With tears streaming down his face and sweat rolling down his body, Bruce dropped his hands to his side and began the journey home, feeling defeated and betrayed. Though he could see his house from where he stood, it might as well have been a hundred miles away. Each footstep grew heavier as he put distance between himself and the crowd behind him. He still wanted to help Bob, wanted to get him out of there and away from those people. But he didn’t want to get shot doing it. He had children to think of, and with Miriam’s true colors exposed, he knew that he had to stay safe in order to protect them from the likes of her.
As the rain fell harder and the sprinkles turned into plump droplets, Bruce continued making his way home. Down the center of the dirt road he walked, nearly dragging his bad leg as he went. He kept his eyes low, letting the tears roll down his chin and fall from his face where they plopped onto the dirt road and mingled with the raindrops. It seemed the sky was crying with him.
He felt defeated, like he had lost a battle and had used every ounce of his strength in doing so. This wasn’t a feeling Bruce was used to and he didn’t like it. He’d spent his life a winner, someone who knew what he wanted and worked hard to get it. That he was unable to convince his friends and neighbors, even his wife, that what they were doing was wrong was unacceptable to him.
Halfway home, he stopped. Standing in the middle of the road, drained of energy, Bruce raised his face to the sky and prayed. As the rain intensified and the thunder sounded around him, he asked for courage and strength. He asked for understanding and guidance. He begged for answers.
When he was finished, he raised his foot to take the first step of the rest of his journey home, but as quickly as he raised it, he lowered it again.
Without thinking, without planning, without even realizing what he was doing until he was doing it, Bruce turned around and walked back to the Murphy house, intent on breaking up the crowd and putting an end to the madness. With suddenly renewed energy, he was determined to take Bob Greeley home where he would be away from those people until they had a chance to cool down and think straight. He was going to get Bob out of there, no matter what.
By the time he made the trek back down the dirt road, the crowd had moved from the front of the house to the side.
As he stepped into the yard, he noticed most of the group of people standing at the front of Miriam’s car, which was parked next to Bob’s in the driveway.
Walking up behind Miriam, Bruce asked, “What’s going on now?”
Miriam glanced over her shoulder at him and said, “We’re taking care of it.”
“Taking care of what? There’s nothing to take care of,” Bruce said as he elbowed his way between Miriam and Maude. He immediately turned to face them. “This has gone on long enough. I’m taking Bob home.”
He looked around for Bob. When he saw him, his stomach knotted.
Bob Greeley no longer sat on the steps of the house. He now stood pale-faced under an oak tree thirty feet from the crowd, his hands bound behind him. Leroy and Ollie were walking away from him, returning to the group. Henry stood beside Bob with the pistol aimed at his temple. Most shocking was the rope that lay around Bob’s throat.
With his eyes, Bruce followed the rope from Bob’s neck, up and over a limb of the tree, back down and across the ground, to the bumper on Miriam’s car. He saw Leroy step away from the group and head toward the driver’s door.
By god, they were going to hang the man.
Adrenaline pumping through him, Bruce shouted, “No!” He then walked as fast as he could toward Bob and Henry. “Stop it. Henry, you take that rope off of him right now.”
“I can’t do that, Bruce. You don’t know what he does to his wife.”
“That’s not your business.”
“You don’t know what he does to that little girl.”
Angry and frustrated, feeling as though he was losing the race against time, Bruce completely lost his composure and shouted, “Neither do you! None of you know what he does or if he even does anything. Now take that rope off him before you do something else that you can’t take back.”
Henry shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t let another man get away with doing things like that to a girl. It’ll ruin her life, Bruce. Don’t you see that? Years from now, when she’s married, she’s going to have problems. She may turn to drugs or alcohol. Who knows what’ll happen to her.”
When he mentioned the alcohol, his voice broke just enough to give Bruce the feeling that Henry was taking this so hard because his wife had been through it. Someone must have done terrible things to Sara when she was young. This was Henry’s way of getting even for her. In his mind, he was doing the right thing. The way he saw it, he was saving two people. But he wasn’t. He was killing one.
Speaking slowly and deliberately in a desperate attempt to make Henry see things clearly, Bruce said, “Get the authorities involved then, Henry. This isn’t the way to go about it. If you think he’s doing something wrong, turn him in. Let the police handle it. You don’t want to do this. You don’t want this on your conscience.”
In an emotionless and flat tone, he said, “I’ll be fine.”
“His blood will be on your hands.”
“I’ll be fine.” Henry looked away, stone-faced. When he tightened his grip on the pistol, it became obvious to Bruce that there was no talking to him.
Bob looked at Bruce, clearly frightened. “I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. You’ve got to help me. I haven’t done anything. I haven’t—”
“Shut up,” Henry yelled, hitting the back of Bob’s head with the handle of the pistol. “You just shut your filthy mouth.” With the back of his free hand, Henry wiped the sweat and rain from his eyes, never turning his attention away from Bob.
The look on Henry’s face was one not many people had seen. Normally quiet and easygoing, he rarely showed anger. He rarely had a reason to. Not since the French trenches in The Great War had he worn this expression. He’d hoped never to be this angry, to feel such rage coursing through his veins. Yet here he was, standing next to a man who had no regard for women or children. His hatred burned hot for Bob Greeley and all the others like him.
As his hand began to tremble, not with fear or reluctance but because the adrenaline pumped like acid in his blood, he tightened his grip on the pistol and pressed the barrel against Bob’s skin, slippery with sweat and rain. He’d be lying to himself if he denied wanting to pull the trigger, needing to squeeze off a shot and rejoice as it tore through Bob’s dirty brain. In that moment, he wanted more than anything to take the life of this imposter of a man, to watch as he fell to the ground and bled through the hole in his head. But he refrained, deciding that watching Bob suffer, watching him fight for air as he dangled from the tree and his life seeped away from him would be much more gratifying.
When Bruce heard the engine rev behind him, he knew there was no time left for him to save Bob Greeley.
But he was damn sure going to try.
He closed the short distance between himself and Bob. Ignoring Henry, who now turned the gun toward him, Bruce grabbed the rope around Bob’s neck and lifted it up, intent on taking it off. His plan was to throw the rope to the ground and lead Bob out of the yard and down the road, where he would put him in the car and drive him home. While Bob was thanking his lucky stars that at least one person remained sane throughout the ordeal, Brue had every intention of alerting the authorities to what had taken place, even though that would mean trouble for his wife.
Behind him, a scream tore through the day. With the rope still in his hands and Henry still pointing the gun at him, shouting at him to let go, Bruce glanced over his shoulder to see who was screaming.
At the corner of the house, the Murphy girl stood crying and shouting for these people to stop. Bruce doubted they would listen to her any more than they had listened to him.
After looking away for only a second, he turned back to Bob, determined to finish removing the rope from his
neck. But a quick blow to the face, delivered by Henry Miller, sent him sprawling backward onto the ground, where his mouth filled with the bitter, metallic taste of blood.
Instinctively, he brought his hands up to his nose and felt the wetness as the blood poured from his nostrils.
Still reeling from the blow, he looked up at Bob, hoping that he’d succeeded in removing the rope before he fell to the ground.
He had not.
Certain that this was it, this was the moment that Bob Greeley would hang, Bruce struggled to get to his feet in time to save him, worried that he wouldn’t make it. Just as he got his legs underneath him and began to push himself up, a voice rose from the crowd.
Chapter 23
Grace hoped to make it to town and back home before the full force of the storm hit. She should’ve left sooner, but she hadn’t. Now she walked in the rain, pulling the wagon behind her.
It wasn’t so bad walking in the rain. For the first time in a long time, her clothes clung to her skin, wet not from sweat but from water. She didn’t mind. The rain, a hot sprinkle at first, seemed to be getting cooler as it turned to a drizzle. Either that or her body temperature was dropping. She’d been hot for so long, she couldn’t remember what it felt like to be cool.
Her steps slowed as she walked. She didn’t mind that the dirt road was turning to mud beneath her feet, or that her Keds were becoming dirtier than they already were. She didn’t mind that her hair was plastered to her head. She simply didn’t care. All that mattered was that it was raining, something she’d spent a long time hoping for. And for the first time in many months, she didn’t feel as though she was burning from the inside out.
Grace wasn’t far from the end of the dirt road. When she got to the end, she would make a right onto the pavement and continue on to the store, a route she’d taken enough times over the years to allow her to do it with her eyes closed. She was so sure of herself, she closed her eyes and walked, just to see if she really could make the journey blind.
For a while, she walked without incident. There was the occasional stumble over a rock, the awkward step into a washboard rut, but she didn’t walk off the road. Didn’t twist an ankle or fall down. She was doing great.
She opened her eyes when she heard what sounded like people arguing. Even though they shouted excitedly, she couldn’t hear them clearly enough to make out what they were saying.
Unsure of where the voices were coming from, Grace paused in the road, stopping the wagon in order to have a better chance of hearing.
Even with her steps and the wheels of the wagon perfectly still, making no noise whatsoever, she still couldn’t pinpoint the location of the people. The booming thunder echoing off the hills around her and the sound of the rain plopping onto the dying leaves and dead grass made the task more difficult than it already was.
She looked to the house on the left side of the road, but saw no one on the porch or in the yard. Looking to the house on the opposite side of the road, she again saw no one.
After deciding it didn’t matter what the voices were saying, or even who was speaking, she continued on to town, planning to stop in the pharmacy for a Coke, no matter what Bob said about it.
She soon came upon the Murphy house, where a little girl lay crumpled on the ground, her head rested on her arms, apparently sobbing. Grace’s heart went out to the girl immediately, just as it always did for crying children. Even as she wondered what had the girl so upset, she realized that it almost certainly had something to do with the voices.
Grace, empathetic to any crying soul, quickened her pace. She veered from the middle of the road to the edge, intending to leave her wagon at the driveway and hurry over to the child. But as she drew closer to the driveway, she noticed more things.
Miriam Lawson’s car was parked alongside Bob’s in the driveway, surrounded by a group of people who Grace now knew weren’t arguing at all, though they were clearly upset. They seemed angry about something, talking loudly and animatedly to each other.
With her eyes on the group of people standing around the car, Grace slowly walked into the driveway. Once she was absolutely certain that this car belonged to Miriam and had been parked in her own driveway just hours earlier, Grace shifted her eyes over to the child, who remained on the ground in a forlorn position. From this distance, Grace was able to confirm that the girl was in fact crying. Her body rose and fell rhythmically, an obvious sign of sobbing.
“Grace!”
Tearing her eyes away from the girl, Grace looked over to see Miriam rush up to her, followed closely by Maude, Emma, and Sara.
“What’s going on?” Grace asked, confused as to why a group of adults were standing around talking, ignoring the fact that a child lay crying on the ground just feet away. She could expect that kind of thing from a man, but it wasn’t normal for a woman to ignore a crying child.
Miriam threw her arms around Grace’s neck and said, “It’s going to be over soon.” She withdrew from the hug, but she kept one hand on each of Grace’s shoulders. Holding her at arm’s length, she smiled. “It’ll all be over soon, Grace. You won’t have to worry about a thing now.”
“What are you talking about?”
Maude stepped forward, clapping her hands together. She put one meaty arm around Grace’s shoulders and pulled her close. Grace could smell the sour sweat of her armpits mixed with the heavy scent of perfume.
“Won’t it be wonderful?” Maude asked in a dreamy voice. “You can sleep easier at night, Grace. From now on, in fact. An easy sleep every night, with no worries at all.” She laughed a high-pitched cackle that made Grace cringe.
Trying not to be rude, Grace did her best to wiggle out of their grasp, but they were holding on tight.
“I still don’t…” Grace said, shaking her head as she tried to make sense of it all.
Emma walked over and stood on the other side of Grace, rubbing her back slowly and smiling at her. Sara wedged herself between Miriam and Emma as there was no room on Maude’s side, and took one of Grace’s hands in her own. She too smiled, making Grace more than a little uncomfortable and causing her to feel a bit claustrophobic.
“What in the world is going on? I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” Grace said, shaking away from the women’s hands, not caring now whether or not she appeared rude. She took a step back and looked at each of them.
“Don’t you see? You’re going to be free,” Miriam said with a smile.
The other women nodded and smiled.
“Not only are you going to be free, but she’ll be free as well.” Miriam pointed to the little girl, who peeked up from the ground.
Through the strands of hair that had covered her face, the girl looked at the group of women with wide, frightened eyes. When she saw Grace, she raised her head. She jumped up from the ground and ran to her, throwing her arms around her waist.
Grace looked down at the girl and smoothed her wet hair as best she could, tucking it behind her ears. She watched as the rain pelted the young girl’s upturned face, mingling with her tears and dripping off her chin.
When she looked back at the four women, Grace asked, “What will we be free from?”
“From him, of course,” Maude said, as if it was as plain as the large polka dot dress she wore.
“From who? You’re not making any sense.” Grace shook her head and squeezed her eyes closed, trying to remain patient with the women even though she was becoming increasingly frustrated with them.
“From Bob,” Sara said calmly. “He won’t be able to hurt either of you two ever again. She’ll be able to have a normal life, and you’ll be able to live yours in peace.”
Grace didn’t understand any more now than she did when she first arrived. It seemed the women were talking in riddles.
Hoping that the girl could provide clearer answers, Grace looked down at her.
“Sue, honey. What happened?”
Sniffling, the girl raised her head and looked up at Grace. With
eyes full of tears and a voice full of pain, she said, “B-b-b-ob.”
“What about Bob?” Grace asked.
“We’re taking care of it,” Miriam said. “For you. For her. Soon, he won’t ever bother either of you again.”
“Bother us? Why would you think Bob was bothering her? Or me, for that matter?”
“Wasn’t he?” Emma asked.
“Why was he alone in the house with a young girl if he wasn’t bothering her and doing things he shouldn’t be doing?” Miriam asked. “A grown man has no business being alone with a young girl.”
Grace was getting an uneasy feeling.
“He did have business being with her.”
“What business could he possibly have had?” Miriam asked, putting her hands on her hips and shifting her weight from one leg to the other.
“He was helping her overcome her speech impediment,” Grace snapped, angry that she had to explain her husband’s actions to these busybodies.
“Speech impediment?” Emma asked quietly.
“Yes. In case you haven’t noticed, she stutters. My husband stuttered as a child, and he was teaching her how to stop.” Grace looked at each of the women, all of whom said nothing now. “Why does it matter why he was here?” Directing her question to Miriam, she asked, “What business is it of yours what my husband does and who he does it with?”
After a moment of silence, Miriam said, “Even if he wasn’t doing anything wrong here with her, I saw what he did to you today. Are you going to deny that he hit you?”
Grace straightened, standing taller and prouder. “No. I won’t deny it. He did hit me. But that’s none of your business either.”
The Day Bob Greeley Died Page 13
