Bloody Kin Page 12

  “Yankees aren’t that noticeable anymore,” complained Mrs. Faircloth, a fiftyish woman whose beanbag figure betrayed a fondness for her own cooking. “I remember when I was little and Sam Carroll came to church the first time with his brand-new Philadelphia wife. I never heard such pretty talk in all my born days and I followed her around all afternoon and even stood on the pew bench behind her to hear if she sang her words like she talked them; but nowadays, shootfire! With television and so many strangers moving in, I wouldn’t turn around twice for a Yankee accent.”

  The maids murmured agreement.

  “Mrs. Whitley?”

  Sally Whitley had sent a reluctant Mary Pat out to play and now looked as if she wished she could have been excused, too. “I guess we’re the western branch of the new invasion,” she said with a nervous laugh.

  “From California, aren’t you?” asked the sheriff.

  “That’s right. So a different accent wouldn’t seem odd to Tom or me.” She glanced around the room. “I don’t know why Tom isn’t here. Shall I go find him?”

  “We talked to him up in the attic,” said Dwight, “and I think he said something about measuring for cabinets he’s going to build Mrs. Honeycutt.”

  “Then he must have told you that we’ve only lived here a few months ourselves. Even if we’d seen those two men, we wouldn’t have realized that they didn’t belong here.”

  “Let’s see now,” said Bo Poole. “I believe y’all came to Gilead when? Last September?”

  “That’s right. Tom’s enrolled at State. We needed a place to live and Tom needed a part-time job, so when we heard that Gilead wanted a live-in caretaker—”

  “It was listed with the Student Aid Office, didn’t you say, Rob?” asked Dwight.

  Rob nodded and started to elucidate, but Bo Poole broke in.

  “I believe I heard someone say you’re a teacher, Mrs. Whitley?”

  “Yes, I’d applied at several schools, but all the positions were filled before we arrived. I was working part-time at a day-care center when Mr. Tyrrell called to ask if I’d look after Mary Pat full-time.”

  “She was a lifesaver!” Gordon said warmly. “At the last possible moment, Mary Pat’s nursemaid categorically refused to leave Costa Verde; I could hardly believe our luck when I realized Gilead had a fully-certified kindergarten teacher in residence.”

  It was only after a quick lunch at his mother’s and while he was driving back to Raleigh in time for the Carolina-Duke semifinal, that Rob remembered that he hadn’t clarified his answer to Dwight. A minor technicality, the lawyer decided. What difference did it make that Tom Whitley had approached him directly about the caretaker’s job at Gilead rather than through the Student Aid Office?

  Overhead the sun gradually faded and the Carolina blue sky dulled to gray. He wasn’t really superstitious, Rob told himself, but he would have felt better about the upcoming game if God had left the sky blue.

  “Looks as if we might have rain before dark,” said Kate, glancing out the packhouse’s single window.

  “Maybe not.”

  Tom Whitley had lost a little of his initial shyness with her, but Kate was learning that the Californian was almost as sparing with words as Lacy. In the hour that they had spent measuring and planning, he hadn’t offered a single personal comment. By this time, Kate would normally have the basic life history of any other workman.

  Jake used to tease her about it and occasionally, when he was feeling frugal and the repairman or painter was charging fifteen or twenty dollars an hour, he would banish her to the other end of the apartment and plead with her not to come offering the man a pot of coffee and a willing ear.

  “It cost us seventeen-fifty for you to hear about his wife’s troubles with their daughter-in-law,” he would grumble. “Couldn’t you just go watch a soap opera?”

  But cheerful comments and tactful questions did little to loosen Tom Whitley’s tongue. “You’d think he was paying me instead of the other way around,” thought Kate.

  Whitley added a final notation to the long list of materials and supplies needed to convert the dark packhouse into a well-lit studio.

  “I’ll stop by the building supply place in Raleigh first thing Monday morning,” he told Kate.

  Their eyes touched briefly, then he ducked away. “I can carry enough on my pickup to get started with till they deliver the rest.”

  It was his longest speech that afternoon.

  In the nursery wing at Gilead, Sally Whitley paused and cocked her head in a listening attitude. She no longer heard Mary Pat’s piping treble from the next room where the child had been talking to herself.

  Sally rose and crossed the colorful floral carpet and peeped into the playroom. All was still and quiet.

  “Mary Pat?”

  She hesitated indecisively in the doorway. Technically, Mary Pat was no longer a baby and she didn’t like for Sally to hover around every single minute; but if anything happened to Mary Pat, Sally thought nervously, Mr. Tyrrell would blame her.

  Fortunately, before she had to decide whether or not to go hunting for her charge, she saw Mary Pat curled up on the cushioned window seat. In the last month, Mary Pat had begun to insist she was too big to take naps. As a result, she often fell asleep in odd places three or four times a week.

  Relieved, Sally tucked a light blanket around the wiry little body and went back to work. For the next hour at least, she would know exactly where Mary Pat was.

  She threaded clean laces into a pair of small shoes and added sneakers to the shopping list of spring clothes she was compiling. Mary Pat continued to outgrow things before she wore them out and the current sneakers were getting too tight.

  Mr. Tyrrell had told her to use her own judgment, but it was probably a waste of time to pack up even these few things, thought Sally, fitting the lid on a storage box full of heavy knitted items. She knew money was no consideration, yet these were so pretty: imported, hand-worked sweaters of cashmere and mohair. Expensive, too. But knits did stretch some and unless Mary Pat grew like a weed this summer . . . at any rate, the caps and mittens would certainly go another season and she could wait until next fall to determine if the sweaters would still fit.

  Assuming they were still here. Mr. Tyrrell might decide she wasn’t all that good with Mary Pat, or Tom might lose control with the wrong person and—No!

  Her thin face tightened and she pushed away that dark memory. It was only because Tom was under so much pressure at the time—that army lieutenant, the forced changeover to civilian life—even a well man would have exploded. And he hadn’t hurt her. Not really. He’d almost gone off his head with remorse afterward and ever since, he’d been so gentle.

  There was nothing to worry about, she told herself. Life here was slower paced. No pressures; only the classes at State, a few hours of physical work here on the grounds or the odd jobs like remodeling Mrs. Honeycutt’s packhouse. Those army doctors were all wrong about Tom. He was just fine.

  Mary Pat slept without stirring, so Sally carried the carton of winter clothes up to the attic. As she recalled, there was a trunk of summer things there from Mexico. She really ought to bring it down and see if any of them would still fit Mary Pat before they went shopping.

  It was almost too warm up under the eaves of the roof. Sally slid the carton in beside Mary Pat’s trunk and lifted the lid. Inside were several little sundresses and a stack of bright cotton shorts and shirts.

  As long as she was up here, Sally decided, she might as well bring down the few warm weather things she and Tom had brought from California. The new matched bags stood in a neat group off to one side: but in the attic’s dim light, it took her a moment to locate Tom’s battered old suitcase behind an unused bedstead.

  Tom had wanted to throw the bag away when they came East, but everything wouldn’t fit into the new luggage her roommates had given them as a wedding present; so she’d stuffed their cutoffs, tank tops, bathing suits, and flip-flops into the case and here it h
ad sat since last fall.

  Downstairs, she stopped by the nursery to deposit Mary Pat’s things and to switch on the intercom, then lugged the old bag down the back stairs to their quarters where she slung it onto the bed and clicked open the latches.

  Her faded green bikini was on top. As she lifted it up, Sally felt a few grains of California beach sand sift out of the bra onto her fingers, and, for the first time, she was awash with homesickness for curling waves and salty air. Life had been so simple then, she thought wistfully: on her own, sharing an apartment with three other girls from the college, long golden evenings at the beach after a day in classes, meeting Tom there at sunset one day; and falling instantly in love with his shy gentle nature.

  Remembering, her hazel eyes grew dreamy as she unpacked, then sharpened into puzzled awareness when her hands touched an unfamiliar object buried at the bottom of the suitcase. It was a small wooden box with a curved lid, about the size and shape of a loaf of bread.

  She had never seen it before, but she knew without even lifting the lid that it was James Tyrrell’s missing chest, and the dark fears she had been trying to push away clutched at her heart.

  Tucker Sauls tore open the cellophane strip on a fresh pack of menthol cigarettes and struck a match. The smell of sulphur and tobacco made Lacy decide he was ready for another cigarette, too. He patted the large bib pocket of his overalls for his own crumpled pack. He didn’t blame Tucker for switching over after that patch of pneumonia winter before last; but privately, Lacy was proud of the fact that he still smoked a man’s cigarette, straight and unfiltered.

  “So when you want to let’s start?” asked Sauls. He leaned against the back of his logging truck, his weather-stained felt hat pushed back on his head.

  Lacy squinted through the smoke. “Next week maybe. Let her get used to us coming and going first.”

  “What if she notices?”

  Lacy snorted contemptuously. “Ain’t no New York City gal gonna notice the difference between a pine tree and a peanut plant and even if she did, I got a right. Jake might of give her the farm, but he sure as hell didn’t mean it for no bastard young’un,” he said angrily.

  CHAPTER 14

  Two weeks can make an enormous difference, especially in March, thought Kate as she walked out with Gordon and Mary Pat.

  Pears, crab apples, cherries, and flowering Judas were in full bloom now. The plums had already faded and tiny fruits had begun to swell. Apple blossoms were swelling, too, and dogwoods uncurling until they were almost as wide across as a man’s thumbnail, each greenish-yellow petal tipped with a brownish pink “bloodstain” to symbolize the Easter legends.

  Quince, spirea, forsythia, and flowering almonds were at their peak and azalea buds were showing a bit of color. Hyacinths, daffodils, and pansies crowded each other in lavish borders. Soon the irises would follow.

  Confederate violets had been thick drifts of gray-blue in the orchard where Kate met Gordon and Mary Pat, and the breath-ofspring by the packhouse was covered with fresh green leaves, its scraggly twigs transformed into gracefulness. Lacy’s vegetable garden had neat rows of peas, onions, and mustard, and tiny potatoes were already forming among the roots of rank green plants.

  Everything seemed fecund with new life. Bluebirds were squabbling over the nesting boxes Lacy had erected around the farm, mockingbirds staked their territories with long melodic bursts of song, and Jake’s lovesick pointers had deserted the farm to hang around Willy Stewart’s dog pen where two of his bitches were in heat. Kate had even been kept awake last night by the yowl of mating cats.

  She didn’t mind. In fact, she welcomed every chirp and yowl. It was part of the natural cycle of life and she felt more and more in harmony with the farm as her own body swelled.

  Two weeks had made a difference there, too. No longer could loose shirts and sweaters conceal the definite bulge of her abdomen. Now she wore proper maternity tops and slacks with stretchy stomach panels.

  For Kate and Gordon, walking was therapeutic, a painless way to get the exercise their respective doctors recommended, even though Gordon was already more physically active in his newfound life as Gilead’s squire.

  Often when Kate walked over to meet him, she found him out on a tractor, overseeing the ditching and draining of a low field, or in conference with the farmer who currently leased the acreage allotments, about contour plowing to control erosion. He had ordered new fruit trees to rejuvenate Gilead’s diseased orchard and planned to convert an idle piece of land into a modest vineyard.

  “All the Tyrrells are farmers at heart,” he told Kate. “I really used to envy my cousins. Not their money, but the land. They just took it for granted, while James and I felt like we’d been kicked out of Eden. If my grandfather hadn’t been a younger son, I’d probably be working the family land up in Virginia right now.”

  Remembering the flitting, adventure-seeking life Gordon and Elaine had led, Kate was somewhat doubtful.

  On the other hand, Elaine had grown up when Gilead was a rundown tobacco farm. As a child, she had risen early and gone to bed late during those hot sweaty summer days, her hands gummed with tobacco tar and her muscles aching from carrying heavy sticks of green leaves from the racks to the barns. Elaine had harbored no sentimental feelings about farming and had left as soon as Philip Carmichael’s money made it possible. Kate thought Gordon might not be quite so romantic about working family land if he’d actually had to do it. Directing the labor of hired help wasn’t quite the same thing.

  Still, it was a harmless delusion and did not stop Kate from looking forward to their walks. Gordon was intelligent and informed and a welcome alternative to Lacy’s sour company. Kate valued Miss Emily and Bessie’s sturdy common sense and warm friendliness, and she supposed Rob’s infrequent visits would be more enjoyable once he recovered from Carolina’s poor showing in the NCAA Basketball Tournament; in the meantime, however, Gordon was someone who would talk to her about books and movies and national politics. They had fallen into the habit of meeting after lunch for a long ramble around both farms every two or three days, weather permitting; and they were usually accompanied by Mary Pat and Aunt Susie, who trailed along behind, absorbed in their own interests while the two adults talked.

  The walks and the conversation with someone as content as Gordon helped calm Kate’s own mercurial shifts of emotion. He seemed to have made peace with what fate had dealt him and now accepted each day’s offering, while she still swung between black despair over Jake’s death and deep happiness over the prospect of his child. Death and life. Mourning and exhilaration.

  Both extremes were tempered by Gordon’s calm steadiness, and by his immersion in the needs of the land. As he planned improvements for Gilead, he opened Kate’s eyes to possible alternatives for the farm. “Tobacco’s not always going to be king here,” he said. “Subsidies are under attack in Congress, import restrictions will probably be loosened, and even die-hard smokers like us, Kate, are cutting back on cigarettes.”

  Kate had never paid much attention when Jake and Patricia talked like this; but now, carrying the baby who might someday depend on the farm for a living, she began to realize that land was not inanimate. It was a living entity with certain basic requirements that could not be safely left to renters, who often took and took with the help of chemicals, but who returned nothing organic to the soil. So as they walked, she listened when Gordon talked of cover crops, seasonal rotations, and irrigation ponds; of natural controls instead of pesticides, of windbreaks and new cash crops if tobacco stopped being profitable—asparagus, snow peas, or sunflowers. She was particularly taken with the idea of tall yellow flowers as far as the eye could see.

  And she agreed that the old tobacco barns should be pulled down and the solid lumber used elsewhere.

  As they passed the barns that day, Gordon gazed at the huge rusting tank that once supplied fuel to the four barns. “Did you know there’s still gas in this thing?” he asked Kate.

  “Is there?
” She peered at the gauge and saw that it registered three-fourths full. She tapped it. The needle quivered, but remained unchanged. “Maybe it’s broken.”

  “Maybe, but if I were you, I’d have someone come out and check it. Perhaps you could get it transferred to your house tank.”

  It was too nice a day to worry about economy and practicalities for long and she smiled to see Mary Pat already running across the field with Aunt Susie.

  The sky above was bright blue with the puffy clouds of changeable spring weather. It had rained hard several times in the past week and the wind had blown briskly all day yesterday, so the fields were as smooth as a tabletop, and Kate had suggested that they look for arrowheads and pottery fragments.

  Long before any Europeans arrived, Colleton County had been inhabited by Indians, and late winter or early spring, before the crops were planted, was the best time to look for relics. Stray points could turn up anywhere, but the likeliest place to look was on the west side of a creek, and Jake had shown Kate an area in the lower field that had been a camp site for several tribes widely separated in time. The earliest and most beautifully detailed points dated back six thousand years; the latest and more crudely shaped were probably mid-1600s.

  Mary Pat thought it was as much fun as an Easter egg hunt and she darted back and forth to show Kate and Gordon a chip of white quartz, a flake of apple-green flint or a palm-size scrap of broken pottery. The sandy field was so naturally rock-free that almost every stone was a possible Indian artifact.

  “What’s this?” asked Mary Pat, her grubby little hands clasped around a smooth stone the size and shape of an Idaho baking potato.

  “Don’t ask me,” said Gordon. “Cousin Kate’s the expert here.” Kate turned it in her hand, remembering the first time she had noticed a white quartz stone burned red around the outside.

  “It’s a pot stone. See the color? Like a brick?” she asked Mary Pat, echoing Jake’s long ago explanation. “That means it’s been in a hot fire.”