The Last Innocent Hour

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  But his retreat from her was as inevitable as the rain that would come. She sank to her knees, put her hands to her cheeks, watching him leave her. He wouldn't be back. She knew it, and the knowledge unhinged her.

  Chapter Ten

  Charlie glanced back once, in time to see Beth crumple. The wind carried the sound of her grief to him, lightning captured the glisten of her tears. She was crying? He'd figured the polar snow caps would melt first. The impulse to go to her, to scoop her into his embrace and comfort her was sharp to the point of pain, but he kept walking down the drive away from her, away from his sense of her, the ten thousand things he loved about her, the touch of her fingers ruffling his hair, the sudden gift of her smile, the rare music of her laughter. Rounding the barn, he thought he heard Black Knight's hooves pawing the ground, then remembered the horse was dead. Shot by the man who in one day had saved his child and destroyed his marriage.

  What was he supposed to make of what he’d overheard? How could Beth have kept such a terrible thing from him? She'd played him, played him for a fool and betrayed him. That was all.

  A few fat drops of rain struck Charlie’s scalp, ran among the hairs; one trickled into his ear. He walked blindly, thoughtlessly, and then just as the storm broke, he found himself back at Maizie's front door. She stood on the porch, lantern held high, as if she'd been expecting company, expecting him.

  “Come on up here,” she called. “'Fore you go and git yourself soaked through.”

  He followed her inside and sat where she indicated, in one of the two cane-bottomed rockers that was pulled before the cold hearth. She handed him a towel. “Lights went out a bit ago. Always do when the wind kicks up. Radio said the storm’s comin' off the Gulf, somethin’ tropical, done got the roads flooded out from here to Galveston. I made tea. You want some?”

  “Not for me, thanks.” Charlie's voice was muffled by the thick folds of terry cloth that smelled like white sun and blue wind.

  “It's chamomile. It'll calm your nerves.” She peered at him through the cloud of vapor rising from the iron kettle on the range.

  It would take something stronger than tea, he thought.

  As if she read his mind, she said, “I 'spect you're wishing for a stiff drink, but this be better for you.”

  She brought him a cup of the steaming brew and stood over him expectantly, waiting to see him drink. He took a sip, surprised to find the flavor not unpleasant. She brought the lantern, set it on the mantelpiece and sat adjacent to him, rocker creaking under her weight.

  She said, “Well, I know you didn't come out in this weather to pay me a social call, but I got ready jus' the same.” She raised her voice over the sound of thunder.

  “Did Beth call you?”

  “Cain't nobody call. I won't have a phone.”

  “So, are you psychic?” He smiled.

  She didn’t. “Some might say so, but I don't got to have the sight to figure there's been trouble at the big house, an' nuthin' good from the look’a you.” Maizie's gaze was steady, immutable. “You want to tell me ‘bout it?”

  He set his cup down. “I'd lay odds you already know.”

  “Maybe. But I'd like to hear it from you, jus' the same.”

  Charlie leaned his elbows on his knees.

  “You’re a man who likes a wager, ain’t you? I'll wager you right now you didn’t stick around and get the whole story.” The old woman fell silent a moment. “What sort of home was you raised up in, Charlie? I don’t miss my guess--an’ I don’t too often--I’d say it was a hard one, right?”

  Charlie picked up the towel, twisting it in his hands, speaking to it. “My mother died when I was nine, and my old man was so tied up trying to keep one step ahead of the law that I hardly knew him. He died in Joliet Prison up in Illinois. I lived with my grandmother and an aunt who couldn’t stand me. She stuck my grandmother in a nursing home, and soon as I could, I left her house too. I was fifteen. Been on my own ever since.”

  “So, you’ve known troubled times.”

  “You could say so.” He laid the towel over his knee.

  “Your mama died on you, and your daddy run out, and that's bad. I ain't sayin' it ain't. But you don't know nuthin' about the kind’a hurtin' was put on Miss Beth.”

  “Explain it then, will you? She won’t, and I want to understand.”

  Maizie rested her head against the back of the rocker. “I knowed from the start there'd be nuthin’ but trouble the day Miz Lucy met that Tinker. I done tol’ her and tol’ her not to marry that man.”

  “Why did she? Seems like a woman her age with a daughter would know better.”

  “She was crazy after she lost Beth’s daddy. She was always a drinker, but it got a hold on her in that awful time. I had my hands full with her. Uhh-huh, I tell you I did.” Maizie clucked her tongue and shook her head. “That Tinker just showed up one day in town. Nobody know to this day where he come from, not the truth anyway. I never trusted him, been watchin’ him ever since he started comin’ ‘round here. Even 'fore he married Beth's mama, I watched him playin’ the two of ’em, one off the other like he was the cat and they was the mice. Beth followed like he the pied piper, too. Like a little lost puppy, she was, an’ Miz Lucy, she--”

  Charlie pushed back and stood up leaving the rocker in violent motion. “I thought I could hear this, but I can't.”

  “You gon' have to. Them women needs you to hep 'em.”

  “Beth doesn’t want my help. She wants him. She came here for him. I’m going to get Chrissy and clear out. Now, tonight.”

  “Where you gon’ go? Where you thinkin' a takin' yourself, and a little girl 'thout her mama this time a night? Or any time? You know what? Your name suit you. Charlie. You nuthin' but a good-time Charlie, always duckin' and hidin' from your ‘sponsibility.” Her lip curled in disgust. “You run off now, where you think it gon’ get you, fool?” Maizie was on her feet now too, glowering at him. “Your daddy throwed his fam’ly away, an' you cain't stop bein' mad with him. But you fixin' to do the same thing, ain't you?”

  Charlie opened his mouth to deny it and couldn’t. He ran his hands over his hair, still damp from the rain.

  “You got a wife and a child that needs you, Mr. Good-Time-Charlie.”

  He returned the rocker to its original spot near the hearth.

  “You think Tinker’s done with them? You think he gon' leave them women alone? He still got a key to that house. He still livin' there, sleepin' there sometime. He still a sick man. Sicker now Miss Beth is growed up. What you think he'll do once he sees you run off?”

  The rain drummed steadily outside. Charlie's eye tracked the wet prints of his shoes to the door.

  “Tinker ain't right in his head, Mr. Charlie. He's evil.”

  “He saved Chrissy's life.”

  “You think he done that on account of Black Knight almost stompin' her?” The old woman shook her head. “He jus' want to show Miss Beth he still runnin' things 'round here. He want her to know he still runnin' her.”

  “He doesn't run her!” Charlie slammed his fist into his palm. “Jesus Christ! It makes me sick, the whole damn thing.”

  “You don’t know the whole damn thing.” Maizie lifted her car keys from a hook beside the door. “Here. You can bring the car back tomorrow.”

  She pressed the keys into his hand. “What you got to remember-- What you--” But her voice faltered. Her eyes widened, clinging to Charlie’s. She gave a low groan, put one hand to her chest and groped her way blindly toward him. He grasped her elbow, guiding her to the rocker, easing her down. Her head rolled, and she rested it on her hand, shuddering, breath coming in rough gasps now.

  Her skin was the color of ash, her lips were bleached and dry. Charlie knelt beside her, his own heart hammering. All he needed was for this old black witch-woman to die on him.

  But after a moment, when she had her breath, she beckoned him closer. “We don’ got much time,” she said. “You gon’ have to hear me now. What Tinker done t
o Beth, that weren’t the end of it.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Beth started upstairs. The rain sheeting the long rectangle window on the landing distorted her reflection. The noise of the storm pounded in her ears. The lights kept flickering as if to warn that the ordinary manmade conduction of electricity was easily snuffed in the face of Mother Nature's fury.

  Where would Charlie go in such weather, on foot? If Maizie had a phone, Beth would call and ask her to keep a look-out for him. But what good would it do? He hated her. The sound of Mama’s voice halted her foot on the stair.

  “He'll be back, honey, once he’s had time to become accustomed--”

  “Accustomed?” Beth slowly faced her mother. “Is that what you've done, Mama? Have you grown accustomed to what happened? Because I haven't.”

  “No, of course not. I didn't mean it that way. I’ll never forgive myself.” Mama bound herself with her arms, and she looked so tiny and frail, Beth was almost sorry for her, but then Mama went on and said, “It’s just that I know perhaps better than you that there can be so many small misunderstandings in a marriage.”

  Beth came down a step, incredulous, gripping the handrail. “I didn’t just burn dinner, Mama, or scorch his favorite shirt with the iron!”

  “He'll be back,” her mother insisted.

  “He won't. And even if he did come back, I'd have to tell him the whole sickening truth, and he'd just take off again. You don't know him the way I do. You don't know his pride.”

  “How can I make it up to you?” Mama opened her arms clearly wanting Beth to join her, to step into the circle they made.

  She stayed where she was.

  “There has to be a way.” Mama was crying now. “I should have seen it, I would have seen it if I--” She stopped. “I can't go back, can I?”

  Beth watched her knead the flesh of her upper arms.

  “I can't undo the damage. Can't undo how badly I mishandled things.”

  “You know what, Mama? It's funny, but in a way I'm glad for what happened. It got me out of here.”

  “You have no idea how often I've wished him dead.”

  “No more often than me.” Beth resumed climbing the stairs, but, again, her mother’s voice caught her, and she paused when she reached the landing.

  “I'm sorry, honey. It's not enough--being sorry--but it's all I have.”

  Beth had waited a long time for the apology, and she nearly relented hearing the broken sound of it and seeing the way Mama's chin pulled into the cup her shoulders made, but it was too soon in their reunion. Or perhaps too much was lost.

  Mama said, “I know you can’t do it now, but do you think in the future-- Will you ever forgive me?”

  “No,” Beth answered in flat refusal. “It's too late.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Charlie ducked into Maizie’s old Buick Roadmaster, found the lights, the switch for the wipers. A turn of the key and the engine purred into life. He slipped the transmission into gear, pulled away from the cabin, and followed the drive toward the house. The world was reduced to nothing more than the welling glow from the headlamps, the insistent sound of the rain, the slap of the windshield wipers. He liked the feel of the steering wheel under his hands, the sense that he was in control.

  Some of the heaviness that had settled inside him lifted; he felt somehow less burdened. A corner of the house loomed at him from the wet night, softened now into a watery blur, and he slowed, bending his glance, letting it track the veranda that was veiled by sheets of rain and bathed in eerie light from the fixtures that flanked the front door. Then he was beyond it, that strange house. It was nothing more than a reflection in the rearview, and then it was gone.

  He found his way to the interstate, stopped in the left lane of the intersection that would take him up onto it and waited for the light to change. Maizie’s voice circled his brain, fragments of disjointed speech ... “probl’y should of let Beth tell you this ... ain’t right for you to blame her ... at her mama’s mercy … an’ that Tinker go along … never knowed why….”

  He’d kill him, Charlie thought, if he ever saw the sonofabitch again. He never wanted to see Lucy again either for that matter. As for Beth, he didn’t know, just didn’t know. She should have told him, warned him.

  “You gon’ have to forgive her,” Maizie had said. “For her sake an’ your own.”

  Like hell, Charlie had answered, and then he’d called Maizie a goddamn liar when he’d known better and walked out on her knowing she was ill. She could hardly hold up her head. Technically, he guessed he’d stolen her car; she’d only said he could use it to drive back to the house. But he wanted a drink, or several. Then he might be able to think rationally, think what to do, how to handle this. How to deal with it. Deal with Beth. He mopped his face with his hands.

  Behind him, a horn blared, and he gunned through the intersection, turning, entering the freeway. Thunder broke overhead; the sound of the rain increased. The car ahead of him slowed and edged off the flooding highway onto the shoulder beyond a huge light-washed billboard. Charlie glanced at it, did a double take. Sam Houston Race Track, it read. Houston had a racetrack? Since when?

  He pulled onto the shoulder in front of the sign. “Now open.” The words stood out like a beacon. “Exit Sam Houston Parkway,” they helpfully instructed. Any notion Charlie’d had of finding a bar was overtaken by the familiar thrill of anticipation that grabbed his gut. His thoughts fell into a well-worn and comforting rut: Wonder if they're running, or if there's a rain delay? But they’ll have simulcast….

  What the hell? He could at least go see. He might win. Win big. Parlay the twenty dollar bill in his pocket into some real money. He pulled onto the interstate again. The promise not to gamble that he’d made Beth was easily swept aside. He needed a break, he told himself. Like a dead man needs a box.

  At the gate, Charlie shelled out a buck for a program and threaded his way through the milling crowd toward the grandstand. He liked to watch the races at track level. But a look outdoors showed him the bleachers were deserted. The rain-soaked track was dark. So that left simulcast. Not as good as live racing but better than nothing. On his way upstairs, when he found an abandoned racing form, he took it as a sign.

  The banks of television monitors that aired live horse racing from various tracks across the country were scattered throughout the second level. Spectators, mostly men, were clustered around them, necks craned, watching the action, or they sat at tables bent over their forms, some of them scribbling furiously in the margins, working the odds, others hotly debating them. The hum of conversation was punctuated by the occasional shouted curse or burst of applause. Tension rode in the air like static.

  Charlie stood for a moment on the periphery, his glance swinging from one monitor to the next. Races were in progress at a couple of the New York tracks, Meadowlands and Yonkers. Delta Downs in Louisiana and Hollywood Park in California also had horses running. The separate announcers' voices flowed together, reporting the progress and outcomes of different races in mingled degrees of excitement.

  At the concession, Charlie bought a beer and a hot-dog and found a table with a good view. That's when it hit him. He felt lucky. There'd never been any way to predict the sensation; it just came over him, and he knew. Whenever he got this feeling, he knew he would walk away a winner.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Beth came awake slowly. Her face felt hot, her eyes swollen. Her head throbbed dully. It was several moments before her mind cleared enough to register that she was still dressed and lying across the old Victorian four-poster in what had once been her mama and daddy's room. Chrissy slept next door in the nursery, in a pretty old iron daybed that had been Beth's.

  She rolled to her back, put her hands to her face, feeling the salty tracks. She must have cried herself to sleep. But what had wakened her? Some sound above the noise of hard steady rain. She leaned up on one elbow to listen. It came again. Voices talking. Arguing. Mama? Charlie? Had he come ba
ck? Her heart leapt. Beth swung her feet to the floor. She flipped the switch on the bedside lamp, but nothing happened. The electricity must be out because of the storm.

  A flash of lightning picked her path across the room. The voices lifted over the clap of thunder that followed, punctuating bursts of words she couldn't understand. Who was shouting? Not Charlie. She didn’t think it could be him.

  Her heart began to pound. She pulled open the door, crept onto the balcony that overlooked the foyer, some instinct warning her to stealth.

  A fresh shock of lightning glared through the high beveled glass window that rose from the landing. But it was her mama’s voice that drew Beth forward. She reached for the rail that bordered the long balcony, pulled herself along its length, hand over hand, paused, blinking at a weaker flash of sudden light. Then, too quickly, was pitched again into utter darkness.

  “Mama?” she whispered. “What's the matter?” She raised her voice, inching forward. “Mama? Is someone with you?”

  “Oh, honey! Help me.” Mama’s voice rose, a near shriek carried on the back of the wind and rain.

  “Shut up, bitch.”

  Jason’s voice! Beth recognized it. Now, lightning burst through the window catching his and Mama’s images in its brittle glare. Beth gasped. They were on the landing. Jason had Mama pinned to the wall by her shoulders.

  “Get away from her!” Beth started down the stairs.

  “Stop right there, little girl, or I'll kill her, so help me.”

  Beth did as he said; she held out her hands, an uncertain beseeching gesture. Light flashed, rendering her nearly blind. But she could hear thumping and Mama’s little squeaks of terror. Now, in a sudden, jagged glare of light, Beth’s eyes locked with Jason’s, and she saw that his stare was blank, bleached of all reason, then almost before she could register what he was doing, he circled Mama's neck and jerked her off her feet far enough that she dangled from his hands, a limp doll.