by Donis Casey
“Y’all are suspecting Kurt of these awful deeds of late?” Her tone was carefully calm and neutral.
“We’re suspecting Kurt of acting strange these last few days,” Shaw told her.
“I like Kurt a lot.” Mary was matter-of-fact about it. “He’s sweeter than pie. He wouldn’t do anything wrong.”
“You just stay away from him ’til this gets sorted out,” Alafair insisted.
Mary’s mouth took on an ironic twist. “How about Micah? Shall I stay away from him, too? What if you’ve set the foxes to guarding the hen house?”
Alafair’s eyes narrowed just enough to let Mary know that her comment was dangerously close to sass. “You just be careful not to be alone with anybody who’s not kin,” she said sharply.
Mary eyed her mother and father thoughtfully. There was no reasoning with them right now, not when they were in the full throes of parental protectiveness. “All right.” She conceded more to end the conversation than out of any conviction that they had a point. “Ma, Doctor Ann sent me out to get you. The baby’s crowning, and Phoebe wants you.”
Phoebe’s need for her more immediate than Mary’s, Alafair’s expression changed utterly in the blink of an eye, and she disappeared into the house. Mary hesitated on the landing and crossed her arms over her chest. “Suppose we ought to wake John Lee?”
“Naw, let him alone. He won’t be doing much sleeping for the next few months.”
After a moment’s consideration, Mary crossed the few steps that separated her from her father and laid her head on his chest. He enfolded her in a hug, as natural as could be, as though she were seven again. Mary closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of his cotton shirt against her cheek and breathing in the familiar smell of wood smoke, sorghum feed, and horse that was peculiar to her father. When she was a little girl, she had always felt completely safe from harm in her daddy’s arms, and for a few minutes she let herself go back to that safe place where she knew her parents would never let anything bad happen to her or to anyone she loved.
Finally she stood back. Life was a road that could only be traveled in one direction.
“You feeling all right, honey?” Shaw’s hands were on her shoulders, unwilling to release her back into adulthood until he was assured she was ready to go.
She smiled at him. “Oh, I’m just tuckered out. It’s been a long few days. I feel like I could sleep ’til Christmas.”
The spell broken, Shaw dropped his hands and smiled back at her. “You’d better get back in there and help your mother and sister, now. We can think about sleeping after this child joins us.”
***
The sun was up by the time Shaw began to hear the wild noises coming from the house that had terrified the liver out of him the first couple of times he had heard them, and he drew John Lee away with him to milk the cow and feed the animals. The two men were just walking back toward the house from John Lee’s little barn when Alafair stepped out of the house and waved to them. Shaw read the look of joy on her face.
“Looks like you’re a daddy, boy,” he said, and just managed to grab the half-full milk pail from John Lee’s hand before the young man dropped it and ran.
John Lee flew past Alafair into the house, pausing only long enough to get the word on Phoebe’s condition and the gender of his offspring. Alafair waited for Shaw by the front door.
They locked eyes. “Phoebe’s fine,” Alafair said, first thing. “She did real good. I’m proud of her. It’s a girl. She’s a little thing, maybe six pounds, Ann says, but healthy and pink. Got a head full of black hair.” She hesitated in her recitation. “We’re grandfolks, Shaw,” she managed, awed. “Don’t that beat all?”
She was standing on the landing that served as a porch, and he was standing below her, hazel eyes gazing up at her from under his hat brim. Milk from the pail he was holding in one hand had splashed down one side of his trousers. He was bleary eyed and unshaven, and Alafair wondered if she looked as bedraggled as he did.
Shaw, on the other hand, was thinking that Alafair had hardly changed since the day they married twenty-four years earlier. She still kept her dark brown hair caught up in a loose twist from which tantalizing wisps were always escaping. The expression in her dark eyes was still sharp, opinionated, warm and laughing. When she had something important to tell him, she still unconsciously placed the palm of her hand on his chest, over his heart. She was exactly the right size to tuck the top of her head under his chin, as though they were a pair made to fit together. She was not as willow-whip slender as she had been before she had borne him twelve children, but as far as he was concerned, she had plumped up nicely in all the right places, and her arms embraced him just as warmly. Most of all she was still the sword and shield and heart of her family, the pillar of the house.
“You’re the finest looking grandma I ever saw,” he said at last.
Alafair laughed. No matter how much things changed, one thing in her world could always be counted on.
Chapter Ten
Remember how, every year, early in the fall, Grandpapa used to send Bill down to Waco? He’d go down to Millard Jackson’s JJ ranch, to look over his new crop of foals that we about ready to leave their mamas. Grandpapa and Mr. Jackson have been friends since I don’t know when…since they were both pony soldiers together out in the Arizona Territory back in the ’60’s, right after the war. After him and Grandma started that farm outside of Mountain Home soon after they were married. That’s when Grandpapa bought some of his first breeding stock from Mr. Jackson.
***
Calvin Ross sat upon his front porch with a shotgun across his lap. Even though the sheriff had left a deputy on duty outside the front gate, Calvin had been sitting there on the porch from the moment Sheriff Tucker left his farm after the fire until he couldn’t stay awake enough to keep from falling out of the chair. Then he had called his most trusted hired man to relieve him just long enough to eat and catch a nap. And now he had resumed his watch on the porch, shotgun on his knees, while his crew cared for his dairy herd, milked, separated, churned, and readied the delivery wagon for the upcoming week.
For Calvin didn’t have time to run a business at the moment. He was too busy pondering his future and the future of his family. He rocked his chair back and forth as he thought. Since he was not sitting in a rocking chair, the thump, thump, thump of the front legs on the wooden porch echoed hollowly across the yard.
Somewhere out there in the world prowled a vile excuse for a human being, a damned bushwhacker, the lowest scum in all creation, who was bent on killing his Laura, a girl bright and delicate as a daisy, clever, gentle and loving, guide and comforter of her sisters, helper to her aunt and father. Ruined now, he thought. Yes, surely ruined, her mind broken as well as her body, walking somewhere between life and death, between this world and the world over yonder.
Calvin loved Laura dearly. Or, he loved who Laura had once been. He had no idea if she would ever return to him. But the truth was that while her would-be killer was at large, and as long as her empty shell remained in his house, everything that Calvin still held dear was in danger of annihilation.
It seemed obvious to Calvin that he was going to have to send Laura away—where, he didn’t know—not just for Laura’s safety, but for the sake of her poor terrified little sisters.
But where to send her, and to whom? To keep her safe, Calvin needed to do this thing in secret. Not an easy proposition when one lived in a town the size of Boynton. There was an insane asylum for white folks that had just opened up near Vinita, but the very thought of sending Laura to a place like that horrified him to the core. Yet what alternative did he have? Laura needed constant care and vigilant attention. The strain on Iva and the girls was already telling. Calvin and Iva’s parents were dead, and his late wife’s mother was far too elderly and frail for such a task. Perhaps he should ask Dr. Addison for his advice.
“Calvin!”
Iva’s voice caused him to start out of his reverie, and he
looked over to see his sister scowling at him, red-faced, from the half-open screen door.
“Calvin, if you don’t stop whomping that chair on the porch, I’m going to dump this soup I’m making right over your wooden head. The whole house is shaking!”
Calvin mumbled something to appease her, and Iva slammed back into the house. He shook his head, and his gaze wandered back over the yard. He was grateful for the interruption, because the problem was eating him up, and no solution was forthcoming.
“I ain’t going to stew on it,” he said aloud, but before the last word was uttered, his mind had slid back into its well-worn groove.
Calvin closed his eyes and sat back and thought.
Lord, I don’t have an idea one what to do about this. Now, you have seen fit to call that fine boy Bill McBride home. I don’t understand why, but I expect you got your reasons, and since he’s in heaven, I ain’t got no quarrel with it. But you visited this evil on my innocent girl, who never has harmed a living creature in her life, and I just don’t hold with that at all. So you’d better get this son-of-a-bitch caught, Lord. (Excuse my language, but you know I was thinking it, so what’s the point of being a hypocrite about it?) And if your plan is to let us mortals run around with our thumbs up our fundaments for a spell before we nab the dog and hang him, then you better send me a downright resplendent idea for keeping Laura and the girls out of harm’s way, and right quick, too, because it’s too big a poser for me to figure out…
Sometimes the Lord doesn’t answer prayers in the way the supplicant wants, and sometimes he takes his sweet time in answering prayers at all. But the Lord was on the ball and looking sharp that day, and Calvin opened his eyes to see a dark little woman in a black dress and poke bonnet trudge determinedly through his front gate and toward the house.
He blinked twice and stood as she climbed the steps and halted before him. She looked up, black eyes burning from the depths of her bonnet.
“Calvin,” she greeted.
“Miz McBride. Allow me to express my condolences. I was right sorry to miss the funeral.”
“I understand, Calvin. I’d have done the same if I was you. How’s she doing?”
“Not so good, ma’am. In fact, I think she’s standing on the drop edge of yonder. I fear that the merest nudge is like to send her plunging over to the other side.”
Sally nodded. “I hear you had some trouble the other night.”
“Like to got burned out.”
“Jesus burn the sniveling yellow coward in hell.”
“Amen.”
“When my grandson told me what had happened, I got to thinking that if I was in your shoes, I’d be looking to find some safe place to hide the girl ’til this is over.”
“You and me are traveling the same path with that thought, Miz McBride.”
“I expect. Well, then, Calvin, I aim to present you with an idea.”
Calvin and Sally McBride sat down on the porch, and leaned toward one another, head to head. Calvin listened to Sally for a quarter of an hour, and after she left, he had just about decided that God is partial to the direct approach.
***
Alafair didn’t get home until late Sunday afternoon. Shaw and Mary had left Phoebe and John Lee’s little farm shortly after the baby was born, but Alafair stayed to clean the house, feed John Lee and the doctor, and generally provide support to the new mother. In the mid afternoon, Phoebe’s twin Alice showed up all in a flutter of excitement, and Alafair finally felt free to go home and see after her own family. Alice would stay the night. In fact, some female relative, mother, sister, aunt, or cousin, would spend some time with the newly minted parents every day for the first couple of months of their newborn’s life.
Alafair was exhausted, but there would be no time to rest in the foreseeable future. Shaw had agreed to help his brothers with their cotton harvests, and before dawn on Tuesday morning, they would be on their way to James’ farm for three or four very hard days of picking, hauling, ginning, and baling; and for Alafair and her sisters-in-law, cooking for and feeding a score of workers three times a day.
She had one evening to regain her equilibrium, for tomorrow she had to get her own house in order before the cotton harvest took her away. For the second time in recent weeks, she had reason to be thankful for her grown and half-grown children. She sat on the porch and played with Grace while Martha and Ruth fixed supper and the other children did the barnyard chores. Using her childbirthing adventure and her head wound to good advantage, Mary napped. Shaw, tired out from baby sitting John Lee all night, going to church, and then spending the rest of the day catching up on work, Sabbath or not, sat with Alafair on the porch for a long while, but finally dragged himself out to the stables with Gee Dub to check the horses and mules.
Alafair was about to nod off in her chair when Charlie and his namesake dog startled her awake by gallumphing onto the porch. The dog nosed her knee and the boy bent over her, his face inches from hers, and said, “Mama? You awake?”
“Mercy, Charlie, I’d have to be dead to sleep though all that stomping. Where have you been, anyway? Have you seen your new niece, yet?”
“Yeah, me and Blanche and Fronie just got back from over there. We stopped by the barn to play with the kittens for a spell, but we can’t find them. I noticed that only the gray one came out to play day before yesterday when I went to do the milking in the afternoon, nor did we spot any of the other of them all day yesterday. I never thought nothing of it—sometimes their mama keeps them hid—but it’s been so long now that the kids are getting worried. Where do you think they’ve got to?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it, Charlie. I imagine their mother has moved them somewhere. They’ll turn up directly.”
Charlie bit his lip. “Well, that’s what I figured at first, but this evening Blanche noticed that mother cat meowing all distressed around the store room door. Daddy padlocked that door a couple of days ago, after we were in there for some lumber. We left the door standing open all afternoon while we moved some stuff around. I’m thinking the mama cat moved her kittens in there while we was busy, and we locked her away from them. I told the girls I’d get the key from Daddy, but I don’t know where he is. They’re fretting about them kittens something awful.”
Alafair smiled. She could tell by the look on his face that Charlie was doing some fretting of his own over the fate of the missing kittens. Grace, who was standing with her elbow on Alafair’s thigh, listening intently, puckered her mouth anxiously. “Kitty?” she said.
Alafair stood up. “Daddy’s gone out to the stable with Gee Dub, but I’ll fetch the spare key and we’ll have a look in the store room. Are the girls out there now?”
“They’re waiting for me.”
Alafair went into the house and retrieved the iron key ring from its peg by the back door, and walked out to the store room shed behind the barn. Charlie, Grace in his arms, trailed behind her with the dog. Blanche and Sophronia ran up to her as she neared, both talking at once, repeating the story of the imprisoned kittens. Alafair could see the small calico barn cat pacing up and down in front of the store room door, mewing loudly. She suddenly felt a pang of worry that she was going to open that door and find a litter of dead kittens. After the recent stress of their uncle’s death and his murderer uncaught, and the long day of waiting for their sister to give birth, losing the kittens might be just the catalyst to send her younger ones into fits of hysteria all at once. She hesitated, key poised over the lock, considering whether she had the energy to deal with this right now.
Well, whether she did or not, it was going to have to be done. She slid the key into the lock. As soon as the door was open an inch, the cat oozed into the store room, and the kids and Charlie-dog nearly knocked Alafair over trying to all get inside at the same time.
“Here they are! Here they are!” Blanche called.
“Don’t touch them!” Alafair cautioned, even before she got inside to see the knot of children leaning over a pile
of burlap bags in the corner.
Sophronia flitted over to her and grabbed her skirt. “But, Mama, they’re barely moving. We got to feed them.”
“Are they alive, Charlie?”
“Looks like they are, Ma, but just barely.” He was squatting down near the floor, still holding on to Grace, who was practically doubled in two over his arm in her desperation to see what was going on.
“Can’t we do something for them, Ma?” Blanche asked, close to tears.
“No, come on, kids, leave them to their mother. She knows way better than us what to do for them. If we get to messing with them, it’ll just make things worse. We did the best thing we could do by getting them back to their mama.”
After some protest, the children finally acquiesced to their mother’s greater wisdom in these matters, and followed Alafair back to the house, all in a row like preoccupied ducklings, considering the fate of the hapless kittens.
Life for a young creature on the farm was precarious at best, especially for barn cats, who were just the right size to make a tasty snack for coyotes or a passing stray dog. But it did seem to Alafair that they had been having a particular run of bad luck over the past few months. Thinking of coyotes brought to mind the previous February when one of the new foals had managed to get out of the pasture and away from her mother and the coyotes or a bobcat got her. She had gotten away somehow, but her muzzle was so chewed up that she couldn’t eat and Shaw had had to put her down.
The Eichelburgers on the next farm got worried about their calves and put out poisoned horse meat for the predators, then, way out in the back forty. But blamed if one of them didn’t haul a big chunk of it from the neighbor’s place right up to the house one night and leave it almost in the yard. If Gee Dub hadn’t found it right off when he went to milk that morning, they’d have lost one of the dogs for sure. Alafair shook her head. A coyote was smart, and sometimes just as spiteful as a man.