A Time For Hanging (2 page)

He fell face forward on the ground.

The Reverend Wayne Randall wondered where his daughter was.
 
She had been acting strangely lately, going off with no warning and coming back in time for supper.
 
Such behavior was very unlike Elizabeth.
 
She had made it a habit to be around the house to help her mother with the meals, but now her unexplained absences had become more frequent, and she had not responded obediently to his questions, refusing obstinately to answer him when he asked about her whereabouts.

Tonight the table had been set for over an hour, and Randall's wife, Martha, had tried to keep the meal warm.

Finally she had to speak.
 
"I don't believe out daughter's coming home for supper."

Randall was sitting at his place at the head of the table, as was right for the man of the family.
 
His head was bowed over his plate, but he looked up at his wife's words.

He tried to keep the distaste he felt for her out of his voice.
 
"Sharper than the serpent's tooth," he said.

Immediately, his wife teared up.
 
He knew that she hated for him to talk like that about Elizabeth, but he didn't care.
 
He had long since stopped caring one way or the other about what she thought.
 
He knew it wasn't Christian, but he couldn't help himself.
 
He had prayed about it, to no avail.

It was the way she looked.
 
When they had married, she had been slim and fair, hair as red as fire, but something had happened to her, something that he hated but could not prevent.

She had changed.

After the birth of their child, she had become larger and larger, turning to soft fat before his eyes.
  
Her arms were as big around as his own thighs, or so it seemed to him, white and thick as bread dough.
 
He often thought that if he stuck a finger in her, it would leave a dimple.

He never tested the theory, however.
 
He had long since ceased to touch her, and she had long since ceased to care.

She looked at him across the table, her little faded eyes almost blurred in folds of fat, the tears squeezing out of them.

"You don't even care about your daughter," she said.

Even her voice irritated him.
  
It was high and whiny.

"I care," he said, feeling the anger rising in him, the way it always did.

"You've mistreated her, mishandled --"

"That's enough!" Randall roared, standing abruptly, shoving the table away from him, rattling the dishes.
 
He was an imposing man, corpulent, with an impressive hard belly.
 
He was dressed, as usual, in black, except for his white shirt.
  
His tie, which he wore from morning until bedtime, was also black.

"I have done my best for that girl," he said, biting off the words and spacing them for emphasis.
 
"I have always done my best."

He reached for the Bible which sat on the table by his plate.
 
he always had a Bible close at hand.

When he picked it up, he gripped it in his right hand and held it to his breast.
 
"I have raised her by this book, and by God's words.
 
Any mistakes that have been made --"

"No!" Martha said, and she too stood up.
 
She was not tall, no more than five feet and a few inches, which emphasized her bulk.
 
"I won't allow you to say that again."

Randall was dumfounded.
 
His wife was a woman who knew her place.
 
That was one of her only good qualities.
 
She never contradicted him; she always did his bidding and performed her wifely duties around the house without protest or complaint.

There were no tears in her eyes now.
 
She pressed the advantage of his surprise.
 
"You've been hard with her, too hard.
 
Whatever she is, you made her that way."

"Woman, you forget yourself," he sputtered.

"No," she said.
 
"I'm remembering."

He looked at her blankly.

"I'm remembering how you treat her, always.
 
Not the way you treat me, not that way, but almost as bad."

"I don't know what you mean," Randall said, putting all the self-righteousness he knew how into his tone as he continued to clutch his Bible to him.

"Of course you know," his wife said.
 
"You've never let her lead a normal life, not the way a girl should."

"I am a man of God," he said, more self-righteous than ever.
 
"A normal life is not for me and mine."

"I don't mean it the way you do," she said.
 
"The kind of life you talking about, well, I guess I accepted that when I married you.
 
I knew that we'd never have much money, that we'd have to live on what we could take in from the church members, whether it was money or chickens or ear corn.
 
That we'd have to live with cast-off furniture in a house that none of the members would want for themselves but that they think's just fine for their preacher."

She paused for breath, but Randall didn't try to say anything.
 
He couldn't think of anything to say, though his face was contorted with the effort.

"It's the other things," Martha went on.
 
"Always making her sit on the front row of the church every Sunday morning, not letting her even move or wiggle so much as a toe without leaning down out of that pulpit and yellin', 'That's the Devil in you, Lizzie!
 
Sit still and shame the Devil.'"

"The Lord our God demands a reverent heart," Randall said.

"And every time a boy'd come around to play, it was off with LIzzie to her room or to her chores.
 
No time for that, you'd say.
 
Not even when she got older, and the boys'd be around her like bees around a honeycomb.
 
You never gave her a chance to let one of them come calling, not ever.
 
Whenever she'd ask, you'd turn it around, make it sound like whoever it was that wanted to come by, even if it was just for a little talk, making it sound like he was burning with all the lusts of Sodom."

Randall pulled himself straighter, pulled the Bible closer to his breast and held it there like a shield.

"That time you found her sitting under the sycamore tree on Sunday afternoon with the Collins boy.
 
You pulled her away from there as if he was the imp of Satan himself, pulled her right back of the house and took off your belt and --"

Randall slammed the Bible down on the table.
 
The plates and forks jumped into the air and clattered down.

"Woman!" he yelled.
 
"You've said too much.
 
Wives must be subservient to their husbands --"

"And so I have been, for far too long!" she stormed at him.
 
"Where has it gotten me?"
 
She looked down at herself and the tears spurted from her eyes again.
 
"Look where it's gotten me.
 
Look what you've made me."

"I've made you nothing," he said coldly.
 
"What you are is your own doing."

"No," she said.
 
"But that doesn't matter.
 
It's what you've made of Elizabeth that matters."

"And what might that be?"

"I don't know."
 
With these words, the spirit seemed to go out of her.
 
"I just don't know.
 
But she's secretive now, the girl who used to tell me everything.
 
She sneaks out of the house at all hours --"

"What?"

Oh, it's been going on for a while.
 
I knew, but I didn't say anything.
 
I didn't want to have you beat her again."

"Spare the rod and spoil the child," Randall said sententiously.

"I'm almost certain you believe that, and that's why I didn't tell you.
 
The she got bolder, or more desperate, and left even when you knew.
 
But she never said why."

Randall picked up his Bible again and twisted it in his hands.
 
The leather cover creaked.
 
"If it was a man . . . . "

"If it was, what will you do?
 
For all you know she's with him now, and she may never come back."

Randall shuddered as if from a sudden chill.

"She'll be back," he said.
 
"You'll see.
 
She'll be back."

But somehow there was no force in his words.
 
Martha could tell that he wasn't sure.
 
For the first time in his life, he wasn't sure that he was right, and he was clearly shaken.

It must be a terrible thing, she thought, for a man who's always known he's right, known it for nearly fifty years, to suddenly think he might be wrong.
 
And if he's thinking back over those years for the first time, really thinking, to realize that he might have been wrong before, and been wrong more than once.

Seeing the stricken look in his eyes, she almost wanted to walk around the table that separated them and take him in her arms.
 
Almost.
 
But she couldn't bring herself to do it.

The stood there like that, staring at one another like strangers.

Fireflies filled the grove, flickering and shimmering in the darkness.

Paco sat up and shook his head, and the fireflies disappeared.
 
He realized that they had never actually been there.
 
They had been nothing more than the dazzling left behind by the solid blow on his head he had received from the tree.

The night was quiet now; there was not even the call of the owl to disturb the silence.

Paco got to his feet, putting his hand against the tree trunk to steady himself.
 
His head throbbed painfully, and everything seemed to be whirling around him.
 
He could taste blood in his mouth.

He stood there for a few minutes, trying to remember what had happened.
 
Then it all came back to him in a rush -- the dead woman, his sudden panic, his collision with the tree.
 
He had no idea how long he had lain on the ground, or how late it might be, but he knew that he had to get out of there.
 
The blow on his head had done one good thing for him:
 
he was no longer afraid.

The full moon was high in the sky, and quite a bit of its mellow light filtered through the tree branches, shadowing the ground at Paco's feet.
 
He looked around helplessly for the salt and sugar he had been holding at one time, but they were nowhere to be seen.

He felt his fear returning, but he controlled the urge to run.
 
There was no need to hurry.
 
He was alone, except for the woman, and the woman would not be bothering him.
 
He would retrace his steps and try to find the sugar and salt.
 
He must have dropped it in his headlong flight.
 
If he was careful, he would be able to find them.
  
He hoped they had not spilled.

He began walking back the way he had come, looking at the ground as carefully as he could in the dark.
 
He had almost reached the trail when he heard voices.

He stepped back into the
 
trees, pressing himself to the trunk of a large elm.
 
The sharp point of a broken limb poked him through his thin shirt.

At first the voices were just a blur, but then he began to distinguish them.
 
There were obviously a number of men, all of them talking loud.

"Dammit, Harl, watch out where you're goin'," someone said.
 
"This trail's too narrow for more than one of us."

Harl, Paco thought.
 
That would be Harl Case, the owner of the livery stable, the only man in town by that name.
 
What was he doing there?