He rode back to Brown’s Hotel. The Wentworths didn’t have to listen when Joshua Devlin told them Serena wasn’t there. He needed back up. The telegram to Greenville raced through the wires before noon. ‘Found her. Macon. Advise arrival time.’
Kent passed a profitable afternoon and evening waiting for his cousin’s train to pull into the depot. Upper class Macon might be just fine and dandy letting Joshua Devlin handle the problem of the needy. But he knew one class of Macon wouldn’t be fine and dandy with it at all.
There were in-between folks, uneducated maybe, but not entirely illiterate. Of course, Kent wasn’t looking for Harvard graduates. These men weren’t upper class, or even middle class, but they weren’t trash. Fiercely independent, many were from farm stock whose families had been forced to the city streets and closely built houses by droughts or floods or failed crops or hoof-in-mouth disease. They didn’t have a background of noblesse oblige. Most of them lumped all people with dark skin into one neat category: they were niggers.
Kent wasn’t surprised to find the working class men who stopped in at the small bars on Third and Fourth Streets for a mug of beer on the way home didn’t like Gorley House or Joshua Devlin. In fact, they were of the opinion Macon would be a hell of a lot better off if somebody rode that nigger out of town on the rails and burned the entire shootin’ match to the ground. After all, nobody was giving them any hand-outs. Not that they’d take any hand-outs were they offered.
Kent smiled and disbursed liquid refreshment with a liberal hand. By darkfall, he had the bars incensed, ready to help in the righting of this terrible wrong. Things had come to a damn fine pass when a man’s wife took off without a by-your-leave and stole his young’un. So what if the young’un wasn’t born yet, didn’t that damn woman have no idea what a man’s first son meant to him? Didn’t she have no respect, hiding out with the niggers? And that highfalutin’ Joshua Devlin, who talked like a white man and acted like he thought his shit didn’t stink, well, he’d just stuck his nose in one time too many where it didn’t belong and if the rich white folks in this town didn’t have the guts to put him in his place once and for all, they sure as hell did.
They’d like to see him try and stop them from helping their newfound friend and his cousin get that baby back. They purely would like to see it. They hoped they’d see it.
Kent left them at eleven p.m. to meet his cousin at the train depot. He’d meet then at Gorley House with David. Kent paced impatiently, checking his watch. Damnation. Almost midnight. Would the damn train never pull in? Finally, it did. David Wentworth stalked across the terminal platform.
“Where the hell is she?” he demanded.
For the briefest space, Kent, irritated as hell by David’s attitude—no expression of thanks, no appreciation that his cousin had finally brought Serena to ground when battalions of Pinkertons hadn’t been able to—almost told his cousin he’d been mistaken. That he’d thought he’d found Serena but it hadn’t been her after all. But damn it all, a Wentworth baby was involved. Why the hell did there have to be a baby?
“At a church shelter,” he said shortly. “It’s called Gorley House. Now if you’ll shut up, I’ll tell you what we’re goin’ to do about it.”
“Don’t you talk to me like that!”
“I’ll talk to you any damn way I please! I spent all damn day on this, I got the whole thing set up! Now you just shut up and listen to me!”
David did.
“What the hell you mean the police wouldn’t be much help? We’re Wentworths, by God, they’ll do whatever the hell I tell ‘em to!”
“I don’t think so. And it don’t matter anyway. I got better than the police. I got a whole group of liquored-up transplanted sharecroppers waiting down from the house ready to go in that door right behind us. Every last one of ‘em despises niggers and hates this Devlin nigger’s guts.
When they rendezvoused with the mob, David had to admit Kent had done himself proud. Nobody was going to stop this group. If Serena was in that house, they’d find her. And his son.
“All right,” he said shortly. “Let’s do it.”
Chapter Fourteen
In this hour past midnight, Gorley House was dark. The children slept soundly in their dormitory rooms in the rear of the building, sprawled with the careless abandon of childhood between their clean cotton sheets underneath thin veils of mosquito netting.
The dormitory rooms reserved for those temporarily in need of shelter were empty. In high summer, seasonal farm work was plentiful and the nights were warm. No transient street people needed shelter that night.
Sadie was awake. She sat in the kitchen on the side of the house, sipping weak tea. The rumbling nausea had finally departed and she’d slept off and on through the day. Now, she couldn’t sleep. She glanced out the window, looked away, and glanced back. Lantern light? Not out front, but she was sure she’d caught a lantern glimmer going around the side of the house toward the front door. Surely no one needed help at this hour in high summer. She groaned and got up to go check. Sometimes she wished Joshua had gone to medical school. She’d swear to the Lord fewer people knocked for Everett and Paul in the middle of the night.
She stood by the door. Nobody knocked, but there was definite movement and low rumblings of mumbled conversation. Well, no sense letting them wake the house.
She opened the door enough to peer out. What on earth? Eight or ten men, all of them white.
Kent moved forward. He didn’t trust David to handle this situation.
“Good evening, ma’am, we’re sorry to trouble you this time of night.”
“Yes suh?”
David pushed his cousin out of the way and shoved Sadie backwards. Caught off guard, she fell heavily and struck her head against the sharp corner of the low table standing against the foyer wall. She tried to fight off the dancing motes of lights behind her eyes and regain her balance but gravity pulled her on down. Her head bounced hard off the hardwood floor. She went limp, momentarily knocked unconscious by the successive blows.
“Goddamn, you idiot! This ain’t no social event! I want that bitch! And I want my son!”
David started down the hall, his rag-tag vigilantes close behind.
“Goddamn it!” Kent exclaimed under his breath. The head-strong, stubborn, stupid son-of-a-bitch. And this idiot was the head of the sprawling Wentworth fortune? They’d best start stockpiling their money or it wouldn’t last long. David was one insane little bastard.
Kent bent over Sadie, uncertain whether to pick her up. He heard the low mutters of the men and slamming doors as they moved throughout the house. He could check on the old woman later. Now he needed to follow David and see if he could keep the situation under control.
He froze at the bellow of rage.
“You whoring bitch! Ruttin’ with a nigger!”
Kent shot down the hall. What the holy hell was going on? This wasn’t the way he’d planned things, not at all.
He pushed his way through the crowd of men standing in the doorway, ignoring their mutters.
“Never seen the beat!”
“Did you ever?”
“My woman, I’d skin her alive!”
“Not ‘fore I skint that nigger!”
“Starting at his balls!”
Kent pushed his way to his cousin’s side. He stared in horror at the sight of the couple, their contrasting color staring in stark relief against the white of the sheets. The bedside lamp, lit hurriedly when the mob’s search wakened them, burned low.
Its dim light served as the final macabre touch for this vision of a white man’s greatest horror. He’d sympathized with Serena, he truly had. Only the thought of the Wentworth child had made him send the telegraph humming over the wires. But this? How in the hell had any white woman fallen to this?
He looked at his cousin’s face and saw death. David’s revolver was in his hand, pointed directly at Joshua. Joshua’s eyes moved around the room, looking for something, anything. But there w
as nothing and he knew it. Nothing beat a bullet and even it did, he stared a lynch mob in the face.
The hammer cocked. The trigger began to squeeze. Joshua turned to look at Serena’s face.
“Love you,” he said.
* * *
Paul roamed the woods, the blood fever upon him. The tensions of the past weeks, his worry over his brother—he hadn’t even tried to fight it. He had to hunt, stalk and capture, bite and tear. He knelt on the ground beside the big buck he’d strangled with his bare hands and tore open the jugular, feasting on the richness of hot blood.
Suddenly, he raised his head. Blood dripped from his mouth in black gouts and stained the front of his white shirt. He didn’t hear the sounds with his ears. Some portion of his brain caught echoes, sending them out in a floodtide. He raised his arm and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. The vibrations of a gunshot reverberated throughout every cell of his soul.
“No!”
The roar of the shout lingered long after he cast out into the dark.
* * *
David turned the gun on Serena. She sat immobile, carved from stone. She held the sheet, splattered now with Joshua’s blood, tight over her breasts. She’d looked at Joshua once. She’d look no more. His face was gone. In a few seconds, she’d follow him and then she wouldn’t feel the horrified grief and guilt coming as soon as the first numbed shock and disbelief wore off.
“David, don’t!” Kent spoke urgently to his cousin, afraid to grab his arm for fear of the gun’s explosion. “The nigger’s one thing but—”
David Wentworth laughed.
“Like I’d make hers that quick,” he told his cousin. He turned to Serena.
“Get your ass out of that bed and get dressed. Then you show me where my son is. But don’t you dare touch him. You ain’t never goin’ to touch him again. You just about to find out what hell is, woman!”
“You don’t have a son! The baby’s dead, you bastard! Born dead.”
“You bitch! You killed my son!”
The hammer cocked again.
“And it was a girl!” she spat. At least she’d die carrying the look on David Wentworth’s face with her.
Paul materialized directly beside Wentworth. The buck’s blood still stained his mouth. His shirt dripped gore. The vigilantes’ eyes bulged. As one, they started backing away.
“Jesus!”
“Goddamn, did you ever see?”
“What the hell?”
“Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
Their footsteps echoed down the hall. Paul grabbed the gun from Wentworth’s hand, snapping his wrist bones. He flung the gun wildly. The force of its impact with the wall sent a bullet ricocheting around the room and Paul felt a sting in his right shoulder. He didn’t stop to investigate.
Killing time. He was going to kill this man. He knew it. With his bare hands, he’d tear him limb from limb. A loud crack sounded in the room and Wentworth screamed, his left arm broken.
Serena flung herself off the bed as the gun flew through the air. She pounced on it the second the bullet exploded from the muzzle. She stood straight in the middle of the room, naked and giving it no thought. No one who holds a gun is naked. Her long black hair swept across her face in a cloud and she shook her head impatiently, tossing it back.
Kent backed away, his eyes fixed on the furious, bloody thing closing in for the kill. He stopped at the sound of the cocking hammer.
“Don’t you move!”
No general ever issued a firmer order. Kent didn’t move.
Her voice broke Paul’s concentrated attack. Wentworth fell in a crumbled heap at his feet. Paul bent down to grab his arm and haul him back up.
“No!” Serena commanded. “He’s mine!”
“Serena, for the love of God!” Kent implored, his voice strangling in his throat.
“Look at me, David!”
Wentworth crouched in his huddle at Paul’s feet.
“I said look at me!”
He raised his head.
“Meet me in Hell, you bastard!” She pulled the trigger.
Kent stood frozen against the wall, scalded by the heat of his cousin’s brains spattering his pants legs. He closed his eyes, waiting to hear the hammer cock again.
“Now you look at me!”
Kent kept his eyes closed.
“I said, look at me!”
By God, if she was going to blow his brains out too, he’d be man enough to look at her. He opened his eyes.
Serena still held the gun pointed directly at him. But the hammer didn’t cock. Keeping the gun trained on her target, she lowered her arms to give Kent a clear view of her body in the light of the kerosene lamp.
“You see me?” she asked. “You see David Wentworth’s handiwork?”
He stared at her, at the scars marring her upper body and covering her breasts.
“Oh, my God!”
“You’re a Wentworth, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
“Yes. You have the look. Do I know you?
“I was at your wedding. I’m David’s second cousin.”
“No. You’re my Judas.”
His last nerve snapped.
“Why don’t you go ahead and pull the damn trigger? Get it over with!”
Paul spoke.
“He’s an extra body to get rid of.”
Serena looked at Paul. So this was Joshua’s brother. Who looked like he’d bathed in blood, appearing from nowhere and knocking the gun from David’s hand. How and why, she didn’t know and she didn’t care. But no one needed to know he existed.
“All right, Cousin Wentworth.” She moved to Kent and placed the gun’s muzzle directly against his temple. “Tell me what happened here tonight.”
“Ain’t got no idea in Hell. Ain’t seen David in two months.”
“What about me?”
“Don’t know where you are.”
Paul spoke. “But if you ever remember, I’ll know. And I’ll find you.”
“Do you understand?” Serena asked.
Kent was afraid to speak and with the gun to his temple, he was afraid to nod. His lips barely moved as he whispered.
“Yes.”
Serena looked at Paul. He nodded.
“Go,” she said, standing back and lowering the gun.
He went. And none of his father’s raging threats of disinheritance ever brought him back to Macon again.
Chapter Fifteen
Paul looked at Serena. He couldn’t look at his brother. Not yet. He walked to the dresser and lifted Serena’s robe, tossing it to her. He dared not come near her. He wished he’d let her die in childbirth.
She caught it, realizing for the first time she was naked and caring not at all. She slipped it on. She stood and inspected him.
“You’re hurt,” she said. He shook his head. “Yes, you are,” she insisted, moving nearer. “Your shoulder.”
He moved away from her and looked down at the small, reddened hole in his shoulder. Must have caught a ricochet. He felt something move under his skin and as he watched the flattened lead popped out and fell to the floor.
He ignored Serena’s gasp and maintained his careful distance. She caught the echoes of swirling ice in his voice.
“Where’s Sadie?”
“I don’t know.”
The moan came from the doorway. He swirled around. Sadie stood, holding on to the door frame. She’d held on to the walls navigating her way to the room, refusing to give in to the dancing, dizzying motes floating behind her eyes. Paul rushed to her.
“Mama.”
She sank down on the floor and sat stiffly, her eyes wide as they focused on Joshua’s body. She folded her arms across her breasts and began to rock.
“Mama!” Paul knelt beside her and caught her swaying shoulders. “Mama, stop! Sadie! Look at me!”
But Sadie didn’t stop. She didn’t look. Her eyes stared, unseeing, at the still figure on the bed. She saw nothing. There was nothing in her w
orld except darkness and the rocking sensation. She didn’t know the swaying came from the motion of her own body. She knew nothing.
Paul slowly straightened. He turned and walked to the bed, picking up the bed spread from its bottom. He wrapped his brother in its folds.
“Get me a shawl or something. For Sadie.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Bury my brother. And take Sadie somewhere.”
“Where?”
“None of your damned business.”
“I’ll take care of Sadie.”
“Like you took care of my brother?”
“Where will you bury him?”
“Are you deaf? None of your damned business.”
“I deserve to know where he’s buried!”
“So you can put flowers on his grave? Touching. You already killed him. That’s not enough?”
She moved to Joshua’s bureau and pulled out one of his shirts.
“Here.” she said, holding it out. “Whatever you think of me, you can’t go riding through town like that.”
Paul looked down at his bloody shirt and shrugged. He ripped the buttons off and dropped it, pulling on its replacement. It was tight across the chest and the arms were a little too short. Both the Devlin brothers were lean and well-made but Joshua was smaller. No matter. It would do.
He picked Joshua up and they both disappeared, leaving Serena gape-mouthed. He materialized in the stables and placed Joshua carefully in the back of the small buckboard and returned to the bedroom.
He stared down at David Wentworth’s body. Too bad he was dead. He’d died too quick. He bent and tossed the body over his shoulder and disappeared again. This time he materialized down by the Ocmulgee. Without ceremony, he tossed the dead man into the flowing current. Then he returned for Sadie.
“I asked you to get her a shawl,” he said. He moved to Joshua’s desk, opened the drawer and pulled out P. J. Devlin’s checkbook.
Serena left the room. She refused to think about the mysterious appearances and disappearances of Joshua’s brother. What did they matter after tonight? But the children. They must be terrified. She found them huddled together in one of the back rooms, and took a moment to reassure them.
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