Tattler's Branch

by Jan Watson

  Absently he rubbed circles around the healing sores on his chest. Maybe the law had come with a warrant and a set of leg irons. But he didn’t think so. The house was too much like it had been on the night he’d fled, not even bothering to close the door, figuring he’d never be back, figuring his amazing luck would give him one more chance. He’d been halfway to Tennessee when Betsy Lane’s need had called him back. He’d take his chances with the law, but his heart couldn’t leave his little girl behind. How would he know she got proper care unless he gave it himself?

  He’d rented a room at the boardinghouse in the town with the big general store and journeyed from there to Skip Rock. He figured the best place to start was at the doctor’s office. His wounds gave him the perfect excuse to pay a visit. Intuition, a sixth sense honed by years of speculating, served him well that day in the fancy lady’s office. His gut told him he had hit the nail on the head. The paper he was pleating into perfect folds confirmed it.

  Outside the open door, a dry, hot wind kicked up. Swirling bits of leaves and twigs danced across the threshold, caught up the errant page, and flung it away. It stuck against the wall as if held by an unseen hand. He should get up and close the door before the kitchen was full of grit, but he sat there too dejected to move.

  Man, he was wrecked. He needed a plan. He needed to find his daughter so they could get on the road. He needed a gun.

  Chapter 19

  Chanis Clay was coming up the road as Lilly was coming down. He hailed her with a big wave.

  “How’s Miss Mazy this morning?”

  “Still sleeping. She’s keeping an eye on Armina today.”

  “Miz Armina doing better?”

  “Much. I won’t be surprised if the whole story comes spilling out soon,” Lilly said, putting a hand on his sleeve. “Chanis, we need to talk. I’ve a theory about the break-in.”

  They matched steps as Lilly relayed what she’d found inside the book. “I believe the baby’s mother is searching for her. Maybe she was hiding and watching that first night when I carried Glory to my office. She might have thought she’d find information in my charts, and instead she stumbled onto the book. It must have been quite a shock to her.”

  Chanis listened politely, stroking the line of his jaw with his thumb and index finger. “She’d be a mighty big woman,” he said as they reached the clinic. “Come and look.”

  Outside the office door, the air smelled of fresh-cut lumber. Chanis pointed at a mishmash of tracks outlined in the brimstone dust. “See here how the dust revealed the prints of the culprit’s boots? We couldn’t see them before Turnip fumigated out here. I wish I’d thought of such.”

  “Goodness, Chanis, all I see is a mess.”

  He hunkered down, picked up a stick, and indicated one set. “These here are mine. Back-and-forth ones I figure to be Turnip’s—see how they go off toward where he would have parked the wagon? These littler ones are Timmy Blair’s. They’re what I noticed first—so obviously different.” He stood and went to a perfect pair planted beneath the new frame. “He would have stood just so, squaring his stance to leverage the window.” Chanis took hold of the unlocked sash and raised the window halfway up.

  “I took the liberty of looking around,” he said, using his passkey to unlock the door. “Inside tells an even better story.”

  Lilly was appalled. Gray grime covered every surface, including the floor. She’d have to get someone to mop and clean before she could see patients. “What a mess.”

  “Turnip didn’t spare the fire and brimstone; that’s for sure,” Chanis said. “These prints could be used in court if there was a way to preserve them.”

  He was right. It was amazing. The fine dust worked the same way it had outside, collecting around shoeprints. “It seems more likely that these would be made after the dusting, not before,” Lilly said.

  “I thought the same at first. It took me a minute to figure out that something from the bottom of our shoes repelled the dust. See, you can see yours also.”

  He was right. There she was in heels and toes. “How odd.”

  “I checked my soles. Are you wearing the same shoes you were last Thursday?”

  Balancing on the edge of the desk, Lilly bent her knee, lifting her foot. “Yes, but I don’t see a thing.”

  “Run your hand across it.”

  Lilly took her handkerchief from her pocket and ran it over the sole. “It looks greasy.” She folded the hankie dirty side in and put it back in her pocket.

  “That’s it. Just as I thought. Remember at the accident, the axle grease that was all over the tracks? We all—you, me, Timmy, Turnip—were there. I suspect we’ve tracked it all over town.”

  “Makes me glad I leave my shoes at the door when I get home,” Lilly said. “But if that is so, how do you explain the culprit’s prints?”

  “He was there among us. Sure as shooting. There were a lot of folks milling around the site.” He ran a finger through the dust. “This stuff is great. I might start using it all the time to turn up clues.”

  Lilly sneezed. “You might ruin your lungs in the process, Chanis.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” His voice trailed off as he indicated where the man who broke in had walked. A few steps in—a few steps back out.

  Lilly leaned against the desk. She would not sit in her chair until it was thoroughly cleaned. She tapped her index finger against her chin. “He must be the baby’s father, else why be snooping around my office? This whole thing is so bizarre.”

  Chanis whisked his hands together. Dust motes danced in the early rays of sunlight streaming in through the clear windowpanes.

  Lilly sneezed again. “Chanis.”

  “Sorry,” he said, tucking his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “There’s something we haven’t considered.”

  Lilly raised her eyebrows, giving him a look.

  “Maybe Miz Armina stole the baby. Maybe her parents didn’t abandon her at all.”

  “Armina wouldn’t do such a thing,” Lilly huffed.

  “You said yourself she’s been acting mighty fey.”

  “Not fey enough to abduct a baby!” Lilly put one finger underneath her nose in an effort to stifle another sneeze.

  Chanis pulled a perfectly ironed handkerchief from his back pocket and handed it to Lilly.

  “Thank you.” She ka-shooed, eyes watering. “If the baby was taken, why wouldn’t the father’s first stop be your office?”

  “Some folks would rather fall in a pit of vipers as to have the law come calling. Maybe they’re making moonshine up a holler somewhere, or maybe somebody in the family’s got a warrant on their head.”

  They could hear the front door open. “Hannah’s working a day shift today,” Lilly said. “Give me a moment, and then we should go to the Beckers’ and check on the baby. Is it all right to get this mess cleaned up?”

  “Um, yeah,” he said, already busy with his pencil and pad of paper. “I’ll just make a few more notes.” He moistened the tip of the pencil. “What size shoe do you wear?”

  They took the back way to the Beckers’ place. It was a little longer but a more pleasant walk.

  The morning air, still light and fresh, carried the scent of the honeysuckle that tumbled riotously over a fencerow. Unfolding the blade of his pocketknife, Chanis cut two long sprigs, handing one to her.

  “Did your daddy ever tell you that honeysuckle vines draw snakes?” he asked, the flower stalk bobbing in his mouth.

  Lilly made a show of stepping around him, putting his body between her and whatever might slither out from under the vines. “Yes, that’s why I keep my distance.”

  “Tastes sweet,” he said, dropping the frayed stem to the ground. “That could be fixed up.” He indicated a neglected-looking house behind the fence. “It’d make a good home for somebody. Wonder if it’s on the market.”

  “Houses look sad when they’re boarded up like that,” Lilly said, sipping nectar from a fragile yellow trumpet. “Mmm,
it tastes like it smells.” She shortened the stem and tucked the flower into the sturdy gold chain that held her watch fob. They walked on. “Tell me about your father, Chanis.”

  “Well, for starters, he was a big man. Tall with broad shoulders—I thought he carried the world on his back. He was that strong. He was good to us kids and to my mother, and he smiled all the time.” Chanis took a breath. “There was this tune he hummed. I don’t know what it was—wish I could get it right, but it won’t come to me. And he whistled; we could hear him coming from far up the road whenever it was suppertime.”

  A bumpy-skinned toad hopped halfway across the path, then stopped to stare at them from alert jade-green eyes. Suddenly the toad’s long tongue darted out, snaring a hapless dragonfly, which, except for one papery wing, disappeared into the toad’s wide mouth. Daintily the toad used its front feet to stuff the leftover wing into its mouth.

  The toad struggled, emitting birdlike chirps, when Chanis plucked it from the dusty path. He held it out for Lilly to see.

  “Ah, Bufo,” she said, stroking the creature gently between its eyes. As if in bliss, the toad leaned its head toward her. “I loved playing with toads when I was a girl.”

  “Me too, and I never once got a wart. I bet Mazy never touched one,” Chanis said.

  Lilly smiled. “I expect you’re right. One time we watched as a full-grown toad ate its skin—you know how they do when they shed? Mazy cried for hours. She thought it was hurting itself. It took me forever to convince her that the toad was only doing what comes naturally.”

  “She’s sweet that way,” Chanis said, freeing the warty creature.

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Say, since we’re on the subject . . .”

  “Well,” Lilly teased, “I do know a bit more about Bufo americanus. Shakespeare wrote about the beauty of a toad’s eyes.”

  “Now, Doc Still,” Chanis said, turning serious, “I was talking about Mazy. There’s not one thing pretty about a hop toad. But Mazy—that’s a whole different story.”

  “She’s young yet, Chanis. You must give it time.”

  Chanis kicked a pebble. It hopped up the rutted washboard road like the toad had done, leaving little puffs of red clay dust in its wake. “I’m willing to wait. How long do you reckon? A year?”

  Lilly could see heartache coming around the bend. “Mazy may not be here past the summer. She only came for a visit.”

  “Yeah, she said as much, but there’s always the mail, and she really likes the telephone. Do your folks have a telephone?”

  “Not yet. Soon, perhaps.”

  “I can hardly look at Mazy without my heart swells up like an ole full-throated bullfrog. I just wanted to tell you that.”

  A bridge made of stone crossed a meandering stream so blue that it might have captured the sky. Flecks of early morning sun breached the leaves of overhanging trees, dappling the water with golden fingers. A heron fished the banks on long sticklike legs.

  “Stop right here, Chanis, and tell me which way you’d look to study this creek.”

  “Upstream,” he said without pausing to think. “Upstream fills you with possibility, the way the water rushes toward you like time out of mind, forever and enduring. Downstream everything is already past.”

  Hands on the built-up railing of stone, they leaned over the bridge, listening to the hypnotic gurgle of water flowing over moss-covered rock. Catching their presence, a muskrat scurried off into the thick weeds, leaving its stockpile of cattails behind for the moment.

  “This quiets your soul, doesn’t it?” Chanis said.

  “The salvation of living water,” Lilly replied. She was glad for this walk, this opportunity to get to know Chanis Clay in a deeper way. If Mazy so chose, he would be good for her, but Mazy was flighty and immature.

  As if Lilly should judge. Her mother would say Lilly was born an old soul, yet she’d nearly married a man who could never have fulfilled her. Her aunt Alice was already picking out her wedding dress and drawing up the guest list when true love intervened. It was as if God had plucked her up and set her feet on the true path when she found Tern.

  Under cover of her linen jacket, she patted the growing mound of her belly and sent a silent prayer heavenward. Thank You, Lord, for sending Tern to me, and please be with Mazy and with Chanis.

  They walked on between dangling fronds of creek-side willows. “It’s so peaceful here,” Lilly said.

  “Until now, that is. Sounds like somebody’s hog is setting up a fuss,” Chanis said as they angled up a twisting trail to a high and bony ridge.

  “Must be Sassy.” Lilly folded her skirts around her, trying to dodge the sticker weeds. She’d always hated sticker weeds.

  “Reckon Cletus could have found a more awkward place to live if he’d tried?” Chanis said, offering Lilly a hand across the shifting shale.

  In the valley below, they saw the house sitting in a swirl of fog. It could have been a ship on the open sea.

  Cletus was attempting to drag Sassy out from under the porch. “I’m a-taking her to market,” they heard him yell over the clamoring of the hog.

  “Cletus, don’t,” Anne pleaded from the porch, where little Amy buried her face against her mother’s legs. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said anything.” She unpeeled Amy from her knees and set the child inside the doorway.

  Cletus tugged on the hog’s big, floppy ears. Sassy bucked like a frightened horse and backed up, dragging Cletus right into the sty. Soon they couldn’t tell the pig’s squeals from the man’s.

  Anne lumbered down the steps, shrieking and praying. “Cletus! Cletus! Oh, Lord, help us.”

  Chanis took off in a run, down the rocky slope and across the yard to the pen, rolling his sleeves as he went. Lilly hurried after him, careful of her footing. By the time she got to the porch, Anne had collapsed against the stair rail. Cletus was lying in the yard, where Chanis had dragged him, covered with stink, one shoe missing, and heaving for breath. Sassy was rooting a red-rimmed watermelon rind around in the muck of her stall.

  Cletus raised his head from the ground and looked at Anne. “I’m a no-good so-and-so.”

  “The next time, Cletus Becker, I’ll let Sassy eat you!”

  “Mama, no,” Amy whimpered from the doorway. “Mama, no.”

  “Just shuck my hide and call me bacon,” Cletus said, letting his head fall back.

  Anne fanned her face with the skirt of her apron. Lilly could see she was on the verge of tears.

  “Come on, dear.” Lilly took her arm and helped her up. “Let’s go inside.”

  “See to Cletus first,” Anne said. “I’ll heat up the coffee.”

  Once Lilly had treated Cletus’s minor scrapes, using much more stinging iodine than was necessary, she went inside, wishing she had a potion for misery.

  “You’ll think I’m lazy, seeing breakfast still on the table at all of eight o’clock in the morning,” Anne said, filling two chipped mugs with steaming coffee. “Just let me take this out to the menfolk.”

  Lilly dipped hot water from the fifteen-gallon reservoir on the wood cookstove in the corner, filling a granite wash pan nearly to the brim. She scrubbed her arms up to the elbows with lye soap and dried them thoroughly. Wishing she had some spot remover, she dipped a corner of the feed-sack towel in the wash water and blotted a skim of slop from the hem of her skirt. Refreshed, she played peekaboo with Amy until the child was more like her sunny self again. Life could be so hard on children.

  “Want to help me with baby Glory?” Lilly said, lifting the infant from her Moses basket and laying her on a pallet she made on the table.

  “Me hep,” Amy said, trying to lift Lilly’s kit from the floor.

  Lilly followed her usual routine, beginning with the heart and finishing with a check of the mouth for the white patches that signaled digestive upset. Thrush was so common in infants and children that Lilly gifted a solution of borax and glycerin, along with a camel’s-hair brush for application, to all her young
charges’ mothers. She also showed the mothers how to cleanse their infants’ mouths with a clean flannel cloth and warm water. Since she’d instigated those simple practices, she’d seen not one case of ulceration or gangrenous inflammation caused by thrush.

  Because of her cleft, Glory was at an even higher risk for mouth ulcers than most children. Lilly was pleased to see the baby’s mucous membranes were pink and healthy. Glory squirmed but did not cry. She was a placid baby.

  Darling little Amy stood at Lilly’s knee, her mouth stretched wide open, mimicking Lilly’s examination of Glory.

  “Close your mouth, baby bird, or you’ll likely catch a worm,” Lilly said, standing with the baby. “Let’s go check on your mama.”

  Amy stood just behind Lilly, sucking on two fingers. She wasn’t totally over the distress of the morning yet.

  The yard was empty, but they could hear sawing and hammering from across the weedy lot. Anne came out of the yawning darkness of the barn, carrying the empty cups. Her face was red as a just-boiled beet. “They’re fixing a pen for Sassy in one of the empty stalls. If Cletus would have done what I asked him to in the first place . . . Men!”

  Amy stomped her foot. “Men!” she said.

  Back in the house, Anne fussed around like a broody hen after a grasshopper, scraping plates, splashing water, wiping the table. Lilly held the baby and let Anne go. Sometimes a body just had to wind down.

  Finally Anne stopped and put her hands on her hips. “It’s past my understanding why this keeps happening,” she said, pouring remains from a skillet into a grease keeper. “It seems like he cain’t abide having a penny extra.” She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and neatened it behind her ear. “If he drank like he throws money around, he’d be a sot.”

  Tears shone in Anne’s eyes. “My mother had a saying: ‘When hard times come in the front door, love goes out the back window.’ Good thing I ain’t got a back window.” She blotted her tears with the tail of her apron. “He found that coffee can of folding money I had salted away,” she said. “I found it empty when I went to gather eggs for breakfast. He didn’t even bother to pitch it—just left it laying there for me to find, like my feelings didn’t matter a whit.”