Listen to the Mockingbird

by Penny Rudolph

  Then I heard the voice, and every drop of blood in me congealed.

  “This is my house, you damn nigra bitch, and I’ll not be kept waiting at the door.”

  Somehow, as though slogging through mud, I moved forward and nudged Winona aside.

  The door swung open a few inches to reveal a man, tall and slender and fine-looking in his Union lieutenant’s uniform. His flesh looked a little pale and there were half moons of darkness beneath his eyes, but otherwise he looked much the same. The forelock of red-blond hair still swung jauntily above his eye.

  “Ah, the fair Matilda in the flesh!” He smiled into my eyes, for all the world as if we were friends. “As I have been explaining to this slave here, she belongs to me. I own her, same as I own this ranch. I am the master here. You do realize that? Of course, you do. A married woman owns nothing in her own right. That is the law. And I am your husband.”

  Andrew smiled again and stepped inside.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  ”You did me grievous harm, my dear. But I am prepared to overlook it.” The statement slipped from Andrew’s lips like drops of honeyed hemlock.

  “Get out.” I ground out the words through clenched teeth. Now I could smell the whiskey on his breath and see the drunkard’s web of fine red lines that had claimed his nose and cheeks. Still, he looked quite dapper in his freshly pressed uniform.

  “Your countenance is exceeding fine, Matilda. You are still the most handsome woman I have ever laid eyes upon.” His tone was caressing.

  “How—?”

  “Did I find you? I came down from Craig with Colonel Carson, though I admit to little liking for the man nor him for me. So, he left me here. I’ve asked for you in every town I passed through, though I did reckon you had gone back to St. Louis. Imagine my amazement when the saloonkeeper was acquainted with you. Now, if you please, stand aside.”

  “I do not please.”

  Andrew put his hand gently on my shoulder and stroked it. Then, he shoved.

  I staggered backward, and he stepped inside. His eyes, shiny as new buttons, seized mine. He crossed the parlor then turned back, wanting me to see him run his gaze slowly over the fireplace, the walls, the furniture. “First-rate house, from the look of it. You invested my money well.”

  He ambled back to me as casually as if he had just returned home from a day’s journey and leaned forward, his breath brushing my cheek. I recoiled. He pulled me to him and squeezed my breast. “Did I interrupt your morning primping?”

  As if it were no part of me, my hand flew toward his jaw. My palm stung as if it had touched acid.

  Laughing, he danced away. “You robbed me, Matilda. I found it most difficult to believe that you had such mettle. I’m sure the sheriff here would like to hear about it.”

  “I turned myself in. Served my time in jail.”

  “Did you now? That must have been congenial. Did you fuck every guard or just the ones you liked?”

  “Get out!”

  Winona had remained riveted to the spot, watching. Now she threw the door wide.

  “Oh, come now, Matilda.” Andrew gazed through the doorway. “This surely is a fine spread. How much land do we have here?”

  I took a step forward, thinking, I suppose, to flail at him with my bare fists. But just then, in the back of the house, Zia waked from her nap and let out a howl.

  Andrew’s eyes fixed on mine and a puzzled look spread over his face. “A child?”

  The words came calmly, as if rehearsed without my knowing. “My son.”

  Andrew tried to read my face. “You…”

  “Yes.”

  Andrew was drawing himself up with the new thought. Winona was staring at me. I looked down at my hands, then back at Andrew, trying to make my eyes soft. “I suppose he is that, Andrew. Perhaps I was wrong, keeping a son from his father. Would you like to see him?”

  His eyes held mine as he nodded.

  “I will fetch him for you.” I strove not to break into a run as I left the room.

  Zia gurgled when she saw me and held out her arms to be picked up.

  Despite his vanity that he had fathered a son and his slightly drunken state, Andrew was not so stupid that he would not soon recognize the cry of a baby less than a year old and realize that any son of his by me would have to be at least six.

  I gave Zia the rag doll she had thrown from her crib and took a piece of horehound candy from the bag on Winona’s bureau; she was teething and liked to bite on the hard candy. Cooing happily, she reached sticky hands to my shirtwaist and tried to unbutton it. She adored buttons. I took it off and gave it to her. She drooled her appreciation but when I started to move away, she began to whimper.

  I grasped her chubby arms and looked into her huge eyes. “You must be very, very still,” I whispered, and she must have understood because she didn’t make a sound as I left the room and slipped down the hall to my office.

  I lifted the pistol from its hook above my desk and walked as quietly as I could down the hall, my hand on the trigger and ready. Stepping fast into the parlor, I propped my legs apart, held the gun as steady as I could with two trembling hands and aimed the barrel straight at Andrew’s chest. “Get out. Now!”

  He had been standing at the door, looking out. Now he stared at me, his jaw slack and open. Winona stood, stone still, a few feet from him.

  “Do not doubt for one moment that I will kill you, Andrew,” I said, wondering whether I really could.

  He whirled and grabbed Winona. “Then kill your precious nigger!”

  She squealed and jerked away; he pulled her back. I slackened my finger on the trigger. Kicking at him, pummeling his chest with her fists, Winona brought up her knee. He yowled as he doubled over, and she spun out of the way.

  I moved toward him, the pistol aimed, my hands more steady now.

  He straightened and backed toward the door, hands involuntarily rising as the barrel of the gun approached.

  My gun still at the ready, I followed him outside to the wagon that had brought him. Andrew was never one to sit long in a saddle.

  Without a word, he climbed into the seat, took up the reins and turned the horse toward town. Then he stopped, looked down at me and said quite conversationally, “I will be back. You are my wife. This is my land.”

  I watched the wagon move along the trail until it all but disappeared. Then I dropped the gun to my side, and my stomach began to roll.

  In the doorway, Winona was shaking her head. “That be one mean somabitch. Good riddance.”

  A wave of weariness stole over me; my body seemed made of granite and older than the mountains. My feet lurched unsteadily and my head ached as though a minie ball had roosted there. “He will come back, Winona.”

  She saw me to a chair and brought a damp cloth for my head. “You get yourself to that fort and tell that general.”

  “No,” I said dully.

  “What you mean, no? He got a viper right there in his vest pocket and it dang near bite you and you say no? That general maybe can help.”

  “Andrew is my legal husband, Winona. He’s right. He owns Mockingbird Spring. And you. And me. The general can’t do anything about that. For that matter, he may realize he can simply purchase the ranch from Andrew.”

  “You can beat that wagon on the horse of yours. Sell it to the general before he get there!”

  “It would hardly be right for me to sell the ranch to General Canby when one of his own men has a better claim to it than I.”

  We both considered the bleak facts.

  “He knows you helped me, Winona. He might have killed you—”

  “At least he be nursing his nether place a good long time!”

  I tried to laugh but the sound twisted in my throat like a rope.

  999

  I devoted the entire afternoon to staring at a smudge on the parlor wall, unable to muster the energy to walk down the hall.

  Winona made many sojourns through the parlor, pretending to be cleani
ng; but I knew she was checking on me. Perhaps she thought I might take a gun and swallow the barrel. I do own that I considered it.

  She mopped her brow with a kerchief. “Heat come mighty early this year.”

  For myself, I felt chill clear to the bone.

  She was polishing an already spotless window. “I bet a pound of gold to a goose feather he not just crazy from whiskey,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Of course, it’s whiskey,” I snapped. “It’s always been whiskey. But nothing changes the fact that he’s right. That’s the law. The godforsaken law. He can take everything, and there’s nothing I can do to stop him. I reckon all he has to do is take our marriage paper to the alcalde, and he and Zeke will be out here to enforce it.”

  “That Andrew be dosing hisself with something. You see them eyes?”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “The blacks of his eyes are real big. Injuns drink something that do that. It makes them all het up and mean when they go on the warpath.”

  “That’s a merry thought.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Winona fried up some chicken for supper, and I was doing my best to eat it, though it tasted like sawdust. Zia was in fine fettle, gurgling and drooling and banging her spoon on the table from her perch on the box Homer had built for her.

  I was still chewing my first bite of chicken, trying to get it to go down, when a tiny puff of breeze slid over the back of my neck. A faint stench of stale whiskey and something sweet and rancid hung in the air. I darted a glance over my shoulder. My jaw went slack, and the food I had swallowed turned to stone.

  Andrew was slouching in the doorway. The air was utterly still.

  “I do hate to interrupt your supper.” A small smile played about his lips as he savored our shock. He had replaced his uniform with a velvet waistcoat, a cravat of blue satin and a narrow-brim hat. He would have seemed quite the dandy if the eyes above it all had not been those of a coyote sighting on a hare. “I have come for my son. Where is he?”

  “You have no son.” The words rasped in my dry throat. “Your son is dead.”

  His eyes narrowed to slits. “You take me for a fool? I heard him.”

  My body felt like beeswax that had got too near a fire. “You heard Zia.”

  Andrew’s gaze took in Winona, still rooted to her chair, her eyes like saucers. He shifted his stare to Zia.

  “That’s no son of mine. That’s a nigger baby. You fucking niggers now?” He grasped both my arms and lifted me from my chair. “Where is my son?” he bellowed, shaking me. The chair crashed to the floor. Andrew ignored it. “Get him. I will not have him grow up with a pack of whores and a nigger brat.”

  I willed myself numb. “Andrew, I lied to you. It’s true I was expecting when I left, but I lost the baby.”

  He reared back and squinted at me, as though he was having trouble seeing, then slapped me hard across the face. Pain bloomed in my cheek like an evil flower.

  “I own this land and I want you off it,” he roared, hammering my shoulders with his fists until I lost my balance and fell.

  He watched as I struggled to rise, then swaggered away. Before I could think what he meant to do, he had snatched Zia from her makeshift chair. She sensed the peril; she barely whimpered.

  Winona pitched herself at Andrew like a human catapult, but he caught her face with the flat of his hand and slammed her backward.

  “I shall teach you to keep your knees together,” he hissed at her. Then his voice turned chillingly soft: “Why should my son die and this nigger baby live?”

  Grasping Zia by the shoulder in the careless way a child holds a rag doll, Andrew stalked into the parlor.

  Winona and I dashed after him but pulled up short just inside the doorway.

  He was leaning against the wall. A small, prideful smile fit his face like a mask. His blue evening coat showed two streaks where the baby had drooled.

  A horrible vision of the puppy, his head dashed against that other wall, swam into my head.

  “It’s a chilly evening,” Andrew announced. “We need a fire.”

  “It too hot…” Winona’s voice started thin and trailed off.

  His eyes were fixed on me. “Perhaps you didn’t hear me. I said I want a fire.”

  My legs moved toward the fireplace as if they were walking under water. The log box next to the tile panel still held plenty of wood. My quaking fingers laid waste to five matches, but at last the tinder flamed.

  I stood and turned to him. A gush of gorge rose in my throat and I swayed on my feet, but my voice was like a ship becalmed. “That’s a handsome coat, Andrew. You always cut such a fine figure.”

  He tilted his head and studied me with a sly look. Zia’s eyes were huge and dark. She had nearly swallowed her thumb trying to find some comfort in it.

  “I’ve not seen the like of that coat in all these years,” I went on. “You do us an honor to dress so finely for your visit.”

  “I would not squander a pair of filthy dungarees on such swill as you have become. I intended to attend a reception for the general’s wife.”

  “Did you send your regrets? Did you tell Mrs. Canby you would be visiting me instead?”

  “Of course not.” He seemed to puzzle over my question and find no sense in it. “There is ample time yet to present myself.” His piercing gaze raked over me. “Your hair, there by the fire, is outlined with gold. Your hair was what I loved most about you.”

  I drew a breath, and the sound of it seemed deafening.

  “Yes,” he said, as if thinking it over and agreeing with himself. “Your hair is, indeed, your finest feature. It has a fire of its own, doesn’t it, Winona?” He turned to her; and very slowly, she nodded. “Get over there by your mistress.”

  Winona blinked but didn’t move.

  “I said, get over there.”

  She seemed frozen to the spot, her eyes glassy. Andrew jerked Zia’s arm, and the baby began to scream. Winona scurried to my side.

  “That’s better,” Andrew nodded approvingly. “Now take that stick, Winona, that bit of kindling there on the left, under the log.”

  She held his eyes, motionless as a mountain.

  “Take the stick.” He shook Zia. The baby howled, and he shook her harder. Her head wobbled.

  Horrified that her neck might break, I lunged at him. He blocked my assault with his knee and pitched me to the rag rug on the floor. A scream rose from Zia then halted as suddenly as if it had been chopped through with a knife.

  Winona snatched up the stick. The logs in the fireplace toppled with a sound like a muffled drum roll.

  The wand of wood in Winona’s hand flamed, beginning to consume itself.

  “Bring it here.” Now Andrew’s tone was smooth, cajoling.

  Ever so slowly, she did as she was bid; but when she reached him, he shook his head. “Hold it to your mistress’ hair,” he crooned, the words rolling gently from his lips.

  Winona’s eyes and mouth were enormous dark circles in her face. Finally, her mouth moved. “No, sir, no. You not do this.”

  “But I’m not going to do it. You are.”

  Winona’s mouth worked, but no sound came out. Her head jerked right then left.

  Andrew grasped Zia’s shoulders and held her high, then began to swing her headfirst toward the floor. I half leapt toward him, but his arm had already stopped mid-arc. He nodded at Winona.

  I could almost hear her muscles tightening to the bursting point. A strangled-animal moan came from her lips.

  He nodded again, sharply. “Do as I tell you.”

  Slowly, she moved the stick toward me. I willed myself utterly still. The stench of burning hair filled my nostrils. The fire flared, the heat searing my neck. My heart beat like a wild thing in my chest; my brain ordered me to scream but I clenched my jaw shut, knowing Andrew’s cruelty thrived on screams.

  Something hit the front door, first tentatively, then louder. An anxious voice rose behind it. “Matty! Why the f
ire? What’s going on?”

  I had forgotten our pact to build a fire if something boded danger. I had meant a brush fire outdoors, but the chimney smoke on a warm night must have brought Tonio on the horse I had left with him.

  Andrew gaped at the door as if he were slow-witted.

  “Tonio!” I rasped, my voice dry as tinder. “Go! Go away!” Then the fire reached my scalp, and I shrieked.

  A crack of splitting boards sounded, the door gave way and Tonio hurled into the room.

  “Sweet Jesus!” He did not pause to take in the full scene. Buttons bounced on the floor as he ripped his shirt open, threw himself over me, wrapped my head in the shirt, pummeled my head with his hands.

  When he pulled away the shirt, I rolled into a crouch and swung my face toward Andrew. Tonio followed my gaze.

  Andrew’s eyes had narrowed to surly slits. The click of a pistol hammer seemed to echo in the silent room, the barrel like an eye, fixed on Tonio.

  “You havin’ this sweet white body between your sheets, my frien’?” The liquor slurred Andrew’s words. “You’ll like get the French pox from her. She’s prob’ly warmed every bed in the territory. Or chilled it, more’s the like.”

  I tried to breathe, but my lungs wouldn’t open.

  Ever so slowly, Andrew took aim and pulled the trigger. Tonio seemed to rise into the air, then fold up as he sank to the floor.

  I tried to rise, but my legs turned to jelly and went out from under me.

  Zia, quiet for so long, began to scream—long, terrified, sobbing screams. Andrew grabbed her by one arm. She slipped out of his hand. Hiccoughing between short shrill bleats, she tried to crawl away. In her panic, she struck her head on the leg of the table that stood next to the wood-box. Framed by the table’s legs was a row of mockingbirds on a tile panel.

  Andrew’s eyes went flat. He swept Zia up and stuck the end of the pistol into her ear. Her cries rose then dwindled to whimpers. He drew the hammer back. She gave a high-pitched shriek. He jerked the gun in anger. She grabbed her ear where the muzzle had rammed it; when she drew her hand away I could see the round, red mark the metal had made.

  Like someone whose mind is dead but whose body lives on, Winona began to lumber past Tonio’s crumpled body toward Andrew.