House of Purple Cedar

by Tim Tingle

  Dead by the hand of her husband.

  He’d heard his father speak of it.

  As suddenly as they appeared, the spirit lights vanished. Samuel looked to the farmhouse in the distance and realized he was on the back acres of the Hardwicke place. Staying in the shadows and keeping a careful ear for dogs, he crossed the back pasture and five-acre corn patch. Nearing the rear of the house, he crouched in a clump of brown and brittle stalks, the remains of last year’s corn. He could see Mrs. Hardwicke in a yellow square of window light.

  Samuel decided to ease himself into the still warm dirt of the new garden and learn what he could from this vantage point, when he felt sweat dripping down his ribs. His breath quickened and his eyes locked on a dark gathering of foliage fifty feet to his left. Coming into slow focus, he made out the flimsy frame of an arbor covered with grape vines. A quick glimpse of lightning split the sky. In the afterimage and thunder that followed, Samuel found himself staring at the brooding darkness of Marshal Robert Hardwicke.

  The marshal was gripping the neck of a jar of whiskey. Samuel sat without moving for a quarter of an hour. When he heard the nervous whine of conversation between two hunting dogs, he reached in his pocket for the fish heads.

  Both dogs leapt to their feet and dashed in his direction. The marshal lifted his chin and said, “Sic ’em, boys. Go get ’em.”

  Soon Samuel was scratching the ears of two bluetick hound dogs eating catfish heads. Hearing no barking, the marshal decided the intruder to be a snake or rodent too small to worry about.

  He looked to the house, to the figure of his wife moving in and out of view in the kitchen window. Hardwicke rose to his feet. In a stumbling grip for balance, he kicked over his whiskey jar. He cursed and turned his anger and his footsteps to the quivering light in the kitchen. A strange look passed over his face. He struck his fist hard against the wall of the house and stomped his boots twice on the back porch. Mrs. Hardwicke looked to the door.

  The marshal entered the house. With a crash and shattering of glass, the light vanished. Samuel scrambled to his feet and ran toward the house. He stood at the window and watched a shifting play of shadows, screams, and curses as the marshal raised his fist and gripped his wife by the back of her neck. He feinted with a quick thrust of his shoulders and Ona Mae flung her head aside and closed her eyes.

  Samuel stood leaning against the window, ready to spring through the door. Only the fear of Ona Mae’s death kept him immobile. The marshal moved his knuckles to Ona Mae’s face and rubbed his balled-up fist across her nose, slowly, taunting her with what was to follow.

  “No,” Ona Mae said, over and over, “Noooo,” but her lips clenched tight to her teeth and all that emerged was a strange and primal humming sound. Samuel shuddered to hear it.

  When Hardwicke drew back his fist, she lifted her elbows and crossed her arms over her face. He grabbed her by the hair, and when she raised her hands, exposing her face, he hit her with his fist. Ona Mae’s knees buckled and she fell against the wall.

  Samuel felt his hands shaking and his breath burned in his chest. He clutched his own fists and held them tight against his belly to stop the shaking. Hardwicke loomed over his wife and hit her as she cowered in a corner of the kitchen. As her screams shrank into soft moans, he began hitting her at random moments. Just as she felt he might turn away, just as she relaxed, ever so slightly, he struck her again.

  Samuel knew by the strange rhythm of her crying that he was witnessing the bleeding of a wound, the playing out of a ritual much older than he was. He slumped against the wall and listened for any change in the awful pattern. With every blow from Hardwicke, he jumped as if the blow had struck him.

  Samuel Willis became a child again, covering his face and sobbing quietly, as helpless as the woman who clung to her life ten feet from him.

  When Hardwicke finally turned from his wife and slouched his way to the arbor, he overlooked the young Choctaw boy hiding beneath his kitchen window. He would never know that Samuel entered the kitchen soon after he left, helped his wife to a chair, and bathed her face with his shirttail.

  Ona Mae was unquestioning in her surrender. She looked into Samuel’s face as if beholding a heaven-sent apparition. He stood by her side for half an hour. He moistened the cloth of his shirt with his tongue and touched her skin lightly, moving around the cuts on her face and lips. He continued until he was assured the wounds were not deep and the bleeding had stopped.

  Samuel lifted her arms one at a time by the elbow. He knelt before her and took each foot with his hands, one behind the heel and the other beneath the sole. He slowly stretched and lifted each leg. Curious at first, Ona Mae soon realized the boy was making sure no bones were broken.

  “I will be okay now.”

  “I want to help.”

  “You have. Bless you, my child, you have.”

  “Will he hurt you again?”

  “No. Not now. You have to go.”

  Samuel stood slowly and quietly. He took her hands and waited for her eyes to join his.

  “You have to go too.”

  Her eyes never wavered.

  “You are Samuel, the preacher’s oldest son.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have my solemn word, before God, that I will go.” As he moved to the door, she said over his shoulder, “You pray for me, Samuel.”

  In a moment, Samuel was gone, racing the storm. A mile before he reached home, it struck. He was grateful to be caught in the blasts of wild wind and water. He slowed to a walk, lifted his face to the sky, and spread his arms aloft. The wind whipped the buttons of his shirt free and the rain stung his face. In the pounding noise, he screamed till his throat scorched.

  “Where are you, God?” he cried with the full power of his lungs.

  A lightning bolt slapped against the wall of rock fifty yards east of Samuel, and the clap of thunder that followed sent the boy to his knees in fear and wonder at the powers before him. Samuel Willis had never doubted either his courage or his strength, but on this night he felt the sting of guilt to see Mrs. Hardwicke lying helpless and alone. He covered his face with his hands and wept to think of her cowering on her own kitchen floor.

  With Samuel gone, Ona Mae focused her attention on her big toe. In the dim light of the kitchen, she squinted and stared and sent her will into the toe. It throbbed in response. She moved her attention to her ankles, then her calves and thighs, her bruised and aching shoulders, her bleeding, swollen face, till inch by inch she felt again her body.

  She straightened her knees and stood on uncertain legs. She leaned forward and gripped the kitchen table, feeling the blood rush to her prickling feet. Through the thin crack of light between the door and threshold, Ona Mae saw the fireflies in the bottoms.

  “Please, Grandma, can I go see the fireflies?”

  “Now, hon, you know it’s too late for you to go off in the woods by yourself.”

  “Come with me, Grandma. Please!”

  “Oh, child. I’m too old to go chasing fireflies.”

  “Pleeease.”

  “Mercy, Onie. You are a strong-headed one. Pity the man that marries you. No, you get along to bed now.”

  Ona Mae made her way to bed, slipping quietly beneath the covers, quietly so as not to wake her bruises. She arched her neck against the pillow, as she had learned to do so long ago, to peer through the open window and watch the fireflies flash and flicker their silent joy, beings from another world, a world of light and laughter.

  “Dead by the hand of her own husband,” Samuel thought. “Dead by the hand.”

  “Lord God in Heaven,” he prayed, “please look over Mrs. Hardwicke. Please look down tonight and cast your eye to her suffering. Surround her with your strength, if it be Thy will. Please, be the God I know you to be, the good God of my father. Please see her through this night that she may know a better life someday. Please God in Heaven Almighty, please help her to leave. Please God. Help her to see a light beyond these woods.”
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  Ona Mae opened her droopy eyes one final time before drifting into the welcome warmth of sleep. Her eyes beheld a glow from the bottoms, as if all the fireflies floated together in a warm ball of yellow light. Through the pain of coming bruises, Ona Mae smiled and fell away.

  Escape in Broad Daylight

  Maggie and Terrance

  With his newly-acquired pistol in hand, Terrance Lowell strolled boldly into the Spiro Bank. After waiting politely in the longest line and letting everybody in town get a good look at him, he demanded, “All the money in your drawer,” from the terrified teller.

  Once he was satisfied he had all the money from the teller’s drawer—and forgetting about the safe, where the real money was kept—Terrance pointed his pistol to the ceiling and fired a warning shot, just to let everyone know he meant business. Folks cowered into small groups against the wall, crouching and covering their ears.

  CLICK. That was it.

  CLICK.

  Not boom or pow.

  Just CLICK. That’s all they heard.

  Terrance had cleaned his gun out the night before in preparation for his first day of becoming a full-fledged badman, a bank robber, but he had forgotten to reload it.

  CLICK. At first everybody just looked at each other, dumbstruck. Had he taken advantage of their confusion and run and jumped on his horse, or even walked briskly and climbed aboard Old Paint, a more likely scenario, seeing as how he never was much of a horseman, Terrance could probably have escaped.

  But how bad is a badman really with no bullets for his gun? Nobody would ever make wanted posters of a bank robber whose gun went CLICK. Nope, the next time he had occasion to use his gun, he wanted his victims flung into the throes of death to the auditory equivalent of exploding dynamite, less a CLICK and more a KA-BOOM, followed by a teeth-shattering recoil.

  For one brief moment of enlightenment, the disjointed elements vying for control of his thinking came to a unanimous agreement. There was no way around it. Terrance Lowell needed bullets.

  Quick as he could, he untied Old Paint and led her to the hitching post in front of the hardware store across the street. A dozen of his would-be victims, leaving their bank business behind them, came trailing after him. They didn’t speak, but the incredulous looks on their faces were noted by dozens of sidewalk minglers, who soon joined the throng of Terrance’s followers.

  Terrance was so intent on finding the proper gauge bullets and leaving Spiro, he didn’t notice people following him through the door of the Spiro Drygoods Store. But Hiram did.

  “Oh, mercy,” he said. “What has she gone and done now?” He was convinced that Maggie had advertised a sale without even telling him, a sale the magnitude of which Spiro had never seen, judging by the size of the crowd.

  “Now see here, folks,” he said, but nobody paid any attention to Hiram. “Stop!” he hollered, but the crowd continued flowing in. “Ok, now, listen closely. Nobody buys anything till I have a talk with Maggie.”

  This didn’t set well with Terrance, who had by now located his box of bullets. He faced the swelling crowd and grew nervous, recalling how he had just done his best to rob the bank across the street.

  Maggie was in the storeroom sorting through unwanted items she intended to put on sale beginning Monday––without telling Hiram. When she heard her name, she strapped her leg on and stump-walked around the counter.

  “Just what is it,” she said loudly, then finished in a whisper, “we…need…to…talk…about,” as her eyes moved from the crowd to Hiram and back again.

  Terrance pushed his way through the crowd and to the cash register.

  “I need to pay for these,” he said, slapping three boxes of cartridges on the counter.

  “Over my dead body!” hollered Hiram. He grabbed the bullets and clutched them to his chest. “Maggie doesn’t set the prices here, I do.” Hiram stuck his lower lip out and his left eyebrow began to twitch. He glared a dare ya look at Terrance.

  It could be said that Terrance Lowell lived a life of quiet confusion, but nothing in his muddled existence prepared him for his present dilemma, as Spiro’s finest citizens crowded into the hardware store, pushing and shoving to get a better look.

  From Terrance Lowell’s point of view:

  A chubby woman barely five feet tall with what appeared to be a wooden leg stood behind the cash register prepared to take his money for sorely needed bullets. A tall skinny man with a twitching face and bobbing Adam’s apple stood stubbornly holding the bullets.

  “Over my dead body,” the Adam’s apple man hissed again in a low whisper. The idea seemed a good one to Terrance, who lifted his pistol to Hiram’s head, sending his Adam’s apple into a leaping frenzy.

  The onlookers gasped and cowered, but those from the bank hooted and hollered.

  “He ain’t got no bullets!” someone shouted.

  “That’s what he’s trying to buy,” said another.

  “His gun is EMPTY!” they called in unison.

  Hiram dropped the bullets to the counter and said, “Full price, not a penny less.”

  The onlookers groaned. Everyone was understandably disappointed, hoping for a bit of blood to top off the most memorable day in the town’s history.

  As if in answer to their unspoken prayers, a tiny child’s voice lifted above the mayhem and sang out in high-pitched beatific beauty, “He tried to rob the bank.”

  Everything froze. Hiram closed his eyes and shook his head. To come so close! He timidly slid a box of bullets across the counter in the faint hope of completing the transaction.

  “Hiiiiii-Rummm!” Maggie bellowed. “He’s a BANK ROBBER. Don’t sell him bullets. He’ll kill us all!”

  “No, ma’am, I will not,” said Terrance. “You have my word on that.”

  “Over my dead body,” Hiram said for the third time.

  It is a sign from above, thought Terrance, spinning his gaze around the room in search of a deadly weapon. His eyes settled on a tall cabinet at the end of the counter with shelf after shelf of kitchen utensils. Terrance plunged his fist into a box of knives, butcher knives, steak knives with serrated edges, all manner of cutlery. He grabbed a knife by the handle and leapt over the counter.

  Maggie balled up her fist and swooped it at his head. Terrance ducked and kicked her wooden leg out from under her, sending her crashing against the wall, where she settled like a ball of wet laundry, whimpering and rubbing the skin where the hinge met her knee. Terrance turned his back to Maggie, an error he would soon regret, for all the while Maggie was whimpering, she was also loosening the hinge to her leg and recalling girlhood fantasies of her wooden leg as weaponry.

  Terrance spun Hiram around to face the crowd, pinned his left forearm to the shopkeeper’s chest, and gently touched the knifeblade to Hiram’s throat. The spectators backed away from the embracing men, uncertain if being washed in Hiram’s blood was after all a fine way to spend a Saturday.

  Terrance had not a clue as to what to do next.

  “May I say something? Please,” said Hiram.

  “Uh,” grunted Terrance.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I am very afraid.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Terrance.

  “Please don’t try to cut my throat with that knife,” said Hiram.

  “Huh?” said Terrance.

  “It will never work,” said Hiram. “It’s a butter knife. You are holding a butter knife to my throat.”

  Terrance lifted the knife from Hiram’s throat. He stood stupefied, staring at the dull blade as Maggie scooted backwards and eased herself to a standing position against the wall. She gripped the ankle of her wooden leg and clutched it like a bat. A voice from the crowd declared, “It’s a butter knife. The bank robber has a butter knife.”

  Terrance’s brain had barely absorbed the word butter when Maggie swung the fat calf of her maplewood leg at the back of his head. Terrance melted in a warm puddle at her feet.

  “Step aside now,” said Marshal Hardwicke, entering the st
ore and pushing through the crowd. “The excitement is over. Go on home, now. Let the law handle it from here.” Marshal Hardwicke rolled Terrance over, wrestled his arms behind his back, and handcuffed him.

  “Give me a hand,” he said, nodding to two stout Irish farmers in town with their Choctaw wives. The two took a leg apiece and dragged Terrance across the floor as Marshal Hardwicke cleared a path through the crowd. They paused at the door and Terrance floated into blurry-eyed consciousness. When he spotted Maggie, his face softened and he took a deep breath.

  “Wait,” said Maggie. She knelt to Terrance and lifted his head from the floor.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you, ma’am,” he said. “I feel real bad about that.”

  “I know,” said Maggie. “I didn’t mean to hurt you either, you sweet and tender man.”

  “My name is Terrance. Terrance Lowell.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Terrance. My name is Maggie. Maggie Hazel Johnston.”

  At the sound of the word Hazel, Terrance fell into a swoon from which he never recovered. He would remain a warm puddle at Maggie’s feet for the rest of his life. He was much the better for it.

  Or so the story went.

  Hiram Blackstone had never seen so many potential customers in his store at one time. Seeing them now desert him to follow the marshal and his prisoner, he tried blocking the doorway and announcing, “Half off everything! Half off, aren’t you listening to me!” He quickly came to his senses. “Uh, that’s twenty percent off certain items.” Hiram was pushed by the flow of the crowd onto the sidewalk.

  “Ok, you pick the items. Ten percent off with purchase of…” Hiram sat on the wooden sidewalk, dangling his legs over the edge as he watched the parade to the jailhouse.

  “Never mind,” he said to nobody. “Have a good day. Hurry back.”

  “Hush, Hiram,” said Maggie. “Can’t you see a man’s been hurt?”

  Charges were filed––bank robbery, attempted murder and kidnapping––and a trial date was set. “He’ll hang, no doubt about it,” said Marshal Hardwicke, recounting the arrest at the Salty Dog Saloon that evening.