“Perish the thought,” Lilly said. She selected the red-and-black batik print and draped it around Armina’s thin shoulders. “This one is definitely for you, Armina. It matches your hat.” That left the sky-blue scarf for her. Tern loved to see her in blue.
Armina stroked the silky fabric of her gift. “I never felt anything so soft in my livelong life. It’s like a baby’s . . . like a baby . . . a baby.” She faltered, stricken; her eyes searched the room wildly before landing on Lilly. “Where’s the baby?”
Shade Harmon
had had just about enough. He had stayed too long at this particular dance.
Yesterday he’d spent a good part of the morning darting from shadow to shadow trying to figure out where the doctor was. Then she popped up with the sheriff, them walking and laughing together like their heads were strung with gold, like there wasn’t a care in their particular world. And who gave a whit about his? Man, he was sick of this game.
He pulled a straight-back chair out onto his porch to clean and oil the revolver he’d won in a craps game last night. The gun was small and short-barreled but had substantial heft. It also, somehow, had a feminine air
—menacing as a
spurned woman. He supposed it was the pearly-pink handle that made it seem girlie. He bet Jesse James would never put a fancy bit like this in his holster.
Shade stretched out his long legs, keeping his back to the pear orchard. He held the pistol loosely against his knee. That would have been the life, wouldn’t it? Running the back roads with the James gang, taking no guff, robbing from banks instead of being robbed by one.
A blue jay landed just in front of him, cracking open a sunflower seed against the wooden porch railing. When Shade shifted in his seat, the bird called a raucous warning and flew away. Its wings shone like sapphire in the early morning sunlight.
Shade and Jesse had something in common besides their disdain of banks: both lost their fathers at a young age, and both their fathers had been Baptist ministers as well as farmers. Shade’s father raised tobacco, and Jesse’s grew hemp. Before she died, Shade’s mother used to tell of the time both men preached during the same brush arbor meeting. She said the tent was full every night and that two dozen men were baptized following the revival.
“Poor Zerelda,” Shade’s mother would lament whenever Jesse’s latest escapade blazed from the newspaper headlines in bold black print. “She loved her blue-eyed boy, but she raised him hard.”
“Poor Zerelda indeed,” Shade said to the returning jay. “She got her arm blowed off because of her wayward boy. Not to mention, the outlaw Jesse James got shot in the back
of the head whilst dusting a picture frame. What an inglorious end. I wonder if the portrait was of his mother.”
Seed hulls flew from the bird’s mouth. The blue jay cocked its head and stared at Shade with black, piercing eyes. He fancied the bird could peer into the darkness of his soul. “It’s good my mother didn’t see how I turned out.”
Disdainfully the bird turned its back and winged away again. Shade twirled the oiled pistol on his index finger. The butt banged square against his kneecap before falling to the floor with a dull thud. He hopped across the porch on one leg, swearing in pain.
He sat back down, resting his head in his hands. The gun lay in shadow where he had dropped it. Some bandit he would be. Lucky he didn’t shoot himself in the foot. Did he actually think he could shoot a man in cold blood like Jesse James had done? Agony clutched his heart with an icy hand. Had Jesse ever killed a woman?
A wild hot wind rustled through the pear orchard like a cry. Like a call from the grave
—like the voice of Sweet Noreen. The incessant droning insects in the drying grass and weeds chanted a funeral dirge.
Shade tugged his hair with both hands and cried out, “Lord! Lord! Is it too late for me?”
There was no answer
—not from God, not from his mother or father dead these many years, and not from Sweet Noreen. He was on his own. But only for a little while, only until he found Betsy Lane
—his last chance to do something good with his life.
He swore to himself that he would raise her right, try to fix whatever might be wrong with her. But if it proved impossible to change, he’d love her anyway. He was all she had.
Picking up the rag, he recommenced polishing the gun, stopping every so often to sight down the barrel. The blue jay mocked him from the limb of a sugar maple. Maybe the bird would be his first target; he could take it out in a blaze of guts and feathers. Except he wouldn’t, of course; instead he went in the house and came back out with a fistful of bread crumbs. He flung them over the rail. The jay dived for one before it even hit the ground.
He didn’t intend to shoot anyone. The firearm was for show in case whoever had Betsy Lane didn’t want to hand her over. The very thought made him mad all over again.
Twirling the gun, he drew on his own shadow.
“Blam!” he said before ramming the loaded firearm in the pocket of his pants and drawing again. “Blam! Blam! Blam!” He could get good at this. The gun made him feel powerful
—like everything was even for a change.
He made to draw one more time, but the hammer caught on his pocket, cocking the gun. Impatient, he grabbed the pistol and tugged hard. With a mighty blast, the gun discharged.
Shouting, Shade fell back against the floor, sure his time had come. His ears rang and his heart pounded. He was alive, but he dared not move. He didn’t want to know where the bullet had lodged.
From the corner of his eye, he watched the jay sidestep
over to some crumbs. The bird pecked and ate while keeping one eye trained on him.
“Life goes on,”
he fancied it would say if caws were words.
“Your loss is my gain.”
With an effort, he raised his hand and let it flop. The bird didn’t even flinch, just kept pecking, cleaning up the bread one tidy piece at a time. The repetitive striking of the bird’s beak no doubt masked the sound of his blood dripping through the floorboards. Tears leaked from his eyes and pooled in his ears. He sighed mournfully. Soon the buzzards would come.
A fulminating anxiety bloomed in his chest like mold on overripe fruit. How had his life come to this? What had he ever done to bring himself to such a dark and desperate place? Someone once said life is about choices. . . . Well, could be, but what about other people’s choices? What about how they had affected him?
Yeah, what about growing up without a father? What about having to be the man of the house at eight years old? What about his nervous, clingy mother who couldn’t or wouldn’t support herself? What about her spending the better part of every day rocking and staring out the window while her mind slipped away like a shadow in the night? What about the Missouri Home for Indigents where he’d been forced to place her? What about it taking ten long years for her to die alone?
One dark thought bumped up against another
—like his brain was a chain-smoker bent on self-destruction.
The only peace he’d ever had was during the early years
of his marriage to Betsy. She’d been a loving presence in his life
—stabilizing, even. It seemed to him she was his reward after years of strife. She made him want to get up in the morning. And then she got sick. What about that? What about how someone else’s illness could suck the life right out of you? Did he really ever have a chance?
His father had preached that all of life was preordained. There was an answer for you. Some folks were destined to stumble in shadow and others to dance in the light.
The one thing he’d cop to was Sweet Noreen. He’d waltzed right into that with eyes wide open. She’d had the opposite effect on him than Betsy. Where Betsy calmed him down, Noreen revved him up. She was the whirlwind to Betsy’s calm zephyr. Once they’d met, they stayed on the go
—living in six towns in two years. It was the perfect life to ply his trade, and Noreen thrived on change.
Of course it had to end. Everything did eventually. And that was fine. He’d been ready to settle down. The way they were living was taking a toll. They made plans. He’d get a daytime job. She’d take care of the house, cook and clean, be a regular wife. Problem was, settling down unsettled Sweet Noreen. She wasn’t wired for the mundane life.
The porch floor was getting hard. Shade’s back seized in protest. The blue jay spared him no sympathy. With one easy hop, it landed on his chest and went to work on a shiny metal button. Gathering his energy, he brushed the bird away, then cautiously patted his chest. The only wounds he found were the old healing ones. He sat up, then stood. The
bullet had splintered the place in the floor directly under his feet. Maybe he wasn’t so unlucky after all.
He shook his head, his shoulders, his arms
—letting the problems fall where they would like so many dry leaves on a windy day. Then, back inside, he cooked a hearty breakfast, adding fried potatoes to his usual bacon and eggs. After pitching the coffee grounds, he set about his tasks. It was time to put his plan in motion.
Last night he’d tossed and turned, discarding first one strategy and then another. Finally, about 5 a.m., he rose and put on a pot of coffee. It seemed every plan he came up with had a kink. He wasn’t concerned with the actual taking of Betsy Lane
—one look at his gun should convince the doctor that he meant for her to lead him to his daughter. No, the problem was how he could get the baby on a train without stirring interest. He’d traveled east to west and back again more than once, but he’d never seen a man on a train alone with an infant.
Then he’d hit on what might be the solution. His old Army duffel would make the perfect little nest for Betsy Lane. He wouldn’t close it fully so she could have plenty of air. Once aboard, he’d retire with the baby to a sleeper car. He only needed to make it as far as Cincinnati. It would be easy enough to disappear in the big city.
He prepared the house for leaving. First he boiled all the baby’s bottles and the rubber nipples, putting them in a paper sack when they dried. He washed Noreen’s delicate pink-and-green dishes and mopped the kitchen floor with
sudsy bleach water. His clothes were in the duffel from his aborted trip to Tennessee. He took out some things
—pants and jackets of rough material
—and put them in a separate bag, leaving only soft things like shirts and underwear and socks. Atop these he put the few diapers he had left and some little drawstring gowns. They’d make a good bed for the baby. There was plenty of stuff in plenty of stores in Cincinnati, and he had plenty of money.
Whoa, Nellie. He’d just about forgotten about the baby’s head. Noreen never took Betsy Lane outdoors without a hat. She said it would prevent earaches. She said nobody wanted to be around a baby with the earache.
He searched the house over before he found the knit cap tangled up in his own bedcovers. A yearning, lonesome feeling washed through him as he held the tiny piece of fluff. He fingered the pink ribbon ties attached to the bonnet with delicate pink rosettes. Betsy Lane looked like a doll baby when she had that ribbon tied in a bow under her sweet chin. At first he’d fretted because she didn’t seem to have a neck
—her wobbly head set square on her shoulders. But Noreen said babies didn’t have necks. She said their heads were too heavy for a neck.
“Support her head. Support her head,” Noreen was always saying whenever he picked the baby up. It put a dreadful fear in him
—what if Betsy’s head popped off and rolled under the table or clean out the door? Toward the end, when he was doing most of the holding and feeding and changing, he’d discovered babies were sturdier than they looked.
Betsy was seven days old when the naval string came off. It was about the same time Noreen lost interest. He noticed her drawing away when they gave the baby her first bath. He thought it would be fun, but the baby just lay in the water with her head resting in the crook of his arm. She didn’t splash and coo like he thought she would. And Noreen stood looking over his shoulder as dull as Betsy Lane. He’d dried the baby with a soft cotton towel, being extra careful with all the tucks and folds. Noreen oiled and powdered Betsy Lane, then dressed her and wrapped her in a blanket before putting her to nurse. It didn’t go well, though Shade loosened the papoose wrap and tickled the tiny feet. Noreen had sat in the chair like a mannequin with stiffly folded arms. It reminded him so much of his mother.
That’s when he’d thought of going to the store to buy bottles and rubber nipples. The baby needed more than the butter and sugar mix she took from Noreen’s finger following the sporadic difficult feedings. That trip was the beginning of the end. But now he had a second chance.
He was ready to put the past behind. The house was clean and neat. The windows were closed and shuttered. The icebox was packed with newsprint. The taxes were paid for the year. He’d keep them current by money order for a few more years until the secrets this place held could no longer be a threat. What happened after that was of no consequence to him. He and Betsy Lane would never be back.
He was locking the door when he remembered the bromide of calcium. His fingers wavered back and forth at the
black metal plate, the lock click-clacking as he maneuvered the key, undecided what to do. He swore he’d never give such a thing to the baby, but what if she cried and he couldn’t get her to hush? It would only be for a short time, just until they got to Cincinnati, and he’d give her only a tiny bit
—not the half teaspoon Noreen dosed her with.
His step was light when he crossed the bridge over Tattler’s Branch. Once he got to Skip Rock, he’d stash his gear in that old abandoned house he’d found and look for a game
—give him something to do this evening. Come morning, everything would change for the better.
Lilly dressed hurriedly.
It was her half day and she wanted to get to the office early, before the stream of patients arrived. Kip seemed to understand and made short shrift of his business when she let him out.
She cracked the door to the back bedroom and saw that Armina was still sleeping. Good. She’d needed a sleeping draught last night, but thankfully she hadn’t slipped back into the fugue state of Saint Vitus’ dance. Remembering the baby had left her confused and shaky but not physically unfit.
In stammering bits and stuttering pieces, Armina had told Lilly her story. She remembered climbing through an open window and taking a baby. She didn’t remember why
—only
that it was crying. She recalled running with the baby across a footbridge spanning a deep creek, but she didn’t remember where it was or why she was there in the first place. There were giant rabbits and juicy blackberries and grating pickaxes jumbled throughout her account but no understanding of why they were relevant.
When Chanis had stopped by for an evening visit with Mazy, Lilly shared the things Armina had said. “Will Armina be in trouble with the law?” she asked after they stepped outside, beyond earshot.
Chanis rubbed his jaw. “There’s way more to this than Miz Armina’s able to tell. I talked to the Blair boy yesterday. He saw a fellow hanging around in the alley the same place as I did. He told me something interesting about the man
—said he was the guy who’d been in your office a few days before. Said he had long braided hair.”
“Yes, Timmy and I talked about it. Remember me telling you about the fellow with the puncture wounds? That was last week on Tuesday. He said he’d stabbed himself gutting fish.” Excited, she took hold of Chanis’s arm. “I found the baby in Armina’s house the night before!”
“That man’s the one who broke into your office. It’s center as a die.” Chanis’s eyes narrowed. “He’s up to no good, and I aim to stop him.”
While they were talking, Mazy had come out. With the white-and-gold scarf draped over her head and across her shoulders, she looked like the woman she was fast becoming. Lilly felt a little glitch in her heart, as if she were going
to lose her sister. Chanis’s grim appearance had changed the instant he saw her.
Now Lilly slipped into Mazy’s room and gently shook her awake. “Mazy, I’m going to the office. Keep a close eye on Armina, okay?”
Mazy opened one eye. “Do I need to get up now?”
“No, just keep an ear bent. I’ll come home at noon.”
Kip jumped up on the bed. Mazy threw one slender arm over him and pulled him close. He gave Lilly a look, then snuggled down.
“Traitor,” Lilly said, smiling at the sweet picture they made. Surely it was only yesterday that Mazy and Molly were mere babies. Mazy was always bubbly
—always smiling
—while Molly was careful, restrained. Mama would say Molly took after Lilly.
Lilly stopped in the kitchen to finish her breakfast over the kitchen sink. A cold biscuit and jam along with her tea sufficed this morning.
She was halfway to the office when she noticed she’d forgotten to change her shoes. Her attractive new Red Cross high-tops were still in the box, and the sturdy deck shoes peeped outlandishly from under the hem of her skirts. It was a decidedly unfashionable look. She turned to go back but thought better of it. Time was wasting. She’d just keep her feet under the desk. The good thing was her stone bruise was much better.
She opened the clinic door and went in through the back, stopping in the kitchenette to put the kettle on. Another
cup of tea would hit the spot as she went through the mail piled on her desk. Lilly sorted through periodicals and business envelopes
—and a letter from Tern. The postman had mistakenly left it here instead of at the house. What a sweet surprise. Her heart skipped a beat as she slid the letter opener under the corner of the flap.
How’s my sweet girl?
he opened as salutation. Tern always got right down to business. Lilly couldn’t help herself and went straight to the ending. She couldn’t wait to see his proclamation of love for her penned in his distinctive left-handed scrawl. And there it was:
Forever and always, unending love, your husband
.
Husband
—how she cherished the thought and word. It was wonderful to be loved and to love. Lilly knew she was blessed.
She backed up and read Tern’s account of the men who had died at the mine disaster and of the ones the crew managed to save. Lilly was sad to think of the women whose husbands had gone to work and never come home. Tern told her how much the area reminded him of Kentucky and how the people in Canada were so kind to him and his men.
They talk a little funny,
he wrote, referring to a private joke between them
—how no matter where he traveled, folks knew he was from Kentucky whenever he opened his mouth.
The best news was that he would soon be home. Lilly’s whole mood lightened. She felt like a girl waiting for cake on her birthday.
When the teakettle shrieked, Lilly fairly floated to the kitchen on her ugly plimsolls.
Turning her chair to face the window, she raised the blind and watched the town wake up while she sipped her honey-sweetened tea. The gaslights winked off one by one like giant exhausted fireflies. Mr. Tippen’s wagon rolled past. He would be going to the tracks to fetch the huge blocks of ice a railroad worker would pitch to the ground from the night train rolling through. The elderly black man who sometimes helped Mr. Tippen rode on the lowered tailgate with his legs hanging over the edge. He had his hat pulled down over his eyes as if he were catching a nap. Lilly hoped he wouldn’t fall off the back of the wagon.
Every Wednesday, Mr. Tippen restocked the diner, where they stored the ice in the cellar between heavy layers of straw. The fresh-chipped, slightly straw-flavored ice was why the diner’s iced tea tasted like a summer day. He also filled the clinic icebox and the one at her house as well as many others in town.
Lilly should check to see if Hannah had emptied the drainage trays yesterday, but it felt so good to sit idly for a moment.
She watched the commissary lights blink on and saw a man drive a mule-drawn cart into the alley and unload the trash bin. As soon as he backed out, there was Timmy swinging his small bucket of cream with his good arm. Just outside the cream station, he paused and wound his arm like a baseball player getting ready to strike a batter out. He swung the tin container around and around faster and faster. Lilly held
her breath, praying the lid was secure. Timmy just begged for trouble.
Lilly turned to set her teacup down. She’d make sure the icebox was clean and ready for Mr. Tippen before she pulled charts. From the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of movement in the alley. Her skin crawled with apprehension. As she lowered the blind, she thought of Chanis Clay’s warning to never be in the office alone, but who would be watching this early in the morning? She stopped the blind midwindow. There was Timmy coming out of the cream station, counting his change before he headed for home.
Lilly rapped her knuckle on the windowpane as if the lad could hear her. Timmy stopped and stuffed the money into his front pocket, then whipped his head toward the alleyway. Lilly hurried to the door and twisted the knob. Her silly boat shoes tripped her up as she neared the street. Kicking them off, she ran to the alley just in time to see Timmy’s feet disappear around the back corner of the cream station. It looked like he was being dragged, but she didn’t hear a yell of protest as she pounded up the passage.
“Stop,” she screamed when she saw a man hauling Timmy away by the scruff of his neck. “Let him go!”
The man who had Timmy stopped when he heard her. She opened her mouth to scream bloody murder, and that’s when he drew the gun. A rush of fear raced through her body like a dash of ice water. He was the man from last week
—the man with the puncture wounds. The man Chanis was sure was behind the break-in. They were in trouble.
Timmy bared his teeth and bit down on the man’s arm. “Run, Doc, run!” he yelped and struggled free as the man swore.
Lilly ran toward Timmy. She couldn’t leave him, not even to save herself, but the man with the gun was swifter than she. He grabbed the boy and secured him with a hammerlock. Timmy’s toes scrabbled against the ground. The man was strangling him. With his gun hand, the man motioned for Lilly to come closer. When she did, he let Timmy go, grabbed her, and with a violent motion jerked her around to face a rough tar-paper wall. He pasted Timmy up beside her.
“This ain’t exactly what I planned,” he said, “but it’ll work.” With a cord he tied one of Lilly’s hands to one of Timmy’s. “Now we walk.”
Lilly looked around. They were right beside the back door of the cream station and just beyond the grocery’s loading dock. On the other side of the alleyway, she could hear carts and wagons on the road. Surely someone would come this way. But there was no time for that.
The man pointed toward the scruffy, untended woods that crept down the bank behind the stores. They plunged into a haphazard stand of spindly sourwood and stubby serviceberry trees. “Straight on,” he said from behind them. “Just keep going.”
It was hard going through the pocked, stunted forest, where trash cedars seemed intent on taking over and thorny locusts conspired to nip at their arms and legs. Webworms dripped from loose, sloppy nests strung along the tips of the
sourwoods like Christmas lights. Lilly brushed one from her hair and felt one squish beneath her heel. She shuddered in distaste. She had to wonder why God created webworms and the aggravating gnats that flew in her eyes and up her nose.
With one arm secured and the other in a sling, Timmy had a hard time keeping his balance. He tripped over a gnarled root and fell hard. Lilly toppled over him. Without a word the man gripped her elbow and helped her to stand.
Timmy scrambled up and looked at the knees of his jean pants. His eyes narrowed and red patches colored his cheeks. “My mommy’s gonna be really mad at you, mister. These here are my good britches.”
“Shut your trap,” the man said. “Keep walking.”
For a time they were traveling straight up the side of the mountain. It would have been hard enough if Lilly were climbing alone, but with Timmy attached, it was a strenuous uphill battle with no time to plant her feet or search for an easier way. Fear fluttered in her belly. What did the man want? It had to be about the foundling baby, but why abduct her and Timmy? Maybe he was one of those people who had no conscience. Maybe he would shoot them both just for sport or misdirected retribution. Lilly forced herself to remain calm, to ignore her fear and the stitch in her side by focusing on the farthest tree on the path ahead.
Lord, give me the strength to make it to that tree
became her only prayer.
Finally, after a meandering switchback, they reached the summit. The morning fog was dissipating, burned off by golden sunshine. The air was pure, free of dust and coal
smoke. In the distance a cow’s bell tolled. They were standing on a bald knob high above the town. From this vantage point, the buildings looked like children’s blocks. On any other morning it would have been a beautiful sight.
“Lookit,” Timmy said. “There’s the church and there’s the store. Wow, you can see everything from up here.”
Lilly turned her head to take in the view from all sides. Suddenly she knew where they were and where they were headed. The Beckers’ homestead was down the mountain from this point. Anne would be going about her morning: tending her babies, feeding her chickens, slopping Sassy, maybe fussing at Cletus over some little something, while, unbeknownst to her, peril crept its way toward her house like a cloud of noxious brimstone.
Lilly tightened her lips, choking back questions and concerns. She sensed this was not the time to try to engage their captor. Better to keep silent and plan how she and Timmy could escape.
The man gave them a little breather, then herded them to a steep one-cow path that descended the mountain to yet another ridge. On one side of the path a green meadow beckoned, but on the other there was nothing but a sheer drop-off. A body wouldn’t even bounce on the plummeting way down.
Lilly would not have thought it, but going down was harder than going up. Since they were tethered together, and since the path was so precipitous and narrow, Timmy had to follow behind her, which twisted her arm in a painful way.
Her knees screamed in protest at every downward step. It was probably good that she was barefoot and her hose had long since turned to shreds, for she had to grip the dusty ground with her toes to keep from sliding over the side of the mountain. How did the cows do it? She supposed it would be easier to climb up and down this hill if that was where you wanted to be and if you didn’t have a gun at your back.
After a while they came into a clearing and to the back of a boarded-up house. A pleasant, sweet scent tickled Lilly’s nose. Honeysuckle abounded on the wire fence that ran along one side of the house. She knew this place from the other side! This was the weather-beaten house she and Chanis had passed on their trip to the Beckers’. Just seeing it gave her a sense of hope.
Surely someone would have missed them by now. Chanis would put two and two together. She began to pray that he would think about the back way to Anne’s place. It wouldn’t take thirty minutes for him to get here from Skip Rock. Maybe he was already on his way.
“Sit,” the man said, indicating the flat porch built low to the ground.
He walked to a metal well pump on a rotted wooden platform and, kicking around in a patch of weeds beside the pump, retrieved a mason jar. After wiping the lip of the jar on the tail of his shirt, he began to pump the handle. The platform creaked under his weight. Rusty water dribbled from the mouth of the well, but he kept at it until clear water gushed forth.
Timmy winged Lilly’s side with his elbow. “Maybe he’ll fall through and drown like a rat,” he whispered.