A shot rang out, loud, undeniable—the pressure at his throat was suddenly gone, his lungs greedily taking in deep drafts of air, his chest hurting, feeling as if it were on fire. He sank to the ground, confused, his senses addled, the sound of blood pounding in his temples so loud that he could hear little else. His eyes sought Elise, his vision still unclear—she was all right, staring toward the house. They were all staring toward the—
He turned his eyes in the same direction, coughing, forcing himself to breathe, feeling a sense of shock move through him as his eyes came to rest on Stan Whitley where he stood on the veranda steps, the boy lowering a rifle from the shot he had just fired into the air. Stan pointed the gun at Franklin Bates, it shaking badly in his hands as he walked down off the steps and into the yard.
“Let my sister go!” he demanded, his voice loud but unsteady. Bates stared at him for a moment, as if assessing what he might be capable of doing, then he took a step back, releasing Elise and holding his hands out to his sides as she moved to drop to her knees beside Janson. Her face was frightened, concerned, and Janson tried to speak, to reassure her, but was overtaken by a fit of coughing instead as she touched his face, his lungs still hurting for air.
“Give me that gun—” he heard Whitley say as the coughing subsided. Janson lifted his eyes to see Whitley slowly walking toward his son, one hand out. “Give me that—”
“You leave Elise and Janson alone,” the boy said, shaking so badly Janson thought he would drop the rifle.
“This isn’t any of your concern—now, give me that—”
“I won’t let you hurt Janson. I won’t let you—”
“It’s for Elise’s own good. You’re just too young to understand—”
“I’m not too young!” Stan shouted. “You just let them go!”
“Elise is nothing but a child, and neither are you. I won’t let her ruin her life by letting her run off with some red-Indian—”
“What right do you have to tell me what’s good for me!” Elise demanded, rising to her feet beside Janson. She stared at her father, rage tensing her body. “You never cared about me or what I wanted! All you ever cared about is yourself and your stupid dreams of owning part of that damned cotton mill. I was never anything more than a property to be bargained off in the process!”
“Is that what he’s told you? That’s what he said that made you run off with him?”
“Quit lying!” she shouted at him, more rage in her in that moment than Janson had ever thought possible to see within her. Her face was flushed, both her hands tightened into fists against her sides. “You tried to kill Janson to keep us apart—you told me you had him left beside some road, but you lied. You took the money he had worked so long for, and then you threw him in that well to die, you son-of-a-bitch! You threw him in that well to—”
“What the hell are you talking about?” her father demanded, staring at her.
Janson pushed himself to his feet, a wave of nausea and dizziness hitting him and making him cling to Elise for support. Whitley stared at him, accusation in his eyes.
“You goddamn—that’s how you did it. I never had you thrown in no well. I ought to break your goddamn neck for—”
“Stop lying!” Stan screamed from behind him, tears streaming down his cheeks now. “I found him myself!”
Bill seemed to shift from one foot to the other, his eyes moving from Whitley, to Franklin Bates, then to the gun in his younger brother’s hands—and suddenly Janson understood. His eyes went to Bates, and he found the man staring at Bill as well.
Bill moved toward Stan, and Janson opened his mouth to warn the boy—but another fit of coughing overtook him, almost doubling him over, making his tortured chest and bruised throat ache. It had been Bill and Franklin who had—
“You goddamn lying son-of-a-bitch, I’m going to—” Whitley moved toward Janson again, shoving Elise aside, his hands closing around Janson’s throat to—
“He’s not lying,” Bates voice rose above the pounding of blood in Janson’s ears, and Whitley froze, his fingers pressing into Janson’s neck. For a moment he only stared at Bates.
“You know I never—”
“But he was thrown in a well,” Bates said, his eyes never leaving Whitley’s face. There was nothing to show in the man’s expression.
Whitley stared at him for a long moment, then his eyes moved to his eldest son, his hands dropping from Janson’s throat.
“Are you going to believe the word of that half-breed trash and Bates over me? I never—”
“Shut up,” Whitley said quietly, staring at him—he knew; Janson could read it in his expression. He knew.
“Bill—” Elise’s voice was quiet where she stood now beside Janson.
“I didn’t have him thrown in no well!” Bill’s eyes darted quickly from Franklin Bates to Janson. “Why would I—”
“I don’t know why he wanted him dead, but he did,” Bates said coldly, his voice still emotionless as Bill’s eyes came back to rest on him. “He had me stop the truck at some burned-out old sharecropper shack—Bill kicked him down into the well himself—”
“You lying—”
“Shut up!” his father yelled, and Bill fell silent, staring at him. For a long moment there were no words, only silence as the two men stared at each other, tension filling the air around them. Whitley’s eyes came back to Janson and Elise, and the silence became almost a physical presence—the man’s eyes were cold, knowing, filled with realization, and with hate.
“Get the hell off my property, both of you,” he said quietly, his eyes moving from Elise, to Janson, and then back again. “Get the hell out of my County, and don’t ever come back again—”
“No!” The word was filled with fury, with more hate than Janson had ever before heard in his life. Bill Whitley quickly crossed the distance to Janson and Elise, grabbing Janson by the shirt collar to slam him backwards against the side of the Model T, driving the breath from his already tortured lungs with the impact. “I’m not going to let—”
“Let him go!” Whitley yelled.
“You goddamn stupid old fool, we can’t let—”
Whitley stepped up and wrenched the rifle from his youngest son’s hands, the boy giving a small cry as it was torn from his grasp. Whitley turned and leveled it at his elder son, and at Janson. “I said—let him go!”
Bill stared back over his shoulder at his father for a long moment, his breath coming in hoarse, angered sounds from somewhere deep within his chest. He turned his eyes back to Janson for a moment, his body shaking with rage, then he released him with a push and turned again to look at his father, his eyes filled with nothing but hatred.
Elise moved into Janson’s arms, and Janson held her, meeting Whitley’s gaze over the top of her head as the man lowered the rifle and stared at them. After a moment, Whitley’s eyes settled on his daughter. There was absolutely no feeling on his face. “I want you out of my sight, both of you—and don’t ever come back again, or I will kill him—” he said, staring at her as she finally lifted her eyes to meet his. “You wanted your dirt farmer—well now you have him, and you’ll hate him for it. Just try to live for a while with what he can give you, and what he can’t give you. You should have thought about what it was you were wanting so badly, because now you have it, and you’ll never live another happy day because of it. You’ll hate him, and everything there is about him—and don’t think you can come running back home when you realize what you’ve done. You’ll never be welcome in this house, or in this County, ever again—”
He stared at her for a long moment, and then his eyes moved to Janson, eyes that were cold, unfeeling. “You slipped up, boy. She’ll take no money with her, and she’s used to the finer things in life, things you’ll never understand—but she’s your problem now, and you’ll learn to hate her for it. Now take her and get the hell off my land,�
� he said, turning to start toward the front steps of the big house behind them. As he reached the veranda, he stopped for a moment, speaking back over his shoulder, not bothering to turn to look at either of them. “You’re both dead to me now,” he said. “I no longer have a daughter.”
There were hurried goodbyes, a train leaving from Goodwin they would have to catch or the next to Alabama would not be until morning—and they could never spend the night in Endicott County. Her father could still change his mind, and there was Bill—but Elise refused to think about that now. They were leaving; her father had written her off for good, and Janson had to be safe—it was over. It was finally over.
She sat beside Janson on the rear seat of the Model T, holding tightly to his hand as Stan started the car down the long drive toward the road that would take them into town. She kept telling herself that she should be happy, that there was nothing more she could want in her life than what she had now—but there was another feeling as well as the car pulled away, a sadness and a longing she could not understand. She put her arms around Janson and held tightly to him, pressing her face to the roughness of his workshirt where it covered his shoulder. Then she lifted her eyes to stare past him and through the rear window-glass of the car, toward the house where she had spent all her life; toward her mother where she stood on the wide front steps, one hand raised in parting, the tears streaming down her cheeks; toward this place and these people she knew she would never see again, the only home she had ever known—
Elise Whitley Sanders stared out through the rear window of the Model T Ford long after the house had disappeared from sight behind them, somehow both child and woman, and somehow having gotten at last what she had wanted most in the world.
All she wanted to do now was cry.
William Whitley stood staring out the front parlor windows of his home, an unlit cigar clamped between his teeth. His eyes were on the red-clay road that wound from before his house, past the cotton fields, through the woods, and toward the main road to Goodwin—the road his daughter had just gone away from him on. He heard someone enter the room behind him, and he knew without having to turn to look that it was Martha, marveling again for a moment that, even after all these years, she still moved like a young girl. So much like—
She stood silent in the doorway, and he could feel her eyes on him. He wished she would speak, or just go away, anything but just stand there in silence and stare her accusations at him. “You got something to say?” he asked her at last, not turning from the view beyond the window.
“Damn you, William,” she said, her words quiet, but as hard as any words he had ever heard. He turned to stare at her, seeing hatred in her eyes, hatred, where only a few short months before there had never been anything for him but love. “Damn your soul straight to hell—”
He turned his back on her, turned once again to stare out the window, and after a moment he heard her leave the room—hell gets every man sooner or later, he told himself as he stared toward the long clay road that led from before his home. He did not need her hatred. He had enough of his own.
He continued to stare toward the road for a long time, the silence of the house close about him—one day soon, he told himself; one day soon, and they would all realize he had been right. Elise would come home—young people never knew their minds, anyway, he told himself. She would realize what a fool she had been; she would tire of her farmhand and the life he could give her, and she would come home begging to be taken in—he had done nothing more than put a scare into her today, telling her she could never come home. But she would plead, and he would give in—of course. After all, she was his daughter. After all, she was a Whitley.
Once she was home, that insane marriage could be forgotten; once she was home, where she belonged, everyone’s lives would get back to normal. Martha would realize he had been right all along, and Stan would no longer look at him as he did now, and Bill—but, no, things would never be the same with Bill. William now knew there was something within his eldest son that he had never known had existed there before, something capable of attempting a cold-blooded murder. When William had almost killed Janson Sanders, he had done it out of rage and anger and concern for his daughter, but what Bill had done had been out of hatred, and something far worse. William did not like knowing there was a part of himself capable of so easily trying to kill a man, but he could not condemn himself for that part. If any man had ever deserved to die, Janson Sanders did—but not as Bill had tried to kill him. What William had done had been only for the sake of his family—Martha would see that, as would Stan, as would Elise; and there would still be plenty of time for Janson Sanders to pay for what he had done to this family. There would still be time.
William knew his daughter. Elise was nothing more than a spoiled child, a child playing at being a woman, a girl accustomed to being petted and pampered and forever getting her way. She had been reared to a nice home and lovely things, and a husband far different from the one she had taken—only a few months, maybe less, of the life she had chosen, and she would come running home, begging to be taken in. Only a few months—
He turned from the window and crossed the wide rug to the mantlepiece, taking out a match from the crystal box there, and bending to strike it on the hearth and light his cigar. He drew in on it heavily, and then watched as the smoke drifted upwards, toward the ceiling—only a few months, he told himself. Only a few months, and Elise would be home. Only a few months, and she would learn the lesson that most spoiled children had to learn in the end, that they should always be careful of what they wished for, for fear they just might get it.
For fear they just might get it.
J.C. Cooper sat staring into the fire that burned in the Bennett’s parlor fireplace. The flames were uncomfortably warm on his face and hands, but he could not make himself move away. If he got up, if he crossed to the door to leave the room, he would have to go past Phyllis Ann—and he did not trust himself not to strike her if she were that close.
She sat on the upholstered sofa behind him, her voice a dull, continuous monotone as she talked to herself—but he could not even turn to look at her. He wished there were some way he could stop himself from thinking, stop himself from feeling, from realizing what it was she had done, but thought and feeling would not stop, nor would the realization. Phyllis Ann had told William Whitley where Elise and Janson had gone. She could have cost them everything—but Phyllis Ann did not even care. She had only laughed when he had confronted her, had laughed and said she would do it all again.
“Yes, I did it! And I’d do it again—she deserves whatever happens to her. She deserves—”
“You idiot! You could have gotten them both killed! You almost did get Janson killed!”
“I don’t care—I hope he does kill her! I hope he does—”
He grabbed her, filled with a rage he had never before known in his life, and shook her as hard as he could, shook her until the short, dark hair fell into her face and her eyes were wild with insanity.
“Go on, hit me! Go on—I know you love me! I know you do! I know—”
J.C. had stared at her for a long moment, and then had shoved her away, shocked that he had almost struck her, that he had almost struck a woman—what in the name of heaven had she made of him? What had she made of what had once been a decent, caring human being—
He sat staring into the fire, wishing it were possible to somehow reverse time. He had wanted her so badly, for so many years, thinking he could never have her—and then she had become his. The beautiful girl he had dreamed of for so long had loved him, had cared for him—but fantasy could so quickly turn to nightmare. He wondered now at how blind and stupid people could be, to want something so badly, and then finally to have it, only to discover that dream becomes nightmare in their hands.
He could hear her talking quietly to herself from the sofa behind him, her words continuous, repetitive, sounding agai
n and again in his ears. “I only wanted somebody to love me—” she said. “That’s all I ever wanted, somebody to love me—”
J.C. turned to stare at her, his heart breaking inside of him—God help me, but I still do, he thought. God help me, I still do.
Janson was going home—not to that white house and those red acres he had thought to return to, but to the sharecropped land his grandfather worked, to a small room in a tenanted house shared with so many other people, and to a way of life he had sworn he would never have. He was going home.
He sat within the train that afternoon as it pulled out of the station in Goodwin, little changed from the man who had come here to Georgia those months ago—just a year older, perhaps a year wiser. The worn portmanteau at his feet was the same, the faded clothes he wore much the same—but there was a difference. Today he was not leaving Endicott County in a stinking freight car as he had come here, but as a paying passenger of the train, having spent a little of their precious money in order to pay for the fare—and he was leaving with Elise Whitley at his side.
Sanders—he reminded himself. She was Elise Sanders now, his wife. And he thought she was crying.
She sat with her face turned from him, her eyes staring out the window at the passing cotton fields and pine woods as the train swayed over the tracks, each moment taking her farther and farther from the home she had always known. He could feel her tears in her silence, in the tenseness of her body as she sat beside him, in the sadness of the spirit that touched his own—but he did not turn to look at her. She deserved her privacy. He would allow her the right to cry for herself in peace.
He stared straight ahead as the long trip passed slowly, wondering how he could be taking her from her family and home, from all the nice, beautiful things in the world, taking her to a life such as the one that waited for them in Eason County. She clung to his hand almost desperately now, and somehow that made the worry within him all the worse—he was all she had left now. He had taken everything else from her today in asking her to leave with him, and she had come, knowing how little he had to offer. She loved him, and he knew she loved him; she loved him enough to be willing to give up everything else in her world. She loved him.
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