Wild Midnight

by Davis, Maggie;

  She should have remembered, too, that Lee Tillson was a banker. Naturally if one of his sons suggested that she contact him about money, and the other, Til Coffee, actually relayed the message, then he would come—out of curiosity if nothing else, one would suppose—to sit with his still lean, attractive frame relaxed on her sofa, an ingratiating smile on his face, to offer her the loan that the co-op needed so badly.

  He was Til Coffee’s father and Clarissa Beaumont’s widower, a man who needed and used women. But he was not a man whom women could use, that was plain. His wise, knowing look traveled with something of the old lustful relish up and down the old shirt and the jeans she wore.

  “I hear some mighty good things about you, little lady,” he had drawled. “I guess you know I got”—the voice paused with a delicacy that didn’t ring true—”some of my relations down here, although I don’t see them much. I want you to know they speak highly of you and what you’re doing for this town.

  She should have ordered him out of her house then and there, but she was too fascinated to do it. He was such an evil old man; she’d never seen anyone quite like him. And his relations, of course, were Til Coffee and Beau Tillson, his sons; he was not even honest enough to come out and say the word. The diamond-hard recklessness, the lingering glimmer of sensitivity that were in one son’s face and the pragmatic strength in the other’s, were in him a muted, worn grossness. All the tangled torment of his past deeds—Clarissa’s parvenu up-country husband and Jessie Coffee’s rich lover—came together, Rachel saw, in this dandyish, not quite respectable, probably dishonest, still attractive, lecherous old man.

  She knew she couldn’t possibly let him lend the co-op any money, no matter how much they needed it. Staring at the elegant, wickedly powerful presence sitting on her sofa, she suddenly felt herself entangled in the dark web that seemed to reach out from the past and involve Beau and Til and this man.

  At that moment, Rachel had decided to use her own trust money to supply the loan to the Ashepoo River Farmers Cooperative.

  “If you were feeling sick, Rachel,” her mother said as they headed for Draytonville in the Toyota, “then you shouldn’t have ordered such a big dinner.” She shifted slightly to watch her daughter’s face in the soft glow of the dashboard lights. “I feel you have a very good friend in James Claxton. He was very upset that you weren’t feeling well.”

  “He is friend, Mother,” she said meaningfully.

  “But he would like to be more.”

  Without meaning to, Rachel slammed the gears into fourth with more force than necessary. “He needs a wife and someone for his children and someone to keep house for him. He makes that very clear. I don’t know what you mean by ‘more,’ he hasn’t gotten to that part yet.”

  Her mother sighed. “And what does the other one need, Rachel?”

  She wasn’t surprised that her mother knew. How could anyone overlook it, the electricity that surged through the air between them, the way her face had betrayed her, and the way she had bolted from the dining room at the inn before she could scream her pain and despair?

  There were still enough hours left of the night for them to sit, mother and daughter, and drink tea and talk to each other in a renewal of that loving concern that still bound them together. Rachel supposed, now that she thought about it more calmly, that she wanted it as much as her mother did.

  “I have had the feeling ever since you met me at the airport,” Elizabeth Goodbody observed, looking out the window at Draytonville’s streets, lined with ancient live oaks and their melancholy drapes of Spanish moss, “that you are not happy, Rachel. It’s unpleasant to know that one is surrounded by secrets.”

  “Yes, Mother,” she murmured, relieved.

  It was really going to be all right after all. Her mother would be shocked and pained and apprehensive, but that would disappear quickly in love and practical considerations. They would sit in the middle of her bed in their bathrobes and drink tea and talk and talk in that warm communion of women until they were talked out and tired enough to sleep.

  Rachel drew a deep breath as she turned into the road that led to her house. “I don’t want to have any secrets from you, Mother, you know that. Maybe I should tell you the most important thing first, something I haven’t told anyone yet. It will just have to be between the two of us. Until I have to come back to Philadelphia.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Elizabeth Goodbody stood between two rows of tall, waving sweet corn plants, carefully adjusting a pair of heavy canvas gloves purchased in Draytonville’s one and only seed and hardware store. The sun was hot at seven A.M. and getting hotter. A wide-brimmed straw hat borrowed from her daughter shaded her round, pleasant face, and she was ready for a day’s work in a pair of Rachel’s faded, patched jeans, a man’s plaid shirt, and the well-worn Red Cross brogans she used for field trips in various parts of the world.

  “Now darlin’,” Loretha Bulloch instructed in her sultry voice, “you just take hold of this ear of corn and you pull it off the stalk hard.” The elegant dark woman demonstrated, leaving the ear of corn dangling from the plant by its half-broken stalk. “Then you cut it off with your little knife.”

  Loretha, no expert herself, paused to study the operation with one perfectly arched ebony eyebrow lifted, a gold-painted fingernail touching the bright red curve of her underlip. In contrast to Elizabeth’s practical attire, the willowy dark woman wore a bandanna sweatband, a matching red tank top, and cutoff jeans that exposed the long lovely shape of her brown legs. “Oh lordy,” she breathed. “I think I killed it.”

  On the other side of the tall green corn Rachel lifted her voice to shout, “Loretha, I didn’t know you knew that much about pulling corn.”

  “I don’t,” she yelled back. “But my relatives do, and they’ve been teaching me. Why didn’t we get one of those mechanical harvesters in here?”

  “Because we don’t have the money!” Rachel couldn’t help smiling. “And sweet corn is better picked by hand, anyway, everybody tells me.”

  The volunteer help were getting off to a slow start, but every helping hand was needed. The farmer members who had been in the field since before sunup, picking the dew-wet ears for shipment to the farmers market in Savannah and the produce wholesalers, had an assortment of trucks ready; all they needed to do was fill them up.

  “You mean like this, dear?” Elizabeth’s sweet clear voice inquired. There was a ripping sound and the distinct thunk of a ripe ear of corn falling into a wooden basket, followed by another.

  After a moment’s silence Loretha’s puzzled voice said, “Woman, how did you do that?”

  Rachel laughed outright. Elizabeth Goodbody’s middle name was Social Service her friends claimed, in spite of her expensive, conservative clothes and her Philadelphia Main Line manner. Her mother had done her post-college volunteer years in primitive corners of South America and the deserts of Chad and Nigeria with relief teams; she would probably be working hard and efficiently until the last ear of corn was picked.

  Rachel lifted her head to look down the row and check on a subdued D’Arcy Butler working silently under the sun. She wasn’t quite sure why D’Arcy had joined them, but she was down from Charleston and had insisted on coming. She said she needed something to do. The tall, fragile blond woman wore a makeshift bandanna to keep the sweat out of her eyes, and it clasped her fine, straight gold hair in sticky strands to her brooding face.

  “Miz Rachel, you in there?” A heavyset black youth of about sixteen years of age, a star running back of the Draytonville High School football team and one of Mr. Wesley’s grandsons, crashed through the corn and appeared-before her, panting a little.

  “Miz Rachel, Til Coffee says come keep the tally book for a while, he got to go work on one of the trucks that’s broken down.”

  Rachel dropped the ear of corn she’d just pulled off its stalk into her basket. It was their third truck breakdown of the morning. If it hadn’t been for Til’s help, they would h
ave been in a large jam-up by now.

  Thank heavens for Til, she told herself, following the teenager out of the corn. Or more to the point, thank heaven for Loretha. Til’s wife was prodding him now to do even more for the farmers’ cooperative, and their enigmatic relationship seemed to be taking a turn for the better.

  “D’Arcy,” Rachel said a little breathlessly, “I’ve got to run back and do the tally book again so we’ll know how many bushels we’ve picked to ship. Will you be all right?”

  Her friend looked up with lackluster aquamarine eyes. D’Arcy’s slender figure was clad in a pair of elegant white sharkskin slacks that were already covered with green stains from the corn, and a navy silk tailored shirt showing dark spots of perspiration. “I don’t need a keeper, Rachel,” she answered sulkily. “I’m working just as fast as anybody else, aren’t I?”

  Looking at her, Rachel felt a small pang of guilt. She’d been so involved with her own troubles, she hadn’t thought about D’Arcy or her unrequited feelings for her cousin in days. And yet she’d probably made that situation worse in some ways. When her mother’s visit was over she was going to have a long overdue talk with D’Arcy.

  “Oh, D’Arcy,” she murmured, “why don’t you go home if you don’t want to do all this? You don’t have to work with us, I think we have enough help.”

  The taller woman turned on her, her expression bitter. “What’s the matter, Rachel—don’t you think I can do a good day’s work? I’ve picked as much of this stuff as you have already this morning, and a damned sight quicker. I don’t want you telling me I’m just a worthless, rotten society girl from Charleston too. I don’t want to hear it!”

  “D’Arcy, I didn’t say anything of the sort!” Good heavens, were they having an argument? She couldn’t believe it. “How could anybody as sweet and kind to other people as you are be worthless!”

  “Oh, but I am,” the other woman cried. “And empty-headed, and I’d just fall apart without my Lincoln car and a lot of servants to wait on me! You just don’t know!”

  Rachel could only say, “D’Arcy, I don’t think you’re used to heavy work out in the hot sun like this.”

  “Oh, shut up, Rachel! I’m stronger than I look, dammit. I can’t help it if I’m skinny. And I’m more used to hot sun than you are—at least I can get a tan, and don’t swell up and look like a boiled lobster!”

  Rachel backed away. D’Arcy was so unhappy there was nothing she could say to her. She was positive none of the people working in the field had criticized her; many of them were just as inexperienced as she.

  “I won’t be long,” she said hastily. “I’ll help you finish this row when I get back.”

  But D’Arcy only shrugged indifferently and turned back to her work.

  Til Coffee was on his back and halfway under an old pickup truck when she found him. “How bad is it?” Rachel asked, crouching down to look.

  His voice came out from underneath. “It’s a good thing I got my basic expertise hot-wiring cars in my formative years, Miz Rachel, otherwise you’d be looking at a mountain of corn with no place to go.” He slid out from under the truck feet first and stood up, brushing at his cutoff jeans and legs with his hands.

  “How old is this heap anyway?” he asked under his breath, narrowing his eyes at the ancient vehicle before him. “Dodge Something 1962? It ought to be in a museum. And yet Lloyd brought that old wreck in here today to help.” He bent down to wipe the motor oil from his hands against a clump of Bermuda grass. “I got one of Lloyd’s girls in my earth science class. She’s a smart little thing, wants to go to college. I’d hate for her to be out of class again minding her sisters and brothers at home while the rest of the family goes looking for work to get enough money to get that truck fixed. But the damned thing’s dying of old age.”

  “They’d keep her out of school?” Rachel said, staring at a small thin black farmer hovering in the background with a worried expression.

  “You’d better believe it. Take enough months out of the school year and Clinie Lloyd won’t catch up. And won’t make college either.” He looked around with his habitual wry smile. “You and my wife the Dragon Lady have dragged me into this, haven’t you? Here I was, grooving in my middleclass bag in this backwater dreamland, and you come along wanting high school volunteers, propagandizing my wife about uplifting my people and stop taking conscience money from ... certain corrupt sources I could name.” He flashed her a wicked look. “So that my boy will look up to me and all that. Okay, do you think I ought to run for public office?”

  Rachel blinked. “Here?”

  “A good question, but I doubt here, Miz Rachel. Black voters in the low country are still pretty unradicalized. And, although I’m not an ordained minister like Jesse Jackson, I do have my moments.” He grinned at her. “I was a pretty good stand-up comic in ward meetings in southside Chicago, enough to make state committeeman. What do you think?”

  “I ... I can’t,” Rachel murmured. “Think, that is. But have you ... have you talked it over with Loretha?”

  “Sure have. She thinks I need another big city. Like Atlanta. Are you going to do the tally book?” he asked abruptly. “I’ve got to get some kids to load this truck now that I got Lloyd’s muffler all wired up and ready to go.”

  By ten o’clock the sun had turned the air to steam and Rachel could see that the remaining trucks would take care of what had been picked. They would have to stop in another hour or so. It was two hours to Savannah, and there was no need to try to sell their corn after noontime, since most of the truckers and buyers would be gone.

  The same thought, apparently, was on Jim Claxton’s mind when he arrived. The county agent’s tall, rangy figure loped over the rows and toward her in a hurry. He pushed back the brim of his western hat with his thumb and smiled at her.

  “Looks like you people have done a good job,” he said.

  Rachel was genuinely glad to see him, although the warm look in his eyes made her turn away. She closed the ring binder of the tally book and smiled reluctantly.

  “You’re such a pretty thing,” he murmured, stepping closer to her. “How do you always manage to get so dirty?” He reached up to flick a dollop of mud from her cheek.

  She backed away from him. The gesture was fond and intimate, but she was not in love with Jim Claxton and she was sure he wasn’t in love with her. She looked up at the tall blond man uneasily.

  His blue eyes were suddenly fixed at a spot over her shoulder, and his expression froze.

  Before she could turn around to see what he was staring at the county agent muttered, “Excuse me a minute, will you?” and charged past her.

  She’d never seen him move that fast. She stared at him as he started for the far rows of corn. There was no one in sight except the last group of high school students picking up their baskets and stereo radios as they prepared to leave, and the forlorn figure of D’Arcy Butler still working midway down the field.

  It was D’Arcy’s row that Jim Claxton charged into, pushing the waving green arms of the stalks aside like an oncoming freight train. D’Arcy looked up, startled, and then drew back, her lovely face gone paper white as the big man seized one of her fine-boned hands and lifted it palm up to glower at it.

  They were close enough for Rachel to hear him say in a tight, angry voice, “Woman, what’s got into you? You’re going to ruin your hands doing this!”

  D’Arcy’s wide eyes lifted in an expression of pure hunger.

  “You don’t think I can do anything, do you?” Her lips moved slowly, almost dreamily. “I keep telling you I can do things, I’m not a totally useless piece of china—I can pick corn and keep house and wash diapers and cook—and mah God, all you can think of to say is that I’m going to ruin my damned hands!”

  “D’Arcy,” Jim said, his voice a low rumble. “Please, honey—I don’t want to see you doing work like a common field hand.”

  “I could just kiss you, you damned fool.” In spite of her words D’Arc
y seemed to be advancing on him almost menacingly. “I could just tear your clothes off right here and make you kiss me and hug me and make love to me, Jim Claxton, but you won’t do it. You never would, and you’re not going to do it now, because you think I can’t do anything except paint my toenails and spend my time buying fancy clothes!”

  “D’Arcy,” he said desperately, “don’t put words in my mouth. I’ve never said things like that about your clothes. I can’t ask you ruin yourself, you know that. My mother and sisters, they had to work like slaves picking corn and chopping cotton. I couldn’t ask you—”

  “Ask me to what?” she shouted.

  “D’Arcy, Godalmighty!” Jim took off his hat and looked as though he were about to throw it on the ground. “You know my wife was a thousand times more used to the way I live than you are, and she hated it. And you—”

  “Your ex-wife,” she yelled. “And what’s she got to do with it? And what have your mother and sister got to do with it anyway? I’m just tired, tired, Jim Claxton, of throwing myself at you and making a fool of myself in front of the whole of damned DeRenne County year after year! And having you tell me the same old trash about your ex-wife and how she hated having kids and doing housework, and how hard your mama worked chopping cotton! Well, to hell with it! I’m picking corn, and I could probably chop cotton, too, if somebody’d give me a damned hoe!”

  Til Coffee had come up to stand by Rachel. “They’re at it again.

  Rachel couldn’t speak; she was dumbfounded. D’Arcy and Jim Claxton? Was that why D’Arcy had looked so unhappy these past few weeks, when Jim was being so attentive to her?

  Rachel felt strangely irked. Obviously she was the paragon Jim was looking for; she fit the mold of wife and stepmother to his children, and not tall, lovely D’Arcy with her indulged Charleston society background.

  “But she’s got more going for her right now than I’ve seen before,” Til observed philosophically. “I understand she used to follow him around even when they were kids.”