Secret Souls (9 page)

‘What scoundrels. Do you think they will come back?’ asked Andrew.

‘I honestly don’t know. Frankly I think it’s a matter of mood. If they’re in the mood to work at getting us out, they will. For the money, of course,’ answered Hannibal.

‘That poor child. She seems way above her father, smart as a whip, courageous, kind. One thing is certain, she tried her best for us,’ said Sam, taking his pistol from its hiding place under his shirt, shoved down his belt at the small of his back. Andrew took his from the pocket of the seersucker jacket he had been forced to wear in place of the shirt he had used for bandages.

The men closed their eyes and tried to sleep. No one said anything but the three were very much aware that if Ed and his friends returned within the next few hours, it very well might be to shoot them. The dozing men were certain to hear them coming through the undergrowth. Chances were, hunters or not, they would be less cautious than if they were stalking an animal because they did not suspect the city boys were on to them or that they had firearms. The trio were banking on that and ready to fight it out if it came to that.

They didn’t have long to wait. No more than an hour later they heard a rustling in the undergrowth. The sun was still high in the sky but unable to burn through the still-lingering mists. It was steamy and jungle-like and very still except for the rustling. Sam Kane heard it first and poked Hannibal who shook Andrew awake. Before they could remove the safety catches from the pistols, much to everyone’s relief Chadwick burst through a tangle of dogwood.

‘Chadwick! You did give us a turn,’ said Sam who looked as if he were about to faint.

She collapsed at their feet. Her hair was wet with perspiration, she was scratched on her arms and legs from the bushes as she’d gone racing through them and she was panting, wanting a drink to quench her thirst. Finally she smiled and told them, ‘They won’t be back, not for hours and hours. But they will come back, looking for me. Only I won’t be here and we’ll all be safe. Well, safe till Pa finds me – and he will find me. He hates me too much to let me go. Now we got to get a move on.’

‘Move on, how? Where to? What’s happened? Why have you returned?’ asked Hannibal.

‘Oh, I guess it’s best if I explain my plan.’

‘Yes, I think you had better,’ said Hannibal.

‘Well, it’s like the prince and the lady in distress game I’m always playing only it’s turned round. I’m the prince and I’m saving three sorta ladies, if you get my meaning.’ Her smile faded and she continued. ‘Fact is, I know my pa. He’s mean an’ he’s ornery an’ he’s a lazy dog of a man an’ I just don’t like the signs, so I lied. It’s not half a mile to the Muchamanee River, it’s ’bout quarter of a mile, maybe less. My pa is the best hunter round this county but he don’t know these woods like me. He hunts where the game is and there’s never been much good game in these woods so he don’t come here as much as I do. And Siddy Parton’s boat? Siddy’d never lend my pa that boat. He’d shoot him first and come for you himself
and
he’d take no money for his trouble, he’s a learned man. Siddy’s place is more than an hour downriver and another hour past him is Gingertown. I been there once and that’s where Doc’s got his office, in the hospital. It’s got two nurses and six beds. But Pa’d never take you there. The law’s office is in Ginger, and Pa stays clear of the law and the sheriff.’

‘So you’re saying we are going for the river. But my darling, courageous and lovely child, what then?’ asked Hannibal, trying to disguise the distress he was feeling for this child who was taking on the burden of saving them with so little thought for the consequences for herself.

‘Why then, Mr Chase, we get in the canoe I got hidden there – I
mean, I
have
hidden there – and we paddle down to Gingertown,’ she answered him, mimicking his Harvard accent and diction perfectly. Her smile was strangely endearing for the cruel lopsidedness of it due to the swelling and bruising of her face and lips.

Chapter 5

Even now, lying between the roughest sheets Hannibal had ever slept in, he wondered how they could possibly have made it through to and down the Muchamanee. Three crippled men in a near-delirious state from broken bones, high fevers and infection, and a young girl with an iron will that they should survive. It had been the roughest terrain they had yet encountered, and the canoe, dented and with more and varied patches than its original skin, at first sight inspired thoughts of a watery grave. But it had been large and dry and the river swift-running with no rapids or falls. Manning it had been almost as difficult as getting to it: climbing in and out for the right distribution of weight, a modicum of comfort achieved for the men who must remain still for hours so as not to topple the vessel – certainly a possibility since it would be riding dangerously low in the water.

Every time Hannibal closed his eyes another vision of the three of them walking, dragging, at times even crawling any way they could through the dense wood, sometimes over huge jagged slab-like sheets of granite then stretches of loose shale to the river, made his eyes open again. At other times, while he listened to the constant whirr of the ceiling fan generating nothing more than moist warm air through the windowless, screened-in room Dr Rudge referred to as ‘the ward’, he would stare from his bed through the screens to the river. He could hear, as if it were happening at that very moment, the haunting melodic sound of Chadwick singing sad country music, ballads, as she paddled in a controlled and steady rhythm. It had been left to her and Sam, when he found the energy, using their makeshift paddles, to get them safely to Gingertown. Andrew’s hands were busy with the
tourniquet and Hannibal’s own injuries hardly allowed for paddling.

He surveyed the small backwoods river town of twelve hundred people lazing in the heat. Hardly a dog moved, and only occasionally some person would cross the street to the general store-cum-post office-cum-barber shop and the screen door would swing noisily open and bang shut. The only real action in Gingertown was the sheriff’s black and white police car, shining like a new penny, its silver star gleaming, the bar of red, white and blue lights on its roof flashing for ten seconds every time Bonner Gleason and his deputy turned on the ignition and shot out of town in a cloud of dust, or returned trailing one.

Sam cleared his throat. The sound drew Hannibal’s attention back to the six-bed ward. It had been Sam who had had the worst of it for pain but aside from exhaustion, shock, and a hideous spiral fracture of his leg, he had ultimately fared the best because his injuries were straightforward. Andrew was fighting septicaemia, and up until that morning it had been touch and go; now he was winning. Hannibal was suffering from internal injuries that were not fatal but had needed immediate surgery. Now he was without a spleen and with his ribs tightly bound with a massive amount of adhesive tape. And Chadwick had got them here despite her own twisted ankle with a hairline crack in it. All in all the four of them occupying the ward was the most dramatic and exciting thing that had ever happened in Gingertown.

In the five days since they had been tended by Dr Rudge, a Johns Hopkins-trained surgeon who had given up a big city career to work as an itinerant backwoods doctor, when the survivors had not been sleeping or fighting their injuries with what energy they had left, they had been on the telephone to loved ones, the insurance company, their offices.

These were high-powered men. Hannibal, the most powerful of them, was indeed a president, not of the United States but of a number of companies. He was a man with connections: it took no more than a single call to senator he knew. The right judge was
found and a court order issued that Ed Chadwick was bound by law to stay within a half-mile’s distance of his daughter, Chadwick, until further notice. It also gave temporary custody of Chadwick to Dr Rudge.

Chadwick was for the moment not in the ward. She had been sent with a nurse to the General Store to buy some clothes, as many dresses as she wanted, and shoes, a gift from her grateful friends. Hannibal slipped from his bed somewhat painfully and went to sit in the rocking chair between the two white metal-framed hospital beds where Sam and Andrew lay.

‘It has to be addressed, what are we going to do for Chadwick after all she has done for us?’ asked Andrew.

‘Have you got something in mind?’ asked Sam.

‘An educational trust? A trust fund well invested that will take care of her for the rest of her life? But that’s hardly enough. Prosecute her father for assault, child abuse? That’s about all we can get him on. Is that enough?’

‘And thus speaks our legal mind,’ said Hannibal, not facetiously but thoughtfully.

‘And we have to catch the bastard first. No easy task according to Sheriff Gleason,’ said Sam.

‘I’m going to buy Chadwick from her father,’ announced Hannibal.

Neither man lying in the beds to either side of him made any comment. They seemed neither surprised nor disgusted. It seemed to them at that moment just another idea about what to do with the child. Both had known and worked with Hannibal Chase for most of his life they knew no kinder nor more philanthropic man. If he said he wanted to buy Chadwick, they knew that, as revolting an idea as it was, he had a plan brewing that would deliver her once and for all from the vile Ed Chadwick. They heard a car draw up to the hospital and watched through the screens as Dr Rudge approached.

‘Can I have a word, Doctor?’ called out Hannibal through the open screen window.

‘Sure,’ the doctor called back.

Dr Rudge’s first words on entering the ward were to enquire
where Chadwick was. None of the men missed the look of relief on the young doctor’s face when he learned that she was only over at the General Store with Nurse Suelee. He walked from bed to bed checking pulses, examining Andrew’s eyes, looking at his fingernails, inspecting the traction rope holding up Sam’s leg, listening with a stethoscope to Hannibal’s breathing. ‘Full examinations later, gentlemen, if you want that ’copter picking you up tomorrow. Now what can I do for you, Mr Chase?’ he asked as he drew up a chair and sat opposite him.

‘I can’t pretend to understand these backwoods ways or how one can deal with these people except on their own terms. Violence and death seem to me to be the only other options.’

‘Now you
are
beginning to understand these people. Sorry, do go on,’ Hal Rudge commented.

‘Chadwick is an unusual, beautiful and courageous child, I cannot and will not return her to that ignorant, violent brute of a father of hers. I intend to adopt her, if she is willing for me to do so. Since her father would never understand a lawful procedure such as adoption or my motives, I intend to buy her off him. That he
will
understand. I feel that’s the least I can do for her. In exchange for our lives, I want to give her a better one than she has ever known.’

‘That’s admirable, Mr Chase.’

‘Hannibal will do, and Sam and Andrew, I think, Hal.’

‘Yes, well, Hannibal, as I was saying that’s an admirable, a fine gesture to make, and I’m all for it, as long as you know what you’re getting into. Chadwick is an intelligent child but she has her secrets and a very mysterious soul. She’s difficult to know in the deepest sense of the word. Love, kindness even … she has not had much experience of such things. There have never been role models, no one to show her affection. Who and what she is, she has had to make up as she goes along. I don’t know you from Adam or your friends and I would have to be assured that you will give her a good home.’

It was here that Andrew spoke up and explained that he was Hannibal’s attorney and that several phone calls would assure Dr Hal Rudge just who Hannibal Chase was and what kind of a man
was making this offer of a new life for the child. Sam added that had not Hannibal offered to adopt Chadwick, it had been on his mind to do so also.

Hannibal was not a particularly emotional man but he was quite overcome by gratitude to his two friends for not only understanding how much it meant to him to save the girl, but for having similar sentiments. His reaction surprised him. Recovering himself, he rose from the rocker and went to Andrew, then Sam, and shook their hands and thanked them. He somehow needed their approval for allowing his heart to go out to this child.

He returned to his rocker and painfully, with the help of Hal, took his seat again. ‘You will work with us on this, won’t you, Hal? You see, I have a plan but without your co-operation, indeed your advice, and the sheriff’s protection, I don’t think I can make it work. I need you to help me with both father and daughter. Somehow you have found a way to handle them both. Despite all we three have gone through with that child, she is as remote from us as she was when she walked through the bushes and mist and found us – yet that remoteness and her beauty somehow enchanted us. However, enchantment is hardly a form of verbal communication, which is what is needed.’

The young doctor laughed. ‘That’s Chadwick, a child-woman enchantress, and the beauty of it is she doesn’t even know it. What she does know is that she’s despised by her family, beaten and abused by her father, what friends she might have made are afraid of her – and all because she’s more intelligent, cleverer, prettier, courageous, and has a certain sensuality that makes her a cut above these backwoods people.

‘What Chadwick has she holds tight for herself and will not allow to be beaten out of her. She makes her father crazy, causes him a great deal of trouble, because she won’t lie down for him. He thinks that chances are when he does force her to, she will kill him. I’m the one that told him she was capable of it, a lie of course created by me to save her. Another lie I told: that I would shoot him if he didn’t allow her to go to school, and that only worked with a pistol held and cocked against his temple. I know how you feel about saving Chadwick, gentlemen. To see a flower growing
in the dust and not to transplant it is a crime. Of course I will help you.’

The four men shook hands and discussed how best to approach Ed Chadwick. The sheriff, Bonner Gleason, was sent for and sat in on the conference. He was all for throwing Ed Chadwick into prison to rot there for the rest of his life, but common sense and a true understanding of the man and the law told him that they would never get a conviction. Paislee Chadwick would never testify against her husband and she was the only witness to the assault on Chadwick other than Calumet and Benjie who would think nothing of perjuring themselves. Bonner had another problem to deal with: Ed was on the hunt for Chadwick, and he doubted she would get away with a beating this time. There was nothing else for it, the best way to keep the peace was to go with Hannibal Chase’s plan.

Chadwick returned in a new canary yellow cotton dress patterned with tiny bright red and royal blue flowers, sizes too large for her and pathetically unpretty, while the men were working on their plan. She had on white ankle socks and sturdy shoes that looked too wide for her and under her arm she carried her old tattered things wrapped in a brown paper parcel. She seemed to Hannibal, even with her now only partially swollen face and a rainbow of fading bruises down one side of it, still to be the most enchantingly beautiful child.

She stood there, neither embarrassed nor overwhelmed, merely smiling as she turned round and the skirt flared out around her incredibly comely twelve-year-old legs. ‘You look really pretty, Chadwick. You did buy more dresses?’ asked Hannibal.

‘No.’

‘But we want you to have many more dresses and shoes and underthings,’ said Sam.

‘And a sun hat with a satin ribbon, if you like?’ added Andrew.

A smile broke across Chadwick’s lips. She tossed her head back and laughed and ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it off her face. ‘Lordy, my pa would kill me for sure. I’ll be lucky he doesn’t burn the one I have bought.’

Hannibal couldn’t bear for her to mention her father, and chose
to ignore what she was telling them. ‘And patent leather shoe. Do go back and see if they have patent leather shoes, white ones.’

Chadwick gave a girlish giggle and exclaimed, ‘White shoes! Well, I never. I’m happy with what I gave me, and I have new undies with a bit of lace,’ she whispered to the men in the ward.

Nurse Suelee shrugged her shoulders and told them, ‘I tried to tell her she could have anything in the shop and lots of it but I don’t think she’s used to having much.’

Hannibal realised that for him it was a
fait accompli
that Chadwick could have everything but as yet she didn’t know or understand that. He called her to him and told her, ‘You’ve done so much for us, Chadwick, how about one more thing – give us a party, a kind of celebration? You go with Nurse Suelee and get us some ice cream and cakes and chocolates. Nurse, take the wallet on my bedside table and spend all you have to, but allow Chadwick to do the choosing.’

By the time they returned with the brown paper bags the men had settled on their plan. And after a party of potato crisps, cherry soda, chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream sticks, Babe Ruth candy bars and a small bag of salted peanuts for each, the moment of truth came.

Dr Rudge called Chadwick over to him from where she had been presiding over the party, mostly in silence and with some wonder at the fun of it all. Conversation had been somewhat stilted but had had its moments, especially when Chadwick had teased the survivors about their lack of faith in her promise that she would save them and had cited specific incidents. There was added charm in the way she would slip back and forth from backwoods Tennessee English to a more cultivated accent taught to her at school or by mimicking Hannibal or Sam or Andrew.

Hannibal asked her to sit next to him, and hoisted her up on to the end of Andrew’s bed. ‘You know your pa has been looking for you, Chadwick?’

‘I guessed as much. Does he know I’m here?’ she answered, looking round the room at the faces of the men, aware that the party was over and something serious was happening.

‘Yes.’

It was impossible to guess what she was thinking because she showed nothing, internalised the news with not a change of expression, merely a sigh of resignation.