Tallgrass

by Sandra Dallas

  “Is he the reason?” I asked.

  Mom put out her hand and closed her eyes. “Be still, Rennie. We’ll talk about that later. Let me think.” Mom stood silently for several minutes—whether thinking or praying, I didn’t know; probably both—while we all watched her, waiting. When she opened her eyes, she was calm, and she spoke quietly but firmly. “Carl and Daisy, you are to go back to the camp right now. You are to say you left when the storm started, which was just as Rennie and I went to town. You didn’t see Danny turn in at the farm. You didn’t even see him drive down the road. You don’t know he’s dead. Do you understand?”

  Carl and Daisy exchanged glances. “I guess so,” Carl said.

  “Daisy?” Mom asked.

  Daisy nodded.

  “This is very important,” Mom said. “You left when the storm started. You never saw Danny,” Mom repeated.

  “Why?” Daisy asked.

  “Because if we tell what really happened, nobody will believe us, and I’m afraid there could be trouble about the baby.”

  Daisy clutched Amy Elizabeth to her, and Carl asked, “Are you going to call the sheriff?”

  Mom nodded.

  “What are you going to tell him?”

  “I don’t know yet. I just know that when somebody tells you the Spano boy’s dead, you’re to act surprised. Do you understand ?”

  Carl started to say something, but Daisy touched his arm, and they both nodded.

  “Go now,” Mom said. “Go across the fields. It’s better that nobody sees you. We’ll give you a few minutes before we call Sheriff Watrous. Go. Run.” They started off, and we watched them from the barn door until they disappeared.

  Then Mom turned to Granny, who was playing with her fingers. “Granny, would you go upstairs and get out your piecing?” Granny smiled. Her mind had already clouded over.

  Mom waited until Granny was inside before saying, “I’ll call the sheriff now. You pick up the laundry on the ground and take down that one sheet, Rennie. It’ll all have to be washed again. Somebody’s bound to wonder why it’s dirty.” I thought it was strange that in a time like that, Mom would think about laundry, but she was right. If one of the Jolly Stitchers came by, she’d notice first thing the washing lying in the dirt.

  MOM TOLD THE SHERIFF only that we had an emergency and to come as quickly as he could. She didn’t want anybody who was listening in on the party line to know what had happened. We waited in the house, Mom pacing back and forth and biting her fingernails. “I wish I could put in that laundry,” she said a dozen times, “but the sheriff would wonder why I’m washing sheets at a time like this.”

  I offered to make coffee then, but Mom said coffee would only make her nervous, so I fixed tea, and we drank it with milk and sugar at the kitchen table. Then I asked about Marthalice, and Mom sighed and stopped playing with her hands and folded them on the oilcloth. “I guess you have the right to know now. Marthalice got pregnant a few months before she graduated from high school. She went to live with Cousin Hazel for a while. Then Cousin Hazel arranged for her to stay in a home for unwed mothers in Denver. That was why I went to visit her so sudden fall before last. The baby came. After that, Marthalice didn’t want to move back home, and we didn’t blame her. So she got a job and stayed on in Denver.”

  I bit my knuckles. My sister’d had a baby, and nobody had told me. Dad would have known, of course, but had they told Buddy? Probably not, because he had joked about Marthalice going to Denver and meeting lots of servicemen. Mom and Dad had kept the baby a secret from both of us. “Didn’t she tell you Danny Spano was the father?”

  Mom shook her head. “She wouldn’t tell us. We assumed he was Hank Gantz, because Hank joined the army so sudden, just as if he was running away from getting married. Marthalice had a wild streak. Once, your Dad . . .” Mom looked at me and didn’t finish. “But Danny Spano? Our poor girl.” Mom put her head down on her hands and began to cry. But she steadied herself and shook her head. “I can’t think about that now. You musn’t ever let on to Marthalice that you know. She’d be shamed. Promise me that.”

  I wouldn’t tell for anything. No wonder Marthalice had changed so much. There couldn’t be anything worse than having Danny Spano’s baby. I wondered if Danny had known Marthalice was pregnant, but of course he hadn’t. He’d have bragged about it. And maybe he’d have claimed the baby, just as he had Daisy’s. It would be horrible to raise a Stroud baby as a Spano.

  Mom said, “These are awful burdens for you to carry, Rennie.”

  “You, too, Mom.”

  She picked up her cup and looked at it, then set it back down. “I never liked tea too much.”

  “What if Granny tells?”

  Mom gave me a sad smile. “She forgot about Marthalice. I expect she forgot about Daisy before she left the barn. Don’t you?”

  I thought that over and agreed. “What happened to Marthalice’s baby?”

  Mom brightened for an instant. “That nice little girl from Mississippi you played with at the Varian house next door to Cousin Hazel, the Brown girl? The baby’s her new sister. Her name is Alice, for Mrs. Varian’s mother and for Marthalice, too. They’re a nice family. Cousin Hazel arranged it.”

  We heard the sheriff’s car then and went to the door. Mom gripped my hand hard and asked, “Ready?”

  “I think so.” I wasn’t, but if Mom, who could hardly stand up in the wind, was strong, I could be, too.

  “You let me do the talking.”

  We took our wraps from the hooks beside the door and went outside, waiting for the sheriff to get out of the car and come to us. He touched his hat to Mom but didn’t say anything, just waited for her to speak. She took a deep breath. “We’ve had a terrible accident, Sheriff Watrous. The Spano boy’s dead. He’s in the barn with a beet knife in his stomach.”

  “Is that so?”

  Before she could continue, there was the sound of a team and wagon, and Dad drove into the barnyard. “Oh, thank God,” Mom said. She sagged against me, and I wondered how her heart could hold up under all the strain.

  Dad pulled the team to a stop beside the sheriff’s car and got down off the wagon seat, tying the reins to the fence. He looked from Mom to the sheriff, waiting for an explanation. It was the sheriff who explained. “Your wife says the Spano boy’s dead in your barn with a beet knife sticking out of him.”

  “Mary?” Dad asked.

  Mom nodded, and Dad came to stand beside her and put his arm around her. She leaned against him, and the two of us held her up. “It’s my fault, Loyal. I did it.” Mom began to cry.

  “What?” I muttered, although nobody paid attention to me. Until that minute, I didn’t know what had happened to Danny. I hadn’t asked, and nobody had told me. I’d just assumed Danny had killed himself, that he’d fallen or something. How could Mom have killed him? She’d never hurt anything in her life, except a coyote. I tightened my arm around her.

  “Why don’t you tell us what happened, Mrs. Stroud.” The sheriff’s voice was kind, but it was firm.

  “Just let her get a grip on herself,” Dad told him.

  “No, Loyal. Let’s get this over with.” Mom took a deep breath. The wind picked up and blew Mom’s coat about her. Snow swirled around us, and Dad asked Mom if she wanted to go inside, but Mom said no. I think she liked the feel of the cold. Maybe it numbed her the way it did me. “You remember when Daisy fell at the camp last summer and didn’t come to work for a couple of weeks?” Dad didn’t answer, and Mom continued. “Well, she didn’t fall. The Spano boy raped her on the way home from our place. That’s how she got pregnant. It’s his baby she had, not Harry’s. Loyal, she didn’t even tell us what happened.” Mom’s voice broke, but she swallowed and took hold of herself.

  She looked from Dad to the sheriff to make sure they understood. “Danny’s been driving back and forth on the Tallgrass Road lately. I’ve seen him in that rusted-out truck of the Spanos. He must have known you were off with the team, Loyal. So when he pas
sed Rennie and me on the road to town this afternoon, he figured this was his chance to get Daisy alone. But I ran the truck into the ditch. It’s down there half a mile. Red Boy’s all right, but you’ll need a chain to get it out.” Mom stopped and blew out her breath. “Rennie and I walked back to the farm, and when we got here, we knew something wasn’t right. The sheet was half-hung up on the line and trailing on the ground, and the laundry basket was upended and the wash all in the dirt. When we got to the barn, Danny was there, holding a beet knife on Daisy.” Mom paused and took a deep breath, willing herself to continue. “He said he’d kill her if she didn’t give him that baby. I think he meant to do it. I truly do.”

  Mom stopped, her eyes closed, as if reliving that scene. “I don’t know what he’d have done with that little girl, but he surely did mean to take her.” She opened her eyes. “He didn’t hear me. I got behind him and tried to snatch the knife, but I didn’t do much of a job of it. My hand slipped, and Danny turned, and, oh, I don’t know how it happened.” Mom swallowed and put her face against Dad’s shoulder. She mumbled, “I expect you can guess the rest.”

  The sheriff turned to me. “Is that about how it happened?”

  I held tighter to Mom. “I don’t know. I’d started for the house to call you. Then I heard a scream, Danny’s scream, I guess. Dad, he sounded like a pig.”

  “Where’s your Japanese people at?” the sheriff asked.

  “I told them to go on home,” Mom said. “You know what would happen if people’s to find out they’re involved in this.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Mrs. Stroud,” the sheriff said.

  “Maybe not, but I believe it was the right thing. I had to think about them and that baby. Somebody else might be hurt if people got riled up. It’s well over a year since Susan Reddick was murdered, and folks still blame the Japanese. You know what’ll happen if they think one of our workers had a hand in Danny’s death.”

  The sheriff mulled that over for a moment. “That’s a fact. We best take a look at the scene.” He indicated me and asked Dad, “You want your daughter mixed up in this?”

  Dad glanced at Mom, who replied, “It appears she already is.”

  I wasn’t surprised she’d said that. After all, Mom and Dad hadn’t protected me from Susan’s murder or Mr. Snow’s morphine addiction. With Mom between Dad and me, the three of us walked to the barn with the sheriff. On the way, Dad stopped to turn off the motor of Danny’s truck. We’d left it on all that time.

  “Did Danny kill Susan Reddick?” I asked suddenly.

  “Oh, I hadn’t thought about that,” Mom said, turning to Sheriff Watrous.

  The sheriff rubbed his wrist across his forehead. “I wished I could say he did, but I don’t have the proof of who done it. It’d sure make things easier around here if I did.”

  By then, we had reached the barn. Mom told me to wait just inside the door while she showed Dad and the sheriff the body. The two men walked around Danny a couple of times, then squatted beside him, talking in low tones. After a while, Mom came back to me, and the two of us sat down on a bench in the late-afternoon light that came through the door. The snow had stopped. It hadn’t been much of a storm, but the sun hadn’t come out, and the air was cold. It looked like the snow might begin again. I started shaking, and Mom put her arm around me and drew me close to her.

  Dad and the sheriff talked in low tones for a long time. Finally, Sheriff Watrous leaned over and slowly pulled the knife out of Danny’s body and laid it alongside him. Then the two of them came over to us.

  “You’re telling me this was an accident, Mrs. Stroud?”

  “Of course it was,” Mom said. “You don’t think I killed Danny on purpose, do you?”

  “No, it’s not probable.”

  “She’s a good woman, Hen,” Dad said.

  “Never said she wasn’t, Mr. Stroud. Your wife makes a good point that if it gets out that your Japanese people was involved, it’s likely to cause a lot of bitterness in Ellis, and that could lead to trouble we don’t need. I wouldn’t like to see that happen. There’s no sense in it.” He stood with his feet apart, leaning forward. “I don’t understand myself why Danny would want that baby except out of little-hearted meanness. And if they find out Danny sired it, the Spanos are just mean enough theirselves to hire a lawyer to claim it. With that baby half-white and the way the courts are, they’d likely get her, too. Then what’d become of the poor tyke?” The sheriff looked from Mom to me to see if we followed him, and we nodded. We knew it would be a terrible thing to turn Amy Elizabeth into a Spano.

  “Now, what if there was to be a trial and you were charged with something, Mrs. Stroud?”

  Mom shivered then and began buttoning her coat.

  “Of course, nobody’d find you guilty of anything for trying to get that knife away from Danny Spano,” he added quickly. “So what good would a trial like that do anybody, and it would just cost the county money.”

  Mom started to say something, but the sheriff held up his hand. “You say your truck ran into the ditch?”

  “Halfway to town.”

  “Anybody see you after that?”

  “No.”

  “Then it looks to me like Danny Spano came along and picked you and your girl up and offered to pull out your truck, maybe offered to do it for a couple of dollars. He went into your barn to get a length of chain Mr. Stroud keeps in there, and he fell in the dark and ran that beet knife through hisself. Somebody must have left it there on a bail of hay.”

  Mom looked from the sheriff to Dad, then back to the sheriff. “Is that about right?” the sheriff asked.

  “I wouldn’t want to lie about it.” Mom hesitated.

  “I never knew her to tell a lie,” Dad said. “I think maybe you’d rather step on baby chicks than lie, wouldn’t you, Mother?” Dad asked, uncertain.

  Mom picked up a piece of hay and broke it into pieces and dropped them on the floor. “I suppose there are worse things than lies. The Spanos raising Amy Elizabeth is one of them.”

  “I don’t see the harm in covering this up, but I wouldn’t want you to go along with something you don’t feel right about,” the sheriff said. “Make your own choice.”

  Mom thought that over. “It would be a terrible thing for Daisy to have to tell what Danny did to her.”

  “Yes, it would,” Dad said. “No sense to it.”

  “And who knows what people might do to the Japanese at the camp, even though it’s not that poor girl’s fault.”

  “There’s that,” the sheriff said.

  I looked from one to another as the three of them talked, spinning the conversation around. I didn’t dare speak and destroy the way they’d convinced themselves there was nothing wrong in what they were doing. And there wasn’t. Maybe it was a lie, and maybe it was wrong in the eyes of the law. But in the light of human kindness, as Mom would have said, they were making the right decision. Those three were good people, and they were doing a good thing.

  Mom turned to me. “Rennie?”

  “Danny Spano was a predator.”

  Mom’s eyes opened wide. “Why yes, he was. Yes. Danny was a predator.” She smiled at me.

  “What about Daisy and Carl?” Sheriff Watrous asked.

  Mom released me a little. “They won’t know Danny’s dead until someone tells them. We agreed to that.”

  “You what?” The sheriff, who had turned to look at Danny’s body, jerked his head around at Mom, his eyes wide, and stared at her for a long time. Then he shook his head. “Yes, ma’am, I believe you can handle this,” he said with a rueful smile. He’d just realized that Mom had known all along he’d come up with the story he had. “Now are we all agreed, before I help get that truck out of the ditch?” He looked to Mom, then me, then Dad.

  “We ask no odds of you, Hen,” Dad said.

  “None given,” the sheriff replied.

  BY MORNING, EVERYONE IN Ellis knew what had happened, and the Stitchers began showing up at our fa
rm. Although it was cold outside and there was an inch of snow on the ground, Dad stationed himself outside the back door and wouldn’t allow any of the women to go inside. He took their food and thanked them and told them Mom was in bed, under doctor’s orders not to see anyone.

  “I’m not just anyone, as you can plainly see, Mr. Stroud,” Mrs. Larsoo said.

  “I can plainly see that,” Dad told her, not moving away from the door.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  She turned and marched back to her car, and Dad remarked that he’d never seen anyone leave in such a huff. Then he added, “I believe a huff looks something like a Dodge automobile.”

  The only person Dad let inside the house was Miss Ord, be cause she came to see me, not Mom. “I don’t have any idea what happened, and I don’t care to know, Mr. Stroud. I’m just concerned that your daughter is all right,” she said.

  Dad turned to me and asked, “Are you all right, Squirt?”

  “I’m okay.” I wasn’t, however. I was sad and confused and mad all at the same time, and I wanted to tell someone. But I couldn’t tell anyone, even Miss Ord.

  “I have an idea this could have become an ugly thing if it hadn’t been for your wife and daughter. I don’t know Mrs. Stroud, but Rennie’s a fine young woman.”

  “Oh, she’ll do,” Dad said.

  “Well, if you ever give her up, I’d take her.”

  “I guess we’ll keep her.”

  Late in the afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Spano came with one of their boys, who got into the old truck and drove it off. Dad had started to put gasoline into the tank, because the truck had run for an hour in our barnyard, and he didn’t want it to run out of gas on the way to the Spano farm. But the tank was almost full, and Dad had remarked he guessed he knew who’d been siphoning gas out of cars around town.