by Tess Oliver
Still clutching tightly to the steering wheel, Buck leaned forward to get a better view of the road ahead. “Don’t remember this strip when I drove out here to secure the lot and hang posters.”
“Don’t tell me you’re lost again,” I said. “The other drivers are going to spit fire if they have to turn their hauls around.”
Buck tilted his head to glance in the side mirror. “Charli, roll down that window and pull yourself out on the ledge to count the trucks to make sure everyone has caught up.”
“On this bumpy road?” I sighed, and pushed Emma’s head over to Rose’s shoulder. She’d stayed asleep, and we were all grateful for her nap. Emma had a tendency to fall in love at every stop, even knowing full well that after eight weeks, we’d pack up everything, the tents, the ticket wagons, the mechanical rides and the main attraction, the Death Sphere, and move on to the next venue. But every time, she’d meet and fall head over heels with some man. Then we’d suffer her moaning and crying for the first five hours of the journey until she cried herself dry and dropped off to sleep. What I couldn’t figure was how she managed to find so many men to fall for. I’d yet to find one man who I’d be willing to spend one hour crying over. Let alone five.
“Watch the holes,” I reminded Buck. “I don’t want to be pitched out.” I pulled myself up and clutched the top edge of the truck as I perched on the door. Verdant green hills stretched poetically across the Piedmont landscape, punctuated occasionally by a jagged outcropping of silver-gray granite. To say the land was lush with foliage would have been an understatement. The smell of grass was nearly strong enough to overcome the tangy smelling engine oil of the truck.
Like a parade of plodding gray elephants, the Starfield trucks rumbled along behind us. I lowered my head into the cab. “Fifteen. Looks like everyone made it.” I stayed up on the window ledge, deciding the crisp May breeze was worth the risk of being tossed out.
“See that Model T parked in that field over there, Charli?” Buck called from inside. “See if someone’s in it. I want to make sure we’re heading the right way.”
“Are we almost there?” Emma asked groggily. Buck’s baritone voice, the voice that announced all the big top shows, had woken her. “I need to take a wee real bad,” she yawned.
I shaded my eyes with my hand. The shabby, tattered top of a worn looking Model T sat perfectly still amidst the shrubs, trees and rocks as if it was a natural part of the landscape. The back window was hazy, but I saw movement.
I leaned down. “I see someone inside. Maybe the car broke down.”
Buck stopped the truck, and the squeak of fifteen brakes sounded behind us. “Yell to him, will ya, Charli? We’re looking for the Muskee corn fields. That’s where we’re setting up.”
I cupped my hands. “Excuse me! You there, in the Tin Lizzy.”
A man’s face popped up in the backseat window. A long pair of naked legs swung around. A few seconds later, the back door opened.
I slid off the edge of the door and plunked hard onto the front seat. “Shit. He wasn’t alone, and I think we just stopped him in the middle of something he probably didn’t want to be stopped from.” I could hear his feet crunching the grass as he headed toward the truck. I stared down at my lap, wishing I wasn’t the one sitting at the passenger window.
Rose and Emma stared unabashedly at the approaching figure. “Oh my,” Emma said enthusiastically. “Looks like they breed them tall and fine out here.”
Rose rolled her eyes. “Christ, Emma, you make him sound like a horse. Still, he is awfully damn pretty for a back country boy.”
I finally found the nerve to look out the window. He’d pulled the gun holster and black suspenders over his shoulders but hadn’t taken the time to button his shirt. His long legs carried him purposefully across the field.
“At least he took the time to pull on his pants,” I mumbled to myself, but Emma heard.
She huffed in disappointment. “And I was thinking just the opposite.”
The muscular build of the man’s chest was enough to cause Emma to suck in a long breath. “I haven’t seen a man like that since—” She giggled. “Hell, I’ve never seen a man like that . . . except in my dreams.”
The man didn’t look angry, but he didn’t look pleased either. His blue eyes flashed with caution as he pushed the black fedora low on his head. It wasn’t as if we’d crept up on him with our fifteen truck parade. And our motives were painted on the side of each truck, making it pretty obvious why we were traveling through.
He still hadn’t bothered to button up his shirt when he stopped at the truck window. I leaned back on the seat so he could talk to Buck, and I could be invisible. Of course, the direct sight line to Buck was blocked by Rose and Emma, who gazed openly at the man as if a six foot two stick of rock sugar candy had just walked up to the truck.
“Are you lost?” he asked in a deep, clear voice that sounded like smooth bourbon whiskey, if whiskey could be heard instead of tasted.
“Not sure,” Buck said.
“I’m guessing you’re that traveling show I saw advertised in the window of Belle’s restaurant. If you’re looking for the abandoned corn fields, just keep heading down this road three miles or so. When you see a never ending patch of barren land, you’re there.”
I snuck a peek at him. Aside from an inch long scar running down from his dark eyebrow, his profile was chiseled perfection.
“Now that’s blue,” Rose blurted, and then seemed a little embarrassed about it once she’d gotten everyone’s attention. “Forgive me, I was just saying how those Blue Ridge Mountains didn’t look all that blue, but those eyes of yours, well . . .” She sat back and sealed her lips shut. I’d never seen Rose taken with anyone, and being an exotic dancer, she’d had plenty of admirers. But Rose had lost her beloved husband, Paul, in the war, and she’d had little interest in any men since. She’d joined up with our show after becoming so destitute, she was living on the streets in New York.
Buck nodded. “Much obliged, Mr.—”
“Jarrett. I take it you’re Mr. Starfield, like it says on the side of the truck.”
“That’s me. Buck Starfield. Hope we see you at the show.”
Emma leaned forward with a bright smile. “You like girlie shows, Mr. Jarrett? Me and Rose, here, put on a real fine performance.”
“Don’t know any man out here with a pumping heart and air in his lungs who doesn’t like to watch beautiful women dancing.” His mouth tilted up.
I could actually feel Emma blush next to me.
He turned his face and glanced at me from beneath the brim of his hat. He pulled his gaze away but then his attention snapped back to me. For a long, odd moment he stared at me, openly, as if no one else was sitting in the truck.
A breeze kicked up pushing back the panels of the man’s white shirt, exposing a small chest tattoo. The tattoo was a cross with a doughboy’s helmet hanging over it. I glimpsed an ugly round scar on his side that looked as if someone had taken an awl and drilled a hole in his flesh.
“Were you in France, Mr. Jarrett?” Rose asked.
The cross and helmet vibrated with the movement of his chest muscles as he pulled his shirt together. “Yeah, I was there,” he said quickly as if he wasn’t interested in talking about it.
Rose didn’t take the hint. “My husband died in the Meuse-Argonne offensive.”
His blue eyes that had glittered up until this point, grew darker. “Sorry to hear. That’s where I fought too.” He returned his attention to me. “Are you a dancer too?”
I shook my head. “Two left feet.”
There it was again, that gaze. As if we were completely alone.
“Jackson!” A woman with a cherry red cloche pulled low over her springy blonde curls leaned out the window of his car. “I’ve got to be at work in an hour.”
He looked back toward the Ford. “I’ll be right there.”
“Well, we’ve got to get moving,” Buck said. “Be sure to let all your frien
ds know that we open in two weeks as long as the weather stays on our side. Thanks for your help.”
He tipped his hat. “Ladies.” I had no idea why the sound of his voice stirred me so profoundly, but it was a confident, strong tone that was edged with something deep, like a sorrow that couldn’t be healed.
Mr. Jarrett looked at me again and tilted his head in a silent gesture of good-bye. He turned around and headed back to his Ford. Buck started the truck. The motors behind us fired up as well. Some of them needing more coaxing than others. We lurched forward. Rose, Emma and I watched the man walk back to the car. The confident set of his broad shoulders made it hard to look away.
“Oh my,” Emma sighed. “I’m in love.”
Rose laughed. “Don’t get yourself all worked up before we even pitch a tent, Em. Besides, didn’t you see the way he was looking at our Charli, here?”
I snorted a laugh. “Oh please, Rose. You’ve been sitting in the cab of this truck inhaling Buck’s aftershave all day. You’re drunk from it all.”
“Not the least bit intoxicated, and I know what I saw. Still, that man’s seen his share of the underworld if he was in France. Did you see that nasty looking scar on his side? Bayonet or a bullet, I’m sure of it. None of those boys came back the same, you know?” She drifted off into one of her long, solemn moments, back to her time with Paul. “They were lucky to come back alive, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t leave a piece of themselves back there on those blood soaked French fields. And not just flesh either. They left their hearts over there. They came back with souls so tattered, they can’t ever be patched.”
“Good lord, Rose,” Buck laughed. The wagon lurched clumsily from side to side, and we gripped the dashboard and each other to keep from slipping off the front seat. “One minute, you’re smearing rouge and gluing pasties on your nipples, and the next, you’re philosophizing about life.”
Rose’s mouth turned down on the edges. Sometimes Buck could say hurtful things without even realizing he’d done it. I reached over and squeezed Rose’s hand. She smiled weakly.
“Did I mention I have to take a wee,” Emma piped up. Even sitting between Rose and me, she was oblivious to Rose’s feelings. And everyone else’s but her own, for that matter.
“I’m not going to stop this whole caravan again just so you can squat in the shrubs, Emma,” Buck said. “Besides, we’re almost there. I’ve got a good feeling about this place, girls. I’ve got a real good feeling.”
I glanced back at the Model T. It was making its way across the field toward the road. Oddly enough, just like Buck, I had a feeling about this place too. I just wasn’t sure if it was good or bad.
Chapter 2
Jackson
I reached down and yanked out the patch of weeds growing in front of Ole Roy’s tombstone. With so many in Harper’s Cross running stills in the night hours and sleeping in the day, no one had had time to keep up the cemetery or clear off the gravestones. Someone had left an empty clay jug in front of Pa’s stone, friends of his, no doubt, coming up to have a drink with Ole Roy. That’s how it was with him. He had a big presence in town and not just because he’d been built like a lumberjack. Everyone knew and respected and even slightly feared the man. But it was a good fear, a fear that made them feel safer to have a man like Roy Jarrett in their sleepy town. My pa hadn’t really done anything of noted significance to earn the respect, it had just come naturally. Could have been the way he handled himself, always calm and cool headed no matter what the circumstance. People had liked that about him. You knew what to expect from Ole Roy. I’d been told by many that I had the same qualities as my pa, but I never saw it. I never could tell what the hell people were seeing that I wasn’t.
Gideon and I had only been in France a month when Ma’s letter had come, letting us know that Pa had taken a rusty nail through the boot and that he was losing his leg to gangrene. Even with delivering the gut wrenching news, she’d joked in the letter that Ole Roy still hadn’t had his feathers ruffled and that he insisted on holding a funeral for the leg. A week later, the funeral was held for the leg and they buried Ole Roy along with it. The putrefaction had gone to his heart, and that was the end of him.
I stepped over to the next headstone, scaring two bobwhite quails from the frilly underbrush. They skittered away warbling in protest. I ripped out the weeds in front of the headstone. Alice Jarrett, beloved wife of Ole Roy. I smiled. Even in death, Ma was not just a woman with a family and humble home to take care of. She was the wife of Ole Roy, something only she could boast. Three months into our tour in France, Gideon took a bullet to the leg. The same day, a letter got through, crumpled and stained, letting us know that Alice Jarrett had followed her husband to heaven, a broken heart was the cause of death given. I missed both their funerals.
Ma had never really been suited to life in Harper’s Cross. She’d grown up in a nice house in Alexandria where she’d gone to college and earned a degree to teach. Then she met Ole Roy, and he’d swept her up into his giant arms. She never looked back. But she brought her teacher mind and her books with her. My brothers and I were the only boys living at the bottom edge of the Blue Ridge mountains who’d had to learn math and read books before we could head out for chores and messing around. The one thing that could get us clapped on the ears was using bad grammar or the word ain’t. Ole Roy would roll his eyes when she’d lecture us about our English skills, but underneath it all, it seemed he was proud that his boys were growing up different.
Gideon blasted the horn from the road. His arm hung out of the driver’s side window, and he slapped the door. “Let’s go, Jackson. We don’t want to be late.”
I headed down the weed choked hill and walked around to the passenger side. “Out, Bodhi.”
He grunted in anger and climbed out to the get in the backseat. “Where is it in the rules that you always get to ride shotgun?” he complained.
“Don’t need any rules, Bodhi. You’re the youngest, so Gideon and I get to boss you around.” I dropped into the front seat and turned back. “Now stop your whining and hand me my coat.”
Bodhi still hadn’t wiped the frown from his face as he handed it to me. Bodhi had dark hair and blue eyes like me and Ma. But I was bigger than Bodhi, not giant like Gideon or Ole Roy, but I could hold my own in a fight. Some brawn, a heap of charm and plenty of brains was how Ma had always described me. Aside from winning every fight he’d ever fought, Gideon could fix the engine in any car, but he didn’t always use common sense. Ma always attributed it to too many blows to the head.
Bodhi was different than both Gideon and me. He was always on the losing end of a fist fight, and he was a lot more sensitive. Sometimes Ole Roy would tease Bodhi that he was the ‘daughter he never had’. That made Bodhi so mad, he decided to show Pa by learning how to shoot. He’d go out every afternoon and hang Ma’s old pie tins in the trees and put rotten apples on the fence and practice shooting. Came one day when Ole Roy was trapped in the field between his plow and a three foot copperhead coiled and ready to strike. Bodhi grabbed the hunting rifle, took aim and shot the snake’s head clean through with the first bullet. Ole Roy didn’t tease him after that.
I yanked my coat on and smoothed back my hair.
“Don’t know why you’re getting all spit-shined for a meeting with a lowlife gangster like Griggs,” Bodhi said. “Noah told me that a couple weeks ago Griggs was meeting with some guys about selling hooch across the river. Griggs didn’t like the way one of the men had his tweed cap cocked at an angle. Griggs told him to straighten it, but the guy refused. Griggs shot him in the head. Straightened his newsboy cap out for good.”
“Sounds like a story to me,” I said.
“It’s no story.” Bodhi leaned forward. “Hey, butt me, would ya? I smoked my last Pall Mall this morning.”
I pulled the cigarettes out of my pocket and handed them back.
Gideon turned onto the main road that would take us to Breakers, Clinton Griggs’s speakeasy on the
northeast fork of the highway. “Jacks, I’m still waiting for you to cut us in on why we’re going to meet Griggs and his fat headed, trigger happy lackeys. Bodhi’s story is probably not that crazy. As far as gangsters go, Griggs and his loyal hound dogs aren’t exactly respectable prospects for business partners. Especially with a two-bit operation like ours.”
“That’s just it, Gideon. I’m tired of being a two-bit operation. As the forty-niners used to say— there’s gold out there in them thar hills, and we don’t even have to bend over a river with a tin pan to find it. Griggs has sealed a deal with some stodgy old politicians on Capitol Hill who like to throw discrete parties, and their favorite party favors are loose women and illegal liquor. It’s a deal that will make Griggs a very rich man. Not to mention that he’ll have some powerful men making sure his operation runs smoothly. It seems the new president, Harding, is filling the District with his cronies and campaign contributors. Bribes and corruption are sweeping through the city. They might be enforcing temperance on the country, but there is a double standard when it comes to the people in charge. The law, even the Feds, will look the other way if the D.C. big shots are on the receiving end. As unstable and dangerous as Griggs can be, as a middleman, he’s worth the risk. He’s got the connections we need, and I want to make him see that he needs us too.”
Bodhi leaned forward. “How the hell are you going to do that?”
“Yeah, Jacks, you know that Griggs has been working with the Denton brothers,” Gideon said. “They’ve been running moonshine for Griggs for the past six months. We step into their territory, and we’ll be asking for trouble.”
I looked over at him. “When the hell has Gideon Jarrett ever shied away from trouble?”
“Passing a twenty-fifth birthday will do that to a man. Makes him start thinking about his mortality.”