“But I’m not doing any good.”
“Promise me this,” Luke said earnestly. “Don’t do anything hastily.”
“All right. I won’t. Thanks for the lunch.”
“Anytime.” Luke took her hand. He held it for a moment, squeezing it slightly, then smiled. “You’re on a low limb right now, but it’ll get better.”
****
“That was a fine supper, wasn’t it?” Clay said. He had come over with Jamie, and the birthday supper had been outstanding. There wasn’t much money for presents, but from her family there was a beautifully decorated chocolate cake and a matching muff and hat. Clay had given her a hand-carved nameplate for her desk, and Jamie had drawn a special birthday picture.
Afterward, Clay and Jenny had gone out to sit on the front porch, while Kat was inside playing house with Jamie. The crickets made a symphony circling the house, and overhead the full moon beamed down with silver rays. Jenny had said little during the meal, but now she knew she had to talk. “Clay, I’m thinking about resigning.”
Clay did not answer for a time, and she finally asked rather sharply, “Did you hear what I said?”
“I don’t think you mean that.”
“But, Clay, I can’t do it!”
“You’re doing a good job. You’re new is all.”
Jenny was feeling rather sorry for herself. From time to time she fell into this mood, and she knew it and hated herself for it. It was a defensive mechanism, and finally she began saying angrily, “It’s easy enough for you to talk! All you do is stay in the house and take care of one little girl! Anybody could do that! But this job is hard.”
“It’s not as hard as my job.” He turned suddenly to face her and seized the edge of her chair and swung it around. “Listen to me. You can’t quit.” There was a hard edge to his voice, like a bell clanging out a deadly tiding, and Jenny could not move. She had never seen him like this. There was something almost dangerous about him. It was not that she was afraid for herself, but she saw that he was a man who could not be ignored. She listened as he told her almost roughly how she had a chance to do something good, and finally he said, “You told me once you thought God had put you in this. Have you asked Him about resigning?”
Instantly, Jenny lowered her head. “No, I haven’t,” she whispered.
“If He put you on the job, I think you’d better stay there. I don’t know much about God myself, but I know if He gave me something to do, I’d stick with it until I couldn’t move.”
Jenny did not speak for a moment, and then finally she said, “Clay, I feel so helpless. You know all about this kind of thing. Will you help me? Will you put on a uniform and a badge?”
Clay hesitated, then shook his head. “No, I won’t. My first priority is Jamie. I can’t do both.”
Jenny got up. She felt angry, and she did not know if it was at herself or at Clay Varek. “Good night, Clay,” she said frostily. Turning, she went into the house and went straight up to her room. Varek stood on the porch, and for a moment he was tempted to call her back. But then he settled back and shook his head, his jaw clenched. “I’ve got all I can do to take care of Jamie. That’s all there is to it.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Kat Has Her Say
The sun was high in the sky as Kat moved along the dusty road headed for home. In her left hand she carried an old flour sack bulging with crawdads, and, from time to time, she would pause, set the sack down, and glance inside.
“Oh, you’re gonna be good eatin’!” Reaching inside, she picked up a large crawdad, more than four inches long, and held it by its hard shell. She put her forefinger carefully in front of him, and when he pinched her, she squealed and jerked away. “You’re gonna be good eatin’ tonight, so just make up your mind to that.” Dropping the crustacean back into the bag, she tied a knot in the top and began to sing as she approached the house:
“Muskrat, muskrat, what makes your back so slick?
I’ve been livin’ in the water all my life
There’s no wonder I’m sick
I’m sick, I’m sick, I’m sick.
“Rooster, rooster, what makes your spurs so hard?
I’ve been scratchin’ in the barnyard all my life
There’s no wonder I’m tired
I’m tired, I’m tired, I’m tired.
“Jaybird, jaybird, what makes you fly so high?
Been eatin’ these acorns all my life
It’s a wonder I don’t die
I don’t die, I don’t die, I don’t die.”
The song pleased her, and she sang it again as she skirted the side of the house and went around to the kitchen, where she found Hannah peeling potatoes on the back porch.
“Look what I got, Hannah.” Untying the sack, she went over and pulled it open. “Ain’t they fine?”
“Don’t say ain’t. Kat, your grammar has gotten terrible since we moved here.” Hannah looked down at the crawdads, and then her mouth puckered as if she had bit into a green persimmon. “I don’t see how anybody eats those nasty things!”
“Well, the way Clint fixes them, they’re good,” Kat said. “He calls it crawfish étouffée.”
“Well, you and Clint will have to settle that. I’m not cooking a bunch of bugs.”
“Okay. Me and Clint will do it.” Turning, Kat left the porch, and going out to the spring house, she dumped the crawdads in a large bucket and poured some water in. “That’ll keep you fresh,” she said, nodding with satisfaction. “But I’m eatin’ you for supper tonight and that’s all she wrote.”
She heard voices coming from the barn and knew that it was Jenny and her father. Kat had no scruples against eavesdropping, so she stepped up next to the barn and put her ear to the large crack between the boards to hear more easily. Jenny was upset. Kat could tell by the sound of her voice.
“I just can’t do it any longer, Dad. I just can’t!”
“I know it’s hard, Jenny, but you knew it would be.”
“I didn’t know it would be this hard.”
“You’re just upset about losing Kermit.”
“Well, I am, but it’s more than that.”
A silence followed for a moment, and then Kat heard her father say softly, “I know how tough it’s been, but I’ve been so proud of you, daughter.”
“Oh, Dad, I haven’t really done anything except to get a man killed.”
“You didn’t get him killed. He was killed doing his duty, and that’s something any officer faces. Why, you face it yourself, Jenny.”
“It’s different when it’s somebody else.”
“I remember during the war. We had an officer, a lieutenant, named Jamison. He had all kinds of courage himself, but he just couldn’t order men to go in under fire. He finally had to be replaced. I think they made a clerk of him in the quartermaster department. He wasn’t afraid of risking his own life, but he just couldn’t do it to others.”
“That’s exactly the way I feel, Dad, and I know you’re going to say that I ought to keep on. You never wanted me to quit at anything.”
Kat remained absolutely silent listening as her father and Jenny spoke. She had been aware for some time that Jenny was acting strangely. Kat herself had thought it would be wonderful to be able to wear a uniform and a gun and drive around in a police car and make people do what you wanted. Now, however, she was seeing a side of Jenny she had not known existed. Jenny had always put up such a tough front that Kat had never suspected she had these fears, but as the conversation went on, she began to see that her sister was actually afraid and this disturbed her.
“If only I had someone I could really trust, Dad!”
“You’ve got Billy Moon.”
“Yes, and Billy’s great, but he’s only one man. You know what I think?”
“What’s that, Jenny?”
“If Clay would help I think I’d be all right. He’s been on a big-time Chicago police force. He doesn’t talk about it much, but I know he was a good policeman. When w
e went to pick up the votes during the election, there were some hard people there, but they just backed down when Clay stepped up.”
“You talked to him about coming on as a deputy?”
“Yes, I have, but he says it’s all he can do to take care of Jamie.”
“I suppose that is a big job.”
Kat heard no more, for she picked up her bucket of crawdads and tiptoed away, making as little sound as possible. Stashing the bucket in the shade of the house, she trotted out of the yard, and as soon as she was out of sight of the house, she said aloud, “Well, Jenny needs help, and Clay is the one who can do it!”
****
Clay stepped through the gate inside the fenced coop he had built to keep the chickens in and looked over his small flock. They were not a very attractive bunch, for he had picked up odds and ends of different kinds. Some of the birds were white, others were black, and some were speckled. They clucked and gathered around him as he tossed some feed out and watched as they scrambled around clucking noisily. “Eat up! For one of you this is your last meal on the earth. Got to have supper tonight and fried chicken is it.”
His attention was captured when he heard someone call his name, and he turned to see Kat Winslow trotting up to the house. She was wearing a pair of faded overalls with patches on the knees and was barefooted. A battered straw hat perched on her head rather precariously, and her tawny hair fell over her forehead when she yanked it off and came to stand before him. She had gray eyes that were almost green at times but now seemed almost blue. “Hello, Kat. What are you doing here?”
“I came to talk to you, Clay.”
“That sounds serious.”
“It is, but you go ahead and finish what you’re doing.”
Clay turned and glanced at the chickens. “It’s a matter of life and death, Kat. Jamie and I are going to have chicken tonight, and I’m wondering which one of these to pick.”
“Doesn’t make any difference, does it, as long as they’re fat enough.”
“I guess it does to them, but they don’t know that.”
“You want me to pick one?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“Then I pick that big white one right over there.”
“All right. That’s what I’ll do. You want to stay and have supper with us?”
“No, I’ll have to go home, but I want to talk to you.”
Clay studied the young girl. She was, he knew, fourteen years old and was caught in that time of life when young girls go through the process of turning from gangly creatures into shapely young women. He had learned to like Kat, but he had told Jenny once, “She’s going to have to quit being a boy pretty soon. Put on a dress and start acting silly like a girl.” And now he stepped outside the chicken yard, fastened the door securely, and said, “Come on up on the porch. We’ll talk.”
“Where’s Jamie?”
“She’s taking a nap.”
The two of them sat down on the porch, and Clay said, “You sit there, and I’ll go get you something to drink. It won’t be cold, but it’ll be wet.”
Five minutes later the two were sipping warm lemonade, and Kat asked suddenly, “Is it hard to raise a baby alone, you bein’ a man and all?”
Clay was surprised by the question, but then he nodded. “Hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
Kat gulped down the lemonade, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Well, why don’t you get married, then?”
Clay shook his head and smiled. “That’s not a very good reason to get married, to find a nursemaid.”
“People do it, though. They get married for all kinds of reasons. You know old man Tatum down by the river in that old white house?”
“I know him. What about him?”
“Well, he’s an old man. I mean really old. He must be . . . oh, I guess forty or fifty. That’s pretty old. And he married Sarah Simington. She ain’t no more than fifteen.”
“That’s just a year older than you are—and Jenny will skin you if you don’t stop saying ain’t.”
“Well, he didn’t care nothin’ about her. He just wanted someone to keep house, cook, and wash his clothes.”
“I’m surprised she married him.”
“I told her she was crazy,” Kat said, then paused to finish off the lemonade. She set the glass down on the floor beside her and nodded. “She’s not pretty, and I guess she figured if she was gonna have any kind of a home, that’d be her only chance. She won’t like it, though.”
“Not very romantic.”
“Romantic! I reckon not.”
Clay Varek sat listening as Kat rattled on. Finally she took a deep breath and said, “I came to talk to you about Jenny. You gotta help her, Clay.”
“Help her. What’s wrong with her?”
“Her job’s getting her down. She’s gonna quit if you don’t do something.”
Clay’s eyes narrowed, and he studied the young woman. “I don’t know what I can do.”
“You can go to work for her. That’s what. Get you a gun and catch those moonshiners. You’ve been a policeman, and you know how to do stuff like that.”
“Did Jenny tell you to come here?”
“No, I listened while she was talking to Daddy. She told him she was going to quit, and she said that you could help, but you won’t.”
“Well, I’d like to help, but I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve got Jamie to take care of.”
“We can take care of Jamie. I can watch her after school in the afternoons, and Hannah and Missouri Ann can watch her in the mornings. She’s easy to take care of. She’s such a good girl.”
Clay sat silently rocking back and forth slightly, then shook his head. “That wouldn’t be right, Kat. You see, when Jamie’s daddy got killed, I promised myself that I’d take care of her.”
Kat said sharply, “Nobody’s arguing about that, but you could help Jenny and take care of Jamie too. All you need is a little help, and I’m telling you that you can leave her with us.”
“Did you talk to your dad about this, or your ma?”
“No, but I will if you’ll do it.”
Clay Varek, in all truth, was tempted. His life had become very narrow, and he had had great difficulty in adjusting at first. But now he was getting bored. He admired Kat for coming. She was a forward young lady full of a thousand schemes, but there was a basic honesty in her that you could not find in many adults. “I’d like to help Jenny. Let me think about it, will you, Kat?”
“Sure.” Kat rose and said, “Thanks for the lemonade. I’ve gotta get on home now.”
“All right, Kat. I wouldn’t say anything to Jenny about this if I were you.”
“I won’t, but I’m gonna ask God to let you come to work for her.” She nodded confidently and said, “You’ll do it. God will make you!” She turned and left the porch in a single leap and then trotted down the road, stirring up small clouds of dust as she ran.
Clay Varek watched and smiled, amused at the girl. But then he grew more sober. “Maybe I ought to do it.” Clay leaned against the pillar that supported the porch roof and put his mind on the problem. He sat so still that a chipmunk streaked across the ground in front of him with the usual calamitous air of the small creatures. Clay watched as it stopped and sat up. It tucked its front legs tightly against its chest so that only its paws were visible. To Clay, the chipmunk looked somewhat like a man coming to ask for a favor and holding his hat. The two regarded each other and then, like a flash, the chipmunk scurried away and disappeared around the corner of the house.
“Maybe I oughta do it,” Clay said again. “She needs help, and she’s not likely to get a lot of that around here.”
****
Lewis Winslow was somewhat surprised when Clay Varek turned up at his house. He had looked out the window and saw Clay get out of the truck and watched as he picked up Jamie and brought her up on the front porch. Lewis went out at once to meet him, but Hannah had beaten him to
it. She was already reaching for Jamie, saying, “Come along. I’ve just got some gingerbread about ready to come out of the oven. I’ll give you a piece of it.”
“Be all right with me. Maybe I’ll eat some myself later.”
Lewis waited until Hannah had taken Jamie off, then he said, “Sit down, Clay.”
“Oh, I can’t stay long,” Clay protested. But he sat down in one of the cane-bottom rockers, and for a time he spoke of common things. Clay said once, “Us Yankees have kind of a hard time here in the South, don’t we?”
Lewis laughed. “Yes, we do. I didn’t even know what grits were when I came down here, and now I have to have them every day or I think I’ve been cheated.”
“One thing I can’t get over,” Clay said slowly, “is how friendly people are in this country. They always speak and nod even to strangers.”
“Yes, they do. And you know they do another thing that never happens up North? Have you noticed, Clay, how when you’re driving and you pass another car, whoever’s driving usually waves at you?”
“That’s right. They do.”
“That never happened in New York, I don’t think. Sometimes people around here just lift their fingers from the steering wheel, but they nearly always look at you and give you some kind of a sign. Even total strangers.”
Varek nodded. “I think that’s a good thing. I don’t know why southerners are different, but they are.”
“It may have something to do with the pace of life,” Lewis mused. “Things are somehow slower around here, at least slower than they were in the middle of New York City.”
The two men sat there talking idly, and finally Lewis said, “How are you getting along, Clay? I know it’s been a hard adjustment for you to make leaving the big city and bringing Jamie here.”
“It’s been tough. I’m not sure I can do it for the next fifteen, sixteen years until Jamie’s grown.”
Lewis studied the face of Clay Varek. It was a strong face, not handsome but intensely masculine. His ears lay flat against his head, and his tawny hair needed cutting. There was a rough attractiveness to the man, but in his eyes, Lewis saw dissatisfaction. “I guess most of us are looking for something. As for me, when I lost all of my money and my home, I was just looking for anything. A place to get a roof over my head for me and my family.”
The Shining Badge Page 21