Man in the Blue Moon (13 page)

“Kissed?”

Sheriff Bissell glanced over at Mr. Busby and then leaned down until the crumb on his chin fell to the top of the counter, next to the cash register. His eyebrows rose into perfect arches. “Folks are saying he put his mouth right on your boy’s mouth. Same as he would a woman. Now I’m not saying whether he did or didn’t, I’m just saying—”

“Well, he did not.” Ella stood upright. Her face flushed, and she stammered, “What you’re repeating . . . what you’re circulating is a lie.”

Mr. Busby stopped fussing with the backdrop, and Ruby looked away from the wooden doll with blue chalk eyes that Lanier had made.

“Now I’m not here to get into beauty-parlor gossip,” the sheriff said. “My job is to uphold the law. I got to clarify . . . you know . . . clarify what people are accusing.”

“Who’s accusing?” Ella asked.

The sheriff closed his eyes, shook his head, and fanned his hat. “Like I said, I’m not getting into all that. I just don’t want somebody around here that might have unnatural tendencies.”

Ella walked from around the store counter. She stood so close to the sheriff that she could make out a stye underneath his eyelid. “If there’s anything unnatural here, it’s the unusual amount of attention that people are paying to me lately. Now let me tell you one thing, Charlie Bissell. I was standing right there in that room when Macon was treated by that man, and there was nothing perverse about it.”

“Enough said.” Sheriff Bissell smiled and brushed crumbs from his hands. “No need to fly off the handle. We’re just sorting it all through.”

“Oh, you’re right. There’s been more than enough said,” Ella added. “I am the boy’s mother. Husband or no husband, I am still able to keep watch over my children.”

“Now, Ella. May I say this.” Sheriff Bissell held up his stubby fingers with flakes of crackers on his thumbs. “Folks just want to make sure you and these boys don’t get hurt. You know, there is such a thing as being too trusting, even if somebody’s claiming to be kin.”

As Sheriff Bissell walked out of the store, Ella stared at the damp khaki material that gathered in the seat of his pants. She noticed how he patted the side of his waist where a pistol hung from a holster. “Now, you call if you need us. And I’ll tell Lovey that the picture man has come to town. She always was the craziest thing over a picture.”

Ella leaned against the barrel half-filled with watermelons that were becoming too ripe to sell. Her breathing was sparse, and she felt the rage of her pulse. She fought the urge to run after the sheriff and plead her case in front of the people who milled about in front of the store.

“Ella,” Mr. Busby said. He barely touched the sleeve of her shirt that was still stained with pine tar.

“I’m fine,” she said and pulled away.

Ruby marched up to them carrying one of the dolls Lanier had made. It was painted with a white beard that he had modeled after the Uncle Sam poster that hung on the store wall, advertising the need for war recruits. She hummed “The Star-Spangled Banner” and used the arm of the doll to imitate a salute. The sound of her song wore on Ella’s nerves as much as the words handed down to her by the sheriff.

“Are you sure?” Mr. Busby asked. “You look peaked.”

Ella nodded and then watched Ruby stomp back to the birdcage. The sound of her humming seemed to grow louder.

“I am perfectly fine,” Ella said.

“You might be weak from all that work. Have you eaten?” Mr. Busby turned his head as if examining Ella.

Ella nodded once more, and Ruby began tapping the beat to the song against the birdcage.

“Ruby, will you hush with that humming!”

Mr. Busby took a step backward, and Ruby dropped the doll on the floor. She stared at Ella and then thumped the birdcage with her thumb and forefinger.

Elroy Purvis, the beekeeper, came in wearing a wide-brimmed hat with lifted veil. He looked at Mr. Busby, then at Ruby, and finally at Ella. “Afternoon,” the man said.

“Afternoon, Elroy.” Ella moved away from Mr. Busby and the barrel of melons. “What can I do for you?”

While Ella rang up the case of Mason jars that the beekeeper wanted, Mr. Busby busied himself by selling a portrait to a woman who was new to the area. “You can’t spend enough to capture precious memories,” Mr. Busby said after the woman told him she had two children. “They grow up so fast,” he added. Ruby sauntered about the store, running her baton against one of the watermelons before returning to the birdcage, where Lanier’s dolls were displayed on a shelf below. Pulling the ends of her dress up to her waist, she grabbed the Uncle Sam doll and shoved it into her underwear.

“I tell you what we can do,” Mr. Busby said. “I’m so confident you’ll be pleased, I’ll go ahead and take your son’s photograph. And then we can settle on an amount you think fair.”

The woman twisted her mouth and said, “I just don’t know.” She looked to the side and then back at Mr. Busby. She pointed toward Ruby. “Oh my stars,” she whispered. “That girl . . . that girl just put a doll in her unmentionables.”

The beekeeper lifted the crate of Mason jars, thanked Ella, and turned to leave. Ruby swung the baton over her shoulder and marched directly into the man. The crate fell to the floor, and the sound of breaking glass filled the room. Ruby screamed and tried to run out the door. Mr. Busby grabbed her by the arm, and the baton fell and then rolled out onto the porch.

“Let go of me,” Ruby screamed. She kicked and leaned down, trying to bite Mr. Busby.

“It’s in her unmentionables,” the woman kept saying, pointing at Ruby.

Ruby thrashed and tripped over the crate of broken Mason jars. Her dress rose up, and the foot of the doll stuck out from the hem of her underwear.

“Look,” the woman said, moving closer.

They all stood over Ruby, and when she scampered to get up, Mr. Busby grabbed her by the wrist again.

“You never were nothing but trouble,” the beekeeper said and left to get the sheriff, who was standing at the intersection, listening to an old man complain about his neighbor’s wayward cattle ruining his garden.

As the sheriff pulled Ruby out of the store, promising to take her back to her father, they all agreed that she was in need of better supervision. “I’ve been telling that daddy of hers,” the sheriff said. “I been telling Earl she was going to wind up in a mess. He won’t hear of it.”

“Earl ought to lock her up in her room or something,” the beekeeper said. “Instead of staying drunk half the time, he ought to be looking after that simpleton.”

Ella stood at the door with her arms wrapped, massaging her elbows. The new customer, the beekeeper, and Mr. Busby stood behind her, shaking their heads. Ella kept telling herself that the sheriff would take care of it. The incident was only a momentary setback in returning to normalcy. She watched Ruby kick and listened as the sheriff warned her not to make a scene. But the time for warnings was long past.

Myer Simpson, Neva Clarkson, and the other ladies who fought the afternoon heat by sipping tea poured from a glass pitcher all leaned against the Simpsons’ spooled porch railing, craning their necks toward the parade that the sheriff led. Everyone within shouting distance of the intersection could hear Ruby screaming.

That night Ella stood at the bedroom mirror with her hair draped over her shoulders. She brushed it and watched as slivers of pine and bits of spiderweb fell to the floor.
This too has passed,
Ella thought of the wood that seemed to multiply inside her black locks. She sat on the edge of the bed, massaging her shoulder, and then looked toward the window. The thin lace curtains revealed the shadow of the tin roof on her barn. She stepped closer and lifted the edge with her fingernail that was still sticky from the turpentine that no amount of kerosene seemed able to strip away.

There was no light from the barn or across the way where Narsissa’s cabin stood. A whip-poor-will called out from the night, and Ella felt satisfaction at the sound that typically made her feel melancholy. Even if she couldn’t make out the stacks of pine at the edge of her drive, she knew they were there, served up from land that had saved her, just like her father had promised in her youth. Lying on the bed, Ella reached over and turned down the kerosene lamp. She could hear Samuel snoring in the room next to hers. If she hadn’t known better, she would have guessed that the noise was coming from an old man. Sleep found her before she could pull back the covers.

The darkest hour of the night fell on Ella Wallace’s property. An owl swooped down to snatch away a field mouse that the calico cat chased from a tree stump to the pile of timber. The cat looked up just as two men arrived. The tallest man was dressed in suspenders and the other in knee-high boots. The cat twitched its tail and darted across the road, but the men didn’t seem to notice.

The one wearing the boots carried gallon jugs of kerosene, and the other held a shotgun and two torches. The man with the suspenders whistled and motioned with his chin at the pile nearest the sound of crickets chirping. Splashes of kerosene landed inside the broken-off places of the stacked pine and dripped down along the rings of the tree trunks. The owl circled overhead as the men lit torches and flung them as they ran. Fire sparked and spread across one pile and then to the next. The men ran past a stray hound that scavenged in a pile of trash behind the Simpson home. They headed north toward Neva Clarkson’s house and the schoolyard. Jumping into a pickup, they never looked back at the flames that grew taller and would eventually reach the height of the rooftops in Dead Lakes.

Charred devastation blanketed the ground where the pinewood had been stacked. Black soot now spread out across the property. Smoldering smoke rose up and twisted through the crowd that had gathered in hopes of getting a glimpse of Ella as much as what was left of the blazing commotion that had awakened them in the first hour of that Saturday.

Ella sat next to the store on the stacks of croaker sacks filled with feed. She hadn’t heard her neighbors’ words of sympathy, even though they stood right next to her, patting her and awkwardly trying to hug her. They were only mumbles against the roaring fire out in her yard that had awoken her. Hours later, all she could hear were the crackling sounds of wood that disappeared in what seemed only seconds. She looked like a rag doll, slumped against the side of the store, never bothering to adjust the patchwork quilt that had fallen down the side of her shoulder. Ella stared at the fiery ashes as if peering into a crystal ball in search of direction.

Keaton was the first to see the blaze. He had stepped out into the thick summer air to relieve himself in the outhouse. Standing on the front step of the house, he rubbed his eyes and slapped himself. He looked into the fire and was certain he saw the red haints that Narsissa always said guarded the water. Inside the blue blazes, they danced on top of the hissing pines, swaying and reaching up toward the sky.

Keaton ran screaming toward the barn, snatching up a bucket used to water the oxen. Pumping the handle to the water pump, he screamed, “It’s burning. It’s burning to the ground.”

Lanier came hobbling out of the barn, pulling up his boots. His shirt dangled from his chest, and he jerked it free, running toward the pump and taking control of the handle. “Go,” he yelled as he handed the filled bucket to Keaton. Water sloshed over the edges as Keaton lifted the bucket chest high and ran.

Narsissa’s hair frayed out at the sides as she clambered to the water pump with two more buckets. Samuel grabbed the wheelbarrow and tried in vain to get the water to the fire faster. Macon came out of the house barefooted and followed his brothers toward the fire that continued to rise. But Ella stood frozen on the porch, watching them run in circles. The feeling that had warned her that something worse was headed her way pierced through the armor of optimism she had pretended to wear. She tried to run. She wanted to run. But her body forbade it the same way her aunt had forbidden her to play outside when the temperature reached its noontime peak.

Now her body was slumped on sacks of feed. She looked at the smoldering ash and wished Lanier could touch it and restore the lumber back. Maybe he could.

Mrs. Pomeroy hovered over Ella and whispered words of comfort in a tone more suitable for soothing a baby. With arms so flabby and dewy that they were like damp towels, Mrs. Pomeroy attempted to hug Ella. “Bless it,” she whispered.

Ella jerked away and stared at the old woman’s kernel-sized yellowed teeth.

“Now, don’t move about and overtax yourself. You’re just all to pieces, I can tell,” Mrs. Pomeroy said.

Ella reached for the porch rail and pulled herself up from the sacks of feed where she sat. She marched past the oxen that circled and snorted in fear, brushed against the sunflowers she had planted on a carefree day, and stomped a path toward the water pump. The patchwork quilt Mrs. Pomeroy had placed around her shoulders tumbled to the ground. That quilt, stitched with gold thread in the shape of stars, landed in a puddle of mud. Priming the handle so hard the squeaking sound of the handle turned to a hum, Ella grunted the same way she did when she swung the axe into the base of a pine.

“We tried,” Lanier mumbled to Ella. He stood in front of her coughing and wiping the sweat from his eyes. His forehead looked as if he had just stepped out of an Ash Wednesday service.

“Would you like for us to help you inside and pray?” Reverend Simpson’s musky breath cut through the smell of smoke.

Mr. Pomeroy reached for Ella as if he might pat her on the shoulder but then stopped. “You worked it as good as a man,” he said and then swiped sweat and water from his arms.

“Who would do such a thing?” Neva Clarkson asked and reached out to brush the hair from Macon’s eyes.

“I don’t think it coincidence that Ruby was caught stealing red-handed right before all of this,” Myer Simpson said as she pulled at the collar of her floral-print night coat. She made a clucking sound, and the beekeeper joined along.

“If Earl was a decent man, he would’ve locked that girl up a long time ago,” the beekeeper protested. “He’s nothing but a drunkard. A drunkard with a simpleton for a daughter. What’s to be done with the both of them?”

“I have said all along that the girl should be in Chattahoochee, where she can be seen after proper,” Myer Simpson said. “Remember, Neva? Remember me telling you that girl needed to be in the nervous hospital?”

“I knew she’d wind up doing something dangerous,” the beekeeper said. “We’re lucky this fire didn’t burn down all of our places.”

“Now, nobody knows for sure what happened,” Neva said.

“Don’t tell me.” Myer Simpson smacked her lips.

“With all due respect, Miss Clarkson, you weren’t in that store when Ella caught her stealing. She was fit to be tied. That gal had a crazed look to her. Looked like some wildcat or something.” The beekeeper stretched his neck out and bugged his eyes.

“And Mrs. Pomeroy . . . you heard for yourself how she was cursing and yelling.” Myer Simpson pointed down to the intersection where the incident had taken place. “Cursed Ella for all she was worth. Didn’t she, Callie?”

Mrs. Pomeroy tucked her head and offered a nod to her husband. “I’m going to Apalachicola to get the sheriff,” Mr. Pomeroy said as he turned away from the crowd.

“Bless your heart,” Mrs. Pomeroy said. She stepped forward but stopped. Doughy skin rolled up over the tops of her black slippers.

Ella kicked the water pump, primed the handle again, and then stuck her head underneath. She rose up, and strands of wet hair whipped the air. Lanier never moved away even when water splattered against his face.

Ella stared at him, daring Lanier to offer her words of hope. “What do you suggest we do now, Mr. Stillis? Can’t you breathe on the fire and make it go away?”

“We have eleven days,” Lanier said.

“Ten,” Samuel yelled from the stump he sat on.

“We could sell the oxen,” Keaton said.

“Huh,” Samuel spat out the word. “We’d be lucky to get the worn-out things to stand upright long enough for somebody to bid.”

“You have that sack of money I gave you,” Narsissa added.

“It’s over,” Ella yelled and dusted her hands in the air. “Over!”

Macon flinched, and a flock of crows cackled out in the field mangled with tree stumps.

“There’s a few trees left,” Keaton said.

“Nothing but saplings,” Samuel responded.

Lanier looked out toward the field, and Samuel stood next to him, shading his hands over his eyes as if he were out at sea in search of new land. Narsissa walked up behind them, followed by Keaton and Macon. Two sandhill cranes poked along the edge of the swamp before flying off and landing on a low-hanging branch of a cypress tree. The gray of the birds seemed to get caught up in the color of the moss that hung from the same tree branch.

Narsissa stared toward the low-lying land beyond the tree stumps where gnarled cypress trees stood with twisted thin branches shaped like witch nails. But no one paid any attention to an Indian. The neighbors kept their sights on the beautiful heroine. They took in the scene as good as any picture show they had seen at the Dixie Theatre.