Signs in the Blood (16 page)

She shut the door and went to change out of her good clothes before disposing of the little corpse. This body on the porch puzzled her: Molly and Ursa had been known to tangle with skunks before, but, to her knowledge, they had never killed one. And James was a known coward when it came to any animal larger than a mouse.
Oh, well,
she thought,
back to your rags, Cinderella,
and pulled on her oldest work clothes.

She found a flashlight, turned on all the outside lights, and headed for the toolshed. Armed with a long-handled shovel, she went to the edge of the garden. She swept the strong beam of the flashlight all around her.
If whatever killed this skunk is still around . . . or whoever . . .
Finally, reassured that she was alone, she set the light on the ground, still shining, and began to dig. James stayed close to her, barking and growling at some creature, real or imagined, on the mountainside.
He always barks at nothing,
she reminded herself, after stopping for the third time to shine the light in the direction James was looking.

When the hole seemed large enough, she got a pitchfork and gingerly transported the skunk to its grave, clumsily tucking the flashlight under her arm. She noticed how clean the dead creature's pelt was, not dirty and messy as it would have been if the dogs had dragged it home.
Curiouser and curiouser,
she thought, returning for the doormat, which she knew would never lose that skunk odor. James's barking grew more urgent and up on the mountainside she could hear Molly and Ursa baying.

She was very uneasy now as she picked up the doormat on the prongs of the pitchfork. A white oblong lying on the porch floor came into view. Leaning down to look at it, she saw that it was a postcard, blank side up. She was about to reach for the card when, high on the mountain, the baying turned into furious barking. The dogs had killed a raccoon once while she had watched helplessly and this sounded like the same sort of thing—angry growling and snarling as the dogs snapped at the cornered beast.

What if it isn't a raccoon? What if it's . . .
She didn't finish the sentence, not even in her thoughts. Quickly she went into the house and grabbed Sam's big pistol from the drawer in her bedroom.
It's a Colt Python .357 Magnum,
he had told her.
I want you to learn how to use it.
She knew it was loaded.
Most people would be intimidated just seeing this gun in the hands of a wild-eyed woman,
Sam had said,
but in case that's not enough, we'll keep it loaded. I worry about you and the girls out here when I have to be away.

“You're away for good, aren't you, Sam? But thanks for making me learn to use this thing.”
Cold comfort,
she thought resentfully.

Turning off the outside lights, she hurried back to the porch and fired the gun into the air.
That will bring the dogs back,
she thought.
They're terrified of thunder and gunfire. And if it's a person instead of a coon out there, well, at least they'll know I'm armed.

Her ears were ringing and she couldn't hear anything. But then she began to make out the sound of dogs running full tilt toward the house. Ursa and Molly bounded up the steps, panting heavily, tongues lolling out the sides of their slavering jaws. Keeping the gun behind her back and away from their gaze, she sniffed at each dog carefully, but neither carried the telltale skunk aroma.

“Okay, you girls, what's going on here?” she asked. They wagged noncommittally, whined, and nosed desperately at the front door. Elizabeth opened it for them and they crowded in, leaving muddy paw prints on the white card that lay in front of the doorway. Not even stopping to investigate their food bowls, they hurried toward the bedroom where, she knew, they would take refuge under the bed until the memory of the gunshot faded.

Still carrying the heavy gun, muzzle-up, Elizabeth returned to the porch and moved quietly to the far end where she could have an unobstructed view of the mountainside. Nothing but the usual night sounds met her ears, but high on the southern end of the ridge
—about where we border with Walter and Ollie,
she thought, the glow of a powerful flashlight swept briefly down the mountain then winked out.

She waited but the light didn't reappear. Finally, she went on with the task of burying the doormat. This time, she took the gun with her. She returned to the porch after one last careful perusal of the ridgeline. No sound. No lights.

Was it just a few hours ago that I was all dressed up and eating at Tapas?
she wondered. She had almost forgotten the postcard, but as she opened the front door the light from within illuminated it. With a weary groan she picked it up and turned it over.

The picture was a reproduction of what looked like a colored woodcut. In the upper left-hand corner was the number 27. The image was a gruesomely realistic human heart on a yellow background. It was pierced by an arrow and blood dripped from the wound.

V-J
ULY
1901

I don't know if hit was Mister Tomlin's treatin me so ill that set my mind toward Levy. Maybe I'd already begun to think about him that way when first I seen the sun a-shinin on his golden hair. After that whippin, I didn't talk with Levy no more and he quit comin down the road that ran near our cabin, bringin the mare down the far ridge instead. But I sometimes could have sight of him and hear him whistlin a song as he went. Hit were always the same one, Little Mathey Groves, that old love song about a young wife who lays up with Little Mathey while her man's away.

There hadn't been no more whippins for I had been careful to do just like Mister Tomlin said, but seemed like he was just bidin his time. Sometimes at night, when he'd pull his belt off, he'd run it between his hands, feelin of it and lookin at me. One time, when he was tryin to do it again, he had me on my knees before him while he ran that old belt real slow all over me. Hit didn't hurt but hit felt nasty and put me in mind of a snake. He done other things too and there come a time when I knowed that I didn't want to be his wife no more. Just the sound of him jinglin of them gold coins in his pockets like he always done was enough to make me bow up and want nothing to do with him.

I wished that I could talk to Aetha but she was gettin near her time and couldn't climb the hill to come to see me no more. And I couldn't go see her for Mister Tomlin had forbid me from goin anywhere but down to the homeplace ever mornin to fetch some milk. I knowed it weren't no good to say nothing to Romarie; she'd likely just tell me that I'd made my bed and now must lie in hit. I could just see how she'd look when she said it too and knowed I wouldn't never tell her about how Mister Tomlin done me with the belt. Not just the whippin but the other.

I studied on hit some and the next day when Mister Tomlin had gone off about his business, I walked down the hill to find my daddy. He was a-leanin on the wooden gate that opens into the little pasture just above the chicken house and he was a-watchin a great red bull with a ring in his nose. What went with old Abraham? I asked, and Daddy smiled and said, Got rid of him. This is a fine pure-blooded Hereford bull. I marveled that my daddy would have laid out the money for such an animal but didn't say nothing for I had been noticin just the past little bit that he was spendin money like one thing. Rom and Clytie both had wore new dresses to church last Sunday and Rom was talkin big about how Daddy had ordered a Buncombe Beauty Buggy all the way from T.
S. Morrison's in Asheville.

Hit took me a time but at last I told my daddy that I found Mister Tomlin hateful and that he whipped me with his belt for the least thing. I told my daddy that I didn't want to be married no more, but he just laughed and said I'd been bought and paid for and that I had ought to get back home and mind my husband or he'd take a strap to me hisself.

Little Sylvie, says he, don't you know hit's the law that you got to stay with yore husband? Now get what you come for and get on back home.

Hit was some days atter this that Mister Tomlin set off upriver on a timber-buyin trip. I had been studyin on what my daddy had said about the law. I minded two years back when Daddy and the Paynes couldn't agree about the line fence, Daddy went to Ransom and talked to Lawyer Platt to find out the right of hit. So I laid out to do the same. Though I had never been to Ransom, I knowed that the train stopped at Gudger's Stand around seven of a mornin. You could get on and ride to Ransom and they was a train you could ride back in the evenin. I hadn't been to Gudger's Stand but only a few times, when Daddy would take us girls. Hit was reckoned to be a rough place with fights and drinkin goin on most nights but I figgered to be well away afore nightfall.

I rose in the black dark and dressed in my Sunday clothes. I took a basket with some biscuits and a jar of water and set out down the road. They was a half moon and I could feel my way along pretty good, but when I got near Daddy's house I had to leave the path and make my way through the fields so that the house dogs wouldn't hear me and set up a commotion. Some cows and the new bull was grazin nearby and as I seen the shape of that big creature, movin quiet in the moonlight, it come to me for the first time that, along with that fine English shotgun, Mister Tomlin had give Daddy the money that had bought the pureblood bull and my sisters' new dresses and the new buggy. It come to me that my daddy hadn't sold nare land nor timber to Mister Tomlin; what he had sold was me and neither him nor Rom nor Clytie was like to want to give that money back. Bought and paid for was what he had said.

Hit was three miles to Gudger's Stand and the sky was beginnin to lighten as I followed along the wagon road that runs by Ridley Branch down to the river. About halfway to the bridge is the road to Fate and Aetha's place. Up on the hillside I seen a light in their cabin and thought should I go talk to Aetha. But I couldn't tell my story afore Fate and all them young uns and I knowed if I tarried much longer I'd miss the train to Ransom.

When I come to the bridge I could see that the train hadn't got in yet. They was a little gang of people waitin there and I dreaded that someone amongst them might know me and ask what was I about. So I set my basket down and tarried on the bridge, lookin over the rail and tryin to decide what I would say. Standin in the water below me was a great tall gray bird with a long sharp beak. He was as still as if he was carved out of wood, just a-watchin the water at his feet. Then all to once he darted out that cruel beak and I seen a flash of silver as he brung up a fish and swallered it.

I looked at the river, runnin so fast there beneath the bridge. Teacher had showed us on a great map how a flatboat could go down this same river into Tennessee, on to Alabama, back to Tennessee and Kentucky all the way to the Ohio River and from there to the mighty Mississippi and right smack down to New Orleans. And in New Orleans, she told us, you can get on a ship that can take you right around this world.

It seemed a marvel to me that this same water I was lookin at would travel so far while I stayed put. I thought how I would like to go on one of them boats and see all them places. Just then I heared the train whistle blowin and seen the locomotive roundin the bend. I quit my loaferin and grabbed up my basket to run to where the people was waitin.

For a mercy, didn't none of em know me and I watched how they did as they got on the train. I had taken some coins from Mister Tomlin's box where he keeps papers and such and I gave mine to the man in the black suit just like I seen the others doin. I set down by a woman with double chins who smiled friendly-like at me and I put my basket on my knee. The fat woman asked where I lived and who were my people and I told her but I didn't mention no husband. I had taken off the ruby finger-ring and left it wrapped in a rag and stuck in a little hole in the feather tick, for I had come to purely hate the feel of that thing on my hand.

When the train got goin I was some scared for it ran so fast and took the curves so quick that I was fearful of a crash but Miz Honeycutt (for that was the name of the fat woman) seemed just as calm and didn't even hold on.

So atter a time I begun to enjoy myself and was sorry when the train pulled up at the depot in Ransom. Miz Honeycutt told me she had come in to have a tooth pulled at the dentist and that she would see me on the trip back. Iffen I live, she said, but she laughed and winked when she said it.

I walked along with her down the street into Ransom. I have never seen so many people and horses and mules and wagons. They was buildings two and three stories high down both sides of the street. Between two of the buildings was a narrow stairway and a sign shaped like a big tooth hung out over it. The words on hit said Dr. Adams: Painless Extractions. Miz Honeycutt said that was where she was bound for and bid me stay clear of the far end of town. That's where them old whisky wagons come, she said, and a lot of no account rascals.

I walked on down the street, lookin in the windows of the stores and just marvelin at all the things they was for sale. One store had a sign tellin about Snuffles, the famous catarrh cure, and there was another sign for Thedford's Black Draught. I knowed about that for Rom use to make me and Clytie swaller that nasty-tastin stuff for a tonic every spring. They was some bolts of cloth too and one was the prettiest gray satin-striped dimity you ever seen. They was ladies' capes and fascinators and a big travelin trunk.

Then I saw in gold letters on the glass of an upstairs window: James Vance Platt: Law Office. There was another narrow stairway and an arrow on the wall sayin Law Office. I took a real deep breath and begun to climb the stairs.

Lawyer Platt knowed who I was right off when I named my daddy. When I told him that I was married and didn't want to be, he looked surprised. How old are you, Miz . . . ? he asked.

Hit's Tomlin, I said, and I'm thirteen. Lawyer Platt pressed his lips together and leaned back in his funny wooden chair. Hit was on little wheels and he could rock back and forth and turn hit ever whichaway. He just set there in front of his big wooden desk that was all heaped with papers and rocked back and forth in that chair.