by Alan Black
WEDNESDAY – MUCH LATER AFTERNOON
LillieBeth rode Ruth up the hill, past their house and tied her to the water trough. There was little grass left on the hill, but she tied off the mule where it could reach the water and what grass there was. It would not give the mule enough rope to reach the garden. Even if there had not been anything sprouting yet, she did not want a thousand pound mule tromping on their garden.
She pulled the rifle from the scabbard. She walked down the hill and into the house.
“Hello, Mama,” she said.
Mama said, “Hello, honey. How was Mr. Hoffman?” Mama was concentrating on stitching patches together in a star pattern for a quilt. Since the day was warm, she had all of the doors open, allowing the shifting breeze to find its way into and through the little cabin from any direction.
“Fine, when I left him. I saw him for a little bit on the road outside his lane.” She went to the cabinet in the kitchen and pulled out two things from a drawer. She carried them to the table and plopped them down.
Mama said, without looking up, “You still have Mrs. Bailey’s chores to do.”
LillieBeth said, “I’ll get to them directly.” She opened the big family Bible, turning quickly to 3 John 2:9. She read the scripture through twice. She had remembered it from when it was a Sunday school recitation, but she wanted to make sure she remembered it right.
She nodded to herself. She closed the Bible, gently, reverently and softly, as if she did not want to disturb the words hidden inside. She opened the box of .22 cartridges and reloaded Daddy’s rifle.
She looked up to see her mother watching her.
“You bring in supper?” Mama asked. “It normally doesn’t take that much reloading.”
“No supper yet, Mama.” She put the Bible and the ammunition box back in the drawer. “I will see if I can get something after evening chores. I used the bullets when I had to shoot a man.” She wanted to burst into tears and tell her mother, but her eyes were dry and as much as she wanted to cry emotionally, physically she could not.
She grabbed her pig-staff from where it stood, leaning against the stairs next to her bed. She carried it and the rifle out the east door. If she had looked at her mother, if she could have looked, she would have seen Mama’s face turn white, mouth open, unable to speak and stunned enough to not race after LillieBeth to stop her from leaving the cabin.
She went through her chores without thinking. She was tired of thinking. She tossed some feed to the chickens and looked here and there for an egg or two.
It was a quick matter to tend to the goats. Throw out a little of this and spread some of that. They already had enough goat milk for Mama to make cheese from what they had left over. So, what milk she got, she mixed with pig feed and poured the slop into their trough.
The pigs were still out in the woods and she would have to go hunting them. She carried her rifle in one hand and the pig-staff in the other. It did not take long before she spotted a rabbit. She leaned the staff carefully against a tree, drawing a bead on the rabbit. She snapped the gun to her shoulder, but she did not fire.
All she could see was the man crying on the ground in front of her. In her mind, she could not see clearly, it was as if she was seeing it all through a thick fog of gun smoke. There had not been much blood on the man. But, all she could still hear was a grown man crying like a baby for his mother. Beside him, another man, not dying, but dead, with his face missing.
She pulled open the breech and lowered the rifle. Maybe Mama would not mind if all they had was eggs for supper. Now she understood how Daddy felt about shooting. She had not understood it before. She knew she had not been given any choice but to shoot the man. She had to shoot him. She had not even killed him, but her heart was still in anguish.
She wondered if her heart hurt this badly, then how bad must Daddy feel? He had been to war, shooting and killing many men. How badly must Fletcher Hoffman feel? He had killed a man today. She was being really selfish, worried only about herself when her friend must be hurting worse than she could imagine.
It suddenly struck her why Hoffman had become a hermit. He had locked himself away from people. He must have done it to protect other people from him and to punish himself for the things he had done. It was true his place was pretty, but a prison is a prison, no matter how nice it looked. A prison is a prison no matter who holds the key to leave.
Hoffman could run from the prison he had built, but he could not run from his own heart.
He had built a beautiful little home, yet lived in squalor in a lean-to. Looking at the house must be torture. It would be a daily reminder of what he could have had if he had made different choices in his life. It would be a constant prodding to his heart that he did not deserve a pretty house, a family or even a friend.
He could torture himself with a pretty house. He could deny himself a family. But, LillieBeth knew he could not deny her friendship. He needed her more than she would ever need him. She wanted to slap herself for worrying about how she could make her soul prosper when a neighbor’s soul was in such desperate need of comfort, forgiveness and love.
She let the rabbit go and watched it hop away. Just as she lost sight of it, she caught the sight of the old boar. She took a wide loop around him, coming up from the back side. Her plan was to drive it back towards its pen. She poked it with the end of her pig-staff.
It ignored her, continuing to snuffle under an oak tree, burrowing, sniffing, digging up last fall’s acorns. Boars could be dangerous creatures if provoked to anger, but she was in no mood for nonsense. She poked the boar a little harder. It continued to feed, ignoring her.
She looked around. The other pigs were scattered about the area, but they were not behind her. She did not want to get trapped between them.
Everyone had heard of the old woman who died last summer over near Reed Springs. The woman had gone to feed her pigs and fell in the pen. After a couple of days, her neighbors went to check on her. All they found was a bloody boot and a handful of teeth in the pigpen. LillieBeth had seen this old boar snap a two-by-four with its jaws.
She set the rifle carefully on the ground, reared back with the staff and whacked the old boar across the nose. The staff crunched as if something deep inside had broken. The boar grunted, quit feeding and waddled toward home. The other pigs waddled after him as if nothing had happened.
Normally she would have smiled, laughed or cheered at her success. She was not in a smiling mood. Laughter and cheering would also have to wait for another day, if ever.
She picked up the rifle and followed on. She shook the staff, but it felt right. Still, she would not trust it again and would have to make another one. It would not be difficult to find a sapling the right size, cut it down, strip it of leaves, twigs and bark, and smooth out any large bumps. The old widow Bailey used a two-by-four she kept on her back porch, but LillieBeth liked a longer staff. It gave her reach enough to poke the pigs through their fence without having to go in after them and it was much smaller around and fit easier in her grip than a two-by-four.
She finished her chores without the usual exhilaration of completing a job well done. She did not even turn to tell her imaginary children to go play or get washed up for supper. Imaginary or not, she was worried about what her children would think of her having to shoot a man. She wondered if she would ever have children, since she seemed to have developed the habit of picking the wrong candidates like the Braunawalls or giving away the good ones like Reverend James.
As she walked across the road, she saw two mules in the corral. They were saddled and stood patiently. She knew Ruth was still up by the water trough and she did not recognize these animals. They were brown and just about as non-descript as mules came. Mama must have visitors.
She trudged uphill and quietly slipped in the east door. Trance and Dangle Braunawall had Mama backed into a corner by the fireplace. She was holding them at bay with a kitchen knife, but they were unconcerned and laughing.
Dangle said, “Since your daughter ain’t here, we might as well party with you.”
Trance nodded in agreement. His face flushed red around the bruises from Hoffman’s Winchester rifle butt. “I like them when they fight, so you just keep on fussing.”
Dangle said, “Maybe we get done with this one, we can still go find LillieBeth. I do have a score to settle with her.”
LillieBeth knew they would not have far to go if they were looking for her. She dropped the rifle on her bed. Taking two steps closer to Dangle and gripping the pig-staff at one end, she swung it in a large circle and slammed it against Dangle’s head. The staff shattered where it had cracked on the boar’s head earlier. The broken end flew across the room, startling Trance and Mama. Neither had noticed her in the room. The rest of the staff vibrated out of LillieBeth’s hands as she let it drop to the floor.
It did not hit the floor before Dangle did. He dropped to his knees, cradling his head in both hands. Blood squeezed between his fingers, oozing from his ear and a gash across his cheek. He screamed that his head was broken, the confusion evident in his voice.
LillieBeth took two steps back to her bed. She picked up the rifle, pumped a cartridge into the chamber and pointed it directly at Trance’s face. Her long hair, unbraided and loose, fell across her face in a mask, but she could see well enough. Her finger itched to squeeze the trigger, but she held it still.
“Whoa, LillieBeth,” Trance said. “We was just fooling around. We didn’t mean no harm.”
“Liar,” LillieBeth said.
“Now you hold on,” Trance said. He held his hands out in front of him, palms outward in innocent surrender. “That’s a strong word.”
“So is rape,” LillieBeth said. “Mama, you come over here and stand behind me.”
Trance started to reach out to grab Mama, but pulled his hand back when LillieBeth put a bullet past his face. It barely clipped his ear, but his hand came away bloody when he grabbed it.
She pumped another cartridge into the chamber before he could move again.
“There ain’t no call for that. You done shot my ear off.”
“I just put a little notch in the tip. And that was just so you know I am serious and that I hit what I aim at. The next one goes through your eye.”
Mama slid behind her. She put an arm on LillieBeth’s shoulder, reaching across to take the gun. LillieBeth shrugged her arm off.
Trance said, “You wouldn’t really shoot me, would you? We are friends and all.”
“You haven’t been my friend since you tore my dress and tried to rape me.” She glanced at Dangle. He had stopped squalling. He had slipped a knife from his pocket. It was the same type of knife Hoffman had taken from him days earlier.
LillieBeth continued to watch Dangle and Trance, her eyes veiled by the fall of hair across her face. She did not think they could tell where she was looking. “Now I come home to find you trying to hurt my mother. What makes you think I won’t shoot you? You wouldn’t be the first man I shot today.”
“You never shot no one before.” Trance’s eyes flicked down at Dangle and back at LillieBeth again.
“I shot one of those Illinois Yankees come down buying moonshine. I shot him over near Hoffman’s Lane, just this morning. There were four of them. I shot one and Mr. Hoffman killed another. Feel free to ask him any time you want. If you do not believe me, just wait a minute and you can see me shoot Dangle unless he drops that knife.”
Dangle’s hand flew open and the knife skittered across the floor. “Don’t be shooting, LillieBeth! We will just go all peaceable like and not bother you again.”
“Stay still,” she demanded. “You have already proved to be liars. I would not trust you to not come back. You have been raping other women and I say that has to stop.”
Trance said, “Rape? No, LillieBeth. We would never do such a thing. Why, we have been with a few women here and there, that’s true, but it wasn’t rape.”
Dangle spit a mouthful of blood and said, “That’s right. Them women was all willing.”
Trance pointed at his brother for emphasis. “That’s right, yeah that’s right. They say different, well, it’s just their word against ours. They are the liars not us.”
LillieBeth said, “I know I was not willing when you grabbed me. But it is not my word against yours, is it? I have a witness, remember? Fletcher Hoffman saw you and stopped you. I am his friend and he will speak up for me. He knows what you tried to do, just like I do. Sheriff Grissom and my Daddy are going to know, too.”
She was not sure Hoffman would really speak up, but she hoped she was making enough progress in her attempts at friendship that he would at least talk to the sheriff or Daddy.
“Now, LillieBeth,” Trance said. “We been sweet on-”
“Shut up,” LillieBeth said. “It is Miss Hazkit from now on. Anything else will get you shot. Do you understand? Don’t speak, just nod your heads. If you say anything I think is a lie, I am going to shoot you.”
At their nods, she continued. “It seems to me Fletcher Hoffman had a right nice way of dealing with you both. Get them clothes off.”
Trance shook his head in disbelief. “What are you going to do if we don’t take our clothes off, kill us and bury us in the woods?” It was obvious he did not think she would go that far.
LillieBeth shook her head. “No. I think that is too much digging. I could not dig deep enough to keep some coyote or fox from digging you up.”
Trance said, “That’s right. That would be a lot of work. If you just-“
“No,” LillieBeth interrupted. “I think I am going to shoot you in the legs so you cannot run away. Then I am going to use your own mules to drag you across the road and toss you into old widow Bailey’s pigpen. I think that would be much less work. If we give those hogs a couple of days, there won’t be enough left to say it was you, at least not enough for anyone to go digging around in pig poop to find it out for sure.”
Trance started to speak, but grew quiet when she continued.
LillieBeth said, “I imagine I could drive those two mules down to the livestock auction in Arkansas, you know, the new one in Green Forest. I’ll bet we could get thirty or forty dollars apiece. Even with a forged bill of sale, that far from home, no one will ask too many questions of a sweet little twelve-year-old girl. Better yet, when Mrs. Bailey gets back from Lake Taneycomo, her pigs will be much fatter without having to pay for extra feed. That should make everyone happy.”
Trance laughed nervously, “It would not make Dangle and me happy.”
LillieBeth said in a calm voice, “I suspect you will be a lot less happy when those hogs start chewing on you before you’re dead. I wonder what part they will bite off first. What do you think Dangle? Think the hogs will gnaw off your privates or eat your face first?”
LillieBeth could feel her Mama’s hands tighten on her shoulders. She ignored her mother. “So I say, for the last time before I start shooting, get out of those clothes.”
When the Braunawalls were halfway undressed, she said, “Union suits and boots, too. Come on, get them off. That was where you were going with Mama before I walked in, so get to it. No. Turn your backs to me and keep your privates covered with your hands. You do not have anything that I want to see.”
When the two men were naked, LillieBeth started backing toward the east door, herding her mother behind her. She stopped in the doorway and glanced behind her. Mama was pale, but smiled and nodded at LillieBeth.
LillieBeth wanted to smile back, but did not. She could not. She was not in a smiling mood. She was not sure she would ever smile again. She had a long list of things going wrong. She could not do anything about most of them.
The Braunawalls were a problem she could fix. She could shoot and kill them. She wanted to shoot and kill them from the minute she saw they had her mother trapped in a corner. But she could not imagine pulling the trigger. She might have been more willing except for the anguish she was feeling already at having sho
t a man. The man she shot was not dead, but even shooting the man was eating at her soul.
No matter how much she wanted to shoot the Braunawalls and no matter how much she knew some people just needed to be shot, she did not think she could. She just needed the Braunawalls to think that not only could she, but she was eager to do so.
She said, “Keep your backs to me. Before you move, show me your hands so I know they are empty. Good. Now cover your privates and back up this way.”
Dangle tried to say something, but his face was swelling badly and he could only mumble. He spit out a mouthful of blood.
“Stop spitting on my Mama’s clean floor. We do not need to be cleaning up after you. If you have got something to spit, just swallow it, teeth and all. I do not care.”
Trance said, “He wants to know about our clothes and boots. Do you want us to carry them? And when can he go pick up his knife?”
“You just keep backing up to this door. You step in any direction other than this way and I will shoot your legs out from under you and feed you to the pigs. That is a promise.”
“We’re backing up. He was just asking.”
LillieBeth backed up, keeping the men framed in the doorway until they stepped outside. “Do not be too worried about being outside naked. This is not the first time you have done this. It is not even the first time this week. Now you walk on down to your mules, walk real slow and keep your hands on your privates.”
Mama whispered in her ear. “Do you want me to get their clothes?”
She shook her head. It felt strange to feel her hair flop across her face instead of feeling the braid across her back. She raised her voice, making sure the Braunawall’s heard her. “Please just stay behind me, Mama. That way if I have to shoot these polecats, you will not get hit by a stray bullet or a ricochet off a rock.”
Trance and Dangle walked on tender feet, trying to miss the rocks poking up through the dirt. That was a hard task. LillieBeth had managed, more than once, to walk across their lot, north to south and east to west while stepping on rocks only. Many a time, the biggest crop in their garden was more rocks.