Let Me Die in His Footsteps (25 page)

1952—ANNIE

ANNIE’S FIRST THOUGHT
had been to return the cards to Ellis and tell him she didn’t know who they belonged to. She would make a big show of telling him all the folks she questioned—Mama, Daddy, Grandma, Caroline, even the sheriff. But Abraham took the cards so Annie has nothing to return and no way to explain what became of them unless she tells the truth.

All her life, Annie has kept an eye out for the Baines. If it rattles, choose a different path. If it looks like a Baine, do the same. She’ll walk no closer than the fence. She’ll tell him she lost the cards and she doesn’t know where they came from. They’re just plain old cards. Faded and tattered and all bent up. Could have come from anywhere. From the drugstore, most likely. Or maybe the market where they sell playing cards near the batteries.

He won’t see her coming until she’s reached the barn, especially if she hunches down as she walks uphill through the lavender. The fields will be perfect for Sunday. Daddy has a way of picking the most perfect day. He’ll get up early that morning, Annie and Caroline too, and they’ll cut all the bundles to be sold. Fresh-cut, Grandma says. That’s the secret. That’s the thing that keeps folks coming back.

Daddy and Annie will reach deep into the bushes, grab a handful of the stems—Annie, not Caroline, because Annie’s hands are much larger—hack the bunch at its base with a rounded knife and snap a band around the whole of it. They’ll layer the bundles in a flatbed wagon Daddy will drag from row to row, and Caroline will tie off each bouquet with an eight-inch purple ribbon.

The lavender oil from last year’s crop is already distilled, bottled, and stored in the lower kitchen cabinets, where it’ll stay cool and safe from light. There will be more baking to do as the week comes to a close, and this year, there will be a special cake—a wedding cake. Harvest on the morning of the fourth Sunday in June, or a Sunday thereabouts—when that flatbed wagon is piled high with lavender bundles, the purple blossoms dripping off one side, the satin ribbons dripping off the other—is the one time Daddy might say he likes lavender farming better than tobacco farming.

But the real work will begin after the fourth Sunday. They’ll harvest the rest of the fields. They’ll cut and bundle, and Daddy will drive it to Louisville. They’ll next start to distill the oil and then prepare for next year’s crop and hope for a mild winter. Eventually, they’ll set up the trays to start new seedlings, and Daddy will stay awake all night to make sure the warmers don’t fail. The coming of the lavender will begin again.

As Annie passes through the rows, trying not to let her skirt brush against the stems and stir up the odor any more than has already been stirred by the heat of the day, the truth starts pushing its way up and out. She feels an obligation to Ellis Baine for being so kind as to deny her being the daughter of Joseph Carl. It might bring some peace to all of them, to both families, if she were to offer up this truth. At the top of the hill, Grandpa’s tobacco barn stands to her left. The rock fence is straight ahead, and Ellis Baine is still leaning there against the well, waiting. Annie steps up to the fence that stretches to the road on one end and farther than she knows on the other, presses her hands flat on top, hoists herself over, and walks a few steps toward Ellis Baine.

“Abraham Pace,” she says, knowing the moment she says it, she has made a mistake. This won’t bring peace of any kind. But she’s done it and she’s put something in motion, and now she can’t stop.

“Abraham Pace,” she says in a louder voice, so Ellis will be certain to hear. “He saw me holding them and took them from me. Said he was sure glad I found them. Said they missed them when they sat down to play cards.”

Ellis nods. She had expected her answer to matter to him, that it would mean something important, but he leans there, picking the bark off a twig, not making any show of being upset or carrying on in any way.

“Why do you care about an old deck of cards?” Annie says. “What’s them belonging to Abraham Pace mean?”

Besides driving stakes for Mrs. Baine’s tomatoes, Daddy has done other things for her over the years. Mama never liked him going up there, said a person never knew what might happen, but Daddy always said it was the least they could do. He said it like her being alone in that house without her boys to help her keep it up was largely Mama and Daddy’s fault. It’s the least I could do, he always said when he would come home from hammering a sheet of plywood on her roof or replacing a few rotted boards on her porch.

“That boy down there hollering for you,” Ellis says, ignoring Annie’s question about the cards and Abraham Pace. “You see that boy in this well?”

“No.”

“Betting he wishes you did.”

Might as well mow it all down, Daddy said the last time he went to Mrs. Baine’s place. He was there to fix a broken-out window and couldn’t hardly get a new window to fit because the house had so settled it was no longer anywhere close to square. But in the few short weeks Ellis Baine has been back, he’s stripped away the clutter. He’s toted off rusted, twisted scraps of metal and the bones of discarded furniture, all of it tossed out on the porch or along the side of the house. Ellis has mowed down the grass and turned under the weeds. Grandma says he’s cleaning up the place so it can begin again with new folks.

“You got a family?” Annie asks.

“Couple nieces. Bundle of nephews.”

“None of your own?”

He shakes his head.

“Never married?”

“Nope.”

“Is that because of my mama?” Annie asks. “Did you love her?”

“Should have,” Ellis says, digging a thumbnail under a stubborn piece of bark. “If I hadn’t been such a damn fool, probably would have. Plenty of fellows are fools when they’re young.”

“She loved you.”

He shakes his head.

“Then why does it make her so sad to see you?”

“Not sadness.”

“Then what?”

“It’s regret, I suppose.”

“What’s she regretting?”

He points his nearly bald stick at Annie. “Not telling you that. None of your damn business.” And while he’s pointing and cursing, he’s smiling too. Almost smiling. “Truth?” he asks.

Annie nods.

“As much as I’m a damn fool for not loving a woman like your mama, she’s probably figuring to be a damn fool for ever thinking she was in love with a man like me.”

Annie says nothing, mostly because she doesn’t understand what Ellis has said. So instead of trying to talk, she works on remembering his exact words so she can keep on thinking about it later and maybe piece it together.

“You ought get back home now,” Ellis says.

Annie thought Ellis Baine had pulled out all the tomatoes, but walking toward the well, toward Ellis Baine, who has gone back to picking the last of the bark from that twig, she sees a few yet grow. He picked good ones to save. They’re waxy and green, smaller and newer than the tangled plants that had been here before, but soon enough, they’ll grow too top-heavy to stand on their own.

“You still got those stakes you took out?” she asks.

Ellis pushes off the well, cocks his brows at Annie because now he knows she’s been watching him in the days since he came back, and walks toward the house.

“String too,” Annie shouts after him. “String of some kind.”

She’s snapping off some of the top buds so the plants will stop growing up and start growing out when she hears Daddy.

“Annie?”

She looks to one side and then the other.

“Annie, what are you doing?”

She stands and turns. He’s there, just this side of the fence.

“What are you doing over here?”

But before Annie can answer, before she can tell about the cards belonging to Abraham Pace and the stakes Daddy drove for Mrs. Baine and tying up the last of the tomatoes so they fare better than the rest, Ellis Baine walks out from behind his house, a bundle of white twine slung over his shoulder and three of Daddy’s stakes in his left hand. He stops when he sees Daddy, stands looking at him for a time, and then walks closer.

“What’s he done?” Daddy says.

“Nothing, Daddy.”

Daddy grabs Annie’s arm and yanks her toward him. She cries out from it hurting so bad. She stumbles and trips, falling at Daddy’s feet.

“What’s he done to you?” he shouts down into her face.

Ellis Baine lunges in Annie’s direction, but as quick as he makes that move, he backs off. Like he did in the Hollerans’ kitchen, he holds his hands out to the side.

“Just staking tomatoes,” he says, backing away. “I’ll go. No need to haul the girl around like that.”

Daddy yanks Annie back to her feet, and she can’t help but cry out again.

“You get home.”

Daddy pushes Annie behind him, and Abraham is there. He grabs on where Daddy let go. Big as his hands are, he doesn’t pinch her the way Daddy did.

By the time Annie gets herself righted and has peeled Abraham’s hand off her arm, Ellis Baine has reached his porch. They stand watching him, all three of them, until Ellis disappears inside.

“Don’t you ever come here again,” Daddy says without looking back at Annie.

“Take it easy, John,” Abraham says.

“You understand me?”

Still Daddy won’t look at Annie.

“Asked you a question,” he says.

There’s something in the way Daddy is talking to Annie, something in the tone of his voice, the way he looked at her, squatted down at the tomatoes, that shames Annie. He’s never shamed her before, never been afraid of her black eyes or treated her like she has bygones to be sorry for. But just now, Daddy is disgusted by her, and that’s a thing she never thought he would be.

“I know you think Mama loves him,” Annie says.

Daddy swings around. He doesn’t mean to, surely doesn’t mean to, but he reaches out with one hand and strikes Annie across the face. It’s like a whip cracking down on her cheek. The sting of it shoots up into her eye and down into her lower jaw. Abraham grabs at her again, yanks her backward, putting himself between her and Daddy, and presses one of his hands in the center of Daddy’s chest.

The most frightening thing happens next. For the first time, Daddy doesn’t know what to do. He always knows what to do. He knows how to tighten the faucet so it doesn’t drip all night long and drive Grandma into a rage. He knows how to take a screwdriver to the top hinge so the bathroom door won’t stick and just when to head inside to avoid the rain. But bending to pick up the hat that flew off his head, dropping to his knees instead of standing, Daddy doesn’t know what to do next.

“She didn’t love him,” Annie says, stepping from behind Abraham and not covering over the sting on her cheek with the palm of her hand even though she wants to. It would be like reminding Daddy he drank too much whiskey and wasn’t there at the well when they found Mrs. Baine.

“Regret,” Annie says. “That’s what he said. Ellis Baine said it’s not love Mama’s feeling; it’s regret. What’s she regretting, Daddy?”

“Ah, Jesus, Annie,” Daddy says. “Jesus, I’m sorry.”

Annie stands in front of Daddy, not saying anything more. He’s kneeling on the ground, sitting back on his thighs. He’s catching his breath, that’s what Grandma would say. Sometimes a person needs to catch his breath. Annie takes Daddy’s hat from his hand and is brushing the dirt from its brim when a movement of some kind makes her lift her eyes. It’s Ellis Baine, and he’s coming this way again.

He’s walking different than before. He’s taking long steps, his heavy boots giving the soft turned-over ground a beating. He’s looking straight ahead, not quite at Annie, not quite at Daddy, but instead at Abraham Pace. And Ellis Baine is carrying something in one hand. It hangs at his side, down along one leg. He’s carrying a shotgun.

•   •   •

ABRAHAM MUST HAVE
seen Ellis Baine coming before Annie did. He could have shouted out, could have warned them, but he said nothing. Instead, he is waving a hand in Annie’s direction. Miss Watson is walking toward the fence, and Abraham is waving at her, wants her to get away.

“What is it, Abe?” Miss Watson calls out. She hoists the hem of her skirt and teeters on the heels of her fine dress shoes. She is supposed to be shopping for something new and something blue with Mama and Grandma. “What’s wrong? You were meant to meet me in town.”

Turning her eyes back to Ellis Baine, Annie reaches down and touches Daddy on the shoulder so he’ll look too. And then Annie is stumbling again and falling and being shoved toward the fence. Her hands and knees hit the ground. She skids, falling flat, rocks cutting into the side of her face. She scrambles forward, not quite on hands and knees, not quite sliding on her belly. Daddy keeps pushing at her from behind.

“Go on back down to the house,” Abraham shouts out again.

“Come on with me, Abe,” Miss Watson says. She must not see the gun hanging at Ellis’s side, and she’ll not see Annie pressed up against the fence. “You promised you’d meet me.”

“Only one thing I want,” Ellis says.

Annie reaches the fence, grabs at it, her fingers slipping between the flat rocks like they did when she was a girl, except now she’s on the wrong side. She pushes against it, turns to face Ellis. Daddy stands between her and Ellis Baine. Miss Watson has gone silent, which must mean she understands now what is happening.

“Tell me what hand you had in it,” Ellis says, the shotgun still hanging at his side. He’s talking to Abraham. “Tell me what hand you had.”

“Good God,” Abraham says. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Ellis,” Daddy says, nearly stumbling over Annie for standing so close, “ain’t no need to scare these women. Put that thing away.”

“Then get on,” Ellis says. “Tell me. And you can start with the cards.”

Abraham looks to Daddy, but Daddy’s eyes are on that gun hanging from Ellis Baine’s hand.

“Better do as the man asks,” Daddy says.

“Be happy to, John,” Abraham says. “But I’m not sure what in God’s creation he’s talking about.”

“You took a deck of cards from the girl,” Ellis says, dipping his head toward Annie. “Said they was yours. Where’d they come from?”