But her eyes strayed back to him, and she watched as he bought a cup of lemonade from the girl behind the table, and then stood talking to her as he drank it. It was only Rachel Cleary that he was talking to, the daughter of a small farmer from there in the County, a short girl with a large bosom and wide hips, and long blond hair that hung to somewhere past her waist. Elise had paid little attention to Rachel, had hardly spoken to her a dozen times in her life, though both girls had grown up in the same church and within a number of miles of each other—but, then again, few people in the church had much to do with the Clearys, for they really had no business attending the largest Baptist church in the County. They were only farm people; they had no farmhands or tenant farmers, and they produced little more than a few bales of cotton each year. Rachel was not smart or pretty, and neither was either of her two sisters—but Rachel looked pretty now as Janson talked to her, smiling up at him until a dimple showed in her cheek. Elise had hardly wasted a thought on her in all her life, had paid her little mind—but now she suddenly despised her, despised everything there was about her, from her dimpling smile to the figure that was too well-rounded to ever be in fashion.
Elise snapped at the buyer who came up to her own table with money already in hand, and then hardly paid any attention as the woman walked away muttering about the manners of modern youth—she was too distracted, too irritated at the attention Janson was paying to Rachel Cleary to even care. He had no right to smile at another girl like that, no right to laugh at some silly, empty-headed remark she might make, no right to stand there looking so handsome and so distant, spending time with someone else. He had behaved stupidly, had acted like a child, and it should be him, and not Elise herself, feeling alone and lonely at this moment. She had nothing to feel sorry for. She had done nothing wrong—and if he was too stubborn to admit that he had behaved like a fool, then that was his problem. She had been insulted, yelled at, and it should be him to apologize—to say that she did not know how to act like a lady, indeed! She would show him that he mattered nothing to her at all; she did not need him anyway. She never had. And she had never loved him. That had been a silly, schoolgirl dream—and she was no longer a schoolgirl; she was a woman now. She was a woman.
She snapped shut the lid of the cigar box that held the money from her sales, and sat back against her chair, folding her arms across her chest and giving Rachel Cleary an assessing look—she was not even in fashion, with her tight-waisted dress that showed off her bosom and hips and more than covered her knees, with her cotton stockings and long hair, and her figure too ample to ever be in style. If Janson thought she was pretty, then Elise had certainly never had any business being attracted to him. No business, indeed.
There was a sound from behind her, which she ignored, her attention focused on the pair talking at the other table, then came the sound of her own name: “Elise—” and she turned to find Phyllis Ann Bennett standing just behind her.
The entire right side of Phyllis Ann’s face, from just beneath the eye and down along the cheekbone, was swollen and bruised. Her lower lip was puffy, one eye nearly black. Elise felt a stab of alarm at her appearance, at the beating she must have suffered—and then memory came flooding back: the weeks and months of hurt and grieving, the look on her mother’s face when they had lowered Alfred’s coffin into the ground, what Bennett had tried to do to her—the lies; the selfish, self-serving interests of this girl in setting that madman on Elise in order to protect herself. Elise felt the anger and disgust well up inside of her. She clenched her fists at her sides, trying to calm their shaking—Phyllis Ann dared to face her now after all she had done, all she had caused. No words would come. She could only stare, rage filling her, daring the other girl to speak first.
“Elise, I’m so glad I found you. I need your help; you’ve got to—”
“My help!” The rage exploded. She wanted to slap Phyllis Ann, but instead forced a shaky control over her anger as she rose to her feet, clenching her fists only more tightly at her sides. “You would dare to ask for my help after what you’ve done! After—”
“Can’t you forgive and forget about something that—”
“Forget! Forget that you were the cause of your father trying to rape me! Forget that he murdered my brother!”
“But, I need your help. My father—”
“I don’t want to hear about your father! You know that he told me what you said, that it was me and not you that cheated, me and not you that got us thrown out of school—”
“I never meant for—”
“I don’t give a damn what you meant to do! You lied to save your own neck, and made him come after me instead! Do you think I’d help you after it was you that caused my brother’s death?”
“He came after Daddy with a gun. It was self defense; there were witnesses—”
“I don’t give a damn about the witnesses! It was murder, and you were the—”
“You can’t blame me for that! And look what he’s done to me now, just look—” She brought a hand to her face, to the bruises, to the evidence of the beating she had suffered, wincing slightly as her fingers touched the battered cheek. Tears welled up in her eyes, and her swollen lower lip quivered. “You’ve got to help me. You’ve got to—he’s going to kill me—”
For a moment Elise saw before her again the girl she had grown up with, the girl she had loved almost as a sister, the girl she had shared her deepest secrets with, her most treasured dreams, and something of her weakening must have shown on her face, for Phyllis Ann began to slowly smile, a look of satisfaction coming to her eyes.
“I knew you’d help me. I knew—”
Elise stared at her, seeing her clearly perhaps for the first time in her life, understanding. “You and your father can both rot in hell for all I care,” she said. “You deserve each other.”
She stared to walk away, started to leave her table and her plates of cakes and candies, started to get as far from Phyllis Ann Bennett as she possibly could—but an angry hand grabbed her arm and held her back, the nails biting into her flesh, and she was hauled around to face the cold, angry, hate-filled eyes. “You will do what I say—” The words came as a statement, a demand, hissed out between barely parted teeth, all pretense at vulnerability now gone—there was nothing left within this creature of the girl Elise had grown up with, the girl who had been almost a sister to her. There was nothing but hate and rage and determination. “You will do what I say—”
“Let go of my arm, or I swear I’ll black your other eye for you—” Elise threatened, barely controlling her own rage—this girl had caused her brother’s death, had caused her to almost be raped, and now—
“You don’t have the nerve. You always were a coward.” The nails bit even more deeply into her arm, now out of nothing more than sheer cruelty. Elise could see the pleasure in her eyes, the satisfaction at the pain she caused.
“You’re just like your father,” she heard herself say, unable to stop the words, all the while knowing what would happen.
“You little bitch!” Phyllis Ann’s free hand clenched into a fist, flying upwards, and then starting down toward Elise’s face. Elise braced herself for the blow—but it never came. A strong male hand grabbed Phyllis Ann’s arm and held it back, a male voice saying:
“You better let go ’a th’ lady, an’ right now—”
Elise looked up into Janson Sanders’s green eyes, feeling the painful hold on her arm being released. She rubbed at the aching nail marks reddening her wrist, seeing Phyllis Ann’s angry glare as Janson released her with a slight shove.
“You better get on out of here,” Phyllis Ann said, open contempt for him in her eyes. “This isn’t any concern for the likes of you.”
“I’m makin’ it my concern—an’ I think it’s you that better git outta here.”
“How dare you talk to me like—”
“I said git!”
he said, taking a threatening step toward her, “before I forget you’re a woman—”
Phyllis Ann stared at him for a moment, and then shot a look at Elise, a look that said clearly that this was not the end. Then she turned and left, walking toward the edge of the church grounds without ever once looking back. Elise stared after her, seeing several of the church people turn to look in her direction, seeing the embarrassed looks on the faces of those who had seen and heard, and who had not interfered, and then she turned back to Janson, finding his gaze on her. For a moment their eyes met. Then he looked away.
“You all right?” he asked, his voice gruff.
“Yes, I’m fine. Thank you—”
He simply nodded, and then turned to walk away. For a moment the anger welled up inside of her again—if his damned pride was that important to him then let him be that way. She had nothing to apologize for. She had done nothing wrong. And she did not need him anyway. She did not need—
“Janson, please wait—” she heard herself call even before she thought, and then watched as he stopped and turned back to look at her—she did need him.
And she knew she always would.
For a long moment he just stood there staring at her—why would he not at least say something, make it easier.
“You want somethin’?” he asked at last.
“Yes, I wanted to thank you for—”
“I don’t need your thanks.” His voice cut through hers.
“Yes, I know, but—”
“I couldn’t just stand there an’ watch what she was doin’.”
“But, I want to—”
“I said I don’t need your thanks!” His voice rose, his green eyes clouding with anger. He turned and started away again, but her voice stopped him.
“Janson, please wait—” she called, going toward him, and he turned back to look at her. “Can’t we at least talk?”
“I don’t know as we got anythin’ t’ talk about.” That damned, insufferable pride. Couldn’t he at least—
“I think we do.”
“What about?” he demanded, his voice rising in anger, in hurt feelings. “About how ignorant an’ uneducated I am? Well, I don’t need your pity, Miss Whitley!”
“I’m not offering you pity. I never meant to hurt your pride. I didn’t know that—”
“Well, you know now!” he yelled, silencing her words.
“Yes, I know now—” she said, more quietly, and he looked away. After a moment she heard his voice again, much quieter, but no less filled with emotion:
“I may not can read as good as you, but that don’t mean I’m not a man.”
“I know you’re a man. I never meant to hurt your pride or to embarrass you.”
Anger rose behind the green eyes again as he looked at her. “I told you I don’t need your pity!” He turned and started away, but suddenly she was beside him again, her hand on his arm, staying him.
“What I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry I—that—” She looked at him for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said simply.
He sighed, looking away. After a moment he spoke, not bringing his eyes back to her. “I guess I shouldn’t ’a got s’ mad at you. You couldn’t ’a knowed. An’ I guess I said some things I shouldn’t ’a said—”
“I said some things I should never have said as well. Can’t we just forget that it happened, and let things go back to being the way they were before?”
He turned to look at her, something unreadable in his eyes. “I don’t know as they can.”
“Why not?”
He stared at her for a long moment, and then looked away. “I just don’t know as they can.”
“Why—because I know you can’t read? That doesn’t matter—”
“It’s more ’n that. It’s—” His voice trailed off and his eyes met hers again. “You an’ me are ’s different. I don’t know as how we could ever be frien’s.”
“We were friends before.”
“Yeah, but—”
“But, what? What’s so different now?”
He stared at her for a long moment. “It’s just different.”
“What’s different?”
He moved so that her hand fell from his arm. “It’s just different. You’re a lady, an’ I’m a—”
“A—what? A farmer? A hired man who works on my daddy’s place? What does that matter? We’re the same people we were a week ago.”
“Yeah, but that was before you knew—” His words fell silent.
“Before I knew you couldn’t read? That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters t’ me.”
“Why?”
He stared at her. “It just does.”
She sighed and shook her head—why did he have to be so stubborn and stupid, so proud, so mule-headed—and why did she have to love him so much. “Janson, I need you in my life. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. I don’t want to lose that because of a stupid argument.”
He looked at her for a long moment—there was something going on behind his eyes that she did not understand. Something—
“I don’t want t’ lose it either,” he said at last, very quietly. “ I don’t want t’ lose it either—”
And, even as he said the words, Elise saw something in his eyes that she understood at last. It was resignation.
Elise Whitley and Janson Sanders—a black rage filled Phyllis Ann Bennett as she drove the coupe down the rutted clay road away from town that morning. The window beside her was down, blowing her bobbed hair wildly into her eyes. She pushed the accelerator even further, tasting the raw, red dirt being blown into her face by the wind—goddamn them. Goddamn them all.
Elise had turned her back on her—Elise who had followed her blindly for years. And that farmhand—oh, yes, Phyllis Ann knew exactly who he was, just as she knew who every other reasonably good-looking man in the County was, even those beneath her attention, such as that half-breed Indian. He was the one who had almost killed her father the night of Elise’s supposed attack, the same one who had broken her father’s nose after he had found it necessary to kill Alfred Whitley—goddamn them. Goddamn them both for what they had done to her. Elise had failed her, insulted her, and the farmhand had even dared to threaten her harm—but they would not get away with it. She would make them pay. She would—
She rounded a curve in the road to find an elderly Negro man walking along the road’s edge toward town. She honked the horn of the coupe, warning him out of the way, but he only froze, staring first at her, and then at the ditch alongside the roadbed. The coupe brushed him as it passed, sending him stumbling onto his knees at the side of the road. Phyllis Ann did not stop or even slow, pushing only harder at the accelerator—the goddamn nigger, she thought, should have gotten his black ass out of the way. The goddamn—
They would pay. They would all pay. Elise, and the farmhand, and all the people in the County who had snubbed their noses at her. They would—
They were nothing anyway. Nothing at all. Like the nigger. Like the farmhand. Nothing—but she would make them pay. If it was the last thing she did in her life, how she would make them pay.
13
In the weeks following the bazaar, Elise never once mentioned his failing, never once suggested that she teach him to read, but somehow to Janson that only stressed the differences between them, only stressed that she was William Whitley’s daughter, and that he was nothing more than one of her father’s farmhands. In some ways they had grown only closer over those weeks, even as Janson had fought to keep her at a distance in his mind. He knew he could never have her, could never love her, as he wanted to, and that dreaming of her was the one sure way to destroy all that he was—but still he could not stop loving her, could not stop wanting her, no matter how hard it was that he tried. She was somehow part of him in a way he could not explain, in a w
ay he could not fight, and, as the days passed, he was growingly coming to understand that he did not want to.
He sat on the steps leading up to the rear veranda of the Whitley house that first Sunday afternoon in July, staring out across the wide yard, past the kitchen, and to the woods beyond. He was waiting for Elise, waiting for her to finish Sunday dinner with her parents and with J.C. Cooper, waiting for her, as he had been waiting for more than half an hour now. He toyed with a blade of grass he had pulled from the smooth lawn, staring out toward the woods where he knew he would feel more at home than he did waiting here behind this great house—he had promised to spend the afternoon with her, had promised to take her for a walk in the woods, had promised even to teach her to weave a basket from white oak splits later if she wished—but now he knew he would have to break those promises, would have to break them, just as he had been forced to break so many promises to her lately. And he knew she would not understand.
Laying by had finally come that year, bringing with it the long waited-for rest from the before dawn to sometimes long after dark work of the sharecroppers and farmhands on the place. At last there was time to court and socialize, to visit kin or tend their own gardens, to attend the revival meetings at the bush arbor set up at the edge of town, or the all-day singings held on Saturdays at the little Holiness church out in the country—but Janson did not have those hours free, though the cotton fields now stood lush and green, and there was little work left to be done there until the bolls would burst open and the back-breaking work of picking the cotton would begin. Whatever hours he found free from the plowing, chopping, and poisoning of the cotton were quickly taken up by the bootlegging operation, by the making and hauling of the corn liquor that gave him the money he could put away in the back of the old chifforobe in his room.
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