The Whip (10 page)

Thirty-Three

It was a crisp, clear fall morning, punctuated by the rhythmic fall of Byron’s axe as he chopped wood. Inside the farmhouse, the baby was asleep in a fluffy white sea of blankets. Emerson went up and sniffed at the baby, touching her with his wet nose.

“That’s enough now, Emerson,” said Charlotte. “Go outside.”

The dog trotted out and across the front porch as Charlotte followed carrying a basket of laundry. She slung it into the wagon, already hitched to the team.

She went back inside and brought out the baby in her basket, and placed her in the shade on the porch. She waited for Byron to put his axe down, then walked over to him and leaned in for a quick kiss.

“I’m going to the river to do the wash. The baby’s asleep. I’ll be back soon to feed her. Keep an eye on her. And don’t let Emerson wake her up.”

Byron started to protest her leaving, but she cut him off, “I’m fine. I’m feeling strong. And there’s a lot of work to be done.”

“I’d rather wear dirty clothes than have something happen to you. You just had a baby. Get yourself back in bed.”

“I promise I’ll take it easy. I just need to stretch myself. Watch the baby. Don’t worry. I’ll be back before she wakes up.”

He paused for a moment, leaning on his axe, “All right, I’ll let you go if you finally pick her a name. What about Bess? Or Clara?”

Charlotte, getting into the wagon, made a small, noncommittal sound.

“She deserves to have a name,” he said. “If you won’t name her, I will.”

Charlotte smiled down at him. “I know, I know. You’re right. I need to make a decision…I’m sorry. There’s so many names in my head. I want it to be perfect. When I come back. I promise.”

“No ifs or ands about it, we are going to name that baby today,” he said. “I think Bess, my mama’s name; and that’s that.”

“Maybe,” said Charlotte winking at him. She lifted the reins and drove off. Byron shook his head with amused exasperation.

Thirty-Four

Charlotte had finished washing the baby’s things and was now pounding Byron’s clothes over a rock on the riverbank. Her hands were red and stiff from the icy cold water. The basket rested nearby filled with wet laundry. This was hard work. She’d much prefer to swing an axe, at least when her body was back to itself in a few weeks. Actually, she’d prefer to do nothing but nurse the child. Just lie there and feed the baby. What bliss. How strange that somehow, that empty place inside her had seemed to vanish. She wouldn’t change her life these days for any other.

As she started scrubbing Byron’s shirt on the rock, she felt the engorgement of her breasts ease. Her breasts, enormous these days, straining her dress to its utmost, were leaking their milk. Looking down she could see the stain of it rise on the front of her bodice. She should be back at home feeding her child now.

There was a sound: the crack of a single gunshot.

Charlotte looked up. What the hell was that? Her heart stopped in her chest. Her cold fingers released the shirt. The swift river current carried it away. She was appalled by her carelessness. But this was something she couldn’t ignore.

She got up, her knees aching with stiffness, and stood still for a moment, listening hard. Then, heeding the alarm in her heart, she began to move. She dragged the heavy laundry basket over to the wagon. She lugged it over the side, spilling most of the clothing onto the dirty wagon bed. It couldn’t be helped. They’d laugh about it later: her over-reaction, her protectiveness of her baby.

She ran around the side of the wagon, climbed on in a great flurry of skirts, and whipped the horses. They bolted. She whipped them again. “Sorry,” she whispered to the horses, as the wagon jolted forward at great rackety speed over the rock and dirt road. “I’m a mother now.” It’s true; that’s what she said; it wasn’t Byron she was thinking of.

Charlotte whipped the horses again, urging the rough wagon faster than it could go. Her heart felt like it was skipping beats. She had started crying; tears were coursing down her cheeks. She rounded a curve and the wagon skidded out, one wheel hitting a boulder. The spokes crushed inward like toothpicks and the small wagon overturned. She fell onto the hard ground and rolled across the road. In an instant, she was up on her feet, not even pausing to check the horses or her bruised body. Frantic, she ran ahead on foot.

She reached the crest of the road where in a moment she would be able to see the farm. Her breath was deep and frayed. She came round the break of trees. The cabin looked peaceful and serene, wood smoke curling from the chimney. She felt a tremendous wave of relief. She imagined herself weeping in Byron’s arms, laughing a little: I was so scared. He would be baffled and would shake his head but would pet her hair and kiss her and laugh too. Still, she needed to see her baby.

She lifted her skirts and started down the road toward the cabin. Chickens pecked in the yard around the coop; a pair of staked goats bleated as she passed by—the usual sights and sounds.

But then she heard a rumble of hooves. Her face drained itself of color.

“Byron? Byron,” she called. She ran toward the farmhouse.

What she couldn’t see: on the far side of the farm, Byron was running, hurling himself up the hill. The baby was clutched in a bundle of white against his chest. His breath was desperate. Right behind him was a pack of horses and riders. One of them was trying to lasso him. It was a game to them; they were rounding him up.

The riders were hooded, their faces concealed under flour sacks with rude round openings for eyes and gashes for mouths. “Over that way,” one of them shouted.

Two riders broke away to take Byron’s other side. They had him surrounded. He stood frozen in the center, panting huge gasps, hugging the baby closer. The baby was screaming.

“Little one,” he whispered between gasps for air. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.” She didn’t even have a name. So crazy at a time like this it crossed his mind. She should have been named. Damn Charlotte’s obstinance. He knew that they were about to die. She should have had a name. She should have had a name. The thought ran through his head over and over.

The men raggedly dismounted their horses. They approached him.

Charlotte stumbled as she neared the house.

Emerson was lying unmoving on the ground in front of the porch, a gaping wound in his side, the packed earth soaked with his blood. Her face opened wide with horror.

At the top of the hill the men were gathered around a tree. A branch dipped as a rope went taut with the drop of Byron’s weight.

The hooded men were hovering, watching the body struggle and convulse. His legs drawn up, his chest heaving, the baby silent now, clenched in a death grip in her father’s arms.

“That’s enough, now,” said one of the hooded men. “We done what we came for. Scared the shit out of him. Taught him a lesson. Let him down.”

“Let him down now,” another man repeated. But the man who had tied the rope to the tree ignored them.

“Hell, I ain’t no murderer,” said the first man. He grabbed his reins and swung himself back onto his saddle. The other hooded men began to scatter toward their horses.

Charlotte was running. Her dress was gathered in bunches in her hand. She panted up the hill. She crested the hill.

It was the last moment already. She saw it end.

Byron’s body rocked in the air. The baby slipped from his grasp and fell to the hard ground. The body on the rope was still. The branch creaked with the weight. She stopped short, paralyzed, unable to move.

The hooded men were wheeling on their horses, kicking the horses’ sides hard with their heels. They vanished.

Piteous cries were bubbling from Charlotte’s mouth. Her legs crumpled beneath her as she reached the tree. The world swam before her eyes and then for a moment ceased to be. Except, the last hooded man stepped out from behind the tree next to her, raising a liquor bottle to his lips under the hood. He tossed the bottle aside and fumbled with his pants. He hunched down over her and in a single movement ripped her dress apart like someone tearing open a package.

She came back to consciousness, struggling, clawing at him as he held her down. He was at her underclothes now. Her hands scratched his hood and pulled it half-over his head. It was Lee.

His hands grabbed her face, forcing her to look at him. His face was wild with pain. “I love you,” he gasped. “I love you.”

A roaring sound came from her mouth, and she spat in his face.

A sudden look of surprise, and then he slapped her hard, bearing down on her.

“You whore,” he said. “You nigger fucker.” He frantically kissed her mouth and neck. “Whore. Whore,” he screamed as he plunged himself into her. But he was limp with drink.

By then Charlotte had fainted, or died.

In a rage Lee bit into her breast, leaving a double arc of tooth marks. Her unresponsiveness spurred his rage; he used his elbows against the dirt to hoist his way up her body until he’d positioned his groin over her face, his own forehead braced against the needle-covered loam. He was screaming again. “I know you suck on that nigger. I know you do it.”

But the will had left him by then. He got up to his feet, swaying. He managed to pull his pants back up. He didn’t feel so good. His mouth tasted like blood and milk. He wobbled to his horse, struggling to mount and, after retching, rode off.

Thirty-Five

Charlotte lay motionless in a streaked and dirty heap on the grass, her face vacant. The branches swayed in the darkness, their leaves soughing. Byron’s body hung there, twisting with the movement of the wind. Somewhere far, far away, she could hear the bobbing of the little wooden swing, back and forth, back and forth. It was cold. The moon was rising. Then Charlotte’s body shifted on the ground. Consciousness and everything else all at once drifted back to her. She awoke to herself vomiting.

It was full, that moon, and hid nothing. It shone down over the tree where Byron’s body hung. Charlotte was dragging a wooden chair up the hillside. She was weeping…the baby, the beautiful broken thing. She’d already lifted from where it was splayed in the dirt and carried her, shrieking with the anguish of it all, down to the house. She’d washed the baby’s body and kissed it all over. Then she’d wrapped the little body in her shawl and placed it in its cradle. She kissed and kissed its little brow.

She couldn’t let her mind turn to the baby now. She stood on the chair behind Byron’s body. For a moment she laid her head against his legs, and then she reached her arms around him. She tried to hoist him up a bit; if she could lift him, she thought she might be able to loosen the knot around his neck. But he was too heavy; what had she been thinking? She got down from the chair and went to where the other end of the rope was tied around the trunk of the tree. She tried to unknot it there. If she cut the rope with a knife, the body would crash to the ground. She couldn’t bear that thought.

At last she was able to undo the knot. She started to release the rope. For the first moment the bark of the tree branch from which he hung dragged on the rope enough that she could slow the speed of it. But then the weight was too much; the rope slid, burning through her hand. She couldn’t stop it and his body thudded hard onto the ground.

The sound of the body falling was terrible. She’d never forget that sound. With a cry of apology she went to him. “I’m so sorry,” she bawled. “I’m so sorry, Byron.”

She straightened his body out on the ground, averting her eyes as much as possible from his empty face. Where had he gone to, that man she’d loved? That man who’d loved her.

She wouldn’t be able to move his body tonight. She was beyond exhaustion…no strength left in her. She forced herself back down to the house, took the baby from the cradle, and the warm winter blanket from their big shared bed, and returned to the hilltop. That night they slept all together for the last time.

Thirty-Six

It was dawn. Charlotte lay asleep on Byron’s chest, her arm enfolding the baby at her breast. Her eyes opened. She grimaced, her face in agony, and closed her eyes, willing herself to die.

She opened her eyes again; she had a grave to dig.

She worked all day at it. She felt her mind go numb with the work, and this was good…disappearing into the rhythm of the shoveling. The earth here was rocky and difficult, and she wanted to make the grave deep, deep as she could. She spoke to Byron as she worked, and to the baby. She said everything she could think to say: a lifetime’s worth of thoughts and regrets. Finally she’d said it all.

It’s time, Byron, she said to him then. She bent down over his head and took him under his arms, dragging the body onto the blanket and then tugging the blanket to the long hole in the ground. She laid him alongside the opening and lowered him, feet and legs first, as best she could. It was complicated, getting him down there. She’d left room for herself, too, there in the grave; she could crouch alongside him to untumble him, to arrange him as if he were sleeping.

Then she lifted the baby, tiny, swaddled in white, so sweet. She made soothing sounds to the little one as she laid the bundle on Byron’s chest, folding his arms around her. She placed the warm winter blanket over them, tucking them in. Then she placed Emerson at Byron’s feet.

It did not feel right to climb out of the grave, leaving them there; in the dark shadow, amongst the hairy ends of tree roots, the rocks and yellowish clay layered in with the dark softer dirt and the worms and millipedes and pill bugs.

And horrible it was then to lift a shovelful of the soil and drop it down upon them. Yet another pain went through her, so deep that all she could do was stand at the edge of the grave, looking away, pretending it wasn’t there, throwing dirt from her shovel onto their bodies.

Once they were under a layer of earth and she couldn’t make out their lineation any longer, all that remained was filling the hole. It was a faint degree easier now. She worked shovel by shovel, filling it up and then raising it round, like a featherbed, above the level of the ground. She finished just before dusk. It was done.

Then she remembered the horses. She found the two poor creatures still tied to the tipped wagon near the river, scared but unharmed. They had dragged the broken wagon until it had lodged itself between two large rocks. She unhitched them and took them back home. It was already dark as she walked them into the barn, so they could eat and rest.