Many times, as she’d lain in bed next to Lester while he snored, she’d dreamed of walking away, taking nothing but herself to go find her life again, beholden to no one, free of the land she didn’t own, the endless work it took, and the shame of being conquered.
She was sharing a seat with a young married couple. Bonnie, a petite redhead, said, “We was renting. House didn’t belong to us anyway, so we might as well make a clean break.” Bonnie wore a thin gold wedding band—a sliver of treasure.
Her husband, who said he’d worked as an usher at the movie theater, said, “Nothing’s going to be working for a while. Can’t see too many people going to see a picture show anytime soon. I got what little money we’ve saved out of the bank before the water rose, so we’ve been thinking of heading out to California.”
Bonnie addressed Adah. “What are you going to do?”
Adah gave them a brief version of her story, then said, “The first thing I have to do is find my husband.”
“Maybe he’s already in Mayfield.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.”
She was keeping up the façade of a woman desperately searching for her husband, but inside, the prospect of another life, one of her own choosing, thrummed hope through her veins, until another image emerged, again. Daisy, of course. A sweet little bluebird surrounded by circling birds of prey. Would the Branch family destroy her spirit? Would they make her mean? Would they beat her? Adah suspected that Lester had been beaten as a child and therefore had been infused with an illness that drove him to treat others the same way.
No. Adah’s body jerked involuntarily.
She had to go back, even though turning around and going backward had never been a part of her being. But now she had to do it. She had to go back, for Daisy.
In Mayfield, all evacuees were directed to the Graves County Courthouse, where those who had not already done so were to receive typhoid vaccines. Adah learned that the town was already overflowing with refugees, and volunteers and city officials had no immediate plans for where to send the people still coming. Many homes were packed with as many as forty refugees, eight or nine crammed into one room, most all of them relegated to the floor.
She couldn’t take up the space that others so desperately needed, so resignedly she asked one of the workers to contact the Branch family.
The volunteer said, “We’ll send word, but you’re probably going to have to spend the night here.”
Adah was sent to a church, where she slept curled up on a mattress in a hall occupied by entire families, couples, children, and assorted loners like herself.
During the night, grief came like a fever. Lying flat on her back, searching the ceiling for answers, she balled her blanket and held it against her mouth to muffle her cries. Lester was dead. Her husband. A mean man, a tortured man, but one she had once loved and given herself to fully. She had known the contours of his body, the hair on his chest, the way he breathed as he fell asleep, and the sounds of their intimacy. At one time, she had loved his body. And now she’d ended his time on this earth. She hadn’t deserved his beatings, but he hadn’t deserved to die an unnatural death. Over and over she had to remind herself that it was done, that it could not be changed, that death was permanent.
In the morning, she received notice that Jesse Branch was waiting to pick her up.
Outside, he stood backed up to another Model A truck, this one newer than Lester’s. His arms crossed, his eyes that always seemed as if they were in a permanent squint staring hard at her, and his rigid stance like a bull about to charge. Most of the time Jesse didn’t bother to groom himself or try for a pleasing appearance. Eternally stuck to his bottom lip was a burning hand-rolled cigarette that suffused the air around him with the smell of scorched ruin. Today his hair stood out in fuzzy tufts from under his hat brim.
“Where’s my brother?” Those were his first words. Not “How are you?” or “Glad you’re alive.” He looked as if her presence were about as welcome as the flood itself.
Jesse was Lester’s older brother by five years, his parents’ favorite, set to inherit the family farm outside Lone Oak, where he still lived. Bigger and bulkier than Lester but less handsome, he was devoid of humor, rarely smiled, and had never married. Once, she’d overheard a young girl at church describe Jesse Branch as a big, bad bear .
No warmth had ever been aimed in her direction from Les’s family, as they disapproved of her previous life and occupation, once proclaiming it the work of the devil. And yet she had been expected to endure tension-charged Sunday suppers after church for three years, during which Lester and Jesse sparred in not-so-subtle ways for their father’s favor. Lester always fell short—he’d had to buy his own place and start over, whereas Jesse was all set up to inherit the much larger, more prosperous family farm on higher ground. Jesse’s future was secure—he’d won the big prize. And yet these brothers had remained in competition. Lester had managed to get two women to marry him, something that Jesse hadn’t been able to do, plus Les had produced an heir—albeit female, but still an heir—and so beneath Jesse’s slow and deliberate exterior, Adah had always read a seething envy.
Adah walked up to Jesse, tears blooming in her eyes. Despite her dislike of Les’s family, it was still an awful thing to have to give them bad news. “I haven’t seen him since the river . . .”
“The river what ?”
“The river . . . it rose so high, so fast. We’d let out the livestock, but the poor milk cow went in the wrong direction. We were trying to save her . . . and then the river took both of us down.” Adah almost believed her own story now.
His narrow eyes never left hers, and he shifted his weight. “Are you telling me my brother is gone?”
“I was hoping he’d already made his way to you. He can’t be gone, I know it. You haven’t heard anything?”
He stared off, and Adah was pretty sure he was fighting tears. But Branch men would never cry. When he turned back to face her, however, there was an unexpected hardness to his face, his mouth a stern, tight line. “Not till this morning, when I heard about you. We been waiting for word and asking around. Ma and Pa have been pacing the floor. Nobody could sleep.”
“Have you checked at other places? I’ve heard people are scattered everywhere.”
Jesse’s face paled and his eyes reflected shock, as if the gravity of the situation was deepening and gripping him even tighter. “I just told you we ain’t heard nothing till this morning—and it’s only ’bout you. Where the hell is my damn brother?”
Adah wrapped her arms around herself. She remembered why she was subjecting herself to this. Daisy’s face floated unbidden in her mind, and Adah resisted the urge to bring her up so soon. If her story were true, her only concern now would be finding her husband. “Maybe he’s hurt. Have you checked at the Clark School? I heard the sick and injured are there.”
“I been checking everywhere.”
He kept staring her down, searching, apparently not the least bit interested in how she had survived. She must have looked a fright. Still wearing Chuck Lerner’s jacket over her dirty dress, unbathed, unshod, covered with scratches and bruises she evidenced no reason to doubt her story. It was obvious to anyone that she had been in the river. And yet Jesse’s eyes showed doubt. He tossed his cigarette into the mud, then ground it under his boot, his eyes never leaving hers.
“Get in the truck, then” was all he said.
He drove with his hands clenching and unclenching the steering wheel, steely eyes focused on the road ahead. The veins on his large-knuckled reddened hands were bulging.
They crossed a land of moving, ghostlike mists; spindly trees swaying with the wind; winter-bare fields; icy creeks; frozen ponds; slick roads; and the occasional inviting farmhouse, yellow lights in its windows and curls of smoke from its chimney.
“How’s Daisy?” Adah finally asked, unable to wait any longer.
“Fine and dandy,” he answered in a flat voice.
Adah
focused ahead. What would she be doing if her story were true? What would she be talking about? “Can we go to some of the other places Lester might be? I’m dying to see Daisy, but we can’t stop looking for Les.”
He breathed out slowly, as if fighting every ounce of this release. “You and I both know my brother is dead.”
“No,” she said. “If I got out, he could get out, too. He’s stronger than I am. I just know he’s alive. Have you looked around our place?”
He didn’t respond for a long time. “We cain’t get there yet. Water’s too high.”
“What about the police?”
His head jerked in her direction. “You think we’re idiots? Of course we been to the police and the sheriff’s department, too.”
The skies were drifting down snowflakes that stuck to the windshield and turned to ice. Jesse exhaled audibly again and spoke to the road. “If he got out, I would’ve found him by now. Where you been all this time?”
“I made my way to land, slept in a barn, then got on the roof. That’s where they found me.”
“When was the last time you saw my brother?”
“When the water hit us.”
Jesse wiped his brow with the back of one hand and then gripped the steering wheel again. He looked as if he was restraining both grief and rage. “So now I got to go tell the folks their youngest is gone.”
“I don’t think we should do that. He could be anywhere, even farther downriver. I’ve reported him missing, so others’ll know to keep on the lookout. He could be fine but have no way to get word to us. Everything is such a mess right now. He has to be okay, I just know it.”
He drove the rest of the way in silence, and Adah sensed true grief emanating from her brother-in-law. Jesse and Lester had competed for their father’s favor, but for people like the Branches, blood was everything. They stuck together. When one of the Lone Oak farmworkers took off with tools and a good quarter horse, Lester had joined his father and brother to hunt the man down. If not for the intervention of a nearby county sheriff, the Branch men would’ve lynched the thief.
Despite it all, Adah’s heart went out to Jesse. She had taken away his only brother and a son from his mother and father. A sob rose in her throat, and Adah made no attempt to suppress it.
Jesse seemed aware of her silent crying but made no comment. Adah could tell he was still sorting things out in his head. Still letting it sink in that his only brother was likely dead. Maybe for the first time something in his life had struck him deeply, into a vulnerable space that he’d always protected.
But any vulnerability was quickly replaced with anger. Adah could sense Jesse’s pain and rage gathering from the very center of his soul. The air between them went icy despite the warmth from the engine.
“Something that don’t make sense to me,” Jesse eventually breathed out. “Lester’s no idiot. Why’d he go down to the river when it was all a-rising and rushing like that?”
She managed to say, “It was the milk cow.”
A stony silence and then, “I don’t know much yet, but I do know this: Lester didn’t go down there for no cow.”
Fear leached from the roots of her hair. Adah sat completely still.
“No,” he said as Adah now broke out in a quick sweat. “Lester was too smart to let himself get caught like that. There’s something you’re not telling me.”
The sky shifted duskier and started swirling heavier snow. Adah told herself to stay calm. Not to get carried away defending herself, which would only make her seem guilty. “I-I’m telling you what happened.”
He jerked his head. “Just don’t make sense.”
She rubbed at her eyes and whispered, “I can’t believe it happened, either.”
A long hush followed, during which Adah stole a glimpse sideways. Jesse’s facial features were coming together hotly. His neck looked monstrously thick and red. He spoke through his teeth: “There’s something more to this story.”
“Th-there’s nothing else I can tell you. We were caught unaware.”
Jesse was driving under control on roads that were icing over. He seemed far away for a moment. What was he thinking? Was he thinking about Les, or was he thinking about his parents? Was he thinking of himself, or was he thinking about Adah?
She couldn’t read him.
“I don’t get it,” he uttered with a cold fury. His lips twitched, and he gripped the steering wheel so hard Adah expected blood to come oozing out of his hands. “There’s something else, something you’re not saying, and you better believe I’m going to find out what it is.”
Now the land was a wide swath of stark white glister. She kept silent, her heart gripped with a hundred new fears. What would they do to her? And what of Daisy, the innocent in all this?
If family history held, there was no telling. The Branches had always let it be known that Adah wasn’t one of them. Les’s mother, Mabel, had always refused Adah’s help in the kitchen, and his father, Buck, had once corrected Daisy when she’d called Adah “Mama,” insisting, “She ain’t your real mother.” Yet her in-laws had always remained civil. Could she count on civility now?
Adah’s breath snagged in her throat. The idea of escape was still there, like a whisper—soft, yet insistent.
“When we get to the house, you ain’t putting one step into the room where my folks is waiting. First thing, you go on and get yourself a bath.” He glanced in her direction. “You smell like shit.”
Chapter Five
The Branch house, a well-kept white two-story with dormer windows and an inviting wraparound porch, sat on a low rise overlooking empty fields ringed halfway around the back by an unlogged hardwood forest. Off to the side of the house stood a livestock barn, a new wood-plank curing barn, an old log-sided curing barn, and a shed that housed farm equipment. Adah had never been prone to romanticizing the rural life, but the Branch place was the picture of pastoral loveliness, complete with painted wooden rocking chairs with rope seats spread across the sprawling front porch.
Jesse parked the truck at the top of the long gravel driveway in front of the house. Adah looked up to see her mother-in-law standing in the doorway with Daisy hiding behind her grandmother’s housedress skirt and thick-stockinged legs. The Branches’ two large hunting-type dogs bounded forward but didn’t bark.
As Adah opened the truck door, Daisy sprang down the front-porch steps, crying, “Mama!”
Adah stepped down onto the wet ground and immediately had the sensation of being stuck there. But Daisy, wearing the same woolen jumper she’d worn the last time Adah had seen her, threw her warm and pliable body at Adah, and her heart took a turn. The little one clung to her, burying her face in Adah’s filthy clothing, and Adah stroked Daisy’s hair, silky as fine threads. But tangled. When was the last time someone had combed her hair or put it in pigtails? She pulled in a deep breath.
This was why she had come back.
Daisy lifted her tear-streaked face and gazed at Adah. Her eyes were wide set and open, and a circle of dried milk ringed her mouth. “Where’d you go, Mama?”
Adah leaned down, smoothed Daisy’s hair, and tucked the sides behind the girl’s ears. “The flood took me away for a while,” she answered, “but now I’m back.”
“Where’s Daddy?”
Adah glanced at Jesse, who shooed her away like some annoying insect, and Adah determined to do exactly as he wished.
The Branch home was one of the first outlying farmhouses to have indoor hot and cold running water due to the New Deal. And still there were parts of town without sewers, which the Works Progress Administration was working on, and most rural homes had no running water. The Branches could afford to install the plumbing and buy toilet paper and towels for the bathroom.
In the second-story bath, Adah stripped out of her clothes and sank down into the claw-footed cast-iron tub full of warm water. Finally the remaining numbness in her toes and fingers seeped away into the fluid around her.
When she had finished ba
thing and wrapped herself in a towel, her hair dripping down her back, she wiped the tub clean and picked out tiny twigs and pieces of hay that must have come off her body. She wanted to leave no trace of her filth behind. Only then did she realize she had no clean clothes to put on.
She tiptoed down the hallway and peered into her mother- and father-in-law’s bedroom, where a chenille bathrobe hung on a hook behind the open door. It was her only option, so she took the robe and wrapped it securely around herself. The robe almost swaddled her twice around, as Mabel Branch was as stout and stocky as any man. Her soft fleshy features and silver-streaked hair pulled back into a bun were the only things that made her appear feminine.
And yet of all the Branch family members, Mabel seemed the only one with charity in her heart. Mabel often gave old clothing, shoes, and coats to the poor through her church, though always making sure people noticed her altruism. If only Adah could get her hands on some of that old clothing now. Adah had long ago taught herself to sew; she could take in and refashion Mabel’s discards.
Outside, another storm was gathering, and a gloomy haze crept over the farm, pressing in against the walls of the house. Every sound from within and outside was dulled, the air itself thick with foreboding.
Adah stepped silently down the staircase and into the hallway below, then gazed into the parlor to her right. A well-sized room with tall windows, sofas and chairs that were rarely used, and polished tables on which sat frozen bouquets and dusty figurines.
Mabel was sitting straight backed on her sofa, a Queen Anne look-alike, her eyes muddled with grief, the flesh under her eyes swollen so full it appeared she could scarcely see. Buck Branch sat beside her patting her hand, while Jesse stood over the both of them. Daisy was nowhere in sight, and Adah could only assume the little girl was taking a nap.
The River Widow Page 4
