Let Me Die in His Footsteps (12 page)

•   •   •

IT’S BEEN A
year since Jacob left town. Folks say he went to stay with his aunt in Louisville where he could see a decent doctor. Just last summer, he was Jacob Riddle who had an arm like a cannon. The men in town said Jacob could throw a baseball harder than anyone who’d ever crossed the Hayden County line, probably harder than anyone who’d ever crossed into the state of Kentucky. And the taller he grew, the harder he threw. Folks still talk about the day last June when something snapped in his arm. They knew it before the ball hit the catcher’s mitt. The arm that dangled like it had come unhinged would never throw another pitch.

The closer Annie, Daddy, and the sheriff get to the bottom of the hill, the stronger the smell of Grandma’s spice cake becomes. Jacob’s going to smell the cake a person should only be smelling at Christmastime, and worse yet, he’s going to know it’s her day of ascension and that she’d been looking in a well in hopes of seeing her intended.

Jacob must be nineteen now, maybe twenty. Annie first started watching him play ball when she was nine years old and they had just moved in with Grandma. She’d walk all the way into town to watch whenever his team was playing. It wasn’t that she was a fan of baseball, or even so much a fan of Jacob’s, but going to a game meant she was going somewhere where lavender didn’t grow.

Usually the games weren’t all so interesting because Jacob threw one pitch, two pitches, three pitches, and the batter was out. If a player did manage a hit off Jacob Riddle, he damn well knew he’d earned it because Jacob never threw with pity. The few times a fellow put his bat to one of Jacob’s pitches, Jacob covered his mouth over with his glove, but not before Annie saw the smile on his face. He was smiling because that hit meant he got to stay on the mound a bit longer.

There were a few games during Jacob’s last season when Annie wondered if her liking to watch him throw the way she did—if her getting to know his motion so well she knew if the ball sailing toward the catcher would skim the outside of the plate, float with no spin, or dip just before reaching the batter—meant she was falling in love. But then something in that arm snapped, he left town, and she didn’t much think about him again, which probably meant it hadn’t been love.

Annie stops worrying about spice cake and wells and what the sheriff might tell Ryce over the supper table tonight when Daddy starts walking faster, so fast he passes Annie up. The sheriff passes her up too, and he’s red-faced again and can’t speak for breathing so hard.

“Someone’s in there,” Jacob says, pointing toward the house.

He jogs toward the sheriff as he says it again and yet again, shouting just loud enough to be heard but not so loud that whoever is inside the house will hear. Even in a uniform, his shirt tucked, his belt buckle shining, both laces on his boots tied up tight, those arms and legs of Jacob’s don’t quite fit as well as they did when he stood up on that mound.

“What do you mean?” Daddy starts drifting toward the house. “Who’s in there?”

“You hold up, John,” the sheriff says, and when he reaches Jacob, he bends at the waist, hands on his hips, and draws in one deep breath after another. “You wait for me, John.” And then, to Jacob, he says, “Who do you say is in there?”

“Not altogether certain.” Jacob gives a single nod in Annie’s direction as if to say hello. “Only know the family likeness.”

Annie was right. It’s Aunt Juna. She’s come home.

“Spit it out, son,” Sheriff Fulkerson says. “Who is it?”

“Sir,” Jacob says, “I believe it’s Ellis Baine, sir.”

Even though the sheriff hollers at him to stop, Daddy starts to jog and then gets to running so fast his hat flies off. He jumps the three stairs leading onto the porch, yanks open the door, and disappears inside. Sheriff Fulkerson straightens, blows out one deep breath that makes his lips flutter, and tells Jacob to hurry on after Daddy.

“See to it John doesn’t get himself in any trouble,” he shouts as Jacob follows Daddy up the stairs and into the house.

•   •   •

IN ADDITION TO
smelling of cinnamon and cloves and ground ginger, the kitchen still smells of the lavender Grandma simmered during the night, or maybe it smells like lavender because the sun is full in the sky now, the air has warmed and everything will smell of lavender for the rest of the day. And right there, sitting in the center of the table and reminding everyone it’s Annie’s day, is the spice cake. The powdered-sugar drizzle still glistens, has not yet hardened to a chalky white. Grandma must have forgotten Annie was supposed to do the icing.

The moment Annie sees the cake, she wants to snatch it and hide it in a cupboard or on the back porch so Jacob Riddle won’t see it. It’s a reminder Annie is halfway between fifteen and sixteen, and even though fifteen and a half is altogether different than being thirteen or fourteen, it still isn’t being grown up. Not so grown up as Jacob Riddle.

Two decks of cards also sit on the table, right next to the cake, yet another sign today is a special day. Cards on the table mean company is coming for supper. Annie glances around the room, trying to decide if she can take the cake without anyone noticing, but Grandma is leaning against the counter as if she’s washing dishes in the sink except there aren’t any dishes to wash, and she’ll know, because she always knows. If Annie tries to take that cake, Grandma will turn and ask what Annie’s up to, and then everyone will see the cake for certain and Annie will turn red in the face again.

Sliding deep into the corner, where she hopes no one will pay her any mind, Annie lets her glance drift from the spice cake to the rest of the room. Daddy stands near her, just inside the door, chest still rising and falling with each heavy breath, boots still on both feet because he didn’t bother to take them off. His arms are crossed, and he’s taken on a wide stance as if he’s setting himself against the northern wind. With both thumbs hooked inside his belt, Jacob Riddle stands on the other side of Daddy. Jacob is a good head and a half taller than Daddy, probably had to duck when he walked through the door, but as tall as he is, he doesn’t look so big standing in the kitchen, not sure where to look or what to say. And sitting quietly, both hands wrapped around a coffee cup, hat hanging from the back of his chair, is Ellis Baine.

Annie recognizes Ellis from pictures she’s seen over the years. The Baine brothers are almost as much a legend as Aunt Juna. Ellis Baine especially, because he was the first one chased away by his own mama. Every five years since the year Joseph Carl Baine was hanged, newspaper people show up in town and start asking questions. While they couldn’t have known it in 1936, they know it now: Joseph Carl Baine was the last man publicly hanged in all of the United States of America, and history will always make that a fact worth revisiting. Those reporters want to meet a Baine brother, and a few have even knocked on the Baines’ door. In the early days, before the last brother was gone, those reporters who braved such a knock found themselves staring into the end of a shotgun.

In addition to tracking down Baines and visiting the crossroad where Joseph Carl is buried, those reporters come knocking on the Hollerans’ door too. Whenever a year rolls around that ends in a one or a six, Daddy will ready himself. For some reason, newspapers mark time in blocks of five years and ten years. The reporters ask after Juna Crowley, and is this the right house? Has she ever returned? Does she ever write? And is this the child? Usually Daddy has chased them off before they get a glimpse of Annie and can ask that last question.

Even now, every five years, those newspapers come, once from as far away as New York City. They write about the female sheriff and the appetite of a small town to witness a man hang. Some say the stories those reporters write are filled with lies. Folks were there. They know the truth. Doesn’t much matter what folks here might know when the folks reading those made-up stories are all the way up in New York City or Dayton, Ohio, or Washington, DC.

Those reporters still come even though the last Baine brother left years ago. The folks in town do their best to make life unpleasant for those reporters. Not a single room will be for rent in all the county. The café will close its empty tables when one of them walks through the door. And not one person will have one thing to say about the Crowleys or the Baines.

“Afternoon, John,” Ellis Baine says to Daddy.

Trailing everyone else by a full minute, the sheriff finally makes his way inside, wiping his face with that same limp kerchief as he steps into the kitchen. Jacob holds open the door for him and takes the sheriff’s hat and Daddy’s too, which the sheriff must have picked up on his way toward the house. Sweat stains have grown out from under the sheriff’s arms, and a button on his shirt has popped open or maybe popped off entirely, exposing his white undershirt.

“Didn’t waste no time, did you, Ellis?” the sheriff says, pulling out a chair and dropping down on it. “Marrying a cook as fine as my Bethany is a blessing and a curse,” he says, patting his large stomach. “Annie, you here?” He turns in his seat, his stomach sagging to his lap.

“Yes, sir,” Annie says, sliding a step to the right so the sheriff can see her standing behind Daddy.

The sheriff begins at the top of his shirt, and one by one, struggling with his thick fingers, unhooks each button. “Come on over here, girl,” he says.

Annie steps up to his chair, places both hands on the sheriff’s collar, all the while keeping her eyes on Ellis Baine, though she isn’t certain why. Grandma would say the know-how is the thing that causes Annie’s breath to quicken, her mouth to go dry, her fingertips to turn numb.

As she stands behind the sheriff, helping him off with his shirt, Ellis Baine studies her. The man’s eyes don’t settle on one piece of Annie. Instead they scan all parts of her, settling here and there as if looking for something special. He’s looking at the size of her hands, the thickness of her hair, the curve of her shoulders. Once the sheriff has managed to pull his arms free, he reaches in one pocket and hands a small white button to Annie.

“Think you can take a needle to this for me?” he says, his stomach stretching the white undershirt he is left wearing. Then he gives Daddy a wave to have a seat. When Daddy makes no move to join him, the sheriff scoots the chair out from under the table with the tip of his boot. “Go on and have a seat. We’ve quite a bit to catch up on after all these years.”

Daddy sits, but not in the chair next to the sheriff. Instead he pulls out the one Mama usually sits in and positions himself directly across from Ellis Baine.

“How is it you see fit to find yourself in my house?” Daddy says.

“Not here to cause no trouble.”

In every picture Annie has ever seen that showed the Baine family, Ellis and Joseph Carl were always the easiest to pick out. Joseph Carl was fair-haired with pale eyes. He was narrow through the shoulders and the shortest of the bunch. The other brothers wore long beards, wide and bushy clumps of hair that drew down to a scrawny point at their end. All of them except Ellis. He was always clean-shaven, or somewhere close to it. The legend goes that Ellis was the brother the ladies liked best, and so he kept himself fine and clean for them. Others, mostly the older men in town, said any decent man would wear a beard, and if he didn’t, it was only proof he wasn’t man enough to grow one.

“Didn’t ask if you was here to cause trouble. Asked why you think you’d be welcome?”

“Never said I figured on being welcome.” Ellis doesn’t look at Daddy as he speaks but instead stares into his coffee cup.

From her spot at the sink, Grandma lets out a grunt. It’s the same grunt she lets out when Abraham Pace says his fiancée doesn’t like him having so much salt or more than one dessert or a third sip of whiskey.

“You been up to the house?” Sheriff Fulkerson asks, shooing Annie away to get busy stitching that button.

“Sure have.”

“You just get in today?” the sheriff asks.

Ellis Baine nods. He’s come home again, and so maybe he’s the one the rocker foretold. But as he nods his head yet again to tell the sheriff he only just today arrived, Annie knows he wasn’t the one who left those cigarettes.

“And you thought to come here next?” Daddy says, even though the sheriff keeps holding up a hand to quiet him.

“You want I should see him back home?”

Everyone turns toward Jacob when he says this. He takes a step forward and asks again.

“Want I should see Mr. Baine home?”

“No, thank you, Jacob. Why don’t you go on outside and make sure we don’t have no more Baine brothers paying a visit.”

“Ain’t no one else coming,” Ellis says.

The sheriff jabs a thumb toward the back door. Jacob pulls on his hat and, without another word, walks outside.

“So you know about your mama?” the sheriff says once Jacob’s footsteps have crossed the porch and the kitchen is quiet again.

Ellis nods. “Not why I’m here though.”

“Then why are you here?” Daddy pushes away from the table, the chair’s legs squealing across Grandma’s freshly mopped and waxed floor.

The sheriff gives Annie the same thumb jab he gave Jacob, but Ellis Baine is staring at her again and she can’t make her legs move.

“Here to see her,” Ellis says, tipping his head in Annie’s direction. “Here to see the girl.”

1936—SARAH AND JUNA

DALE WAS SWEET.
That’s the first thing Juna says when Daddy and I and Sheriff Irlene sit with her at the kitchen table. Daddy sucks on a cigar, little more than a stub. He blows his smoke in our faces. Simply put, Dale was sweet. Though he looked just like Daddy, even given the baby fat that hadn’t yet burned away, he had none of Daddy’s meanness. Juna says these things like Sheriff Irlene never met the boy. She says these things like Dale is already gone. Gone for good.

Juna is smiling as she talks even though Daddy is sitting right there to hear her every word. He starts to push away from the table, but Sheriff Irlene points a finger at him and he settles back in.

“Dale had hair like mine, you know?” Juna says. “He was smart too. But he had a softness he wasn’t inclined to outgrow. We worried for him, all of us.”

She tells us they had made their way, she and Dale, to the end of a row of tobacco when they saw the man coming. The road runs straight for a good long time, so they saw him when he was just something rising up out of the horizon.

“Which way had he come from?” Sheriff Irlene asks, sipping from her coffee and leaning back in her chair like she isn’t all too concerned with the answer. “Which way was he headed?”

“Come from town,” Juna says. “Headed toward the Baine place.”

I stare at Sheriff Irlene, waiting for her to say something more, to ask Juna how she knows he was headed to the Baine place. John Holleran said, when leaving me at my door and telling me not to worry, that Irlene Fulkerson was a sharp woman and would see to things. A man walking in the direction of the Baine place could have been walking to one of a half dozen places or more. But Sheriff Irlene says nothing. Instead she reaches across the table, pats Juna’s hand, and gives a nod so she’ll keep on with her story.

“That’s when Dale started tugging on my skirt and pointing,” she says. “He kept on, and the sun was good and hot, so I stopped my work, pulled off my sweater, and watched that man coming toward us.”

There on the southern slope, the air is warmer and drier than back home. The first mistake our daddy made was a lasting one. He built our house on the northern side of the hill. He built our house in the shadows, where the sun rarely falls and the winds are always at their worst. We spend our lives wearing damp socks and clothes that smell of mold because they never dry through and through, not even on the line, not even in front of the fire. Our fingers, cheeks, the tips of our noses, are always cold, all because we live in the shadows.

“The man kept coming,” Juna says.

Sheriff Irlene reaches for Juna’s hand again. “Don’t let it upset you,” she says because she must hear the same rise in Juna’s voice I hear.

Juna nods, takes in a deep breath as if to calm herself, and tells us the fellow was small. Not so tall, not so wide, and walked with a slouch. That’s true for most fellows who walk alone down our dirt roads. They have heads that hang, heavy shoulders, and caved-in bellies. Daddy calls them hoboes. He says they aren’t altogether bad because they bring news of things happening in other parts. Last fellow who came through told of storms so bad they lifted up whole fields and blew them from one state to another, blew red dirt to places where the dirt was once brown, and brown dirt to places were the dirt was once black.

“I thought to say hello, is all,” Juna says.

She craves news of places other than this one almost as much as she craves the feel of a man lying alongside her and his calloused hands moving across her belly. She doesn’t say this to Daddy and the sheriff, but I know.

The other thing Daddy says about hoboes, besides saying they sometimes carry news, is that Juna and I shouldn’t talk to them. That’s a job for the men and damn sure not his girls. Keep yourselves clear, Daddy is always saying.

When the fellow was within shouting distance, he called out to them. How you all doing today? You all got water?

Juna imitates the man’s voice as she tells us what he said. She holds one hand up to her mouth like she is hollering out across the road.

“But I remembered what you’re always saying, Daddy, and I didn’t say nothing back to that man. Only answered a question or two. Didn’t say nothing more.”

Juna looks in Daddy’s direction, but as quick as she does, he turns his head. Sheriff Irlene gives Daddy another look, a warning for him to stay put. He won’t be going anywhere near Joseph Carl until Sheriff Irlene hears the rest of Juna’s story.

Juna told the fellow he’d find water up there a ways and pointed off toward the sycamores growing along the far side of the road. Those trees throw a nice slice of shade the fellow could have walked in, but he didn’t. He crossed into the sun to walk closer to them. She told him he’d find the river on beyond those trees. But the fellow kept coming.

She didn’t recognize him as a Baine. He’d been gone for years, at least five. She sure didn’t recognize him. You’ll hear it before you see it, she told him, and he asked was it good cool water. And he kept on toward them, kicking at the dirt with his leather boots. He stirred up dusty clouds that moved closer with every step.

“He asked was that water deep enough to wade in,” Juna says.

“Joseph Carl asked you that?” Sheriff Irlene says. “He asked how deep was the water?”

Again I wait for Sheriff Irlene to say something more. I wait for her to wonder after why Joseph Carl would ask for the nearest water and was it deep enough to wade in when Joseph Carl had grown up with the Lone Fork and the sycamores and already knew the answer to every one of those questions.

Dale asked the man where he’d come from and how far had he traveled. He asked the man real polite, but the man didn’t take notice of Dale or his questions and asked again where he’d find that water.

That is the next surprising thing about Juna’s story. Folks don’t ignore Dale. They might have started to whisper about him being awfully soft for a Crowley boy, but they all love him. The church ladies will smooth his hair for him. The fellows might give him a lure or a penny or maybe an old cane pole they don’t so much need anymore. Folks never ignore Dale because he makes them smile.

The man next stopped in the middle of the road, yanked off his hat, and ran a hand over his fair hair. The knot in his throat bobbed up and down as he spoke, and his eyes focused on the ground at Dale’s feet. Those eyes were trimmed with fine, pale lashes, and his skin, instead of tanned to a leather hide by the sun, was pink.

There wasn’t much interesting about the man. His trousers were cut from denim that had gone soft, and his white shirt was buttoned at the cuffs and at his throat. Strangest thing about the fellow was how clean and white his shirt was. Only other interesting thing about him was the bend in his nose. Someone must have broke it for him. Juna thought it might be a story worth hearing to have the man tell how he happened upon a shirt as white as the one he wore and a nose as crooked as the one on his face.

Can’t miss it, is what Juna told the fellow, and she stretched out her hoe, lifted it a few feet, and slapped it to the ground. You’ll hear that water before you see it.

“It was a clumsy thing, what the man done next,” Juna says, staring at Daddy, her head laid off to the side in that way of hers. “He took a few more long steps that led him right up to Dale. Put them almost nose to nose. And then the fellow asked had Dale ever seen a deck of cards.”

Up close, Juna could see the man’s shirt was something that belonged in a church and was meant for a larger man because the sleeves ballooned and the shoulder seams sagged down each arm. The man didn’t say anything else. He should have pulled a deck of cards from his back pocket, Juna figured, since he made mention of them, but instead he kept on staring at the ground beneath Dale’s feet.

“Dale asked the man if he had any,” Juna says. “Asked did the man have a deck of cards to show.”

I have always figured, because it’s what Daddy has always said, that Juna and I are the ones in danger when one of those fellows happens by. I would have never thought such a man would want Dale. Juna must have thought about it.

“He sure was interested in Dale,” she says, staring at the closed door now instead of Daddy.

The room is dark except for the lantern sitting in the middle of the table. It burns just bright enough to light up the lower half of each face.

Good cool water, is the last thing Juna said to the man. You’ll hear it before you see it.

And then he took Dale.

•   •   •

SHERIFF IRLENE SITS
in a ladder-back chair pushed up against the front door of the sheriff’s office, her black boots planted flat. Folks say she started wearing them on the day her husband died. They belonged to him, and she must surely stuff the toes with newspaper to keep them from slipping and giving her blisters. Folks say she wears them to keep her husband close and to remind folks Kentucky’s own governor said she’s sheriff now.

A fire burns in the box stove. A silver coffeepot sits on top and has boiled dry by now. Every time the fire starts to dwindle and the room takes on a chill, John Holleran taps on the front door with the butt of his shotgun so Abraham, who has taken up watch on the front porch, will gather more wood. The last batch he set inside was too damp, and now the fire hisses and smokes. If not for that smoke, we’d smell burned coffee. Sheriff Irlene will have to soak that pot for a good long while and scrub at it with a piece of steel wool.

When the sobs coming from behind the closed door stop, Sheriff Irlene walks from lantern to lantern, putting a match to the wicks and rolling the knobs until the flame is to her liking. Each lantern has a slender chimney and a low-footed brass collar. She’s brought them from home, where they probably once lit the parlor. The sound of Daddy’s leather gloves slapping against some part of Joseph Carl and the sobs that follow stop Sheriff Irlene. One hand on the third lantern, she lets the other hang limp at her side.

“I been wondering, Juna,” she says, that hand still resting lightly on the top of the lantern’s glass chimney. “How is it you figured the fellow you seen was headed toward the Baine place?” She pauses and glances in Juna’s direction. “Why, the fellow may as well have been headed to John Holleran’s place. Or just passing through. How is it you figured he was headed to the Baines’?”

Juna sits at the small wooden desk pushed up under the room’s only window. Wrapped in the blanket we brought from home, she has taken no notice of the silence or the sobs. Since we arrived, she has sat, head hanging, hands in her lap. Every so often, the blanket has slipped from around her shoulders, exposing her cotton underthings, and I’ve tugged it back in place and tucked the ends into her hands. Each time, I have asked in a whisper . . . You’re certain. You’re certain Joseph Carl done this? Now Sheriff Irlene is wondering the same.

“Juna?” Sheriff Irlene says when Juna gives her no answer. “Why the Baines’ place? Why not some other place?”

Juna continues to stare at her hands and makes no sign of having heard Sheriff Irlene’s question.

Eventually the other Baine brothers will make their way here. They’ll hear from their mama what’s happened and what’s become of Joseph Carl. That’s why Abraham sits out on the porch, his shotgun resting on his lap. That’s why a half dozen of Sheriff Irlene’s deputies do the same. They are all waiting for the Baine brothers.

“Don’t you think that’s odd, John?” Sheriff Irlene says to John Holleran.

John glances at Juna and then me but says nothing.

“And it’s odd too that Joseph Carl would wonder about the river.” Now Sheriff Irlene is talking to John. “Juna said he asked was the water deep enough to wade in. He’d know, wouldn’t he, seeing as how he lived here most all of his life? Odd too, don’t you think?”

“Deeper certain times than others,” John says.

Sheriff Irlene nods. “I suppose.”

The silence from behind the door leading into the back room has lasted longer than any other silence in the past few hours. Over and over, Daddy has been telling Joseph Carl that everyone knows he took Dale. Only question now is what did he do to the boy and where is he. Where’ll we find him, Daddy keeps asking. But now the room is quiet.

“You done the right thing, Irlene,” John Holleran says. “Bringing Joseph Carl here was the right thing.”

Sheriff Irlene returns to her chair still pushed up against the front door. She sits on the chair’s edge and closes her mouth up tight into a thin straight line, as if to let John Holleran know she’s not quite so certain she’s done the right thing, and maybe so we won’t think she’s troubled by what might be heading toward her small office at this very moment.

From where I sit in the chair nearest Juna so I can tend her blanket, I try not to look at John because I know he’s doing something kind, something I should be grateful for. He believes Juna, though maybe not so much after what the sheriff said. John doesn’t live with Juna day after day, doesn’t see how her mind is all the time working out how to twist and wring things just so. And he’s trying his best to see Joseph Carl treated fairly. At the very least, he thinks I believe Juna and so he’s doing it for me.

But if I look at him, if I look at John Holleran, and if our eyes meet for even a glance, I’ll be beholden to him. I wish I could care for him, and knowing that I don’t makes me too much like Juna. I don’t care for him because he cares too much for me. It’s childish. It’s wanton, and if he knew this, he’d pity me. But all I can think of is Ellis Baine and where is he and when will he come and bring an end to all of this.

“Same would have come about had it been Harold here,” John says to Sheriff Irlene. “This is all that could be done for the boy. Your Harold would have done the same. Juna’ll answer to you when she’s feeling up to it. Don’t you think, Sarah?”

I nod, though I don’t think it at all. Juna won’t answer because she’ll have no answer. Something has become of Dale, but Joseph Carl had no hand in it. Juna likely did.

“I sure hope you’re right, John,” Sheriff Irlene says.

Sheriff Irlene’s skin has a glow about it and is still smooth but for the lines around her eyes and those that frame her mouth. She’s too young to be a widow, but she’ll be one the rest of her life. She’ll likely never remarry. Too young to be a widow. Too old to be a new bride.