by Donis Casey
Mary’s eyes widened. She was surprised that Alafair was taking such a straightforward tack. She sniffled, trying not to break down.
Laura made a little mewling sound.
“You got to live, honey,” Alafair said to her. “For Bill’s sake, and for all the folks that love you. You’ve got to come back.”
Laura’s shoulders began to shake. Alafair rose from her chair, sat herself down on the side of the bed, gathered the girl up in her arms like she was cradling a baby, and began to sing to her.
“I went to the stable and best as I was able
I looked down the old wooden spout.
I went to the wood pile and stayed there a good while
But never would kitty come out.
Oh, kitty, kitty, oh where are you hiding today?
Oh, kitty, kitty, come forth and join in our play…”
Laura moaned, then started to sob like her heart would break. Alafair rocked her back and forth, and Mary, crying herself now, patted her leg.
Iva rushed back into the room at the sound of the sobbing, and stood amazed in the bedroom door. “I’ll declare,” she managed.
Alafair crooned to Laura wordlessly, rocking her and comforting her as best she could. She had to consciously keep from squeezing the breath out of the girl. Her arms were covered with goose flesh and her hair was practically standing on end; for when Laura began moaning and crying, Alafair recognized the voice she had been hearing on the wind.
Chapter Seven
At first, the stories the boys told were all about folks who were too stupid to make a success of being criminals, very funny and all. But then all of a sudden, we were talking about murders. John Lee told about when his little sister found their dad shot to death in a snow bank, and him and Phoebe just gave everybody goose bumps telling how they both reckoned John Lee himself came close to hanging for it. Gee Dub made us all both laugh and shudder with the tale of how Charlie found the dead woman in Cane Creek—running his fingers through her hair in the water. Gee Dub didn’t say it, but everybody was thinking about how that woman was Walter’s first wife. Alice didn’t particularly like that story, as you can guess, Mama. She doesn’t like to think that Walter had a life before she came along and married him.
***
Alafair and Mary were driving up onto the road from the Ross farm, when Mary nudged her mother’s shoulder and nodded at a horseman riding toward them from the west.
“I believe that’s Micah,” Mary said.
“I believe you’re right,” Alafair agreed. She clucked and snapped the reins, and they pulled out onto the road just as Micah reached them. He fell in companionably beside them as the buggy slowed its pace. Crook apparently caught the scent of something interesting, for he jumped out and disappeared into the long grass.
Micah touched his hat brim with his fingers. “Howdy, ladies.”
“Hello, Micah,” Mary responded. “What are you doing out this way?”
“Well, Miss Mary, your daddy sent me to talk to his brother Mr. James Tucker about the cotton harvest. Seems Mr. James’ crop is about ready to drop off of its own accord, and he has contracted with the pickers to work his place this coming Tuesday. He was wondering if Mr. Tucker would be willing to come by and help out, and Mr. Tucker wanted me to tell his brother that he’d be delighted.”
It was the usual arrangement. Every year at the end of August or early September all the relatives and neighbors worked their way around each other’s farms helping the migrant pickers bring in the cotton crop. The harvest usually began with the farms farthest to the south of town and worked north. James Tucker, whose farm was located about three miles south of Boynton, usually put in one of the larger cotton crops in the vicinity, and was part owner of the local gin.
“Why, Daddy will be seeing Uncle James in an hour or so,” Mary said.
“Yes, ma’am, but I expect he thought it would be unseemly to discuss business at their brother’s funeral.”
“You’re coming the long way around if you’ve just been to James’,” Alafair noted.
Micah’s excitable horse, annoyed at having to adjust his pace to the buggy’s, skipped a bit, and Micah pulled the roan’s head up and patted his neck before answering. “I am, Miz Tucker. Corky here is feeling frisky this morning, so I took a long circle around on my way back, letting him run it out. Lucky I run into you.”
“Don’t let us hold you,” Alafair said.
“Why, I’d much rather keep you lovely ladies company.”
Mary laughed, and Alafair’s mouth quirked. The boy was full of bull, but Alafair was glad that he had amused Mary.
“Y’all been visiting with Mr. Ross?” Micah asked. “Did you see Miz Laura?”
“We took some food by,” Mary told him. “Miz Grady let us have a look in on Laura.”
“How is she feeling? Does she remember anything, yet?”
Mary shook her head. “I wish I could say she does. I thought for a while that Mama had got her back with us, but she just cried for a bit, then went to sleep without saying a word. Miz Grady did say she seemed eased some. She asked us to come back any time.”
“I’m mighty sorry Miz Laura ain’t doing well. Why, everybody in town is asking about her. Just this morning Mr. Turner at the livery stable wondered if I’d heard anything new. Seems his boys were particular friends of Bill McBride, and Laura, too. Poor old Kurt is awful upset about the whole business. Can’t stop talking about it.”
Alafair perked up. This was not the first time she had heard the Turner boys mentioned in the last few days. She tried to remember who else Martha had mentioned as a friend of Bill’s. The Turner boys, and Trent Calder, the deputy. Martha had said that Bill liked to visit Alice in town and ride in Walter Kelley’s automobile. Shirley Kellerman, Alafair remembered, had been sweet on Bill once, and Laura’s aunt Iva had mentioned Shirley’s displeasure at Bill’s engagement. She would try to talk to some of the young people at the funeral later to see if she could glean a hint of something that would help the sheriff catch Bill’s murderer.
“Are you going to the funeral?” Mary asked Micah, and Alafair started as though Mary had read her mind.
“Afraid not. Mr. Tucker has me and Kurt busier than a couple of beavers at a wood-gnawing contest. Seems we’ll be taking care of all the stock by ourselves while Mr. Tucker is busy with the cotton harvest. Got to get them all in so we can keep an eye on them. I paid my respects to Mr. and Miz McBride yesterday.”
They reached the entrance to the farm, and Mary made to get out of the buggy to open the gate, but Micah stopped her.
“Allow me.” He leaned over and unhooked the chain without dismounting, then grabbed the postern and trotted the big gate open in a wide arc. Alafair drove through and down the drive toward the house, and did not stop as Micah closed and refastened the gate. Micah loped past them and doffed his hat grandly in the way of a good-bye.
Mary puffed a laugh as he receded toward the stable. “He’s a big old bag of wind, but he’s funny.”
“Would you call him a friend?” Alafair asked.
“Well, I like him all right,” she admitted.
“How much do you like him?”
Mary shot Alafair a look. “I don’t like him that much. What are you thinking, Ma? You trying to get me married off?”
“I’m trying to get you to feeling better.” Might as well be straight. “Seems like the young’un amuses you.”
The comment brought the last few days crashing back down on Mary, and she sagged. “Wish I didn’t have this funeral to go to.”
Alafair drove the buggy into the barn, but made no move to get out right away. Mary looked over at her, curious. Alafair turned on the seat and draped her arm over the back. “I was thinking. After the funeral is over, while everybody is still around, I figured I might talk to some of Bill’s friends, see if I can get a handle on who wanted to do Bill harm, or get hold of Laura. You said you wished you could do something helpful. You want to help me try a
nd figure this thing out? I expect friends of Bill and Laura may be more willing to talk to you than to me, anyway.”
Mary sat up. “I’d like to do that more than anything, Ma. Surely we can find out something to help Cousin Scott.”
Alafair smiled at Mary’s enthusiasm, at once touched to see the spark that lit her blue eyes, and alarmed that perhaps she had a bit too much faith in her mother’s problem-solving ability. “Now, honey, we may not come up with anything useful.”
“I bet we do, Mama. But even if we don’t, at least I’ll feel like I’m not just sitting around all pathetic while Bill’s killer frolics around uncaught.”
Alafair eyed her skeptically, but nodded. “All right, then. While we’re taking care of the horse and buggy here, let’s decide who’s going to talk to who and what we’re going to say. And by the way, honey, don’t tell Daddy what we plan to do.”
“You think he’d try to stop us?”
“Well…no. Probably not. Him and Scott never take my snooping very serious. But there’s no reason to get him all stirred up.”
***
When they finally got into the house, they found Ruth at the stove, red-faced, a smock over her dress, standing over a pot of boiling water with a long-handled wooden spoon in her hand. A dishtowel was spread on the cabinet, upon which stood two glass lamp chimneys. Ruth greeted her mother and sister absently before she retrieved a third chimney from the water by inserting the spoon through its open top and gingerly lifting it out, letting the water drain out the bottom. She arranged the bulbous glass cylinder next to the others to dry on the towel. Alafair had purchased three new kerosene lamps, and the glass chimneys had to be boiled before the first use, to keep them from cracking.
Alafair stopped in her tracks when she saw what Ruth was doing, and Mary, unprepared, ran into her mother’s back.
Alafair clapped her hands onto her hips. “Ruth, are you boiling those new chimneys right now? It’s almost nine o’clock! Y’all should be getting ready for the funeral. And besides, I told Blanche to do that hours ago, after breakfast. Now you’ve got to take time to douse the stove, and the kitchen will be hot all day.”
Ruth, spoon poised in the air, stood dumbfounded for a moment at her mother’s unexpected rant. Mary smothered a laugh, and slipped past Alafair and out of the kitchen, leaving Ruth to her fate.
“Everybody is getting ready right now, Ma,” Ruth said, when she finally found her voice. “I’m just finishing this up for Blanche because Grace got scratched by the rooster while her and Charlie were picking beetles off the potatoes, and she wouldn’t let anybody but Blanche doctor her.”
“Is the little gal all right?”
“Oh, it was nothing, just a scratch, but you know how she is. When she gets it in her head that one of us is her favorite person of the day, there’s no use anybody else trying to do anything with her.”
Alafair shook her head, but couldn’t help a chuckle. Grace was a smart and good-natured little girl, but she did have her willful ways. “I declare, I don’t know what’s got into that bird. He’s going to find himself in a pot along with some noodles if he don’t mend his ways.”
Ruth relaxed when her mother softened, and allowed herself a smile. “Blanche did get the wicks soaked in vinegar so they won’t smoke, and they’re dried and back in the lamps. Fronie’s already over to Phoebe’s, and Daddy said he’d take Blanche and Grace over there directly.”
“Are my greens and dumplings boxed up?”
“Right over there, Ma.”
“Okay, honey, you go on along and get ready. I’ll finish up here.”
After Ruth left, Alafair cleaned up the kitchen, then inspected the mess of turnip greens and fatback she had made. The big pot was packed in a wooden crate with straw all around to keep it hot. After the funeral, she would bring it back to the boil on her mother-in-law’s stove, and make cornmeal dumplings in the pot liquor.
Everything seemed to be in order, and she turned to go kiss Grace’s scratch and pass judgment on her children’s funeral attire before changing into her own. It was a comfort to her to turn her mind to the needs of the living.
***
The funeral was just as hard as Alafair had feared. Neither Sally nor Peter wept, but throughout the service Sally’s little body trembled like a leaf. Whether it was from the effort it was costing her not to cry, or from rage, Alafair couldn’t tell. Sally McBride was tenderhearted and tough as nails at once, so it could very well have been either. Peter McBride was silent and shrunken into himself, the strain of his loss making a shadow of a man whose personality had always filled any room he entered.
Shaw and Josie stayed close to their mother, Howard and Hannah close to Peter, and Charles and James hovered near their brother’s casket. The youngest sister, Sarah, acted as the family’s ambassador-at-large, taking care of business with the undertaker or the minister, relaying the order of the day to anyone who expressed an interest. Their spouses, grown sons and daughters, aunts, uncles, and cousins gathered around and followed along, trailing the younger children and grandchildren. Alafair had Ruth by one hand and Charlie by the other, both youngsters solemn and uncharacteristically quiet. Her older children, Martha, Mary, and Alice, sat together at the service and walked together to the cemetery, along with the sons-in-law, Walter Kelley and John Lee Day. Phoebe, almost too pregnant to walk, had stayed home with Grace. Blanche and Sophronia had been given the option of going to the funeral or staying with Phoebe, and Alafair had been relieved when both chose to help Phoebe.
Alafair had expected Gee Dub to attach himself to his brothers-in-law or his age-mate cousins, but he hovered about in her vicinity so pointedly that she figured Shaw had told him to keep an eye on his mother.
Bill was buried in the family cemetery in the grove behind the McBride house, between his favorite Aunt Olive and patriarch Great-Grandpa Tucker. When the last words were said over the grave and the mourners turned to go back to the house for a funeral dinner, Alafair and her children made a brief stop at the nearby graves of her two boys who had died in infancy. When they left the grounds, three of Bill’s nephews were filling in his grave.
***
After dinner, Mary and Alafair drew aside into a corner of Grandma’s house long enough to review their strategy. Alafair would talk to Mrs. Kellerman, though Mary would not be able to talk to Shirley. She had not come, and Alafair resolved to find out why. Bill’s friend Johnny Turner was there, but not his brother Art, which seemed to be a fruitful line of questioning for Mary to pursue. Trent Calder was spotted filling a plate in the kitchen. He was potentially a rich souce of information, but trying to get anything out of Trent was like pulling teeth. The women determined that he would be less suspicious of Mary’s questions than Alafair’s, and they briefly plotted a plan of attack before separating to take the field.
Mary repaired to the kitchen to find Trent, and Alafair went into the parlor, where the first people she laid eyes on were Scott and his wife, Hattie, sitting next to one another on the love seat in the corner. Their twenty-five-year-old son Stretch was sitting beside his mother in a kitchen chair, with his arm draped over her shoulders. Hattie’s thin, freckled face was mottled from weeping, and she looked up, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, as Alafair walked over. Scott and Stretch both gave her a pale smile. She expected they were relieved to see someone approaching who was more skilled at offering comfort than they. She smiled back.
“Oh, Alafair!” Hattie emitted a shuddering sigh. “What an awful thing for poor Aunt Sally and Uncle Peter. Why, if it was one of my boys, I just don’t think I could stand it.” She shot her son an accusing look. “They none of them better get hisself into a situation, is all I got to say.”
Stretch Tucker, who, true to his nickname, was easily a head taller than either of his parents, gave Alafair a long-suffering glance before he answered his mother. “We aim to stay out of trouble as best we can, Ma.”
“The sad thing about this, Hattie,” Alafair observe
d, “is that Bill and the kids didn’t get themselves in a situation.”
“No, indeed,” Scott concurred. “Can’t blame anybody for this but whoever did the shooting.”
Hattie sniffed. “Scott sees some ugly things about folks in his work, Alafair, but this just don’t make no sense at all.”
Alafair folded her arms across her chest and shifted her weight to one foot. “Are you making any progress in finding out who did it, Scott?”
He shook his head, more in exasperation than in denial. “This killer is a slippery one. He knows how to cover his tracks, that’s for sure. I even called in old Joe Dan Skimmingmoon, the tracker for the Muskogee Police Department. If he can’t follow a trail, it can’t be followed, I reckon. He’d see signs, but then lose the trail directly. Haven’t found anything for the dogs to get a scent from. Best thing I can think to do right now is to investigate Bill himself, see if I can’t figure out who might have taken against him for any reason, unlikely or not.”
“Knowing Bill, that’s a hard way to go.”
“That’s the truth, Alafair. I’ve been talking to every friend Bill ever had, and most of his kin, too. Of course, I get the same story from everybody. If there ever was a ruckus, Bill was the first one to make the peace. The only compadre of his I haven’t spoke to yet is Art Turner. He’s down in Tishomingo at his grandma’s and couldn’t make it back in time for the funeral, according to his dad. I had Mr. Turner over to the office and together we telephoned the post office down there, to see if we could get the boy back up here straight away, but I ain’t heard anything back as of yet. The Tishomingo postmaster told me he had seen Art a day or so ago, and the boy had said he planned to stay on with his grandfolks for a week or so. So we know he was there, at least.”
“Did you talk to Bill’s friend Shirley Kellerman? I see her mama over yonder, but I never did see Shirley at the church or the grave site either one. That surprises me some. Him and Shirley had known each other since they were kids. Used to play together and all.”