by Bev Marshall
I was still cleaning up from the morning run when Leland Graves, the reporter for The Lexie Journal showed up at the door to the barn. He’s a little fellow, kind of prissy, wears a bow tie up tight against his Adam’s apple. He wrinkled his nose against the cow manure, but he stuck out his hand and smiled like he was smelling ladies’ perfume in a drawing room.
“Mr. Cotton?” he said. “I’m Leland Graves.”
I shook his hand and told him I knew who he was from yesterday up at Stoney’s house. I had started to say Sheila’s; that’s the way I always thought of it. Her house. Graves asked some routine things about dairy life and Sheila working for me, and then he took out his pad and acted like he was reading off it, but I could see there wasn’t many words on the paper. “Now, Mr. Cotton, I need to ask you about Stoney Barnes. He works for you also. Correct?”
“He does. Been here over two years.”
Graves tilted his hat back a bit and looked around the milking room. I could tell he’d never been in one before just by the way his eyes roamed over the stalls and sacks of grain. “He milks the cows in here, I presume?” I said yeah that we didn’t milk them out in the weather, and then he said I must know Stoney very well if I saw him twice daily and must have some knowledge of the relationship between him and his wife.
I knew what he was getting to. I had the feeling Carruth was stirring up trouble for Stoney. Clyde Vairo had told me he was pestering him to death to arrest Stoney for the murder. “They were a nice young couple,” I said. “Never caused me a minute’s trouble.”
“There’s been talk,” he said, “that perhaps the relationship wasn’t always amicable.”
I didn’t know what the hell he meant by that, so I kept my jaw locked. In the end, I told him that Sheila had come to work banged up some several times, but that as to who done it, I would be guessing.
After he left, I took a pull on the whiskey bottle and sat on the milking stool to sort things out. I’d been so worried about keeping the dairy going I hadn’t had much of a chance to think about the murder. I went over the day in my mind, step by step, how it all played out.
I’d overslept, the first time I’d done that in a year. Rowena had kept me up late with her fretting. She was gonna be a trial over this baby. I could see that from a mile off. So I’d pulled on my clothes and gone down to the barn without coffee or a shave. I yelled at Digger when I seen they was just getting started on bringing the cows in. They knew better and I told Shorty, who was sitting on a stool eating a biscuit, to get his butt up and moving. Stoney was milking Bell, but he was pulling on her teats so slow she had her head turned back to him as if to wonder what the hell he was doing. We got loaded up, and I remember seeing Digger and Stoney outside the barn smoking a cigarette as I drove off with Shorty. When I got back, the yard was full of cars and trucks, and a school bus. Rowena came running out and told me Stoney had been there and had said Sheila was missing. I remember my first thought was Rowena had jumped the gun and Sheila would turn up saying she was off on some fairy hunt or some such foolishness. Meanwhile, folks were tramping all over my land, and god knows what damage they’d do to the garden. I had to unload and I left Shorty to clean up and joined up with Clyde Vairo, who was toting his rifle over his shoulder.
Now though, as I took another pull on the whiskey, my thoughts jumped to the how and when of it. What was clear to me was that Sheila had been murdered during the night, maybe while Stoney was milking. He said she was still sleeping when he left the house. He said that, but it might not be true. If he had killed her, would he have come to work, smoked a cigarette before he went back home? That didn’t seem likely. But if he hadn’t murdered her, who had? I thought of her papa, or maybe it had been a vagabond, a tramp? Why hide her body in the cornfield? I couldn’t get my thoughts to come to any conclusion about anything, and I was glad I’d chosen dairying for a livelihood and not the law.
I put away my bottle and rinsed my mouth with some Listerine I kept in the cabinet and started back to the house. Rowena would be in a state, and I dreaded what was before me. I looked over to the tenant house and saw that Stoney’s truck was gone. I hadn’t seen him since they’d loaded the body, and I wondered where he’d gotten off to. The thought came to me then that maybe he had killed Sheila and he had taken off to hide out somewhere before he was found out. If that were the case, I’d help Clyde hunt him down myself. “Son of a bitch,” I said. “Goddamn it to hell and back.”
Just as I said that, Annette came out of the house yelling that Digger had called from the jail for me to come and get them. I looked up at the umbrella-shaped cloud over me and said, “Well, thank You for that. At least I can run my dairy right again.”
ROWENA
After Lloyd went into town to fetch the coloreds, I called Mama to tell her that Digger would be coming back soon so that she could pass the word to Angilee, his wife, who works for Mama. I told Mama I couldn’t think of anything except poor Sheila and I just didn’t see how I could get through a funeral. Mama asked when it would be, and I couldn’t answer that. I knew there had to be an autopsy in a situation like this. “Rowena, you know not to look at the body. You don’t want your baby marked,” she said. I told her not to worry, but I knew she would. Mama tried to sound cheerful then. “We should talk about something else, something pleasant.” I told her I was going to give Annette a party for her twelfth birthday, but I couldn’t summon any joy over my plans.
When Mama hung up, I sat holding the receiver until Miss Wilda came on the line and asked was I wanting to make another call. I did want to talk to Leda, but I was drained and went in and just collapsed on my bed. I couldn’t nap though. I kept thinking about the day before, the horrible horrible day.
Lloyd had overslept, and I turned over and put the pillow over my head, so I wouldn’t hear him stumbling around in the dark room trying to get dressed in a hurry. I went back to sleep and didn’t wake until nearly five, and I had just gotten my new seersucker bathrobe on that was going to be plenty roomy for the baby and me later on, when I heard Stoney’s wild knocking on the back door. I couldn’t find my slippers and so I ran barefoot through the kitchen to unlock the door. When I opened it, I smelled cigarette smoke through the screen and I thought my nausea which had eased up some was going to return, but I held my breath for a second and it went away. Stoney looked terrible. I stepped out on the porch and saw that his pants were soaked from the knees down, and his eyes were wet too. I asked him what was the matter, and he said, “Miss Cotton, sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if’n Sheila was down to here.” I told him she never visited this time of the morning. Annette wasn’t even awake yet. That’s when he told me she was missing, and the tears he was holding in his eyes spilled down his face. I felt so sorry for him.
I did ask the question, and I wish I hadn’t. “Did y’all have a fight? Maybe she’s hiding from you.” If I had known she was dead, I’d never have said such a thing, but of course, I didn’t know, and I can’t take it back.
Stoney just shook his head no though and said, “There weren’t no arguing last night. When I left for work she were sleeping on her side like always.” His fingers went up to the tobacco tag hanging out of his pocket, but he didn’t pull out the pouch. “I think something terrible has happened to her,” he said.
I told him I’d get dressed and we’d look for her. I woke Annette, and by the time we got ourselves presentable, Digger had come up to the porch and was talking to Stoney. Stoney said he’d already searched all around their yard, and Annette ran down and checked the smokehouse and the barn again. It had rained the night before and in no time Annette’s bare legs were spattered with mud. When we’d been searching for maybe an hour, I’m not sure how long, it was Digger who suggested that Sheila might have gone home to her parents’ house. I gave him the keys to the Dodge and told him to drive Stoney out there right away. I remember how Digger’s jaw dropped in disbelief that I was allowing him to drive my automobile, but he closed his mouth, took the
keys and jumped behind the wheel. I was sorry I’d made that decision when he swung the Dodge around and barely missed the camellia bush beside the drive. I will never forget Stoney’s face as he sat staring out of the windshield like he was willing Sheila’s face to appear on the glass.
When my automobile disappeared, I suddenly felt so weak I had to lean on Annette to get back to the house. I asked her to pour us some milk and make oatmeal, which she managed in record time. I could tell she was worried about me and the baby, and I tried to comfort her and say I was all right, but she knows me. After the oatmeal, I went in to begin telephoning. I called Clyde Vairo first and then Mama and Leda. They’re on different party lines than we are, so they helped with the calling.
It seemed like no time at all before people began to arrive to help with the search. I was desperate for Lloyd to get home. And darn that sheriff of ours; he was nearly the last to arrive, so that I had to be in charge of everything. I wondered if I should serve coffee, but the big urn was stored in a high cabinet, and I knew not to be lifting anything heavy.
When Stoney and Digger returned and said that the Carruths were on their way, my hopes of finding Sheila died and a cold fear came over me. I guess Mama had called Stoney’s folks because I hadn’t thought to do it and wondered at myself for forgetting about them, but Mr. Barnes drove into the yard and jumped out of his truck with a water jug and a long-barreled shotgun. He had already left for the pasture when the Carruths arrived in the big yellow school bus. I hope the amazement didn’t show on my face when I saw them falling out of the bus. Digger had said they couldn’t all fit in an automobile and that Mr. Carruth had driven over to the Dunaways to borrow the Mars Hill school bus, but I had no idea there were so many of them. Besides Mr. and Mrs. Carruth and the newborn bald baby in her arms, there were eleven children ranging from around fourteen down to a pair of toddler twins. They were dressed in frayed but clean clothes. The boys’ hair, most of them cotton-topped, spiked unevenly in all directions, the obvious result of kitchen shears. The girls wore plaits that hung down to the middle of their backs. All of them were barefoot and wide-eyed. Mr. Carruth’s mouth, a deep straight gash across his face, worked itself open as he walked over to me. “Did you call the law?” he asked.
“The sheriff is on his way out,” I said and then turned to poor Mrs. Carruth, whose ashen face was literally quivering. “I’m Rowena Cotton.”
She said nothing at first. She shifted the baby on her arm, and I thought she was trying to free a hand to hold out to me, but she clutched the baby tighter against her. I patted her back between her protruding shoulder blades that looked like sharp shovels jutting out from her faded, floral-print dress. Her eyes filled and she whispered, “I know she’s dead. I know.”
“Oh, you mustn’t say that. Don’t think it. We’ll find her.” I tried to think of more comforting words to say, but my mind was as empty as our coffee pot by noon. I spread my arms out to the drive where more automobiles and one tractor came toward us. “We have so much help,” I finally said.
Sheila’s mother raised the baby higher and kissed the pink skin that stretched over its big round head. I was staring at the sleeping baby when I remembered that this was the day we were going to celebrate; I was supposed to make a cake. Sheila would tell Annette about her baby today because she was going to tell Stoney yesterday. Had she told him? I looked for him over the heads of the grim-faced people standing in our yard with guns, hoes, shovels, and rakes. They were shaking hands, talking in fast chatter like they were at a church social. They seemed unsure of how to begin the search, and right then, to the great relief of us all I’m sure, Clyde Vairo finally drove up in his patrol car. He tried to get everyone’s attention when he stood up on the bed of Castle Moore’s Ford truck and shouted in a deep bass voice for everyone to shut up and listen. The cacophony of voices continued until, after shouting twice more, he shot his rifle into the air and silenced everyone except the Carruth baby, who woke up and began to wail loudly.
Clyde took over the search then, and I brought Effie Carruth into the house to wait for news. Mama came by and Leda and quite a few of the women from both Effie’s church and ours, but no one stayed all that long. I couldn’t blame them; it was too painful to sit and watch Sheila’s mother sitting on my couch gripping that baby as if she thought he might go missing too if she let go of him. Mama had said she’d stay with me until they found Sheila, but she got a sour stomach right after she ate a piece of the peach pie she’d brought over and had to go home. So it was only me and all those children and Effie Carruth in my house that seemed like a crowded tomb. I wondered if Sheila had told her mother about her being p.g., but I doubt if the poor woman could have stood talking about her at all. I went to my room and brought my Bible out and sat beside her reading aloud from the Psalms, which are uplifting if you read them in the right tone of voice. But my breath was wasted on her; I doubt she heard a word I said until hours later when Digger called me out to the porch and told me Sheila had been found in our cornfield.
ANNETTE
I answered the phone when Digger called to say he and Shorty were free to come home. After I told Daddy, Mama called Grandma so she could tell Angilee. Angilee is Digger’s wife and she makes the best chicken pie in all of Mississippi. We don’t have any help in the house because Mama is just too picky and hard to please. Grandma doesn’t care if her sheets aren’t folded into a perfect square. Mama went and laid down on her bed and said she was going to take a nap and for me to answer the telephone if it rang.
I got out my Parcheesi game, but it wasn’t any fun playing by myself, and I wandered around the house, wishing I could go up to Stoney’s. I needed to talk to somebody about Sheila, but Mama didn’t want me to talk about her. She hadn’t let me say hardly a word to the reporter, and I could have given him a better description of her than anybody else. I wondered if maybe our names would be in The Lexie Journal. I thought Mr. Graves was just about the most elegant man I’d ever met. He was wearing spectator shoes, a blue suit with a maroon stripe, and a pink shirt. Daddy wouldn’t be caught dead in that shirt or the bow tie that moved up and down when Mr. Graves talked.
I went to the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror. I was a woman now, not some kid to be shushed up when I had something to contribute to a conversation. That’s how it should be, but that wasn’t the way things were going so far. I sat on the floor beside the tub and laid my head on my knees. I hadn’t gotten to tell Sheila I started my period, and she would never know that my hair didn’t curl. And she hadn’t told me her secret either.
When Mama had woken me up the day before and told me to get dressed fast, that Sheila was missing, I thought she meant that Sheila was missing some thing, not that it was herself. Of course, I soon realized the truth, and I was sure that I would be the one to find her. After all, I knew all of her hiding places. The first place I looked was the smokehouse, but when I pulled the string cord for the single bulb hanging in the center of the meat hooks, all I saw were a rake, a hoe, a sling blade, and some bags of 13-13-13. Then I got the Ever Ready and pointed it up into the fig tree, expecting to see her legs dangling down, her grinning white face appear in the orb of light. I called her name over and over. “Sheeeeelia, Sheilaaaaa, She Laaa.”
After I helped Mama and fixed her some oatmeal, I took off up to Sheila’s house. Stoney and Digger had gone out to the Carruths’ which I knew was a wasted trip since Sheila would never go out there alone at night. It was around six-thirty now, and the sun should have been rising behind the car house, but later I decided that it knew it shouldn’t shine on the sorrow we were all to feel that day.
I saw her house as if I’d never seen it before. I stood in the yard beneath the gloomy sky, and stared at it. The boards holding up the rust-stained tin roof had weathered to a dull gray, having lost their dress of white paint years ago. A pair of narrow rectangle windows matched on either side of the front door, which was shut and unwelcoming. Their bedroom was to the left of th
e front room, and I imagined Sheila on the patched sheets, curled on her side. I walked around the house and tried to peek in the window, but rising on my toes, I could only see the foot of the bed, a chest of drawers, a small trunk, some clothes on the floor. I staggered back and tripped over an oak tree root and fell, banging my knees. Little red dots formed on my knee cap, and bending over, I licked them and kissed my scratches. Sheila had taught me this routine, saying it was better to soothe your own wounds than run to someone else because you can’t count on finding love every time you need it. I got up then and went on around the house, circling the kitchen windows, too high up to see in. When I came back to the front, I walked up the wooden porch steps and then cupped my hands to look through the front room window. I saw the battered couch I always sat on when visiting; there was the big radio Stoney had bought, and some newspapers littering the floor. On the table in front of the couch beside a ceramic jug was an enamel dishpan filled with water and a gray rag was draped over the side of the pan. Did Sheila wash in the front room instead of the kitchen? Suddenly, a terrible thought came up in my head. The well! What if she’d fallen in the well, and I raced across the yard, my heart rat-a-tatting like a drum. But there was the tin bucket hanging on its usual peg and the board that covered the opening was in place.
I stayed away from my own house most of the day. I couldn’t look at Mr. Carruth without seeing the poker he’d struck Sheila with in his hand. Mrs. Carruth’s eyes scared me too; she looked like a crazy person who might be capable of just about anything. I tried to stay near Stoney, but there were too many people wanting to shake his hand, slap his back, tell him that his wife would be found safe and sound. I could tell he knew different by the way his eyes would slide over people’s heads to avoid looking straight at their lies. I caught a glimpse of Daddy a time or two and ducked down behind bushes or whatever was handy to hide in. I knew he’d send me inside to sit with Mama and wait, and I couldn’t do that, no, I couldn’t have stood it. I had to be looking for my Best Friend. She’d expect that of me.
