SOMETIMES PA WILL talk about the war. He’ll tell how muddled he felt when he found out that Virginia, which he thought was for the Confederacy, went off and split itself in two and he was fighting for West Virginia and something different than he thought.
That’s how I felt all week. Always I thought my family was all of a piece. Now Ro had broken herself off. And was on the side of something different. And me with her. I was so addle-headed I got in trouble in school. We were learning to cipher, but no matter how I studied my Pike’s Arithmetic, I couldn’t work those numbers on my slate.
“Fanny McCoy, if you take five apples away from twelve and give them to your sister, how many would you have left?” Mr. Cuzlin asked.
Dazed, I asked stupidly, “Which sister?”
Everybody laughed. Adelaide and Trinvilla were smirking at me.
Mr. Cuzlin scowled. “Which sister would you like to give five apples to, Fanny?”
“Roseanna,” Nancy McCoy burst out. “She needs ’em.”
More laughter. Mr. Cuzlin slammed his hand down on the desk. “The answer! Now!” Instead I glared at Nancy. “I’d give Ro all twelve if I could! But nary a one to Adelaide or Trinvilla. Or Alifair!” They watched me all the time, inside the house and out, and I knew they were reporting to Alifair. Because she still suspected I’d sneaked off to see Ro.
Mr. Cuzlin stood. “The preliminaries,” he said, “are over.”
I’d never gotten the switch at school and I braced myself as he came toward me. Instead he grabbed my arm and dragged me over to the side of the room with the little kids, the five-year-olds, and shoved me down in a desk. “Maybe you can learn something from them,” he said.
Everybody laughed and my face went hot. I’d rather be switched. Trinvilla and Adelaide were still smirking.
SATURDAY FINALLY CAME and I went to see Ro again, this time with Pa’s blessing. “Listen to everything she says and report to me,” he said.
Again when she went to Devil’s Jump to meet Johnse I followed and hid behind the boulder. I didn’t want them to run off without my knowing.
I heard Johnse say how he told his pa about the baby. “He said he doesn’t want any spawn of the McCoys under his roof.” Ro gave a cry, but he gentled her and commenced telling her of his plan. To this day I believe he had a plan, and if my brother Jim and Pa hadn’t rode up right then I would have heard tell of it.
But they did ride up, on horses that were lathered and wild in the eye, Jim with his gun drawn and Pa waving his hat in the air and shouting and looking like he was fulfilling some prophecy from Isaiah. They tore through the bushes on the other side of Devil’s Jump, splashed their horses right into the creek, and reined them up so hard their horses reared on their hind legs.
Ro screamed as my brother Jim yelled, “Johnse Hatfield, I’m here to arrest you under the laws of the great state of Kentucky for seducing a young woman. Hand over your pistol.”
Then Ro recovered herself. “Still letting Pa lead you around by the nose, I see.”
Jim stood his ground. Which was now the water in the creek.
Johnse had his hands out, palms turned up. “I’d never do a thing to hurt Ro. Ask her.”
Jim wasn’t about to ask anybody anything right then. He aimed to carry out the proper order of things. “Come on, Johnse, let’s go peaceful-like,” he said. “We’ll let the court decide.”
“No court in Kentucky gonna give a Hatfield a fair shot,” Johnse said.
“Why should they?” Ro screamed. “My own family won’t give him a fair shot. Pa, how can you do this to me? Haven’t you hurt me enough? When will all this stupid hatred end?”
Pa didn’t even answer.
“Pa, there’s no cause to do this, please!” Ro was pleading now. “I went with Johnse of my own will. He never seduced me. I love him, Pa! Why are you taking on like this?” And she sloshed through the water with her long skirts, right toward Pa and Jim.
“Don’t come any farther, Ro,” Jim advised.
“Why? You gonna shoot me, too? You big sheriff’s deputy hero?”
“Bring him in, Jim,” Pa said.
“Soon’s Ro gets outa the way.”
But Ro stood right in the way between Johnse and Jim, while Jim still aimed his gun at Johnse, which meant, of course, it was pointed first at Ro, and Pa kept fussing at him to get on with it. Talk about tribulation! You’d have to go all the way back to Job in the Bible to match this.
My sister started sobbing then. It was terrible sounding. “Pa,” she was blubbering, “Pa, how can you do this to me?”
And Pa was saying, “I’ll do more to you in a minute if’n you don’t move. I’ll get off this horse and you’ll find out what I can do if I set my mind to it.”
Right about then I figured somebody had to end it, or they’d all be standing there until the sheep came home for salt. So I ran out from behind that boulder right toward my brother. “Let him go! They love each other!”
Later on, I received a long lecture from Jim, who told me how he could have taken that movement for anything and fired his gun. And maybe killed me. Or Ro, or even Johnse. “You should have stayed out of it,” he scolded. “What in tarnation were you doing there, anyways? You didn’t belong there. You’re always where you don’t belong, Fanny. Damn women always are!”
I didn’t know whether to cry for the scolding or to be proud because he’d lumped me in with all womankind. But back to that creek.
Jim didn’t fire. He was his old steely self, though the gun did waver a bit. One good thing, though, I’d pushed Ro out of the way.
Johnse never moved. Just stood there with his palms out. “You okay, Ro?” he asked.
“I’m fine!” She was mad now. “Fanny, get out of the way,” she said. “Go on up to the house with Aunt Betty.”
But I wouldn’t move.
There’s no telling what would have happened next if Aunt Betty hadn’t come out of the house and stood there shielding her eyes with her hand and hollering, “Hello! What’s going on down there? You all right, girls?”
Jim took off his hat and waved it. “Everything’s fine, Aunt Betty. They’ll be up in a minute!”
Aunt Betty sort of broke the mood. Everybody looked pretty shamefaced for a minute. Johnse ended it. “I’ll come along, Jim. Peaceful-like. It’s the only way to get this thing settled.”
“No!” Ro yelled. “They’ll kill you!”
“Nobody’s killing anybody,” Jim said quietly. “You know me better than that, Ro.”
“Well, I don’t know Pa. Not anymore!”
But when Jim took Johnse in hand, she hushed. She touched Johnse’s arm, then stood with her hands over her mouth as Jim helped Johnse onto his horse and they started down the path, Jim leading Johnse’s horse by the reins. Ro ran after them. “God, don’t take him, please!” she sobbed.
“Fanny, take care of your sister,” Jim ordered. Then they rode away in the name of the great state of Kentucky.
“Oh my God, oh my God, they’re going to kill him!” She was bent over, sobbing.
“Come on, Ro,” I said. “Don’t cry.”
She stopped crying then. She had another thought. “I’ve got to warn Anse!” she said. “If I can warn Anse Hatfield, he’ll stop them! She stood up, wiped her face, looked around, and spied Aunt Betty’s horse, Clothilda, in the field. “It’s ten miles to the Hatfields’ cabin. I can make it.”
“You can’t ride like you are,” I said. “You’ll hurt the baby.” I knew that much. “And we both have wet shoes and skirts. We’ll take our death of colds.”
She bent over, grabbed her petticoat, and started ripping. “Help me make a halter. You can ride behind me if you want.”
You take sides with somebody and there’s no going back. One little bit at a time you keep opening doors and going through them, until you’ve got so many doors behind you, you can’t find your way back nohow. In ten minutes we had the petticoat halter on the horse and were off to cross the Tug and warn the Hatfields.