Eudora didn’t like this Woodruff man very much.
It had been he who told the class on the day that Tyson’s body was found. Just came in without knocking, barked out the news without a sliver of discretion, and took his girl off by the arm. And in that drawl so thick it sounded like he had been dropped on his head as an infant.
It would be hard to get Sarah back from such a man.
She had her lips pursed and a worry line on her brow when I knocked.
Mr. Woodruff looked at us as if he were a bear who couldn’t understand what a couple of deer were doing knocking at the entrance to his cave. The rain was coming hard, so he invited us off the dripping porch and inside. The porch with its puddles. The porch with its mosquitoes and mosquito hawks and moths and flying ants still crucified on the rusting screen, and gouges in the screen where part of it hung and made a lip. Perhaps the bugs had been left to warn others.
“How are you doing?” I said, offering him my hand, but quickly retiring it unshaken.
“I’ve come to talk to you about Sarah,” Dora offered.
He grunted.
When he finally saw that we weren’t going away, he let us into the house and we all sat in homemade chairs in the close space of the front room. The air was thick and hot and damp. Sarah looked up from the chicken she was plucking in the kitchen and peeked through the doorway, but she did not risk a hello. I guessed she never knew exactly when to speak in this house, but with her daddy it was good to err in favor of silence.
“Well, talk then,” he told Dora.
That drawl. He could have made a lullaby sound hostile.
“It’s just that Sarah is very badly missed in school. She has quite a lot of talent and she likes to learn. She…”
“She has a talent for gettin in trouble is what she has. More time she spends away from home, more trouble she gets in.”
Sarah kept plucking.
A horse whinnied somewhere out back.
Mrs. Woodruff appeared from another room and wordlessly poured a glass of tea, which she then brought to Dora. Just to Dora. No ice or sugar. Weak tea from the look of it; they were using their tea bags twice or more. I thought she might not have time to drink much before things with the father soured, but then I looked through the doorway to the kitchen and saw that Sarah was looking at Dora, grateful for any ally.
Yes, get me back in school, tell me about planets and clouds, and especially airplanes that fly all the way across the sea to France. I’ ll name the capitals of all the states right now if you will just take me by the hand out of this place.
“Mr. Woodruff, I assure you that she will get into no trouble while she’s under my watch. She’s such a good student. If you just let her finish…”
“What for? Ain’t no work.”
“Not now, but hard times come and go…”
“Ain’t been no hard times like these. These is the end times.”
“Maybe. But if not, and work picks up, you’ll be glad to have a daughter who can get herself hired anywhere she wants, and not just in a mill.”
“Please, Daddy,” Sarah said from the kitchen. Quietly. Barely as loud as the rain outside. Oh, God, to be shut up in the house with this man smoldering all day like a fire that might lick out.
He grunted.
“The other students would appreciate it, too. She’s so good at math she helps the others solve problems. Sarah really has a gift. She could be anything she wanted, a doctor, a journalist. She would have a good chance at winning a scholarship if you wanted to send her off to a women’s college…”
“Now, just hold on. I ain’t sendin her to no damn college while the other kids walk aroun bare of foot. They out back in the rain right now stickin their feet in the mud gettin ground itch is how much sense they got. We ain’t for college, and college ain’t for us. Besides which, I don’t know if you got your head out a your books to see, but we got bad news aroun here. Niggers is killin our kids. Comin right up an killin em on they own land. Now, I ain’t no cripple an I ain’t no woman an I ain’t no Yankee”—he looked at me for that—“and I ain’t scared to shoot the head off nobody comin aroun if I don’t know em. Sarah’s watched over here. Don’t seem she’s so watched over at that school with jus you, or gettin there, or comin back.”
“I understand your concern. But I promise you I won’t let anything happen to her. Or anyone get to her. They’d have to go through me first.”
That struck him as funny and he laughed in a gravelly little chuckle. It was the first appealing thing I had seen this man do.
“I know,” Dora said, “there’s not much of me to go through.”
“No, you ain’t much,” he agreed, still chuckling.
Everybody was quiet for a while, letting the rain do the talking, until at last Mr. Woodruff said, “Alright, damnit, you women gonna worry at me like a tick. Go on back, Sarah. But you, you gonna keep her outta trouble, you hear? I got your word?”
“Yes.”
“I do, now. I got your word.”
We stood up to leave, and I saw that I would be the one opening the door.
“Thanks for the hospitality,” I said, tipping my hat, for which Dora elbowed me soundly in the ribs once we were back outside in the warm rain.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE PEOPLE OF Whitbrow wouldn’t have to wait long to find out why Estel’s shovels had been stolen.
I heard the knock coming from the front door downstairs and I knew it was bad news. Bad news knocks hard. I swung my feet over the edge of the bed, still blinking in the sunlight, and checked the clock. Almost nine thirty. “I’m coming!” I yelled, and I jerked on some pants and went down. When I opened the door I saw Saul Gordeau panting and sweating so it was clear the boy had been running.
“Been knockin for a while. You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Sheriff wants all able-body men to go to the schoolhouse, Mr. Nichols.”
“My wife, is she alright? What’s happened?”
“She ain’t hurt or nothin, but you best go to her. She’s there, too. Bring workin clothes. I got to tell Mr. Noble.”
And he ran off.
For just two or three seconds, watching the soles of the boy’s shoes flash as he sprinted to the next house, I was abundantly grateful not to know what it was about.
I FOUND EUDORA sitting under the maple tree outside the schoolhouse. I went straight to her without stopping to talk to any of the others gathered there. No other women were being let as near the scene as she was, but she had already been inside so nobody insisted when she refused to be moved farther off. She just sat there holding a leafy branch like it was the only thing that could protect her.
Crows were cawing loudly all around. One walked around near us, quite fearless, looking like a tiny Burgermeister in black velvet pants. I offered her a hand to help her stand, but she shook her head, trying to smile though her face was puffy and red from crying and her eyes were too wide.
“I can’t move just yet, Frankie, okay? I just need to sit here until I have enough strength in my legs to get up and then I’ll help. I’ll help, I swear, just not yet, okay?”
“Shhh,” I said. “You don’t have to do anything. Shhh.”
I squatted down and held her head against my chest while she reached her shaking hands up to touch my arms. I held her head against me and kissed the top of it for a long moment and then I allowed myself to look up at what was happening.
People had war faces on.
Everything seemed tilted.