He thought about fighting the charges-but for what? He was tired of fighting, so damned tired. It seemed he’d been fighting his whole life, especially the last two years-for Elly, for a living, for respect, for his country, for his own dignity. And just when he’d gained them all, a single questioning stare had undone him. Again. When would he learn? When would he stop thinking he could ever matter to anyone the way some people mattered to him? Fool. Ass. Stupid bastard! He absorbed the word, with all its significance, rubbed it in like salt in a wound, willfully multiplying his hurt for some obscure reason he did not understand. Because he was unlovable after all, because his entire life had proved him so and it seemed the unlovable ones like himself were put on this world to accumulate all the hurts that the lucky, the loved, magically missed. She couldn’t love him or she’d have jumped to his defense as thoughtlessly as Thomas had. Why? Why? What did he lack? What more must he prove? Bastard, Parker! When you gonna grow up and realize that you’re alone in this world? Nobody fought for you when you were born, nobody’ll fight for you now, so give up. Lay here in the stink of other men’s piss and realize you’re a loser. Forever.
In a clearing before a house on Rock Creek Road Eleanor Parker watched the law haul her husband off to jail and knew a terror greater than the fear of her own death, a desperation sharper than physical pain, and self-reproach more overpowering than the rantings of her own fire-and-brimstone grandfather.
She knew before the car disappeared into the trees that she had made one of the gravest mistakes in her life. It had lasted only a matter of seconds, but that’s all it had taken to turn Will icy. She had seen and felt his withdrawal like a cold slap in the face. And it was entirely her fault. She could well imagine what he was suffering as he rode to town with his hands shackled: desolation and despair, all because of her.
Well, blast it, she was no saint nor seraphim! So she’d reacted in shock. Who in tarnation wouldn’t? Will Parker could no more kill Lula Peak than he could Lizzy P., and Elly knew it.
The fire-and-brimstone blood of Albert See suddenly leaped in her veins where it had been slogging since her birth, waiting a chance to flow hot for a cause. And what a cause-the love of her man. She’d spent too long finding it, had been too happy enjoying it, had changed too beneficially under its influence to lose it, and him, now.
So she straightened her spine, cursed roundly and turned her terror into energy, her despair into determination and her self-reproach into a promise.
I’ll get you out of there, Will. And by the time I’m done you’ll know that what you saw in my eyes for that piddly instant didn’t mean nothing. It was human. I am human. So I made a mistake. Now watch me unmake it!
"Thomas, get your jacket!" Elly shouted, slamming into the house with yard-long strides. "And three extra diapers for Lizzy P. And run down in the cellar and fetch up six jars of honey-no, eight, just in case! We’re goin’ to town!"
She grabbed ration coupons, a peach crate for the honey, a tin of oatmeal cookies, a jar of leftover soup, Lizzy (wet pants and all), a skeleton key, and a pillow to help her see over the steering wheel. Within five minutes that wheel was shuddering in her hands, which were white-knuckled with fright. But fright wouldn’t stop Elly now.
She had driven only a few times before, and those around the yard and down the orchard lane. She nearly broke three necks shifting for the first time, felt certain she’d kill herself and her two young ones before she reached the end of the driveway. But she reached it just fine and made a wide right turn, missed the far ditch and corrected her course without mishap. Sweat oozed from her pores, but she gripped the wheel harder and drove! She did it for Will, and for herself, and for the kids who loved Will better than popcorn or movie shows or Hopalong Cassidy. She did it because Lula Peak was a lying, laying, no-good whore, and a woman like that shouldn’t have the power to drive a wedge between a husband and wife who’d spent damn near two years showing each other what they meant to one another. She did it because someplace in Whitney was a scum-suckin’ skunk who’d done Lula in and wasn’t going to get by with pinning the blame on her man! Nossir! Not if she had to drive this damned car clear to Washington, D.C., to see justice done.
She dropped Thomas, Lizzy P., the cookies and the soup at Lydia’s house with only a terse explanation: "They’ve arrested Will for the murder of Lula Peak and I’m goin’ to hire a lawyer!" She drove at fifty bone-rattling miles an hour the rest of the way into town, past the square and out to the schoolhouse on the south side, where she flattened ten yards of grass before coming to a stop with the left front tire crushing a newly planted rosebush that the second-grade teacher, Miss Natalie Pruitt, had brought from her mother’s garden to beautify the stark schoolground. Elly left word that Donald Wade was to get off the bus at Lydia Marsh’s place, then backtracked to the library and accidentally drove the car up onto the sidewalk, parking. There it stayed, blocking pedestrians, while she ran inside and told the news to Miss Beasley.
"That piss-ant Reece Goodloe come out to the house and arrested Will for killing Lula Peak. Will you help me find a lawyer?"
What followed proved that if one woman in love can move mountains, two can turn tides. Miss Beasley outright plucked the books from the hands of two patrons, ordering, "The library’s closing, you’ll have to leave." Her coat flew out behind her like a flag in high wind as she followed Elly to the door, already advising.
"He should have the best."
"Just tell me who."
"We’d need to get to Calhoun somehow."
"I drove to Whitney, I can drive to Calhoun."
Miss Beasley suffered a moment’s pause when she observed the Model A with its radiator cap twelve inches from the brick wall. The town constable came running down the sidewalk at that moment, shaking his fist over his head. "Who in the sam hell parked that thing up there!"
Miss Beasley poked ten fingers in his chest and pushed him back. "Shut up, Mr. Harrington, and get out of our way or I’ll tell your wife how you ogle the naked aborigines in the back issues of National Geographicevery Thursday afternoon when she thinks you’re downstairs checking the Ten Most Wanted posters. Get in, Eleanor. We’ve wasted enough time." When both women were in the car, bumping back down the curb, Miss Beasley craned around and advised in her usual unruffled, demagogic tone, "Careful for Norris and Nat, Eleanor, they do a great service for this town, you know." Down the curb they went, across the street and up the opposite curb, nearly shearing the pair of octogenarians off their whittling bench before Elly gained control and put the car in first. Miss Beasley’s breasts whupped in the air like a spaniel’s ears as the car jerked forward, sped around a corner at twenty miles an hour and came to a lurching halt beside the White Eagle gas pump on the adjacent side of the square. Four ration coupons later Elly and Miss Beasley were on their way to Calhoun.
"Mr. Parker is innocent, of course," Miss Beasley stated unequivocally.
"Of course. But that woman came to the library chasin’ him, didn’t she? That’s gonna look bad for him."
"Hmph! I got a thing or two to tell your lawyer about that!"
"Which lawyer we gettin’?"