by Donis Casey
They all put their arms around one another and stood in a knot, this family all together for the last time. The only sound was occasional soft weeping, and through the open windows, the shifting of horses in the yard. The few young children in the room clung to their mothers’ skirts in silent awe. Alafair stood holding Alice’s hand, studying her husband’s family as they clung to one another. Four dark-haired men, all six feet tall or close to it; three tall, dark-haired women, surrounding two little parents. Howard was the only blood child of Peter McBride, now. She wondered if it had dawned on him. Howard was the only one of the entire brood with blue eyes, like his father. Even poor dead Bill, who had inherited Peter’s red hair, had had dark hazel eyes like his Tucker siblings.
Well, people died. Even young, healthy, promising people like Bill McBride. But this…this murder. Absolutely senseless, as far as Alafair could see. Bill had loved her family, and had hung around the farm a lot. He was not much older than her older girls, after all. He and Shaw and the boys had planned a dove hunting trip for the fall.
This would not do. Someone evil was abroad, someone who had no compunction about killing an innocent young man and savaging a seventeen-year-old girl, and almost as bad in Alafair’s eyes, shooting at her daughter. Mary had been lucky. Why hadn’t the killer kidnapped Mary instead of Laura? Maybe he thought he had killed Mary. Apparently he had tried to do just that. Was his plan to steal Laura all along, and Bill and Mary were just in the way?
Alafair stiffened and her grip tightened on Alice’s hand. Did the killer realize that Mary had not seen him? Would he try to finish the job? As much as she wanted to talk to Shaw about what the posse had found, she was suddenly desperate to get home. She pulled Alice toward her and whispered in her ear.
“I don’t think they need me here, right now,” she murmured. “Tell your daddy that I had to go home and check on Mary. I’ll be back later. Be sure and find out everything you can.”
Alice’s blue eyes widened, but before she could comment, her mother was gone.
Chapter Four
After the parade, all of us young folks had pulled the chairs around the bandstand into a big circle, and we were sitting there eating hot dogs and ice cream, drinking Co’Colas and telling stories. All the fellows were telling about lawbreaking that they’d seen with their own eyes. You know fellows. They were all trying to outdo each other, and impress us girls, I think. Whereas we were trying not to get mustard on our summer dresses. Laura was in a fine mood that day. She was going on to Bill about his freckles, accusing Art Turner of having a secret sweetheart, and teasing Kurt about the way he talks. How they both blushed!
Art was giving as good as he got. He’s the teasingest fellow that ever was, especially with the girls. He never met a girl that he wouldn’t try to tease until she cried. I’ve never figured out why he’s that way. Martha says he thinks it’s funny, but I always thought he’s just mean. If he thinks that’s the way to impress a girl, he’s entirely misguided. After a while, I noticed that Bill looked a little put out with Art, but his sass was just rolling off Laura like water off a duck’s back. Bill and her had just agreed to marry, and she was mighty happy. We all were. Johnny Turner broke right down and cried. Nobody is more sentimental than Johnny.
***
Mary was sitting on the porch with Grace in her lap and Charlie-dog the shepherd at her feet when Alafair drove up to the house. In the distance, past the vegetable garden and next to the barn, Alafair could see Charlie and Kurt in the corral, doing something with a couple of mules. Charlie waved at her, and she waved back. She noticed that Kurt was wearing a gun belt.
Phoebe was on the porch swing, fanning herself with a paper fan and looking sweaty and uncomfortable, her auburn curls frizzling out like a halo from the twist on top of her head and sticking to her neck. Mary and Grace had apparently been napping in the heavy heat, but they perked up when Alafair’s buggy appeared. Grace scrambled out of Mary’s lap, and was crawling up the front gate in excitement by the time Alafair had dismounted the buggy. Alafair swung the gate open, giving the little girl a ride that made her squeal with happiness.
Alafair picked her up. “You been behaving yourself for Mary and Phoebe?”
Grace patted her mother’s face with one hand and wrapped her dusty bare legs around her mother’s waist. “I helped Mary.”
“Did you?” Alafair walked up onto the porch and sat down with the toddler in a slat-back chair.
“She was a big help.” Mary gave her mother a look that said she could have done without that kind of help. “She and Phoebe dusted the piano while Ruth and I did up the dishes.”
“It was very musical,” Phoebe added.
“I’m sure it was.” Alafair reached across and plucked Grace’s rag doll from Mary’s lap and handed it to Grace. “Here’s your baby, honey bit. I see her bed over yonder at the end of the porch. You go on and lay her down for her nap.”
Grace was amenable. She jumped down and ran on tiptoes to the makeshift doll bedroom she and her sisters had constructed from rags, buckets, baskets and boxes, accompanied by the dog, leaving the women to talk.
“How’re you feeling, darlin’?” Alafair asked Mary.
Mary touched the bandage at her temple. “Not too bad. Still got a headache, and it stings off and on. Sometimes I get blurry in this eye, but it clears up directly. Main thing is I just want to sleep. I can’t get woke up.” She hesitated. “I don’t want to get woke up,” she admitted.
Alafair nodded, unsurprised. That had always been her own reaction to trauma. She just wanted to go to sleep and not have to think about it any more. She gazed at Mary a minute, stifling a desire to take her into her arms. Mary looked sad. It was not at all a normal look for Mary, who had always been Alafair’s happiest child. Nothing had ever perturbed Mary, until now. In fact, Mary was the one who had always taken it upon herself to cheer the unhappy with a joke and a smile. She had the easiest, sweetest laugh Alafair had ever heard. Alafair caught her bottom lip between her teeth to keep from crying. Yes, if someone had held a gun to Alafair’s head and forced her to say, she might have said that laughing Mary was her favorite. Alafair swallowed the lump in her throat.
Lord, I would do anything, she prayed, to get that smile back, to hear that laugh again.
“Doc Addison said he’d be back sometime today to have another look at you,” Alafair said. “Don’t know when, though. I just saw him leaving when I got to Grandma’s. Seems Laura got found by her daddy, and the doc was on his way to see her.”
Both girls sat up straight at this news, but Alafair forged ahead before they could ask questions.
“All I know is that she’s alive. Jack Cecil told Josie that her daddy found her in the road, unconscious, and they don’t know if she saw anything or not.”
“Well, is she all right?” Mary asked.
“I don’t know. They told me that she was beat up, but that’s all. I expect your daddy will have more news when he gets in later.”
Mary and Phoebe glanced at one another, distressed, before Phoebe asked, “How’s Grandma and Grandpapa?”
Alafair shrugged. “I didn’t get to talk to them, there was too much commotion, too many folks. Oh, but they looked to be feeling bad when I left. Mr. Moore brought Bill home. They set him in the parlor. Daddy’s whole family was there, all your aunts and uncles, so that’s good for Grandma. Alice and Walter were there, too. I couldn’t stay, though. I just felt like I’d be more use at home. What have y’all been doing since I left?”
“Phoebe and me haven’t been doing much of anything,” Mary told her, “except for watching Grace. Seems we’re invalids, to hear Martha tell it. I saw that you have a peck of okra in the kitchen. We were talking about chopping okra directly.”
“I hate cutting up okra,” Phoebe fretted. “I hate the way it makes your hands smell. You can’t get that smell off your hands for nothing.” She shifted in her seat and eyed Alafair ruefully.
Alafair smiled. She knew this
was Phoebe’s mood talking. Phoebe loved fried okra, and was always ecstatic when the first tended pods were ready in the summer. “Honey, I’ve got okra up to my chin. I’ve pickled enough okra to last ten years, and it’s still coming on like wildfire. Maybe I’ll make it into a fried okra pie tonight. You always like that.”
Phoebe’s eyebrows peaked with interest, but Alafair turned back to Mary, intent on her original topic. “Everything been quiet? Where is everybody?”
“Charlie is back in the paddock with Kurt, helping him with the mules. Martha and Blanche are out on the back porch sorting clothes for mending or the rag bag. It’s too hot to do it in the house, but if they sat out here with us, we might try to help, don’t you know. I think Martha sent Ruth and Fronie to rake the chicken yard and feed the chickens. Neither one of them wanted to do it, but Martha figured Ruth needed a task. Fronie’s got scared of that old rooster since he’s taken to trying to spur everybody. She whined about it so much that Martha stalked out there and ran that bird off with a broom.” She chuckled, momentarily raised from the doldrums by the memory of Martha’s pique. “I think in the end Fronie and Ruth were more scared of Martha than the rooster.”
“Bad rooster!” Grace interjected. Everyone laughed, and Alafair was suddenly grateful that the rooster had gone bad and was providing the kids with a distraction.
She stood up. “I think I’ll go around and check on the girls.”
Mary nodded, listless again, but Phoebe gave her mother a narrow look. “Is something on your mind that we ought to know about?”
Alafair almost smiled at being so transparent. “No, of course not,” she lied. She passed through the parlor on her way to the back porch, shedding her hat and rolling up her sleeves. Every window in the house was wide open, but the sultry air was still and offered no breeze to relieve the heat. She glanced up at the loaded rifle in the gun rack over the door. The sight comforted her.
She checked the drip pan under the ice box and was dismayed to see that it was full. She had just emptied it that morning. The block of ice that Shaw had fetched from town on Saturday hardly lasted half a week in this heat. Never one to waste water, she pulled the pan from under the ice box and carefully emptied it into a bucket to use for mopping or for watering the suffering garden.
This small activity in the stifling kitchen made her thirsty, so she poured herself a glass of cool water from the crockery jug on the windowsill in the kitchen and drank it down before going out onto the screened-in back porch.
Martha and Blanche were sitting next to one another in two wooden chairs with a pile of clothing between them. Several smaller piles lay in front of them and to the sides as they sorted the clothing by color and state of repair. Through the screen, Alafair could see Sophronia and Ruth, both topped with big shady straw hats, raking the chicken yard.
Alafair kissed the top of Blanche’s dark hair before she pulled up a chair of her own. Martha’s eyes widened. “You’re home sooner than I expected, Ma.”
“There were so many people there that I figured I was more in the way than a help. I imagine I’ll be over there plenty in the next few weeks. You wouldn’t believe how much food folks took over. Your daddy and Gee Dub and John Lee won’t be very hungry when they get in this evening.” She sat back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. “Looks like y’all are about done. Blanche, honey, go on into the kitchen and wash some rice for me. I’m thinking a pot of rice and a fried okra pie will be just about right for supper tonight.”
“But I ain’t quite done here, Mama,” Blanche pointed out.
“I’ll help Martha finish up.”
“I’m not sure how much rice to wash.”
Alafair calculated in her head for a second. “Use about three of those scoops. Use the big sieve.”
“But it’s hot in there, Mama,” Blanche protested. “I’d rather sit here on the porch and help Martha.”
Alafair was unmoved. “I swear, you’re lazy as Uncle Ed, girl. Why, one time he hid under the porch with the dogs all day so his Pa wouldn’t find him and make him split kindling. Ended up nearly eat up with flea bites. Now, just get in there and don’t dawdle, and you’ll be done before you know it.”
Blanche rose and reluctantly opened the screen to go into the stuffy kitchen.
“And don’t forget to pick through the rice for rocks before you wash it,” Alafair said to the girl’s back.
Blanche didn’t exactly roll her eyes, but the set of her mouth conveyed her exasperation as she disappeared into the house. Alafair tried not to laugh.
She picked up a shirt and turned her attention to Martha. “Everything been all right here? Have you seen anybody around?”
Martha looked at her oddly. “Nobody that shouldn’t be around. Why? Has somebody seen that killer around here?”
“No, no. Not that I heard. It’s just that until they catch the miscreant I’d just as soon keep a close eye on everybody. Oh, I forgot to tell you that Calvin Ross found Laura beat up but alive this morning.”
“I declare! I was just about sure they’d find her dead. Did she tell them who did it?”
“The story I heard was that she ain’t in a condition to talk, but your daddy will know more about it than I do. How has Mary been?”
“Well, now. She’s not herself, that’s for sure. She seems like to cry at any minute. It makes me sad just to look at her. She’s always been the happiest person in any room. I hope they find the killer soon, so maybe she can start to get over this. I miss her laughing.”
Alafair sighed. “I sure wish I could have spared her this. Ever since your daddy brought her home I’ve been trying to figure a way to ease her heart.”
A smile bent the corners of Martha’s mouth. Her mother would never change. “Some things even you can’t do, Mama. Everybody’s got to bear their own burdens.”
“Maybe,” Alafair begrudged, unconvinced. “The thing that confounds me is that as far as I know, there ain’t no one on earth who had bad feelings toward Bill McBride. Do you know anything that might be useful, sugar? You and Bill were pretty close to the same age, after all.”
Martha looked down at the pile of baby smocks in her lap. She didn’t want to think about Uncle Bill. She had been fairly successful, thus far, in keeping her grief at bay. She knew how she would feel when she finally had to visit Grandma and Grandpapa, and see Bill’s earthly remains for the first and last time. She knew how she was going to feel at the funeral, when they would all walk to the cemetery behind the hearse, and she would have to watch her grandparents struggle to contain themselves, and maybe her father, too. Her father seemed to be holding up well, but she could tell that this was harder on him than he was letting on. And Mary, who had been Martha’s closest companion all her life, who had had to see poor Bill all shot up and dead…
No, Martha could handle her own grief. It was the broken hearts of those she loved that she couldn’t bear. She took a deep breath and looked up at her mother. “I don’t know much more than you do, Ma. Since we grew up, I’ve mostly seen Bill at family get-togethers, or when he would come over here to work with Daddy and the boys, or play with the kids. He liked Micah and Kurt, too.” She sighed. “Just last Sunday, when him and Grandma and Grandpapa were over here for dinner, Bill was telling Mary and me about the house and land he has his eye on to buy, before him and Laura marry. And about making another trip to Waco in the fall to look at some mares for Grandpapa.” She was unaware that she was referring to Bill in the present tense.
“Piece of land?” Alafair interrupted.
“Orlen Kelso’s old place, out south of town. Bill said he gave Orlen one hundred dollars earnest on it.” Martha hesitated, thinking. “Wonder what Orlen will do with it now?”
“What did Bill say about his trip to Waco?” Alafair urged.
Martha looked back at her mother and shrugged. “Bill goes down to Waco about every year now, to buy or sell horses. Used to be he’d go down there with Grandpapa, but for the past five years or so,
he’s been making the trip on his own, or sometimes with Uncle Howard, I think, or sometimes with some of his friends. I expect Grandpapa trusts Bill’s business sense, by now. He always did have a feel for the horses.” She paused. “I don’t expect any of this has anything to do with why Bill got killed.”
Alafair nodded. “I know, honey. I’m just casting my net wide. What else is there to know about Bill?”
Martha’s gaze shifted back to her mother’s face. Is this helpful, her expression said, this dredging up happy times, gone forever?
Alafair read her expression, and smiled. “Tell me, honey. If I knew more about the youngster, I might get an idea what happened to him.”
Martha didn’t argue. “Bill came into the bank a time or two, whenever he was in town, just to say “hey.” He was good friends with Trent Calder, and them and the two oldest Turner boys, Art and Johnny, used to go hunting and fishing. I think the four of them would go to the picture show together every Saturday night, at least until Bill got engaged to Laura. Bill was sweet on the Kellerman girl, Shirley, for a while, but once he met Laura, that was the end of that. At least for Bill. I don’t think Shirley was happy about it. He liked to visit with Alice and Walter since they got married. He liked to ride in Walter’s motor car.”
“You never knew him to get in a fight, or have words with some other young fellow?”