Let Me Die in His Footsteps (19 page)

By the time Joseph Carl’s trial was over, folks had started talking about the child making its way inside Juna, and now the news has spread to strangers come from across the country. There was no mistaking it, no hiding it. The baby was evil to be sure. The proof was in how quickly it grew. Not like any other child, but in a few short months, already it was making itself known. Look closely, when the breeze takes her skirts, and you’ll see.

To keep the peace, men have come from all around the county. They’ll stand at the crossroad into town and keep watch for those Baines. The men will level their guns, waiting for a truck. They’ll listen for dried oak leaves being crushed by a leather boot, the snap of a birch branch that could only mean someone was trying to sneak through the brush. They’ll listen for a man drawing hard on a cigarette, the breath he exhales. They’ll stand as long as they must to see justice done. They’ll keep those Baines from passing this road so Joseph Carl will hang and maybe their crops will grow again and they’ll stop being hungry and their children will stop crying with bloated stomachs and bloodshot eyes. They’ll rid themselves of something evil, and their lives will be good again. And because not a single Baine is among the crowd, the men must be keeping to their posts.

It took five minutes for twelve men to say Joseph Carl should hang. There was the white shirt, a shirt exactly like the one Juna described. I thought I had burned it all the way through, left nothing but cinders and ash in that barrel, but the sheriff and her men found it straightaway. They found the shovel lying alongside the house, flipped it around, used the handle, and lifted the scraps of that fine white shirt from the barrel. The collar was still stiff, and one sleeve and cuff held on. One of Sheriff Irlene’s men dropped it in a brown paper bag. And even though Dale never named Joseph Carl, the boy might never have been found if not for Joseph Carl finally telling the whereabouts. Joseph Carl was only able to tell because he was to blame, and now Dale Crowley is dead and isn’t that murder?

But the men in charge—they were lawyers, I suppose—didn’t bother with the crime against Dale. The crime against Juna was crime enough. She saw the man, no question of that, and knew of the fine white shirt stole from Mr. and Mrs. Brashear’s line. That Baine boy had been a good one when he was younger, but then he left and went God knows where. That time away hadn’t served him well. Look what became of him. Look how he changed. Lastly, there was the baby growing inside Juna—more proof still of what Joseph Carl had done—and a man who did such a thing to a woman would hang until dead in front of whoever should choose to watch. Even given the tempting, evil sort of woman they all knew Juna to be. She had ascended, which made her especially tempting. Evil is like that. Tempting. Still, Joseph Carl ought not have done what he did to the boy.

As we wait for dawn and for Joseph Carl to mount the steps that lead to the gallows, people keep a safe distance from Juna and me. They allow themselves only a glance in our direction. They whisper, and when their children point at us, the mothers swat their hands away. But as we stand waiting, folks forget we’re altogether different. They begin to shuffle closer, to fill in the gap between us and them. The men smoke cigars. The fat orange tips glow, sparkle. And they drink whiskey. They take it in great gulps and let out long sighs after they’ve swallowed. The sharp scent tints the air. Every so often, someone spits on the ground. They stomp the clumps of prickly lettuce that have sprung up in the field, kick aside rocks and chunks of dry dirt. When one stumbles, another grabs hold of an arm, gives a lift. They rise onto their toes, shoulder against one another, press their bodies sideways to make themselves smaller, all to make certain they have a clear line of sight.

Someone drapes Juna and me with heavy coats, men’s coats that smell of the tobacco the men chew and spit and their whiskey, and they are warm still from whichever men had been wearing them. Juna holds her coat under her chin with both hands and nods her thanks to the familiar folks who whisper kind words to her. You’ll get on, they say. Justice will see you through. Yours is a fine, strong family. Take refuge. Take solace.

Only a few pass our way in the beginning. But one after another, the need spreads among them, the need of the town’s people to speak some kindness to Juna, and more and more folks step up to voice their good wishes. They touch a forearm, pat the back of a hand, shake their heads at these strangers who laugh at us. Not wanting to chance getting caught up in Juna’s black eyes, they look mostly at me while they whisper their kind words, but they can’t resist a glance, a flick of their eyes, at Juna’s midsection. They want to be able to say they saw it—the early signs of the child.

Some will remember, though incorrectly, the day Joseph Carl Baine hanged as a day folks celebrated. There will even be reports in newspapers across the country of folks cheering and tearing the buttons from Joseph Carl’s shirt and the socks from his feet. For years to come, a fellow will say the leather boots that sit on his hearth, the laces tied together in a double knot, belonged to Joseph Carl. Fellow will lie and say he pulled them right off Joseph Carl’s feet while he was still dangling, the rope stretched tight by his burden, his head slung off to one side, the burlap hood still tied off at his neck.

Others will choose to pass on a story of a dignified group who gathered to see justice done and took no pleasure in the day. They will talk of ladies who wore dark wool dresses and gentlemen in hats. They will remember children who stood quietly, didn’t talk back, didn’t dare talk back. They will remember those same children hoisted to sit on their parents’ shoulders so they’d rise high above the crowd and could see what happened when a man lost his way.

To the east of the crowd, elm trees, their leaves having faded to a pale yellow, block the rising sun. It’s the job of one of the boys from town to stand under those trees and watch for the first hint of daylight. We can’t see that boy from our place of honor, but he must be shuffling from foot to foot as he waits, trying to fight off the chill. By now, he’s probably bored and kicking at the piles of leaves, wilted and slimy, that lie at his feet. Finally he sees that first glimmer of orange, and he calls out to one fellow, who calls out to another. The crowd quiets. Feet stop shuffling about. The last man swallows the last mouthful of whiskey. Cigars still glow, though a few are tossed on the ground and boot tips stomp on them, twist until they’re snubbed out.

As the shout travels through the crowd, growing louder as it passes from one man to the next, folks begin to press forward again. My body is forced up against Juna’s and her bulging stomach. I imagine a small foot kicks up against me or that an elbow pokes at my ribs. The closeness of many bodies and jacket sleeves rubbing against one another and of heavy boots stepping into soft spots in the damp ground stir up the smell of our dark, rich soil. Folks press forward to fill in, but they’ll stand no closer than Juna and me to the spot where Joseph Carl will hang.

Sheriff Irlene is the first to mount the ladder leading to the top of the platform. With one hand, she hikes her skirt up about her ankles, and with the other, she holds the side rail. Two men follow behind, waiting until she reaches the top before taking to the first rung. The one fellow has to shove the other to get him moving. As the men climb, the joists and posts creak under their weight. The smell of the fresh-cut lumber lifts into the air.

I still have the three letters Joseph Carl sent me. I read them over and over. Even before this happened, even before he came home, I would slip them from their yellowing envelopes, press them flat, and by the light of one of Daddy’s lanterns read the words written with a slanted hand. I read them to imagine a fresh life, and when I wrote letters back to Joseph Carl, I told him I would come one day, and Ellis too. We’d ride a train, and he’d find us and our two packed bags at the station. But never, in all those imaginings, did I picture Dale coming with us. I never imagined him staying home with Daddy or boarding the train with me. I dreamed of the day I’d leave Daddy and Juna, but never Dale. I didn’t plan for him under either circumstance. I wonder if I knew, somehow, that he was too kind and sweet and would not long survive this world.

Up on the platform, a man wearing a black denim jacket and a leather hat that sits low over his eyes steps forward, slaps his hands together, and hollers for folks to quiet down. A baby cries nearby, and a mother makes a ticking sound to calm the child. Joseph Carl will be next, probably followed by Daddy because he insisted on standing close enough to hear Joseph Carl let out his last breath. That’s why this man has hollered for us to quiet down. Joseph Carl will next climb the steps, so folks do as the man says. The mother gets her baby to stop fussing. The men wrap their arms around their women. Children are hoisted onto shoulders because they’ll need to see what happens when a man does wrong.

When the crowd has settled, Sheriff Irlene gives a pat on the shoulder to the man in the black coat and steps forward. She wears a blue belted jacket and a long gray skirt. On her head sits a simple blue hat she might wear to a wedding or a funeral.

“At a quarter after midnight,” she calls, her head tipped back so her voice will carry, “I’d say about five hours ago, in keeping with the laws of this county, Joseph Carl Baine was hung until dead.”

Puzzlement keeps the crowd silent for a good long while, long enough for the sheriff to keep on talking. She says he was hung here inside this county as was required by law and that Dr. Alfred Wanton attended and confirmed the death, which was sudden and apparent given the break in the man’s neck. At this point, the shouts begin. Folks want to know how they can believe what they didn’t see. Dawn, they yell, it was meant to happen at dawn. The man in the black denim shouts out again for folks to quiet themselves, and the sheriff says that Daddy is viewing the body just now and he’s the only one deserving of seeing. The rest could have seen had they been present, but there wasn’t no one nowhere who said the man had to hang at dawn or that he had to hang from these very gallows.

“Go on home,” the sheriff says, pulling a few pins from her hair and slipping them onto the cuff of her sleeve. She takes the hat from her head, holds it in both hands, and works her fingers around its brim. “Go on home and see to your own.”

The men begin pressing forward again, no longer caring to give Juna and me our place of honor. They shout about justice and repentance and the rights of all. The men from the newspapers wave their notepads. They wanted to see a woman sheriff pull that lever. It’s damn well why they’ve traveled so far. Children are tossed from their fathers’ shoulders. Mothers press kerchiefs to their mouths, grab their children by their hands, and pull them toward home. They’re realizing Joseph Carl has been dead for hours. He was dead when they awoke, and yet their children are still hungry, their houses still cold, their shelves still empty. He’s been dead for hours, and yet nothing is good again.

I wonder if these folks, like me, will start to fear they’ve been wrong all along. Have they remembered the man Joseph Carl was, the man they knew to take his mama by the arm and open the door for her and remove his hat before walking into church? And are they figuring that baby inside Juna might have taken hold weeks, maybe months, before Joseph Carl set a foot back inside Kentucky? Will they start to fear Joseph Carl didn’t really kill Dale, and will they wonder who did?

The crowd continues to press toward the gallows. Juna and I bounce against each other, shoulder to shoulder. She is pushed one way. I am pushed the other. The jackets fall from our shoulders and are trampled. We link hands and try to hold on.

1952—ANNIE

FOR TWO WEEKS,
Daddy has slept downstairs. The first night, he slept in a kitchen chair, his feet propped on the radiator, while Abraham continued sleeping it off on the sofa. Daddy had shook his head as he and Mama hauled Abraham out of his truck and helped him into the house. Annie had walked Grandma inside, and once in the kitchen, Grandma hugged Annie, held her face with two hands even though her palms were tore up from the fall, and made Annie promise to never do such a foolish thing again. Mama and Daddy laid Abraham out on the sofa and took off his hat and boots. When they were done, Daddy dropped down on the chair where he would sleep.

In the morning, with Abraham still snoring behind them, Daddy and Mama kissed, but over the next few days, Daddy twice caught Mama staring up at the Baines’ place. At first, Daddy stopped talking much. Annie thought he was still angry with her for making Grandma fall, but then Daddy saw Mama looking out the window a third time, and he stopped kissing her in the morning and has slept downstairs ever since.

Mrs. Baine was buried next to her husband in the cemetery across from the church. Though no Holleran attended the service, Abraham and Miss Watson went and said three of the Baine brothers were there, Ellis Baine included. The ladies served jam cake and coffee in the church basement when it was over, and while the other two boys, men now, left town, Ellis stayed. He has spent every day clearing the land that has gone to seed, yanking up the woody tomato plants, hammering nails and patching holes. Daddy has made more trips than usual to the tobacco barn. He had to keep an eye on the lavender he said. Nights have turned damp, more damp than he’d expected, and it wouldn’t do to let mold get a foothold.

“You ain’t moving my day, are you?” Grandma said, afraid her lavender wouldn’t be ready for the fourth Sunday in June, which is the date she had been telling all the ladies at church.

“No, Mama,” Daddy had said. “I ain’t changing nothing.”

The nights have been no damper than every other year. Daddy just needed an excuse to keep watch over Ellis Baine.

And while the nights have been damp, as damp as usual, the days have brought sun and so the lavender has continued to ripen and turn a deeper shade of purple. Grandma sews her sachets every night, always making sure not to favor her right hand, which took the worst of her fall. She’s been doing her best, particularly in the first few days after her accident, not to walk with a limp or rub her sore hip. Whenever Mama and Daddy ask how she’s feeling, she acts like she doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Why, I already forgot about that fall.

As fast as Grandma sews the sachets, Annie stuffs them. It’s a good job for her because it doesn’t take much thinking. She still stays up late most nights, watching for Aunt Juna, though she hasn’t snuck out of the house again. Each night, as she watches for the faint orange glow, she imagines Ellis Baine doing the same. That was him up there, looking for Aunt Juna, same as Annie, though whatever his reasons, they’ll be entirely different.

And while Grandma sews and Annie stuffs, Caroline stitches up the small holes, but only when she isn’t off with Jacob Riddle. A half dozen times, Daddy has allowed Jacob to take Caroline for a walk down the road and back, but only after Mama reminded Daddy that a good many years separate them too. Jacob has been to supper and talked about life with his aunt in Louisville and how being a deputy isn’t as good as being a pitcher but he’ll make a solid living for himself and his family. That made Caroline smile and the thought of a family turned her cheeks red, which made Daddy tap his fork on the table until she stopped that smiling.

Besides making the sachets she’ll hand out to all the ladies who come the fourth Sunday in June, Grandma has been scrubbing the linen tablecloths that have been in storage all year. She hangs them on the line, and when they dry and are still spotted or stained, she tells Annie they will try again tomorrow. Once they are finally declared presentable, Annie is put to work doing the pressing and folding. Daddy hoses down tables and chairs that have been stacked in the attic all winter, Mama bakes cornbread muffins to freeze ahead of time, and Caroline makes faces as she molds handfuls of ground beef into patties Daddy will throw on the grill. Twice during all the cleaning and preparing, Caroline has smeared Annie’s head with mayonnaise and worked it into the ends of her hair, and she trimmed a good inch with Mama’s help. Mama says it looks real nice. Annie can’t much see a difference.

“I’m going to meet Miss Watson,” Mama says on a Monday morning, the last Monday before the fourth Sunday.

Annie is working the tip of an iron around the edge of a linen napkin, being careful to cover over the small bluish stain in the napkin’s center so Grandma won’t send it back to the laundry. Besides having been burned by the iron a good many times, Annie’s fingers are raw, the skin having cracked on the tips of a few, from spending so much time in warm, soapy water. Caroline is dabbing at her thumb with a cotton ball doused in lavender oil—nursing a pinprick from all that sewing she’s been doing.

“You girls should come along,” Mama says, tugging on her white gloves as she walks through the living room.

Mama must be meeting Miss Watson at the dress shop for her final alterations. No other reason Mama would wear her white gloves. She smiles and rocks her hips from side to side so her pale-blue skirt puffs up and twirls. She has rolled and pinned her hair and is wearing the same hat she wore this past Easter.

“You look real nice, Mama,” Caroline says, sticking her sore finger in her mouth.

Annie folds the napkin over, presses the seam with the hot iron, folds again, presses again, and adds it to the pile, taking care the stain doesn’t show. She has barely left the house since sneaking out to find Aunt Juna, not only because she feels like punishing herself is the thing to do but also because she promised Grandma. That’s one good reason not to go to town. Fear of seeing Ryce Fulkerson is another good reason. Mama is always saying time has a way of healing, and while there has been some scabbing over, it hasn’t been nearly enough.

“Caroline’s right, Mama,” Annie says, the memory of Ryce standing over her, his cool skin brushing against her arm revisiting her as if it happened yesterday. “You look real nice. But I think maybe I shouldn’t go.”

Behind Mama, Daddy walks down the stairs in his stocking feet, passes her by without kissing her cheek or swatting her hind end the way he usually would.

“I’d like some company,” Mama says, watching the back of Daddy as he crosses through the kitchen on his way outside. If she was meaning to talk to him, he makes no sign of having heard.

As if she thinks no one is watching, Mama’s smile fades and a sadness settles in her eyes, the same sadness she takes on when she stares out the living room window at the Baines’ place. She thinks no one is watching then too. Mama must be fighting off a memory same as Annie. The screen door slams closed behind Daddy, and it reminds Mama she isn’t alone and her lips snap back into a smile.

“I’ll drop you girls at the café,” she says. “You can have a cinnamon roll while you wait. Do you good to get out of the house. I think we’ve kept you cooped up long enough.”

“That’d be real nice, Mama,” Caroline says, already halfway up the stairs. “I’ll just change and be right down.”

“What’ll Grandma say?” Annie says, glancing at Grandma’s closed bedroom door.

Instead of an answer, Mama gives Annie a wink and touches the stack of napkins still warm from the ironing Annie gave them. Mama runs a finger over a small blue stain Annie hadn’t noticed and presses a finger to her lips.

“We won’t be gone long at all. Need to be back by lunchtime because Abraham will be stopping by with more chairs. Thought to have him some food ready.”

Since the night Mama and Daddy lugged Abraham into the living room, he hasn’t been back for whiskey or cards, but he stops by every day to talk with Daddy or to borrow a shovel or rake of some kind. He’ll have a glass of tea, visit with Mama while she peels carrots or snaps the ends off a bowlful of pole beans, and always he lingers long enough to see Annie.

“You seen anything more of her?” he’ll ask when no one else is nearby to hear.

Each time, Annie shakes her head, and Abraham’s shoulders slump and his wide-open eyes narrow to their normal size.

Annie watches out the window every night, looking for some sign of Aunt Juna—an orange-tipped cigarette floating out there in the dark, a shadow slipping into the tobacco barn or over the rock fence. Many mornings, Mama has said Annie didn’t look well and pressed a hand to her forehead. Annie didn’t look well because while everyone else was asleep, she was watching and waiting for Aunt Juna.

“You sure?” Abraham said just yesterday, and he took Annie by the shoulders, his large hands covering her over and drawing her close, going so far as to hurt her.

Even though Abraham wasn’t drinking whiskey with Daddy, he was drinking it somewhere. The sharp smell made Annie tuck her chin and turn her head.

“But you did see her?” he had said. “You seen her up there, and you know she’s coming back. You said the empty rocker rocked, and that means she’s coming back.”

The way Abraham leaned into Annie and studied her eyes and breathed his whiskey breath in her face made her wish she didn’t have the know-how. She wished she didn’t know things were coming before they had come, or that the histories, all of their histories, didn’t sizzle underfoot and in the air. Abraham believed stronger than anyone else ever had, stronger even than Grandma, and that made Annie more afraid she was right.

•   •   •

IT RAINED WHILE
Annie slept, and it must have been a good one. As she has every night, she sat at her window until well past midnight, watching and waiting for some sign of Aunt Juna, but eventually she fell asleep. She’d been so tired, not even a rain hard enough and long enough to pool in the ditches and leave the road so soft Mama’s tires were cutting ruts in it as they drove to town had been enough to wake her. Surely a rain so hard had brought with it a good bit of thunder, and that’ll mean Mrs. Baine has crossed on over, finally crossed on over. Annie had been hoping for some peace when that happened, but mostly things have gotten worse.

Daddy pulled down the slabs of wood strung with milk snakes, and he scolded Grandma for ruining perfectly good lumber. Since that happened, Annie has helped Grandma catch more milk snakes, and together they’ve taken to dropping the dead, shriveled snakes at each corner of the house, in the back of Annie’s closet, behind the toilet in the bathroom, and just inside the tobacco barn. Every so often, Mama will let out a scream and everyone will know Mama stumbled across one of Grandma’s dead snakes.

“Oh, good Lord,” Mama says, slowing where the road flattens and leads into town. She rolls one hand over the other to avoid the large hole up ahead.

Every time a good rain falls, particularly when it falls past midnight, a few local boys take on the cause of digging up Joseph Carl Baine’s grave. The story goes that the folks back then buried Joseph Carl here at the crossroad so he’d forever be trampled by the comings and goings of the town, and all that coming and going would keep him six feet under where he belonged. They buried him upside down too. If he did find enough peace to take a try at digging himself out, he’d be confused and dig himself farther underground.

Grandma says Sheriff Fulkerson—not our Sheriff Fulkerson but his mama, who was sheriff before him—used to surround the holes with sawhorses until she could get someone over there to fill them in again. Sheriff Fulkerson, our Sheriff Fulkerson, doesn’t bother doing that because everyone knows to keep a sharp eye on the crossroad into town when a good rain falls.

As Mama presses on the brake to stop the car outside the café, she glances in the backseat where Annie sits. Caroline looks too. Annie pretends to be staring out the window, but she can feel Mama looking even if she can’t see her. That’s Annie’s daddy down there under that hole, and even though Mama never talks about Aunt Juna and Joseph Carl Baine being Annie’s real parents and how that means she isn’t a real Holleran, not really, Mama can’t help the pity she’s feeling just now. It’s about the worst thing that can happen to a person—being the object of someone else’s pity.

Annie knows what those boys were thinking when they snuck out of their houses and lugged their shovels all the way to town. They were thinking they’d unearth the spirit of Joseph Carl so he’d chase off Aunt Juna. Everyone would know by now that Annie saw Aunt Juna. They’ve probably all been watching out their windows every night just like Annie, worried about seeing a shadow passing through their gardens or a silhouette flipping the latch on a fence. Those boys would rather the spirit of Joseph Carl wander the streets than Juna Crowley.

Monday mornings are the busiest days at the café. It’s the day Mrs. May makes her cinnamon rolls. When she was younger, she made them every day, and then three times a week, and now only on Mondays because she needs the energy garnered after a day conversing with her Lord to find the will. Folks love those rolls so much a few took on trying to add a service on Wednesdays, figuring Mrs. May would add a day of cinnamon roll baking if she had a second day of conversing.

Once inside the café, Caroline points at two counter seats, and as she weaves between the tables, all of them filled with folks sipping coffee and taking small bites so their rolls last longer, she sashays this way and that. When Mama first mentioned the café, Caroline changed into her second-favorite dress, a blue one this time, and tied up her hair with a matching satin ribbon, all of it because she is hoping to see Jacob Riddle.

But as lovely as Caroline looks, her skirt twirling like Mama’s had twirled that morning in the living room, folks aren’t looking at Caroline. They’re looking at Annie. A few stare at her over coffee cups poised at their lips. A few others tear off a piece of roll and stare down on it as if it were suddenly cursed by Annie’s appearance. The buzz of people talking falters, stops altogether. At the counter, Caroline sits, and once Annie has done the same, the conversation starts up again. Forks grind against plates. Napkins are given a good shake, laid across laps. When Annie was younger, too young to realize Aunt Juna was her real mama, she would tell Daddy and Mama she thought folks were scared of her because her eyes were black. No one else had eyes black as Annie’s. Mama said it was Annie’s imagination and that sometimes we all have a way of making trouble for ourselves when really there is no trouble to be had.