In a Dark Season (31 page)

The Drovers’ Road XIV

The Iron Chain

I ran and climbed through the thickety woods like a wild thing with hounds all a-slaver on its trail. They was a little light from the setting moon and afore long signs of dawn begun to show in the sky. I regretted my heavy coat and my blanket layin back in my room, for hit was bitter cold. At least, thinks I, with only this light snow, by the time the sun comes up, could be hit’ll melt away my tracks. For a time there, I made out that I could get plumb away.

But when the sun had cleared the mountains and I found myself at the top of a long ridge with a choice of ways to go, something come over me and I couldn’t run no more. Hit was like that fine thread had turned to an iron chain and hit was draggin at me ever step. And instead of slippin into the cover of the woods and lightin out for a far place, I stood there and looked all around me.

The broom sedge was waving brown on the hill and the birds that had been making such a racket, not a minute past, was still, like as if a great hawk had glided over. I fell to my knees, wore out with runnin and knowin that it weren’t no use. The hue and cry at the stand had begun as soon as they’d seen the body, and though I had a start on them and knowed the land well, I was afoot and they had horses and mules.

But surely, a man afoot could elude a rider in these steep and precipitous hills. Surely a man like yourself—

Hit might have been a man could, Professor, but I had lost heart. For as I’d run, hit had come to me that hit must be Belle had done this thing so as to be free for me. And the recollection of Ol’ Luce layin in his blood, his eyes starin, had plumb taken the heart out of me. They’ll not rest till they find someone to answer for that, thought I.

I lay watchin the sky, like I had done that last day at my uncle’s farm, and I wondered how come I to be in such bad case; hit was like they was a spell on me and I couldn’t run no more. The clouds chased one another acrost the sky till they was plumb out of sight and I thought of all the places I hadn’t yet seen and so fell asleep there in the broom sedge.

The sun was high overhead when they found me there with the dry, brown blood on my hand, and I stood to meet them.

Boys, I said, holdin my hands high, I’ll go with you. I ask pardon for leadin you such a long, hard ways.

Chapter 41

J’y Suis; J’y Reste

Wednesday, December 27

A
manda’s stunned expression and her indrawn gasp of surprise were immediately followed by the slam of car doors and heavy footfalls approaching the door.

Thomas Blake stood and bent to place a consoling hand on Amanda’s shoulder. “I’m truly sorry, my dear. I had thought you must have known.”

Ignoring the nearing footsteps, he moved back to the kitchen and Elizabeth heard the
glug-glug
of the vodka bottle. “Mrs. Goodweather, you said you’re interested in the history of the stand. I have some items you might find of interest.”

Blake emerged from the kitchen and started to pull down one of several shoe boxes on the top shelf of his tall bookcase. “Some copies Nola shared with me in happier times and some odds and ends I found at the bottom of the very box the little mother in there chose for her
accouchement.
I’ve not had leisure—”

The knock at the door interrupted his explanations and he returned the shoe box to its place. “Unwelcome visitors, I’m afraid, but I beg that you ladies will stay. I don’t believe they will linger.”

A thought seemed to occur to Blake as he wobbled toward the entrance. “But perhaps their visit, destined though it is to failure, will serve another purpose.” He pulled open the door.

“Gentlemen, punctual to the minute. Please, step in.”

Elizabeth recognized them at once: Pritchard Morton, brother of the deceased Payne, who had been at Nola’s bedside on her first visit; Vance Holcombe she remembered from the dais at the meeting at the high school; as well as Hollis Noonan, moving force of Ransom Properties and Investments, he of the annoying boyish grin and tossing hair,
god, he’s doing it now,
who was coming toward her with outstretched hand.

Blake spoke up. “Mrs. Goodweather, may I present…”

For a drunk and a recluse who looks like a homeless person, old Thos does have nice manners,
she thought, trying to mind her own as the sheaf of golden hair was flipped back into place.

“And this is Mrs. Goodweather’s friend, Miss Amanda Lucas.”

Elizabeth was forgotten as the newcomers turned to Amanda. They appeared to find her extremely interesting and she saw the glances the trio exchanged.
Well, she is pretty gorgeous; hardly surprising they can’t keep their eyes off her.

“Gentlemen, I have my answer.”

All three men turned to look at Blake, who was standing very straight, bolstered, Elizabeth noticed, by the bookshelf at his back.

“Your offer—RPI’s offer—was generous, nay, even munificent. But I do not choose to sell and abandon my family heritage.”

“Your family heritage?” Noonan’s boyish face was suffused instantly with anger. “I don’t fucking believe this! You live in a derelict, flea-infested
dump
and we offered you—”

“Hollis!” Pritchard Morton barked out the word.

The effect was immediate. Noonan’s furious expression changed to one of mild concern adorned with a self-deprecating smile. “My horrible Irish temper. Ladies, please forgive me. Blake, my associates are prepared to sweeten the offer to the tune of—”

But Blake was shaking his head. “I’ve made my decision. Double, triple, quadruple the sum—my answer remains. I do not choose to sell.”

Noonan’s face reddened and he opened his mouth but shut it again as Vance Holcombe began to speak.

“Tom, you’ve known me and my family and Pritchard’s family all your life, right? We all go back a long ways and we all want what’s best for the county, wouldn’t you say?”

Blake swayed, took another sip from his mug, and nodded. “That’s right. But do we agree on what’s best? Ay, there’s the rub.”

The three exchanged glances again. “Maybe it would be better if we came back another time, when you don’t have guests,” Morton ventured. “I feel that you haven’t really considered what the offer could mean to you.”

“Gentlemen, you have my final word.” Blake’s eyes were half-shut. “In the immortal words of the Comte de Mac-Mahon at Sevastopol:
‘J’y suis; j’y reste’—
here I am and here I stay.”

“We’ll see about that.” Noonan’s voice was under control but his hands, Elizabeth noticed, clenched into white-knuckled fists, betraying his emotion. “The county commissioners are drooling over the thought of turning this whole area into the centerpiece of the new, revived Marshall County. They’re willing to authorize a taking for the stand property; when we tell them how this dump will blight the whole project, I think they’ll go along with us on condemning this eyesore. They’re not going to let one pathetic old drunk stand in the way of a plan that has so much to offer the county.”

Noonan looked at his watch. “You can have another twenty-four hours to come to your senses. Then we’ll be back with a revised and considerably sweeter deal. If you don’t see fit to accept it,” a shrug was accompanied by the toss of the head, “then we’ll go to the commissioners.”

Motioning toward the door, Noonan summoned his friends with a glance, then flipped the boyish charm back on. “Ladies—Mrs. Goodweather, Amanda—I apologize again.”

His eyes slid to Amanda, who was sitting quietly, stroking a purring ginger cat. “Have we met somewhere? Your face is so familiar. Chapel Hill? Or maybe—”

“She’s Spinner’s sister, you fool!” Blake spat out the words, all pretense of civility gone. Still propped up against the bookshelf, the older man continued. “The resemblance is striking. And she’s trying to locate him. Perhaps one of you can tell her where he is. After all, you were friends and comrades, all five of you.”

The memory of the picture of the 5 Bad Boyz flashed into Elizabeth’s mind.
Of course! That was why that fifth one looked so familiar.

Amanda rose abruptly, dumping the ginger cat from her lap. “You were his friends?” She moved closer, looking from one to another of them. “He wrote to me from Ransom in December 1995—he said he was going to build a cabin. But there were no more letters. Please…where did he go?”

Chapter 42

The Accounts of Randall Revis

Wednesday, December 27

P
hillip could hear the music as he opened the front door—the true mountain sound, with only a guitar to accompany the singing and then a fiddle sobbing wildly on the occasional break. There seemed to be two voices, male and female, handing the verses back and forth. The woman’s clear sweet voice was taking its turn, the poignant words throbbing with anxiety and the pain of love.

I see a dust cloud and the stock drawing near;

I see a tall figure; it must be my dear.

My heart’s pounding faster; oh, will he be kind,

When he finds that there’s two where he left one behind?

And now the man was singing—a lonesome, haunting sound—the sound of a man who sees his doom ahead and goes willingly to it.

Who is this dark woman in the midst of the road?

She beckons me to her; oh what does this bode?

Her eyes are deep pools and they’re drawing me nigh.

She lays her hand on me and for her I would die.

Luellen comes to me and I turn aside—

“You’re back.” Elizabeth punched the button to halt the tape in the boom box. She wiped her hands on her apron and hugged him heartily.

“Yep, Ben and I went in to the tractor place. He’s decided I have potential as a tractor monkey and wanted me to be familiar with the parts department and the guy who runs it—Ben says there’s a lot more use in the tractor but it’s at the age where little things keep breaking or wearing out.” He sat on the cushioned bench and began to unlace his boots. “Saw your car there at Blake’s. Was he able to tell Amanda anything about her brother?”

“Nothing good.” Elizabeth ran through the highlights of the visit, ending with Amanda’s appeal to her brother’s old friends.

“They all three seemed embarrassed by her question. They said they hadn’t really seen that much of Spinner in the last few months he was in Ransom. Kind of insinuating things about his being gay—one of them said Spinner had made a lot of different friends recently, and one of the others laughed and said, ‘Yeah, they were
different,
all right.’”

“Did they have any idea where her brother’d got to?” He picked up the empty plastic tape box lying beside the boom box and read the penciled notation:
Songs of Love and Murder by Josh and Sarah Goforth.

“Not really. One of them kept making these snide comments about Spinner going somewhere ‘more appropriate to his lifestyle’—New York or San Francisco or ‘one of those places with lots of his kind.’”

He listened as she described Blake’s rejection of RPI’s offer and the threat of a county taking, then asked, “Has the county ever done that before?
Can
they do it?”

“I don’t really know.” Opening the oven door, Elizabeth pulled out a cast iron skillet of cornbread. She turned out the fragrant cake onto a bread board and began to fill bowls from the steaming pot of chili on the stovetop. “Sallie Kate seems to think it’s possible. And if the Holcombes want it to happen, I expect it will.”

“Thomas Blake let me borrow a box of Nola’s papers. He said he’d been helping her with research for her novel and she’d given him a lot of her copies from original sources so he could piece together his family’s history. And he said some more stuff that pertained to the stand had just turned up. It was at the bottom of the box where the cat had her kittens—more historical records of some sort tucked under the old clothes.”

They were settled before the fire with their after-dinner coffee, feet comfortably propped up on the big cedar chest in front of them. With a delighted cry, Elizabeth lifted out a page from the box on her lap.

“Look at this one! It’s a copy of an old newspaper article about the same murder as that ballad I was just playing.”

She held up the paper and began to read with exaggerated dramatic emphasis, skipping down the columns of close-packed print.
“An Account of the Recent Terrible Murders at Gudger’s Stand…the flight and capture of the desperate drover boy Lydy Goforth…the mute witness of the ensanguined snow…
Now there’s a word for you; they don’t do journalism like that anymore….

“…hapless young girl dragged to the riverside…bloodied night garment ripped from her frail body…footprints that told the sordid tale…matching the home-cobbled cowhide boots belonging to Lydy Goforth…peculiar pattern in the setting of the nails and a crescent-shaped indentation along the side of the left sole. High Sheriff Loyal Revis, fortuitously on the scene, was the first to note these telling details, and it was he who led the hardy band of trackers, some deputized on the spot, in pursuit of the young man who was at last captured, the
blood
of his victim
still on his hands.”

She finished with wide eyes and a melodramatic quaver, then grinned and handed the copy to Phillip. “Quite a story.”

Phillip studied the page. “Simpler times. I bet Mackenzie wishes his cases could be solved that easy.” He handed the page back to her. “What else is in there?”

Elizabeth began to remove the papers and clippings. “Odds and ends is what he said. Let’s see…more newspaper articles…a little privately printed genealogy of the Blakes and Wakefields…copy of another newspaper article about a bridge being built at Gudger’s Stand to replace the ferry…a bunch of little books tied up with a string…”

She undid the knot and spread out the books—pocket-sized ledgers, their gray-green cloth covers stained and worn. Picking one at random, she opened it. The endpapers were covered with penciled jottings. On the first page were the initials “R.R.” and the date “1990–1993.”

Elizabeth began to page through the book, trying to read the cryptic notations that accompanied various sums. “Look at this, Phillip. It must have belonged to that old man, Nola’s uncle.”

What was it Nola had said? Not till his accounts are closed?

Phillip glanced over her shoulder. “It looks like the private account book of a small-time loan shark.” He took the book. “See how the same sums occur every month—and if a month’s skipped, there’s added interest.”

He flipped through the entries. “Very, very small-time, payments of five or ten dollars—the highest recurring payment is twenty-five from someone he calls ‘Trucker 2.’” Phillip handed the book back to Elizabeth. “The old guy ran an illegal drinking establishment—he probably picked up a little on the side lending money out till payday—something like that.”

Elizabeth took up another book, the one marked “1994–1996.” The same small amounts, as Phillip had said, received from the unknown debtors: Four-Eyes, The Gimp, Trucker 2, Cat Man. She moved on—July, August, September. Some debts evidently were paid—Trucker 2 disappeared, as did The Gimp—and new nicknames appeared: Sandals, Beach Boy, Cave Girl.

“Not exactly riveting reading.” She flipped rapidly through the pages. “I wonder if Cat Man is Thomas Blake?”

Suddenly the pattern made by the repeated five-and ten-dollar notations shifted. “Phillip, the numbers get a lot higher, beginning in October of ’95. There’re new names and they’re paying one or two thousand apiece.”

“So they are…” He frowned at the names.
Holy Joe, Kildare—who were these people?

“You know, Lizabeth, I’m thinking this doesn’t look like loan-sharking.”

She nodded. “But it does look like blackmail, doesn’t it?”