Beast of the Field

by Peter Jordan Drake

  Flora Greentree apologized with a shy smile. This soon faded as Sterno took on a businesslike tone with her.

  "I'm here about Tommy Donnan," he said. "I'm a detective with the Pinkerton Agency. Braun and Marnie Donnan hired me to find out what happened to Tommy."

  She listened with a face that looked worried, but was actually a face intent on listening. "He was murdered," she breathed. This was a stating of a fact she already knew, not a question.

  "Yes, I believe he was," said Sterno. "And I think you know who is responsible."

  It took some strength to compose herself for her answer—she had the strength. "Yes," she said.

  "If you can help me, Miss Greentree--"

  "Don't call me that, please. Call me Flora."

  "If you can help me," Sterno went on, "with the events of that night, May the first, then I can build a concrete case, can face your father with formal charges. Right now, as you may understand, there is little I can do in Price without having to deal with him and the sheriff. It’s not safe for me there right now," he continued. "For that matter, neither is it safe for Tommy's family. I’m trying to get what I need tonight, so I can bring charges in the morning. The quicker, the better, for everyone's safety. But I need your help. You must understand, if you speak to me, you will be likely be called on to testify in court."

  Her head jerked up on his mentioning of Tommy’s family. As she had waited for him to finish the rest, a hundred possibilities seemed to run across her mind. "Is Millie okay? Tell me Millie is okay…?"

  Her eyes found something over his shoulder as she said this. Sterno didn’t need to turn to know what it was she saw. Who it was.

  “Well well well,” the girl said with no mirth. “You got a bun in the oven, Miss Flora.”

  “Young lady!” said Jim Thorpe from the front desk. Flora smiled, however, and a smile began to find its way onto Millie’s face too. Millie got directly to her knees in front of her. Her hands went straight to the belly. Flora soothed down Millie’s hair, a natural gesture, easy to her.

  “A big ol’ bun in the oven, Miss Flora!” Millie said. She was smiling too, a dumbfounded smile. It was dawning on her quickly who was the father of this baby, and what that made this baby to Millie.

  "As you can see,” Sterno went on, “she is holding up okay. However, she knows a lot, a lot more than your father would care—"

  "I no longer consider him my father. Not anymore. I could never love a man who has done the things that man has done."

  Sterno slowed down. He took a breath. His jaw hurt him, all the way to the top of his head. She watched him work his hands over the swelling areas of his face while she ran her hands over her own swelling area. As if awakening from a daydream, Millie finally let go of the belly, came to stand behind Sterno.

  "What happened to your jaw?" Flora asked. “It’s a little difficult to understand you.”

  He gave her the straight answer: the mayor’s back yard, the sheriff's right hook.

  "Yes, well, Sheriff Jake can be a little rough. But Mr. Sterno—Mr. Sterno, right?—the sheriff had nothing to do with what happened to Tommy. He wasn’t there that night, with them. He was trying to help me find him."

  Sterno had not been expecting this. He didn't believe it, either. Not yet.

  "It seemed that way, anyway." Her gaze traveled away to the months before. "It's hard to recall now. I have trouble remembering."

  Sterno gathered himself, adjusted himself to this new twist, went forward with care. "Try to focus on that night of the tornado," he suggested.

  "Yes," she said, still floating away. "Yes. We had a plan to leave Price, you know."

  "I do know. I've read your letters."

  She drew in a short breath, sat straight in the armchair. "You have? How did you get our letters? Do you have them here?"

  “They’re safe,” said Millie.

  “We should have thought of that. I will see that you get them."

  The tears trapped behind her face were gaining strength. Her voice was losing it. "We loved each other so much, Mr. Sterno. So much..."

  "Tell me about that night, Flora."

  She dipped her head, swallowed down the emotion. By and by, a spell fell over her. She was remembering it, feeling it again, putting herself there on that night. Exactly what he needed from her. Eventually her eyes lost focus altogether. Her words barely made it past her lips. Her sentences were islands, small and round and set apart from one another.

  "Our plan was to leave that night. Run away, west. We were to be married. I never told Tommy about the baby—I knew it would make him crazy. He would want to leave right away. I was just beginning to show, but I didn’t tell anyone at all, in fact, not till that day. I knew Daddy would not stand for it. He never liked Tommy anyway. He hated the Irish, and Italians—he thought all Catholics were immigrants and all immigrants were un-American. But never mind being Irish and Catholic. Never mind what Tommy and I had together. He just didn't like Tommy, never had. When I told him about the baby...my God, he was so angry. I have never seen my father like that. He was like, he was like a monster. He was almost black in the face he was so mad. It was strange, him being so angry, over a grandchild of all things."

  "So you told him that day."

  She nodded her head, remembering. "I told him just before we were to leave. I hadn't been planning to tell him at all. I never should have said anything."

  "What happened then."

  "Daddy had Gomer Neuwald—do you know the Neuwalds?—guarding the house, right outside the house all day. Daddy just left."

  "Where."

  "He went to find Tommy, Mr. Sterno. He said, that day, he told me outright he would kill Tommy before he would let us marry. The baby made something inside him unravel. I watched it happen right in front of me."

  She thought about the next bit before proceeding.

  "Still, I never stopped believing we were going to leave that night. The plan was for him to come to the house to get me; but we had never said what time. It all depended on what was going on around us that day. It was impossible, Mr. Sterno, impossible. You see, the Donnans have no telephone—I couldn’t call him. He couldn’t call me. Our letters and our love were all we had. We each set out to look for the other and we both got lost in the storm."

  The desperation, the hopelessness, the folly of it all—so apparent to Sterno—now seemed to be landing on her, too.

  "So…" she sighed. "So I was all packed, I was ready to go. I was sure Tommy would come to the house for me. With Daddy on this rampage like he was, I was getting scared. My senses were fogged. I had not even made a plan. All that time sitting around, waiting, and I hadn't thought about how…I didn’t think. I panicked. I decided I wasn’t going to wait, even if Tommy was. The thing is, I swear I saw him—Tommy—on the road, but it was raining so hard, I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t stop. Or maybe I dreamt it, I can't even remember. I don't want to remember, Mr. Sterno."

  The words were tumbling out now. The memories were resurfacing, despite her wants.

  "Jove Moreland—that's Daddy's driver—took me to the woods in his car. He was the one who muscled Gomer out of the picture—all to help me. Oh, Mr. Sterno, there was a tornado coming. There was such a bad thunderstorm...so much lightning and thunder—oh, and the wind was terrible. It was all so scary, and so confusing. Mr. Sterno…we were so close...I swear I saw him then. Right there on the highroad north of Daddy’s—of my home."

  Her voice cracked. Her strength faltered. He needed her strong, so he kept at her angry side. "Keep going, Flora. If I am going to finish this, I need to know what happened at the barn, and at the cabin. I want to know how those men killed Tommy."

  "I don't know, I don't know," she said, the tears beginning to break through. "I left his letters I had there at the cabin. I waited there as long as I could. I told Jove to leave me; he didn’t want to but I made him. I wanted to wait for him. I did not want to leave without him. I wanted to die there waiting for him, before I
would leave there without him…but the storm…Jove wouldn’t leave me there. His daddy is a preacher in New Bremen, and he has a strong sense of right and wrong. He saved my life more than once that day. He came and took me from the cabin, took me to the barn. Oh Millie, I am so sorry, Millie.”

  She opened her arms. The younger girl came to her. "I'm so, so sorry about Tommy." She was finally overcome by tears, and then so was Millie. She moved to the side of the pregnant belly and squeezed the Greentree girl’s neck.

  Sterno stood, watched them. The world seemed to stop spinning around them so they could share this sad moment. Together the two girls became a single sad thing, wrapped tight in each other's arms. Their sobs were quiet except for mutual apologies that came on the tiny outward seeps of air they were allowed amidst their otherwise breathless grieving. Sterno invited himself outside, where he rolled, lighted, smoked a cigarette. And drank.

  It had been a long time. He was old friends with the sadness, but he had forgotten all about the grief.

  31.

  Jove Moreland couldn’t leave her there. He came after her, pulled her from the cabin and carried her over his shoulder to the car. The strength she had found earlier in her desperation was now grief, and weakness, and she let him take her. He backed his old Model T at full rev through the trees and into the field, where he turned around and found the road through the driving rain.

  The hail came down on them then. A few pieces tapped on the hood and roof of the car at first, but became a few more and a few more until a thousand thimbled fingers were clicking and clacking away at them.

  "We can't stay here. Better we get ourselves into town. That tornado aint gonna be long."

  She nodded.

  "We got to get to that barn, Miss Flora."

  The car struggled in the rain and hail, the pushing and sucking wind. Hail popped up out of the grass. Debris moved birdlike over the swirling crops. Just seconds later the rain and ice gray-washed the countryside out completely.

  “Oh boy, this is going to be tight,” Jove said. Flora looked through the rain-washed windshield to see a large truck loaded high with cut trees come up on the left side. Jove moved his Model T to the right edge of the road, the wheels on the right side going into the mud but in the sucking wake of the truck he could not maintain his control of the car and they went off the road when the window on his side cracked and came loose in its fittings. "Hold on—!"

  For a second she thought she saw something in the wet, washed-out wake of the truck—a horse? A buggy? But it was moving away from them, whatever it was, and now too far gone in the violent rain to be seen. It could not have been Tommy, could it? Surely Tommy would not have let her pass him by, would he?

  Jove made the right turn into town and at last, the barn rose at them from the mayhem.

  "Thank yeh Lord."

  He spun the wheel around in the mud and hail pellets. The front wheels banked this way, that way, before the car stalled twenty yards from the barn. By now the wind was something a person had to yell over to be heard. Jove screamed something at her, pointed to the barn. The door on his side flew open. He slid around the front end of the car, one hand braced against the metal. He pulled her door open, reached across for a jacket from between the seats, draped it over her head. Her heartbeat and breaths became her world as she was lifted from the car and carried over Jove's shoulder to the barn. He kicked open a door, put her to her feet. Inside, the dancing had long since stopped; some people standing by the open trapdoor in the floor that led to the cellar.

  "Are you two crazy?" This was Tess Helmcamp, who held a lamb and was taking it into the cellar. Chickens, calves, shoats and foals numbered nearly as many as the people, and were much louder. "Get your asses in that cellar!" she yelled over the bleating and crowing. "If you know what's good for you!"

  But as they entered the barn an iron grip took hold of Flora's arm. It was Sheriff Jake. He pulled her over to a wall. His presence alone was all he needed to let everyone know to leave them alone.

  "Where's that boy."

  She could only stare at him.

  "Have you seen him or haven't you?" he said, giving her arm a little shake. She shook her head, just barely. Her mouth hung just barely agape. Still she could not speak.

  "Old man Aaronson said he might of lit out on that farm road behind the barn. Where is he going, gal?"

  Her mouth was not able to move. His face was inches from hers. His eyes searched hers, and knew before his thinking mind that only fear could be found there. He let go of her arm. "Well, I got to find that boy," he said, pulling his duster up to his neck, "before Abner and those boys of Jonas' get their hands on him."

  He left then. She watched him press down his hat as he tried to exit the barn. The wind was so strong by then he could barely open the door. He managed half his body through the door before he was pinned against the barn. “Jake, you get your ass in here!” said Tess Helmcamp, who had hold of Flora’s arm but had stopped to holler over the wind. Two men grabbed Sheriff Jake—one of them using his body against the door—and pulled him back inside.

  Tess Helmcamp finally led Flora to and down the stairs. The darkness in the cellar was total. The silence was more frightening than the storm. There was whimpering, praying, bawling from children and animals. There were voices spoken low and calm, to reassure. There were other small noises that preceded the train roar of the sky, but all sound was soon swallowed up as the funnel passed them over and sucked their breath from their bodies.

  *

  Tommy had to take the high road. He may see a car or two, and someone in one of those cars may be looking for him, but he had no choice: his was the quickest route for him. After he had passed the mayor’s house he heard a truck and turned to see a large truck loaded with scrap lumber barreling through the rain, coming up fast behind him. Tommy had no choice but to take the buggy off the road. It was that moment he saw the headlamps of a car coming south on the road too. He was then thanking the gods for the lumber truck. There was no reason whatsoever for a lumber truck to be on this road during this storm, but it was, and if that was one of the Neuwalds’ cars ahead of him, this truck was going to save his life.

  The truck driver pulled his horn as it came close to him. In front of him the car coming south was halfway off the road. The three vehicles met at once and for a fraction of a second were aligned side by side by side. When the truck went past it took its own little storm-within-the-storm with it. Tommy strained against the lines with all his might to bring the horse and buggy back onto the road. Looking behind him, he saw the dark shape of the car in a spray of water. A Model T, but he couldn’t make whose it was for the rain. Even if he had turned around to look, in the rain he most likely would not have seen the face looking back at him through the window.

  When they reached the edge of the east woods, he came down from the buggy, pulled Sonnet by the halter. He saw the tire tracks immediately, and knew they would have to be fresh to still be visible in the rain. The different scenarios flashed through his mind, but the only one he knew was true, the only one he knew was a reality, was that Flora had managed a ride to the cabin. Perhaps that car he had passed on the road belonged to Jove Moreland, the mayor’s driver, and Flora was waiting for him in the cabin. Certainly, this was the only reality.

  "Goddamnit, Sonnet. Will you help me or won't you?"

  She wouldn't. She was tired out now, and too scared to move another step. He had a decision to make. He moved to the front of the horse, rested his hands on her cheeks and his eyes on her forelock. "I have to go, girl. You're going to be safe here. Even if that storm comes this way, you're going to be all right. Do you hear me? Do you hear me? You will be all right, I promise."

  He left without looking back at her, swatting back at branches and leaping over the newly felled trees and the deadwood logs of their grandfathers alike. He had no thoughts, he just ran. The cabin bounded forth to him through the rain, hail, blowing limbs and falling branches. He could hear only
his panting and the limbs of trees snapping all around him like the rifle reports of a skirmish. Lightning flickered from the four corners of the sky, sometimes lighting his way, sometimes confusing him. At last, he saw light shining through the cracks in the cabin wall and heard an elated laugh escape his throat. They would hunker down under the storm, dry and warm for the other's presence. Then, with Price in shock over the twister, they would quit this town.

  “Flora!” he called out, loud even in the storm. “It’s Tommy, my darling!”

  Again, Tommy laughed. It was an accident, the laugh. It was his glee escaping him, for here was the cabin. Here was the light from within. Here was his life.

  As he reached the cabin he called her name out one last time, to allay her fears, to fight back the storm. To hear her name called out.

  The wind helped him fling open the front door. His eyes didn't register what he saw until the blow had cracked open his skull. Only then, through shock and shuttering lids, did his mind show him what his eyes had already seen—in front of him shining dirty red diamonds gleaming out through holes in white cloth, and in the corner of his eye the swooping blurred shadow of the dirty butt of a rabbit gun, raised high but coming down fast.

  *

  When their breath returned, it was used to blow relief into the darkness of the barn cellar, haven now for a good portion of the good citizens of Price. No one spoke. Flora was the first to ascend the thick rungs of the ladder steps, but this was only to be stopped at the cellar ceiling, which on the flip side was also the barn floor. Something was blocking the trap door.

  "Please help me. Someone. Jove, please."

  She heard Jove resign to his fate: helping her in front of the entire town was a mite different than driving her around in the countryside where no one could see. He did it anyway. He pardoned himself as he climbed passed her. He braced his shoulders against the wood. Grunted. The town folks saw a seam of light, but only until the weight of what was on top of the cellar door pushed him back down. Again, there was the darkness, the frightened breathing.