by Denney, Hope
Ivy shrieked.
Birdy and Bess came running.
“Time and place, sir?”
“Seven in the morning at the Unnamed House. Kirk, will you be my second?”
“Indubitably.”
“I shall require a second as well,” remarked Phillip.
“My brother Holt is up to the task,” offered Kirk. “We should keep your immediate families out of this, I should think. There’s no need for any of us to get arrested. The quieter this is handled, the better. As Harlows, I warn you, our stance is to try to keep the duel from occurring at all. We’ve watched medicine practiced our whole lives. We don’t enjoy blood being shed.”
“You will not dissuade me,” said Joseph.
Birdy cradled Ivy’s black head against her shoulder.
“You brought this lamb into this family and now you gonna leave her?” she asked.
“I was a sharpshooter and a fine one at that. This duel is nothing to me.”
“I used to be lots of things I ain’t no more,” said Bess. “You gonna drive your mother into her grave. She done lost one son. You gonna leave this family with no man to carry on the name?”
“Since you’re confident in your ability and you have an infinite number of slights that you feel compelled to defend your honors against, I think I’m going to have to insist on a duel à l'outrance. Anything less makes me look like a cuckold in trying to retain my honor,” said Phillip.
“This is madness,” muttered Kirk. “Call if off, Joseph. In thirty years when you’re lying in bed with your wife, this one moment in time will mean nothing.”
Somerset sprang up and Kirk held her close to his side while passing her a handkerchief.
“If you do this it isn’t for my honor,” she said. “We’ve already proven that I don’t have honor.”
“This is to prove my honor,” said Joseph. “My wife believes I’m more than I believe I am. I should have risen up and led the Forrests long ago. I didn’t and look how we’ve fallen. One way or another, I’m taking the manly, honorable road tomorrow. Take your leave, Phillip.”
***
Somerset looked out the window of the library as the morning sun cast tentative rays across the dying grass. No one slept the preceding night with the exception of Joseph. Blanche had sat up and held Ivy tight all night long, smoothing her hair and whispering wordless murmurs to her as she cried out all her frustrations and fears, while Bess, Birdy, and Cleo hovered at the door like gnats. Somerset didn’t utter a word through the whole ordeal. It was her fault that they were trudging through perdition.
“I ask you for the sake of these girls that you don’t do this,” repeated Kirk as he stretched out his wiry body in the chair by the fireplace. “You have never listened to me before but I ask once more that you do. Think of these girls. Or wait until Thomas gets home from Louisiana. Do you want him to walk in on your wake?”
Joseph straightened his cravat.
“I have a little money in Tuscaloosa,” he said. “In my old bedroom in the maple desk are papers to stock that I hold in the bank. I also have a deed to a little land south of Tuscaloosa. I don’t anticipate you all needing to find them, but just in case, you know where they are.”
“Don’t do this for me,” said Somerset. “Not for me. If I weren’t so headstrong and heedless, none of us would be here now.”
“I’m the leader of this family. I work this farm like my name is on the deed. This is for me,” said Joseph. “Don’t flatter yourself, Somerset.”
“What about Sarabeth?” asked Ivy. “She’s like Blanche. She’s already lost one son and might lose another. She’s one of my dearest friends, Joseph. Think of her. Sawyer is gone and she’s about to find out what caused him to leave. Are you really going to try to rob her of Phillip?”
“Yes, Ivy.”
“She nursed me through scarlet fever. When Mother had diphtheria, she stayed at our house for a month to nurse her and help run Maple Pool. She is like a mother to me, Joseph. Through our marriage, I’ve only asked you for one thing. Is it in your heart to deny me this one other request?”
“I’m sorry. I do love you, but principles are at stake here. I have to think of me, this family. I have to forge a new path for all of us, show that we value honor, that we’re still as powerful today as we were fifty, one hundred years ago. Phillip can take that from us, Ivy.”
“I don’t care about anything but you, and you’re telling me that doesn’t matter. I won’t sit here by myself and let you be killed or let you kill someone else and make an enemy of Sarabeth. I’m going to her. She and I haven’t done a thing wrong but one of us is going to suffer everything.”
Joseph reached out to Ivy but she flung his arm aside and marched out of the library. The sound of the front door slamming made everyone jump.
“It isn’t worth losing a woman like Ivy over any principle,” said Kirk.
“I have to have principles to be worthy of a woman like Ivy,” retorted Joseph. “I’m working on them.”
“I’ll marry him if it will keep you alive,” said Somerset. “I’ll marry him. Just stay.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you for anything.”
Blanche came in. She was by herself. Myra refused to come down from her room. Birdy was sitting at her bedside holding a cold compress to her head the last time Somerset looked.
“This is the fourth time I’ve watched you go out into the world and not know if you’d make it home,” she said.
Her color was high but Somerset saw that she was sober.
“The duel I fought at eighteen,” remembered Joseph. “Marching off to war. Then again when I went back after my skull fracture. Yes.”
“I don’t want you to go do this, son. I understand better than anyone in the room why you think you have to go, but I still don’t want you to go. You’re my only son. The upheaval with Somerset, Eric, and Sawyer—we can sort through it later. I’d rather have you with us when we do.”
“I was never your favorite,” said Joseph.
“No. I’m sorry for that. You deserve a better mother than me. I’ve learned to love you over the years. We’re alike, you and I.”
Blanche wrapped her arms around his big body and he kissed the top of her head.
“I will see you again,” she said. “I’ll wait at the landing window and look for you just like I did during the war.”
***
As the Unnamed House came into view, Somerset thought that it was appropriate that it would be a place of sadness to her forever. Phillip and Holt were already on the field. Holt looked out of place. He checked Phillip’s weapon and ammunition with enough skill, but the brown eyes in his soft face were as scared as a boy’s.
Joseph’s shoulders rose as he inhaled the morning air.
“There are better ways,” said Kirk.
“Much better ways,” amended Somerset.
“I chose you as my second because I thought you wouldn’t be above shooting him in the back,” said Joseph.
“The thought occurred to me,” said Kirk as he loaded Joseph’s pistol.
“Will you?” asked Somerset.
Kirk winced.
“From one visit to the next I forget how practical you are. What makes you think he won’t win?”
“Yes?” asked Joseph.
“Your balance and speed are bad. You used to be fast, and your balance isn’t what it once was. You’ve had your head beaten in and nearly lost your leg. Your hands tremble.”
“Those words don’t inspire me as I face my own death.”
“They aren’t meant to. They’re meant to make you collect Ivy and go home.”
“I can win.”
Somerset approached Phillip with the same caution she would approach a viper.
“I want this called off,” she said. “I stand to lose too much, and I’ve already lost enough.”
Phillip practiced aiming his weapon and didn’t look at her.
“I gave you multiple chances to take my si
de and your stubborn nature prevented you. Now my desire to kill an icon outweighs my hunger for you.”
“That’s base.”
“Do you often find yourself playing games you don’t want to play?” he asked her.
The words rang in her head, a distant memory from a far-off party.
“You Forrests are fun, but you’re all sore losers.”
A chill worked its way from her neck into her backbone as he turned his blue eyes on her. She detected desire, hunger, and anger but no love. He was tired. Phillip might have the words to make her insecure, but he wasn’t as confident as Joseph. He hadn’t slept as well as Joseph. His eyes were red. He was worried, but he was healthier and quicker. Somerset continued looking at him, although it made her feel dirty and cold.
“How would you know?” she asked. “We never lose.”
She turned, feeling satisfied, and went back to Kirk and Joseph.
“It’s seven,” said Kirk. He held up his pocket watch.
He and Holt checked both weapons and agreed that they were properly loaded and functioning.
“Mr. Russell has demanded a duel à l'outrance. Despite attempts to persuade them to decamp, both parties wish to see this challenge to the end. I prescribe that the flat rock is the starting point at which both parties will stand back to back and take twenty paces at my count, after which you will turn and fire until one of you is dead.”
Somerset looked at Kirk’s grim face in the morning light. He squeezed her hand and let go.
She wondered why Ivy hadn’t stopped Joseph by telling him she thought there was a baby. It was Ivy’s news to tell and her time was barely late. She supposed Ivy was punishing him by keeping the news to herself. Somerset maintained that she had food poisoning, but Ivy’s eyes were so morose that Somerset was starting to believe. She wondered if she should intervene. Then even if Ivy was expecting, there was going to be hard effort on Joseph’s part to make up with her if he did live.
“Is there something you need to say?” asked Kirk. He sounded exasperated. “You shouldn’t be here. You won’t be able to help the losing party. It’s a duel to the death. Holt and I are in danger by being the seconds. Go in the house if you must stay but don’t stand out here like a fawn within range.”
“I thought I could say something to stop it, but I can’t. Can’t you do something?”
“Other than killing them to prevent the duel, no. Flee or go in the house.”
“Do you have a gun on you?” asked Somerset.
“Of course I do. Why?”
“If you give it to me, I’ll shoot him in the back,” whispered Somerset.
Kirk grabbed her arm and shook it.
“Get out of the way!”
Joseph and Phillip stood back to back on the flat rock working its way up from the clay in the yard. Somerset’s hand flew to her mouth. It looked as though Eric and Joseph stood back to back. Phillip was half a head taller and much fairer than Joseph, his dark head shining in the morning light. It was a creative scene, her lover risen from the dead to do battle against her brother, a twist on the true story of her second love killing her first love.
“One, two…”
She walked up the front steps of the back porch and settled on the step, her heartbeat drowning out most of the thoughts in her head. Her eyes were hot and foggy.
Joseph’s paces looked about the same as Phillip’s, she realized as she pulled out Eric’s arrowhead and held it to her lips. Her lips moved in a prayer she didn’t know the words to as Joseph marched across the flat land in time to Kirk’s count.
“Eleven, twelve, thirteen…”
Kirk turned and looked at her as he counted. His head swiveled at her twice before he turned back to the pacing pair, and Somerset saw it. His revolver lay on the porch behind one of the stone columns. She picked it up and determined that it was loaded and the safety off. Her hands shook to the point of cramping as she picked it up. Using one hand, she gripped the column beside her to stand back up and tucked the gun behind her back.
A shot is a shot and no one will know it was two against one, she thought, as fear painted a thick coating in her arid mouth. It will only take one good one to kill him.
“Sixteen.”
Her finger curled around the trigger and gauged how much force she would need to use to pull it.
“Seventeen. Eighteen.”
Somehow above the thrumming of her pulse, she thought she could hear both men’s breathing, loud and irregular. There was tension enveloping them that seemed to stretch from the clouds to the ground, an invisible storm that threatened to wipe them all from the scene.
“Nineteen. Twenty!”
Somerset pulled the weapon from behind her on nineteen and aimed it at Phillip’s back. Joseph turned on the beginning of twenty, his lame leg slowing him so that he looked rooted to the ground as he tried to spin. Phillip’s movements were also slow but more fluid than Joseph’s. Somerset steadied the revolver as she aimed at his chest, a broader target than his head and one that moved less. Joseph raised his pistol and aimed. Somerset knew the aim well. He let it slip once that he killed most enemies by firing between the eyes. She forced her eyes to stay open against the shot that was coming, the violence that would haunt her dreams until she died, another nightmare to add to the routine of her sleep. Phillip took a step forward again, planting a wide foot unsteadily on the black, sticky dirt as he raised his weapon. Kirk and Holt both yelled a protest, but he didn’t return to his original position. He took another step forward and another. He looked like a blinded bull lumbering across the field. Joseph fired and missed. Somerset fired and missed. Phillip’s free hand moved up in the air and lay on his chest. He bent forward until he was on his face in the clay.
Somerset flung her weapon in the grass and ran at him just as Kirk began to do the same.
“What is it? What is it?” she cried as she dragged her skirts through the mud, tripping as she ran.
Kirk rolled Phillip over. He was breathing long shaky snorts that Somerset knew well.
“We didn’t hit him,” she cried. “I know we didn’t. Oh, Kirk. What’s happening?”
Joseph stayed rooted to his spot. He went to his knees in the dirt and Holt charged at him to ensure that he wasn’t hit, although Phillip never fired a shot.
“Phillip, can you hear me?” yelled Kirk.
Phillip’s eyes rolled back in his head and he coughed. He shuddered once and he was dead.
“He’s dead,” said Kirk. “He’s dead.”
“A heart attack,” said Somerset. “He died of heart trouble. The stress of the duel killed him.”
She spit on her hands as if she could rid them of the sin she tried to commit. She’d wanted to shoot a man in the back and now he was dead. She wiped them dry on her skirt. She started crying without tears and without noise. Kirk wrapped her in his long arms.
“It’s just us, Somerset. No one will ever know what went on here. No one. Hear me? It’s over, he’s dead, and we’re free.”
“He looks like Eric lying there,” she said between gasps. “He looks as good and innocent as the man I really loved.”
“We’ll have to load him in the wagon and carry him home to Sarabeth,” said Kirk.
He reached out and took her hand and they began a slow trek to Joseph. He never moved from his kneeling position on the ground. Holt was standing next to him, useless to help him up.
“It’s over,” said Somerset. “Joseph, it’s over. Let’s go home.”
“It won’t ever be over,” said Joseph. “Nothing ever is. I stay so tired of it all, but I’m grateful—so grateful—grateful that I don’t have to tell my best friend that I killed his brother. All these thoughts and scenes in my head, they won’t let go. There’s ugliness inside of me that I’ve been trying to wipe clean since the war. Do you think this is what Mother feels like? Do you think it’s why she’s not right? I understand her today. I do. Like Mother, I just want out.”
Joseph turned the pist
ol on himself, the barrel planted between his eyes. Somerset didn’t have time to think, pray, or scream. Kirk removed the other revolver from his holster and clubbed Joseph over the head with it while he grabbed the pistol with his other hand. Joseph slumped on the ground like a corpse with the mewing sound of a kitten as he fell. Somerset screamed.
“Worse has been done to him,” said Kirk. He put Joseph’s gun in his free holster for good measure. “Let’s return Phillip to Riverside and get Joseph back to Orchard Rest. He’ll be a long time getting over this. Holt, help me load up.”
***
Chapter 22
Somerset rode back to Orchard Rest alone. She could not be present when Sarabeth saw her dead son lying in the back of Kirk’s wagon. She saw Blanche’s face at the staircase landing as she approached the house. The servants’ faces, save Birdy’s, all pressed against various windows. She smiled wide and free until her face ached to let them know all was well.
A chill reverberated through her body as she dismounted the horse, causing her to stumble. Was all well? The image of Joseph with a gun pressed between his eyes, teeth grinding together from nerves, rattled her as Blanche almost broke the door handle in her eagerness in get to Somerset.
“He’s alive!” she exclaimed. “It’s over.”
“He’s alive,” said Somerset.
“Is Phillip?”
“Phillip died before anything could happen. Holt was going after Dr. Harlow, but I believe his heart gave out.”
Blanche’s arms found their way around Somerset.
“I’m sorry for what you thought you had that is lost,” she said.
The words were simple but true enough that they meant something more.
Somerset nodded as she looked at her mother’s extraordinary eyes.
“I loved the Russells and they’ll never want me at Riverside anymore. Sawyer will have to turn around and come home for the funeral. All this is because of me. I’ve ruined an entire family, Mother, and all because I chased a long dead dream. I’ll never criticize you again. I’m just like you. Just like you.”
“You’re more than I ever was.” Blanche ran a satin hand down Somerset’s cheek.
