Dovey’s father looked at her and then at Pete before getting up from his chair and picking up the Remington.
“Daddy—” Dovey began as her father came toward them and propped the gun on the floor next to him, holding it upright by the barrel. He didn’t let her finish.
“Pete, you know there’s always consequences,” he said calmly.
“Yes, sir.” Pete’s throat was completely dry.
“I’ll expect to see you in the field four days a week instead of three for the whole month of June. If I need to speak with your mother about it, I can stop by next week.”
“Yes, sir. I don’t think that’ll be—”
He held the shotgun out to Pete. “Do me a favor and put this back in my gun cabinet when you leave. ’Night, you two.”
Pete’s hand trembled a little as he took the gun from Dovey’s father, who left them alone but called from the back of the house, “I wanna hear that Buick crankin’ directly.”
“Yes, sir,” Pete called back. He and Dovey leaned back on the couch and exhaled the breath they had been holding. Pete rested the shotgun on his lap.
“For what it’s worth,” Dovey said with a smile, “I was gonna sing ‘I Feel Like Traveling On’ and ‘Far Side Banks of Jordan’ at your funeral.”
The two of them burst out laughing.
“I’ve got more than one gun,” her father called out.
“We better quit while we’re ahead,” Pete said, returning the shotgun to a cabinet in the hallway. Dovey followed him out to the porch, where he had left his jacket to dry on the back of a rocking chair. He put his arms around her and held her close, listening to the rain drip off the tin roof.
“Dovey,” he finally said almost in a whisper, “do you think you might—I mean, would you maybe—could we, do you think, get married when I get out of school?”
She smiled up at him. “I was sorta countin’ on it,” she said.
Fifteen
MAY 15, 1966
“Pete, you mind comin’ out to the barn for a minute and helpin’ me load a few tools into my truck?”
“Sure, Daddy Ballard,” Pete said as his mother began making a pot of coffee. Pete’s grandfather had taken them out to Sunday dinner after church, and they were spending the afternoon with him. He followed Daddy Ballard out to the barn. “What you need me to load?” he asked as his grandfather shut the barn door behind them.
“Nothin’, son,” he said, taking a seat on a hay bale and motioning for Pete to do the same. “I need to talk to you. Got something I feel like you’ve got a right to know before anybody else.”
Pete felt a familiar knot in his stomach. No good news ever began like this, at least not in his experience. He took a deep breath and tried to steady his nerves. “Did you—did you find Isaac?” He felt a little dizzy as he said it.
“No, son, but we did find something,” Daddy Ballard answered. “We found out that a salesman passin’ through town the night Isaac disappeared saw him—saw him after he left that card game.”
Pete struggled to take it in. “But if he was just passin’ through, how did he know it was Isaac?”
“He didn’t—not at first, anyway. But when he saw a newspaper story about a colored man disappearin’ in Glory, he recognized the truck—remember they ran that picture of the truck in the newspaper?”
Pete nodded but couldn’t quite find his voice for a minute. Then the questions came tumbling out. “Well, who was this salesman? Where’d he come from, and what did he see, and how come he ain’t said nothin’ all this time? And how’d you finally find him? Where’s he at?”
“Hang on, Pete, and I’ll tell you everything,” his grandfather said. “That sorry excuse for a sheriff made one royal mess outta this. And I still don’t know if we’ll ever untangle it. But I’m gonna do my best—for you and Hattie.”
“I know,” Pete said. “And I didn’t mean you any disrespect. It’s just—”
“No need to apologize, son. We’re all sick and tired o’ chasin’ our tails, but I really think we’re on to something.”
Pete’s grandfather recounted everything he had learned about Isaac’s disappearance, down to the last detail. When he finally finished, Pete struggled to put it all together.
“So . . . the Chevy man saw another car but didn’t see anybody with Isaac?” he asked.
“That’s right,” his grandfather said. “And I can’t explain why just yet. But if we can find that car, we can find the owner. Think about it—Isaac wouldn’t have any reason to jump off a car with no driver. Somebody had to have been there. And if we can find ’em, we’ll finally know what happened to Isaac because whoever he was helpin’ either killed him or knows who did.”
Killed him. Even though Pete knew those words to be true, they still hit him like a kick in the gut. Something about saying them out loud made them too real to stand.
Daddy Ballard reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry to be so blunt, son,” he said. “But the way I see it, you’ve done been through enough to deserve the truth. And I think way too much of you to sugarcoat the situation or try to hide anything from you.”
Pete felt his lower lip tremble slightly—imperceptibly, he hoped—as he tried to smile and thank his grandfather.
“I’m going in to tell your mother,” Daddy Ballard said. “It’ll give you a little time to yourself. You come and get me if you’ve got any questions after you’ve had some time to think about it.”
“Yes, sir,” Pete said. “And thank you, Daddy Ballard—thank you for tellin’ me.”
Alone in the barn, Pete slowly climbed the wooden ladder into the hayloft and wandered over to the opening where he had first overheard his cousins speculating about Isaac. He sat down and dangled his legs over the ledge, looking out at the pastures and fields.
If Isaac hadn’t stopped to help somebody in trouble, he might still be here. If he weren’t so kind, he wouldn’t have gotten killed.
The world made no sense—except when Dovey was in it. Pete lay back in the hay and tried with all his might to remember every detail of the night before. If he could see Dovey clearly in his mind, if he could conjure her voice and her laugh and her touch, then maybe he could endure the hours that would have to pass before he could hold her again.
Sixteen
MAY 16, 1966
On a rainy Monday morning, John Pickett took his old seat at Lila’s kitchen table while she poured them both some coffee.
“Still take it with just a little cream?” she asked.
He smiled. “Good memory.”
She handed him a cup and sat down across from him. It had been raining almost steadily since Saturday night, and right now John was looking out Lila’s rickety screen door, watching water splash off a concrete table underneath the pecan trees.
“Cleaned a lot of catfish on that old table, you and Jack,” she said. “It’s a wonder I didn’t wear out my percolator keeping you in coffee back then. How do you ever fall asleep at night?”
He shrugged. “Lotta nights I don’t, but I doubt it’s the coffee.”
“Our kids got anything to do with it?”
“I take it we’re still not telling Pete that his daddy was a friend of mine?” he asked.
“No. And I made Daddy and Geneva promise not to—Aunt Babe and Hattie too—for now anyway. I think the fear of God and your shotgun are good for Pete. Makes him think twice.”
“My family’s keeping it quiet too.”
“I’m surprised he hasn’t put it together, though,” Lila said. “I won’t even let him ride around with Geneva’s boys because I spotted a beer can in their truck, and yet he thinks I’d let him work for a man who might actually murder him.”
She smiled and sipped her coffee. Even that smile—Jack had always thought it was so pretty—looked sad to John now. He had to wonder if the same was true of his.
“Your sister still keeping everybody straight?” he asked.
Lila shook her head. “I’ll pu
t it this way—don’t ask her what she thinks unless you really want to know.”
John hadn’t thought of Geneva in forever—or of this kitchen table, where he had once felt so at home. That seemed like a hundred years ago.
“As long as we’re talking family, there’s something I’ve always wondered,” Lila said. “I know you and Jack sort of stumbled onto each other on the creek bank when you were kids, but how’d you square that with Miss Paul?”
“Daddy.”
Lila nodded, and he knew she understood. Hinkey Pickett and Ned Ballard had been boyhood friends. Over the years, Mr. Ballard had helped the Pickett family so many times that John’s father didn’t share his mother’s distrust of outsiders.
“Prob’ly the only time I ever saw him put his foot down with Mama,” John said. “None of my brothers and sisters could understand why me and Jack were friends or why I liked going over there. But you know how his family was—his mama ’specially. About every other week, I had to remind that sweet lady I wasn’t her kid.”
“Well, when you’ve already got six . . .” Lila said. “I don’t know how on earth they fed everybody on that small farm, but they managed.”
It’s a lot harder when you don’t even own your land. He would never say that out loud because it wasn’t Lila’s fault. Or her daddy’s, really. And it would hurt her feelings.
“I just remember a lot of laughin’ around the table and in the fields,” John said. “That was the happiest bunch of folks I ever saw. So different from our family.”
Lila nodded. “It took me awhile to get used to all their teasing and carrying on, but once I did—oh my goodness, we had some good times over there.”
John remembered when Jack had first worked up the nerve to ask Lila out. They were all still teenagers back then. He had fallen hard for her and started saving for an engagement ring after their first date.
To John, Lila had always been a puzzle. Her daddy was one of the richest men in the state, yet she didn’t have an uppity bone in her body—or a selfish one. Never had. Now that he thought about it, she was probably one of the kindest people he had ever met. The two of them had rarely spoken without Jack in the room, and John had been anxious about coming here. Talking to Lila was easier than he had imagined it would be, but the two of them were still circling each other, not quite sure how to face the questions they needed to answer together.
“How’s the front porch holdin’ up?” he asked.
“You do good work.” She smiled. “I take care of all my serious thinking in that swing.”
When Jack and Lila first married, John had helped them restore their old farmhouse, adding a deep wraparound porch and building them a swing as a wedding present. As the men hammered and nailed, Lila worked on her cooking skills. Every afternoon she would put down her paintbrushes, take out a thick cookbook that the church hostesses had given to her as a wedding present, and attempt something new. Up until then, John had never even seen a shrimp, but when Lila got to the seafood section of her cookbook, he and Jack had to eat shrimp five different ways in one week.
Lila pushed a plate filled with tea cakes in his direction.
“These got shrimp in ’em?” he asked.
“I’m never gonna live down shrimp week, am I?” She laughed as he took a tea cake from the plate.
He looked out at the rain still pouring down. “Hard rain always makes me think of Jack. I used to go to worryin’ whenever the fields stayed wet too long, but he would tell me that a wet field is just an invitation to fish. I miss the way he could turn things around like that. Seen Pete do it a couple of times . . . Sure wish things coulda been different—for all of us.”
“I know. Me too.” After a long silence, she looked at him with a straight face and said, “You know, not many women could beat me at frying catfish, but your Lottie came close.”
John had to laugh. “Man, Lila, your catfish was awful.”
Lila laughed with him. “My secret was cold grease. I can just see Lottie spreading newspaper over y’all’s kitchen table and dumping out a mountain of the lightest catfish in the whole world. Now, that girl could cook.”
“Prob’ly the only reason her sorry daddy didn’t put her out of the house before I came along.”
John had never thought about it before, but it was a remarkable thing that Lila, with her mahogany china cabinets filled with fine dishes and linens, had come to Lottie’s table with Jack and eaten fried catfish off newspaper like it was the most natural thing in the world. Lila had an easy grace about her, and to her credit, she had done everything she could to make his wife feel comfortable. But Lottie would always come away from their visits feeling—what was it she used to say—“a little lost.” And John loved her too much to watch her go through that again and again.
“You’re making the only choice you can, my friend.” That was what Jack had said when John struggled to apologize for letting go of their friendship. He had felt some relief to know that Isaac Reynolds had become a friend and a help to Jack—took away some of the guilt he felt. But now nobody had any idea what had become of that man. If Jack were here, he’d be out looking for him. That’s just how he was.
It was Jack who had found a doctor for Lottie when she got so bad. And then a year later, he was gone too. No one noticed when John slipped into the back of the church the day of the funeral. And no one saw him slip out midway through, when the weight of his loss overcame him and he had to flee First Baptist for the seclusion of the woods.
“I guess we both know what’s coming for these kids of ours,” Lila said, finally broaching the subject they had been talking all around. “Pete hasn’t been able to focus a thought or complete a sentence since Saturday night, so I think it’s safe to say he’s got it bad. If things keep moving in this direction, they’re bound for the altar as surely as any pair I’ve ever seen.”
John looked up from his coffee and asked her straight on, “How you feel about that, Lila?”
“Sometimes I wish they’d give themselves time to date around a little, just to make sure. Then again, Pete could go out with every girl at that high school and never find anybody better to walk through life with. And I honestly think the sight of Dovey with another boy would do him in. He might have to be hospitalized.”
John smiled as she went on.
“I seem to remember making up my mind about Jack the first time I danced with him, and we weren’t that much older than they are now. Sometimes two people just know. What do you think?”
“Jack would be proud of how you’ve raised Pete. And I know the boy really cares for Dovey or he never coulda faced me like he did after that dance.”
“They’re just so young,” Lila said. “There’ll be the draft to contend with when he turns eighteen. I’ve been trying to talk him into at least thinking about college so they’d have some options down the road, but he swears he wants to farm.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“Who knows? You of all people remember how Jack was, and Pete’s just like him. He might truly want to grow cotton, but then again, he might just be saying that because he’s worried about leaving me alone or taking Dovey too far away from you or disappointing his granddaddy. He’ll do whatever he thinks he has to, just to make everybody else happy. About the only thing besides farming that he’s shown any interest in is the woodwork you’ve been teaching him. I’ve heard about every power tool in that shop of yours, by the way. You still selling pieces to a dealer in Birmingham?”
He nodded.
“And Miss Paul still has no idea you’re chasing mammon in Sodom and Gomorrah?”
John smiled. “You’re a meddlesome woman, Lila.” He sat there quietly for a minute before raising the next question that had troubled him. “If Pete does decide on college, would you want him to finish before . . . before he and Dovey . . .”
“Before they get married? Are you kidding me? We’ll be lucky to hold them off till he gets home from school this afternoon.”
&nbs
p; “Maybe me and my Remington can be of some help in that area.”
“Keep it prominently displayed at all times.”
“I wanna thank you for spendin’ time with Dovey—teachin’ her things,” he said. “She’s at that age where I don’t know what she—I mean, I just don’t want her to be afraid—Lottie never could get past it, and it was so hard for her.”
“She did the best she could, John—we all did. We were kids ourselves back then.” Lila took a long sip of her coffee. “Listen, there’s one other thing, and I want you to just hear me out before you say no. I talked this over with Daddy, and we think he should deed that land on the river to your family.”
“Now, Lila, we ain’t takin’—”
“Wait, now, before you decide. First of all, you’re not taking anything. You’ve earned it. And second, I mean, think about it—anything else would be awkward for Pete and Dovey. Business needs to be business and family needs to be family, but the two will be all crossed up for our kids if we keep things the way they are with that land. Y’all have worked it for years, and you ought to have it. Daddy’s already had the papers drawn up. He just needs to know whose name to put on the deed. And as for the equipment, you can trade Daddy some cotton and keep using his or keep all the cotton and buy tractors and a picker someplace else. That’s up to you. Miss Paul, I imagine, won’t go along with this. So should it be your name on the deed?”
He ran his fingertips around the rim of his coffee cup while he thought about what Lila was saying. She was right and he knew it. If things stayed the way they were, then one day—maybe not tomorrow, but one day—he and his brothers would be working for his son-in-law. That would be more than their pride could stand. And seeing their pride hurt would be more than Dovey could stand. Still, his mother would declare it charity and throw an unholy fit. But he would just have to take that as it came, for Dovey’s sake.
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