"Daddy—"
Shook her. "I asked you a question!"
"It's not—"
He backhanded her to the floor. "Did he put his filthy goddamn hands on—?"
"Yes! Many times! And I put my filthy goddamn hands on him too! I have his baby inside me, Daddy.” She stood and faced him, hands on her middle. "We’re going to have a baby and we are going to be married. I love him, and that is it. We are going to leave this town and we are going to get married and be happy. I'm sorry, Daddy. I didn't plan it this way, but this is the way it happened."
He took it like a chest full of birdshot. He had to swing his arm out to the doorjamb to keep from stumbling backwards into the hall, and still it took Jonas and Gomer to keep him from falling over the banister. Geshen was still dumbstruck, his jaw hanging slack, and was no use to anyone any more.
“Where is he?” her father asked when he was on his own two feet again. The voice sounded like hot flames rising through rough pipes.
“Daddy.”
“Where is he?” he said again. He slapped her again. His voice shook the lamps and windows. “Is he coming here?” And again. “You meeting him in town?” And Again. “Or that shack in Jonas’s woods, where you been fucking him?” And twice more.
He stopped. He stood straight over her, panting. “Come on, boys. Let’s go find him. Gomer, you stay right here. Right here inside the house. And if she takes one step out the door, you give her the back end of that rifle a yours. And if you see that Donnan boy, turn it around and use it the right way.”
And Flora, crying, bleeding from her lip and nose, could only watch them leave.
It was five-fifteen.
*
Tommy went south from his home. There were two routes for him to take to Flora’s house from his house. One was the farm road, due east then due south, which turned into the highroad just north of the mayor’s house. This was the busier route, and Tommy didn’t want to see any cars. After what he said to Geshen—after telling him, in so many words, their plan to leave today, there was a good chance one or more of those cars would have in it some men who were looking for Tommy. The route Tommy took was through the field roads, due south then due east; but he had not gone a half a mile before he was cursing this decision.
Sonnet did not like the lightning, liked the thunder even less. It took all his sweetness and a good part of his horse handling that was not sweet to get her to pull that buggy. Add to this they left the twin elms and headed straight into the coming storm. Sonnet was battling the thunder and lightning, the headwinds and the sight of the monstrous, black bubbling sky in front of her, and she was nearly impossible to drive. The roads were mudded from the first storm, causing the wheels of the buggy to slew from one side of the road to other, doubling the poor filly’s troubles. Twice the wagon fishtailed so badly it went nearly perpendicular to the horse, which did bring the entire rig to a stop. Tommy had to both times leap from the seat, pull Sonnet by the bridle until the back wheels were free from the mud, climb back in and snap the reins violently against her back.
Every time the buggy went off the road, every time a flash of lightning nearly halted her hooves in the mud, Tommy cursed into the winds. Checked his watch. Cursed inwardly, and much more vilely.
Where two field roads met and crossed, Tommy drew hard on the reins, pulling Sonnet’s head sharply to the left. The two wheels of the buggy on that side came well off the road and spun mud in all directions; only the wind from the southwest kept it from turning all the way over. The wheels came down into the mud again and the entire rig was swept forward by the strong tailwinds. Tommy put the lines in one hand, used the other to pull the watch from his pocket. In his jouncing, rattling vision, he thought it read five-forty-five. By taking the field roads he had turned a fifteen minute distance into a forty minute trip, and this was cause for him to nearly explode with desperation.
Oh Flora, please wait for me, he thought, holding the reins with white-knuckled hands. I will take you from that house forever if you will just wait for me.
28.
A thrill rattled through Millie upon making the telephone call to the mayor’s house. She heard the tingling through the line and re-hung the mouthpiece, confident she had closed the line before a second ring. She backed away from the telephone, the counter, that entire part of the lobby, until she was standing in the middle of the rug among the old furniture, staring at the telephone as if it had shocked her.
The room was quieter now than any quiet she had ever heard in her life. Rosie's dusting made little wispy sounds; the other one's brush made mousy scratches on the wood floor. There were day-tired murmurs from the kitchen, including Mrs. Helmcamp's. From the street there was almost no sound at all, a car here, a voice there, and everything else was swallowed up by the wind.
The telephone's bell then rang out into the room, causing Millie to jounce inside her shoes. Mrs. Helmcamp banged open the swinging kitchen door, entered the counter area of the lobby wiping her hands on her apron. Millie's heart could still be heard in her ears when Mrs. Helmcamp took the 'phone from the counter.
"Old Price Hotel."
She listened.
"Yes, Darlene, put him through. Yes. Hello? Hello, Mayor. Yes, I can hear you fine. What can I do for you?"
Her eyebrows cinched inward toward the bridge of her nose as she listened.
"A 'phone call from here? When, did you say?" She looked to the Indian women; they had stopped working and were returning the looks she gave them without a trace of guilt. "I don't think so, Abner. My girls would have no reason to call out there."
She listened again, this time with her chin in between in her collarbones. "Darlene said that? That it came from here? A female voice?" She had been shaking her head slightly as she spoke, but now she stopped. Her eyes found Millie standing backlit in the window. "Hung up before your mother answered. My goodness, is she okay? Good, good. Okay. Yes, that's awful strange. Yes, sir, I will."
She replaced the ear piece to the telephone, the telephone to the desk. She stood with her hand on the front desk thinking, but only for a moment. "Mr. Sterno was out to the mayor's house. He went into the house through a window, stole some stuff of theirs, then tried to attack old Mrs. Greentree, or so the mayor says. The mayor is awful mad. He's coming here himself to see which one of my girls telephoned out there. He thinks whoever did it, did it to warn Mr. Sterno the mayor was on his way home." With slow, thoughtful movements, Mrs. Helmcamp re-tied her apron. "It's going to be Rosie," she said. "Mr. Sterno paid her five dollars to do it; she didn't know any better." The Indian woman with the duster in her hand nodded, but showed no sign of emotion. “I don’t know why I’m doing this for you, Miss Donnan. I’m likely to get into a heap of trouble. I think you remind me of me, when I was just a little sprig in a bonnet. Now get on home to your parents. And if you see a car, get off the road. Don’t take any chances. Goodness, I hope Charlie is on his way back to St. Louis. "
In less than ten seconds the sound of an army of rats in retreat could be heard on Main Street.
*
Millie took field roads to avoid Mayor Greentree’s house on the highroad, caught the farm road after the turn where Mr. Sterno had found Tommy’s watch. She was battling with her bicycle in one of the dry wagon ruts with the twin elms in sight when she heard a car come around the turn in the road behind her. She yanked the handlebars and stomped the foot pedal, wresting the bicycle out of the rut and off the road altogether, into a field of tall rattling corn. She hid the bike off the foot path and found a place to hide herself. With a hand over her mouth, she listened.
The car sputtered and spat as it stopped. The brake was set, one of the doors opened, closed. Millie suddenly wished she had kept running, instead of hiding, for surely even in the swaying stalks whoever it was would hear her heart. She waited, breath held, while the person drew nearer. She could hear him pushing stalks aside. Could hear him breathing. Finally she saw the dark pants amid the stalks, the white shirt, not ten feet a
way. She closed her eyes now, and tried to vanish before she was seen.
“Mmm’llie,” she heard, and her head popped up. “Milmmli—oomph!” he tried again.
She was running before she stood. She went straight to him, flung her arms around him, buried her face into a shirt that still smelled like Tommy.
“You did good partner,” Mr. Sterno said, though she could barely understand him. “Yoom did dmmn gmmd.”
*
Junior was in the road, standing out in front of the elms at Donnan's gate. He had been on his way into town to find Millie. When he saw them, he waited for them to turn in through the gate, then followed. Sterno pulled up to the house and Millie stepped out of the car; Junior picked her up, held her close, staring hard at Sterno. Mr. and Mrs. Donnan stepped out onto the porch and were squinting into the wind when Sterno got out. Unlike Junior, they did not appear to understand at first that something was wrong.
Sterno said, "We got to hide this car away, Mr. Donnan, and we'd better get right to it," and Donnan got right to it.
They all went into the stables to help cover the car. When they had put a canvas over it they stood back. Mr. and Mrs. Donnan gravitated naturally toward each other, and Junior stood in a dark corner, watching.
“Someone sure done a job on you,” Donnan said. He tilted his head, squinted his eyes up to see what had happened to Sterno’s leg.
“I did this mostly to myself,” Sterno said. “But I did find this.” He opened his palm; the watch seemed to give off light in the dimness of the barn. They stepped forward to examine it, though Junior stayed in his dark corner. Millie had seen it in the car, during the short trip to the farm from where he had found her. She had not uttered a word since laying eyes on it.
“By God, that’s it, aint it, Mother? Aint that the one, Junior?” Mrs. Donnan gently took it from his hand. She held it up like a mirror, brought it close to her eyes. There was no victory, no satisfaction, no excitement whatsoever in this moment. There was sadness.
“It’s his,” she said. “Where did you find it?”
Sterno wasn’t sure if he should tell them just yet. Not only would it endanger them as long as the mayor and his men were loose, but he was a family friend, and they might just not want to hear it until there’s more proof: there were many ways the mayor could have come across the watch. He could’ve bought it, or someone could have delivered it to him. Maybe it was found by the road, after all, and recognized as the mayor’s property. So Sterno was still deciding whether or not to tell the family when Millie did his deciding for him.
“It was in that shit-blasted mayor’s house.”
The Donnans had not been expecting this. They seemed dazed, unable to react. “Abner’s house,” Mrs. Donnan said finally. “Well, I don’t…how did he…?”
Millie answered: “Miss Flora gave that watch to Tommy last spring, and she told him in the letters that even though it was really hers, she had had to steal it away from her daddy to give it to him. Now that sonbitch got it back, just like he got his daughter back, and there’s only one way he could get either one of them back.”
There was a moment for all to think about this before Mrs. Donnan asked the question that had been too heavy on the tip of Sterno’s tongue to say aloud.
“What letters?”
*
They walked in an Indian line to the barn, one by one took the ladder to the mow, Millie, Sterno, Mr. and Mrs. Donnan, and lastly Junior. Millie stood at the trap helping them in—helping Mrs. Donnan in last of all. The entire floor of the mow was an array of neatly placed letters and little stubs of white wax. They stood aside, backs to the walls, to let Millie pass. Without a word she began to light the candles. After the second was burning, Sterno helped her; soon they were all lighting candles. Millie stood in front of her display. Marnie stood next to her, gently soothing down her daughter's hair.
"They was in his buggy. I found them on the day of the funeral. The letters she wrote to him was in his trunk."
Sterno knelt over the first few, picked one up one of them. "'Were,'" he said under his breath as he read.
“I promised him I would never tell anyone. But I don’t know what else to do.”
She read with him, over his shoulder, offered salt and pepper to the meat in his hands, though what was in his hands did not need any more spice than it already had. These were the sopping letters of two persons whose emotion for the other was too great for the flesh, blood and bone that kept them. This was an extraordinary and alien love in a barren world, a barren time. A once in a lifetime love, a love according to storybooks and dreams that by mistake had found its way to these two little hearts. And these kids seized onto this chance they had been given. They took hold of this chalice already running over the sides, held it in the air over their heads and gave it a big swirl, so that the whole countryside would be washed in it too.
Or stained in it.
When he had finished a letter, he would hand it to Mrs. Donnan, who would read it and in turn pass it to her husband, who’d look over it with Junior. Sterno did not look up from the words. In his head, he saw the young lovers' relationship unfold from the college and the fall of '21 to the spring of '22 on a timeline parallel to the events concerning Greentree and McMurray Oil. He felt the pressure of the town, even the county, riding on the mayor's shoulders. The building pressure of promises to keep. He felt the pull of greed picking him up and carrying him away. He felt the cold, sharp decision making of old man McMurray, cutting his new baby off in mid-dangle, not caring about where he fell. Bankruptcy. Humiliation. Shame in front of his friends, family and constituency. Sterno kept reading, saw the red anger that resides in the heart of a bigot, rising to Greentree's face, his mouth, his hands, his words and his actions. Then came Valentine's Day…what did Tommy see? Sterno had a good idea from the letter, and from old Mr. Price, but had Tommy really known what he saw? Did he see anything at all? Enough to get him killed? How much had the daughter known?
Millie was leaning into his arm, reading with him. “How much of this did you see personally?” he asked.
She looked to Junior, and from the look he returned to her she knew she had to tell the truth. “Some in the beginning—that shed in the woods. I used to sneak out after him. At night. When it got closer to the day they were going to leave, he kept me away."
"Kept you away."
"He told me to stay away from him. Started sneaking around even more. Wouldn't go nowhere with me," she said.
"'Anywhere,'" Mrs. Donnan said.
"Now you know why he did that. He did it to keep you out of danger."
She nodded. "The day everything happened, he came home after that first thunderstorm with his shirt bloodied up. When you-all were in town. He had been in a another fist fight with Geshen Neuwald.”
“Over Miss Greentree?”
“Over Miss Flora,” Millie nodded. “They get—they got—into fist fights about once a year. Well, I asked him what was happening. That's when he told me he was leaving with her and they was going to get married. He asked me to help him with his trunk, when the time came. He said he was going to go get her right now—that's how he said it: 'I'm going for her right now.' We left the trunk in the buggy. He wanted the buggy to be light enough for Sonnet to pull it fast, then he was going to come back for his trunk. Then he left." She thought back, dropped her gaze into her lap. "Sonbitch. Damnit-all. Come to think of it, we never did say goodbye."
Sterno read on, both sides of the correspondence. With each letter the desperation grew, and Sterno felt a vice closing on the kids. Tighter and ever tighter, until they were squeezed.
Mrs. Donnan suddenly made a small noise and froze with her eyes wide as a thought came to her. “My Lord,” she said. “Oh my Lord in heaven, I’ll be right back.” She disappeared down the ladder. Millie opened the hay door to watch her mother run to the house. They stood awkwardly, waiting. Sterno heard the hound dog bark, then the screen door open and close again. When Mrs. Donnan appe
ared through the trap door, it was with an envelope in her hand. “This came in the mail last summer,” she said through her breathing.
Millie snatched it from her hand. “You’ve had this the whole time? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her voice had a smidgen of forgiving in it this time. “Milicent. Because I mind my own business, that is why. Also, I had no idea these other letters even existed, or that you were going through them. You shouldn’t have read those letters, Millie.”
Millie ripped it open. Scanned it, her jaw hanging open. When she was finished reading her jaw stayed hanging open. She spoke with a small, wet voice when she said, "It's dated May the fifth. May the fifth she wrote it... that means she didn't know he was dead yet."
Then she read, every word:
The Fredonia Methodist Home for the Feeble
Minded & Wayward Girls of Kansas
Route 39, Wilson Co., Ks.
My Sweet Love, May 5, 1922
“O woeful day!!!!!!”
I have been here three days and so they have allowed me a pencil and a piece of paper. I am sitting in this room they call mine staring out this window they also call mine waiting for you to come for us................It is gray, cold and quiet here like a mausoleum. That is fitting because I feel dead without you. I think it is the safest thing for me, to make myself dead inside until you come. So then I guess I don't mind being in a place that looks and feels like this............even with the sun shining and the flowers in bloom all around me, it is like a tomb. Is this what Juliet's "fool's paradise" looks like?
Already they have told me my time with the pencil is up. I have wasted too much time thinking and now I only have ten seconds. It is not them I blame; they have been told that I am crazy. They believe I will thrust this pencil into my throat and kill myself. They have not been totally lied to and they are not totally wrong, for if I were alive, I would be crazy. Just from waiting every second, every minute, every hour and day, I would be crazy......................But I am not alive. Not until you come for me, am I alive. I don't know how we missed each other on Saturday. The storm................It was a bad storm. Still, it seems impossible to me now. We were so close. I thought I saw you, Tommy. On the road. Was that you? It was supposed to be our escape, we were supposed to start our life together. But to where have I escaped? And, more importantly, where are you? I have been ordered to put my pencil down. Please, please come for me, Sweet Love. I will be waiting for you...........................
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