She stopped for a moment, resting and thinking. Then she said, "About a mile down the road from their turnoff is a cattle guard between two old chinquapin trees. You can't see the house from the road, for the Jessups built their house way down as close to the river as they could find high ground. Just follow their road. It's on a dump through the low places, so it doesn't get under water when the river rises. It may be that just Horace and Carrie will be there, or their kids may have come home, after the blowup. If they could. Two girls in college and a son in the insurance business in Shreveport.
"Next one is a big deal–brick pillars with a wrought-iron archway over the top. Greenwillow, they call the place. I doubt the Greens will be there, though. It was just their vacation home, even if it is the size of a small hotel. Anyway, I heard that they were spending the winter in Europe. If that's so, I doubt they'll ever get back, if they're still alive at all.
"Now you're almost to the end of the road. The oiltop ends at the edge of the Greens' property – they're the only reason the thing ever got oiled at all, actually. From there it's a muddy lane that ends in Sim Jackman's woods. Sim's there, I'll warrant. It's possible he doesn't even know anything at all has happened. He shuts himself in down there and drinks steadily through until the weather clears in the spring. He makes moonshine, too, but his is strictly for drinking.
"And that's all. I'm tired, Lucinda. Help me to bed, please. " She closed her eyes, the purple lump an ugly splotch on her pale face.
When she was settled for the night, we sat about the fire. Zack, Mom Allie, Suzi, and I. We thought of tomorrow. I don't know about their feelings, but mine were filled with dread and a sick memory of Jess Sweetbrier's crushed head.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was now the end of November. In the confusion, we had lost track of days, but as nearly as we could reckon, it was the thirtieth when we set out on our mission of rescue. It was one of those holly-berry days of dazzling sunlight and hard frost. We left the children spinning round and round in the yard, their bright jackets blurs of color. It was something cheerful to take with us on our journey.
And it was a journey, now. The violent weather of the fall had sent trees down across the road more than once, not to mention washouts and soft spots. Zack, ever practical, had brought his chain saw along, which sent us on fairly quickly. Mrs. Yunt's house looked as empty as it was as we crept by. Though we had secured things as well as we could, on the off chance of her return, it already looked desolate. And Grandpa Harkrider's place was a mess. One of his big old elms had split at its fork and crushed his front porch.
"It's funny how quickly things go when there aren't any people around who care for them," I murmured, and Zack reached over and squeezed my hand, which almost sent us sliding quietly into the ditch.
We were alone. The consensus had been that we might have a full load of passengers when we returned. We, being a pretty tough combination, were the logical ones to go. We were loaded for bear, too. In addition to my pistol, we had the .410 and my dad's deer rifle, a very old Springfield 30.06. We didn't intend to fall victim to the Ungers.
It was a relief to reach the hard-surfaced farm to market road . Even that, however, was littered with leaves and small branches and anonymous debris. Once, indeed, we had to edge around someone's shed roof, which had been blown over a fence and halfway across the pavement. The rest of the shed leaned awkwardly in the cow lot over the fence, its walls awry.
It was a long way around by the road, just as Lantana had said. Nearer twenty than the fifteen miles she had estimated. We reached the oiltop eventually, however, and turned off. We could see in the distance the house where we had found the dead calves. To our relief, there were no dead cows visible near the road, which made us think that our services had come in time for most of the herd.
The Londowns' house was nearer the road, readily visible, and its column of smoke rose plumb-straight into the cold, still air. I wished them luck, as we passed, feeling that such determined people were quite capable of looking after themselves. The next turnoff was Nellie's. The house was hidden behind thick privet hedges, but we could see the top of its chimney over the bushes. I watched the dash, now, and when we neared a mile, I began to look for the big hickory that marked the Fanchers' turnoff. It was impossible to miss. The thing must have been eight feet through at the base.
We bumped gently down the cross-laid pole drive. Obviously, nobody had driven out of it in a vehicle in weeks. Through a belt of young pines, down a slope, around an arm of the wood that thrust itself into the cleared ground, we followed the drive.
Then we saw the fence, and we stopped and honked twice. We waited for a minute, then we got out of the Plymouth and walked toward the gate, very slowly.
I could feel eyes on me. Nobody was in sight, but there was the feel of vigilance all around us, and we stopped at the gate and waited. In a bit, there was a stir of motion in the garden beyond the fence. A dark face peered from behind a row of plum trees, then a tall black man stepped forward and spoke.
"Where the Sweetbriers?" he asked in a slow, still voice. "That's their car, where are they?"
Zack moved very cautiously "Nellie is at our house," he said. "Jess is–dead. Are you Bill?"
"Dead? Really dead?" The man's eyes widened, and his color was suddenly grayish. "How?"
"The Ungers," Zack answered simply. "They all but killed Nellie, too. If we hadn't come down the river, looking for neighbors, she'd have died that night, I think, from the cold and loss of blood."
"Come in the house," Fancher whispered, opening the gate. "We thought they were just after us because we're black. You mean they killed Jess Sweetbrier, a sweet old man like him?"
"Beat him to death," I said, as I entered the kitchen of the big gray house. I found myself facing a tail young woman who held a shotgun pointed at my midriff.
"They're all right, Annie," her husband called from behind us. She slowly lowered the gun barrel, but her expression was watchful. I could see no trace of the many children that Nellie had mentioned, but I felt that the older of them were probably in strategic locations, most likely with weapons. These people had learned caution in a tough school.
It took a while to fill them in on the state of things along the river. They had their few head of cattle penned between their barn and the road, fearing panthers more than any unlikely wanderer, so they had no need to go down to the water except in summer. No well-worn trail marked a way up to their house from the wild woods along the river. So it was that the Ungers had come at them along the road, to which they had likely made their way from the Sweetbriers'. It had never occurred to the Fanchers that the river was the direction from which they made their destructive way.
That made us uneasy.. If the road had led them to the Fanchers, it would lead them to the Jessups, possibly the Greens, and inevitably to Sim Jackman. Though the Fanchers had been armed and on guard, it was unlikely that the others might be.
"I'm goin' with you," Bill told us, when we rose to pursue our investigations. "These folks along here have been right with us. They stood by us when we talked to the Law about Claude Barron's threats and stunts. They came by now and again to see how we were. We're not real close, 'cause say what you will, we're black and they're white, but we've been good neighbors, just the same. If they're in trouble, I'm goin' to be there to help 'em out."
Annie nodded, her smoky eyes still and reserved. "We're okay, the kids and I. We all know what we're doing. You just be careful, Old Son. " The note in her voice said many things that her closed face hid..
As we made our way from the garden, Bill raised his hand. A thin boy appeared from behind a shed, leaned his shotgun against the building, and approached us.
"Tony, you take care of your mom and the young ones, you hear?" his father told him. The boy, not more than eleven, if that, was serious but not at all nervous. He nodded, quietly, then gave me a shy grin as he turned to resume whatever chore his father had interrupted.
Th
e mile to the Jessups' cattle guard went quickly, for along this stretch the road lay between cleared fields, and no timber was down. The chinquapin trees curved gracefully over the drive, backed by thickets of huckleberry and haw, and we went down the road looking at every turn to see the house appear, but it was a good quarter of a mile before that happened.
It was a sprawling structure of fieldstone that rose from its ridge with the authority of something that belonged just there and noplace else. I knew without asking that the Jessups had built it themselves ... probably grubbing the stone out of their own high-ground fields. There was smoke rising from the chimney.
The last part of the drive lay over an embankment. It was obvious that the wet fall had put the river up well into the low ground that it spanned, for there were wet patches still shining with water, and swirled debris patterned the slope of the ridge.
As we came into the open, we honked the horn, feeling that in this new world it was the fair–and safe–thing to do. Warning strangers of your approach was getting to be an ingrained habit. It was just as well that we did. A shot was fired across our bows as we crawled up the slope onto the embankment.
We stopped promptly and opened the doors. Zack and Bill got out, and I scooted across and stood beside them. We held our hands away from our sides, so they could see that we weren't holding weapons.
"Is that Bill Fancher?" came a booming voice from the shelter of a hedge.
"Sure is, Mr. Jessup," Bill answered. "These here is the Hardemans from upriver. They've come all the way round by the road to see if the folks along here are all right. The Ungers got Jess Sweetbrier a couple of days ago. If the Hardemans hadn't come down the river checking on livestock, Nellie'd have died, too."
There was a short silence. I had the feeling that a conference was going on, and evidently I was correct, for a woman's voice called, "Come on over–on foot. We don't want to seem inhospitable, but you know we've got to be careful."
"No problem," Bill called, and we went, single file, across the driveway and up the rise to the house.
Carrie Jessup was sixtyish, small and strong-looking, with wrinkles at the corners of her eyes that would have been deep with laughter in normal circumstances. Her husband, Horace, was tall and slender, with the innocently wondering eyes of a professor of philosophy or medieval literature. His hand, when I shook it, was another matter. Calloused to the point of horniess, it could have crushed my bones without effort.
Before we could speak, he said, in that incongruously booming voice, now damped to a rumble, "It's good of you to trouble yourselves about us. We've had problems, I'Il admit. And poor Sim Jackman from down the road–he's all but dead. Crawled up here through the woods and fields, after those devil women got through with him ... and his winter's cache of liquor. If he lives, it's not impossible that he'll be a teetotaler."
As he spoke, I turned my eyes to Mrs. Jessup, and I saw a slow tear creep from behind her glasses. She said nothing, but she turned away as if to look back the way we had come.
"Is that all the trouble you've had?" I asked him.
"No," he said, and his head tilted forward as if the weight of the words to come were too much for his thin neck. "No. They came at us ... when was it, Mama? Three or four nights ago. They shot Grace ... " His voice wavered away into a basso groan.
"Our oldest girl. She got here just after the blowup. Was on her way the night before it happened and was well away from Houston. She'd flunked out of school. Thank God. Laura was already here for the same reason. Thank the Lord we raised dumb kids. Our boy–we don't know. Anyway, the Ungers sent a little girl up the trail from the river. She was crying and taking on, all ragged and scratched and thin as a starved cat. There's no way we could have kept that child locked out. No way."
She fell silent, and Horace took up the tale. "We got her inside and gave her some warm milk, washed her up some, and were trying to find out who she was and what had happened to her when she pulled a big old hogleg pistol out of the little bundle she had with her – not more than nine! – and told me to open the door. I started for her. No infant is going to give me orders, gun or no. She'd have killed me, but Grace tackled her from the side and got hit instead. She's in the house, now, unconscious. We don't know ..."
"Where's the child?" I asked, a chill crawling through my insides.
"In the house," he answered. "Laura grabbed that pistol as if she had done it every day of her life. She knocked the little wildcat out with the barrel of it. I think she'd have killed her, if we hadn't been there. Now we've got her tied up in the spare bedroom."
"But didn't they try to get in the house, after they heard the shot?" Zack asked.
"Huh!" grunted Horace. "They tried to break in the door, But they're a stupid bunch. Didn't even think to cover the front door, just the one on the river side. I eased out and around the corner and scattered them with bird shot, They hightailed it out of sight, screaming and cussing and raising enough sand to raise the devil. Didn't seem to give another thought to the young'un we had inside."
"Sounds typical," I said, as we entered the arched doorway, into which a heavy and evidently handcrafted oak panel had been swung.
The house was as warm, down-to-earth, and pleasant on the inside as it had seemed from a distance. Hooked rugs made puddles of color here and there on the hardwood floor that ran in a long expanse from front to back, encompassing the long living-work-dining room and the kitchen, brick-floored and wide-hearthed.
On a couch that had been pulled up beside the living-room fireplace lay a young woman who looked about fifteen, but, being Grace, must have been nearer to twenty. She was terribly pale, and the skin about her temples was bluish, as were the shadows under her cheekbones. I bent over her as we entered and laid my hand to her forehead. It was clammy.
"We have had her covered, warm bricks to her feet, the fire going full tilt," her mother said, "but she still seems to be in shock. The wound is clean–went right through the muscle of her right arm, near the shoulder."
Bill looked down at the unconscious girl. "Have you got any salt water down her?" he asked. "Salt ... water?" Carrie said doubtfully. "No. Does that help in a case of shock?"
"Can't hurt," he answered, going to the kitchen and peering into a bucket that evidently contained clean water. "This all right to drink?"
"It's out of the deep well," Horace said. "Here, let me get you the salt. And the water in the kettle is warm.. " He drew an old-fashioned camp kettle from the edge of the coals in the hearth.
When we had finagled several small draughts of the mixture down Grace's throat, we left her mother to continue the process and went to check on Sim Jackman. He was the most terrible sight I saw during all the time of transition. Bruised purple-to-black over every visible inch of skin, he also sported lumps and welts that testified to the merciless use of a stick. Just as had poor Jess. It was evident that he must simply either heal or die.
As I bent over him, his eyes opened. Surrounded by discolored flesh as they were, their color was hard to determine, but they were bright and alert, for all of that. He was unable to move even his head, so swollen was he, but his lips moved, and I bent near to hear.
"Who ye be?" he whispered, and I answered him, pulling Zack forward so that he could see him, too. He tried to nod, and a spasm of pain washed across his face.
To save him effort, I told him of our enclave upriver, our expedition to free the cattle, of Jess and the Fanchers. When I was done, he waggled an eyebrow to bring me closer.
"I git well," he breathed, "'m goin' to flush out them Ungers. Not fit t'live, none of'em. Went down there m'self, young fool, years ago. Bad then. Worse now. Dangerous. Take keer. " He stopped, drained by the effort.
I stood and looked down at him. He was the thin, wiry, tough sort that you find in the back country. With his kind, size was irrelevant. They made up in grit and vinegar what they lacked in inches. I had no doubt that he would live and give the Ungers the hell they deserved.
&nb
sp; If, that is, we were not forced to clean out that devils' den before he could.
CHAPTER EIGHT
All in all, the Jessups were fairly well set up to ride out the winter. Though they had depended on grocery-store goods for most of their necessities for years, both had been reared on farms. They had been used to storing up food against a time of need, and their years of following the oilfields hadn't affected their know-how. In addition to what they had put up for their own use, they had already scrounged what could be had from the Greens' adjacent estate. They had been left keys by the erstwhile owners, so that they might check on dampness in the house and such matters. As the Greens were either dead or permanently stranded in Europe, Horace and Carrie had had no qualms about the thing.
But I told them to go up the river, anyway. "There is a place there, past the Londowns', with a big bunch of cattle running free. We loosed them when we came downriver yesterday, and the house was empty. Had been since the blowup, it looked like. We saw some nice young stuff– springing heifers. That should help out."
Horace nodded. "We hadn't thought of going that far. Since Bill and the Sweetbriers had stayed put, we just assumed that everyone else had, too. We quit going out when we cleaned out the hardware store in Phelan" (this being the town nearest for those on this end of the river).
Zack and I, in that intuitive way you develop after you've been married for years, were pretty well satisfied with the Jessups' status. They were the tough older stock that had seen hardships and rough times. Laura, however, was something else. I could tell that her parents were concerned, too.
She was a pretty girl, not much past eighteen. Fair, blue-eyed. You've seen her exact duplicates on every high school campus you've ever driven by. She should have been giggling her time away with pimply boys or struggling over half-comprehended textbooks. The shock of her world's ending had frozen her ... almost literally.
The World Ends In Hickory Hollow Page 6