A Cup of Dust

by Susie Finkbeiner

  Daddy moved slowly with Beanie, helping her to sit. He was so careful with her, so gentle. And she didn’t want to let go of him, not even with her backside resting on the soft couch. She kept her arms tight around him and moaned when he tried to release her hands.

  He didn’t force her and didn’t fight her. Daddy just knelt down next to her and let her cling to him. He wrapped his arms around her and let her head rest against his chest.

  “She’s in a bad way.” Daddy turned his head as much as he could manage. “Real beat up.”

  “Good Lord,” Mama said, covering her mouth. “What happened? She get caught up in the barbed wire?”

  Daddy and Mama met eyes, and neither of them said a thing. The quiet was only stirred by Beanie’s groaning.

  “Somebody did this to her. Whoever it was …” He stopped talking, smoothing Beanie’s hair and pressed lightly over where her ear was. “Whoever done this meant to kill her, I think.”

  He pushed her hair aside and showed the marks on her neck.

  “What is that?” Mama asked.

  “Marks from the hands of whoever did this to her. He tried to strangle her.”

  Mama’s knees bent and then straightened again, as if her body couldn’t decided what it needed to do. She reached one hand out and held it on top of Beanie’s head.

  Beanie was in our bed, resting. Meemaw had insisted that she needed to be with her. The way my big sister sobbed when Mama cleaned her wounds broke all of our hearts. I wanted so bad to be with her and to hold her hand. But Mama said I’d need to sleep on the davenport for a few nights.

  “Grab the end,” Mama said, holding up a sheet.

  We lifted the sheet in the space above the davenport and it domed up before landing lightly.

  “Go on and lie down.” She nodded. “I’ll put the covers over you.”

  “Where’s Daddy?” I asked, curling up on the fresh sheet.

  “Out on the porch.” She pulled another sheet over top of me. “He’ll be back in right soon.”

  “Is Beanie going to be okay?” I nestled into the pillow Mama handed me.

  Mama sat on the edge of the davenport, her hands folded in her lap.

  “It’s late,” she whispered. “You need to get some rest.”

  I closed my eyes, even though I didn’t think I’d ever fall asleep that night. Pretending to drift off, I breathed slower and rolled so my face would be toward the back of the davenport. Mama fixed the blanket, pulling so it would cover my feet.

  The front door opened with a creaking and clicking sound. I didn’t stir, hoping Mama would still believe I was sleeping. The adults were looser with their lips when they thought I was asleep.

  “How is she?” Daddy’s voice. “Has she woken up at all?”

  I knew he meant Beanie. I didn’t figure they’d be talking about me for a good long time.

  “No.” Mama shifted, pushing her rear against my legs. “I hope she sleeps through the night.”

  “Pearl fell asleep fast.”

  “Sure did.” Mama sighed. “She was real scared. It wears a girl out.”

  “I bet.”

  “You got any idea who did this to Beanie?” Mama asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “I can’t imagine anybody doing such a thing.”

  “The fella who found her is still out on the porch with Mill,” Daddy said. “I told them they should go on home. The other fella’s all shook up. Says he doesn’t want to leave until he knows she’s going to be okay.”

  “They don’t have to stay outside,” Mama said. “Tell them to come in. I’ll make some coffee. I’ve got some potatoes I could fry up too.”

  Mama got up and went to the kitchen. I heard her shuffling around and filling the percolator.

  “Come on in here,” Daddy called out the door. “My wife’s perking some coffee. You drink coffee, do you?”

  “I do believe we could both use a little coffee.” It was Millard’s voice.

  As slow as I could, I rolled over to my other side and opened one eye, the one closest to my pillow. All I could see were three sets of booted feet. Daddy’s and Millard’s I recognized. But the other pair were scuffed up and dusty.

  “Mary,” Daddy called. “Come on in here, darlin’. This here man found Beanie.”

  “Oh,” Mama said. “It’s you. You’re the one?”

  “This is my wife, Mary,” Daddy said. “Mary, I believe you’ve seen this man before.”

  “I believe so,” Mama answered. “You’re the one found Beanie?”

  Mama had the edge to her voice she held for folks she didn’t care for.

  “Just doing my good turn for the day,” the man answered.

  At the sound of his voice all the breath in my lungs got sucked out. I didn’t dare open my eyes any more than they were. Instead, I shut them tight as I could. So tight, orange burst across my vision.

  “Eddie here was just telling me he got back to town just tonight,” Daddy said.

  “That so?” Mama asked. “Seems convenient.”

  “I had work out to Boise City for a couple weeks is all,” Eddie answered. “Found your daughter on the way into town.”

  “Well, Eddie, you’re welcome here any time.” Daddy’s voice sounded like it was smiling. “A regular old part of the family now. We do appreciate you helping our girl.”

  “I’m just glad I heard her,” Eddie said. “She was crying and carrying on so, I thought it weren’t nothing more’n a hurt jackrabbit.”

  I couldn’t help myself, I opened my eyes all the way. Eddie stood looking right at me with those cornflower-blue eyes and a smirk on his face.

  The big bad wolf had found his way into the brick house, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  “He’s the one who was here begging for food, Tom,” Mama said. “I don’t trust him.”

  Millard and Eddie had been gone from our house for only a minute or two before Mama and Daddy whispered to each other about him.

  “Mary, he’s not a bad man,” Daddy said. “He’s just tramping around the country. That’s all.”

  “I get a bad feeling from him.”

  “He found Beanie. A bad man would’ve just left her there.”

  “Maybe he wants some kind of a reward.” Mama yawned. “Folks like him don’t do anything for nothing.”

  “Well, I can keep an eye on him if you want. But I don’t think we’ve got to worry about him none.”

  They were quiet a minute or two, and I almost opened my eyes to see if they were still in the room with me. But then Mama sighed.

  “You really believe he’s all right, Tom?” she asked.

  “I do.”

  It was the first time I doubted Daddy’s wisdom.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  As soon as news spread around Red River about Eddie rescuing Beanie, he became the town hero. Men slapped him on the back to congratulate him. Women apologized that they didn’t have sugar enough to make him a cake.

  Eddie didn’t have any problem telling and retelling his story of finding my sister, her carrying on in the ditch, tangled in the rusty barbed wire. How he did his best to calm her as he pulled the barbs away from her flesh. How she’d held on tight when he lifted her. That out of the corner of his eye he saw a man running west down the railroad tracks.

  A Negro man, he claimed. Though I didn’t know how he could have been able to tell that, what with how dark that night had been.

  Each time he told the story, it got fatter, thick with added details to make it more of a drama. He heard a rattler down in that ditch and feared it would bite him. A coyote howled in the distance. How he had stumbled as he carried her, but pulled together all his strength to keep from dropping her.

  Wherever he went, a group of men and boys stood around to hear him tell the story. I was about sick of hearing his voice.

  Meemaw told me that a hopeless people are always in the market for a hero. “Just remember King Saul,” she’d said.

  All I could re
member of King Saul from the Bible was that he was a head taller than everybody else. Eddie, though, was a head shorter.

  Nobody in Red River seemed to care so much about that.

  “I just wish the newspaper was still running,” Millard had said. “Eddie deserves a front page for what he done.”

  Best they could do was have a picture of Eddie made to hang in the courthouse right next to the newspaper clipping of the shooting of Jimmy DuPre.

  Folks in town wanted Daddy to find the maniac who had attacked Beanie. He went around, door-to-door, tent-to-tent, asking after anybody who had seen anything the night of the attack. No one had.

  He’d even asked my sister to go over what had happened. She never did come up with the words to explain it. All she kept saying was that she couldn’t see anything that night. She repeated that it was too dark, and there were no stars. The one thing she did remember was that someone or something had hit her real hard on the back of the head.

  Then she’d end up crying until she dropped off into a deep sleep. She wouldn’t wake up again for hours.

  “Eddie says he saw a Negro running away,” Mama said after another day of wondering and Beanie’s crying.

  “Eddie isn’t exactly the ideal witness.” Daddy stood. “I like the guy, but I can’t go and arrest the first black man I see just cause Eddie said so.”

  “But Eddie saved her,” Mama said. “Why would he lie?”

  “The way I see it, God’s the one who saved her, Mary,” Daddy answered back. “I know I’m not a church-going man, but I believe it. Eddie just happened to be in the area at the moment. And I ain’t saying he lied. Just saying he might not have seen what he says he did.”

  But the good folks of Red River wanted a man to pay for what had happened to Beanie. Daddy could barely step off our porch without somebody talking to him about a colored man they’d seen in the Hooverville or walking through the town. I even heard one man talk about a “good, old-fashioned lynching.”

  “It’s our right to keep this town safe,” the man had said.

  “Leave it to me,” Daddy had told him. “Don’t go hanging anybody on account of my family. I won’t have it.”

  Two weeks until Christmas and no peace on earth to be found.

  On weekdays, either Daddy or Millard would walk me to and from the schoolhouse, holding my hand. “Just in case” was what they said. Whenever I asked to walk to Ray’s house, Mama said I shouldn’t. Even sitting on the porch by myself sent Mama and Meemaw into a tizzy.

  Things were too dangerous, they believed. They were thinking of how to best protect me from whoever might hurt me.

  Most of the time, I just sat on the davenport, reading my fairy-tale book over and again, wishing Ray would come to visit. I even would have been happy if Beanie sat with me.

  It was a lonely time.

  At night, Mama set up a bed on the davenport for me. She said she wasn’t sure when I’d be up in my room again. Beanie had nightmares most nights, kicking and hitting in her sleep. I didn’t mind sleeping in the living room all that much, really.

  One night I woke up when it was still dark out. I sat up, forgetting where I was. The book I’d fallen asleep reading fell to the floor with a bang. Peeking at the clock, I could just barely see that it was too early in the morning to be awake. I nestled back down on my pillow and pulled the blanket up to my chin.

  Yawning, I closed my eyes, trying to put all extra thoughts out of my head so I could fall off to sleep.

  The scratching of a match strike made me open my eyes. Flame touched the end of a cigarette and it turned orange then faded.

  “Daddy?” I whispered.

  “Nope,” the man answered from across the room.

  I knew that voice too well.

  I sat up, scrambling to the end of the couch farthest from him and pulled the blanket up over myself again.

  Eddie sat in Daddy’s chair, smoke puffing out of his mouth.

  “Did I wake you up?” he asked.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to cover up the fear in my voice. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Says who?” He puffed on his cigarette again. “I would’ve thought you’d be happy to see me.”

  “It’s the middle of the night. You shouldn’t be here.”

  “You’re afraid of me.” He stood up and walked around the room. “You don’t gotta be afraid of me.”

  “Am not.” I pretended to be brave even though I was scared down to my toes.

  “Nah, I know you are.” He smirked at me. “I can see it in your eyes.”

  He turned and looked at the picture of President Roosevelt.

  “You probably should be afraid of me. You don’t know nothing about me.” He thumped a knuckle on the portrait. “Dangerous men are everywhere.”

  Reaching down, I felt for Mama’s mending basket. She hadn’t touched it since Beanie got hurt, but it still sat under the davenport. While Eddie’s back was turned, I grabbed the long bladed shears. I sat up, hiding them under the blanket.

  “Winnie told me she and you talked,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at me. If he noticed that I flinched, he didn’t let on. “I don’t expect she got to tell you everything she had on her mind.”

  “That’s none of your business,” I said, slipping my fingers into the handle of the shears.

  Eddie pushed his hands into the back pockets of his pants and turned toward me.

  “You sure got a mouth on you, you know that?” He winked. “I do believe Mary would smack you silly if she heard you talking to an adult like that.”

  “You ought to call her Mrs. Spence.”

  “See what I mean? Mouthy.”

  I glared at him, hoping he’d see how much I hated him.

  “I never said I didn’t like a sassy girl, did I?” he asked.

  He stepped closer to me, so close I could have swung the shears at him or jabbed them into his side. He would have screamed, I just knew it. Would have cussed so loud everybody in the house would wake up and come out to help me.

  But he turned and walked past me to Meemaw’s rocking chair. The wood crackled under his weight, even though he couldn’t have been any heavier than Meemaw.

  “Winnie told me she’s fixing to change a few things. She said she don’t wanna live in the cat house no more.” He leaned forward, the chair rocking with him. “She said you shamed her.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I think you do.”

  “I didn’t do anything to her,” I said.

  “She told me she wants you to be proud of her.” He rocked back and let out a quiet chuckle. “A thing like that.”

  “I don’t know why she cares. I hardly know her.”

  “Oh, but she sure knows you. She’s been watching you grow up all these years.” He stubbed out his cigarette in Daddy’s ash tray. “She never dared talk to you before, though. Too scared about what would happen to her if she did. Besides, she didn’t want any bad to come to you.”

  “Why would something happen to me?”

  “Isn’t that the question of the hour.” He leaned back and crossed his arms. Opening his mouth, he smacked his tongue against his lips. “You know, I sure am thirsty. I’d like me a glass of water. Or hooch, if you got that sort of thing around.”

  He sat, rocking his chair back and forth and smirking at me, waiting.

  “We don’t keep booze in this house,” I said.

  “Water’s just fine.” He laced his fingers together over top of his flat belly.

  “I’m not getting you anything,” I said, lifting the side of my lip into a snarl.

  “Well, that ain’t so neighborly of you.”

  “You aren’t my neighbor.”

  “Ah, I would’ve thought you knew your Bible better than that.” He tsked at me. “Didn’t Jesus say everybody’s your neighbor?”

  I couldn’t think of a single thing Pastor had ever preached about how to protect myself against an evil man in my living r
oom demanding water or liquor. So I didn’t say anything at all about it.

  “What’s her name?” he asked after a long time of quiet.

  “Who? Winnie?”

  “No. I know her. Believe me, I know her. Winnie was darn near my sister-in-law.” He shook his head. “Nah, I mean the idiot girl. The one I rescued.”

  “She isn’t an idiot.”

  “Right. You said that before.” He sighed. “But you know who I’m talking about.”

  “Her name is Violet Jean,” I said, my sister’s real name feeling weird coming out of my mouth. He didn’t deserve to know the name we all called her.

  No matter what he thought, he wasn’t one of us.

  “Yeah, Violet Jean. You know, old Violet Jean was crying like a pig in that ditch. Just rolling around in the dirt, making all kinds of weird noises.” He shook his head. “She ain’t right. Probably would’ve been better for her if I’d left her there.”

  “Why did you help her?” I made sure I had a good hold on those shears. “Why didn’t you just walk on by?”

  “Now, that’s a question I would’ve expected the sheriff to ask.” He scratched his scalp. “The right answer is that I helped her because it’s the decent thing for a man to do.”

  “What’s the real answer?” I asked.

  The rocking chair didn’t make a sound as he got up. Before I had time to think, he was face-to-face with me, his thumb and finger lifting my chin. I was so scared, I couldn’t find the strength to push the shears into him.

  “You and me, we’re alike, you know.” His whispered words stunk of rot. “You ain’t such a goody-goody, are you? You’ve got dark thoughts and bad dreams. Just like me.”

  He pressed his lips hard against my forehead. They left a moist spot there that I thought for sure I’d never be able to wash off.

  “I never did help that idiot girl.” He lowered his face so we were eye to eye. “Fact is, I just happened to be in the area at just the right time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think that means?”

  I didn’t know but was too afraid to say another word.

  “You tell anybody I was here, and I’ll tell them you’re lying,” he said, his face still too close to mine. “This was nothing more than a dream.”