A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose)

by Charlaine Harris

  I began to feel even more uneasy than I’d been, and that was saying something.

  We’d been jouncing around on a dirt road that had not been leveled in a long time. Eli had not given me any signals in a while. I hoped we were nearing the end of our drive.

  I caught a flicker out in the field on my left, and I leaned forward to look. A cluster of black people were walking through the cotton. They were empty-handed, most of them, and they were all heading for town. In a hurry. Surely taking the road would have been easier; maybe longer, though.

  Eli hadn’t spoken this whole time except to say “left” or “right.” But now he said, “Stop.”

  Where Eli said to stop, there was a graveled driveway to our left leading to a huge white house, two stories with an attic. The windows all had green shutters. A broad front porch extended the full width of the house, and there were pillars supporting the porch roof. As we approached, I could see a big terrace at the back of the house, a sort of patio. Then there was a line of trees and bushes, planted as a screen.

  Beyond that, there were little white cabins, planted all around with flowers, to make poverty pretty. There was a huge vegetable garden and an equally large woodpile. There was a long, low building that might be a garage for farm machinery or cars, or both.

  This had to be the Ballard plantation. I had never seen the like.

  Here was the oddest thing: at first glance, nothing was stirring. There wasn’t even a breeze making the leaves flutter on the pecan trees. Not an old man rocking on the porch, not a bird flying across the grass.

  Eli was coming back to himself, but I could tell it wasn’t easy. I began talking to give him some time. “No way we can sneak up,” I said. “Even if we got out of the car and crawled on our bellies. Probably someone in the house watching right now.”

  “They’re there,” Eli said, from a far distance.

  “Harriet and Travis are in that house?”

  “We must go find them,” Eli said. He seemed stiff, like the long spell had taken away his sap.

  “So here we go,” I said, though I didn’t want to even go close to that place.

  I felt like … I felt like we were going to a hangman, as I turned the car to glide down the driveway. There had been no rain for a while, and the driveway was baked into a crust. The car’s tires turned up a cloud of dust.

  As we parked in front of the house, I saw I had been wrong about the place being empty. There was a black man standing by the blooming bushes that decorated the front of the house. He was clipping them with hedge shears. He had to have seen and heard us, but he was pretending we were not there.

  I got out of the car first and faced the man squarely. I had one of Harriet’s guns in my right hand, the one I’d pulled from my pocket. I’d kept the other in my purse, but if I had one on show, I might as well have the other. Wasn’t doing me any good in the purse. I pulled it out. I was saving my guns and my rifle in the trunk.

  Slowly, unwillingly, the gardener turned to face us, and I saw he was shaking.

  I didn’t draw the guns to the gardener’s attention, but he saw them, all right, clear as I saw the hedge shears.

  “Yes, ma’am? Can I help you?” he said, evenly enough. He was a tall, wide man with a broad face, very dark. I thought he was bald under his wide-brimmed hat. His clothes weren’t rags, but they weren’t too far off.

  “Some people we know are here, and we want to talk to them,” I said. “Harriet Ritter and Travis Seeley.”

  “I don’t know anyone of that name,” he said. “Either one.”

  He hadn’t done anything to me and I didn’t want to shoot him, but I would if I had to. It occurred to me it might shake up his memory if I told him that, and I did.

  “Why would you shoot me? I ain’t done nothing to you,” he said reasonably. There was a quaver in his voice, though.

  “You are not telling me the truth. I want to see the two people I mentioned,” I said. “Just so you know, shooting one more person isn’t going to burden me any.” That might not be the whole truth, but I wanted him to believe it was.

  There was a long moment where nothing happened, and I was sure I’d have to kill him. But just when I decided to raise the gun, the screen door squeaked open and a woman appeared, wearing a gray uniform that didn’t do her glowing brown skin any favors. The woman was scrawny, stiff with fear, and she held open the door to let Harriet Ritter follow her out onto the porch.

  Harriet’s nice clothes were rumpled as if she’d slept in them. Her face was bruised. Though Harriet looked at me directly, I could not read her face.

  “Lizbeth,” she said, without any expression. “Why are you here?”

  “The hotel asked us to find you. They want to know whether you’re giving up your room or not.” I had hidden the gun in the folds of my skirt. I held it out a little now, to show Harriet I was armed. “I can go back to pack up your stuff. You let me know what you want to do.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Another woman stepped out of the darkness of the house. Her iron-gray hair was rolled up behind her head. Her face was wrinkled and her eyes pouchy, but she wore a pearl necklace and earrings. Her dress was a limp print, dark green with light yellow butterflies. She was anything but a butterfly. More of a locust, or a scorpion. She had an ancient pistol in her left hand. She said to the black woman, “Myra, go back in the house and see to Mr. Holden.”

  Myra left the porch, but she didn’t go anywhere to take care of anyone. She stood right inside the screen door. The older woman didn’t seem to notice.

  “I’m Lizbeth Rose,” I called. “Who are you, to speak for Harriet?”

  “I am Mary Ellen Ballard,” the older woman said, as if that name should strike fear into my heart.

  There was a dark kind of buzzing just at the edge of my hearing. Something was happening in the house, and it wasn’t something good. Just when I was wishing Eli stood at my back, I heard him get out of the car.

  “Mrs. Ballard,” Eli said from behind me. “It’s so good to see you again. I haven’t seen you since Amanda’s funeral. I hope you got the condolence card my guild sent after the loss of the tsarina.”

  “Cards don’t mean anything at all when your daughter is dead,” Mary Ellen Ballard said, each word heavy. “You damn wizards! Couldn’t even save her life! And now you want to take away my whole life, in addition to my daughter’s. And my son’s.” She was somewhere beyond bitter, into the real biblical zone.

  Mary Ellen Ballard was drunk. Or crazy. Maybe both.

  Eli ignored the speech. “We need to take Harriet away from here,” Eli said. “You must let her go.”

  “Why? Why must I do that?” Mrs. Ballard said, with all the assurance of someone with an army at her command. Even the man with the shears looked scared. It was all I could do not to flinch, and I was the one holding a gun.

  “ ’Cause I’ll kill you if you don’t,” I said.

  “My people will take care of you,” Mrs. Ballard told me scornfully. “No one will ever see you again.”

  Jeez, she was creepy. “Yeah? Where are all those people? ’Cause I don’t see anyone but these two.”

  Mrs. Ballard looked confused. She actually glanced around her. She appeared to be startled at the silence and the absence of her servants. “Well, I have called my friends from town,” she said haughtily, putting her confidence back on like a coat.

  “Friends” was a lot longer word, the way she said it.

  FREEuhndss. “We need to get out of here,” I told Eli in a real low voice. I made sure Harriet was looking at me. She still seemed stunned, not her sharp-witted self at all. But I gave my head a little jerk. She looked sideways at Mrs. Ballard and edged away from the woman.

  “Don’t you move, you hussy!” Mary Ellen Ballard said, her face in a true snarl. Mrs. Ballard lunged for Harriet, who pulled herself back so the older woman’s hand missed grabbing her. Harriet scuttled down the few steps from the porch.

  “Don’t stand there like a
fool, catch ahold of her!” Mrs. Ballard cried out to her yard man. He saw my gun and made the good decision to stand still.

  Mrs. Ballard whipped out her gun and fired. She was no gunnie. The bullet didn’t come anywhere close to Harriet.

  I raised my arm to shoot the bitch, but Eli had already hit her with his magic. I didn’t know what spell he was using, but it was effective. Mary Ellen Ballard went down like a lightning-struck tree, smoking and crackling. She didn’t move after she hit the porch. The old gun lay by her twitching fingers.

  That was new. I’d seen Eli knock down people in interesting ways, but this was … different.

  Me, Harriet, the yard man, Myra, and maybe even Eli, were all startled. “My goodness. Did you kill her?” I said, which I thought was pretty mild.

  No one moved.

  “Would you mind seeing if Mrs. Ballard is alive?” I asked Myra, who was closest. I wanted to keep my gun on her, in case she roused.

  “No, ma’am, I ain’t touching her,” Myra said. It was clear she’d rather play with a snake.

  I went up the steps and squatted by Mary Ellen Ballard, who lay on her stomach with her face turned to one side. There was still smoke coming from under her collar, so I touched her bare neck real gingerly. Nothing. Her back wasn’t moving up and down with breath. Just to dot my i’s and cross my t’s, I took Mrs. Ballard’s hand and felt her wrist. I shook my head. “She got struck by lightning,” I said, and looked up into the clear sky.

  “The old lady is dead, Franklin,” Myra said. Suddenly, shockingly, she laughed.

  Franklin dropped the shears and looked up to the sky, his arms extended, his palms up. I know praying when I see it. Harriet sank down onto the top step and put her face in her hands. Eli sat down hard, sideways, in the driver’s seat of the car, his feet planted on the dirt. I looked at the body, so I’d know when it stopped smoking. I’m not sure why I thought I had to watch for that. Maybe I felt the porch would catch fire under her.

  Myra said, “If Miz Ballard’s friends get here and you’re still around, they will kill you, and no one will ever know. Me and Franklin, we’re getting out of here now. The rest left already.” She ran into the house and returned with a sack. It clanked a little. I figured Myra was collecting pay owed her in a useful form. She beckoned to Franklin, and he took the bag and without any more words, they got out of there. Instead of walking down the driveway to the road, they took the route across the fields chosen by the other people we’d seen on our drive.

  Franklin left the shears where he’d dropped them. Guess he figured he didn’t work for the Ballards anymore.

  “Harriet,” I said. She looked up at me. “Where is Travis?”

  “He’s out back. He’s hanging from a tree.”

  I won’t say I didn’t flinch.

  “That old bitch hung him,” Harriet said in an empty voice. “Her and her son. They made some of the colored men help.”

  “Where is the son?”

  “Holden Ballard is in his bed upstairs.” Harriet’s face began to look firmer, more like herself. “I managed to wound him pretty bad before they locked me up. I had a knife in my stocking. I hope he dies of it.”

  “What is this all about?” Eli said, as he came up the steps. He was walking like a man who’d been carrying a heavy weight up a steep mountain.

  “She hired us to watch everyone on the train,” Harriet said, nodding toward the body.

  Well, at least now I knew where Iron Hand had come in.

  “She had heard through some of her connections … Ballards have fingers in every pie … that Russians were shipping something to Sally that would make Dixie erupt like a volcano. Mrs. Ballard hasn’t been right in the head since her daughter died. We knew that when we took the job, but our employer really wanted to be hand in hand with the Ballards.”

  “So you looked the passengers over and fixed on us,” I said.

  “Of course. Gun team, at least two well-known shooters and the old man with the ax. And your buddy Rogelio. He told us where you were staying every time. Where is he?”

  “Dead,” I said.

  “I figured.”

  “So was it you who stole the chest from Jake and killed him?”

  “No. That was your little buddy Sarah Byrne.”

  “But why?”

  “She was broke and banged up from her last job. She didn’t want to go stay with her sister. She thought the crate was valuable. And it was.” Harriet laughed, kind of bitter. “She thought Jake was unconscious, and she went to slip it away from him, and he woke up, and she killed him in a panic.”

  “What did she do with the chest?”

  “She told us she wrapped it in a tablecloth from the dining car and carried it to town with her. Some woman who came out to see the wreck gave her a lift.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “She looked from hotel to hotel until she found us. She figured Iron Hand was a big deal; she could get money from us and be on her way. She was figuring that all the trains out of town wouldn’t run again for a while. We all got stuck here in Sally. In nowhere. A town the Ballards rule. And since Mrs. Ballard called her friends in town about fifteen minutes ago, we need to get the hell out of here,” Harriet said.

  “What about the man upstairs? Ballard?”

  “He can rot for all I care.” Harriet made a face. “They summoned us to the house last night, sent a car and a driver. We couldn’t very well say no. One of the waitresses in town had called Mrs. Ballard, told her she’d seen us all eating together. You and Eli, me and Travis, and Rogelio. She had some questions about our loyalty.”

  “And once you got out here?”

  “We didn’t expect what we walked into.” It was clear Harriet was disgusted with herself. “Right when we came in, the old bitch got a big guy, white guy named Phelps, and a couple of his cronies, to pin us down. He’s—he was—her overseer. And our friend Sarah Byrne was holding a gun on us.”

  “Where is Phelps?”

  “Dead. Travis killed him with a knife he’d hidden in his boot.”

  “So that’s why they hung Travis?”

  Harriet nodded. “And they were going to do the same to me, or worse, after I stuck Holden. I want to go cut Travis down.”

  “You said we got to get out of here now,” I pointed out.

  Harriet looked like she wanted to argue, but at last she nodded again. I handed her her guns, and she was really glad to see them. I was tightening my gun belt around me as Eli began to look more aware.

  “Sarah?” Eli asked. I was glad to hear him join the conversation, look livelier.

  “I think she’s run. She’s not in the house, that I could see or hear. I plan on finding her.” Harriet didn’t have any expression at all in her voice. For the first time, I found her a little scary.

  I heard engines. “They’re coming,” I said. “Let’s get in the car.”

  “I don’t think that will work. They see us trying to leave, they’re going to block the driveway.” Eli looked grim.

  “Son of a bitch,” said Harriet. “We’ve got to run.”

  “I have to get the chest,” Eli said.

  “You can’t.” Harriet was all but yelling. “You’ve got to come back to get it. We don’t have time!”

  So we ran.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I caught a glimpse of Travis’s body hanging from a tree branch as we sped past the brick terrace, a flowerbed, a white birdbath, a line of bushes before the white cabins, empty now. There were signs of work that had been dropped in favor of flight; a basket of wet laundry, a bowl of peas. The black people we had seen on the way here had hastened away. They’d been warned by the man riding the horse. They’d fled to town. I hoped they’d gotten there safely.

  I hoped we would, too.

  I should have set fire to the house, I thought suddenly. Would have slowed ’em down. Too late. Maybe they’d search the house, find the Ballard son that Harriet had knifed, spend time getting help for him. />
  Maybe the sight of Travis dangling from the tree would give ’em pause. But not enough.

  Then I heard a dog baying, and I recalled my conversation with the tobacco-chewing man outside the hotel. Clete, or another hound just like him, was on our trail. I didn’t know much about dogs, but I didn’t have anything to bribe Clete with if he caught up to us. That was assuming he was bribable.

  Eli was not at full speed because of the death magic he’d used on old Mrs. Ballard. (In hindsight, I should have just shot her the minute she started talking. But I’d thought we might learn something.) Harriet was sore from being beaten. I was hampered by my damn shoes and skirt. I swore to myself I would never wear such things again. See where blending in had gotten me? Running through some woods with a dog behind me.

  At least Harriet and I both had our guns.

  So we ran. We came to one of those meandering trails of trees that cut through the middle of the first field behind the house. I found that the trees were on the banks of a bayou. The water was dark and still, except for a ripple here and there.

  I saw a snake slithering away from the bank. They had water moccasins here. Copperheads. Shit.

  We leaped the water at the narrowest point. We raced along the other side, Eli picking the direction. Did not know why he went that way, but I followed. I was working on keeping my breathing even. Harriet sounded like a bellows. Weeds and stickers whipped and tore at us as we bulled our way through.

  I finally figured Eli was following the trees because the people arriving at the Ballard place couldn’t see us that way. We were close enough to be visible running through the flat fields. But the line of trees angled north, and we needed to go west, to town. Harriet had to stop for a minute, and I turned back to her.

  “I got a stitch in my side,” she gasped. “Go on. I’ll catch up.”

  I took up running again. Didn’t want Eli to get out of sight. The growth of trees and tangle of underbrush was thick unless you stuck to the edge of the bank, and I was scared I’d tumble into the dark water at any moment. The bayou was widening, and I saw turtles sliding into the water at the noise of our approach, and a slither or two from other snakes. This was its own narrow strip of swamp. At this wider place the sky could shine down onto the tangled green growth and the muddy bank …