A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose)

by Charlaine Harris

  Being helpless in their hands would be hell. Junie didn’t have a chance with a father like that. He would infect the child with his own hatred. He would think he was doing a good thing. Maybe he’d give Junie her own little lamb pin to wear.

  I wondered if I could find occasion to kill them all. The world would be a better place.

  We waited ten minutes after the last man walked away from the rendezvous, just to be cautious. It was good we were quiet on our descent from the tree, because we hadn’t allowed long enough. When we emerged from the weed-choked wilderness of the little cemetery, we found Moultry standing by his car while he smoked a cigarette and waited for his companion to finish peeing in the bushes.

  Even though there were no streetlights close, we froze. I didn’t think the men could see us even if Eli’s spell wore off, but every instinct I had told me to stay still.

  “Come on, Dill, this is taking forever,” Moultry said. I matched his voice to his face. This was the man who had thought Eli might turn me into a dog.

  “I got something wrong with my bladder,” the other man said over his shoulder. It was one of the men from the first funeral home. “I got to go to Doc Fielder.”

  It was at least three minutes until they got in the car to drive off, so that doctor visit had better be soon, I figured.

  We were in full view. The three minutes felt like an hour. I drew a deep breath the second they were far enough down the street.

  “Those men are poison,” I said. “I could shoot ’em all.”

  “You don’t get to judge.”

  I couldn’t see Eli, but from his voice he felt the same as me but thought it was wrong, that feeling.

  “Eli, we judge every day. We decide that person is bad and this one is good.” It was a struggle for me to talk about what I felt. I wasn’t used to it.

  “There is a difference. We have to fight people who are trying to kill us, to block our path to the goal we have promised to reach.”

  That was pretty much my job description, and I nodded. Of course, he didn’t know that. “Yes,” I said, but I was a little slow saying it, because we were in deeper waters here than I was used to.

  “But that’s different from picking people out of a crowd and deciding that person isn’t worthy of life,” Eli said.

  “What makes it different?” When Eli didn’t answer right away, I went on. “What’s the difference between me deciding someone has to die because they’re shooting at me, and me deciding someone has to die because they don’t believe people different from them are human?”

  “Aren’t there any people you don’t think are as good as you?”

  “That isn’t a real high standard, most people would say.”

  “What do you think?”

  I had never questioned my right to make my own decisions about people. “I think I’m as good as anyone if you’re talking about rich and poor,” I said. “I see the differences, but I don’t think they make me worse or better. If you’re talking about morals, I try to do what I think is right. I don’t know how else to act. And I think it’s right that rapists and people who try to hold down other people should die.” I’d messed that all up, but I hoped Eli understood what I meant.

  An invisible arm found my invisible shoulders. We were silent the rest of the walk back.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Getting into the hotel was not as tricky as getting out because there were fewer people around now. The kitchen staff had left, but there were still some workers, and the guests were sitting around the public parts of the downstairs. The Mercers had an apartment at the back of the hotel. Its door was right where the stairs came down. There was a little plaque that said PRIVATE on the door. Just as we passed it, the door opened and hit Eli in the shoulder—at least, that was my guess, because I heard the sound of a stumble and the chair sitting against the opposite wall scraped its legs against the floor as it was pushed sideways.

  Nellie Mercer stood frozen in the doorway, her hand over her mouth. Her eyes were wide. If she’d been a horse, I’d have said she was about to bolt. In fact, she stepped back into the apartment and shut the door. I could hear Eli right himself and then he was back by my side. We could not speak, of course, but I was sure there were a few words he’d like to say. I wanted to laugh, but at the same time I felt a little sorry for the woman. A little.

  We had to wait at the foot of the main stairs for a guest to come down, then a maid, and finally, when the stairs were clear, we could see someone on the gallery above. I sighed, and shifted from foot to foot. After seven or eight minutes, we had a clear path and we went up the stairs as quickly and quietly as possible. At the door of our room we waited, looking, and then Eli unlocked it and we scooted in. Closing the door and locking it behind us made me real happy.

  Eli said, “Bathroom,” and I heard him peeing a minute later. Now that we were alone, I would be glad when we could see each other again. I had to give Eli credit, this spell was lasting a long time.

  I wanted a shower, after pouring sweat and pushing through all the weeds—no telling what was in my hair. I’d just gotten my clothes off when I realized I could see my hand, and then the rest of me became visible. Eli was also taking his clothes off, and he turned to look at me. “Oh, great!” he said, and then we proceeded from there.

  About an hour later I took my shower with Eli.

  We went down to breakfast the next morning early. Eli wore his vest. Our laundry had been returned, and I again wore my white blouse and blue skirt. Now I almost didn’t notice them. I still missed my guns, though.

  I heard a guest at the next table say, “Honey, you know that blond woman we were talking to at the Western Union office?”

  “The woman you thought was so pretty?” his wife said, in a tone as dry as toast.

  “Oh, honey … she was pretty, but you are my wife,” he said, and she laughed a little.

  I half-turned my head to get a look at them, and saw a young man, brown hair, blue eyes, well dressed. The wife was just the same. I looked hard at Eli, and he nodded slightly, to let me know he’d heard.

  “What about the blond?” the wife asked.

  “I went over to Melvin’s hotel last night to ask him if he’d heard from Mama, and he told me she and her man friend had gone missing. Stuff still in their rooms, but they hadn’t come in or out for hours.”

  I wasn’t keen on Travis Seeley and Harriet Ritter, but I had to admit this worried me. Also, they knew a lot about us, and that could become common knowledge if someone really persuasive had got them.

  Dr. Fielder was waiting for us in the lobby when we came into the hall from the dining room. He was holding his hat in his hand, looking uncomfortable.

  “It’s good to see you again,” Eli said, sounding calm and matter-of-fact.

  The doctor did his best to look calm. “Sorry to interrupt your morning, but I wonder if you have a moment?”

  “Of course we do,” I said. “We were just about to take a little walk; it’s such a pretty morning. Come with us.”

  I hadn’t been lying—it was nice and cool that morning. It was even pleasant to be wearing a skirt, because the cool air just flowed up under it. We strolled down the sidewalk until we came to the park across from the courthouse, and there we picked a pair of benches. We sat opposite the good doctor.

  “Something’s going on out at the Ballard house,” Jerry Fielder said.

  We nodded. “We heard,” Eli said. “But we don’t know what.”

  “You remember the girl who came to my kitchen?” He looked around before he said that. “Willa May?”

  We nodded again.

  “You haven’t seen the place yet, but there are a number of cabins behind the house. They used to be slave quarters. Now that—after the Civil War, the Ballards prettied them up and a lot of the people who work for them live in those cabins.”

  I was not going to nod again. I just waited.

  “Willa May decided to hide in one of them with an aunt, Juanit
a Poe, until she could arrange a way to get to her cousin’s.”

  Juanita Poe had been the one who’d said she’d seen a trunk carried into the Ballard attic.

  “Willa May said the Ballards wouldn’t notice one more black face among all the others, and I guess she was right. She went into the house today and called me from the Ballards’ kitchen telephone, which was pretty brave—or stupid—of her. She said people were dying out at the Ballard place. White people.”

  My first thought was of Felix, who’d been planning to go there the last time we saw him. My second was of Harriet and Travis.

  “Since they couldn’t get us, maybe they settled for someone else,” I said, trying to let Eli know what I meant without naming names.

  Jerry Fielder said, “I wanted to make sure it wasn’t you two, and now that I know that, I feel better. But I thought maybe this was information you’d need to know.” He hesitated. I wondered if he were thinking of offering to go with us.

  Instead he said, “I’ll draw you a map, if you want to go to see for yourselves.” He drew a piece of paper from his doctor bag and hastily sketched out a route to the Ballard house. Then he took off for his office.

  “We’ve got to check on Travis and Harriet,” I said. “Maybe they’ve come back.”

  Eli didn’t question that. “Where are they staying?”

  I fished the name out of my memory. “The Livingston,” I told him. We walked into the Livingston lobby a few minutes later. It was cool and dark. Overhead fans turned in slow circles. The lady behind the desk was smiling already, even when she saw what Eli was. “May I help you?” she said. Her blond-white hair was braided and formed into a little crown on her head, which was fascinating. I shook myself and got to business with an introduction. Her name was Mrs. Girtley.

  “Ma’am, we understand some friends of ours have not turned up where they are supposed to be,” I said. Calm and reasonable. “Travis Seeley and Harriet Ritter. My husband and I are concerned about them, and we wonder if—with you present, of course—we might look at their room to see if we can find any clue as to where they might be?”

  Mrs. Girtley’s lips pressed together as she thought this over. “With me present,” she said, nodding. “If Mr. Seeley and Miss Ritter hadn’t been so regular in their habits, I wouldn’t be too concerned. But their rooms were supposed to be vacated today. They told me yesterday they’d be leaving this morning. I just don’t believe it’s like them to vanish, especially not without their belongings.”

  “We’d be much obliged,” Eli said, sounding as Dixie as he was ever going to sound.

  We followed Mrs. Girtley down the ground-floor hall. First Mrs. Girtley unlocked Travis’s room, which was orderly. His suitcase was shut, his clothes still hung in the wardrobe, his shaving gear and toothbrush were in the bathroom.

  “I’m going to open his suitcase,” Eli said to Mrs. Girtley.

  “Oh, I’m sure it’s locked,” she said.

  But I took a cue from Eli and began to ask Mrs. Girtley how long she had worked at the hotel and any other questions I could think of. Eli made some small hand gestures. When he pressed the release buttons the locks popped open.

  “Oh, my goodness, he left it unlocked!” Mrs. Girtley said.

  I knew for sure something bad had happened to Travis when I saw his guns lying on top of his clothes. From Eli’s sudden stillness, he’d reached the same conclusion.

  Same thing in Harriet Ritter’s room. Her guns were in her suitcase too, and it was locked until Eli stepped close. And Harriet’s jewelry was in her suitcase. It was nice jewelry. Not showy, but not fake. Real gold, as far as I could tell.

  “I should call the sheriff,” Mrs. Girtley said. She shook her head. “You’d think since they worked for Iron Hand they’d be able to take care of themselves, even Miss Ritter. But you don’t leave sidearms and jewelry behind.”

  Any dragging our feet would make us look real suspicious. “You should do that,” I said. “This is a real mystery.”

  And it was. But I kept on talking to Mrs. Girtley about how worried I was, to distract her while Eli got hair from Harriet’s brush, just as he’d done in Travis’s room. I had no idea what he meant to do with it, but he knew what he needed.

  “I’ll go call the sheriff,” Mrs. Girtley said, with sudden decision. “You lock the door behind you, please.” I took the key from her, and as soon as she was out of sight I took Harriet’s guns. I checked them to make sure they were loaded—they were—and I tucked one into my purse, where it barely fit, and handed the other to Eli to tuck into the back of his pants, under his vest. I wanted to be armed right now. I couldn’t walk back to our hotel without something better than a knife.

  Eli didn’t say anything about this, so I figured he was trusting me to do my work. He searched the suitcase very thoroughly (nothing) before relocking it in his magical way. We left the room after a final look around for papers or anything else that might give us a clue. Nothing.

  Once we were outside, having handed Mrs. Girtley the key and repeated our conversation several times (some people don’t think saying something once is nearly enough), Eli said, “Quiet spot.”

  I pointed to the paved path going around to the rear of the hotel. I’d looked out of Travis’s window to see there was a patio, deserted this time of the day.

  There was one little area in some shade. That’s where we headed. Three wooden chairs huddled in this bit of shadow. We had to sit close together. Eli drew out the hairs. “Hold them,” he said.

  I turned my palms up, slightly cupped, and he dropped the blond hair into my right and the dark hair into my left. Then he began to whisper.

  My palms began to tingle. As I looked at Eli’s face, intent and serious, and felt his power, I felt proud to know him.

  At the end of the spell, if that’s what Eli called it, he stood and said, “Come.”

  I was up immediately, carefully stowing the strand of hair from Harriet into my right skirt pocket, stowing Travis’s in my left. We began walking. My purse, heavy with one of the guns, slapped my side.

  “Does it mean they’re alive, if you can follow them this way?”

  “No,” Eli said.

  Eli was acting like he was blind except for the path only he could see. I had to steer for him. I took his arm and used pressure to control him. My hands were full with keeping Eli from bumping into someone or stepping out in front of a car. He wasn’t following a scent, like the bloodhound would have done. I don’t know what he was following, but he was definitely fixed on going that way.

  Eli chose that moment to cross a street. I had to hold him back from stepping off the curb into the path of a car. It was like shepherding a very large sheep.

  I was real glad there weren’t many people out.

  “Eli,” I said. “Listen to me.”

  He stopped walking. That was something.

  “I’m going to get the car and come pick you up. Can you stand still here until I get back?”

  Eli nodded without looking at me. He was holding on to the track. He couldn’t waver in his focus. Temperature was going up fast, and he was sweating.

  It took me fifteen minutes to run back to the Pleasant Stay, run up to our room to get my gun belt, get in the car, and return. I was scared the whole time that Eli wouldn’t be there when I got back, but there he was. People were walking around him, giving him as wide a berth as they could, because he was simply still.

  I had to jump out of the car and run around to open the door. Then Eli climbed in after I pulled Harriet’s gun from the back of his pants. He pointed forward, and off we took. I was driving slow so I wouldn’t miss a change of direction. If I turned the wrong way, I might jar him loose.

  I had four guns now, but it didn’t seem enough.

  We left downtown behind and drove through the pleasant streets where the people lived who had plenty. After that ran out, which didn’t take long, we were on gravel instead of pavement. These were folks who were less lucky. Their yar
ds were messy and any cars were beaten and rusty. The children wore faded hand-me-downs. And they threw rocks, sometimes.

  Then we were driving on packed dirt. We were among the shacks and shanties of the very poor. As far as I could see, the people in this neighborhood were all black. I knew there must be some white people just as poor, but even at the most desperate level the two races didn’t mix.

  If we were in Texoma, this was where I would live. The houses were kind of cobbled together, most of wood with the shine of age and weathering, a few with walls or roofs of tin, some with a pen of chickens and a garden, one or two with a cow in the yard, and every now and then a mule. There was always a vegetable garden. Children of all sizes played outside. Some were lucky enough to have a tire swing or a baseball or a jump rope.

  But all these pastimes stopped when we rode slowly by. The children didn’t follow us asking questions like kids in Segundo Mexia would have. These children stood in silent clumps as we passed.

  These kids knew that white people in their part of town couldn’t mean anything good.

  And still I drove with my silent Eli, very slowly, windows down to admit whatever breeze might happen by. The sweat trickled down my back and under my breasts. This skirt might have to be burned after today, and I wasn’t even thinking about the petticoat and the panties and the bra.

  We drove at our creeping pace till there were open fields stretching far as the eye could see. The flat land was only broken by a little gentle roll here and there, or a strip of trees edging a bayou. The farmhouses were spaced wide apart and set back from the road, surrounded by trees. Some were real big and fancy, some were shacks, some were degrees in between.

  A man passed us. He was riding a horse. He gave us a sideways look of alarm and urged the horse on. Odd. This was the only person we’d seen on this road, and he was going in the same direction we were.

  We’d only passed the occasional farm vehicles rumbling down the road, and in the distance I’d seen small wooden sheds at the corners of the fields. I couldn’t figure out their purpose. I learned later that was where cotton was stored when it was being picked by hand. Then it would be loaded on a truck and taken to the cotton gin in Sally. Other than that, the vast landscape seemed empty except for the rider.