It wasn’t long before I started to taste salty tears too, but mine were quiet. I tried to take another bite of pie, but it stuck in my throat. I put my plate down on the small wicker table and wiped my eyes as secretively as I could. I hated crying, but I figured it was for a good cause. I knew that if I’d lost my momma and daddy, I’d have cried buckets, and I knew it would do Gemma some good.
Gemma and I walked home that day in silence. She spent most of her time sniffling and wiping her nose on the back of her hand. I spent my time kicking a pebble along the path in front of me.
That night at suppertime, Gemma stayed in our room, tired out from all the crying, and went to bed early. Daddy had made another bed for my room, so Gemma had a nice bed to crawl into just a few feet away from mine. I left her there after asking her a few times if she was sure she wasn’t hungry.
Luke came to supper that night as he usually did, so I made sure to pretty myself up as best I could before I went downstairs. I’d taken to wearing a dress to supper on nights when Luke was coming, and I’d learned to do a much better braid.
“What went on with Gemma today?” Momma asked as she scooped peas onto her plate. “Is she sick?”
“Maybe she’s sick in a sort of way,” I said. I took as few peas as I could without looking like I hated them, which I did, and passed them on to Luke with a smile. “We stopped by Miss Cleta’s today, and Gemma had a good cry on her.”
“She had a good cry on Miss Cleta?” Daddy asked.
“Right on her apron.”
“About her momma and daddy?” Luke asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Poor thing,” Momma said, her voice shaky with sadness. Momma could work up tears faster than anyone I’d ever seen.
“About time,” Daddy said. “Ain’t right not to grieve properly.” “Well, she grieved, all right,” I said. “I think she’s plumb tuckered out after it. That’s why she’s in bed.”
“Well, if she’s gonna pick a person to cry on,” Daddy said, “Miss Cleta’s a good one for it. That’s one kind soul.”
“I’m worried she’ll go hungry,” Momma said, looking up at the ceiling like she could see Gemma through the floor. “It ain’t good for a girl to go without a hot supper.”
“We had rhubarb pie at Miss Cleta’s,” I told her. “Gemma had two pieces and two glasses of lemonade. She’s had food, sure enough.”
“Rhubarb pie and lemonade don’t take the place of ham and collard greens.”
I didn’t argue with Momma. She was pretty determined about the importance of good eating, and I knew I wouldn’t convince her of anything. Instead I turned my attention to Luke. “Goin’ fishin’ on Saturday mornin’?”
“Plan to. Early as I can get my eyes open. Barter’s Lake is jumpin’ with bass, so I hear.”
“Usually is,” Daddy said.
“I got my boat ready to go out on the water. Patched it up last night, so I’m lookin’ forward to it.”
I pushed my peas around my plate and sighed. “I ain’t been fishin’ in a while. Daddy used to take me, but we ain’t gone in weeks.”
“We can go fishin’ if you want, Jessilyn. I just need to make me a new pole.” Daddy gave Luke a hearty smile. “Last pole I had sits at the bottom of the pond. I tossed it in the water when I lost my catfish, mad as a snake.”
“Don’t go bringin’ up your temper, Harley Lassiter,” Momma said, pointing her fork at him. “You’ve lost more poles in that creek because of it. There must be about twenty of them in there.”
“Just try bein’ this close,” Daddy told her, pinching two fingers almost shut, “without catchin’ the biggest catfish in the South. See how long you keep your temper.”
“And that’s another thing. Every time I hear about this catfish that you keep losin’, it gets bigger and bigger.”
“It was five feet long, sure as I’m born.”
“Five feet long! It started out two feet and grew to five feet in three sightin’s of it.”
“Maybe it ain’t the same catfish. Maybe I’m seein’ the whole family at different times.”
Momma sputtered and got up to refill the water pitcher. “Harley Lassiter, you’re more full of it than Tom Bodine’s cow field!”
Luke and I shared a smile, and Daddy took one look at us and laughed in his big, loud way. “I always know how to get her goat. Don’t I, Jessilyn?”
Luke smiled at me again and said, “Come on with me if you want, Jessie. You can bring Gemma too. I’ve got room in my boat. You’d have to get up before the sun, though.”
My heart started to beat like crazy, and I looked at Momma and Daddy with pleading eyes. “Can we go? I’ll still get my chores done. I promise.”
Momma and Daddy exchanged a glance before Daddy said, “Well, Jessie . . . much as I hate someone takin’ my place as your fishin’ partner, I do have other things to do besides fishin’.”
“I’ll watch out for them like my own sisters,” Luke reassured them.
I wasn’t too happy about being likened to his sister, but I figured it was worth putting up with to go fishing with him. I just said, “So I can go?”
“You can go,” Daddy said, tossing his napkin onto the table. “Providin’ you don’t catch my giant catfish. That’s for me to do.”
Momma shook her head and poured more water into Luke’s glass. “It’s more likely they’ll catch some of your old fishin’ rods, Harley.”
“There likely ain’t any left. The giant catfish family probably ate them.”
“Enough catfish talk,” Momma said.
“All right,” Daddy said, winking at me while Momma wasn’t looking. “No more catfish talk.”
Momma said, “Good” and sat down and went back to eating the rest of her greens.
“’Course, I’ll show you all someday when I catch that seven-foot catfish.”
Momma must have kicked Daddy under the table just then because he let out a yelp and rubbed his shin.
I wasn’t too worried about finding out what happened. I was too busy thinking about Saturday morning and my fishing trip.
Chapter 7
If there was anything I knew about the South, it was that everything in the South was slow. People ate slow, talked slow, and walked slow. Heck, people even thought slow.
For example, Mr. Poppleberry, who ran the pharmacy on Second Street, was the slowest thinker I knew. If I asked him where he kept the quinine, he’d put a finger to his chin and say, “Hmm . . .” for about a minute, and then he’d say, “Miss Jessilyn, I think it’s on aisle three. No . . . no. I moved it last Friday. Or was that Wednesday? Couldn’t have been Wednesday because I closed up early on Wednesday seein’ as how my back was actin’ up. And it couldn’t have been Friday, neither, seein’ as how I spent Friday afternoon talkin’ to Digger Thompson about his grasshopper problem.”
Finally, after I’d heard about every day, he’d figure out which day it was by saying something like, “Now, that’s it, Miss Jessilyn. It was Tuesday. So it was. And it was about three o’clock because that was when Mrs. Sykes came in for her heart pills.” About five minutes in, I’d finally be shown to the quinine. And that was how it went when I wanted foot soak for Momma or bandages for Daddy’s blisters or anything.
Most people in town weren’t much different. It wasn’t that they were stupid; it was just that they liked to take their time and not rush at anything. That sort of way didn’t suit me too well. I was more of a rusher.
Momma always said she didn’t understand where I got it from. “But heaven knows, Jessilyn,” she’d often tell me, “if you keep rushin’ around for somethin’, you won’t notice when you’ve got it.”
That Friday night was one of those times when the slowness of the South was making me restless. That night just plain lasted too long.
Gemma had said she didn’t want to go fishing. I’d figured she might not because she’d never really taken to it before. So she was sleeping soundly and snoring in the bed near mine.
&
nbsp; But me? I’d close my eyes and toss and turn; then I’d hold my clock up to the moonlight to find that I’d wasted only ten minutes. I’d get up, wander the room awhile, trying not to squeak the floorboards and wake Gemma, and stick my face against the window screen for a little fresh air. Then I’d get back to bed and try again.
It was no use. I wasn’t sleeping that night.
By four o’clock, I knew I couldn’t take it any longer. The plan had been that I would wait outside for Luke to come by and pick me up at five o’clock, but I decided that since I was already awake, I’d head on over to Luke’s and wait outside his house instead. The walk through the fields would spend a good twenty minutes of my time, and I thought it was easier to go to the lake from his house because he was closer to it than we were. Seemed to me I was doing him a favor.
When I set out at quarter past four, I had made a pretty good case to myself that I was doing the right thing. I grabbed my pole and some bait I’d gotten ready the day before and walked off through the darkened fields. I cut through the corn crop to save time. It took me about a minute to get my eyes used to the dark, but I managed to find a good path in the middle. The corn rustled and whacked my face as I went, but I ignored it, breathing in the early morning air and daydreaming about my day with Luke.
It was as still and quiet as could be once I came out on the other side of the crop, with only the crickets and frogs to interrupt, and I slowed my pace to enjoy the peace of it.
I passed Herschel Jode’s house, climbed over the fallen tree that belonged to Lyle Bowman, and splashed through the creek that ran across the back section of Tyrus Black-well’s farm. Just five minutes from Luke’s house, I started to think it wasn’t so peaceful as it had been, and I slowed down. I knew I heard something, but I couldn’t figure out what, so I stopped altogether and tilted my head to one side to get a good listen.
It seemed to me there was some sort of buzzing noise, and as I crept farther, I realized it was whispering I was hearing. Not really whispering, though, it was more like what Ginny Lee’s little sister called whispering, which was really just yelling in a hoarse voice.
That’s what I heard as I continued to move closer to Cole Mundy’s property. I knew that property well because all of us kids used to climb on the big magnolia tree there. But when Cole bought it, he caught us playing on that tree and raised a ruckus, swinging his big rifle around and yelling at us to get off his land. I never went near it anymore, but I was feeling that curiosity Daddy had always told me would get me in big trouble one day, and I went even closer until I reached the magnolia tree. It was there that I hid, practically holding my breath as I peeked through the split in the trunk.
I could see a dozen men standing around a fire in a pit, all of them wearing white robes. I shivered the minute I caught sight of them and ducked further down behind the tree.
I knew who they were. Maybe not their true names, but I knew what my daddy had told me about those men who wore the white robes and what they did.
“They’re cowards,” he’d told me when I asked who they were as they held a small parade through town. “They’re cowards, plain and simple. That’s why they wear them hoods. They like to push around people they’re afraid of, and they hide their faces to keep from lettin’ on who they are.”
He’d told me that they didn’t like colored people or Jewish or Catholic people, either. They only liked people like themselves. It frightened me to see them this way, standing around that fire in the dark, sparks from the flames floating on the breeze around them. One of the men was praying in a strained voice, and the others were nodding in agreement I wanted nothing more than to get away from there fast, but I couldn’t move. I was too afraid.
I studied the men, trying to figure out who they were. I knew one of them had to be Cole Mundy. After all, it was his property, and he was mean enough to be part of a group like that. And the man talking was Walt Blevins. I’d have known that gravelly voice anywhere. Hoping to get an idea of who the others were, I shifted to get a better look. To my dismay, when I moved my right foot, a stick snapped, making a loud cracking sound.
I froze, and so did the men. The talking stopped, and the hooded heads looked up. I ducked, but only enough to still be able to see them, and I really did stop breathing. I was afraid they’d hear it. I was so scared then that every move I made seemed bigger than it was. To me, that cracking stick had sounded like a gunshot.
“Who’s there?” one of the men called gruffly. “Who is it?”
Of course I didn’t answer. I didn’t move a muscle.
The men started murmuring to one another, and one of them leaned over and seized a rifle that was set against a tree. That was all I needed to get my legs into gear, and though they felt like rubber bands, I managed to make them propel me across the property toward Luke’s house. God graced me with speed that early morning, guiding me across the creek and up to Luke’s door before the mournful howling of Cole’s dog came within earshot. There was no need to pound on the door, as my fists were cocked to do, because Luke threw it open before I had the chance. He had fishing gear in a canvas sack that hung across his back, and his lips were poised to whistle a tune, but when he caught sight of me, he stopped dead still and dropped the sack on the ground.
“Jessie, what’re you doin’ here?” he demanded. “Is some-thin’ wrong? someone hurt over at your place or some-thin’?”
I was so out of breath all I could manage was a shake of my head and a spluttering “Gotta get inside. Now!” I threw one terrified look over my shoulder before Luke picked up the sack in one fist, took my collar in the other, and hauled me inside. By the time Luke slammed and locked the door behind us, I was nearly hysterical inside, my mind reeling with all the ways I could have been hurt.
“You the reason that huntin’ party’s out?” he asked me pointedly.
The howling was growing louder and closer, and I felt miserable that I’d led trouble to Luke’s doorstep, but all I could do was nod. I watched Luke as he peered out his curtain, one hand on his shotgun that lay propped against the wall beside the window. The howling reached a crescendo, a mournful warning that my curiosity had brought the fury of evil against us, and I peered at Luke with a grimace of regret. “I’m sorry, Luke,” I managed to murmur. “It’s my fault.”
Luke said nothing to me. He let the curtains drop back into place and messed up his hair, pushed his suspenders down, and unbuttoned his shirt. He threw his shirt on a chair and then went behind the closet door, coming back out in nothing but sleeping pants. I suddenly felt like I needed to close my eyes.
“Get under the bed,” Luke ordered. “Get under there fast and don’t make a sound.” I hesitated, not sure what was going on, but he whispered to me loudly, “Get under that bed now.”
I crawled in with Luke pushing me from behind and squeezed back as far as I could. If I pressed my cheek flat to the floor, I could get a glimpse of the doorway, where Luke went and stood, waiting tensely.
No more than ten seconds later, someone started pounding on the door. I waited, barely breathing, to see what Luke was going to do. He grabbed the shotgun and stood by the door. It took three knocks before he finally opened it. “What in blazes . . . ?” he said drearily, like he’d just woken up. “You boys tryin’ to give me a heart attack?”
“We’s lookin’ for someone, Luke,” Cole said. “Someone was sneakin’ on my property.”
The men had removed their robes, and I strained to get a good look at who they were. Unfortunately there were only two, Cole and Walt, the ones I already knew of.
“I ain’t figurin’ on entertainin’ this early in the mornin’, boys,” Luke said in irritation. “I tend to sleep this time of day.”
Cole seemed satisfied with Luke’s answer, but Walt craned his neck to look inside the cabin. “You sure you ain’t seen nobody? Cole’s dog done tracked somethin’ to the creek.”
Luke held his hands out in front of himself and asked, “Do I look like I been runni
n’ through creeks?”
“I ain’t talkin’ about you,” Walt said. “I’m askin’ if you seen anybody.”
“I just said I ain’t,” Luke argued back.
Walt looked around the place again and then said, “Then if you ain’t, you won’t care if I take a look around.”
He started to move into the house, but Luke put his arm across the doorway to stop him. “Funny thing is, I kinda do. Ain’t nothin’ in this here cabin you can’t see from where you are. And besides,” he continued, glancing down at Walt’s feet, “your boots are all muddy.” He flashed Walt a smile that was more a warning than a welcome. “I just mopped my floor yesterday.”
Every muscle in Luke’s body was primed for action, and Cole stepped away, respectful of the fact that Luke was twenty pounds heavier and ten years younger than him. “That’s okay, Luke. Sorry we woke ya.”
Walt only stared at Luke. Cole called for him to move along, but even when he did, Walt never stopped staring at Luke. He just backed away like Luke was a king or something, although Walt’s intent wasn’t to show reverence.
Luke slammed the door and locked it, peeked through the curtains for a couple minutes, and then whispered, “You can come on out, Jessilyn.”
After I crawled out and straightened my clothes, I sat in a nearby chair.
He swung around to look at me, his face creased with anger. “What in the sam hill were you doin’ out there? Are you tryin’ to get yourself killed?”
“I didn’t think I’d come to any trouble, Luke. Honest! I was just comin’ to meet you. I thought it’d save you the trouble . . .”
“Fact is, Jessilyn, you brought trouble to my door instead. Now, what’d you do to get those boys on your trail?”
“All I did was see them. That’s it. I was walkin’ past Cole Mundy’s place, and I saw them there, all dressed in them white hoods. There was a whole bunch of them.”
“And you just had to investigate, is that it? Jessilyn, you beat all. Them men ain’t playin’ around. That ain’t no game. Hear that dog? He’s out huntin’ for spies, not rabbits. Who taught you to sneak around in the dark like that?”
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