Let Me Die in His Footsteps (10 page)

Once they are gone and their voices have faded into silence, I start up the road toward the Baines’ place. Along the way, I pass John Holleran’s home. He lives there with his mama and father. His mama has been to the house a half dozen times already since Dale disappeared. Each time she’s stopped in, she’s said she knows Dale is near and that he’ll be home soon.

Once past the Hollerans’ place, I know I’m close. All the fields here have been planted, and the tobacco has rooted itself and is growing. It’s already taller than Daddy’s. Maybe Daddy is cursed, because the crops in his field and this field and that field there, they should be the same. They’re set in the same dirt, the land has the same rise and fall, the same sun shines here as it does on Daddy’s land, but Daddy’s crop is already failing. At the break in the hickories, I stop long enough to draw in a few deep breaths. When my chest has stopped rising and lowering and I know I’ll be able to speak again, I continue up the drive toward the house.

Mrs. Baine has not yet reached her front door when I come upon her from behind. It’s a long walk, all of it uphill, and I’ve been faster, caught her before she’s reached her front door. She stops, probably because of the sound of my footsteps. In the dark, I can’t see the look on her face.

“We got to burn it,” I say.

She nods toward the side of the house and walks up the stairs and disappears through her front door.

I grab handfuls of dried-out pokeweeds growing alongside the house. There’s nothing else. No wood stacked that the boys have cut for winter. No twigs. No fallen leaves. I twist the weeds into thick strands, the closest to kindling I can find, and toss them in the barrel at the corner of the house. Things are dry. It won’t take much to get a flame going. I’ve made a good pile when Mrs. Baine returns with the shirt. The fabric is still warm. She’s taken it off Joseph Carl just now, must have stood by as he unbuttoned each button, pulled it off, folded it over, and gave it to her.

“He wanted a fine and nice shirt to greet me in,” she says as I strike the match I brought from home. “He was going to put it back. Tomorrow, he said. Was going to hang it right back there on the line. He wanted to look nice for me.”

I drop the match in the pile of tangled weeds. The flame spreads quickly until it reaches the heavy cotton. Then it fails, almost goes dark, but the fabric finally catches and the flame takes hold again. Smoke rises, and a light breeze blows it across me. It’ll be in my hair and in my clothes now. Juna will smell it on me.

“She’ll tell Daddy,” I say. “Juna will. And he’ll believe her. He’ll come here looking for Joseph Carl.”

Mrs. Baine backs away from the fire, the glow catching the underside of her chin and throwing shadows that lift up along the edges of her face.

“Where are your boys?” I ask. “Where’s Ellis?”

Mrs. Baine continues to back toward the house. “My boy didn’t do nothing. You know he didn’t.”

“Don’t matter what I know,” I say, dropping in another handful of weeds. “Now that Juna’s said it, Daddy will be coming. You need to get your boys home, Mrs. Baine. You need to hurry on up about it.”

•   •   •

I SEND MRS. BAINE
for a shovel when the flames have fallen and the shirt is but a few orange embers. As I wait for her, I look back at the house and I see him there in the window. It’s Joseph Carl, though I was wrong about my being more likely than Juna to recognize him. Had I not known Joseph Carl was inside, I’d have not known the man looking out that window. The curves of his face have been worked away, leaving only bone to give it shape. His small eyes lie deep in their sockets, and his cheekbones flare wide over a narrow, square chin. He lifts a hand and smiles, and that’s the thing I recognize.

After handing me the shovel, and before I’ve dug it even once in the ground, Mrs. Baine is gone, up the porch and inside her house. When the door closes, I hear the latch drop and Joseph Carl is gone from the window. I throw a shovelful of dirt on the last of the fire, lean on the handle, and look down into the barrel. Still seeing a glow, I throw another shovelful.

After the third shovelful of dirt, the fire is gone and there’ll be no sign of it. I press one hand against the top of the barrel. It’s warm but not hot. Soon enough, it’ll be cool to the touch. I lay the shovel against the house, walk around to the front door, step onto the square slab of stone that acts as a single stair and then up onto the porch.

The Baines’ house is narrow. It’s one room wide and two deep. Open the front door and open the back, and a person could see straight through it. I knock and listen for footsteps. The house is silent. I knock again.

“I have to talk to him, Mrs. Baine,” I say, pressing my face to the door so I don’t have to yell. “Now, before Daddy comes.”

I saw the look in Juna’s eyes when she stepped from her bedroom. I thought it was relief that she’d finally remembered, but I know her better than that. Should have known straightaway. Her lids were stretched wide open. She was breathing too heavy for having been in bed. She was happy, though trying to hide it. The fellow in the white shirt was the answer. He was the one she could say caused her trouble. She’d been silent since Daddy carried her home, not because she’d gone too long without water or too much tobacco had leached into her blood. It hadn’t been the sun or the shock. She hadn’t worked out yet what to tell us. She had tried blaming Daddy, but then Mr. Brashear said they saw a fellow. Whatever happened, it was somehow Juna’s doing, but now she had someone else to blame.

“Whatever Juna tells him,” I say into the door, both hands and my cheek pressed flat against it, “he’ll believe her. You have to let me in.”

The door opens. For all the years I’ve ached for Ellis Baine, I’ve never passed over this threshold. I see him in town, at church some Sundays, walking a field, driving past me in his truck, and still it’s enough to root him in my thoughts every day. In one of his three letters to me, Joseph Carl said my wanting Ellis wasn’t at all about Ellis. He said I was wanting something that would take me away from the life I was living and Ellis was the least common thing among so much commonness. Ellis shaved himself while most others didn’t. His hair was more black than brown, and brown hair was most ordinary. Ellis was tall and so were others, but his back was still straight. You like that he knows a thing for certain, Joseph Carl had written. You want someone who knows things, doesn’t hope for things, because hoping is common. Hoping is easy.

After opening the door to me, Mrs. Baine slips back to her stove, where she pokes at the fire going inside. It doesn’t draw quite right, or something is stuffing up her pipe, and smoke hangs off the ceiling. Joseph Carl sits at a small stool pulled up to the kitchen table. He wears a blue plaid shirt that’s too big through the shoulders and its sleeves have been rolled up. He starts to stand, but because he presses his hands to the table and rocks forward, I see it’ll be an effort, a painful effort, so I wave at him to stay put.

“It’s good to see you, Joseph Carl,” I say.

The small house isn’t so different from ours. It’s tidy enough, what I can see of it, and keeping it such with all those boys living here is why Mrs. Baine always has a worn-out look about her. Her cast iron hangs from nails driven into the wall, and a set of three square tins, one larger than the next, sits on a small wooden shelf near her stove. They’re the palest of green and rusted at their seams. She must think they’re pretty, maybe they’re her only pretty thing, and she keeps them there so they’ll be handy when she’s cooking, though they’re likely empty. A pot sits on her stove. She’s brewing goldenrod and wintergreen, the smell seeping into the air as steam begins to rise.

“Afraid it ain’t so good to see you.” Joseph Carl smiles and begins patting two flat hands against the tabletop.

Just as Juna said it would be, Joseph Carl’s nose is bent off to the side. It wasn’t that way before he left home, so it must have happened while he was living out west. It won’t be a good story, so I won’t ask.

“Didn’t do nothing to your brother.”

“Did you see him? The two of them together?” I ask, staring at his hands. He stops patting the table, looks toward his mama.

“Sure, I seen them. Seen the both of them. Forgot about the little one. Not much more than a baby when I left.”

“She says you took Dale.”

“Give the boy my cards,” Joseph Carl says. “He was there with her. They was picking worms in your daddy’s field. Give him my only deck. Had it for years. Had it since I was a kid, but was almost home. Figured Mama’d have new cards. Didn’t need no deck of my own. Give them to the boy. I was happy to be home. Real happy. Give that boy the only gift I had. Then went on my way.”

“Did you take that shirt, Joseph Carl?”

“Borrowed it,” he says. “Borrowed it, is all. Thought to wear it a few days. Then return it.”

“Where are your brothers?”

“Looking for your boy, I suppose. Some of them, anyway.”

“Don’t tell no one about the shirt,” I say to both of them. “Not even that you borrowed it.”

“I told her I was a Baine,” Joseph Carl says. “She remembered. Joseph Carl, she said, and I told her yes. She knew me. She’s just confused, is all. Won’t tell no one I took that boy.”

“She already did,” I say.

We don’t hear the trucks until they’ve turned off the road and have started up the drive. It’s the hickories and elms that have muffled the sound. There are two trucks, at least, maybe three. Mrs. Baine leans to look out the window, and two headlights fan across her, lighting up her face for a moment. The window goes dark again. I slide onto one of the stools at the table.

“Not a word about that shirt,” I say again.

I expect the door to fly open and Daddy to stomp inside. He’ll be relieved it’s not his curse that’s taken Dale from us. Now he’ll have someone to grab onto. He’ll have Abraham Pace with him and maybe John Holleran, though John doesn’t take much to violence. Daddy will drag Joseph Carl out of the kitchen, right in front of his own mama, throw him from the porch, and put a gun to his head until he tells what he’s done with Dale. It won’t matter to him that Joseph Carl didn’t do it, and that he won’t be able to do a thing to help us. It won’t matter that maybe there’s someone else out there who did something terrible to Dale, or that maybe Juna herself did it. Joseph Carl will be someone to blame. But the door doesn’t fly open. Instead, there is a knock.

With a rag wrapped around her hand, Mrs. Baine taps the door on her stove until it’s closed. Joseph Carl crosses his arms and lets his shoulders roll forward. I look at the door but don’t stand. There is another knock.

“Cora.” It’s a woman’s voice. “It’s Irlene. Irlene Fulkerson. Open on up, will you?”

I stand, but Mrs. Baine grabs me by the arm. “Don’t you dare,” she says. “Don’t you open that door.”

“Be thankful it’s Irlene Fulkerson out there,” I say, reaching for the latch, “and not my daddy.”

The lights of one of the trucks are still lit up, and they catch me full in the face when I open the door. I hold a hand over my eyes, tip my head, and then I see them. It’s Irlene Fulkerson and John Holleran too.

“The Brashears told me,” John says. “Told me about the fellow and Cora Baine. Figured this was best.”

John has a way of looking at me. He holds my eyes a little too long, a little longer than anyone else. It’s his way, I suppose, of trying to fashion something between us. It’s how he’s looking at me now, out on the porch, the truck lights making me squint and dip my head. Even when I turn away to see Joseph Carl still sitting at the table—him looking like a passing glance of who he once was—and turn back, John’s eyes are there, waiting to latch onto mine.

“I don’t think it’s necessary,” I say. “Juna, she’s confused, is all.” And then, to Sheriff Irlene, I say, “Evening, ma’am.”

Sheriff Irlene was probably just finishing up supper when John came knocking on her door and likely left her children, the three young ones, to do the cleaning up and putting away. She wears a blue blouse tucked into a full beige skirt that skims the toes of her boots. Her hair is done up in a tight knot at the base of her head. Even now, at long past dusk, it looks as fine as it would at Sunday morning services.

“Sarah,” Sheriff Irlene says, taking hold of my hand and patting it, “let’s get you home. How about that? How about that, Sarah?”

Sheriff Irlene tries to draw me from the doorway with a hand to my shoulder. When I don’t move, she gives a squeeze, and in a quieter voice, she says, “I’m worried for you, dear. You really should get home. This is no place for you.”

“Boy won’t be long for this world unless we get him to town,” John says, nodding so I’ll know he agrees with Sheriff Irlene.

“He didn’t do nothing,” Mrs. Baine calls out from inside the kitchen. She still stands near her stove, a rag wrapped around one hand.

“Be for your own safety, Joseph Carl,” John says. “Folks going to want to talk to you. Better they do it in town.”

John grabs onto my forearm, and much like Sheriff Irlene, he tries to draw me outside, but I want to stay and wait for Ellis. He’ll take care of Joseph Carl, and he’ll see me here, finally see me like he doesn’t at church or in town or on the road when he’s got himself wrapped around me. But John holds on, not with a tight grip but a grip that’s not letting go.

“We ain’t got much time,” he says when I don’t move. Then he looks to Sheriff Irlene, who gives a nod.

“You’ll come along with me now,” she says, “won’t you, Joseph Carl? We’ll have a hot meal for you. Take real good care of him, Cora.”

Joseph Carl is still sitting at the table, his hands resting in his lap, when I step onto the porch. In the last letter he sent me, he told about the dust. He said it was all the time in the air and that every green thing had died. The grasshoppers came next, and if something did manage to grow, they seized it and ate it, and when the living things were gone, those grasshoppers took to chewing the wooden handle right off a rake. Right off a rake, he wrote. He and the other fellows hung snakes, white bellies toward the sky, over their fences in hopes of inciting a decent rain. Didn’t work. And there were rabbits. Rabbits like you never seen. They rounded them up on Sundays, a circle of folks beating sticks on the ground, and when the circle was good and tight, they took the sticks to the rabbits. They cry, you know. Those rabbits cry when someone gets after them with a stick. The dust was all the time in his eyes and between his teeth, and God damn it all, he was hungry. Wasn’t everyone so Goddamn hungry?