Allie's Moon

by Alexis Harrington

  Althea made her exit to the kitchen, anxious to get away. After tying on her apron, she went to the table and began cutting careful slices from a loaf of fresh bread. The rich smell of simmering beef soup filled the room.

  Olivia followed her to the stove and lifted the lid on the pot of soup Althea had made. “We could have a picnic on the grass tomorrow. Wouldn’t that be fun?” She looked up at Althea, her face suddenly full of excitement. “You could make little sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and potato salad and cake. Then afterward you could read aloud to me, just like when I was little, remember?”

  Althea walked to the stove and spooned some of the soup into a flowered tureen. “Not tomorrow, Olivia, maybe the day after. And I remember very well. But we’ll probably have to sit on the back porch.” She nodded in the general direction of the yard. “The grass is too tall and still too wet to sit on.”

  “Oh, is it? I hadn’t noticed.” Olivia glanced outside, and her face fell into sullen lines again. “Maybe the man you hired will cut it down for us when he comes out.”

  It didn’t happen all that often, but when Olivia got into the mopes she could be so trying. Of course, Althea supposed she couldn’t blame her sister; she had suffered from frail health off and on since her childhood. Father’s death had sent her into a frightening decline in which she had lingered for almost three years. Despite the fact that Dr. Brewster had never found a medical reason for what he dismissed as Olivia’s hysterical convulsions, Althea had not completely abandoned the hope that her sister might someday grow well enough to marry and lead an independent life. But deep in her heart, Althea didn’t believe that was likely to happen.

  Lane Smithfield hadn’t understood the depth of her devotion to Olivia when he’d come courting Althea. In fact, he’d once even confided to her that he doubted the seriousness of Olivia’s condition. Then one Saturday evening while the three of them sat at the dinner table, as if to prove him wrong, Olivia had suffered one of her spells. It had been a particularly severe and frightening event during which several dishes were broken and food was splattered on the walls.

  Althea never saw Lane again. Three months later she received an invitation to his wedding to Sarah Wilcott. Looking at the careful script that told the day and time, she felt her throat grow tight with discouragement.

  It hadn’t been that she cared about Lane. She hadn’t had a chance to begin caring about him. Their courtship had been so brief she wasn’t certain she could even call it a “courtship.”

  But what he had kindled in her heart was hope. Hope for a life beyond this crumbling house—hope to be someone other than Amos Ford’s daughter and Olivia Ford’s sister. He’d even brought her a small bouquet of wildflowers that she had later pressed in a book. It had very likely been the only bouquet she’d ever receive, and she wanted to remember it always.

  When she’d read the invitation, a part of her slipped away and she’d mourned its passing, weeping silently in the darkest part of the night. Any dreams Althea had held for herself were put to rest during those sleepless hours.

  Olivia had finally begun to improve again over the last few months, just about the time that Lane stopped courting Althea. She realized that it was only natural that her sister would want to get out more often now that she was feeling better.

  As for herself, Althea was grateful for the arrangement she had with Wickwire’s—twice a week Eli Wickwire sent his son out with deliveries of meat, eggs, milk, and other groceries. She was spared from having to go into Decker Prairie, and suffer the prying stares.

  She knew why they stared. It had all been her fault, and now she had Olivia to look after.

  Take care of your sister when I’m gone.

  Don’t let me down again, girl.

  Trying to shrug off the indictment that lay on her shoulders as heavy as a millstone, she finished making two small diamond-shaped sandwiches, mortared with raspberry jam. She didn’t care what other people thought, she told herself. She didn’t have time to worry about it. Her duty and responsibility were right here with Olivia, and Decker Prairie had done nothing to make her job easier.

  Getting the soup bowls from the cupboard, she caught her reflection in a small mirror that hung next to the back door. What she saw made her pause. Did her hair seem a bit more dull than it used to? And when had she lost the youthful roundness in her cheeks that she’d once had? Time seemed to have flown by, and yet, here on the Ford farm, it also had crawled to a stop while life and the rest of the world had gone about their business and passed her by. She’d had hopes and dreams for herself once, a yearning for a meaningful life. Now, though . . .

  Just as Althea put the soup and sandwiches on the dining room table, from the parlor she heard Beethoven’s gift to Elise commence again, this time with a much gentler touch. Maybe Olivia’s doldrums were gone.

  Althea ladled soup into the bowls and sighed.

  ~~*~*~*~~

  Long after Althea went to bed that night, she could hear her sister prowling around in her bedroom on the other side of the wall. She heard the sound of bureau drawers being opened and closed. The tread of slippered feet made the floor creak so softly, Althea could barely hear it over the sound of the rain outside. But she was aware of it, just the same.

  What Olivia did with her time this late at night, Althea couldn’t begin to guess. She had been withdrawn through dinner, but at least her disappointment about not going to town had diminished.

  Althea pulled her quilt closer to her chin, as much for comfort as for warmth. Maybe Olivia didn’t feel as keenly the curious stares and gossipy murmurs when she and Althea went to Decker Prairie. Even that dreadful Cooper Matthews had identified Althea as “one of them crazy Ford women.”

  Her hands clenched on the hem of the quilt and she gazed through the bedroom window at the cold while moon that showed its face from between silver-edged clouds.

  Crazy

  She’d heard it before.

  Insane

  Not right in the head.

  They were nasty little words and phrases that sat like spiders in the corner of people’s minds. It had started with her mother, long before that dark day all those years ago. And of course there had been speculation about Olivia since then. Why should she, Althea, hope to be excluded?

  What was that old saying?

  The fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree . . .

  She rolled over and tried to force the thoughts from her mind. Maybe that was often true, but not about her. She was positive about that.

  And it wasn’t true about Olivia. Her sister was just—childlike. Frail and childlike. Why couldn’t people understand that?

  ~~*~*~*~~

  Jefferson Hicks made his way down a rain-slick hillside and approached the split rail fence surrounding the barnyard. Although the sky had finally cleared, it was cold and damp. He hunched his shoulders against the night chill, wondering briefly where he’d left his coat. He thought he still owned one, but then again, he couldn’t be sure.

  Jeff Hicks was never sure of anything anymore.

  He proceeded as carefully as a man could who had just emerged from a two-day drunk. The world wasn’t quite steady yet, and the darkness didn’t help.

  When he touched the latch on the henhouse door, he stood there for a moment, gripping it to get his bearings. The wood beneath his fingers was weathered and rough, and his hand trembled, although not from nervousness. He’d done this a dozen times or more over the past two years. He wasn’t proud of the fact, but he’d gotten to be fairly good at it. At least he’d never been caught.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he looked at the farmhouse windows again. His hand tightened on the latch.

  The stink of the chicken coop nearly stifled him, and he wasn’t even inside yet. What was it about those damned birds, anyway? he wondered as he lifted the bar from its notch. Even the cleanest henhouse smelled like a full chamber pot under an August sun. As he inched open the door, the warm, fetid odor poured out and flowed o
ver him. His empty stomach lurched and his aching head throbbed harder. He turned his face away, waiting for his insides to settle down. Then he took a deep breath of clean, cool air and opened the door wide. After he stepped inside, the light breeze pushed it closed behind him.

  It was as dark as the east side of midnight in there. Working from memory—and he knew that wasn’t very reliable—he reached out and let his hand trail through straw and God knew what else, feeling for a nest box. An angry squawk and a hard, sharp peck on the back of his wrist told him he’d found what he was looking for.

  He plunged his fingers under the chicken and she let out a series of outraged clucks while he rooted through feathers and straw in search of his prize.

  “Shut up, you old bitch,” he whispered irritably. “You’re sitting on my breakfast. And quit pecking!” Finally his hand closed around a solitary warm, wet egg. He withdrew it and put it inside his shirt. After thinking about it for a moment, he stuck two fingers into his tight front pants pocket, pulled out a penny, his last, and shoved it under the chicken. The biddy set up a caterwauling that was loud enough to wake both the living and the dead.

  As if someone had rung a fire bell, a dog in the yard began yapping along with the chickens. Farley always kept his dog in the house at night. What was it doing outside? The animal apparently rushed to the henhouse because Jeff could hear the heavy, deep-chested woofs just outside, moving around the perimeter. The rest of the hens added their panicky cackling to the racket and flapped blindly around him. He backed up through the coop with his hand outstretched behind him, groping for the door.

  Oh, hell, that dog was probably standing on its hind legs with its front paws and full weight resting on Jeff’s only escape route. A clammy sweat broke out all over him that glued his dirty shirt to his body and inched over his scalp. He knew he was trapped. Fast thinking wasn’t one of Jeff’s more adroit abilities these days, but by God, if he couldn’t out-think a dog—

  Suddenly, the door flew open and glaring lantern light filled his field of vision. Jeff found himself staring down the double barrels of a shotgun.

  “Just hold it right there, mister!” At the other end of the weapon stood Farley Wright, half of his angry, weather-seamed face covered with shaving soap, the other half scraped clean. One strap of his suspenders looped down next to his leg and brushed against the head of his still-barking black-and-white sheep dog. “You stand right there now so’s I can get a look at you before I blow you to kingdom come!”

  Jeff took a couple of dragging steps forward, keeping his eyes on the shotgun, while the dog circled him and jumped at his feet. He wasn’t afraid to die—in fact, he didn’t care one way or the other if he lived. He’d just never expected to be shot for raiding a henhouse.

  The farmer raised his lantern and squinted at Jeff. After studying him closely, Farley lowered his shotgun a notch, then scowled.

  “Sheriff Hicks. I mighta knowed you’d stoop to chicken stealin’. His expression disgusted, the farmer looked Jeff up and down as though he were lower than a dog’s pizzle. Well, the old man was right about that.

  Jefferson Hicks had fallen as low as a man could.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “I caught him red-handed and I’m pressing charges, Will. To the full hilt of the law. I got rights—I can’t have this man helping himself to my henhouse whenever the notion strikes him. And I’ll warrant it’s struck often enough.” Farley Wright stood before Sheriff Will Mason’s desk, brimming with moral indignation.

  “Have you got proof that anything was stolen, Farley?” Will Mason asked. He glanced at Jeff and shifted in his chair, making the badge above his breast pocket flash in the early morning sunlight that came through the window.

  “Well, just look at that!” His weathered face vermillion with anger, Farley pointed to a big wet spot on the front of Jeff’s shirt, just above his belt. “That’s where he hid the egg ’fore it broke. Besides, isn’t it enough to catch someone rummaging in my henhouse before dawn? I don’t suppose he was there for a social visit!” The picture Farley presented—half shaved, one suspender still dragging around his knee, his hair sticking up like a privet hedge—rather detracted from his oration, but not its vigor.

  Jeff Hicks guessed that Farley even fancied himself as something of a hero for bringing in the big, bad egg thief. His own head already thumping like a hammer on a rock, Jeff shut out the sound of the farmer’s voice. He’d had to endure the man’s outraged, nonstop monologue all the way into town. Farley had tied Jeff’s hands behind his back and forced him at shotgun point into the back of his wagon. He hadn’t needed to. Jeff had offered no resistance.

  In fact, he hadn’t felt more than a twinge of self-consciousness when Farley marched him in here, still under cover of his shotgun. At least he kept telling himself that. He’d sensed the curious stares from shopkeepers and people on the street, but what the hell—Decker Prairie had been talking about him for a long time. He’d given them lots to talk about.

  From his vantage point in the corner by the stove, he let his gaze wander the confines of the sheriff’s office. He hadn’t seen the inside of this place for more than two years, but it seemed like twenty. Some of it looked familiar—the wall clock, the blue enamel coffee pot on the stove, the rifle rack, the scarred oak desk. With his hands tied with a rope that cut like a saw blade, it was hard for him to recall that he’d once occupied the same swivel desk chair that Will Mason now sat in as he let Farley ramble on. He’d worn the same silver-star badge, and a long-barreled revolver strapped to his thigh. That had been another life. Another Jefferson Hicks.

  Finally Sheriff Mason leaned back in his chair and turned a wry gaze on Jeff. “Well? Is this just about the way it happened, Jeff?”

  Hearing his name, Jeff dragged his attention back to the moment and shrugged. “I guess. I left a penny in one of the nests to pay for the egg.”

  “A penny!” Farley exploded. “By God, I don’t know where you’ve been, boy— Well, yes I do—you’ve been chasing the bottom of a whiskey bottle. But I get more than a penny for my eggs, and on market day—”

  Sighing, Will lifted his hand and motioned Farley to silence. “Hold on, now, let’s stick to the subject. Do you want to sign a complaint?”

  The farmer drew himself up as straight as a rake handle and adjusted his one suspender strap. “Hell, yes, I’ll sign! If that’ll ship Jeff Hicks off to Salem, I’ll sign a whole pile of complaints.”

  “Jesus, Farley, we don’t send men to the state penitentiary for stealing an egg. I’ll just keep him here for a while.” Will sat up in his chair and rummaged around in his desk for several moments before bringing out a big key ring. “Come on, Hicks.”

  While old man Wright grumbled on about justice, Will Mason led Jeff to the back of the building that contained two jail cells. He unlocked one of the cell doors and opened it.

  “Turn around,” Will ordered, and Jeff turned his back to him. Following a faint sawing noise and a slight tug, Jeff felt the rope around his wrists fall away. “All right, get in there.”

  Jeff walked to the bunk and sat down on the same stained tick he remembered from his days on the other side of the desk. Behind him, the door clanged shut.

  Will folded his pocket knife and turned it over in his hands while he studied it. Then he gazed at Jeff between the bars. “What the hell are you doing to yourself? You look like something the dog puked up and you smell just as bad. And stealing eggs, for chrissakes?”

  Jeff hunched forward, his elbows on his knees, and stared at the gouged plank flooring between his feet. The last thing he wanted to hear today was another lecture. And he sure didn’t want to hear one from the man who had succeeded him in his own job.

  Apparently realizing that he wasn’t going to answer, Will Mason sighed again. “I’m going to let you sit here for a few days to sober up and think about things.”

  Jeff lifted his head, surprised. “A few days—” His voice came out as a croak. He wouldn’t have kept som
eone longer than a day for such a paltry offense, if he kept him at all.

  Will turned to leave, then said over his shoulder, “At least you’ll get fed, courtesy of Decker Prairie and Elmira’s Café.” Then he was gone, pulling closed a heavy oak door that separated the office from the cells.

  Jeff stared blankly at the bars and the brick wall beyond. If he’d had any humor left in him, he might have laughed at this turn of events. He could even envision the newspaper headline: Former Sheriff Jefferson Hicks Jailed For Egg Theft.

  He’d lost count of the number of times he’d cursed himself for taking the damned job in the first place, for coming to this town. Nothing about his life had been the same since. And while the days and weeks now blended together into a dateless, unchanging blur, he remembered with exquisite detail the moment when his life had turned. The fourteen-year-old boy with a gun . . . the deafening blast when he had pulled the trigger . . . the bullet nicking Jeff’s chin . . . the following events that had snowballed in a roaring avalanche, engulfing all the good things in his life and finally consuming him . . .

  He sighed and cradled his tender head in his hands. A few days in this place? Hell, what did it matter? It wasn’t as if he had somewhere important to go.

  He didn’t have anywhere to go at all.

  ~~*~*~*~~

  Althea stood at the kitchen window watching the road. Now and then she looked over her shoulder at the clock in the parlor. She looked again, for what must have been the fiftieth time this morning.

  Late. Cooper Matthews was two hours late. He had told her he would arrive at seven o’clock sharp, and now here it was almost nine on the second clear day they’d had in a month. Half the morning was already gone, and still there was no sign of him.

  It had been hard enough to get him to agree to do the work. He’d been rude and insulting, and more than a little intimidating. When she thought about talking to him yesterday, her stomach felt icy. All Althea wanted was to get the kitchen garden planted and the roof patched before it rained again.