Chapter Sixteen

Devin twisted the cap off of his flask and thrust the bootleg bourbon in front of Margaret’s face. Devin had an evening ritual of downing a nightcap and wanted Margaret to join him.

She recoiled at the liquor’s strong smell, but was afraid that if she pushed his hand away, he might feel insulted and become violent. “Please Devin, stop. You know I can’t drink anything that might hurt the baby,” she said, and tried to go on brushing her hair.

She was glad that she was sitting at her vanity table where she could look in the vanity’s large oval mirror to see what he was doing.

He backed away from her and fell onto their bed. “Oh, that’s right,” he said, slurring his words, “I forgot, you’re a whad ya call it? One of them temperance leaders. Well here’s to you, missy,” he said, holding up his flask in a mock toast, as he swigged another drink.

Margaret was trying her best to ignore her husband, but she had an uneasy feeling that he was on the verge of another one of his alcoholic rages. She began counting her

brush strokes out loud in an effort to distract him.

“Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty, forty-one …” The way he stared at her gave her chills. She was terrified that now that she knew the truth about herself, he would discover it too.

“Damn it, Margaret,” he said, raising up off the bed and coming back over to her, “no matter what else I think about you, you’re one of the prettiest white women this side of Peak’s Pike.”

She started to correct him to tell him that he meant Pike’s Peak, but caught herself just in time. He was too drunk to know what he was saying, which meant he was also drunk enough to want to hit her.

He walked back to where Margaret was sitting and stood behind her so that his thighs pressed into her back. He spoke to her looking at their images in the mirror. His body odor and breath reeked of his two-day binge.

“And, if I ever catch that nigger, Walter, looking at you again, I’ll kill both of you. You hear me? Just because my fool mother promised him the job his father had, don’t mean I won’t take matters into my own hands. I think the boy actually forgets sometimes that you’re a white woman.”

Devin grabbed a handful of Margaret’s hair and yanked her head back, forcing her to look up into his face. She cried out in pain, but he only yanked her head again, and didn’t let go.

“Sometimes, I think you forget, too,” he said, and wrapped and wrapped her hair around his fist for a tighter hold on her.

“Forget what?” What are you talking about, Devin?” Her eyes were watering from the pain.

“Don’t smart-mouth me, missy. You know damn well what I mean. I mean that if I didn’t know better, sometimes I’d think you was a nigger lover, too, like that father of yours.”

Devin pushed Margaret’s head back up with his fist, and let go of her hair, but tossed a spurt of the flask’s contents at the mirror, which splashed back into Margaret’s eyes and face, and onto her nightgown.

The jolt to her head caused her to bite her lower lip, which opened a cut and also sent blood trickling down her chin and onto her nightgown.

Devin just turned his back on her and went over to the chaise lounge and plopped down on it.

Margaret’s scalp felt like it had almost been torn off, and her eyes stung from the liquor. Still, she had to think of the baby. She couldn’t afford to react in a way that might provoke Devin even further.

He was walking back toward her, issuing some kind of command, but her mind could not make sense of it.

“No, Devin, please, no,” she pleaded as he pulled her to her feet, and forced her out of her robe.

“Oh, yes, yes, Margaret. Is that any way for a wife to talk to her husband?” he said, then tore her gown off of her body. “After all, I enjoy looking at you. Your skin,” he said running his hand across her shoulder, “is so white. So beautiful.”

He began to circle her as he unbuttoned his vest, and then his shirt.

“But, Devin,” she pleaded, “I’m eight and a half months pregnant. The baby …”

Devin didn’t answer. He just pushed her onto the bed.

In a last vivid thought, she felt grateful that Kyle or Walter were not home to hear her screams. Mother Browne was too sedated to be aware of anything.

⟞ • ⟝

When it was finally all over, Devin just rolled away from Margaret and dropped off to sleep. She tried to cover herself with the sheet, but most of it was trapped under Devin’s body.

She didn’t dare risk waking him, yet she didn’t dare get up either. Instead, she curled into a fetal position, waiting and trying not to cry.

⟞ • ⟝

The sound of the front door slamming woke Margaret. She looked over at the clock on her vanity table. It was only a little past midnight.

“Hey,” Margaret heard Kyle yell up the stairway, “anybody home?”

She could only pray that he didn’t open up her and Devin’s bedroom door in search of them before she could get up and put her gown and robe back on.

“Yes,” she called out to Kyle over his father’s snoring. “Meet me in the kitchen and I’ll fix you a sandwich.”

“Great, thanks,” Kyle said.

Relieved, she heard his footsteps back down the stairs. Only instead of going to the kitchen, Kyle made a detour to the library.

After flinging the doors open, he went straight to the desk and turned on the lamp. The dim light cast an eerie glow onto the oil painting over the fireplace mantel, the portrait of his paternal great-grandfather, the Colonel.

A faceless wire-form mannequin, standing in the far corner of the library, had on the very same confederate uniform that his great-grandfather wore to pose for the painting.

Kyle went over to the mannequin.

“You won’t mind if I borrow this, now will you, greatgranddaddy?” Kyle said, as he glanced up at the wizened old face of his ancestor, then took the faded gold sash and moth-eaten gray jacket off the mannequin and put them on.

The dust on the jacket, and its loosened fibers from decades of non use, caused Kyle to choke.

“Whew,” he wheezed as he waved the particles from in front of his face, and buttoned up the jacket. Other than the shoulders being too narrow, it was a perfect fit. He mimicked the heel clicking snap to attention of a real soldier, and saluted the painting.

“At your service, Colonel.”

“What? I can’t hear you,” he said to the picture, then reached up and lifted the portrait from its hook.

He studied the painting close up for a long minute, then heaved it into the fireplace.

It landed on the wood grate, and one of the grate’s spikes tore a hole through the canvas.

Kyle looked down at the painting and spoke to it.

“Oh, you say there’s no piss-drinkin’ yanks to run into the river tonight? No belly-achin’ turncoats to shoot at dawn?

No lip-quiverin’ niggras to tar and feather? Come on, greatgranddaddy that ain’t like you.”

Kyle raised his foot and brought his boot down squarely on the old man’s monocled eye, then, on the middle of one side of the frame, causing the frame to splinter and break, and the canvas to rip more.

“Come on, come on,” Kyle shouted as he stomped his heel into the picture over and over again. “Come on, you stupid coward.”

Kyle didn’t see his stepmother standing in the library doorway. Margaret had on Grandmother Browne’s old chenille robe, but she was trembling as if it were late December instead of the first week in August.

She stretched out her arms to him. “Oh, Kyle, what have you done?” She didn’t mean the painting so much as she meant his appearance. He hadn’t been home in almost a week, and he looked drawn and disheveled.

He looked blankly at Margaret without uttering a word. Instead, he went over to his father’s desk and picked up the business ledger that listed every new Klan member and how much each man owed on dues.

Kyle opened the large red leather book and noted his father’s meticulous bookkeeping. The first column after the individual names was to record the six dollars of the ten-dollar annual dues, which went to Dr. Locke.

The second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth columns noted the total payments on the four remaining dollars, which Devin accepted in fifty-cent installments to ensure affordability for poor white trash, went straight to Devin’s pockets.

Margaret walked over to Kyle and tried to take the ledger from him, but he wouldn’t release it.

“You know that you shouldn’t be going through your father’s books.”

If Kyle heard her, he didn’t let on. He simply pushed past her like she was any stranger on the street, and went around to the front of the desk, and opened one drawer after another, rifling through each one, for what she didn’t know.

He’s barely more than a boy just out of his knickers, Margaret thought, while watching him. And that face … that innocent, sweet face. Was I wrong to raise him as my own child?

His mother died when he was a mere infant. He needed a mother. Margaret wondered what else she could have done, but love him? Did losing her own mother at such a young age leave her totally ignorant of a child’s needs?

Did losing her own child to the world cause her to be insensitive to him or overlook some need he had?

What in the world is he looking for?

Finally, Kyle took out a box of matches from the desk’s bottom drawer.

He waved the box at her with a childish glee.

“You want to stop something, Pop?” Kyle ranted to an invisible adversary. “Then stop this.”

Margaret’s efforts to grab the box from her stepson were futile. He was more man than boy suddenly, and his size and strength were too much for her.

He went to the fireplace again, but this time he was ripping page after page from the ledger.

Some of the pages he balled into his fist, and tossed on top of the discarded painting. Other pages he tore into strips and let them flutter to the floor.

Margaret realized she desperately needed to stop him from this madness. What she needed was a weapon of some kind to scare him. She searched about the room for something to use.

The Colonel’s saber was mounted on the wall along with other confederate swords, but a sword could easily be turned back on her.

The muskets and pistols on display on another wall seemed equally ominous.

Finally, she noticed the fire poker and decided it would have to do. She grabbed it and held it high over her head.

“Kyle, stop this. I’m warning you. I won’t let you destroy this family.”

Kyle ignored his stepmother, not even glancing at her.

“How many times do I have to tell you, this doesn’t concern you?” he said. “You’re not my mother and I don’t want your help. All you need to do is to stay out of my way.”

Margaret winced. He sounded just like his father. He even used the same hate-filled tone of voice and had the same scowl on his face. This was all a very, very bad dream. Somehow she had to wake up.

Except it wasn’t a dream, and before she could stop Kyle, he lit a match and threw it into the fireplace. The ledger papers caught fire immediately and sputtered and crackled with flames.

The Colonel’s portrait, thankfully, was still buried underneath the papers, but just as she reached with the poker to retrieve the painting, someone from behind pushed her violently to the side.

She fell against a chair, and crumpled to the ground. She looked up to see Devin with a hand raised to slap Kyle.

“Damn it, boy,” Devin blurted, and whipped his hand through the air, aiming for Kyle’s face.

But Kyle darted, and missed the attack, and just kept on tearing pages and throwing them into the fire.

Now the Colonel was aflame, too.

“No!” Kyle yelled, “Damn you and everything you stand for.”

Margaret saw the vein in Devin’s forehead bulge and throb. She also saw that his bathrobe pocket sagged from the weight of something odd shaped and heavy.

Please, she prayed silently, please Kyle, turn around.

Her plea was useless and the sound of yet another torn page made her stiffen like a frightened child.

Devin put his hand in his robe, then brought his hand back out in the open. He was holding a pistol. He fired the gun once and hit the woodwork on the side of the mantel.

Kyle still didn’t stop tearing the pages.

Devin walked closer to Kyle and put the pistol to his son’s back. “Boy, if there’s one thing I ain’t never gonna tolerate, it’s you sassin’ me like some uppity niggra.”

Kyle finally turned and looked at his father, but laughed.

“Why? Ain’t that how that colored whore of yours talks to you?”

Devin’s face turned nearly as red as the fire.

He cocked the gun’s hammer. “Damn you, boy!”

“Devin, no!” Margaret cried.

Devin looked at her just as she whacked the poker across his arm. He screamed in pain and the pistol fell from his hand onto the floor. It was only seconds before he regained composure, but then he saw the welt on his arm.

He lunged at Margaret, and clasped his hands around her throat, trying to strangle her.

“You crazy bitch.”

Margaret felt herself losing consciousness.

Then she heard a “pop” sound, and smelled something like a whiff of smoke as Devin’s hands first slackened and then dropped away. He was bleeding from a small hole in his shoulder. He looked stunned, and pale.

She looked over at Kyle. He was still holding the pistol he had just fired.

“Oh dear, heaven,” she gasped. “Quick, Kyle. Help me.

We have to stop your father’s bleeding or he’ll die.”