Valley So Low (11 page)

For a few minutes the conversation seemed forced, but after some of the guests headed home, things quieted down.  The men returned from the barn, Harry among them, and everyone left gathered in Mary’s parlor.  They played a few rounds of charades and laughed often.  Sara’s daughter, grown tall for ten, toted George around and tended to him.  When he got fussy, she rocked him and put him to sleep in the back bedroom with several other little ones.

Maude sat beside Harry on the sofa, their hands intertwined.  She didn’t care who noticed or what anyone thought.  Judging from his pink face and the slight aroma of bourbon wafting from him, he’d been drinking but he wasn’t drunk.  He acted comfortable with the forty-odd kinfolk and neighbors and as relaxed as she’d seen him away from home in ages. None of the fine lines always evident when he hurt were visible and no one remarked on his bruises, at least not in Maude’s hearing.  Or hadn’t until she realized it. 

Soon after, Joe, one of her cousin’s husbands, mentioned the fray in town.  “Heard Jones got what he had coming,” he said in his gruff voice.  Harry shifted his shoulders in a lazy shrug. “He’s deviled me for a long time,” he said. “I guess you could say so.”

“I would,” Uncle Tommy added. His red face and slightly slurred words told Maude he’d had more of the whiskey than Harry.  “Let’s sing some more songs.”

They started with Christmas carols but before long, someone suggested a popular tune, then another woman started singing one of the old ballads.  Aunt Mary tried to coax Harry into playing the piano but he refused to budge. “I’m good here,” he said. “I’d rather sit with Maudie.”  Their eyes met like a caress.  At first Maude sang with the rest but as the hour crept closer toward midnight, she grew weary.  She’d been up early to cook, never dreaming they would go visiting, and the days just before Christmas were hectic ones.  The crowded room overheated with the press of people, and the fire burning in the stone fireplace combined with fatigue contributed to a headache.  As she grew drowsy, she realized she might’ve fallen asleep if her head didn’t hurt.  When she stopped singing, Harry glanced down at her with a slight frown.  After she failed to join in the third one in a row, he nudged her. “What’s the matter, honey?”

“I’m frazzled,” she told him. “And I’ve got a headache.”  His eyes narrowed and he touched her cheek with his free hand.  She still held the other.

“You’re not coming down sick, are you?” he asked with obvious concern.

Maude shook her head. “I’m just tired.”

“Then I’ll take you home,” Harry said. “Get your shawl and basket. I’ll fetch George.”

When they stood, though, and Harry made noise about time to go home, Aunt Mary checked the case clock on the mantelpiece. “Laws, I had no idea it was so late,” she said. “I’ll be worn out tomorrow but it should be a quiet day.”

“Where’s George?” Harry asked. “I told Maudie I’d get him.”

“He’s sound asleep in the back bedroom with the other little ones,” Mary replied. “If you wake him now, he’ll be a terror.  He won’t want to go back to sleep by the time you get home.  Why don’t you leave him stay and come back for him tomorrow? Or Tommy can tote him down to you.”

Maude hesitated.  George would be wide awake once roused and he wouldn’t want to go back down.  But she hated to leave the tyke, although he liked Aunt Mary fine.  “I don’t know,” she said.

Harry settled it. “That’d be just fine, Mary,” he said. “Much obliged.”

Her aunt beamed. “Why, you needn’t be.  It’ll be a delight to have a young ‘un round here.  I play with all the babies and grandbabies but it’s rare they stay over.  I’ve got diapers and a cow for milk.  We’ll get along fine.  You two probably could use the time together anyhow.  I ain’t forgot what it’s like to be young and in love.”

Most of the company laughed.  And before Maude could say a thing, Harry kissed her square on the mouth in front of them all.  A few whistles and cheers echoed in her ears but despite a moment of embarrassment, she liked it.  He’d just marked her out as his in front of them all and she was glad.

“All right, then, Aunt Mary, and thanks,” Maude said as she gathered her wrap and basket.  She tucked the shawl around her shoulders and tied a wool scarf under her chin.  “We’ll be seeing you.”

“Don’t be a stranger, child,” Mary said.  After making the rounds of farewells to her kin and a few friends, Maude went outside to find Harry.  He waited at the wagon to boost her up to the seat and climbed up beside her, agile as a squirrel.  He clicked his tongue at the team and the horses took off at a steady pace.  Above the canopy of trees the night sky sparkled with a full-bellied moon and thousands of stars.  The weather turned much colder after dark and Maude shivered.  Alone and away from any curious eyes, she cuddled against Harry and he put an arm around her shoulders. “You all right, Maudie?” he asked.

“Mmmhm,” she said. In the crisp, fresh air, away from the noise, the too-warm cabin, and people, her headache receded. “I’m good.  My head almost doesn’t hurt anymore. I feel kinda bad about leaving George behind, though.”

“Aw, don’t,” Harry said. “I’m kinda glad to be alone with you for a bit.”

Although she missed her son, Maude understood.  Being with Harry on the winter’s night reminded her of the days when they courted.  She almost felt like the carefree girl she’d been then, not the mother, widow, and soon-to-be wife she was, a woman grown. Happiness bubbled up within her heart and overflowed.  She wanted to open her arms wide to embrace Harry and hug the stars.  Maude longed to dance or to run through the woods, magical in the silver moonlight.  The team plodded along too slow for her taste.  She would like to feel the wind in her face, cold air blowing through her hair.  Instead, she tucked her hand into Harry’s coat pocket. “I am, too,” she told him. “Take me home and love me, Harry.”

He slowed the horses and then called, “Whoa.” When they halted, he kissed her long and slow. “I’d like nothing better, honey,” he said. “Let’s go.”

At the farmhouse, Maude went inside while Harry unhooked the team and tended to chores.  Farm life required attention before romance.  She stoked up the fireplace and got a good fire burning.  Then she went upstairs, took down her hair, and brushed it a hundred strokes until it shone.  Maude dug deep into the dresser drawers until she found a cotton nightgown trimmed in lace.  She donned it even though it was far too lightweight in the cold and added a little bit of long-hoarded rose scent to her wrists, behind her ears, then at the base of her throat.  Upstairs the rooms were so cold she could see her breath so she headed downstairs.  As Maude made her way along the stairs, Harry came in.  She paused and he gazed up at her, the expression on his face so priceless she vowed to commit it to memory forever.

His eyes glistened and the smile dancing around his lips pleased her.  Harry stared as if she was beautiful, something Maude doubted, and as if she was something fine, worth a fortune.  She thought she saw hunger in his gaze, a craving bordering on greed but tempered with need.  Desire curled within, warm and potent.  Before she could take another step, Harry bounded up to her.  He stopped two stairs below and drank her with his eyes. “Oh, Maudie,” he said, his voice as serious as a parson at Sunday meeting. “You look so pretty with your hair down.”

With nothing beneath the thin gown, her nipples budded like ripe cherries and strained against the cloth in the cold.  Maude shivered with anticipation and chill.  Harry noticed and he reached for her.  He picked her up and held her as she locked her hands behind his neck. “We’ll freeze in the bedroom,” he said, practical as ever. “Let’s go down by the fire.”

“Take me,” Maude told him, and the words had more than one meaning as he carried her downstairs.

Chapter Nine

Firelight flickered and cast shadows so tall they stretched to the high ceilings.  Harry kissed her before he put her down, his mouth retaining a slight taste of the whiskey he’d drank earlier.  Warmth from the fire reached her in waves but the real heat poured from his mouth into hers.  Harry didn’t hurry the kiss, though, but took his sweet time about it, lips lingering over her mouth until every bit of her body cried out for more.  Maude savored the solid bulk of his body against hers and when he did lower her feet to the floor, she leaned forward to cling to him, almost dizzy.  She undid his overall straps at each shoulder and then fumbled to undo the buttons at his hips.  The denim slid downward toward the floor until Harry stepped out of the garment.  His long-tailed shirt, the one she’d made him for Christmas, hung over his long johns.  She unbuttoned it and peeled it back.  Harry removed his underwear and stood erect, proud and nude before the fire.

He looked the way Maude imagined a statue might, although she’d never seen any but the Johnny Reb figure standing guard over the Confederate dead at the Odd Fellows cemetery in town.  She’d seen pictures, though, of unclothed statues sculpted by great artists and thought Harry looked as fine.  The way the firelight played over his face he looked very young one moment and then the next he looked the way she imagined he might as an old man.  She admired him until his hands, cool to the touch, reached beneath the nightgown she wore to stroke her flesh.  Maude forgot about art, about statues, and anything but making love with Harry.

Harry moved his hands over her body with such deliberate slowness she felt his calluses, even the sharp momentary nip of a hangnail.  He caressed her with something approaching reverence but always with want.  Maude marveled at how smooth and soft the skin on his chest and back felt under her fingers, compared to the rougher, worn skin on his hands.  She savored each touch, each stroke of his fingers as he caressed her breasts.  Harry kissed her as he used his thumbs to coax her nipples to blossom.  His mouth shifted from hers to her throat where his fever-hot lips burned against her skin as she savored every second of it.

Each of her five senses became ultra sensitive as Harry nibbled at the side of her neck, his teeth sharp as they teased.  Her skin tingled from mouth to pussy with delectable anticipation.  Harry’s all male scent filled her nose with its heady combination of soap, wood smoke, livestock, and leather. Maude breathed it and wanted to immerse in it, to hold it forever as a reminder of these moments.  When she covered his neck, then his chest with her kisses, she tasted the salt of his sweat and each time she gazed at him, the minute perfection of his body amazed her.  It fired her with desire too.  The look in his eyes captured her heart, intense and focused as if nothing else existed in the world but the two of them.  For now, she guessed nothing did that mattered.

            Maude shed the gown and shuddered at the contrast between warm air from the hearth on one side and the warmth of Harry’s hands compared to the chill room behind her.  Bolder than she’d ever been, she grasped his cock in her hand and squeezed the rock hard length of it.  He answered by stroking the tight curls of her vaginal hair and using his fingers to reach within.  They’d never make it upstairs, but she didn’t care.  When he lowered her to the floor she expected to find the hardwood floor but her body touched something thick and soft.  On her back, Maude fingered it. “What’s this?” she asked in a soft breath. “Granpa’s bearskin,” Harry said. “Hush, Maudie.”

She did.  Maude spread her knees apart and Harry fit between them.  He offered her his hands and she grasped them as he entered her body.  He hammered her with the same finesse she’d seen him use to hang a nail and with the same effortless accuracy.  His cock glided into her, smooth and full.  Maude tightened her rump to clench tight around him, and her actions brought a pleasure-filled groan from his mouth.  He moved within her with a rhythmic grace, one echoing their dance a few nights ago, but each stroke stoked her inner fires into a roaring blaze.  Her nipples hardened, the walls of her pussy became wet and slick. Her body ached with need.  Each thrust brought her closer to the moment of release but as the tension mounted, she strained against him in a wild effort to bring them both home.

Harry took his time and made each movement deliberate.  His lovemaking bordered on torture but it was so sweet she had no complaints.  If she had, Maude couldn’t voice them.  Her breath came too short.  Everything focused on the moment of completion.  When he released her hands, Maude’s fingers scratched hard against the skin of his back in her efforts to become one with him. Their efforts crescendoed and when the release came it rocked them with the force of a spring tornado.  She cried out in a wordless warble and clutched Harry as he shuddered his way to the finish.  He shouted her name when he came hard and they quivered, all their senses reeling.  For a moment Maude thought sure she’d faint.  Her vision dimmed and her head spun with the incredible impact.

When he pulled out, the loss swamped her hard.  They’d been united as one, and once separated Maude felt bereft.  Harry smiled at her and pushed back the wild tangle of her loose hair with one shaking hand. “I love you, honey,” he said as he flopped beside her on the huge bearskin.  Although it’d been tacked to one wall for decades, Maude’d never known how soft the fur would feel against her bare skin.  “I love you so much,” she murmured, sleepy now she’d been sated. “We should go to bed.”

“Naw,” he whispered. “It’s too cold and I ain’t movin’.  We’ll sleep here.”  Harry reached up and dragged several quilts from a chair, then fumbled to spread them over him and Maude.  He must have planned ahead, Maude thought, as she snuggled against him, warm, safe, and fulfilled.   She stretched her hand out toward the fire and the golden ring caught the light.  It turned the gold brighter, burnished with reflected orange.  Then she slept, burrowed under the covers beside Harry, their limbs intertwined.

If she dreamed, Maude didn’t remember.  She woke, cozy and warm, until she noticed Harry’s absence.  Before she could do more than stretch out a hand in search of him, he spoke in a hurried whisper. “Get up, Maudie. You’d best get dressed.”

“Why?” she asked as she sat up, quilt clutched to her bosom. “Harry, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know that anything is,” he said. “But I hear someone coming, several of them on horseback. Listen.”

In the still frosty morning she heard what he did, the pounding of multiple sets of hoofbeats and the approaching jingle of more than one bridle.  Men’s voices echoed across the snow-packed ground too, the words indistinguishable.  More than a little alarmed, Maude scurried upstairs with the quilt wrapped around her.  She dressed in a fresh housedress with speed and combed out her hair, wincing at the tangles.  Then she braided it and pinned it up into a figure eight on the back of her head.  She shoved her feet into shoes and hurried downstairs to join Harry.  In her brief absence, he’d dressed too, picked up the bearskin, and folded the quilts. He stood by the front window and peered out as three mounted men rode into the yard.  “Who is it?” Maude asked.

“Looks like its Sheriff McGill,” he said. “He’s brought a couple of deputies. I wonder what’s going on.”

So did Maude.  Her mind raced toward unthinkable possibilities—trouble at her uncle’s home, a fire, something bad happening to George.  “Go see,” she urged him. 

Harry nodded and stepped out onto the porch, a hand lifted in greeting. “Good morning, Sheriff,” he called. “What brings you out this way?”

Ike McGill’s face appeared to be carved from granite as Maude stood in the doorway so she could hear the exchange. “I’ve come for you, Harry,” the Sheriff replied. “I’d rather I didn’t have to do this, but you’re gonna have to come back to town with me.  It’ll go easier if you don’t kick up a ruckus but you’re going with us either way.”

Maude stood close enough she watched Harry stiffen his back.  He made no other movement but his wariness prickled the air between them. “I don’t plan to make a fuss,” Harry said. “But I’d like to know what’s going on, Ike.  I’ll go to town with you but won’t you tell me why?”

“I reckon you know,” McGill said and spit a stream of tobacco juice onto the snow.  His expression didn’t shift and his absence of a smile warned Maude this wasn’t a joke.  Whatever brought him to the farm must be serious.

“I don’t have an idea,” Harry answered. His tone remained even but Maude sensed the underlying tension.  She moved out onto the porch to stand beside him in silent support. “Is something wrong with Granny or Uncle Fred?”

Sheriff McGill stared hard at Harry and then exhaled a slow breath. “I almost believe you don’t have a clue why I’m here, Harry.  I’d like to think you’re innocent after all but right now I don’t.”

Innocent.
The word slammed into Maude’s brain with the force of a hammer. 
He thinks Harry’s guilty of something…but what?
Fear twisted her insides with invisible barbed wire and she wrapped her arms around her torso as if she could protect herself from whatever blow was about to fall.  Her hand, cold as snow, fumbled at Harry’s until he held it, his fingers secure around hers. “You sound like you think me guilty of something, Sheriff,” Harry said after a moment’s pause. “Honest to God, I don’t know what it might be.  I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“If that’s true, you got nothing to hide,” Denny Dumont, a deputy, said. “So it won’t hurt none to come along with us. We’ll get it settled one way or another before the judge.”

McGill shook his head. “Harry, where’d you spend Christmas?”

“We went over to Maude’s uncle’s place,” Harry said. “You can ask Tommy King or his wife or any of the thirty-odd people who were there if you like.”

“I will,” Ike McGill said. “Were you there all day?”

Maude didn’t like the way he asked the questions, as if he meant to trick Harry some way or another.  Hot words boiled in her mouth but she didn’t dare say them, afraid she’d make the situation worse.  So she kept quiet and waited as Harry spoke. “No, we had dinner here at home and then headed over there.  Not that it’s any of your business, Sheriff, but I hadn’t left the farm here for several days.  Last time I was off the place before Christmas would be when I went to town last Saturday.”

The way McGill snorted, Maude thought he doubted Harry’s word. “It’s true,” she said.

“Do you have anybody else who can vouch for you?” the sheriff asked. “Someone who can swear you were here and didn’t head back to town.”

Harry shook his head. “Just Maudie and the baby,” he said. “Tommy King brought a ham over Sunday but that’s all.  Like I said, I ain’t been off the place.”

“Would you swear to it?”

“On a stack of Bibles, I would.  What the hell is goin’ on anyway?” Harry asked.

“Since you don’t know what happened or you’re good at playacting, I’ll tell you.  Delbert Jones turned up dead late yesterday with a knife in his gut.  He’d probably been dead a day or two before that but it’s hard to tell.”

“Pity,” Harry said in a sharp tone indicating it was anything but one. “What’s it got to do with me?”

“You’re the one folks say done it.”

A rock dropped from the highest peak of the roof couldn’t have hit Maude any harder.  Outrage exploded within her mind but fear followed with haste.  Harry’s body, already still, went rigid as a just-planed board.  “I didn’t,” he said, his voice calm and firm.

Sheriff McGill exchanged glances with his deputies.  He sighed, spit, and faced Harry. “Is it true you two got into a fight Saturday?”

“Yeah, it’s true,” Harry said with more than a touch of defiance. “My bruises haven’t faded away yet.  We fought after he deviled me into it, the way he’s been tryin’ to do for months now, probably years.  But this time I fought back and knocked him down.  Far as I’m concerned, it was over then, this bad blood between us.  If he’s dead, it’s news to me.”

“Well, he’s dead.” McGill spat the words out as if they tasted bitter. “Your story don’t match what some of the witnesses say.”

“Half the town watched the fight,” Harry replied. “I reckon most would agree with my account.”

“Maybe so but not Miss Fannie Farnsworth,” Sheriff McGill said. A smile smirked around the edges of his mouth. “Or her cousin, Mrs. Daisy Wainwright.  Both ladies swear you were beaten and vowed you’d get your revenge.”

Maude found her voice. “That’s a black lie!” she exclaimed. “Why, Daisy Ann was just at my aunt and uncle’s for Christmas.  We just saw her and she never said a thing.”

“Ma’am,” Sheriff McGill said with a tip of his hat. “I’ve got her sworn statement, written out in the prettiest handwriting you ever saw.  Miss Fannie brought it with her when she came to my office day before Christmas.  Truth is, I didn’t put much stock in it until Delbert Jones turned up deader than a graveyard ghost.”

“Did they say I killed him?” Harry asked. “I swear to you I didn’t.”

“Well,” the older man said. Doubt tinged his voice for the first time. “No, they didn’t say exactly that they did.  And they didn’t say they saw it.  But both ladies—one in my office, the other in a letter—said you vowed to get him back.  So when Jones turned up dead, I came for you as the most likely suspect.  Still figure I’d best take you in, Harry, let the law sort it out.”

Harry’s fingers tightened their grip on her hand and Maude huddled against him.  She wanted to cry out “don’t go” but she didn’t.  “Aren’t you the law?” Harry asked after several long moments of silence.