Let Me Die in His Footsteps (9 page)

For the better part of the morning, Annie has been sitting here on this step and wondering when and how Aunt Juna will come home. The longer she’s sat here, the more she’s found her eyes scanning the road and the fence line and Daddy’s shed and the far corner of the house, and she’s started to wonder if Aunt Juna is already here, out there, somewhere.

She knew Ryce would come back today, though she hadn’t expected him so early. When she hears that squealing again and knows Ryce Fulkerson will pop over the hill any moment, she knows why he’s come and she can only hope Lizzy Morris isn’t with him. For an entire week after Lizzy looked down into the well, the boys of Hayden County bunched around her in a pitiful fashion. She made herself up extra nice that whole week, brushing her hair over lunch and at the afternoon break. Twice, she wore dresses she would usually only wear to church and did not open a single door for herself the entire week. Pitiful. Annie kept track, even wrote herself a list of names, and swore she’d never have any part of any of those boys who might as well have pleaded on hand and knee.

Ryce was the only one who didn’t sniff around Lizzy all day every day, waiting to hear who she saw down in that well. And when finally Lizzy Morris pronounced that Ryce was the boy she saw, he had said he figured he had to marry someone and she might as well be Lizzy. He swears, even now, they haven’t had a first kiss or any other kiss. He swears it like it should matter to Annie.

“So?” Ryce says, that front wheel of his bike drawing another crooked line down the drive.

Rolling to a stop, he props himself up with one leg, holds on to the handlebars with both hands, and stares at Annie. He’s come straight from church, because he’s wearing a short-sleeved button-down shirt and smells of his daddy’s cologne and his mama’s green hair gel. Annie knows it’s green because Mama uses the same when she sets her curlers. Ryce’s mama has combed it through his hair, making it shiny and slick so it would look decent for at least the length of the sermon.

“So, what?” Annie says, not bothering to stand from the porch step where she sits. She draws all her hair over her shoulder like Caroline is all the time doing and pulls it through her two hands, smoothing it because it’s likely the sort of a thing a girl should do once she’s had her day.

The smell of lavender hasn’t yet been stirred up, and instead a spicy scent fills the air. Grandma likes to whisk the cloves, ginger, and cinnamon into melted butter, says it keeps the spices from floating on top and ruining the cake.

“So, who’d you see?”

“You’re making a habit of this, Ryce Fulkerson. You smell home cooking? That what brought you?”

“Told you, ain’t looking for food.”

“Shouldn’t you be working?” Annie thinks to cross her ankles because it’s the thing a girl, a young woman, should do.

“Going soon enough. Just wondering who you seen, is all.”

“How do you know I went?”

“Everyone knows you went. Everyone knows about Mrs. Baine too.”

“And just what does everyone think they know?”

“Know she’s dead,” Ryce says. “Think maybe a Holleran killed her.”

“That’s a damn fool thing to say.”

As hard as Annie is trying to do as a girl should do when she has ascended, the nastiness works its way through.

“Wasn’t me who said it,” Ryce says. “Just heard talk, is all.”

“Barely washed the breakfast dishes and you’re telling me folks are already talking?”

“You know I hear things. Can’t help it sometimes.”

More than once, Ryce has come to school and not been able to sit because of getting whipped for spreading his daddy’s business. That’s what happens when the sheriff is your daddy. About the time Ryce reached the sixth grade, he figured how to keep his mouth shut and mostly tries not to hear what his daddy tells his mama at the supper table.

“You telling me your daddy said a Holleran killed Mrs. Baine?”

“Hush, Annie.” Ryce rolls his bike forward and leans close. He’s still young enough to do what his mama tells him to do, so he smells like soap and a line-dried shirt. “That ain’t what I’m saying. It ain’t what my daddy’s saying. Not necessarily. Makes folks nervous, is all. A Baine dying on your day. Makes them remember Juna. You’re the same age she was.”

“You telling me your daddy thinks I killed Mrs. Baine?”

From behind Ryce, Daddy walks out of the shed where he disappeared a few minutes earlier, Grandma’s old rocking chair hoisted over his head. He had carried it around the house and into the shed after having told Annie he figured the old rocker needed some work, seeing as how it was making so much noise. He asked if Annie thought a few days would be enough time to fix it up. Annie said she thought a few weeks would be better, and Daddy nodded and said he’d see to it, even though they both knew nothing was wrong with that rocker. Daddy didn’t believe in the know-how, never had, and it didn’t scare him the way it scared Mama.

“Morning, Ryce,” Daddy says, shutting the shed door and dropping the latch that keeps the wind from pulling it open. “Got a long day ahead today. You come to call on Annie, have some breakfast?”

“No, he did not,” Annie says. She stands, and then remembering she has ascended and should do such things, she brushes the wrinkles from her skirt.

More and more, Daddy and Abraham Pace, and sometimes Mama too, tease Annie about Ryce Fulkerson. Time and again, Annie has reminded them that Lizzy Morris is the one who saw Ryce down in the well, so if anyone deserves teasing, it’s Lizzy Morris.

Annie wants to remind Daddy of this again but won’t with Ryce standing right here. Instead she starts to say Ryce was just leaving, but stops and turns when Daddy pulls off his hat and nods off toward the main road.

“Looks like your daddy,” he says to Ryce.

“Yes, sir,” Ryce says. “It sure does.”

The car coming up over the hill is white with black stripes and squared-off lettering on the side. It’s the sheriff’s car. None other like it in the county.

“Guess I’d better be going,” Ryce says. “I’ll be seeing you, Annie.”

Annie says nothing until she looks up to see Daddy staring down on her. All it takes is a nod and Daddy’s intentions are clear.

“Thank you for stopping, Ryce,” Annie says, failing to temper her nasty tone until another look from Daddy convinces her to try harder. “Pleased to see you again.”

“Crop looks real fine, Mr. Holleran,” Ryce says as he leans over his handlebars and lifts his hind end off the bike’s seat. Pumping his pedals as fast as they’ll go seeing as how his front tire is crooked, he gives his daddy a quick wave and pedals on past before he can get out of the car. Ryce might imagine himself growing up to be a sheriff just like his daddy, but he doesn’t much care for the man. Or maybe his daddy doesn’t much care for Ryce. Or maybe that’s just the way it is between fathers and sons.

1936—SARAH AND JUNA

ALL NIGHT AND
into the next day, the men come and go, more of them as the hours pass. They promise, every one of them, to find Dale straightaway. Folks bring food, what little they have managed to grow in their gardens. I am better with a garden than most, but folks share what they can—cucumbers, tomatoes, thick stalks of rhubarb. Someone brings eggs, only a few so they’ll stay fresh and because it is likely all they have. I fry those eggs in a spoonful of lard until there is no run left in the yolks and feed them to Juna so she’ll feel strong again and tell us about Dale. The men, most visitors too, leave straightaway because they’re afraid to be in a house with Juna, and with Daddy and me as well. Word has traveled from our house to theirs that a curse has taken Dale from us.

While no one counted out the days for me, everyone in town knew when Juna would come of age. Some mothers sent their sons to stay with friends or relatives in the weeks leading up to Juna’s day, thinking distance would save their boys from being the face Juna Crowley saw in the well. It wasn’t Juna’s know-how that frightened the mothers of Hayden County. There have been other girls with the gift, a knack for knowing things, and once these girls ascended, their gifts ascended as well. Their know-how rounded out, became something larger, greater.

Folks were unsettled by these girls who knew more, saw more, felt more, but the girls didn’t give rise to fear. The evil living in Juna’s eyes is what prompted these mothers to pack up their sons and send them away. They wondered if the evil would ascend too. Now that Dale has disappeared and Daddy’s life is cursed, folks know for certain that Juna’s evil has rounded out. It’s larger, greater than ever before.

Irlene Fulkerson comes to the house early in the day. Her husband was the sheriff until he died two months ago, and now Irlene is sheriff. Her oldest son, Buell, who is my age and has a family of his own already, is with her, as well as a handful of other men who were good to her husband and now are good to Sheriff Irlene. She wears a gray dress that scratches my cheek and neck when she pulls me into a hug. She’s full through the chest, soft, holds me a good long time and whispers that she’ll see to Dale. All these fine folks will see to finding Dale. She smells smoky, as if she must have had a time getting her stove lit this morning. When she leaves along with all her men to get on with looking for Dale, it’s like losing my mama all over again.

Near sunset, Mr. and Mrs. Brashear and Abigail come with milk from their cow, and Mrs. Baine brings two heads of cabbage, the first of her crop. They’re scrawny, have been picked too early, but they’re likely all she has to share. The four stand on the porch, all of them swatting at mosquitoes. I look for Ellis among them, wondering if maybe he drove his mama here. But there is no truck parked outside, meaning the four of them walked. I invite them into the house, offer them coffee and a seat, and while they settle in, I pour a cup of milk for Abigail and lower the rest into the well to keep it cool.

Back in the house, I place my best folded linens on the table—snow-white tea napkins my mama hand-stitched—and four silver teaspoons, tarnished, though I polish them regular with baking soda. I serve Abigail the last biscuit to go along with her milk. I wonder if she’s slept since we first realized Dale was gone.

“You shouldn’t waste what little you have,” Mrs. Brashear says, meaning Abigail isn’t allowed.

“Please,” I say. “It’s no waste. Abigail has been such a help to me.”

Since daybreak, Abigail has been at the house, brewing coffee and digging the mud out of the men’s boots, but she won’t go outside to pick from the garden unless someone goes with her. She’s even washed the clothes Juna had been wearing when we found her in the field. Three times Abigail has scrubbed the dress as if hoping once it’s finally clean, Dale will come home.

“Go on and eat,” I say to Abigail, slipping the white cap from her head and brushing my hand over her hair.

“We seen a fellow,” Mr. Brashear says as I freshen his coffee. He leans over the kitchen table as he speaks, his long, slender frame tipped forward, and he presses one ear toward me.

“We did,” Mrs. Brashear says. “Both of us seen him. Ordinary-enough-looking fellow.”

Mrs. Brashear, short and stout to her husband’s long and lean, wears a pale-yellow dress, always pale yellow even in winter, and a white kerchief nearly the same shade as her graying hair is wrapped over her head and tied under her chin. Next to them, Mrs. Baine clings to her coffee cup with both hands and keeps her eyes lowered. I’ve always thought her like a dog that has carried one too many litters. Her long hair, mostly brown but for the many wiry gray strands, hangs down her back. She is a tiny woman with narrow hips and shoulders who must have once been bigger, stronger, because the clothes she wears have a way of hanging on her such that she’s always tugging at them and tucking them in. They must have fit her at one time, probably before all those boys of hers wore her down.

“A fellow?” I say.

“What’s that?” Mr. Brashear shouts.

“You say you seen a fellow?”

Mr. Brashear slaps the table, causing his coffee to slop over the edge of the cup and Abigail to startle. “Took a shirt right off Mother’s line.”

Mrs. Baine lifts her head, her hair falling back just enough to let me see her face.

“A fine shirt,” Mrs. Brashear says. “Good, heavy shirt.”

“Figured to let him have it,” Mr. Brashear says. “What with Abigail in the house, we don’t want no trouble. If that’s all he wanted, figured to let him have it and move on.”

Mrs. Baine, still clinging to her coffee cup, scoots forward on her chair. She is looking at Mr. Brashear. “With buttons?” she says. “And a fine stiff collar?”

“He went on his way,” Mrs. Brashear says, her voice having risen to a shout, and she nods yes in answer to Mrs. Baine. “Didn’t think so much about it, except to be sorry that shirt was gone. It always pressed up real nice. Thinking now maybe that fellow is worth knowing about.”

We all turn toward the back of the house at the sound of a door opening. Mr. Brashear lowers his eyes when Juna walks from the bedroom into the kitchen, and his slender shoulders roll away from her. Mrs. Brashear turns her eyes too, pats the table with a flat palm, and points at Mr. Brashear to leave the house. He pulls his hat over his silver hair, nods in my direction without letting his eyes follow, and steps out onto the porch.

Juna’s cotton nightgown covers too little. Even in the dim light, we can see the rise and fall of each curve, the dark shadows of her intimate parts. I sweep past her, stirring up the flames of the candles I lit before dusk. A few are snuffed out. A few others dance, dwindle, and then rise again to throw a steady light. I slip a blue blanket over her shoulders and pull it closed under her chin.

“You don’t want a chill,” I say, even though the house is closed up and the air stuffy. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

“There was a fellow,” Juna says, clinging to the thin blanket with both hands. She leans into me as if struggling to stand upright. She’s not been out of bed, barely eaten or taken a drink since Abraham placed his claim on her. Each time he’s come to the door, she’s told me to send him away and have him come another time. It’s likely why Abigail has barely left the house. Abraham will have asked her to keep watch over Juna.

“I seen him too,” Juna says. “Wore a fine white shirt, buttoned to the collar and at each wrist.”

Mrs. Baine stands, her fingertips resting on the table. Her brown hair hangs nearly to her waist, and her gray dress is tied off with a thin leather strap.

“That’s good,” I say, speaking as if Juna were a child. She is about to tell us what we’ve been waiting to hear, and as Mrs. Baine begins to slide around the table toward the kitchen door, I worry she’ll scare Juna, interrupt whatever she is about to say.

“Please,” I say, stroking the hair from her face. “Keep on.”

“His nose, it was bent.” Juna’s black eyes are empty sockets except when they catch the candlelight. “Crooked in a funny sort of way. Like it had been broke.”

“Good, good,” I say.

“Why, that’s him,” Mrs. Brashear says, giving the table another whack. “That’s sure enough the fellow we seen. Abigail, don’t you figure? Don’t you figure it’s the same fellow?”

“It’s the same fellow,” Abigail says, staring at the table instead of Juna.

Mrs. Baine isn’t the type of woman a person would notice. In church or at a summer gathering or on the street in town, a person wouldn’t remember her walking among the others. She is a woman who blends in, and I’ve often imagined she’d make a fine mother-in-law. I would hope to live one day under the same roof as her and call her son my husband. She is quiet, humble, happy enough to be overlooked, but as I stand next to Juna, holding her, stroking her, waiting for her to say more, I can’t stop staring at Mrs. Baine. I can’t stop the worry creeping up from the soles of my feet.

“Go on,” I say. “What more do you remember?”

“Thought it was a fine shirt,” Juna says. “Too fine for any day but Sunday.”

Mrs. Brashear nods. “Yes, it was a fine shirt. Mr. Brashear’s best. That was the fellow.”

“A fine shirt,” Abigail says.

“That don’t mean nothing,” Mrs. Baine says. “A man can walk down a road if he chooses. And he can wear a fine white shirt too. Don’t mean he stole it.”

It is the most words I’ve ever heard Mrs. Baine say. Mrs. Brashear must be surprised too, not so much by what Mrs. Baine is saying but that she is saying anything at all.

“Please,” I say, “have a seat, Mrs. Baine. Daddy or John, they’ll walk you home. It’s too dark outside. Sit a bit, wait. They’ll stop in soon.”

Mrs. Baine backs toward the door. “Don’t mean nothing, that man walking down the road.”

Juna steps forward into the glow of the candles that burn around us. She drops the blanket. It slips from her shoulders and pools at her feet.

“That’s the fellow who took our Dale,” she says.

“That ain’t so,” Mrs. Baine says, and I know the man in the white shirt is one of her boys.

There are seven Baine brothers, but only six who still live in Hayden County, all of them with their mama. All of them except Joseph Carl. He left a half dozen years ago to travel the country. He was, still is, the oldest of all the brothers. Because he’s been gone so long, he’s the only one the Brashears wouldn’t know because they moved here in the years since he left. He’s the only one Juna might not know if she were to see him walking down the road.

“That just ain’t so,” Mrs. Baine says again, and I know I’m right. Joseph Carl is back home.

“He’s the one,” Juna says. “The one in the fine white shirt with a bend in his nose. He’s the one who took Dale.”

•   •   •

BEING FOUR YEARS
older than Juna, I remember Joseph Carl better than she. He is the one kind soul among all those Baine brothers. Even given my ache for Ellis, I know he isn’t such a kind man as Joseph Carl.

Joseph Carl was the brother who would take his mama by the arm, escort her into church or down the road through town. Walking with Joseph Carl was the only time Mrs. Baine would hold her head high so a person could see her eyes. She would nod to passersby, pat Joseph Carl’s hand, even call out a hello to one of the ladies. But Joseph Carl’s kindness didn’t serve him well in that family. It’s surely why he finally left, even knowing he was abandoning his mama to the care of those other boys. He had a yearning for something more and too much kindness to survive his family, so he packed up and left Hayden County.

For weeks, months maybe, before Joseph Carl stepped aboard a train, he talked of traveling north and west. Not so far away, he said, but look at how tall they grow their wheat. For anyone who would give him the time, Joseph Carl unrolled for them a poster that showed a man standing on a ladder so he could see over the top of his crop. This is how tall it grows, he said. Land so rich, crops sprout like weeds. When he did finally step aboard a train, most folks thought it was a damn foolish thing to do and he was a damn foolish man for doing it.

I’ve thought of Joseph Carl over the years, thought one day Ellis and I would marry and we’d go to live near Joseph Carl somewhere away from Juna and Daddy. I remembered the sun in that poster of his. The landscape had glowed orange, and the wheat was yellow, and the man who stood on that ladder had red cheeks. We would live there, where it was dry and warm and not all the time moldy and damp. I imagined Joseph Carl would be my brother, even on the day he left and I was too young to want Ellis in the way I want him now. I imagined Joseph Carl, and not any other Baine, would one day be my brother and Ellis would be my husband.

Most folks thought Joseph Carl likely died in the years that followed, or packed himself up and kept moving west like so many others when that dark rich soil dried up and blew away. I would imagine, sometimes, in more recent years, when we had a bit of dust blow through and it was a particular dark-brown shade, that it had come from a place where Joseph Carl had been and that he had touched it or walked upon it or dug it with his own bare hands.

He did write me a few times, three letters that came over two years. By the third letter, he told me he knew I loved Ellis but that it was a feeling I should be shy of. He said Ellis was a good enough man, but not as good as I might want him to be. Don’t mistake foolishness for bravery, Joseph Carl wrote. I’d tell you to find another man, but I know that’ll only make you want Ellis all the more. But I’ll say it anyway. Find another sort of man. Joseph Carl was the only person I ever knew who left Hayden County. The only person most anyone knew who left. But now, it would seem, Joseph Carl is back.

I leave the house before Juna can say Joseph Carl’s name out loud, and I take Mrs. Brashear and Abigail with me. On the porch, Abigail shakes her grandfather by the shoulder, him having already fallen off to sleep.

“Go on home,” I tell them, standing on the porch, drying my hands on my apron like I’ll be staying right here and have no other place to go. “Abraham will probably be there by the time you get home.” I say this because I can see in Abigail’s eyes, the way they are near to tearing over, that she’s scared to walk home with only her grandparents. “You all be safe, and thank you for the milk. We’ll send word when Dale is found.”