Behind the Bonehouse (36 page)

Alan walked toward the door, limping more than normal. He had been since they'd left the houseboat. And Jo asked how bad his leg was as they walked toward the car. He just said, “It's nothing to worry about,” and thanked Spencer again for everything he'd done, and told him he'd give him some clean clothes as soon as they got home.

Alan and Jo got Ross fed and bathed and spent enough time with him to think he was calm enough to put to bed (with Emmy sticking to Jo like glue). When they finally got showered and ate what little they felt like eating, and crawled into their own bed—sore everywhere and bone tired, Jo's nerves still frayed and vibrating, her forehead bandaged, a bag of ice on Alan's leg—Jo said, “When you came through the cabin door you looked like you wanted to kill him.”

“I did. In the abstract. I'm glad I didn't have to.” Alan looked away from Jo then, their hands holding onto each other, lying quiet on top of his chest. “I know what war can do. Remember the old cliché? ‘But for the grace of God, go I?' That one's true. I could've been like Butch.”

“No. You'd never do anything like—”

“Oh, yeah. Me, Jo. Given the right circumstances. And now I know what it's like to be locked up, thinking you're facing life in a cell. He needs to be there. He's unstable and dangerous. But I'd like to think that someday he'll build a useful life again. Ouch.” Alan had taken off the ice pack, and twisted his knee when he'd moved.

“I do too, in the long run. But I hope he'll be locked up for a good long while to come.”

“I know. Me too.” He turned toward her and wrapped his arms around her and kissed her on the forehead.

“Do you think he dropped Ross on purpose? Or did he just lose hold of him, as drunk as he was?

“I don't know, Jo. I couldn't tell.”

“It makes a big difference how I feel about him.”

“Yeah. It does to me too.”

Excerpt From Jo Grant Munro's Journal

Tuesday, June 23rd, 1964

It's early morning, probably just after five, and I'm in Mom's rocking chair in Ross's room watching him sleep. He seems to be doing okay, but I can't believe what he's been through won't end up in nightmares, or dysentery, or something even worse. Though what that might be I don't know.

I dreamt Ross was lying dead on his back on the table in the cabin of the houseboat, and I woke up in a blind panic afraid to go back to sleep. I'll get over it. The dreams'll stop. But I can't write about being kidnapped. Not anytime soon.

Saturday, June 27th, 1964

Spencer backed Tracker down the ramp of his two-horse trailer, then led him into Jo's south barn into the stall next to Sam. They knew each other from having gone cross country with Jo and Spencer and Alan, and they trumpeted to each other, and nosed the boards between their stalls, and stuck their heads over the bottom half of their doors so they could see each other face-to-face—before Tracker circled his stall twice, peed in the straw in the center, then sucked up half the water in his bucket and rubbed his chin on his door.

Spencer had put his dad's gelding, Buster, on the other side of Tracker's stall, after he'd trailered his own mare, Bella, and his mother's gelding, Duff, over to Jo's farm. Duff and Bella and Alan's Maggie had watched the new boys walk through the barn, snorting and whinnying and nodding their heads over their doors—and Jo and Spencer stood and smiled for a minute, before they poured grain in all the feed tubs, and left them to get used to their stalls before they were turned out.

Spencer and Jo walked north toward her house, watching the wind blow in from the south, seeing it stir the trees on their left, on the west edge of the ridge, making the mares and the babies in the paddocks that Toss had just turned out pick their heads up and prick their ears, and sniff the world in the wind.

It was a soft wind in a lazy afternoon cooling into an evening of long shadows and quiet rustlings after a hot humid day of buzzing bugs, and birds feeding babies, while horses flicked at flies and fought drowsiness in their stalls.

The sun was still hot, when it wasn't hidden by the clouds that had just begun to drift in in swirling white mounds, before they got torn into tatters that slid apart toward the north.

Spencer was quieter than sometimes, while Emmy ran around them, sniffing tire tracks on the gravel drive—till she spotted her favorite barn cat in the tall grass along the fencerow on their right where the yearling colts were turned out on the east side of the drive.

It was a game they played almost daily, and Cloe clawed up a distant sycamore, just as Emmy shot off in hot pursuit, barely squeezing between two fence rails, giving a handful of yearlings a reason to turn and run. They all liked the excitement, and Spencer laughed when Jo did, just before a huge horse fly landed on Jo's head—the Flying Fortress of the horse world that can rip chunks out of horsehide. She waved it away, then trapped it on her shoulder and crushed it between her fingers before she told Spencer she was sorry.

“For what?” His blond-brown hair was blowing in his face, and he pushed it back with one hand before he looked at Jo.

“That you've had to sell your farm.”

“Thanks. Yeah. I know. But the couple who bought it are in their seventies, and when their granddaughters sell their horses to go to college, they'll move back to Midway. They've given me right of first refusal, so I'm hoping I'll have the business up and running, and can buy it back then.”

“You think our tenant house'll make you claustrophobic?”

“No. I'm working so many hours, all I need is a place to sleep. The important thing is that you're letting me bring the horses here and take care of them myself without having to pay board.”

“It's the least we could do with what you've done for us.”

“What d'ya think of the name Blue Grass Horse Transport? Dissolving Blue Grass Horse Vans means I've got to come up with a new name. I wanted to keep Blue Grass in it to make reaching old customers easier, but—”

“I think it's fine, as long as folks don't think you pick up horses and deliver them.”

“Yeah, that's the danger. If you come up with a better suggestion let me know.”

“What are Martha and Richard doing?”

“Well …” Spencer picked up a stick and threw it up ahead for Emmy. “We've had to put Mom and Dad's house
and
the Blue Grass property up for sale to pay the inheritance taxes. They're based on the value of Dad's estate when Blue Grass was worth something.”

“Nuts.”

“Yeah. But we'll get the insurance money from the fire. It was some kind of a wiring malfunction, so that's been a relief. Anyway, Richard's going to work for a company in Lexington that sells rare stamps and coins. He used to collect both, so I think he'll be suited for it. Martha's gotten a job at the art museum in Macon, Georgia. Her college roommate lives there, and she's converted her family home into two large apartments, and Martha's going to rent one. Her ex-husband pays decent child support, and it's at least a place to start.”

“How are they treating you?”

Spencer shrugged as Emmy brought the stick back and slipped it in his hand, so he'd tug on it while he walked. “More or less the way they have since Dad died. They can't get over of the fact that he trusted me to run the business.”

“So it's the old ‘Daddy loved you better.'”

“He didn't, though. He just thought I'd do a better job.”

“Your dad thinking your brother's more competent must be hard too. Especially when it's true.”

“I know. Family business. If it wasn't this, it'd be something else.”

“Are you going to keep your folks' horses?”

“I don't need four, that's for sure. If I knew somebody who'd ride them and care for them the way I would, then it might be different. It's not like selling a couch.”

“No. I went through that when Tommy died and left me Sam and Maggie. 'Course I'd had to put my own horse down, so that made it easier.”

They'd passed the trees on the south side of Jo's house, and the long drive that led to it, and they were almost to the tenant house, a hundred yards north, when they heard a car climbing the drive. They turned in time to watch it cross the cattle guard in the front hedge, heading up to Jo's porch.

Spencer said, “Was that Earl?”

“I couldn't see the driver.”

They couldn't see much of anything through the evergreen windbreak, and they walked on to the tenant house Spencer had just rented. They stopped on the porch and looked at the chaos inside—furniture shoved against the walls around a sea of cardboard.

Spencer said, “A sharecropper Dad knew as a kid used to say, ‘The worst thing about any job is the dreadin' of it.'”

“Let's just hope he's right.”

“I know!”

“What do you want me to do?” Jo was standing with her hands on her hips, gazing from one side to the other of the wide open room that was kitchen and living room and dining room combined.

“I need to put the bedframe together in the bedroom first, but then—”

“How 'bout I put your dishes away and set up the kitchen?”

“Thanks. That'd be great.”

“We can shuffle the furniture around once some of the boxes are gone.”

“Fine.” Spencer stopped in the middle of the room, holding his old pine headboard. “Elizabeth said she'd come over tomorrow and help me too.” He looked endearingly self-conscious.

And Jo smiled before she said, “Good,” and told herself not to laugh.

“Thank Alan for me too, for what he did this morning. I couldn't have moved the furniture without him.”

Spencer had just walked into the bedroom, when Jack parked his pick-up in what there was of a driveway thirty feet from the front door. The back was filled with boxes of books, and Jack asked where he should put them as he slammed the truck door.

“Pro'bly here on the porch for now. The living-room floor's an obstacle course.”

“I heard from France.” Jack smiled as he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his face and neck. “She'll get here September 12th. Do you know anybody I could hire to give the house a good cleaning? I clean, but—”

“Charlie Small's sister, Esther Wilkes. She'd do a great job.”

“Also,” Jack lowered his voice and smiled self-consciously as he opened the tailgate and reached for a box, “when we talked before, you said Camille could stay with you if she wanted. You still willing? I'd like to give her a choice. I've got the extra bedroom too, but—” His voice trailed off and he dropped his eyes, and it almost looked to Jo as though he was ready to blush.

“Sure. No trouble at all.”

“And …” He paused dramatically and smiled at Jo. “The people you're doing the restoration for have accepted my proposal for the landscaping.”

“Good!”

“This is the first time I've had a chance to execute an overall plan. By the way, did you know Earl's up at your house?”

“No. I wonder what he wants?”

“One other thing.” Jack looked at her, holding the box, but still not speaking for what seemed like half a minute. “My father's heart condition's gotten worse. I'm driving up tomorrow.”

“I'm sorry, Jack.”

“I never should've stayed away from him all those years. It was my mother I didn't …” Jack looked stricken.

And Jo said, “I look back on how frustrated I got with how my mother treated me when she had the brain tumor, and I wish I could do it all over. Your father's so glad to talk to you now, that's all he cares about.”

Jack didn't say anything else. He just set the box of books on the porch, and went to get another.

Earl had knocked on Jo and Alan's front door, then opened it and shouted, but hadn't gotten an answer.

He'd seen Jo walking toward the tenant house, but Alan's Dodge was parked by the south side of their house, so he walked around behind it past the arbor, and saw Alan sitting with his back to him by the willow tree on the edge of the pond, sharpening a hedge clipper, with Ross on a blanket beside him.

“Hey. Ya got a minute?”

Alan looked over his shoulder, and said, “Sure. Let me get you a chair.”

“I'll get it.” Earl was carrying a shoebox in his left hand, but he grabbed a director's chair from the arbor with his right, and set it on the other side of Alan from Ross.

Alan shoved the hedge clippers under his chair, where Ross couldn't get them, while he told himself it was purely Pavlovian, the wariness and flash of distrust whenever he saw Earl. “So what's up? You're actually wearing jeans again.”

“Saturday. Took the day off, 'cept for a fund-raiser this mornin'.” Earl was squinting at the pond, his broad face furrowed and fixed under the brim of a worn beige cowboy hat, his huge hands planted on his knees, looking as though he felt ill at ease too, or was worried that his small canvas chair wouldn't hold up underneath him. “First off, I gotta say this once. Ya shouldn'ta gone after Butch like you did. It couldda gone wrong real easy for you,
and
for Jo and Ross.”

“It happened fast. Finding Jo gone. Spencer getting here within minutes. Hearing from Frannie where Butch might've taken them. I made the decision to move right away because of what Spencer and I did in the war.” Alan looked at Earl, as he rubbed his left thigh, his eyes steady and cool.

“I'm just sayin' what's gotta be said.” Earl took a pack of gum from his shirt and held it out toward Alan, then folded a stick in his own mouth after Alan shook his head. “Ross is doing real well. Sittin' up like that and all.”

“Yeah.”

“Anyway, I wanted ya to know the County Attorney's gonna move things along so Butch'll go to trial week after next.”

“Thanks for letting me know.”