Pamela Morsi (28 page)

“And I’m sorry I won’t be there to help you get the crop in,” he said “At least when I get back from prison, I’ll be bigger and stronger.”

His words were determinedly cheerful and positive.

“Now you are beginning to sound like your sister,” Moss told him. “Trying to see the silver lining in every dark cloud.”

The boy nodded.

“I suspect it’s a pretty fair way to live,” he said. “Especially in a world that can be full of rain.”

Eulie began to speak to her brother again, and Moss excused himself. He went back into the outer
office and spoke to the sheriff once more.

“Where is this Sam Wainthrop’s saloon?” he asked. “I thought I’d might go over and talk to the man.”

The sheriff eyed him warily. “You ain’t about to start something, are you?” he asked. “I know how you hill people can be about feuding and such.”

Moss took the comment in stride. He was itching to point out to the disparaging sheriff that Jarl, Tennessee, was not exactly a high-toned flatland city, but he managed to restrain himself. Denials were a waste of breath. Strangers to the Sweetwood liked to believe that it was populated by ignorant, inferior people. They were often treated that way when they came down from the mountains. It was no wonder that most folks were so content to stay home.

“I’m not about to start anything,” he assured the sheriff. “I want to talk to the man about those reparations.”

That satisfied the man and Moss was given directions. Outside, he untied Red Tex from the hitching post and mounted up.

Moss rode through the little town in the direction of the river. He thought about the Sweetwood. He thought about Eulie. He thought about grazing cattle and the wild vast Texas prairie that he had never seen.

And he thought about Rans Toby.

He annoys ye so much,
Jeptha had said,
because he’s so much like ye.

Moss had been uncertain what the man was talking about at the time. He was not at all like Rans. He never looked for trouble. He didn’t have a hot temper. And he had nothing to prove to anybody.

But the two of them did share a common misconception.
They both believed that life would be better if they could get away from the Sweetwood. Every time things got bad or feelings were hurt, Rans headed out, he ran away. Moss had never run. But just like the boy, the minute difficulties came his way, Moss was, in his mind, gone to Texas. He’d never settled into his life, never tried to improve his lot. He’d just dreamed about getting away.

Moss had had more years to think about it, and he’d managed to focus his hopes on a specific place, a faraway haven. Young Rans had just determinedly wanted to get away from the familiar, to get away from the life he knew and the troubles he had.

As he turned Red Tex’s head toward the direction of the river, he wondered if either of them would have found out differently.

Truly, Moss believed that Sweetwood farming was not the finest choice of livelihood. He was certain that cattle grazing was a far superior way of life. But not every person got all the choices. A place couldn’t make anyone happy and satisfied with life. Those things came from inside the heart. And they were as likely to be found in a hellhole as in paradise.

Red Tex drew a lot of admiring looks from passersby as they got closer to the water. The streets and alleyways got poorer, dirtier. Wainthrop’s saloon was obviously not one patronized by the more upstanding of Jarl’s citizens. When he located the place with the distinctive swinging yellow doors, he was even more convinced of that fact It was a desperate place, catering to the tastes of desperate folk.

Moss almost hated to leave the horse tied at the hitch. The area around Wainthrop’s bar was the kind
of mean-living place where a man might rob his own grandmother in broad daylight for the penny in her garter stocking. A fine animal like Red Tex might well prompt a petty criminal to become a horse thief.

Moss patted the animal’s neck affectionately as if encouraging the horse to take care of himself Then he walked up to the building and stepped through the swinging doors.

In the clear light of day, the place was awful. It was as dirty and ill-kept as the handful of patrons sitting around guzzling pale, sudsy beer.

Moss surveyed the room for damage. The mirror behind the bar had caught a bullet. And from the point of entry a web of cracks fanned out in every direction. Clearly it was damaged beyond repair, but who would want to see themselves in a place such as this? The glassware was stored on shelves behind the bar. There were a lot of shelves and not very many glasses. It was quite probable that many of them had been victims of the shoot-out.

Moss walked along the length of the bar until he came to a place where the wood was gouged cleanly with a hole about as big around as his little finger. Moss surveyed the room carefully, looking for other damage. He didn’t see any.

“Twenty dollars,” he mumbled to himself. “I wouldn’t give twenty dollars for the whole place.”

“What can I get for you?” the bartender asked him.

“I’m looking for Sam Wainthrop.” Moss answered.

The man looked immediately defensive. “What do you want him for?”

“A little matter of business,” Moss said. “Are you Wainthrop?”

The man hesitated for a minute.

“Yeah, what of it?” he said finally.

Moss offered his hand. “My name’s Collier,” he told the man. “I come from up in the Sweetwood.”

Wainthrop had accepted the handshake, but his expression got wary at the mention of the Sweetwood.

“You here about the shoot-out?” he asked.

Moss nodded. “The boy was my wife’s brother.”

The bartender looked him over uneasily as if assessing whether or not he was in physical danger.

“I didn’t have nothing to do with nothing,” he declared forcefully. “That boy came in here with those no-account Pusser brothers. He was ripe for plucking and they plucked him. I didn’t have no part in it, nor profit neither.”

“I didn’t believe that you had,” Moss told him. “I’m sure the Pussers didn’t have no trouble getting the upper hand on a child of thirteen.”

“That’s the truth,” Wainthrop agreed.

“Of course,” Moss continued, “you didn’t make any effort to put a stop to it, either.”

“What could I have done?” the man asked, as a protest of innocence.

“Well, maybe you could have kept that marked deck out of their hands,” he suggested.

Wainthrop swallowed nervously.

It was a nearly two hours later when Moss walked into the lockup section of the jail once more. The sheriff had kindly allowed Rans out of the cell, and he was seated with Eulie on a small bench at the end of the room. They were talking as perhaps they had never talked before, at times solemnly saying the words that brothers and sisters rarely voiced, but also remembering
together the childhood memories that none but siblings could ever share.

“Where have you been?” Eulie asked when she glanced up and saw him. “You were gone so long, I was beginning to worry.”

Moss grinned at her, pleased.

“Well, that’s good, don’t you think, Rans?” he said jokingly. “Wives are supposed to worry about their husbands. Especially when they are in town on their own for an hour or more.”

His teasing was light and cheerful. He knew it contrasted with the dark, dank gloom of the jail. But he just couldn’t keep the sunniness inside himself. He was a happy man.

Moss sat down in the narrow space next to Eulie and draped his arm around her back. Ostensibly this was to make more room on the bench, but in truth, Moss did it because he just simply wanted to hold her.

She smiled up at him and he grinned back.

“What is it?” she asked him.

Rans echoed her question. “You look like a cat that just fell in a crock of cream.”

Moss didn’t get time to answer. The door to the office opened, and the sheriff stood on the threshold.

“All right,” the man said. “The paperwork is all signed and recorded. The charges are dropped. Toby, you’re free to go.”

“What?”

The question came from Rans and Eulie almost simultaneously.

“You’re free to go,” the sheriff repeated.

The brother and sister sat stunned. Moss rose to his feet. They turned to stare at him.

“Let’s get on out of here before the man changes his mind,” he suggested.

That was what they did. The sheriff returned Rans’s shoes and galluses. And the boy tucked his pitiful sack of needments under his arm as they headed for the street.

“I can’t believe it,” Eulie said. “He don’t even have to come back for the trial?”

“There is not going to be a trial,” Moss told her. “The sheriff ruled it a fair fight. The Pussers can’t complain unless they want to defend themselves as gambling cheats. And I don’t think they’ll want to do that.”

From his pocket Moss withdrew at handsome wooden box and handed it to Rans.

The boy’s eyes were wide as he pulled it open.

“It’s the marked deck,” he said.

Moss nodded. “I thought you might want it as a remembrance of your adventure in town.”

“How did you—”

Moss held up a hand to silence him.

“Never mind about all of that,” he said. “It’s over. We’re all tired. Why don’t we go home?”

Eulie was smiling broadly, but her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

“I just can’t believe it,” she told him.

He shrugged. “I don’t know why not,” he said. “Aren’t you the one who’s always telling me how things work out for the best?”

He turned to Rans.

“Do you know how to get to the dock from here?” he asked.

The boy looked around for a minute to get his bearings.
“I think it’s a turn to the right at the next corner and then straight down the hill.”

Moss nodded.

“Why don’t you run on down there and ask the boatmen if anybody’s headed up river this late in the day,” he said. “If we can get partway by boat, maybe we’ll be home by midnight or so.”

“Yes, sir,” Rans answered. “If there is any boat headed that way, I’ll find it.”

The boy took off at a dead run. It was as if freedom had by itself made his feet fly across the ground.

Moss turned to offer Eulie his arm.

She stood stock-still, staring at him.

“Aren’t you going to take my arm?” he asked her. “It’s not every day that a Sweetwood man gets to escort his bride through town.”

“Where is Red Tex?” she asked him.

Moss scratched his head for a moment, looking thoughtful.

“You know your brother was right about that horse,” he said. “A farmer just can’t have an animal around the place that doesn’t earn its own way.”

“You sold your horse?” Her words were an incredulous whisper.

“I bought a bunch of broken beer glasses, some wood repairs, and a cracked mirror,” he said. “And I got three dollars in my pocket and a deck of marked cards to boot.”

“But Red Tex was so important to you,” she said, her eyes searching his for answers. “He was part of your dream.”

“Red Tex is a horse,” Moss told her. “Your brother is family.”

“How will you get to Texas?” she asked him.

“Well, I was kind of thinking I wouldn’t go this year anyway,” he said. “With all the things that need doing around the place and all, it seems like I’m not going to have all that much time to cater to my wanderlust.”

He looked down into her eyes. He saw her love for him reflected there. He saw how much she cared.

“Texas will still be there next year,” he assured her. “It will be there next year or in ten years, or even long after I’m gone.”

“It’s what you’ve always wanted,” she reminded him.

Moss shrugged. “I don’t seem to want it so much anymore,” he said. “Besides, I’m planning on having you spend the rest of your life making it up to me.”

“Making it up? How?” she asked.

Moss chuckled softly.

“Oh, some burnt dinners, a few scorched shirts, some mornings with nothing to put on over my underwear.”

He took her hands in his own.

“A pat on the back at the end of a hard day, a kiss in the moonlight from time to time, a warm body beside me in bed at night. In due time, maybe a youngun or two.”

“Oh, Moss.”

“I love you,” he told her. “It wasn’t something that I intended to happen. It was never what I’d planned for my life. But the things we plan are not always what would make us happy. Travel and adventure, even cattle, seem a paltry substitute for the love of a good woman, a home, a hearth, a family.”

Her eyes were misted with tears as she gazed up at him.

“You are my wife,” he said to her. “There is nowhere in this world that could matter to me without you there. And when you are there, it no longer matters where in the world it is.”

She wrapped her arms around his chest and held him so tightly, it was as if she would never let him go.

“Moss Collier, you are the most wonderful husband-man a gal ever trapped into marriage,” she said.

I
T
was barely three weeks later, on the next Preaching Sunday, when, after a heartfelt sermon on the forgiveness of the woman at the well, Rans Toby slipped out of his place on the pew and made his way down to the front of the church to be saved. He manfully confessed his wrong to heaven and humbly asked to be forgiven.

“Jesus told the woman to ‘go and sin no more,’” Rans stated before the congregation. “I believe he’s saying the same to me. So from this day forward, I swear off gambling and drinking and … and, well, other sinful vices that I don’t even know about yet.”

There was a chorus of hearty
amens
from all around the building. Even the Pusser brothers, having taken their usual seat in the back of the church, looked a bit uncomfortable and sheepish as the young fellow took full blame for everything that had happened that day in town.

The people of the Sweetwood hadn’t felt that way, and it had already been very strongly suggested that the two men, as soon as they were able-bodied once more, put in a goodly amount of time assisting Moss Collier until their debt was paid off.

Sitting proudly beside her husband-man in the pew, Eulie squeezed Moss’s hand, her eyes misting as she watched her little brother take his place of respect among the men of the Sweetwood congregation.

The service ended and there were hugs and handshakes all around. People congratulated Eulie as if she were the proud parent of Rans. She understood full well that her brother had taught her as much as she’d been able to teach him.

“The boy is going to do real fine,” Miz Patch told her as the two walked out of the church together. “He ain’t going to be perfect. And this ain’t going to end all his troubles, but he’s going to do real fine. We’re all going to help him.”

Eulie hugged the older woman joyfully. “I feel like I ought to pinch myself,” she confessed. “Moss and I are so happy together. Clara and Bug are planning their wedding. The twins have a good future ahead of them learning to be weavers. And did you see how proudly Little Minnie sat on the Pierces’ pew with her new mama and daddy?”

Miz Patch smiled at her and nodded.

“I always believe that somehow everything will work out for the best,” Eulie told her. “But you know, when it does it’s almost more scary than the messes I get myself into.”

The older woman laughed, understanding.

They stopped and stood together in the meetinghouse doorway, gazing out onto the beauty of the misty mountains and the verdant green of summer. All around the clearing, friends, family, and neighbors were gathered together. They were talking, laughing, living everyday lives that in this one space of time were well and good.

The two reached the bottom of the church steps and began the walk through the long row of men and boys on either side of them.

“The joys and sorrows of life always have a way of balancing out,” Miz Patch said. “Nobody lives happily ever after. But there is, ever after, plenty of happiness to go around. There are still going to be days to come when you are lower than a well digger. And times of such contentment and bliss they will make this moment pale by comparison.”

Eulie shook her head in near-disbelief. “I can’t imagine anything that could happen to make me happier than I am at this moment,” she said.

They reached the end of the courting gauntlet. To Eulie’s complete surprise, Uncle Jeptha had wheeled his cart up to the line.

“Sary Patchel,” he called out. “May I see you home this evening?”