She took in a deep breath and held it. Preferring to face the lions as soon as possible, Adah stepped into the room.
When he saw Adah, Buck stood to his full height, his chest thrust forward, and said, “Git on in here. We got some questions for you.”
Lester’s father was also large, making it curious as to where Lester’s litheness had come from, and his height and demeanor meant he had a powerful presence. His ruddy complexion made it evident he’d spent most of his life out in the elements, and his chest and shoulders were still broad and formidable, as though they could carry the world, despite the ample hard belly that protruded in front of his body like a watermelon. He had steely gray-tufted hair, and age spots on his bald pate and on his arms and hands. Buck’s large hands, knobby knuckled and braided with large blue veins like rivers, were clenched on his hips. Adah had always read dominance and anger in those hands. For a man his age, he commanded respect, but today a stench of sweat blended with the sour smell of fear.
Adah stole a look at Mabel. “I borrowed your robe.”
Mabel leaned back, waved off her comment, and peered askance, as if unable to speak.
Buck commanded again, “Come on in here.”
Her head ringing, Adah did as she was asked and stood before her seated mother-in-law and her standing father- and brother-in-law.
“What’s this I hear about you and Les going down close to the river?”
Adah gulped, trying not to show it. She and her story felt as flimsy as one of Good Housekeeping ’s paper dolls. “We did. Lester and me. He freed the livestock and was gathering up tack and such while I was inside. We were loading up the truck when we saw the milk cow running off in the wrong direction. So we went down to save her, and before we knew it, we were in the water.”
Buck surveyed her with a skeptic’s crinkled eye. Sizing her up, making her sweat it out. “It must have been your idea.”
“Maybe it was. I don’t remember.”
“Say what?”
“I don’t remember. I mean, not all of it. It was so . . . quick.”
“So you ain’t no help,” Buck said. Then he pulled himself up even taller, breathing harder, faster. His stare a brutal arrow of hard sunlight. “My son ain’t no damn fool. He’d have known where the water was.”
“It was pitch dark. We knew we were getting close as we searched out the cow.”
“It was so dark you couldn’t see the river, but you could see a cow?”
Adah hadn’t thought of that. Naturally, the Branches would look at her explanations with the harshest scrutiny. Thinking fast, she scrambled. “Our cow’s white. We could spot her especially when lightning flashed, and we could hear her sloshing in the mud ahead of us. Then a big ole wave came. We both went down with it.”
Buck didn’t move except for a narrowing of his eyes. He let long tense moments pass, then spoke with a croaking but loud voice. “Jesse and I ain’t buying it.”
Adah touched her wet hair. “You saw for yourself I was in the river. I was picked up way down.”
“No doubt you was in the river. That much is true. Jesse’s been hearing that some folks is saying it was a miracle.”
Adah shrugged. “Just good luck, I guess.”
“Good luck for you. Too bad my son don’t seem to have got any of that good luck rubbed off on him.” Buck’s eyes flashed with rage. “I want the damn truth. I want it now!”
“I’ve told you everything I can remember!”
“You’ve told me nothing that can help me find my own God-fearing flesh-and-blood kin out there in the freezing cold.”
“He’s alive.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I feel it!”
Buck’s brow went flat, and his eyes burned. “You feel it? Like you got some kind of special way of feeling ? Like the abracadabra nonsense you once used to get poor fools to part with their hard-earned money for?”
There was no use defending herself as Buck stood there studying her, and the weight of three pairs of eyes nearly buckled her knees. She was an impostor pretending to be human, playing a role. “Listen to me. I was in shock. I was fighting for my life, too. I wish there had been some kind of magic to intervene, and maybe I did get lucky somehow. I don’t know where Lester went, but my gut tells me he’s okay.”
Buck said, “Like I said, no doubt you was in the river, but how you got there and how my youngest got in there is still a mystery to me. A mystery I’m damned sure to solve.”
Mabel was sniffing and wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. “Why didn’t you two stay together in the water?”
Hoping to glean one shred of kindness, Adah turned to Mabel. “We tried. But the river was too strong for us.”
Jesse broke his silence and interjected, “It weren’t too strong for you.”
Buck glanced at his wife and then back at Adah. “For now, I gotta make one last search for my missing son.” He flicked a finger at Jesse, indicating that his son was to come along; then he looked at Mabel. “You hold tight.” And then to Adah: “You stay put.”
After the men left, Adah took a step closer to Mabel and whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
Mabel sat rigid for a few long moments, then lifted herself and walked slowly off. Reluctantly Adah followed her to the kitchen area, which was much larger and better equipped than most with plumbing against one wall, an icebox and stove against another, and a checkerboard linoleum floor. Mabel was already pulling out potatoes to scrub and had put a pot on the stove to boil. As usual, she declined Adah’s offer of help.
After gathering her strength Adah asked, “Where’s Daisy?”
Mabel flinched, but she breathed out an answer. “She’s down for a nap.”
Adah lightened her voice, if only a little bit. “That girl hates her nap these days.”
“That girl’s been a bunch of trouble since you left her here that night. On top of not knowing where my son is, I been running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to take care of her.”
Adah’s brain recoiled. “That girl is your granddaughter. And thank God we brought her here, Mabel. She would’ve probably ended up in the flood, too.” No response. “I’m sorry she’s been an added burden, but I’m here now. I’ll look after her.”
Mabel’s head snapped up. “Like you done looked after Lester?”
Adah took a step back, determined not to become defensive. “What does Daisy know?”
“We told her you two was gone and would be back shortly.”
Adah said, “I understand.”
Wiping her hands on her apron and then chopping onions, Mabel shot a hate-filled glance at Adah. “Reckon you got no other place to go now, do you?”
Her do you? felt like a shove. Adah stood still, then slowly nodded.
Mabel tossed a rotten onion into the bin. “I’ll fetch you an old dress.”
Buck and Jesse, like animals drawn by innate hunger at the smell of food, appeared just as Mabel was fixing to set the table. By now Adah was wearing one of Mabel’s old housedresses, so large on her it was like a cape with sleeves. After she’d helped Daisy wash her face and then gently combed the girl’s hair into a ponytail, she had gotten down on the floor with her to play with blocks that were too young for the girl. But the Branches kept no other toys in their home for their granddaughter.
“Let’s make a house,” Adah whispered.
“A new house,” Daisy replied. “With flowers out front.”
“And a white picket fence?”
Daisy gazed down at the blocks. “We don’t have a fence.”
“So we’ll pretend,” Adah said and gulped. Her life now was all about pretending.
Buck headed for the kitchen while Jesse climbed the stairs. Adah could overhear Buck tell Mabel, “He ain’t turned up now, he ain’t never gonna turn up.”
Then Mabel’s wrenching sobs.
Over supper everyone seemed to find their plate in need of focused attention. No one look
ed up except when passing the platter of fried calf’s liver with onions or the bowls of mashed potatoes and green beans or the basket of biscuits and crock of butter. Adah made Daisy’s plate and set it before her, then made her own.
“Everything okay, sweetie?” Adah said. Daisy was staring into her food as if she saw some kind of riddle on the plate.
“I don’t like beans,” Daisy replied.
“I know, honey,” said Adah. “That’s why I gave you a small serving. Just take a few bites.”
A moment of strained silence hovered in the air, then Buck turned to Daisy. “Hold on, there, little lady. In this house, you’ll eat what’s put on your plate. Every bite of it, you hear? We don’t put up with no complaining.”
Daisy looked down, her soft little lips quivering. “But I don’t like—”
Buck’s glare remained fastened on Daisy. “What’d I hear you say, girl?”
Daisy peered up at Buck. “I didn’t say nothing.”
“Exactly. But now that you’re living in this house, you better start saying ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir.’” His gruff tone and the rising color in his cheeks held everyone still.
“Eat what you can,” Mabel whispered.
“Yes, sir,” said Daisy to her grandmother, but no one laughed. She turned her face to Adah’s. “Do I have to eat it, Mama?”
Before Adah could decide how to answer, Buck nearly yelled, “Listen here, girl. You don’t need to ask Adah there nothing. This is the damned hard truth, and you best hear about it now. She ain’t your mama, and your daddy’s dead.”
His color had reddened, but he remained still and in command—the captain of his ship, despite it all. He motioned with a butter knife to himself, Mabel, and Jesse. “The three of us—this here’s your family now.”
Chapter Six
The high-water level in Paducah wasn’t reached until February 2, the river eight miles wide at that point. Seven-eighths of the town was underwater, as were cities and towns all along the Ohio, including Cincinnati and Louisville. Now Paducah was a ghost town of foul water, broken-windowed buildings, submerged cars and trucks, and floating trash.
Adah’s life among the Branches was just as desolate.
While the nearby town festered, the Branch men had to keep working, focused on the new year’s crop, while Adah concentrated on appearing helpful with the farmwork. The seedbeds were prepared by burning brush, wood, and bark, which provided ash—a good supplement for tobacco seedlings—then tilling and fertilizing the beds. The main fields had to be broken up, disked, and furrowed.
Buck said to Jesse one night over supper, “We’re gonna have us a tractor this year. Oughta be coming any day now.”
Jesse quirked an eyebrow. “How’d you manage that?”
Buck waved his fork in the air and, still chewing, said out of the corner of his mouth, “That Harper boy sells John Deere tractors now, and ever since last harvest he’s been at me to buy one of those new ones with rubber tires and a diesel engine.” Buck’s face twisted into an ugly smile; then he chuckled and wiped grease from his mouth. “I told him I wasn’t buying anything I hadn’t tried out yet, said I wanted one on approval. But he goes and says the company don’t do that, so I said fine, no deal, then. Damn fool said he’s so convinced I’ll want the thing, he’d go ahead and buy the tractor himself and let me use it and then pay him once I’ve ‘fallen in love’ with it or some such hogwash.”
“You gotta be kidding,” Jesse said. “He went ahead and bought it?”
“Yep, he thinks I’ll be convinced to buy it from him. But I never had no wanting of buying a tractor, ’specially when I can hire help for nothin’. Boy’s gonna end up with a tractor he don’t need.”
Jesse gave off a snort. “A used one at that.”
“Yep,” Buck said with a sly smile. “He’s got no use for a tractor; he lives in town. Right smart little house he has with his whore of a wife. Too bad it’s probably ruint now, like so many others.”
Shocked, Adah had stopped eating. With so much suffering and loss around, Buck was trying to take advantage of people’s goodwill.
Mabel appeared to be astonished, too. “He’ll tell people what you done.”
Adah had a difficult time believing that even Mabel could think the family was held in the slightest bit of high esteem by others. She obviously had no ability to read people.
Buck harrumphed. “Like hell he will. He’d be admitting to being duped. Mark my word, he won’t say a damn thing about it.”
Adah’s words slipped out before she could stifle them. “Why would you want to do that to someone?”
Buck pointed his fork at her. “None of your business, now, is it?” Then he dropped the fork and dug his hands into the ribs and tore meat off with his teeth, juices sliding down his chin. A moment or so later, he dropped the rib, cleaned down to the shiny bone. “Come to think of it,” he said, gazing across the table at Adah, “you might as well know: me and that boy’s father go way back. Let’s just say we once had a major disagreement.”
Adah’s back went rigid. Buck had no reason to give her this explanation unless it was meant to serve as a warning, making it clear that he could hold a grudge forever. Was it meant to scare her? And still she couldn’t stop herself. “But that was his father.”
His face hardened as they both stared at each other. “Don’t matter. All them Harpers think they’re better than everyone else ’round here. Truth be told, I never cared none about any of that bunch. Bad pennies, all of them. But they go prancing around like they’re all shiny and clean.”
“What have they done?”
“The old man’s a banker. Ain’t that enough?”
“I still don’t see what this has to do with his son,” she said. “He’ll probably lose his job.”
“Am I supposed to care?” Buck sat back, patting his belly. “If he’s fool enough to fall for the deal I made, he deserves to lose his job.” He looked over at Jesse, wearing that ugly smile again. “In the meantime, we’re gonna have to learn us how to drive a brand-new tractor.”
Jesse bellowed with laughter.
After that, the voices at the table were like whispers from far away. Shocked, Adah became deaf. It was one thing to have heard from others how unethically the Branches conducted their lives, but it was another thing to have to bear witness to it in person.
Would she now be seen as one of them? Or had it always been this way? Had she been seen as theirs from the moment she married Lester? Adah remembered trying to befriend some of the farmwives who lived nearby. The women had been civil but never warm, and nothing had ever developed. Adah dropped her hand into her lap and grabbed her skirt, bunching it into a ball. People were too smart to get close to a Branch.
Paying them some wary deference seemed to be the status quo. Later that night Buck said he’d been asked to be a part of a February 19 Paducah town meeting to discuss the possible construction of a floodwall. He had no expertise in construction or engineering, so Adah concluded that he’d been asked out of respect for his family history in the area and because one of his sons had apparently perished in its waters. By then three bodies had been found, one man having fallen out of a boat and two others discovered in the kitchen of their three-room house. More were sure to come.
From then onward Adah lost herself in her daily chores and playtime with Daisy, deciding that raising her with a sense of fairness and kindness was the best thing she could do to counter the Branches’ lack of character. That was the only thing she could do now, until she came up with a plan for them to live elsewhere.
As both February and the floodwaters receded at an agonizingly slow pace, the Branch men had to continue to prepare for the next season’s crops, some of the time allowing Adah to help. As bad as it was to exist in the same space as the men (Mabel’s company was little better), the fields provided fresh air for both Adah and Daisy. Especially since the family hadn’t left the farm yet except to attend makeshift church services.
O
utside, Adah could breathe. On the porch, as she stretched her back, she looked out to the dawn—its blossoming colors of blue and salmon and silver; its cool, crisp air that spoke of new beginnings. Pulling her coat closer, she exhaled a long frosty breath as if she were releasing demons, and she allowed herself to briefly relish the glory of a rising sun over the hazy fields. Those moments provided only a brief reprieve from the torment of her entrapment, however, and each day she awoke with renewed purpose, racking her brain for a way out.
The day the Harper boy, Ben, came to deliver the new tractor, Adah lingered outside in hopes of saying something to the man, who was young, still baby faced, and had dressed well for the occasion in a suit. He had the wide-eyed look of someone whose life loomed ahead as full and sweet as June days to come, and it wrenched Adah’s heart to observe his obvious excitement. Even his hands looked fresh and innocent. Ben Harper had no idea he was soon to receive a swipe from Buck Branch’s poisonous claws.
Adah longed to whisper to him, Don’t do this. Buck won’t buy no matter what , but there was never an opportunity, and when Ben Harper left, all smiles, she was left with a sadness she couldn’t suppress.
Only two kindly women had come by to deliver condolence casseroles, and one lady, once she learned the flood had left Daisy and Adah with nothing, came back with some hand-me-down clothing and shoes she had packed inside an old and faded needlepoint bag. She looked friendly but declined Adah’s invitation to come inside.
“Thank you so very much,” Adah said as she opened the top of the bag and glanced inside, where she could see a flowered housedress, some walking oxford shoes, and more things underneath. “I’ll take the clothes upstairs and bring the bag back down to you.”
“No, of course not, honey. You go on and keep the bag, too.”
Adah held it close. Any small possession was now a precious thing. “But it’s so nice.”
“It was a donation, came in. Some folks’ trash is another man’s treasure, or some such. And I couldn’t think of anyone who needed something nice as much as you.”
The River Widow Page 5
