by Holly Bush
“Everybody knows you’re staying at the Campbell place. It’ll just cause trouble for her. Leave her alone.”
Matt would have asked more questions, but after a moment’s reflection, he realized he might never get answers, truthful ones anyway. It seemed that everyone in the town was terrified to talk to him. It was clear it was because he was staying at Annie Campbell’s, but he had no idea why. He imagined she’d have to tell him.
He got Chester from the stables and walked the horse to the butcher’s.
“Got that chicken ready for me?” he asked when he went through the door.
The man nodded and put the bird in a burlap sack and handed it across the counter. He looked up at Matt with a pained expression. “I was rude before.”
“Everyone in this town is nervous and not very happy to see me, and I’m guessing that Thurman has something to do with that.”
“Mr. Thurman has ways of making things difficult for a businessman. I’ve got a wife and children and my wife’s parents to support.”
Matt tipped his hat. “We do what we have to, don’t we, and sometimes we do what we don’t have to do as well.”
He had one more stop to make, the telegraph operator’s. It was time to let his mother know where they were.
“Can you sit up just a bit for me?” Annie asked Ben Littleship when the light of day was just coming in the window above his bed. “I’ve cooked a canned peach that Matt brought from the general store in with your oatmeal. You’ll have to chew it up.”
She stuffed pillows behind his back while pulling him forward by the shoulders. It seemed like he weighed next to nothing. She remembered what he looked like when she dragged him into the wagon that day at the river. He wasn’t huge but he had muscles and mass to him. She smiled at him and continued propping him up, glad he was able to talk to her now instead of just squeezing her hand and nodding. He was nearly sitting straight, his head against the pillow, his arms slack at his side.
“I’ve probably tired you out, flopping you around and yanking at you, haven’t I?”
He laughed softly, his hollow cheeks swelling. “And I thank you that I’m even here on this earth to get yanked around,” he said.
She sat down beside the bed, picked up the bowl of oatmeal, and blew on its contents. “I’ve been glad for the company. It gets lonesome out here.”
“Why don’t you move to town? I’ve never been wide awake and farther than this bed to see your property here, but I’m sure there’s a lot of work for a young woman all alone.”
“No. It’s best I stay here. I can’t keep the farm as nice as I’d like, but I get by.”
“Matt helping you?”
She nodded and dabbed his mouth with a rag. “He’s been helping. He’s in the barn now, mucking the stalls.”
“He better be making up a bed out there. His momma would be angry knowing he was living in the same house as a young, unmarried woman, and he knows it. Eleanor Gentry would not have to say a word, either.” Ben chuckled. “That woman has a way of looking at a man and making him feel like the lowest worm when she’s disappointed with something he says or does.”
“She sounds like a woman to be reckoned with.”
“She is, missy. She is. Even when I feel like closing my eyes and not opening them ever again, I think about how happy Miss Eleanor will be when she lays eyes on her youngest son.”
Annie wiped Ben’s chin and gave him a sip of water before pulling the extra pillows out from behind him. He was asleep moments later. She sat beside his bed stroking his arm and thinking how fine it would be to have a close family like the Gentrys. She admitted to herself that she wasn’t just lonely for people around her, she was lonely for connections. Without her mother, father, or brother, there was no one. And more than that, she was lonely for a man. Lonely for how Madeline and Tom were when they were together. Touching and looking at each other and sharing a connection that Annie knew nothing of. Or making babies together in the still of the night—where had that random thought come from?
“Did he eat?”
She jumped in her seat. “Oh. I didn’t hear you come in—I was daydreaming. What did you say?”
Matt smiled and her stomach flopped. He was finally and completely well and putting on muscle and weight every day with all the chores he was doing and the massive amount of food he consumed. She’d forgotten what it was like to cook for a hungry man, and a big one at that. Matt Gentry was as thick-chested as he was broad-shouldered, with powerful arms and a thick, corded neck. He’d finished the fence posts, fixed a hole in the shed roof, and was working on the barn now.
There was no wonder any longer why she’d been barely able to move him on that day at the river. She’d not noticed then, of course, she was too busy concentrating on saving his life. She hadn’t noticed much, either, when he’d slept fitfully in front of the fire day and night. By the time he got out of his sickbed, he’d lost weight and muscle and his skin was sallow. And now she thought he was as handsome a man as she’d ever seen even knowing he could be hardheaded and angry and sad.
“He did eat,” Annie said, now recalling his question. “I propped him up with pillows, and he ate nearly the whole bowl of oatmeal and had a few sips of water.”
“That’s good,” he said, but his smile lessened as he stared at Ben. “How am I ever going to get him to Paradise?”
“You can’t go yet. You’ve got to reconcile yourself to that. He’s got to get stronger.”
Matt nodded and sat down on the rocker. “Sometimes I forget how close he was, how close both of us were, to dying.”
“You must be tired. You’re getting maudlin. You’ve been working all day.”
“I am tired, and often maudlin, but I’m just going to sit here a few more minutes and then get back to the barn.” He looked at her. “I’m almost done building a bunk in the loft for myself. I’ll be sleeping there tonight.”
“Oh,” she said and felt her cheeks get hot. Any other time, she’d have been glad to get a man out of her house, away from her when she was sleeping and vulnerable, but hadn’t she just been thinking about making babies? Did she trust Matt Gentry? What a novel thought. “I never thanked you for the peppermint candy you brought back when you went into town a few days ago. I haven’t had any for ages.”
“Town,” he said and stared at her. “Some strange goings-on in Bridgewater.”
Annie stood and pulled the covers tight over Ben’s shoulders. “I’m not sure what you mean, but I do thank you for the sugar and whatnot, too. The garden needs tending. I’ll be out back if you need me.”
“Tell me about the Thurmans, Annie.”
She shrugged and stepped into her old boots. “I already told you. They own the mill. Daddy should have never said anything to them about old Tom.”
“There’s more to it than that. Everywhere I went in town, they already knew I was staying here. The butcher warned me off, saying that I would cause you grief by mentioning your name. Thurman came in while I was there.”
She took a deep breath to calm her racing heart. “I hope you didn’t say much.”
“I didn’t. I don’t know the whole story. But I intend to.”
“There’s not much to tell.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I don’t care what you believe, Matt Gentry,” she said. “It’s none of your business.” She stalked off through the door and around the side of the cabin toward the gate and the garden beyond. She was pulling wild onions and grasses out from between the bean plants with a fury.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked, having followed her out.
“I’m not afraid of anything. It’s just none of your business.”
“You don’t have to be afraid anymore,” he said softly, just feet away from her.
She was on her haunches pushing dirt against a tender bean sprout, when her eyes suddenly clouded with tears. His shadow blocked the heat of the sun on her back, but she didn’t believe that was why she felt c
hilled.
“You’ll be gone one of these days.”
He sank down to his knees beside her. “There’s more to this than him killing your father, although that’s awful in itself. Why would he bother you now? Why does it matter to him?”
“The Thurmans own this town. There’s nothing to be done about it.”
“Where’s your brother, Annie?”
She jerked her head up. “Dead in the war. You know nothing about him.”
“I don’t think so. I was reading from your bible to Ben and found a baptism paper. He was too young to have been in the army.”
Matt wasn’t sure he wanted to hear her story and had put off asking his questions. He didn’t know if he wanted to listen to whatever atrocity had been committed on this property, on this family. He was certain there was some ugly history, and she might not be prepared to tell him. He’d watched men, some wearing blue and some wearing gray, treat men and women and children cruelly, to the limits, he imagined, of humanity. He’d watched it with his own eyes and done nothing about it. He’d been as horrible as the ones wielding their knives and their fists and their guns and their taunts, and drank his way through the next few years trying desperately to forget his cowardice and bone-deep despair that he’d forgotten or ignored everything he’d been taught since he was a small child.
Somehow this felt different. He wasn’t avoiding her tragedies or turning his head away, and he knew he must hear the stories first to lift the pain of them from her. She bore a solitary life and the work of a farm, in addition to saving his life. He owed her, and perhaps he could banish some of his own demons by taking on some of hers. Somewhere in the last few days or weeks, she’d stopped simply being the person he owed his life to—he could hardly call that simple, he supposed—and become a woman. Just that. A woman.
“Teddy wasn’t like other children,” she said finally, as she looked over the garden on her left and then lifted her face to the sun. “He was slow to learn and never really acted like he was much more than five or six years old. But he was such a loving little boy. My mother died during childbirth, and I raised Teddy while Daddy worked the farm, taking care of the hogs, and we had chickens and cows then, too.”
“I was ten years old when he was born. Momma had taught me to read and do my numbers and sew and even embroider. Her family was from Tennessee and had some money. She was accustomed to city life, her father being a lawyer with some stature in his town, and even the state. Daddy met her when he traveled there with a cousin. They fell in love, and she came here, to Daddy’s family farm. I wonder when she realized things would never be better, that they’d never move to town and that she’d only have two or three dresses to her name as long as she lived. Daddy wasn’t happy that she was schooling me and teaching me to set a table correctly and speak well. He thought it was presumptuous for a girl child, but he never pushed back overmuch to her. I think it was her way of saying, ‘I live here in this hovel. I’ve sacrificed everything for you. I’ll raise my daughter as I see fit.’ Anyway, after Momma died giving birth to Teddy, he was mine to bring up. Daddy was in a decline and I feared he’d take his own life, even when I was young girl. He’d sit at the table, holding his gun, with a faraway look that scared me. Looking back, I wonder if he didn’t intend for Thurman to kill him that day. He had no special feelings about the coloreds in town.”
“When did Teddy die?”
“Just two summers ago, sixty-seven. I can still hear his voice in my head if I close my eyes and think about him, but it’s fading. My memories are fading.”
“What happened to him?”
She stood up and stretched her back. He stood, too, and followed her down the garden row, past the property fence and into the trees. It was cool and shady, and Matt wiped the sweat off his neck with a kerchief. She sat down on a stump, and he leaned against an oak tree a few feet away. She was crying, he realized then, and bent down on his knees in front of her.
“You don’t have to tell me, Annie. I know he died. I know it was horrible, and I can see you mourned him as if he’d been a natural son.”
She turned to face him but her eyes never rose above his chin. “They hung him in the barn. He was terrified and calling my name. His neck didn’t snap and he hung there, alive, fighting to breathe, while I watched and those animals held me back. While they all watched.”
She was gasping with each word, clearly reliving every second of what must have been the most horrible thing a mother could possibly see. He picked up her hand, which was hanging limp over her knee, and rubbed it. She was staring off in the distance, tears running down her cheeks and off her chin.
“It’s over now,” he whispered. “Your brother is at peace.”
She lifted her eyes to his and focused on him. “Is he?”
“Yes. I’m certain of it.”
“You’re a faithful man, then?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m not. I’ve done killing, and seen others do worse. There are things worse than a quick death, as you know. How can I be a faithful man?”
“You believe in heaven, though.”
“My mother read the bible to us. We learned our letters from the bible. There’s a heaven. My mother told me so, and I believe it because she believed it. It’s true. There is a heaven, and there most certainly is a hell.”
“Teddy’s in heaven then,” she said and looked skyward.
“Why were they here that day?” Matt asked.
“I’m a woman. Why do you think they were here?” She rose quickly from the tree stump she sat on.
He stood, his fists clenched at his side. “What did they do?”
Annie walked past him to the cabin. “Nothing. They did nothing.”
“What’s went on here?” Ben asked when Matt stopped in the cabin for a drink of water late morning. He’d been turning over more ground for a bigger garden, after hearing Annie wish she had room for fall corn and onions and potatoes. There was not a doubt in his mind what Ben meant.
“Has she said something to you?”
“No,” Ben replied. “She didn’t have to. There’s a sadness there and some fear, too. She told me her father and brother died in the war.”
“There’s some real ugliness in this town. The Thurman family owns the mill and did some killing, including her father and her brother. She told me they hung her brother a few years ago when he was twelve and that she was mother to the boy as her mother had died birthing him. She said he wasn’t quite right in the head.”
“Who hung him?”
“Town folk and the Thurmans. They don’t care for the Campbells.”
“She’s no threat now,” Ben said. “But she’s still afraid, I think.”
Matt nodded. “There’s more to it. I just don’t know the whole story.”
Ben shoved himself up as much as he could, knocking the bible that had lain on his lap to the floor. “You’re going to have to fix this, Matthew. You can’t just leave her. You’ve got to fix this for her.”
“I know,” he said and picked up the bible and laid it on Ben’s lap. “Don’t get yourself all worn out about it. I’ll take care of it.”
“Well, Gentry men just don’t let women be treated poorly or threatened. Don’t care how long you’ve been away. You know your duty and what Miss Eleanor and Beauregard would expect.”
“I do,” Matt said. That being the source of his conflict.
Chapter 6
Annie walked out to the barn after she’d fed Ben a second time for the day. She’d moved her bedding to the pallet in front of the fire. Sleeping in the small room had been uncomfortable, and she felt vulnerable without Gentry in the house. There, she’d said it. She’d admitted to herself that he was less a threat and more a comfort. He was solid, strong, with a deep code of right and wrong, although he’d been wandering for years. Improbably, he made her feel like a woman, when she’d spent so much time trying to be anything but.
“I’ve brought you some blankets and filled a pillow for you,�
�� she said from the bottom of the ladder leading to the loft.
His head popped over the side. “Much obliged. Would you like to see my handiwork or should I come down?”
She tucked the pillow and blankets under her arm and went up the ladder. She’d changed into a lightweight skirt and shirt that had been her mother’s and combed her hair and pulled it back with a ribbon. She’d not done as much with her clothing and hair for an age.
“Well,” she said when she stepped onto the loft floor. “The last time I was up here it was filled with old harnesses and wood and everything else Daddy didn’t know what to do with.”
“I burned some of it and stacked the wood that could be saved. There wasn’t much to keep. I suppose I should have asked you first.”
She shook her head and handed him the pillow. “No. I’m glad you went ahead and did it. It needed done, and I just never had the time to do it.”
“Look at this. The ends here are all sewn fancy with flowers and whatnot. It’s very pretty,” he said as he fingered the opening of the pillowcase and looked up at her. “Maybe a burlap sack would be better for a rough character like me.”
“I embroidered that case when I was eight or nine and have several more. Momma said we would keep them for when I married. How silly. It’s not as though I’ll be moving into some fancy house or getting married at all!”
She glanced at him then and he was staring at her, most likely thinking she’d lost her mind, talking about a hope chest when she didn’t even have a trunk but had stored her things away in the leather satchel her mother had brought with her from Tennessee, as if he would even know any of those details.
“Why shouldn’t you marry, Annie?”
She smiled and shrugged. “And who would I meet that would want to marry me? I’ve made some biscuits for dinner, and I’ve got some early blueberries we can sugar and have with the cream I got from the milk Madeline gave me.”
“Why were those men here, Annie? Why did they hang Teddy? I can’t stop thinking about what you told me. Were they soldiers or townsfolk?”