After Eli (33 page)

“You know, Sarah, it’s true,” Rachel whispered.

“What is, Mama?”

“What Eli used to say,” Rachel replied. “He used to say his baby was his wife made over, a baby Rachel, he said. He used to say no child was ever more like her mother.” She paused and smiled. “Maybe it’s not as true as I’d want it to be, but that’d make me happy when he said it,” she continued. “Oh, that’d make me happy. I guess that’s somethin’ I missed more than anythin’ else about Eli not bein’ around. He was a sight around you. Last time he was around you—that was a long time ago, now—he kept callin’ you his sweet angel. You had a doll then and, oh, Eli was a spoiler with you. One time, when you was just a baby learnin’ about things, Eli woke us both up about this time, about sunrise, and we all went tiptoein’ to the kitchen window. He said he wanted to show us the prettiest sight in the whole world. You remember that? It was a bunch of wild canaries. They’d lit out by the woodpile. The prettiest yellow birds you ever saw. Singin’ and chatterin’. First time I ever saw any wild canaries. And the last time. Funny. Now that I think of it, it’s funny. Eli said they was wanderin’ birds. Never stayed long enough for people to see them.” She paused and pulled Sarah closer. “He left home soon after that,” she said. “Just up and left.”

Sarah lifted her head in surprise.

“I remember that,” she said. “I do, Mama. Yellow birds. I thought it was a dream, maybe. I never guessed they was real.”

Rachel nodded.

“Mama, what’ll we do now?” Sarah asked suddenly. “About him?”

“Nothin’,” Rachel replied. “It’s over. We’ll let it be at that. He won’t be comin’ back.”

“What if he does?”

“We’ll tell him to go.”

“Did he have to kill Owen?” Sarah asked hesitantly.

“I don’t know, baby. Don’t think about it.”

“But I do, Mama.”

Rachel thought of Owen Benton. She thought of the story Michael had told. She thought of the doctor and the grief she had seen in his eyes.

“So do I, baby,” she confessed.

SMOKE FROM THE chimney was a blue curl against the shell white of morning. It was as thin as a string and rose high above the house and spread into a veil, like a net of silk.

Michael knew the fire in the house was hot: pine kindling and hardwood. It was a quick fire on a clean grate and it would warm the kitchen and the heat would drift into the living room and along the corridor leading to Dora’s and Sarah’s rooms. The smell of coffee would be heavy.

Michael pulled the collar of his coat around his neck. He squatted beside a bush in the hem of the woods above the house and crossed his hands inside his coat, with his palms pressed against his chest. The night had been cold and he could not have a fire.

He did not know what had happened at the house, but he was calm. It was finished and he would not again be a fool. He would wait, be patient. From the distance, he was safe. He did not have to run. He smiled. He did not
want
to run. Not without Eli’s money, and the money was there, in the house. He would not leave without it; if he did, it would be a failure—a small failure—and it would linger with him. Rachel had hidden it with cunning. It was not in the quilts, as he had believed, but it was near her. Not even Eli could have found it. Eli, he thought. Was it the reason Eli left? Angry because he could not find the money he had stolen and given his wife? It
would have been a fight, all right. Enough to make a man take a fit and storm out, if not kill her.

He looked over the roof line of the house to the hills opposite him. He wondered if Tolly Wakefield was there, waiting, watching. Tolly Wakefield was suspicious, but he had nothing he could prove. He was an annoyance, nothing more, Michael thought. Still, if Tolly Wakefield interfered with him he would split him open like a melon.

The door of the kitchen opened and Michael moved forward against the bush. Rachel and Sarah hurried across the yard to the barn lot. He watched as Rachel bridled the mule and led it to the fence. Sarah climbed the fence and straddled the mule and took the reins from her mother and rode away toward Floyd Crider’s house. He was puzzled. Why Floyd? What would she tell him? There was nothing to say, except to confess the intimacies, and they would never do that.

* * *

Rachel knocked lightly on the door leading into Dora’s bedroom.

“I want to talk to you, Dora,” she said.

“It’s your house,” Dora replied from inside.

Rachel opened the door and entered the room. Dora sat in a chair beneath the window, over which the curtain had been pulled. She was still dressed in her gown. She held her Bible in her lap.

“Dora, I’m sorry for what I said, what I done,” Rachel told her.

Dora looked away. Her hands played over the gold-edged pages of her Bible.

“I can’t live your life for you,” she mumbled. “It ain’t for me to say. You’ll have your judgment, like he will, like everybody else.”

“I know that,” Rachel replied quietly. “But I don’t want to talk about that. I’ve got to tell you somethin’.”

Dora did not answer. She sniffed the air and waited.

“I sent Sarah up to Floyd’s on the mule,” Rachel said.

“What for?”

“I remembered somethin’ this mornin’.”

“What?”

“Michael, he—he said he killed Owen because Owen was cuttin’ at him with the knife he stole when he run off at the jail.”

Dora stared at her. She did not have to ask the question.

“It wadn’t the truth,” Rachel explained. “Michael had the knife on him the night before that happened.”

“How do you know?” Dora asked bluntly.

“I saw it. It was in his pants leg. When we was havin’ supper, he leaned back and I saw the top of it. I remember it because I’d seen it before, when he was carvin’, and that was the first time I ever saw him wear it on his leg.”

Dora sat forward in her chair.

“Maybe they was two knives,” she said.

Rachel shook her head.

“There was only one. It was that one. He let me hold it one night, when he was carvin’. Said it was the only one in the world like it. Said a man from England made it special for him.”

“Didn’t you think nothin’ about it?” Dora demanded. “He’d told us about the boy stealin’ the knife.”

“I don’t know,” Rachel admitted. “I didn’t. I just didn’t. It didn’t come to me until this mornin’, when Sarah was askin’ why he killed Owen.”

Dora stood and walked to the table beside her bed and placed the Bible on it. She looked at the shredded pieces of paper shamrock scattered across her pillow.

“What does it mean?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “Tolly—Tolly didn’t believe him. I could tell.”

Dora remembered Tolly’s silence and the way his eyes had stayed on Michael. She thought of Sarah, alone.

“And you sent Sarah out by herself?” she asked angrily.

“She’s on the mule. I told you.”

“What’s she supposed to be tellin’ Floyd?” Dora said bitterly.

“That Michael run off. We don’t know why. He just up and left. I told her to tell him I’d feel better if he’d come over and help me check and see if he took anythin’.”

“You should of told me before she left,” Dora snapped. “It ain’t right, her bein’ out there by herself. You tell her about the knife?”

“No,” Rachel answered. “I—I couldn’t.”

Dora thought of Michael with Sarah, whispering soft, soothing promises, taking her.

“What if he catches up to her?” she asked.

“He won’t do anythin’ to her. Anyway, she’s on the mule. He won’t catch her.”

“What he won’t do is come back here,” Dora said coldly. She moved to her dresser and began to pick among her clothes.

“What you doin’?” asked Rachel.

“I’m goin’ to take the gun and go after her.”

“Dora, there’s no need in that.”

Dora turned to Rachel and stared hatefully at her.

“It’s somethin’ I’m doin’,” she said. “Ain’t nothin’ you can do about it. That girl may be from your own flesh, and she may have sinned her way right into Hell with that man, but she’s mine, too. I ain’t lettin’ anythin’ happen to her, if I can help it.”

Rachel knew it was senseless to argue with Dora. Dora was angry. And Dora’s God was angry.

“All right,” she said softly, and then left the room.

* * *

Michael saw Dora leave the house carrying the shotgun. He nodded to himself. She was after Sarah, to protect her. Dora knew. Dora knew it all. And she would gladly kill him. Poor Dora. She had been such a fool, such an ugly bitch of a fool, following after him like a child. Now she knew and she wanted to kill him. But she had left Rachel alone in the house. He settled against a tree and rubbed against its rough bark. He was
pleased with himself. He had waited and the waiting had rewarded him. He was not like other men, he thought. Other men would have panicked.

* * *

He saw her through the kitchen window. She sat at the table, holding a pan of beans that she snapped methodically. She seemed serene. A trace of a smile that was cupped in memory rested in her face and her eyes floated over her moving hands as though gliding in a fantasy. He looked around him, then stepped to the door and opened it quietly.

“Rachel,” he said.

She looked quickly to him. Her eyes widened and then softened. She smiled warmly.

“Michael,” she replied. “You’re back.”

She placed the pan of beans on the table and moved to him, folding her arms around his waist and turning her face into his chest.

“I’m glad you’re back,” she whispered. “I been hopin’—”

He pulled her close and held her.

“Rachel, Rachel,” he said gently. “You’re a good woman, Rachel. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about what happened. I’m the bastard of bastards. It’s a weakness in me. A curse. It runs in the men of my family. Blarney, they call it in Ireland. A curse of the blarney. I—I didn’t mean it with Sarah. Sweet Sarah. Wantin’ to be a woman and me around, and weak like I am. I’m askin’ your forgiveness.”

Rachel lifted her face to him. She kissed him on the corner of his mouth.

“No need explainin’ it, Michael,” she told him. “I’m a woman. I understand a woman’s needs. I talked it out with Sarah. No reason to forgive what’s easy enough to understand.”

Michael studied her face. He could see nothing hidden in it. He kissed her on the eyes.

“I been achin’ all night to come back and take you up close like this, like we was last night,” he said. “Up in the woods
there, tryin’ to decide about leavin’ before seein’ you again—before apologizin’—I kept tellin’ myself to go, but I couldn’t do it, and then I saw Sarah leave on the mule and Dora after her, carryin’ the gun. And I knew what she was wantin’ to do, and I couldn’t blame her. But I knew I’d not have another chance to see you.”

“It’s all right, Michael. I just sent Sarah off to visit, just to let her get away for a while. Dora got scared and went after her.”

Michael held her tight. His hands rubbed over her back and shoulders, searching for the surprise, the lie, that his mind failed to hear. He thought of his audience, wondered if their faces could tell him anything, but he could not call them out of his deep senses where they rested.

“But I have to be goin’, Rachel,” he said at last. “You know that. And the pain of it crushes me. Just when I was beginnin’ to feel like I belonged, like there was a chance of takin’ Eli’s place.” He laughed quietly. “You won’t believe it, but I was makin’ plans. Yes, it’s true as the day’s long: I was thinkin’ about hirin’ on with Teague and the sawmill gang after I finish the fence. Me, Michael O’Rear, workin’ out wages, because I knew we’d be needin’ the money.”

She said it very easily, very casually: “You needn’t be worryin’ about money, Michael.”

The words struck him like a slap. He would not have to force her, he thought. She was about to tell him. He cupped her face in his hands and let his eyes draw her into him.

“You’re a lovely woman, Rachel,” he said. “I swear I’ve never met better. You’d give me the last cent you had. You’ve proved that. But I know you live from day to day, and—”

“No,” she protested, interrupting him. “It’s not my money, Michael.” She paused. “It’s Eli’s,” she added. “Like we talked about, but I never told nobody about it. Never. Not even Dora or Sarah. That’s why I told you it was a lie.”

“Do you mean it?” Michael asked eagerly. “There was money? It’s not just a story?”

She shook her head and touched his lips with her fingers.

“No, it’s not just a story,” she answered. “There’s money. It was stole and I never touched it. Never. I always saved up the quilt money. But I helped Eli hide it. I know where it is.”

“Why, Rachel? Why not spend it? It’d take you places you’ve never seen, buy you things you’ve never thought about havin’.”

“Because,” she answered hesitantly, “it was stole, and it wouldn’t matter where it took me; this is where I’d come back, and nothin’ else ever seemed to matter, knowin’ that.”

“Why?”

“It was somethin’ my daddy said when I was little,” she replied. “I heard somebody callin’ us hill people one time and I asked him what they was sayin’, and he told me to be proud of that. I think I learned what he meant.”

“What?” Michael asked patiently.

“It’s like when Mama Ada died,” she told him. “The preacher said he’d shuddered when he heard about it. And that’s what it’s like, livin’ here. You die, somebody shudders a little bit. I guess we all know that.”