A Season in Hell

by Easy Jackson

  Badger stared at her with solemn eyes. “You always said we can’t be depending on nobody but ourselves, Miss Tennie. Don’t you believe that anymore?”

  She looked at the boys, biting her lower lip.

  “It’s rule number one, Miss Tennie,” Lucas reminded her. “Never expect help from anybody. Be glad when you get it, but don’t expect it.”

  Why did the boys always have to throw back things she said just at the time she didn’t want to hear them? She forced herself to stop wallowing in self-pity. “Well, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. I guess we’ll just have to take care of ourselves for a while.”

  Tennie, grateful for Wash’s thoughtfulness in one area anyway, stuffed the roll of money into the front pocket of Badger’s overalls, buttoning it securely. “Don’t lose that. If we get robbed, maybe the thieves won’t think to look there.”

  In the meantime, Wash was her betrothed, and he had told her to wait in Waco.

  “I heard they have an ice cream parlor in Waco,” she said.

  “What’s that?” Rusty asked.

  “A place where they sell ice cream,” Tennie said.

  “What’s ice cream?” Badger asked.

  “You’ve never had ice cream?” Tennie asked. “It’s frozen cream with sugar. You’ll like it.”

  Besides a possible ice cream parlor, Waco had saloons galore and a reputation for being a rowdy town. Also known as “Six-Shooter Junction,” it was split by the very religious and the very bad, mostly bad. Tennie had the feeling she would once again be the outcast stuck on the outside of the circle.

  “Come on. Let’s practice our arithmetic while we’re trapped in this stagecoach,” she said.

  The boys let up a howl, but she interrupted them. “What if the people in the ice cream parlor are crooked? Do you want to be taken for a fool?”

  Lucas looked at Rusty. “She’s right. Remember what Mr. Gid said about measuring powder.”

  Tennie gave him a sharp look. “What did he say?”

  Lucas looked at Rusty, and Rusty answered, coloring a little as he did. “You have to know the right ratio of powder to sulfur and things like that.”

  Tennie wanted to wring Gid’s neck at the moment, but she said in an even voice, “See. Arithmetic is important in a lot of things. Now Badger, what is one times one?” She felt an irrational anger at Gid for coming for Lafayette, and an even stronger anger at Poco Gonzalez-Gonzalez and Ben McNally for dragging Wash away from her. It was stupid to be mad at the messenger when she was really mad at Lafayette and Wash for leaving her alone in a bumpy, dusty stagecoach with three bored boys. But what good did it do to be mad? There was a reason for everything under the sun. Besides, she told herself, she would have hated it if Lafayette was a slothful business owner like the Miltons, or if Wash had a heart of stone and refused to help a little girl in distress. How could she be mad? Except at Gid. She decided she could be mad at Gid over his smoke cans and tree stump explosions. It made her feel better to be angry at him.

  CHAPTER 6

  They made a short stop at another swing station. The boys picked up sticks to practice sword fighting. Rusty swung too hard and hurt Lucas’s arm. Tennie looked at it and decided it wasn’t quite as bad as Lucas was making it out to be. Back in the stagecoach and on their way, the boys began to bicker about it again, erupting into a fistfight with Tennie yelling at them to stop while she and Badger tried to stay out of the way.

  The driver stopped the stage, and his young shotgun rider hopped down. He stood menacingly at the window, holding gun in hand and spitting his chaw of tobacco onto the ground before speaking.

  “You boys don’t stop that fighting, y’all be walking the rest of the way to Waco.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rusty said, begrudging the words. Lucas, with a similar pout, repeated the same thing.

  After giving the boys another hard look, the guard got back up on his seat, and the stagecoach started again. Tennie shut her eyes, giving in to the rocking motion of the stage. She opened one eye a slit and saw the two boys across from her nodding their heads. Badger was propped up on her side, already asleep.

  She wondered about the fire at the saloon. Perhaps Lafayette’s new cook had accidentally started it. Or more likely, someone had shot out a coal oil lamp, and it caught Lafayette’s lavish drapes on fire. And the poor kidnapped girl. Tennie racked her brain trying to remember what she’d read in the newspapers about the senator. What she recalled didn’t make sense. Why would anyone want to kidnap the daughter of an East Texas backwoods politician who had twelve children and probably a mortgage on his farm? They hit a large bump in the road, but she was so sleepy she hardly felt it.

  Tennie didn’t know how long she slept before becoming aware the stagecoach had stopped again. In her groggy state, all she could think of was that the boys hadn’t been fighting, so she didn’t know why it had stopped. She sat up and tried to clear her head.

  Rusty looked out the window. “Hell’s banjo! It’s the Miltons.”

  Tennie looked out the window as two masked men held rifles on the driver and his helper, ordering them to throw down their weapons. “How can you tell?” she whispered.

  Rusty lowered his voice. “I’d know those holes he cuts out for his corns in Bod Milton’s boots anywhere.”

  The two men on top of the stagecoach reluctantly threw down their weapons. One of the masked men dismounted and approached the door of the coach, throwing it open.

  “You!” he said, pointing to Tennie. “Out!”

  Tennie didn’t budge, and he reached in, pulling her roughly from the stage. He pointed his gun on the boys. “Get back!”

  He shoved Tennie toward his companion. He grabbed Tennie and held on to her arms, but not before she had seen his bulging eyes above his mask and knew he was Ozzie Milton.

  “Ride on to Waco!” Bod yelled. “We got men posted on every ridge ready to blast you to hell if you stop this stagecoach before you get to Waco.”

  “Miss Tennie!” Lucas cried. Behind him, Badger was sobbing.

  “Go to Waco,” Tennie cried. “Wait for Mr. Lafayette like Wash told you!”

  Ozzie shook her and told her to be quiet.

  “Move it!” Bod said, pulling a pistol from his belt and firing it in the air.

  The stagecoach driver gave an agonized look at Tennie.

  “Hurry!” she screamed. She wanted the boys away from the insane Milton family as quickly as possible. The driver popped the reins and the stagecoach sped away, with three boys hanging from the windows, looking back at Tennie with tears streaming down their faces.

  The two men waited until the stagecoach was out of sight before shoving Tennie toward a wooded area filled with underbrush.

  “What do you want?” Tennie asked.

  “Shut up,” Bod said.

  The fire at the saloon, the wild-goose chase deep into East Texas—how had the indolent and somewhat simpleminded Miltons thought of all that, much less executed it? And for what reason?

  They reached a clearing containing a wagon. In the wagon sat Inga Milton, and suddenly, how they planned it made sense.

  Pulling the bandannas from their faces, they propelled Tennie toward the wagon while Inga watched.

  “Tie her hands first,” she said. “Then push her in wagon bed and tie feet.”

  Tennie’s mind raced. Whether to run or fight? Did they intend to kill her? If she fought, she couldn’t win. If she ran, she might get a back full of buckshot. Hawkshaw had told her not to antagonize Inga.

  “Hello, Inga,” she said, forcing herself to be calm.

  Inga looked at her and smirked. “Little Mrs. Granger has more courage than perhaps I gave her credit for.” She looked at the men. “Hurry up. Stagecoach driver may not believe story about men waiting to shoot if he stop.”

  Bod twirled Tennie around and seemed to make a show of roughly tying her hands behind her back. He pushed her into the back of the wagon, forcing her down. He took her feet and tied them together. Loo
king to see if his wife was watching, he ran a quick hand up Tennie’s leg when Inga glanced at the direction from whence they’d come. Tennie drew back but said nothing to him.

  “What do you want, Inga?” she asked.

  Inga looked at her. “Did you search her for money?” she asked the men, ignoring Tennie’s question.

  Bod felt all over her skirt until he found a pocket. Reaching a grubby hand in, he pulled out the small bag that Tennie had brought along, emptying the contents. A comb, a handkerchief, and a twenty-dollar gold piece.

  “That’s all you had?” Ozzie said, leaning over the wagon and looking disappointed.

  “My fiancé carried all the money I needed,” Tennie said. The rest of the money she carried was in her other pocket, but Bod hadn’t thought to look there.

  “Hurry up. Let’s go,” Inga said.

  Tennie looked at Ozzie. She had bought the comb, a nice one, with her first earnings. “Will you put my comb and handkerchief back in my pocket, please?”

  “Leave it,” Inga ordered.

  Ozzie cringed, but as soon as Inga turned her back to take up the reins, he scooped up the comb and handkerchief and shoved them back into Tennie’s pocket, squeezing her thigh as he did and making her wish she hadn’t asked.

  Ozzie and Bod got back on their horses as Inga urged the mule forward. Tennie lay still in the wagon bed trying to assimilate what was happening. She thought she better try to raise up enough to see where they were going. Wriggling herself against the side of the wagon, she managed to push her shoulders upward.

  Inga hit her across the neck with a whip. “Get down,” she ordered.

  Tennie slumped back down. She looked up at the cloudless sky and found the sun. They were heading west. They left the clearing, and on either side of the bumpy road they were following, trees leaned over the wagon and brushed against its sides. Finding a large crack in the boards of the wagon bed, Tennie looked downward. If they were following a road, it was one that had been little used in the past. Grass brushed against the bottom of the wagon bed.

  They didn’t appear concerned about covering their tracks. From the sounds of the horses and the wagon, Tennie thought Bod and Ozzie were riding in front. If they spoke, she couldn’t hear it above the creaking of the wagon. They entered a shallow and sandy stream, heading north, following it wordlessly for a distance, the wagon jarring every time they hit a hole. Inga urged the mule onto a flat bank, and they followed what could only be described as a wide Indian trail for some time before Inga again drove the mule into the creek. The creek bed was smoother this time, but they only followed it a short time before coming out on the opposite bank. The mule again picked up a trail heading south, and Tennie realized they were backtracking to the road.

  They began heading west again, the grassy road dotted with occasional weeping tree limbs giving way to harder, rockier ground before the wagon came to a sudden halt.

  Inga stepped down. “Get her out,” she ordered.

  Bod and Ozzie came around to the back of the wagon bed. Bod took Tennie by the feet and jerked her out, shoving her upright.

  Tennie had to fight to keep down the rising hysteria that threatened to set her off screaming. She swallowed hard and looked around.

  They were at an old cabin that sat two or three feet off the ground on top of precarious stumps. The whole structure looked like it might blow over if they all exhaled at once. A nearby barn, oddly enough, was in slightly better condition.

  Tennie swallowed again, determined to keep her temper. “However did you find this place?”

  “It’s the Milton old home place,” Ozzie said with pride.

  “Shut up, Ozzie,” Bod said.

  That was how they knew to get to it in a circuitous way, Tennie realized. Looking at what was little more than a shack, she could imagine a pack of lazy hounds lolling in the cool under the porch and skunks wallowing their way underneath a house with no underpinning. She thought she saw a shadow flitter by the window. Someone else was in the house. Perhaps it was an older Milton, the father or the mother.

  Inga ordered her untied. While Bod worked on the ropes on her hands, touching her buttocks as covertly as he could, Tennie tried to sway away every time he did. Ozzie untied the rope at her feet, running his hands around her ankles. Careful not to express anger, she looked down and kicked at his hand slightly, letting him know she did not appreciate his caresses. He drew back with the ropes.

  She was a pawn used to punish her and Wash Jones for killing their brother. She looked at Inga’s hard face and realized it was more than that. It had to be money, and the person with money was Lafayette.

  Bod shoved her toward the house. Tennie tried to take in her surroundings as she stumbled toward it. They were in a clearing on a wooded ridge. It would be difficult, but not impossible, for anyone to get to the cabin without being seen.

  She staggered up the steep steps of the porch as Bod shoved her again. He was purposely provoking her, but she was determined not to let an emotional outburst give them an even stronger upper hand.

  “Bod, you ain’t got to be so rough with her,” Ozzie said.

  Inga told him to shut up. She flung the batten door open and stood aside. Tennie felt immeasurably safer outside and did not want to enter. Bod’s hand on her back gave her no choice.

  She took in an old table, decrepit chairs, a rude kitchen containing empty shelves and a row of meager supplies. Bod pushed her farther into the room, and a noise like a heavy breath escaping caught her attention. She looked behind her.

  Next to the door stood a tall man with dark hair, his mustached lips curved in a faint and mocking smile. “Mrs. Granger,” Hawkshaw said, with an insolent tip of his hat.

  “You!” Tennie said, breathing fire. She remembered her resolve and clamped her mouth shut, but she couldn’t stop the flaring of her nostrils or the flashes of uncontrolled hatred coming from her eyes. She took a breath and forced her voice to come out evenly. “Would you mind telling me what is going on?”

  Hawkshaw moved a step closer. “Yes, I mind. Put her in the storeroom.”

  Ozzie, who had heretofore been the nicer of the brothers, decided to show how tough he was in front of Hawkshaw by jerking Tennie toward another batten door. He pushed it open and shoved her roughly into a small room that was the size of a large pantry minus the shelves.

  With the door shut, the light in the room dimmed. When Tennie’s eyes adjusted, she saw slits of light coming from between the boards of the door. The room was so ill-built, there was light coming in from cracks in the outside walls. The floor was rotting and had holes in it. Someone had recently swept it out, but there wasn’t a bucket, a plate, a can, or a scrap of anything else in the empty storage room.

  Tennie could hear voices coming from the other side of the door. “I don’t have a waste bucket,” she cried.

  “Use corner!” Inga yelled.

  “What about water?” Tennie said.

  “Tomorrow! Shut up!” Inga said, her voice so rough, Tennie slumped to the floor. The jailor had become the jailed. She placed her back to the door and heaved in and out, trying to keep from screaming or melting into tears.

  Surely the stage drivers would go to the law. What was happening with her stepsons? The stagecoach drivers would see that they had a place to stay, but what then? If Lafayette tarried long, they would get into trouble. They would run through Waco so wild, Rusty, and possibly Lucas, would be thrown into jail while Badger would be shipped off to an orphanage. She shut her eyes, and after much effort, forced herself to pray inside her head in clear, concise words instead of a jumble of fear.

  She leaned against the door, shutting her eyes again while she tried to concentrate on what those idiot Miltons were telling that traitor Hawkshaw. She wanted to strangle him. But it went back to rule number two, never expect gratitude for anything. She forced herself to forget Hawkshaw and listen.

  “He’ll pay up, won’t he?” Ozzie asked.

  “Of course, he wi
ll,” Inga said. “She is to be his sister-in-law.”

  “I think we should have asked for more money,” Bod said.

  “No,” Inga replied. “We ask only for what he can get easily. If he has to get loan, too many people get involved.”

  “That’s right,” Ozzie said. “The sooner we get this over with the better.”

  “Have you forgotten about Creed?” Bod thundered. “They shot him.”

  Creed? Tennie wondered. Who was Creed? Oh. That must have been Maggot Milton’s real first name.

  “I ain’t forgot,” Ozzie said. “But Creed, he weren’t no good to us nohow.”

  “Shut up!” Bod roared. “He was our brother.”

  “So, we get even the best way,” Inga said. “Money in exchange for life of no-good brother.”

  It sounded like she was putting food on the table and Tennie could hear chairs scraping against the floor. Hawkshaw had remained silent, but she believed he was still there. Whether it was because of Inga’s realism, or the desire to satisfy hunger, they stopped arguing.

  Tears came to Tennie’s eyes, and she brushed them away. She wasn’t hungry, but her throat was parched, and she was covered in road dust. The light coming in through the cracks began to fade. Night was falling. The murmur of voices receded, and Tennie fell asleep against the door, praying over and over that God would get her out. She was so near hysteria, she couldn’t finish the rest of the sentence, only that she wanted out.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, she thought she was at the jailhouse, and Rascal, Badger’s puppy, was pestering her. “Get away, Rascal,” she murmured, and pushed him away. The second time it happened, she pushed harder and something small hit the wall. She awoke with a start, jumped up and screamed. “Mice! Oh God, there’s mice in here,” she said, turning to pound on the door. She kicked at what she couldn’t see with her shoes, cringing when they made contact.

  “What is it?” Inga demanded.

  “There are mice in here!” Tennie said, and she began to cry. Where there were mice, there were snakes, and she had already almost died once from a snakebite. This time, there wouldn’t be anyone to save her.