Morning Glory

Chapter 21

On a day in late December, Elly was working in the kitchen when she looked up and saw Reece Goodloe pull into the yard in a dusty black Plymouth with adjustable spotlights and the official word SHERIFF on the door. He’d held office for as long as Elly could remember, since before he’d come knocking on the door of Albert See’s house, forcing him to let his granddaughter go to school.

Reece had grown fat over the years. His stomach bobbed like a water balloon as he hitched up his pants on his way up the walk. His hair was thin, his face florid, his nostrils as big as a pair of hoofprints in the mud. In spite of his unattractiveness, Elly liked him: he’d been the one responsible for breaking her out of that house.

"Mornin’, Mr. Goodloe," she greeted from the porch, shrugging into a homemade sweater.

"Mornin’, Mizz Parker. You have a nice Christmas?"

"Yessir. And you?"

"A fine Christmas, yes we did." Goodloe scanned the clearing, the gardens neatly cleared for the winter, the junk piles gone. Things sure looked different around here since Glendon Dinsmore died.

"Your place looks good."

"Why, thank you. Will done most of it."

Goodloe took his time gazing around before he inquired, "Is he here, Mizz Parker?"

"He’s down yonder in the shed, painting up some supers for the hives, getting everything ready for spring."

Goodloe rested a boot on the bottom step. "You mind fetchin’ him, Mizz Parker?"

Elly frowned. "Somethin’ wrong, Sheriff?"

"I just need to talk to him about a little matter come up in town last night."

"Oh… well… well, sure." She brightened with an effort. "I’ll get him."

On her way through the yard Elly felt the first ominous lump form in her belly. What did he want with Will? Some sheriffing business, she was sure. His homesy chitchat was too obvious to be anything but a cover for an official call. But what? By the time she reached the open shed door, her misgivings showed plainly on her face.

"Will?"

With paintbrush in hand, Will straightened and turned, his pleasure unmistakable. "Missed me, did ya?"

"Will, the sheriff is here lookin’ for you."

His grin faded, then flattened. "About what?"

"I don’t know. He wants you to come to the house."

Will went stone still for ten full seconds, then carefully laid the paintbrush across the top of the can, picked up a rag and dampened it with turpentine. "Let’s go." Wiping his hands, he followed her.

With each step Elly felt the lump grow bigger, the apprehension build. "What could he want, Will?"

"I don’t know. But we’ll find out, I reckon."

Let it be nothing, she entreated silently, let it be a carburetor for that dusty black Plymouth, or maybe Will’s got his road sign on county property or they need to borrow the library chairs for a dance. Let it be somethin’ silly.

She glanced at Will. He walked unhurried but unhesitant, his face revealing nothing. It wore his don’t-let-’em-know-what-you’re-thinking expression, which worried Elly more than a frown.

Sheriff Goodloe was waiting beside the Plymouth, with his arms crossed over his potbelly, leaning on the front fender. Will stopped before him, wiping his hands on the rag. "Mornin’, Sheriff."

Goodloe nodded and boosted off the car. "Parker."

"Somethin’ I can do for you?"

"A few questions."

"Somethin’ wrong?"

Goodloe chose not to answer. "You work at the library last night?"

"Yessir."

"You close it up, as usual?"

"Yessir."

"What time?"

"Ten o’clock."

"What’d you do then?"

"Came home and went to bed, why?"

Goodloe glanced at Elly. "You were home then, Mizz Parker?"

"Of course I was. We got a family, Sheriff. What’s this all about, anyway?"

Goodloe ignored their questions and uncrossed his arms, firming his stance before firing his next question at Will. "You know a woman named Lula Peak?"

Will felt the anxiety begin at the backs of his knees and crawl upward-sharp needles of creeping heat. Hiding his worry, he tucked the rag into his hind pocket. "Know who she is. Wouldn’t exactly say I know her, no."

"You see her last night?"

"No."

"She didn’t come in the library?"

"Nobody comes in the library when I’m there. It’s after hours."

"She never came there… after hours?"

Will’s lips compressed and a muscle ticked in his jaw, but he stared squarely at Goodloe. "A couple of times she did."

Elly glanced sharply at Will. A couple times? Her stomach seemed to lift to her throat while the sheriff repeated the words like an obscene litany.

"A couple o’times-when was that?"

Will crossed his arms and stood spraddle-footed. "A while ago."

"Could you be more specific?"

"A couple of times before I went in the service, once since I come home. Back in August or so."

"You invited her there?"

Again Will’s jaw hardened and bulged, but he exercised firm control, answering quietly, "No, sir."

"Then what was she doing there?"

Will was fully aware of Elly staring at him, dumbfounded. His voice softened with self-consciousness. "I think you can prob’ly guess, bein’ a man."

"It’s not my job to guess, Parker. My job is to ask questions and get answers. What was Lula Peak doing at the library in August after hours?"

Will turned his gaze directly into his wife’s shocked eyes while answering, "Lookin’ to get laid, I guess."

"Will…" she admonished breathily, her eyes rounded in dismay.

Having expected circumvention, the sheriff was momentarily nonplussed by Will’s bluntness. "Well…" He ran a hand around the back of his neck, wondering where to go from here. "So you admit it?"

Will pulled his eyes from Elly to answer, "I admit I knew that’s what she was after, not that she got it. Hell, everybody in Whitney knows what she’s like. That woman prowls like a she-cat and doesn’t make any effort to hide it."

"She… prowled after you, did she?"

Will swallowed and took his time answering. The words came out low and reluctant. "I guess you’d call it that."

"Will," Elly repeated in dull surprise. "You never told me that." Her insides felt hot and shaky.

Again he turned his brown eyes directly on her, armed only with the truth. "’Cause it meant nothin’. Ask Miss Beasley if I ever gave that woman any truck. She’ll tell you I didn’t."

The sheriff interjected, "Miss Beasley saw Lula… shall we say, ah.. pursuin’ you?"

Will’s gaze snapped back to the uniformed man. "Am I bein’ accused of somethin’, Sheriff? ’Cause if I am I got a right to know. And if that woman’s made any charges against me, they’re a damn lie. I never laid a hand on her."

"According to the record, you did a stretch in Huntsville for manslaughter-that right?"

The sick feeling began to crawl up Will’s innards but outwardly he remained stoic. "That’s right. I did my time and I got out on full parole."

"For killing a known prostitute."

Will fit the edges of his teeth together and said nothing.

"You’ll excuse me, ma’am." The sheriff quirked an eyebrow at Elly. "But there’s no way to avoid these questions." Then, to Will, "Have you ever had sexual intercourse with Lula Peak?"

Will repressed his seething anger to answer, "No."

"Did you know she was four months pregnant?"

"No."

"The child she was expecting is not yours?"

"No!"

The sheriff reached into his car and came up with a cellophane packet. "You ever seen this before?"

Standing stiffly, Will let his glance drop, examined the contents of the transparent packet without touching it. "Looks like a dustrag from the library."

"You read the newspaper regular-like, do you?"

"Newspaper. What’s the newspaper-"

"Just answer the question."

"Every night when I take a break at the library. Sometimes I bring ’em home when the library’s done with ’em."

"Which one you read most often?"

"What the hell-"

"Which one, Parker?"

Will grew aggravated and temper colored his face. "I don’t know. Hell…"

"The New York Times?"

"No."

"What then?"

"What is this, Goodloe?"

"Just answer."

"All right! The Atlanta Constitution, I guess."

"When’s the last time you saw Lula Peak?"

"I don’t remember."

"Well, try."

"Earlier this week… no, it was last week, Wednesday maybe, Tuesday-Christ, I don’t remember, but it was when I drove in to work, she was locking up Vickery’s when I went past on my way to the library."

"And you haven’t seen her since last week, Tuesday or Wednesday?"

"No."

"But you admit you went to your job as usual last night and left for home around ten P.M.?"

"Not around. At. I always leave exactly at ten."

Goodloe squared his stance, giving himself a clear shot of both Will’s and Elly’s faces. "Lula Peak was strangled last night on the rear steps of the library. The coroner puts the death at somewhere between nine and midnight."

The news hit Will like a fist in the solar plexus. Within seconds he went from hot to icy, red to white. No, not me, not this time. I paid for my crime. Goddammit, leave me alone. Leave me and my family in peace.While the tumult of sick fear built within him, he stood unmoving, wary of reacting the wrong way lest he be misread. His stomach trembled. His palms turned damp, his throat dry. In that quick black flash of time while the sheriff threw out his bombshell, a montage of impressions wafted through Will’s head, of the things he valued most-Elly, the kids, the life they’d built, the good home, the financial stability, the future, the happiness. At the thought of losing them, and unjustly, despair threatened. Aw, Jesus, what does a man have to do to win… ever?He was struck by the irony of having fought and survived that miserable war only to come home to this. He thought of all else he’d survived-being orphaned, the years of lone drifting, the time in prison, the hungry days afterward, the taunts, the jeers. For what? Rage and despair slewed through him, bringing the unholy wish to sink his fist into something hard, batter something, curse the uncaring fates who time after time turned thumbs down on Will Parker.

But none of what he felt or thought showed on his face. Dry-throated, expressionless, he asked flatly, "And you think I did it?"

The sheriff produced a second cellophane packet matching the first, this one bearing the pieces of newsprint with the cryptic message. "I got some pretty convincing evidence, Parker, starting with this right here."

Will’s eyes dropped to the incriminating note, then lifted again to Goodloe before he slowly reached to take the packet and read it. A rush of hatred poured through him. For Lula Peak, who just wouldn’t take no for an answer. For the person who did her in and pinned the blame on him. For this potbellied vigilante who was too stupid to reason beyond the end of his horsey nostrils.

"A man’d have to be pretty damn dumb to leave a message that clear and expect to get away with it."

Elly had been listening with growing dread, standing like one mesmerized by the sight of a venomous snake slithering closer and closer. When Will began handing the packet to Goodloe she intercepted it. "Let me see that."

MEET ME BACK DOOR LIBRARY 11 O’CLOCK TUESDAY NIGHT. W.P. While she stood reading it the kitchen door opened and Thomas called from the porch, "Mama, Lizzy wet her pants again!"

Elly heard nothing beyond the frantic thumping of her own heart, saw nothing beyond the note and the initials, W.P. Terror rushed through her. Oh, God, no. Not Will, not my Will.

"Mama! Come and change Lizzy’s pants!"

She fixed her thumbs over the edge of the cellophane simply for something to hang on to, something to steady her careening world. From the recent past she heard again Will’s voice admitting things that she wished now she had never heard… We used to go down to La Grange to the whorehouse there… Me, I wasn’t fussy, take any one that was free… I picked up a bottle… She went down like a tree and hardly even bled, she died so fast…

For a moment Elly closed her eyes, gulping, unable to swallow the lump of fear that suddenly congealed in her throat. Was it possible? Could he have done it again? She opened her eyes and stared at her thumbs; they felt weighty and thrice their size as shock controlled her system.

Will watched the reactions claim his wife. He watched her struggle for control, watched her momentarily lose and regain it. When she lifted her eyes they were like two dull stones in a face like bleached linen.

"Will…?"

Though she spoke only his name, the single word was like a rusty blade in his heart.

Oh, Elly, Elly, not you, too.They could all think whatever they wanted, but she was his wife, the woman he loved, the one who’d given him reason to change, to fight, to live, to plan, to make something better of himself. She thought him capable of a thing like this?

After a life filled with disappointments, Will Parker should have been inured to them. But nothing-nothing had ever reduced him like this moment. He stood before her vanquished, wishing that he had been in that foxhole with Red, wishing he’d never walked into this clearing and met the woman before him and been given false hope.

On the porch a door slammed and Thomas called, "Mama, what’s wrong?"

Elly didn’t hear him. "W-Will?" she whispered again, her eyes wide, her throat hot and tight.

Aggrieved, he turned away.

The sheriff reached to the back of his belt for a pair of handcuffs and spoke authoritatively. "William Parker, it’s my duty to inform you that you’re under arrest for the murder of Lula Peak."

The awful reality hit Elly full force. Tears squirted into her wide, frightened eyes, and she pressed a fist to her lips. It was all happening so fast! The sheriff, the accusation, the handcuffs. The sight of them sent another sickening bolt through Elly.

At that moment Thomas eased up behind his mother. "Mama, what’s the sheriff doing here?"

She could only stand gaping, unable to answer.

But Will knew all about hurtful childhood memories and wanted none for Thomas. As the sheriff pulled his left arm back and snapped the cuff on, Will ordered quietly, "Thomas, you go see after Lizzy P., son." He stood woodenly, waiting for the second metallic click, cringing inside, thinking, Dammit, Goodloe, at least you could wait till the boy goes back in the house!

But Thomas had seen too many cowboy movies to misinterpret what was happening. "Mama, is he takin’ Will to jail?"

Taking Will to jail? Elly suddenly came out of her stupor, incensed. "You can’t just… just take him!"

"He’ll be in the county jail in Calhoun until bail is set."

"But what about-"

"He might need a jacket, ma’am."

A jacket? She could scarcely think beyond the frantic churning in her head that ordered, Stop him somehow! Stop him! But she didn’t know how, didn’t know her rights or Will’s. Tears slid down Elly’s cheeks as she stood by dumbly.

"Mama…" Thomas began crying, too. He ran to Will, clutched at his waist. "Will, don’t go."

The sheriff pried the boy off. "Now, young man, you’d best go in the house."

Thomas swung on him, pummeling with both fists. "You can’t take Will! I won’t let you! Git away from him!"

"Take him in the house, Mizz Parker," the sheriff ordered in an undertone.

Thomas fought like a dervish, swinging, fending off their efforts to calm or remove him.

"Get in the car, Parker."

"Just a minute, Sheriff, please…" Will went down on one knee and Thomas threw himself on the man’s sturdy neck.

"Will… Will… he can’t take you, can he? You’re a good guy, like Hopalong."

Will swallowed and turned entreating eyes up to Goodloe. "Take the cuffs off for a minute-please." Goodloe drew in a deep, unsteady breath and glanced at Elly sheepishly. At his hesitation, Will’s anger erupted. "I’m not runnin’ anyplace, Goodloe, and you know it!" The sheriff’s distraught gaze fell to the boy sobbing against Will’s neck and he followed his gut instincts, freeing one of Will’s wrists. Will’s arms curled around Thomas, the metal cuff dangling down the boy’s narrow back. Closing his eyes, Will clutched the small body and spoke softly against Thomas’s hair. "Yeah, you’re right, short stuff. I’m a good guy, like Hopalong. Now you remember that, okay? And just remember I love you. And when Donald Wade gets home from school tell him I love him, too, okay?"

He pushed Thomas back, wiped the child’s streaming face with the knuckles of his uncuffed hand. "Now you be good and go in the house, and help your mother take care of Lizzy. You do that for old Will, all right?"

Thomas nodded meekly, studying the ground at Will’s knee. Will turned him around and gave him a push on his backside. "Now, go on."

Thomas ran around his mother, sobbing, and a moment later the screen door slammed. Elly watched Will stretch to his feet, his image a blur beyond her streaming eyes. With a wooden face he willingly put both hands behind himself and allowed the sheriff to snap the cuffs in place once more.

"Will-oh, Will-what-oh, God…" Elly moved at last, but her speech and motion patterns had turned jerky. She cast her gaze around like a demented thing, reaching out a hand, pacing like a wild animal the first time it’s caged, as if not fully comprehending its inability to change a situation. "Sheriff…" She touched his sleeve but he ignored her plea, tending his prisoner. Abruptly she veered to her husband. "Will…" She grasped him, clutching the back of his shirt, her wet cheek pressed to his dry one. "Will-they can’t t-take you!"

Unbending he stared straight ahead, and ordered coldly, "Let’s go."

"No, wait!" Elly cried, overwrought, turning beetlelike from one man to the other, "Sheriff-couldn’t you-what’s going to happen to him-wait-I’ll get his jacket…" Belatedly she ran to the house, not knowing what else to do, returned panicked, to find both men already in the Plymouth. She tried the back door but it was locked, the windows up.

"Will!" she cried, pressing the jacket to the glass, already realizing what had caused his cold indifference, already repentant, needing to do something to show she’d been hasty and had reacted without conscious thought. "Here-here I b-brought your jacket! Please, take it!" But he wouldn’t look at her as she pressed the denim against the glass.

The sheriff said, "Here, I’ll take it," and hauled it in through his window and handed her, in exchange, the paint rag on which Will had earlier wiped his hands. "Best thing you can do, Mizz Parker, is get a lawyer." He put the car in gear.

"But I don’t know no lawyers!"

"Then he’ll get a public defender."

"But when can I see him?" she called as the Plymouth began to move.

"When you get a lawyer!"

The car pulled away, leaving Elly in a swirl of exhaust with her hand reaching entreatingly.

"Will!" she cried after the departing vehicle. She watched it carry him away, his head visible through the rear window. She twisted her fingers into the smelly rag and covered her mouth with it, hunched forward, breathing its turpentine fumes, fighting panic, staring aghast at the empty driveway.

The jail was in a stone building styled much like a Victorian house, situated just behind the courthouse where Will had gotten married. He held himself aloof from emotion during the booking procedure, the frisking, the walk down the echoing corridor, the cold metallic clang of the iron door.

He lay in his cell facing a gray wall, smelling the fetid odors of old urine and pine-scented disinfectant, on a stale-smelling pillow and a stained mattress, with ink on his fingertips and his belt confiscated and dullness in his eyes and the familiarity of his surroundings consciously shut out. He thought about hunkering in a ball but had no will to do so. He thought about crying but lacked the heart. He thought about asking for food, but hunger mattered little when life mattered not at all. His life had lost value in the moment when his wife looked at him with doubt in her eyes.

He thought about fighting the charges-but for what? He was tired of fighting, so damned tired. It seemed he’d been fighting his whole life, especially the last two years-for Elly, for a living, for respect, for his country, for his own dignity. And just when he’d gained them all, a single questioning stare had undone him. Again. When would he learn? When would he stop thinking he could ever matter to anyone the way some people mattered to him? Fool. Ass. Stupid bastard! He absorbed the word, with all its significance, rubbed it in like salt in a wound, willfully multiplying his hurt for some obscure reason he did not understand. Because he was unlovable after all, because his entire life had proved him so and it seemed the unlovable ones like himself were put on this world to accumulate all the hurts that the lucky, the loved, magically missed. She couldn’t love him or she’d have jumped to his defense as thoughtlessly as Thomas had. Why? Why? What did he lack? What more must he prove? Bastard, Parker! When you gonna grow up and realize that you’re alone in this world? Nobody fought for you when you were born, nobody’ll fight for you now, so give up. Lay here in the stink of other men’s piss and realize you’re a loser. Forever.

In a clearing before a house on Rock Creek Road Eleanor Parker watched the law haul her husband off to jail and knew a terror greater than the fear of her own death, a desperation sharper than physical pain, and self-reproach more overpowering than the rantings of her own fire-and-brimstone grandfather.

She knew before the car disappeared into the trees that she had made one of the gravest mistakes in her life. It had lasted only a matter of seconds, but that’s all it had taken to turn Will icy. She had seen and felt his withdrawal like a cold slap in the face. And it was entirely her fault. She could well imagine what he was suffering as he rode to town with his hands shackled: desolation and despair, all because of her.

Well, blast it, she was no saint nor seraphim! So she’d reacted in shock. Who in tarnation wouldn’t? Will Parker could no more kill Lula Peak than he could Lizzy P., and Elly knew it.

The fire-and-brimstone blood of Albert See suddenly leaped in her veins where it had been slogging since her birth, waiting a chance to flow hot for a cause. And what a cause-the love of her man. She’d spent too long finding it, had been too happy enjoying it, had changed too beneficially under its influence to lose it, and him, now.

So she straightened her spine, cursed roundly and turned her terror into energy, her despair into determination and her self-reproach into a promise.

I’ll get you out of there, Will. And by the time I’m done you’ll know that what you saw in my eyes for that piddly instant didn’t mean nothing. It was human. I am human. So I made a mistake. Now watch me unmake it!

"Thomas, get your jacket!" Elly shouted, slamming into the house with yard-long strides. "And three extra diapers for Lizzy P. And run down in the cellar and fetch up six jars of honey-no, eight, just in case! We’re goin’ to town!"

She grabbed ration coupons, a peach crate for the honey, a tin of oatmeal cookies, a jar of leftover soup, Lizzy (wet pants and all), a skeleton key, and a pillow to help her see over the steering wheel. Within five minutes that wheel was shuddering in her hands, which were white-knuckled with fright. But fright wouldn’t stop Elly now.

She had driven only a few times before, and those around the yard and down the orchard lane. She nearly broke three necks shifting for the first time, felt certain she’d kill herself and her two young ones before she reached the end of the driveway. But she reached it just fine and made a wide right turn, missed the far ditch and corrected her course without mishap. Sweat oozed from her pores, but she gripped the wheel harder and drove! She did it for Will, and for herself, and for the kids who loved Will better than popcorn or movie shows or Hopalong Cassidy. She did it because Lula Peak was a lying, laying, no-good whore, and a woman like that shouldn’t have the power to drive a wedge between a husband and wife who’d spent damn near two years showing each other what they meant to one another. She did it because someplace in Whitney was a scum-suckin’ skunk who’d done Lula in and wasn’t going to get by with pinning the blame on her man! Nossir! Not if she had to drive this damned car clear to Washington, D.C., to see justice done.

She dropped Thomas, Lizzy P., the cookies and the soup at Lydia’s house with only a terse explanation: "They’ve arrested Will for the murder of Lula Peak and I’m goin’ to hire a lawyer!" She drove at fifty bone-rattling miles an hour the rest of the way into town, past the square and out to the schoolhouse on the south side, where she flattened ten yards of grass before coming to a stop with the left front tire crushing a newly planted rosebush that the second-grade teacher, Miss Natalie Pruitt, had brought from her mother’s garden to beautify the stark schoolground. Elly left word that Donald Wade was to get off the bus at Lydia Marsh’s place, then backtracked to the library and accidentally drove the car up onto the sidewalk, parking. There it stayed, blocking pedestrians, while she ran inside and told the news to Miss Beasley.

"That piss-ant Reece Goodloe come out to the house and arrested Will for killing Lula Peak. Will you help me find a lawyer?"

What followed proved that if one woman in love can move mountains, two can turn tides. Miss Beasley outright plucked the books from the hands of two patrons, ordering, "The library’s closing, you’ll have to leave." Her coat flew out behind her like a flag in high wind as she followed Elly to the door, already advising.

"He should have the best."

"Just tell me who."

"We’d need to get to Calhoun somehow."

"I drove to Whitney, I can drive to Calhoun."

Miss Beasley suffered a moment’s pause when she observed the Model A with its radiator cap twelve inches from the brick wall. The town constable came running down the sidewalk at that moment, shaking his fist over his head. "Who in the sam hell parked that thing up there!"

Miss Beasley poked ten fingers in his chest and pushed him back. "Shut up, Mr. Harrington, and get out of our way or I’ll tell your wife how you ogle the naked aborigines in the back issues of National Geographicevery Thursday afternoon when she thinks you’re downstairs checking the Ten Most Wanted posters. Get in, Eleanor. We’ve wasted enough time." When both women were in the car, bumping back down the curb, Miss Beasley craned around and advised in her usual unruffled, demagogic tone, "Careful for Norris and Nat, Eleanor, they do a great service for this town, you know." Down the curb they went, across the street and up the opposite curb, nearly shearing the pair of octogenarians off their whittling bench before Elly gained control and put the car in first. Miss Beasley’s breasts whupped in the air like a spaniel’s ears as the car jerked forward, sped around a corner at twenty miles an hour and came to a lurching halt beside the White Eagle gas pump on the adjacent side of the square. Four ration coupons later Elly and Miss Beasley were on their way to Calhoun.

"Mr. Parker is innocent, of course," Miss Beasley stated unequivocally.

"Of course. But that woman came to the library chasin’ him, didn’t she? That’s gonna look bad for him."

"Hmph! I got a thing or two to tell your lawyer about that!"

"Which lawyer we gettin’?"

"There isonly one if you want to win. Robert Collins. He has a reputation for winning, and has had since the spring he was nineteen and brought in the wild turkey with the biggest spur and the longest beard taken that season. He hung them on the contest board at Haverty’s drugstore beside two dozen others entered by the oldest and most experienced hunters in Whitney. As I recall, they’d given Robert short shrift, smiling out the sides of their mouths at the idea that a mere boy could outdo any one of them-big talkers, those turkey hunters, always practicing their disgusting gobbles when a girl walked by on the street, then laughing when she jumped half out of her skin. Well, Robert won that year-the prize, as I recall, being a twelve-gauge shotgun donated by the local merchants-and he’s been winning ever since. At Dartmouth where he graduated top in his class. Two years later when he took on an unpopular case and won restitution for a young black boy who lost his legs when he was pushed into the paddlewheel of a gristmill where he worked, by the owner of the mill. The owner was white, and needless to say, an unbiased jury was hard to find. But Robert found one, and made a name for himself. After that he prosecuted a woman from Red Bud who killed her own son with a garden hoe to keep him from marrying a girl who wasn’t Baptist. Of course, Robert had every Baptist in the county writing him poison pen letters declaring that he was maligning the entire religious sect. The church deacons were on his back, even his own minister-Robert is Baptist himself-because as it turned out, the murderess was a fervent churchgoer who’d almost single-handedly bulldozed the community into scraping up funds for a new stone church after a tornado blew the clapboard one down. A do-goodah," Miss Beasley added disparagingly. "You know the type." She paused for a brief breath and continued intoning, "In any event, Robert prosecuted her case and won, and ever since, he’s been known as a man who won’t knuckle under to social pressures, a defender of underdogs. An honorable man, Robert Collins."

Elly recognized him immediately. He was the one who’d come out of chambers in intense conversation with Judge Murdoch on Elly’s wedding day. But she had little opportunity to nurse the memory before becoming distracted by the surprising opening exchange between the lawyer and Miss Beasley.

"Beasley, my secretary said, and I asked myself could it be Gladys Beasley?" He crossed the crowded, cluttered anteroom in an unhurried shuffle, extending a skinny hand.

"It could be and is. Hello, Robert."

Clasping her hand in both of his, he chuckled, showing yellowed teeth edged with gold in a wrinkled elf’s face surrounded by springy hair the color of old cobwebs. "Forever formal, aren’t you? The only girl in school who called me Robert instead of Bob. Are you still stamping books at the Carnegie Library?"

"I am. Are you still shooting turkeys on the Red Bone Ridge?"

Again he laughed, tipping back, still clasping her hand. "I am. Bagged a twenty-one-pound tom my last time out."

"With an eleven-inch beard, no doubt, and an inch-long spur, which you hung on the drugstore wall to put the old-timers in their places."

Once more his laughter punctuated their exchange. "With a memory like that you’d have made a good lawyer."

"I left that to you though, didn’t I, because girls were not encouraged to take up law in those days."

"Now, Gladys, don’t tell me you still hold a grudge because I was asked to give the valedictory speech?"

"Not at all. The best man won." Abruptly she grew serious. "Enough byplay, Robert. I’ve brought you a client, vastly in need of your expert services. I should take it as a personal favor if you’d help her, or more precisely, her husband. This is Eleanor Parker. Eleanor, meet Robert Collins."

Meeting his handshake with one of her own, Elly inquired, "You got a wife, Mr. Collins?"

"No, I don’t, not anymore. She died a few years back."

"Oh. Well, then this is for you."

"For me," he repeated, pleased, accepting the quart of honey, holding it high.

"And there’s more where that came from, plus milk and pork and chickens and eggs for the duration of this war and without rationing coupons, to go along with whatever money you need to clear Will’s name."

He laughed again, examining the honey. "Might this be construed as bribery, do you think, Gladys?"

"Construe it any way you like, but try it on a bran muffin. It’s indescribable."

He turned, carrying the honey into his messy office, inviting, "Come in, both of you, and close the door so we can talk. Mizz Parker, as for my fee, we’ll get to that later after I decide whether or not I can take the case."

Seated in his office, Elly quickly assured Robert Collins, "Oh, I got money, Mr. Collins, never fear. And I know where I can get more."

"From me," put in Miss Beasley.

Elly’s head snapped around. "From you!" she repeated, surprised.

"We’re digressing, Eleanor, on Robert’s valuable time," returned Miss Beasley didactically. "We’ll discuss it later. Alone."

It didn’t take fifteen minutes for Robert Collins to ascertain the few facts known by the women and inform them that he’d be at the jail as soon as possible to talk to Will and make his decision about defending him.

Before that hour was up, Elly herself was standing in Sheriff Goodloe’s office with another jar of honey in her hand. He was deep in conversation with his deputy but looked up as she entered. Straightening, he began, "Now, Elly, I told you at your house you can’t see him till you got a lawyer."

She set the jar of honey on his desk. "I came to apologize." She looked him soberly in the eyes. "About an hour ago I called you a piss-ant when actually I’ve always had a fair deal of respect for you. I always meant to thank you for gettin’ me out of that house I grew up in, but this’s the first chance I got." She gestured toward the honey. "That’s for that. It’s got nothin’ to do with Will, but I want to see him."

"Elly, I told you-"

"I know what you told me, but I thought about what kind of laws they are that let you lock up a person without letting him explain to people what really happened. I know all about being locked up like that. It ain’t fair, Mr. Goodloe, and you know it. You’re a fair man. You were the only person ever stood up for me when they kept me in that house and let the whole town think I was crazy because of it. Well, I ain’t. The crazy ones are the ones who make laws that keep a wife from seeing her husband when he’s in the pit of despair, which is what my Will is right now. I’m not askin’ you to open his door or put us in a private room. I’m not even askin’ you to leave us alone. All I’m askin’ is what’s fair."

Goodloe glanced from her to the honey. He plopped tiredly into his chair and ran his hands over his face in frustration. "Now, dang it, Elly, I got regulations-"

"Aw, let her talk to him," the deputy interrupted, fixing a slight smile on Elly. "What’s it gonna hurt?" Sheriff Goodloe swung a glance at the younger man, who shrugged and added, "She’s right and you know it. It’s not fair." Then, to Elly’s surprise, the younger man came forward, extending a hand. "Remember me? Jimmy Ray Hess. We were in fifth grade together. Speaking of fair, I’m one of those who used to call you names, and if you can apologize, so can I."

Astounded, she shook his hand.

"Jimmy Ray Hess," she repeated in wonder. "Well, I’ll be."

"That’s right." He proudly thumbed the star on his shirt. "Deputy sheriff of Gordon County now." In friendly fashion he swung back to his superior. "What d’you say, Reece-can she see him?"

Reece Goodloe succumbed and flapped a hand. "Aw, hell, sometimes I wonder who’s the boss around here. All right, take her in."

The deputy beamed and led the way from the office. "Come along, Elly, I’ll show you the way."

Walking along beside Jimmy Ray, Elly felt her faith in mankind restored. She counted those who’d helped her today-Lydia, Miss Beasley, Robert Collins, and now Jimmy Ray Hess.

"Why are you doing this, Jimmy Ray?" she asked.

"Your husband-he was a Marine, wasn’t he?"

"That’s right-First Raiders."

Jimmy Ray flashed her a crooked grin oozing with latent pride. "Gunnery Sergeant Jimmy Ray Hess, Charlie Company, First Marines, at your service, ma’am." Giving her a smart salute, he opened the last door leading into the jail. "Third on the left," he advised, then closed the door, leaving her alone in the corridor fronting a long row of cells.

She had never been in a jail before. It was dank and dismal. It echoed and smelled bad. It dampened the spirits momentarily lifted by Jimmy Ray Hess.

Even before she reached Will her heart hurt. When she saw him, curled on his cot with his back to the bars, it was like looking at herself on her knees in that place, praying forgiveness for something she didn’t do.

"Hello, Will," she said quietly.

Startled, he glanced over his shoulder, carefully schooling all reaction, then faced the wall again. "I thought they weren’t gonna let you in here."

Elly felt as if her heart would break. "That what you wanted?" When he refused to answer, she added, "Reckon I know why."

Will swallowed and stared at the wall, feeling a clot of emotion fill his throat. "Go on, get out of here. I don’t want you to see me in here."

"Neither do I, but now that I have, I got some questions need asking."

Coldly he said to the wall, "Yeah, like did I kill that bitch. Was I carrying on with her." He laughed mirthlessly, then threw over his shoulder: "Well, you can just go on wondering, because if that’s all the faith you have in me, I don’t need your kind of wife."

Remorse spread its hot charges through Elly. With it came sudden, stinging tears. "Why didn’t you tell me about her, Will, back when it happened, when she came to the library? If you had, it wouldn’t’ve been such a surprise to me today."

Abruptly he swung to his feet and confronted her with fists balled and veins standing out sharply on his throat. "I shouldn’t have to tell you I didn’t do things! You should know by what I do dowhat kind of man I am! But all you had to hear was one word from that sheriff to think I was guilty, didn’t you? I saw it in your eyes, Elly, so don’t deny it."

"I won’t," she whispered, ashamed, while he took up a frenzied pacing, driving a hand through his streaked yellow hair.

"Christ, you’re my wife! Do you know what it did to me when you looked at me that way, like I was some-some murderer?"

She had never seen him angry before, nor so desolate. More than anything she wanted to touch him, reassure him, but he paced back and forth between the side walls like a penned animal, well out of reach. She closed her hand over a black iron bar. "Will, I’m sorry. But I’m human, ain’t I? I make mistakes like anybody else. But I came here to unmake’em and to tell you I’m sorry it crossed my mind you coulda done it’cause it didn’t take me three minutes after they took you away to realize you couldn’t of. Not you-not my Will."

Coming to an abrupt halt, Will pinned her with damning brown eyes. His hair stood disheveled. His fists were still knotted as he and Elly faced off, doing silent battle while he fought the urge to rush across the cell and touch her, crush her hands beneath his on the iron bars, draw from her the sustenance he needed to face the night, and tomorrow, and whatever fight lay ahead. But the hurt within him was still too engulfing. So he returned in a cold, bitter voice, "Yeah, well, you were three minutes too late, Elly, cause I don’t care what you think anymore." It was a lie which hurt him as badly as it hurt her. He saw the shock riffle across her face and steeled himself against rushing to her with an apology, taking her face between his hands and kissing her between the bars that separated them.

"You don’t mean that, Will," she whispered through trembling lips.

"Don’t I?" he shot back, telling himself to disregard the tears that made her wide green eyes look bright as dew-kissed grass. "I’ll leave you to go home and wonder, just like I laid here and wondered if you meant it!"

For several inescapable seconds, while their hearts thundered, they stared at each other, hurting, loving, fearful. Then she swallowed and dropped her hand from the bar, stepped back and spoke levelly. "All right, Will, I’ll leave if that’s what you want. But first just answer me one question. Who do you think killed her?"

"I don’t know." He stood like a ramrod, too stubborn to take the one step necessary to end this self-imposed hell. Don’t go, I didn’t mean it, I don’t know why I said it… oh, God, Elly, I love you so much.

"If you wanna see me, tell Jimmy Ray Hess. He’ll get word to me."

Only when she was gone did he relent. Tears came as he spun to the wall, pressing fists and forearms high against it, burying his thumb knuckles hard in his eyesockets. Elly, Elly-don’t believe me! I care so much what you think of me that I’d rather be dead than have you see me in this place.

Miss Beasley had obligingly waited in the car. Returning to it, Elly looked pale and shaken.

"What is it, Eleanor?"

Elly stared woodenly out the windshield. "I did Will wrong," she answered dully.

"Did him wrong? Why, whatever are you talking about?"

"When the sheriff came out to our place and said Lula Peak was dead. You see, it crossed my mind for just a minute that Will might have done it. I didn’t say so, but I didn’t have to. Will saw it in my face, and now he won’t talk to me." Elly tightened her lips to keep her chin from shaking.

"Won’t talk to you, but-"

"Oh, he yelled some, got it off his chest how much I hurt him. But he stayed clear across the cell and wouldn’t take my hand or smile or anything. He said it didn’t matter to him anym-more what I th-think." She covered her eyes and dropped her head.

Miss Beasley grew incensed at Will’s callousness and took Elly’s shoulder.

"Now you listen here, young woman. You didn’t do anything that any normal human being wouldn’t have done."

"But I should’ve trusted him better!"

"So you experienced a moment of doubt. Any woman would have done the same."

"But you didn’t!"

"Don’t be an imbecile, Eleanor. Of course I did."

Surprise brought Elly’s head up. Though her eyes were streaming, she swiped at them with a sleeve. "You did?"

"Well, of course I did," Gladys lied. "Who wouldn’t? Half of this town will. It means we shall only have to fight harder to prove they’re wrong."

Miss Beasley’s staunchness suddenly put starch in Elly’s spine. She sniffed and mopped her eyes. "That durn husband of mine wouldn’t even tell me if he suspected anybody." With the return of control, Elly began rationalizing. "Who could’ve done it, Miss Beasley? I got to find out somehow. That’s the only way I know to get Will back. Who should I start with?"

"How about Norris and Nat? They’ve been sitting on that park bench for years, watching Lula Peak point her bodice at anything in pants that came along the sidewalk. I’m sure they’d know down to the exact second how long it took her to follow Mr. Parker into the library every time he brought me eggs, and also how long it took her to come back out looking like a singed cat."

"They would?"

"Of course they would."

Elly digested the idea, then had one of her own. "And they’re in charge of the town guard, aren’t they?"

Miss Beasley’s face lit with excitement. "Prowling around town at night, listening for airplane engines, looking through binoculars and checking blackout curtains."

Elly tossed her a hopeful glance, tinged with anticipation. "And chasing curfew violators off the streets?"

"Exactly!"

Elly started the engine. "Let’s go."

They found Norris and Nat MacReady soaking up the late afternoon sun on their usual bench in the square. Each received a quart jar of pure gold Georgia honey in exchange for which they gladly revealed the startling details of an overheard conversation behind the library one night last January. They had been together so long they might have had a single brain at work between them, for what one began, the other finished.

"Norris and I," Nat said, "were walking along Comfort Street and had turned up the alley behind the library-where the podocarpus bushes grow by the incinerator-"

"-when a high-heeled shoe sailed out and clunked me on the shoulder. Nat can testify to the fact-"

"’Cause he had a purple bruise there for well over four weeks."

"Now, Nat," chided Norris, "you might be stretching it a bit. I don’t think it was over three."

Nat bristled. "Three! Your memory is failing, boy. It was there a full four, ’cause if you’ll recall, I commented on it the day we-"

"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" interrupted Miss Beasley. "The conversation you overheard."

"Oh, that. Well, first the shoe flew-"

"Then we heard young Parker beller loud enough to wake the entire town-"

"’If you’re in heat, Lula, go yowl beneath somebody else’s window!’ That’s exactly what he said, wasn’t it, Nat?"

"Sure was. Then the door slams and Miss Lula-"

"-madder than Cooter Brown-pounds on it and calls young Parker a name that you ladies are free to read from our logbook if you like but one that-"

"Logbook?"

"That’s right. But neither Norris nor myself would care to repeat it, would we, Norris?"

"Most certainly not, not in the company of ladies. Tell ’em what happened next, Nat."

"Well, then Miss Lula yelled that young Will’s-ahem-" Nat cleared his throat while searching for a genteel euphemism. But it was Norris who came up with it.

"-his, ahh, male part"- the words were whispered-"probably wouldn’t fit into Lula’s ear anyway."

Almost simultaneously, Miss Beasley and Elly demanded, "Did you tell this to the sheriff?"

"The sheriff didn’t ask. Did he, Norris?"

"No, he didn’t."

Which gave Elly the idea about running an ad in the newspaper. After all, running an ad had brought results before. Why wouldn’t it again? But Miss Beasley’s ankles were swollen, so Elly took her home before returning to the Whitney Register office to rid herself of another quart of honey as payment for the ad which stated simply that E. Parker, top of Rock Creek Road, would pay a reward for any information leading to the dropping of charges against her husband, William L. Parker, in the Lula Peak murder case. To her amazement, the editor, Michael Hanley, didn’t bat an eye, only thanked her for the honey and wished her luck, ending, "That’s a fine young man you married there, Mizz Parker. Went off and fought like a man instead of runnin’his finger through a buzzsaw like some in this town."

Which sparked the memory of Harley Overmire’s long-ago antagonism toward Will and made Elly wonder briefly if it were worth mentioning to either Reece Goodloe or Robert Collins. But she hadn’t time to dwell on it, for from the newspaper office Elly proceeded directly to the office of Pride Real Estate, where she unceremoniously slapped a heavy nickel skeleton key on the counter, followed by yet another quart of honey and announced to Hazel Pride, "I want to list some property." Hazel Pride’s husband was fighting "somewhere in the south of France" and had left her to manage the paper while he was gone. She had typeset every word about Will Parker’s heroism and his Purple Heart, so greeted Elly affably and said it was a shame about Mr. Parker, and if there was anything Hazel could do, just let her know. After all, Will Parker was a veteran with a Purple Heart, and no veteran who’d been through so much should be treated the way he’d been. Would Eleanor care to ride in Hazel’s car out to the house?

Elly declined, following Hazel in her own car through the chill of a late-winter afternoon. The morning glory vines were dry and leafless around the front door, woven into a thick mesh of neglected growth. The grass was the color of twine. The two cars flattened it while pulling around to the back door.

Of all the things Elly had done that day, none was as difficult as entering that dreary house with Hazel Pride, walking into the murky shadows behind those hated green shades, past the spot in the front parlor where she’d prayed, past the corner where her grandmother had died on a hard kitchen chair, past the bedroom where her mother had gone slowly insane, smelling the dry bat droppings from the attic, mixed with dust and mildew and bad memories. It was hard, but Elly did it. Not just because she needed the money to pay Robert Collins but because she’d come so far in one day she figured she might as well go the rest of the way. Also, she knew it would please Will.

In the parlor she snapped up the shades, one after the other, letting them whirl and flap on their surprisingly tensile springs. The sunset poured in, revealing nothing more frightening than dust motes swimming through the stale air of an abandoned house with mouse leavings on the linoleum floor.

"Two thousand, three hundred," Hazel Pride announced, tapping her tablet. "Top listing price, considering the work that would be necessary to make the place livable again."

Twenty-three hundred dollars would more than pay Collins’ bill, Elly figured, and leave extra for the rewards she hoped to pay. She insisted on signing the paper there, inside the house, so that when she walked out she’d be free of it forever.

And she was. As she climbed back into Will’s car and drove through the hub-high grass of the deep twilit yard to the road, she felt relieved, absolved.

She thought about the day, the fears she had put to rout simply by attacking them head-on. She had driven a car clear to Calhoun for the first time, had confronted a town that seemed no longer intimidating but supportive, had set into motion the machinery of justice and had shed the ghosts of her past.

She was tired. So tired she wanted to pull the car into the next field-access road and drop off till morning.

But Will was still in jail and every minute there must seem like a year to him. So she drove clear back to Calhoun to find Sheriff Goodloe, give him hell about his slipshod methods of investigation and put him onto Norris and Nat MacReady’s logbook. She forgot, however, to mention Harley Overmire.