“That’s enough.”
Ranny moved out into the open, stepping into the road. He held the shotgun cradled under his arm, but his finger was on the first of the two triggers and his other hand rested under the double barrel ready to bring it up.
The leader slewed around. His voice was querulous but hard when he spoke. “Stay out of this, son.”
“This man is my friend. This is my land. Get away from my friend. Get off my land.”
There was a moment of utter quiet. Lettie’s burning gaze clung to Ranny. The wavering glow of the torch turned his hair to red-gold silk and glazed his skin to a bronze sheen. The moonlight added a trace of silver gilding and threw his shadow like an enormous black genie before him. For an instant it was as if he were not quite of this puny world, but was rather like some ancient god of war, magnificent and terrible in his simple wrath. There could be little doubt that he would pull the trigger of the weapon in his arms. Moreover, there was a sense that he would do so without compunction, without the least regard for the consequences. It was unnerving. Horrifying.
And yet he was so vulnerable there with his damaged faculties, one against many. His understanding was such a fragile thing that he might be tricked, overpowered, beaten senseless, if not worse. The thought of it made Lettie feel sick. The pounding of her heart was so hard and suffocating that she felt as if she swayed with it where she stood. Never in her life had she been so frightened for another person. Never. Not even for Henry.
If Ranny should be struck on the site of his old injury, he might die. To think of him, with his sweet nature and gentle teasing laughter, dying on a night of such moonlit splendor was more than she could bear. To see him killed while she stood by would maim her in some way that she did not quite understand.
Lionel had gone to kneel beside his father, fumbling with his bonds while keeping one wary eye on the men who now stood with their backs to him. Mama Tass was crying, a soft wailing that had the sound of ageless anguish.
The leader took a step toward Ranny with his whip trailing in the dust at his back. “This has nothing to do with you, son. You’re interfering in something you don’t understand. Go on back to bed and let us deal with it. That’s the best way.”
“I understand. Get off my land.”
“This is our lives, our families, our homes, our land we’re dealing with here. Everything we ever dreamed of and worked for is being taken from us. Friend or enemy, black or white, doesn’t matter. We have to take a stand.”
The leader twitched the whip a little behind him, straightening it. He meant to use it, to stun Ranny or, perhaps, if he was good enough with it, to snatch the shotgun from his hands. Could Ranny see it? Did he realize?
“It matters to me,” Ranny said, his gaze square on the eye slits in the sheet covering of the leader.
The man stepped forward again. He held out his free hand. “You don’t want to hold a shotgun on your friends and neighbors. Give me that thing.”
The other men were easing apart, getting ready to rush Ranny when the moment came. At any moment, as soon as the leader was close enough, the lash would whip back and forward.
Lettie stepped from her hiding place. She moved out into the golden wash of moonlight, out into the road. Her head high and her arms swinging, she walked to Ranny’s side. Her voice rang out, clear and carrying.
“I would take care if I were you. He is single-minded when he decides what he wants to do and very, very fast.”
The leader glanced at Lettie, then looked back at Ranny. His manner was more angry, less coaxing. “Hand me that shotgun!”
Ranny lifted the weapon, centered the black holes of the gun barrels on the man’s chest. There came a hair-raising double click as he pulled the hammers back. His eyes were bright in the flickering torchlight with what might have been laughter, rage, or a touch of madness as he said, “Which end?”
Not a sheeted figure stirred. Somewhere a whippoorwill called, and the ignorant rooster in the magnolia crowed as if in answer. A breath of air lifted the sheets and sent the smoke of the torch flying in a long, gray plume. The night was abruptly hot, stifling.
“I think,” Lettie said, “that it might be best if you did as he told you. Carefully.”
The leader made a brief gesture with his head. The others began to back away, their eyes on the gun Ranny held. They took the reins of their mounts from the man who held them as well as the torch and swung into their saddles. The leader coiled his whip with slow care, a gesture of his defeat and of his refusal to preside over a complete rout. Slipping it over his arm, he climbed onto his horse, then sat looking down.
“We won’t forget this.”
Ranny answered before Lettie could speak. “Don’t.”
They rode away. The red eye of the torch grew smaller and finally disappeared along the road. Bradley, free of his bonds, stepped toward Ranny. His face was gray under the brown of his skin and yet it was transfigured by the dawning warmth of his smile. “I won’t forget it, either.”
Ranny held out his hand and they hugged each other in the sudden joy of relief. Ranny gave a soft laugh. “We saved our hides again.”
“One more time,” Bradley agreed, “especially mine.”
Ranny sent Lettie a quick look. “Miss Lettie helped.”
“So she did,” Bradley agreed, turning to her. “I’m grateful, believe me.”
“You’re welcome.” If her tone was ungracious, she could not help it. She could not forget the danger this man had brought down on them all. “Why do you think they waited until you came here?”
“It’s quieter, more isolated, and, so they thought, less likely to be interrupted than in town.”
“You take it easily.”
The black man shook his head. “It wasn’t unexpected.”
“Then why aren’t you armed?”
His mother came bustling up, her fear turned to anger. “Because he’s stupid, that’s why; stupid to get mixed up in this mess, stupid to come here, stupid to let them take him out without a fight.”
Bradley shook his head. “If I let them teach me their lesson, they let me go. If I kill or even injure one of them, I’m a dead man. Dead men don’t become representatives.”
“Representative for who, son? Them carpetbaggers? They’re the enemy. Don’t you see that? They don’t care about you; they don’t know you and don’t want to know you. They just want to use you, and then they’ll throw you away like a rag too used up to wash.”
“I still have to try. I can’t not try.”
It was the same quarrel and the same haunting fears. No one seemed to notice or care that Ranny had been drawn into it, that he had made enemies who could destroy him, enemies who could come again at any time, appearing out of the night. Lettie thought of that moment when she had been afraid he would be tricked, defeated, and an icy chill moved over her. She could not bear to stand there a moment longer being polite and calm. She had to get away.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Only Lionel murmured an answer as he clung to Bradley’s coat and also to Ranny’s hand, which he had taken as he moved to stand beside him. Lettie walked away, keeping her back stiff and straight. When she could no longer hear their voices, she increased her pace, taking long, quick strides. Faster and faster she went until she put her head down and began to run.
What she was running from, she did not know, unless it was from Ranny. Or herself. There was something wrong, terribly wrong inside her. She wanted to weep and could not, wanted to cry out with the pain of it and would not. All the old wives’ tales about southern climes might be true after all, for there was something in her heart and mind that made her feel what she ought not feel, think what she should not think, want what she must not want. She thought she had conquered it, but she was wrong. It was even stronger now, possibly stronger than she was.
She had almost reached the bottom of the back steps when she heard the quick, soft footfalls. In a frenzy
, she snatched up her skirts and began to leap up the wide treads. She reached the top and fled across the veranda.
She was caught just inside the dark hall. Ranny grasped her arm and whirled her around. She staggered, tripped, fell against him as her long braid whipped around to lash across his bare shoulders. His arms closed around her. She stood in the circle of his arms, her chest heaving and her breath coming in ragged gasps. She was aware with every ending of her nerves of her nakedness under her nightgown and dressing gown, of her soft curves just brushing the hard angles and planes of his body.
“What is it, Miss Lettie?”
It was the soft concern that broke her control. With a sound of anguish in her chest, she flung herself against him, going on tiptoe to clasp her arms around his neck and to press her forehead into the hollow of his collarbone. The sense of comfort and safety she felt was false, but for the moment it was enough.
Ransom held her close and felt the trembling, like the vibrating of a taut violin string, that shook her and the desperate tightness of her grasp upon him. He stroked her braided hair and murmured quietly he knew not what and cursed himself and wars and politicians. He was close, so close, to picking her up, taking her into his bed, which was so near, and letting her guess as he made love to her just who and what he was. His courage failed him, not because he feared what she would do, but because he could not stand to see her hate him.
And yet, she was a sensitive woman, his passionate prude, and he was beginning to think that her hate would be easier to bear than this tortured affection — he would not call it love — she had conceived for Ranny. He almost wished she would guess. There had been a time when he thought she had, but he had been too panicked by the idea to do anything other than to cover his tracks and bluff his way through. It had been too soon. Now, if she asked him, if she wanted to test him, he might find the strength to allow it and to give her whatever else she might possibly want of him.
He bent his head, brushing her forehead with his lips, pressing light kisses along her temple, her cheek. She lifted her chin to give him her lips, her fervor a delight and a promise that made his arms tighten involuntarily. The kiss deepened, a meshing of tongues in clash and play, a torment to strained senses, and a delight. He followed her lead, pressing as she retreated, tracing the edges of her teeth with his tongue. Entranced by her sweetness and the ravishing tenderness of her surrender, he lost touch with who he was and of his purpose. Until he tasted the salty wetness of her tears.
Gently, lingeringly, he ended the kiss, flicking the corners of her mouth, slanting a last, moist brush across the sensitive indentation of their perfect, generous bow. He sought Ranny’s soft, lilting tones. Found them.
“Is there more you can teach me?”
She didn’t laugh. She stared up at him, dazed, hardly aware of what he said or the hot tracks of wetness on her face. What occupied her senses, her mind, was the warm and firm pulsing of him against her in arousal. She had done this to him, had made him long for something more that he could not have. She had introduced him to the torture of desire, something not easily controlled, as she had learned to her cost. It could be she had infected him with her own malady of immoral longing, had given him something that would make it impossible for him to go on as he was, innocent, joyously childlike in his man’s body. It was thoughtless and cruel of her, and quite possibly a greater threat to him than any gathering of night riders.
She must do what she could to mend matters. Her voice husky, almost breaking with the ache of tears, she said, “No. No, Ranny, there is nothing else.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“How — how could I be? And are you annoyed with me anymore, as you were at the fish fry?”
“Not so long as you kiss me, too.”
“I was wrong to do that. I shouldn’t do it again.”
“If it was wrong, nothing is right.”
Sometimes he made such sense, even if what he said was quite unanswerable. She could not think, could not reason with him now. Perhaps another time, when she was calm and had thought in advance of what must be said.
“Let me go, please. It’s right that I leave you here and go to my room.”
“Why did you run away?”
“I was overwrought.”
“What does over—”
“Afraid. It means afraid. I didn’t know how much until it was over.”
“Afraid for me?”
Sometimes he was too acute. She lowered her gaze and placed her hands on his chest, pressing until he let her go. She stepped back, breathing easier. “For all of us.”
“Bradley and Lionel and Mama Tass—”
“And me.”
“You don’t ever have to be afraid with me.”
There was something in his voice that brought the return of tears, so nearly conquered, to her voice. “I know,” she whispered. “I know. It would be best if you were afraid with me.”
With a strangled good night, she left him. He was still standing there, a dark form against the wide moonlit square of the open doorway, when she stepped into her bedchamber and closed the door panel behind her.
15
“I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE IT! Where in the world was the Thorn when we needed him? He would have sent those Knights in their silly white sheets about their business in short order!”
Aunt Em bent to give a hard yank to a handful of pea pods in her annoyance, stripping them from the waist-high vines and casting them into the pan she carried on her broad hip. Lettie, picking peas in the next row over in the vegetable garden, was not sure what to say to mollify the older woman. Some comment appeared to be required of her, however.
“Ranny handled it well enough without him.”
“Bless his heart, he did, didn’t he? I’m so proud of him. I just wish he had peppered a few backsides with his shotgun. To think of those high-and-mighty Knights actually daring to ride onto our land and tamper with our people. It makes me so mad I could jump up and down and scream.”
Our people. It was a term often applied to the former slaves. It had a possessive ring, and at the same time there was something protective, almost familial about it. Lettie had come to see that the slave and master relationship was more complicated than she had ever dreamed. Nor had it been dissolved, not completely, by war and freedom. For good or ill, the majority of Negro men and women of the South were still dependent for the necessities of life on their former masters. Until they could provide for themselves, they would never be really free. For the time being, they were a burden that had to be carried without hope of return. And when it was lifted, if it was ever lifted, both races might well have lost as much as they had gained.
“At least Mama Tass’s son was unharmed.”
Lettie shifted the pan on her hip and bent to snatch a drooping stalk of peas in the hull. It was nearly too hot to breathe. The glare of the sun was blinding and the heat reflecting up from the sandy ground caused a trickle of stinging perspiration between her breasts and along her shoulder blades. Bees hummed and wasps danced over the new blooms on the pea vines. Now and then lizards, green chameleons and also gray-blotched ones with blue throats, darted here and there. The cloth sunbonnet on her head made her feel hotter, but it at least kept the top of her head and her nose from burning.
“Yes,” Aunt Em agreed, her tone grim. “I don’t know where it will all end, I really don’t. I don’t want the Knights coming after Bradley, but on the other hand, Bradley has no business getting mixed up with the Republicans. He’ll wind up getting himself killed for nothing and leave Mama Tass and Lionel grieving. He thinks the riffraff at the state capital is going to give his people what they want, when he ought to know it’s something that will take time and work. The Knights think they can scare people like him when they ought to know it will just make them more set on getting their way. The Republicans think they can keep us down now that they have their heel on our necks, when they should realize that it will cause our men to rise up in righteous wrath, e
ven if it’s in secret. It’s enough to make a body wonder if men ever think what they’re about.”
“I expect that if everyone worried too much about other people and what they need and want, nothing much would get done.”
“You’re probably right.” Aunt Em sighed, then repeated for the fourth time that morning, “But what I really can’t understand is how I came to sleep through the excitement. I’m not that heavy a sleeper, not really.”
Lettie, her voice soothing, said, “There wasn’t that much noise.”
“I didn’t even hear the rooster that woke you up. We’ll have to catch him and clip his wings. There’s no other way he’ll change his roost; that’s the way they are, creatures of habit, like the rest of us. But,” she went on in a sudden reversion to the previous topic, “you and Ranny could have waked me!”
The reasons why they had not done so were many, and Lettie had no wish to talk about them. She merely signified her agreement while keeping her head bent so that her sunbonnet hid her face as she continued to pick peas.
The colonel found them in the garden. They raised their bent backs and shielded their eyes with a hand against the sun as he rode around the end of the house and cantered down the track toward them. They were so nearly at the end of their rows that they were able to grab the last few peas and go to meet him.
“It’s too hot for this kind of labor,” he greeted them. “Two such lovely ladies should be lying in the shade with a book in one hand and a fan in the other.”
“While the peas dry on the vine? A scandalous waste! But what brings you out in such weather?”
“If we can all go and sit on the veranda where it’s cooler, I’ll tell you about it.”
“Just where we were heading,” Aunt Em said, but though her tone was jovial, even welcoming, the look in her eyes was wary. Lettie was also less than easy. The colonel’s words were pleasant enough, but his manner was more than a shade formal.
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