“You taking me in to jail?”
“Have to, Will. Until we can get some sort of bail bond fixed up. Them two fellows are in the hospital. It looks pretty serious.”
Will’s voice was cold. “Sure,” he said. “It’s always serious.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
RHODES was running faster than he’d ever run before. In his dream, he was running along a bare white road and no trees grew along either side. He was breathing through his mouth, and the pound of his heart seemed to him louder than the beat of his feet in the powdery dust of the road.
He kept telling himself that it was a dream, and he was dreaming. This did not help. He felt more tired than if he were awake. In waking life there is a sense to things, a boy doesn’t run without some reason clear to himself.
In his dream he was taking long steps, legs stretching like taffy at a church candy-pull.
Suddenly ahead of him he saw a strange gray shack with the word “Jail” emblazoned across it in bright green neon. Now he knew why he was running. He was running toward the jail where they had put Will.
In his dream appeared dozens of faces, all of them people he knew in the countryside, all of them accusing Will of murder.
Rhodes ran up to the ramshackle gray jail. He began to beat on the doors. He felt the pain in his fists and up his arms, but he would not stop beating on the door.
“Let him out!” Rhodes screamed. “We need him. We need Will. Let him out.”
But the men inside the jail only laughed at him and told him to get on back home and tend his crops. He beat on the door until his fists began to bleed and he slumped to the dust that powdered up about him when he struck it. He began to sob, to make them understand that the farm would die, and the fields would die, and the animals would die unless they freed Will. In the back of his mind was the thought of his mother, but he would not mention her name, he would not say aloud that she would die unless Will was freed from the jail. It seemed a frightening thing. If he mentioned death and his mother in the same breath, she would die, and yet he knew in his mind that was what they were waiting for inside that jail. If he told them that his mother would die without Will, they would release Will. But then … it would be too late.
In his dream, he got up from the dust and walked away from the jail, going back home where the days were endless and the chores mounted and he could not get all the work done, and soon there were so many chores, so many things to do, he could not get any of them done, and knew he’d have to return to the jail and tell them his mother would die without Will.
He would have to say those terrible words.
Again he was running, and he had been working so long, and going so long without sleep that he felt that he could not stand up, but he had to run, he had to keep running. Will was in the jail, and by now Will was used to the jail and liked it and was lying on his bunk in a cell picking at a mandolin and singing some song.
As Rhodes ran, he yelled for Will, begging him to come back and help him, but Will only laughed and slammed the door in his face. There were bill collectors, and the sheriff with an eviction notice, and orange pickers stripping the trees, and he begged Will to help him, and Will only laughed and went on singing and picking at the mandolin.
Go away, kid, and leave me alone. That was what Will was singing. There wasn’t much tune, and the words never changed. Rhodes began to beat on the door again.
The pounding was louder than ever. It was so loud that he woke, and sat up in bed….
• • •
Somebody was pounding on the front door.
Rhodes slid out of bed, and stepped into his dungarees. He was going down the hall as he buttoned them.
He found the upstairs light, snapped it on. His mother called, sleepily. “What’s the matter, Rhodes?”
“Somebody at the front door, mamma. I’ll see who it is.”
She said something else but Rhodes went on down the stairs to the darkened hallway. The knocking was persistent, but weaker, and Rhodes knew how they felt because he remembered his dream.
He turned on the foyer light and unlocked the front door. Through his mind ran the thought of his grandfather’s word about locking doors. “All a locked door does is keep your friends out.”
Rosanne hurried into the foyer. Her face was pale. She was breathless and she’d only thrown a shrug about her shoulders against the cold.
Her hands were trembling with the cold.
“Rosanne. Come in the front room. I’ll stir up the fire.”
She shook her head. “No. I haven’t time. Is Will here?”
Rhodes opened his mouth to say no when Will came down the steps. He had dressed hastily and his hair stood wild on his head.
He took one look at Rosanne, put his arm about her and forcibly led her into the front room. He turned on the light, threw the screen away from the fireplace and stirred the logs so the fire caught quickly.
Rosanne knelt before it, trembling.
The firelight flitted across her face and into her eyes. Rhodes again felt that painful-sweet stab of knowledge that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
“Rhodes, heat up the coffee on the kitchen stove. Hurry boy,” Will said.
Rhodes started to run from the room. Rosanne’s voice stopped him. “Don’t, Rhodes. There isn’t any time. It’s Tom. He’s been shot. He’s down there — at the house — he’s dying.”
“All right, Rhodes,” Will said. “You get some warm things on, get a big coat for your Cousin Rosanne. Then you bring the truck around front.”
• • •
They didn’t talk on the three mile ride along the lane to the shack.
The front door was standing open as Rosanne had left it when she ran out. The light spilled in a pale yellow glob out on the bare yard.
Rhodes drove close to the steps. They hurried into the house.
Rosanne went at once to the bedroom. Rhodes closed the front door. But the whole house was like an ice box, even though the wood stove was afire. Will threw in some wood and told Rhodes to go chop some more.
When Rhodes came back with the wood, the house seemed warmer. He was startled at the changes that Rosanne had made. She’d painted furniture, put up cheap curtains. Then he heard Tom moan from the bedroom. At least he wasn’t dead.
Rhodes stepped inside the bedroom door. Rosanne was standing at the head of the iron four-poster and Will was leaning over Cousin Tom.
Cousin Tom was sprawled out on his back. The bed looked as though somebody had doused it with a bucket of blood. Rosanne had left Tom on the bed while she ran for help. He had rolled, writhing in his agony until the bed was soaked with his blood.
Cousin Tom was unconscious. He was babbling aloud, but the things he said had no connection and made no sense.
Will ripped away Tom’s denim shirt, loosened his fly and turned back his trousers. Cousin Tom’s bloated bay window rose like a mound on the bed. The mound was ripped on the right side and over the coagulated blood around the torn place, Rhodes could see the black of the powder burns.
Somebody had shot Cousin Tom in the stomach.
“We’ve got to get him to a doctor,” Will said. “He’s lost a lot of blood. That bullet is in there pretty deep.”
“We can’t get a doctor,” Rosanne said.
“Why not?”
“How can we?” She faced Will, her hand clenching the bed post until her fingers whitened. “Don’t you know how Tom got shot?”
“I know he’s going to die unless we get that bullet out of there.”
“Can’t you get it, Will … please?”
“I might kill him trying.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Why do you think I wouldn’t?”
“Won’t you try?”
“What difference will it make if a doctor knows that Tom was shot carrying bootleg shine?”
“The doctor will have to report it, Will. That was the last thing that Ab Taylor told me when they brought Tom and
left him here. He said to get that bullet out, but not to get a doctor.”
“Don’t you see, Ab ain’t worried about Tom. He’s worried that Tom will implicate him.”
“I know that Tom will be arrested. If he talks then, it won’t matter to me. I don’t care what happens to those other men. But if Tom goes to jail — what will happen to me, Will? What will I do?”
“I’ll send you home, Rosanne. I’ll send you back to Alabama. You’ll be all right.”
There was a long silence. Rhodes stood there hearing the moaning grow weaker from the bed. At last Rosanne spoke again. She had not taken her eyes from Will’s face during the silence that filled the whole shack.
“I don’t want to — to go back to Alabama, Will.”
Will drew in a deep breath.
“He might die if I tried to get the bullet out. That would be a bigger mess than ever.”
“He won’t die, Will … You won’t let him.”
“He needs a doctor, Rosanne.”
“Won’t you try, Will?”
Will breathed heavily again. He looked about the room. His gaze moved across Rhodes, across the shabby furniture, back to the bed where Tom was growing quieter, and weaker.
He spoke as though talking to himself. “We couldn’t get a doctor here in time now, anyway.” He stared down at the obese mound of Tom’s stomach. “Rhodes, boil water. Get the sharpest knife that’s there and stone-sharpen it down to a point You understand?”
When Rhodes came back with the knives and baling wire immersed in boiling water, Tom was bound hand and foot to the bed. Will had cleaned away the blood from the wound and opened the bullet hole as much as possible. He was swabbing at it with cotton that turned red the moment he touched the flesh.
“Looks like it’s in fat,” Will said, talking to himself. “If I can cut it loose, I can get it out with the wire.”
He reached his hand into the boiling water flinching only slightly. He came up with the knife, shook the water from it. Rhodes watched the bright point of the knife until it touched the flesh, making a sudden sharp incision. The blood spurted again.
“Rosanne!”
Cousin Rosanne moved quickly with the cotton swabs. Rhodes began to feel ill at his stomach. He could not stand there and watch it any more. He walked to the bedroom door and stood there in it.
He stared at the wood stove that had turned a bright red with the fire inside it. Behind him he heard Cousin Tom’s deep labored breathing, and for the first time in his life realized that pain could express itself even in the way an unconscious person breathed.
Once in a while Will would speak sharply to Rosanne and she would move, never speaking, never answering him.
Rhodes felt the illness whirling in his stomach like a merry-go-round. He bit the back of his hand.
He felt Will touch his shoulder. Will said, “It’s all right, boy. We got the bullet.”
Rhodes stared at the blunted piece of lead on Will’s palm.
“Is he going to be all right?” Rhodes said.
Will shook his head. “I don’t know, boy.”
“He’s going to be all right,” Rosanne said.
Rhodes turned and walked slowly back to the bed. So much had happened. Rosanne had put on new sheets. Will had tightly bandaged Will’s stomach and there was no sign of blood on the pad.
Rosanne carried out the huge bundle of soiled things, and the room was clean. Rhodes could barely hear Cousin Tom’s breathing, but he could see the big chest rise and fall under the spread.
Rhodes turned and walked into the front room.
Rosanne was putting a coffee pot on the blistered stove. Will stood beside the table. He was watching Rosanne and he did not move.
Rhodes heard Will say, “He’s going to be all right now, Rosanne.”
Rosanne said, “Yes, Will.”
But Rhodes knew the words meant nothing. They were meaningless words. The meaning was all in the way Rosanne moved about the small part of the room that was the kitchen, putting coffee on to boil, getting cups and saucers, yet not seeing any of it. Seeing only Will across the room.
“Reckon we ought to be gettin’ back home, Will,” Rhodes said.
“Yes.”
“Have coffee first,” Rosanne said. “Please.”
“Don’t reckon I want any coffee, Cousin Rosanne,” Rhodes said.
Will said, “We’ll go soon, son.”
“In just a little while,” Rosanne said. Her voice sounded empty, as though she could not imagine going on staying in this house if they went out of it now.
Will said, “Rhodes, sit by Tom’s bed for a while. When I’ve had coffee — we’ll go. Your Cousin Rosanne will have to sit up and watch over him all night. You can spell her a while, can’t you, boy?”
Rhodes said, “Yes.”
He was watching Rosanne. He saw the way she sighed, the way some of the tension went out of her.
Rhodes went back to the bedroom. Inside it, he pulled a straight chair near the bed. He sat down watching Cousin Tom breathe under the spread. The light from the other room hurt his eyes he told himself. He got up and closed the door.
He stared at the two people in the front room. It did not seem to Rhodes that they had moved at all. Will was standing beside the table, not touching it even with his fingertips. Rosanne was beside the stove. Wisps of the smoke from the coffee pot sifted past her face. She was not looking at the coffee or at the fire. She was looking at Will half across the small room.
Rhodes closed the door and went back to the chair at the side of the bed, aware of a deep and unexplained emptiness in his stomach….
Rosanne got a dish cloth to use as a hot-pad on the coffee-pot handle.
She picked up the steaming, discolored pot and came across to the table where Will was sitting.
They had not spoken since the coffee started cooking. They had heard Rhodes stirring in the bedroom, heard him close the door and neither of them turned to look.
She poured the dark fluid in Will’s cup. The cup was cracked, and she wished for a second that it was better. She’d always wanted nice things, even if she hadn’t thought about having them for a long time now. It was as though leaving Alabama and coming down here to the Florida scrub was the end of the world for her.
Rosanne watched the thick steam rise from Will’s cup. She turned back to the stove.
“You didn’t pour your coffee, Rosanne.” Will’s voice was deep and low, and the sound of it stirred her insides.
“Don’t reckon I want none, Will.” There was the tension and silence between them again. Will did not touch his coffee. She set down the pot, came back and stood by the table.
She glanced toward the closed bedroom door.
“Looks like I cain’t stand it,” she said.
Will had reached for the steaming cup. He withdrew his hand. “He’ll be all right, Rosanne. Things will be better.”
Her head tilted. “I didn’t mean … him,” she said. “You know I didn’t, Will.” She drew a deep breath. “Anyway, things won’t never be better. Not for him — and me.”
“No.”
Her eyes widened, and for an instant she looked startled and pleased, as if she’d found what she’d been looking for but never expected to find.
“You do know, don’t you, Will?” Her voice got anxious. “You know what it’s been like — for him and me — right from the start — up there in Alabama … We ain’t had nothing, Will … not together — not ever … I reckon I don’t know what it’s like to — to do it when you want it — but I know what hell it is to — do it when you don’t want it.”
He stood up. “You’re here now, Rosanne.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “Yes. I’m here with you, Will. That’s what you mean, ain’t it? You do understand. I know now. That’s why I came down here — this is why he brought me down here — even when I fought comin’ — because you were down here, Will. I knowed it when I walked in that front door and you were standing there, and the —
room was warm — and you were kind.”
Will’s grin was crooked. “I’m not kind, Rosanne.”
She looked up, her gaze touched against his. “No,” she said. “No, I wouldn’t want you if you was kind.”
“I’m mean and I know what I want.”
“Yes.”
“You’re a kid, Rosanne. A little girl. You know what I’m talking about?”
“I’ve knowed, Will. From the first minute I saw you, I’ve knowed.”
“I’ve wanted you, Rosanne. In spite of Tom. In spite of hell. I wouldn’t want to fool you about that.”
Her smile looked frightened. “Have you wanted me, Will? Terrible? Strong? Tell me about it.”
He touched her arm and she trembled. “I don’t have to tell you, Rosanne.”
“No. You don’t have to tell me. But I want to hear it. I want to hear you say it.”
“I’ve wanted you, Rosanne. So bad, it looked like sometimes I couldn’t think about nothing else.”
“Did you ever wake up in the night, Will, and want me? You ever lie in bed at night and think about me?”
“Every night.”
She nodded. “Yes. Every night. Because I was thinking about you. I was wanting you so hard you couldn’t sleep for me wantin’ you so bad.”
He grinned again. “You make it sound real good.”
“Yes, Will. Real good. Because no matter what else I am, I’ll be real good for you, because I need you so terrible.”
He rubbed his sweated hands along the sides of his dungarees. He dampened his lips.
“What about — him, Rosanne, in there?”
“Oh God.”
“Still we got to talk about it. He’d kill you, Rosanne.”
“Yes.”
“He knows you don’t want him. That makes it worse.
He’d kill you to keep anybody from having you.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’ve hurt enough people in my time, Rosanne. I ain’t going to hurt you.”
“You’re hurting me now, Will.” She stepped nearer, put her hands on him and slid down to her knees, clasping her arms about his legs. She stared up at him. “Ain’t you been a-listening to me, Will? I been telling you how terrible I need you. Like I cain’t stand it no more — not unless I have you … God, Will, them ain’t just words … I’m trying to tell you the truth. You got to love me — you got to — or I cain’t stand it no more.”
A Woman on the Place Page 7