THE REASON I know that Ellison Mounts didn’t kill my sister Alifair is more than because I heard Cap Hatfield talking with her that night just afore she was shot. It’s because Reverend Thompson told me.
It was September. Pa was on another raid. Aunt Martha Cline had come to the little house in Pikeville to visit Ma, like she did every so often. I was in the parlor, studying. My sister Ro was upstairs in bed. She’d been sickly for the last month and nobody knew what ailed her. But while the bright blue skies of fall and the flaming colors beckoned outside, inside Ro roamed the house in her nightdress, not talking, not eating, just telling us all to leave her be, and getting thinner and thinner. Adelaide, who came home once a month like our sheep used to do, had doused her with remedies a week ago. Nothing helped.
I’d finished packing. I was going to Saylorsville to visit Trinvilla and Will. They’d built a new house there last summer. It was Aunt Martha’s idea that I go. I needed to get out of the house, she said. She and Ma were in the kitchen talking.
“I just can’t stop Ranel,” Ma was saying. “His mind is set on all this killing.”
“Then don’t stop him,” Aunt Martha Cline said. “He’s got no more homeplace, no more crops. He’s got only his kin to revenge. It’s proper for him to bring the Hatfields to justice, Sarah.”
“How can it be proper to kill?”
Aunt Martha Cline’s voice rose. “You preached prayer instead of action to your husband for so long, Sarah! You’d still have all your children if you hadn’t. And now you’ve got Roseanna failing.”
“Roseanna’s grieving ’cause she heard Nancy is to wed Frank Phillips. She’s grieving for that scoundrel Johnse,” Ma said. “All she needs is a tonic.”
Aunt Martha made a scoffing sound. “You live in your own world, Sarah. You always did.”
I SUPPOSE REVEREND Thompson was kin to me, being father-in-law to my sister. I just couldn’t think of a reverend as kin. I had trouble sitting at table with him, watching him eat and talk of everyday things. But it never bothered Trinvilla at all. It was part and parcel of how she’d changed since that day of her wedding, I suppose. She was a full woman at twenty-one, with notions from living in Baltimore, with her own house spread around her, a baby in a cradle, and a lawyer husband. She headed up committees in her father-in-law’s church. I’d lost her again before I’d found her. Snobbish, she was. It was the only word I could put to how she acted. Confused as I was, I had to find meaning where I could.
“How’s Roseanna?” Reverend Thompson asked when there was a lull in conversation.
“Middling,” I answered. “Ma can’t put a finger on what’s ailing her.”
He smiled. “I spoke to Johnse just yesterday.”
I gaped, waiting. Something was coming, I was sure of it.
“I minister to folk on both sides of the river, Fanny. You must remember that. I take pride that both Hatfields and McCoys trust me. I like to think I’ve quenched some fires on both sides and kindled some understanding.”
“Yes sir.” He was rooting around it like a hound dog. All that talk of quenching and kindling fires. I looked at my sister. Under the soft light of the kerosene lamps, she glowed. Whatever he was getting at she knew about it. Imagine, I thought. Being privy to what a reverend was thinking!
“Johnse is worried about Roseanna,” he said. “He heard she was took sick. And he asked after your ma, too.”
I bridled. “He’s got more nerve than a Yankee at a Southern camp meeting,” I said. “After they raided our house that night.”
“Now, now, Fanny,” the reverend said soothingly. “Johnse wasn’t there that night. I can vouch for that. You think he’d be part of that killing and maiming? He still loves Roseanna.”
Before I could give my opinion on that bit of hogwash, he went on.
“Jim Vance attacked your ma. Johnse’s brother Cap shot Alifair.”
“Then why have they got Ellison Mounts in prison for it?”
“Because,” he answered softly, “Cap promised Mounts five hundred dollars, a rifle, and a saddle, if he’d take the blame. Promised he’d spring him from jail before they hanged him.”
I stared at the man in disbelief. Then at my sister and Will. Trinvilla smiled in a way that made me want to smack her the way I did when she tattled on me to Alifair. “It’s true,” she said.
“What’s it all got to do with me?” I asked.
“In the spirit of Godly forgiveness and forbearance that I myself preach and your sister and brother-in-law practice in this home,” the reverend said, “I have a letter to Ro from Johnse. I’d like for you to deliver it to her.”
I felt a blinding light behind my eyes. My head hurt. My food turned to sawdust in my mouth. “Aunt Martha Cline was just this day telling Ma how foolish she was with all her forgiveness and praying,” I said. “And how, if she’d let Pa go after the Hatfields sooner, my brothers and Alifair might still be alive.”
Nobody said anything for a minute. Trinvilla made a to-do about pouring coffee. I suppose she learned how to pour real fancylike from all those ladies’ meetings she went to in church. She was getting notions, that’s what her problem was. Thought she was too good for us anymore.
“What does Johnse want from Ro?” I asked the preacher.
“Just to see her. As I said, he’s heard she’s failing.”
“He loves her still, Fanny,” Trinvilla put in.
I scowled. “I suppose there’s no sense in asking why you care, when you always hated Ro.”
Her smile was like a knife. It was kindly but bespoke things between them that I was too young to understand. “We were all children back then, Fanny,” she said. “We’re all grown now.”
“Johnse can be grown as last year’s corn. There’s no way he can come into Kentucky and see Ro without his being killed,” I told her.
“He’s been here many times,” the reverend said.
“To this house?” I asked.
The reverend stirred sugar into his coffee. “Haven’t you ever seen the man in the wool hat in the rowboat on the river? He’s seen you. Said you waved to him many a time.”
Now I felt like I was out in the windy night, looking in the window at them. The man in the woolen hat? Johnse Hatfield? “Why did he never give me his howdy if it was him?”
“He didn’t want to put you in a compromising position.”
“What’s that?”
“He didn’t,” Trinvilla explained, “want to make you waver between telling Pa he was there and loyalty to him.”
“I’ve got no loyalty to Johnse Hatfield,” I said.
“Does that mean you won’t deliver the note to Ro, then?” the reverend asked.
“I don’t know what it means. I have to study on it.”
He put his hand inside his coat pocket and something crackled. Paper. He drew out the note and set it on the table next to me. “Why don’t you leave it to your sister if she wants to see him.”
“Why don’t you deliver the note to Ro?” I asked him.
“I have to leave for Pennsylvania in the morning. My sister is dying. It will be an extended stay.”
“Where would this meeting take place? He’d come in his wool hat on the river and expect her to come sashaying down the bank in the cold and dark?”
“In this house,” the reverend said. “It is a safe house. Neither side comes here.”
“It’ll be right cold soon,” Will put in. “And the fall rains will come, making the roads muddy. There’s no way we could justify a trip here for an ailing Ro if we wait much longer.”
They were all in on it. Had it planned. It was why they’d invited me. Not because they cared about me. I took the note from the table and put it in my pocket. Safe house? I almost laughed in their fool faces. I’d come, and look what had happened. I’d been lured, trapped. Crazy, they all were, I decided. Plumb crazy.