“She’s right, John. I’ll pack my clothes and take the horse come sun-up. Where can I meet you?”
“At the Bates’ place. It’s only a stone’s throw from the Andersons’, so no one will see us together on the road. We’ll meet there and head straight for the mountains.”
Laura hesitated. “What if somebody was to see me on the road before I get there? They’ll know I’m running away.”
“Why, tell them you’re running off with Tom. Nobody would mind about that, and by the time they find out any different, the two of you will be long gone. You mustn’t tell anybody-anybody-who you’re really going with. If you do, you’ll get John hanged for sure.”
John Anderson nodded, liking the plan. Then he turned back to me. “Swear that you won’t tell about us running off. On your life. Swear it.”
And I swore, hand on heart, and eyes awash with tears. I meant it, too. Oaths are nothing to me. Some fool who can’t keep a secret is trying to make sure that somebody else will, that’s all. So I always tell people what they want to hear. But this time I meant it.
An hour or so later I hurried back to the Meltons’ place to tell Ann that Laura Foster was eloping-with Tom Dula.
PAULINE FOSTER
May 24, 1866
For once I didn’t mind the long, muddy walk back from German’s Hill, for I needed every mile of the journey to think out what to do next. It was like trying to piece together squares on a quilt to make a pattern, only sewing is stupid and tedious work, and I had always hated it-but this cutting and piecing together of people’s lives makes my heart quicken with excitement.
I walked back along the trace, following the fading sun, which was just about to sink below the blue mountains in the distance, where I’d come from back in March. Sometimes it was hard to tell where the clouds stopped and the mountains began; they had that same blue hazy look against the sky, as if one was no more solid than the other.
I didn’t meet anybody on the road, and I’d scarcely have taken note of it if I had, for my mind was running faster than a snow-melt creek, thinking on what I would say and who I needed to talk to before morning.
I could have ended Laura’s fine plans for an elopement then and there, I think, if I’d told her secrets in the right ears. If I’d warned her daddy that he was about to lose both his mare and his daughter, I reckon he’d have put a stop to it. Or if I’d told some of the neighbors-or that high and mighty Colonel Isbell, who thinks he is the lord and master of everybody in the valley-that Laura Foster was fixing to run away with a colored man, they’d have stepped in. And if I had just told that nut brown boy of hers that Laura was afflicted with the pox-I doubt if even her white skin would have made her a prize to him then. Being hanged for running off with her or catching the deadly pox from her-it was all the same in the end. Death. And more than she was worth.
But I had no particular score to settle with Laura Foster, except for the fact that somebody loved her. She was making foolish choices, and she would bring about her own ruin without any help from me. I reckoned that I had more wrongs to repay in other quarters, and I meant to see those debts of cruelty paid in kind, hurt for hurt. It would take a careful piecing together, though, this blood quilt in my head. One dropped stitch and all would come undone.
When I neared the Melton place that evening, it was already gathering dark and the wind had picked up some, making a tedious journey of the last mile, but I would have walked barefoot in the snow to deliver the news I brought back with me.
I was almost to the house when out of the dark, a white hand grabbed my arm and jerked it hard. “What are you doing back so late? James will be wanting his supper!”
I could just make out Ann’s pale face in the moonlight, but I had known it was her already. I could smell the whiskey on her breath, as I squirmed to get free of the grip of her claws on my arm. “Why don’t you fix his supper your own self then? You’re his wife, aren’t you?”
She tossed her head. “Don’t you sass me, Pauline. I am going over to my mama’s tonight. I told you that this morning.”
I saw that she had a little bundle of clothes with her, and then I remembered that she had declared that she would be gone to Lot Foster’s place by evening. I laughed. “Why are you going there, Ann? Can’t you sleep with Tom here like you always do?”
She tightened her grip on my arm and shook me once or twice for good measure. She would have slapped me, but she was near drunk, and I kept twisting this way and that to avoid her.
“I have seen Tom already,” she said. “Though not for long. I said I would get him some whiskey tonight. If he don’t come for it, I’ll send one of the girls to fetch him at the Dulas’ place. Though she mustn’t say it straight out if that cat of a sister of his is in earshot. I don’t mind his mama knowing, but his sister is a devil about trying to keep us apart.”
I choked back a laugh. I wanted to say, “Some people are funny about adultery, I guess,” but that would only have set her off again, so I swallowed my bitter words, and asked instead, “How did he seem to you tonight?”
She shrugged. “Tom? Same as always. Restless. Why?”
When she said that, I closed my eyes for two heartbeats and decided to take a stab in the dark. Chances were that my words would come to naught, but if they struck home, I would have done what I set out to do, and what I had planned on that cold walk back from German’s Hill. “Well, I don’t think you will see Tom anymore tonight at all,” I told her. “I don’t doubt that he’ll be afraid to face you. You know how Tom Dula is. Always easy and smiling, saying whatever he thinks folk want to hear, and not to be trusted an inch toward keeping his word. Or perhaps he has told you already?”
“Told me what? Why should he be afraid to face me?” Ann’s voice quavered, and she forgot to tighten her hold, so I wriggled out of her grasp, with marks of her fingernails stinging my arm, and glad for yet another injury to pay her back for.
“You mean he didn’t let on to you?” I shook my head. “Well, if he didn’t say nothing, I don’t reckon I should. Anyhow, I have sworn to keep it a secret.”
Ann dropped her bundle of clothes into the weeds, and took me by both shoulders, but I stood my ground, and she thought better of shaking me again. The wind whipped that black hair of hers into clouds around her face, and she shook her head to get it clear of her eyes. “We put you up, Pauline,” she said, with tears of rage in her voice. “We let you stay with us out of Christian charity…”
I had to bite the inside of my lip to keep from laughing at that. Oh, yes, Christian charity, indeed-to work me like a field hand, doing the kitchen chores and cleaning the cabin, tending her babies and the animals, and helping out in the fields-while she lay around like a farrowing sow, not doing a hand’s turn of work. Yes, they were the souls of kindness, all right. But I pretended to see the sense in what she said, and after a moment’s pause, I said, “All right, Cousin, if you think it is my duty to confide in you, then I will break my oath and tell you. You might as well know now as later, so that it won’t be such a shock to you when it is over and done with.”
She let me go again, and took a step back, clapping her hand across her mouth. She gulped down a few deep draughts of the night air before she said, “Is it Tom? What about him?”
I shook my head. “You may have seen the last of him.”
“Why?” She looked about her, wild-eyed in the moonlight, and in an instant she would have gone running to the Dulas’ place, so I said quickly, “He means to run away with Laura Foster, first thing in the morning. Come sun-up.”
She stared at me for a moment as though the sense of my words couldn’t quite sink in to her head, and then she threw back her head and laughed, ending with a sob of relief. “Tom run off with that mud hen? Has the pox addled your brain, Pauline? What would he want with her?”