Alvin looked down at Vilate. “What was that all about?” he asked,
Vilate dropped her teeth at him, then smiled. “How should I know, Alvin? But I reckon this is a dangerous time to be talking about what I come to talk about.” She picked up her skirts and rushed from the jail.
Alvin had no idea what her visit had been about, but he knew this much: Whatever her new hexes did, they were involved with the deputy and what he saw when he came in. And since there was a come-hither and a beseeching, Vilate might well have been the reason the deputy came into the room in the first place, and the reason he panicked so fast and rushed out without investigating any further.
She dropped the upper plate of her teeth to show contempt for me, thought Alvin. Just like she did to Horace, her enemy. Somehow I've become her enemy.
He looked at the pie sitting on the cot. He picked it up and slid it back under the door.
Five minutes later, the deputy came back with the sheriff and the county attorney. “What the hell was this all about!” Sheriff Doggly demanded. “There he is, just like always! Billy Hunter, you been drinking?”
“I swear there wasn't a soul here,” said the deputy. “I saw Vilate Franker go in with a pie–”
“Sheriff, what's he talking about?” said Alvin. “I saw him come in here not five minutes ago and start yelling and running down the hall. It scared poor Vilate so she took on out of here like she had a bear after her.”
“He was not here, I'd swear to that before God and all the angels!” said Billy Hunter.
“I was right here by the door,” said Alvin.
“Maybe he was bending over to get the pie and you didn't see him,” said the sheriff.
“No sir,” said Alvin, unwilling to lie. “I was standing right up. There's the pie– you can have it if you want, I told Miz Vilate that I didn't finish the last one.”
“I don't want none of your pie,” said Billy. “Whatever you did, you made me look like a plain fool.”
“It don't take no help from Alvin to make you look that way,” said Slieriff Doggly. Marty Laws, the county attorney, hooted at the joke. Marty had a way of laughing at just the right time to make everything worse.
Billy glared at Alvin.
“Now, Alvin, we got to put you on your parole,” said Marty. “You can't just go taking jaunts out of the jail whenever you feel like it.”
“So you do believe me,” said the deputy.
Marty Laws rolled his eyes.
“I don't believe nobody,” said Sheriff Doggly. “And Alvin ain't taking no jaunts, are you, Alvin?”
“No sir,” said Alvin. “I have not stirred from this cell.”
None of them bothered to pretend that Alvin couldn't have escaped whenever he wanted.
“You calling me a liar?” asked Billy.
“I'm calling you mistaken,” said Alvin. “I'm thinking maybe somebody fooled you into thinking what you thought and seeing what you saw.”
“Somebody's fooling somebody,” said Billy Hunter.
They left. Alvin sat on the cot and watched as an ant canvassed the floor of the jail, looking for something to eat. There's a pie right there, just a little that way… and sure enough, the ant turned, heeding Alvin's advice though of course the words themselves were just too hard a thing to fit into an ant's tiny mind. No, the ant just got the message of food and a direction, and in a minute or two it was up the pie dish and walking around on the crust. Then it headed out to find its friends and bring them for lunch. Might as well somebody get some good out of that pie.
Vilate's hexes were for concealment, all right, and they were aimed at the door. She had got him to stand close so that he'd be included in her strong overlook-me, so Billy Hunter had looked and couldn't see that anybody was there.
But why? What possible good could she accomplish from such a bit of tomfoolery as that?
Underneath all his puzzlement, though, Alvin was mad. Not so much at Vilate as he was mad at himself for being such a plain fool. Getting all moony-eyed about a woman with false teeth and vanity hexes, for pete's sake! Liking her even when he knew she was a plain gossip and suspected that half the tales she told him weren't true.
And the worst thing was, when he saw Peggy again– if he saw Peggy again– she'd know just how stupid he was, failing for a woman that he knew was all tricks and lies.
Well, Peggy, when I fell in love with you you were all tricks and lies, too, you know. Remember that when you're thinking I'm the biggest fool as ever lived.
The door opened and Billy Hunter came back in, stalked over to the cell door, and picked up the pie. “No sense this going to waste even if you are a liar,” said Billy.
“As I said, Billy, you're welcome to it. Though I sort of half-promised it to an ant a minute ago.”
Billy glared at him, no doubt thinking that Alvin was making fun of him instead of telling the plain truth. Well, Alvin was, kind of. Making fun out of the situation, anyway. He'd have to talk this over with Arthur Stuart when the boy came back, see if he had any idea what Vilate might have meant by this charade.
The ant came back, leading a line of her sisters. All they found was a couple of crumbs of crust. But those were something, weren't they? Alvin watched as they struggled to maneuver the big chunks of pastry. To help them out, he sent his doodlebug to break the pieces into smaller loads. The ants made short work of them then, carrying out the crumbs in a line. A feast in the anthill tonight, no doubt.
His stomach growled. Truth to tell, he could have used that pie, and might not have left much behind, neither. But he wasn't eating nothing that came from Vilate Franker, never again. That woman wasn't to be trusted.
Dropped her teeth at me, he thought. Hates me. Why?
There was no way around it. Even with the best possible luck in choosing a jury, even with this new English fellow as Alvin's lawyer, Little Peggy saw no better than a three-in-four chance of him being acquitted, and that wasn't good enough odds. She would have to go to him. She would have to be available to testify. Even with all the newcomers in Hatrack, one thing was certain: If Peggy the torch said a thing was true, she would be believed. The people of Hatrack knew that she saw the truth, and they also knew– sometimes to their discomfiture– that she never said what wasn't true, though they were grateful enough that she didn't tell every truth she knew.
Only Peggy herself could count how many terrible or shameful or mournful secrets she had left unmentioned. But that was neither here nor there. She was used to carrying other people's secrets around inside her, used to it from the earliest time of her life, when she had to face her father's dark secret of adultery.
Since then she had learned not to judge. She had even come to love Mistress Modesty, the woman with whom her father, old Horace Guester, had been unfaithful. Mistress Modesty was like another mother to her, giving her, not the life of the body, but the life of the mind, the life of mannered society, the life of grace and beauty that Peggy valued perhaps too highly.
Perhaps too highly, because there wasn't going to be too much of grace and beauty in Alvin's future, and like it or not, Peggy was tied to that future.
What a lie I tell myself, she thought. “Like it or not” indeed. If I chose to, I could walk away from Alvin and not care whether he stayed in jail or got himself drowned in the Hio or whatnot. I'm tied to Alvin Smith because I love him, and I love what he can be, and I want to be part of all that he will do. Even the hard parts. Even the ungraceful, unmannered, stupid parts of it.
So she headed for Hatrack River, one stage at a time.
On a certain day she passed through the town of Wheelwright in northern Appalachee. It was on the Hio, not far upriver from where the Hatrack flowed into it. Close enough to home that she might have hired a wagon and taken the last ferry, trusting that the moonlight and her ability as a torch would get her home safely. Might have, except that she stopped for dinner at a restaurant she had visited before, where the food was fresh, the flavors good, and the company reputable– a welcome change in all three categories, after long days on the road.