Man in the Blue Moon (5 page)

Ella never turned around. She just kept walking back to her proper place behind the cash register in her store. The less she knew about Lanier Stillis, the better.

The clock on the store wall read half past twelve. Ella ate the biscuit stuffed with sausage that Narsissa had brought her and listened to the latest progress report on Macon. “He’s out of bed,” Narsissa said, not able to hide her enthusiasm any longer. “He’s out playing ball with Keaton and that man from the box.”

Ella walked over to the window that overlooked the front of her home and the rows of pine trees that bordered the yard. She grabbed Narsissa’s shoulder. “I don’t care if you call it hoochie-coochie medicine or not. Macon is out there in the pines, playing ball and laughing. That’s good enough for me.”

Myer Simpson came into the store, declaring a miracle at having seen Macon playing in the side yard. Ella smiled and felt downright giddy in front of the sanctimonious woman. “A miracle. Yes, a miracle,” Ella repeated.

Samuel came in and gathered the mail that he would be taking to Apalachicola along with Lanier Stillis. “What time did you tell him you’d be leaving?”

Samuel didn’t look up as he flipped through the envelopes before placing them into the mail pouch. He never did pay any mind to Ella’s complaints that the US mail was confidential.

“What time did you say you were leaving?” she asked again.

“One o’clock,” Samuel said. “Let me go and hitch the wagon.”

As Samuel walked out through the back of the store, a sheriff’s deputy, Ronnie Eubanks, came in through the front door. He took off a felt cowboy hat. An indented ring on his forehead marked the spot where it had sat upon his head.

“Afternoon, Ronnie,” Ella said as lightly as she could. She darted her eyes out toward the lawn, where Macon, Keaton, and Lanier were still throwing the baseball. Watching her boys playing so carefree, Ella kept telling herself that if seriously bad news were being delivered to her doorstep, it would come from Sheriff Bissell, not his deputy.
Ronnie is probably just passing through and decided to stop for his usual cheese and crackers.

“I bet you we break ninety today,” Ronnie said and used a handkerchief to dab at his freckled forehead.

Ella stood in front of the cheddar cheese and lifted the cake lid that protected it. “How’s your mama doing?”

“Improving some every day. I appreciate you asking.” Ronnie tucked his handkerchief into his back pants pocket and pulled out a white envelope. “No thank you, Ella. I’m going to pass on the cheese today.”

For an instant Ella hoped it was only notification that her husband had been found, probably in an opium den where he had overdosed.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news.” Ronnie sighed and laid the envelope on top of the register.

Ella ripped into it the way an anxious child might open a birthday gift. She pulled out the official notification with the clerk of the court’s signature and stared. She had tried to prepare herself for this day. Many were the nights that she had woken up drenched in sweat, picturing in her mind’s eye the type of print that would inform her that she was losing everything to foreclosure. But to hold the actual papers and to see the way the swirled, bold print spelled out the details in the King’s English still caused her knees to buckle. She leaned against the counter and felt the edge of the nail where her husband had instructed her to hang shopping baskets.

“I’m sorry, Ella,” Ronnie whispered. “He didn’t have to send us out here to deliver these to you but he’s a snake enough that he did.”

Ella flipped through the pages to find Clive Gillespie’s signature at the bottom of the documents. The scent of cigar smoke was embedded into the document, and suddenly Ella felt nauseous.

After she had managed to stand on shaky legs long enough to collect money from her neighbor Mrs. Pomeroy for a package of Cheek-Neal coffee, Ella went outside. She leaned against the railing and sank down to the porch step. She watched her sons run and jump for the ball that Lanier kept tossing in the air. His laughter echoed up to the porch, and she wondered how a man this seemingly carefree could be running from anything. She imagined him being loaded onto the steamboat back in Georgia, stuffed in that box like cargo. She couldn’t help but feel envious that he had managed to escape his tormentors. If only she could be irresponsible and flee. The thought both terrified and angered her.

Voices from Ella’s past, present, and future played in her mind. “Throw it to me,” Macon yelled as he ran past Keaton. “Catch,” Lanier Stillis said as he threw his arm back and tossed the ball.
“I’ve been more than patient,”
Clive Gillespie called out in the darkest corner of her mind. “Throw it to me,” Macon repeated.
“Whatever you do, don’t sell that property,”
her father whispered in her head.
“Either you sell me the land, or I’ll take it on the courthouse steps,”
Clive hissed.
“Remember who you are and where you come from,”
her father said again.

“Throw it to me,” Macon called out from the side yard. Lanier threw the ball to him. It flew far into the sky, over Keaton’s grasp and past the reach of Macon. Ella watched as the ball landed in between the pines that were shrouded in vines of kudzu.
“Use it as a resource, but don’t sell it.”
She heard her father’s voice one last time and stood up.

The bit of salve that remained on Macon’s face glimmered in the sun, and he fanned his hand across his forehead when he looked up at her. “Did you see me catch it, Mama? Did you see me?”

Gripping the foreclosure notice behind her back, Ella marched toward them and never took her eyes off of Lanier Stillis. “My husband used to talk about his daddy taking him out of school to help cut timber. He claimed it was why he hated the man. And why he had to teach himself everything he knew.”

Lanier leaned down and picked up the wayward ball. “All right.”

“Did you cut timber like that growing up?”

“We all did. We all got took out of school to cut the timber when it was time to sell.”

“I’m taking you at your word.” Ella stared at Lanier and twisted the foreclosure notice up until it took the shape of a thick straw. “I couldn’t pay you up front, but if I gave you a percentage, would you stay and help me cut this timber?”

As soon as Lanier offered the slightest nod to her question, Ella pointed the bound document at him. “I need your word,” she said. “I don’t need any more trouble.”

“Uh, yeah . . . I mean, you have my word,” Lanier said. “Like I said, I’m family.”

Ella had already made it halfway back to the store when she called back to him. “We have to have it all cut and sold in forty-five days. You can do that, can’t you?”

The bridle and harness had already been put on the mule. Lanier shook his head and stretched his head back toward Samuel. Ella cleared a path of grass as she walked past Samuel.

“Did you tell him to come on?”

“He’s not leaving,” Ella said, never stopping long enough to register Samuel’s disbelief. “You’re taking him to town. Buy every saw, chain . . . every piece of equipment that he tells you to buy. I’m going to give you Aunt Katherine’s pearl necklace to sell.” The necklace and her wedding ring were the last pieces of real jewelry that Ella still possessed.

“What?” Samuel shouted. “You told Mr. Busby in front of God and everybody that you’d never sell that necklace.”

Ella bounded the steps two at a time. When she swung the store door open, the cat that had been hiding behind the sewing samples ran down the stairs, past the mule that kicked at it, and circled Lanier before disappearing deep within the thicket of pines.

Myer Simpson stood at the window in her parlor where the grandfather clock might have been placed. Sunlight streaked through and fanned out across the room to the walnut desk, where her husband sat working on his weekly sermon.

“Don’t you think it curious?” Myer asked as she fingered the lace curtain.

Not looking up from his papers, the reverend grunted.

“How this man just shows up out of the blue to help Ella Wallace.”

The reverend reached up to the bookshelf above the desk and took down a book of Greek translation. “What man?”

“What man?” Myer Simpson repeated and turned toward her husband. The light from the window cut across her face and caused the vein in her neck to look even bluer. “The
man
we met the other day when we were out taking exercise. What man? The very notion that you’d forget such a sight.”

The reverend never turned away from the pages he flipped through. A long gray hair fell from his beard and floated in the air before landing on the cuff of his shirtsleeve.

“That
younger
man, I might add. He’s at least ten—well, maybe five—years younger than Ella Wallace. Don’t you think it curious how this woman who is about to lose everything suddenly has this man show up at her place? This woman—this
married
woman, I might add—has a man living at her place. In the barn, supposedly.”

“Maybe he’s an answer to prayer,” the reverend said. “Lord knows she could use the help.”

“Reverend Simpson, must you always be contrary when I speak my mind? The woman has three impressionable boys living on the place.”

If the reverend heard her he didn’t let on. He simply flipped through the Greek translation, searching for the original meaning of the word
pardonable
. All the while, Myer Simpson fingered the seam of the lace curtain and watched as the townspeople made their way down the dirt road to the store that Ella Wallace struggled to keep open.

By the third day of gripping the handle on the snarl-toothed saw blades to rip through pine bark and swinging a machete to slice through the vines of kudzu that hid the trees, every muscle in Ella’s back ached. She worked alongside Narsissa and Lanier without ever voicing uncertainty or fear. She fought the clumps of briars and a swarm of hornets that tried to keep her from the pines. She sliced her machete through palmetto bushes deep in the woods, all the while staying on alert and ready to kill a rattler like the one that had struck at Narsissa two days earlier as she stepped over a dead log. Even though Narsissa kept looking at Ella in a cautionary way as if she might break at any moment, Ella marched forward, deeper into the rows of pines. She swung the axe until her fingers were numb and wore stains of dirt and pine tar on her face like war paint.

“Everybody okay?” Lanier would call out, his voice echoing against the trees. “Fine,” Ella would yell, knowing full well that the question was intended for her.

By the end of the first week of cutting timber, even the Watkins liniment that Ella sold to customers in the store by guaranteeing its ability to replenish tired muscles had stopped working. She went to bed each night too sore to move and too tired to let the pain keep her from sleep. Ella made certain that her sons would not see the blisters that had burst and turned bloody. She wrapped her hands in bandages that she claimed helped her to grip the axe handle tighter. When the dirt and blood stained the bandage cloth, she put on the leather riding gloves that her aunt had given for her eighteenth birthday. Any appearance of normalcy was important to Ella, now more than ever. It helped to keep her sane.

Ella even tried to convince the customers that her sons’ increased activity in the store was all part of a grand plan. “We forget how important apprenticeship once was in this country,” she said to casual inquiries about her children’s role in the business. “They are learning the trade from the ground up.”

Keaton had become the official store manager, Macon, whose face had now healed, was the clerk, and Samuel was the logger learning to follow Lanier’s instructions. Naturally Samuel rebelled at first. But after he didn’t move fast enough and a loblolly pine missed driving him into the ground by mere inches, he began to follow Lanier’s plan.

As the evening sun turned the sky orange and the mosquitoes swarmed the heavy air, Samuel, Narsissa, and Ella carried tools and chains along the path that had emerged from their boots and the wagon wheels. Lanier pulled the mule by the harness. The animal tried to shake his head as if saying he was too tired to pull the last load of timber that filled the wagon behind him. With a nudge of Lanier’s elbow to his neck, the mule bellowed and then stepped forward.

After the timber had been mostly stacked, Ella wrung the red handkerchief that she kept tied around her neck. Sweat dripped from the handkerchief like water. She ran her hand through her hair, trying to comb out the bark, ticks, and chiggers that had accumulated. Narsissa had used alcohol to help draw out the last two ticks on her scalp. Ever since, the hat and handkerchief had never left her head.

The fear that Ella had pictured attached to the side of her brain now ran wild through her system. “We’re not going to make it,” she declared, lifting her head toward the tops of the trees. The mass of pines stood like lean, defiant soldiers who would not be taken without a fight.

Lanier stopped unloading the timber. Samuel dropped a line of chain he’d been wrapping around his forearm. Narsissa let go of the axe she’d been cleaning.

“What kind of talk is that?” Lanier stepped forward and took off his hat. Strands of curly wet hair hung over his mangled ear, and the side of his neck bulged.

“It’s reality,” Ella said.

“It’s a give-up spirit,” Lanier said. “I don’t like quitters.”

“No, you just like those who run away, I reckon,” Narsissa added.

“Look,” Lanier said, “we’re all tired. I understand that. I’m tired too, but we can’t just walk away. We’ve cut—”

“We’ve cut hardly anything. Look at this pitiful mess.” Ella pointed toward the small stack of timber that lay scattered and twisted next to the road.

“We’ll make it,” Lanier said.

“Stop lying,” Ella said and threw her hands up in the air. “We won’t make it. You know it’s the truth.”

“Now you listen to me,” Lanier said. “I am starting from scratch here. I got nothing to lose. And if I’m not mistaken . . .”

Ella kicked over the water bucket. Clouds of dust twirled up behind her as she marched toward the house.

“And you’ll lose everything you got unless you straighten out that attitude,” Lanier yelled.

Narsissa got so close to Lanier that he could make out a black mole under her right eye. “I’ve listened to you just about as long as I intend to. Step to the left. Saw more in the middle. Break away to the center. . . . But so help me, I will not stand here and listen to you yell at her. Make no mistake—I can get the sheriff over here anytime I want to.”

Lanier reached down and picked up the bucket. “Go ahead then. Nobody’s stopping you.”

Samuel moved from the side of the wagon and brushed his hands against his overalls. Crickets began to break the silence. “He’s right,” Samuel said. “We’re in just as deep as him.”

“He’s blackmailing us,” Narsissa shouted.

Samuel shrugged. “What you want us to do? Give the place over to the bank? My daddy ain’t coming back home and finding out that I let the place go on my watch. No, ma’am.”

Narsissa picked up the axe she had been using and slowly wiped the blade on the side of her denim work pants. The blade left a gluey smear of pine tar on her leg that shimmered in the fading sunlight. When she swung the axe over her shoulder, Lanier stepped backward. She never said a word as she walked back to her cabin.

Samuel continued stacking the equipment and didn’t notice Lanier unfastening the mule from the wagon. “I’ll water the mule,” Lanier said. Samuel gave no indication that he heard him. It was only after Lanier had watered and fed the mule that Samuel offered his opinion. Walking past the sunflowers that had begun to unwind their petals for evening, he spat a stream of tobacco at the nearest bloom.

“She’s wrong, you know,” Lanier called out.

Samuel stopped and turned. The light from the barn caused Lanier to seemingly glow.

“Hear me out. I’m not blackmailing anybody. Family is family. I want this just as bad as y’all do.”

Samuel pulled out a pocketknife, examined the tip, and flung it at the water pump where Lanier stood. The knife stuck out of the side of the water bucket like a wild hair. “You ain’t no family of mine. I just want to keep my property.”

Yanking the pocketknife from the wood, Lanier folded the blade up and tossed it back to Samuel.

Samuel caught it with one hand and spat a line of tobacco juice from the side of his mouth. “And hear me when I say I’m gonna be watching you,” he said.

Around bedtime, Ella stood in the doorway of her bedroom with drips of water falling from her dark, wet hair. “You’re going to skip school, you say?” Ella said after Samuel had informed her of his decision.

“Either me and Keaton stay out of school and help, or we’ll all go to the poorhouse. You said as much.”

“Don’t you sass me.” Ella closed her eyes, wishing she could take back her moment of weakness when she had let the fear manifest itself in front of her sons. “Skipping school is not an option.”

“There’s no option to it,” Samuel said. “There’s only two weeks left till school lets out for the summer anyway.” Muscles flinched in his forearms and beads of dirt dotted his neck like a necklace.

Ella no longer saw a boy. The thought scared her just as much as Samuel’s ability to convince her that he was right. She stammered the words. “You will go back to school after summer. Promise me that.”

From her bedroom, Ella could hear Samuel explaining his plan to Keaton and Macon. His words were low and hushed as if a secret were being offered.

Not wanting to hear any more, Ella followed the sounds of the clock and walked into the dining room. She stood in the spot where her cherry buffet had once sat. The one that had been taken away in Mr. Busby’s wagon after the picture taker had found a buyer for it in Albany, Georgia. She tried to think of happier times, of holidays when the family sat alongside the dining room table decorated with branches of holly berries. But all her mind would play was the scene from the day when Samuel was forced to become a man.

It was the night before Harlan left. Ella had met Clive Gillespie at the store earlier that day. In ignorance and desperation, she had tried to sell him a new derby hat when he walked through the door of the store.

“No, I’m afraid I’m not here for shopping,” Clive had said. “Is Harlan here?”

Ella fiddled with the edge of the derby hat and then placed it back in its proper place on the shelf. “No, I’m afraid he’s off . . . off picking up new merchandise.” She couldn’t very well say that Harlan was in bed, hallucinating that he was riding a cloud.

“There’s an issue with payment.” With those words, Clive Gillespie introduced Ella to the world of banking and finance. He opened the doors to a knowledge that she had otherwise just as soon not known.

“This isn’t even my signature,” she had said whenever Clive pulled out the document verifying the loan and specifying the payment that would be required each month, the same payment that she learned was overdue.

“The law is black-and-white. Just like this piece of paper, Ella,” Clive said. “Now, I’m not here to get into marital squabbles.”

Ella had repeated the words back to Harlan that night when he went to take another hit of opium. The dinner dishes had been cleaned, and she was in the kitchen drying them when he staggered in through the back door.

“I can manage without an interfering wife,” Harlan said while knocking his pipe against the stove.

“Well, evidently you can’t,” Ella shouted. “You lost some of my land once already. Now I find out that you’ve gone and forged my signature for a loan. A loan on property that belongs to me?”

“What are you going to do, Miss Debutante? Huh? Are you going to put that finishing school education to use and get yourself employed?” Harlan threw the pipe into the eye of the stove and circled Ella.

“I have a job. I have to run that store you cast aside the same way you do everything else you touch.”

Then Ella saw the click in his eyes, the glazed narrowing that indicated he was at his breaking point. The point at which her husband transfigured out of the graciousness used to manipulate others. As Harlan moved past the kitchen sink, he snatched a butcher knife that she had used earlier to slice a chicken. Strips of milky-white fat and blue veins clung to the blade. Before Ella could see what was happening, Harlan was standing behind her, breathing on her in a musky scent. His breath was hot against her skin, and the blade cold as he held it up to her throat. “I’ll run this straight across those pouty lips. We’ll see how good you can sass then.”

Ella felt a trickle of urine run down her leg. From the corner of her eye, she saw Keaton and Macon in the hallway. Without lifting her hand away from her dress, she managed to motion with her index finger, shooing them away. When Harlan laughed, she elbowed his groin and ran into the hallway, screaming, “Get out of the house, Keaton. Get Macon out of here. Run.”

Keaton jerked Macon’s arm and ran out of the door without closing it.

Ella darted into the dining room with Harlan running, stumbling behind her. “I’m going to cut your lips off,” he yelled, holding the knife high over his shoulder. Spit flung from his mouth, and strands of his hair hung over his eyes.

Ella dashed around the dining room table and through sheer agility managed to keep away from his grasp. When she stopped at the head of the table, Harlan stood facing her with the front door at his back. He held the knife higher. The dark eyes that she had grown accustomed to seeing in a state of opium-induced glassiness were now piercing with an intensity that terrified her.

Through the front door, Samuel eased into the house. Before she could scream for him to leave, she saw Samuel shaking his head, instructing her to be quiet. Ella obeyed. She never even flinched as he lifted a two-by-four, and she certainly never uttered a sound as the tip of the board brushed against the chandelier, causing it to chime.