by Maren Smith
Millicent squawked. “That’s a lie! He had it in his mouth!” She threw out her arm, gesturing to her friends. “We all saw it!”
They looked at one another. Both Abigail and Violet grimaced, but when one stood up, the others reluctantly followed.
Hands folded across her midriff, Abigail said, “We did see him steal.”
“And he made a mess,” Violet affirmed.
“I’m not interested in messes,” Judge Johnson told her. “All little boys make messes. It’s part of the whole ‘snips of snails and puppy tails’ package. This hearing is only interested in possible criminal mischief.”
“He paid for the candy,” Sam provided, again his voice carrying easily throughout the meeting hall. “It was penny candy and he passed his penny right into my hand.”
“And where did he get that penny?” Millicent countered.
“So, your claim is that he stole the penny, not the candy?” the judge clarified, making a note on the paper before him.
Everett Jackson flipped the page of his notepad and continued writing as well.
“We all know he stole something,” Millicent snipped. “He’s an Indian.”
Captain Everson shifted again. His foot jiggled faster. A leap of clenching muscle pulsed along his chiseled jawline as rapid as a heartbeat.
“If we’re talking about yesterday morning, he got it from me,” Mayor Rockwell stated from his seat beside the sheriff to the right of the judge’s table. He didn’t stand up, but his voice too carried easily throughout the room. “I gave it to him when I paused to speak with Emerald.”
“Oh, you would say that,” Millicent scoffed. “You’re hardly impartial.”
“And you are?” the mayor countered.
“So neither the penny nor the candy were stolen,” Judge Johnson stated, doggedly drawing everyone’s attention back to the matter at hand.
“He still made a mess!”
“A mess isn’t theft,” Judge Johnson replied.
“It had to be thrown out, didn’t it?” Millicent replied. “All that candy spilled across the floor, or was that paid for as well?”
“I clean up messes all the time,” Sam told her. “Accidents happen. It’s part of running a store.”
“The only accident came when he spilled the jar trying to get the candies into his pockets!”
“At least he tried to clean it up, which is more than I can say for most customers.” Sam shrugged. “For instance, I have a particularly quarrelsome group that comes through my store once a month. They unravel every bolt of cloth they touch, often leaving the ends trailing on the floor to be trampled. On their last visit, I had to cut the ruined ends off three bolts—including one very expensive length of violet taffeta that came all the way from France. That’s also wasteful.” He looked at Millicent. “And unpaid for. And it cost me significantly more than a penny.”
Millicent snapped her mouth shut. Twin spots of color rose to her cheeks. “Well…” she floundered. “Well, I never!”
Uncovering his eyes, Myron said, “Sit down, Millie. That’s enough.”
“Enough?” she echoed, her flush deepening to a bright shade of pink. “Why won’t anyone listen to me? We’ve an Indian in our midst! Can no one see the danger this represents to our community? To our very lives? If left unchecked, we’ll all be murdered in our sleep!”
“By a four-year-old?” Judge Johnson drawled.
“I’ve heard enough,” Captain Everson said, slapping his hat against his thigh.
“Children grow!” Millicent fisted her hands and stomped her foot. “Certain children grow up to become monsters!”
“You certainly have,” a man in the crowd behind them—Lydia had no idea who—muttered.
Millicent whipped around, glaring at everyone now. “I heard that!”
“Sit down!” Myron told her, his voice raising over the swell of muttering that began to ripple through the meeting hall. Like a small pebble tossed into calm waters only to be followed by a boulder when Millicent turned on him, drew back her hand and slapped him as hard as she could. She might have been aiming for his face, but his involuntary flinch back ensured she hit his arm instead.
“I will not sit down! I will not be quiet!” she shouted at him. “I will speak my mind and you are going to listen to me!”
Myron exploded out of his chair. The sound his boots made when his feet hit the floor silenced the entire room. Shorter than his wife by almost three inches, he still managed to tower over her. His face darkened with all the anger he somehow managed to hold onto. His reaction took Lydia back. By the look that came over Millicent, it must have taken her back as well.
“Sit,” he breathed, pointing at her forgotten chair. “Right goddamn now.”
The room was once more perfectly silent. For the longest time, no one moved apart from Millicent. Stumbling slightly, she sat down.
For almost a full minute, no one said a word, which made Captain Everson easy to hear when he muttered, “Yeah, I’ve heard enough as well.” Slapping his hat against his knee again, he stood up and faced the judge. “The United States would like to withdraw its petition to arrest this boy,” he said grimly. “I am returning to Fort Mervine. At that time, it will be my recommendation that all charges be dropped.”
Leaning back in his chair, his countenance lightening, Judge Johnson nodded. “Thank you, son. That will be fine.”
Summoning his lieutenants with a glance, Captain Everson motioned for those in the aisle to make way, but as he started into the crowd, he stopped long enough to face Millicent. “Two weeks ago, I ordered my regiment to dig proper graves for the victims of a real Indian attack—an old man and his wife, their son and his wife, and their three grandchildren, one no older than that boy there.” He glanced at Lydia, who did everything she could not to hug Paquah closer, as if she could shield him from the soldier’s hard gaze before it again returned to Millicent. “Two weeks from now, I’m set to marry the love of my life and I will spend every day until I die making sure she never has to witness what I did the day I buried those people. Don’t you ever waste my time again.”
Tapping his hat back on his head, the captain gave Paquah, then Lydia another long, assessing stare. Too late Garrett moved to reposition himself, between her and the Captain now. His head was canted; his stone-grey eyes wary.
“I’m not going to touch her,” Captain Everson said as he stepped around Garrett. Still, her stomach lurched when Lydia again found herself trapped in the full judgment of his stare. “If you want to make your living in a house of sin, Ms. Emerald, that’s on you. But that is no place for children.” He swept the room, glaring at everyone in turn. “Leaving this little boy to grow up knowing nothing but vice and degradation…” That look stopped on Judge Johnson last of all. “Now, that’s on all of you.”
Lydia’s heart hit her stomach. Her stomach hit the floor. And all the weight that seemed to have lifted from the judge’s shoulders just seconds ago came crashing back down upon him as the soldiers walked out of the meeting hall.
Lydia heard Captain Everson’s order to pack up and be ready to move out within the hour. It sounded as if he were calling his orders from the far end of a very long tunnel. It was the same way she heard Judge Johnson order, “Sheriff Justice, take the boy into custody.”
“Aw, horse shit!” Garrett snapped, grabbing Lydia’s shoulder as if to stop her from bolting for the door. As if she could have bolted anywhere when her legs had no strength at all. She couldn’t have stood then, no matter how much her brain was screaming for her to run. “You going to take Stone into custody too?”
“This office isn’t in the business of taking children from their fathers,” the judge snapped back, anger flushing his face a dull red.
“But you’ll take one from his mother?” Garrett demanded.
When his mother was a whore? In a heartbeat if he was forced to; Lydia could see the resolve as clear as daylight on Judge Johnson’s face. And he’d just been forced to. No
t all the biting in the world could stop it now. Because a woman had no rights, not even to her own children.
And a whore had even less.
Lydia began to shake.
“Sheriff,” Judge Johnson said again, because the lawman was still sitting where he had been the entire hearing long, the full weight of his office bearing down on him as cold as the star upon his chest and all kinds of apology taking root in the dark of his eyes.
He stood up.
“I’m his father,” Gabe announced from the back of the room, where Jewel had latched onto his arm. Her other hand was covering her mouth and her blue eyes shone bright with all the same tears that were even now burning their way up the back of Lydia’s throat, suffocating her.
“Much as I admire the sentiment,” Judge Johnson said heavily, “that still puts him back in the Red Petticoat. Do your duty, Sheriff.”
Mayor Rockwell stood up. “I’m his father.” He turned to Lydia. “You will always be welcome in my home. You can see him anytime.”
“I’m his father.” Pushing through crowd, Doctor Norwood had to raise his voice to be heard and his arm to be seen above the now-quite vocal crowd. It wasn’t even his own hearing. Both he and Citrine had come anyway. She hadn’t known that until now.
The first hot tears spilled over Lydia’s lashes as Citrine leaned over the row of chairs between them to beckon her closer. “Come on, honey. Let’s get you both out of here.”
They weren’t the only ones pushing to the front of the room, either. John was there, so was Charlie. Both their hands were raised and that same challenge belted from their lips, “I’m his father!”
Judge Johnson stood up now too. “This is still a lawful court proceeding,” he told them, and rapped the table for quiet. “The truth and only the truth will be spoken here!”
“I’m his father,” Pastor Black declared, shoving through the crowd. “Call me a liar,” he dared the judge, mouth grim and eyes flashing hot.
He’d lost control of the hearing and he knew it. Judge Johnson stabbed his fingers back through his hair, perhaps for the first time in his professional life at a complete loss for how to proceed. At last, he threw his hands up. “Is there anyone in this room who is not this child’s father?” he bit out in frustration.
In the quiet that followed, with half the town staring either at the judge or one another, Garrett softly said, “I’m not.”
Lydia couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. She could barely see Garrett turn to her through the shimmer of tears that refused to be cried though. God knew, in the last few days she’d bawled her eyes out for lesser reasons than this.
“I’m not,” he said again, a little helplessly. He came to her, lowering himself to one knee. The smile he gave Paquah was shaky comfort at best. He didn’t even try to fake one for her. “I’m not his father,” he said to Lydia alone, but then his stone-grey eyes softened. “But I want to be, and I will be. You just have to let me.”
The first salty drops spilled over her lashes and slipped hot down her cheeks to her chin. “I don’t have much of a choice now, do I?”
“You have a room full of choices,” he corrected. “I’m just hoping like hell you don’t take them.”
“Why?” she whispered, feeling every bit as broken as that word came out.
“Because,” he whispered back. “I’m the one who loves you. Temper, teeth and all.”
Chapter Fifteen
Lydia signed the bottom of that marriage document the way she had learned to back when Jewel and Gabe had first taken her in and she’d confessed she couldn’t read or write.
“A woman doesn’t need to know much in this world,” Jewel had told her then. “But writing her own name is one of them. There’s freedom in not being consigned to an ‘x’.”
As she watched Garrett bend to put his name beside hers, Lydia supposed Jewel was right. It looked awfully natural, the swoops and curls of her signature next to the swoops and curls of his. Still, she wasn’t sure she knew how to feel about this. Any of this. Right now, all she felt was empty and cold.
“This is a farce,” Millicent muttered, still sitting exactly where her husband had commanded her to. “This whole town is going straight to hell.”
“You don’t even live here,” Jewel sniffed.
“Thank God,” Gabe muttered under his breath.
“Whether it does or not, you’ll still be the first to feel the burn,” Myron said grimly. “Sheriff Justice, I believe my wife has another thirty days in jail for contempt.”
“I believe you’re right,” Judge Johnson agreed, bending to take the pen from Garrett and adding his signature to the document as well. “Sheriff?”
That aspect of his duty, Sheriff Justice was only too happy to fulfill. Millicent tried to yank her arm out of his when he caught hold of her, but he tightened his grip and marched her out of the meeting hall.
“I meant what I said,” Judge Johnson added, just before Myron took his leave. “The best damn copse of hickory switches grows right out behind my house. Help yourself. Anytime.”
Nodding once, Myron walked out of the meeting hall with his head held high. He only made it halfway across the street before suddenly changing directions, but nobody said a word about that. Nor did they say anything when someone saw him duck behind the judge’s rental house only to appear a few minutes later with three fresh-cut switches in one hand and purpose to the long-legged strides that carried him straight across town to the jailhouse.
“About damn time,” was all Gabe said as the caterwauling began to the age-old accompaniment of the ‘swish-thwhick!’of the switches. Lydia felt absolutely no sympathy for the participants of that particular dance. She was too busy packing up everything she owned—what little of it there was—to care about Millicent’s comeuppance.
One trunk and one carpetbag, that was what she had to load into the back of the wagon Mayor Rockwell loaned Garrett.
“I’ll have it back to you by morning,” Garrett promised.
“Take your time,” the mayor replied as he helped to load the trunk. “And congratulations. Truth be told, I’m just glad the day ended this well.”
A statement that shook Lydia so badly that she faltered in the act of lifting herself up into the front of the wagon. This was well? What of any of the last few days could anybody consider as “well?” The soldiers coming to town had been awful. The hearings, both of them, had been worse. The resolution…
That stopped her.
Never had Lydia ever thought she would marry again. Not to Garrett. Not to anyone. Not to keep her son.
But even as she thought it, that stopped her all over again.
You have a room full of choices, he’d said, as he’d knelt before her. Terrible choices. Choices no woman should ever have to make, but choices nonetheless. I hope like hell you don’t choose any of them.
A little hand patted her hip. Lydia looked down as Paquah held up a covered basket.
“Nettie gave it to us.”
No doubt it was filled to the brim with some of her famous world-class cooking. Lydia’s heart tightened and as she took it, she looked up at the windows of Red Petticoat. Jewel, Gabe, Opal and Amy—they were gathered on the porch to watch her go. Everyone else was watching her through the upper floor windows. Almost all were smiling, that sad kind of smile that said they hoped she was heading out for bigger and better things but, if not, that she would be welcome back any time. Any time at all.
They might only be whores, but they were—every last one of them—some of the best family she’d ever had. She was ashamed not to have realized that until now.
What was she doing?
She put the basket in the back of the wagon, then lifted Paquah up and deposited him into the back alongside it. He settled himself to ride on top of their trunk, one arm slung over the back of the seat she climbed up to sit on. She took her time arranging her skirts around her legs, wondering with every smoothing brush of her hands if she might not be making the big
gest mistake of her life.
Hold your head high…
Lydia did. She also folded her hands tight in her lap so no one would know how scared she really was.
Go down biting…
She’d probably do that too, because when she made mistakes, by God, she took them to the farthest of all possible ends.
Because I’m the one who loves you…
Unbidden, her gaze slid to Garrett, just now shaking hands with the sheriff, who thumped he on the back in fond farewell before tipping his hat to her and walking away. When Garrett caught her watching, he winked, and damn if the smallest blossom of wanton warmth didn’t unfurl in the pit of her tightly knotted stomach. She quickly faced forward again, but Garrett was already on his way to the head of the wagon. Coming down off the porch, Gabe stopped him before he could climb onboard.
“Reckon we got everything,” Garrett announced cheerfully.
“I expect so.” Gabe nodded. “Mind taking a message to your brother for me?”
“Be happy to.”
Gabe hit him, a roundhouse clock to the jaw that made Lydia jump and knocked Garrett backwards into the wagon.
On the porch, Jewel groaned and covered her eyes.
Feeling out the damage done his jaw, Garrett pushed back off the wagon, chuckling. “Mind if I use a little less fist when I tell him?”
Tsking, Gabe shook his head. “Might lose something in the translation.”
After a moment, Gabe held out his hand.
Garrett shook it. “I was just starting to like you,” he said.
“I was just starting to like you too.” Gabe smiled. He looked up at Lydia, then Paquah, then back to Garrett again. “Take care of them,” he warned.
“For all the days of my life,” Garrett promised.
The wagon rocked as he climbed up to take his seat beside her. He gathered the reins and unlocked the brakes. Lydia reached back to steady Paquah when the wagon gave a soft lurch forward.
“Mama,” Paquah grumbled.
“Hold on,” Garrett told him, giving the reins a light slap.