Good Ground

by Tracy Winegar

  “No,” she said, her voice nothing more than a weak whisper.

  Joe’s expression was one of surprise, as his mouth hung open and his eyes grew wide. She’d never stood against him before, and she could see that it had caught him off guard. “What’d you say?” he growled, his eyes withering as he popped her in the mouth again.

  She was struggling to get the word out, to answer him. She was frightened by her own mutiny, but unwilling to give into him, she endeavored to fight back. Clairey tasted the bile rising up in her throat, could smell the pathetic fear she was giving off, and they were as familiar to her as waking and sleep, as hunger and thirst. In her time of peace there with Ellis, she had nearly forgotten the taste and smell of it, how her joints became liquid and her mouth became sour. That was what violence did to her.

  But something else was surging through her body just then too. Clairey felt her own separateness, her own identity that was apart from her father’s. A sudden and powerful realization was planted within her. She might have come from his seed, she might have been his flesh and bone, his daughter, but her daddy did not own her. Indeed, Joe had no power over her.

  In all of those years that she had been stifled by the dark cover he’d cast over her, she had felt so small, so irrelevant. There had been no ability to extend past the limits he had set for her. Only, Clairey had not been under his thumb for months now. She had experienced freedom for the first time. Her eyes had been opened, and there was no going back.

  Why had she never seen how weak this man was, this big man who had brutalized her and her brothers and her mother? Her mind brought to recollection the most traumatic of her childhood memories. Her mama had been big with child when Joe had come home drunk and in a foul mood. Mama had told her to get because she knew what was coming. Although Clairey hadn’t wanted to leave her mother, she’d been too afraid to stay, to try to absorb some of the blows herself. She’d only been seven and too small and helpless to stand up to him. She’d run to the other room and hidden beneath the bed. But Clairey had still had a full view as Joe struck her mother over and over. Her mama had been up the rest of the night in labor, and the baby had finally come in the early morning hours, a baby that was stillborn.

  What a small man! What a hateful and loathsome man he was! She might have been too frightened at seven to stand against him, but she wouldn’t bend any longer. Clairey was willing and able to take what he was dishing out. For the first time in her powerless life, she felt capable of standing up to him.

  “I’m talkin’ to you!” he roared, hitting her so hard her head bounced back and hit the door frame.

  It was slightly louder this time when she found her voice. “No,” she said.

  “I ortta…” he began, raising his fist as if he might hit her again.

  There was a moment of hesitation in which Joe looked into her eyes, and she looked back without flinching. Many a time, he had been at the same game with her, and she had always crumbled, bowing to his will. Now, he must have realized he was looking into the eyes of a stranger. She was someone he could not recognize, a foreigner inhabiting the body of that old Clairey, the girl he had abused, intimidated, and broken. Clairey decided then and there she would no longer cower before him. It was almost as if she were daring him to strike her in their unspoken exchange.

  Go ahead and see if I care! she thought.

  Chapter 18

  ELLIS CAME BACK TO THE HOUSE at suppertime to a dark, empty place, no lights lit within to beckon him home. He knew immediately something was amiss. The door was ajar, and he nudged it open cautiously to discover a mess of broken crockery and half a dozen smashed eggs scattered across the floorboards.

  “Clairey?” he called out.

  She did not answer.

  He found the oil lamp on the table and lit it carefully, noting how the rooms had been rifled through, pie smashed to pieces against the wall, clothing scattered across the bed. The rooms had been ransacked. Someone had gone through everything, not bothering to shut doors or drawers. He checked for his money in the top dresser drawer in the bedroom and found it gone. Then, he began to panic, wondering what had transpired there. Still, there was no Clairey. He stepped out onto the back porch and called to her again.

  Holding the lamp out in front of him, he inspected the yard and then headed for the barn, shouting her name at intervals. Ellis thrust the barn door open, yelling for her one last time. “Clairey!”

  He heard her timid voice above him, muffled and emotional in the shadowy darkness. “Ellis?”

  He set the lamp down and climbed up to the loft, his upper torso hovering above the floor. “Clairey, come on down from there,” he coaxed.

  She worked her way out of the hay, hesitating for a moment before she obeyed him and crept over to the ladder to follow him down. He waited until she was safe with her feet upon the ground and then took up the lamp and led her back to the house. She was crying once more, falling to her knees the moment they got through the door, franticly picking up pieces of the broken bowl and eggshells, working to put them into a pile.

  Ellis had kept himself in check up to that point. He assumed that Clairey would voluntarily offer up her story. But when she remained silent, he lost his temper. “Mind tellin’ me what’s gone on here?” he asked, briskly rubbing the back of his neck in irritation.

  She continued to cry, avoiding looking at him. “Nothin’ come of it,” she said. “He come and gone, and nothin’ come of it.”

  “Who?”

  “I thought he’s gonna kill me, but I runned off. I got away from him.”

  “Money’s gone.”

  She became still. “He musta took it,” she finally groaned.

  “Who?” he repeated, more sternly this time. “Who took it?”

  Clairey rested her head against her forearm as she squatted next to the mess she had left. “My daddy,” she said.

  “Your daddy was here?” Ellis asked. The implications of the situation were sinking in, and he was not pleased with any of it. “What’d he want?”

  “Said he was in need of hep, but I done tole him you ain’t got nothin’. Only, he wouldn’t believe it.”

  Ellis felt his blood boil. He strode across the room and picked Clairey up by the elbow so she was standing again. “He touch you?” Ellis roared, examining her closely. “He lay a hand to you?” He knew before he even asked. The dim light of the lantern revealed the bruising, and the shattered expression in her eyes told the rest.

  She was sobbing, trying to catch her breath as she recoiled from his rage. She didn’t have to answer him. Her face said it all.

  “I’ll kill him!” he vowed. “I’ll be damned if I don’t kill him!”

  “Please,” she begged. “Please don’t.”

  “No good…sorry…” he sputtered. He was so agitated that he couldn’t seem to find the words to express himself.

  “Promise me,” she said. “Promise you won’t do nothin’ bad, Ellis.”

  He paused, surveying the damage to Clairey’s face. As angry as he was, he could see the torment in her expression and felt empathy for her. His jaw line relaxed, and his anger diminished as he sought to comfort her. “It’s gonna be all right,” he said, drawing her near and holding her close.

  “Promise,” she sobbed, trying to pull away from him. “Promise you ain’t gonna do nothin’. I couldn’t stand it if you got yourself into trouble or was hurt because of me. I couldn’t stand it!”

  “I promise,” Ellis agreed so that she would calm down. “You all right?” he whispered against her hair.

  Clairey wrapped her arms around his waist, nodding her head against his shoulder.

  The brush of her body against his made Ellis forget completely about her father, about his desire to go hunt him down and make him pay. Holding her like that was touching on something he had forbidden himself from considering up to that point. He began to berate himself inwardly but stopped, utterly tired of fighting his natural instincts.

  He re
called randomly how it had been the warmth of her body that had sustained him that long night in his truck on the side of the road, her body that had kept him from death in the bitter cold. Ellis leaned into Clairey, pressing her between himself and the wall, relishing the feel of her in his arms. Was it his imagination that she was clinging to him too? I’ll touch her face, and she’ll stop me, he thought, and that will be the end of it.

  He felt the hammering pulse in her neck, fast and insistent. Ellis remembered how he had held a frightened, wild rabbit in his hands when he was a child, and how its heart had beat similarly. Will she stop me? he wondered. He felt inhibited by his ignorance of women and by his inability to know what she was thinking.

  Clairey could feel the change in him, how the lines of his muscles had seemed to soften and relax. He slid his hands down her arms, his fingers leaving a slow trail, his breath heavy and uneven as he stood before her, face to face. There was something in his eyes that she couldn’t read, although it seemed surprisingly like bashfulness. Ellis had always seemed so confident, so sure of himself. It was something she had admired very much about him. Yet there he was, showing vulnerability. She realized he must have been as insecure as she was, and it somehow made her more self-assured.

  He leaned down and put his lips to hers, barely touching in an almost kiss, just enough to send goose bumps over her body, so that they were exchanging breaths, his sweet and alluring. Perhaps he was expecting that at that point she would protest, make him stop, but she didn’t. She simply stood there perfectly still, trying to get her emotions in check as she struggled to stop crying.

  His hands and lips were gentle, uncertain, inquisitively slow and deliberate as he explored her face. He put his fingers to her throat and her collar bone. Now and then he looked into her eyes, as if he were asking her without words if she approved or if she wanted him to stop.

  Clairey met his gaze with unabashed frankness, the excitement stirring within her. Since that first night when she had come with him unwillingly, there had been a change in her. Although subtle, it was nonetheless a complete transformation from what she had been. She recognized now that she was in a very different position. For it was given to her to choose. Would she become the mistress of that house in word and deed? Would she take her place in the world as a woman or stay forever that frightened little girl she had been brought up to be? She saw what she was doing to Ellis, how his body reacted to hers, and it gave her a sense of power unlike anything else she’d ever experienced.

  Clairey let him kiss her neck and touch her with quiet relish until it wasn’t enough anymore, and he needed her completely and totally. Ellis clasped her arms in his firm grip, moving her away from the wall and guiding her backward into the bedroom, working his mouth over hers impatiently while he steered her.

  The energy surged between them as he knelt before her on the floor while she sat on the edge of the bed, his clumsy fingers working to unbutton her dress with poor results. The buttons didn’t seem to want to accommodate him. As he was thus fumbling, again he looked up to meet her gaze, and he hesitated.

  She was watching him, her almond-shaped eyes half concealed by her lashes, softly returning his gaze, and for the first time Ellis faltered.

  “You prob’ly think I’m nothin’ but a fool. A ham-fisted dumb animal…” He pulled away. “If you want, I can stop.”

  In that moment, Clairey knew that she was nobody’s victim anymore. She was in control of her own destiny. She was taking her place in the world. She realized then that this was something she wanted desperately, to belong, to be anchored.

  Ellis apparently read her silence as rejection. He took a deep breath and let it out in a ragged sigh. He said again, “I can stop.”

  “No,” she assured him. Clairey took his face in her hands and drew him to her. She let Ellis know that stopping was not at all what she wanted.

  He seemed surprised by her uncharacteristically brazen behavior, but he was not displeased by it. After living with one another for months in their peculiar coexistence, they finally lay together, body to body, as husband and wife.

  The next morning, Ellis went about his usual business in a drizzling rain, tending the animals then eating the breakfast she had prepared. Not sure if it was the rain or his reluctance to leave their warm bed, her body pressed next to his, he had slept in. Then, without disturbing her, he had crept out to take care of his chores. When he came in out of the rain again and she was there, he hardly knew how to carry himself. Ellis was acutely aware of the change that had transpired between them. He, however, chose to behave as if there were nothing out of the ordinary and today was like any other.

  “Where you goin’?” she asked when he put his hat on and took his gun out.

  “I aimed on goin’ over to my daddy’s place. Just wanna check up, look round the house, make sure it’s locked up still,” he said.

  She drew in close to him. “Not today,” she enticed. “It’s rainin’.”

  “Been meanin’ to do it for a time now. Won’t be but a short while,” he told her with a winningly persuasive grin. “Can’t get much else done in this here rain anyhow. And I’ll be back long afore supper.”

  Her hands rested in his, her palms to his palms, and he inspected them for a brief moment, marveling at how small they seemed. He flipped them over, noting the calluses that lined the pads of her hands just below where her fingers joined. He thought how nice it would be if she had a pair of gloves like the ones the ladies wore in town. He kissed her hands and then her lips with a sense of tenderness. He felt eager anticipation at returning to her when his business was done.

  “Don’t worry none. Maybe make another one of them pies of yours while I’m gone. That’d be awful nice to come home to.”

  “I will if you want it,” she agreed.

  He nodded his head with a smile before he went outside, tossed his rifle in the back of his truck, climbed into the cab, and drove away.

  Ellis remembered the way to the shabby little cabin instinctively. And without any hesitation, he drove in the steady rain to the source of his trouble. The route was permanently recorded in his memory from last winter. He pulled off of the main road onto the gravel road and then to a dirt road that led to the hollow.

  When he knocked on the front door, Clairey’s mother answered. It occurred to him that he was married to this woman’s daughter but did not even know her name. Her poor face was marred by a glaringly ugly black eye, swollen to the point that it was nearly shut. She looked alarmed when she saw him. And he knew what she was thinking, how her gut must have been churning right about then.

  “What’re you doin’ here?” she said, looking around in panic to see if her husband, Joe, was aware of the two of them talking. “You need to leave afore there’s trouble.”

  “I come lookin’ for trouble,” he replied with a hard smile. “Maybe you know where he is?”

  She didn’t have to be told to whom he was referring. She hesitated for a moment. “The barn” was all she said, and her eyes wandered over in that direction.

  Ellis turned to head for the barn.

  “Wait,” she called in a desperate whisper.

  Ellis paused and turned back toward her. He lingered expectantly, staying to hear what she had to say.

  The woman’s expression was grave. “Clairey,” she murmured. “How is it with her?”

  Ellis looked at her, pity overcoming him. “She’s well. Eatin’ good. Got a warm bed and all she needs.”

  “Would you tell her…tell her her mama sent her love.”

  Ellis’s eyes grew tender, and he seemed remorseful for having to decline her wish. “I can’t do that,” he apologized. “She don’t know I’m here.”

  “Prob’ly best,” the woman agreed with a little nod of her head. “Prob’ly best. Take care with her for me, will you?”

  He nodded. He couldn’t save her. It was too late for the woman. But he could save Clairey. That was his aim. That was his purpose in going there. “You
got my word, ma’am,” he assured her.

  The interior of the barn was dim in the midmorning gloom of the rain, but he easily spotted the man sitting on a stool, sagging heavily against the wall. He was sleeping, snoring loudly in a stupor brought on from the drink he had likely bought with Ellis’s money. Ellis knocked the man’s foot roughly, waking him with a start.

  He looked up, confused, disoriented, until his eyes eventually focused on Ellis, and he grew angry. “What’re you doin’ here?” Joe barked.

  “You been out to my place, you dog. Did you think I was just gonna let you get away with it?”

  “Ain’t a man allowed to see his child? His own flesh and blood?” he asked in an innocent tone. “I come to see Clairey. But she’s disloyal to me, her own daddy! Well, she never was good for nothin’.”

  “Don’t you talk about her that a-way!”

  “Didn’t I provide for her all these long years? Didn’t I trick a man into havin’ her when nobody else woulda looked twice at her? And she won’t give me the respect I deserve! No, she never was good for nothin’.”

  “You wouldn’t have her. You turned her out! You don’t got no claim on her no more. And when you come to my place, into my home, hurtin’ my wife and takin’ what’s mine, well, sir, you gotta answer for it.”

  “That right?” he said with a laugh. “What’re you gonna do ’bout it?”

  “Well, that’s up to you, mister. I either come to warn you off or kill you outright.” He spoke quietly but with intent.

  Joe got up, unsteady on his feet, but he was too drunk to realize how impaired his reflexes really were. “I don’t need no feller too big for his britches comin’ round tellin’ me what for, damn it!” he growled. He launched himself at Ellis, who easily moved out of his path, and Joe crashed to the ground on his stomach.