Angels Make Their Hope Here (19 page)

“No!” both Jan and Dossie shouted. “There is more to this
thing here, Uncle,” Jan continued. “Let’s us leave her to fix herself. Let’s us talk about it.”

“What happen here, boy?” Duncan shouted. “You bring my wife back here bleedin’ and broke up. What happen?”

“Was Emil Branch. We kilt him. She’s in one piece, but we got trouble, Uncle. Emil Branch was attackin’ Dossie and she kilt him,” Jan squeezed out the words with great effort. Only then did Duncan see the thick red bands around Jan’s neck, his bruised eyes, and the gash at his hairline.

Jan propped himself unsteadily against the doorjamb.

“Son, what you talkin’…?” Duncan’s words trailed off as Jan slid toward the floor.

Duncan took his nephew under the arms and supported him. He’d heard his own voice call the young man by his baby name. It was a visceral response to the sight of his welts and his faint, and Duncan brought him to a chair and sat him in it. He poured a mug of ale to revive Jan and get the story.

“Son, what happen to y’all?” Duncan asked in a coaxing, paternal voice.

Jan gave forth the story painfully, haltingly. When it all had come out, neither could speak.

Duncan sat in the rocking chair and sawed back and forth on the floor, emitting deep grunts. Then he leaped up suddenly and stood with his fists poised.

“I ain’t help her. I open the door for that bastard. I knew his mama and I bragged on it. I didn’t think what I was sayin’. I made a enemy of him and he made my Dossie pay. I’m gonna dig him up and take off his balls and burn ’em, Jan. Then I’ma go down to Paterson and spoil his wife some.”

“No, Uncle. Stop that talk! Dossie already paid him full. We better be smart, or she’ll swing.”

“He ain’t been paid full for what he done!” Duncan’s voice sounded like the wavering cry of a sheep and it unsettled Jan. “A woman got a right to kill a beast attacking her!”

“Colored woman ain’t got that right, Uncle—not ’mongst the whites. Colored woman ain’t got the right to kill a white man no matter what he do to her. You know that. Emil Branch was a lawman besides. They’ll show you a colored woman swingin’ from a tree as easily as any man!” Jan said bitterly. “Her an’ me and you, too. She’ll hang and so will all of us if they catch us!”

“Now Dossie got a killin’ on her soul, what she gonna do? What she gonna do, Jan? She mus’ been so scared. My min’ ain’t clear. Help me, son. Help me, Jan. Help me to take care of my Dossie!”

Jan looked at his uncle and was surprised. Duncan Smoot was unhinged. All throughout the proceedings since Emil Branch had died Jan had been musing that what he must do was bring Dossie to Uncle, and Uncle would grab them both up and know how to turn away the rest of the world. Duncan was the heart of their refuge. Jan had spurred Dossie and kept her from fainting by saying that they would soon get home and that Duncan would be at home and all would be well. But she’d got sick at the sight of him.

In the past Jan had wanted to set the old man back on his heels. But he studied him now in silence. A man so accustomed to venting anger and meting out punishments is now shaking with indecision?

“The harm was done to her, old man,” Jan said sharply. “Dossie’s not no lamp on the mantel that the sheriff knocked to the floor and broke.” His voice was sober and angry.

Duncan looked up at his nephew like an inquisitive child. “You think God is punishin’ me for what I done?”

“I hope there ain’t no God that cares so much for you, old man, that he’d let this happen to her.”

“I wanna talk to Noelle and find out what the Afric gods got to say ’bout this.”

“Uncle, it’s late in the day for bringin’ up religion and spells and such,” Jan chided.

“Get Noelle! Get Hattie! We got to get her some help!” Duncan cried.

“You got to be quiet some, Uncle,” Jan said in a cool voice. “We got to think about what’s been done and who ought to know about it—for they own protection. Your wife killed a white man, an’ we don’ wan’ her to hang.”

Suddenly Duncan honed his attention on his nephew as if only then questioning some facts of the events. “How come you ain’t stop him, Jan? Why you let it fall to her? You been followin’ her, been watching her. How come you didn’t kill Emil Branch when he was rapin’ my wife?”

Jan had expected the onslaught. He’d raked himself over coals to explain why he hadn’t he come up quicker. Why hadn’t he knifed Emil Branch?

But he’d lapsed in his watching and, when Sally Vander said the sheriff had come by, he went to find the shed that Mattie Ricks had told him about. When he reached it and heard Dossie’s screams, there was one long moment when he couldn’t see where she was. He heard her cries. She was beneath the man and obscured by him. Branch might have been holding her with a gun or a noose about her neck. Jan had hesitated only so much as that moment. Then he’d picked up a post with a nail
in it and slammed it into Branch’s back. Branch roared and turned to face him and was upon him quickly. They mostly grappled and tried to subdue each other. Jan couldn’t catch hold of his naked opponent as his skin was slick with sweat. Branch had hold of him tightly, though, and began closing his hands around Jan’s neck, putting him in a perfect lock and throttle and cutting off his air.

“I set out to kill him, but he bested me,” Jan confessed to Duncan. “She killed him to save me, not herself. She put her soul in jeopardy for me. I won’t let her swing for it.”

“What you sayin’, boy?” Duncan flared indignantly, and Jan stood toe to toe with him. He wanted to hit somebody. Jan saw that and understood it. But Jan knew he would not allow it. Duncan would have to rein himself this time. He would have to hold himself back because of Dossie. She had borne the harm! It was for her to raise her voice and scream and make vows. She had been raped, she had killed the man, and she was shaken.

Duncan quieted. He sat down and slumped in his chair. He held his head down, bent forward.

“Husban’,” Dossie said when she rose the next day. At the sound of her voice both men’s hearts came alive with hope. She stood in the doorway, and her woolly hair was every which way on her head from lying down and tossing. “I did not do it willin’, husban’,” she said. The words tumbled fast. Her eyes filled up with water when Duncan touched her cheek. There was a quality of ghostliness in her expression. “I was scared that man could hurt you.”

Duncan placed his finger over her lips to seal them. “Hush, girl. Hush, Dossie, don’ say nothin’. Nobody blame you! You must know it!”

Duncan and Dossie sat at their table and ate hoecakes. For all of their travail, they looked like childhood sweethearts. Duncan held a cake to Dossie’s lips and she smiled and bit into it to please him.

Jan sat on the porch and considered what they’d tell the others—An’ Hat, Pet, and Noelle. They would have to know what had happened and would have to be part of a solution.

Later in the morning, Jan went out to the chicken house to take care of Dossie’s birds and her dog. There was agitation in the animals because they had not seen their mistress. They were noisy.

“Mr. Jan, Mr. Jan,” Sally Vander called out. Hiding in the familiar territory of the chicken house, Sally said her piece in a forceful whisper. “Folks sayin’ she run away wid him. Mattie Ricks from down in the town is tellin’ folks there is a letter to the sheriff’s mama sayin’ he meant to take Miz Dossie out West They say he chuck his wife for Miz Dossie and she lef’ willin’ to go. My mama say it can’ be. I ’on’ say nothin’.”

Sally had concealed herself for some hours waiting for Jan to come feed the birds. She was guessing that he’d be the one who did this errand for the woman he was so sweet on.

“You be a good wife someday, Sally,” Jan said. He couldn’t help flirting and flattering the young girl. “You smart and brave, eh?” His attention made Sally giggle widely and show her prominent, brown gums.

Jan circled her waist and made her staunch in the enterprise by kissing her. “Don’t say nothin’ different—not even to your
mama.” He knew she would not betray them. “No matter what they ask you. You don’t know nothing. Anything could be true, you say. That letter can work in our favor,” Jan said more to himself than to her. “Me an’ Miz Dossie are goin’. You gonna wait for me to come back? I’m comin’ back, you know,” he vowed, teasing Sally, using her poor heart to his purpose. “Don’t pass up any good beau if he should come along, though, you hear?” Jan pursed his lips in a kiss. Sally turned and ran away.

Pet stood around expectantly for much of the morning. He felt something was happening that he’d been left out of. Later Pet and his mother set out together for Duncan’s place. Both of them could feel a draw—a something in the air.

“Brother!” Hat called out breathlessly. She was in a lather by the time she was in sight of Duncan’s porch. “Brother!” she called out.

“Come in quiet, Hattie. Don’t holler,” Duncan replied.

“Where is Dossie, Brother? Sally said she was doin’ an errand for you and now folks are sayin’ she’s run off.” Hat confronted Duncan at the threshold.

“Hat, I’m here. I’m sorry to worry you.” Dossie’s voice from inside the house was small like a penny dropped.

“Dossie?” Hat’s forehead wrinkled up and drew tight in with questioning.

“What’s goin’ on here, Uncle?” Pet asked Duncan, but looked into Jan’s face. Jan’s eyes shifted and Pet felt betrayed. Jan had kept him out of something important.

“Is Emil Branch, Pet. Dossie had to kill him.”

“Kill?” Pet blurted.

Hat sucked her breath in loudly. “Kill? How come she kill the sheriff?”

“He was rapin’ her, Hat. He was violatin’ her,” Duncan wailed.

“He had his hands on my neck and she knifed him to save me,” Jan confessed to his cousin. He felt his admission exposed him as a worm and he watched his cousin’s face experience a range of expressions.

“Then it’s a case of self-defense,” Pet answered, though he knew he sounded naïve and falsely hopeful.

“The law won’t see it like that, Pet,” Jan said. “We’re in a stew.”

Kill the sheriff with a knife! Little Dossie had done that? Hat took Dossie’s hand and led her into the bedroom.

In the other room the men had stood around Dossie obscuring her from view. In the bedroom Hat saw that her face was pained, that she winced, that she was close to a faint.

“Let me see?” Hat was frightened, but she faced looking. “I can maybe help you,” she whispered while they removed the wrapper that Dossie had kept tightly closed up to her throat.

“He dirtied me with what he did, Hat. He changed me. I killed him. I’m not the same as I was,” Dossie squeezed out in an odd, uncertain voice.

“We’ll heal you up. You will be yourself again,” Hat replied. Her words were gentle and urgent and conspiratorial. Perhaps she could keep her brother from seeing the thick bands on Dossie’s thighs and arms. Maybe Emil Branch’s finger marks on Dossie’s breasts would fade before Duncan saw them. Maybe they could keep Duncan from digging up Emil Branch and cutting off his leather.

There were things in Emil Branch’s pockets and Jan had
removed them before wrapping his body and putting it in Gideon’s lap. There were two tickets for a train passage to Phillipsburg. There was a receipt for a wagon and a receipt for a horse, both to be picked up in Phillipsburg. He’d had a gun and a knife. He’d carried tincture of opium in a leather pouch in his coat and he had a flask of whiskey.

Jan looked around at all of their faces. He knew he must say the thing that no one wanted to hear. “She’s got to go. We can’t hide what happened if she stays.”

“My wife ain’t going nowhere,” Duncan shouted out. “I’ma take her place if I gotta. I’ll face the law.”

“Settle down, Duncan. We got to have a plan,” Hat said. She uncorked the whiskey and poured some of it for all of them. Jan’s hands shook and she pressed his hands around his glass and squeezed. She poured his drink tall.

“What good will it do her for you to swing? A colored woman whose husband is hanged is in desperation,” Hat said to her brother.

“If they come here hunting her they will make a show of it. A woman who has killed a sheriff will suffer. They ain’t gonna just string her up in her Sunday dress. They’ll abuse her and anybody who gets in the way,” Jan put in. “If they come here they liable to kill others of the People. They will burn out the town. We can’t visit that on our neighbors. I’ma give myself in and say I kilt him,” Jan said. “I ought to have anyway. I give myself up and clear her record.”

“I woulda killed him, too,” Hat said with a sudden, big passion.

“We ought to go east to New York.” Dossie spoke and the others turned their heads. They hadn’t noticed that she got up
to replenish her coffee, that she gazed out over her swept-up yard, that she thought of her first moments upon this porch in Duncan Smoot’s heaven. She was contemplative. She was quiet—reticent as she’d once been in their presence. When she had first come to this heaven home, she never considered leaving it. Leaving her heaven now looked like it was going to be the only way to keep it a heaven for the others. When Emil Branch was destroying her, all she thought of was praying for Duncan to recover her bones and keep them here in Russell’s Knob. But now she must consider the People. She must go now because what she’d done could get them all burned out. She ought to go because of Emil Branch’s plan. If his plan would work, his people would think he went off alive and left them. “I’m goin’ to the city with Jan and let the trouble here blow away some,” Dossie said. “Leavin’ is the best plan for coverin’ up what happen. They likely won’t look back east for him. He claim he left a letter for his wife and his mama. He said he was”—she put down her cup carefully as if her next words would cause her to drop it—“taking me out West into Pennsylvania, on to Ohio, and on to St. Louis. He said he would leave me off there. He’d have his chance to kill you if you thought it was worth it to track me.” Dossie took up her coffee again, sipped some, then resumed speaking while all of them stared. “Maybe you wouldn’t want to bother so much for a ruined woman. In that case I was free for him to take,” Dossie’s voice trembled and sputtered out as her hand shook.

Hat poured a dollop of the whiskey in Dossie’s coffee and pushed it toward her. She made an encouraging expression of her eyebrows.