Chapter One
The last quarter mile to the house was one long pull, and the car took it in second the way it took it every evening, hot by the top. Claude eased through the bend at the apple tree and there was the yard under the ridge. The maples on the crown had gone red this past week. The grass was already the color of straw, and windfall apples lay browning beneath the tree. Francis usually had them gathered before they sat that long.
Susan’s Ford was still under the oak. Claude had expected her to be gone by now. She wasn’t. The hens were shut up too, the chicken-house door latched, and it was a good hour yet before they would have gone in on their own.
The two of them were on the porch, one in each rocker. Neither got up.
Francis always met him in the yard. She had done it five years, in rain, in the sleet last February with her hair wet, with Lilly on her hip when Lilly was too small to manage the walk, and he had never once asked her to and never once told her not to. She stayed in the chair.
He nosed in behind the Ford and cut the engine. Through the windshield he could see Francis had reached over the arm of her rocker for her mother’s hand and had her eyes on the porch floor. Susan kept watching the bend below the apple tree where the road came out of the woods.
He got out. The door shut hard and the sound went out across the yard and came back off the sandstone on the north line. The McElroys’ dog gave one bark from the bottom and quit. He walked through the yard and up the steps.
Susan looked at him. “Claude.”
“Susan.”
Francis didn’t lift her head.
Claude came up onto the porch and stopped beside them. Francis still wouldn’t look at him. He knew something was wrong, but he knew better than to push her before she was ready to say it.
“What is it?”
“Daddy didn’t come home,” Francis said.
He waited.
“Went out Tuesday,” Susan said. “Before light. Was supposed to be back by dark that night.”
Claude counted back without meaning to. “That’s four days.”
“I can count,” Susan said.
“When did you—” He stopped. “When did you quit thinking he was late?”
“Wednesday night.”
“An hour ago is when I got told,” Francis said.
Susan squeezed Francis’s hand. “I wanted to be sure.”
“She was sure Wednesday.”
Susan didn’t answer that. “I’m sure enough I ain’t been home since. That’s how sure.”
“Who’s he running for?” Claude said.
Susan finally looked at him. “Claude.”
“I’m asking.”
“You asking as what?”
Phil Talley had never in five years said one word to Claude about where he went on the days he went, and Claude had never asked. Susan had stood in that kitchen for all of it.
“As her husband,” he said. “Not as anything else. Not tonight.”
She looked at Francis and found enough comfort in her daughter’s face to answer him. “His own. And the Wallaces’. That’s most of it now.”
“Willie B.”
“Willie B and Stephen. Phil hauls for them, this last year. It’s their liquor. He goes down to Sand Mountain for the load and brings it back up across the line.”
“So it’s the Tennessee end.”
“He’s made that run more times than I’ve got fingers.”
The county’s notebook was in his shirt pocket with the pencil beside it. The pistol was still on his hip. He left the notebook where it was. He would write nothing down tonight.
“Bobby know?”
“I sent word up to the camp through the crossroads store. Thursday.”
“Bobby should be on his way by now.”
“That was never the question.” Susan’s rocker creaked once.
Francis took her hand back and rose stiffly, smoothing the front of her dress with both palms. Then she looked at him straight, the first time since he had come into the yard.
“Supper’s on the table. Come eat.”
She got the screen door and stood in it a second holding it with her hip, not looking round at either of them. From inside, clear, Lilly told Polly her hair was getting brushed whether she liked it or not. The door banged behind her, the spring on it too strong the way it had been all summer.
Susan turned her face back to the yard. “Go in to her.”
“In a minute.”
“Not in a minute. She’s had that supper on since four o’clock. She wouldn’t sit down till she heard your car.”
He went in.
The kitchen had been shut up all evening with the pork frying and then sitting, and the smell of it and the cornbread had gone heavy in the room. Lilly was already at the table with Polly in her lap. The second Claude came through the door, she reached both arms toward him.
“Daddy.”
“There’s my girl.” He bent and kissed the top of her head.
“Mama made pork.”
“I smelled it before I got through the door. You save me any?”
Lilly nodded. “I told Mama you’d be hungry.”
“You know your daddy pretty well.”
“You’re late.”
“I am. I’m sorry, baby.”
Francis had the skillet up in a rag and her back to him, and kept it that way. Claude took off his gun belt and hung it on the peg behind the door.
“Sit down,” Francis said.
He sat beside Lilly. Her hand slipped under the edge of the table and found his, and he closed his hand around it.
“Mamaw’s still on the porch,” she said.
“I know, Lil.”
“She’s not eating.”
“She will when she’s ready.”
Past Francis’s shoulder, through the glass above the sink, Susan was still on the porch. Behind her, the last of the light was fading off the ridge.
The skillet came down on the trivet. The cornbread came next, and the butter, and then nothing else came, because Francis sat down opposite with her plate in front of her and her fork laid on the wrong side of it, and did not pick up the spoon, and looked at him.
“Find him.”
Lilly’s hand was small and warm in his. He didn’t look at the window.
“I don’t care what you have to do,” Francis said. “I don’t care who you have to ask.”
“I’ll find him.”
Then she reached for the spoon. Lilly first. Then him. Herself last, and not much.