Valley So Low

by Patrice Wayne

  Each of her five senses became ultra sensitive as Harry nibbled at the side of her neck, his teeth sharp as they teased. Her skin tingled from mouth to pussy with delectable anticipation. Harry’s all male scent filled her nose with its heady combination of soap, wood smoke, livestock, and leather. Maude breathed it and wanted to immerse in it, to hold it forever as a reminder of these moments. When she covered his neck, then his chest with her kisses, she tasted the salt of his sweat and each time she gazed at him, the minute perfection of his body amazed her. It fired her with desire too. The look in his eyes captured her heart, intense and focused as if nothing else existed in the world but the two of them. For now, she guessed nothing did that mattered.

  Maude shed the gown and shuddered at the contrast between warm air from the hearth on one side and the warmth of Harry’s hands compared to the chill room behind her. Bolder than she’d ever been, she grasped his cock in her hand and squeezed the rock hard length of it. He answered by stroking the tight curls of her vaginal hair and using his fingers to reach within. They’d never make it upstairs, but she didn’t care. When he lowered her to the floor she expected to find the hardwood floor but her body touched something thick and soft. On her back, Maude fingered it. “What’s this?” she asked in a soft breath. “Granpa’s bearskin,” Harry said. “Hush, Maudie.”

  She did. Maude spread her knees apart and Harry fit between them. He offered her his hands and she grasped them as he entered her body. He hammered her with the same finesse she’d seen him use to hang a nail and with the same effortless accuracy. His cock glided into her, smooth and full. Maude tightened her rump to clench tight around him, and her actions brought a pleasure-filled groan from his mouth. He moved within her with a rhythmic grace, one echoing their dance a few nights ago, but each stroke stoked her inner fires into a roaring blaze. Her nipples hardened, the walls of her pussy became wet and slick. Her body ached with need. Each thrust brought her closer to the moment of release but as the tension mounted, she strained against him in a wild effort to bring them both home.

  Harry took his time and made each movement deliberate. His lovemaking bordered on torture but it was so sweet she had no complaints. If she had, Maude couldn’t voice them. Her breath came too short. Everything focused on the moment of completion. When he released her hands, Maude’s fingers scratched hard against the skin of his back in her efforts to become one with him. Their efforts crescendoed and when the release came it rocked them with the force of a spring tornado. She cried out in a wordless warble and clutched Harry as he shuddered his way to the finish. He shouted her name when he came hard and they quivered, all their senses reeling. For a moment Maude thought sure she’d faint. Her vision dimmed and her head spun with the incredible impact.

  When he pulled out, the loss swamped her hard. They’d been united as one, and once separated Maude felt bereft. Harry smiled at her and pushed back the wild tangle of her loose hair with one shaking hand. “I love you, honey,” he said as he flopped beside her on the huge bearskin. Although it’d been tacked to one wall for decades, Maude’d never known how soft the fur would feel against her bare skin. “I love you so much,” she murmured, sleepy now she’d been sated. “We should go to bed.”

  “Naw,” he whispered. “It’s too cold and I ain’t movin’. We’ll sleep here.” Harry reached up and dragged several quilts from a chair, then fumbled to spread them over him and Maude. He must have planned ahead, Maude thought, as she snuggled against him, warm, safe, and fulfilled. She stretched her hand out toward the fire and the golden ring caught the light. It turned the gold brighter, burnished with reflected orange. Then she slept, burrowed under the covers beside Harry, their limbs intertwined.

  If she dreamed, Maude didn’t remember. She woke, cozy and warm, until she noticed Harry’s absence. Before she could do more than stretch out a hand in search of him, he spoke in a hurried whisper. “Get up, Maudie. You’d best get dressed.”

  “Why?” she asked as she sat up, quilt clutched to her bosom. “Harry, what’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know that anything is,” he said. “But I hear someone coming, several of them on horseback. Listen.”

  In the still frosty morning she heard what he did, the pounding of multiple sets of hoofbeats and the approaching jingle of more than one bridle. Men’s voices echoed across the snow-packed ground too, the words indistinguishable. More than a little alarmed, Maude scurried upstairs with the quilt wrapped around her. She dressed in a fresh housedress with speed and combed out her hair, wincing at the tangles. Then she braided it and pinned it up into a figure eight on the back of her head. She shoved her feet into shoes and hurried downstairs to join Harry. In her brief absence, he’d dressed too, picked up the bearskin, and folded the quilts. He stood by the front window and peered out as three mounted men rode into the yard. “Who is it?” Maude asked.

  “Looks like its Sheriff McGill,” he said. “He’s brought a couple of deputies. I wonder what’s going on.”

  So did Maude. Her mind raced toward unthinkable possibilities—trouble at her uncle’s home, a fire, something bad happening to George. “Go see,” she urged him.

  Harry nodded and stepped out onto the porch, a hand lifted in greeting. “Good morning, Sheriff,” he called. “What brings you out this way?”

  Ike McGill’s face appeared to be carved from granite as Maude stood in the doorway so she could hear the exchange. “I’ve come for you, Harry,” the Sheriff replied. “I’d rather I didn’t have to do this, but you’re gonna have to come back to town with me. It’ll go easier if you don’t kick up a ruckus but you’re going with us either way.”

  Maude stood close enough she watched Harry stiffen his back. He made no other movement but his wariness prickled the air between them. “I don’t plan to make a fuss,” Harry said. “But I’d like to know what’s going on, Ike. I’ll go to town with you but won’t you tell me why?”

  “I reckon you know,” McGill said and spit a stream of tobacco juice onto the snow. His expression didn’t shift and his absence of a smile warned Maude this wasn’t a joke. Whatever brought him to the farm must be serious.

  “I don’t have an idea,” Harry answered. His tone remained even but Maude sensed the underlying tension. She moved out onto the porch to stand beside him in silent support. “Is something wrong with Granny or Uncle Fred?”

  Sheriff McGill stared hard at Harry and then exhaled a slow breath. “I almost believe you don’t have a clue why I’m here, Harry. I’d like to think you’re innocent after all but right now I don’t.”

  Innocent. The word slammed into Maude’s brain with the force of a hammer. He thinks Harry’s guilty of something…but what? Fear twisted her insides with invisible barbed wire and she wrapped her arms around her torso as if she could protect herself from whatever blow was about to fall. Her hand, cold as snow, fumbled at Harry’s until he held it, his fingers secure around hers. “You sound like you think me guilty of something, Sheriff,” Harry said after a moment’s pause. “Honest to God, I don’t know what it might be. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “If that’s true, you got nothing to hide,” Denny Dumont, a deputy, said. “So it won’t hurt none to come along with us. We’ll get it settled one way or another before the judge.”

  McGill shook his head. “Harry, where’d you spend Christmas?”

  “We went over to Maude’s uncle’s place,” Harry said. “You can ask Tommy King or his wife or any of the thirty-odd people who were there if you like.”

  “I will,” Ike McGill said. “Were you there all day?”

  Maude didn’t like the way he asked the questions, as if he meant to trick Harry some way or another. Hot words boiled in her mouth but she didn’t dare say them, afraid she’d make the situation worse. So she kept quiet and waited as Harry spoke. “No, we had dinner here at home and then headed over there. Not that it’s any of your business, Sheriff, but I hadn’t left the farm here for several days. Last time I was off the place before C
hristmas would be when I went to town last Saturday.”

  The way McGill snorted, Maude thought he doubted Harry’s word. “It’s true,” she said.

  “Do you have anybody else who can vouch for you?” the sheriff asked. “Someone who can swear you were here and didn’t head back to town.”

  Harry shook his head. “Just Maudie and the baby,” he said. “Tommy King brought a ham over Sunday but that’s all. Like I said, I ain’t been off the place.”

  “Would you swear to it?”

  “On a stack of Bibles, I would. What the hell is goin’ on anyway?” Harry asked.

  “Since you don’t know what happened or you’re good at playacting, I’ll tell you. Delbert Jones turned up dead late yesterday with a knife in his gut. He’d probably been dead a day or two before that but it’s hard to tell.”

  “Pity,” Harry said in a sharp tone indicating it was anything but one. “What’s it got to do with me?”

  “You’re the one folks say done it.”

  A rock dropped from the highest peak of the roof couldn’t have hit Maude any harder. Outrage exploded within her mind but fear followed with haste. Harry’s body, already still, went rigid as a just-planed board. “I didn’t,” he said, his voice calm and firm.

  Sheriff McGill exchanged glances with his deputies. He sighed, spit, and faced Harry. “Is it true you two got into a fight Saturday?”

  “Yeah, it’s true,” Harry said with more than a touch of defiance. “My bruises haven’t faded away yet. We fought after he deviled me into it, the way he’s been tryin’ to do for months now, probably years. But this time I fought back and knocked him down. Far as I’m concerned, it was over then, this bad blood between us. If he’s dead, it’s news to me.”

  “Well, he’s dead.” McGill spat the words out as if they tasted bitter. “Your story don’t match what some of the witnesses say.”

  “Half the town watched the fight,” Harry replied. “I reckon most would agree with my account.”

  “Maybe so but not Miss Fannie Farnsworth,” Sheriff McGill said. A smile smirked around the edges of his mouth. “Or her cousin, Mrs. Daisy Wainwright. Both ladies swear you were beaten and vowed you’d get your revenge.”

  Maude found her voice. “That’s a black lie!” she exclaimed. “Why, Daisy Ann was just at my aunt and uncle’s for Christmas. We just saw her and she never said a thing.”

  “Ma’am,” Sheriff McGill said with a tip of his hat. “I’ve got her sworn statement, written out in the prettiest handwriting you ever saw. Miss Fannie brought it with her when she came to my office day before Christmas. Truth is, I didn’t put much stock in it until Delbert Jones turned up deader than a graveyard ghost.”

  “Did they say I killed him?” Harry asked. “I swear to you I didn’t.”

  “Well,” the older man said. Doubt tinged his voice for the first time. “No, they didn’t say exactly that they did. And they didn’t say they saw it. But both ladies—one in my office, the other in a letter—said you vowed to get him back. So when Jones turned up dead, I came for you as the most likely suspect. Still figure I’d best take you in, Harry, let the law sort it out.”

  Harry’s fingers tightened their grip on her hand and Maude huddled against him. She wanted to cry out “don’t go” but she didn’t. “Aren’t you the law?” Harry asked after several long moments of silence.

  “I am but I’m not judge or jury,” the sheriff said. “And I have no real reason to believe you.”

  “Or to take the ladies’ story and swallow it hook, line, and sinker,” Harry replied. “There’s no proof I killed Delbert Jones or anyone else.”

  Maude cringed as Harry stared straight at the lawman, unblinking. McGill met the gaze and sent it back with an intensity she didn’t like. “And none you didn’t,” he said. “I came out here to fetch you to jail and I’m not leaving without you. You can come with us easy or we can make it hard.”

  The sheriff reached into his pocket and drew out a pair of steel handcuffs. He dangled them from one hand with menace. One of the deputies displayed a heavy club while the other pulled a Colt .45 pistol. The two deputies, both men Maude knew by sight from growing up in town, grinned with malevolence. What she recalled of both lacked anything positive. They’d been known to hurt prisoners in their custody. She remembered talk about busted heads, split skulls, and the like. Harry, who’d been hurt before, couldn’t take further injury to his head. Until now she’d been wary and a little afraid, but she understood the Sheriff meant to take Harry away. She lacked any power to stop him and she doubted anything Harry could say or do would change the outcome. He’d go with the men and if he resisted, they’d hurt him—or worse.

  “Harry,” Maude said in a voice no more than a whisper. She tugged his sleeve. He turned to her and their eyes locked. In his, she read the same awful truth. He had no choice but to go. An invisible power resonated between them “I didn’t, Maudie,” he said, his voice as low as hers. Maude lifted her free hand to touch his face, to stroke his cheek. “I know,” she said. “I never doubted your innocence for a minute.”

  A smile flickered across his mouth and vanished, as fleeting as a summer lightning bug. “I’ll have to go with them, honey, but I’ll be back soon as I can.”

  She nodded, unable to speak around the tears clogging her throat. Harry touched the ring on her left hand and then seized her. He kissed her, his mouth frantic and furious on hers.

  “Go in before you catch your death of cold,” he told her. “I love you and I’ll be home soon as they let me.”

  “Harry…” she managed. “Harry.”

  He let her go and turned to face the law. “I’ll go with you without a fight,” he told them. “I’m an innocent man. How soon you think I’ll be home? Maude needs me here on the farm. She can’t do all the chores and work alone.”

  “Empty your pockets,” Sheriff McGill said. He didn’t answer the question. “Hold up your hands and come to me.”

  When Harry did, the sheriff caught him and put the handcuffs in place. Maude heard the click when they latched and she moaned aloud in response to the terrible sound. Harry glanced at her and the naked pain etched across his face silenced her. She’d hold her tears until he was gone, no matter how much it hurt. But she didn’t go inside, either. Maude stood and watched as one of the deputies forced Harry up behind his saddle. The party rode away and although his hands were bound, Harry swiveled his head to look back. She moved to be sure he saw her and remained until the men were out of sight, the sounds of their passing lost in the sweep of wind.

  Maude considered weeping and rejected the idea. If she started crying now, she doubted she could stop. Although her thoughts rushed past the way a flock of blackbirds disturbed in the cornfield took flight, she tried to focus, to hold onto calm so she could think. She sat in her old rocking chair and set it moving. Harry loomed large in her mind, his face as the lawmen took him away etched in memory. If something didn’t change, everything she’d dreamed, all they hoped together, would vanish. I have to help him. I need to go to town and figure out what to do.

  Then she remembered her baby. If she didn’t show up to get him, Uncle Tommy would bring him home. Maude would rather not take George to town while she attempted to save Harry and preserve his good name. He’ll have to stay with them a day or two more. A pang at being apart from her son for so long slashed her heart but she stopped rocking, stood up, and changed into a better dress. If she needed to be in town, she’d have to go. Walking didn’t suit—town lay too far away for it to be practical unless she wanted to arrive about sundown and swim Shoal Creek on the way. Her short stature kept her from mounting Harry’s horse. It stood far too tall for her and remained boisterous enough she didn’t dare try to ride him. Her sole option would be to hitch up the team and drive the wagon. Maude loathed the very idea but she decided she would. There wasn’t any other way.

  Two hours later, frustrated to tears, tired and cold, she thought she’d give up, forget the effort,
and lie down on the frozen, snow-packed ground to die. Her small hands couldn’t manage to hook up the lines and traces. The horses stamped their feet, whinnied, and tossed their heads until Maude feared them. Every accident she’d ever heard about with horses haunted her as she struggled. Her handbag and best hat rested on the wagon seat but if she didn’t manage the task soon, she’d go inside.

  Her fingers fumbled in the cold and when she’d reached the point of despair, she heard the distinct sound of mule hooves over the rocks. Maude lifted her head and sobbed with relief. Uncle Tommy, her boy tucked in front of him, approached on his old mule. As she ran to meet them, her hair tumbled down, and by the time she met them she couldn’t stop crying.

  “Whoa up,” Uncle Tommy said. She didn’t know if he spoke to her or the mule. “What’s all this commotion, Maude?”

  “I need to go to town,” she wailed. “And I can’t get the horses hooked up or anything.”

  “Slow down, girl. Where’s Harry?”

  “Sheriff McGill took him hours ago,” Maude said. “He said Delbert Jones is dead and he’s got two witnesses who say Harry threatened to get him back. They don’t have any other suspects so they took him, said the law could decide it.”

  “That’s plumb crazy,” her uncle said. “They think Harry killed him?”

  “It’s what they said.”

  “T’aint possible. I wouldn’t fret, Maude. It’ll all come out in the wash. I’ll take you to town if you want and we’ll take this child back to the old woman to watch. Get your things and whatever this boy’ll need and we’ll head out.”

  By the time she’d gathered up a stack of clean diapers for George, another dress and change of undergarments, and a few other things in an old carpetbag, Uncle Tommy had the team hitched and the wagon ready to go. Maude climbed up on the seat and took George in her arms. For the little boy’s sake, she’d done her best to still her tears but she held him tight all the way to Aunt Mary’s. She didn’t speak on the way to town, a trip which took longer than usual because of the snow. By the time her uncle dropped her off at Fred’s house, the only place Maude had to go, it was mid-afternoon. “I’ll come over to tend your stock for a day or two. If you need us for anything at all, send word and we’ll help you,” he said in parting. She hugged his neck, thanked him, and walked up to the door of the two-story house at the corner of Washington and McKinney.