Man in the Blue Moon (3 page)

His monotone words caused Ella to breathe deeper than she had all day. She loosened the grip on her purse and lowered it to her side. The money she had held back to pay for shipping was still hers for now. She turned and smiled at Samuel, who darted his eyes away from her. Keaton nodded and said, “Paid for. Told you so.” Ella hushed him and signed the papers releasing the delivery to her care.

The words
Blue Moon Clock Company
ran down the side of the crate along with the crudely written instruction in red chalk,
This Side Up
.

During the drive home, Keaton continued to run his finger down the side of the box. “I told y’all it was a grandfather clock. Didn’t I?” he kept saying.

The sun was sinking lower when they passed the swamp where the cypress trees loomed like giants wearing moss for armor. Ella felt chilled and rubbed her shoulders. Samuel pulled off his jacket with one hand and held the reins with the other. Without ever taking his eyes from the road, he balanced the jacket on Ella’s shoulders. She studied him and the way his chin was beginning to take the square shape of his father’s. “Thank you,” she whispered. She offered the words as much for his thoughtful gesture as for the times past when he had defended her against her husband’s tirades.

Narsissa met them as they turned the bend at the farm. She stood on the porch with a broom propped against the side of her hip. “How much did it cost?” she yelled out.

“Not a cent!” Ella shouted and laughed when Narsissa jolted backward in surprise.

The box was heavy enough to require all four of them to unload it. While Samuel used a crowbar to pry the box open, Ella stood over it like it was a birthday cake and wished for a walnut clock. Mrs. Simpson’s dining room table was walnut, and Ella knew a matching clock would be an easier sale.

“Hurry up,” Keaton said, licking his lips and dancing a jig.

“Give him time,” Ella said. “I do not want it nicked.”

“This thing stinks to high heaven,” Narsissa said, covering her mouth and moving closer.

Samuel swung the crowbar with the purpose of a full-grown man. Pieces of jagged wood flew from the box and landed at Narsissa’s feet. She leaned closer, peering into the part of the box that was exposed.

A man’s muddy boot kicked out from the end of the box. Narsissa screamed and ran toward the house. Samuel stumbled backward, rebounding with the crowbar held over his head. Keaton ran and hid behind the mule that darted to the side and kicked at the dirt. But Ella was frozen. If she still had been the girl from Miss Wayne’s school, she probably would have fainted.

“Don’t be scared,” the man said, waving the end of his boot. He held up his hand through the ripped opening and attempted to wave. He finished what Samuel had begun and pulled the broken wood back until he could climb out. His blond, curly hair was slicked with sweat against the nape of his neck. Green eyes shone from his dirty face. A cocktail of waste and perspiration glued his clothes to his skin. He groaned as he rose up from the box. “I’m the one your daddy is waiting for.”

Narsissa ran out of the house carrying a double-barreled shotgun. The man stumbled over the box, landed on one knee, and held up a crumpled paper like a shield. “Don’t! Please don’t shoot,” he said. “I’m the man from the letter. I’m the man from the Blue Moon.”

It wasn’t until the man handed Ella a copy of the letter that had been sent to her husband that Narsissa finally put down the shotgun. The date on the letter was February 28, a week before Harlan Wallace left his family.

“Harlan’s daddy was my mama’s first cousin,” the man kept repeating as he marched his legs up and down, trying to wake the muscles that had become locked from the tight confines of the crate. He kept his hand held high as a sign of surrender.

“We don’t want trouble,” Ella said as she took the letter. “We don’t need trouble,” she kept saying as she read the words.

“I promise I’m not bringing trouble,” the man said and offered a second letter. “This right here is from the sheriff in Bainbridge, Georgia.”

As Ella reached for the second letter, she tried to push down the crowbar that Samuel kept held over his shoulder. Samuel ignored her instruction.

While Ella scanned the notarized letter vouching for the character of the man who stood before her, she asked without looking up, “That letter was from a clock company. We expected a clock. If you’re so upstanding, then why did you arrive here like this . . . in this crate? Nothing good comes from secrecy.”

“I’m a victim of circumstance,” the man said. He used the inside of his elbow to wipe the side of his head. A cluster of curls broke free from the grime in his hair.

“Ummm. Victim of circumstance,” Narsissa mumbled.

The man’s green eyes darted from Ella to Narsissa and back to Ella. “My friend who knows the truth helped me. He got the stationery from the clock company. He mailed that letter to this store . . . mailed it directly to Harlan. My friend even got me shipped out on the steamboat.”

“I don’t like this,” Ella said. “I don’t like this one bit.”

“Look, now, I’m speaking the truth. My wife took her own life. Her family never did see it that way, though.” He raised his hand higher, begging more than surrendering. “You got to believe me. They’re out to get me.”

“That’s it,” Ella said and handed the papers back. “I’ve heard enough. I want you to leave.”

Samuel leveraged the crowbar higher above his head, and this time Ella didn’t try to stop him.

The man shuffled the letters in his hands and stammered, “Now ma’am, I settled all this with your husband. Like I told you, Harlan is my cousin. He knows all about me. If you just go get him, then—”

“We don’t know where he is,” Keaton said from behind the mule.

Ella stomped her foot, and the mule moved to the side, exposing Keaton. “Hush,” Ella said.

“What you mean?”

Samuel stepped closer with the crowbar. “Ain’t none of your business.”

Standing behind Samuel, Narsissa roped her thick hands around the crowbar and fought to pull it out of Samuel’s hands. She tossed the bar to the ground. “Watch yourself,” Narsissa whispered as the crowbar landed on pieces of broken oyster shells.

“My husband is not here. That’s all you need to know, Mr. . . . whoever you claim to be,” Ella said.

“Lanier Stillis,” he said. The man ran his hands through his chin-length hair, and more curls broke free. He pulled on a left ear that was disfigured and jagged in shape. “I’m not bucking your suspicions. I reckon I’d be suspicious too, but I am not lying to you. I am kin to Harlan.” His words seemed to plead more than state the fact. “Harlan gave the all clear for me to come down here. Just think about it this way: if he didn’t know about all of this, then would I be crazy enough to go to such lengths?”

“Like being packed like a rag doll in a box ain’t crazy enough,” Narsissa hissed.

As Ella and the others darted their eyes away from the visitor, Keaton stepped closer. He was fingering a rip in the sleeve of his shirt. “If you are kin to us, then what was my daddy’s mama’s maiden name?”

Lanier looked up at the trees. A flock of chimney swifts darted down to the oyster shells that were scattered along the side of the store. “Keaton,” Lanier said. “Her name was Keaton. She grew up in Tempest, Georgia, up in the mountains . . . just like your daddy and me. Your daddy left home when he was fifteen to jockey racehorses in Kentucky. The last I’d heard from him, he’d polished himself up and come to Apalachicola to run a horse track so that all the rich people making their way to New Orleans would stop off and make bets on the evening races. That’s just how he told it.”

Ella tried not to let the man see her flinch. Harlan Wallace had indeed owned a racetrack when she met him. It was only after she had signed a marriage license that he lost it to the steamboat owner who had helped finance the venture.

Keaton looked up at Ella and then back at Lanier. “Do you know where our daddy might be?”

“Keaton, enough,” Ella said.

“No, son,” Lanier answered. “Believe me, right about now I wish I did know.”

“Well, if all this is like you say, then how long was you planning on being here?” Narsissa asked the question like she already knew the answer.

“Probably not as long as you’ve been here.” Lanier’s answer caused Narsissa to take a step toward the crowbar. “My cousin told me that there was a Creek woman on the place. Said something about her planning to go to Brazil but never seemed to get there.” Lanier locked eyes with Narsissa and raised an eyebrow. “He said folks around here wouldn’t think anything about one more showing up to work in the store for extra money.”

“She’s been here six years,” Ella said. “You’ve been here six minutes. Narsissa’s more family to me than the filthy man I’m standing here looking at.”

“I think it best if you keep on heading to New Orleans,” Samuel said.

Lanier tried to brush the dirt from his hands. Flakes of dead, soiled skin fell to the ground. “I don’t mean no harm. I just . . . I just need . . .”

“You just need to leave,” Ella said.

The man looked down and kicked at the box he had arrived in. The steady thumping noise rose up like a drum beat, and Ella suddenly realized that they were all exposed, out in the open.

“Would it be too much to ask to let me stay the night?”

“Yes,” Narsissa answered.

“Just until I can get a ticket to New Orleans?” Lanier reached inside his boot and pulled out a wad of money secured with a silver clip. The silver shone brightly against the dingy color of his clothes. “I’ve got money to pay you.”

Ella stopped short from saying that her home was not an inn. The mule stomped the dirt again and looked over at the barn where his hay awaited him. Lanier followed the mule’s gaze and pointed in the direction of the barn. “I don’t mind sharing a stall with a jackass. I’ve slept with worse.”

Keaton laughed. Ella wrinkled her brow and shot her son a look of disapproval. Over Keaton’s shoulder Ella saw Myer Simpson and her husband, Reverend Simpson, rounding the corner of the store.

Myer Simpson clutched a rose-printed parasol with one hand and her husband’s arm with the other. The reverend’s stomach poked out over his belt. The end of his wrinkled shirt protruded from his pants. He pulled away from his wife long enough to fan away gnats.

“Well, there you are,” Myer Simpson said. “I told Reverend Simpson, I said, Reverend, let’s take our afternoon exercise over to Mrs. Wallace’s store and have the first peek at that clock.”

Ella walked toward them and pulled the edge of her dress out like she might curtsey. She hoped without reason that she could pull the dress out far enough to hide the man who had arrived in place of the grandfather clock.

“As soon as she saw the wagon turn the bend in the road, she has spoken of nothing else. I told her, woman, let’s get on with it and see that clock.” The reverend stopped swatting when he noticed Lanier.

“I have already moved my parlor furniture, marking the spot where that grandfather clock will go,” Myer Simpson said. She twirled the parasol and giggled until her bosom shook. “But of course if it’s not a grandfather clock, then our daughter . . .” Her voice faded as she looked at Lanier. “Oh.”

“The clock,” Ella said in a singsong fashion, hoping to make them think she was cheerful. “That clock . . . that clock. It was so gashed up that I just refused. I flat refused to pay for that clock. I refused right then and there on that dock.”

“I see you have company.” Myer Simpson raised the handle of her parasol and pointed it at Lanier.

Lanier stuffed the letters assuring good character inside his pants. He nodded and bit the edge of his lip.

“That’s . . . ,” Ella said. “He’s . . . he’s a worker who has come to help us out.”

“I didn’t realize business was so brisk,” the reverend said.

“From the looks of him, you’ve been working him but good,” Myer Simpson added.

“He’s here to get the crop going again. He’s just here to help out. So . . .” Ella’s voice trailed off. The chimney swifts dipped down toward them and then darted back to the trees.

“Mrs. Simpson, now you have me out here to take exercise,” the reverend said. “If we don’t get back to our walk, I’m afraid I might sit down on Mrs. Wallace’s wagon, and you won’t be able to budge me.”

The reverend took a step forward, but Myer Simpson continued to stare at Lanier. She stumbled a bit before letting the reverend lead her away. “Good evening,” the reverend said as they continued their walk.

“Evening,” everyone said, even Lanier. But Myer Simpson didn’t say a word. She just clutched the arm of her husband and turned her head ever so slightly, examining the man who looked like he had been dipped in dirt.

It was only when the reverend and his wife had walked past the magnolia tree that stood between the store and the main road that Ella let go of her dress. She felt her boys, Narsissa, and this so-called relative staring at her, pinning her into making a decision. If only Myer Simpson had never come into the store. If only Ella had never mentioned the clock. “You can stay one night in the barn,” Ella said without turning around to face them. “And not one hour more.”

Lanier unfurled a couple of bills from his money clip and looked at everyone before handing the money to Samuel.

As Narsissa walked back into the house to check on Macon, she passed Ella and mumbled, “This is trouble. Mark my word.”

Ella closed her eyes, felt her pulse race against the side of her neck, and once again fought the fear that had tried all day to overtake her.

After the supper dishes had been dried, Keaton stood behind the living room curtains and looked out toward the barn. He strained to see the movements of the visitor, whose silhouette flitted back and forth beneath the gas lantern that hung on the barn door.

“Get away from there,” his mother said and pulled Keaton back from the window. “Now quit studying that man. Go get ready for bed.”

But Keaton ignored his mother’s instructions. Instead of following Samuel into the bedroom, he darted to the side hall and eased out the back door. He used the tip of his boot to lift the bottom of the door and keep it from squeaking against the floor.

Outside, Keaton followed the swaying yellow light of the lantern. The flickering light stretched out from the barn like fingers, waving him closer.

Keaton peeked around the doorframe of the barn and watched the man.

Lanier was washing his dirty clothes in a barrel that had once been used to water the horse that had long been sold. He had already changed into the clothes he had brought with him in a tote bag made from speckled hog skin. His hair, still wet from a bath, hung in loose blond curls. He wrung out the remaining water from his shirt. When Lanier looked up, Keaton tried to dart behind the door.

“Evening,” Lanier yelled.

Keaton stepped forward and brushed the end of his nose, striking the beginning of a mustache. “I was just . . . just making sure that you knew the boat to New Orleans leaves at two tomorrow.”

The mule, in the stall next to Lanier, kicked the stall door. Lanier snapped the shirt again and put it on a stack of fence posts. “Appreciate it.”

Keaton turned to leave but stopped. “And I . . . I just wanted to see how you were making it?”

“Doing better than I was when I was folded up in that box.”

Keaton looked at the broken top of the Blue Moon Clock crate that had held Lanier. “How long were you in that thing?”

Lanier hooked his thumbs inside his pants and glanced up at a cobweb that dangled from the crossbeam in the barn. “About ten hours, give or take.”

“You scared?”

Lanier slung his head sideways and drips of water scattered from his hair. A strand of hair clung to the top portion of his left ear that was mangled and partly missing. “I’m done through being scared.”

Cautiously flicking a piece of splintered wood on the crate, Keaton turned his head and studied Lanier. “If you ain’t done nothing wrong, then why did you hide in this box? Do you need you a lawyer?”

“I’m done through with lawyers, too.” Lanier looked at Keaton, and for the first time he smiled. “And let me tell you, son, innocence and justice sometimes don’t go hand in hand.”

Keaton jerked a portion of wood from the crate and then bent down and stuck his head inside. “Looks to me like you’d suffocate in this thing.”

“Way back when people were slaves, some of ’em got free. Their friends shipped them up north like cargo. You ever heard of the Underground Railroad?”

Keaton tossed the sliver of wood to the ground, where it landed inches from the tip of Lanier’s boot. “How come you know all that? You’re not that old.”

Lanier laughed for the first time since being nailed into the crate. “No, I ain’t that old.” He reached into his bag and pulled out two books, one made of black leather that was frayed at the corner and another with an orange cover. He dusted the orange one off and placed it on top of a hay bale. “I just like to read. How ’bout you?”

The mule grunted and rubbed his back against the boards that separated him from Lanier. Keaton picked up a rusted pitchfork that was turned sideways on the ground. He scooped up hay from a pile in the corner and tossed it in the mule’s stall. “When’s the last time you saw my daddy?”

With his head dangling sideways and water dripping to the sand, Lanier didn’t bother to look up at Keaton. “You sure do ask a lot of questions.”

Keaton kicked at the sand until it covered the wet stains that Lanier had left on the ground. He decided against asking Lanier how he ended up with a left ear that was shaped like a cauliflower that had been cut in half. “I was just wondering . . . how long it’s been since you’ve seen him.”