by Donis Casey
“Thank you, ma’am, but no. You all have been most kind. And we’re indebted. But we’ll be all right now.”
Shaw casually lay his arm across Alafair’s shoulder as he studied John Lee. “You know we’ll be right here for you all the way through your trouble, John Lee,” he said.
John Lee colored. “Yes, sir, I know it. And I want you to know that I won’t speak no more on that other matter we discussed until this whole affair is honorably settled.”
Only Alafair would have noticed the twitch that disturbed the corner of Shaw’s mobile mouth. “I appreciate that,” he said to John Lee.
John Lee drew himself up. “But then I’ll be approaching you. I do promise it.”
Alafair’s eyebrows shot up at this boldness and she glanced sidelong at Shaw. His face had become the picture of inscrutability. “I expect,” he replied coolly.
Naomi came out onto the porch, shepherding the younger children before her. They all spilled down the porch steps toward the buckboard, followed by a pack of Tucker children, closely followed by John Lee, Alafair and Shaw. As older people lifted younger people into the wagon, Alafair managed to maneuver herself through the throng to stand next to John Lee. She leaned in to murmur into his ear.
“Tomorrow is the weekend, and everybody will be home. But when you come back from visiting your ma on Monday, come on over here late in the morning while everyone’s at their tasks and let’s see if we can find your daddy’s still.”
John Lee skewed a sharp look at her, then nodded once before he climbed up into the driver’s seat and unwound the reins from the brake. Alafair picked up Alfred and handed him to Naomi, who settled him on her lap. “You all have been right kind,” Naomi acknowledged.
“Call on us if you need anything,” Alafair told her.
“Yes, ma’am,” the girl stated in a tone of voice that was not particularly enthusiastic.
Shaw and Alafair, Martha and Mary, Phoebe and Alice and Gee Dub shooed little hands and feet away from wagon wheel and mule hooves as John Lee released the brake and clucked at the mule, and they moved slowly off into the darkness. Most of the Tucker family headed back up the porch steps toward the warmth and their beds, but two or three little ones escaped into the yard, skipping and shrieking.
“You kids get inside before you freeze,” Alafair called.
“Mama, Charlie tied a knot in my hair,” Sophronia’s voice yelped out of the darkness.
“You children get yourselves inside,” Shaw interjected, “before the panthers get you. It’s a cold night and the panthers need to eat little children to keep warm.”
The quality of the shrieking changed as Charlie, Blanche and Sophronia charged around the corner of the house and up the steps in a rush to elude the panthers.
***
Alafair dreamed that night. “Bobby!” she screamed, and the baby gasped and dropped the glass jar he had just drunk from. She scooped up the little boy in her arms. The parlor floor was covered with coal oil and glass shards and her bare feet were cut and bleeding. The baby was choking and turning blue. She crashed out the front door, leaving a trail of bloody footprints down the porch steps and across the yard. She started awake, and got up to check on her sleeping children.
***
Alafair was too busy on Sunday morning to worry much about her upcoming foray into the woods with John Lee to find Harley’s still. Shaw and Alafair rousted everyone out of bed long before dawn, so that cows could be milked and all the animals fed before breakfast, and Alafair and the older girls could prepare the dishes they would take to Grandma’s house for Sunday dinner. Before eight a.m., everyone was fed and washed and dressed, and packed into the wagon for the trip to town. They stopped by Shaw’s parents’ house on the outskirts of Boynton to drop off the food, then proceeded to the Masonic Hall, where the First Christian Church met.
After the service, Alafair lagged behind in the cloakroom with the younger children, so that she could supervise and assist as they put on their coats and hats.
“Fronie has a loose tooth, Mama,” Blanche informed Alafair.
“Is that so?” Alafair asked as she wrapped Blanche’s scarf around her neck.
Sophronia gaped wide and wiggled a front tooth for her mother’s inspection. Charlie, who was sitting on the floor adjusting his boots, looked up, intrigued. “I think she should show it to Grandma,” he said.
Alafair shot Charlie a stern look. Grandma was notorious for asking permission to inspect a loose tooth, then jerking it out of the unsuspecting child’s mouth amid howls of outrage from the victim and laughter from the siblings. Unabashed, Charlie returned an impish grin.
“Oh, I will!” Sophronia exclaimed, while skipping about and manipulating the tooth with her index finger. In spite of feeling guilty, Alafair smiled and kept quiet. Sophronia would undergo her rite of passage and join the sorority of the untoothed.
Alafair inspected buttons and knots, and dismissed the children one at a time. Blanche was suffering from a bunched-up sock, so Alafair knelt down to make the necessary adjustments, drawing off Blanche’s shoe and straightening out the stocking.
“Hurry, Mama,” Blanche urged, as her siblings disappeared out the door.
Alafair glanced up, but before she could say anything to Blanche, her attention was captured by a group of women standing in the foyer, visiting. She paused, and Blanche, whose foot was in Alafair’s hand, grasped her mother’s shoulder to steady herself.
Alafair recognized the plump woman standing nearest the door. It was Mrs. Lang, Russell’s wife and Dan’s mother. She released Blanche’s foot and stood up with the shoe still in her hand, and took a few steps toward the women. Blanche hopped after her. “Ma!” she exclaimed, affronted.
Alafair handed the girl her shoe. “Here,” she said, distracted. “Sit here and put your shoe on. I’ll be right back.”
Blanche obeyed, grumbling. Alafair insinuated herself into the group of women and sidled up to Mrs. Lang. For a few seconds, she stood silently at the woman’s elbow, pretending to listen to the conversation, but as soon as a lull arose, Alafair touched Mrs. Lang’s arm to gain her attention.
Mrs. Lang looked at Alafair blankly, then her eyes widened with alarm when recognition dawned. She mastered her expression quickly, and stepped back from the group, drawing Alafair with her.
“Hello, Miz Tucker,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
“I was just wondering,” she began gingerly, “if you had heard that Harley Day’s wife confessed to the murder of her husband?”
“Yes, I heard,” Mrs. Lang said. “I’m sorry for Miz Day, but I’m glad the killer is caught. I didn’t like all the suspicions between folks.”
Alafair felt her cheeks grow warm. Obviously, Mrs. Lang had been apprised of Alafair’s interactions with Russell and Dan. By this time, it was likely that everyone in town knew. Did Mrs. Lang think that Alafair suspected her menfolk of murder? Did she bear Alafair ill will for casting aspersions on her loved ones? Alafair would, if the situation was reversed. Nevertheless, she forged ahead. “John Lee thinks his mother confessed to protect…someone. He’s thinking the killer is still out there, and I’m wondering if he’s right.” Was that statement innocuous enough? Maybe not, since Mrs. Lang’s face reddened.
“I mean,” she added hurriedly, “I know your son cared about Maggie Ellen Day and her family, at one time. I was thinking that he might be keeping his ear to the ground.”
Mrs. Lang thawed a bit, and nodded. “Well, it’s true that Dan liked that Day girl for a while, but that situation was just too big a mess to turn out well. Mr. Day gave Dan a hard time from the minute he got involved with his daughter. Russell and me tried to warn him, but you know how young folks are. I don’t know what it was that made Dan and Mr. Day get into such a nasty fight in the end, but after that happened, Dan never went out to that place any more. Russell wanted to bring charges against Day after the scrap, but Dan wouldn’t hear of it. Said he could take care of himself. He don’t
want to be treated like a child, I reckon.”
“Did Dan and Maggie Ellen ever see each other again?” Alafair asked. Dan had told her that they did, but she wondered if his mother knew about it.
“I think they did, now and then, though Dan never discussed it with me. I’m just his ma, after all. I was surprised as all get-out when I heard she married somebody else all of a sudden. I liked that girl, too, until she up and broke Dan’s heart. Dan blamed her father for the whole business, though. He still won’t hear a word against her.”
“Your husband told me that he was on his way out to see John Lee the night Harley got killed. Did he see anything suspicious?”
“Well, he said there wasn’t hardly anybody on the road. Just one of those Leonard boys is all he could call to mind. Russell never got to Day’s place, you know. His buggy slid off the road. It was a miserable night. He told me he’d just be gone a couple of hours, but after it got close to nine o’clock, I sent Dan out to look for him.”
Surprised, Alafair opened her mouth to speak, but Mrs. Lang went on. “Russell had already got his buggy out of the ditch, though, and finally came back home not long after. Dan just missed him. Said he spent a cold and miserable hour searching, before Mr. Ross out there by the crossroads told him he had seen Russell riding back toward town a few minutes earlier.”
“Dan went out to look for his dad? Did he tell that to the sheriff?”
Mrs. Lang bristled, and Alafair wanted to bite her tongue. “I didn’t mean…” she attempted, but Mrs. Lang interrupted her.
“Isn’t the sheriff your husband’s cousin?”
“You must think me uncommon nosy, Miz Lang, but I’m concerned about my girl. I imagine you know she and John Lee Day like one another. Your son got mixed up with that family and got hurt. I’d not like to see that happen to Phoebe.”
Mrs. Lang took her explanation as an apology, and nodded, though her manner had cooled. “If Miz Day says she done it, that’s good enough for me. She had cause. I don’t know what else I can tell you that you don’t already know, Miz Tucker. Seems you already run Dan through the mill, and Russell, too. Yes, the sheriff talked to both of them, and I’ll say to you what they said to him. Neither of them know a thing about that murder. In fact, Dan told the sheriff he ought to look to J.D. Millar for some answers.”
Alafair blinked at her. “You mean Mr. Day’s brother-in-law?”
“That’s the one. Him and Mr. Day had quite a feud going. Maggie Ellen told Dan that her daddy and her uncle hated one another like poison, and that J.D. threatened to shoot Day more than once. Ask the sheriff about that, while you’re asking.”
Alafair put her hand to her forehead. “Hating Harley Day seems to be a popular way to pass the time.”
“And keep this in mind, too, Miz Tucker,” Mrs Lang added, “John Lee must have seen how his father came between his sister and my Dan. I’m sure he didn’t want the same thing to happen to him and Phoebe. His mother confessed, and I’m sure she did it, but nobody had more reason to get rid of Harley than John Lee himself.”
Alafair didn’t respond, but she suddenly felt a little nauseated. Mrs. Lang had voiced a thought that she had no wish to ponder.
“Mama,” Blanche called from her seat on the aisle, “help me tie my shoe. I can’t get it right.”
“Just a minute, punkin. Thank you for talking to me, Miz Lang. I will ask Sheriff Tucker what he found out about the bad blood between J.D. Millar and Harley Day. If I find out anything that might interest you, I’ll let you know.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“Mama,” Blanche wailed, and Alafair reluctantly returned to her duties.
***
As Shaw pulled the wagon around the side of the Masonic Hall and out into the road, Alafair caught sight of the Langs, father and son, standing in the yard, engaged in intense conversation. Mrs. Lang was walking away from them, back toward the building. As the wagon passed, both the men turned and looked at her sitting next to Shaw on the bench. She was struck again by their resemblance to one another, even in the way they both stood, ramrod straight, in their matching black suits with tan vests, black boots and Stetsons. Dan’s hand came up to finger the scar on his cheek, and Alafair’s heart thudded. The three people eyed each other as the wagon moved away. Russell Lang gave her an ironic smile and tipped his hat.
Alafair looked away quickly, just in time to see J.D. and Zorah Millar’s buggy coming down the road toward them from the Methodist church on the hill. Zorah Millar’s piercing blue-green gaze followed her until they were out of sight. Alafair felt a thrill of fear in her stomach, and she swallowed. Lord help me, I’m seeing murderers everywhere, she thought.
“Is Scott going to be at your ma’s for dinner?” she asked Shaw.
“I think his folks are going to Ma’s house, so I expect Scott will be there with Hattie and the boys. Why? Are you expecting to pick his brain again?”
“I’m planning to try,” she confessed.
Chapter Twelve
By late Monday morning, Shaw was long gone from the house, out in the fields with the livestock, hauling feed to them, making sure their ponds and water tanks weren’t frozen over, checking the herds for signs of illness, injury or stress. Alafair and her helper Georgie had left the wash flapping on the line, and Alafair was on her own until dinnertime. She took an empty flour sack and a scoop to the root cellar and scooped a couple of cups of pecans from the big bag in the corner next to the bottom of the steps. The nuts had been curing in the cellar at the side of the house since the family had gathered them from the ground under the trees in Shaw’s mother’s pecan grove the previous November. She took the nuts back into the house and sat by the window in her rocking chair. She sat rocking nervously, stopping occasionally to chafe her hands, as she stared down the drive toward the gate and cracked and picked out pecans into a bowl in her lap, while her mind was otherwise engaged.
While she was at her mother-in-law’s for Sunday dinner, she had tried to talk to Scott about her conversation with Mrs. Lang, but she had been unable to make any headway with him. She was never sure if he was taking her seriously or simply humoring her when she told him of her suspicions. He did tell her that he had investigated both the Langs and the Millars, but he didn’t tell her what he had found out. She had expected him to tell her to mind her own business, but he had seemed more amused at her questions than annoyed.
In spite of a banked fire burning in the kitchen stove, and a good coal fire going in the pot belly stove in the parlor, the house was chilly. It was February, now, and spring couldn’t come fast enough for Alafair. Winters in Oklahoma weren’t as relentless as the winters she had experienced growing up in the Arkansas mountains, but even so, the weather alternated almost day to day from false spring to arctic blast, and a body never had time to get used to one or the other. It was a wonder, she thought, that they all hadn’t died of pneumonia long ago.
She was worried that if John Lee showed up too late, they wouldn’t have time to search the creek bank for Harley’s still, and still get back home in time for her to fix dinner without alerting Shaw that she had been out. Therefore, she was most relieved to see John Lee trudging up the drive toward the house just before eleven o’clock. She carried the bowl of cracked pecans back into the kitchen and pulled on her winter wear in time to meet him by the front gate.
“Good morning, son,” she greeted. “You made it in good time. Have you already managed to get into town to see your mother?”
John Lee snatched the stocking cap off of his head before he spoke to her. “Good morning, Miz Tucker. Yes, ma’am, I’ve been and gone already. Her and the sheriff’s deputy are on their way to Muskogee right now. Ma is in fairly good spirits. As long as she thinks we’re all going to be taken care of, she don’t seem very concerned with what happens to her.” They began to walk around the house and into the woods at the back of the yard, toward Phoebe’s secret access to the Day property. “I have a pretty good idea where Daddy was
set up before he died,” John Lee interjected. “It shouldn’t take us more than fifteen, twenty minutes to get there. Anyway,” he continued, “I told Mama that I didn’t think she really did the deed, and that she was just helping the real culprit get away. She told me that she did do it, too, and besides she’d just as soon that this all be over and us kids can start our new lives.”
“But you still think it wasn’t her,” Alafair said.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t think it was. I think she just saw the opportunity to confess and make this all be over with, and she done it. I’ll tell you, ma’am, I think she’s got it in her head that this way she can make up for not standing up to him all these years and putting us kids through it.”
“Well, that’s just crazy,” Alafair opined.
John Lee shrugged. “That ain’t all, I’m thinkin’. I expect she really believes that I did it, and she thinks she’s protecting me, and making it up to me, as well.” He looked over at Alafair, his black eyes hard with determination. “That’s why we’ve got to find out who really done it, and quick, because I don’t want my own mother thinking I’m a killer, even if it’s of such a low critter as my father.”
Alafair stared at him, taken aback. John Lee moved ahead of her to lead her through the trees as they neared the creek bank. The crunch of their feet on the carpet of brittle leaves was magnified by the papery rustle of the wind through the pin oak leaves that still hung on the trees. “Do you have some notion of who the culprit is, John Lee?” she asked his back, at length.
“I have two or three notions, Miz Tucker,” he said, as he held a blackjack branch aside for her, “though they’re just guesses. Pa was such a nasty piece of work that I’m sure there are a dozen folks who would welcome the opportunity to do him in. When we got to talking about the still, it reminded me that Daddy had got in some kind of a scrape with Jim Leonard over the last batch of ’shine he sold him. Seems Mr. Leonard didn’t think highly of the quality of the batch and didn’t want to pay. I heard them going at it down here a couple of weeks ago, while I was at the pond, them a’yelling and all. They took a couple of swings at one another. Daddy had a scrape on his cheek that evening, anyway. Daddy always met his customers down here on the creek, at the place where that willow hangs over the water and the bank is undercut. Lots of roots there for stashing quart jars.”