The Mercy Seat (27 page)

“I had to, child. The mule's leg was broke.”

“You shot our mule.”

“Hush, Matt,” the father said.

“He shot our mule.”

And then, “You killed her. You killed our mule.” She chanted the words in a thin monotone as the sun's lingering rays withdrew at last behind Bull Mountain and the blue shadows covered the hill. The other one, the tiny girl with tremendous dark eyes changing gray to green beneath straight lashes as she turned her head from her sister to Mitchelltree and back again, took up the chorus. “You killed our mule,” said the little one. “You killed our mule,” from the older child again. They piped in unison, the sound high and unceasing, like a hidden pondful of spring peepers on the side of the hill.

“You girls hush up now,” Fayette called. “What's the matter with you, good Lord!”

John, still not looking at his daughters, said, “Matt, hush.”

And abruptly the children did hush, but they never stopped staring. The ocher eyes of the older child did not blink or well tears; she was not weeping, not sorrowful; something different emanated from her, like a cold, miniature hatred. Mitchelltree witnessed it but still could not fathom that the child was absorbed by an obsession greater, more unyielding even than that of her uncle, more consuming in its degree of singlemindedness—for Fayette's obsessions, except for the two constants of guns and his brother, were erratic, leaping from this to that, guided only by the happenstance of whatever came before him; but this child had a singular obsession, driven by the feel of her mother's hand on her shoulder, and the death of the little gray mule had ground it to a terrible halt.

Mitchelltree heard his own voice roll on the ridge again. “Child, that mule was going to suffer a terrible death for a long time before it go on and die anyhow.” He was shamed even as he heard it, at the defensive tone in it, but the words came, unbidden, hulking nearly in their embarrassment, in the way that only a child can shame a man. “That mule had to be shot.”

“Get now!” Fayette came toward the girls, swatting his palms together as a farmwife shoos chickens, saying, “You young'uns got no business here.” He came unsteadily along the ridge toward them, and then stopped when the girls turned and stared up at him. His hands swerved seamlessly from swatting each other to patting the deep pockets in the front of his corduroy coat. “John, mind your children. You see what I'm saying? This is just what I been saying—look here how they act. Martharuth, this ain't your business. Take your sister and get on back to the house. John?”

“Looks to me like you're the one better mind your own business.” The brother's voice was low-key, quiet, his eyes honed on Fayette now, and once again Mitchelltree felt himself fall out of their existence. Fayette spat.

“That ole mule wan't worth a toestump, and you know it. I told you. What'd I tell you? Look here, it's dark. We got to get them slabs hauled up the mountain first thing in the morning. First thing in the morning. Tell you what: that black mule right yonder, he's yours. Quick as we get these blame slabs hauled. You loan me that old Sarn of yours, let me just borrow the use of your wagon about a day's time, that mule yonder is yours. Tomorrow morning. I'll get me a nigger to drive 'em, I'm not trusting no more Indi'ns. Hush them girls up.”

But the girls were silent, and for a heartbeat on the ridge there was nothing but silence, and then Fayette, unable to help himself, had to keep on. “You going to take a look at that howdah or ain't you? I reckon you don't even want to know if it's one of yours. Hell, it's bound to be, I seen your handwriting all over it. That goddamn Tanner, I bet you he made off with a flat dozen. Listen here, Son, we got to pay attention to business here, take a look at something that matters a little bit. Forget that blame mule.”

“Something that matters,” John Lodi said, his eyes keen on his brother. His face was still unfathomable as he repeated the phrase. “That matters. Yes.” Slowly he turned to Mitchelltree, said calmly, releasing the words one at a time into the burnished air, “Mister, if you don't mind a minute, I'd like to take a look at that gun now. We don't intend anything. Just want to take a look at the mark on it. I'll give it right back.”

Mitchelltree nodded once, though later he would wonder why. Pondering it, he would conclude that there'd been something about the directness in the cracked voice, maybe, that told him this one spoke the truth. Or he would mention to himself the presence of the two children, strange as they were, bound together on the edge of the ridge between the two white men. In fact, he was never fully to understand why he suddenly gave that brief acquiescent nod to John Lodi before he eased his head in the direction of the shadowed men behind the post office wall and said softly, “Let them down yonder know.”

John Lodi looked at him a moment, and then turned and called down the hill. “Blaylock! We're all right up here now! Y'all may as well get on back to your business!”

A voiced floated up in the twilight.

“Fate? Y'all got everything under control up yonder?”

Fayette waved his loose hands amiably over his head.

Mitchelltree held his right hand out from his body, and with his left lifted the checkered grip by two fingers and pulled it free of the homemade holster. John stepped toward him to take it. The children never stopped staring, although it was not at the enormous four-barreled pistol they stared; the gun held no fascination for them. They'd grown up around guns, the making of guns, the sound and smell of guns all their lives, and the lure of them held no sway over their souls. It was Mitchelltree the two children continued to stare at. Fayette took a step toward the weapon, eagerly, but by then John had hold of the gun. He broke it open at the breech, checked the three remaining cartridges, turned calmly, almost gently, and yet too fast for anyone to understand what he meant to do, and, without aiming, shot the charcoal mule once in the head.

T
he girl began, in the warmth of the earth's turning, to walk. She would sneak out of the house without her sister, each day ranging farther and farther, though Jonaphrene would call her sometimes, would see her walking quickly away from the log house and try to run after her. But the girl went on, relentless, unseeing, driven in her inheritance as she'd received it from her father: her birthright stronger than the blood union that had left her naked without the feel of her sister's thin bones beneath her hand, touching, so that for a month and more after Thula Henry's coming, she had continued to walk joined tight to Jonaphrene when she could have walked alone. All was changed in the twinkling of an eye, a gunflash, as Matt became at once unyoked from her sister and driven forward by the killing of the mules.

On the crest of the ridge, with the black man before her and Delia dead by his hand on the hillside, and Fayette's big mule dead by her own father's hand, the change had come on her. She did not know when her arm slipped from around her sister. She watched her father give the gun back to the black man and, without a look or word to his brother or his two daughters, turn and walk straight down the side of the ridge toward the town, and before she knew she had done it, she'd left her sister and followed him. She followed him along the road toward Cedar until she fell too far behind and the night dropped too dark, and then she found her way back to her uncle's store at the end of the row of town buildings and slept behind an empty cracker barrel on the plank porch.

The next morning, when she awakened at first light, she stood up and immediately stepped down off the porch, not east toward the log house, but south toward Waddy Mountain. The old hound dog Ringo saw her from his sleeping place beneath the store porch, where he slept separate from Fayette's dogs since the black-and-tan, wounded in a coon fight and suffering from blood poisoning, had been shot by the girl's father and buried in the yard. The beagle trotted down the hill behind her, followed her, waddling, as she crossed through Faulk's field.

Thus began the girl's restless, ceaseless roaming. She would leave the house early, the dog following, and walk until she could walk no longer, along the rocky slopes of the hills beside the valley, or she'd follow Bull Creek to where it joined the Fourche Maline, and then walk east until she was too weary to turn back. She would sit on the clotted bank then, with the sun warming her naked head, and look at the elm buds pricking red on the bare branches, the peachleaf willows swelling pale green. Her eyes would follow a cardinal darting through the cedars, a thousand shimmering insects skimming the water's surface, dancing in the changing air, but the girl did not see. She would turn her gaze to the hills, where the flowering trees daubed the ridges sweet cream and raspberry, but she had no eyes for the rush of life, could not see how the earth scrambled to cover itself. She was caught alone in the words of her own mind, and those words were like a chant or a prayer, though there was nothing of God in them but only the repetition of thoughts shaped in monotonous rhythm.
Papa put them in a cave somewhere. Safe from rain. Safe from moths and rust and summer dirt daubers, safe from the pilfering fingers of Fayette's boys. I'll find them in a minute, our quilts and clothes, Mama's trunk, I'll load up the wagon. It's just over that next rise. Beyond that cedar yonder. No. On the other side of that sandrock ridge.

The girl's chanting thoughts did not include what she would do once she'd found her family's belongings, how she might carry them to the wagon, or the wagon to where they were hidden, now that Delia was dead and old Sarn nodded his aged dreams in the shed barn alone. The destruction of the mule, rather than being the event to end her determination, became, instead, the act which sealed her obsession. She would find their things. She would load up the wagon. She would drive east into the mountains and get her mama; she would carry her mother back home.

On she went, walking.

Her aunt forbade her to leave if she could catch her before she got out the door. Jessie would stand with her palm laid across her swelling belly, saying, “Get right back in here this minute, child, there's work to do!” The girl would look up at her, unblinking, and turn and go out the door. The woman's voice was no more than a lone hornet to her, or yellow jacket, buzzing: one could give a nasty sting if you did not stay out of its way, but one could not kill you. She believed she knew the truth in her aunt. She was not afraid of the woman, but she did begin to rise and leave the house earlier so that she might not have to listen to her aunt's buzzing whine. As soon as she heard her father leave, the girl would roll from the pallet. She did not have to take the time to dress, because she slept in the one calico she had to wear; she didn't have any shoes. She'd go to the table, as her father did, and place her hand beneath the cloth and take a piece of cold cornbread or biscuit, turn and lift the latch on the front door, and go out.

Jessie began to complain bitterly in the evenings to her husband that the girl would not work, that there was something wrong with her, but Fayette raised his head only once, said, in Matt's general direction, “You got to pull your share around the house now,” and turned back to his coffee.

So Jessie determined that she would, no matter what, she
would
speak to John about the girl. She waited up for him one evening. She'd left his supper on the stove and blown the lamps out, but for the one on the pine table, where she sat, sewing, when her brother-in-law came in. The rest of the household was long abed, her sons and husband snoring upstairs. John did not speak but came in heavily and, seeing her, hesitated a moment and then went to the washbench. He returned to the table, pulled a chair out, and sat down. They didn't greet one another. Jessie gathered the bulk of the muslin sheet she was hemming and put it on the table, stood up and went to the stove and fetched his plate, placed it quietly on the oil cloth. She dipped up a glass of buttermilk from the ready crock and set it before him, then took up her sewing again and sat.

She said, “You're going to have to do something about that girl.”

John looked at her from beneath his slouch hat, chewing, but still he did not speak.

“She hadn't done a lick of work since I don't know when,” the woman whispered. “Stays off and gone from daylight to dark, won't do a thing in the world I tell her.” She was silent a moment. “I can't have that, I'm sorry.”

The man still didn't say anything. He took a bite of bacon, picked up his cornbread and crumbled it into the buttermilk.

Jessie's fingers moved faster and faster on the sheet. “The rest of them act just like her! She shows out, and the rest of them act just like her. We can't be feeding a bunch of young'uns that won't work, I don't care whose they are.”

The man turned his dark look on her, and immediately the woman fell silent. There was no sound in the room then but a moth that had come in with the night air, batting around the table, thumping softly against the hot globe of the lamp, falling to the wood. John pushed his plate away, leaned back against the chair slats and reached in his front pants pocket for his purse. The room sounded with the hard thunk of coin wrapped in leather when he set it on the table. “I give Fay twenty dollars Friday,” he said. “Have my children eat more than that?”

“Oh, it's not that. It's not just that.” The woman hesitated, her hands still, then the sound burst in a harsh whisper. “The child don't act right!” The words spat into the room. “She hadn't acted right since . . .” Jessie's voice trailed off. She picked up the sheet again and went to sewing in fast, tight little stitches.

The man turned and looked at the children on the floor near the hearth. The girl immediately twisted around on the pallet and sat up.