A Question of Mercy (18 page)

Before the man opened the screen door, he turned and, in one terrible moment, looked straight into the woods. At first, Jess imagined that she had blended in with the trees, then she slid down slowly to move out of sight. She did not believe he had seen her, but his eyes seemed to pick her out. She knew he could use that bat on her, do the same thing to her, without a hint of reservation. He entered the dark house and closed the door.

Jess hurried toward the road and stumbled as if she, too, were drunk. The sun was almost up, and a Negro woman stood in her doorway waving Jess over.

“What are you doing in this part of town?” she said. “You shouldn't be here.” Jess moved straight toward her voice. When she got close, the woman grabbed her arm to bring her inside. “You hear that dog? You see what happen? You better get out of here. Where're you going, anyway?” Then she turned her head toward a man in a back room. “He finally did it, Eli,” she told the man. “Murphy finally killed that dog. Come help me get it. We'll bury that creature. Least we can do.” She turned to Jess. “You see it?”

Eli listened while Jess described what she had seen. “I'm not going over there, Gracie,” Eli said. “You crazy, if you go. He could do the same thing to us.”

“Well, I'm going,” said Gracie. “At least, you can get me that little wagon out back.”

Jess followed Gracie and said she would help.

“I can do it myself.” But Gracie did not refuse the help. “Knew it would happen someday.” They pulled the empty wagon toward the man's house. “Murphy's a mean drunk. Known him for years. He used to be good to his dog, but he went to jail twicet, and come out mean. Like he is now.” Jess followed Gracie, a big woman with legs like stumps. They walked straight into the man's yard and saw the dog short-chained and dead. Blood covered his head and eyes, and his mouth had frozen into a strange grin.

“I been bringing this creature food ev'ry night. He bark ‘cause he hungry, that's all.” She leaned to unhook the chain and began to lift the dog's hind legs. The dog had urinated on himself and Gracie wanted to spare this girl that, at least. “You get the head, what's left of it. We can take him away. He's done now with all his suffering.” She spoke as though she knew something about suffering herself.

Jess lifted the bloody head and front legs. Blood soaked her pants and shirt, but she couldn't help that. The dog's middle drooped, and Gracie put one hand under its stomach, then shifted the body into the wagon. Gracie's
arms seemed to be all muscle. When they pulled the wagon out of the yard, Jess saw the man standing at the window watching them. He stood very still. The sun was coming up over the hill.

“Don't look at him,” Gracie said. “No telling what could set him off.” They left, and buried the dog behind the grill.

“Now we gonna wash up,” Gracie said. “Then you gotta go. I swear, you not big as a kitten.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Jess entered the bathroom and found it sparkling clean—not new, but clean. She removed her bloody clothes and washed her face with a bar of soap, rubbing it with paper towels. Somebody knocked on the door.

“Just a minute,” Jess said.

“I brought you a rag and towel you can wash with,” the woman said. “And some other clothes I think can fit you. Just thow those ones away.”

Jess unlocked the door and the woman stuck her brown hand around the doorsill, giving her the rag, towel, and clothes. The dog's blood lay smeared on Jess's arms and legs. She scrubbed hard, then washed out the rag, seeing red, gritty water move down the drain. She washed herself until the rank smell of dog had drained away, and she began to smell like the soap itself—slightly disinfectant and barely sweet. She saw a bottle of Jergens lotion on a table where toilet paper and extra soap were stacked. She lotioned herself all over, until her skin began to feel smooth again.

She even leaned into the sink and washed her hair, soaping and rinsing until her hair began to squeak like baby birds. She took a brush out of her bag and brushed until the water was out. She tried to wipe the floor with paper towels, but hesitated to use all of them. One of the clean shirts had a ragged ribbon around the hem, and Jess tore it off, choosing the ribbon to tie her hair into a ponytail. She felt fresh when she exited the bathroom, but the image of the man hitting the dog kept playing in her mind.

Gracie had already cleaned up and wore a dark dress and apron. “Just set down here,” she said. Gracie was not young but not old, her skin slightly lighter than coffee, her hair short and oiled. Eli was black as coal. His eyes, arms, and face were all one color of black. “Where you goin'?

“Lula, Alabama.”

“You almost there. Too far to walk, though. You got any money?” Then she turned to Eli. “Eli, give this girl enough for the bus ride. She won't need to be walking all that way.”

The man looked up from where he was sitting in what Jess knew must be his favorite chair. “How much you want?”

The sun no longer burned red over the yard where the man called Murphy had killed his dog. The dog lay covered with soft dirt, positioned in a
shallow grave. Jess saw that Gracie was not afraid of Murphy, even as they lived next to each other; and she marveled how this man with an impulse toward such cruelty lived in such close proximity to Gracie's kind efforts toward consolation. The thought disturbed her.

When Jess left she looked like a different person—her face shining, her hair wet, but growing long again. She smelled like a mixture of Jergens and lye soap. “Don't come back around here,” was the last thing Gracie said before she went back inside.

Eli called to her. “Bus depot's in the middle of town. Right next to the fire station.”

Fire station
. Jess's heart leapt at the thought of a fire department, of maybe running into a fireman named Sam Rafferty. And though she knew he would not be here, that he was far from home, in another country, in another world, she looked for his face anyway.

As she passed the firehouse, three men came out. One whistled at Jess and she waved. They could not guess how much her life had changed in the last two-and-a-half months. She thought about riding the bus, the ease of just sliding smoothly along the highway, sitting in a comfortable seat and not lugging her suitcase and satchel.

— 23 —

T
he bus driver told Jess that he was going all the way to Gadsden, Alabama, but that Lula was one stop before Gadsden. He had only eight passengers, but would pick up others on the way. She climbed on and walked midway back, sitting huddled against a window.

Jess thought again of the muddy brown and white car with the
ike Ike
sticker, and felt clear of it now. She hoped she would never see it again. Everything about that car seemed like trouble. And she had not forgotten the appearance of those two men coming up so fast in the woods—the older man's fat nose, the boy's furtive glance, their sudden exit as though they had never really gone. And the slick salesman in the car, her quick escape. Pug and Ruby's Esso Station and Possum's generous breakfast. But, even more vivid in her mind's eye, was the brutal way the bat came down on that dog, and Murphy watching as Jess and Gracie rolled the dog away in the bloody wagon.

She clutched her satchel tightly on her lap and settled into the comfortable seat. No one sat near her, but someone had a transistor radio and she could hear Patti Page singing “The Tennessee Waltz.” She rode awhile with her forehead against the cool window. It was toward the end of July, and the weather had turned hot and lush. Plumes of cattails and stalks of bee-blossom grew beside the road. Wide fields bloomed full with cotton plants. Jess felt new life forming all around her.

A newspaper lay on the seat beside her and Jess examined it for casualties or deaths from the war. She looked for the name
Sam Rafferty
, and was relieved not to find it. She could barely think of the war without thinking of Sam lying hurt somewhere in a ditch. She read an article that described the UN's proposal; the article said the war could end soon.

She took out the pack of Sam's letters. She knew whole paragraphs by heart, and liked the idea of reading fragments of them as she rode along.
Anything could have happened during these past months, but reading his words kept her hopeful.

My whole mind is going deaf …. I don't want to forget you. I don't want you to forget me. I hope I come back
.

What do you think of this war?

… that radio operator … a boy, 5, girl, 2 … told me to write his wife … When I think about writing that letter …

… the truth is I don't know how I'm still alive
.

Last night … all Hell broke loose … We ran for it. My feet felt numb from the cold …

Six bullets hit just a few yards from me … I watched a good buddy die … stomach wound …. I wanted to kill everybody
.

… I wish I could come to the campus where you are and walk around under the trees … I am so far from that
.

A few new people boarded the bus. The radio person had turned the music down, but Jess could still hear it, a slow song with violins. She looked again through the newspaper, reading that some American soldiers had come back home in June. Then she saw, under a list of missing persons, her
own
full name next to a school photo. Jess stared at the photo for a long moment. She looked nothing like that now. Her heart stuck large in her throat and the memory of leaving Adam at the river that day filled her head. All her decisions, since then, seemed to be made from a different mind.

But Adam, now, would not suffer shock treatments or drugs or locked doors. He would not have the operation. He would not leave home. He died in a river going to the ocean, and Jess, in her private self, felt relief. She tucked the newspaper in her satchel as the drift of ground moved beneath her.

Maybe she would call her father. Let whatever happens happen. She remembered on television shows where the person robbing a bank was caught, or a gangster on-the-run was found. “The jig is up,” the cops would say. Jess felt that now. She didn't know what a jig actually was, but it seemed to be just about up.

After a while she fell asleep to the gentle rocking of the bus and the tinny-sounding radio playing Tony Bennett's “Rags to Riches.” When she woke, the bus had stopped.

She was here.

REPRIEVE

— 24 —

J
ess approached the town square in Lula, and saw, first, a diner—Honey's Last Stop. The air smelled of wild onion and honeysuckle. She wore a dark blue skirt that ruffled around her knees and a white blouse that pulled slightly across her breasts. Her hair was growing long again, curling around her neck and shoulders

Honey's diner was a neat place with booths and tables nicely spaced. Behind the counter was an overweight sixty-year-old man who looked as though he might have grandchildren and could be patient with anyone. Jess asked if she could use the phone.

“You looking for a motor court?” The man wore a tag on his shirt that said Leonard Reese.

“I'll be staying at the boardinghouse. Mr. Brennan said he would come get me,” Jess said. “And I'm looking for work.” She had seen the Help Wanted sign in the window.

“That boardinghouse is just down the street. You could walk there,” Leonard Reese told her. “You had any experience waiting tables?”

“A little,” Jess said. “I'm a fast learner though.”

Leonard wiped down the counter in front of him. “If you know Mr. Brennan, I'm willing to try you out, I guess. See how you do. We could sure use the help.” He leaned on the counter. “When can you start?”

She told him she could come in the next day.

“That's fine.” A couple paid their bill. Leonard pushed four keys on the cash register and gave them change. “See you later, Lenny,” the man said.

Jess walked to the back of the diner toward a sign that said Restroom. She washed her face and hands, straightened her skirt, and brushed the dust off her shoes. When she came back, she sat in a booth and observed how the waitress took her order: how she wrote everything down and then called out the order to a cook behind the swinging doors.

The waitress, Maggie, brought Jess a ham and tomato sandwich with two pickles on the plate. “You the new girl coming to work here?”

“I think so.”

“That's good. We get worked to death around noon and again at six o'clock. This's the best eating-place in town.” Maggie was short, and older than Jess by about twenty years. She wore a white uniform with a light blue apron and a white hat propped on top of her head. “So, when you starting work?”

“Tomorrow.”

Jess ate her sandwich. For once, she was not very hungry. Maggie brought a large glass of iced tea. “We got good chocolate cake.” She patted her round belly and smiled.

“Not today. I'd better go to the boardinghouse. Mr. Reese said I could walk there.”

“Lenny. Call him Lenny. Everybody does. Even me, and he's my daddy.” Maggie slipped into the booth with Jess. “Miss Tutwiler runs that boardinghouse—just two blocks away. You can't miss it.”

“I've been there before,” Jess said. “My mother knew Mr. Brennan, and we visited when I was little.”

Maggie stood when three men came in. She waved and scooped up four menus. “Henry coming today?” she asked the men. “He'll be here directly,” said one.

Jess went to the cash register to pay Leonard Reese for her meal, but he said she could eat here for free now that she was hired. “Want you here tomorrow by nine. I can get you ready for the lunch crowd. I pay seventy-five cents an hour.”

Jess left two dimes on the table for Maggie and started walking.

The sign on the lawn said Tut's Boardinghouse, and its turrets and intersecting roof looked exactly as Jess had remembered. She knocked on the screen door and could see the dark, high-ceilinged hallway. Miss Tutwiler, a short woman with deep green eyes, greeted her. She wore a scooped-neck dress and had a handkerchief tucked in her bosom. “Lenny called and told me you'd be coming. He said you're working for him, and that you were a friend of Will Brennan's.” She looked cautiously at Jess, but invited her in. “Did he know you were arriving today?”