Walk on Earth a Stranger Page 3
“That’d cost more than six hundred dollars,” I say.
“For a family of three, like yours. But even one person needs at least two hundred.” He shakes his head. “There’s got to be a different way.”
I know from his tone, as surely as I know Mama’s locket doesn’t contain a lick of brass, that Jefferson wants to go west more than anything. “You’re going to run away,” I say.
“Maybe. I don’t know.” He scuffs his bare foot against the step, sending a wave of sludge over the edge. “I could take the sorrel mare. Hunt my way there. Or work for somebody else, taking care of their stock. It’s just that . . . It’s just . . .”
“Jeff?” I peer close to try to figure him. He has a wide mouth that jumps into a smile faster than lightning. But there’s nothing of smiling on his face right now.
“Remember the year the creek dried up, and we caught fifty tadpoles in the stagnant pool?” he says softly.
“Sure,” I say, though I have no idea why he’d bring it up. “I remember you dropping a handful down my blouse.”
“And I remember you screaming like a baby.”
I punch him in the shoulder.
He jerks backward, staring at me in mock disapproval. “Your punches didn’t used to hurt so much.”
“I like to get better at things.”
His gaze drifts far away. Rubbing absently at his shoulder, he says, “You’re my best friend, Lee.”
“I know.”
“We’re too old for school. I only come to see you.”
“I know.”
All at once he turns toward me and grasps my mittened hands in his bare ones. “Come west with me,” he blurts.
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
“Marry me. Or . . . I mean . . . We could tell people we’re married. Brother and sister, maybe! Whatever you want. But you’re like me. With your daddy sick, I know it’s really you working that claim, same way I work Da’s. I know it’s your own two hands as built that place up.” His grip on my hands is so tight it’s almost unbearable. “This is our chance to make our own way. It’s only right that—Why are you shaking your head?”
His words brought a stab of hope so pure and quick it was like a spur in the side. But now I’ve a sorrow behind my eyes that wants to burst out, hot and wet. Jefferson is partly right: I’m the one who makes our claim work. He just doesn’t know how much.
“Leah?”
I sigh. “Here’s where you and I are different. I love my mama and daddy. I can’t leave them. And yes, it’s my claim as much as anyone’s. I’m proud of it. I can’t leave it neither.”
He releases my hands. Together, we look out over the snow-dusted yard to find the others staring at us. They saw us holding hands, for sure and certain. But we ignore them. We’re used to ignoring them.
“You might not have a choice,” he says. “If your daddy wants to go to California—”
That stab of hope again. “Mama will convince him not to. He’s too sick.”
“But if you go—”
The school bell peals, calling us inside.
“We’ll talk later,” I say, more than a little glad to let the subject go. I’ve lots of thinking to do. In fact, I do so much thinking during the next hours that I’m useless for helping the little ones with their sums, and when Mr. Anders calls on me to recite the presidents, I mix up Madison and Monroe.
I drive home as soon as school lets out, not bothering to say bye to Jefferson, though I wave from a distance. I need to get away, and fast, find some open air for laying out all my thoughts about California and gold and going west, not to mention the stunning and undeniable fact that Jefferson just asked me to marry him.
As offers go, it’s not the kind a girl dreams about while fingering the linens from her hope chest. I’m not even sure he meant it, the way he stumbled over it so badly.
I’ve thought about marriage—of course I have—but no one seems to have taken a shine to me. It’s no secret I spend my days squatting in the creek bed or hefting a pickax or mucking the barn, that I have an eagle eye and a steady shot that brings in more game than Daddy ever did, even during his good spells. I might be forgiven my wild ways if I was handsome, but I’m not. My eyes are nice enough, as much gold as brown, just like Mama’s. But I have a way of looking at people that makes them prickly, or so Jefferson says, and he always says it with a grin, like it’s a compliment.
One time only did I mourn to Daddy about my lack of prospects. He just shrugged and said “Strong chin, strong heart,” then he kissed me quick on the forehead. I never complained again. My daddy knows my worth.
I suppose Jefferson does too, and my heart hurts to think of him leaving and me staying. But the truth is I’ve never thought of him in a marrying kind of way. And with an awful proposal like that, I don’t know that Jefferson’s too keen on the idea either.
A gunshot cracks through the hills, tiny and miles distant. A minute later, it’s followed by a second shot. Someone must be out hunting. I wish them luck.
By the time my wagon comes in view of the icy creek and the faint track that winds through the bare oaks toward home, I decide there’s no help for it but to talk everything out with Mama and Daddy. We share secrets among ourselves, maybe, but we have none from one another.
Peony tosses her head, as if sensing my thoughts. No, it’s the surrounding woods that have put a twitch in her. They are too silent, too still.
“Everything’s fine, girl,” I say, and my voice echoes back hollowly.
As the leafless trees open up to reveal our sprawling homestead, right when I yell “Haw!” to round Peony toward the barn, something catches my eye.
A man’s boot. Worn and wrinkled and all alone, toppled into a snowbank against the porch.
“Daddy?” I whisper, frozen for the space of two heartbeats.
I leap from the bench, and my skirt catches on the wheel spoke, but I rip right through and sprint toward the house. I don’t get far before I fall to my knees, bent over and gasping.
Because Daddy lies on his back across the porch steps, legs spread-eagled, bootless. Crimson pools beneath his head and drips down the steps—tiny rapids of blood. His eyes are wide to the sky, and just above them, like a third eye in a brow paler than snow, is a dark bullet hole.
“Mama!” I yell, and then I yell it again. I can’t take my eyes off Daddy’s face. He seems so surprised. So alive, except for that unblinking stare.
What should I do? Drag him away before he ruins the porch, maybe. Or put his boots back on. Why did Daddy go outside without his boots?
My hands shake with the need to do something. To fix something. My eyes search the steps, the porch, the wide-open doorway, but I can only find the one boot, shoved into the snowbank. “Mama? Where are Daddy’s boots?” My voice is shrill in the winter air, almost a scream.
I use the porch railing to pull myself to my feet. If I can just find that blasted boot, everything will be fine. Why isn’t Mama answering?
The world shifts, and I stumble hard against the railing.
Two gunshots. I heard two. “Mama,” I whisper.
I start running. Through the drawing room, the bedroom, the kitchen still messy from supper. Upstairs to the dormer room where I sleep, then back down again. Sunshine has broken through the clouds, streaming light through our windows. Mama’s touches of love are everywhere—the blue calico curtains of my bedroom, the pine boughs winding our otherwise plain banister, the wrapping-paper flowers stained yellow with wild mustard, poking from the vase on our mantel. Yesterday’s venison stew, still warm on the box stove.
But Mama is nowhere to be found, and the place feels so bare it’s like an ache in my soul.
Still calling for her, I race outside and bang on the outhouse. I search the barn. I splash through our tiny stream and sprint into the peach orchard.
Winter chill works its way through my boots, which aren’t quite dry from yesterday’s hunt, and I wrap my arms around myself against the cold and the dread. In the distance, Peony snorts at something. I left the poor girl hitched to the wagon. She’ll have to keep.
I close my eyes and concentrate, turning in place like a compass.
Gold sings to me from north of the orchard, from the vein that Daddy and I started working before the snow hit. Fainter, as if very small or from very far away, comes the one I’m looking for: a hymn of purity, a lump of sweetness in my throat. A nugget, maybe, but I’m hoping it’s Mama’s locket.
It’s in the direction of the barn. I’ve already been to the barn. What did I miss?
That lump of sweetness pulls me back through the bare peach trees, through the icy brook. The sensation strengthens as I approach. It’s not coming from inside the barn but behind it. Beyond the henhouse and near the woodpile.
The ground outside the henhouse is littered with down; something panicked the poor birds bad enough to send their feathers through the breathing holes. The sweetness in my throat turns sour. I force myself to walk the remaining steps.
I find her there, sitting with her back against the woodpile, legs outstretched, her skirt ridden up enough that a sliver of gray stocking shows above her boots. The locket that led me to her rests above her heart, sparkling in the sunshine. Below, her waist is soaked in blood. She’s been gut-shot.
Her eyes flutter as I approach, and she lifts one hand in my direction. “Leah,” she whispers. “My beautiful girl.”
I rush forward and grab her hand. “I’ll get Doc,” I say. “Just hold tight.” I try to pull away, but her grip is strong, though her gaze is so weak it can’t seem to alight on anything for more than the space of a butterfly’s touch.
“My strong girl. Strong, perfect . . .”
“Who did this to you?” Tears burn my eyes.
Her head lolls toward me, as if moving her neck can force her gaze in the direction her eyes cannot. “Trust someone. Not good to be as alone as we’ve been. Your daddy and I were wrong. . . .” Her words are coming slower and quieter.
“Mama?”
“Run, Lee. Go . . .”
Her chin hits her chest, and she says no more.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Chapter Four
I need help. I should get the sheriff. Or Judge Smith. I know I should.
But all I can do is sit back on my heels and stare. It doesn’t matter what I do next. Not a single thing in the whole world will make my mama and daddy any less dead. And once I get up and walk away, everything will be different. I want this moment, this in-between time, when I’m not quite an orphan and I’m not quite alone.
She’s wearing her winter dress, the black wool. Her chin rests in the ruffles of the high collar. I avoid looking at her belly, instead letting my eyes drift down to the mud-splattered skirt. She tried to run.
I gently lower her skirt to cover her stockings and tuck it under her ankles so the breeze won’t blow it back up. The shiny brown bun of her hair skews to the side. I reach up to rearrange a hairpin or two, but my shaking fingers just make a mess of everything.
I swallow hard. Mama had the most beautiful hair. Shimmering light brown, with hints of bronze and gold. It fell past her waist when it wasn’t pinned.
The locket winks at me, bright against the black wool. She’d want me to have it. But removing it will be so final.
A twig snaps, and I shoot to my feet. The sound came from the woods behind the barn. It could have been a raccoon, or even a deer. Still, I imagine murderous eyes on me as I reach behind Mama’s neck for the clasp. My hands struggle to make sense of it. I’m too afire with listening, ready to dart away at the slightest noise.
My fingertips tingle from gold as I work the clasp. It comes free, and I barely catch the charm before it slips off the chain. I shove both chain and locket into the pocket of my skirt.
“I’m so sorry, Mama,” I whisper. “I have to go.”
But go where? Everything is foggy and strange. All I know for sure is that Mama told me to run.
I can’t just leave her here. It wouldn’t be right. I need help. I need—
Jefferson! He’ll know what to do. I could be at the McCauley claim and back in twenty minutes.
I shouldn’t go unarmed.
I dash to the house and bang open the back door. Daddy has a special rack above the mantel for hanging our guns. We own three—an old long rifle with a bayonet, the newer Hawken rifle I always hunt with, and a cap-and-ball revolver. The long rifle and the Hawken give me distance and accuracy, but they can be awkward to load while bareback, especially with my fingers trembling like they are. That leaves the revolver.
I grab it from the rack and palm the ivory grip. Something niggles at me while I stare down at it, like mosquitos in the back of my head. I think about Daddy, lying in a pool of his own blood. Bile rises in my throat, but I force it down.
That hole in his forehead. So tiny and perfect. The back of his skull is probably in tatters, but except for that hole, the front is as white and pristine as Mrs. Smith’s alabaster vase.
No rifle would make such a tidy hole. My daddy was shot with a revolver, like the one I hold in my hand. No, maybe even a smaller gun, like one of those fancy new Colts. Do I know anyone who owns a new Colt revolver?
I sift through memories of everyone I know, but my mind fogs up again, and I can’t do it for all the gold in the world.
Jefferson. I need Jeff.
I run out the front door, leaving it swinging in the wind, and I leap over the steps and over Daddy’s body. I unhitch Peony, hike up my skirts, and I use the wagon wheel to vault onto her back.
The McCauley homestead is tucked into a dark holler between two birch-thick hills. Jefferson half cleared one of the hillsides and planted corn, now brown and shriveled with winter. But the rest of the land is so wild and dense that most of the ground never sees the sun. It’s a dank, dark place made for hiding things like moonshine and heartbreak.
Peony and I splash across the frost-edged creek, passing a rotting, abandoned sluice. I pull her up at the house—a small log cabin with a sod roof. Smoke curls from the chimney, and wind whistles against the cracked glass of the single window.
“Jefferson!” I swing a leg over and slide off. I sprint through dead weeds to the stoop, where I leap to avoid the sagging steps, and pound on the door. “Jefferson!”
Their dog, Nugget, barks from inside the house. Booted footsteps hurry toward me. The door swings wide, revealing Jefferson’s da, a small man with wild gray hair, rumpled clothes, and a bright, red nose.
He shrugs on his right suspender strap, blinking against the gloomy day, which is downright perky compared to the murk of the cabin. “Miss Lee,” he slurs.
The air wafting out the door is warm and sour, like rising bread gone bad. “I need to see Jefferson,” I say.
“Dunno where that boy run off to.” Nugget pokes her yellow head out beside his legs, floppy ears perked forward.
“Where do you think he might’ve—”
“I said I dunno.”
“Did he come home after school?”
“Mebbe.”
Something snaps inside me. “Think for one lousy minute, will you? I’m in a heap of hurt, and I need to talk to your boy.”
Mr. McCauley recoils. “Watch your swearing tongue, girl.”
My fi
sts clench with the need to bust his bright, red nose. It’s a testament to my fine character that I turn tail and jog away. I’ll find Jefferson myself.
The door slams behind me, so I’m surprised to feel Nugget’s damp nose in my palm as I head toward the outhouse.
I pause at the door. It’s powerful improper for me to bang on it with Jefferson inside. No help for it. I raise my fist to knock when the crack of an ax rents the air.
Relieved, I lift my petticoats and run toward the ramshackle building that was intended to be a barn but never got finished and became a woodshed instead.
Jefferson is behind it, sleeves rolled up past his elbows and ax in hand, splitting firewood on one of the larger stumps. The moment he sees me, he frowns and drops his ax. “Lee?”
And suddenly I’m clutch-hugging myself, and my words are jumbling all over one another, and I hardly know what I’m saying except that the word “dead” hangs in the air, sharper and more final than the crack of an ax on a chopping block.
His arms come up around my shoulders, and he pulls me close. He smells familiar and safe, like fresh woodchips and loamy soil, and finally I cry—great, gulping cries that dampen his shirt.
“All right, Lee,” he says at last. “Slow down. Start over and tell me everything. Every single thing.”
So I do. His face is grave as I talk. Even though my dinner is turning round and round in my belly, and my words come spilling out all over themselves, Jefferson just stands calm and ponders like a man twice his years.
“Maybe it was bandits,” he says, though I can tell he doesn’t put much stock in the idea.
“They didn’t take anything. Only thing missing was one of Daddy’s boots.”
“How long ago were they shot, do you think?”
“I heard the shots when I was on the way home. Mama was still alive when I found her. And Daddy’s . . . The blood hadn’t froze. Jeff, he rushed out the door with his boots still in hand. Why would he do that?”
Jeff’s hand finds the small of my back and guides me toward the cabin. I stumble keeping up with his long legs. “Where—”