“There, you see, he ain’t deaf. So just chat with a normal voice is all.”
“Well, how in the world will I know he’s a hearing me?”
“Abel, can you blink?”
Abel blinked one eye, a wink.
“I reckon that will have to do. Are you hungry?”
Wink.
“Ma, why don’t you heat up that broth left over from cooking the chicken. Put some cornbread in it and make mush. I expect Abel can manage that. What do you say, Abel?”
Wink.
“There you go. So, Abel, you said some son of a bitch done you in, that right?”
Wink.
“You can stop talking that trash right this very minute, you hear?”
“Sorry, Ma. I’m just trying to keep him on track. But you can’t say who. That right?”
Wink. Smile.
“Did he say anything to you? Oh shoot. We have to figure out how to tell a yes, from a no. Okay. Abel, one blink for yes, two for no. Okay?”
Wink.
“So, a voice?”
Wink, wink.
“Shoot.”
Addie returned with a bowl of mush. “You leave him be for a while. I think he wants to eat now. You do, don’t you, son?”
Wink.
The evening wore on to nightfall. Abel ate nearly all of the broth/cornbread mix. His winking turned to blinking. “He’s using both his eyes,” Addie sounded like Abel had just discovered Radium. An hour after sundown, Abel’s eyes began to flutter.
“What’s he trying to say?”
“Ma, that ain’t him trying to talk. I think he’s falling asleep. All his trying to answer questions has wore him out. You’re tuckered, ain’t you Abel?”
Blink.
“You ready to lie down again?”
Blink.
“Got both eyes working now. There you go. Here, I’ll help you get him back to bed. It’s probably a good thing if we all turned in. You ain’t had a real night’s sleep for days, Ma.”
“I am just fine.”
“And I am the King of England. You go to bed.”
“Jesse, about Saturday…”
“You just put that out of your mind, you hear? I didn’t make it all through the war just to come home and have some pup stick a knife in me, did I?”
“But—”
“No buts, Ma. Go lie down. Tomorrow you likely are going to be busted keeping up with Abel. You need to get your sleep.”
They managed to settle Abel in the bed near the stove. The fire was banked so it would spring to life in the morning with a few sticks of kindling. Addie went off to bed. Jesse checked on both of them a half hour later and they both slept like the dead. He blew out the lantern and found his way to bed as well. He did not, however, drop off to sleep. He had tomorrow, Friday, to finish this business or he’d need to decide what to do on Saturday. He couldn’t see any good news looming up on his horizon.
***
The sun leaked through his window. He must have dropped off to sleep. That was the thing about sleep: you only remembered the times you were awake. He could have sworn he hadn’t slept at all, but here he was, surprised by the sunlight. He shuffled out into the main room. Abel had managed to sit up in his bed. He smiled at the sight of his brother.
“Hey there, Abel. You are looking pretty perky this morning. What you got to say for yourself?”
“Unh…Sorr…ee.”
“You spoke another word. Ma. Where’s Ma at? She needs to hear this. Ma!”
A sleepy and unsteady Addie walked in. “Land sakes, what time is it? I must have slept in. I ain’t been this late rousing in thirty years. What are you hollering about, Jesse?”
“He talked again. Something new.”
Who talked?”
“Who do you think? Abel did.”
“No.”
“He did. Abel, say hi to your Ma.”
“Mmmmmmm.”
“Well. That’s close enough for now. Ma, Abel needs breakfast. Don’t you?”
“Jez…?”
“Yeah, what Abel?”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry about what?”
“Nnn…node.”
“What? You mean the note you got that was meant for me. Hey, I’m the one who should be sorry. I should have been here, not running all over creation trying to make me some money.”
“What you mean, make yourself some money? What are you up to, Jesse? It better not be no swindle.”
“Relax, Ma. You know me better’n that. I am only going to sell some timber rights on some land I got ahold of. It is all on the square, I promise. Hey, Abel, what do you think? You and me in the timber business?”
Addie pulled a face. “Well, I don’t like it.”
“What don’t you like, Ma?”
“Easy money is always got a problem stuck on it like a pig’s tail, all crookedy.”
“I promise you, this is four square, straight up honest,”
“Humph. Abel, you ready to eat?”
“Jez, din mean to get inna way.”
“Hush that talk up right now. You did what you thought you had to do. I am proud of you. You want to make up for anything, you get your lazy rear end up out of that bed and help me sort out the mess we got ourselves into.”
Abel smiled, stronger than the night before, and some life seemed to come into his eyes.
“I believe the boy is going to make it, Ma. I really do.”
“You get yourself out of the way and let me stir up the fire and cook us up some breakfast. Hand me that side of bacon. You go grind us up some coffee beans and get the jug down off the shelf. Abel is in need of a pick-me-up, ain’t you, Abel?”
***
Jesse spent the morning visiting and revisiting the places where people had been killed or nearly so. He particularly wanted to go over the ground where Jake had been nearly hanged. Something about that night gnawed at him and he couldn’t figure out why. Sam Knox told him Jake had an empty jug when they caught him. That made sense since Serena confessed that her brother poached hooch. But one jug? This far over on the west side of the mountain and he only had one? Anse, Sam, Little Tom, and the two Crother boys were likkered up that night. Where did they get ahold of all that drinking whiskey? Everybody knew those boys couldn’t raise two bits between the five of them. Where’d they come up with two dollars for a jug, maybe four for two? All this made you think that they were into something more than their usual mischief before they took on Jake. Unless…unless Jake stashed his jugs between poaching and collected them after he got done. That would be the safe thing to do. If he got caught with one, who’d say anything? But if he was lugging four or five, maybe more…. that’d be enough evidence to get himself shot. If those boys had come across his stash…or…Or they could be trading hooch for showing him the locations of the McAdoo stills. Hadn’t he found Sam Knox halfway to a liquid hell with a jug when he went to talk to him? He needed to have another talk with Sam. He needed to find out everything they were up to that night and Sam needed to know, if he already didn’t already, that if Little Tom could be killed for what he knew, so could Sam. That went for the Crother boys, too.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Jesse had some hard looks sent his way when he went over to the east side to look at where Albert Lebrun died. No matter what he said or what the court decided, folks still reckoned he was the man who had put a knife in Albert. The only reason someone didn’t shoot him on the spot this very minute was because John Henry Lebrun had put in a prior claim to do him in and the rest of that clan was willing to honor it. If John Henry didn’t get it done, another Lebrun or two would step up and that would go on, one after another until Jesse ended up in a grave somewhere. There would be no end to it until one of two things happened—everybody died or he found a way to set them all of
f on a different course.
Jesse did not linger long at the spot. He inspected the place where Albert fell, turned halfway around and stared in the bushes. He turned back and took four steps and spent a minute kicking at the ground with his toe and then took himself back to the friendly side of the mountain. He breathed a whole lot easier when he could see Big Tom’s place through the trees.
In the daylight, the area where Little Tom had been shot seemed noticeably different. It had been disturbed the most. That surprised Jesse. You would have thought that the area where Albert died would have been disturbed the most. After all, the Lebruns had called in the police. Sheriff Franklin and his deputies would have bumbled around and trampled all over it. Yet, here, where only Jesse and the McAdoos had been, it looked like a pair of mountain lions had fought over who got to mate with the lady cat. It looked like somebody might have come out here and deliberately scuffed his feet through the leaves to scramble any attempt to reconstruct what happened.
If he’d a mind to destroy evidence, he came up short on his exit. Jesse easily picked up the path the killer took when he ran off. In the pitch black that night was, with hardly any moon and all, a person would have the Devil’s own time not leaving a trail behind him when he went crashing through the forest. Sure enough, Jesse didn’t have to be one of the local Cherokee Indian guides that the swells from the city hired to show them where the deer were hiding to follow the bent and broken branches on bushes and trees, shuffled leaves, and all the other signs that someone came through here in a hurry. Whoever pulled the gun on Little Tom had headed along here straight east ’til he hit a path. It happened to be one of the well-used and walked-on by a lot of folks because it connected the two sides of the mountain. He could only assume the killer kept heading east once he got to that point. It wasn’t a certainty, but a reasonable guess.
Walking the ground around Big Tom’s still didn’t turn up anything new. Jesse headed home.
***
Addie made fresh pone and brought a jug of buttermilk up from the spring where she kept the few items that would spoil in the heat. With winter coming, putting crocks in the spring wouldn’t be necessary much longer. Jesse’s Pa had built his wife a little box attached to the back wall that had a hinged door inside and out. All you had to do, if you wanted a jug of cream or something, was to open the little door and bring it in. You didn’t even have to put your shoes on or nothing. Once in a great while, the heat from the house wasn’t enough to keep the contents from freezing, but that didn’t happen too often.
Abel sat at the table with them. He didn’t say much and Jesse didn’t press him. His appetite had returned and he managed to wolf down as much by himself as Jesse and his mother combined. Addie poured coffee and they all pushed back.
“Why’d they hit me, Jesse? Were they mad ’cause I come in your place?”
“It wasn’t that, Abel. They tried to kill you ’cause they thought you were me.”
“They did? How’d they come by that? I don’t look nothing like you.”
“Your back was to them. Probably the sun was in their eyes, that time of day, but mostly, I think it was because you were wearing one of my Army coats that Ma put on you. I suppose they saw that and jumped straight to the notion that the person standing on the creekbank was me. I reckon there’s a jaw or two dropped when I turned up alive the next day. ”
“Holy Ned. Why’d they want to kill you? Wait a durn minute, you think a Lebrun come after you because you stabbed Albert Lebrun and they wanted to even it up?”
“Abel, an ocean or two has flowed under that bridge since you dropped off on your long nap. It might have been one of them, I ain’t saying it weren’t, but Lebruns as the Devil’s Disciples is currently off the table.”
“What?”
“A right smart lot of things happened lately. Little Tom’s been killed. We don’t know by who or why—”
“No! He was the one who give me the note for you. Is that why he’s dead?”
“Wait. Little Tom brought the note? Did he say where he got it?”
“I don’t remember exactly. I think he said one of the little kids over on the other side give it to him. Hey, maybe it was one of them whose footprints we saw.”
“Yeah, maybe. But that don’t explain why he’s dead.”
“Well, shoot, I know why. He was the one who delivered a note that could of pointed out who killed Solomon.”
“No, that won’t wash, Abel. Like I said, things has moved mighty fast here lately. Big Tom has met with Garland Lebrun and they might have come to an understanding of sorts.”
“No, you’re pulling my leg. He is, ain’t he, Ma?”
“It ain’t my place to say. It don’t seem even natural, but that is what they’re saying.”
“It’s a true fact, brother. Also, me and John Henry didn’t have our set-to…not yet, anyway. It’s been crazy busy around here lately.”
“I don’t understand. You didn’t kill Albert like you said in the courthouse you didn’t?”
“That’s right. I am a great disappointment to the McAdoos generally, but no, I did not send Albert Lebrun to a cold and lonely grave. Because of that, the problem comes up, if I didn’t, who did? Nobody over here is claiming it and, for sure, nobody over there is, either.”
Abel slumped in his chair, his face darkened by a frown. “Little Tom is dead?”
“Yep. Someone shot him twice not two hundred yards from our front door.”
Addie patted her son on the wrist. “Abel, honey, you got enough to think about without worrying yourself with all this mess. You brother has got it in hand, ain’t you, Jesse? You’ll see. Everything is going to be alright. Ain’t that so?”
Jesse nodded and forced a smile and wished it were so. Unfortunately, as much as he tried, he didn’t see a rosy end to this particular story. He wished he could at least put one or two of the puzzle pieces together. That’s how it is with jigsaw puzzles. You had to get something started before anything looked like it was supposed to. He excused himself and wandered into his bedroom. Unless he had himself a miracle, tomorrow he would go up against John Henry. Would the state policeman show? Was Bradford having him on about that? If he did show up, what would he do? What could he do? Would he be brave enough to step in between a few dozen armed and angry Lebruns and McAdoos and try to stop it? If he had the sense of a bumble bee he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t last ten seconds if he did.
Jesse pulled the box of his old Army equipment out from under his bed. One of the Limeys he’d run into showed him his Dayfield Shield, a little vest that had metal plates sewed in it. Jesse wished he’d managed to talk the Englishman out of it when he’d had a chance. He heard later that the Brit was killed anyway when a bullet slid in between the plates. Bad luck, that was. He grabbed a few items, his sharpening stone, and leather strop and walked into the woods. Tomorrow was coming and there was nothing he could do about it except be prepared. He took a swipe at a sapling and severed its spindly trunk in one clean cut. It toppled gently into the leaves and rolled a foot or two away. He paused and turned back to stare at the fallen tree, then smiled, and resumed his walking. Things could be worse. Not much, but some.
Chapter Thirty-eight
The view from the top of Buffalo Mountain is considered one of the better if not the best in that corner of Virginia. Jesse might have agreed, but the mountain was his home and the view, as with everything else there, just an everyday thing. In any case, it was the last thing on his mind that evening. He had come to reconnoiter. Only a fool fought on ground he didn’t know intimately. Too many generals raised up in places like Kansas or Ohio found that out to their sorrow in the war. The funny thing about it; you’d have thought the French would have had a better handle on the ground than they did. Apparently the success in Verdun convinced them they didn’t need to do any more scouting. Anyway, the one piece of strategy Jesse had learned in that wa
r that he felt sure would help him in this one had to do with knowing the ground. In any fight, whether it involved clubs or howitzers, the person who held the high ground started with an important advantage.
He worked his way down to the creekbed he’d mentioned to Jake as the place he would meet John Henry. A trickle of water kept the bed damp and muddy. He climbed out of the creek and worked his way along its course. He searched for an area that was nearly flat. The high ground he wanted to keep at his back. That way, if he needed to, he could take it by retreating. John Henry would be so happy to see him back away, that he wouldn’t notice he’d lost that advantage. Jesse positioned himself in the spot he’d choose to stand the next day. He turned completely around, memorizing every feature of the land in the full three hundred and sixty degrees. Satisfied he’d done all he could, he trudged back up to the summit. The evening was fast upon him and the light was fading. He didn’t see the figure at the top until he’d nearly reached it. He didn’t realize it was Serena until he stood in front of her.
“What are you doing here, Serena?”
“Well, that ain’t much of a greeting. Where’d you lose your manners, Jesse?”
“There’s plenty of those who’ll tell you I never had any. I ask again, why are you here?”
“Unless you happen to be the owner of this particular piece of the mountain, it’s none of your business where I am or aim to be.”
“As you wish. I can see a chance for a polite social call is not going to happen.”
They stood side by side looking off to the west and the setting sun not saying a word.
“Temperature is dropping, Jesse. You could catch your death up here.”
“I don’t believe you just said that.”
“What? Why? Oh, no I didn’t mean it that way. I’m sorry.”
“I have this greatcoat the Army give me. I won’t freeze anytime soon. I can’t say the same for that flimsy shawl you’re hiding yourself in.”
“I am just fine and dandy right like I am.”
“If you say so.”
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