by Diane Munier
“That’s not fair to me. I worked hard for what I have, long after Richard deserted us. When Charles got sick I carried everything. We would have no store if it wasn’t for me. And I intend to make a very good life for this family. I have always favored Adeli…Addie. And I’ll be good to the children. They’re my blood,” he said.
“I am good to these children. They are…,” I tapped my chest over my heart.
“So it’s up to her. You must know…I am in your debt. But I am determined she will marry me.”
“Best keep your eyes in your head around Lavinia then. A distracted man will never attain his goal,” I said.
Now I’d tromped on his good intentions, and he was getting huffy. Now I was starting to see what manner of man he was.
Tom Tanner
Chapter Nineteen
Addie left the house and walked toward me and Quinton. I realized she didn’t have a screen for the door, and knew such would allow so much heat out of the kitchen. Then I felt even more anger at this Cousin who still stood there waiting for me to take back everything I said, like this was the schoolyard. Then I wondered if he was watching her hips sway, too, and I wanted to kill him all over again, even as I remembered her in the yard that morning, so beautiful and welcoming I nearly fell to my knees.
I imagined she had cared for Janey, and was coming for the other now. I knew she blamed me for the sins of this world. She was sizing up the two of us, wondering how it was.
“I will carry him in,” I said, meaning Johnny.
“Is he sleeping?”
“In the hay,” I said. It’s where I planned to sleep myself this night, waiting like a stray cat she had made the mistake of feeding. I wanted to be as near to her as I could get.
“Have you made peace?” she asked looking from me to Cousin.
I turned my head and spit in the dirt. He was still trying to stanch the blood from my bull’s-eye comment about Lavinia.
He shuffled his feet. “For the sake of everyone, we must shelve this disagreement.” He walked off to the field and I tried not to throw a rock.
Addie walked past me into the barn. She looked down on Johnny. “He’s had a trying day. This morning when he woke you were the first one he asked for…always the first he tries to get to. He’d sleep with you if he could.”
And I’d sleep with her if I could. I reached and pulled that bandana off her hair. That mane of glory was twisted in a bun at the nape of her slender neck. I touched it then, the field scrubbed off her. Such a spot of sweetness I nearly stuttered out some kind of mating call.
“Don’t,” she whispered, but her eyes closed.
I went from love to madness for the hundredth time. “I came back,” I said. “If Johnny wouldn’t have come…I was trying to leave.”
She opened her eyes. “Maybe you should. I was ready to go for the shotgun when you started with Quinton. You shamed him there. You put notions in Johnny’s head.”
“Did I? And offering him a whole store now his pa is gone ain’t putting notions in his head? He’s family shoppin’.”
Her hands went to her hips again. She eyed me and her mouth was open. I tied her bandana round my neck and stared at her like a relentless son of a bitch.
“You made him out to be another Boyle Monroe the way you talked. I don’t know where you got such notions about him. And you made us out to be pitiful share-croppers. I’m purely ashamed the way you must see us—him the villain and me the damsel.”
I kept staring. “I’m shaming him, no one else.”
She looked suspicious, raising one of her brows in such a fetching way. “You’re the one who has no shame. I don’t know what you’ll do next.” She snatched at my prize, “Give me my bandana.”
I stepped back. “Come and get it.”
“I declare, Tom Tanner, you’re worse than Johnny. You are putting me under a millstone. That’s what. I have told you I must return home. You came back to cause me trouble. It’s revenge!”
“I came back to see you again. I don’t know why. But after this morning…I needed to see you again.” I stepped closer, “I want you.”
“Dear God,” she whispered, like it was more a curse than a prayer.
I didn’t know what else to say. So she let me put my arms around her. I held her loosely, but I fought every instinct when I didn’t smash her against me. We grew quiet like that, staring at Johnny nesting there.
“I…I hurt for you carrying such about Garrett. I hoped you laid it down with the telling of it.” Her voice sounded like I’d knocked the wind out of her finally.
“That’s all you got to say?” I looked at her. “I’m reprobate.”
“Sounds like you pity yourself.”
I did not expect her to say such.
“Go on,” I said.
She twisted out of my arms, and let that knot of hair loose to trail down her back. “If you’re reprobate, that takes away all the hope you gave me about failing to protect my husband. Guess I’m reprobate, too.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I can’t believe a thing you’ve said to encourage me.”
“Woman…why do you insist on making me rabid?”
“You speak out both sides of your mouth,” she was nearly whispering. “There’s one set of laws for you, and another for the rest of us. We get to make mistakes, we get to fail, but not you.” Her voice was picking up speed, “You have to do every little thing as well as God Himself, or you call yourself reprobate,” she poked me hard with her finger and it hurt. “Well hubris can take many forms, Mr. Tanner. And you are not God, fact is no one is praying to you, singing you hymns, or reading the good book you wrote.”
She was all teary eyed, and looked mad enough to choke me.
“I….” I just did not know what to say. “I’m not worthy,” I whispered, like she must see this.
“You have to give yourself some mercy, Tom. I only know you as worthy. Your family, they would agree. I don’t know how it was with Garrett, but I suspect you’ve taken all the things out of your mind that are worthy. You’ve set the worst of it in stone until you’ve decided you ain’t fit to live.”
“I don’t know….”
She grabbed my arms. “I have never known a more worthy man in my life than you, Tom, and if Garrett was here with us, he would back me up! Do you think his last thoughts didn’t include your anguish as well as his own!”
I shook my head at her. How could she know all this? “Do you mean this?”
“Yes,” she shouted in a voice that seemed to come from her toes. “I will say it one hundred times. Yes.” She was staring me down again. I wanted to fall at her feet. I wanted to worship her.
“Then don’t you dare marry him.”
She was chewing that bottom lip, but her eyes were digging into mine.
“I will try not to.”
I pulled away from her and ripped her bandana off my neck and slapped it again and again on my leg, raising a small cloud of dust. Then I turned to her, and she was backing as I advanced, and I was making some kind of noise that even scared me, and she was able to go no further cause her back hit a gate, so she cringed back, and her face had this look like a madman was upon her.
“You marry him I swear to God above I’ll come there and kill him…I’ll put my hands around his scrawny city boy neck and I’ll squeeze and squeeze until I feel the cracking and popping, and his eyes bug out and the red lines break through them and he gets that nice deep red color, and his tongue flags out, and the spit runs out, and then he pees and shits himself and goes limp and I will throw him down and stomp on him.”
I leaned over her, but I had not touched her for my hands were twisting that bandana.
I stopped then, for such a terrible feeling had broken loose in me, I stepped back from her and I stumbled, and caught myself, and ran a hand over my face, and saw Johnny looking wide-eyed at me, still in that curled position.
She yelled then, running for me with a board she’d gotte
n her hands on. She held it like a club, and I had to sidestep her, grab her round the waist and take it from her.
“Let me go,” she yelled.
“Addie, Addie…I’m….”
We were just breathing then, both of us looking at Johnny. She swallowed, and still huffed as she said, “It is fine, Johnny. Tom and I….” Her tears broke loose and her shoulders moved, and I pulled her against me, my arms around her middle, my face against her hair.
“You have to go,” she said. “I’m scared to be without you. And I’ve grown scared of you. I know you’ll blame Quinton, but…don’t you see? I can’t talk you out of it, and it’s like I said, I’ve been here before. So please, please…let me go.”
I was stuck there for a minute. When I took my arms away, I’d be letting her go. I didn’t know if I could. I was stuck where I was, inside and out.
I took in a breath and I let her go then, forced my arms to agree. “Be a good boy, Johnny,” I said, and I walked quick.
She was scared of me. I thought it was all him—Cousin. But she was scared of me. I’d told her…and she was scared. And I’d been scary.
Johnny did not speak, but I saw him rise, and he followed and crashed into me, and I kept walking, turned and pried him loose, and kept walking then, in the sunlight, and the heat, I pried him off two more times.
She came after, “Johnny,” she called.
“Boy,” I said, “you stay with your ma like we said. Go to your ma. Right now.”
“No,” he howled, falling on his knees. “Don’t leave us Tom. Don’t go.”
She was running to him, fell beside him and wrapped herself around him for he was fixing to come after me again.
I could not bear to hear that sound, him cater-wailing and I knew it came from deep in. I picked it up then, breaking into a run soon as I cleared the yard. I ran and ran. I ran from their pull and their call, I ran.
When I was far enough away I could no longer look back at them or hear, I walked for a spell. I had no thoughts. I had no feelings. It was one mile in before I knew where I was or what I was doing.
I slowly came to myself. There was the bent oak, there was the north field breaking out into the horizon. There was a black-tailed hawk swooping for supper. There was the pale sky and the blazing ball of fire.
And there, crushed in my hand…was her bandana.
I would do no hard thinking until I was well on my way. My mind was made up. It had dropped in and locked in. Always fast, always strong, I ran then. I ran and I ran so I could put miles between us, so she’d be safe. And I did not look back.
In my room, the things were already piled. I should have left this morning. But I’d waste no time now. I would make it to Greenup before sundown. So I filled my knapsack, strap on my shoulder I went to the house for my Enfield. Ma sat in the rocker a paper on her lap. I could see the pot boiling over on the stove, but she didn’t seem to care. “Are you going too?” she said.
“Too? Who else is going? You mean Addie?” It hurt to say her name.
Then I realized she’d been crying. Seth told me she did this. She would never stop mourning Garrett, I knew.
“Ma…I am going. I will write.” I dealt with the pot.
“You think it will take that long to bring them home?”
“Ma? Garrett is not coming home,” I said carefully.
She looked shocked. “Gaylin and Allie!” she yelled shaking her glasses at me.
“What are you talking about?
“They’ve run off! Him to join that posse and my baby girl to marry Jimmy!”
“Hellfire! Hellfire!” I yelled just as loud, going to the metal box for all the ammunition I could set my hands on. “How long ago?”
“I don’t know! I figured Allie was sick with her monthlies so I let her lie abed. But Gaylin did not come to table, and when Pa returned for dinner he thought Gaylin had gone to Varn’s farm to help in the field. Later I called Allie and when she did not respond Pa climbed the ladder and found the letter!”
I went to her and took it from her hand. It said some nonsense about elopement, and not to worry for Gaylin was accompanying her and he was going to join the posse.”
“Hellfire!” I yelled again because that was the worst I could say in Ma’s hearing.
I would kill Jimmy for sure. Then Allie, now widowed, would have no recourse but to return to her senses and her home. Gaylin could go straight to hell and probably would once he got his breads shot off by some cross-eyed farmer.
“God Almighty,” I yelled through my teeth. “Ma,” I said, “I will send them to you…never you mind.”
She nodded, but she did not speak.
“Where is my pa?”
“He headed cross field on Bess to find you.”
“Tell him to stay put. Tell him I will bring them home safe and sound. You hear?”
“Yes Tom,” she said, more docile than I’d ever seen.
“Ma,” I said, “I…love you.”
Her chin trembled then, and she nodded. I squeezed her hand and went out.
I saddled my horse and packed my gear. I muttered plenty, but I kept it mostly in. The town of Greenup was only a two hour ride. Least the way I’d fly over dip and holler.
I pushed hard and got to Greenup close to sundown. I was not prepared for the amount of folks that glutted the square. Everywhere a man could put his boot was some sodbuster eating a can of beans or priming his old firearm. Young men ran in packs. You could smell the home brew and eager sweat. I had not seen such an assortment of misfits and weaponry since the day we left for the army.
I took my horse to the livery and had they not known me they would have turned me out. I walked then, through this melee, listening for him as much as looking. I made my way to the sheriff’s office, but there sat Michael instead of Jimmy or William. “Where is he?” I said.
Michael was at the desk, boots and spurs crossed on the roll-top. He slammed his feet down when he saw me. I was no captain in the war, but I had my shot to climb the ranks and I said no, not me. But still they listened to me.
“He’s on the street,” Michael said.
“Where?”
“Have to look. He goes all over.”
“William?”
“Can’t abide it. You know.”
I nodded. He didn’t like the smells. White folks. He didn’t like the looks. The words. Crowds. Buildings. What in tarnal was he doing here.
“He said you’d come,” Michael grinned now.
“Jimmy?”
He nodded like he knew a joke.
I had no wish to hear it and left. I walked between the buildings then, out back where the houses were sprawled. I went as far as the field where the poor were buried. Passed the foul latrines. Then out further and I whistled some. It was dusk now, but he’d see me alright. I walked a good piece, and had nearly given up when I saw him leaning against the back of the store. He smoked that pipe, and whittled some.
He had the brim of his hat low. I didn’t want to be glad to see him, but I was. “Big show.”
He snorted.
“You seen ‘em?”
“Allie went to Springfield on the train.”
“He left her to get on the train by herself?” I asked, trying to make sure I killed Jimmy for just the right reasons.
“Lenora went with her. I learned to read some. But Mose….”
“Changed his mind, did he?”
William nodded. “He thought….”
“You were too stupid.”
William nodded.
“He may be right. You been in cahoots against me.”
“We are marrying in Springfield soon as we bring Monroe in.”
“I won’t even waste my time beating you within an inch. Mose will kill you soon enough.”
He stared at me. “She is safe. Far away from all this.”
“Like that’s good enough.”
“He did it to bring you here.”
“Jimmy?”
He nodded.
“Is he even going to marry Allie?”
William shrugged. “He says he is.”
“Has he compromised her?”
“It’s Allie.” He said this with some pluck.
“I trusted you…all my life I knew you’d cover me and mine.”
“I cover Allie now. From you.”
“From me?” I said up close, feeling something I never thought I would, the desire to hurt him. Maybe kill him. I thought of Addie’s words as William straightened, his eyes flickering to my hand, the one on the hilt of my knife.
“I promised her. I promised Lenora. You and Mose are the same.”
“I…I should a brought Mose with me, and believe me, if I knew what was up I would have.” I stomped away from him, pushed a couple of fools out of my way and made for the road and the big man. If I stayed by him…. I eased my hand off that knife, but the sound of Jimmy’s voice brought it there again.
He was in a knot of men, taking names. “Heberbrand. Where’d you get a handle like that, boy?” The crowd laughed, and Jimmy wrote. Now would be the time to stick him good. While I was thinking such someone bumped my arm and broke the red trance I’d been in. I shook out my arms and moved my head side to side. I pushed through that crowd, folks not happy and grumbling about it. I stood before him and he was surprised. There came that grin. “Tom!” He put an arm around me, and introduced me to the crowd as his best pard and the hero of the twenty-seventh. I felt such a fury building in me my eyes watered.
Folks wanted to shake my hand, but I kept them tight against me. Jimmy excused us and led me to the jailhouse. When that door closed behind us, something tripped in me, and I lashed out like a crazy man. I don’t know where they came from, but they were on me, at least three of them, and I got loosed once, and grabbed me a chair and held it up. They were already bleeding, Michael, William and Jimmy. “You son of bitches, come on!” I yelled, swinging that chair at Jimmy first as the other two stormed me. They dragged me in the cell then, chair and all and I fought them with everything I had, which included the chair which was now in pieces I was trying to use before they wrested them out of my hands, and it took some minutes to keep me in while they tried to get out. If Jimmy hadn’t cuffed me to the corner bar they’d of never got shed of me. So when they were finally out and huffing, Michael’s shirt shredded, William’s ear bleeding pretty bad, and Jimmy’s nose broke again, they were looking at me like I was some animal right off the boat from South America.