Daddy turned to Luke, who was now standing near him, one hand hanging on to the porch pillar. “Luke, I’d be just as obliged if you’d stay behind with my girls.” He lowered his voice. “I’d feel mighty good knowin’ they wasn’t alone tonight, you hear?”
Luke tipped his hat. “Yes’r.”
Daddy’s tone and the look on his face when he spoke to Luke made me even more nervous than I’d been. Now I knew for sure that he was scared for us, and my daddy didn’t scare too easily. I pulled my knees up to my chin and hugged them, watching Daddy tug his hat down tighter before heading out into the light droplets of rain that had begun to fall. “Be careful, Daddy.”
“Oh, I’ll be fine, darlin’,” he said with a lighthearted smile.
“Ain’t nothin’ old Jeff Pollard’s goin’ to do to me. He’s been a fine neighbor right these twenty years, and he ain’t like to do nothin’ bad.”
I returned the pipe to its place on the mantel and told Momma where Daddy had gone. I stared out the front window, watching the truck leave the house, my heart heavy. I had a persistent feeling of doom these days, like something awful waited for me around every corner. Fear had become my constant companion, and I hated to see my daddy head off into any situation that could be dangerous.
Momma came up behind me and took a look out the window. “That Jeff Pollard. What a sight.” Then she went back to her humming and dish cleaning.
I left Momma and Gemma to their busy work and walked out to the porch, where Luke sat tapping his foot.
“Rainin’ good now,” he told me.
“S’pose.” I settled in the seat next to him. “You think Daddy’s safe out there at the Pollard place?”
“Don’t see why not.”
“But his wife says he’s bound to kill ’em, Mr. Otis said.”
“Aw, his bark’s worse than his bite, I’ll wager.”
“How d’you know?”
“Well, your daddy says so, and what your daddy says is usually right. Besides, Jeff Pollard works at the factory with me, and he seems a right good man. Most decent men don’t go doin’ awful stuff when they’re liquored up.”
“But the drink does bad things to people.”
Luke looked at me sideways. “How do you know? Your daddy don’t drink.”
I stumbled a little because I hadn’t told anybody about Buddy Pernell’s advances at the Independence Day social, and I didn’t feel like letting on now. So I just said, “I been to enough barn dances to know what men are like on the drink. It ain’t nice, is all.”
“No, it ain’t nice, but I don’t think a basically decent man would kill his family just from bein’ drunk. I’d say he’s gotta be a mean one to begin with if he’s gonna do somethin’ crazy like that.”
I wasn’t so sure I agreed with his theory. “Seems to me when a man loses his senses he’s bound to do anythin’. A man shouldn’t do somethin’ that takes away his senses, the way I see it.”
He nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “Well, I reckon you’re right about that. A man gets his sense from the good Lord. I guess he should be mindful of keepin’ it.”
“That’s right.” I sat there for a few moments listening to the thunder as it rumbled further and further away. “Luke?”
“What’s that?”
“You drink whiskey or anythin’?”
“What’s that?” he asked again, and I could tell I’d made him a bit uncomfortable.
“I said, you drink whiskey?”
“Well, you got to realize that there’s different kinds of drinkin’,” he said after a good throat clearing.
“That don’t make no sense,” I said. “Either you drink or you don’t.”
“Now, that ain’t so. There’s a difference in havin’ a little taste, like I do now and again, and in gettin’ good and drunk on purpose.”
“I don’t see no difference if it makes you fuzzy, and Daddy says even a little makes him fuzzy, so that’s why he don’t take it.”
“Well, each man’s different.”
I turned to him, and I’m sure my shock and petulance must have shown on my face. “Luke Talley, you tellin’ me you’re a drunk?”
“I ain’t no drunk!”
“You just told me you have a taste of whiskey some days. Seems to me that makes you a drunk.”
“No, it don’t! You just hold on to your britches there, little girl. I ain’t no such thing as a drunk.”
“I ain’t no little girl,” I hollered, standing up. “And I know a drunk when I seen one.”
“Now, Jessie . . .”
“For all we know, you got yourself a still hidin’ in your backyard.”
Luke stood to his full height and gave me a look that made me shiver. “Don’t you go sayin’ things like that about me, Jessilyn. You want to have the law on me? I may be many a thing, but I ain’t no moonshiner.”
He looked at me expectantly as though I’d feel sorry for my words any second, but my idol of Luke had been chipped, and I was fit to be tied. I turned away from him sharply and slammed the screen door open so hard it shook the house.
Momma came walking to the kitchen doorway when I marched inside. “What in the world . . . ? Jessilyn, what’ve you got a bee in your bonnet for?”
“Luke’s a rotten drunk,” I hollered, and then I ran up to my room with the vehemence of a woman scorned.
It was about twenty minutes of thinking about the bad side of alcohol before I decided I’d have to see Pastor Landry about my dilemma sometime. Surely a preacher man would have the right answer on such a subject. So it was with a heavy heart and a faded view of my perfect Luke that I wandered back downstairs about eight thirty. I avoided eye contact with him when I found him resting in Daddy’s chair in the den.
Momma was sitting by the lamp, her face as close to her embroidery as it could be without poking her eye out with her needle. “There you are, Jessilyn,” she said as though I’d never been distraught to find out my true love was a drunkard. “You think I should use sky blue for this pillowcase or cornflower?”
I really didn’t care about shades of colors just then, but as I plopped down next to Gemma on the couch, I mumbled, “Cornflower, I guess.”
“That’s what Gemma said. Cornflower it is.”
Gemma was reading her book quietly, but she took time to whisper to me, “What’s got you riled?”
“Nothin’,” I bit back. “Girl’s got a right to get her back up now and again, ain’t she?”
“Sorry I asked.”
I felt sorry for being so harsh, and I couldn’t quite figure why I had been either. But then, I couldn’t figure out much about myself those days. Luke tried catching my eye several times over the next ten minutes, but it was no use. I kept my eyes trained so hard on the portrait of my great-grandparents that my eye sockets felt about ready to pop.
At nine fifteen, the clock disturbed the silence to chime once. I was starting to worry about Daddy not being back yet, but one look at Momma’s easy expression told me I was probably exaggerating. If there had been real cause for worry, Momma would have been the first person to have it.
The clock wasn’t the only thing that disturbed the quiet, though, as Duke started to bark like crazy. There was all sorts of ruckus coming from the back of the house, a mixture of barks and growls with a few yips mixed in. We sat and listened for about a minute before Momma finally said, “Sounds like Duke’s fightin’ with somethin’.”
“We’d better find out,” I exclaimed. “He might get hurt.”
“Probably just a raccoon,” Gemma said with a yawn. “He’s done that enough times.”
“But what if it has rabies or somethin’?”
“Ain’t none of the other ones had rabies.”
“That don’t mean this one can’t. We need to go help him.”
“Jessilyn,” Momma said, “we can’t do much to help him if he’s fightin’ with a dangerous animal. We can’t fight wild animals.”
Luke was looking out a side window, so
I appealed to him instead. “Can’t you get Daddy’s gun and see what’s hap-penin’?”
“I’ll find out what it is. Y’all stay here inside the house.” Luke stuck his hat on, unbuttoned a couple buttons on the bottom of his shirt, and reached inside to pull a pistol from his waistband. I could not believe my eyes. Now my Luke wasn’t just a drunkard, he was a drunkard who carried a pistol. Heavens, he was a drunken gunfighter!
My heart leapt as I watched him walk out the back door, but I didn’t know if I was more worried for his safety or for his soul. I made a note to ask Pastor Landry about gun carrying too.
The noise had gotten more distant now, and I assumed Luke was having to walk down toward the corn rows to find Duke.
“Land’s sake, they make a mess of noise, those animals,”
Momma complained. “We should have tied him up after supper. Don’t know what good we get from that mutt, anyhow.”
“Momma!”
“Well, we don’t get no affection from him, Lord knows. All he does is eat our table scraps and chase animals.”
“But that don’t mean we should want him gettin’ killed by a wild animal.”
“I didn’t say I wanted him killed by a wild animal, Jessilyn. Watch your tone of voice.”
I said a quiet “Yes, ma’am,” but a loud crash at the far end of the room made me shoot up from my seat before I even got settled down.
Momma and Gemma jumped up as well, with Momma gasping, “What on earth? My heavens, what is happenin’ in this house?” She raced across the room and pushed my and Gemma’s heads down like we were under fire. “Jesus, protect this house,” Momma said over and over again as we huddled together on the floor.
I peered out from underneath Momma’s arm to see what had crashed through the window. “It’s a rock. Just a big rock.”
“A rock don’t get through a window on its own, Jessilyn. Keep your head down.”
Then we heard footsteps on the porch, and the three of us instinctively focused on the front door. The screen door was closed but unlocked as always, and fear struck us as we realized whoever was on that porch had access to our house.
Momma decided to meet them head-on. “Stay here,” she said as she rose and walked slowly toward the front door, her head ducked.
“I ain’t lettin’ her go alone,” I told Gemma. “She crazy or somethin’?”
“Me neither,” she said.
We followed Momma in similarly hunched positions.
“I said stay back,” Momma hissed.
“We ain’t bound to sit by and let you go by yourself,” I said with determination. “We’re comin’ too.”
Momma didn’t say anything more, which surprised me because Momma didn’t take any lip from me on a normal day.
We approached the doorway timidly, and when we looked out, we saw an eerily familiar sight. Five men in white stood on our lawn, pointing guns toward the house, calling out to us with curses and wry laughter.
This time, they had come for revenge.
Chapter 19
My heart was in my throat as I stared down those robed gunmen, and I felt naked without Daddy’s rifle, like I’d carried one all my life.
“We brought our own weapons this time,” one of them said, as though reading my thoughts. “If we’s gonna get shot at by young’uns, we may’s well be able to shoot back.”
“You ain’t got no right to be here,” Momma said, her voice a mixture of anger and fear. “You get shot for trespassin’, let that be on your head.”
“See, as we figure it, you folks is the ones trespassin’. We got ways in this here part of the country, and you decided to go against those ways. From our side of seein’ things, you made yourselves the outsiders who are trespassin’ on our way of life.”
I strained my ears hoping to hear Luke returning, but I heard nothing from the back of the house, not even Duke.
“You ain’t got no right comin’ on our property,” Momma said shakily. “No right! And why don’t you take off those filthy hoods and show yourselves, you cowards?”
They stood with no reply, and their silence was more horrifying than any bitter words they could have uttered. The very sight of those white robes flapping in the breeze against the dark of night made my skin crawl. There were several moments of silence as we remained in our standoff, glaring at each other like opponents in a duel.
Then Momma spotted something that made her gasp and start to cry. “Oh, dear Jesus.”
I looked around frantically, trying to train my eyes upon whatever it was that had Momma so upset. It took me two passes of the front yard before I saw it. There, coming from around the side of the house, were a sixth and seventh hooded man, dragging a limp form between them. I struggled to breathe as I watched Luke’s head bob up and down, his blond hair tousled and sweaty.
“Luke!” I screamed, trying to rip my way past Momma to get outside.
“No, baby,” she said, grabbing me around the waist. “You stay here.”
I could tell by her voice that she was in tears. Gemma ran into the house for some reason, and I fleetingly hoped she was going for the rifle so we could kill all of them for what they’d done to Luke. “I want to go to Luke. Let me go!” I struggled and flailed against Momma, finally breaking free and running onto the porch.
“Jessilyn!” Momma screamed.
I could feel her grasping at my shirt as I fled, but I made it to the end of the porch and hopped the rail, landing right where the men who had Luke were standing. They dropped him to the ground, and I ran to him, falling to my knees in front of him.
“Oh, Luke, what’d they do to you?” For all I could see, he was lifeless, his bloodied face displaying no movement. I put my head down to his chest to listen, but I couldn’t hear anything. In sheer rage, I jumped up and started pawing at one of the men, ripping my fingernails into whatever skin I managed to make contact with. “You killed him!” I shouted over and over again. “I’m gonna kill you. You hear? I’ll kill you.”
The man I attacked howled and swatted at me. “Get her off me.”
The other man pulled me off like a rag doll, his face against my right ear. “Ain’t you done enough killin’ for one year?” he asked in amusement. “You’re just a regular killin’ machine, ain’t you, little girl? Well now, I like spunk in a girl, sure enough. And you got spunk.”
“If I’m a killer like you say, Walt Blevins, then I ought to have no trouble puttin’ a bullet through your heart.”
In normal times, Momma would have washed my mouth out with soap for that, but she said nothing even though I knew she must have heard me. She just stayed frozen there on the porch with her hands over her mouth and terror on her face, two Klansmen blocking her path to where Walt stood with his dirty hands on me.
Just then, Otis Tinker’s truck came flying up the road, spraying gravel every which way. Daddy was hanging halfway out the window firing a pistol into the air and shouting things I’d never heard my daddy say before.
Walt took a minute to whisper, “This ain’t over, pretty girl,” in my ear before dropping me like a hot potato.
I crawled back over to Luke, sobbing, while the rest of the group fled. There was absolute chaos in the yard, with Daddy and Mr. Tinker yelling and Momma wailing.
“Jessie!” Gemma screamed. “Jessie! Jessie! Stop shakin’ him!”
I realized then that I had taken Luke by the shoulders, shaking him back and forth, begging him to wake up. At Gemma’s orders, I let him go suddenly, his head dropping back to the earth with a thud.
Engines roared as the two trucks carrying the Klansmen sped off down the dirt road, and Daddy helped Momma over to where Gemma and I sat with Luke.
Gemma held me as I wept, but we both jumped a mile when Luke jolted up into a sitting position, yelling something about killing someone. He closed his eyes tightly and muttered again, “I’ll kill ’em all.”
I must have cried out his name ten times, throwing myself over him like a blanket.
; “Now, Jessie,” Daddy said, “don’t strangle the boy.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“Well, keep that up and he will be.” My daddy’s face was red with rage, his hands shaky as he grabbed my shoulders, yet he somehow found the ability to tint his tone with lightheartedness. “Come on,” he urged as I resisted his efforts to pull me away from Luke. “Go to your momma. I need to help Luke into the house.”
I stood reluctantly and watched, with Momma’s arm about my shoulder, as Luke got up, wincing in pain with every move he made.
I looked over at Mr. Tinker and said, “You seen what they done, ain’t you? They near killed Luke. You gonna arrest ’em?”
“It’s right hard to arrest men with no identity.”
“They got identity, all right. I can tell you that Walt Blevins was one of ’em, and so was Cole Mundy. I know them voices.”
“Jessilyn—” Daddy grunted from the strain of lifting Luke—“I thought we agreed not to get the law into this.”
Mr. Tinker went over to help Daddy, ignoring my insistence that the men be arrested.
We got Luke settled on the couch, and Momma gathered her antiseptic and bandages. I followed Mr. Tinker out to his truck, telling him all the reasons he needed to arrest half the men in Calloway.
But he seemed loath to engage in any argument with me. “Jessilyn, you best talk this over with your daddy. Now you head on back inside, you hear?”
“Ain’t no use gettin’ the law involved,” Luke moaned when I renewed my argument inside. “Even if we could for certain identify them, which we can’t, they’d get off anyhow. That’s the way it works in these parts. Klan gets by with everythin’ and anythin’.”
“But, Luke, just look what they done to you.” I had his hand in mine, and I kept squeezing it. “They bruised you all up. They can’t get by with that.”
“Jessilyn,” he said with a grin, “you’re gonna wear the blood right outta my hand.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I gasped, dropping it quickly. “Did I hurt you more?”
Luke put a hand on my cheek and patted it lightly. “I’m gonna be just fine, you can be sure. Don’t you worry none about me.”
Fireflies in December Page 20