After Eli Read online

  Michael’s voice rubbed gently inside Owen. He closed his eyes and felt the words, like fingertips, on his forehead and temples, and he was at last unafraid.

  “How’s the water? Cool, is it?”

  Owen nodded once. He lay flat on the cot. One arm was across his chest, the other by his side. The cold, damp cloth on his lips and neck made his breathing easier.

  “Doc said to wake him if you came around,” continued Michael, “but I don’t believe I will. Let you get some rest before they start pokin’ and askin’ questions. No need to rush things, if you’re feelin’ better.” He squeezed the wet cloth over the bucket and unfolded it and draped it over the foot support of the cot. He walked from the cell and returned with a chair.

  “You can rest if you want,” Michael said, sitting in the chair and leaning against the wall. “Or you can talk, if you’d like that. I’m a good man for listenin’, especially for one who’s known for doin’ the talkin’ of a dozen.”

  “I rested enough, I reckon,” replied Owen. He looked at Michael. Michael did not seem a stranger.

  “If you could call it restin’,” corrected Michael. “I’d say it’s been fitful.”

  Owen said nothing. He touched the scab that had healed over a cut on his lip.

  “He didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” Owen mumbled.

  “That you said. Did you wrong him in some way?”

  Owen turned his head from Michael.

  “I’m pryin’,” Michael said. “It’s a personal thing and it’s not right to be pryin’. I’ll leave you to sleep.” He dropped his chair from the wall and stood.

  “It don’t matter,” Owen told him. He covered his eyes with his hands. He asked, “My daddy didn’t say nothin’ about it?”

  Michael reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew his short pipe packed with tobacco. He struck a match across the floor and held the flame to the bowl and inhaled. The smoke from the burning tobacco rose in a mushroom O above the bowl and drifted in a sheet across the cell.

  “Not that I know,” he answered. “Doc’s not said. Nor the sheriff. From what I know they wanted you here to mend. Don’t even know if it’s legal, you bein’ locked up. There’s no charges that I’ve heard about.”

  “People in town know I’m here?”

  “It’d be a hard thing not to know,” Michael replied. “It’s a small place and what with the doctor hirin’ me for the night work, it got around, but it took some time. No, Owen, there’s no secret of it. There’s many askin’ about you every day. They’ll be glad to know you’re better.”

  Owen’s face moved in his hands. He said nothing. Michael pulled on the stem of his pipe, filling his mouth with smoke. He wondered why Owen had asked if his father had said anything, and if the townspeople knew something they had not told him. The talk of Owen in Pullen’s Café had been restrained, polite, spoken in short, whispered sentences. Michael had believed it was their anger or their awkward expression of sadness; he had believed that Frank Benton had become well known for his abuse of his children, and for being a religious fanatic. But perhaps there was more than a single incident that caused the talk; perhaps there was something lingering in the fixed nodding of the townspeople, and in their too-sudden reserve when Owen Benton was mentioned. Michael could feel the ghost of an uneasy truth, of something more terrible than a father’s madness. He sat against the laddered slats of the chair back and the thin overture of a familiar music began to play inside the chambers of his imagination. His teeth closed tight on the pipe, and he waited.

  11

  MICHAEL WAS WEARY as he walked along the road out of Yale. It was morning. The sun was over the trees, above the mountains, riding a line of milk clouds that stretched across the eastern sky like a brush stroke. He had stayed late at the jail, explaining to Curtis Hill and Garnett Cannon what had happened the night before. The doctor had been irritated that his instructions to be awakened had been ignored, but he had not reprimanded Michael. Michael was not George English; at least he made Owen comfortable.

  He had been paid six dollars by Garnett for five days’ work—with the extra dollar for his caring. “It’s worth it just to keep the place from smelling like a slop jar,” the doctor said. “Worth more than that. God, yes. It’s Friday. Take the night off. Go to Pullen’s. Curtis’ll be around tonight, anyway. We’ll get word to Frank that his boy’s conscious, and he’ll be around to get him. I don’t know when, but we can watch after him tonight.”

  Michael had tried, but he could not command his instincts to tell the doctor about Owen Benton. For four nights he had watched as Owen’s mind sailed in illusions that rested peacefully on his face, while his body jerked in spasms of pain and fear—the mind and body joined like some grotesque Siamese mutation. Michael had attended Owen because the doctor expected it and the doctor was important to his plan. There was nothing unusual about Owen, nothing to suspect. Then Owen had awakened and a signal had flashed in him and Michael had sensed it. It was like a mouse in tall grass scurrying to hide from the hawk’s eye. A brown dot there, then not there, imperceptible against the landscape until it moved again.

  Patience, Michael told himself. Patience. The mouse would move again.

  * * *

  He crossed the bridge at Deepstep Creek and stopped to rest and he began to trace the winding creek bed in his mind. It wiggled out of the mountains in North Carolina and turned sharply west at the Georgia border. Then it curled east again, like a scrawled C, and slipped around the crown of Eli’s farm, through the map of the farm Michael had imprinted on his inner eye, and then it ran in an almost straight line through the Naheela Valley before cutting into the Naheela River above Yale. Michael had come to know Deepstep Creek well. The narrow stream that flowed beside Lester and Mary Caufield’s home emptied into Deepstep and Michael had waded that stream into the creek to kill the scent of his presence. He still remembered the numbing cold of the water in the dark March night.

  He stooped in the road and picked up a small stone and rolled it in the palm of his hand. It had been a long plotting, he thought. Almost five months of it. He had played it meticulously, expertly, as grandly as the grand theater roles he had performed or watched. And it was no longer only Eli’s money that mattered. It was the performance, too. Always had been, perhaps. From the very beginning, with Lester and Mary. Eli’s money would be the hire for his performance. One day its hiding place would leap into his mind with the pull of a divining rod. He would find it and then his performance in Yale would be finished and he would leave without anyone in his audience knowing they had been witnesses to a great drama.

  He flipped the stone into the creek and stood and stretched his body in a shaft of sun that shot through the trees. Suddenly he was aware of a wagon rolling toward him on the road, with its uneven sounds of steel and wood and harness and animals. He cupped his hand over his eyes and looked up the road. It was Floyd Crider. His wife, a thick woman whose face was covered by a white sunbonnet, was seated beside him on the wagon seat. He could see the top of Jack’s head in the back, where he always sat. He waved to the wagon and waited.

  “Good mornin’ to you,” Michael said cheerfully as Floyd reined the mules to a stop beside him. “You’re out early this mornin’, Floyd.”

  “Tryin’ to get to town and back before late,” replied Floyd. “Wife had some things she needed at the store.”

  “Good to see you, Mrs. Crider,” Michael said. “I know your husband here, and Jack, but I’ve not had the pleasure of meetin’ you. I’m Michael O’Rear.”

  The woman dipped her head in acknowledgment. Michael could not see her face in the shade of the sunbonnet’s peak.

  “I forgot you never met,” Floyd mumbled. “Her name’s Carrie.”

  “Well, that’s a fine name,” replied Michael. “Carrie was the name of a lady I worked for in New York City. She was as good as you’d find, and I think a name tells a lot about a person.”

  The woman said nothing. She stared ahead, at the bridge
.

  “Now that Mama’s passed on, Carrie likes to get out once in a while,” Floyd explained slowly. “Got to get some things she needs from down at Deal’s.”

  “I see,” Michael said. “I’m just comin’ from town myself. I’ve been helpin’ out nights at the jail, keepin’ watch over a young fellow named Owen Benton.”

  Floyd shook his head sadly. He reached for his tobacco pouch in his overall bib.

  “Heard tell about Frank beatin’ up on the boy,” he remarked seriously. “Man ought not do that. Man does that ought to be put in the lockup hisself. Ought not be the boy there. Don’t understand it. Frank wadn’t always that way.” He tapped the tobacco into the trough of a cigarette paper.

  Michael agreed: “It’s a bad thing. But he’s come about. Started talkin’ some last night. The doctor said he’d be all right.”

  “That’s good,” Floyd said. He licked the edge of the thin cigarette paper and rolled it and sealed it with his fingers. “Always thought he was a good boy,” he added.

  Michael watched Floyd twist the ends of the cigarette and place it between his lips and light it with a match. The twisted paper danced in the flame, then died away, and the tobacco began to burn.

  “Well, now, I’d better be goin’ along,” Michael said. “It’s been a long night.”

  “Maybe see you later on,” Floyd told him. “We’ll be droppin’ by with a little somethin’ Carrie picks up for Sarah.”

  “Sarah? Why?” asked Michael.

  Floyd’s face flickered in surprise.

  “Ain’t they told you?” he asked. “Today’s Sarah’s birthday.”

  “Today, it is?”

  “That’s right. What’ll she be now, Carrie? Seventeen? Eighteen?”

  “Eighteen,” Carrie answered.

  “Eighteen,” Floyd repeated. “Two years older’n Jack, back there.”

  “Well, I’m glad you happened along,” Michael said. “I’d not have known it otherwise. There’ll have to be a celebration tonight, and I’ll have to come up with a gift of some sort.”

  “Uh-huh,” muttered Floyd. “Maybe see you later on, then.” He clucked to the mules and slapped the rope reins gently across their backs.

  “It’s good to meet you, Carrie,” Michael said as the wagon passed him.

  Carrie only nodded.

  Michael smiled at the thought: Sarah’s birthday. Why had she not told him? Since the night in the barn, before he began staying at the jail, she had visited him once in the middle of the day—boldly, quickly, in a pretense of getting something from the barn. She had wanted to be held and touched, to hear his promise of yearning for her, and then she had bolted from his room in confusion. The change in her had become all too obvious. Around her mother, she was sullen and quiet, and Rachel had watched her closely—not with suspicion, but with bewilderment.

  But it was Sarah’s birthday and Michael knew immediately what he would do. He had worked his way to center stage in the Pettit home, like a mountain climber inching up a sheer cliff. He was only one grip away from the command he needed. He had taken both Rachel and Sarah, and Dora was yearning—secretly, without knowing—for something as personal as a touch. Yet they had not opened to him; they had not told him of Eli’s money. It was sealed in them like a vault, closed hard and locked. He needed one other thing to pull the secret from their mouths, like a hypnotist luring ancient stories from the subconscious. One other scene—superbly played—and they would resign themselves to him.

  Sarah’s birthday was a perfect opportunity.

  * * *

  He cut runners of a honeysuckle vine from a tangle growing along the road and threaded them into a garland of flowers. Then he walked hurriedly to the house and into the kitchen where Rachel and Sarah were, and he placed the garland on Sarah’s head like a crown.

  “For the birthday lady,” he said, bowing graciously.

  Sarah blushed and smiled. She lifted the honeysuckle from her head and offered it to her mother.

  “It’s yours, Sarah, not mine,” Rachel said. “But I think you should thank Michael for it. It’s pretty enough to wear to a party.”

  “And that’s what she’ll be doin’,” Michael replied eagerly. “We’ll be havin’ a party tonight, just the four of us. A dress-up party, it’ll be.”

  “No,” protested Sarah. “We don’t do—”

  “Don’t celebrate birthdays?” asked Michael, interrupting. “Well, we do now. I’m insistin’. Where’s Miss Dora?”

  “Outside, by the garden,” Rachel answered.

  “Then we’ll have to tell her,” Michael said. “We’ll need to have a cake. Could you bake it, Rachel? Thick, with plenty of icin’?”

  Rachel smiled foolishly. She embraced Sarah.

  “Yes,” she replied. “Yes. I’ll cook three layers, with chocolate icin’. And we will dress up. We haven’t done that since—” She paused. “We haven’t done that in years,” she said. “And you have that new dress Dora made, Sarah. Never even worn it.”

  “Then it’s settled, it is,” Michael announced. “I’ll get some rest, but I’ll be awake in plenty of time to help out.”

  “What about the jail?” asked Sarah. “You’ll be there tonight?”

  “I didn’t tell you, did I? The boy’s better. Started talkin’ some and the doc gave me the night off. Couldn’t’ve worked out better. A birthday’s worth celebratin’.”

  “How’d you know it was my birthday?” Sarah asked deliberately.

  “Why, Sarah,” he said, “how could you ask that? I heard it in town. It’s all they’re talkin’ about. Everybody you see, up and down the street, they’re sayin’, ‘Hey, did you know? Today’s Sarah’s Pettit’s birthday. She’s eighteen.’ It’s big news, I’ll tell you.”

  Sarah looked quickly at her mother. She turned the garland of honeysuckle in her hands, suddenly uncomfortable.

  “No, it’s not the truth,” admitted Michael. “Not at all. The truth is, I heard it from a bluebird down by the creek. He was talkin’ to a wren, I believe it was, when a butterfly as yellow as the sun happened by and told all about it.”

  Sarah remembered what he had said about butterflies. She knew he was speaking to her privately, in code. She wanted to touch him, to hold him.

  “And I’d say those birds and that yellow butterfly was Floyd and his family,” suggested Rachel. “I saw their wagon go by. I guess you ran into them on the road. They always remember Sarah’s birthday.”

  Michael smiled easily.

  “If you want to pin me down,” he confessed. “And it’s a good thing, too. You ladies are button-lipped about such things.”

  “A birthday’s a day. No need to fuss about it,” Rachel said. “We never have.”

  “But that’s wrong, Rachel. Wrong. Wrong as can be,” argued Michael. “Every day’s new, somethin’ special. Every single day the earth turns around. And there’s some days more special than others. Bein’ born. What’s better than that? That’s a day for rememberin’, not because you reached another year, but because you had to travel through it to get there. That’s special.”

  “Yes,” Rachel admitted quietly. Her eyes held his face like hands. “Yes,” she repeated.

  “So, there’ll be a party tonight and there’ll be no holdin’ back from it,” declared Michael. “None. We’ll dress to the gills and have a king’s feast for supper and a three-layer chocolate cake and we may even do some dancin’, like they’d do in Ireland on such an occasion. You ladies start workin’ on the festivities. I’ll tell Miss Dora on the way to my rest—if there’s to be any rest.”

  * * *

  The table was crowded with food—the chocolate cake as centerpiece—and the three women sat waiting for Michael. They were dressed as they had promised: in the special dresses that women keep like prizes for a hidden time that seems never to happen. They sat waiting for Michael and stared at one another in amazement. They were participants in a new game that Michael called Party and they did not know the rules. U
ntil now, it had been happy and girlish and the afternoon had been filled with wonder. Now they waited and looked at one another and did not know what to say.

  “You sure he heard you call him?” Rachel asked Sarah.

  “I told you, Mama. He said he’d be right in.”

  “Food’ll be cold in a minute, he don’t come on,” said Dora.

  They sat, dressed in their elegant dresses, and waited, feeling awkward and misplaced.

  “Cold food’s no good,” mumbled Dora. “No good at all.”

  “He’ll be here, Dora,” Rachel said. She stood and walked to the window of the kitchen and looked out. The door to the barn was closed.

  “That was a pretty bolt of cloth Carrie brought by,” Rachel remarked absently. “She always remembers your birthday.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “I remember the night you were born. It was like this,” Rachel said. “Lookin’ like rain. Dora, do you remember it?”

  “All I remember is Mama bein’ scared to death,” answered Dora. “Said you was too weak to have a baby before its full time.”

  “Was I early?” Sarah asked with surprise.

  Rachel turned from the window. “About two weeks, from the doctor’s count, but I always thought he was wrong. Your grandmother worried about everythin’. She was worse than your daddy, and he was bad enough.”

  “Was—was he mad because I was a girl?”

  Rachel laughed playfully. “Mad? Dora, do you think he was mad?”

  “I’ll have to give Eli that,” Dora said. “Only man I ever saw who wanted his first-born to be a girl.”

  “It was like a parade in here,” Rachel remembered, sitting again at the table. “Day after day, your daddy drug people in to take a look at you. He’d stand over your crib like he owned half the world and made everybody who came in hold you, even though he didn’t trust them. Kept his own hands spread under theirs in case they dropped you. Used to tell the men they’d been holdin’ the prettiest woman they’d ever see, and it was the first and last time they’d ever have the chance to touch you. Said he didn’t trust a one of them. Oh, no, Sarah, he wadn’t mad because you were a girl. He got exactly what he wanted.”