Thing With Feathers (9781616634704)

by Sweazy-kulju, Anne

  When Sean looked up, he could see smoke on Tjaden Hill, a lot of smoke. Then he squinted and thought he could make out some licks of fire beyond the rise, the side of the hill where all the wellness camp cottages and bath houses lay. Sean pitched his shovel and ran for the house, ringing the dinner bell on the front porch in hopes that his brother, Will, who was out milking, would hear the racket and come running.

  There was no danger of the fire moving toward the Marshall property. The wind was blowing the other way, and besides, the land was too wet from all the winter storms. Sean and Will rode to the Tjaden’s house first. They found Signey “Sig” Tjaden on the front porch, surrounded by the younger children, wringing her hands nervously. As the Marshall boys approached, she lifted her hand and pointed west toward the flames that were clearly visible and hollered one word, taut with worry, before the men could dismount their horses.

  “Angus!” she had screamed.

  The boys took off in the direction of the fire, searching for the good-humored neighbor they had known and loved since they were both knee-high to a fly.

  Chapter 27

  February, 1932

  Cloverdale, Oregon

  Had it really been almost two years since they’d buried Angus? Where did the time go? Sean was thinking he was happy to have all that nastiness with the lawsuits and the fire investigation surrounding Angus Tjaden’s death dealt with and discharged. The family kept their homestead and that was Sean’s interest in the matter. He’d been beside himself when it looked he might lose Elrod and Rebecca. But here it was, 1932, a promising new year, and the fine February day was perfect for a road trip. Sean glanced sideways at his young son sitting up in the seat beside him. The boy’s hair was thick and curly, and his lashes as long and dark as a beautiful maiden’s. But Victor was all boy. Much as Blair tried to coddle the little boy and keep him close to her, Victor couldn’t be stilled for long. There was always a garter snake or tiny green tree frog that vied for his attention, and nature almost always won over his mother’s lap. It would be hard for the lad to sit still the entire ride to McMinnville. Sean kept having to bribe him with reminders of why they were going.

  “Is mine gonna be red too, Daddy?” The boy looked up at his father, squinting because the sun was in his eyes.

  “Yessiree, Victor. Red and bright as an apple.”

  They’d seen a picture of the tricycle in Mr. Wendt’s drugstore in town. It had to be ordered by catalog from Sears and Roebuck, and only the store in McMinnville received the catalog orders. Victor had been waiting since his birthday on Christmas Eve until then, when the weather was finally accommodating, for them to go and pick up his present.

  “Four years old, Victor.” Sean shook his head. “I just can’t believe you’re getting that big.”

  The little boy smiled up at him. He was a happy child. They were all happy, considering. Life hadn’t been too fair to the boy’s mother, Lord knew. And it seemed like one tragedy after another had assaulted the Marshall household. But 1932, they hoped, was a bright new year, and Sean and Blair had decided, in spite of economic difficulties all over the world, that they would splurge that once on the coveted tricycle; thus, the trip to the valley. They would be staying overnight at a hotel, which would have been the closest thing to a vacation for he and Blair since their honeymoon. But Sean’s mother wasn’t in good enough health for the trip, having caught another winter cold that settled in her prone and vulnerable lungs, and Blair said that she should stay and watch over Mavis.

  Sean frowned at the sight of a hand-painted sign on the side of a barn up ahead. It read, “Fascism Lives. Death to Stalin.” It seemed like a lot of folks were upset about the unrest in central Europe. The papers reported on the terror Stalin used to rule the Soviet Union and on the atrocities committed by Mussolini in Italy, and Sean doubted that it would end there. The world was entering an age of dictators. Unrest usually meant an opportunity for men seeking power, and countries could begin falling like timbers. Rumor had it some young upstart in Germany was going to run Hindenburg out as chancellor. World upheaval was frightening to a young America, and it was to Britain and France too. Free democracies did not hanker to go to war again, what with the devastation of the Great War still fresh in the minds of many.

  The barn was suddenly covered in shade by a large cloud passing overhead. The way the sign darkened just as he read it; Sean did not usually put much stake in premonition, but he did find that somewhat foreboding. Sean worried there would be no escaping troubled times ahead for his country.

  Of greater calamity would be the trouble heading straight for Sean’s own family, trouble that started about the same time Preacher Bowman noticed the Marshall’s Model-T was loaded up and heading out of town with only Sean and the boy inside it.

  Chapter 28

  It was time to get the strawberry plants they’d dug up before the first frost and get them planted in the ground for spring harvests. Blair had spent most of the morning making certain her rows were straight and far enough apart from each other. Her back was giving her pains, but she kept at it, hoping to have all two hundred plants in place when Sean and Victor arrived home the next afternoon. She reached into the wheel barrel for another plant. Her mind wandered, and she thought of her little boy’s glee when he finally laid hands on his treasured trike. She loved that boy intensely and delighted in spoiling him. Whoever would have believed she could be that happy? Despite the cause for its induction, her marriage was a solid one. She adored her husband, and he seemed truly content with her. And the child; Victor showered her with total, unconditional love. She patted the earth solidly but not too packed around the base of the plant and reached for another. A cloud must have just passed overhead because the wheel barrel was suddenly bathed in cool shadow. No-no…A chill skipped down Blair’s spine, and she realized even before he spoke that he was near.

  “Your husband has left you alone, wayward child.”

  Blair turned her head slowly to see the preacher looming over her. He wore the wide-brimmed hat that blocked out the sun and obscured his face. She put a hand over her eyes to see him better and rose quickly to her feet, backing away from him as she did so.

  “You have no business here, Preacher. You’re not welcome.” She would never again refer to him as her father. She would not dirty the name she had used for calling Wyatt Marshall.

  The preacher studied her. He hadn’t opportunity to look at his daughter close up, because she had not visited him or the church in nearly four years. She was the image of her mother, the beautiful Jennie, even more so than before. Her youth had traded itself for more prominent, mature bone structure. Her lips were fuller, her cheekbones more pronounced. If anything, Blair had only grown more beautiful. She was twenty years old now, a woman, his woman. He took a step toward her and reached out to touch her cheek. Blair slapped his hand away.

  “You leave me be, you hear? I want nothing from you and nothing to do with you.”

  “You are still my wife!” the preacher thundered.

  Blair looked around quickly to see if anyone was near enough to hear the obscenity. There was no other person in sight. Will was working at the grist mill since dawn. “You are drunk you, you philistine!” she hissed. “I was never your wife. I was your child. I was only a child, and you—the terrible things you did to your own flesh and blood! I was never a demon, old man. The demon is inside of you!” She turned to run for the house, where Mavis was resting.

  The preacher grabbed hold of her arm and spun her back around. With the other hand, he slapped her hard enough to send her sprawling.

  “How dare you say such filth to your father? I have watched you go about your days with that Sean Marshall.” He nearly spat the words out. “I stood by while he raised my son! I have imagined the things he does to you in your marriage bed, deeds which are, by right, my privilege! Oh, you are surely a demon, Blair. Be on your kne
es demon child!”

  Her eyes grew wide with fear and shock. She had thought that she was safe from him, so safe that she never even gave thought to him anymore. She hadn’t needed her inner-voice in a very long time, had succeeded in making it go away, but she needed it now.

  Please! Her mind screamed. Help me! She was running. Somehow, she had found her feet and began running for the house, for safety. But he caught up with her, and they struggled.

  The day was already growing nigh. Blair had been laying on the back breezeway for what must have been a very long while. The voice penetrated Blair’s cloudy thoughts It told her she was an unclean, pathetic creature again.

  Gone was Sean’s devoted wife. Gone was Victor’s loving mother. Cindy picked her battered body off the ground and made her way through the back door to the main house. She bathed herself with mechanical quality. She dressed and then began packing Blair’s belongings. The trunk closed and ready, she sat at the small vanity and began writing Sean a letter. She couldn’t just leave. She had to tell Sean what had happened to Blair. She wouldn’t want him to think that her leaving was due in any part to something he had done. He was too fine a man for that. Cindy loved Sean too. She signed the letter and tucked it into a pretty pink envelope. She didn’t want anyone else to find it and read the letter, so she looked around for a private place to leave it. Her eyes found the box Sean kept under the bed, where he stowed the money he was saving for college. She took the key from the vanity drawer and unlocked the box. She withdrew the money and put the envelope in its place. She wished she did not have to take Sean’s savings, but Sean would understand. She locked the box but left it sitting on the vanity so that he might think to look inside when he found her gone. She looked around the room and said good-bye to the only joyous times Blair had ever known. Then, her stare hardened and her fingers snapped her small handbag full of money crisply shut, signaling the closure of Blair Bowman Marshall’s existence.

  Chapter 29

  “I spy!” yelled little Victor with glee.

  The top story of the house could be glimpsed from the downside of Hebo Mountain. Sean reached over and tousled the boy’s hair. In spite of the adventure of going to the valley, the boy was obviously as excited to return home to Blair as he was. The trip was the only time Sean had been apart from Blair since the day they were married, and the intensity of his homesickness for his wife surprised him. A wave of inexplicable anxiety washed over him at the mental uttering of her name, and something spurred Sean to get home fast. He applied more pressure to the gas pedal.

  On final approach, Sean could make out the figures of three people on the front porch, but none of them Blair. He saw his mother, well enough on that day to leave her bedroom in favor of the front porch swing. One of the figures was obviously Will, who was identified by the three quarter curl of his handlebar mustache. Sean had to strain his eyes to make out the third person. His anxiety quickly turned to dread. The noisy auto ground up the gravel drive. Sean pulled the red tricycle out of the back and lifted Victor down so he could play with it, and then he walked quickly to the porch, stumbling and nearly falling over a large rock, giving away his nervousness. At the top step, his brother grabbed his hand in an effort to steady him as much as to welcome him home, but the crack in Will’s voice gave away a level of emotion Sean had never witnessed in his brother before that moment. It made Sean’s legs feel like they were formed of water.

  “Little brother, I can’t spare you any pain, so I might as well come out with it. Blair has left you.”

  “What?” Sean was incredulous. “What happened, Will? And what’s he doing here?” He jerked his head in the preacher’s direction.

  “Listen, Sean.” He pulled his brother over to a bench seat. “I left yesterday morning early to see to the milking, and Blair was in the garden, makin’ it ready to replant the strawberries. When I came back for dinner yesterday, there was no meal and there was no sign of Blair. Looks like she left her gardening right in the middle of her work. She left for somewhere without even seein’ to Ma’s care. She didn’t put the garden tools away…” His eyes relayed his concern for the absence of his sister-in-law, a woman he had come to love and admire. “Sean, she ain’t come home all night. Nobody’s seen her.”

  Sean looked accusingly at the preacher, and he half rose with a threatening posture. “What did you do, Preacher? If she’s gone, it’s gotta be your doin’. You tell me what you’ve done or, so help me God, I will kill you!”

  “Bah!” retorted Bowman. “Whatever you say. I’ll be makin’ it known to the whole town how you mistreated my daughter. That’s the reason she’s left you, Sean Marshall, and for no other cause.” And then the preacher uttered words that sucked the wind from Sean’s sails. “It won’t do for my grandson to remain in this violent atmosphere. I believe he’d be better off with his grandfather, his only blood relative. My attorney agrees that it is right for the boy to come with me immediately.” He descended the porch stoop and continued down the walkway to the drive, Bible in one hand, prepared to retrieve his grandson.

  Sean was dumbfounded by what the preacher had said. He looked around wildly, seeing confusion in his mother’s silence and grief in his brother’s. By the time he realized that the preacher had left, the old man was within reach of Victor. Sean bolted down the walkway and twisted the old man around.

  “I don’t care what you say! I know you, Preacher. I know what you are! You’ll not put your hands on my son. You hear? I know that if somethin’ foul has happened to Blair, then you surely had a hand in it. You’ll not get my son, you louse!”

  “Your son? Was it you then, Sean Marshall, who was the rapist? Did we hang the wrong man?”

  Sean seethed. “I ought to kill you where you stand. No. I should have killed you four years ago, when I saw what you did to your own flesh and blood.”

  The admission surprised Bowman. The preacher’s eyebrows lifted in a way that told Sean the old man had believed his black secret to be sealed.

  “That’s right, old man. I saw you down by the river. I know what you are! And I’ll see you in hell before I let you have my Victor.”

  “Well, you might find it to be a lot like hell, Marshall. But it will be a court room where I’ll be seein’ you. Mark my words, Victor is mine.”

  Sean reached for the man, but a stronger arm stalled him.

  “Let him go, Sean. We will fight him legally. I want to give that miscreant a knuckle sandwich too. You can’t imagine the garbage he’s been spoutin’ to our ma ‘bout the way you treated your wife. Ma knows better, of course, but I tell you, Sean, that man is no preacher. He’s evil. We’ll get him, Sean, legally. So don’t give him anything to use against you in court by using violence now.”

  Will shook him by the shoulders, unsure whether the glassy stare in his brother’s eyes had kept his ears from hearing. They both watched as the preacher picked the small boy off the tricycle and carried him off to his car. Victor didn’t cry, but he did look frightened, and his cry for help was a quiet one emitted from behind wide, questioning eyes.

  Chapter 30

  “I want my twi-shwicle!” Victor looked up at the fat man dressed all in black.

  Bowman looked over at the boy, scowled. “Bah! We will not be needing anything from the Marshall family. Not after what they done to your ma, Victor.”

  “Mommy?” Victor’s bottom lip had begun to quiver and his eyes brimmed. The dark man said nothing. Victor missed his mommy. He had not seen her in two days’ time and that was the longest the child had ever been separated from her. High pitched hnn, hnn, hnn’s escaped the little boy’s closed mouth as he rocked and soothed himself, and tried to keep himself from crying aloud.

  “I won’t hear it, boy. Are you a big boy or are you a baby?” He glanced sideways and saw the small child had already lost his battle with self-control. Tears were freely sliding down his hot little cheek
s.

  “I want my mommy,” he cried.

  “Your mother is gone, Victor. Sean Marshall drove her away. You may as well accept that you will never see her again.”

  “You’re mean! And scary! And old!” Victor screamed at Bowman, who did not bother to answer or even turn his head toward the youngster.

  “I want my daddy!” The four-year-old wailed and crossed his arms petulantly. He didn’t like the dark man.

  Bowman casually reached over and back-handed Victor across the face. It doused the boy’s tears and crying like flour on a grease fire. He was stunned. Victor had never been hit before.

  “I want to go home,” he sniffed.

  At that moment, Bowman’s buckboard turned left to penetrate the dank, shadow-struck ingress to the squalid cabin. “Behold, Victor Bowman, you are home,” the preacher said.

  Chapter 31

  Next to Cindy on the train was a finely dressed young woman returning to her home in Chicago, and she had a gift for gab, as she phrased it. Cindy did not want to be unfriendly, but she did wish that the woman would grow bored with her and take up gabbing with someone else for a spell. She tried laying her head on a pillow against the window glass and feign sleep, but the woman was not to be put off.

  “Well, I guess I’ve told you all about me. What about you. Cindy, right? Where are you headed?”