Southern Rapture

by Jennifer Blake

  There was a white line around his mouth, and stark grief and pain shimmered in his eyes along with an element of confusion over his friend's death. His concern was for her, however. His clasp was firm, offering support, comfort, if she would accept them. Lettie felt a small giving sensation inside her, felt a measure of her distress recede. She turned her hand palm-upward, taking Ranny's, returning the pressure and the comfort with gratitude.

  Aunt Em closed her eyes. With one hand at her throat, she said in ragged tones, "Please, Thomas, put that thing away."

  The colonel returned the locust shell to its envelope without looking at them. "Forgive me if I've upset you. For the sake of past friendship, I wish that things could be different, but I have to inform you that this is an official inquiry."

  "Official," Aunt Em echoed.

  "There are questions concerning the object I just showed you and Johnny's death that require answers."

  "I see." The older woman's face was abruptly haggard, years older. "Very well, ask what you must."

  Colonel Ward gave a nod and then straightened to his full height, his bearing more military. When he spoke, his voice was neutral, without a trace of its customary warmth.

  "We have, of course, talked to the victim's mother, Mrs. Reeden. According to her statement, her last communication with her son was a letter received just under three weeks ago. In this letter, now in our possession, Johnny Reeden said that he was in trouble and had been persuaded that the best thing for him to do was to go to Texas. He said that you, Mrs. Tyler, and also Miss Mason were going to help him, that you knew someone who would see that he got across the state line safely. He told his mother not to worry, that he would send for her when he was settled." Thomas Ward turned to Lettie. "The letter was dated the same day that you, Miss Mason, are said to have been seen with the Thorn."

  The connection between the three of them, Johnny, the Thorn, and herself, was made with such suddenness that Lettie was caught unprepared. The formal use of her surname while it was made was doubly disturbing. What was she to say? How was she to answer without exposing the whole sordid episode? It was not only herself who would be implicated in Johnny's death. There was also Aunt Em.

  She lifted her chin, her eyes dark but steady. "Are you accusing me of something, Colonel?"

  Aunt Em broke in before he could reply. "I don't believe it! I don't care what you say or how you twist things around, I won't believe that the Thorn killed Johnny. There was no reason for it, not for him."

  "The fact remains that he did."

  "Fact? You call it a fact because of a locust? Anybody could have put that thing on Johnny when he was dead,"

  "Anybody?"

  "Anybody who wanted to make it look as if the Thorn was guilty."

  "Don't you think that's a little unreasonable?"

  "Not at all. You don't know—"

  It was the opening the colonel had been waiting for. "No, but I'm trying to find out."

  Aunt Em licked her lips, her faded blue eyes haunted. She sent a quick look to Lettie, then her shoulders sagged. "Well, I don't suppose it matters now if it's told. It can't … hurt Johnny any longer."

  There was complete quiet as Aunt Em, faltering now and then, told of how Johnny had confessed to getting involved with the outlaw clan, of how he had been blackmailed into carrying messages, and of how devastated he had been to discover that he had been a party to murder.

  "Lettie discovered the mess he was in. He told her, too, that the only solution to it that he knew of, was to put an end to his life. How could we not help him?"

  "I don't suppose," the colonel said with irony, "that it occurred to you to send him to the sheriff or to me?"

  "Certainly it did, but the same thing that caused him to become a messenger for the outlaws in the first place made that impossible. He couldn't bear for his mother to know what he had done or to have her face the public disgrace."

  Lettie spoke up. "He was also positive that if he went to the authorities, the outlaws, or their contact in town, would kill him."

  "He didn't mention names?"

  Lettie gave a slight shake of her head. "He said it would be too dangerous for me to know."

  "So you arranged with the Thorn to give Johnny safe passage to Texas. Did you never think that might be like turning him over to the hangman?"

  "That's a terrible thing to say!" Aunt Em protested in indignation.

  "A terrible crime has been committed."

  "The Thorn didn't do it. If he said he would see him across the line into Texas, he saw him across the line. All I can suppose is that Johnny turned back for some reason and that he met some of the outlaws or even this man from town, who had figured out what he meant to do and decided to kill him for it."

  "And he just happened to have a locust with a thorn handy?"

  "Maybe the Thorn gave it to Johnny earlier as—as some sort of keepsake! I don't know! I only know that the Thorn couldn't have done this. It doesn't make sense."

  "Unless he is either the leader of the outlaws or their contact? Or unless Reeden stumbled on to his real identity during the ride?"

  "I don't believe it," Aunt Em repeated, folding her arms and rocking back in her chair.

  Lettie hardly heard the older woman's stubborn answer. In her mind was the scene that night in the cabin. Johnny in his old woman's clothing, the Thorn in his. What was it Johnny had said? "You know, the way you look as an old woman reminds me—" He had not been allowed to finish the sentence. Had his memory been jostled by a resemblance, by some past incident that had given him an inkling of who the Thorn might be? It was possible. It was only too possible.

  The colonel's voice, low and biting, broke in upon her thoughts. "You seem determined to champion the man, Mrs. Tyler. Could it be you know him personally?"

  "I wish I did."

  "Is that your only answer?"

  Ranny had been following the interrogation with frowning concentration. Now he spoke. "Colonel, I will tell you as I told the men in sheets. This is my house. That is my Aunt Em."

  Colonel Ward turned his head to stare at him, then gave a brief nod before swinging back to the older woman. "I'm sorry if I offended. I will endeavor to cut this short. It's fairly obvious, Mrs. Tyler, that if you don't know the Thorn, you at least know how to contact him. Tell me, how is it done?"

  It was a question that had been inevitable from the beginning, from the moment the Thorn's name had been linked with Johnny and the two of them. There seemed to Lettie no way that the truth could be avoided, no way Aunt Em could keep from explaining about the message in the hollow tree and thereby betraying the Thorn into the hands of the Union army. But did it matter? Was there really any reason, now, to shield him?

  Aunt Em had regained her self-possession and her wits during the course of the argument, however. Now she looked squarely at the colonel and told a lie that would have her on her knees before nightfall. "It was a chance opportunity, almost an accident, one of those things that seem meant at the time. Who's to say it wasn't?"

  "Meaning?"

  "The ways of the Lord are mysterious."

  "You know very well what I am asking," the colonel said, his face flushed. "If you think you are aiding in some heroic cause by protecting this man, you are making a serious mistake. For every good deed he has done, there has been an evil one that wipes it out, and then some."

  "It was the purest coincidence, I tell you. Wasn't it, Lettie?"

  It was an appeal she could not refuse. Lettie could not brand Aunt Em a liar at this moment, even if she regretted it later.

  "So it was. I happened upon him coming from Dink's Pond one evening. I heard no dogs, but I suppose he was being careful to confuse his trail. I believe it was you, Colonel, who told me he used it now and again for that purpose?"

  "A second chance meeting?"

  For a moment she thought the colonel might know more than he was saying, then she remembered. The visit to her bedchamber on the night of her arrival. "Strange, isn
't it?"

  Her flat, unemotional tone seemed to disconcert him for a moment. Only for a moment. "I thought you were convinced the man killed your brother? What changed your mind?"

  What, indeed? She wished she knew. "I was persuaded otherwise for a short time. I see now it was, as you said, a serious mistake."

  Lettie was trembling. Ransom could feel it in her tight grip upon his hand. He was afraid for her, afraid as he had never been in his life. It was peculiar to be forced to sit and listen with scant intervention while his fate was decided, but he could summon little interest. His concern was for Johnny's death, Johnny whom he had sent, laughing, on his way across the state line, and for the woman at his side. Lettie's restraint disturbed him as much as it surprised him. He had sat waiting for her bitter denunciation of the Thorn, for her to give her fullest cooperation to the Union commander by exposing the location of the message tree. That she had done neither affected him with an odd jubilant disquiet. He would give all he owned, all he was or ever hoped to be, to know what she was thinking, what she felt, what her trembling meant.

  Weak. She had been morally, mentally, physically weak. She had permitted liberties, had given herself, to a murderer. She could not blame the climate, the circumstances, or even the Thorn. There was no one to blame except herself. She was debased beyond saving, a pitiful creature enslaved to a sensual nature.

  Oh, but how was it possible that the man who had held her, had joined with her in such rapture, could be a cold-hearted killer? It could not be.

  He had come to her with blood on his hands. What an exciting chase it must have been for him, to run her down on the ferry and take her in payment for saving Johnny, knowing all the while that it was Johnny's life that was forfeit. Her murderous lover.

  Still, he had been so tender, so exquisitely gentle in his strength, so loving.

  Tender and cruel. Gentle and savage. Good and evil.

  There had to be some explanation. Perhaps there were two of them? Two night riders claiming to be the Thorn?

  She was looking for excuses for the sake of her conscience. There were no excuses, just as there was only one Thorn.

  Aunt Em was so sure he was innocent.

  She was a wonderful woman, but deluded. As deluded as Lettie herself had been to believe in a chivalric righter of wrongs. That was only in legends, lovely old tales of knights and honor and great deeds carried out against impossible odds. If such things had ever taken place, they did so no longer. Men only acted when they were forced to do so to save themselves, or when there was something they hoped to gain, such as a woman's favors.

  "All I've done, all I'm trying to do, is to see that as few people as possible are hurt—"

  Words. Empty words.

  Ranny was pressing her hand, a warning to recall her attention. Aunt Em was standing. The colonel, it seemed, was preparing to go, for he had his hat in his hand. Lettie, summoning at least the appearance of composure, allowed Ranny to pull her to her feet. With his hand under her elbow, she moved to the top of the steps as the Union commander trod down them.

  He turned at the bottom. "Oh, yes. There is one other thing. The funeral will be this afternoon; where and when I don't know, but I expect the notices will be up in an hour or so, if they aren't already. I'm sure you will all want to attend."

  The funeral notices were tacked on posts and on trees here and there in Natchitoches and for some distance out of town on either side. The black-bordered placards, printed with the proper sentiment under a design of a weeping willow and lettered by hand with the time and place, were already curling in the heat when the party from Splendora drove past them later in the day. The service for Johnny would be held at a small church in the country south of town.

  Aunt Em had taken food to Mrs. Reeden's house as was the custom, driving there with it the instant it was prepared, well before the noon meal. She had returned a short time later. Her face was pale and her eyes were red from weeping. Johnny's mother was prostrate, she said, and seeing no one.

  The church of white clapboard sat beside a winding, back-country road. Its narrow width and steep roof gave it the same look as a thousand such churches from New Hampshire to Texas, though the shingles were of cypress that could only have come from the swamps of Louisiana. The congregation was Methodist, the preacher a tall, lanky man with arms too long for his sleeves and a prominent Adam's apple. He made one of a quartet of men who sang a Wesley hymn, then moved to stand in the simple pulpit looking down on the flower-covered wooden coffin before him.

  The congregation fanned themselves, enduring, since they could not change it, the heat caused by the hot day and the press of bodies in the small church. The air was thick with the smell of overwarm humanity, good clothes brought out of the back of armoires, hymn books, and varnished walls—all of it overpowered by the heavy, cloying scents of the wilting cape jasmine and honeysuckle that had been massed around the coffin to overcome the faint but unmistakable odor of death.

  The preacher, mopping his face with his handkerchief, which he sometimes held to his nose, did not give a long eulogy. He finished his remarks, gulped for air, then motioned the pallbearers forward. They carried the coffin on their shoulders out the front doors and into the churchyard. A grave had been dug beside a row of graves that was each marked with a rust-colored iron rock tombstone. They set the coffin down beside it.

  Johnny's mother, moaning, barely able to walk so she had to be supported on both sides, followed the coffin to the graveside with other relatives. A chair was brought for her and she collapsed into it. The people gathered around, shuffling their feet, clearing their throats. Here and there a woman sniffed and held her head up to keep from crying. Beside Lettie, Aunt Em was blotting unembarrassed tears. Not far away stood Martin Eden, with his hat under his arm and his gaze straight ahead. Beyond him, on the edge of the crowd, was Colonel Ward, with Sally Anne and her family nearby.

  The pallbearers stepped back from their task and stood shoulder to shoulder, their heads bent under the blistering sun, their hands clasped behind their backs. The preacher stooped and replaced flowers that had fallen off the coffin as it was set down. Then he took his Bible from under his arms and began to read.

  "'To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. …"

  Lettie allowed her gaze and her mind to wander. Scattered here and there in the graveyard were other graves marked with iron rock, some even piled with it. There were many, however, of engraved marble. In the corner was one grave with a tall monument that was covered by a small wooden structure and surrounded by an iron fence, like a dwelling for the dead. Cedars were planted here and there, along with cape jasmines and roses and evergreen periwinkle. Most of the graves were scraped clean of grass, but a few were overgrown. On nearly all of them was a vase of some kind—some expensive, some cheap—filled with the stems of dead and blackened flowers.

  Her attention was drawn back to the grave. Ranny was one of the pallbearers. He stood staring at the ground, the sun striking golden gleams in his hair, his face flushed with what might be heat from his black suit and his exertion, but was more likely emotion. Johnny had been his friend, perhaps his only real friend.

  The preacher concluded his reading, said an amen that was echoed with deep voices among those standing around the grave, then closed his Bible. He moved toward the bereaved mother, bending to console her. The brief, simple ceremony was over.

  Almost. Ranny took a harmonica from his pocket. Looking neither to the right nor left, asking no one's permission, and needing none, he cupped it in his hands and lifted it to his lips. He took a deep breath, let it out, took another. He began to play.

  The pure, mournful sound rose, each note carefully, perfectly drawn, floating gently on the warm air. The clear, sweet melody spoke of friendship and laughter and camaraderie, of battles and long marches and lonely camp-grounds. It spoke of Johnny, with his red hair and freckles and love of life, his wide grin and quick, barbless wit, his tac
t and ready understanding. Wordless, unspeakably poignant, it was a tribute, a requiem, and a cry of grief.

  Listening, Lettie thought of Johnny with trouble on his face, trouble that had turned to relief and to trust. They had failed him, she and Aunt Em. She had led him to his death, given him over to his killer. She had been one of the last people to see him alive. He had said to her, "I don't guess I'll be seeing you again." And he hadn't.

  The last clear notes of the harmonica died away. Johnny's mother was sobbing. The other women wiped their eyes. Men blew their noses and looked around to see if anyone had noticed. One or two went up to Ranny and shook his hand. The rest began to move away slowly, pausing in groups of three or four to talk in subdued voices. Mrs. Reeden was surrounded and taken to where a buggy sat at the nearest edge of the graveyard. Aunt Em went to speak to Sally Anne and her family, and they began to move back toward the church and their own buggy that waited beyond.

  Lettie stood still, her gaze on the coffin heaped with flowers. Johnny was dead, and she had helped to kill him. And if that was not enough, she was protecting the man who had murdered him by her silence. She could make excuses, could say she was doing it for Aunt Em, but the truth could not be denied. The same weakness of the spirit and the flesh that had allowed her to give herself to the Thorn was preventing her from turning him over to the justice he deserved.

  She was depraved. She had known that as she watched Ranny and heard him play for his friend. He was so simple and good. What she was doing to him was wrong, so wrong. It would be better for everyone if she went away.

  She would go back to Boston where she knew what was expected of her, what was permitted and what would be scorned. She would go now, while it was still possible that she might regain a sense of who and what she was and what she must do with the rest of her blighted life. But first there was something she must do if she was ever going to be able to regain her self-respect, something she should have done weeks before when it would have served a worthwhile purpose, that of saving a life.

  To her shame, she did not want to do it, even now. To her shame. The tears welling in her eyes threaded through her lashes and tracked slowly down her face.