“Come on, now,” Daddy says. “Put the gun down. Too many years have passed to be talking like this.”
“Too many for you maybe,” Ellis says. “Not too many for me.”
“You know Joseph Carl confessed,” Daddy says. “Told us where Dale would be found. How do you figure Abraham had any part in that?”
“Never heard Joseph Carl say any such thing,” Ellis says. With his thumb, he slides the safety off. He readies his finger on the trigger. “You hear him say it, Abe?”
Ellis squints through one eye to get a better look down the barrel of his gun. Daddy’s boots press up next to Annie. The black toes are covered with dust where he’s kicked up the fine, dry dirt, and one lace hangs loose.
“Dale didn’t have no cards when I seen him.” It’s Abraham’s voice. He spits out the first few words, but as he continues to talk, he slows and speaks not so loudly, because Ellis Baine has lowered his gun. “Best I can remember, he didn’t have no cards.”
“You seen the boy that day?” Ellis asks.
“He was with Juna and me. But it was early in the day. Had to be before Joseph Carl come along because the boy was with us. Juna, she was fine.” Abraham holds his hands out to the side. “I swear, Ellis. Juna and I, we had our place. We went there that day. Told the boy to wait for us.” And then, because Juna Crowley is Annie’s mama and Abraham thinks Annie will care most, he looks to her. “I loved her. Loved your Aunt Juna. Thought she’d be my wife one day. She didn’t want nobody knowing what we was up to. Most especially her daddy. She said he’d put an end to it right quick. We told the boy to wait. It was shady and nice there by the river. Told the boy to wait and mind his business. Don’t remember no deck of playing cards.”
Abraham has always talked about loving Aunt Juna and that his was the face she saw down in the well. Annie shifts on her knees, braces her hands on the ground. She wants to stand so she and Daddy can go home. She never knew Dale Crowley or Joseph Carl or any of these people, but now she knows Abraham is her real father. She wants Daddy to take her home and she’ll pour iced tea and Mama will start supper soon, probably something that won’t need to go in the oven because it’ll heat up the house and it’s so darn hot outside as it is. She wants to stand, tries to stand, but Daddy is pinning her against the rocks. The jagged edges bite into her right shoulder and knee. She looks up to say something, and she sees it. The gun is pointed at her now. Ellis Baine is staring down, and the slender tip is pointed at Annie.
They must all know. Daddy, Mama, and Grandma too. Once Annie started to sprout, they must have realized Abraham was her father. She should have seen it long before now. And it’s not just the height. Annie has Abraham’s square face too. Caroline has a delicate chin like Mama, and both have a face shaped much like the hearts Caroline is all the time drawing on her notebooks. More and more, Mama will cup Annie’s face on a Sunday morning when she’s dressed for church or when she’s fresh out of the tub and wrapped up in a towel, her hair still damp. She’ll rest a hand on Annie’s face and say striking, just striking. They must all know, Abraham included, that Abraham is Annie’s daddy.
“That ain’t all,” Ellis says again, still looking at Annie, directly into her black eyes. “You go on and tell.”
“I swear to God, Ellis,” Abraham says, dropping his head and shaking it side to side. “I don’t know nothing else. Juna sent me on my way soon as we was done. She didn’t like no one seeing us coming and going together. She and the boy, they was going back to work. Next thing I know, Abigail come to tell me Dale was gone and Juna’d been hurt. I swear to God, that’s all I know.”
“Christ in heaven, Ellis.” It’s Daddy. “Turn that thing away.”
Annie hugs her knees, the rocks still cutting into her shoulder and the back of her head.
Next, it’s Abraham. “Ellis, please. She ain’t got nothing to do with this.”
“Then you better tell right about now.” Ellis squeezes that one eye closed again. The one that is open does not move. It’s set on Annie. No matter which way Daddy moves or how closely he stands over Annie, that eye does not move.
It’s hard seeing through the tears. They pool in Annie’s eyes, spill onto her cheeks. They turn Ellis Baine into little more than a smear, and Abraham the same. Her nose runs, and her hair sticks to her neck and the sides of her face. She dips her head and swipes her eyes with the back of one hand. Off to the right, Abraham is sliding one foot toward Ellis and holding both hands out to the side as if to prove he doesn’t have any gun of his own.
“What else do you want to know, Ellis?” Abraham says. “Anything. I’ll tell you anything.”
Ellis looks down on Annie again, the gun still pointed at her. “You let them bury him like he was a crazy man. Let them bury him where he’d never find a moment’s rest.”
Annie shakes her head, though she knows Ellis isn’t talking to her.
“That’s not so,” Daddy says, his arms stretched out to the side to better protect Annie. “That ain’t what happened, Ellis. Joseph Carl ain’t buried there.”
Ellis pulls away from the gun, but that single eye and the barrel are still aimed at Annie.
“He’s buried out back of your house,” Daddy says, shuffling to the right and nearly tripping over Annie. “We did it. A handful of us. Best I remember, we tied together a few logs and that’s what’s buried there in town. Ain’t Joseph Carl. We waited a time and then buried him out back. Your mama, she fashioned a marker of sorts, I think. We tried to do right by the boy,” Daddy says. “Didn’t want to believe he done those things. Don’t really guess I ever did much believe it. Have always kept my own girls close, figuring there was someone still out there.”
Daddy’s always said if it looks like a Baine, choose a different path. Maybe he’s always thought another one of the Baines left Uncle Dale for dead.
Ellis Baine is still staring at Annie through that one eye, and the gun is still lifted in his hands, but the barrel has started to dip toward the ground. To the right, Abraham has slid a few steps closer to Ellis. As Daddy starts to talk again, Abraham slips his right hand behind him and up under his jacket.
“You let me know if you can’t find it,” Daddy says, inching ever so slowly to the right. “Guess I figured your mama would have told you about it, else I would have told you long before now.”
Abraham grabs hold of something and slips it from under his jacket. It’s silver and catches the sunlight. Still holding it in his hand, whatever it is, Abraham lets it hang down alongside his leg and Annie can no longer see it. But she knows enough. Even though Daddy has never been much for guns and rifles, Annie knows enough.
“I’ve a pretty good memory,” Daddy is saying. “Could help you track it down. It’s just out back of your house.”
“You still ain’t explained how you came to have those cards, Abe,” Ellis says, lifting the gun again and settling it on Annie. “Thinking there must be a reason you won’t tell.”
“Miss Watson,” Annie says. It’s almost a whisper, so maybe no one hears.
The tip of the shotgun doesn’t move, but Ellis stops squinting through that one eye and looks at Annie with both. It’s barely a movement, but it’s enough. Ellis Baine knows. Annie is remembering Abraham in the kitchen. He had tossed the cards into the air, making them spin end over end, and hollered up to Miss Watson that they’d found the cards they’d been looking for.
“They’re Miss Watson’s cards,” Annie says again.
It’s louder than most anything Annie has ever heard. Louder than the backfire from the old truck Daddy once drove. Louder than the shed door when the wind catches it and slams it shut. Before the echo of it has faded, Daddy is on top of her, his body forcing her flat on the ground. The rock fence is beside her, though she can no longer feel its sharp edges. One cheek is pressed into the dirt, the other buried beneath Daddy’s chest. His heart beats against her face. His chest lifts and lowers with each breath he takes, and she can’t inhale under the weight of him.