"I gotta stop," Ellis cried, falling into a chair breathless, wobble kneed, and ecstatically happy. "I gotta stop or I'll die."
Bryce sat across from her taking a long sip of his beer to quench his thirst. Buck and Anne had left shortly after twelve. Their empty glasses were still on the table.
"Where in tarnation is the barmaid when ya need her," she asked, watching the last drop of fluid disappear when he licked it from his lips.
"Ah." He looked shamefaced. "I'm sorry. I forgot ya didn't have one. I'll be back in a sec."
"No. It was a joke. I can fetch one—I think I should go back to work anyway," she said, looking around uneasily. One dance had turned into several in all the frivolity. She wasn't sure how much time had elapsed, but she was sure it was considerable.
"Nah. Everybody parties after midnight, and folks serve themselves. It's tradition here. Look there at Tug dancin’ with Mary Jo."
It was a sight to see.
She grew lax, listening to the music and watching the people dance, waiting for Bryce to return. With time to notice such things, she began to suspect there was something wrong with the drums ... or maybe the drummer had tipped too many. There was an odd, irregular downbeat, over and over that didn't hold with the rhythm of the music. She turned her head when she heard Bryce call a farewell to a friend, then turned back to the band.
"Here ya go," he said seconds later, setting a soft drink in front of her. He'd debated over getting her something stronger to toast the new year with, but knowing her aversion to spirits, chose her usual libation instead.
"Thank you," she said, picking it up and taking long refreshing gulps.
"The drummer's drunk," Bryce said in passing, making no judgment. "Have ya noticed the way he keeps addin' extra beats?"
"I did." She grinned and leaned back in her chair with a hand to her heart. "I thought it was me in the beginnin'. My heart was beatin' so fast, I thought everybody could hear it."
His head tilted to one side as he watched her; her face radiant with happiness.
"Ya sure are pretty, Ellis," he said, not really meaning to compliment her, merely stating a fact.
She sat forward again, slipping her fingers between his hands. "Ya keep tellin' me that. But the only time I feel pretty is when ya look at me the way ya do."
His face came closer, and she knew he was going to kiss her. She wanted him to. She was eager.
"Bryce! Get out here quick!" came a male voice from the main door. It was the man he'd waved good-bye to moments before. Bryce was at the door before Ellis could push her chair away from the table. The man was still shouting. "He's really lost it this time. Look at him."
Bryce stopped cold in the doorway, shocked and bewildered, unable to believe what he was seeing. By the time Ellis got there, they were three or four bodies apart, and she couldn't see a thing.
"For crissake," she heard him mutter before he uncorked the exit and let the people pour out into the cold, snowy parking lot.
It was Ellis's turn to stand in disbelief and horror and watch as a big blue truck ran full throttle into the back of her old, already battered pickup. Before her eyes the driver backed up at a right angle, shifted gears, and plowed into the right tail end.
"No," she heard herself say in a weak, feeble voice. "No. Stop that."
It was then that she noticed Bryce running alongside the truck, making one attempt after another to grab the door handle without getting run over in the process. He shouted at the driver, and her gaze lifted. Reuben Evans sat behind the steering wheel, a crazed, vengeful, and absolutely determined expression etched deeply in his features.
She willed her feet to move her forward, thinking that there was something she could do to help Bryce. The rear end of her pickup looked like an accordion, and when the sound of the impact and whine of bending metal came to her a third time, she knew she'd misjudged the drummer. He hadn't been silly on spirits and out of sync. The irregular beats had been Evans's very deliberate and very rhythmic destruction of her vehicle.
"Stop," she shouted, her shock fading to outrage. "Somebody call the law. That's my pickup. Why is he doin' that?"
She'd marched out to the middle of the parking lot shouting and waving her arms when a set of mindful hands restrained her, pulled at her, and staggered her backward toward safety.
"No. He's gotta be stopped," she cried to her unseen and uncared about caretaker. "That's all I got. It's . . ." She froze. A whisper escaped on a breath of terror. "The money."
With a sudden jerk she broke loose of her protective restraints and bolted for the old pickup. She hadn't gone ten feet before she was captured again. She heard a familiar male voice trying to calm her, reason with her, but her strongest instincts had already taken over.
She fought like a bobcat to free herself, cringing from the inside out when the slam of metal on metal penetrated her consciousness.
"Please. Let go," she screamed, digging her nails into flesh, thrashing her legs about in search of any obstacle in her path. "The money. Please. I . . . Let go of me!"
Somewhere in the back of her mind she was still keeping track of Bryce and his efforts to stop the madman. She registered that he'd reached the handle, that he'd been dragged several feet before he'd pushed himself away from the truck, and that he cursed proficiently and profusely before announcing that the doors were locked.
"Get your shotgun, Tug," she heard him bellow into the crowd of people behind her, her arms flailing in her attempts to pull at her captor's hair. "Well blow out his tires."
A microsecond later the big blue truck rammed the dilapidated old pickup once more. Sparks shot from the pickup's bowels before tongues of fire lapped across its belly, licking out at both sides.
Ellis's scream split the night wide open. An animal instinct deep inside her snapped and spilled superhuman juices into her bloodstream. With another cry that went beyond anything earthly, she tore loose of the hands that were keeping her from the most important thing in her life.
She ran in front of the truck, oblivious to the fact that she'd come within mere feet of being crushed under its wheels as it sped out of the parking lot into the cover of darkness.
Nor was she particularly alert to the steady flame burning its way into the gas tank when she tried to yank open the door on the driver's side of the pickup.
The door was stuck. She beat on the window with no effect and went back to bashing and banging on the door to get it to open.
"Ellis!" It was Bryce. "For crissake, have ya lost your mind? This thing's gonna blow up any minute." He took her hand and attempted to pull her away, but she wasn't leaving without her money. "Ellis! It's too late. You can't save it."
"I got to. Bryce, help me! My money."
He took both her hands this time, and when pulling and dragging her wasn't fast enough, he bent low and threw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
"Get your damned hands offa me," she screamed, pummeling his back with her fists. "Put me down, Bryce! Stop. Please. Help me. My money. I have to have my money. It's in the seat. Bryce! Listen to me. It's in the seat. The seat, Bryce. I have to have that money."
"It ain't worth it," he said, panting, weak with fear and effort as he set her on the ground on the far side of the building. Others had taken shelter there as well, but just to make sure that everyone was safely concealed, he turned and poked his head around the corner.
His mind tripped beyond shock when Ellis shot past like a dart. The truck was her bull's-eye.
"Dammit to hell," he said, taking a flying leap, tackling her facedown in the snow an instant before the truck blew up.
The noise was deafening. An invisible force stomped across their prone bodies so quickly and so stunningly, they weren't sure when it began or when it ended—only that it had happened. And then there was silence but for an occasional piece of metal hitting the ground.
Eleven
As if in slow motion, Bryce lifted his head, and when he saw that it was safe to d
o so, he rolled his body off hers to lie on his back looking up at the stars. They seemed unreal. Too far away. Too peaceful to be a part of what had just happened. What had just happened? The entire episode flashed through his mind and seemed more unreal than the stars.
He could feel Ellis stirring at his side.
"Gawd. I feel like I been shot at twice and missed," he said, a general comment on how lucky he felt to be alive.
He knew he was a bit put out with Ellis and that he had a few pointed remarks he wanted to make to her, but he wasn't sure what they were yet.
He was bounced back to reality with a jolt when her fist met his chest like a jackhammer on concrete. The wind whooshed out of him and refused to come back.
"Why did ya stop me?" she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks, the mist of her angry words rising in the frigid air.
"Why did I . . ." He gasped for air and struggled to raise his head off the ground. She began to rant.
“Ya knew it was important. I worked hard for it. I need it. Why did ya stop me? I hate you." She hit him again. "I hate you, ya hear? Ya shouldn'ta stopped me. I’ll never get him back now. It'll take me too long to start over. He'll forget how to talk. Granny Yeager never talks. He'll forget me." Her voice quivered heartwrenchingly. "He won't remember who I am or how much I love him. It's been too long. He won't remember me. Ya shouldn'ta stopped me." Sobbing, she crumpled into a heap.
Feeling as if he were living in an extended nightmare, he automatically reached out to comfort her, though he didn't know why. Nothing she'd said made sense to him. Who wouldn't remember her? What other him did she love? All he knew for sure was that she was in great pain. He could hear it in her voice, feel it in every fiber of his being.
She pushed his hand away and cried harder. He decided to deal with the only complaint he knew anything about.
"Money ain't worth dyin' for," he said. He touched her again with the same result. His need to ease her pain was a tangible thing, as strong as any other urge he'd known. "Payin’ off a debt is a good thing, but no one expects ya to die doin' it."
"I would," she moaned. "I'd have done anything."
"It's only money, Ellis," he said, frustration getting the better of him. She gripped her abdomen and groaned painfully as if someone had stabbed her. His concern and helplessness made him anxious and nervous. He didn't know how to help her, what to say, what to do.
He bent his head until their faces were only a breath apart and whispered reassuringly, "We’ll get the money, Ellis. Soon. I promise. We'll figure out somethin' and pay off the debt. We'll work it out together. I promise."
Profound relief washed over him when he felt her arm snake around his neck, pulling him closer.
"I gotta have him with me," she murmured, still
crying, her words barely understandable. "He needs me. I need him."
"Who, Ellis? Who do you need?" His heart stopped until she answered.
"My baby. I need my baby, Bryce."
Mystified and profoundly hurt in a way he couldn't describe, he slowly pulled away from her. For several long seconds he watched as she wept in misery—in an agony greater than any she'd told him about.
"Is she hurt?"
He looked up into Bernice Jordan's kind face and shook his head. She bent to tuck a coat tight about Ellis's shivering body. He shook his head once again to clear away the cobwebs of confusion.
"No. She's . . . upset," he said. He looked around at the familiar faces that had gathered, worried and as dazed as he was. "Could someone . . . give us a lift home?"
He scooped her up out of the snow and carried her all the way home on his lap like a small child. She clung to him weakly, and her crying subsided. An occasional sob racked her body. He murmured soft, unintelligible words in her ear while his mind ticked rapidly, sorting through information, calculating, reasoning.
~*~
A door on the second floor closed quietly. Moments later Bryce heard Anne's footfall on the stairs. He waited, his nerves jumping restlessly under the surface of his skin. He hated being helpless, useless. It was the plight of his life. Now more than ever before he wanted to do something. He wanted to make a difference.
"She's sleeping," Anne said at the bottom of the stairs. It was all she said.
He watched Anne lower herself into a chair and was about to blast her with questions when he noticed the trembling of her hands. In a movement that spoke of extreme control, she set her elbow on the arm of the chair and lowered her forehead into it.
"I want to break something," she said, her voice strained with anger. "Somebody's arm or their leg or their face."
Buck, always near her, always close, pulled a footstool to her chair and settled himself on it.
"What happened?" he asked quietly, giving her time to collect her emotions. "Where's her baby?"
"She . . ." Her chin quivered as tears brimmed her eyes. She cleared her throat to dislodge the words. "She had to leave it in Stony Hollow."
"Why?" Why was all Bryce wanted to know. Why? Why? Why? Why did she need the money? Why had she left her baby behind? Why hadn't she told him?
Anne looked at him and shook her head. "She didn't have any other option." She sighed, heavy and deep, her hand lifting to caress her abdomen and the small miracle within. "I can't even imagine having to make the choice she did—but it was the only choice she had."
"Why? How could she leave her child?"
"Don't judge her harshly, Bryce. . . ."
"I'm not judging. I'm trying to understand," he said, running an agitated hand through his hair.
"The baby was . . . unexpected, from what I could gather," she said, speaking quickly to fill Bryce in on the details. "Her husband hadn't wanted it, with grown sons of his own, but . . . there it was. When he died, he left Ellis nothing. But he did include the baby. He left him an equal parcel of land—the same as he left his other sons."
She extended her hand, flexing her fingers as if groping for something solid. Buck covered it securely, with big hands that could handle most anything.
"She loves you very much, Bryce. You're the only man who's ever been kind to her. Did you know that?"
He shook his head and then nodded. He wasn't sure what he knew anymore.
"When her husband died, it was like . . . open season on Ellis. The sons saw her as fair game, and their wives saw her as an unattached female and felt threatened—not unreasonably from what Ellis has told me." She hesitated. "Ellis moved out. She and the baby went back to the old woman, the one who taught her the potions?"
“Yeager."
"That's the one. But the old lady didn't want her back. She made it very clear, but she took them in temporarily until Ellis could find her own place and get settled. She looked for work, but there either wasn't any or no one would hire her. . . . That part was a little garbled. Eventually she hit on the idea of selling the baby's share of the land and using the money to relocate in a city. The brothers"—she might just as well have said the snakes if the intonation of her voice was any indicator—"wouldn't hear of it. They threatened to take her baby."
Both Bryce and Buck could have pointed out that such an act would have been illegal, and even if they'd taken her to court, they still would have had to prove that Ellis was an unfit mother—but neither said a word. Justice in the nooks and crannies of the Appalachian Mountains bore little resemblance to the American legal system—less to its ideal. Change came slowly as the people clung to old ways that had serviced them well enough for over two hundred years. Illegitimate and homeless, Ellis would have had a better chance of putting hell out with a bucket of water than she had fighting the Johnson brothers.
"She'd never worked for wages before . . . only her keep. She knew she had to leave Stony Hollow to make a life for herself and for her baby, but . . ." Anne started to cry outright, silently, as if she were unaware of it. "She said that even if she ate nothing herself, the baby would starve to death faster than she would. She didn't know if she could find work outs
ide Stony Hollow, or a place to live."
She wiped her eyes on the hem of her smock and sniffled loudly. "But she knew the people of Stony Hollow. She knew that the worst that could happen to her baby if she left him there would be that his life would be like hers. They'd work him, shame him, and berate him . . . but they wouldn't let him die."
Tension crackled in the air like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. They tried to imagine the pain and the courage it had taken for Ellis to leave her child and embark into a world she knew nothing, about. They couldn't.
"What about the money?" Bryce finally asked. "She said she had a debt to pay."
Anne nodded. "The old woman, that Granny person? Ellis trusts her. She's quiet and to herself, she doesn't speak often, and Ellis was worried that the child would forget how to talk. But apparently the woman is also ornery and unwelcoming, and because of her instincts for healing, the people in Stony Hollow are a little afraid of her. And ... I guess, in her own peculiar way, she'd been good to Ellis. So she made a deal with the old woman."
"What sorta deal?"
"Well . . ." Anne was thoughtful for a moment, and as an aside, she said, "Actually if this weren't part of a tragic story, it would be funny. But this old woman has outlived her husband and her seven children, and she isn't fond of anyone. . . . And, well, the long and short of it is that Ellis knew she was concerned about being buried properly when, or if, she finally died." She couldn't stop it—and she needed a good laugh anyway. "I'm sorry. This isn't funny." She burst into a fit of laughter.
Bryce and Buck delayed their protests, allowing Anne to laugh until she cried, sensing the hysterical release of emotions she had no other civilized way to let go of.
"I am sorry," she said, wiping her eyes once more and making a supreme effort to control her facial features. "Where was I? Oh yes. Well, Ellis made this deal with the old woman. They gave a letter to the preacher to be opened at the time of the old woman's death, instructing him to contact Ellis—who solemnly vowed to let the preacher know her whereabouts, always, until after the woman died—and then Ellis would come back from wherever she was and see to it the woman was buried properly . . . whatever that means. And in return, the old woman would keep Ellis's child safe from the Johnsons and feed him and be kind to him until Ellis could return for him."
Sweet Dreamin' Baby Page 15