Authors: Donis Casey
All Men Fear Me (2 page)
“Oh, once upon a time in Arkansas
An old man sat in his little cabin door
And fiddled a tune that I like to hear
A jolly old tune that he played by ear”
â“The Arkansas Traveler” an American folk tune
Henry and the traveler didn't have a lot of time to chat once the train pulled out of the Muskogee station. Boynton was only fifteen miles down the track, and the stop at Wainright was so brief that the train barely slowed down long enough for the stationmaster to fling a bag of mail into the open door of the postal boxcar.
Henry did most of the talking. He wasn't usually such a chatty fellow, but the traveler kept asking him questions, and in such a solicitous manner that Henry found himself relating as much of his life story as he could cram into the half-hour trip.
Yes, he had just come up from Brownsville, Texas. Oh, yes, there was a lot of trouble going on down there. The border clashes hadn't slowed down because of the war. In fact, they were getting worse. That's why he was coming up to Boynton. His mother had convinced his father that it was safer up here.
The traveler and Henry got off the train at Boynton just as the sun cleared the horizon. Neither noticed the nondescript man in the bowler hat who disembarked behind them and moved into the overhanging shadow of the station roof.
The traveler hoisted his backpack and shook the young man's hand. “I wish you luck, slick. And by luck I mean I hope your number don't come up.”
Henry smiled at that. He took a furtive glance around the platform for eavesdroppers before he replied. “I admit I don't want to go to war, Mister, but I expect it's my duty to give it a try. There's a lot I could do for my country if I was in the Army.”
“Sorry to hear that. Good luck just the same, whether you get in or not. I reckon we'll see each other around.”
“I hope so. Thanks again for keeping me from getting my head stove in. Which way you headed?”
“West of town.”
“My uncle's place is to the east, just yonder, so I'll take my leave.”
The man in the bowler hat watched the two men part and tapped his lip with his finger while he figured out his next move. The traveler was sure trouble, but something was not right with the blond-haired youth. He sensed it, and his senses were never wrong. He picked up his kit and took a leisurely stroll down the street that led east.
***
It didn't take the traveler long to walk the three blocks from the Boynton train station, through the still-shuttered downtown, and turn onto the dirt road that led out into the country.
The summer morning was already warm, and promised to be uncomfortable once the sun was high. It made for a beautiful sunrise, though, the dusty sky tinted faintly pink by the light of dawn. There was no wind to stir the leaves on the few scrubby trees that grew between the road and the endless miles of barbed-wire fence enclosing the checkerboard of pasture and cropland. The traveler had noted that the leaves of the trees had turned bottom-side-up. It was going to rain soon. Judging by the state of the crops, he figured that a shower would be most welcome around here.
He had a spry, almost jaunty gait. The big rucksack he had slung over his right shoulder didn't slow him down any. He was dressed for travel in a waistcoat and trousers, a collarless white shirt, faded red bandanna around his neck, leggings, and sturdy walking shoes. A utility knife in its sheath was suspended from his belt. His hair hung almost to his collarânot gray like his beard, or as red either, but the dark reddish brown of a chestnut horse. The wide-brimmed U.S. Army hat on his head, creased front and back in the old Rough Rider style, had seen better days.
It felt good to walk. After the prison camp, the traveler was enjoying the fresh air and the stretch of his limbs as he strode down the rutted road. His practiced eye assessed the crops in the fields as he passed. A lot of cotton had been planted. Not surprising, considering that the price per bale had shot up in the spring, when the country joined the European war.
The traveler heaved a sigh, as he did whenever he thought of the war, and firmly directed his mind to other topics. The countryside looked different from the last time he had come this way, ten years earlier. The land was more settled and cultivated, and there were many more farmhouses than there had been in 1907, just before Oklahoma had joined the Union.
He waved greetings to the farmworkers heading out to the fields as the sun rose, and began to whistle “The Arkansas Traveler” as he rounded the bend of the road at the section line.
On his right, in the distance, a young man was sitting on the top rail of a long wooden gate in the barbed-wire fence that stretched endlessly along the road. A large yellow dog lolled in the dirt at the youngster's feet, which gave the traveler a moment's pause. The dog perked up when he noticed the stranger, mildly interested rather than aggressive, and the traveler relaxed. The young man's head turned, but he didn't move from his place as the walker approached. The youth shifted his seat on the top rail of the gate, hooked the heels of his boots over the second rail, and set himself to study the approaching stranger.
The traveler guessed that the big youth was in his early twenties, maybe, until he grew near enough to get a good look at him. The boy's hands were spread out on either side of himself along the top of the rail, the sleeves of his tan shirt rolled up above his elbows. His cowboy hat was pushed back on his head, revealing a flop of straight fair hair on his forehead, and curious, lively, blue eyes. He was long of limb, but as yet unused to his considerable length, judging by the awkward way his knees and elbows stuck out all over the place as he perched on the gate.
The youngster kept his peace until the traveler stopped five feet from the fence, shrugged the rucksack off his shoulder and lowered it into the dust at his feet. For a moment, the two eyed each other, taking friendly stock. The dog finally stood up and wagged his tail lazily, nosing the stranger's thigh in hopes of an ear rub. The man complied.
The traveler reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and withdrew a tobacco pouch and a pack of cigarette papers. He looked back up at the boy, startled to see that he was even younger than the traveler had reckoned. Those still-rounded cheeks had not yet had use for a razor.
The man looped the drawstring of his tobacco pouch over his index finger and let it dangle as he slid a cigarette paper out of the package. “Howdy, sport. What d'you got to say for yourself?”
The boy flashed him a strong white grin and slid off the fence. He topped the stranger's height by half a head. “Not much, Mister.”
The man creased his cigarette paper and tamped a line of tobacco out of the bag and down the center. He pulled the drawstring closed with his teeth before he ran the tip of his tongue down the edge of the paper, deftly rolled it into a tight little cylinder with one hand, and twisted the ends, neat as you please.
“Mind if I bum one of them off you?”
The traveler cocked an eyebrow, pulled a box of matches out of his pocket, fired up his cigarette and handed it to his companion.
“Thanks, Mister.” The youngster took a drag and let the smoke dribble out between his teeth as he watched the stranger roll a second for himself.
“Where you bound, Mister? We don't see too many passers-by out here. This road ain't hardly on the way to anywhere.”
The man drew a contented lungful of smoke before he answered. “I expect I'm headed right here, slick, if my memory holds true and this is the Tucker farm.”
“It sure is!” The boy straightened and the blue eyes widened in surprise. “I'm Charlie Tucker, and this is my daddy's farm. You looking to buy mules?”
The man's eyes widened in turn. “Charlie! Well, knock me down and stomp all over me! How'd you come to be all growed up? You and me are kin, though it's no wonder you don't remember me. Last I saw you, you were just a little shaver. I'm your uncle Rob Gunn, boy, your mama's brother.”
A momentary blank look on Charlie's face was quickly replaced with an expression of delight. “Uncle Robin?”
The man grinned. “That's right. Now I know you're kin to me, since none of my folks ever called me anything but Robin in all my born days.”
“Well, I'll be jiggered! I thought you were in jail!”
Rob sputtered a laugh at this unstudied outburst. “Sometimes I am, Charlie Boy, and sometimes I ain't, which I ain't right now. I'm between jobs and I had a yen to stop and see my kinfolks while I was at it. You expect you could see me up to the house?”
“Keep the Home Fires Burning”
âpatriotic song lyric by Lena Gilbert Ford, 1914
With his old yellow shepherd at his heels, Charlie led his uncle through the gate and up the long approach to the house. The house looked the same as it had the last time Rob had visited, white, with a long porch, surrounded by a white picket fence and sitting on a slight rise. A capped well sat in front, and herbs and flowers lined the stone walk that led to the front porch steps. In the yard, a redbud sapling stood by at the side of the house. A breeze had picked up with the sunrise, and was worrying the bushes and little sapling. Rob could just see the top of a lightning-blasted hackberry tree at the back corner of the house. A slender woman was sitting in a chair on the front porch, but Rob could tell by her coloring that she was not his dark-haired sister. Surely she was one of his nieces, for even from a distance, she reminded him of his grandmother. Her hair and complexion were rather like his own, and it occurred to him with a pang that this girl could be his daughter.
She stood up and strolled down the porch steps to meet them. Her expression was mildly curious, but she smiled as they approached the gate. Her hair was rolled into a neat twist, but several auburn curls had already made a break for it and had arranged themselves across her brow and cheeks and down the nape of a graceful white neck. Her almond-shaped eyes were precisely the same golden-brown color as the shawl draped over her shoulders.
Charlie's face was wreathed in a big white grin. “Ruthie, guess who this is.”
She reached out and took his hand over the low fence. She was only a little above average height, but stood so straight that she seemed taller than she was. “I hardly recognize you with that beard, but I do believe you're my Uncle Robin come to visit us at long last.” Her voice was low and melodious, as though song were more natural to her than speech.
Rob shook his head. “Ruth, honey, I can't believe you knew me after all this time. You're sure not the same long-legged elf I taught to make a cat's cradle when last I saw you.”
She laughed. “You remember that! Well, it's no surprise that I've changed. That must have been ten years ago! You haven't changed a bit, though, but for all that gray.” She opened the gate and stood aside for them to enter. “Mama will be so glad to see you. Charlie, Mama's back in the woods. Give her a holler and I'll take Uncle Robin into the kitchen and see if I can roust up some breakfast for him.”
“Destroy This Mad Brute”
âU.S. Army enlistment poster
In the woods behind the Tucker farmhouse, the buffalo currants and blackberry bushes were heavy with fruit. The deep shade was occasionally punctuated with color that flared when a breeze stirred the leaves and allowed a shaft of early sunlight to illuminate a scattering of purple henbit. Every morning of the world, Alafair Tucker made her way out to the woods after breakfast was cleared away to snatch a moment of solitude, commune with nature and the Deity, and feed stale breadcrumbs to the wild turkeys who made their home here.
Her companion this morning was her two-and-a-half year old granddaughter, Zeltha Day, child of her fourth daughter, Phoebe. Zeltha was only a bit more than two years younger than Alafair's youngest child, Grace, who was far too energetic and chatty for her mother's one quiet morning ritual. But Zeltha was a peaceful, dreamy little girl, with mild, round, hazel eyes, and thick black hair that liked to stick straight up.
Phoebe had worried that Zeltha still did not talk much, but Alafair was inclined to think that the girl simply kept her own counsel. Animals adored her. Even when she was an infant, the farm dogs and cats, Phoebe's little milk goat, even wild birds, would come close when her mother took her outside.
At the moment, Zeltha was hunkered down beside Alafair's knee, doling out the breadcrumbs clutched in her fist. She had nothing to say, but the soft chortling sound she was making was so like the turkeys' that it took Alafair a moment to realize it was her.
Alafair looked after Zeltha quite a lot these days, now that Phoebe was busy tending to her husband, her house and garden, and her active one-year-old, Tuck. Truth be told, Alafair sometimes volunteered to keep Zeltha without being asked. Zeltha was such a soothing presence. Which her own lively children were not.
Alafair was not a fearful woman, but never before in her life had there been so much to dread. For a woman whose entire experience of the world extended from the western side of the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas to the middle of the Southwestern desert, Europe was so far away that she had never imagined that the fire that was raging there could ever burn her.
And it hasn't, yet, she kept reminding herself, as she scattered crumbs. Yet the United States was in it, now. She didn't have the slightest idea what that would mean. Would they come here, the Germans, so far away? Would Hindenburg send brutal men in his submarines and battleships to march across this wide country burning and killing and raping, spearing children on their bayonets? Had such a thing really happened in Belgium? The papers had said so, and even though she wasn't quite sure where Belgium was, she certainly didn't wish such a thing on the poor natives. She was quite aware that human beings were capable of unspeakable acts, yet she was always skeptical of such stories, since it was hard for her to believe that so many people could be so evil all at once.
Whether or not the tales of German atrocities were true, she had a very bad feeling about the hysteria that seemed to have gripped the country. The worst thing, though, was the horror in the back of her mind that she refused to allow the full light of consciousness. She had eight daughters, two sons, and four sons-in-law. One of her boys was sixteen. But the other would be twenty-one in a month. Barely too young for the draft lottery that would be held within a week, but not too young to volunteer. And there was talk of a second draft later in the yearâ¦.
She knew it was no help to worry about something that hadn't happened yet. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
But all the common sense and biblical philosophy in the world couldn't keep thoughts of war and death out of her mind for long. Something evil was about to happen, she could feel it. She closed her eyes and purposefully narrowed her thoughts, banishing past and future together, as she concentrated on the slight rustle of the leaves in the breeze. One of the birds brushed her ankle, his feathers a warm tickle.
She was so engrossed in the smell of the earth and the turkeys' chortling contentment as they fed that it took a few seconds for her to realize that her boy Charlie was calling her. She straightened and cocked her head toward the sound, not entirely sure she had really heard him, but his voice pierced the morning again, a long call riding the breeze.
“Maaaa. We've got companeeeeeâ¦.”
Alafair smiled. He sounded excited. As usual, Charlie was bringing home some action, something to set things aroil.
She tossed the rest of the breadcrumbs out of the pan onto the ground, hoisted Zeltha onto her hip, and headed out of the copse toward the house.
She cleared the tree line and stepped into the open space behind the house, then stood still for a moment with Zeltha in one arm and the old beat-up cornbread pan dangling from her hand at her side. She had emerged from the woods at enough of an angle that she could see around the house and onto the long drive that led from the front gate. Charlie and her middle daughter Ruth were walking toward the house with a slight, gray-bearded man with a rucksack. Alafair shook her head. It was just like the boy to invite a passing hobo to have a meal with the family.
But there was something familiar about the way the stranger carried himself, a jaunty, swinging stride that caused her heart to pick up the beat. She started toward the road, and then she was trotting before she even realized it. “I declare!” she said aloud. “I declare!”