Fireflies In December Part 11

"Well, we may not be able to track 'em all down, but Walt's likely the ringleader. Once he's out of the picture, things'll settle down. You wait and see."

"We'll take care of 'em in court, Harley," Mr. Tinker said.

"I don't want my girls testifyin' in court," Daddy insisted. "I teach mine all about standin' up for what's right, but there ain't no way I'm makin' these girls tell their story to a jury full of Klan-sympathizin' white men who'll just let Walt walk away to do more harm. Besides that, they might start tryin' to get after Jessilyn for shootin' that gun. It ain't like we're the most popular people in town these days. Ain't unlikely they'd be happy to blame us for somethin' else." He shook his head adamantly. "No sir! It ain't gonna happen."

"But we can tell 'em-," I began.

He cut me off. "There are things you don't understand, Jessilyn. That's why you got a momma and daddy to help you make decisions, and I'm makin' this one. There ain't gonna be no testifyin' in court."

The sheriff was visibly upset, but he could see that Daddy's mind was made up and he wouldn't be changing it tonight.

Daddy and Momma showed the men out, and I lay back and closed my eyes, holding on to Gemma's hand. "They'll just let Walt go," I said in a frightened whisper. "He ain't gonna pay at all for what he done."

"Your daddy's right," Gemma muttered. "Ain't no way a white jury would convict Walt of anythin' against a white family who took in a colored girl. Folks around here think that's a mortal sin. They'd figure we all got what we deserved." She looked down at her skirt and let two tears drip down and soak into it. "Seems I ain't done nothin' but bring trouble around here."

"Don't you go sayin' that!" I said, sitting upright in a hurry. "Don't you never go sayin' that. You heard my daddy tellin' you we're glad to have you here, and there ain't n.o.body-no Walt Blevins, no hooded men-n.o.body who's goin' to change that. It's what we think that matters, and what we think is that you belong with us. And with us is where you'll stay." Gemma had her face turned aside, and I grabbed it, forcing her to look at me. "You hear, Gemma Teague? It's here you're stayin'."

She nodded slowly, her tears making tracks from her eyelashes to her chin, and then she threw her arms around me. We clung to each other for a while, and I could tell Momma purposefully puttered around the kitchen longer than she needed to so Gemma and I could have our time alone.

"Gemma?" I whispered after a few minutes of silence.

"Huh?"

"Thanks for savin' my leg."

"Thanks for savin' our lives," she whispered back.

She set her head down on the sofa beside me, and I rolled my head over so our foreheads were touching. It felt special, that bond between the two of us. We'd faced death together, and I figured we couldn't have had anything happen that would have made us see each other as any more important.

We couldn't have been closer if we'd been blood sisters.

Chapter 11.

As it turned out, Walt Blevins was wanted in Coopersville for an a.s.sault, and by good fortune he was arrested there just a day after our ordeal. Daddy told me and Gemma that he and Sheriff Slater had agreed to keep the shooting a secret.

"We agree it'd do no good for it to get out if it don't have to, all this trouble," Daddy said. "If Walt's goin' to jail anyhow, ain't no need for anyone else to know what's gone on here, you see?"

"But won't people hear about it?" I asked. "This town ain't good at keepin' secrets."

"There ain't no one more used to keepin' secrets than them Klan boys," Daddy answered. "Them cowards don't want no one knowin' who they are. We'll tell Luke, but he'll be the only one, you hear? The doc's agreed to keep his peace, and Sheriff Slater and Mr. Tinker are the only other ones who'll know anythin'."

It all seemed to be tied up with a bow. Walt was gone, the Klansmen were quiet not wanting to incriminate themselves, and we La.s.siters kept our traps shut. We agreed that if anyone asked, we'd say I burnt my leg on the tractor, but I figured it unlikely anyone would ask, anyway.

The evening after the incident, I was sitting on the porch when Luke came by for supper. I had my injured leg propped up on the railing, and I watched him over the bandages as he flew across our driveway. "What're you doin'?" I called. "Dinner ain't even ready yet and you're runnin' like a jackrabbit."

He skidded to a stop right in front of the porch and whipped his hat off. "Don't no one think I ought to know about things when they happen?"

"What're you yellin' about?"

"That," he said, pointing at my leg. Then he looked at the singed gra.s.s in our yard and waved his arm at it, saying, "And that! You just about get your place burnt to ash, and you girls about get killed, and you don't say nothin' to me?"

Daddy came out of the house then and said, "Now, Luke, I was gonna tell ya-"

"It's a little late. I had to go and find out from Sheriff Slater. Ran into him at the pharmacy, and he says, 'Well then, Luke, what do you think of all that trouble out at the La.s.siter place?' And I'm left sayin', 'What trouble?' like I'm some sort of stranger or somethin'."

"We're all fine and good," Daddy said. "Everyone's alive and well, and Jessie'll be back on both feet in no time."

"I knew that boy was trouble. I knew it!" Luke walked one way across the yard and then another, like a nervous squirrel, before he turned back to us and said, "Animals like Walt Blevins ain't fit to live; you know that? They ain't fit to live."

"Seein' as how I figured you might feel that way, I thought I'd let you know after things had calmed down a bit," Daddy told him. "We don't need you goin' and gettin' yourself in trouble by causin' violence. The sheriff had to tell me the same thing last night."

Luke put his head down and took a long, deep breath.

Daddy rested a hand on his shoulder. "Son, I appreciate you carin' for my girls. I just don't want you gettin' in trouble over it, you hear?"

Daddy headed inside the house, and Luke came up onto the porch to sit in the rocking chair next to me. He rocked back and forth for a couple minutes before he nodded at my leg and asked, "It hurt?"

"A little."

Then he rocked some more before saying, "Gemma okay?"

"Suppose so. She's helpin' Momma with supper."

That was the way all our conversation went that night. No one said much more than five words at a time. No one ate much either, even Luke, who could usually eat more than me, Momma, and Gemma combined. It was like the events of the day before had soured everyone's stomachs.

For me, it had started to change the way I saw life and the people in it. I'd known that some of the colored people in town had been hara.s.sed by white men who didn't think colored people should be treated the same as white people. Gemma had a friend who didn't have a daddy, and she had once told me that he'd been hanged for talking back to a white man. But now it was happening to me, and I had no choice but to look the evil of it full in the face. Some people were full of hate, and I was going to have to accept that for what it was.

Once I'd told my momma that I hated Buddy Pernell, and she'd taken a switch to my backside, saying, "There ain't no worse thing to say about a body than that you hate them. It's like tellin' them to go to the devil."

When I was nine, that didn't mean much to me, because sending a mean boy to the devil didn't seem anything but good. But once I saw the hate in Walt Blevins's eyes and heard it in the voices of those men, I started to realize the point of Momma's words a little more. I didn't like the way it felt to be hated, and if being attacked by those men was anything like being sent to the devil, I didn't want any part of that either.

A few days after that devastating night, Gemma and I were out for a walk through the backwoods on our property, the one place we knew had shelter from the scorching sun, when Buddy Pernell leapt out at us from behind a tree. We jumped a mile and screamed, setting him into a chorus of laughter. I flashed him a sore look. He was one of the last people on earth I wanted to see, and all I could think of was his drunken breath on my neck on Independence Day.

"You think you're so funny, Buddy Pernell," I said angrily.

"I swear you girls looked like you'd seen a ghost."

"We don't believe in ghosts," I shot back.

"You'd best have if you're goin' walkin' through these woods. This here's Cy Fuller's property you're on now."

"No, it ain't. It's my daddy's."

"Not if you cross over the creek there. You do that and you're on Cy Fuller's property. Can't never tell when you'll run across his ghost takin' a stroll through these here dark woods."

"What're you talkin' about Mr. Fuller's ghost?" Gemma asked. "Man's got to be dead before you can start makin' up ghost stories about him."

"Ain't you heard?" He looked around as though he was making sure no one was listening, and then he gave us a wide, mischievous grin. "He is is dead." dead."

"Buddy Pernell, you tell the dumbest stories a girl ever heard," I argued.

"You think I'm lyin'? Go ask the sheriff. Better yet, head on over to Cy's meadow and take a look at the search party they got goin' on over there."

Cy Fuller spent most of his time on the bottle and owned about fifteen dogs that loved to holler at night and wake me up. I didn't like him one bit, but he had a nice little girl named Missy, who was as shy as a mouse and never said much. I suppose that's why I thought she was nice, because I talked so much that anyone who would listen to me made me happy. I didn't much like the idea of her losing her daddy, even if I didn't like the man.

"You're lyin'," I argued. "Cy Fuller ain't dead."

"You ask anyone. They done found blood all over his back property, and ain't no one seen 'im since Sunday."

It was the mention of Sunday that got my heart racing and made my hairs stand on end. Ever since that night I'd wondered about what might have happened in the chaos that had followed those last two gunshots. In the dark, with the smoke and shouting, I couldn't see a thing, and all I could hear was a ringing in my ears. There was no telling what I'd done. For all I knew, I was a murderer.

Daddy had scolded me when I'd mentioned that to him. "You ain't killed no one, Jessilyn. Don't you worry none about things like that. You did what you had to do, and you scared 'em off. Ain't nothin' more to it than that."

But I hadn't been so sure, and now, hearing about Cy Fuller, my fears started to flood back. I had no doubt that Cy Fuller could have been one of those hooded men, as I had no doubt that I could have killed him with my daddy's rifle without knowing it. I figured it was possible that he'd struggled home from our place only to meet his death just a piece from his house.

The first thing I wanted to do was go right over to the Fullers' property. Gemma squeezed my hand to stop me, saying, "You can't go there. What if someone sees you?"

"I ain't gonna do nothin' to be seen. I just want to prove Buddy wrong, is all." I gulped twice and kept my face turned toward Gemma so Buddy couldn't see how scared I really was.

"What's to see?"

"More'n you think," Buddy said. "I'm tellin' you, the man's dead."

I stared hard at Gemma and told her without words just how much I needed to go see that place for myself. She returned my gaze for several seconds before dropping her head with a sigh. "Fine," she agreed. "But if there's trouble, you got to promise me we'll hightail it good and quick."

I promised her, and the two of us followed Buddy through the woods, ducking under the brush and branches he let snap back in our faces. Gemma had a grip on my hand, and I knew if I failed to keep my promise to run from trouble she'd find some way to haul me off bodily.

When we got there, we found the place crowded with the sheriff, some of his men, and townsfolk who had volunteered to search the property.

"Told you so," Buddy whispered, his face buried in a pine bough.

"You said he was dead," Gemma told him. "But that looks like a searchin' party."

"Well, they ain't found him yet, but you can bet he's good enough dead. They'll turn him up soon." We stood in the woods, hoping for some information, but didn't see much outside of a lot of men walking back and forth with their arms locked together, shouting things at each other across the fields. As boring as it was, we watched with wide eyes, barely moving.

After an hour Buddy gave up watching. "I got better things to do," he said with a yawn. "You girls stay if you want to, but I'm tellin' you, the man's gonna turn up dead." He leaned down and put his lips to my ear. "They say the dead like walkin' best at sundown," he said in an eerie voice. "Best be gettin' home before too long or Cy Fuller will get ya."

I shoved at him with one hand and kept my eyes glued to the ordeal past the tree line.

"Let's go too, Jessie," Gemma begged when Buddy left us behind. "There ain't nothin' to see."

But I ignored her. I was transfixed by the fear that those men would any minute prove me a murderer.

Gemma kept complaining at me about every five minutes until I finally gave up wearily. "Fine. Let's go. But I ain't never gonna be able to sleep again till I find out if I killed Cy Fuller."

"Jessie, you ain't killed killed Cy Fuller," Gemma said, whispering that terrible word. Cy Fuller," Gemma said, whispering that terrible word.

"How do you know?"

"I know 'cause I know." She stood there staring at me with her hands on her hips like my momma would do, and I could tell she expected that her words should be the end of my worrying.

I nodded to make her think I agreed, but I didn't. And as we walked back home, I figured she knew I didn't, but she didn't say anything. Neither of us said a word that whole time, and I went straight to my room and stayed there. I'd told Gemma to tell Momma I wasn't feeling good, and when she told me she wasn't going to lie for me, I said, "It ain't lyin'. I feel sick in my gut."

"Luke's gonna be here," she tried. "Ain't that a reason to come on down?"

"I can't look at him now. He ain't never gonna love a murderer."

Gemma marched out of the room in a huff. I had an awful feeling I wouldn't be eating for a while.

The days that followed were a misery. Rumors were all around town about what happened to Cy Fuller, and everyone had their own theory about it. Some people were saying he'd been shot over his moons.h.i.+ne business; others said he'd been beat up over some gambling debts. The method of death changed with each story, but the idea that he was dead never changed. Everyone a.s.sumed the same thing-that he'd been killed and dragged away to a hasty grave somewhere in the acres of woods around his house.

Because of that, Cy's property continued to swarm with men and dogs, a sort of makes.h.i.+ft hunting party, except they were hunting for a corpse. Sheriff Slater had his team out there for four days before he gave up. He stopped by our place at the end of his search and had a talk with Daddy. I watched them from my bedroom window, unable to hear a word, but I had a pretty good idea what they were saying.

The feeling around our house was that we were thinking the same thing, but no one wanted to say a word about it. I knew I didn't want to. I moped around feeling like the loneliest person in the world. After all, I was the only person I knew of who thought she might have killed a man.

That week, Daddy hired a new hand, figuring that he needed to be around the house more to keep an eye on things. Jeb Carter seemed a good sort, kind of quiet and shy, and he mostly kept to himself. I liked him a lot from the start. Just the way he smiled at me made me trust him. We had some other farmhands, but none of them paid much attention to the family. They only worked for us. But Jeb . . . he was different. He and I seemed to have something that made us like each other.

"What're you doin'?" I asked him on his second day as he sat on a tree stump taking a midday break. "Whittlin'?"

"Makin' me a bird call."

"What for?"

"Like watchin' birds."

"Oh." I sat down on the gra.s.s and picked a leftover dandelion, blowing the white tufts into the breeze. I looked at Jeb with one eyebrow c.o.c.ked, wondering at his short way with words. He never seemed to speak full sentences. "Which birds you like?"

"All kinds."

I blew another dandelion and asked, "You like workin' the farm?"

"Just like workin'. Don't matter what kind."

"You like workin'?" I asked in surprise. "What kind of person likes workin'? Most people only do it 'cause they have to."

"Workin' keeps the mind busy."

"So you like keepin' your mind busy?"

"A busy mind," he said with a short nod, "quiets bad memories."