around. I kept on down the road, struggling against the wind and rain. A tree had fallen across the road and I stepped over the big trunk and continued toward the hotel. Up on the porch there was some respite from the rain, but not the relentless wind. I pounded on the door and yelled for Sara with no thoughts of the man I had tried to kill just a short while ago.
When she opened the door, I could see even in the dim light she was bleeding from a large gash beneath her right eye. My anger rushed through me again, but then I thought of Melanee and I tried to calm myself as much as I could. I pulled Sara out onto the porch with me. She seemed stunned from either the blow to her face, or more alcohol or both. I shook her to try to get her to look at me. “Sara, Melanee is gone,” I said, almost shouting against the din of the storm, my panic rising again. “Did you hear me? Melanee is gone. Did she come back over here?”
Sara finally seemed able to understand what I said. She started shaking her head no, and then I could see the panic growing in her own expression. "No, she hasn’t come back.” And then she was screaming at me. “No, you were supposed to take care of her!” She started hitting me in the chest. “You were supposed to take care of her!” I grabbed her arms to stop her screaming and then I held her close to get her to calm down.
“Go inside and make sure she’s not hiding somewhere,” I yelled. “I’m going to go down to the beach.” I left her there standing with a dazed expression on her face. There had been no sign of Farley. I walked back out into the rain and the wind. I thought to myself there was no way a little blind girl could make her way in this storm, but I also realized Melanee knew the area instinctively and could have followed the boardwalk down to the newly built pavilion and even down to the beach to the sound of the waves breaking.
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