Zion

by Dayne Sherman

  She claimed to have no memory of the attack. No images. Nothing. Her speech was staccato. “I can’t—uh—uh—re—mem—ber—any—thing,” she told Tom.

  “That’s okay, honey, rest,” he said. For some reason he could not pin down, Tom doubted her complete memory lapse. But he was not a cruel man, and he did not want to press her for details. He wished he didn’t have to work at the brickyard. Had he been at home when the predator arrived, he could have defended her. Tom asked for a second week off from work, which was granted with pay, something he didn’t expect.

  Corrine came to the hospital to sit with Sara, even though Tom was available to stay. Tom went to town and bought a new GE television set, and he got James Luke to help him put it in the living room where it awaited Sara’s return home. Tom climbed a sweet gum tree in the backyard, thirty feet up, and installed an antenna to get decent reception.

  Marshal Brownlow stopped by the Hardin home that evening. He brought a casserole wrapped in tinfoil that his wife had sent over. Despite the friction over the forest fires, Brownlow seemed to be genuinely concerned about the fate of this family in his jurisdiction. By contrast, the Baxter Parish Sheriff’s Office hadn’t shown any interest in the case whatsoever. Rarely did the sheriff do anything south of Liberty City unless there was a fierce public outcry, and he did even less in the Ninth Ward, which had its own marshal and special dedicated tax to pay for the office. The sheriff’s main base was in Ruthberry and the north end of the parish where his supporters lived, his chief campaign funders being the old-money landowners. Some of these families had been in power for more than a century.

  The marshal’s office could perform any police work in the ward, as well as handling civil papers and security for the Ninth Ward Court in Milltown. Sometimes it seemed that the marshal served as the only real law in the Ninth Ward.

  “You got any idea about who did this to my wife?” Tom asked the marshal. He and Brownlow stood outside on the front porch.

  The marshal smoked. “Not any leads or suspects. Nothing at all. We got the state police to fingerprint the house, but not a thing’s come of it so far,” the marshal said.

  “I want you to go see Sloan Parnell. I had to knock the hell out of him over at Beam’s feed store a couple of weeks ago.”

  “And you don’t like him so you think he’d go and rape your wife? Come on, Tom. That’s a far stretch.” He snuffed out the cigarette on the porch post and tossed the butt into the yard.

  “He’s Judge Parnell’s grandson, and he’s marked with a real bad seed. What’s wrong? Are you scared of him?”

  “I ain’t scared of no man.”

  “You’re full of shit. Every man is scared of somebody.”

  “I’ll look into it.”

  “You’d better. I might have to go visit him myself one night soon if you don’t.”

  “Tom, you’d do well to stay away from him, if you know what’s good for you.”

  “I’ve already said it once, and I’ll say it again. My hog dog was loose. He broke his chain on the day of the attack. I’d bet a hundred-dollar bill whoever attacked my wife had a patch of skin bit out of his ass.” Tom pointed to Jubal where he lay under the tree in the dirt, a thick chain hooked to his big leather collar. The sun was almost down, and the dog seemed to watch the men out of the corner of his eye. Jubal’s coat was red-brown like a rich roux and spotted with black, crimson, and white splotches. He had one glass eye that was blue and the other was mud-brown, and his overall build was more in line with a bulldog than a Catahoula. He wasn’t an anxious or barking dog, never making much noise around the house, and the other cur dogs were kept far past the barn in a series of net wire pens, but Jubal was always chained near the front of the house under a shade tree to serve as a deterrent to trespassers. If he had broken loose, he would have nailed any stranger who entered the yard planning mischief. Tom believed this fervently. The chain was snapped near his collar for a specific reason, and Tom knew the dog broke the chain to protect his wife.

  “Well, it’s just another thing to look into,” said the marshal.

  “I’ve already told your assistant Wentworth, and I also spoke to a deputy sheriff in Ruthberry by the name of Roberts.”

  Brownlow looked away, toward the road. He didn’t say anything.

  “My best guess is the son of a bitch that did this has a big patch of skin missing out of his ass or leg or arm or somewhere from trying to fight off the dog. Jubal’ll bite the fire out of anybody except me and my wife and boy, James Luke and Nelda Cate, Corrine Travis, and maybe Martina and Sid Hardin. That’s about it. He tries to bite folks, and that’s why I keep him on the logging chain when I’m not able to watch him close.”

  “Like I told you, I’ll look into it.”

  “You do that.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The sky was gray and dark, as if the clouds were begging to rain. It was Sunday afternoon. Tom and Wesley had dressed for the church services earlier in the day, but Tom decided against going.

  He walked to the open backdoor and looked down at the boy who was rubbing Jubal’s ears. Wesley rubbed the dog’s head and he seemed pleased, his tail wagging. The boy sat on the back steps dressed in a pair of khaki trousers and a khaki shirt like an aged farmer.

  Tom stared down at the boy and remembered how he and Sara didn’t think they’d be able to have a child of their own. After they’d been married two years and no pregnancy occurred, they went to see a doctor in Pickleyville. The doctor said Tom was almost completely sterile. It was scarcely possible that they’d ever conceive. But then after their third year of marriage, they had a son, and he saw it as a miracle from God, evidence of the Lord’s graciousness and answered prayer.

  “When will Mother come home?” Wesley asked.

  “Maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after,” Tom said.

  “Is Aunt Corrine going to stay at the hospital with her tonight?”

  “Yes, she’s there now. Then I’ll relieve her for a while later, and afterward she’ll come back and stay there for the night.”

  “Can I go with you to the hospital?”

  “No, they won’t let you go into the room.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re too young. I’ve already covered this ground with you about the hospital rules.”

  “Pops, who hurt her?”

  Tom was startled. This was the first indication that Wesley knew something truly dreadful had happened to his mother, and she was not simply ill. “Where did you hear that somebody hurt her?”

  “School. I heard Mrs. Maxine Bennett whispering to Mrs. Jennings.”

  Tom wondered exactly how much he knew. “I’m not sure, and neither is the marshal, though I have a suspect.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “You need to say, Pops.”

  “No,” Tom said.

  “We need to figure this out.”

  He could see the boy beginning to cry, tears sliding down his face. “I need to figure it out. But this is not your concern.” He reached down and hugged the boy, held him against his chest for a few seconds.

  It started to drizzle. Drops of rain fell across their shirts. “Let’s go inside before we get wet. And I’ll go put Jubal back on his chain,” Tom said to the boy.

  Tom had sold a few more hogs that he’d caught by baiting them with corn at Junior Cooper’s catch pen deep in the piney woods. The homemade trapdoor gate worked like a dream, but he realized the process of catching the mavericks was going to get harder and slower over time. He needed the money to recoup some of his livestock investment, not to mention the hospital bills coming home like a second assault. The deadline for removing the hogs from the rangeland was December 31st, and it was always on his mind, a foreboding date haunting him.

  Before the attack, he’d planned to buy more tools for his carpentry work, a planer and a wood lathe, a big band saw and a drill press. Perhaps he’d start doing odd jobs and fix-it projects for cash money when he w
asn’t at the brickyard, now that the livestock business was becoming dead to the past. However, the estimated two-thousand-dollar hospital bill he now faced would flag any attempt at investing in an at-home shop. The surgery left pins in Sara’s shoulder and arm, and the time in the hospital cost money that he didn’t have readily available. The Hardins didn’t have insurance, and their savings account at the bank wasn’t enough to cover the bills. Tom needed to sell the remaining hogs. So far, he’d only earned four hundred dollars from the hogs and cattle he’d sold, but a number of hogs were still running wild in the woods.

  The day Sara returned home, she was a shell of her former self. Her face was still swollen and drawn to the right side, and several of her teeth were missing. Her left eye was bloodshot and her vision blurry. The pain was unceasing. Her broken shoulder was in a brace, and she could hardly walk because of poor balance, but at least she was home, back to the house where she’d lived since shortly after their marriage. Yet this was little comfort since it was also the place where she had been left for dead. Often, she just sat on the couch and wept, drying her tears with her dress. The new television screen showed the gray images of the Baton Rouge station, WBRZ, but she didn’t really watch it. Sara never even acknowledged the television set. When she heard footsteps nearing the room, she would cower, trying to hide. Then she’d go stiff as a corpse until she understood who was approaching.

  Perhaps the worst of it was the cold shame of the attack, the rape itself. How could the family speak of rape? There were no adequate words for the attack on the homemaker, mother, and wife. Truth be told, Tom and Sara never really talked about anything beyond trivial matters—daily activities and books. Words had not come to them to address the anguish and sense of violation. Silence was its own punishment, and it continued to force more pain on the broken Hardin family like some kind of cosmic millstone crushing them into powder, grinding each of them into the dirt.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  While Sara slept, Tom stood in the kitchen cutting onions. He was cooking, baking potatoes and a pork roast in the oven, picking up the slack in the housework. This was the first time he’d kept house since their marriage. Corrine cooked a little. Nelda helped out. So did Martina and a few others, women from the Methodist church, friends and family in the Zion community. Mostly, folks brought food to the house ready to eat, but they never ventured beyond the front porch.

  Sara slept in the bedroom, an oral tranquilizer causing her to breathe with shallow breaths, the sound of a whisper floating from her dry lips. On days when Tom had to go to work, Martina or Corrine stayed with her all day, and this made Tom feel a little better. She told him the pills chased away the dark shadows, cloudy images of being attacked. Still, when she slept, sometimes the certainty of death visited her dreams, and she’d awake screaming and fighting a ghost.

  The phone on the wall rang. Tom dropped the kitchen knife into the sink, wiping his hands on a rag, grabbing the phone just as the third ring hit the first note. He answered it saying, “Hello. Hardin residence.” He spoke softly, hoping the noise wouldn’t wake his wife.

  “Is this Tom Hardin?” the woman asked. Her voice was sweet and youthful sounding.

  “Yes. Who’s speaking?”

  “I can’t say. But I need to tell you that Sloan Parnell was the one that raped your wife. He did it to her on account that you whipped him.”

  “Ma’am, how do you know this?” Tom massaged his temple with his partially wet left hand.

  “Sloan talks a lot when he’s drinking heavy, and he’s always drinking heavy.”

  “Who is this?”

  “I can’t tell you. The Parnells are powerful people. And I’m scared.”

  “How do I know it’s true? I don’t even know who you are.”

  “He told me your dog bit his left forearm bad, and it’s not healed. He said your father’s pocket watch is under his truck seat. It’s inscribed with Ansel Earl Hardin on it. Sometimes he gets drunk and calls me.”

  “I’m not missing my daddy’s watch.”

  “You’d better go check, Tommy.”

  He was stunned. Almost no one ever called him “Tommy” except for a small circle of friends and neighbors. He couldn’t place the voice, and he didn’t think the old watch was missing. He kept it in his top dresser drawer. It was there the last time he checked, as best he could recall.

  “Lady, why are you telling me all of this?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Sara deserves a little mercy for something she did a while back. And the Lord’s been dealing with me, chastising me for some sinful ways in my life. He’s been speaking to me, talking to me in my prayer times. The Lord said she didn’t deserve what she got. But I better go now. I’ve told you all the Lord put on my heart to say.”

  The phone went dead. Tom held it to his ear a few seconds and then hung up.

  He went into the bedroom where Sara slept, trying not to disturb her.

  She spoke without opening her eyes, sounding startled. “Tommy, is that you?”

  “Yes, I’m looking for a handkerchief.”

  He searched the chest of drawers, but the watch was gone. He considered whether he should go directly to Brownlow but decided against it. What would it accomplish anyway? The marshal either wouldn’t or couldn’t do anything, and Sloan might destroy the evidence linking him to the crime.

  Tom contemplated killing Sloan, perhaps shooting him with a .308 rifle, his old Savage 99 lever action deer rifle. Shoot him from the highway as he walked out of his front door to go drinking. Or maybe sucker him into a fistfight and take an oak stick to him, not quitting until the man died. These were twisted images that he sought to dispel from his mind, but the violent vision lingered despite his best efforts.

  He studied it a while, considered it all. He would make a reasonable plan to deal with the knowledge and do something. In the meantime, he needed to verify that the watch was still in Sloan’s possession.

  Tom called Nelda and asked her if she’d be willing to come over and relieve him of his care-giving. He asked her if James Luke was home, and she said he was. Nelda and Tom swapped shifts looking after Sara. Wesley was over at Corrine’s house.

  When Nelda arrived, Tom drove over to James Luke’s house. When he got there, dogs started barking, two yellow curs running from James Luke’s barn, a small pole barn that sagged a little in the middle.

  From inside the barn, Tom heard a sharp whistle and the dogs settled down a bit. There was nothing moving at the barn, though James Luke’s truck was parked beside the building. Tom buttoned his denim jacket. The barn door opened, and James Luke stuck his head out and waved, hollering at the dogs. Tom walked over and found that James Luke was pouring out wheat shorts to feed some small pigs he’d gathered from the woods. The pigs fought over the food, squealing and tussling.

  “Damned things are crazy as all hell. I’d say they’re feral and would eat me if I fell in the trough.” James Luke grinned.

  “Yeah, hogs are killers, but not that young,” Tom said.

  “Hell, years ago I saw a hog eating a half-alive calico cat in a thunderstorm. Old hog carried the cat out into our yard and was eating it under an oak tree. I shot the hog and killed it, but there was no way I was going to eat it after what he had done to the cat.”

  “That’s sick,” Tom said, standing with his hands in his pockets. He’d heard the tale once before but doubted its veracity.

  “You need something, friend?” James Luke asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Tom said, stalling a couple of seconds, and then he launched into the story, telling James Luke about the phone call and the pocket watch and the marks left from the dog attack.

  James Luke appeared taken aback, one hand gripping the rope handle of his bucket, the other holding a cigarette. “Sloan Parnell is a no-good sumbitch. If he did that to your wife, he deserves some pain. He’ll just do it again. Let’s go get his sorry ass right now,” James Luke said, his face red with anger.

  “No, I just need to se
e if he has Daddy’s watch in the vehicle and decide what to do next,” Tom said.

  Earlier in the year, James Luke had a rift with P.T. Parnell over some money. The elder Parnell had been James Luke’s former drinking buddy, and he was some kind of business partner in a venture to raise giant sinker cypress logs from Lake Tickfaw and sell them to the state under Governor Davis, a kickback scheme that Tom never could quite understand. On top of this, there was a large tract of land that he was going to buy for the price of the stand of timber, but P.T. bought the property out from under James Luke. He was always working an angle to make money in a side business. Most of the time it was a fly-by-night scam that included taking someone else’s cash. Because James Luke and P.T. had a falling out, he cursed the Parnells daily.

  “Why not go right now?” James Luke said. You want to take after him? I say let’s ride,” James Luke threw his bucket into the feed room where he stored grain in a large steel bin. He took a hard pull on his Camel.

  Tom said, “I need more information. Then we can go check his comings and goings, search his truck to see if we can find the old watch.”

  “Don’t ass around. I say let’s do something now. He might get rid of the watch. That’s all of the rock solid evidence you ought to need. The dog bite on his arm might heal up, make it an invisible scar.” He gripped a bottle of beer that had been sitting on a 55 gallon oil drum, and swallowed a quarter of it in two gulps.

  “I won’t waste any time. But the woman said he’s injured on his left forearm, and Jubal must have latched onto him good, which makes sense with the chain broke and all. I know he’d try to bite the hell out of somebody if he wanted off the chain bad enough to break it.”

  “What do you really want to do?”