Sweet Mercy

by Ann Tatlock

  “How was I to know? No one really knows anything about him.”

  “Maybe you would, if you talked to him.”

  “He’s the one who won’t talk to anybody. He looks at the ground when he walks, like he wants to pass people by without being seen.”

  “Listen, Marlene, he has a name, you know. It’s Jones, and I bet he’d talk to you if you said something to him. Anything. Just hello. You could give it a try.”

  She smiled, shrugged. “Well, maybe. If I ever run into him.”

  “You’re not afraid, are you?”

  “Of course not.” She laughed, but it didn’t sound convincing.

  Before I could say anything else, Mother appeared on the shore and called my name. “We could use your help for a minute in the Eatery,” she hollered. “We have a question about the supply list.”

  “All right,” I hollered back, “I’ll be right there.”

  Before I could take a step toward shore, Marlene leaped toward me and grabbed my hands. “Listen, Eve, we’re going to be great friends. I just know we are. And I want you to meet Jimmy. Tonight!”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes. There’s going to be a band playing in the pavilion, isn’t there?”

  I nodded. Uncle Cy was bringing in the first band of the summer season, a well-known group from Cincinnati.

  “I’ll bring Jimmy and you can meet him, all right?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “And he can . . .” Her face grew animated and she laughed.

  “He can what?”

  “Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “You’ll see. Just come looking pretty and be ready to dance.”

  “With Jimmy?”

  She laughed again and swam away. I shook my head and moved toward shore.

  Chapter 7

  At dusk, Alonzo Martin and His Band assembled in the pavilion and, with one quick wave of Alonzo’s hand, broke the quiet of the night with the first jump-crazy notes of “Keep a Song in Your Soul.” Those horn-blowing, banjo-strumming, piano-pounding musicians pumped out some kind of dynamism, because all at once the dance floor was rushed by a fox-trotting crowd of couples bebopping all over the place.

  I stood off to the side, tapping my foot and nodding my head as I waited for Marlene and her boyfriend to show up. Twenty minutes went by before I felt a hand on my shoulder and knew she had finally arrived. She was dressed in a shiny orange chemise with a string of knotted pearls around her neck and a pair of black strapped heels on her feet. She was arm in arm with a young man wearing a casual shirt and slacks, his thick blond hair slicked back with pomade. He had a narrow face with pleasant blue eyes, a slightly too-large nose, and a smile that formed heartthrob dimples in his cheeks.

  “Eve,” Marlene said, speaking loudly over the music, “I want you to meet Jimmy. Jimmy, this is Eve, the one I told you about. Her uncle owns the lodge.”

  Jimmy nodded and said, “Nice to meet you. So Cyrus is your uncle, huh?”

  “That’s right,” I answered. “Do you know him?”

  The young man laughed. “Sure I do. Everybody knows Cyrus. Him and my dad go way back. My dad owns the gas station across the street.”

  “Oh yeah. He’s—”

  “Calvin Fludd. Yup. Me and Marcus work for him.”

  “Marcus?”

  Marlene stood on tiptoe and scanned the crowd. “Speaking of which, where’d he go?”

  “There he is.” Jimmy pointed with a thumb. “Talking with Spencer Girton over there. Probably up to their usual no-good.”

  “Oh, hush, Jimmy. The son of the sheriff is hardly going to be up to no-good. Marcus!” Marlene hollered, waving one long white slender arm. “Marcus!”

  The young man heard his name, said a parting word to Spencer Girton, and headed toward us. As he weaved his way through the crowd, I felt my breath come up short and my heart pump itself into a momentary spasm. If he had stepped right out of a Hollywood film, he couldn’t have been any more good-looking. He was an easy shoo-in for Rudolph Valentino, tall and lean, with a face so achingly handsome I had to fight the urge to turn and run. I knew what was happening. I was being set up. He was being set up. With me. And that could only spell disaster.

  “There you are, you rascal,” Marlene said coyly.

  “Sorry about that.” He smiled apologetically.

  “I want you to meet Eve Marryat.”

  When those two dark eyes settled on my face, it all came raining down, all the things Cassandra had said to me over all the years. I had tried to tamp it down into some unused corner of my soul, but under the gaze of this Greek god I knew every word was true. I was the typical ugly duckling, the mean-faced little rat, the luckless wench who would inevitably hurl headlong into a lost and lonely spinsterhood.

  “And Eve, this is Marcus Wiant.”

  I lifted my eyes to his then and felt a burning crimson creep up my neck and fan out across my face. I became keenly aware of my dress, not a clingy orange flapper slip like Marlene’s but a simple blue cotton going-to-church dress with a white eyelet collar and a fringe of matching eyelet around the sleeves and hem of the skirt. When I’d put it on, it was fine, but now it was all wrong. What would Marcus think?

  “Very nice to meet you, Eve,” he said politely.

  “You . . . you too.” Bumbling idiot! I willed myself to stay, though my feet were still yearning to flee.

  “Well, what are we doing standing around?” Marlene cried jubilantly. “Come on, Jimmy, let’s dance!”

  I was left alone with Rudolph Valentino or Marcus Wiant or whoever he was, someone who would undoubtedly give Marlene the business come morning for setting him up on this miserable blind date. Shame, fear, and dread came over me, and I wanted to apologize for what Marlene had done, but before I could form the sentence in my mind and deliver the words to my lips, the young man shrugged, flashed a shy smile, and said, “Shall we?”

  He held out a hand and waited to escort me to the floor. I looked at that hand and wanted to take it with my own, but I was paralyzed by a deep sense of inadequacy. “I don’t know any fancy steps,” I said, and even as I said it I heard Cassandra laugh, which made me want to scream loud and long into the clear star-studded sky.

  Marcus, still smiling, shrugged again. “Perfect,” he said. “I don’t know any fancy steps either.”

  The next thing I knew I was in his arms and we were moving around the dance floor like we’d been dancing together all our lives. Before the song was over I fancied myself the happiest girl on Marryat Island. And before the song was over, I saw Jones standing in the shadows, shoulders hunched and hands in his pockets, staring at me with his piercing red eyes like fiery arrows hurled across the night.

  Chapter 8

  Sunday evenings were quiet on Marryat Island. After supper, in the cool of approaching dusk, I wandered down to the island and stepped into one of the rowboats tied up to the dock. It bobbed gently under my weight as I sat on the seat between the oars. I lowered my chin to the palms of my hands and drifted into thoughts about Marcus.

  We’d danced till the end, till the band laid down their instruments and everyone headed toward home. We danced for three hours thinking only minutes had gone by, and then he walked me to the lodge and said good-night. I wondered whether that was what it was to be in love. Was it being so thoroughly happy that the joy seemed unbreakable?

  Never having been in love, I didn’t know. And I wasn’t sure I was going to find out, because I didn’t know whether the night was a one-time affair or whether I’d see Marcus Wiant again. He was unfailingly polite and a proper gentleman, thanking me for a good time and then letting me go with neither a kiss nor a promise of anything more to come. The kiss I was relieved to do without, but I would have liked to know whether he might come around another time.

  So lost was I to thought, I didn’t hear the footsteps on the dock, nor see anyone approach till someone said, “If you’re taking that thing out, you might want to find someone to go with you.”
>
  Startled, I looked up to find Jones standing over me, his safari hat pulled down over his brow, its long strap dangling low beneath his chin. He wore dark glasses, a long-sleeved button-up shirt, and a pair of cotton slacks, minus the suspenders. His startlingly white feet were bare. I looked from him, to the river, and back again. “Well,” I said, “I don’t guess I was planning on taking it out.”

  “Then why are you sitting in it?”

  Why indeed? Because it seemed a good place to think about Marcus? I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. “Does someone need it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who?”

  “I do.”

  “You do?”

  “I enjoy rowing the river in the evenings, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Well, of course it’s all right with me,” I said testily, “but there are plenty of other boats.” I waved a hand at them to prove my point.

  “I like this one.”

  I sighed, started to stand. “All right. You can have it.”

  “No, don’t get out.”

  “Don’t get out?”

  “Just move up to the bow and let me sit there.”

  I hesitated a moment. “You mean, you want me to go with you?”

  “Don’t you like boats?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Then sit down.”

  I moved to the bow and sat down. For one brief moment I wondered what Marcus would think if he saw me out on the river in a boat with Jones, but I dismissed the thought. Jones was my cousin, after all. My cousin of a sort, anyway.

  Jones untied the rope anchoring the boat to the dock. He stepped in and settled onto the seat I had just vacated. “I can get more exercise if I have somebody weighing down the boat,” he said.

  “Oh.” So that was it. “Well, I’m glad I can help out by being your dead weight.”

  He nodded, as though I was serious. Fastening the oars into the oarlocks, he pushed us away from the dock and began to row. Because I was at the front of the boat, he was sitting with his back to me, as if I weren’t there at all. If he’d told me to sit on the other end of the boat, we’d have at least been facing each other, though perhaps that wasn’t how he wanted it.

  For several minutes he moved us along at a generous clip. I watched, mesmerized as the oars dipped in and out of the river. Every time they came up, they dripped great pearls of river water before they quickly sank down again. Their sweeping motion formed small whirlpools that circled momentarily on the surface of the water before drifting off and dying out. I dipped one hand over the side of the boat and let it linger in the water; my fingers cut a small wake into the river.

  “This is really nice,” I said, “being out here like this.”

  He didn’t answer. After a time he rowed less vigorously, and we moved at a more leisurely pace down a long stretch of river. I hugged my knees and breathed deeply of the cool air. I watched as a trio of sparrows soared on an upward draft. I searched the sky for the first sign of stars, but it was too early yet for anything other than a translucent hint of the moon.

  We slowed down enough that we were overtaken by a couple of punts, flat-bottom boats with square-cut bows. Each was navigated by a man standing on the deck of the stern, pushing the boat along with a pole. The men wore unseasonably warm jackets and tweed caps, and in the hull of both boats were several wooden boxes labeled castor oil.

  As they passed us, one of the men touched the brim of his cap and gave a nod in greeting. Jones nodded in return. I watched as the punts moved on down the river ahead of us.

  In an attempt at conversation, as heaven knew Jones wasn’t very good at it, I said, “Now where do you suppose they’re going?”

  Jones pushed his hat back a notch and looked over his shoulder after the two boats. “The Little Miami meets up with the Ohio River not too far from here,” he said. “That’s probably where they’re headed.”

  “Funny that they’re taking a bunch of castor oil down the Ohio River.”

  Jones turned again to look at me. I couldn’t see his eyes, but somehow I sensed they held amusement. My suspicions were confirmed when he shook his head and laughed. “Castor oil, nothing,” he muttered. “They’re hauling moonshine.”

  For a moment I was speechless. I frowned and wondered whether I had heard him right. “Moonshine?”

  “Sure. People like them are up and down this river all the time.”

  It can’t be, I thought. This was Ohio, after all, birthplace of the Temperance Movement. I knew. I had done the research. I had won first place in the essay contest. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Don’t they know moonshine is illegal?”

  Jones laughed again, louder this time. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m not kidding, Jones. I can’t believe they’re hauling that stuff right out here in the open. They could be arrested and go to prison. They should be arrested.”

  “Yeah? And who’s going to turn them in? You?”

  I drew back. I didn’t know how to respond. “You mean, nobody does anything about it? Nobody tries to shut down the stills?”

  “And just what would people drink if they shut down the stills?”

  “But that’s the point! People shouldn’t be drinking anything at all. Aren’t there any Prohibition agents around here?”

  “Of course not. There aren’t enough agents for the big cities, let alone a little Podunk town like Mercy. Anyway, it’s a losing battle. There’s stills all over the county. Too many to count.”

  “But Prohibition is the law!”

  “A stupid law, itching to be broken.”

  “It’s not a stupid law. It’s one law that makes completely good sense.”

  “And who are you? Carrie Nation? You go around with an axe chopping up saloons?”

  “Maybe I would if there were any saloons to chop up!”

  “Well, there aren’t. They’ve all gone underground and turned themselves into speakeasies and blind pigs. And believe me, someone like you would never get in.”

  “I wouldn’t want to get in! I don’t believe in drinking. All it does is ruin people’s lives.”

  He stared at me a moment, brows turned down, nostrils flaring. “I guess Cyrus forgot to tell me you were a saint.”

  “You don’t need to be sarcastic just because I believe in obeying the law. But then, I wouldn’t drink even if the country were wet again. It’s just a sin, plain and simple, and it leads to no good.”

  “You’re all-fired sure about that, are you?”

  I lifted my chin. “I am.”

  “And how do you know so much about it?”

  I thought about Cassandra. I thought about the drunks down at the St. Paul Mission. I thought about the gangsters that wreaked havoc, killing each other and even innocent bystanders over the selling of illegal booze. “I’ve seen it,” I said. “I’ve seen what it does to people. But folks keep on drinking because other people, terrible people, keep on making illegal liquor and selling it.”

  “Now hold on just one minute there, St. Eve,” Jones spat out. He pulled the oars into the boat and turned around on the seat to face me. “I’d wager those two men who just went by aren’t terrible people. I’d wager they’re not bad people at all. They’re just a couple of men trying to feed their families, and they got no other way to do it except to sell spirits to people who want an occasional drink. If it’s between making moonshine and letting their kids starve, they’re right to choose moonshine, and you’re wrong to judge them.”

  Looking away, I could taste the disgust at the back of my throat like something sour. “There are other ways to make a living,” I said.

  “It’s not all that easy, especially now, times being what they are.”

  “The times being what they are isn’t an excuse to do what’s wrong. If everybody would obey the law and work together, I’m sure we’d be able to find jobs for everyone. Or at least make sure no one goes hungry. People don�
�t have to resort to crime to stay alive.”

  “Selling liquor wouldn’t be a crime if we got rid of the law. Then people could just go about their business and take care of their families.”

  “But it’s the law and—”

  “You sound like that man who said he believes the law can regulate morality and make upstanding citizens out of everybody.”

  “His name is Volstead, and that’s right, I do agree with him. If people acted decent and nobody drank, this country would be a whole lot better off.”

  He looked at me a long time. Finally he said, “You mean, if everybody was as perfect as you, this country would be a whole lot better off.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, but that’s what you meant.” He sighed, turned around on the seat, and took up the oars. “You’ve got a lot to learn about being human, missy,” he concluded.

  My mouth dropped open. How dare he admonish me when the law was on my side? I was glad he had turned his back to me again, because that way he couldn’t see my tears of frustration as we rowed toward home.

  Chapter 9

  I climbed the stairs to my room with leaden feet, feeling as though my heart had cracked in two. In the short time I was on the river with Jones, the luster of Marryat Island had begun to tarnish. Something was amiss in Paradise. St. Paul was the devil’s playground, and I’d left it for a safe place, but the serpent had found its way even here.

  Passing by Mother and Daddy’s door, I decided to knock and see if they were in for the night. They were. They sat in the room’s two overstuffed chairs, drinking tall glasses of iced tea. Great Expectations was open facedown on the table between them.

  “Going to bed, darling?” Daddy asked.

  “Soon, I guess.”

  Mother gave me that knowing look. “What’s the matter, Eve?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I just found out something terrible.”

  “What is it?” Daddy asked, leaning forward in his chair. Deep furrows cut across his forehead as he gazed up at me with concern.