by Carolyn Wall
I’m grateful that Will’m is out of reach. I nod and push back my chair. “If you don’t mind, Wing, I’m going to bed.”
“’Course I don’t mind,” he says. “You want another blanket? Extra pillow?”
“I don’t need a thing.”
He nods. “Just sleep.”
“That would be good. And, Wing—”
“Mm?”
“I don’t know how to thank you—”
“Don’t,” he says. “It all evens out. I’ll drive you up to Doc’s around eight. We’ll have breakfast first. That all right?”
Yes. Makes me wonder how I got through these years without anyone else. I must not, now, become dependent on him. Until all this is past I must keep some distance.
When I have brushed out my hair and gotten ready for bed, I punch the electric light button and the room falls into darkness. I can’t resist going to the window and looking out. Below, everything sleeps in the white of a new snow. It drifts down, thick and lazy. Through the fat flakes, I see that a truck is parked in front of Ruse’s. There’s someone behind the wheel—a man thick of body and wearing a stocking cap. Buford.
My stomach rolls and settles in a hard knot. My chest aches with each rise and fall. Phelps has sent him to keep watch on me. He probably thinks Will’m’s here, too.
God bless the storm and Molly. God bless first love. I have mixed feelings about that last, for my own first love is sleeping not twenty feet away.
56
The snowfall has lightened by morning, but the sky is the color of old dishwater. The truck is gone from in front of Ruse’s.
Wing scrambles eggs and makes a pot of coffee, toasts cinnamon bread, and we eat without saying much. Then we bundle up, Wing starts the station wagon, and we head out.
Someone’s had the foresight to shovel Doc’s driveway, and right now, Doc’s wife is sitting with Ida. Miz Pritchett tells me Ida’s fading. Her mouth is open and her breath comes and goes in quick puffs. It reminds me of the breath of Will’m’s dying cubs. On one hand, I’m sorry he’s not here to say good-bye to his great gran. On the other, I’m glad he can’t see her this way. Her soul has already taken flight.
Doc brings me creamed coffee. Wing says no thanks, and Doc goes about his business. A half dozen patients are in his waiting room, and I’m sure that, by now, they all know what’s happening. After a while I go outside and walk up and down the drive.
Before long, a panel truck with a bright-painted red cross pulls up. I hurry in, to the back room. Miz Pritchett, probably thinking I want a moment alone, scuttles out. I touch Ida’s shoulder, shake her a little.
“Ida?”
I’m glad there’s no one to hear me, for although maybe I should say good-bye, or tell her she’ll be cared for, there’s something else I’ve got to know. “Ida, tell me what you did with Pap!”
Two men in white uniforms come in. One has a folded sheet, the other carries a stretcher. They lift Ida, slack-jawed, arms dangling. The one with the sheet snaps it open, tucks it around her. Doc’s wife hurries to cover her with a blanket, and there’s a paper for me to sign. I follow them out.
Love Alice is there in the road, and she comes to stand with me. We watch as they lift Ida up, the light snow falling on her colorless lashes. In that instant, her eyes pop open, and she stares straight at me. Then she snaps them shut, and they shove her inside.
“Ida!” I shout and scramble in after her.
But they reach for my arms, mistaking this for grief.
“Ida, you tell me! You tell me now!”
“Lord Jesus,” Love Alice says, and her voice rises sweetly, with some distant hymn.
The doors slam shut, and I stand there watching while the pure white truck with the painted cross moves along the pure white road toward the highway. The clouds are as dark as a pan of burnt biscuits.
Ida has played the last hand. Is she faking? Or is it possible, as Dr. Baird said, she’s fading in and out? Maybe, at Stipling, she’ll keep her eyes open, go to Four and spend the rest of her life in her nightgown, wandering. Not a life so different from what she’s had. Right now I’m so angry, I hope she ends up on Five. One thing’s certain—she won’t make it below Three, because they’ll never get her to fold laundry.
Love Alice looks past me to the ditch. “I know about losin’ thangs, O-livvy.”
I put my arms around her tight.
She croons in my ear, “That li’l girl of mine—I calls her Baby—she the reason I see my truths. She gave me that.”
Oh, my precious Love Alice. I never knew. I wonder, wrapped in the miseries of my own life, what else I have missed.
Wing comes, then, and puts his arms around both of us.
57
It was good of you to take me home.” “You keep doing that,” Wing says softly.
“Doing what?”
“Letting me get close, and then—turning polite.” After a few minutes, he says, “Don’t worry about it. You’re going through a lot right now.”
“So have you been,” I say. “These last few weeks. Few years, I guess.”
He nods and gives his glasses a nudge. Turns off Doc’s road and heads toward town.
“Wing, I’ve got the store to mind, and the goats. Eggs to gather.”
“Olivia, on this I am firm. One more night. You’ve earned it.”
It’s hard to argue when I’m damn near hostage in his car. My mouth’s open to say, Then take me up for an hour. While I do a few things. But I don’t because I remember the surprise Will’m and I came home to the night before last. If there’s more of that, Wing will ask questions.
How close, exactly, is Wing to his guests?
He pulls in the alley beside the hotel and parks the car. “You rest today, then tonight we’ll go over to Ruse’s for supper.”
Wing sends Junk to milk the goats and scatter corn. Other than that, my house stands empty and ripe for more vandalism while I sit drinking tea and watching Wing roll out sticky buns. He coats them with cinnamon, sprinkles on pecans, and shoves forty-eight at a time in the big oven. While they bake, he checks on the bread he’s set to rise. His shirtsleeves are rolled up and he’s got flour from one end of the kitchen to the other. He beats the bread dough and turns it in its bowl. Then he pours himself coffee, but the timer goes off and he leaps up to pull out the buns. While they’re piping hot, he spreads on brown sugar icing.
He glances up. “Olivia Cross smiled,” he says. “I believe the world will stop turning. Take these pot holders, will you, and carry this pan.”
He takes a second tray, and in short order we’re headed across the street. “Come on, woman!” he shouts over his shoulder. “Ruse has got folks lined up for these.”
And he does. This is quite a business Wing’s started. He needs to add a coffee shop to the hotel. I help him scrub down the kitchen, and at noon he slices hot bread to eat with pieces of fish he’s fried in corn meal. While he works he tells me that Sampson’s boy, who’s nearly sixty, goes ice fishing up north. He brings back more halibut than a body can wrap in waxed paper and bury in snow. “I’ve got to get three rooms ready,” he adds. “Guests arriving late tonight. They’ll need sandwiches and coffee, some pastry—”
“I’ll help.”
“Good. But you’ve done enough for now. Why don’t you turn on the radio and listen to Ma Perkins or whatever it is that you women like?”
As it turns out, I fall asleep on my bed, and Wing has to wake me for supper. I wash my face and tuck my hair in its braid. I argue with him that, all day, I’ve done nothing but eat. Still, he puts his arm around me, and once more we hustle across the street, coatless, to Ruse’s where he orders steak and potatoes and pecan pie. We sit at the corner table, leaning on our elbows and speaking in hushed voices like we’ve been doing this for years. Wing tells me funny things about folks in town. I confide that I miss Will’m. He tells me about Saturday night when Will’m stayed over, how he fed the cub thick cream whipped with egg yolks. I think�
�no wonder the furry little devil’s growing. I’m embarrassed for such a wastefulness of good food, but Wing laughs. I wonder if he knows how the cub came to live with us, the way its brothers died of hunger or loneliness, and that Ida shot its ma’am.
We go back to the hotel, and, although it’s eight o’clock and near my usual bedtime, Wing slices bread and spreads mayonnaise. I lay on thick slabs of ham and roast beef, cut the sandwiches crosswise and arrange them on a platter. He makes coffee.
I’m setting out squares of buttered gingerbread when the lobby door opens and a great convolution of wind and people rushes in. Wing goes to welcome his guests. His seems to be a pleasant life. I don’t know whether it’s the warmth and elegance of the hotel, or having someone, today, to share the workload. Maybe it’s that Wing doesn’t have to worry where his next dime’ll come from.
Out in the lobby, voices boom, raucous men pumping Wing’s hand, slapping his back. Telling baudy jokes in cigar-raspy voices—every one of which I heard Saturday night in Alton Phelps’ barn. The hunt club is back. This time, they aren’t here to snipe at my wolves and take home ears. Apparently the warning they left in my house was not enough. I scan Wing’s kitchen for a place to hide, but even if I slipped out the back door, they might spot me from the hall. They must have seen us, Elizabeth and me, must have posted a guard. And if they have now come for me, what have they already done to Elizabeth?
The elevator wheezes open, and Wing takes them upstairs. In minutes they’ll come down, wanting this supper that I’ve helped prepare—and my cape’s up in my room. I round the corner to the hall, slip into the first bedroom and open the wardrobe, looking for one of Wing’s old coats. Empty. But there, folded on the bed is the pink rosebud quilt that I gave Grace Harris. I wrap it around me, hurry through the lobby, and step out onto the icy sidewalk. A fine sleet burns my face as I slip into the alley, hurrying between buildings, then cross over at the next block and head for the bridge. I pull the quilt up over my head. Was it just this morning that I watched Wing at his baking? Now I’m slogging through the frozen night, coatless, not knowing what’s ahead. I’m ashamed of myself that, once more, I wonder if Wing is a Cott’ner.
58
It’s good to be home. Climbing the steps, I am glad I locked the back door. I feel for the chain hanging over the table, and pull. Nothing happens.
In the dark grocery, I hear the clang of the cash register, and my heart lurches. Alton Phelps draws back the curtain, stands in the doorway. I recall, now, that of all the voices I caught in the lobby at Wing’s, I did not hear his. His rifle is propped in the corner, by the stove.
“Get out of my house.”
“Why, Olivia, that’s not friendly,” he says. He’s wearing a sheepskin coat. He takes up the gun. A big-bellied man steps out of the larder. In his hand are three boiled eggs that he cracks against the sink, and he stands there, peeling them.
“I hope you’ll excuse my cousin Doyle Pink,” Phelps says smoothly. “He may be the sheriff, but he’s short on manners.”
Fear crawls up my arms, puckering the skin. They must not see that my heart’s lodged in my throat.
I muster a shaky politeness. “Alton, you-all go on down the road, now.”
Phelps holds the gun, pointed easy at the floor. He whistles like that’s the stupidest thing ever. “When you was out to my place Saturday night, my missus and I weren’t near this inhospitable.”
Poor Elizabeth. My stomach does a turn.
He gestures with his hand, and Pink produces a rope. “Was I you, Olivia, I’d sit down in that chair.”
I do, and wince when he binds my hands behind me, then my feet.
“You’re not as social as Ida,” Phelps says. “I thought whores begat whores.”
Inside me, a twig snaps. “I’m not going to spend one more night afraid. If you came to shoot me, that’s fine. At least tell me why.”
“Shoot you?” he says and smiles as if he’s just now thought of that. “I told you I’d come for you and the boy, Olivia. You got something I want. Or you know where it is.”
Pink crams the last egg in his mouth.
Phelps looks around, says, “Goddamn, Doyle, you’re making a fucking mess.”
“’Em niggers wouldn’t stand for no shootin’,” Pink says. “Findin’ her with a hole in her gullet.”
Phelps’ face darkens. “They’ll stand for whatever I tell them to.”
I’m remembering what Elizabeth said. “You’re so full of yourself, you and your club. So vicious even the Klan denies you.”
Phelps takes a step, draws back his arm, and strikes me hard across the face.
It brings tears to my eyes. What is it they’re after? Old chloroform? Stitching silk, dog runs, tweezers in six sizes? I lay my throbbing cheek to my shoulder, and hold my tongue.
“I’m askin’ you one more time,” Phelps says.
My ears are ringing, and I can’t think clearly. “For what?”
“We’ll rip this place apart if we have to, Olivia, one splinter at a time.”
I sit for most of an hour while every damn thing is once again ransacked and shattered, mattresses slit. They pull out the stove, throw cans from the larder. Out in the store, I hear glass jar after glass jar breaking. This must be how death sounds when it’s coming, and it wears me down worse than a beating. It wears the sheriff down, too.
“Goddamn, Alton,” Pink says. “I’m tuckered out.”
Phelps fights to keep himself under control. “What say we hold her trial right here, Doyle?”
“Ain’t got no bale of cotton, Alton.”
So I’m about to find out what a cotton trial is.
Phelps reaches in his back pocket and snaps out a hank of red fabric, turns two cut holes to the front, and slips it over his head. The very scarlet that Aunt Pinny Albert wouldn’t buy. Through the eyeholes, now, he watches my face, gauging my fear.
Pink whines, “Shit, Alton, I didn’t bring my hood.”
“That’s all right, Doyle, you can see better without it. I’m just showin’ off a little. Why don’t you go on down in the cellar and look around. See if you can find a beam—”
A beam.
Now I know how this will end.
Pink tries the cellar door, but it’s locked. He spots the key. “Jesus H. Christ, it’s dark down there.”
“Well, light a goddamn lamp.”
While we wait, Phelps looks around. Says, “Me and James Arnold, we used to come here, take turns with Ida. She was a spitfire—man, that suited us fine.”
“I never—saw—James Arnold.”
“Oh, he liked the feel of Ida’s skin. You don’t remember,” he says with a grunt, “’cause you were half dead, over to Buelton.”
What?
“Alton, I can’t find shit down here!” Doyle calls from the cellar.
Phelps’ voice is low. “Don’t that come as an almighty surprise.”
“It’s colder’n hell and all cleaned out. But the beams are solid. I’m comin’ up!”
The two of them are too much for me, and there’s no getting rid of the stronger one. I wet my lips. “Get Pink out of here.”
Phelps steps closer. “What’s that, now?”
“Send Doyle away. When it’s just you and me—I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
“Why, Olivia!”
“Do it.”
He pulls off the hood, entertains a grin. Steps to the doorway. “Doyle boy,” he shouts. “That’s all right, you come on up.”
The sheriff appears, ears red and sour of face.
Phelps takes a toothpick from his pocket. “You take the truck back to my place,” he says. “Me and Olivia are gonna have a talk.”
“But we were gonna string her up, have us some fun.”
Phelps frowns. “Jesus Christ, what kinda way is that to talk? You go on now.”
“I say we put her in the cellar, Alton. Lock this door, take the key.”
My stomach turns over.
“�
��Be some time ’fore they find her. We impound her truck, they’ll think she took off. We grab the boy—” Pink’s pleased with himself.
Phelps picks his teeth. “Like I said, you take my truck. You’re always wantin’ to drive it.”
“But it’s parked clear up the road—”
“Walk’ll do you good. Now go.”
When he’s gone, Phelps says, “I don’t trust you one almighty inch, Olivia. But just to see if your heart’s in the right place—” He comes to me, leans, puts his lips on my hair. “Untie me,” I say.
“That’d be pure foolishness.”
“It’s the only way I’m gonna tell you—what you want to know,” I say. “Otherwise, I’ll die without talking. I mean what I say.”
He grins and moves around behind me. I hear him set the rifle down, feel him work the knots loose. I rub my wrists.
“The way I see it, Olivia, I can’t lose. And you can’t win.”
He’s come around and is directly in line with the cellar doorway. With my feet still bound, I fly at him, claw his face, get in one long rip before he bellows and grabs me. He catches my wrists, shoving. I land hard on my back. He comes at me, but I deliver a foot to his groin. His fist connects so hard with my jaw that I hear my teeth rattle. He sinks to his knees, clutching himself and fumbling for the rifle. “Bitch,” he says through his teeth.
Ankles still bound, I struggle to my feet. Work frantically at the knots.
He groans, grabs my boot, and I hit the floor with my shoulder. I reach for the leg of Will’m’s bed, the potato bucket, the door frame. But his hand covers my nose and mouth, squeezing the bones. I bite down and swing the bucket. Connect.
“Fucking bitch!”
I hear my dress rip and scramble away.
He comes after me. “This one’s for James Arnold—”
He slaps me hard. I crash against the alcove’s corner, the back of my head going warm and wet. My knees give out, and I slide down the wall.
Phelps’ face is dark, the eyes so black the sockets seem empty. “I’ll tell you, little girl! Tate Harker kilt my brother, all right, but it wasn’t the night you think it was.” He’s on his knees, lifts the rifle. “Couple months later your old man came home. Caught James Arnold with his drawers lying right where you’re sittin’ and his hand up Ida’s twat, that’s what.”
