1936—SARAH AND JUNA
DALE WAS SWEET. That’s the first thing Juna says when Daddy and I and Sheriff Irlene sit with her at the kitchen table. Daddy sucks on a cigar, little more than a stub. He blows his smoke in our faces. Simply put, Dale was sweet. Though he looked just like Daddy, even given the baby fat that hadn’t yet burned away, he had none of Daddy’s meanness. Juna says these things like Sheriff Irlene never met the boy. She says these things like Dale is already gone. Gone for good.
Juna is smiling as she talks even though Daddy is sitting right there to hear her every word. He starts to push away from the table, but Sheriff Irlene points a finger at him and he settles back in.
“Dale had hair like mine, you know?” Juna says. “He was smart too. But he had a softness he wasn’t inclined to outgrow. We worried for him, all of us.”
She tells us they had made their way, she and Dale, to the end of a row of tobacco when they saw the man coming. The road runs straight for a good long time, so they saw him when he was just something rising up out of the horizon.
“Which way had he come from?” Sheriff Irlene asks, sipping from her coffee and leaning back in her chair like she isn’t all too concerned with the answer. “Which way was he headed?”
“Come from town,” Juna says. “Headed toward the Baine place.”
I stare at Sheriff Irlene, waiting for her to say something more, to ask Juna how she knows he was headed to the Baine place. John Holleran said, when leaving me at my door and telling me not to worry, that Irlene Fulkerson was a sharp woman and would see to things. A man walking in the direction of the Baine place could have been walking to one of a half dozen places or more. But Sheriff Irlene says nothing. Instead she reaches across the table, pats Juna’s hand, and gives a nod so she’ll keep on with her story.
“That’s when Dale started tugging on my skirt and pointing,” she says. “He kept on, and the sun was good and hot, so I stopped my work, pulled off my sweater, and watched that man coming toward us.”
There on the southern slope, the air is warmer and drier than back home. The first mistake our daddy made was a lasting one. He built our house on the northern side of the hill. He built our house in the shadows, where the sun rarely falls and the winds are always at their worst. We spend our lives wearing damp socks and clothes that smell of mold because they never dry through and through, not even on the line, not even in front of the fire. Our fingers, cheeks, the tips of our noses, are always cold, all because we live in the shadows.
“The man kept coming,” Juna says.
Sheriff Irlene reaches for Juna’s hand again. “Don’t let it upset you,” she says because she must hear the same rise in Juna’s voice I hear.
Juna nods, takes in a deep breath as if to calm herself, and tells us the fellow was small. Not so tall, not so wide, and walked with a slouch. That’s true for most fellows who walk alone down our dirt roads. They have heads that hang, heavy shoulders, and caved-in bellies. Daddy calls them hoboes. He says they aren’t altogether bad because they bring news of things happening in other parts. Last fellow who came through told of storms so bad they lifted up whole fields and blew them from one state to another, blew red dirt to places where the dirt was once brown, and brown dirt to places were the dirt was once black.
“I thought to say hello, is all,” Juna says.
She craves news of places other than this one almost as much as she craves the feel of a man lying alongside her and his calloused hands moving across her belly. She doesn’t say this to Daddy and the sheriff, but I know.
The other thing Daddy says about hoboes, besides saying they sometimes carry news, is that Juna and I shouldn’t talk to them. That’s a job for the men and damn sure not his girls. Keep yourselves clear, Daddy is always saying.
When the fellow was within shouting distance, he called out to them. How you all doing today? You all got water?
Juna imitates the man’s voice as she tells us what he said. She holds one hand up to her mouth like she is hollering out across the road.
“But I remembered what you’re always saying, Daddy, and I didn’t say nothing back to that man. Only answered a question or two. Didn’t say nothing more.”
Juna looks in Daddy’s direction, but as quick as she does, he turns his head. Sheriff Irlene gives Daddy another look, a warning for him to stay put. He won’t be going anywhere near Joseph Carl until Sheriff Irlene hears the rest of Juna’s story.
Juna told the fellow he’d find water up there a ways and pointed off toward the sycamores growing along the far side of the road. Those trees throw a nice slice of shade the fellow could have walked in, but he didn’t. He crossed into the sun to walk closer to them. She told him he’d find the river on beyond those trees. But the fellow kept coming.
She didn’t recognize him as a Baine. He’d been gone for years, at least five. She sure didn’t recognize him. You’ll hear it before you see it, she told him, and he asked was it good cool water. And he kept on toward them, kicking at the dirt with his leather boots. He stirred up dusty clouds that moved closer with every step.
“He asked was that water deep enough to wade in,” Juna says.
“Joseph Carl asked you that?” Sheriff Irlene says. “He asked how deep was the water?”
Again I wait for Sheriff Irlene to say something more. I wait for her to wonder after why Joseph Carl would ask for the nearest water and was it deep enough to wade in when Joseph Carl had grown up with the Lone Fork and the sycamores and already knew the answer to every one of those questions.
Dale asked the man where he’d come from and how far had he traveled. He asked the man real polite, but the man didn’t take notice of Dale or his questions and asked again where he’d find that water.
That is the next surprising thing about Juna’s story. Folks don’t ignore Dale. They might have started to whisper about him being awfully soft for a Crowley boy, but they all love him. The church ladies will smooth his hair for him. The fellows might give him a lure or a penny or maybe an old cane pole they don’t so much need anymore. Folks never ignore Dale because he makes them smile.
The man next stopped in the middle of the road, yanked off his hat, and ran a hand over his fair hair. The knot in his throat bobbed up and down as he spoke, and his eyes focused on the ground at Dale’s feet. Those eyes were trimmed with fine, pale lashes, and his skin, instead of tanned to a leather hide by the sun, was pink.
There wasn’t much interesting about the man. His trousers were cut from denim that had gone soft, and his white shirt was buttoned at the cuffs and at his throat. Strangest thing about the fellow was how clean and white his shirt was. Only other interesting thing about him was the bend in his nose. Someone must have broke it for him. Juna thought it might be a story worth hearing to have the man tell how he happened upon a shirt as white as the one he wore and a nose as crooked as the one on his face.
Can’t miss it, is what Juna told the fellow, and she stretched out her hoe, lifted it a few feet, and slapped it to the ground. You’ll hear that water before you see it.
“It was a clumsy thing, what the man done next,” Juna says, staring at Daddy, her head laid off to the side in that way of hers. “He took a few more long steps that led him right up to Dale. Put them almost nose to nose. And then the fellow asked had Dale ever seen a deck of cards.”
Up close, Juna could see the man’s shirt was something that belonged in a church and was meant for a larger man because the sleeves ballooned and the shoulder seams sagged down each arm. The man didn’t say anything else. He should have pulled a deck of cards from his back pocket, Juna figured, since he made mention of them, but instead he kept on staring at the ground beneath Dale’s feet.
“Dale asked the man if he had any,” Juna says. “Asked did the man have a deck of cards to show.”
I have always figured, because it’s what Daddy has always said, that Juna and I are the ones in danger when one of those fellows happens by. I would have never thought such a man would want Dale. Juna must have thought about it.
“He sure was interested in Dale,” she says, staring at the closed door now instead of Daddy.
The room is dark except for the lantern sitting in the middle of the table. It burns just bright enough to light up the lower half of each face.
Good cool water, is the last thing Juna said to the man. You’ll hear it before you see it.
And then he took Dale.
• • •
SHERIFF IRLENE SITS in a ladder-back chair pushed up against the front door of the sheriff’s office, her black boots planted flat. Folks say she started wearing them on the day her husband died. They belonged to him, and she must surely stuff the toes with newspaper to keep them from slipping and giving her blisters. Folks say she wears them to keep her husband close and to remind folks Kentucky’s own governor said she’s sheriff now.
A fire burns in the box stove. A silver coffeepot sits on top and has boiled dry by now. Every time the fire starts to dwindle and the room takes on a chill, John Holleran taps on the front door with the butt of his shotgun so Abraham, who has taken up watch on the front porch, will gather more wood. The last batch he set inside was too damp, and now the fire hisses and smokes. If not for that smoke, we’d smell burned coffee. Sheriff Irlene will have to soak that pot for a good long while and scrub at it with a piece of steel wool.
When the sobs coming from behind the closed door stop, Sheriff Irlene walks from lantern to lantern, putting a match to the wicks and rolling the knobs until the flame is to her liking. Each lantern has a slender chimney and a low-footed brass collar. She’s brought them from home, where they probably once lit the parlor. The sound of Daddy’s leather gloves slapping against some part of Joseph Carl and the sobs that follow stop Sheriff Irlene. One hand on the third lantern, she lets the other hang limp at her side.
“I been wondering, Juna,” she says, that hand still resting lightly on the top of the lantern’s glass chimney. “How is it you figured the fellow you seen was headed toward the Baine place?” She pauses and glances in Juna’s direction. “Why, the fellow may as well have been headed to John Holleran’s place. Or just passing through. How is it you figured he was headed to the Baines’?”
Juna sits at the small wooden desk pushed up under the room’s only window. Wrapped in the blanket we brought from home, she has taken no notice of the silence or the sobs. Since we arrived, she has sat, head hanging, hands in her lap. Every so often, the blanket has slipped from around her shoulders, exposing her cotton underthings, and I’ve tugged it back in place and tucked the ends into her hands. Each time, I have asked in a whisper . . . You’re certain. You’re certain Joseph Carl done this? Now Sheriff Irlene is wondering the same.
“Juna?” Sheriff Irlene says when Juna gives her no answer. “Why the Baines’ place? Why not some other place?”
Juna continues to stare at her hands and makes no sign of having heard Sheriff Irlene’s question.
Eventually the other Baine brothers will make their way here. They’ll hear from their mama what’s happened and what’s become of Joseph Carl. That’s why Abraham sits out on the porch, his shotgun resting on his lap. That’s why a half dozen of Sheriff Irlene’s deputies do the same. They are all waiting for the Baine brothers.
“Don’t you think that’s odd, John?” Sheriff Irlene says to John Holleran.
John glances at Juna and then me but says nothing.
“And it’s odd too that Joseph Carl would wonder about the river.” Now Sheriff Irlene is talking to John. “Juna said he asked was the water deep enough to wade in. He’d know, wouldn’t he, seeing as how he lived here most all of his life? Odd too, don’t you think?”
“Deeper certain times than others,” John says.
Sheriff Irlene nods. “I suppose.”
The silence from behind the door leading into the back room has lasted longer than any other silence in the past few hours. Over and over, Daddy has been telling Joseph Carl that everyone knows he took Dale. Only question now is what did he do to the boy and where is he. Where’ll we find him, Daddy keeps asking. But now the room is quiet.
“You done the right thing, Irlene,” John Holleran says. “Bringing Joseph Carl here was the right thing.”
Sheriff Irlene returns to her chair still pushed up against the front door. She sits on the chair’s edge and closes her mouth up tight into a thin straight line, as if to let John Holleran know she’s not quite so certain she’s done the right thing, and maybe so we won’t think she’s troubled by what might be heading toward her small office at this very moment.
From where I sit in the chair nearest Juna so I can tend her blanket, I try not to look at John because I know he’s doing something kind, something I should be grateful for. He believes Juna, though maybe not so much after what the sheriff said. John doesn’t live with Juna day after day, doesn’t see how her mind is all the time working out how to twist and wring things just so. And he’s trying his best to see Joseph Carl treated fairly. At the very least, he thinks I believe Juna and so he’s doing it for me.
But if I look at him, if I look at John Holleran, and if our eyes meet for even a glance, I’ll be beholden to him. I wish I could care for him, and knowing that I don’t makes me too much like Juna. I don’t care for him because he cares too much for me. It’s childish. It’s wanton, and if he knew this, he’d pity me. But all I can think of is Ellis Baine and where is he and when will he come and bring an end to all of this.
“Same would have come about had it been Harold here,” John says to Sheriff Irlene. “This is all that could be done for the boy. Your Harold would have done the same. Juna’ll answer to you when she’s feeling up to it. Don’t you think, Sarah?”
I nod, though I don’t think it at all. Juna won’t answer because she’ll have no answer. Something has become of Dale, but Joseph Carl had no hand in it. Juna likely did.
“I sure hope you’re right, John,” Sheriff Irlene says.
Sheriff Irlene’s skin has a glow about it and is still smooth but for the lines around her eyes and those that frame her mouth. She’s too young to be a widow, but she’ll be one the rest of her life. She’ll likely never remarry. Too young to be a widow. Too old to be a new bride.
She’s about to say something more, maybe something about what a good man her husband was, but a scream stops her. Not a sob like those that came before but a scream. She jumps from her chair. I stand too. John Holleran pushes off the wall and grabs for the door’s latch. Daddy had been slapping at Joseph Carl with a pair of leather gloves. That’s what we had figured by the sound of it. But there’s no more slapping coming from that back room. No one is stumbling across the floor, being shoved up against a wall, tripping over an upended chair. It’s quiet except for that scream. John yanks on the door, rattling it in its frame, but it won’t open.
“Unlock this door, Ed,” John shouts at Daddy.
A piece of wood in the box stove falls, and the fire crackles and sparks. Another scream. The front door opens, and the damp night air bursts into the room. The flame in each lantern wavers. Abraham Pace ducks under the threshold. In three steps, he crosses the room. There’s another scream, higher in pitch this time and it lingers, and before it can fade altogether, another scream. And another. John Holleran yanks on the latch, starts beating at it with the butt of his shotgun, but Abraham wrenches it away from him before the latch breaks loose. Maybe he yanks at it because it’s a damn fool thing to do with a loaded gun, or maybe because he wants Daddy to make Joseph Carl scream.
“You stop in there,” Sheriff Irlene shouts and then calls out the door to her deputies.
“Make him say it, Daddy.”
We turn, all of us, at the sound of Juna’s voice. She has stood from her seat at the small desk. The blanket is crumpled at her feet. She stands in her white gown, her matted hair hanging down the sides of her face, her lips bleeding where they’ve cracked. She takes a step toward the door, and as another scream rises up, she screams out too.
“Make him say it. Make him say it, Daddy.”
She squeezes her hands into fists. Her arms are rigid. She tips forward as if leaning into the wind. Her black eyes are stretched wide.
“Make him say he done it. Make him, Daddy. Make him.”
I grab for the blanket, try to wrap it around her, but she slaps at me and screams into my face.
“He done it. He took Dale. He done it.”
Sheriff Irlene and Abraham stare at Juna, both of them backing away. The deputies, three or four of them, huddle in the doorway but won’t step inside. I try again with the blanket, this time wrapping it from behind. I hold it around her shoulders. Her body is stiff and small. Joseph Carl keeps screaming, and I try not to think about what Daddy could be doing to him. With one arm still wrapped around Juna’s shoulder, I slide to the side of her. She turns toward me. Ever so slightly, she’s smiling.
• • •
THREE BAINES ARE the first to arrive. They must know the silence is a bad thing because their footsteps are quick up the stairs, across the porch, and through the door. Ellis walks first inside. He pulls the hat from his head, and I’m close enough to see the dent it’s left. Air rushes in and out through his nose. His jaw is covered over by a dark shadow, his having not shaved since morning. Two brothers stand behind him. They’re scrawnier, hairier versions of Ellis, and meaner too.
The door at the back of the sheriff’s office is open now, and beyond it, Joseph Carl is locked behind a set of bars. He sits on a narrow bench, elbows resting on his knees, head hung down. A tray loaded up with his supper sits untouched on the floor near his feet. Mrs. Brashear will have brought it for him, and Abigail likely helped. Sheriff Irlene did the cooking for the men who found themselves behind those bars before her husband died, but once he passed and Irlene became sheriff, Mrs. Brashear took over the cooking. It was fried ham tonight, and cornbread and snapped beans.
“Suppose you can let the boy out now,” Ellis says without looking at Sheriff Irlene. Instead, he keeps his eyes on that open door and the little bit of Joseph Carl he can see from where he’s standing.
“Afraid I can’t do that, Ellis,” Sheriff Irlene says. “Best place for that boy is right where he sits.”
“We kept Joseph Carl safe bringing him here,” I say. “The sheriff did. Didn’t let Daddy take a gun or a knife to Joseph Carl. Made sure he was fed. We kept him safe.”
John Holleran steps into the middle of the room. “He admitted to it,” he says. “Heard it myself. But won’t tell us what he done with the boy.”
“Damn right he admitted to it.”
It’s Daddy. His dark shirt has pulled free and hangs loose about his waist. He still wears his hat, though it’s pushed high on his forehead. Drawing a kerchief from his back pocket, he wipes the sweat from his face. He looks small, scrawny even, compared to John and Abraham, but Joseph Carl is smaller still. When John Holleran finally broke through the door, Sheriff Irlene rushing in behind him, he had hauled Daddy off Joseph Carl with one hand.
“God only knows what he done to my boy,” Daddy says.
“Daddy’s going to make him tell.”
Again, we all look to Juna. The lids over her black eyes are swollen, and dark patches have settled under each. It’s from her not sleeping and not drinking and not eating. She holds the blanket around herself like a shawl, baring her white shoulders.
“Make him tell what he done to me too, Daddy.”
It’s no more than a whisper. Clutching her blanket with both hands, she is looking at the ground at Daddy’s feet and not into his eyes.
“You can do it,” she says, still in a whisper. “You can make him tell what he done to Dale, and you can make him tell what he done to me.”
“Juna, no,” I say, dropping my arms and backing away. “Don’t do this. Please don’t do this.”
“What’s that you’re saying?” Abraham says.
Sheriff Irlene covers her mouth over with one hand and shakes her head. Her three deputies turn away. John Holleran does the same. They’re trying to spare Abraham his shame.
“He ruined me, Abey,” Juna says. “He didn’t spare me. Not like you said. I’m so sorry, Abey.”
“You saying Joseph Carl ruined you, girl?” Ellis says.
“Can’t bear to say what he done to me,” Juna says.
“Man can’t very well ruin what’s long since been rotted out,” Ellis says.
At this, Abraham Pace lunges for Ellis. John Holleran grabs at him, wraps him up in two arms. Ellis holds up a hand to his two brothers, stopping them from raising their guns.
“Would guess half the fellows here have had a hand in ruining this girl,” Ellis says, nodding off toward Juna. “But Joseph Carl damn sure ain’t one of them.”
John Holleran holds on tight, pulling against Abraham, who is still pushing to get at Ellis. Abraham leads with his square jaw, and his heavy brow shades his eyes, making them look dark like Juna’s when really they are pale brown.
“You surprised I’d say that, Abe,” Ellis says. “Don’t mean no harm. Guess I shouldn’t speak for the others, but I damn sure had her. Damn sure of that. She’s been ruined all right, but it wasn’t by that boy in there.” He calls Joseph Carl a boy even though he’s the oldest Baine brother. “And he sure didn’t do nothing to Dale. It’s a damn fool thought.”
John’s arms loosen from around Abraham. He’s no longer struggling to get at Ellis but instead is staring at Juna. I can’t help but stare myself.
She’s known, known all along, I wanted Ellis Baine. She’s known I’ve been waiting for him to wring himself out and be ready for a wife. She’s known I watch him in the field, fingering the dirt until it’s just so and knowing the perfect time to set his crop. She’s known my wanting him is like an ache. She’s told me over and over that Ellis will want me too and has told me how he’ll marry me one day and take me in and we’ll grow beans and cabbage and our fields will be filled with tobacco. And still I believe Ellis Baine. I know he’s telling the truth.
“Don’t you let him say that, Daddy.”
Juna tilts her head in that way she does. She’s wanting Daddy to remember the wife who died and the boy Juna was supposed to be. She’s wanting Daddy to remember he’s afraid of her.
“Don’t you let him, Daddy.”
Sheriff Irlene walks among the men, pushing them aside as she makes her way to the small door at the back of the room. She leans inside and says, “You sit tight, Joseph Carl. I’ll be in to tend to you shortly.” Then she pulls the door closed, though, because the latch is broken off, it doesn’t shut all the way.
“I heard it myself, Ellis,” she says, turning her attention to Ellis Baine. “Joseph Carl said he took the boy, so you all need to go on now. Joseph Carl’ll be staying right here until we sort this through. And all the rest of you, you all go on home. Ed, you. And Ellis, you too. All of you. Get on with looking for Dale. Joseph Carl is staying here with me, and that’ll be the end of it.”
“Tell you right now,” Ellis Baine says, backing toward the door, “this will not be the end of it.”