by R.J. Ellory
Gabe Ellsworth had worked the previous farm back in the summer of 1936. The summer of ’37 had been a time of change and upheaval, for that was when Ralph lost his wife and Rebecca her mother. Moving away from Oklahoma had been an effort to escape the past, but—as in most cases—memory was the scenery you found no matter where you were. Things were getting better, a little easier, and Ralph Wyatt had to say that his daughter had shown the most extraordinary resilience and fortitude. Couldn’t put it any other way, but had it not been for Rebecca, he might have lost his mind to grief completely.
The untimely death of Madeline Wyatt was still an open wound, and yet the new farm was prospering. He needed an extra pair of hands, and Gabe Ellsworth, sometime drinker though he was, had proven a good worker, accepting a nominal wage alongside room and board. So Ralph made the call, and Gabe set out for West Texas, coming in on the bus to Ozona on Friday, May 13. Portentous the day and date might have been, for it took just one weekend for Rebecca to realize she was in real trouble.
Gabe Ellsworth was a man of appetites, no doubt about it. To anyone with a weather eye for such things, he was a wolf in wolf’s clothing, and a pretty sixteen-year-old girl was just about the wrong kind of temptation. Such a morsel was well suited for sharpening teeth as well as wit.
Unbeknownst to most, when Gabe Ellsworth was twenty-two, he did something that meant he could never go home. Not ever. From that point and forever onward, his temper had been volatile, his fuse short, his mouth full of smart one-liners. As if to keep everyone at arm’s length, he appeared either unpredictable or infantile, that kind of mischievous bluff and bravado that spoke of a man with unwholesome secrets.
“Hey, girlie,” he would say to Rebecca. “You want to come over here and polish Cousin Gabe’s trailer hitch,” both of them knowing full well that Cousin Gabe possessed neither trailer hitch nor any vehicle upon which such a thing could feature.
The tone was suggestive, the glint in the eye too obvious by half, and the intent of every word slanted toward something devious and unsavory.
On the Sunday just forty-eight hours after Gabe’s arrival, Rebecca spoke to her father.
“I don’t like him, Pa,” she said.
“You don’t have to like him, sweetheart. He’s here to help me. He don’t cost a great deal, and he won’t make any trouble.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Why’d you say that?”
“The way he looks at me, the things he says … not what he says, but what he means.”
Ralph Wyatt paused, a flicker of concern crossing his brow like a cloud shadow crosses a field. “He do something to you?”
“No, Pa. He didn’t do anything to me.”
“Then what’s the worry for, Rebecca?”
“What he’s thinkin’ about doing, I guess.”
“Well, I can’t really afford not to have him, and until he does something that justifies my lettin’ him go—”
The sentence remained unfinished.
Sunday evening Rebecca went straight to her room after dinner. She didn’t much care for the furtive glances and sly smiles that now seemed almost without pause.
She heard him in the hallway, and with her door inched open, he said, “You hidin’ from me, sugar?”
“No, sir,” she replied. “If I was hidin’, you wouldn’t have found me.”
“I do so appreciate the sharpness of your tongue, Miss Wyatt,” he crooned, and she could hear the whiskey in his throat, the way it relaxed muscles and morals and good intent.
“Prefer it if you wouldn’t behave such a way, Cousin Gabe,” she said.
His elbow touched the door, and the gap between door and frame widened somewhat.
Gabe could see a girl alone, pretty as a picture, ringlets like feathered question marks, her teenage breasts so proud and pert, that delicate throat, those honey-tasting lips.
Rebecca could see the shadowed face in the doorway, the way he leaned against the jamb, that dip in his shoulder that made his whole body a question mark. He had his thumbs tucked in his belt, his fingers fanned toward his crotch as if to frame whatever hideous thing lay behind the buttons.
“Why you so mean to me, Rebecca Wyatt?” he purred.
“I’m not mean to you, Cousin Gabe. I just see what’s on your mind an’ it ain’t right an’ proper.”
“What do you mean? I’m just bein’ friendly.”
“You know what I mean, Gabe, and what you’re thinkin’ right now ain’t friendly, and you know it.”
“So what am I thinkin’ right now, sweet pea?”
Rebecca took a deep breath. Beyond the distaste and discomfort, there was now a sense of real anxiety. Gabe Ellsworth’s thoughts were so strong, she could feel them pushing right up against her, much the same as what he would do if given half a chance.
“Gabriel Ellsworth,” she said. “You are close to my daddy’s age. You are also related to my mother. If for no other reason than decency and good manners, I am asking you to leave me alone. I know what you want, an’ you ain’t gettin’ it. Do you understand me?”
“Oh, don’t be such a baby—” he started, but was cut short when Rebecca moved suddenly and closed the door.
Gabe Ellsworth pawed the door and whined like a puppy dog. Then he laughed coarsely. “G’night, sugar pie,” he whispered, loud enough for her to hear him.
She slept little that night, ever aware for the slightest unfamiliar creak that would forewarn her of Gabe’s approach. Visions of him creeping into her room, dressed in nothing but his undershorts, his manhood erect and angry and filled with malintent, haunted her terribly.
Gabe Ellsworth didn’t visit with her that night. He sat in his room and drank himself to sleep, and the following morning he looked at her across the kitchen table and smiled his greasy smile.
That was the afternoon Rebecca took her bundle to the Riggses’ place and asked Evan to hide it. If she was to make a run for it, then she at least wanted a change of clothes.
Evan didn’t see Rebecca again until late on Wednesday. There was no hiding her upset.
“My mama’s cousin is here,” she told Evan. They were away from the house some distance, Rebecca having found Evan on the stoop playing guitar, asking him to just take a short walk with her so they could speak without being overheard.
“He doesn’t mean well,” she explained. “He has bad things on his mind, and I think he’s set to do them. I don’t know how long he can withhold himself.”
“Bad things?” Evan asked.
“You know,” she said. “He’s gonna put the hurt on me. Rape me, I guess.”
Evan’s eyes widened. Though he’d done nothing more than think about Rebecca Wyatt buck naked and all that this entailed, he also knew that for a man of any age to impress himself on a woman uninvited was a sin against God and nature. It would not be the first time that the color rose in his cheeks when he thought of such a thing, how it angered him, how it stirred some violent shadow in his being. There was rightness, and then there was everything else. This was most definitely part of the everything else.
“What do you think we should do?” Evan said.
The fact that he didn’t play it down, question her certainty, the fact that he immediately included himself in the solution to this problem, reminded Rebecca of the fundamental difference between Evan and Carson. She could have taken the problem to Carson, but Carson would have done one of two things: laughed and told her she was foolish for imagining such a thing, or walked over to the Wyatt place, hauled Gabe Ellsworth out from wherever he was skulking, and had a damned good go at walloping some sense into him. That was not what she needed and would certainly cause more trouble than it was worth.
“My pa needs to send him away,” Rebecca said.
“Does your pa know what he says to you?”
“I tell him, but I think he wants to read it a different way. He has a problem. He needs help with the farm, but he can’t afford anyone but Gabe. Gabe comes cheap.”
“Right.”
“Then we set him a trap.”
“That’s what I was thinkin’.”
“Catch him good when your pa can see it.”
“Scares me, Evan.”
Evan reached out his hand and took Rebecca’s. He squeezed it reassuringly. “I’ll be there. If he gets crazy, I’ll jump on him.”
“He’s a big man, Evan. He’d kick a hole in you ’fore you had a chance to take your hat off.”
“We shall see,” was all Evan said, and there was flint in his expression that reminded her of Carson.
The trap was set for the following Friday. Ralph had business in Sonora, fifty crow-miles east. He’d be gone four hours or more, and Rebecca had known this by Thursday lunchtime. There was time to undertake this thing before Ralph Wyatt departed. At least that was the intent.
Evan told his ma and pa and Carson that he was visiting with Rebecca, that her daddy had some chores as far as he knew, that there was a buck or two in it and he needed new strings for the guitar.
“The way you fuss with that thing, anyone’d think you were gonna marry it and have ukuleles!” Carson quipped.
“Would serve you well to find something to get so interested in,” William Riggs told his eldest, a comment that provoked a sulky silence until Grace broached the subject of William’s birthday, two months hence, and whether they should all take a trip out to San Angelo for a restaurant dinner.
“We’ll discuss it some other time,” was William’s edict, “when we know better our financial position.”
Evan was gone to the Wyatt place right after dishes were washed and put away. He thought to take a weapon of some variety, a baseball bat, at least a sturdy branch, but ultimately decided against it. He hoped that there would not be any violence, for he felt sure that Gabe Ellsworth was not the kind of man to take a step back when tempers flared and fists were drawn.
Evan had never had a fight in his life. Playground scuffles, perhaps, but nothing beyond squinted eyes and flailing hands connecting rarely and with the force of a frightened bird. Cousin Gabe was a traveled man, full-grown, engineer’s boots, a good head of steam in him. Evan had recognized his kind from a distance, and recognized trouble.
The plan, if that was its name, was for Rebecca to lure Gabe to the barn nearest the Wyatt house, and here she knew he would set upon her with his seductive lines and molasses charm. Evan would be within earshot and would happen upon a moment of inappropriateness before it became truly threatening, and he would cause sufficient alarm to bring Rebecca’s father from the house. Men in their thirties with a mind for seducing teenage girls could only be cowards, and neither Rebecca nor Evan saw him maneuvering his way out of a confrontation with Ralph Wyatt when both his daughter and a witness challenged Gabe with the truth of what had happened.
Would Gabe follow Rebecca out to the barn was the only question, but it wasn’t really a question.
Dinner over, Rebecca said she was taking a walk. She walked slowly, knowing that Gabe would require sufficient time to head for the veranda and a smoke, angling to see where she was headed without making it too obvious.
Ralph would be gone soon enough and had his mind occupied with the Sonora drive and whatever business awaited him.
Evan was in the barn already, a split-level affair with a suspended upper hayloft that projected half the length of the building. From this vantage point he could see all below, and he waited patiently for Rebecca to appear, Gabe coming after her with no more than a ten-minute delay.
Sometimes people wore faces that told stories before any word was spoken. Cousin Gabe had one of them faces, and the story was no fairy tale.
Gabe feigned surprise when he saw Rebecca.
“Hey, girl,” he said. “Known you was here I’d a left you to your own devices.”
Even from twenty feet aloft, Evan could hear the lie in his tone.
“You’re not gonna start any trouble, now, are you, Gabe?” Rebecca asked.
“Well, I’ll be damned, Rebecca Wyatt,” he said. “You certainly have set your mind to disliking me, haven’t you? What did I ever do to deserve such a welcome?”
“You are welcome,” Rebecca replied. “It’s your intentions that ain’t.”
“And what intentions is they, my sweet?”
“You know very well, Gabe Ellsworth. I know what you’re thinking.”
Evan guessed she was saying this stuff on purpose, winding Gabe up like a cheap watch. His spring was gonna break, that was for sure, and then he’d do something stupid and irreversible and they would have him run out on his heels and back to wherever he crawled from.
“You do, do you?” Gabe purred. “So, what am I thinking?”
“That maybe you want me to rub your thing for you.”
Evan felt sure that Gabe would have heard his intake of breath as he lay there amid the musty hay. Dust filled his throat, and it was all he could do to suppress a coughing fit. Evan was shocked to hear such a thing from Rebecca’s lips. But there it was, five seconds of the obvious, and they had both known what they were dealing with before they set out.
“My, oh my,” Gabe said. “You do have a wicked mind, little girlie. Though I can’t say I am surprised. You always took a liking to me, didn’t you? I could tell even last summer that you wanted me to show you a thing or two.”
Rebecca didn’t reply.
“Why don’t you hitch your dress up a little there, sweet pea? Show Cousin Gabe how growed up you is since I last seen ya …”
Evan wanted to gag. After that he wanted to leap from the hayloft and land on the man’s head, breaking his neck with one clean snap.
“You better leave me well alone, Gabe, or I’m gonna tell my pa.”
“What you gonna tell him, huh? He’s gonna be gone anytime now, and then what ya gonna do?”
“Don’t you come near me, Gabe Ellsworth—”
Gabe took three or four slow steps toward Rebecca. “Oh, come on, sugar pie. Just a little kiss for big ol’ Gabe, eh? Gets awful lonely out here, you know? Working like a dog, helpin’ out your daddy when he’s got no money and whatever. Seems to me you only got food on the table because I’m bighearted enough to work for nothin’ …”
Another step, another two, and Gabe Ellsworth was within ten feet of Rebecca Wyatt, and it seemed the man’s head was losing whatever fight it may have had with his loins. Seemed he was dumb enough to get frisky before Ralph Wyatt had even left the house for Sonora.
“Seems a man that makes a sacrifice might earn himself a favor. Whaddya say?”
“You want to kiss me?” Rebecca asked.
In that split second Gabe glanced sideways and Rebecca looked up at Evan. There was a fierce and defiant light in her eyes.
“Kiss you, sure,” Gabe said, and he took another step.
“Well, if you mean no more than that, Gabe Ellsworth, and you promise that you’ll leave me alone, then I will let you kiss me.”
“Now we’re talkin’ the same language, baby doll,” Gabe said, and he slunk a little closer to Rebecca, his right hand reaching for her.
Rebecca pushed his hand away. “Don’t you get any fresh ideas, Gabe,” she said. “You can kiss me one time and one time only, and then we’re done with this dumb game, okay?”
“Whatever you say,” Gabe replied, but what he said and what he meant were not even close.
Again Rebecca glanced up at Evan, but Evan was already out from under the hay, edging carefully toward the top of the ladder, ready to come down those rungs at lightning speed and start hollering trouble.
“Well, if you’re gonna do it, then do it,” Rebecca told Gabe, and Gabe came at her with his slick words and his slicker smile, and it was then that Evan Riggs’s foot connected with the top of the ladder, pushing it away from the edge of the loft merely a couple of inches, but upon its return it connected with a sufficient
thump for Gabe to turn suddenly.
He saw Evan then. His eyes flared. He looked back at Rebecca, and the expression she saw terrified her. There was something inside Gabe Ellsworth that she had never seen before. Unknown to her, unknown to most everyone, it was the same expression he’d worn when he did the thing that got him excommunicated from his hometown, never to cast his greasy shadow over that boundary again.
“Why you—” he started, and with that he raised his hand as if to strike her.
Evan grabbed the ladder, swung his foot over, connected with the second rung, started down with far greater speed than was well-advised.
Gabe turned suddenly, realizing now that this was some sort of honey trap, and there was no way that Rebecca Wyatt and this skinny rat of a kid were going to confound and bamboozle him.
“You little son of a bitch!” he growled, turning his attention from Rebecca to Evan, already reaching out to grab the boy as the ladder started to swing backward.
Evan, arms flailing, lost his footing and dropped to the ground. He felt something twist sharply in his ankle, and he yowled.
Rebecca screamed involuntarily even though Gabe’s violent intent was now focused on Evan. On his back now, Evan’s eyes wide with fear as Gabe rushed at him, and the ladder still falling.
“Evan!” Rebecca hollered, and Evan rolled sideways just as Gabe dropped to his knees.
The ladder came down with force, landing a good blow on the back of Gabe’s head. Gabe flattened to the ground, lifeless almost, no sound but a dull moan escaping his lips.
Evan got up and limped awkwardly to where Gabe lay. He glared down at the man, and then he took a step back and let fly with a good kick to the ribs.
“No …” Rebecca said, but she only half meant it.
Evan hesitated, almost as if he were contemplating fetching a rock and bashing Gabe’s brains out, and when he looked up at Rebecca, she saw something that chilled her. It was gone as soon as it had appeared, and she shuddered. There was a meanness in that look, and she questioned its source.
