But she knew it could happen. Her father would never let her marry Janson—she knew that now—and he would do anything he had to do to keep them apart. William Whitley had his own ideas as to what his daughter’s future would be, his own reasons, his own purposes—but Elise knew what she wanted for her life. That life would be very little as she had always thought it would be, but somehow that did not matter anymore. She would be with Janson, and she would be his wife—and she would keep him safe until the day they could leave here together, no matter what she had to do to assure that day would come. No matter.
Janson had talked to her today as he had never talked to her before, had told her things, spun her visions in words she knew now she would never forget. They had sat for hours, holding hands atop his knee, their fingers intertwined as if no one and no thing could ever pull them apart again—he had told her about Alabama, about Eason County, about the little house he would take her to someday, about his grandparents and his kin; about fields of white cotton and people he had known and how much his parents had loved each other. He had told her about the red hills and the blue sky and the tall, straight pines, until she could see it all so clearly in her mind. He wanted a large family, and he wanted to farm the land his father had farmed—and he wanted his sons, their sons, to farm it one day. He had given her so many dreams to dream, so many visions to see, and it would all be true one day, when she could at last become Janson’s wife—Janson’s wife, for that day she could lie, and she could deceive, and she could do it all so easily. She was her father’s daughter, after all.
She walked up the wide front steps and onto the veranda. The sheriff’s car was parked in the curve of the drive before the house; she knew he was probably inside now, discussing politics with her father in the front parlor. If she was very lucky, she might be able to slip into the house and up the stairs to her room before anyone could even know she was home. She did not want to see anyone just yet, least of all her father; she needed time to gather her thoughts and calm her temper before she had to face him. At the moment she still wanted nothing more than to slap his face and tell him what it was she truly thought of him and his lies—but she knew she could not do that. And, for Janson’s sake, she knew she never would.
She stopped for a moment with her hand on the front doorknob, looking back toward the woods one last time. There was a slight movement there, a touch of blue among the greens and browns of the trees—Janson, watching and loving her. Somehow that knowledge gave her the strength to turn the knob and enter her father’s house—never her home again, for her home was wherever Janson was. Her home was that little white house Janson had told her of, that little white house she could now see so clearly in her mind, that place where they would live together one day when they could at last leave here.
She quietly closed the door behind herself, hearing the sounds of muffled voices from just beyond the open parlor doorway to her right. She made her way toward the stairs and started up, anxious to reach the upstairs and the safety of her room.
“Elise—”
She froze where she was for a moment, halfway up the stairs, and turned back, finding her father staring at her from where he stood just within the doorway to the front parlor. There was a set expression on his face as he looked up at her, his teeth clenched down on the unlit cigar in his mouth, and a fresh surge of anger filled her at the sight of him, and at the knowledge of what he had done to her, and to Janson. She wanted nothing more than to strike him, to tell him how much she hated him for the danger he was to Janson—but she knew she could not. He stared up at her, seeming not to notice her hands clenching into fists at her sides with the feelings that surged through her, and she hated him all the more that he did not notice.
“Come into the parlor for a minute. Sheriff Hill has something to talk to you about.” He waited for her to descend the stairs before he turned and went back into the room. Elise crossed the hallway going toward the open parlor door, trying to force a control over her emotions—her feelings could never show. Never. Not toward her father. Not toward Janson—she smoothed her hands over her bob, took a deep breath, and made herself walk through the doorway and into the room.
Sheriff Hill stood from the chair he had been sitting in before the tall front windows. He looked exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes, as if he had slept little the night before. His clothes were rumpled, and there was a serious expression on his usually kind face—something’s wrong, a voice inside of her said. Her eyes moved to her mother where she sat on the sofa across the room, Martha Whitley’s hands fidgeting at her needlepoint. Her father stood now, silent and distant, before the fireplace. He lit his cigar, and then puffed on it heavily, his eyes settling on the sheriff through the blue haze of smoke.
“Elise—Miss Whitley—I thought it might be better that I tell you,” the sheriff began, and her eyes came back to rest on him, “before some of the County gossips get a chance, considering, well—” He turned his hat in his hands, and a cold chill moved up her spine. “It’s about Ethan Bennett and Phyllis Ann—”
Ethan Bennett and Phyllis Ann—she thought, then: please, God, no more.
Ethan Bennett was dead, and Phyllis Ann had killed him—Elise sat on the bed in her room a short while later, one leg tucked beneath her, her back against the tall, wooden headboard of the bed. She reached to take up a favorite, indestructible Roanoke doll from where it usually rested against the pillows, and held it securely in her arms as she stared at the wide expanse of white counterpane before her, trying to let the full realization sink in—Ethan Bennett was dead, and Phyllis Ann had killed him. Phyllis Ann had—
She wondered now if there had been anything she could have done weeks, or even months, before that might have prevented things from ever having gone this far. Phyllis Ann had at one time been her best friend; they had once been closer than many sisters—Phyllis Ann had even asked for her help no more than weeks ago, but Elise had refused to give it. She had known what Ethan Bennett could be capable of doing, had seen the bruises and blacked eyes, even the broken collarbone the day of Phyllis Ann’s tenth birthday. But this time Ethan Bennett had beaten his daughter one time too many; this time she had taken up a fireplace poker and had ended his life—there would be no need for a trial, no need for punishment, the sheriff had said, for it had been clearly a case of self defense. Phyllis Ann’s life would go on much as it had always gone on, with the one exception—she would never have to fear her father again.
Elise thought briefly about going to see her, about trying to forgive and forget all that had happened between them over these months, but she knew she could not. She felt a great deal of pity for Phyllis Ann, for all that she had gone through, and for all she was going through even now, but she could not forgive, and she could not forget—Phyllis Ann had caused Alfred’s death. Elise could never forgive that.
But it was over now. Ethan Bennett was dead. He would never again be a threat to anyone. And the trial, finally scheduled for only weeks in the future, the trial where Bennett would have at last had to face a judge and jury for what he had tried to do to her, the trial she had tried so hard not to think about, would never take place. Her attacker was dead. It was over.
She sat at the supper table hours later that night, staring over the bowed heads at her father as he offered the blessing over the food, and she found herself wondering if he prayed to the same God that Ethan Bennett had prayed to. All her life he had been a leading member of the Baptist Church, a leading member of the community; she had always thought him so upstanding and good and right, and had felt herself so far superior to Phyllis Ann because she knew that he would never hurt her, would never beat her as Phyllis Ann’s father had so often beaten her. He might be demanding and short tempered and single-minded, but he was still her father, and he wanted only what was best for her—how blind she had been. She should have known, should have seen so long ago, in those days when he had first begun to try to p
ush her into a marriage with J.C., a marriage she did not want, with a man she did not love; she should have known when he had become so demanding and forceful—she hadn’t even realized when she had seen what he had done to Gilbert Baskin.
But she knew now. He had hurt her just as surely as any beating could ever have hurt her. He had lied; had tried to tear her and Janson apart, and had come so horribly close to achieving that goal. He did not believe that Janson was good enough to marry his daughter—she had known that all along, but somehow she had convinced herself that it did not matter, that her love for Janson could convince him, but now she knew differently. Her father would never allow her to marry a farmhand, a small farmer, a man who was only half white, no matter how much she might love him, no matter how much she might beg and plead, for she was William Whitley’s daughter, and she would never be allowed to marry someone her father thought so far beneath her. He had plans for her future, plans for her and J.C., plans that would one day net him the cotton mill he had wanted for so many years—and now Janson Sanders was standing in his way. She knew now that her father could be capable of doing anything to achieve his goals. Anything. And she knew a little of what he was capable of doing to anyone he believed stood in his way.
She no longer felt superior to anyone. She only felt afraid.
The following days were the happiest of her life, and also the most worry-filled. Her thoughts rarely strayed from Janson and the plans they had made. She thought of the little house he had told her of, the little house that would be all their own. She thought about furniture in the rooms and flowers in the yard. She thought of cooking for him, and cleaning for him, and knitting baby clothes; she thought of going to sleep beside him at night, and waking up beside him in the mornings. There would not be a lot of money—she knew that—but it did not matter. Old people might say you could not live on love alone, but she and Janson would, if they had to.
There was such little time they could be together now. Her father had taken from them the pretext of friendship, and now their moments had to be stolen in between times she had to be with her family, and times that he had work to do for her father. There was constantly the worry that someone might find out, that Janson would never be safe so long as they remained here—and, always, when he was not in her sight, there was the fear that her father might know, that anything might happen to Janson. That anything might already have.
They tried to meet each day, for whatever few minutes they might have. A kiss, a touch, a moment to be in his arms, or to look into his eyes, a moment to hear him say that he loved her, to hear him speak of the place they would go one day to be safe, one day when they would never have to be separated again. Often she would wait for hours when he could not come, and, as many times as not, he could not tell her where he had been, or what he had been doing—work for her father, he would say, and, at last, she quit asking. There was always the fear, when he was a moment late, or when there was no excuse she could find in order to meet him, that something could have happened, that he might be hurt, that—
As the weeks passed, Elise began to realize that she had taken on the most difficult task of her life. No one could know how she felt—no one, for her father might find out. She could never let her feelings show, never let anyone know that she waited now only for the day she would leave here with Janson, waited only for the day when she knew he would be safe, the day when she would at last become his wife. The days now seemed to slow almost to a standstill; it seemed as if the year, the year Janson said it would take before they would have the money to leave, would never pass. Janson was working so hard, taking on any odd work he might find, and any work her father might give him—and she would not bring herself any longer to ask what that work might be; she knew he would not tell, and she also knew that she really did not want to know. He had shown her the money he had already saved, unknotting it from an old sock he had brought from where he kept it hidden in his room, and she had begun to save as well, from the money her father gave her weekly for dresses and ‘doodads and frip-frappery’ as he called it—to do without a dress or a new pair of shoes or a fresh compact of rouge was little enough payment for their future together, and it would be justice enough that her father would pay for it in even that small way. She had not told Janson what she was doing. He could be so irritatingly old-fashioned about most things, that she did not think he would accept money from a woman, not even the woman he was going to marry. She would tell him once they were away from here; he could fuss all he wanted then.
The new school term would begin in a matter of only a few weeks there in the County, and she had already been enrolled in school there for the year. It had been her mother’s idea, and her own, but now she wished the notion had never come up. School would take time away that she might have been able to spend with Janson—but it was too late to back out now. Her father had already agreed to her returning to school, telling her that it would at least keep her occupied and out of trouble—and J.C. would want an educated wife, she had realized, and William Whitley would see to it that J.C. Cooper would have what he wanted. The summer was drawing toward a close, and there would be a long year ahead before she and Janson could leave together—if only she could keep him safe until then. If only they could keep her father fooled. If only—
Elise sat waiting at the edge of the clearing on a hot Sunday afternoon in mid-August. She worried with the long strand of rhinestones that hung about her neck, staring unseeingly at the grass and weeds that grew thickly in a clump near where she sat with her legs curled beneath her. She had been waiting here for more than an hour now—and still there was no sign of Janson.
She had not seen him since early the morning before—there had been no more than a moment then; there was work he had to do for her father, and he was already running late. He had held her in his arms, and kissed her for a long moment, and then had looked down at her as if he were again trying to memorize her every feature—he would meet her later in the afternoon, he had told her, here in the clearing, if he finished with the work in time. If not, then he would see her the next morning, before she would have to leave for church, if she could find an excuse to get away. She had waited, afternoon and morning both, and still he had not come. Now she was worried. And frightened. Her father could have found out. Janson could be lying somewhere, hurt, bleeding, maybe even—she tried to think of any instance when she might have given even the slightest sign toward her feelings, the slightest signal that she and Janson—but she could remember nothing. She had been so careful, so very careful—if she had given her father even the smallest reason to suspect—
But she could not let herself think about that now. She caught herself chewing nervously at a thumbnail, and she made herself stop—if he was all right, then he would come to her. All she could do for now was wait. All she could do was—
The clearing was quiet, the woods silent behind her. She got up from where she sat and paced a short distance into the clearing, worry filling her—surely her father was just keeping him busy. Janson was working, earning money he could save toward their future. He was all right. He had to be all right. He had to—
There was a sound behind her, the rustle of leaves in the woods, the crack of a twig, and she turned in that direction. It had to be—Janson, just coming into sight, bowing to avoid the low limb of a young tree. He was dressed in overalls and a workshirt, his hair less than neatly combed—but he would have come straight to her from whatever work he had been doing; he would have—
She rushed into his arms, almost knocking him from his feet in her rush to touch him. “I was so afraid. I thought Daddy had—” But she never finished the thought. His mouth came to hers, sending her senses reeling and almost taking her breath away. He held her close against him, his arms tight around her. She could feel the heat of his body against hers, and she prayed that he would never let her go.
“I was hopin’ you’d be here. I wasn’t sure, after I couldn’
t come yesterday or this mornin’—” He stared down at her, holding her close against him still as his eyes moved over her face.
“I was so worried. I thought that—”
“I’m all right. Don’t be worryin’ about me; your pa don’t know nothin’ about us—”
“But, he could. If he finds out—”
“He ain’t gonna find out—”
“But, if he does, he could—” But his mouth came to hers again, silencing her words. Even as her body pressed against his, and his arms tightened around her, drawing her even closer, only one thought remained in her mind—it could not go on like this forever. He was too much in danger, and each time they were together like this only increased that danger to him. Something would have to happen—something.
And she could only fear what that something might be.
The downtown section of Main Street in Goodwin was busy the first Saturday in September as William Whitley stood talking to Hiram Cooper. William stood on the brick-paving before Dobbins’s Drugstore, one foot up on the running board of Cooper’s Packard—they had been discussing politics for the past several minutes now as Hiram waited for his son, J.C., to return from the drugstore, the two men debating over the likely candidates for the Presidency now that Calvin Coolidge had announced that he did “not choose to run” for reelection. Cooper had his opinions, as did William—but presidential politics really mattered very little to William Whitley, so long as the winner in the race was a Republican, was capable of keeping prosperity at its current booming pace, and was staunchly in favor of continuing Prohibition, for, thanks to the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and all the shouting preachers, the Volstead Act had made him nothing but a wealthier man.
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