After Eli Read online

  “Never run across it,” Lester confessed. “Only thing around here’s some revivals, and when that ain’t on, some drinkin’ done down at Pullen’s, down in town.”

  “Times change,” Michael said simply. “Maybe your friend took off on some tent circuit of his own likin’.”

  “Eli? Don’t nobody know, I reckon. He wadn’t Irish, I reckon, but he had him a streak. Tale around the hills is he come back home last time with a whole suitcase of money he stole somewheres. Hid it on that farm of his—down the road five or six miles—and then he lit out again. But that was some time ago, like I said. He ain’t come back since.”

  Michael shifted his weight, leaning forward from the doorjamb. He folded his arms around his knees and locked his right hand over his left wrist. His eyes sparkled quickly and played across Lester’s face.

  “Ah, a buried treasure, it is?” he said. His voice had the exuberance of a child’s question.

  Lester nodded and returned a child’s smile. He glanced over Michael’s shoulder through the screen door, then motioned Michael closer with his head and whispered, “Them Pettit women say it ain’t so, but ain’t nobody believes ’em. They’s been some snoopin’ around, times bein’ what they are, but ain’t nobody found nothin’. Harley Nixon tells around how he got shot at one night, thinkin’ they was gone, but them women don’t leave the place all at one time, not even goin’ to church.”

  Michael returned the whisper: “Is it a goodly sum?” he asked.

  “What they say. Ten thousand dollars, some say. Five thousand, according to others. Word is Eli took it from a bank up in Kentucky, but don’t nobody know for certain. Way he talked, he could’ve been lyin’ just for the hell of it. Eli loved to do his talkin’ and word is he told around that it was hid in his luck place. But that was the way Eli was.”

  Michael could sense a drama moving in his mind. Flashes of a house he had never seen, of faces, of secret, hidden places. His heart pumped hard against the muscles of his throat and he could feel the palms of his hands warming.

  “And the women?” asked Michael, forcing his voice low.

  “Couldn’t call ’em all women, I reckon,” replied Lester. “I ain’t seen ’em in a while, but there’s Eli’s wife—Rachel, she’s named. And there’s Sarah, the daughter. I expect she’s sixteen or seventeen now, a couple of years younger’n my Mary. Always been a little weak, like Mary.”

  “Just the two of them?”

  Lester shook his head and laughed sharply. He sipped from the whiskey, smacking and sighing as he swallowed.

  “One more,” he said. “Dora. She’s the sister to Rachel. Old maid. Tale is, she’s the one you got to watch out for. Keeps a shotgun handy and damn well knows how to use it. Besides, she’s quaint, I hear tell.”

  “Quaint?”

  Lester shrugged his shoulders. He rolled the whiskey jar in his hands and thought about his answer.

  “Well, maybe that ain’t the way to say it,” he replied. “She’s always starin’. Got a mean eye. Meaner’n Hell.” He laughed. “Reckon that’s the reason she never got no man. That’d be more’n a man could stomach, wakin’ up every mornin’ to some woman starin’ a hole through him.” He laughed again.

  A chill ran through Michael. He could feel the glare of a woman’s face.

  “But, hell, it wouldn’t be that I’d be scared of,” Lester added. “It’d be that damned ol’ shotgun. I’d be careful, I was you. You got to go by when you light out in the mornin’, if you goin’ on down to Hiawassee.” He snickered gleefully. “Don’t you go strayin’ none when you pass that house off the road, say five or six miles on down. You’ll see it. Sets up on a little hill in a bunch of oaks. First farm down the road is Floyd Crider’s; next one is the Pettits’. Ol’ Floyd ain’t gonna do nothin’ more’n wave his hand. I ain’t givin’ you no promise on them women.” He snickered again.

  Michael’s inner eye framed the image of three women, and his mind repeated their names—Rachel, Sarah, Dora. He said, “It’s a good thing there’s some fear in them, I’m thinkin’. Women livin’ alone could be in the Devil’s danger if they’re not careful what’s about them.”

  “And them women could be what the Devil’s danger is,” Lester replied, snorting into the mouth of the jar. He shook his head lazily and stretched his shoulders against the hard brace of the chair. The whiskey had entered his mind and muscles and the night was becoming heavy. He rubbed his hands over his eyes and yawned. “Anyhow,” he added, “it’s somethin’ how much you put me in mind of Eli, what I recall of him.”

  “Well, I take that as a compliment, all but the part about him bein’ a rogue, that is,” Michael replied. “That part I’ll leave to the next traveler down the road.”

  Lester laughed suddenly. He hiccupped and his eyes floated sleepily to Michael.

  “Yes?” Michael said.

  “I was just thinkin’ how you was lucky to come walkin’ up here instead of up to the Pettits’ place,” Lester mumbled. “Dora might’ve blowed you to kingdom come before you got the chance to say hello.”

  Michael pulled himself from the floor of the porch, smiling at the thought.

  “Now that’s the truth,” he agreed. “That’s the truth. Maybe my luck’s changin’, and it’s luck I’ve been livin’ by all these long years, Lester Caufield. Pure luck.”

  * * *

  He did not have a watch, but Michael knew by the ticking of his patience that it was after midnight. He had planned carefully. It was time.

  He rolled quietly from the cushion of straw and folded his bedding neatly and tied it beneath the top flap of his knapsack. He then pushed the straw back into the stack—a habit of erasing where he had been.

  He stepped silently across the barn and slipped out of the door into the barnyard. There was only a rim of a moon, like a silver scratch. It was cold and dark, the kind of darkness he needed.

  Luck, he thought. Yes, blessed luck, as he had said to Lester. There was no dog to worry about. Nothing for warning. That was first. And it was Friday. Being Friday would give him time. The rest would be simple. He had studied the door carefully; it would be no trouble. And there would be time to follow the stream and lose himself in the mountains before Monday morning and the truck of men.

  He placed his knapsack and walking stick at the foot of the steps leading to the porch. He took the steps slowly, pushing his weight on the supports. Then he was across the porch and at the door. He reached for the knife scabbarded to his belt. He slipped the blade between the doorjamb and lock and pried gently. The door broke open without a sound.

  He was inside, moving in a crouch, skimming the room with his fingers. The bedroom was before him, its door open. He could hear the heavy breathing of whiskey sleep rising from Lester. He wondered if Lester had taken his wife.

  Michael smiled. A pleasing Irish melody rose in the back of his throat and the words flowed into his seeing like sheet music—“I have loved you with poems… I have loved you with daisies… I have loved you with everything but love…” The music was a serenade of joyful sadness and it filled Michael with memories. His skin tingled with a rush of excitement. He stood at the bedroom door and stepped lightly to the foot of the bed. Lester was asleep on his left side, his right arm tucked against his chest. Mary lay beside. She was awake. She stared at Michael in horror, unable to move or to make a sound. Michael winked and warned her with a low, hissing “Shhhhh.” He bent to Lester, catching him on the shoulder with his left hand, rolling him quickly, the knife in his right hand flashing in one clean stroke through Lester’s throat. Lester’s body quivered. The blood gurgled and spewed as Michael rolled him onto the floor. He turned to Mary, whose open mouth was frozen in a mute scream, and the Irish melody in his own throat escaped in a hum.

  “Well, now, you’re a lovely sight, close up, you are,” Michael said softly, easing onto the bed with his knees. “Young as the mornin’, you are. Just the thing a man would be needin’ before he’s up and off.”

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nbsp; He moved effortlessly across the bed, singing quietly to himself as he worked, casually pulling away the bedcovers with his left hand, playing with her flannel nightgown with the tip of the knife blade. He was unhurried, almost gentle, as he slipped the blade into the gown and slit it open.

  The smile in his face faded as he looked at Mary’s body.

  “You’re a sickly one,” he said bluntly. “Not tit enough to feed a sparrow.” He smiled again as his left hand swept lightly over her breasts, tipping the tiny pink nipples. “But it’s not tit I’m in favor of,” he added. “Not when there’s more for the havin’.” His hand dropped to Mary’s underpants and he tore at them roughly, lifting her from the bed. The knife whipped quickly, slashing at the garment, and then his hand was on the soft feather hair and his fingers were gouging at the tight opening.

  Mary cried at last.

  2

  THE BOY WAS SITTING on the back of the moving wagon, slumped forward at the shoulders as an old man would sit. His elbows pushed into his thighs and his fingers laced his hands together like bootstrings. His legs dangled from the bed of the wagon and he wagged them unconsciously in small air steps as he stared between his knees at the grass bridge in the center of the hard dirt road, unrolling in a pale green ribbon beneath the spoked wheels of the wagon. There was no expression on his face.

  The boy’s father sat up front on a plank seat hooked to the side gates of the wagon. He had a thin back and he, too, was slumped forward, exactly like the boy, but his feet were propped on the front gate of the body and he held the rope reins of the two mules loosely in his hands. The wagon between the boy and his father, sitting with their backs to one another, was empty except for two axes and a large fertilizer sack filled with sweet potatoes.

  * * *

  Rachel Pettit stood at the front window of her house and watched the wagon moving slowly along the road. She knew it was Wednesday. Floyd Crider was a calendar. If it did not rain, he arrived always on Wednesday, always in the same hour, always at the same languid pace, always in the same hesitant mood. Floyd intrigued her. She was grateful for his attention and his concern, yet he intrigued her because, of all the men she knew, he was the most guarded and private. He was a male Crider and that was the way of the male Criders, as though it had been bred into them; it was a substance in their blood, passed down from generations in the darkness of mating. If you were a male Crider, you were born to silence and to a hollow, distant face with eyes covered by a dull film of surrender. And if you were a male Crider, you did not change. You lived and died in a monotone that was as empty as a sigh.

  But Floyd had been a caring neighbor. Since Eli had disappeared, Rachel had learned to depend on Floyd for the safe man-presence he offered, as well as for the occasional man’s work demanded by the farm. His sense of obligation, sealed by the common borders of their land, was as absolute as an Old Testament law: It was the work of good deeds to watch and to help. And slowly, Rachel had learned Floyd well. She did not impose; she waited. She would not speak until Floyd spoke. She would not ask his advice about the farm until Floyd insisted that he be allowed to help. And she never spoke of Eli. To speak of Eli would have been to whimper and she could not whimper before Floyd.

  Each Wednesday, when it did not rain, Floyd escaped the unending oppression of his failing land and made a visit to the town of Yale, and it was his habit to stop at the home of Rachel Pettit. Each Wednesday Rachel would hear the wagon, and she would stand behind the curtain of the window in the front room and watch as Floyd stopped his wagon fifty yards away at the mouth of the road turning into her house. He would sit and observe the house, expecting Rachel, or Dora, or Sarah, to greet him. He would sit and become uncomfortable and remove his hat and fan the air into his face. But he never looked at the boy, though the boy was always with him, always sitting in the back of the wagon, looking down.

  And then Floyd would cup his hands to his mouth and call out: “Ho, anybody home?”

  Rachel would not answer him at first call. Never at first call.

  “Yo-hoo. Anybody home? Rachel? You there?”

  In all the years, Rachel had always been there.

  * * *

  “Yo-hoo. Anybody home? Rachel? You there?”

  Rachel stepped to the screen door. She knew Floyd could not see her from the road. She called, “That you, Floyd?”

  “Yes’m. It’s Wednesday.”

  Rachel pushed open the door and stood beneath the frame of the doorway.

  “Mornin’, Floyd. Jack. Come on up. We’re all here,” she replied.

  Floyd clucked to the mules and pulled them into the narrow road leading to the house. He stopped the mules at the edge of the yard and tied the rope reins to the hand brake. He then climbed slowly off the wagon, using the front wheel for steps.

  “Thought somethin’ might’ve been wrong when you didn’t answer right off,” Floyd drawled, looking beyond Rachel. It was one thing Rachel had long known; Floyd could not look into her eyes when he spoke.

  “Nothin’s wrong, Floyd,” replied Rachel. “I was in the back of the house. Didn’t realize it was Wednesday again. Week’s gone fast.”

  “Time gets by and you don’t know it, I reckon,” Floyd said. “It sure does. More I live, the faster it goes. A man don’t know how little time he’s got unless he’s got a little age on him.” He nodded authoritatively and mumbled, “Uh-huh, uh-huh.”

  Rachel moved to the corner of the porch, above the steps. She leaned against a support post.

  “Y’all all right?” she asked. “Mama Ada feelin’ better?”

  “Doin’ good. Doin’ good. Have to help Mama around a little bit, but she’s feelin’ good. Sure is. Y’all all right?”

  “Fine, Floyd. Fine. Sarah and Dora’s out back, workin’ out there in the garden.”

  “Keeps me worried, y’all bein’ up here all alone,” Floyd said.

  “Nobody’s bothered us, Floyd.”

  “Can’t tell, though. Sure can’t. Times bein’ hard.”

  Rachel knew what he wanted to say but could not.

  “It’s been two months since the Caufields was found,” she replied patiently. “Whoever done that must’ve passed on through.”

  “Could be.”

  “Well, we’re fine, Floyd.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Floyd stood nervously beside his wagon. His fingers moved absently to the blouse of his overalls and he withdrew a tobacco sack. He began to build a cigarette with the precision of an artist, his long, hard fingers moving gently over the thin paper, cupping it, tapping it full with shredded tobacco leaf, folding it in a single twist. Rachel watched him, fascinated by his skill.

  “Me’n the boy’s goin’ to town,” Floyd said as he lit the cigarette. “I heard tell there was a man wanted some oak shingles cut. Thought y’all might be needin’ somethin’. Maybe you got some quilts you want carried to the store.”

  Rachel looked at Jack Crider sitting on the back of the wagon. He had not lifted his head. He seemed preoccupied.

  “No,” she answered. “Nothin’ today, Floyd. I’m grateful, just the same.”

  “Sure wish Dora wadn’t so dead set against lettin’ me and the boy cut up some wood for y’all,” Floyd said slowly. “Wouldn’t take us but a little while.”

  Rachel smiled. She said, “Don’t suppose it’s hurtin’ us, Floyd.”

  Floyd sucked smoke from his cigarette. He looked around the yard, his eyes carefully examining the buildings. He pinched the cigarette from his lips and dropped it and ground it into the dirt with his shoe heel.

  “Almost forgot,” he said quickly. “Got a sack of sweet potatoes in the wagon. Me’n the boy finished cleanin’ out the hill a couple of days ago. Got more’n we can use.” He turned to the wagon before Rachel could reply and effortlessly lifted the heavy sack and shouldered it. Floyd was small and thin, but strong.

  “You didn’t have to do that, Floyd,” Rachel protested.

  “Wadn’t no need in lettin�
� ’em go to waste.”

  “I know they’re good. Sarah loves sweet potatoes.”

  “We had us a heavy crop last year. Made up the biggest hill we ever had,” Floyd said. “Where you want me to put ’em?”

  “You don’t mind, in the storeroom.”

  Rachel watched Floyd nod and drop his eyes from her face. She knew him; yes, she knew him well. Part of his caring was overplanting his garden, though his sharing of goods was always spaced and calculated, presented with timid excuses of having more than needed for his own family. It had become a familiar ritual between them: the gift hurriedly offered like an embarrassment, countered by protest, then excuse, then acceptance. The two could have been players in a motion picture, repeating a memorized script. There was never any improvisation or invention; it was always the same.

  Floyd followed Rachel to the screen door, waited for her to open it, then entered the house.

  The house was wood-warm. Its walls and floors and ceilings had cured into the soft tan of time and use. The smell of wood smoke and cooked foods and cleaning soaps coated the house and expired from the walls like a living thing, a breath. But there was no odor of a man, nothing of the musk of the field laborer, or of the sweat brine of the sawmill hand. The breath of the house was sweeter, more delicate, like evenings of early spring flowers or the perfume of lilac water on hands. It was a house that belonged to three women and contained only their presence.

  There were five main rooms to the house—the living room, the kitchen, and three bedrooms, one for each of the women. A narrow corridor led from the kitchen along the back of the house to the small sideroom used for storing canned goods and food supplies, and to Dora and Sarah’s bedrooms. The largest of the rooms, belonging to Rachel, was at the front of the house beside the living room. Rachel’s room was both bedroom and workroom. Two heavy quilt curtains had been tacked to the ceiling, almost precisely dividing the room. One side was for sleeping, the other for sewing and quilting. Most of the hours of Rachel’s life were spent in the divided halves of the room. Once there had been a door leading from her room onto the porch, but Floyd had boarded it, with Rachel’s permission. “Makes me feel some better,” Floyd had said flatly.