by Donis Casey
“Don’t give them any ideas. Besides, they’ll finally come around to that if the killer isn’t caught soon. I’d bet money on it.”
“I won’t take that bet.”
“So what’s Mary up to in there?”
Gee Dub shrugged. “Writing in her journal, last I looked.”
Martha nodded, and so did Gee Dub. He had apprised her of the situation, and, purpose achieved, he turned without another word to return to Charlie and his pinto.
The first thing Martha always did when she entered the barn was take a deep breath. The sweet and cozy smell of leather, corn, sorghum, dust, and animals was irresistible.
Charlie-dog skidded out of a shadowy corner and trotted up to greet her, his entire hindquarters wagging a hearty greeting. Martha murmured to him and let him push his wet nose into her hand as she surveyed the cavernous space, looking for Mary.
“Mary,” she called, and heard a scuffling and the clomp of feet above her head. Mary’s face appeared at the head of the ladder to the loft.
“Well, hey,” Mary said. “You’re home kind of late. What have you been up to this afternoon?”
“I had some things I had to do in town.”
“You have another suffrage meeting?”
“Yes, Alice had it at her house this time. You should come to one.”
“I’m sure Mama and Daddy would be delighted.”
“Mama and Daddy wouldn’t care a bit.”
Mary’s voice thickened with irony. “Why haven’t you told them about it, then? Mama might even want to come.”
Martha felt her cheeks grow warm. Why hadn’t she told her parents? They probably would be supportive. Probably. She changed the subject.
“What are you doing up there? You have alfalfa all over you.”
Mary absently brushed the tail of the flowered bib apron she wore over her faded navy blue dress, but didn’t really seem to mind. “I brought one of those kittens up here with me. Looks like the mother cat did move them back into the barn here, but she won’t let the litter come out when Charlie-dog’s about. He might love them to death.”
“Are you being shunned?” Martha asked the dog. He looked up at her, forlorn, and she patted his head.
“Come on up here when you get that bicycle put away.” Mary’s hand appeared and she beckoned an invitation. “I brought a jar of tea. We’ll finish it off and you can help me haul down the jug and the cat when we go back up to the house directly.”
Martha slid the bike into its stall, hung her wide-brimmed hat on a handlebar, and mounted the ladder to the hay loft, leaving Charlie-dog to whine once in a vain attempt to rouse pity before he padded back to his corner, resigned to abandonment.
Mary had already resumed her seat in the loose hay, next to a wooden crate she had upended for use as a tea table. The black and white kitten was romping around the loft for no reason other than to burn off some of its baby energy.
“That cat is full of beans,” Martha observed.
“Yes, he’s a real exuberant one. It’s hard to dwell on your troubles while you’re watching a romping kitten.”
Martha inspected Mary’s little hideaway and then cast a critical eye over her sister. Mary looked pale. The blue circles under her eyes bespoke someone who was not sleeping well. She had smiled at the romping kitten, though, and that was nice to see. The smile made her look more like herself, and less like the stricken young woman who had emerged from the field where Bill died the week before. Martha hesitated a moment before sitting down in the hay, thinking of her crisp black serge skirt. But she was already hot and gritty from the bicycle ride home, so she gracefully accepted the inevitable and lowered herself onto the floor next to Mary. The kitten instantly pounced on her, and she laughed. Cat hair on her clothes, to go along with the hay.
“You’ve got yourself a nice little hidey-hole up here,” she acknowledged. “Gee Dub thinks you’re hiding more from Mama than from the murderer who’s lurking about.”
“Oh, Mama means well, I know that. I just don’t have the patience to humor her right now. Besides, you’d need a change of scenery, too, if you were cooped up in that house all day.”
“I heard you and the kids had an outing this afternoon, though. Did some target practice?”
“Oh, yes, but that was…” She paused, not knowing quite how to describe it. “That was a little too much fun. I guess I’m not ready to be that happy, yet.” She gave Martha an ironic smile.
Martha was surprised by a sudden prickle of tears as the meaning of Mary’s comment dawned on her. She took a breath and sat up straight, determined not to give in to melancholy. “You’re looking better.”
Mary shrugged. “I’m still kindly in a fog. I try not to dwell on things. No point in that. But I hardly think of anything else. I don’t have a job to distract me, like you do.”
“I expect.”
“I brought my little journal up here with me.” She picked up the small cloth-covered book which was lying in the hay beside her. “I write in it every once in a while, when a useful thought comes to me.”
“What kind of a thought?”
Mary hesitated before answering. “Anything useful. Don’t know how to say it. Know how it is when you just catch sight of something out of the corner of your eye, but when you try to look right at it, there’s nothing there? Well, somehow I’ve got a notion that I know something about who shot Uncle Bill and kidnapped Laura, but it’s buried deep and I can’t bring it to light.”
Martha’s brown eyes opened wide. “I declare! Nobody else has the littlest idea!”
“Now, don’t get excited, Martha, and for mercy’s sake, don’t say anything to Mama or Daddy. I don’t know any more than anybody else. I just have the awfulest itch of a feeling that there’s something buried in my head—a clue—and if I could just be quiet long enough, it might float right up.”
Martha was leaning toward her, looking so intrigued that Mary grew alarmed. “Martha, don’t go telling Mama,” she reiterated. “She’ll plague me, and then I’ll never think of it.”
“No, no!” The kitten had clawed itself halfway up Martha’s sleeve, and she absently pulled the little body off herself and handed it to Mary. “I won’t say anything. But I confess I’m excited that there could be an answer somewhere. I won’t tell Mama, I promise, but, you know, you might ought to talk to her about it. I don’t mean you should tell her you might have an idea. You can wipe that look off your face. I mean Mama’s got a way about figuring things out.”
“Yes, she gets in there and never lets go.”
“Don’t I know it. But if you give her something else to occupy her mind, she might not spend all her time trying to cosset you.”
Mary laughed. “There’s a happy thought. Which, speaking of Phoebe, thank goodness for that new baby. Mama and Grace were over there for hours this afternoon.”
“Have you been back to see her?”
“No, not yet. I expect it’ll be a few days before I can, too. Mama is determined that I go with them over to Uncle James’ for the cotton harvest tomorrow.”
“Well, you’re just going to have to put up with the fact that everybody is concerned about you right now, and wants to keep an eye on you.”
“Oh, I know I shouldn’t be so contrary. I caught Micah watching over me when I was in the garden early this morning, and we had a nice talk. He came with us when we went target shooting, too.”
“Micah’s sweet on you. I’ve seen the way he turns all red when you’re around.”
Mary reddened a little bit, herself.
Martha went on. “I think both those hired boys are taken with you, especially now that Daddy’s put it into their heads that you need protecting right now.”
“Pshaw.”
Martha grinned, amused at Mary’s discomfort. “I hope they don’t end up getting into a big dustup over your favors.”
“Now you’re just teasing me,” Mary accused.
“Well, maybe. But there’s truth behind what
I say, and you know it. What do you think? Do you favor one of them over the other?”
“I think I don’t want to think about that right now.” Mary sounded adamant, but then she turned right around and contradicted herself by answering, “Actually, I kind of go back and forth. They’re both fine-looking. I think I favored Kurt, when they first came to work here, but he’s so shy, he just digs his toe in the dirt and won’t look at me, and it’s hard to build a friendship on that, don’t you know. Micah’s a lot of fun, and he really seems to be concerned about me.”
“Do I hear my name taken in vain?”
The girls started as a head popped up through the trap. A mischievous black-fringed gray eye winked at them.
“Micah!” Mary’s cheeks grew hot as she realized what he might have heard. “What are you doing sneaking around eavesdropping on us?”
One hand appeared and tipped the Stetson on Micah’s disembodied head, and he grinned. “Well, ladies, I heard y’all’s voices, and reckoned I’d pay my respects.” He eyed Mary’s cozy setup, and nodded his approval. “This looks like a good safe place for you to be biding your time.” He flicked a look at Martha, who was leaning back on her elbows and appraising him coolly. He returned his attention to Mary. “Good to stay out of sight until whoever shot your uncle is brought to justice, that is. Won’t be so long, surely.”
“Come on up,” Martha said, “and don’t just hang there between up and down.”
“Sorry, Miss Martha, but Mr. Tucker just sent me to fetch a bag of feed for the foals, so I expect I’d better be about it.”
“All right, then. We need to get back to the house, anyway.”
Micah touched his hat brim again and disappeared down the ladder. The minute he was gone, Mary and Martha tried in vain to suppress an explosion of laughter. The effort caused a searing pain to shoot along the side of Mary’s head, and she bit back a moan and pressed her hands to her temples.
Martha put her hand on her sister’s arm. “Are you all right, Mary?”
Mary shook her head. “I’ll swear, every time I feel better for a minute, God reminds me that evil has been done.”
“That doesn’t sound like God’s doing to me,” Martha said grimly.
Chapter Thirteen
I know you remember, Mama, how that trip to Waco ended, because there wasn’t one of us sitting by the gazebo on the Fourth of July who hadn’t heard the tale of how Farrell Dean Hammond slipped under the train as it was coming into the station and was killed on the spot. Everybody in town was horrified about it. None of the boys could figure out how it happened, either. Bill said the platform was pretty crowded that day, and they were all five standing in a bunch by the tracks, waiting for the train to pull on in, and the next thing anybody knew, Farrell Dean was gone. Bill said he never made a sound.
We all remembered when Farrell Dean died. Bill was pretty shook about that for months. But that awful event had sort of knocked out of everybody’s head the reason that the boys were still down there and not at home like they should have been two weeks earlier. Three of them had had to testify at a murder trial.
***
A pale smear of light streaked the horizon, but the sun had not risen when Shaw and Alafair and their family arrived at James Tucker’s cotton farm the next morning. Shaw had driven them in the big buckboard. Ruth sat on the seat between her parents, holding a basket of eggs, while Mary was in the back trying to restrain a wiggly Grace. Blanche rode with her arms around boxes and baskets of food and containers of cream and butter. Sophronia and Charlie and his dog bounced around the wagon, full of energy, generally irritating everyone else. Gee Dub rode behind on his horse, leading a string of three mules.
Mary had not wanted to come. She pleaded fatigue and volunteered to go back to Phoebe’s to help with the new baby, but Alafair had told her that since Martha had to work and Alice was with Phoebe, Mary was needed on this expedition. Actually, Alafair expected that Mary would probably get more rest and be as safe at Phoebe’s, with Alice and John Lee there as well. The truth was that she didn’t want to have Mary out of her sight again.
They were met in front of James’ long, low frame house by his two teenage sons, Jimmy and Jerry, who took the buckboard and the stock to the barn. Alafair restrained Charlie from following his cousins for the moment and loaded him and the other children down with food to carry into the kitchen, where James’ wife, Irene, was directing the preparation and distribution of breakfast for the pickers.
It was a task not for the fainthearted, and already well underway when Shaw and Alafair arrived. Long sawhorse and board tables had been set up before the row of tents by the edge of the field where the thirty or so black workers, men, women, and children, along with a few infants and toddlers who were too young to work, were eating breakfast by the light of kerosene lanterns. A smaller table had been set up at the side of the house for James’ family members and his few white hands who would also be picking, weighing, loading, and driving.
Shaw spotted his brothers James and Howard, and his brother-in-law W.J. Lancaster. He and Gee Dub skewed off to join them, while Alafair and the other children carried the food into the house. Alafair found Shaw’s sister Sarah Lancaster alone in the kitchen, at the stove, frying dozens of eggs by the yellow light of kerosene lamps. An enormous platter at her elbow was already piled high with eggs so expertly fried and stacked that while none were cooked hard, not one egg on the platter had a broken yolk.
Sarah glanced back at them over her shoulder when they came in. “Morning, Alafair, kids,” she greeted cheerfully. She pushed a stray tendril of black hair behind her ear with her free hand. “Glad y’all are here. Irene and Vera and Josie are hauling out bacon and biscuits and coffee. I need one of you girls to take this plate of eggs on out to your uncles and the boys.”
Blanche imperceptibly fell back behind her mother, but Sophronia leaped forward. “I’ll do it.”
Sarah handed her the platter. “That’s my girl. Just put it on the table and scoot on back here. I’ve got more tasks for you.”
Sophronia disappeared out the back door and Ruth handed her aunt the basket of eggs. Sarah began to crack them into the skillet and threw the shells into a bucket beside the stove without missing a beat.
Charlie dumped his burdens on the cabinet and began winding one of Blanche’s dark braids around her head to have something to do while he complained to Alafair. “Can’t I go with Daddy, now? I brought in all them things you told me to.”
“Mama!” Blanche protested, swatting Charlie’s hand and trying to lift a ham out of a basket at the same time.
“Go on, get out,” Alafair told him, annoyed. “And take the dog with you. Not you, Blanche. Ruthie, why don’t you take over frying up the eggs for your Aunt Sarah? Mary, you set up a blanket under a tree outside. You can baby-sit Grace today and keep an eye on your cousin.” She was referring to Sarah’s four-year-old daughter Katie, whom she had seen crawling around under her father’s feet at the breakfast table. “Where’s your other kids, Sarah?”
“They’re at their Grandma Lancaster’s, all but Katie. I didn’t feel like riding herd on the bunch of them today.”
“I saw a couple of little babies with the pickers,” Mary noted. “You suppose they’d let me sit the bunch?”
“Their mamas may have their own arrangement, but you can ask them, if Aunt Irene don’t care,” Alafair told her.
“You going to let her babysit Grace and Katie and a bunch of little colored babies after what she’s been through?” Sarah asked Alafair, after Mary had left with Grace in tow.
Alafair was unconcerned. “It’ll occupy her mind. Did I hear you say that Josie is here?”
“Yes, and I was surprised, too. Irene told me that she showed up this morning not long after cock crow. She’s been staying at the big house with Mama and Papa for the past few days. Mama told her she’s getting underfoot, trying to do for them all the time, so she decided she’d give Mama and Papa a break from herself and do s
omething useful over here for a spell.”
“Sounds like your ma is feeling better.”
Sophronia reappeared, skipping through the door with her shoes and stockings in her hands. “It’s getting hot already,” she protested, when she saw the look on her mother’s face.
Alafair let it go. Anyone who wasn’t tramping around in the field would be barefoot before the day was out, anyway. “All right, Fronie, Ruth has another plate of eggs ready to go. Blanche, pile up a big platter with this ham and take it out to the pickers, and when you get back we’ll have a small platter ready for you to take out to the family. I’ll make more coffee. Ruth, it looked to me like everybody’s just about finishing up. Sun’ll be up directly and it’ll be time to go to work. Dishes need to be gathered up.”
“Mama, I’m hungry,” Blanche pointed out. “When do we get to eat?”
“We can eat after everybody’s done, sugar,” Aunt Sarah told her, “before the washing up. Won’t be long.”
Alafair snatched a hot biscuit from the pan sitting on top of the stove, slathered it with butter, and shoved it at the girl. “Have a bite of this to tide you over.”
She took one of the enormous tin coffee pots outside to fill at the pump beside the back door. The sky was light, now, and the disc of the sun just coming up over the eastern horizon. Alafair could see the itinerant workers standing up from the table in ones and twos and gathering in a group under the elms, putting on hats, adjusting fingerless gloves and toeless old socks over their hands, and draping the long, trailing bags over their shoulders, which they would drag behind them down the rows and fill with cotton. The hand covers wouldn’t help much. The only help for what cotton bolls did to fingers was to develop callouses like an elephant’s hide.
It made Alafair tired just to look at them. She had picked plenty of cotton in her time, both when she was a girl and when she and Shaw were young and unable to afford to pay pickers. It broke your back. It ripped the skin right off your hands and dyed your fingers black and tore your clothes. It sucked every drop of water out of your body. It blinded you with sun and choked you with dust and grit. And it had to get done in a day, or two, and then it had to be done all over again in another week, or two, sometimes off and on all the way to November. And these people traveled from field to field for months and killed themselves to get other people’s cotton in, starting in Texas and following the cotton up to Kansas. Just as the wheat harvesters did in the spring.