Elise awoke slowly the next morning, feeling the warmth of Janson’s body against her. She smiled to herself and stretched lazily, opening her eyes to watch him in the dim light as he slept. He looked so handsome, his features softened in sleep, making him look almost as if he were a little boy. His hair was mussed, his thick, black lashes fanned out on his cheeks, his lips slightly parted—she loved him; more than she had ever thought it possible to love anyone, she loved him.
She suddenly realized the room was too light, the edges of the single window framed in a dim pink glow. Dawn was coming, and she knew she should not be here. If someone should check her room, if someone should realize that she was gone, a search would be started, and—
She knew her father would kill Janson if he were ever to find her here in his bed. There was no doubt in her of that. If she were found here, she would easily cost Janson his life.
She gently tried to disentangle herself from his arms, only managing to wake him instead. He looked at her sleepily and smiled, reaching out to gently touch her face. “Where’re you goin’ s’ early?” he asked softly, one leg moving possessively over hers to keep her still beside him.
“It’s almost daylight. I fell asleep. I’ve got to get back to the house—”
She tried to sit up, but he would not allow it, gently pressing her back to the straw tick instead and moving to lean over her. He brushed her hair back from her eyes and smiled down at her. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere yet—”
“But, if Daddy—” But Janson silenced her words before she could say anything more, his lips coming to hers, his tongue beginning to explore her mouth. When his lips left hers, they traveled over her cheek and down, over her throat and to her breasts. “No, we can’t—” she protested, trying to push his hands away as they began to touch her. “If they realize I’m gone, they’ll start looking for me. Daddy’ll kill you if he finds me here.”
“Your pa ain’t gonna think t’ look for you here,” he said lightly, his lips against her skin. “You b’long t’ me, an’ I don’t aim t’ let you go just yet this mornin’.”
“But, if he catches us, he’ll kill you—”
He moved to look down at her again, leaning over her on one elbow, his right leg still over hers. He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers, then smiled down at her. “Then hush up an’ love me back for a while, that way I’ll die happy, whether it’s a year from now, or a hundred years from now—”
She knew she should not be here, knew each moment she spent in his bed only increased the danger to him—but she could not leave. His hands and lips were insistent, and her resolve melted before the need in him, and in herself. The desire to protect him lost out for the moment to the need to possess and love him just one more time—
Afterward, she lay drowsing in his arms, warm and secure against him. She could not bear to leave him just yet, even though she knew that she must, that she had to, to make him safe.
There came a hard knock at the rickety door, shaking it in its frame. “Hey, boy—I’ve got a haul for you to make this morning!” came shouted words through the door—her father.
Elise sat up quickly, pulling the old patchwork quilt from the foot of the bed to cover her breasts, a cold knot of fear and panic gripping her heart—her father, standing just on the other side of that door. She stared at Janson, knowing that it was over—if her father opened that door, if he saw her here, she knew she would see Janson die.
William Whitley stood waiting impatiently outside the door to the rough room that had been added years before to the side of the old barn. The structure had originally been appended to house sacks of fertilizer—but it was good enough to house the half-Cherokee farmhand who lived there now, William told himself. They weren’t too far different anyway, he thought, farmhands and fertilizer, for they both served their purposes, and they both could be tolerated, just so long as they didn’t stink the place up too much.
He pounded on the door again. “Damn it, boy! I ain’t got all day!”
The door creaked open a narrow space and Janson Sanders slipped through, then closed it quickly behind himself as he stood staring at William. He was dressed in overalls and no shirt, and his hair was uncombed for the first time that William had ever noticed. The boy ran the fingers of one hand through his hair and cleared his throat. “You got some work for me t’ do?” he asked.
“Ain’t that what I said, boy?” William demanded, staring at him. “Why’d you take so long to answer me?” It seemed strange the boy would still be in his room at this hour. It had been daylight for some time now, and, like any other of the farmhands or sharecroppers on the place, he was accustomed to rising well before daybreak.
William looked at him more closely, noting for the first time that the overalls were wrinkled, and even showing slight stains in places—the boy might not have much, but he was undeniably proud, his clothes always clean and well-mended at the beginning of each day, even if they were old and more often than not obviously patched. It looked almost as if the boy had just gotten out of bed and grabbed the first thing he could find handy to put on. His hair was mussed, and he was obviously ill-at-ease as he shifted from one foot to the other, his eyes never once leaving William’s face.
William grinned to himself, suddenly realizing—the boy had a woman in his room. All the signs were there. Janson Sanders had had a woman in his bed last night—and, by the looks of him, she was still there. “Did you have yourself a woman last night, boy?” he asked, still grinning—so, Sanders was human after all.
A muscle clenched in the boy’s jaw, his eyes never once shifting from William’s face—he did not smile, or even crack a bragging grin as many men would have done. Instead there was anger behind the green eyes, anger that he did not even try to conceal—you goddamn son-of-a-bitch, William thought, suddenly frowning to himself. You think you’re so damned high and mighty, when you’re nothing more than dirt-poor trash and a half-breed farmhand.
He took the cigar from his mouth and pointed it at the boy, a muscle clenching in his own jaw now. “As long as you’re working for me, boy, you better have your ass up out of that bed before sunup every morning. I don’t give a damn who you go bedding in your own time, but you’re on my time now. Send your slut packing and get to work; you’ve got ten minutes to meet me out behind the house—” he said, then turned without another word and walked away—goddamn son-of-a-bitch, he thought. You’d think he’d just bedded one of those moving picture actresses to see how he was acting, instead of it being some stupid little farm girl or cheap back-street whore. The goddamn half-breed—
The soft folds of the cotton nightgown fell about Elise’s shoulders and to her feet. She brushed her hair back from her eyes, staring at the closed door, wishing that she would not have to—
The door creaked open and Janson entered the room, closing the door again quietly behind himself. He turned to look at her, and she felt her cheeks redden—she had heard every word, every thing her father had said. He had called her a slut—he had not known that it had been her to share Janson’s bed last night, but that did not matter. He had still called her a slut. And now she was embarrassed, embarrassed before Janson’s eyes, when yesterday, and all last night—
Her face flushed hot and she turned her eyes away. “You’d better go; he said ten minutes.”
“I know—”
Her eyes touched on him again briefly, and then moved away. He stayed where he was near the door, not crossing the narrow room to come to her and take her in his arms, and that somehow made what she was feeling all the worse.
“You’d better go—”
“I will in a minute.”
“But, he said—”
“I don’t give a damn what he said.”
Her eyes rose to meet his and she stared at him for a moment. He finally crossed the room to her, but when he touched her she pulled away and stood with her back turned toward him, her face burning. “You’d better—”
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice concerned as he stood just behind her.
“Nothing’s wrong, except that he could come back and—”
“He ain’t gonna come back.”
“He could, and—” She turned to look at him and her words fell silent. She stared at him for a long moment, not speaking—what was he thinking? So many times in the past months she had wondered what was on his mind, but never more than she did in this moment—what did he think of her now? Did he think the same thing her father had said? He loved her; she knew that, but—“Janson, after what we—” Again she fell silent. “Janson, do you think I’m a—that I’m—”
He stared at her, a look of surprise and understanding coming to his face even though she could not finish the words. “You know I wouldn’t never think nothin’ like that about you!”
“But, after what we—”
“Especially not after what we did.”
“But my father—”
“He didn’t have no idea it was you in here.”
“But, he knew that you had been with a woman, and he said—”
“It don’t matter what he said—”
“But, do you think that I’m a—”
“You know I don’t!” he said quickly, cutting off her words. Again she stared at him, trying to see what he was thinking, what he was feeling.
“We’re not married,” she said quietly.
“That don’t matter.”
“But everyone says that a man won’t marry a girl who’ll do that with him before they’re married.”
“I’m gonna marry you; you know that.”
“But—” She stared at him for a long moment, then turned her face away—she knew she had ruined it. She knew she had ruined everything. “You’d better go on. He’ll be waiting for you,” she said quietly.
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere, not ’til you understand somethin’,” he said, and she lifted her eyes to his for a moment. When she tried to turn away again, he would not allow it, gently drawing her into his arms and holding her even as she tried to struggle away—she would not cry in front of him, and she knew she was going to. She knew—“I love you,” he said, staring down at her as she felt the tears flood her eyes. “I love you, an’ you ought t’ know that you’re my wife already; right here an’ now you’re my wife. I don’t need no preacher to make that be, ’cause it’s somethin’ that’s inside ’a me, part ’a me. You’re more my wife right now than any weddin’ could ever make you—but we’re gonna have that weddin’, an’ we’re gonna have it in a church, with a preacher, just like it’s suppose t’ be.”
“But—”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “There ain’t no ‘buts’ to it. You’re gonna be Elise Sanders—”
“I won’t be able to wear white,” she said, feeling stupid and silly the moment she had said it.
He smiled, his face relaxing as he reached up to touch her damp cheek. “You can wear white if you want t’.”
“But now I’m not a—” Suddenly she blushed, unable to finish, and he laughed. She looked up at him, a hurt expression coming to her face, and he smiled.
“Marryin’ in white ain’t just for a girl who ain’t never been with a man. Just ’cause you an’ me have laid t’gether don’t mean you cain’t get married in a white dress.”
“It wouldn’t seem silly?”
“No, it wouldn’t seem silly.”
She found herself smiling slowly and he bent to kiss her, holding her tightly to him for a moment as she pressed her face against his bare shoulder beside where one of the galluses of his overalls went up over it—she knew she had been a fool. He loved her; that was all that mattered. He loved her. “You’d better go,” she said, looking up at him after a moment, still not wanting to leave his arms. “Daddy said ten minutes. It’s already been longer than that.”
“Yeah—” but he held her for a moment longer before releasing her. She watched as he pulled on a workshirt and then re-hooked his galluses. “You’d better stay here for a little while after I leave, an’ then head back t’ th’ house just as soon as it’s quiet out.”
“I will.” She walked him to the door, remembering the tone in her father’s voice. “You’d better be careful around him,” she warned, looking up into his green eyes as he turned toward her.
“I will be.” He kissed her again, and then looked down at her for a moment, his eyes moving over her face. He gave her a gentle hug, and then he was gone.
She moved to kneel on the narrow cot, watching him through the warped panes of the small window until he left her sight. She sighed and sat back—just let him be safe, she prayed silently, over and over again. Please, just let him be safe.
She waited there until she thought it was safe out, and then left, making her way through the edge of the fields and the woods toward the house. All the while there was that one fear crowding her mind—what if someone should see her about in her nightgown at this hour; what if her father caught her, or her mother saw her as she entered the house. She finally made it to her room and closed the door behind herself, turning to lean against it for support—but still the worry was there. Janson was with her father now; if William Whitley should ever even suspect—but she could not allow that to happen. If it did, then she knew she would lose the one thing that meant the most to her—but Janson would pay the dearest price of all. He would pay with his very life.
“Come on,” Elise urged one Sunday morning a few weeks later as she led him across the white-columned veranda and in through the front doors of the big house. The place was deserted, her family gone for the day, first to church, and then to visit relatives in the next County, with Bill in Atlanta for the weekend. She had managed to beg off the family plans, pretending a headache, and now she and Janson had the day to themselves, and the house to themselves, and Janson knew she intended to make the most of it.
She smiled up at him, holding tightly to his hand as she drew him into the hallway and closed the door behind them. “Everyone’s gone. Don’t worry; it’s safe—”
Janson looked around, filled with caution in spite all her assurances. It did not feel right to be here in the big house with her, after all the weeks and months of hiding they had been through. He knew that it did not do to play with fire—but Elise was so insistent. She had planned for days how they would have this time together; and he knew that she wanted to lie with him in her own bed for once, instead of in the old house, or on his own sagging cot, or in the barn loft, or some other such place they could find to be together—she had not had to say a word; he had known, just as he had always known. Just as he knew her.
His eyes moved from the twin crystal chandeliers of electric lights that hung there in the wide entry hallway, to the flowered paper on the walls, to the grand descent of the staircase—he was uncomfortable, ill-at-ease, here in this grand house. He knew they should not be here, and that knowledge came from more than the fact that this was her parents’ home, more than the fact that Whitley’s catching them together here, more than anywhere else, would probably mean his own death. It was—
“You haven’t seen the entire house, have you?” she asked, watching him as he brought his eyes back to her.
“No.”
“Come on, then; I’ll give you the grand tour—”
She led him through the rooms, through those he had been in before, and through uncountable ones he had not, from the company parlors at the front of the house, to the dining room, and even the kitchen where Mattie Ruth had fed him that first night he had come here, that night he had tried to steal food from Elise’s family—Elise did not know about that night, and he saw no reason to tell her now; that was a long time ago, a long time, and many dreams.
She smiled at his amazement over the water closets, watching him as his eyes moved over the gleaming fixtures, the white-enameled facilities and claw-footed bathtubs. There were huge bedrooms with enormous beds all for one person, and high, shadowy ceilings in every room from which hung electric lights—and everywhere there were books, shelves of them in the bedrooms and in the parlors, and even in the dining room, as well as in the library itself.
The feeling of being out of place only increased with each room she led him through. His own home back in Eason County had not even had running water or electricity, and the privy had been in the back yard a good distance from the house where it had belonged. He had never grown up in a world where homes such as this one existed—the houses he had played in as a child had more often than not had gaps in the floors and walls, and holes in the rusting tin roofs that leaked in even the slightest rains. He had known kin where eight children had slept in one bed, and where mothers had carried water from wells several hundred yards from the house. He had seen families where twelve had lived in the cramped two rooms of a sharecropper’s shack, where children shivered in the cold that seeped in around doors and blew in through cracks in walls, children who went to school hungry, who had no coats, and only the most ragged clothes to wear, for the simple reason that their parents could do no better. And he wondered how such a world could exist in the same land as this one.
He looked around with amazement as Elise led him through the door and into her own bedroom. His eyes moved from the huge, white-counterpaned bed, to the walls papered with tiny pink and red rosebuds, to the tall windows hung with heavy lace curtains. The furniture was a rich mahogany, with chairs and a settee upholstered in deep rose velvet; there was a wide shelf of books against one wall, and a tall chiffonier against another, and the wooden floor was waxed and shining, then covered almost entirely by a rose-colored rug—why would anyone tend a floor so carefully, he wondered to himself as he stared down at the rug at his feet, only just to cover it up.
He looked at Elise and wished they had never come here. Never before had he seen so clearly the differences between them. The Whitleys were rich folks, the same kind of people who drank in the speakeasies he delivered liquor to, who drove motor cars at speeds beyond all safety and reason, and who had parties to all hours of the night—while his own people lived in sharecropped shacks, barely scratching out a living from another man’s land year after year, and going into debt to the nearby country stores just to survive. He looked at Elise as she stood there in her expensive dress and her high-heeled shoes and her silk stockings with the seams so straight in back—how very different they were; he in his overalls and workshirt and bare feet, and the woman who would be his wife. He was so out of place in this pretty room with its high shadowy ceiling, its electric light fixtures, its papered walls and huge feather bed. He did not belong in a place such as this, would never belong in a place such as this—but Elise Whitley did.
She was in his arms, her mouth pressing his, before he could speak—he closed his eyes, trying to give in to the desire in her, the feeling of her body pressing against his. She wanted him; she wanted him here on this big feather bed. She wanted him here in this room that was a part of her life he could never know.
They sank down into the feather tick, her hands touching him in places she now knew so well—but still his mind would not stop working. What could he ever give her that would make up for all she would lose the day she left here to become his wife? They were so different, too different—what kind of life could they ever know together? He was the son of a man who had been a sharecropper and a mill hand and a small farmer burned out and killed for refusing to be something less than he was; and she was William Whitley’s daughter, a girl who had everything she had wanted all her life, a girl who could never hope to understand the world he had come from, the world he would be asking her to live in with him—what kind of life could they ever know together?
Less than a hundred years before, the Whitleys had been a wealthy, slave-owning family, one of the largest cotton planters in the area, and were even now one of the wealthiest families in all of Endicott County—while his own people, his mother’s people, had lived in the wilderness of north Georgia at that same time, content in their lives and in their own ways, until men very much like the Whitleys, men with a greed for land and money, and an insatiable appetite for both, had driven them out. Nell Sanders’s people had been driven toward the west at gunpoint, herded like cattle through weather such as they had never known before, barefoot, poorly clothed, sick, dying—all so that men like the Whitleys could take the land that had been a home to them, and to so many others like them, for centuries.
Now Elise’s family, and other families like them, had the money, and the land had grown up in cotton fields and towns and cities and mill villages, and his mother’s people would never be the same—for there where four thousand silent, unmarked graves along the path of that forced march, more than four thousand graves of the men, women, and children of Cherokee blood who had died along what had become known as the Trail of Tears, and they would never be forgotten.
Janson’s own great-great grandmother lay somewhere along that Trail, alongside children who had never lived to see adulthood—how many nights he had sat at his mother’s feet as a boy, hearing stories that had come from her father, and her father’s father before him, of that time when Janson’s great-grandfather had seen so many marched away, and of the way of life that had existed before it. Nell Sanders’s people had been left with nothing, as had his father’s people when they had come from Ireland in the time of the Potato Famine. Theirs was a people accustomed to struggle and to fight, his mother’s people and his father’s both, and the hard way of life was a life they well knew, a life they had always known.
But Elise’s people knew nothing of a life such as that. They had money; they had land that no one could ever take from them; they had fine ways and fancy manners and book learning—he had none of that. He was nothing like the man Elise had been raised to marry. He did not have a big fine house with electric lights and running water and enameled bathtubs; he did not have the money and fine learning, the motor cars and fancy ways—he was a dirt farmer, a hired hand, and even a moonshiner. He had skin dark from his ancestry, and darkened even further still by years of hard work in the sun. He wore patched overalls and a faded workshirt; his hands were rough and calloused, and there was dirt underneath his fingernails that it seemed no amount of cleaning could ever remove—these were not the hands meant to touch a fine, educated lady who read books and wore expensive clothes and who had a telephone right in her own house. And perhaps these were not the hands meant to touch Elise Whitley.
He rolled away from her on the bed and sat up, his back to her. He ran the fingers of one hand through his hair and sighed, not turning to look at her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, her fingers reaching to touch his back through his overalls and workshirt.
“I shouldn’t ’a come here. I don’t b’long in a place like this.” He got up from the bed and crossed the room, stopping to stare out one of the windows at the smooth lawn, the road, and the cotton fields and pine woods beyond. “I jus’ don’t b’long here—”
“Why not?”
“I jus’ don’t. This ain’t no place for somebody like me. I shouldn’t never ’a come here in th’ first place.”
“You came because I asked you to.”
“Why?” He turned to look at her. “Why’d you want me t’ come up here with you? Ain’t th’ old house or th’ cot in my room good enough anymore?”
“You know they are.” She propped up on an elbow to stare at him. “We’ve been together in both those places lots of times.”
“Then why not t’day? Why’d we have t’ come up here?”
“Why can’t we be together here as well; there’s no one else in the house.”
He looked at her for a moment—she could never understand. She belonged anywhere she wished to be, and, no matter how grand the surroundings, she would never be out of place. “I jus’ don’t b’long in a place like this.”
“Why not?”
“I jus’ don’t!” He raised his voice, then was immediately sorry. He turned away, toward the window. “I jus’ don’t b’long here,” he said more quietly—damn her, she could never understand; and damn her for being so lovely and so caring. He stared out the window, wishing that he had never stepped foot into this house today.
He heard her get up from the bed and cross the room toward him, then felt her gentle hand on his back. “Janson, tell me what’s wrong—”
He lowered his head and shook it slowly back and forth. She could never understand; no matter what it was he said to her, she would never be able to know what it was he felt. It was not a matter of thoughts or words—it was what he was, deep inside himself; and it was something she could never know because of the life she had led.
“Janson, please talk to me. Tell me what I’ve done wrong—”
The sound of her voice cut right through him, but he could not turn to look at her—God, how much he loved her, but they were so different, so very—
“You ain’t done nothin’ wrong.”
“Then, what is it?”
Why couldn’t they have been more alike? Why couldn’t she have been the daughter of some small farmer or sharecropper or mill hand; or he the son of some businessman or big cotton planter, someone who could give her the kind of life she deserved to have. He had never once been ashamed of the man he was, and he was not ashamed now—he only wanted to give her all that she deserved, all that she had always had, and he knew that he could never do that.
“I love you—please, tell me,” she said softly from behind him, her voice almost pleading.
He turned to look at her, a stab of pain going through him as he met her blue eyes. “Why do you love me—me, out of everybody else you ever met?” he asked her. “Why wasn’t it somebody more like you, somebody more like—”
She stared at him, and his words fell silent. “I don’t know why I love you—why do you love me?” she asked, her eyes never leaving his.
“It ain’t th’ same thing.”
“Why not? Did you have more choice in the matter than I did? Love’s not something you choose, Janson; it’s something that’s just there—”
“But, why me?”
“Why not you?”
“You don’t understan’!” He turned away, becoming angry with himself, and with her.
“Oh, yes, I do, and I can’t believe you’re asking me a question like that.” When he turned to look at her, he found her eyes almost angry. “I love you; isn’t that enough? I love you because of who you are—”
“Yeah, a hand that works your pa’s place, as different as night is from day from you.” His tone was sarcastic, and he turned his eyes away again, unable to meet the directness of her gaze.
“It didn’t matter who or what you were—or didn’t you mean what you yourself said, that you knew I was the one you were meant to be with almost from the day you met me?”
That was not fair. She was using his own words against him. He could not help how he felt about her—but she had been raised for a life so far different from the one he could give her. She had never been meant to be the wife of a small farmer, to have to worry about money for the remainder of her life, to have to do without all the fine, beautiful things she deserved—and somehow he was afraid she would grow to hate him one day for the choice she had made those months ago when she had agreed to become his wife, for that choice would one day take her away from all that she had ever known.
She seemed to be waiting for a response, and, when she did not get one, she sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know why I love you, any more than I know why you’re who you are, or why I’m who I am. I could have fallen in love with someone from town or from the next County—but, whoever it was, it would have been you.” She finally managed to turn him to face her, and she stood staring up at him for a moment, her hands on his arms. “It could never have been anyone else but you, because you’re somehow the other part of me—isn’t that what your parents taught you, what you taught me? I don’t care how different we are; you’re still as much me as I am, what completes me and makes me whole, and I couldn’t live if I didn’t have you—” She reached up to touch his face, her blue eyes filled with caring. “I couldn’t help but to love you. I wouldn’t want not to love you, even if I could; it’s as much a part of me as thinking or breathing is—”
“I’ll never be able to give you all this—” With one hand he indicated the room, and, with it, the house.
“I don’t want all this. All I want is you, you and the place we’ll have in Alabama.”
“But it won’t never be like this; we won’t ever have a lot of money—”
“We’ll be together; that’s all that’s important.”
“We’re s’ different,” he said, looking at her.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“But it could matter t’ you, someday.”
“No—” She placed her fingers over his lips, silencing his words. He searched her eyes. “When we’re together, when we’re touching and you’re inside of me, there are no differences. We love each other, and we’re one person.” Her eyes moved over his. “We’ll be together forever; that’s all that’s important.”
“Even if—”
“Sh-h—” She moved into his arms, pressing her body against his, feeling warm and soft and so close. “Just love me, Janson; that’s all that matters. Just love me—”
They sank down onto the feather tick again, her hands touching him in ways that awakened the need—but, even as their bodies joined, his mind still refused to release the worry. Would she ever be able to live the way he was asking her to live? And, if she could not—
There was the crackling of dry leaves beneath her feet that Saturday morning in the autumn of 1927, the sounds of migrating birds in the trees overhead. Elise moved quietly along an unmarked path in the woods, trying to keep Janson just within sight ahead of her. Briers and underbrush tore at her silk stockings, and a branch snagged her sweater, sending a chill gust of autumn air against her bare skin before she could again free the knitted material. She hurried to narrow the gap between them, careful of any sound she might make—if she should lose sight of him here in the woods, she knew that she might wander for hours, even for days, before anyone found her. They were not too far from the largest of her father’s cotton fields, and still somewhere on Whitley property, but she knew she would never be able to find her way back along the unmarked path Janson traveled, not even well enough to find her way out of the woods and back to the house again.
She tried to move as quietly as possible, carefully picking out each step, cringing at the sound of each twig that cracked beneath her feet—why had she not worn more sensible shoes; why these high heels when she had known all along what it was she had intended to do this morning? But at least she would soon know what it was she had come to find out. At last Janson would hide nothing from her any longer—before this day was over she would know what it was he did for her father; today she would know where it was he went, what it was he did, when he left her to do things he would not speak to her of later. Today, at last, she would know everything.
She had the right to know, she reasoned to herself, carefully keeping him in sight. There was no reason for secrets between them, not as close as they had become. She was his lover, and she would be his wife—she was prepared for the truth, no matter what that truth might be, she told herself, just as she had been prepared for it for months now. She was coming to understand what kind of man her father was, and she knew that whatever he and Janson were doing was most probably illegal—but it was the one thing that Janson kept from her, and the one thing that still held them apart. She had a right to know, and she was ready for what she would find—and, after this day, Janson would never hide anything from her again.
He seemed almost to sense that someone was following him, for he stopped suddenly and turned back, causing Elise to step behind a tree quickly to keep from being seen. His eyes moved through the woods for a moment, searching for the source of some slight movement or sound he had detected. After a moment he moved on, and Elise breathed a sigh of relief, doubling her efforts to be quiet as she stepped from behind the tree and made to follow him again. If he had caught her—
But she would not worry about that now. He would be furious once he discovered what she had done, but that could not be helped. He would forgive her, just as she would forgive him once she knew what it was he was hiding. There was no doubt in her mind of that.
He slowed his pace, and she felt a sense of relief—at least she would not lose him here in the woods before she could even make her discovery. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, making his way along some path he knew—toward what, she wondered again, thinking over the possibilities. She knew it was probably illegal, this thing that her father had Janson involved in, and, if not illegal, it was at least something her father would not want everyone in the County to know he was doing. She had been convinced for days now that it had something to do with gambling, for her father was extremely fond of his poker, even though he might loudly condemn card playing to the deacons in church on Sundays. If not gambling, then it had to be the sharecroppers and tenant farmers on the place, for her father had cursed often enough about the men who he always swore never got enough work out of their families or out of the land—maybe he was using Janson to keep them in line, forcing higher rents from them, or a larger percentage of their crops each year. Perhaps it was underhanded business dealings, money her father was earning from some source he would never openly admit—whatever it was, it had to be shady, if not downright against the law; and he was using Janson to do it. She had wondered about it for so long, worried about it—but today she would know. Today, at last, she would know.
There was a peculiar odor in the woods around her, stale, as if it had been hanging there in the leaves for days. She lost sight of Janson for a moment, and panic gripped her, then she caught a glimpse of the blue of his overalls through the leaves, and she moved to shorten the distance between them—surely it could not be much farther. She had been following him for such a time already. Surely—
He seemed to break into a narrow clearing ahead, and then to pause. There was no sound of movement ahead of her now, no rustling of leaves or cracking of twigs coming to her over the distance. There was one more brief glimpse of blue, and then it was gone. Elise moved ahead cautiously, her eyes searching the woods for any sight of him. An eerie feeling moved up her spine, as if someone were watching her—but she could see no one. Her own heartbeat was loud in her ears now, the break of a small tree limb at her side as resonant as a gunshot—what if she had lost him? What if there were someone else about—what sort of person, on what sort of shady dealings, might be moving about here in the depths of the woods on a Saturday morning? She pulled her sweater closer about herself, suddenly chilled, and moved quietly ahead, her eyes searching for any movement, her ears straining for even the slightest sound. She came to the edge of the narrow clearing and stopped, seeing hidden in the woods at the other side what it was she had come to find.
She stared in disbelief at what lay before her, knowing suddenly that this was where Janson had come, what he had been doing, all the times he had left her. She had never once seen a whiskey still in her life, but she knew what it was that lay in the edge of those woods as she slowly crossed the clearing; she had heard the descriptions, had grown up with the folklore—the reddish copper, the furnaces, the barrels, the tubes and pipes; it could be nothing else. Her eyes moved from the copper boilers, to the rough rock of the furnaces beneath, to the glass jars and sacks of sugar lying nearby under a crude shelter there alongside a stream—whiskey stills, moonshine stills, and Janson had to be the one operating them. Janson, and her father.
She stared for a moment, unwilling to comprehend—liquor, but all liquor was illegal, the making and selling and transporting of it, because of the Volstead Act and the Prohibition laws. She had known that what her father and Janson were doing was probably illegal, and she had somehow accepted that—but not liquor, not when she knew so many people whose lives had been affected by it; Ethan Bennett, Phyllis Ann, even Alfred—and this was even so much worse. Moonshine, the poisonous corn liquor that could kill or cripple or blind—and her father, and the man she loved, the man she was going to marry, were the ones who were making it, selling it, doing only God knew how much harm to who knew how many people.
Her eyes came to rest on Janson where he stood near one of the stills, staring at her. His arms were folded across his chest, his jaw set, a terrible anger in his green eyes—for a moment she could only stare at him, letting her discovery, and the look in his eyes, slowly sink into her. She no longer knew what she had expected to find when she had begun to follow him from their meeting place earlier in the day, but this had not been it. This had never been—
“You had t’ see; you had t’ know what I was doin’—well, go on now an’ look!” His voice was filled with fury, his face with more anger than she had ever before seen in any human being in all her life. “You cain’t leave nothin’ alone, can you? No, you had t’ go followin’ me—did you really think I didn’t know there was somebody behind me in th’ woods back there? Did you think I didn’t know it was you? A man don’t make it too long runnin’ liquor if he’s stupid!”
For a moment, she could only stare at him. “You knew I was—”
“You’re damn right I knowed it!”
“And you let me—”
“Yeah, I let you!” he yelled, interrupting her words. “You wanted t’ see s’ bad—well, go on an’ look! You wouldn’t listen t’ me when I was tryin’ t’ tell you what was best for you—”
Suddenly anger exploded within her. “Best for me!” She shouted the words at him, enraged. “How dare you try to tell me or anyone else what’s best when you’re poisoning people at the same time with this stuff!”
“I ain’t poisonin’ nobody! We ain’t made nothin’ but good corn liquor—”
“‘Good corn liquor’—you call this poison good! You know what it does; it can kill or blind—and it’s against the law!”
“God damn Prohibition!—a man’s got th’ right t’ make a livin’!”
“Is money that important to you? More important than the lives of the people who drink this stuff?”
“I done told you that we don’t make no bad liquor—an’, yeah, money’s important t’ me. It’s how you an’ me are gonna be able t’ leave here an’ get married, ain’t it?”
“I won’t have our lives built on this kind of money!”
“What do you think’s payin’ for that big, fancy house ’a yours now, an’ all that schoolin’ you got, an’ all them pretty clothes?”
She stared at him for a moment, realization slowly coming to her—this had not just recently begun; this had been going on for years, perhaps even for her entire life. Her father’s money, or at least much of it, had come from this source, from the making and selling of bootleg liquor. From moonshine. Janson was right—the house, all her things, her entire way of life, had been built on the profits of these stills, or on other stills like them. Janson was right—but that did not make the realization any easier.
He seemed to sense what he had done to her, the confusion, the inner turmoil that his words had caused. His expression softened, and he moved toward her. “I’m sorry, Elise. I shouldn’t never ’a let you find out this way. I should ’a stopped you in th’ woods as soon as I knowed you was there, an’ made you go back—”
“Made me go back!” She pulled away just before he could touch her, and stood staring up at him, her anger, both at her father for having kept this from her all her life, and at Janson for defending what he had been doing, now turning on him alone. “Why—so you could hide it from me even longer? So you could go on poisoning people and I couldn’t say a—”
“Damn it, woman—do you really think I’d be poisonin’ people!” he shouted at her, angry again. “Well, do you! Do you really think I’d be makin’ liquor that could hurt folks! Th’ most this stuff’ll do is give somebody a headache if he drinks too much of it, but it ain’t gonna do no more harm’n that!” He stared at her for a moment, breathing heavily, his eyes angry. “You know me better’n anybody else aroun’ here—do you think I’d be poisonin’ folks?” he demanded, staring at her. “Goddamn it, woman, answer me!—would I be poisonin’ folks!”
She stared at him, remembering the man who had held and touched her so gently, who always whispered her name as their bodies were joined—the same man who made moonshine whiskey in illegal stills. “No—” she said after a moment, “not on purpose, but—”
“There ain’t no ‘buts’ to it. Your pa turns out good liquor; there ain’t no busthead ever left this place—”
Your pa—his words echoed in her ears. She had lived off the profits of bootleg liquor, of moonshine, even as she had sat in the Baptist choir and heard her father condemn ‘the demon rum’ to the church deacons. Moonshine, the liquor made by backwoods people and white trash—and by her father and Janson. How self-righteously she had pitied those whose lives had been torn apart by alcohol, while all the time she herself had been living off of—
“Liquor is wrong; you know that. Why else would they have made it illegal.”
“Bein’ legal or not don’t matter. Folks are gonna drink anyway if they want t’—an’ makin’ a life for us ain’t wrong, is it? Runnin’ these stills is how I’m gonna do that.”
“We can’t build our future on the destruction of other people’s lives!”
“Damn it, Elise—I ain’t destroyin’ nobody’s life! All I’m doin’ is runnin’ good corn liquor an’ haulin’ it out t’ th’ speakeasies an’ t’ th’ sellers in Buntain—what’s s’ wrong with that? You knowed that I was doin’ somethin’ for your pa that I couldn’t tell you about—would you rather I’d ’a been hurtin’ folks or cheatin’ people than runnin’ liquor? A man’s got t’ make a livin’, an’ this is as good a way as any, an’ it’s better’n most. This way I’m makin’ more money, an’ savin’ more money, than I’d ever be able t’ do if I was doin’ somethin’ else.”
She stared at him for a moment, too confused to speak. All her life had been built on a lie, on many lies—but she had never known. She felt like such a hypocrite, having lived on the profits of liquor all these years, while at the same time living with such self-righteous blindness toward so many things that were now becoming so horribly clear—but she had never known. She had never—
Janson was staring at her, his green eyes moving over her face. “You said you wanted us t’ be t’gether, t’ be able t’ leave here an’ get married an’ have a place ’a our own,” he said, more quietly. “I’m doin’ what I feel I got t’ do for us t’ be able t’ have that. If you love me, it don’t seem t’ me that it ought t’ matter what it is I got t’ do. If it does matter—”
He left the words hanging, unfinished, in the air between them. She could feel their weight almost as if they were a physical presence. She looked at him, seeing in him the man she loved, and also seeing in him a man who operated illegal liquor stills for a profit. ‘If it does matter’—he had said, but it didn’t matter; nothing could really matter but him and the life that he was trying to provide for them both. No sense of betrayal by her father, no injured dignity over having discovered something so unexpected, no sense of right or wrong or legalities or memories from the past was more important than the love she felt for him, and the life they would have together.
“You got t’ decide, Elise. If you want us t’ be t’gether, then you’ll let me do what I feel like I got t’ do for us t’ be able t’ leave here b’fore too much longer. It don’t seem t’ me that what that is ought t’ matter too much, not so long as you feel th’ same way about me as I feel about you—”
Suddenly she was in his arms, pressing her body against his, holding him tightly. “It doesn’t matter; nothing matters but us, that we can be together. Nothing—”
He covered her mouth with his, crushing her against him, his relief at her words evident in the tightness of his arms around her. She could feel his body respond to her nearness, feel the desire awakening in him.
“Not here—” he said against her hair, holding her as if he could never let her go. “Not here; it’s not safe. Go t’ th’ old house; I’ll show you th’ way out a’ th’ woods t’ a path that’ll take you right to it. Wait for me there. I’ll be on soon as I can—”
It was not until she was away from the stills, away from Janson and the place that had stolen so much of his time from her, making her way along the path that he had shown her, that she realized—Janson could be in even so much more danger than she had ever known before, not only from her father, but also from the men her father sent him to do business with, men very much like that Al Capone and all the gangsters she had heard so much about on the radio, men who trafficked in bootleg liquor, and who openly violated the Prohibition laws—men who would think nothing of killing Janson if he even once got in their way.
A shiver ran up her spine and she pulled her sweater tighter about her shoulders, stopping for a moment to offer a prayer that he would remain safe. Then she went on toward the old house to wait for him, knowing that she would never again know another easy day until they were away from here and safely married—and knowing that, if something did happen to him, it would all be her own fault. He was doing it all for their future, he had told her—
She could only pray that future would be.
Elise sat staring at her reflection in the oval-shaped mirror above her dresser that October morning in 1927, the huge house silent around her, her mind somewhere lost in thoughts she had been considering over the past days. She reached and took up the ivory-handled hairbrush from the dresser top before her, and started to run it through her bobbed hair, but stopped short, staring into her own eyes—“I’m going to have a baby—” she said softly, staring at herself, feeling a thrill of both excitement and fear pass through her. No matter how many times she told herself, the thought was still so new she could hardly comprehend it—there was a baby inside of her. She was going to have Janson’s baby.
They had never once discussed the possibility that she might become pregnant, though she had known they had taken the chance in taking each other. Janson often talked about the children they would have, the family they would make together, and of the home and land he would provide for them—surely he had to have thought of the possibility of a baby from all the times they had been together. He wanted to have a family, children with her—he would be happy when he found out, she told herself, excited and nervous just as she was, though they would now have to leave so much sooner than he had planned. They would have to be married and away from here before her condition could become obvious, and before anyone could find out—her father would kill Janson immediately if he knew; there was no doubt in her mind of that. There would not be enough money to buy Janson’s land back right away, as he had hoped there would be, but that could not be helped now. They would find a place to live, and Janson could work, and they would have it soon enough—and they would have their baby, and other children in the years to come, and they would be so happy, together, at peace—and it would all begin so soon, she told herself, just as soon as they could leave here together. So soon.
She sat the brush down and took a deep breath, still staring at herself in the mirror as she told herself again that she was going to be a mother, and Janson a father, in only the matter of a number of months—she would find just the perfect way to tell him, and then they would begin to make plans for their departure and marriage. In a few days, or weeks at the most, she would be Elise Sanders—nothing could ruin their plans now. Nothing could spoil her happiness. God could never be that cruel. And, so she prayed, neither could William Whitley.
“I’ve got to talk to you—” Elise said a few hours later that morning, smiling up at Janson and looking happier than he had ever before seen her in the months they had been together. They stood at the edge of the clearing in the woods, their old meeting place, where she had asked him to meet her this morning—somehow he could not stop looking at her, touching her, feeling almost as if he had not seen her in weeks, though they had been together only the day before.
“Then talk,” he prompted, pulling her to him, then covering her mouth with his before she could say a word.
She giggled after a moment and tried to hold him at arms-length away. “I’m serious!”
“So am I—” he said, smiling and once again trying to pull her closer even as she playfully tried to fend him away.
“No—I mean it!” she laughed, pushing at his shoulders. “We’ve got to talk.”
“Okay, talk.” He gave her an exasperated look at last, and then contented himself for the moment with his hands at her waist. “You can be th’ damndest woman sometimes for talkin’.”
She laughed at his words, and then stretched up to kiss his cheek, affectionately looping her arms loosely about his neck.
“S’ what’s s’ important that you got t’ talk t’ me about?” he asked, reaching up to gently brush her hair back from her eyes—she looked so pretty this morning that he could refuse her nothing, not even talking when he wanted to touch and love instead. “I don’t have much time. I got t’ go int’ Goodwin t’ pick up some stuff for your pa in a little while.”
She stared up at him for a moment, seeming to be considering something. “No—not like this,” she said, moving her fingers down to play at the buttons on his shirt. “When will you be back?”
“Couple ’a hours, I guess.”
“Then meet me at the old house after supper. I’ll tell my folks I’m going to see J. C..”
Janson shrugged—women could be the damndest things for changing their minds as well. “If that’s what you want,” he said.
“It is.” She looked up at him for a moment, and then threw her arms around his neck again, holding him close. “Oh—I love you so much!” she said, pressing against him.
He laughed, holding her even tighter. “An’ I love you—” He smiled—he had never seen her like this before, so warm and happy in his arms, seeming so content and so much a part of him. “You sure you don’t want t’ talk t’ me now?” he asked, enjoying the feel of her against him.
“No—” she smiled, her eyes moving over his face, more beautiful than she had ever before been in the months he had known her. “It can wait,” she said. “After all, you and I will have a long time to be together.”
“Forever—” he smiled.
“Forever,” she answered, and then drew his lips to hers, saying more with the kiss than any words could ever tell him.
William Whitley stood just out of sight within the cover of the trees at the edge of the clearing, his jaw clenched, his hands tightened into fists at his sides—never before in his life had he truly known what hatred was, but he did now; he did as he watched his daughter in the arms of the half-breed farmhand, Janson Sanders. He had thought nothing more than to take a short cut through the woods from one of his tenant houses this morning, when he had heard Elise’s voice, and then had happened on this scene—a black rage enveloped William; she had been lying to him as she had kept this relationship hidden away in dark corners—how long had it been going on now? How far had it gone? If that dirty half-breed had—but, no, Elise would never have given herself to someone so far beneath her. She was William Whitley’s daughter, and she had been raised for something so much better. She had been raised for—
William had thought he had killed the relationship, had thought he had killed whatever had begun to grow between them—but she had lied to him, Elise and the half-breed both. William had known all along that the boy would present a problem of himself one day, for he was too proud, too damned sure he was just as good as anyone else, when he was nothing more than red-Indian, dirt-farming trash—and now William knew just exactly what the boy had in mind, perhaps what he had had in mind from the first day he had come to the place. Janson Sanders wanted to get his hands on William’s money, and he wanted to get under Elise’s skirts in the process. He had probably been promising her his undying devotion at the same time he had been whoring on the side—after all William had found him one morning with some whore still in his room. What a damned little fool Elise had proven herself to be. What a damned little—
William stared, clenching his fists even more tightly at his sides until the tendons stood out on the backs of his hands in stark relief, his eyes on his daughter as she put her arms around the half-breed’s neck and drew his lips toward hers—a killing rage filled William at the sight. He was certain of only two things in that moment—Elise would pay for the lies and deceptions she had been carrying on all these months, and this relationship would end, once and for all. There was no doubt of that. Janson Sanders was a dead man.