Beast of the Field

by Peter Jordan Drake

  "Oh yeah, and he's fond a crotches," Donnan said. “You walk slow enough he’ll give the other side the once-over, too. Come on now, we're letting the flies in."

  Inside the house everything was in silence and shadow. The sky, the sun, the wind stopped at the front door. They stood in a dining room where a table was heaped with food. There should have been light in there for that spread, a chandelier, candles, sunlight, but there was none. Mrs. Donnan entered the room from the kitchen, pulling some loose strands of hair back from her cheek, and although she was polite enough, she wasn’t exactly sunny either.

  Donnan cleared his throat. "Mother, say hi to Mr. Charlie Sterno. Mr. Sterno, say hi to my wife, Marnie Donnan."

  She moved slowly and looked sickly. The color in her cheeks was from the kitchen, but looked more like a fever than anything. She had big, wet, tired green eyes and long lashes set in bruises of sleeplessness that were like old boot leather. She wore the sun in her blanched, bunned-up hair, and wore it like it was a heavy hat.

  Her voice was heavy for her too, small as it was. "You'll need to wash up before you sit down?"

  "Yes ma'am."

  "Come with me. Call me Marnie."

  When they were at the dinner table, the size of the meal laid before him could be fully taken in. As slow as she moved, this must’ve been two-days’ work. In the center was a mound of fried chicken that from what Sterno could tell must have been three birds in the yard not too long ago. Mashed potatoes, green beans, fried okra, black-eyed peas, corn on the cob, tomatoes with black pepper and two baskets of biscuits made up the accompaniments to the chicken.

  "Sure is a lot of grub, ma’am. I do thank you."

  Donnan said, "Of course, out of manners, we expect you to eat every bite now, Mr. Sterno. Heck, just ribbin' you. The kids'll be along soon enough. One of 'em's an eater."

  At that moment a shadow swept up the porch to the front door. A dirty blonde girl in a dirty blonde dress swung open the screen door. The giant who removed his hat as he followed her inside took up the entire door frame. Sterno was just now beginning to understand what he’d seen back on that road.

  Donnan said. "Millie, say hi to Mr. Charlie Sterno, Pinkerton Detective, all the way from St. Louis, Missoura. He's the man checkin' into Tommy."

  "We saw you already, mister. Tell me, are you near-sighted? We waved and hollered and you just drove right past us like we were ghosts. Walked all the way there to say hello to you. It's goddamn humiliating." Her face flashed red going on purple as these last three words trailed off into the room.

  Sterno turned his chair to face her squarely; his expression did not change. “I saw you, young lady, I saw you. And let me ask you this, with all these highwaymen, desperate Indians and Okie bank robbers cruising these roads the way they do, you think it’s a good idea to go chasing down cars like a couple crazies escaped from the booby-hatch? You nearly scared me into turning around and heading home. I thought I’d driven right past Kansas, straight into Bedlam."

  Her eyes wandered to over his shoulder while she thought about this. "Well…" she started, “…I guess, if…” but could manage no more.

  Donnan slapped the table. "Well, hum a tune Mother, looks like our little soldier might-a met a match."

  A look from Mrs. Donnan. Silence again. She then said, with patience, "Milicent Margaret Donnan, please apologize to Mr. Sterno for your rude behavior, then march directly into that kitchen and wash up. You're lucky I don't wash your mouth out while you're in there."

  At the sound of her mother's voice, lines returned to the girl's forehead, her mouth became hard as stone.

  "This instant."

  She really had to force herself to do it. "Sorry, mister," she said, turning, then added, "But sonbitch, what a hell of a long walk for nothing."

  "Milicent!"

  Donnan wiped a chuckle from his mouth, flicked a finger to the big man. "This little tyke behind you is Braun Jr. 'Junior' works for him."

  "Charlie Sterno. Pleasure."

  "H-y," he said in a voice like someone teaching a bear how to talk.

  Sterno said, "You pretty near scared the life out of me back there. Of course, I couldn't see so well with the sun behind you."

  "H-y," he said again.

  "He means he's sorry. That's all you're going to get out-a Junior," Donnan said. “The war."

  "Braun," said Mrs. Donnan.

  "To be honest," he continued, "we aint exactly sure if he's saying 'hay,' like the stuff in our barn, or 'hey,' like, 'Hey, how'ya doing today, mister?'"

  "That's enough, Braun," Mrs. Donnan said. This time he listened to her.

  When Millie and Junior had returned from washing their hands and faces, Mrs. Donnan waited for everyone to be seated, said, "Let's say grace." Elbows on the table, hands folded at their foreheads, the Donnans mumbled a prayer to the Lord. There were forks in hands before the last Amen was done sounding off the walls.

  Save for the scraping of these forks on plates and teeth, dinner was silent. Sterno kept his eye on the mother. He couldn’t help it; there was a dark hole in the corner of his eye he kept seeing as he was trying to eat and each time he looked up it was her. She was in a black dress still. Cooking, cleaning, sleeping, dreaming, living in black. Sterno had seen a thousand mothers like this since the war, haunting the world with their thousand dead sons.

  Directly across from Sterno was the big man, Junior, they call him, like he was still in dresses. One of the baskets of biscuits was for him. He ate with two hands, one on the chicken and one on his fork. He never looked up and he never stopped eating until half the mound of fried chicken had become a pile of clean gray bones on his plate. There was something in his eyes that bothered Sterno, a vacancy that could be filled in any way. He was never comfortable around these shell-shocked types, who smiled a stupid smile at you all day then jerked awake from a trench dream that night to snap your neck. He’d seen it before.

  Donnan, the senior, ate well too, but steadily, and quietly, now and again wiping his fingers on the napkin tucked into his shirt. He flattened his mouth at Sterno a couple times, which seemed to be all the smile he was allowed indoors. Once he asked his daughter for the buttermilk, once the big man for the salt; other than this he kept his eyes on his plate.

  Then there was the girl. Throughout the dinner, as Sterno had watched the family, a pair of eyes had been watching him in kind. She didn’t touch her food, didn’t say a word, did nothing, in fact, except watch Sterno. Measuring him up. Despite this, he thought, she’s the exception. She’s the only one wants you here.

  Truth was, none of them wanted him here, and he knew it. Sterno had seen this before too: blame, anger, guilt, grief—wounds re-opened and fresh with the arrival of a detective. Suddenly, the death was alive again, right here in the room, sitting with them in a chair where the living used to sit. This was what they thought they had wanted all this time; now they got it and they were not so sure anymore if they wanted to re-live this pain again or just let the dead lie.

  He’d seen it a thousand times.

  3.

  After dinner, Mother made Millie work with her in the kitchen while the men smoked on the front porch. Her dropping a coffee cup and chipping a plate didn’t make any difference to Mother: she felt there was a time for a woman to do what only a woman could do well and leave the men to their matters. “Well, horseshit,” said Millie, under her breath; but she waited until Mother was on her way upstairs before she said it. When she heard her mount the final creaking stair, she hung her apron, grabbed Tommy’s boots from their place by the back door and slid quietly outside. She went around the back corner of the house, into and through a tunnel she’d made through Grandmother’s old lilac bush until she was at the front corner of the house, peering through dried, wilted little leaves at the conversation on the porch.

  Closest to her sat Pa, rocking like he was trying to start a fire with the floorboards and the runners of his chair. Junior stood on the far end of the porch, looking
the other way, out to the fields, thank God, or he’d see her for sure. In the middle was this Mr. Sterno, this so-called “detective” from Missouri. Blind as a bat, can’t drive for shit and scared of a twelve-year-old girl and a farm boy who can’t talk, coming out to him just to say hi. Some detective they sent us, Millie thought. Little chance of this palooka finding out who killed Tommy, she thought. And here was Pa, running off at the mouth like they were old pals now he finally had a grown man around to talk to.

  “…Never did know who gave him that watch,” he was saying, “some gal I reckon. Tommy always had a gal or two treatin’ him nice. I’ll tell ya. Sure was a nice one they got off with. A Elgin watch. A shiny silver watch, nice silver chain.”

  The Pinkerton wrote in a pad. Smoked. “So that was all that was missing, far as you know. The watch and the billfold.”

  “Well, far as we know. These thing’s might-a been fount on the road and carried off. Or, if it was bandits, they might-a known Tommy carried cash on him most of the time and took these things from him right there when they did it.”

  “Cash.”

  “Well, he worked at the stables, in town. But what I’m talking about is his winnings, mostly. From racin’.”

  "Right. Your letter said he raced buggies," said the detective.

  "Mother’s letter. Yessir. He never took to motor-cars. Ever-now and then he would get into a saddle. He was just as good in a saddle as he was in a buggy. He was just plain great with horses, breaking 'em, training 'em, running 'em, you name it, best I ever seen—some folks are born that-a way. But I'd say Tommy's favorite kind of racing was right out here on these dirt roads, where he could get that horse a his up to a full cut. His buggy’s out in the barn, we haven’t touched it since it happened. Tomorrow we can pull it out for you, if you like—too dark now. Hell, it aint nothing but a courting rig, four wheels and a seat. Then he got this new race horse of his—Sonnet, a filly—and damned near gave up on trotting. He was using it that night though, the buggy that is, I reckon to take some gal to the dance—there was the Mayfair dance that night."

  The men smoked, rocked. The last time she saw Tommy alive he was on that buggy, snapping the reins against Sonnet’s flanks, that black thunderhead high in the sky to the southwest, the wind kicking up dirt all around him until he vanished in it.

  "Hard to imagine a buggy racer, so good with horses, falling off his rig like he did,” said the detective finally.

  Millie perked up her ears.

  “…I’ve heard of these guys letting go of the lines, doing backflips and landing ass-on-seat and reins-in-hand."

  Millie frowned. Maybe there’s a tiny little chance you aint as dumb as you look, she thought. She had seen Tommy do a handstand while holding the reins, seen him jump from the buggy to the horse and back. Probably this so-called detective had heard this about Tommy, and said it to sound smart. Sneaky St. Louis sonbitch.

  “That was Tommy,” Pa said. “That was sure’nough Tommy.”

  “So then…how did he fall?”

  Pa thought some. "Pitched forward, I reckon, got hung up underneath. They say in town the horse spooked—that big old twister come through that night, ruined the dance, you can bet, carried away some houses. Maybe you heard about it. No? Well, any rate, come morning we got that filly out at the gate, still in the harness. Abner—that's Mayor Greentree, there in town—he'll tell you all about it. Go find him tomorrow, an old friend of ours. Practically family. Been with us the whole way. Was there that very afternoon, with the whole town blown to smithereens by a twister, and he come out to look in on Mother.”

  “So where did you find him? Your son.”

  “Under the buggy. Dead. Got hung up when he fell. Hell, that horse probably dragged him all over half of creation on that bumpy, good-for-shit road yonder,” Pa said, then paused. Millie heard the tinny slosh of a flask, looked to see him handing it back to the detective. Pa didn’t carry a flask, so that meant this blind, can’t-drive-for-shit-all Pinkerton detective from Missouri was a drunk too. Pa started up again. “I guest I knew right away, right there on the porch I knew. But Mother was panicked—rushed me out there to look. Welp, there's one sight I wisht I could forget, tell you that. We never did let Mother get a good look, thank God for that. Junior wouldn’t look either. But there was no stopping the girl—she came right on out with me."

  From the house she had only been able to see the horse at first, lifting its head from the hard grass outside the gate to look to the house, chewing, ears flicking. Pa thumbed his suspenders onto his shoulders, told everyone else to stay inside, started out there in a fast jerky hobble without his walking stick. He slowed down when he saw the buggy behind the horse, stopped when he saw there was no driver in it, bent with his hands on his knees when he saw what was under the buggy. Millie walked right up next to Pa, staring down like he was; all he did was rest a hand on her shoulder. She had thought at first he was resting a hand on her shoulder anyway, but actually it had been her shoulder holding him up.

  Now Mother opened the screen door, stepped past Pa, Junior and the detective. She stood on the porch looking around the front yard.

  Pa said, “We aint seen her, Mother.”

  Mother ignored him. She looked out the fields, then at the barn, then gave it up. Sighing, she turned to the detective and said, “I’ve prepared Tommy’s room for you, Mr. Sterno. I suppose after that long drive, you’re ready for a good rest.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the detective said, standing.

  Well I’ll be a—Millie quickly thought, then she was gone. Backwards through the lilac tunnel, up the trunk of the old elm next to the house, along the stump of the bough Pa and Junior had sawed off last summer and across the roof to Tommy’s window. She used a twig to unlatch the screen, stepped through. The lamp was on and the bed turned down.

  Well well well, you too, huh Mother?

  Mother had known good and goddamn well there was no way Millie would’ve ever let this near-sighted sad-sack of a detective from Missouri stink up Tommy’s sheets with his whisky breath, if she had known that was what Mother had planned, so she had never even told her that this was her intention.

  “A bunch of shit-blasted sneaks,” Millie muttered. Then, she said, still to herself, “The letters.”

  In Tommy’s trunk in the closet, under a few folded shirts and his big Shakespeare book, was a neat stack of envelopes, wrapped in a dainty pearl-colored handkerchief and bound with a dark green ribbon. Millie closed the trunk, stood with the letters—but not for long, for there were footsteps coming in the hallway. She was stepping through the window back out onto the roof when she heard Mother’s voice behind her. “Stop right there, young lady! What have you got in your hand? Milicent Margaret Donnan! Get back here! Millie!”

  But Millie was gone.

  *

  She spent the night in the mow. Sometime after the house had gone dark, Mother came out with a lantern. Hollering at Millie in a raspy whisper to get down out of there, get her behind in that house right now, start acting like a young lady instead of a spoiled child, for once; but all Mother could do was holler. Millie knew she would never come up to try to get her down, not after last time. So she stayed quiet until Mother ran her voice dry. “I’ll be waiting with the spatula when you come in for breakfast, young lady. You’re lucky we have company. What would your brother say?” was the last thing she said before sliding the bay door closed.

  Millie waited, listened, at last put a match to a candle. For several minutes she stared ahead without moving. She had no idea how long she was there with those letters in her lap. A long time. When the flame began to bounce on a stump of wax, Millie blinked back to the barn. She was surrounded by square bales. Below her were the heavy breaths and scuffing hooves of the livestock. A barn squirrel chattered from the darkness above her, then skittered away, leaving just the night noises from outside. Millie re-tied the ribbon around the stack of letters. Hidden on a cornice rafter above the top bale of the highest stac
k was a battered trilby hat; underneath the trilby was a wooden cigar box from a store in Wichita. In the box, among other personal knick-knacks, were Junior’s letters from the war. Millie opened the box, placed the bound letters inside, put the box back under the hat, climbed down.

  She put an eye to a crack between slats of the barn. The house was not completely dark, as she had thought. There was lamplight coming from Tommy’s room. She watched, but could see no movement against the curtains. Cursing weakly, she laid down on a horse blanket spread across two bales. She wanted to stay up to keep an eye on this detective, make sure he stayed out of Tommy’s trunk, and his other things; but if he was going into town in the morning, then so was she, and she would have to get up early.

  4.

  It seemed like half the farmers in Hope County were in town to see the Pinkerton man. Harvest time and wheat-drilling time and market day and these no-good loafers had nothing better to do than to come gawk at an out-of-towner.

  Millie had come out early in the morning on the old bicycle. She had had to be fast—gather the eggs, bring two pails of water in from the well, grab a hunk of bread and leftover coffee from the night before and get out of there before Mother came after her with the spatula. It had been a successful escape, a quick cut through the dusty field roads, directly south into town. She had had plenty of time to wait before everyone showed up.

  Pa led the Pinkerton man into town in his pick-up, with Mother in the passenger seat, her hair in a bun and one of Grandma’s silver clips clasped to the side of her head and wearing her white dress with the faded red flowers she hadn’t put on since the night of the Mayfair dance. Millie had forgotten how pretty she could look. She watched them from the filling station, careful not to be seen. She didn’t see Junior anywhere yet but knew he’d be out looking for her, same as she was sure half the reason Mother had come was to drag her back to the farm.