Those Across the River

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

DORA COLLAPSED JUST outside of town.

I had been in and out of consciousness myself, but the rough landing in Miles Falmouth’s unkempt patch of acorn squash jolted me into the here and now. Dora and I both struggled to our feet. I saw now that her nightshift was drenched in blood, and she was holding her hand over her abdomen.

There was so much blood.

Her white legs were covered in it.

“I’m sorry, Frankie. I guess she shot me. I didn’t feel it for a while, but oh God I do now.”

“Is it… is it going to heal?”

“It burns too much. I think it’s silver.”

Charley Wade’s gun. The bitch had picked up Charley’s gun when he dropped it during the stoning.

We leaned into each other and rested with our foreheads together. My mind raced. Eudora was bleeding to death and I didn’t know where to take her. Dr. McElroy was surely dead and Morgan’s hospital was far away and dangerous. Oddly, I noticed that it was a pleasant day. The brilliant blue sky and tawny fields behind her seemed incongruous with the mortal danger she was in.

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to lie down with her so we could die together nestled like teaspoons.

“Who’s out there?”

I looked at the porch of the sagging house and saw Miles Falmouth leaning on his cane, holding his rifle. I couldn’t see clearly, but it seemed he had a beard now.

“Thank God,” I said, then shouted, “It’s Frank and Dora Nichols! We need help!”

He was silent for a moment.

What was he doing?

Fussing with the gun.

He pointed it now and screamed insanely at us. “GIT ON OUTTA HERE! I know what she is now. Maybe you, too. GIT!”

“She’ll die,” I said.

“Good,” I heard, then he shot above our heads.

He drew and slapped the bolt, and aimed again.

“Next time I start tryin. GIT!”

I remembered my .45, which was still in my waistband; Martin’s pants were so tight, the gun had stayed wedged in. I had the presence of mind not to actually put my hand on it now.

We limped together through his field. It was taking forever. He watched us down the barrel all the way off his property.

Now we were in the Gordeaus’ corn, but there weren’t any more Gordeaus. Crows were flying all around, a few at first, then many. A proper murder of them. We made the street. A dog was barking somewhere.

The town square was deserted as we went through. We limped near Harvey’s Drug Emporium, and I banged on the door but found it locked. Harvey was moving inside. He pulled the shade.

“Please,” I said, and banged the door again.

Nothing.

We moved away.

I looked at the wrecked tea roses.

I looked at the flaking town hall.

I looked down and noticed that we were both leaving bloody footprints on the sidewalk.

I felt woozy for a minute, and went to lean on Dora, but she was leaning too much on me. Her head was starting to droop. I reached deep inside me and pulled up what was left. I had to be strong for just a little while longer. I helped Dora towards the general store, but before I even got close, Peter Miller came out and waved us off.

“Keep away,” he said. “Nobody here wants what you got.”

“We’re dying,” I said.

“We don’t want it,” he said again, and went inside and locked his door. I looked around. Curtains jiggled and shadowy figures moved in windows in all directions. We were a spectacle. We were lepers.

The door to the hardware store opened, and for a wild moment I thought Sheriff Blake was going to come out. He did not, but one-armed Mike did. He had a wheelbarrow. A fucking wheelbarrow.

“Get away from there,” somebody yelled at him.

He dragged it behind him, unable to push it with just the one arm. He helped me put Dora in it. Then he went back to the hardware store and shut the door. He waved out the window at us. He was crying.

Staggering, praying, stopping to heave, stopping to rest. Somehow I got us home.

I piled Dora into the passenger seat of the Ford and then stumbled into the house to get the key and my spare pair of glasses, whose frames were slightly bent. I didn’t bother locking up as I left. As I opened the driver’s-side door, I saw my reflection in the glass and didn’t recognize it for a second. Beard nearly full grey now. Sunken eyes. Crooked glasses. A ghoul was trying to get into my car.

I pulled the gun out of my waistband and sat down. The car seemed strange to me, like I had forgotten how it worked. I had to think my way through every step. Key in the dash, turn it to On, check the gas, clutch in, stick in neutral, spark lever up (this hurt my broken finger), throttle down, choke, then the starter button. Spark lever down. Let her warm up. Don’t pass out. Brake. Reverse gear. Check mirror. Foot off brake. Now we’re moving.

I backed the car out.

Right into a throng of women.

Nearly hitting Mrs. Woodruff, Sarah’s mother. She was holding a large, mean-looking wrench. The other women had makeshift weapons, too. And at least one gun; a woman I didn’t recognize had a rifle.

Mrs. Woodruff’s face was tight and determined. She slapped her hand on my window. Her ring nearly chipped it.

“You open that window and talk to me!” she said.

Proceeding on the theory that angry women with wrenches rarely have nice things to say, I stepped on the gas. I believe I ran over her foot. A hoe flashed and broke a headlamp. The woman with the rifle shot, but I don’t know how many times because I was also honking the horn as I sped off. I can’t say why. I believe it was a reflex. One of the shots hit the body of the car, but I could only assume it didn’t damage anything important, because we kept moving. Now I saw Mr. Woodruff coming up the road on a horse, holding a pistol. God knows how the maenads had beaten him here; maybe he had gone ahead to try to cut me off.

He pointed the pistol, and I laid on the horn again, making straight for the horse, an ugly mottled thing. It did what I hoped it might do in ruining his shot, but then it surprised everybody with a proper rear and pitched the ignorant bastard into a tree.

And that was how we left Whitbrow.

I didn’t know where we were going, but that’s just as well.

We wouldn’t have arrived anyway.

A BABY WAS crying.

I was on my stomach.

I opened my eyes, but this took some effort; they were crusty and they hurt. Everything hurt. I saw words, and I tried to focus on them.

TALMADGE OPPOSES ROOSEVELT ON CCC

I didn’t understand why this was important, why it was right in front of my eyes. I picked up my head a little and it felt like an iceskater slid to a stop on my back and then wiggled there.

“God,” I said, and shut my eyes again.

The baby kept crying.

Why wasn’t Dora hushing it?

Why should she? She couldn’t have any.

Where was I?

“Gramma, that man awake now.”

“I told you he was fittin to wake up.”

“I thought he dead.”

“No, chile. Lots livin that look dead, and lots dead that look livin.”

“Can I look him in the face?”

“Sure enough, he won’t hurt you.”

I felt a small poke on my right arm.

“Dammit, Horace, I didn’t say you could touch im.”

“His face was agin the wall.”

I opened my eyes again. I saw that what I had looked at before was a newspaper that had been pasted to pine boards. Moving my head a little, I saw that there were others, covering the whole wall.

I was confused.

Where was my Dora?

“Don’t you roll over and mess up my work, now,” a woman said.

I edged up just a little on my forearms and looked to my right. Just about the cutest little black boy ever was staring at me with big eyes. Behind him was a huge older woman with a kerchief around her head, trying to bounce the bad humor out of a squalling baby in a burlap gown.

“You might just live,” she said.

“My wife.”

“I think she gonna live, too, but if you got any prayers, pray em hard. She bad hurt. She ain’t woke up yet.”

I saw something fall off my shoulder and wriggle on the fabric near my face. It was a maggot. I groaned.

“Horace, put that back under the man’ dressin, and mind you don’t kill im.”

“Yes’m,” said the boy, and he pinched it carefully between his little fingers and tucked it somewhere on my back. I felt sick.

“I know they ain’t pretty but they eat all the bad out. I’m a take em off today an put honey to you. Moss, hosstail, onion juice an comfrey, too. An you gonna drank hosstail tea. Do that an them licks gonna close right up. Don’t an you gonna be in the groun by Friday. What you think, can you drank a little tea?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“One thing you owe me to tell.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Somebody lookin for you?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, you better live, cause if you die I’m a dump you in a hole and never tell nobody. You come from Whitbrow?”

“Yes, ma’am. Where am I?”

“You didn’t get too far. You in Chalk Ridge. We poor as bluejays, an twice as loud, but you better off here. The Good Lord done forgot where Whitbrow was a long time ago.”

“Gramamma?”

“Yes, chile.”

“I don’t like he face.”

“Hush with that. Somebody put a bullwhip to you, you make a bad face, too.”

I WAS WITH sharecroppers, poor tenant farmers who were working another man’s land for barely enough to survive. He could kick them off anytime he wanted. They bought their mules, tools and tankage from him at very unfriendly prices. He made them grow corn, cotton and tobacco, and the corn went right up to the door. No room for their own garden, but my benefactor, Miss Matilda, grew a few things in the pine trees near the road. When the crops were big they broke even and when they were small they went further into debt. Eventually the landowner would evict them, seize their tools and livestock and sell them to the next bunch foolish enough to move in. God bless America. We had abolished slavery and reinvented serfdom.

I spent the next two days on my stomach, except for trips to the privy, helped there and back again by different members of the family. Miss Matilda had five grown sons, four daughters and so many grandchildren that I couldn’t keep track and I was impressed that she could. Despite their lack of shoes, monotonous diet (almost nothing but corn and lard) and dew sores, the children were lively and game. Horace was my most loyal companion; I guess he had adjusted his position on the quality of my face. He would share with me from a big bag of white clay I was supposed to eat; it tasted gritty and foul to me, but the boy loved it. All of them ate it. They seemed to crave it. It wasn’t chalk, but it was just that white; I wonder if deposits of the stuff had been responsible for the town’s name.

Horace sat on the side of my bed, which was really just an elevated plank and a sack stuffed with corn husks, while I told him stories like “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.” We had a fine old time. But what he really wanted was a ride in my car.

Apparently the car was in good shape. I had blacked out and driven it into a ditch, but Matilda’s son, who had driven the landlord’s farm truck, used a mule to get it out, then started it with no problem. He moved it back behind the shacks where it couldn’t be seen from the road.

I promised Horace I would give him a ride.

Three days after I came to, Miss Matilda helped me walk five shacks down where her daughter Samma lived; Samma’s husband was dead, and, in the name of Christian charity, she had given her bed to the dying white woman who, as it turned out, had decided not to die.

“She woke up at all?” Miss Matilda asked Samma.

“Say a word sometime, then go back asleep. Mostly say ‘Frank.’ S’pose that be you.”

“At your service,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess you in my service now.”

“We in Jesus’ service, girl. Don’t let me hear you talking small again.”

“Yes’m.”

Dora moved her head side to side, then lay still again.

“Samma, go see to Horace an leave me alone with Mr. Frank.”

Samma obliged. Miss Matilda moved over to a spool table and picked something out of a bowl. She brought it over for me to look at. It was a slightly misshapen silver slug.

“What you gonna tell me about this?” she said.

“What do you want to know?”

“Don’t play no ‘what you want to know’ with me. My boy Egger brought you and that woman lookin like two dead cats out of that car, and you got better like I thought you might. But I was sure she was goin to Jesus. Now I ain’t so sure it Jesus she was goin to. She pushed this outta her. It came outta her lady parts, and now she’s getting better fast. I ain’t never seen nothing like this. But I heard about it.”

“What did you hear?”

“She a Look-a-roo. Look just like us but change into a boogey when the moon come, and nothing kill em but silver. They tell that story to scare babies outta they fussin. But she is one. Whitbrow had bad trouble these days, like when the Look-a-roo was comin roun after the State War takin chilluns. Now you come outta there all beat up and shot up. Mister, you go ahead an tell me I’m wrong, if you can do it without lyin.”

There was nothing to be done. There was no lie to be told and no more running to do. I just nodded.

“I’m a keep this silver,” she said.

“Okay.”

“They say the Look-a-roo come here to punish Massa for havin slaves, and that’s why it stick on Whitbrow but leave us alone. But that moon’s comin up brighter every night and I don’t want her nowhere near us when it big. You promise me you git her outta here and leave us be. We got the Lord right here in Chalk Ridge and don’t deserve no more trouble than we got.”

No, I agreed. They didn’t.

Dora woke up that night.

Two days later we left, with a gallon of hosstail tea and a bag of corn bread. I had a good, homemade shirt and a tattered coat. Dora got one of Samma’s two homemade Sunday dresses, and Miss Matilda nearly had to beat her to get it from her. Miss Matilda was too proud to take money, but Samma wasn’t. I called her over to the car and gave her a hundred and twenty dollars, and her eyes just about fell out of her head; that was two months’ worth of teaching pay, and almost the last of the money my aunt had left us.

Now Samma’s eyes narrowed.

“Man who got this much got a lot more besides. You’d a died, we’d a got it all. Give me twenty more.”

I did.

“Hmph,” she said, and hid it.

Before we left, I had a promise to keep. Horace and his younger brothers, sisters, cousins and friends, everyone who was too young to be in the field, all piled on and into the Ford. The sun was rising red and pretty in the east. I drove in slow, wide circles in a field, raising a cloud of dust, careful not to spill any of my squealing freight. There were little hands on my arm, little hands leaving smudges on the glass. I saw a bunch of crows picking around and steered for them as one girl with her hair in lots of little red ribbons screamed, “Git them crows! Git them crows!” and laughed good, high laughter. The last weeks had been awfully short of good moments, but that was one.

That was definitely all right.