But it was too late. He’d been noticed, and the door swung open on him.
“Are you going to stand out there mooning all morning, Mr. Powell?” grinned John, motioning him inside. “Or perhaps you were going to serenade her at the window?”
Powell managed a pained, uncomfortable smile and entered the house.
As he passed John, he saw that nearly the entire family lined the hallway near the foyer, all of their eager, expectant eyes on him. Even Lucy’s curiously clouded eyes sparkled.
“Good morning,” he said politely, doffing his hat and inclining his head to the group. “I trust I’m not too early.”
“Not at all. Would you like some coffee?” asked John, taking his coat and hat.
“No, that’s quite all right,” said Powell, nervously eyeing the group, gathered in a quiet little knot. John flashed them all a look, and Lucy gathered the giggling boys and led them away.
John gave Powell a conspiratorial wink. “Sorry about that. But with all that’s been happening here, this is the first good news we’ve had in a long time. Even the Witch must think so, because we haven’t heard from her in days.”
“What I’m doing?” repeated Powell.
“Courting Betsy,” reminded John, entertained by Powell’s flustered demeanor.
“Oh, yes!” he nearly shouted, flushing again and shaking his head in embarrassment. “Yes, of course. What was I thinking?”
“Well,” gestured John, “she’s in the sitting room waiting for you. Good luck!”
“Thank you,” he said, feeling his heart begin to thunder nervously as John left him.
Mustering his courage, he turned to his left and entered the room.
Betsy sat on a low sofa across from the doorway wearing a beautiful dress of deep green that shimmered against the fall of her blonde hair. She smiled demurely at him, fidgeted with the folds and pleats of the dress.
“Good morning, Miss Bell,” he said, crossing the room and taking her hand.
“Good morning, Mr. Powell. How pleasant to see you,” she said, her eyes only glancing at his. “John said that you wanted to see me this morning. And though I’m flattered, I can’t think for the life of me why you’d want to see me. Did I forget an assignment? Or am I doing poorly in studies?”
“No, no,” he laughed. “May I sit?”
Betsy scooted to one side, and Powell sat down.
“You look… very beautiful this morning, Miss Bell. Is that a new dress?”
“Quite new, thank you. But, please, call me Betsy.”
He swallowed at that granted intimacy. “Betsy, then. Betsy,” he repeated like an idiot.
“You were saying?”
“Oh, yes, yes. Well, I was talking with your brother. John, that is. And, you see, I was asking him if you were… that is, if you might consider…”
“You asked John for permission to court me?”
“Yes,” he nodded enthusiastically, happy to be relieved of the burden of uttering it.
“And why did you ask John?”
Powell looked confused. “Excuse me?”
“You did want to court me, didn’t you?” Her tone was playful, but there was a sharp, reprimanding aspect to it that he couldn’t help but notice.
“Well, I knew that your previous engagement had been… called off. And I thought… I mean it is proper… polite to… request the permission of a lady’s father in such cases. But that was obviously… out of the question. So, instead, I asked John.”
She sat quietly while he answered, letting him stumble through until he reached the end.
“What do you think gives John the right to decide to whom I’ll fall in love with?” she asked. “I can decide that for myself, thank you. I don’t need him or you to make such a decision. Besides, that decision was made long ago… with no input from any of you,” she said.
Color rose again in Powell’s cheeks, and the butterflies in his stomach became frenzied. This was going exactly as he had foreseen: disastrous. It was time, he decided, to cut his losses and make for home.
He bowed his head to her. “I can see that my interests are unwanted, and I can accept your decision. I hope that we can at least remain good friends, Miss Bell… Betsy,” he said, lifting his head and giving her a tight, careful smile.
“I don’t believe this!” she shouted, jumping to her feet in a flash of shiny green and a rustle of material. “Are all men stupid and arrogant? First, you and John decide that I should love you. Now you sit here and decide that I shouldn’t. All with no consideration of me and my feelings in the matter.”
Now, she really was mad, and she spun on him with narrowed eyes.
“I don’t understand,” stammered Powell.
“Ask me! That’s all that’s required. Just ask me. Not John. Not Pa or anyone else. From now on, if it concerns me, I’ll decide!” She stood before him, eyes glaring, her hands planted on her hips. “Go ahead, ask!”
“Would you agree to allow me to court you with an eye toward marriage?” he blurted. And like a tooth yanked fast, he was amazed at how painless it was once said.
“Yes,” she said.
He was not, however, prepared for her response.
“Excuse me?”
“I said yes,” she answered again. “Yes, yes, yes.”
Gathering the hem of her skirt, she flounced down next to him on the couch, her mercurial mood turning joyous once more. “Oh, Mr. Powell! I’ve dreamed of this. I mean, I’ve loved you for quite some time, but I never thought you noticed me. I never dreamed that my affections would be returned.”
She took his hand. Stupefied, he stared at her, squeezed her hand back.
“I don’t quite know what to say, Miss… Betsy,” he said, recovering a bit and taking her small, dainty hand more firmly in his own.
“Why, Mr. Powell, say that you love me,” she giggled, but her eyes were serious, almost otherworldly in their intent.
“Richard,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Call me Richard.”
“Richard…”
“I love you, Betsy,” he said. “My only regret is that I didn’t tell you sooner.”
“Mine as well,” she said.
“Would it be unseemly to kiss you?” he asked, in a daze.
“It might…,” she began, but he sealed her lips with a kiss.
Powell opened his eyes as the kiss faded, looked into hers and became a little nervous.
He pulled away slowly, and they both composed themselves.
“The Witch was right,” he whispered.
“She was?”
“Yes. She urged me to make my feelings known to you, because you shared them.”
She clutched at a fold of her dress, rolled the material absently between her fingers.
“You know, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, taking her hand again.
“Do you know why?” she asked, looking away, out the window upon the falling snow, that now lay over the landscape.
“Yes, I think,” he said after a minute. “I’m sorry, because––”
“Shh,” she said, placing her hand over his mouth. Tears glittered in her eyes, and he inhaled the primrose scent of her hand. “It isn’t your fault.”
She removed her hand, kissed him, transferring some of the wetness of her tears to his cheeks. “I’ll need help to deal with this. Understanding. Gentleness. Love. Can you give this all to me?”
Powell looked at her, and his heart swelled in his chest. “Yes, Betsy. I can give you all of that and more,” he said, his voice breaking.
He drew her close, and she laid her head against his chest.
“I can hear your heart.”
“Yes,” he smiled, kissing her hair. “Just as I have heard yours.”
Powell looked out the window, at the snow that lay thick and deep over everything. And he thought how much it looked like a bandage, a balm soothing and annealing a deeply wounded earth, giving it time to heal.
He could, Powell mused, spare that time as well.
THIRTY-FOUR
Late in the afternoon, Jack left the house, slowly and on unsteady feet, still woozy from his beating in the church just a few days earlier. His labored breathing, impeded by his swollen tongue, hung vaporous in the air around him, clung to him like a personal cloud.
Under this grey must, Jack was barely recognizable.
He was a pale, drawn man, exhausted and drained of vitality, bruised in a way that penetrated through the skin and into the essential core of his being. His clothes hung on his frame as if there were nothing more than a few twigs inside to give them shape.
The slaves tried not to stare as he hobbled across the yard. But he felt their eyes upon him, their contempt, their pity.
Rather than the commanding presence he once wielded among them, he was reduced to a curiosity; a sickly, weak man with his own death marked clearly upon him.
Jack knew this, was chagrined by it, and kept his attention focused straight ahead, with no words spoken to anyone. He increased his pace as much as his stiff legs would allow through the snow.
The sky was a uniform dun color, gloomy and leaden. And although quiet, it was a close, pregnant quiescence, as if something were gathering, awaiting some signal to unburden itself of whatever it held back.
Jack pushed forward to the smoke house, where John said he would be after lunch. The weight of the snow piled upon it had partially collapsed the roof of the structure, and he was working on getting it fixed quickly.
The door to the small building was propped open, and Jack could see the wan daylight seep inside through a splintered hole in the roof. He pushed his way through the hanging meat, now coated with a rime of ice, to where John was working with Sam and another slave in replacing several of the cross supports.
Sam’s face blanched when he saw Jack walking toward them, but the man said nothing to him, acting as if he didn’t even see him.
Jack looked up at another slave working atop the roof, stepping gingerly, knocking snow off. A cloud of fine, powdery snow drifted down through the hole, sprinkled onto the smoldering embers, sending up an ashen fog that filled the room.
“Pa!” exclaimed John, climbing down from his ladder in great consternation. “What the hell are you doing up, much less outside?”
Jack gestured gruffly for his son to follow him, but John resisted.
“Pa, you look like hell. There’s nothing you can do to help us, so why don’t you get back inside and rest. Get your strength back.”
“No,” Jack snapped, and his voice was hoarse and choked, slurred as it crowded past his thickened tongue.
John took his father’s arm, prepared to take him back inside.
“Damn it!” his father rumbled. “Listen to me! I need to talk with you now, not lie in that damned bed anymore.”
Letting loose of his father, John gave him an appraising look. “But, Doc Hopson said––”
“The hell with Hopson. I’m gonna die anyway, boy,” he said, then paused to let this sink through. “You understand that, don’t you?”
“Pa, I don’t…,” John stammered, turning away.
“You heard the Witch. You see me now. I don’t need to tell you. And I don’t have long. Come talk with me a while.”
John stared at his father, speechless.
Jack gave him no time to think. “Come on,” he said, taking John by the shoulder, in a sort of hug, sort of support.
John flashed Sam a look, then turned and left the smokehouse with his father, both disappearing through the steam and swaying meat. They walked a while in silence, John still reeling inwardly at his father’s simple declaration.
I’m gonna die anyway, boy.
But soon, he could tell that his father had no real destination in mind. They were simply walking. Together.
“Been good, boy,” said Jack, finally.
“Sir?”
Jack laughed at his son’s sudden respectful tone. “First you tell me I look like hell. Now, it’s ‘sir.’ But, you’re a good boy. A good son.”
“Pa,” protested John, stopping and facing him. “I don’t want to hear this.”
“You’re gonna. Because I gotta tell you. You’ve got to know…,” he said, looking past John.
“I… know about you,” John said.
Jack snapped his attention back to him instantly. “You know?”
“About Kate Batts. I’ve known for a while.”
Jack waved his hand in dismissal. “Nothing. But… when I’m gone… you’ll hear other things… worse,” he said, his piercing gaze sweeping the horizon.
“Pa, I don’t know what you’re saying. You’re delirious,” John whispered. “Please come back with me to the house. You’re talking nonsense.”
But there was an edge to John’s voice; an edge his father recognized but hadn’t heard since his eldest child was a young boy.
It was the sound of a boy pleading with his father not to do something that he plainly feared.
Jack smiled ruefully, a rictus of pain on his narrow, hollowed face. “Son, I’m sorry. I want you to know that.”
“For what?” pleaded John, becoming angry and scared at his father’s words.
“I… can’t bring myself to tell you. Too much of a coward even here at the end. And I’m embarrassed to tell you that I’m relieved that I’m not going to be around to deal with it much longer. You’ll have to pick up the pieces, move on, take care of things.”
He turned back to John, looked him square in the eyes.
“Just don’t think too harshly of me,” he mumbled. “I never meant to hurt anyone. Never.”
“Pa,” moaned John, and Jack saw tears of comprehension and confusion in his eyes. “I’m not ready for this. I’m scared.”
“So am I,” said Jack, shaking. “So am I.”
John rushed to him and hugged him tightly, as if he really were a little boy again.
Don’t get too close, John, else I might have to kill you, too, said the Witch. But her voice was altered; low and growling, almost weak but for the menacing tone she adopted.
John pulled away. “God damn you! Leave!”
John, go home. This is a game no longer. No exercise in morality or theology. If you stay, I might hurt you as well, she snapped. For I will assuredly hurt him.
“You can’t hurt me,” said Jack. “I hurt enough.”
YOU? HURT? she shrieked, sound erupting from nowhere and reverberating on the cold air. YOU? You arrogant prick! You go about like a bull in a China closet, destroying things of beauty, of delicacy, then have the audacity to complain of a cut?
“Witch, enough!” yelled John, railing at the air. “Whatever you’ve done already is killing him. And whatever he’s done, he’s sorry for.”
Shut up! she screamed back.
And something struck John a staggering blow directly in the center of his chest, hurtling him backwards into the snow. The force of the impact knocked the breath from him.
Jack stood silent, motionless.
I’m not through yet. I won’t be through until he’s dead. He can be sorry for all time and that still wouldn’t be enough! Damn you, John, for making me strike you! And damn you again for speaking about something that you know so little about.
John got to his feet, put his arm around his father.
“Come on, let’s get back to the house,” he said. Then, he looked up at the sky. “May God forgive you for what you’re doing to my father. Just as he has forgiven my father his sins.”
There came from the air a wavering, ululation of grief and rage, followed by a single word that rent their senses.
AWAY!
John was separated from his father, lifted bodily and thrown to the ground again, this time with enough strength to bring him to the edge of unconsciousness.
If your father is such a saint, John, then let him be a martyr to his sorrow.
At her last word, a rock appeared from nowhere, struck Jack on the cheek forc
efully enough to draw blood. He threw up his hands in a pitiable attempt to ward off the blow.
Then a rock struck him in the abdomen, and he doubled over.
Another struck his shoulder.
His arm.
His back.
His neck.
Soon, he was at the center of a barrage of stones.
John saw blood streaming down his father’s face from a dozen wounds. He tried to go to him, but something held him down, pinned him helplessly to the ground. He struggled furiously against it, to no avail.
A flurry of stones struck Jack, who had bent into a whimpering ball. Then, a large stone hit his right knee. There was a sound like a rifle shot, and he dropped to the ground.
For a minute more, the rocks continued to strike the motionless man, who was as curled up and stiff as a dead bug. Then, like a brief, intense afternoon shower, they trickled off, and stopped.
At that instant, John broke free of whatever held him, and sprawled in the snow from the suddenness of his release. Scrambling to his knees, he crawled to his father.
Jack was shaking as if possessed of some terrible ague, and he flinched at his son’s touch.
“Pa?” John asked, trying to pull his father’s hands from his face.
But Jack gripped all the tighter, mumbling incoherently all the while.
Pushed beyond his limits, John drew his father up, embraced him as they lay on the cold, damp snow, threw his head back and howled.
It was a scream of frustration and fear, helplessness and rage, confusion and knowledge. And it was the only thing his mouth seemed capable of uttering at that time.
John’s scream brought Jack back to consciousness. He shrugged off his son’s touch, wiped indifferently at the blood slicking his face, running into his eyes. His hand came back wet and red, and he rubbed it onto the snow.
It left a livid, red handprint embedded there, like an angry weal on the pristine surface.
Dazed and disoriented, Jack braced himself on his son’s shoulders, left more bloody handprints there like epaulets, and stood. Again, he waved off any assistance, instead lurching off on his own toward the house.
Where do you think you’re going, Jack? asked the Witch’s razor voice across the icy air. Oh, no. You’ll not walk away wearing the guise of a martyr. If you long to play the role, be a true penitent!
The Bell Witch Page 25