Esther seemed equally confused. “Why?”
Adah said, “Why not?”
Esther’s look had changed. Her tone was lower and somewhat indignant now. “Okay, I understand. How obvious you are. You must know.”
A tap on Adah’s shoulder could’ve knocked her over. What in the world was Esther talking about? “Know? Know what?”
“Oh, come on. You’re kind of obvious, you know.”
Taken aback, Adah managed to sputter, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Let’s not behave like children. Someone must have told you about Lester and me.”
Adah’s knees turned to mush. “What?”
“Someone must have told you that I dated your husband at one time.”
A full shock sweat broke out. If she had been near a chair, she would’ve fallen into it. “N-no . . . no one did.”
Now Esther’s face was pliable, and there was a new curiosity in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t think anyone could fake the reaction you’re having right before my eyes. I’ve shocked you. I can see now that you really didn’t know.”
Adah had wrapped her arms around herself and her hands were shaking. Other than Betsy, Lester had never mentioned anyone from his past, and the idea of him with any woman was now unsettling. Esther probably had no idea that she had dodged a bullet. “I didn’t know.”
What followed was a confusing supper, during which Adah had a hard time reading anyone’s hands or anything else about them. The talk was about flood reparations—Congress had been petitioned by the city for a levee, a seawall of sorts around the city, and the estimated cost was over five million dollars. They also discussed conflicts among school-board members, some town gossip, and radio programs.
Throughout it all, Adah read no sparks of romance between Jesse Branch and Esther Heiser. Adah kept quiet, and Daisy, too, remained silent during the entire tedious meal, showing no interest in their guest whatsoever.
Later, after supper had finally ended, Esther took Adah’s arm and steered her onto the front porch, where the daylight was drifting away. Then she stood facing her. “Look, it was before he met you, just after his wife died. We went out a few times. Nothing serious. No harm done.”
Then what was that pain Adah saw in Esther’s eyes?
“He ended it when I told him I was falling for him. Now that was a mistake. I’ve picked up too much of an aggressive style from managing teachers and parents all day. As soon as I spoke of the future and my feelings, he jumped ship. Les said he wanted no ‘entanglements,’ and that was that. But we remained friends. I’m sorry to hear what happened to him, God rest his soul.”
Still gathering herself, Adah said, “I had no idea that Les was friends with . . . really anyone. So you’ve known this family for a long time?”
“Almost my entire life. I went to school with the boys.”
Adah could detect no ill feelings about the Branches coming from Esther. How was that? If Jack Darby had heard the gossip, why not this strong woman?
“I-I’m surprised.”
Esther seemed a little offended. “That we would stick together in these parts?”
Adah shook her head adamantly. “No.” But she was. Why would a fine woman like Esther Heiser be friends with the Branches? A horrible urge. Could she tamp it down? “I have to ask you something: What are you doing here with Jesse?”
A hard stare now. “Just as I thought. You judge, like everyone else.”
“I don’t. It’s just that you’re here, and then the shock that you might be dating him . . .”
Esther shifted her weight, and now she crossed her arms. “Why wouldn’t I date him?”
Groping for the right words, Adah said, “You just seem so much . . . more sophisticated.”
“I’m almost thirty-three years old, and I’ve never been proposed to. You’re younger than I am and have already been married. You have no idea how it feels. I’ve been stuck in the same place for my entire life, waiting for something to happen. I’ve left it to the Lord for many years, and now it’s time to take matters into my own hands.”
Adah frowned, more questions cramming her mind. “So it was your idea to date Jesse?”
Esther’s bristling was only barely discernible. “At Lester’s funeral, Mabel and I spoke for the first time in a long time. Really spoke.”
Adah mulled over this information. She had not noticed Esther at the funeral service or the graveyard. “Oh, so it was Mabel’s idea?”
“She had just lost one son. You bet she wants the best for her only remaining one. And she knows what I want. Let’s just say it was a meeting of the minds.”
Realization sinking into her, Adah started to see Mabel as the quiet manipulator, the master planner, the real force behind the family. On the surface Buck was in charge and had the more commanding presence, but on a personal level Mabel orchestrated everything. She had coordinated the romance between Jesse and Esther with the fervor of a thief planning his next heist.
Having a woman like Esther Heiser marry into the Branch family would be a definite triumph and would lift their position in the community decidedly higher. “It sounds like a business transaction, rather than a romance.”
Esther Heiser silently and only scarcely shook her head, as if she had been hurt. “Again, you judge. What would you know of my feelings? Or of Jesse’s?”
Regret flooded Adah. She couldn’t imagine Jesse Branch turning into anything but a less awful version of his father, but Esther had set her sights, and Adah doubted anything would deter her. “Nothing, I guess. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“You’re right. You probably shouldn’t have.”
“I owe you an apology.”
“You owe me nothing.”
Adah gulped. She watched as Esther, too, swallowed hard. Adah could not get a read on the woman.
But any new presence in her life was good news. At the very least, Esther offered some contact with the outside world.
Esther extended her hand. “I’m not one to hold a grudge.” Her countenance changed faster than any other person Adah had ever known. “No hard feelings?”
Adah took Esther’s hand. “I think maybe you’re a kind person.”
“Not at all. I simply know what you’re going through.”
Adah had no idea what Esther meant. Did she mean losing her husband, being a widow, living with the Branches, taking care of Daisy? Or something else? “And . . . ?”
“You’re all alone now, aren’t you?”
Chapter Sixteen
All alone, indeed, and without any plans to get Daisy away, Adah was shocked that time continued to tick on. Each day of her continued confinement was marked by moments of hopelessness as no ideas came to her. But May ushered in the warm weather Adah had been craving, and Daisy could spend more time outside playing rather than inside surrounded by the Branches’ toxicity.
By midmonth it was time to transplant the tobacco seedlings from the seedbeds to the main fields. These were hard, long days of labor, during which extra workers had to be brought in, and Adah joined in if for nothing else than activity and a break from the despair she held inside. Buck always took on the most desperate of men and paid them as little as he could; at least in her own small way, she was helping them.
When four colored men arrived one day in a wagon and pulled up before the house, Buck made them get down and undergo something of an inspection, and it reminded Adah of what it must have been like when slaves were put up on the auction block.
“You’re pretty scrawny, ain’t you?” Buck said to the men; then he circled them, looking them up and down. Buck’s cheeks were aflame, his posture straight. Despite his age, he appeared tough enough to jump into a boxing ring and throw punches whenever he chose to, making it clear he was always in charge.
One of the youngest in the group allowed his mouth to fall open; his nostrils flared and his chest heaved, but he spoke not a word. Just tolerated it.
Scrawny was an understatement, Adah observed, swallowing back a warm flood of compassion. These men were withering away, shrinking into themselves, as if even the marrow of their bones had been leached. Tall and lean, their faces gaunt, though still young, hair twisted in knots, their clothes threadbare and hanging loosely, they seemed muddled as to what to say. Their faces were stoic, but their eyes remained bright.
Another of the men finally twitched under Buck’s perusal. Buck stood still for a moment and stared at the man, as if daring him to twitch again, taking pleasure in their discomfort.
“You always this jumpy?” Buck asked with a sly smile.
“No, sir,” the man answered.
The one who looked the oldest shifted his weight from one foot to the other and said, “We’s right hard workers, sir.”
Buck took another look over them and rubbed his chin. “That’s still to be determined, now, ain’t it? I bet you ain’t ate a full meal in a month, so I don’t figure any of you’s capable of giving me a full day’s work. I’ll offer you seventy-five cents a day.”
The four men glanced at each other with stunned expressions, and the oldest, still focused on his role as leader, cleared his throat before saying, “We was hoping to get at least a dollar.”
Buck held a twig in his hand and proceeded to pick at his teeth. “I’ll go up to eighty cents. Take it or leave it.”
The leader held still, his eyes awash with a pleading desperation. “But sir, most of these spreads around here is paying a dollar.”
Buck flung the twig to the ground and hitched up his pants, held by suspenders. “Then why aren’t you working one of those spreads? There has to be some reason you ain’t been hired on elsewhere. Probably because you look weak as women.”
“Mr. Branch, I gives you my word. We’s gonna do good work for you.”
A cruel grin spread across Buck’s face, as if he knew he’d won. He spat on the ground. “Eighty-five cents, and that’s my final offer.”
Again, the men glanced at each other, and Adah could read defeat in the set of their shoulders. The oldest, wearing a sorrowful but resigned expression on his face, eventually said, “Alright, sir.”
Buck lifted his arm. “Well, hop to it now. What you standing there for? You got work to do.”
Appalled, Adah sighed with dismay and turned away. Life could be brutal even during the best of times, but for men like those four, every day probably amounted to facing another shameful humiliation and degradation. The Depression had weakened almost everyone, and 1937 had been a year of setbacks, but even those who weren’t directly hurting were usually kind. Many people were trying to help their fellow man. But not Buck Branch. Scruples meant nothing more to him than the gravel in the driveway he kicked as he walked away.
Later, when she overheard him tell Jesse he’d hired the men for only eighty-five cents a day, he laughed. The mad rumbling sound like thunder announcing a coming storm, combined with Jesse’s snortlike laughter, sent a trail of sweat down the center of Adah’s back.
The tractor was hitched to the tobacco planter, and one man drove while two others sat on the back of the planter and set the seedlings eighteen to twenty inches apart, then watered them while a fourth man followed on foot. Adah helped from time to time after doing laundry and trying to do some fun things with Daisy.
But the downside of the warmer weather was doing the laundry in the heat and over a fire. On occasion Adah found herself overcome by the smoke that set off coughing and gulps for fresh air. Often her back was drenched in sweat, and her cotton dress clung to her body like a second set of skin. Sometimes she had to walk away for a while and stretch her back, look to the horizon, and breathe deeply, reminding herself to take care of her health for Daisy’s sake.
After the tobacco plants were in the ground, and after each rain, Buck and Jesse spent all day running harrows down the rows in the fields to turn under weeds and keep them at bay. If the two men weren’t in the fields, they were inside the old log curing barn, or they disappeared into the woods for hours, obviously making more moonshine as the weather warmed. With dirt-cheap labor doing most of the fieldwork, they could give time to their other enterprise. Most of the days, only Adah, Daisy, and Mabel kept to the house, the silence between the two women as loud as a blaring horn.
The conversation with Esther ran through Adah’s mind, in particular Esther’s comment about judgment. Esther had indicated she was interested in Jesse and wanted a proposal, and that could mean that Esther would be moving into the Branch house. Or if they married, would Jesse finally leave home and get a place of his own? Adah thought that unlikely—Jesse was to inherit—so it was altogether possible that Adah and Esther would end up living under the same roof someday.
Their first meeting hadn’t gone well, but it hadn’t been a disaster, either. Adah pledged to herself that she would do better next time. If there was a next time. She also kept thinking that a smart woman such as Esther Heiser would soon come to her senses and lose all interest in Jesse Branch.
As she gazed about, her eyes landed on the livestock barn, and an idea hit her.
She found Mabel in the kitchen cutting a chicken carcass into pieces she would flour and fry later. Adah said to her mother-in-law, “It’s such a nice day, I thought about taking Daisy for a ride around the farm on Miss Socks. What do you think?” She had learned to ask permission for everything, especially if it had to do with Daisy.
“Fine by me,” Mabel answered.
Something hooklike lodged in Adah’s windpipe, but she cocked her head and her words slipped out as if they had minds of their own. “Isn’t Miss Socks the horse Lester’s first wife was riding when she was killed?”
Mabel’s face registered shock. The skin was hanging off her cheekbones, and her pupils became pinpoints as she blanched. “I can’t remember.” She wiped her hands on her apron, and Adah noticed a slight tremor in her fingers. She appeared to have to force herself to meet Adah’s eyes. “Who told you that?”
“Someone at church mentioned it.” Funny, Adah thought, how these days she could walk in and out of the truth as though through an open door. “Said she was surprised you’d have kept a horse that killed someone.”
Mabel fixed a pained but angry stare on Adah. “Like I said, I don’t remember.”
“How many horses did you have back then?”
“We had several.”
“But still . . .”
“What are you saying?” Mabel demanded as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
Adah’s gaze never fell. “Only that it seems strange you’d let your granddaughter ride a horse that killed someone—her mother, in fact.”
Visibly shaken, Mabel darted her eyes away, and a line etched between her brows. “I changed my mind,” she said fiercely, her hands clasping her apron. “I don’t want Daisy on no horse.”
Adah smiled; she couldn’t help it. Then she spun around and walked calmly to the back of the house and out the back door, filled with satisfaction at being able to challenge any of the Branches, especially Mabel or Buck. But Buck was too terrifying to face head-on, and he was sure to hear anything Adah said to Mabel anyway.
On the heels of her satisfaction, pure dread. Why was she making things harder for herself? She hadn’t been thinking straight. Why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut? She remembered one of the first things she’d learned while out on the streets of New York City. If you spot someone’s weakness, avoid touching upon it at all costs, unless you want a confrontation.
Adah was running late that day, and by the time she returned home from making her laundry rounds, supper was over. But Mabel, Jesse, and Buck were still sitting around the dining table, apparently in rapt conversation that stopped as soon as Adah entered. Buck was spinning quarters on the tabletop.
“Mama,” Daisy cried and ran to Adah, wrapping her arms around Adah’s legs. “You were gone so long.”
“Not long enough,” Mabel said.
Buck shushed her. His no
strils visibly flared, and he gave Adah a look that felt like the tips of a hundred sharp knives were pressing into her flesh. He caught the quarter he’d been spinning and slammed it on the tabletop, his eyes still boring through her.
She supposed they had been discussing the earlier talk of Miss Socks and Betsy, and she figured they were none too happy about it.
So why were they keeping her around? Did they still want her part of Lester’s farm? Or was there more? Were they planning to rid themselves of her, too, just to make it easier? Even though Adah had once believed the Branches wouldn’t dare stage another accidental death on their property, that night she told herself to be extra careful around farm machinery and make sure that the Branches kept their distance when she was around fire or in any other vulnerable situations. She decided to always prepare her own plate of food and pour her own coffee.
One never knew.
Chapter Seventeen
On the day Ben Harper came to retrieve the tractor that had been heavily used for tilling and planting, his face had been transformed from one full of energy, optimism, and enthusiasm to one that looked as though it had experienced a grave disappointment for the first time. He wore casual slacks and a plaid shirt, and together with his trailer driver, they loaded the dirt-encrusted tractor onto the flatbed without saying a word, their faces blank. Buck and Jesse hadn’t even washed it.
After the trailer started lumbering off the farm, Adah ran to catch up.
The driver must have seen her in the mirror and stopped. Ben Harper looked out of the window at her and then stepped out of the truck as she approached; he was wearing a curious but wary expression.
When she reached him, she was heaving dry breaths. “I’m sorry if I startled you. I just had to . . . to ask . . . are you going to be okay?”
First, he seemed to pass through the surprise that she had come after him; then he plastered on a smile and forced a carefree tone of voice. “Of course. Why do you ask?”
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