He looked into her blue eyes, and knew that telling her, when he did, would be the hardest thing he would ever do—but he would have to do it. Maybe it was best now that she had lost the land when she did. There would be nothing to tie her to Eason County once the land was gone and after she knew the truth. He would ask her to leave with him. Maybe they would marry. They could raise her daughter together, and maybe have children of their own.
They had not made love that night, but had just held each other without the need for sex, until the time came for her to go. She was never able to stay the entire night, anyway, for she had to go home to her daughter and family before too late, but they made the most of their time together, as they always did. After she left, he turned out the lights and sat in the living room in the dark, unable to stop himself from recalling the words she had said:
“Goddamn the Easons. Goddamn every last one of them.”
Stephen watched as the bank president rose from his chair and came around the desk to shake hands with his grandfather. Stephen sat up and placed the paperweight back on the desk, then rose to his own feet, glad the meeting was finished. He wanted to get home where he could be alone to think. Joanna was coming to his house again tonight, and he would find some way to tell her what he had to tell her—she would have to understand. She would have to.
The banker shook Stephen’s hand, and then walked them to the door.
“It was good to see you again, Mr. Eason,” the banker said to Stephen, patting him on the shoulder. Stephen accepted the name, and the “Mr.,” from a man twenty years his senior, without saying a word. He was growing accustomed to it.
He opened the office door and started through, then turned back at the sound of his grandfather’s voice.
“Go tell them to bring the van up,” Buddy Eason said as he guided the electric wheelchair through the doorway, barely clearing either side of the frame.
“Whatever you want, Grandfather,” Stephen said, and then turned in preparation to go for the driver, and then froze where he stood.
Joanna stood a few yards away, an older woman and a little girl at her either side. For an instant there was a look of pleasure on her face as she met his eyes—and something more. Then her gaze took in Stephen’s grandfather in the wheelchair just behind where Stephen stood, and a terrible recognition came over her face. Her eyes rose again to Stephen—there was a knowledge there, an awareness, that he had hoped never to see. His own words echoed in his ears—
“Whatever you want, Grandfather.”
Joanna’s hands were suddenly shaking so badly that she had to clench them tightly into fists at her sides to still their trembling—but he would not see her hands shaking. He would not.
Grandfather—the grandfather Stephen had told her about was Buddy Eason. She had heard him say it. She could see the truth in his eyes, could even see now a resemblance to the bloated man in the wheelchair. Stephen was Buddy Eason’s grandson.
He was an Eason.
He had known all along who she was. He had used her, and she felt filthy. She was such a fool—after all the Easons had done to her family through the years, to have allowed herself to be used by one of them was somehow the worst thing of all. Each time he had touched her, each time he had looked at her, made love to her—it was all a lie, all part of that same cruel insanity the Easons had used against her family for generations.
“Joanna?”
She heard her grandma’s voice at her one side, and felt her daughter’s hand in hers at the other, but she could not stop staring at Stephen.
“Joanna, I—” Stephen said, coming toward her, those gray eyes mocking her with every word she had ever said to him. Once she had even imagined what a child of theirs might look like, with his gray eyes and her reddish hair. “You don’t—”
“Goddamn you!” She spat the words at him and slapped him hard across the face. She tried to drive the trembling away, out of her body, but she could not. He was an Eason. He had used her, betrayed her—and he was an Eason.
She saw him raise a hand to his cheek, saw the reddened mark her palm had left there, but she did not care. His eyes showed pain, and she gloried in it.
“You goddamn—” But she suddenly realized Katie was there, and she forced the words to stop. She hated him—she hated him and every lie he had made her believe. She hated him—and she wished she could see him dead.
Suddenly she knew she was going to cry. She had thought that she was beyond such foolishness—but she was going to cry, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
“Damn you to hell,” she said, hearing her own voice break.
She fled toward the back entrance of the bank, where she, her grandmother, and Katie had entered such a short time before. She held tightly to Katie’s hand, dragging the little girl along, leaving her grandmother behind. Tears coursed down her cheeks—but he had not seen. He would not know how much he had hurt her. She would never give an Eason that satisfaction.
Elise Sanders stood facing the young man her granddaughter had cursed and slapped—Buddy Eason’s grandson, though Joanna had not known until now.
The young man started after Joanna, but Elise stepped into his path. She heard the rear door of the bank slam. Only then did she move her eyes to Buddy Eason in his wheelchair.
Buddy’s insane laughter followed her as she turned to walk away.
25
Joanna had never known such hurt or such a sense of betrayal. As the days passed into weeks, she expected it to diminish, but it did not. It grew and strengthened inside her, as did the hatred she now felt. Stephen called repeatedly until they had to leave the phone off the hook and finally had the number changed to a new, unlisted one. But he somehow found the new number and the calls resumed. He wrote letters and stuffed them into the mailbox, but she burned them unopened. He even dared to come to the house to try to see her, and left only after her father’s temper finally exploded to send him sprawling into the yard with what she hoped was a broken nose. Joanna had not spoken his name since that day in the bank, and she hoped never to see him again.
Her father and grandfather both threatened to kill him. Her grandfather even went so far as to load a rifle, but her grandmother and mother would not let him leave the house.
“It’s over,” her grandma said, trying to take the rifle from his hands.
“It ain’t over,” Janson told her, angrier than Joanna had seen him in years. “It ain’t never gonna be over so long as Buddy Eason’s alive.”
“He’s not worth it,” Joanna told him, “and neither is his grandson.”
Her mother asked outright: “You were sleeping with him, weren’t you?” and Joanna had told her the truth.
She could imagine Buddy Eason asking his beloved grandson for details:
“Does she scream out your name?”
“Is she good?”
“Did you use a condom?”
They hadn’t.
She was not pregnant—thank God—for she had gone on the pill when she admitted to herself she was eventually going to sleep with him. Stephen had never asked about birth control, and she bitterly wondered now if his intention had been to leave her pregnant when he told her who he was. What a triumph that would have been for Buddy Eason, what a victory, to leave Janson Sanders’s granddaughter pregnant and abandoned by Buddy Eason’s grandson, with the county to know the truth of how she had been used. What a fool she’d been. What a goddamn fool.
She could not sleep without nightmares. In those nightmares it was Buddy Eason who took her, the bloated, sick, twisted old man, smothering her beneath his weight.
Or it would be Stephen who became his grandfather during the act.
She would be pregnant from what they had done. Stephen/Buddy’s child would be a twisted monster, with Buddy Eason’s face, who would rip her open at its birth—and she would wake in a cold sweat, her
heart racing as she stared into the darkness.
She sickened knowing she had once allowed herself to wonder what a child they had together might look like, when she knew now that it would be Buddy Eason’s great-grandchild.
When they had to leave the farm, they moved into a six-room, rented house in the mill village in Pine. Joanna knew what leaving did to her grandfather, and she wondered if Janson Sanders would live a year after they left the land. He had been such a part of it for so many years, and it of him, that she could not imagine one existing without the other.
Her father had taken a job in a plant, and her mother was working part-time for a lawyer in Wells. They both came home, tired and exhausted at the end of the day, as did Joanna, who took a temporary job bookkeeping for Hess Furniture. She had no idea what she would do after the auction of their land, but she would stay in Pine until then, until their land and her home was sold to another owner. Her father’s friend, Mr. Betts, had called to offer her a job again, and she thought she would take it; before long there would be no reason for her to stay in Eason County, except for her family.
And she never wanted to take the chance she might see Stephen Dawes Eason again.
Stephen sat in his grandfather’s den at twelve-thirty on a Thursday afternoon, waiting to be called through the closed doors into the living room to see the old man. Buddy had called his house that morning before daylight, waking Stephen from a sound sleep to tell him to dress and come to the house so they could speak.
Stephen had done just as he had been told, had shaved and showered and dressed as quickly as he could, but had been waiting for hours now to see the old man—as he would keep waiting until his grandfather had time to talk to him. He was hungry, not having eaten since early the evening before, and the hunger was now edging toward nausea, but Stephen would not even go to the old man’s kitchen to find something to eat. His grandfather might look for him while he was gone, and not believe Stephen had done exactly as he had been told, and Stephen would not have his grandfather believe he had disobeyed his direct order.
Things had been so much better between Stephen and his grandfather since the day at the bank. His grandfather believed Stephen had gotten close to Joanna simply to please the old man—and Buddy Eason had found great pleasure in it. He had clasped his hands in delight the moment Joanna ran from the building, tears filling her eyes. A cackling laugh had escaped the old man as he rocked back and forth in his wheelchair, clapping his hands over and over again after Elise Sanders walked away.
“Goddamn—Sanders’s granddaughter!” Buddy Eason laughed, rocking so much now that the wheelchair rolled slightly forward, and then again. “You’ve been getting at her, haven’t you boy?” he demanded, so loudly that people in the bank were turning to look at them. “What’s she like, boy? What’s she like? Was she any good?”
The old man was still grinning broadly in the van as they left the bank’s parking lot. He picked at Stephen’s coat sleeve, plucking it up, and then smoothing it down, over and over again, at last beginning absently to pet Stephen’s arm, almost as if he were a dog, until Stephen pulled away.
“You made her love you, didn’t you?” his grandfather said, cackling again. “Oh, I wish I could see that goddamn red nigger’s face when he finds out. Oh, I wish—I bet she’s good, huh, boy? I bet she’s good.”
Buddy’s behavior toward his grandson changed that day. The change was subtle at first, but Stephen had noticed—his grandfather was pleased with him. His grandfather was pleased, and even in his shame at what he had done to Joanna, Stephen couldn’t help enjoying his grandfather’s approval.
“You did something I could never do,” his grandfather had said that day, just before the van’s lift lowered him to the ground. He reached up to take hold of Stephen’s suit coat at the shoulder, pulling him down until they were face to face. His grandfather stared at him through dark glasses. “You got right to the heart of them, boy. You used her and got to them—you did good, boy. You did so good.”
And then Buddy Eason pulled him forward and kissed him full on the mouth, startling Stephen so that he pulled away quickly and hit his head on the van’s door opening, shooting stars through his vision for a moment before it cleared. By then they had lowered the old man to the ground and he could do nothing but stare.
Now he waited outside his grandfather’s door, the hunger beginning to make him lightheaded. At last the door opened and one of the male nurses stepped through. The man did not speak, but stood there until Stephen realized he was being summoned inside. Stephen rose from the leather sofa and walked past the husky man and into the living room, hearing the heavy door close after him to leave him alone with his grandfather.
Stephen waited until the old man motioned to one of the chairs in the room before he sat down, and, once seated, he waited to find out what his grandfather wanted of him.
“I have a job I want you to do for me,” Buddy Eason said.
“A job?”
“Yes.” Buddy reached up to rub one side of his thick neck, a ring glittering in the light from the desk lamp, catching Stephen’s eye. “You are going to buy something for me,” Buddy said.
Nervousness tightened Stephen’s stomach muscles. His grandfather’s tone was light, but Stephen had the sudden impression that he was about to be asked to do something illegal. His grandfather had done so much for him. Stephen owed him everything—but he had become increasingly uncomfortable with Buddy’s business dealings and dreaded the possibility that he might be asked to get involved in an unknown something in repayment.
His grandfather’s sudden laughter took him by surprise, and he jumped when the old man slapped an open palm down on the desktop before him. “Don’t worry, boy,” Buddy Eason said, reading the worry in his expression. “You don’t have to kill anybody. I just want you to buy something for me.”
His grandfather’s assurance did not dispel the tension inside of him.
“What do you want me to buy, Grandfather?” he asked, knowing that he sounded again like the child he had once been. Stephen’s entire field of vision was focused on his grandfather sitting there in the wheelchair beyond the cherry wood desk.
Buddy Eason watched him for a long moment, and then spoke again, his voice very quiet. “You’re going to buy Janson Sanders’s farm for me.”
When Stephen found his voice, after a sharp intake of breath, he could get out only one word—“But—” before his grandfather interrupted.
“The auction will be this Saturday. I’m going with you, but you’ll be the one who does the bidding. Sanders will be there—he has to be—” There was a sound of desperation to the last words. “If he sees me buy the place, it would be bad enough, but you buying it would rub their noses in what you did to her—rub their noses in it,” he repeated with a cackle, scrubbing his hands together before him. “You had his granddaughter—he has to know that. He has to picture it, day after day, you with her, the things you did. And her grandmother—she has to know; she has to think about it all the time. I always—” He fell silent and was staring away now, hardly aware Stephen was even in the room.
“Grandfather—” Stephen reached out after a moment to him and Buddy Eason brought his eyes back, turning the dark glasses toward his grandson.
“You’ll buy the place for me,” he said, very quietly now, a sound of pleasure in his voice. “We’ll burn the house and buildings to the ground and sow the fields with salt. I’ll have it paved over and turned into a parking lot there in the middle of nowhere so no one will ever farm it again. No one—it will kill him,” he continued, a rising tone of excitement in his voice, “seeing it gone, seeing it gone to me, seeing it taken by you, just like you took his granddaughter—”
“But—”
“No buts. You know where your loyalty is. You know—”
“Yes, Grandfather.” And he did. He owed Buddy Eason everything—everything, the best
education that could be had, the roof over his head every night, everything he had ever had in his life from the age of five.
“I know.” There was satisfaction and pleasure in Buddy’s voice. He opened a folder on his desk and drew a paper that he pushed across the desk toward his grandson. “This is a cashier’s check for more than the place will ever go for. Whatever you can bid in under this, you keep the rest. A little bonus—” The word was followed by a chuckle.
Stephen stared at the numbers on the check—so much money. Far more than it would ever take to buy the Sanders land, their home, everything Joanna had told him about.
He knew he owed the old man more than he could ever repay. He owed his grandfather so much, for all the years that Buddy Eason had looked after him. Buddy’s had been a strange love, but it was the only love Stephen had ever known.
He lifted his eyes from the check, to the face of his grandfather, realizing how much he did resemble the old man—they were of the same blood, so much the same. He met his grandfather’s gaze through the dark glasses, then heard his voice speaking, even before he thought. “You tried to kill Janson Sanders , didn’t you?”
For a moment the heavy face was impassive. “Yes.”
“Several times?”
Only a moment’s silence. “Yes, I did.”
“And his father?”
The face showed nothing, his grandfather’s expression changing not in the slightest. “I heard he had a heart attack fighting a fire in his cotton crop.”
Stephen watched him. “You had someone set the fire?”
There was just a flicker across the features. Memory. Satisfaction. “I set it myself.”
“And you’ve wrecked their equipment through the years, killed their cattle, destroyed their crops?” He was surprised to hear how rational the words sounded, the concepts.
There Is a River Page 27