by Linda Bridey
She stared up at the towering figure of Cornell at the foot of the stairs, and she couldn’t even recognize him. Where was the kindly uncle who managed all their affairs so selflessly through their formative years? Where was the man she revered as a second father or grandfather? Where was the guardian she turned to for advice and protection?
Cornell never turned his hand against any of the sisters before. Had he suffered some sort of apoplectic spell? Had he suddenly taken to drink? Certainly the sisters’ mail-order marriages couldn’t have driven him beyond his senses. But she didn’t stop to try to reason with him or find out the cause of his bizarre behavior.
Something snapped in Violet’s mind. Her ability to rationalize deserted her, and her body took over her brain. She never could understand afterward what impelled her to act. Some force beyond her comprehension took control of her arms and legs and exploded out of her in a whirlwind of motion.
Violet launched herself up off the floor with a violent screech, her teeth bared and her fingernails flexed like the claws of a wild cat. Her feet didn’t touch the floor as she sailed across the hall and hit Cornell with all her weight.
She knocked him backward, and he landed on his back on the incline of the stairs. But Violet didn’t stop there. She leapt on top of his prostrate form, screaming her insanity to the rafters. She seized Cornell by the tufts of hair on the side of his head and slammed his head down again and again onto the stair underneath him.
The first two times she delivered these blows, Cornell grunted in pain. He stared up at the banshee on top of him in terror, unable to rally his own hands to fight her off. The third and fourth blows drew whimpers of agony from him. His eyes rolled up in their sockets, and a wet dark patch stained the edge of the stair under his head.
Violet couldn’t stop herself, even when she saw him losing consciousness in her hands. She wanted to drop his sweaty bleeding head and run from the house, but her body wouldn’t stop slamming him down, lifting him up, and driving him down again. Each blow sent a sickening shudder through her body. How could she ever rid herself of this memory?
Cornell lapsed into hollow grunting underneath her and probably would have died on those stairs had Chuck not pulled Violet off him. Violet heard his voice in her ear, but she couldn’t make out the words. Cornell’s hair tore out in her clenched fists, but Chuck dragged her off him.
The same mindless shriek still poured out of her mouth, and she kicked and scratched at Chuck’s hands and arms to get back at Cornell, but he held her until they retreated to the front door of the house.
Cornell rolled onto his side with a moan and lurched up into a sitting position. He tried to speak, but only a muffled growl of pain came out of his mouth. He leaned forward to get his feet under him, but fell back down onto the stairs. “You’ll pay for this,” he grumbled. “I’ll get you for this.”
“We’ll pay for this!” Violet screeched. “You’ll pay for this! You had your chance to stay on good terms with us and this is how you act! I would have stood as your friend through life and death, and this is how you treat me!”
“You’ll live to regret this,” Cornell rumbled through gritted teeth. “I’ll see you thrown in jail for this, and I’ll see your sweetheart there driven out of the territory.”
Violet went still except for her hard panting breath. “You better pack your bags, Cornell. Come Friday morning, you’ll never set foot in this house again, and if I never set eyes on your face for the rest of my life, it will be too soon.”
She didn’t hear his answer. Chuck pulled her the rest of the way out of the house and slammed the door behind them.
The lamplight of the front hall vanished behind them. The crisp night air and dreamy moonlight sealed the breach between the inner world of the house and the outside world of shadows and fantasies.
Violet gazed around her at the open range awash in crystal moonlight. All of a sudden, Chuck’s hand enfolded hers, and she opened her eyes as if recognizing for the first time where she was. His touch, his presence, his essence grounded her and cleared her thoughts of everything that just happened.
“Are you okay?” Chuck asked.
Violet shuddered. Finally, she nodded. “I’m all right. How about you? You had a hard fall. I thought you might be hurt.”
Chuck rubbed the back of his head. “I’m all right. I blacked out for a minute, and when I opened my eyes, he was trying to pull you up the stairs. I saw you hit him, and he knocked you over. The next thing I knew, you were beating the ever-loving tar outta that man.” He shook his head. “Boy howdy! I wouldn’t want to be him right now.”
Violet stared down at her hands. Bloody hair was still tangled around her fingers. “I’ve never done anything like that before. You have to believe me. I don’t know what happened to me. Something made me do it. I don’t know what.”
“You don’t have to explain,” Chuck told her. “I saw what happened. If it comes to explaining anything to anyone, we can both vouch for each other. He struck the first blow when he knocked me down. And you hit him in fear for your own safety. You attacked him only after he hit you back. It was all self defense.”
“I don’t know what on earth made Cornell act like that,” Violet remarked. “I’ve never seen him so crazed.”
Chuck cocked his head on one side. “No? Hasn’t he ever done this sort of thing before?”
“Never!” Violet declared. “He’s always been the most mild-mannered gentleman you could imagine. I just don’t understand it.”
Chuck rubbed his chin, and the two of them began walking away from the house, out onto the range. “I guess he was a mild-mannered gentleman as long as he had his way around here. As soon as you ladies started standing up to him, making your own decisions and telling him where to stick it if he didn’t like it, he lost control. Sounds to me like the mild-mannered gentleman was just a mask he wore to hide his other side. This was the real Cornell we saw tonight.”
“Don’t say that!” Violet cried. “I just can’t believe it! I’ve loved him and looked up to him all my life. I can’t believe this is the real Cornell.”
“How do you explain it, then?” Chuck asked
Violet shook her head again. “I can’t explain it. Maybe he suffered a psychotic episode, or an attack of brain fever, or….or….I don’t know, or anything.”
Chuck gazed out over the pasture. “You might be right. But it doesn’t change the fact that he attacked us. Whatever the cause, he’s dangerous. We’ll have to look out for ourselves and we have to warn the others about him. They could be in danger from him, too, if he’s that worked up about us getting married against his wishes.”
Chapter 24