“But, if he finds us—”
“No—” he said, his green eyes moving over hers, his fingers still lightly touching the bruise at her cheek. “I ain’t gonna leave you. There ain’t much in this world I can promise you, but I will promise you that. I won’t never leave you. Never—”
He drew her closer into his arms and held her against him, repeating the words, even as she began to cry anew. “I won’t never leave you. Never—”
But all she could hear was her father’s voice, and his words, time and again, drowning out Janson’s own: “I’ll find you wherever you go, and, when I do . . . his blood’s on your hands.”
His blood’s on your—
There was nothing but a complete, dead exhaustion as Elise reached home that night. She was altogether drained of feeling and emotion after the past hours—Janson would not leave, no matter how she had begged and pleaded for him to protect himself. He would not leave her, not give her up—they would leave together, just as soon as she could slip away from the house undetected. They would have their life together, just as they had dreamed, just as they had planned, no matter what it was he might have to risk to allow that to be. She had not told him about the baby, and she knew she could not, not until they were safely away from here. There was enough for him to worry about already, with her safety now as well as his own to think of, for her to add that extra burden as well. He had not even liked the idea of her having to return to the house tonight to face her father, worried about what might happen to her should she rouse his anger again, but there had been little choice. Her father would be waiting for her, waiting to make sure she had done exactly as she had been told—she had to go home, had to wait those hours, those days, until they could leave here safely. Janson would meet her then, once she could slip away undetected, and they would leave together, with hopefully enough time to be out of the County before she could be missed. Until that day, she could only pray that her father would believe his plans had worked so that he would not be watching her all the more closely—that would make communicating with Janson in the meantime all the more difficult, and it would make leaving nothing less than dangerous for them both.
She walked across the front veranda and entered the house, closing the heavy wooden door behind herself, then turning to find her father staring at her from the open parlor doorway to her right, her mother only slightly behind him, the older woman’s face worried, concerned—he had been waiting for her, waiting just as she had known he would wait, waiting to make sure she had destroyed herself, and Janson, just as he had intended she would. She felt a fresh surge of anger and hatred as she stared at him, anger and hatred that she did not even try to conceal.
“Did you do it?” he demanded, taking the cigar from his mouth and looking at her in much the same way he looked at his house or his automobiles or his horses, or at anything else he fancied he owned.
“I did it,” she said, her feelings for him apparent in her voice.
“Well?” he prompted, his eyes never leaving her.
“He’s gone, if that’s what you wanted to know.” She stared at him for a moment longer, angered even more by the smug and satisfied look that came to his face. “And may you rot in hell for it,” she said, seething with anger, then she turned and started toward the staircase, never once looking back.
Martha Whitley stood at the bottom of the stairs a moment later, watching her daughter ascend into the darkness above. There was a sense of surprise and sudden awareness in her now as she watched Elise disappear from sight, awareness as she had never known before.
She turned and looked at William, finding a look of self-satisfaction on his face—yes, he thought he had won, thought he had defeated the feelings his daughter and Janson Sanders had been hiding for so long. But, oh, how wrong William was. It had been written plainly on Elise’s face only a moment before—love, anger, defiance; if only William were not so blind to anything other than himself—but perhaps it was best that he was blind. Perhaps that was the only hope Elise and the boy had left.
Janson Sanders was not remotely what Martha would have chosen for her daughter. He was a decent-enough young man, well-mannered, hardworking, sober, religious in his own way—but he had no home, no money, no social standing, no prospects in the future of ever becoming anything more than what he was now. He was a dirt farmer, a hired hand, and was so far beneath Elise that she should never have given him a second thought—and, for heaven’s sake, Martha could never forget that he was only half white. Elise could have made no worse choice if she had planned it, though Martha could not believe the boy capable of a deliberate plan of using Elise just to further his own aims, as William thought. They had simply allowed themselves to be carried away in their fancies, their dreams, for, as Martha well knew, to a sixteen-year-old girl, dreams could quite often be more real than life.
When William had told her of his discovery, of what he had seen in the woods earlier in the day, Martha had been surprised, shocked, and more than a little dismayed—Elise, and the half-Indian farmhand, it was almost more than she could believe. But William had seen, and he knew, and then Elise had confessed—they had planned to run away together, had planned even to be married, and only the grace of God had allowed William to find them out before it had been too late.
But what William had done then had been unforgivable. He had struck Elise, struck her when he had never before struck any of the children. He had threatened Janson Sanders’s life, and then had forced Elise to tell the boy the cruelest of lies in order to end the relationship. Martha had pleaded with William, had tried to reason with him, had tried again and again to convince him there were better ways to end the romance, ways not so cruel to Elise or to the boy, but he had refused to listen, cursing her as he had never before cursed her in the twenty-seven years of their marriage. And now he had perhaps sealed all their fates.
There was nothing Martha could do now, nothing to put to a stop what William had set in motion, and nothing to change the decision she had seen in her daughter’s eyes. Elise was not yet a woman, but she was also no longer a child—Martha had never before seen that so clearly as she had tonight. It had not been the face of a heartsick child that her daughter had worn, but the face of a young woman instead, a young woman angry at the injustice she believed done her, and determined to protect the young man she thought she loved, no matter the cost to herself. There was nothing Martha could do to stop that now, nothing, for, though she feared her daughter had made the wrong decision tonight, a decision she might live long to regret, she feared even more what William might do should he find out his threats had not worked.
She looked back up the stairs toward where her daughter had gone, sad for her little girl who was no more, and sadder still for the young woman who had taken her place. She knew Elise would not have an easy time ahead, especially not if she had chosen still to be wife to her farmhand, for Martha well knew that Elise would never again know another easy day in her life if she wed Janson Sanders.
But she could not tell her daughter that. She could not tell her daughter anything. She herself well knew there was no way the girl would listen. There were too many memories inside her of another sixteen-year-old girl who had chosen against her own parents’ wishes, a sixteen-year-old girl she herself had been all those years ago. She had taken William then, had taken him in defiance of her family and her friends and everyone else she had known. Sixteen-year-old girls rarely listened to reason; they listened to their hearts instead.
Martha Whitley turned away from the staircase, her mind suddenly filled with thoughts and memories and with more pity than she had ever known before.
It was a long time before she realized who that pity was for.
It had begun to rain, a cold, insistent drizzle that soon built into a steady downpour. Janson was soaked through to the skin by the time he reached Mattie Ruth and Titus Coates’s house that night. He walked up the slanting fr
ont steps to the old porch, pounded on the front door, and then waited, trying to pull his sopping coat tighter about himself.
After a long moment, the door swung inward and Titus stood peering out at him, a kerosene lamp held high over his head to try to better see the unexpected visitor. The old man was dressed in a faded nightshirt alone, his bony legs peaking from beneath it, with Mattie Ruth just behind him in a heavy cotton nightgown that brushed the floor, her hair hanging in two thick, gray braids down over her shoulders.
“Janson—that you, boy?” Titus asked, squinting into the darkness that lay beyond the edge of the lamplight. “What’re you doin’ out this time ’a night?”
But Mattie Ruth pushed her husband aside before Janson could answer him. “Titus, cain’ you see th’ boy’s clean soaked through?” She moved up to view Janson better, taking the lamp from her husband’s hand. “Lor’, boy, what’re you doin’ out on a night like this? You’ll ke’ch your death—well, com’on in out ’a th’ cold an’ th’ wet,” she said, stepping back for him to enter.
But Janson shook his head. “I don’t want t’ drip all over your clean floor, Mattie Ruth. I just wanted t’ know if it’d be all right for me t’ sleep in your barn t’night. I didn’t want you thinkin’ I was some kind ’a thief or no-good, puttin’ myself up without askin’.” He could not help but to smile to himself, watching her own eyes light with the same memory that came to him—that seemed a long time ago now, that night she had caught him in the storeroom off the Whitley’s kitchen, that first night when he had tried to steal food to eat. That had been before he had met Elise, before he had met any of the Whitleys, before he had—
But he shook the memory away, watching Mattie Ruth smile and shake her head good-naturedly—at least she was not armed with a cast-iron skillet this time. “Lor’, boy, don’t you think I know by now that you ain’ a thief or a no-good—but what do you need t’ be sleepin’ in th’ barn for? You in some kind ’a trouble?”
“Not exactly trouble, at least not yet—”
“You an’ Mist’ Whitley have words?” Titus asked, staring at him from just beyond Mattie Ruth.
“Not exactly words—but you ought t’ know that Whitley’s said he’d kill me if he ever saw me again—” It would not be fair to involve them without their knowledge that Whitley’s anger would extend to them as well should it ever be found out that they had given him shelter. It was not fair to involve them in this at all, but he had little choice. He could not stay in his room any longer, for Whitley had to believe he had left the place for good, and the old house might not be safe, for Elise might easily have been followed there tonight. Mattie Ruth and Titus’s barn was the only alternative. He knew that it was dangerous to stay anywhere on Whitley land now, especially so close to the big house itself, but he could not leave. He had to remain close-by in case Elise should need him. She was still there in the house with her father—if she should make one slip, if she should give herself away, then Whitley might hurt her again. There was no way Janson could leave Whitley land, not yet, or ever, until she was safe with him; no way he could leave, no matter the risk he was taking. Her safety meant more than did his own anyway.
“Mist’ Whitley said he’d kill you?” Mattie Ruth stared up at him for a long moment. “Lor’, boy, what’ve you done?”
“I fell in love with his daughter,” Janson answered simply.
She and Titus both stared up at him, neither speaking.
“An’, I’m gonna marry Elise, that is if he lets me live long enough t’ do it.”
Neither spoke, and for a long moment Janson could not tell what they were thinking. He watched their faces for a moment, faces shrouded in dim yellow light and deep shadows cast by the kerosene lamp in Mattie Ruth’s hand, and it struck him how strange it must sound to them that he was going to marry Elise Whitley, a girl who had everything in the world, when he had come to their door tonight in bare feet and patched overalls, his wet coat tattered and frayed, his only pair of shoes slung over his left shoulder, and everything he owned existing in the battered portmanteau in his hand—but then the feeling was gone, for he knew somehow that he and Elise had taken the last step somewhere in this day, and that there was no going back now.
“You an’ Miss Elise?” Titus asked at last, his face still cloaked in that unreadable light and darkness.
“Yeah.”
“An’, he foun’ out about you, what you’re plannin’?”
“Yeah—he told Elise she wasn’t t’ have nothin’ more t’ do with me, that she was t’ break off with me for good, or he’d kill me. She tried, but—well, I wouldn’t believe her. We’re gonna leave t’gether as soon as we can, an’ we’re gonna get married an’ go someplace where he cain’t never bother us again. But, he’s gonna be watchin’ her close; it may be a while before she can get away without him knowin’ an stoppin’ her.”
“An’ you need some place t’ stay ’til then?”
“It wouldn’t be more than a few days, or a week at th’ most. I’d be careful that don’t nobody see me—but you got t’ know that Whitley’d be madder’n th’ devil if he found out you were hidin’ me. He could throw you off th’ place, an’ I don’t know what else—”
Titus looked toward Mattie Ruth, and Janson did as well, waiting for her to speak. He knew the decision lay in her hands, just as his life, and perhaps Elise’s as well, lay in her hands at the moment—but he would never blame her if she should turn him away. Her home, the home she had lived in for most of her married life, the home where she had borne and raised two sons, both now dead, could be lost if they gave him shelter and were ever found out. Their livelihoods rested with William Whitley, and Janson knew their loyalty should rest with him as well.
After a long moment, Mattie Ruth nodded her head, her decision made, and Janson put his fate in her hands. “You stay here long as you need t’, boy,” she said, moving out onto the porch to hold the lamp higher as she stared up at him. “There ain’ no better husban’ Miss Elise could fin’ for herself than you. You got t’ love her a lot t’ be willin’ t’ take on Mist’ Whitley t’ have her. We’ll do anythin’ we can t’ help you, boy; all you got t’ do is ask—”
Janson lay on a bed of hay in the barn a short time later, shivering beneath a damp quilt Mattie Ruth had given him. He could hear the sound of the rain outside, falling steadily on the tin roof, dripping through and into a rusting tin can nearby, the sound slowly turning from a sharp pinging into a dull plop as the can filled.
He twisted uncomfortably under the quilt, pulling the portmanteau closer and trying to use it as a pillow. Inside the worn old leather case was everything he owned in the world, and more. Inside it were the dreams of a lifetime, and the future he and Elise would share together; inside it was the money he had saved over the months of working on the Whitley place, the money that would help him to buy back his parents’ dream and his own, the money that would buy the home and land he had promised Elise they would have. It was not as much as he had hoped to have before they left here, but it was still more money than he had ever before owned at one time in all his life. There would not be enough to buy his land outright, but they would make do; he might have sworn never to use credit again, never to have another mortgage against the home and land he had lost before, but he would do it now to give Elise all he had promised her. There would be hard years ahead, but they would survive them. They had survived hell already just to be together.
He shifted uncomfortably, unable to sleep, the sound of the rain grating on his nerves. He was worried about Elise, worried about her, as he would remain worried until they were far away from this place. For the first time in these months he knew with a certainty that she might not really be safe there in the house with her own father. He had never before believed the man capable of deliberately hurting his own daughter, no matter his threats, and no matter what else he knew William Whitley might be capable of doing—b
ut Whitley had hurt Elise today, and Janson knew he might very well hurt her again. He now held no doubt that William Whitley could be capable of doing anything, and to anyone, if it suited his purposes.
The memory of Elise’s bruised face haunted him still as he lay staring into the darkness. He knew the bruises she had suffered over the past hours had gone much more than skin deep, and for that he could have very easily killed her father. The man had forced her to deny the love she felt, had forced her to face Janson and say things to him that neither she nor Janson would soon forget, things that had been meant only to drive them apart, and things that had scarred her in a way that might never heal. Janson had known from the moment she had spoken the words that they had been nothing more than a lie, just as he had known that it had been Whitley behind the lies from the moment they had been spoken—Elise loved him; that was the one thing in life that Janson would never doubt again, the one thing he would always be certain of. Elise Whitley loved him.
Janson pulled the damp quilt closer about himself, trying to shut out the cold and the damp and the sound of the rain. It would be a long night ahead, a long night of lying awake listening to the rain on the rusting tin roof, a long night of worrying his mind and his heart over Elise—only a few more days, he promised himself silently. Only a few more days, and we’ll leave together. Only a few more days, and—God help me—William Whitley will never hurt her again.
Elise slipped quietly from the side door of the Baptist Church there in Goodwin that following Saturday morning. She stopped on the steps that descended into the churchyard, listening to the sound of the choir practice from within the building behind her, her eyes moving over the area around the church to make sure she was not being observed before she moved on. Once she was satisfied that no one had noted her departure from the practice, she quietly slipped down the remaining steps and made her way across the near-empty parking area toward the old graveyard that lay to one side of the church. She stopped again no more than a moment later, one hand on the black-painted iron gate, looking about to assure herself again that she was alone, then she entered the graveyard and turned to close the gate again quietly behind herself.
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