The Old Buzzard Had It Coming (7 page)

Alafair looked at the sleeping boy and saw just that—a boy. Certainly no violent murderer. Any fear she may have felt vanished.

She took a step or two forward so that she was standing over him. “John Lee,” she said in a normal voice. When he didn’t stir, she tried again. “John Lee Day,” she said, louder.

In the dimness, Alafair saw his eyes open and regard her dreamily for a second, then fly open in consternation. He sat up abruptly, and the comforter fell away from his shoulders.

There was a long silence as they gazed at one another. Alafair was pleased to see that John Lee’s startle had faded quickly, and he sat looking at her matter-of-factly, plainly trying to decide if she were friend or foe.

And Alafair realized clearly that whether he had done it or not, she was his friend. Not that she would help him go unpunished if he were guilty. Rather that Alafair Tucker, mother of children, wasn’t going to allow this child to suffer needlessly if she could help it.

John Lee, for all his rough condition, had the aura of innocence about him. And not just innocence of the death of his father, but soul innocence. How is it that some people can grow up in grinding poverty, in an atmosphere of violence and oppression, forced into literal slavery, and still maintain their innocence? Some are simply in a state of grace, and why God chooses whom he does, Alafair thought, is a mystery.

John Lee unfolded himself from his blanket and slowly stood up to face her.

“Miz Tucker,” he greeted warily. “How did you find me?”

“Phoebe didn’t tell me, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Phoebe?” he echoed, with entirely convincing wonder. “Phoebe ain’t got nothing to do with this.”

An involuntary smile curled Alafair’s lips. Good for you laddie-boy, she thought. But she said, “It’s no use, John Lee. I followed her here last night.”

He drew a breath, but said nothing.

“She’s in big trouble, you know,” Alafair observed.

“I made her help me,” he replied evenly. “She didn’t want to.”

“Why did you run away, young’un?”

There was barely a pause before he answered. “Because I killed him.”

Alafair’s heart dropped. “Killed who?” she asked, giving him every chance.

“My daddy,” he answered, throwing the chance away. “You don’t need to pretend, Miz Tucker. I know he’s dead. I seen him there, next to the house, all dead and froze.”

“Doc Addison says your daddy froze to death,” Alafair said.

“No, ma’am,” John Lee said with conviction. “I shot him.”

Alafair folded her arms across her chest. “Why did you do that, son?”

“Well, ma’am, he was trying to brain me with a rock. I had socked him, you see. I struck my own daddy, and he wasn’t having none of it.”

“Why’d you hit him, John Lee?”

John Lee bit his lip, then answered slowly. “He liked to hit my ma, Miz Tucker. He done that a lot when he was drinking, and sometimes when he wasn’t. I finally had all I could stand, so I jumped on him. I guess I pummeled him a mite. He chased me around a while, but later that evening, when he come at me with the rock, I shot him. I didn’t know I killed him, not ’til we found him that morning. He acted right shocked, when the bullet hit him, but then he just staggered off toward the barn. Didn’t seem to bother him that much. He didn’t even bleed that I saw. When I seen that the mule was gone the next morning, I figured that he just had rode off down to his still like he’s done a hundred times before. I didn’t know he was dead ’til my sister found him a few days later. Then I got to thinking about hanging, and after I fetched the sheriff, I run off. I know I shouldn’t have done it.”

Alafair was listening to John Lee’s story with a growing sense of confusion. “What kind of gun did you shoot him with, John Lee?” she managed to ask.

“A little old two-shot derringer. I wouldn’t have thought it would kill a flea.”

“Them things aren’t easy to come by,” Alafair observed. “Kind of expensive, too. Where did you get hold of such a thing?”

John Lee hesitated for so long before answering that Alafair was fairly certain that the answer was a lie. “I saved up money for it,” he told her. “I was going to give it to my ma for protection, but I had it in my bib pocket that evening.”

“Was that before or after you met Phoebe on the road?”

“Well, it was before. I was trying to cool down, walking along the road, when I run across her. I didn’t tell her nothing. She didn’t know. She was just so calm and gentle, and made me feel better, so I asked if I could walk her home.”

Alafair’s hand went unconsciously to her forehead, which wrinkled with perplexity. “Sheriff Tucker says you were riding the mule when you came to tell him that your father was dead.”

“Yes, ma’am. I came across him as I was walking over here, thinking to borrow a horse. He was just grazing by the side of the road as calm as you please, all saddled and everything. I caught him and rode him to my Aunt Zorah’s and told her the situation. She didn’t seem much surprised. She went to get the kids straight away, and I just rode off to think a spell.”

“Where is the mule now?”

“I let him go out in the fallow field behind the pin oak stand, close by the creek. He’ll have plenty to eat, but nobody goes out there much this time of year. I expected I’d throw the sheriff off a little.”

“And how did you end up in our hay store?”

“I was just wandering around looking for someplace to hide where I wouldn’t freeze. I thought my own farm was too easy to figure.” He paused. His big dark eyes were shiny with tears, Alafair could tell, even in the dim light. “I done the worst thing in the world,” he said. “I reckon they’ll hang me.” He sounded quite calm, but Alafair detected a catch in his voice. She resisted an urge to touch him, to comfort him. He sat down on a convenient bale of hay and perched his forearms on his knees. “Wish we had some light, don’t you, Miz Tucker?” he said. “Course, I don’t have no matches in here. But I wish you’d sit down a spell, ma’am, and let me talk a bit before we go to the sheriff.”

Alafair was too curious to protest, and even if she had not been, she was in no hurry to make a decision about the boy. She folded her full skirt around her knees and sat down.

Her move encouraged John Lee, and he smiled, grateful for her—well, if not trust, then suspended judgment. “I’m sorry I run away,” he began. “I don’t mind paying for my sins. I ought to, I reckon. I just got afraid of going to hell. I don’t see how God is going to forgive me for killing my own father. I guess I was looking to put off my eternal punishment as long as I could.”

Alafair felt a physical pain in her chest as she listened to him talk. “If you face what you did, John Lee, if you’re truly sorry, and you take your earthly punishment like a man, you can look to the Lord for mercy. I don’t think God is so harsh.”

He gazed at her. “You think so, Miz Tucker?” he asked, with tentative hope.

Alafair hesitated. This was the most important thing in the world John Lee was asking, and she wanted to be as honest as she knew how. “I don’t know the mind of God, but I’ll tell you this, son. I know how I feel about my own children. If one of them killed their daddy, now, I’d be practically killed myself. But I couldn’t stop loving that child no matter how bad he was. And no matter what he did, I could never send any child of mine to burn forever in hell. And I’m only a mortal woman, John Lee. I figure God’s love must be infinitely bigger than mine. So I don’t think you ought to be scared of God.”

John Lee’s bottom lip, pushed out in youthful bravery, quivered a bit, and a couple of solitary tears escaped the corner of his eyes and slid down his cheeks. He let them go unheeded. “What shall I do, Miz Tucker?” he asked.

“You’re going to have to turn yourself in.”

“What do you expect will happen to me?”

“I don’t know, John Lee,” she said. “If what you say is true, it sounds like self-defense to me. They don’t hang you for that.”

“They don’t? What then?”

“I’m not your judge and jury, son. I don’t know what will happen. You’ll probably have to go to jail for a while. But if you’ll trust me for a day or so, and not stir a hair, I’ll try to see which way the wind blows with Sheriff Tucker. Will you promise not to run away?”

“Yes, ma’am, I give my word.” He paused. “What about Phoebe?”

“Don’t you worry about Phoebe. I’ll see to her.”

“Please don’t blame her for helping me,” he pleaded. “She’s a good, kind girl. It’s my fault she got led astray.”

“Now, John Lee,” Alafair began.

“Can I see her before they send me away for good?” he interrupted anxiously.

“Oh, John Lee, you worry me like a dog with a bone! Let’s see how things fall out. Now, I’m going to go make the best arrangements I can for you. Will you trust me, young’un?”

“Yes, ma’am, I will.”

“You know that if you run again, they’ll find you eventually, and it’ll go worse for you,” she warned, “and I’ll see to it that you never see Phoebe again.”

“Yes, ma’am, I know.”

“Then you just sit tight here for a while. I brought you some breakfast here.” She handed him the pail and eyed the quilts and blankets critically. “I reckon I can spare a pillow, too. Looks like you’re set for bedclothes.”

A ghost of a smile appeared on John Lee’s face. “Phoebe allowed as how you might be peeved that I have your best comforter.”

“Phoebe knows me pretty well,” Alafair admitted. “You just stay stuck, now, ’til you hear word.”

***

Alafair ran back across the field, through the scrub oaks, past the barn and outbuildings, and slammed into the house. It was getting colder by the minute, and blowing a gale. There would be an ice storm before the day was out. All the way back, she prayed that John Lee Day would get an attack of sense and stay where he was. She had already determined to delay telling Shaw where the fugitive was hiding until she had thought about this for awhile. Shaw may have been Alafair’s partner in all things, and the finest man ever to set foot upon the ground, but he was a man, after all, and had a different way of seeing things. Shaw was more apt to stick to the letter of the law, and Alafair, in her own humble opinion, would cling more to the spirit.

And her spirit was telling her not to turn over an innocent boy for hanging. For Harley Day could not have staggered off to the barn after receiving the wound she saw. He would have dropped like a stone.

She had to have more information. Of course, it was entirely possible that John Lee was lying. An innocent face certainly didn’t always mean an innocent man. If he was lying, he was not only a killer, he was so stupid it strained the bounds of credulity, and he did not strike her as such a dimwit. More likely, he could have thrown her that bit of disinformation just to give her pause. Which is exactly what it had done. If that were the case, he would be long gone before anyone could get back to the soddie. No, Alafair’s intuition, in which she placed great and justified store, told her that John Lee sincerely had no idea that his father had been shot in the head. And in that case, someone else killed Harley Day.

Chapter Seven

There were innumerable people with a motive to kill Harley. In fact, to Alafair’s way of thinking, Harley had invited killing. But who, besides Harley’s immediate family, could have had the opportunity? Alafair had no doubt that everyone in town was speculating about the murder, and she felt a surge of frustration that she was isolated on the farm when she really wanted to be gathering information from anyone who ever knew Harley Day. Somebody had that piece of information, that one little illuminating fact that would cause the truth to dawn. It was clear enough to Alafair where to start asking questions. No one in town knew more about what was happening or what people were saying than Mrs. Fluke, the postmistress.

After feeding John Lee, Alafair figured she had a while before Shaw returned from town, so she dashed out to the barn and saddled the small mouse-grey filly that she usually rode. Missy, the horse, was as housebound as any of the people on the place, and was quite happy at the prospect of a trip to town. She stepped lively into the cutting wind, carrying Alafair to Boynton.

***

The town of Boynton hadn’t even existed when the Tuckers had settled in the area. So many people moved into the region after the Creek Nation privatized the land that an enterprising fellow by the name of Finley laid out the town in 1902, and now, ten years later, Boynton boasted a population of close to a thousand people. There were two banks, five churches, and two schools, one for the white children and one for the colored children. The lively weekly newspaper was called the
Index.

The Francis Vitric Brick Company, located just northeast of town, and the Boynton Refining Company employed one hundred and fifty people between them. Main Street was paved with Francis’ brick. Homes in town were lighted by the Boynton Gas and Electric Company and supplied with running water by the city’s own waterworks system. There was an automobile garage and machine shop to go along with the two livery stables, as well as four general merchandise stores, three hotels, two groceries, two drug stores, a furniture store, hardware stores, grain merchants, a farm implement store, a bakery, a cotton gin, an oil well supply, and representatives of any other business or profession for which any reasonable person might find a need. For the past few years, the town had even had its own telephone exchange. And right in the middle of Main Street, in pride of place, stood the Elliot and Ober Theatre, which showed moving pictures every Saturday night.

On the two mile trip into town, Alafair thought about John Lee huddled in the dim hay-store, wrapped in his quilts. She wished that she had taken a book out to him to relieve his boredom. But then, it was probably too dark out there to read. If indeed he could read very much. It had begun to snow again by the time Alafair got to town, another fat, wet, clinging snow like the one that had buried Harley. She rode Missy directly to the livery stable, loathe to leave the little mare hitched outside and exposed to the elements.

Mr. Turner, the owner of S.B. Turner and Sons Livery, popped up from his desk beside the door as Alafair dismounted and squeaked open the rough wooden door.

“Well, Alafair Tucker,” he exclaimed. “I almost didn’t recognize you under all them clothes. What are you doing out and about on a day like this?” The little grasshopper of a man had been old ever since Alafair had first known him in 1897, when they had moved to the area where Boynton would be. That had been the family’s second move in three years. Before that, they had migrated to Cherokee County from Arkansas, in 1894, when she was twenty-one years old with two baby girls and pregnant with twins. They had come out in covered wagons, with Shaw’s parents, siblings and their families, and three uncles and their extended families. They had been a wagon train unto themselves. The country had still been the Indian Territories then, and since the Tucker clan was part Cherokee, they were more welcome than most. Shaw’s stepfather and uncles had seen the land runs in the west, in the Oklahoma Territory, but had preferred this greener country to the east. They had settled on tribal land near Tahlequah at first, and had even enrolled in the Cherokee Nation, but after a couple of years, many of the Tucker clan had traded up for several beautiful wooded parcels in the newly privatized Creek Nation.

The frisky Mr. Turner, who was a member of said Creek Nation, had a face both the color and texture of a walnut, covered over the top by a stiff gray buzz of hair that stuck up like a scrub brush. The lively gray eyes that examined Alafair with such human delight betrayed the fact that at least one of Mr. Turner’s grandparents had been white.

“I was just stir crazy, Mr. Turner,” she told him. “I came into town to see if we have any mail and to visit a while with my sister-in-law Josie Cecil. Do you mind if I leave Missy here for a spell? Too cold to leave her standing outside for long.”

“Not a bit,” Mr. Turner assured her. “Not like I’m doing much business today, and none at all if it wasn’t for you Tuckers. Shaw’s pair is right over there.”

“Shaw? Did he say where he was going? Might ride home with him.”

“Said he was going to drop into the sheriff’s office and jaw with Scott a while.”

She handed Mr. Turner the reins. “Well, if he comes back before I’m done visiting with Josie, would you tell him I’m here in town?” she asked.

“I’ll do it,” Mr. Turner called after her, as she ducked back out into the cold.

The town Post Office was directly across the street from the livery, at the corner of Second and Main. The tiny establishment consisted of one long wall of cubbyholes and a little counter, presided over by Mrs. N.C. Fluke, the postmistress. There was no one in the town of Boynton who knew as much about what was happening in the vicinity and what people were thinking about it. Every person who lived within a ten-mile radius of town had to pick up his or her mail from Mrs. Fluke, and if there was anything Nadine Fluke loved, it was gossip. At this hour, she was throwing mail, and Alafair could just see pieces of her through the jigsaw of postboxes.

“Morning, Nadine,” Alafair called, and the entire Mrs. Fluke appeared from around the corner with a stack of letters in her hand. Nadine Fluke was a pretty, fair-haired widow of about Alafair’s own age. She had been postmistress for three or four years, now, since the death of her husband. She lived in a little apartment behind the post office with her only child, a ten-year-old son.

“Alafair!” Nadine exclaimed. “I never expected to see anybody but townfolk today. If you’re here to get your mail, you’re too late. Shaw already picked it up. He had something from the Grange, and there was a letter for you from Enid. Your sister, I reckon.”

“Oh! Well, I’ll look forward to that. I haven’t heard from Ruth Ann in a while. Since I can’t get the mail, I’ll just have to pass the time of day for a while. What are you hearing about this murder out to the Days’ place?”

Nadine sat down on her stool behind the counter. “Nobody can talk of nothing else,” she assured Alafair. “And just between you and me and this stool I’m sitting on, it’s pretty shocking what people are saying. I mean, I know Harley Day wasn’t no prize or nothing, but most everybody I’ve talked with seems to think it was about time somebody done him in. Can you imagine? And to just say it straight out like that! You know he must have had some good quality somewhere in him.”

Alafair shook her head, but didn’t comment. Nadine’s charitable attitude toward Harley was rather nice for a change, and Alafair felt somewhat guilty that she didn’t share it. “Anybody have any ideas on who might have done it?” she asked.

“That boy of his, John Lee, seems to be the leading candidate, since he disappeared and all. But if he did do it, nobody wants to blame him much.”

“I sure don’t want to blame him, either,” Alafair told her. “He’s such a nice boy. Have there been any other names bandied about?”

“Why, to hear tell of it, just about everybody in the county could have done it. Ara Kellerman thinks it’s likely that it was the wife, since she had the most grievance. But since Harley sold that home brew, he was always consorting with murderous types. For my money, I’m picking one of them. You know, Bud Ellis that works over at the Mill and Elevator company was telling me just yesterday that his boss Mr. Lang was supposed to go out there to the Day place on the very evening that Harley disappeared. He said Mr. Lang was mighty unhappy when he came into work Thursday morning because he had made that long trip out there in the ice and snow and all for nothing.”

“For nothing,” Alafair repeated. “So he never saw Harley at all on Wednesday?”

“That’s what Bud says.”

“You know, Zorah Millar told me that Mr. Lang’s son Dan used to be sweet on Maggie Ellen Day awhile ago, but he broke it off with her because Harley didn’t approve.”

“Oh, he more than didn’t approve,” Nadine assured her. “Them two planned on getting married, is what I hear, but Harley flat out forbade it. I don’t know why he took against the boy. Dan Lang seems like a fine catch to me. You’d think he’d be glad to see his daughter settled. Anyway, the story I hear is that Dan went out to the Day place to confront Harley about it. Intended to tell him that he was taking Maggie Ellen off and that was all there was to it.”

“Why didn’t he, then?” Alafair wondered.

Nadine shrugged, then leaned forward over the counter, looking conspiritorial. “Somehow the two of them got into it, and Harley caught Dan one up the side of his head with a hoe handle. Knocked him silly. I gather Harley would have beat Dan near to death if John Lee and Maggie Ellen hadn’t put a stop to it.”

“I’ll swan!” Alafair declared.

“Well, Harley got in a lucky blow. I’d think that healthy young fellow would have killed Harley, otherwise. Even so, I reckon Dan figured he’d had enough of the Days after that, because I never heard another word about him and Maggie Ellen.”

“That’s a shame,” Alafair said. She was thinking that the situation sounded a little like Phoebe and John Lee’s. Had Harley Day decided that if he couldn’t be happy, none of the rest of his family could be, either?

“That gal must have been determined to clear out of there, though. Last I heard, she had married a bricklayer and was living in Shawnee. That Maggie Ellen is a feisty little gal, from what I know of her.”

“Miz Millar has a high opinion of her, too.”

“Speaking of Miz Millar,” Nadine said, “she may have been Harley’s sister, but there was no love lost between them, either.”

“I got that impression, myself, when I met them during a visit to Miz Day,” Alafair confessed.

“Yes, they must have called the sheriff out to their place ten times in the last few years with some complaint or another about Harley. Him and Zorah’s husband had some bad blood about an inheritance, I believe. The Millars had all kinds of mischief going on at their farm—fences pulled down, garden ripped up, that sort of thing.”

“Why didn’t Scott arrest Harley, then?”

“I don’t think they could ever prove it was him doing it, though J.D. was sure of it. In the last couple of years, though, Harley took to showing up at their front gate and hollering cuss words at them, until J.D. would threaten to fill him full of buckshot if he didn’t get gone.”

Alafair shook her head. “What a poor excuse for a human being that man was. Have you talked to Scott since this all began?”

Nadine chuckled. “Oh, he’s been in here, but you know how he is. He just teases and jokes, and in the end you don’t find out anything. Hattie was laughing and complaining that her husband never tells her anything interesting, either.”

“Well, I’ll be interested to see how it all falls out,” Alafair said. “I just hope John Lee ain’t involved. I’d hate to see him go to jail. So how is Freddie these days?”

Nadine smiled at the mention of her son. “He’s just fine. Growing like a weed. I saw your girl Martha early this morning. She was picking up mail for the bank. I swear, Alafair, she looks more like you every day.”

“Mercy, don’t tell her that!” Alafair joked, though the comment pleased her. “Well, I’d love to stay and talk more, Nadine, but there’s chores awaitin’, and I mean to visit my sister-in-law before I head home.”

***

The women said their farewells, and Alafair stepped outside. She caught her breath at the shock of the wind, but pressed on grimly. She took a left at the corner and ran the half-block to her sister-in-law’s square white frame house, thinking about Russell Lang and wondering what the man knew. She was surprised to see Shaw’s two hounds snuffling around Josie’s yard. They trotted up to her with wags and whuffs of welcome, but she was too cold to pet them.

She rushed through the gate, picking up speed as the cold insinuated itself deeper into her bones. She didn’t stop to knock but flung the front door open and ran inside at full tilt.

“Josie!” she called through the wool swathing her face. “You here?”

Josie Cecil keeled out of the kitchen with her sails at full. Josie was a large woman, generous in every way the word could be applied. She was five years older than Shaw, and like him, a typical Tucker, with the rosy-brown complexion, the honey-hazel eyes and black hair, and the wide toothy grin that dazzled all and sundry. The selfsame grin was now warming Alafair as she felt herself enfolded in a voluminous embrace.

“Girl, you’re a block of ice!” Josie exclaimed. “Get in here and eat something this minute.” She practically carried Alafair into her big, warm kitchen. “If you’re looking for Shaw, you’ve come to the right place. Nothing’s wrong, is there?”