“Then he really cooked me good!” The way I said it made her grab my arm quick and hard. She never spoke for a second, just stood there and held on to my arm.
Then she said, “It was the girl. She changed you, Sam. She was never any good. It must have pleased Satan the day she was born, a wild, greedy hussy. But you can’t know her, Sam. No man could. No man ever knows a woman like her. She’s all things to all men, Sam no matter what the man is — as long as he seems to be able to give her something she wants.”
“Let's leave Lucy out of this!”
“No, son.” Her voice was old and so tired it ached. She turned and started walking up the slope away from the house. The slow way she was moving along, I knew she expected me to follow her. I did. I followed her up the rise of the hill, and there at the hill top, I didn't see it at first. Then I did, straining my eyes in the night. It was the skeleton of a house somebody was building. It was in a good spot looking over the meadow, about a short quarter of a mile from where we were standing. It was in a stretch of land where a person could have a fine front yard all hemmed in with a white picket fence.
“Now you’ll go, Sam, It’ll break my heart — but go quick! The house is Charlie’s. He’s building it for Lucy.”
Ma just didn’t understand. To her, Charlie and me were still brothers. It couldn’t be any other way to her. There was nothing here for me now — so I should go.
I stood looking at the half-done house, fighting the cold sick thing that came to life in my stomach. He’d put the mark on me for murder. He’d taken my money. He'd taken my girl. Maybe Charlie’d had his eye on Lucy for a long time...
I heard Ma talking, her voice dim and far off, and I looked at her to make sure she was still standing there beside me.
“She’s rotten to the core, Sam. But Charlie’s like you, like every man she's ever met. He won’t hear anything against her. He’s blind and deaf and dumb. He's killing himself to get the house done. And that’s only the beginning. She’ll use him. She'll work him like a slave. She’ll change him if she can, the way she changed you. But Charlie won’t change. His heart will break, yes, but he won’t change — and some day when she’s got all she can out of him, he’ll come to his house and she won’t be there. She'll never be there again...”
I turned around and hurried off down the hill. I guess Ma was watching me. I guess she thought I was getting out of there for good. I wasn’t thinking. I was feeling like somebody had poured a dose of red poison down my throat. I cradled the carbine like a baby in my arm. I never had a gun feel so hungry in my hands before...
It was just after eight o’clock when I got to the Coggins place. Lamplight was flickering behind a couple or three windows in the old house. I saw the tired, stringy figure of Lucy’s ma pass a window, heard a couple of kids yelling their heads off, and the old man cussing in streaks now and then. I didn’t want any of them to see me, except Lucy, and I wondered how I was going to let her know I was out there. I waited for maybe half an hour, heard the old man bawl that the water was out, and watched the dark place where the back door opened on the hard, bare yard. There was a commotion in there; then Lucy came out, swinging a wooden bucket back and forth like she’d like to throw it away.
I could see her pretty well in the moonlight. My throat got thick and tight. She had the kind of a figure that wears a cotton print dress like an extra layer of skin. Her hair looked like honey in the moonlight, waving down to her shoulders.
I moved around the edge of the yard toward the spring house. She never knew I was there until I stepped out of the shadows and touched her.
“Sam!”
I popped my hand over her mouth before the sound got too loud. I let the carbine drop, grabbed her arm, and pulled her over in the shadows of a thicket.
For just a second she struggled. Then she didn’t, and I looked at her eyes there in the shadows and forgot everything except that she was alive and I was alive and we were standing here together.
Then I thought about Charlie. Seemed like Charlie was always around, one way or another, to spoil everything. “No noise,” I said, and took my hand from her mouth. “Seems like you didn’t waste any time when I got gone, Lucy.”
“Oh, Sam...”
“You’d better just talk. It’s a pretty nice house he’s building, ain’t it?”
“Sam, you don’t understand! Kiss me, Sam. It’s been so long...”
“The house,” I said.
She started crying, and I thought of oak leaves when the wind is strong. She’s lost her wooden bucket out there in the yard somewhere, and crying like that, she seemed so helpless and hurt it was like having a knife in my chest.
“It was Charlie, Sam. And the time you was gone — more than six whole months. I was going to wait. Sam, honest! When they told me you'd tried to rob old Ezra Honacker’s lumber mill payroll and he’d almost caught you and you’d had to kill him — when they told me that, Sam, I hoped you’d take me with you. I didn't sleep much for three weeks, watching the yard after dark for some sign of you. Then I guessed I’d never see you again, that you didn’t think enough of me to take me with you. It hurt, Sam. It made me want to hate you. But I couldn’t do that. I could just go on remembering that I’d been slighted and trying to build up hate where there wasn’t any.”
“And Charlie?”
“He said you was never coming back, Sam. He said there was another woman you’d talked about. He told me all kinds of lies, Sam, said you’d just played me for a fool. He — wanted me, Sam.”
“Keep talking, Lucy.”
“He... he started seeing me. I hated him for what he’d done to you, Sam. I wanted to hurt him. Then I thought if I could manage to get him to say he was lying about that evidence against you, you’d be safe. I’d get him to say he’d fixed up that evidence himself to get you on the run, because he wanted me. Then I’d hunt you, Sam. and get you back.”
“You’d never get Charlie to say a thing like that.”
“But I thought I could, Sam! I thought I could get him to do anything!”
“Even build a house?”
“I wouldn’t have married him, Sam! There’s never been anybody but you and never will be! I was doing it for you, Sam!”
I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe her so bad clammy sweat broke out all over my face. It was true. Everything she had said was true. But — I kept hearing Ma’s voice when we had stood on the hill top.
Lucy was so close to me I could feel her breathing against my face. She was looking right in my eyes, and her teeth started chattering. “Sam!” she said, “Sam...”
“Lucy, you’d better be telling me the truth.”
She put her arms around my neck and sort of wilted against me, like she was weak all of sudden. She had the shakes bad. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Sam!”
“Then we’ll get out of here tonight.”
“But money, Sam...”
“I can get money. I can get more money than you ever heard of.”
The shakes stopped then. But she didn’t take her arms from around my neck. She looked up at me. “I know you can. Sam. I can feel your heart beating.”
“You never mind about my heart right now. You just think what you’ve got to do. Get the water back in the house or they’re going to start wondering. Then tell them you’re sick and go to your room. Get what stuff you got to have together. Not much, we’ll have to travel light. Slip out and meet me at the willow tree beside the creek on Pa’s place. You know the spot. I’ll try to make it by nine-thirty. But you wait until I get there. I’ll be depending on you, Lucy. I love you — but if you cross me, I’ll give you the same thing I gave Honacker.”