Let Me Die in His Footsteps (3 page)

She’ll run, knees high and arms pumping, until she reaches the tobacco barn. That’s her plan. From there, she’ll be able to see the Baines’ house. She’ll see that it’s dark, the door closed, the shutters drawn. She’ll see that Mrs. Baine isn’t sitting on her front porch, rocking in her old rocking chair, a shotgun resting in her lap or propped up against the house within grabbing distance. Folks say that’s what she does, day in and day out, in case one of her boys tries to come back home. And when Annie is sure Mrs. Baine isn’t there waiting with a shotgun, she’ll run on past the barn, climb the dry-stack rock fence separating the Baines from the Hollerans, hoping it doesn’t crumble beneath her, and there, she’ll find the well.

Rows of lavender follow the gentle curve of the hillside behind Grandma’s house. Daddy may not be happy about growing lavender, but a job worth doing is a job worth doing well. And so the rows are perfectly spaced, and even now that the bushes have sprouted into large mounds and the stalks are tipped with bluish-gray buds, there is still room enough for a person to walk between each row. In a few weeks’ time, maybe a month since this spring was cooler than most, the tiny buds will bloom and a rich purple will spread across the hills.

Earlier in the day, Annie had counted out the rows and picked the one that would lead her up the hill and drop her at the barn. She counts now, third row from the corner of the house, and begins to run. Here, on this side of the hill, the wind has a way of calming after dusk, and without a stiff breeze to stir it up, the smell of lavender has a way of lying down for the night. But as Annie runs through the bushes, she stirs up a breeze of her own. Her thin cotton nightgown flutters behind and brushes against the stalks. The smell of lavender lifts in her wake. The sweet scent chases her up the hill, making her run faster, breathe harder. She runs until she breaks free of the lavender row, and continues on though her lungs burn and her sides ache until she reaches Grandpa’s barn.

Living here on this farm all her married years and letting Grandpa grow tobacco was Grandma’s greatest failing. The way those tobacco plants sprung up tall and proud and then withered and were finally hacked off at the base and hung upside down to dry was a sign bigger than any other that had ever blessed Grandma, and she had ignored it, overlooked it, or had been plain afraid of it. Grandpa was damned to wilt and wither and end up no more than a husk of the man he once was. He was damned to suck on that tobacco for fifty of his sixty years, to chop it and dry it and haul it and sell it. He was damned to die, and when finally he did, shriveled up and beginning to rot before he was laid in the ground, Grandma sold the land, sold nearly every acre that had ever grown a stalk of tobacco.

By the time Daddy, Mama, Annie, and Caroline moved in, Grandma had staked out the lavender beds. They had to move in, had no choice. When Grandma sold the land, she sold Daddy’s livelihood. That’s what Mama said to Grandma the day the bags were unpacked. How do you sell a man’s birthright and expect him to survive? Grandma said she had plenty of money and no one would ever need for a thing. And isn’t lavender a nicer crop to tend? People who grow lavender don’t wilt and wither.

The path beyond the barn is black. Annie pulls the candle and a single matchstick from her pocket. She wraps the match up in her fist, hooks her thumbnail over the red tip, turns her face away, and plucks. The flame pops up, singeing the tip of her thumb. She touches the fire to the waxy wick, shakes out the match, and sticks her thumb in her mouth. She sucks on the sore patch and then cups the pocket watch that hangs from a chain around her neck. Its smooth silver case is warm from lying against her skin. She draws the candle close to the watch’s face but still has to squint. Fifteen minutes until midnight.

Annie breathes in through her nose and exhales through her mouth, trying to slow the rise and fall of her chest. Even though it hasn’t been used for drying tobacco in years, most days the barn still smells like the heavy leaves Daddy and Grandpa once strung up from its rafters, and like the tips of Daddy’s fingers before the land was sold, and the chambray work shirts he wore in those days, and his tan trousers even after they’d been washed and wrung and hung on the line. He was happier then, when he spent all his time with tobacco.

During the day, a person has a good view of the Baine place from the barn. But now, under a black sky, there is nothing but darkness beyond the faint light of the candle. When Annie looks back down the hill, her own house is dark too, except for the dim yellow glow coming from the kitchen. Grandma leaves on the light over the stove in case someone needs a sip of water during the night. Mrs. Baine must not have a light like that, or if she does, she has no reason to keep it burning all night long. Annie holds the candle at arm’s length and shields the flame with her free hand. She’s never actually been to the well, has only seen it from the Hollerans’ side of the waist-high fence made of limestone, one flat rock stacked on top of another.

Remembering Daddy, Annie looks back toward the house below with the one dimly lit window. She’s too old to be wishing her daddy would come for her and take care of her, but that’s exactly what she’s wishing. She was sure before that Daddy was out here watching over her, probably him and Abraham Pace together, but if they were somewhere nearby, they’d have come for her by now. They’d have seen her standing outside the barn, squinting to see some landmark that would direct her a few feet to the right, a few feet to the left. It must be the whiskey. Too much of it and a bomb couldn’t wake Daddy. That’s what Mama says over coffee the mornings after Daddy and Abraham Pace have a go at their whiskey.

And then Annie thinks of Ryce Fulkerson and holds her breath so she can hear. She’s listening for footsteps because maybe she heard something. Maybe that was a twig snapping or a clump of dirt getting kicked aside. Maybe Ryce is here even though she crushed that dead frog of his. It was a spiteful thing to do. Even as she did it, even as she crushed that chalky white body, she knew it was such, and as sorry as she was, she couldn’t stop herself. Mean-spirited and spiteful and now she’s alone because of it. She stretches the candle overhead, leans around the barn, and wishes she hadn’t been so nasty.

“Ryce,” she whispers, but only once because the sound of her own voice gives her a shiver. She reaches her arm out into the darkness, tips the candle, and can’t help crying out when a stream of hot wax runs down the back of her hand. She drops the candle. The flame goes out.

MANY TIMES OVER
the years, Caroline and Annie have squatted at the base of this very fence, daring each other to sneak a look at the Baine place. When finally one of them would find the courage to reach her fingers over the top of the flat rocks, unfold her knees, and lift just high enough to see over—usually this was Annie—she would straightaway drop back down, clutch her knees to her chest, and swear, double swear, to have seen Mrs. Baine. It’s just like they say. She’s rocking back and forth, her skirt dragging on the ground, a shotgun cradled in her lap. Annie does that now. She squats behind the fence, her dark candle in hand, and rests against the rocks that have sharp edges even after all these years.

Tapping a finger to the wick and feeling that it’s cool to the touch, Annie slips the candle in her pocket, and as she did when she was seven, eight, ten, and twelve years old, she slides her hands up the fence, her fingers slipping in and out of the cracks between the cool, flat rocks as they crawl toward the top. Once there, she grips the edge and hoists herself, but only until her eyes clear the fence. She can see it . . . the Baines’ well. It’s no more than a shadow, a faint outline. Slaves dug it, that’s what Grandma says. And they built the fence too, taught by the Irish. The Irish build the best fences, and so it’s still standing all these years later.

She feels the light wrap around her as much as she sees it. Those were footsteps she heard, though they were traveling much slower than her own. Caroline would have taken her time, probably walked, and been careful not to snap any of the slender stalks.

“Thought you might need this.”

Annie turns, and the light catches her in the eyes. She blinks, holds up a hand to shield herself.

“Damn it all,” Annie says, dropping her hand as Caroline lowers the beam of light to the ground.

Hurrying back to the barn’s open doorway, Annie motions for Caroline to follow. Annie’s being tall is back to being something she wishes she could brush off. Being tall makes a person all too easy to spot.

“I told you not to come,” Annie says. “And turn that damn fool thing off.”

Caroline uses the flashlight to brighten her path and follows Annie. “Don’t tell Mama,” she whispers as she lets the light settle on a spot near her feet.

Stacked in a small perfect pile at the barn’s entrance are a half dozen twisted cigarettes. Each one has been nearly snapped in two where the filter meets the tobacco except for the one with a tip that still glows.

Annie stoops to the pile and tosses dirt over the one smoldering butt. “Don’t tell Grandma,” she says.

Mama hates it when Daddy smokes, though he normally smokes cigars and usually only when he’s drinking whiskey with Abraham Pace. But no one hates smoking like Grandma hates smoking. Annie stands, stomps on the cigarettes to be sure they’ve been snuffed, and glances around for some other sign of Daddy. They must be his, or Abraham’s. They must be. She leans into the barn, waves for Caroline to point the flashlight inside. Bunches of lavender, cut early to be distilled, hang upside down. A person would have to duck to walk into the barn because of the low-hanging bundles, and even the smallest ruffle would knock loose the tiny buds. Annie leans and squints, looks hard at the stream of yellow light shining into the barn, looks for loose petals fluttering to the ground. Nothing. No one.

“It’s almost time,” Caroline says. She walks from the barn, leaving Annie alone in the dark, and makes her way to the fence. Once there, she lays the flashlight on top of the flat stones. The yellow glow travels down the long rock fence and eventually fades into darkness. “You want to go first? Or should I?”

Caroline skipped the better part of childhood, never cared about sneaking off to go swimming when she was supposed to be hanging out the laundry. She never begged for seconds of Grandma’s banana pudding or lied about brushing teeth. It would seem, however, that the chance to see her future husband is the one thing to give Caroline some gumption because before Annie can grab hold of Caroline’s arm or sweater or any part of her, Caroline has pressed her palms on top of the fence, jumped, plopped her hind end on the flat rocks, lifted her legs, and dropped down on the other side.

“Hurry up,” Caroline whispers, wrapping both hands around the lit end of the flashlight to douse it.

Taking one last look into the dark barn, Annie backs away from the open doorway, feeling certain she ought not turn her back on it, and follows Caroline over the fence.

As if walking through the snow that drifts up alongside the house every winter, Annie high-steps it through the weeds that have taken over on this side of the fence. Without her boys to help, Mrs. Baine has let the land go to seed. With both hands, Annie parts the tall, bristly stalks and takes one last look at the dark barn. The rustling she thinks she hears is only her imagination, or it’s likely the work of some critter caught in the barn’s upper rafters. The shifting shadows in the doorway are surely the work of thin clouds drifting across the dark sky and playing with the moonlight. At the sound of Caroline’s voice calling out for Annie to hurry up, Annie turns away from the barn and follows the yellow glow that bounces on ahead.

The well stands no more than twenty feet from the Baines’ house. If Annie had a stone in hand, she could throw it and have a good chance at hitting the front door. It hadn’t looked so close from the other side of the fence. Grandma would have called it wishful thinking, and she always says nothing causes a person more harm than wishful thinking. Standing on the near side of the well so she can keep an eye on the dark porch outside Mrs. Baine’s house, Annie pulls out her candle and her last two matches.

“Put that thing out,” she says to Caroline again, this time in a hiss. “You’re going to wake Mrs. Baine.”

Caroline slides around the well to Annie’s side and switches off the silver-handled flashlight just as Annie draws her match across the jagged rocks laid along the top of the well. The flame jumps, flickers, and dies out. She tosses the match aside, turns her back to shield the flame this time, and strikes her last one. The flame catches, steadies, and Annie touches it to her candle. Holding it such that the wax will drip into the well and not down her arm, she leans over the dark hole. The air is cooler here and smells of the shallow water along the river’s edge.

“You got no business here,” Annie says, lowering her candle into the well. The flame’s glow cuts a small hole in the darkness. “There ain’t nothing for you down there.”

Hooking one hand over the edge of the flat top, Annie leans into the hole and slowly, so the flame doesn’t get snuffed, lowers the candle. Through the thin cotton of her nightgown, the rock wall is cool and rough against her thighs. She hopes to see a handsome brown-haired boy, because brown-haired boys grow into brown-haired men and brown-haired men make the best husbands. And he’ll be tall. Surely he’ll be tall, taller than Annie. The yellow glow swells and glistens on the well’s smooth, dark insides.

“This’ll work better,” Caroline says, and like Annie, she tips over the well. She wraps both hands around the silver handle, points the flashlight in the black hole, and switches it back on. The light wobbles and bounces as she leans forward to rest on her forearms. Once she has settled on a comfortable position, her feet most certainly firmly on the ground, the light steadies.

“It’s midnight,” Caroline whispers. “Now, Annie. Now’s the time.”

Annie shakes her candle until its flame goes out, takes three deep breaths, and closes her eyes. When she opens them, she’ll see him, and she’ll know he’ll be her husband, and by summer’s end, she’ll kiss him full on the mouth. Their kiss won’t be sloppy like the ones the girls at school warn of, but this future husband will keep his tongue in his mouth, exactly where it belongs. Their kiss will be sweet, dry, pleasing, and Annie will be a new kind of girl after it’s over, and not a single kid at school will have one thing to say to Annie Holleran about husbands-to-be or first kisses.

“I see him,” Caroline says.

It’s little more than a whisper.

Again.

“There. I see him, right there. Do you see?” And in an even quieter voice, Caroline says, “I see my husband.”

•   •   •

ANNIE CAN STRETCH
no farther. The smell is stronger. It’s an earthy smell, like damp leaves rotted down to their stems and the fuzzy green moss that grows among the river rocks and the mud when it squishes up between her toes. But there’s something else too. Something faint. Something foul. Before Annie can push away from the well to pinch her nose, the smell is gone.

“That’s my husband you’re seeing,” Annie says.

“He’s right there. Plain as day. Don’t you see?”

Annie squints, puckers her mouth.

“It’s true, Annie,” Caroline says. “My goodness, it’s true. That’s my husband.”

Even though Annie can’t see her, she knows Caroline’s black eyelashes will be fluttering and her cheeks will be flushed with red and she’ll be smiling the slightest smile. It’s the same way she looks when she leans over a baby carriage and babbles on about the sweetness of babies. She is seeing her future, her entire perfect future, and Annie is seeing nothing.

“I see something too,” Annie says. “Yes, I see something. Right there. I see him. I see my husband too.”

But she sees no one, nothing. This is how it goes between Annie and Caroline. Caroline all the time getting the better of things. She isn’t prideful about it. She never brags. She doesn’t even seem to notice she always does best or looks best or is best. The not being prideful and the not bragging and the not even seeming to notice make it all the worse. And now Caroline has stolen Annie’s vision, and it’s likely she’s stolen Annie’s husband.

“I see dark hair,” Annie says, her lies spreading out before her. “Brown. He has brown hair. That’s my husband. He’s tall and slender. The one with brown hair. He’s mine.”

As she tells her lies, Annie pushes away from the well, her stomach already queasy. Caroline stands too, holding the light so it catches her under the chin like it did in the bedroom. Her eyes sink into their sockets, her nostrils flare, and her cheekbones protrude.

“I saw him,” Caroline says.

In the slow way a person does when just waking up, Caroline opens and closes her eyes. She exhales one loud, long breath, and lets her arms drop to her sides. The flashlight dangles from one hand and throws a circle of light at her feet.

“The most handsome man ever,” she says. “The man I’m going to marry.”

She pauses, her eyes closed. She’s savoring Annie’s vision. Right this minute, she’s falling in love with Annie’s husband. Not only is Caroline stealing Annie’s first kiss, she’s stealing Annie’s future too.

“Now we have to find him,” Caroline says.

“That’s a damn fool thing to say,” Annie says, staring at the yellow patch of ground near Caroline’s feet. “Everyone knows you’re going to marry Olsen Weber. Was it Olsen Weber you saw down there?”

“No, it was not,” Caroline says, twisting her face as if she’s smelling the same foul smell as Annie, though it’s probably the thought of Olsen Weber causing that face. He’s one of many boys Caroline fancied for a short time before deciding he didn’t quite fit.

“The man I saw was striking, powerful,” Caroline says. “Successful, and rich too.”

“How can you figure all that from the looks of him?”

There’s something on the ground at Caroline’s feet, a twig maybe, a fallen branch, definitely something Caroline would trip over if Annie were to startle her and cause her to take a backward step or two.

“I know because I know,” Caroline says. “He had dark hair and blue eyes.”

“You’re lying.”

It might not be proof positive Caroline’s lying, but every dark-haired man Annie has ever seen has had dark eyes.

It’s times such as this when Annie wishes she’d be altogether good or altogether bad, because living somewhere in between is like having those cicadas buzzing in her ears. Rolling her hands into fists, she takes a step toward Caroline. And as Annie thought she would, Caroline takes a step away. That something on the ground creeps into the light.

“I’m not lying. Clear as day. I saw him clear as day.”

“Then it’s my husband you were seeing,” Annie says. “My husband down there.”

Annie slides one foot forward and then the other.

“It’s my day and my husband.”

Caroline takes another backward step, smaller this time because she bumps up against something that makes her stop and look at the ground.

“I saw blue eyes,” she says, turning and shining the light around her feet. “Yes. Yes, he had blue eyes and dark hair.”

Her back is to Annie, and Caroline is spraying the light across a patch of ground a few feet in front of her. Those are tomato plants, heavy with green tomatoes. They have fallen over, haven’t been properly staked. And there’s something on the ground, a large stick probably meant to hold up the tomatoes.

“He looked right at me,” Caroline says, squatting to prop up one of the top-heavy plants. Still holding the flashlight in one hand, she does her best to gather the leafy stems, but without twine and a stake, the plant falls again. As she works, the light bounces around the small overgrown garden.

“Pity,” she says, stands, stretches her arms out to her sides, and tips her head toward the sky. She turns in a slow circle until she’s facing Annie.

“It was like he knew it was me,” Caroline says. As if remembering Olsen Weber again, or, more likely, smelling the foul thing Annie is again smelling, Caroline twists her face up for a second time. “Like he already loves me. Yes, he had blue eyes.”

Slowly at first, but faster when Caroline doesn’t move, Annie begins waving Caroline away from the garden. When she still doesn’t move, Annie reaches out, grabs the flashlight first and then Caroline’s arm. With one good tug, Caroline is at her side. Annie holds her by one wrist, squeezing so hard Caroline swats at her and cries out.

“Look,” Annie says and points the flashlight on the ground a few feet from the small plant Caroline had been trying to rescue.