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Chapter 16

1940

Lucy was reading. It still wasn't easy, and it sure wasn't fun, but it was something she had to do if she was ever going to get out of school. And she had to do that. As much as she loved her mama, she had to get out of this house.

That Saturday morning in early November had started out cool and wet, but about an hour ago the clouds had finally moved on to the east and the weather had pulled one of its autumn switch acts. Now it was warmer outside than it was in the house. That's why she had the windows open in the dining room where she had her books piled around her at the end of the long dark table.

And that was probably why Papa had the doors to his study open onto the porch, just an angle away from where she sat, trying to concentrate on her homework so that she could leave when Walter came for her. Didn't they know that she could hear every word they said? Didn't they know Mama was in the kitchen? Didn't they care?

"It's a chance, Ralph," Aunt Marian said. Lucy had twisted around to look when she first heard their voices and knew that Marian stood in the doorway. "Maybe our last chance. My God, how can you stand being dependent on her family for every dime?"

"Our last chance, Marian?"

"Yes."

"And all I have to do is take the risk?"

"There is no risk. Can't you see that by now?"

"What I can see is that Jackson is dead, his son is dead. Billy Ray and that other digger are both dead. Every buyer I sent any part of it is dead—No. Adkins isn't dead. He's just a blithering idiot. And every other buyer has already heard about the damned curse on the stuff, a curse that attacks anyone who touches any part of that marvelous treasure of mine."

"Except us."

"What?"

"Except us. It hasn't harmed us."

"But we haven't—"

"Haven't what? We moved it into the house. I helped you pack the pieces you sold. We moved it into the attic."

"Yeah. And it moved itself right back."

"But we hadn't completely finished moving it when we stopped for the night. And that isn't the point, anyway. It's been almost five years. Don't you think if it was going to harm us, it would have done so by now?"

"Is that why you won't sleep in your bedroom any more, why you wanted it out of there, why you've locked the door on it and everything else you couldn't move into your sitting room?"

"Where I sleep isn't the issue either, Ralph. Or maybe it is."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing. Just that I'm tired of living in poverty. I'm tired of being a hanger-on to a group of people I wouldn't acknowledge on the street and having those same people look down on me. You promised me more when I came here. You owe me more."

Lucy heard Papa's desk drawer slam. She closed her eyes, wishing she could close out what she was hearing, but she couldn't, because then she heard his voice, louder, as though he had moved to stand beside Aunt Marian. "And all I have to do is what, Marian?"

"I think you must take it. That seems to be the clue. We can touch it, probably because we have all of it; others can't. So all you have to do is take enough of that—treasure—to Henrik Johnson to convince him we have the real thing, to convince him he needs to buy it—all of it—and then it will be his problem and we can get out of here."

"Lucy."

Her mama's soft voice. Oh, no. She hadn't heard, had she?

Lucy opened her eyes. Walter and her mama stood at the door to the pantry. Mama beckoned to her with that same sad look on her face she had seen too many times. Lucy gratefully left her books and the sounds of her papa and Aunt Marian plotting to get rid of that poor, dead man upstairs, plotting to get rid of her mama and her. Plotting. Always plotting.

Walter was quiet when they went back into the kitchen, but he had a hard time hiding what he felt, and he was so mad now his freckles were standing out like paint against his ruddy complexion, and his blue eyes fairly sparked fire.

Mama had draped her apron over the edge of the sink. Now she folded it and placed it in the basket she kept in the kitchen for laundry. "I believe I will visit my father this afternoon," she said in her soft, slightly accented voice. "I will ask him to return me to this house at nine this evening. That would be a good time for you to return also, Lucy."

Lucy felt her mouth hanging open. She'd had to beg her mama for permission to go to the matinee at the picture show with Walter this afternoon, and now Mama was telling her to stay out until bedtime? Walter tugged on her arm until she got her feet to moving, then opened the door for her and stood there, waiting for her to grab her jacket from its peg near the door and go on outside.

"Yes, ma'am, we'll be back by then," he promised, in a hurry, so that her mama wouldn't have time to tell them she'd changed her mind. But on the porch he stopped, and turned, and looked back into the kitchen, and Lucy looked, too. Her mama was just standing there in the middle of the kitchen, looking lost.

"You take care now, Mrs. Hansom," Walter said. And then, being Walter and, Lucy suspected, unable to just go off and leave someone hurting the way her mama must be, he took a step into the house. "Should we stay here with you until your father comes for you? Can we do anything for you?"

Her mama looked at them, still sad, still quiet. "No, son," she said. "Yes. Yes, there is. You take good care of my little girl for me."

"Yes, ma'am," he said solemnly. "I will do that."

And then her mama smiled. "I know that, Walter Briggs. I've known that for a long, long time."

They walked down the driveway. Even though she wanted to, even though she needed the physical connection with Walter, Lucy wasn't quite brave enough to reach for his hand. Not when Papa might look out the window and see them. Not when he might yell at her and make her come back to the house. Not when he might tell Walter to go away and never come back.

At the street, Walter turned to the left, out of sight of the house, and stopped at a dusty green truck. "Do you really want to go see that big monkey?"

Lucy dredged up a smile. All anyone had been talking about at school for the last week was that the movie King Kong was finally coming to the Criterion in Allegro, Oklahoma.

"A monster movie might be the only thing that could make me laugh today," she told him, "but I'm not sure Harvey Skinner would appreciate my laughing just when he's all set to protect Mary Sue Johnson from whatever might lunge off that screen after her."

Walter chuckled, and it sounded only a little forced. "I know what you mean. This will probably be the only time in his life Harvey can look like a hero without really risking anything. So," he said, patting the front fender of the truck, "would you mind going for a drive with me?"

"A drive?" Lucy looked at the truck. "You mean it? In this? Whose is it? Oh, Walter, you didn't buy a truck?"

"Not too likely," he said. "It's Abe McPherson's. I'm doing some work for him, helping him build a barn. He asked me if I'd pick up a load of posts at the sawmill and deliver them out there. I should have gone before I picked you up. I would have, if I hadn't hoped I could talk your mama into letting you go with me. We can still be back in time to go to the movie if you really want to."

 

Young Mr. Johnson helped Walter at the mill. He was called young Mr. Johnson because he was a Junior and it got real confusing when everyone out there was yelling for "Will." And he was young, only a few years older than Walter, but old enough to be courting Miss Edmonds, the new high school teacher who had come to Allegro last year. He was a nice man, but then Lucy had known that forever, because she had cousins who lived on the next road over and she had visited in the Johnson house almost as much as she had visited in her cousins' houses.

But he was also a busy man that Saturday, and Lucy couldn't help but be glad, because that meant he didn't have a lot of time to tease her and Walter and ask how things were at home.

And Walter was busy. Thinking about something real hard. Something that he didn't even try to share until he had offloaded the last post, not letting her help even the least bit. She didn't mind, not really. She knew he'd get around to sharing whatever was bothering him with her soon. He always had. Just as she had always shared with him.

And besides, the homesite where Abe McPherson was building was beautiful, peaceful, sunshiny warm but alive with leaf color, set as it was on the top of a ridge, with mountains above and below and all around.

"Lucy," Walter said, finishing his job and dusting his hands on his trousers. "I've been thinking."

She couldn't help smiling. That was exactly the tone of voice he had used when he'd announced they ought to be blood brothers, exactly the tone he used for any important pronouncement he made.

"I could tell that, Walter," she said lightly.

He frowned at her, deep in concentration. "I figure you and I ought to go ahead and get married now."

Lucy leaned back against the tailgate. Married now? Whatever happened to Lucy, will you marry me? Had she missed something? Of course she would. Marry him, that was. She'd known that since the day she'd shown him the kitten in the loft and he'd gone back into the barn to see what Papa and Aunt Marian had done with the dead man. But he hadn't asked. He hadn't ever asked.

"Now?" she squeaked.

He nodded, sure of her. Sure of himself. "I love you. You love me. And I have to get you out of that house. I—I can get enough work to take care of us."

"And what about your schooling?"

"I—I'll get by. Lots of folks don't finish school."

"And the army?"

"I'll—I can still go later.

"And your plans to learn a trade?"

"I'm a carpenter, Lucy. I've worked as one for years."

"And you're a darned good one, Walter, but every man in this county who can hold a hammer calls himself a carpenter. That doesn't leave a whole lot of work, even for someone as good as you."

"You love me," he said.

Yes. She did. "Only this morning, I was thinking how much I want to get out of that house. But not if it means giving up your future. And not if it means going off and leaving my mama alone there."

"Maybe if you left, she could, too," Walter said.

Mama? Leave her papa? Lucy shook her head. That would never happen. And if it did? "And all of us could just go off and leave him alone with Papa and Aunt Marian, with them selling off pieces of him and getting even more people killed?"

"Damn it, Lucy, they're going to sell him anyway, and we still can't do one damned thing about it. But I can get you out of there. Hell, I can even get your mama out of there. If I tell her how much you want to go."

She couldn't let him do that. Not for his sake. Not for the sake of the dead man in Marian's bedroom. Not for her mama's sake and not for her mama's pride. Lucy lifted her fingers to his mouth to silence him. He shook with frustration and that other, darker emotion that had come barging into their times together only after they had explored their friendship as children, that other, darker emotion that sang and sizzled through her blood, too, when they had their too-few precious moments alone.

He clasped her about the waist and lifted her to sit on the tailgate of the pickup, then stepped close, holding her tight. "Say yes, Lucy."

She shook her head. "Not to this, Walter. Not until we're out of school, that's only months. Not until after you've enlisted, and been accepted, and done your training."

"And if we go to war like it looks like we might have to?"

"Then I'll marry you before you leave. I promise you that."

"Say yes, Lucy," he said again, his voice harsh in the way it sometimes was when he felt things too strongly, when he wanted her too much.

"No," she said. "Not till later."

"Say yes, Lucy," he said, his voice hot against her throat.

She felt tears welling in her eyes. She knew he didn't think he'd be sacrificing anything by marrying her now, but she knew he would. And she knew she could never let him make that sacrifice.

"Only to loving you," she told him. "You know I do. You know I will."

"Say yes, Lucy," he groaned.

And there, beneath a clear, crisp November sky, with the remnants of autumn's bright leaves rustling in the trees around them, with the birds and the squirrels and the rabbits forgetting they were there and scurrying and scratching through those leaves that had already fallen, Lucy said yes to Walter, yes to everything except the legal bond that would ruin his plans, his future, his life.

 

They were on their way back to town, hurrying a little to get Lucy home by nine o'clock, when a sheriff's car, lights flashing, drew up alongside them and turned its spotlight on them. Lucy saw Walter glance at the speedometer. He hadn't been hurrying that much; he'd have been crazy to on this road. He frowned, but he pulled onto the shoulder and stopped.

The deputy stepped up to Walter's side of the truck and looked in. "Good," he said. Then, "Briggs." That was meant to be a greeting, Lucy knew, a kind of code between men that said all the things that women had to verbalize. But when he spoke again, she wished he'd had a code so he hadn't said what he did to her.

She'd seen him around, on duty and off, but she didn't know him. Obviously, though, he knew her.

"Lucy, honey," he told her, "you need to get on out to your grandpa's. Your mama needs you out there."

"What's the matter?" Walter asked.

The deputy motioned with his head, jerking it to one side. More code, Lucy recognized, telling Walter to get out of the truck, to step away so she couldn't hear what was said. But she had to hear it. She knew she did. "What's the matter, Deputy?" she asked.

He looked to Walter, but Walter nodded.

"It's your daddy, ma'am. There's been an accident."

Now Walter did step out of the truck. He patted Lucy's hand and walked back by the rear tire, and the deputy followed him.

"What happened?" Walter asked.

The deputy cleared his throat. "That switchback north of town? His Buick didn't make it. We found him at the bottom."

"How bad?" Walter asked. But Lucy already knew the answer. Aunt Marian had wanted him to take part of the artifacts to the dealer, and Papa had been fool enough, or arrogant enough, or greedy enough to try. She didn't have to listen, but she did.

"I think he might have survived the crash," the deputy said. "He was outside the car. But some animal, bear maybe—something big—found him before a motorist saw the smoke from the burning car. I'm afraid he's dead. Real dead."

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