When Johnny Came Marching Home (6 page)

"Of course, Jubal, but please call me Mary, or you'll make me feel very old. Is it something about the shirts you were looking at?"

"No, Mary. I want to talk to you about Johnny Harris."

She shifted her weight, nervously. "What about Johnny?"

"How well did you know him?" I asked.

"Not well, really. Walter and I only married a short time ago. My first husband—he was killed during the first year of the war, you know—well, he and I lived in Richmond before he died, so I'm afraid I never met many people from Jerusalem's Landing."

"Rebecca mentioned that Johnny came into the store quite a lot over the past few months, so I wondered if you or Mr. Johnson had seen or heard anything that might help me understand what happened."

"Do you mean about who killed him?" Her eyes were wide and fearful, and she turned and quickly busied herself with things behind the counter. "Lord, I certainly never heard anyone threaten him, if that's what you mean."

"Did you ever hear any talk about Johnny having trouble with anyone?"

She shook her head, then seemed to realize that probably wasn't enough. "I work in the store in the mornings with my husband, but then I leave to take care of our home"—she raised her eyes to the upper floor where the Johnsons had their living quarters—"and my husband works here in the afternoons, so he'd probably hear more than I would, him being here a lot more than I am."

I had a strong feeling that she didn't want to talk and I decided not to push her. "Is Mr. Johnson here?"

"Yes, Walter's out in the barn unpacking some stock." She spoke the words with a clear sense of relief.

I thanked her and went to the rear door that led outside to the barn.

 

* * *

 

Despite the morning chill, Walter Johnson was sweating as he wrestled a crate from a stack near the barn's wide front door. He was short and stocky and his soft brown eyes and prominent chin made me feel I was again looking at Abel, grown older that he would ever be.

"Good morning, Mr. Johnson."

"Good morning, Jubal. Something I can do fer ya?"

"I just wanted to talk to you about Johnny."

He withdrew a red handkerchief from a rear pocket and mopped his brow. "Sad thing," he said, but there was little sadness in his voice. "You three boys grew up in this quiet valley and then that damnable war came along, and now you're the only one left." He glanced at my missing arm as he spoke the final words and I knew what he was thinking.

"You believe the war had something ta do with Johnny's death?" I asked.

He gave his head a small shake. "I don't know, Jubal. I jus' know Johnny weren't the same boy came back as left." He paused, his eyes growing sad. "But at least he come back. God, I miss that boy of mine, miss him every day."

"I miss him too, Mr. Johnson."

The man drew a deep breath as if it might drive all the sadness away. He seemed to get hold of himself and went on. "Anyways, what can I tell ya 'bout Johnny that ya don't already know?"

"Well, sir, I know there's always a lot of talk going on when people get together in your store, and I was wondering if you overheard anything about Johnny, about any trouble he might have been having with anyone."

Walter Johnson chuckled softly. "Yeah, we are a good ol' buncha gossips, ain't we?" He scratched his head. "I did hear that he was havin' some trouble with Rusty LeRoche, but then ever'body has trouble with Rusty one time or another, don't ya know?"

"Did you hear what the trouble was about?"

He offered up a small shrug. "Well, I heard he was up on Rusty's land, doin' some huntin' a few weeks back. Well, ya know, Rusty's got that young daughter who folks say has a bit of trouble keepin' her britches on, an' I guess Rusty caught Johnny on his land and figured the kind of huntin' he was doin' didn't require no gun. I guess Rusty made it pretty clear that he might do some huntin' hisself if he caught Johnny up there again." He shook his head. "From what I heard that didn't scare Johnny none, an' he was up there a couple more times when Rusty was out loggin' his timber."

I toed the ground with my boot. "You know Rusty a lot better than I do. You think he's the kind to come looking for Johnny?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know, Jubal. He's a crazy Frenchman, fer sure, an' strong as a bull, an' I sure wouldn't want ta meet him alone in the woods iffen he was mad at me. But I can't see him doin' more then maybe give somebody a good thumpin'." He paused, thinking that over. "Unless he was awful, awful mad."

 

* * *

 

I went back to the store, and as I came through the rear door I heard sharp words being exchanged. Rebecca and Mary Johnson were face-to-face and both sets of eyes were flashing anger at each other, but at the sound of the rear door, they stopped and Mary turned away from her stepdaughter.

"Good morning, Jubal," Rebecca said. "I heard you were out back talking to my father. Was he able to help?"

"A bit," I said. "At least he gave me someone else to talk to. That's about the most I can expect right now."

She nodded. A bit curtly, I thought, and her eyes flashed defiance at her stepmother's back. "Are you going to Johnny's funeral tomorrow?" she asked, as she turned back to me.

"Yes, I am."

"I wonder if you'd be kind enough to escort me there."

The brazenness of her request startled me. Rebecca had always been a willful girl, and I now saw that it had carried well into her adulthood. And asking me in front of her stepmother had left me little choice but to agree to her request. Yet, I have to admit, though slightly unnerving, it gave me more than a little pleasure.

"Of course," I said.

Her stepmother had turned back to her, a look of surprise spread across her face. Rebecca gave her a sharp, defiant stare in return.

She looked back to me with softer eyes. "Thank you," she said. "The service starts at ten. I'll wait for you here at the store."

 

* * *

 

I guided Jezebel off the main road and onto the track that led to Sherman Hollow. It was past noon, and I hoped to catch Rusty LeRoche at home having his afternoon meal. The road into the hollow rose steeply and was only wide enough for one wagon, making it necessary to pull off the track if you met another coming the other way. But these were sparsely populated lands and that was something that rarely happened.

There were only a handful of cabins in Sherman Hollow, all of whose occupants forged a living by logging the thick pine forest that covered the area, or hunting and trapping the abundance of game that lived there. There were vegetable gardens, of course, but the land with its high, rocky hills was not suited to serious farming or raising a dairy herd.

The LeRoche cabin was a good two miles into the hollow. It was a simple four-room structure, barely big enough for LeRoche, his wife, his two sons, and one daughter. I wondered about LeRoche's supposed concern that Johnny had designs on his daughter, thinking that Johnny would have had to get her off into the woods somewhere if that was his intent. But the concern certainly fit what I knew of Johnny, at least the Johnny who had come home from that "great civil war" our dead Mr. Lincoln had spoken of.

After about a twenty-minute ride I turned Jezebel into the dooryard of the LeRoche cabin. Rusty's young daughter Chantal was outside, drawing water from the well. She had brown hair that fell below her shoulders and doelike brown eyes that looked up at me with what I could only describe as hunger. She had been a child when I left for the war. Now she was seventeen and had the body of a grown woman, and she was dressed to show it at its best advantage. Standing before me, she wore a skirt and a loose-fitting blouse that was open to expose an ample cleavage. I hadn't seen her since I returned home, and I could see why Johnny had wanted to hunt LeRoche's land.

"You're Jubal Foster, ain't ya?" she asked, smiling.

"Yes, and you must be Chantal. I remember you from before the war."

Her smile widened. "I've changed a bit, don't ya think?"

Before I could answer the cabin door opened and Rusty LeRoche stepped out into the dooryard. He was a big bull of a man—not as tall as my father, but even wider—and he had the largest hands I had ever seen. LeRoche had a full black beard and long, scraggly hair streaked with gray, and his eyes, brown like his daughter's, bore no sense of warmth or friendship.

"Who are ya?" he snapped. "An' whaddaya want? Yer interruptin' my meal."

"I'm Jubal Foster," I said. "I'm the deputy town constable and I need to take a moment of your time."

Rusty looked me up and down and offered me a derisive snort. "Then ya better git yerself down offen that horse." He turned to his daughter. "Git back in the house. Yer mother's waitin' fer that water."

LeRoche watched his daughter return to the cabin, his eyes hardening at the sway she put in her hips; then he led me to a nearby woodpile and seated himself on the chopping block. "All right, git to it," he said.

"Have you heard about Johnny Harris's murder?"

"I heard. What about it?" LeRoche's eyes bore into my face and then he looked at my missing arm as if measuring me by it. "Ya lose that arm in the war?"

"Yes."

"Goddamn stupid war; all 'bout a bunch a niggers. Wouldn't let my boys go." His words carried the sneer that filled his face.

I had heard that sentiment before and wanted to challenge it, but knew any attempt would be useless.

"I'm investigating Johnny's death," I said instead, "and I heard you had some words with him a few weeks back. I need to ask you about that."

LeRoche stared at me with cold eyes. "Just throwed him off my land is all," he said at length.

"Why was that?"

LeRoche snorted. "Didn't those gossipy bastids who tol' ya the rest tell ya that too?"

"I need to hear it from you, Mr. LeRoche."

"You kin call me Rusty, boy. I ain't fancy like them folks live down in the village."

"All right, Rusty. What I heard was that you felt Johnny was up here chasing after your daughter."

"That what they said?" He let out a grunt. "Didn't think none of 'em was smart enough ta figure that out."

I remained silent and he gave me a long stare. He looked at the pistol on my hip and his lips curled into a renewed sneer. "Course that's what he was up cheer fer. You don't have ta travel five miles ta hunt in rough country like we got cheer. Not when ya got deer an' rabbit and squirrel right on t'other side a the river, huntin' grounds a village boy kin walk ta."

"So you think he came up here to see your daughter?"

"I
know
he was up here lookin' ta see my daughter."

"Why is that?"

"My daughter an' me was in ta the store 'bout a month back an' that there Johnny Harris, he waltzes over from the church an' starts eyein' her. Then, next thing I know, he's up cheer in my dooryard askin' my daughter if it's okay ta hunt my land, an' iffen she'll show him the best trail ta take. Well, he din' know I was in the barn an' I heard him as I was comin' out. He jus' 'bout shit his pants when he saw me. An' I tol' him straight out ta git his ass outta there an' if I caught him in my dooryard agin, he was gonna be the one what got hunted."

"I heard he came back." I watched Rusty's face redden.

"Yeah, I know he did—the sumbitch."

"What did you do about it?"

"I made my daughter tell me when he was plannin' ta come on up cheer agin. I was gonna lay fer him and give that Bible-thumpin' little shit what he deserved. But I never got the chance, cause somebody took care of it fer me."

Rusty was smirking, as if he knew I lacked any information to challenge his story.

"When's the last time you were down in the village?" I asked.

"Go there 'bout ever week," he said. "Always somethin' ta do. Bring some lumber down ta the mill, or some hides fer Walter Johnson ta sell. I don't much keep track of what day I'm there an' what day I'm not."

"Were you there two days ago?"

"Don't rightly remember. Either then, or the day afore it, or the day afore that. Like I said, don't much keep track. Only thing certain is I drive my wife down on Sundays, so as she kin git herself ta church."

"Do you go to church with her?"

"I'm French Catholic and there ain't no church a mine close by. My wife, she'll go ta any damned church."

"When you went to town two or three days ago, did you think to look in on Johnny? Sort of tell him you weren't too happy with him?"

LeRoche offered up a cold smile. "Can't say I din' think on it. You have ta pass by his house ta get ta the mill."

"But you didn't stop?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Better ta see him when he come up cheer agin." The chilling grin returned. "That way there wouldn't be no witnesses ta the ass-kickin' I was gonna give him."

 

* * *

 

When I got back to the village I checked with Walter Johnson, who said he hadn't seen Rusty in more than a week, and then with the yard manager at the sawmill, who said Rusty had delivered a load of cut timber the day Johnny was killed. While there I looked out into the yard and watched several men moving logs with cant hooks, long hickory poles with slender, pointed metal tips and a hook hanging about six inches down on one side. I asked the yard manager if Rusty LeRoche owned such a tool and was told he certainly did. The man said he'd never known a logger who didn't own at least one. I decided I'd bring Doc Pierce to the yard to tell me if that logging tool could have been the weapon that ended Johnny's life.

 

* * *

 

Jerusalem's Landing, Vermont, 1856

Johnny led the way up the hill. We had built a hunting blind in the woods up behind the church, using rocks and fallen tree limbs and filling the holes with hard mud. Thirty yards to the east there was a cold stream that came off the hillside, and the fresh sign left by the deer told us they were watering there most every morning. We had scouted the surrounding area farther out and had found numerous rubs on trees—places were bucks had rubbed their antlers to remove the summer felt and sharpen the tips. In a few weeks, when the rut started, we would again scout the area and search out scrapes the bucks had left on the ground, patches of earth that had been freed of any snow or leaves or twigs that the bucks would then mark with their urine in an effort to attract passing doe.