Lily of the Springs (13 page)

But my little brother wasn’t one to go without putting up a fight. As Landry grabbed his arm and tugged him toward the front door, the freckle-faced youngster twisted in his grip and shouted, “Ain’t nobody gonna tell Lily Rae how we found Jake Tatlow gassin’ up his car at the Texaco out Liberty way?
He was
skaddaddlin, Lily
Rae
!
Ouch
! Dad
burn
it, Landry, quit yer hittin’ me!” Edsel probed the back of his head where Landry’s wallop had landed. “She’s got a right to know, ain’t she?” he managed to yell before Landry pushed him out on the front porch.

The door slammed behind them. I looked at Jake, feeling the room tilting around me. He stared down at the floor.

“Is that true?” I whispered.

When he didn’t answer, my gaze swept over the others in the room—my mother, my daddy…Aunt Jenny…the preacher…the sheriff, who hadn’t spoken a word but whose very presence seemed ominous. No one spoke. But they were all staring at me—Aunt Jenny and Mother with pity in their eyes. Daddy’s expression was stone-like, as was Burps Dewey’s. Preacher Joe Bob made an attempt to look pious, but I saw the gleam of satisfaction in his beady little eyes. The saintly man of the cloth was enjoying my fall from grace.

Surprisingly, I took strength from his hypocrisy. My jaw lifted. I fixed my eyes on Jake’s bowed head. I might be a sinner and a tramp, but I wasn’t a hypocrite.

“The least you can do, Jake Tatlow,” I said in a firm, clear voice, “is give me a truthful answer.”

Slowly Jake lifted his head. His blue eyes connected with mine, as brilliant as glittering sapphire, and just as hard. “What’s done is done,” he said finally, and then he turned his head, and looked toward the door with a deliberate stare.

I followed his gaze, and my heart lurched. There, on the floor, rested an old army-green duffle bag stamped with a rank and a name:
Private T.L. Tatlow
. At one time, apparently, it had belonged to Jake’s older brother, Tully. But now, there was only one reason it was laying there on the floor of our front parlor.

It had been Jake’s getaway bag.

***

After the ceremony, I returned to my room to pack my meager belongings. I hadn’t been in there two minutes when a knock came at the door. My heart leapt. What now?

Landry stood there.

The composure I’d regained crumbled again. “Oh, Landry!” Shame settled over me, and I couldn’t look him in the eye. What he must think of me! “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, gazing miserably down at the floor.

“Hey…” His finger nudged my chin up so I was forced to look at him. “You got it all wrong, Lily Rae. I’m not judging you. I know what it’s like to get caught up in…” He flushed and looked away. “…in tender feelings with somebody. It’s just that…” Hesitating, he brought his gaze back to mine.

I saw sadness and something like fear in the depths of his soft brown eyes.

His hand tightened on my shoulder. “I don’t trust Jake, Lily. His pa is the meanest man in the county. I’ll bet he’s been whipping that boy since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. What comes around goes around, know what I mean? And it’s plain he wasn’t exactly jumping up and down to get hitched. I don’t want him taking out his anger on you.”

“He won’t,” I said firmly. “You don’t know him like I do, Landry. He loves me. It may not look like it, but he does. This all just took him by surprise. Once he gets used to the idea of being married, he’ll settle down. I know it.”

He nodded slowly, but he couldn’t hide the doubt on his face. “I sure hope you’re right. Just know, Lily Rae, if you ever need me…for anything. I’m here for you. And that’s a promise, little sister.”

His words brought grateful tears to my eyes. I should’ve known Landry wouldn’t stop loving me because of the mistakes I’d made. He was way too kind-hearted. I hugged him quickly and then hurried down the stairs, my suitcase in hand.

My new life with Jake had begun.

Glady’s Kentucky Soup Beans and Cornbread

2 cups Great White Northern Beans, Soaked Overnight

4 cups water

1 bay leaf

1 ham hock or other pork

½ teaspoon pepper

1 Tablespoon salt (to be added later)

About 3 hours before supper, bring beans and other ingredients
except salt
to a boil in a heavy iron pot. Reduce to Low and simmer for 2 to 3 hours until beans are soft and tender. Add salt and using a wooden spoon, smash some beans against side of pot to thicken. Serve hot with cornbread.

Cornbread

1 cup yellow corn meal

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon salt

4 ½ teaspoon baking powder

1/3 cup hot bacon grease or shortening, melted

1 egg

2/3 cup milk

Mix together dry ingredients. In separate bowl, mix egg and milk. Add bacon grease or melted shortening. Mix liquid ingredients into dry ingredients. Stir only until moistened. Drop batter into generously greased corn pone pan or muffin tins. Bake at 425 degrees for 25-30 minutes.

“
P
ass the cornbread, Inis,” Royce Tatlow ordered through a mouthful of string beans, his dark, mean eyes fixed on the rapidly disappearing food on his plate.

Please
, I added silently as a familiar wave of dislike swept over me. I’d never met a ruder man in my life than Jake’s father. Or a more ill-tempered one.

Twelve-year-old Inis passed the plate of cornbread pones to her mother then cast her eyes back on her plate and resumed eating. Like Jake, the girl had somehow inherited a natural beauty that was missing in both her parents and her older sister, Meg. She had long, naturally-curly dark brown hair and big, brown doe-eyes. But she was one of the most backward girls I’d ever met, barely speaking a word to anybody, and always keeping her eyes downcast. There would be no ally in her.

Nor in anyone in this house.

I took a bite of Gladys’s fried potatoes; they were delicious―crunchy on the top, tender underneath. That was the one good thing about living here with the Tatlows—my mother-in-law could cook like a dream. Not better than Mother, of course, but pretty darn close.

The food was the only thing about suppertime here that reminded me of home, though. Here, the only sounds at the table was of food being chewed—noisily by Royce—the scrape of Gladys’s chair against the worn Linoleum as she got up to get something Royce wanted but didn’t see on the table. No one asked how anybody’s day had went or talked about what was going on in the world or even mused about the
Farmer’s Almanac’s
prediction of a cold winter, and how surely that must be true because the wooly worm’s black coat was the thickest I’d ever seen it. No, it wasn’t like supper at my home at all.

But the unnatural silence was better than the alternative—the fights. There had been two of them since my arrival almost a month ago—three, if you counted the one that concerned me on the evening of the wedding when Royce had raged at Jake, and Gladys had wailed and sobbed through the night. The next one had been between Royce and Meg when she’d shown up at the supper table with her drab dark brown hair cut in a new short style, which I thought actually suited her, opening up her narrow, cat-like face and making her dark eyes large and luminous. But Royce Tatlow had a conniption fit about it.

The worst fight, though, I’d witnessed here in this nutty home had been between Royce and Gladys, and it had shocked me to the core. Mainly because I’d been under the assumption that Gladys Tatlow was a typical Kentucky wife under the thumb of her husband, the lord and master. But that night last week had changed my opinion of my mother-in-law forever.

Gladys Tatlow was a stout, stern-faced woman with gray-streaked dark hair pulled back in a severe bun. I figured she was around the same age as my own mother, maybe a year or two older. But unlike Mother, who wore a simple dress every day of her life, except for Sundays, Gladys frequently wore cuffed blue jeans teamed with a button-down work shirt, only wearing a dress when she went into town. That mere fact should’ve told me that Gladys wasn’t typical at all.

The fight started innocently enough with Royce taking a slurping mouthful of soup beans and proclaiming them “too damn salty.” Gladys had stared at him for a long moment and then quietly got up from her chair, went over to him and snatched his bowl away. He protested, but she ignored it, and as the rest of the family stared, dumbfounded, she marched over to the back door and slung the bowl’s contents across the yard, scattering squawking chickens in all directions.

“I reckon it ain’t too salty for the chickens,” she said mildly, sitting back down in her chair to finish her supper.

Royce stared at her, eyes bulging like he couldn’t believe what he’d just seen. He blinked and his hands clenched down on the arms of his chair. It was as if he’d just then realized what his wife had done. “
Good God, woman
!” he roared, his forehead wrinkling up like a dried prune. “What in tarnation did you do
that
fer? I said it was too damn salty, but that don’t mean I won’t eat it, you
stupid bitch
!”

Seemingly unconcerned, Gladys slid a piece of cornbread into her mouth and chewed, not even looking his way. I could almost feel the tension coming from Jake’s body in the chair next to me. The two girls sat with bowed heads, almost supernaturally still. When Gladys still didn’t acknowledge her husband, Royce’s face darkened like a summer thundercloud and his fists crashed down on the table, rattling dishes and utensils.

“God
blast
it, Gladys! Git your fat ass over to that there
goddamn
stove and git me some more beans and cornbread
lickety-split!”

I stifled a gasp. Never in my life had I ever heard a man utter such foul language in front of women and children! But amazingly, Gladys didn’t appear to hear. She just kept eating—neat little spoonfuls of soup beans broken by occasional sips of thick, creamy buttermilk, fresh from their own cows.

“
Did you hear me, woman
?” Royce shouted, a thick tide of crimson streaking up his neck to flood his face.

Still, Gladys didn’t budge. Instead, she took another long sip of buttermilk and daintily wiped the cream from her upper lip with the sleeve of her shirt. It was as if Royce wasn’t even at the table, much less screaming at her at the top of his lungs. Furious now, he scraped his chair back so hard it toppled over with a crash. Everyone flinched, especially me, but Gladys seemed completely oblivious as she calmly popped another piece of cornbread into her mouth.

Cursing violently, Royce stomped toward the stove, and that was when Gladys went into action. She jumped up from her chair and moving with a grace that seemed impossible, maneuvered past her husband to reach the stove before he did. He stopped, watching her. Afterwards, I would realize he was thinking just what everybody else was thinking—that Gladys’s brief uprising was over, that she was back in her role as wife, servant and caretaker, and she was going to get her man his supper after all. But what happened next astonished everyone. Royce waited as Gladys grabbed two potholders and headed for the cast-iron pot on the stove.

“Sit yourself down, Royce Tatlow,” she said shortly.

With a grunt of disgust mixed with satisfaction, Royce righted his overturned chair and plopped his skinny hind-end into it. And everyone at the table watched as Gladys picked up the kettle, marched to the back door, and flung the whole thing—pot and all―out into the yard.

She turned, placed her hands on her generous hips and stared at her husband. “I reckon,” she said slowly, “that if you
want
it, you’ll have to go out and lap it up with the chickens.”

All hell broke loose. Royce jumped up from the chair and hurled himself at his wife. She whirled around and ran into the kitchen with him right behind her, cursing like a madman. Jake jumped up and headed for the fracas. Meg and Inis sat frozen in their seats, eyes wide with fear. I watched the whole scene, stunned.

Just as Royce grabbed the back of Gladys’s bun, she wrenched open the utensil drawer and pulled out a lethal-looking butcher knife. Quick as a snake, she had the tip of it poised at the bottom of Royce’s bobbing Adam’s apple. Jake froze between the table and the kitchen. Royce froze, too, his eyes bulging in shock. All the color had drained from Gladys’s face, and her eyes gleamed like blue diamonds.

Her mouth curled in a completely mirthless smile. “Let go of me, Royce Tatlow, or I swear to Lord, my God, I’ll
gut
you like a barnyard chicken. And there won’t be
a soul
in Russell County who’ll see me hanged for it.”

For a long, tense moment, the couple eye-balled each other, and then, apparently using the lick of sense God gave him, Royce decided to back down. The fury left his eyes, and abruptly, he released her hair and began to grin. It wasn’t a likeable grin, because I suspected he couldn’t produce a likeable grin if his life depended on it. It was sort of sickly and pathetic, but apparently, it was enough for Gladys.