Hell With the Lid Blown Off (17 page)

Eichelberger's gate and fence were clean gone. Things looked entirely different out that way. I doubt if we could have found the place if it hadn't been for the fact that the trees that had shaded the house were bare stumps now, so from the main road there was nothing to keep us from seeing clear across the field to the smashed remains of the house. Neither of us said a word as we rode up what used to be the drive.

Mr. Eichelberger was sitting on an upside-down washtub in front of the woodpile that had been his house. He didn't look up at us or act like he knew we were there. He was buck naked. There was an ugly gash over his eye and he was covered with a coat of white dust from top to toe. He looked like a ghost. It made my skin crawl.

Mr. Tucker stepped down out of the saddle and got down on one knee, eye-to-eye with the poor dickens. “Mr. Eichelberger…” His voice was real gentle. “Mr. Eichelberger, look at me, now.”

Eichelberger didn't move but his eyes shifted toward Mr. Tucker, so I reckon he knew we were there. Mr. Tucker put his hand on the man's shoulder. “Mr. Eichelberger, can you tell me where your wife is?”

Eichelberger's voice was creaky as a rusty hinge when he spoke. “All gone. I can't find Maisy. I tried to hang on to her, but the devil sucked her out of my arms.”

Mr. Tucker looked up at me, and I nodded and made for the rubble pile to hunt for Mrs. Eichelberger.

I found her.

Mr. Tucker only had enough time to throw a coat over Eichelberger's shoulders before I got back to him. He must have read my face, because he turned kind of pale. I just shook my head. Mr. Tucker stood up and drew me aside.

“Dead, is she?” he murmured, and all I could do was nod.

It took me a minute to get my voice back. “She's around back of the house, lying in the yard plain as day. She's busted up. Looks like she has a broken neck, at least. I expect he found her right off.”

Mr. Tucker heaved a sigh and glanced back at Eichelberger, who was still sitting on his washtub, muttering to himself. “Well, we've got to get him out of here. You ride on back to Kurt's and see if you can rustle up a pair of britches for him and maybe a blanket to cover her with. I'll hang around here and keep an eye on him till you get back.”

“Where are we going to take him?” I wondered. “Back to your place?”

Mr. Tucker shook his head. “I'd rather not. The children are disquieted enough as it is. I don't want to bring a deranged man home on top of everything. I'll try to figure it out while you're gone.”

“I'll be back directly,” I promised, and mounted up. I left Mr. Tucker on his knees in the mud, murmuring soothing words to his broken neighbor. I skipped the drive and cut out directly across Mr. Eichelberger's fallow field for a shortcut.

Alafair Tucker

When Trent returned to the Eichelberger farm, he brought more than a pair of britches. He brought Alafair, riding her gray filly and hauling a load of first-aid supplies. The sky was still overcast, though it wasn't raining at the moment. More worrying was the fact that the wind was up and the temperature was rising again, making it muggy and uncomfortable and presaging another storm.

Trent looked abashed when he explained that Alafair had insisted on coming back with him, but Shaw didn't give him any grief over it. He was quite aware that a twenty-two-year-old deputy sheriff didn't stand a chance against Alafair. He passed Mr. Eichelberger into Trent's care and helped Alafair take down the pack from behind the saddle. His unnecessary aid gave him a chance to talk privately with his wife for a moment.

“You didn't need to come,” he said to her, though he was glad she did. He knew from experience that Alafair's quiet, competent presence was calming and would do Mr. Eichelberger good. Not to mention Shaw himself.

“Trent told me what happened.” Her eyes brimmed, but she blinked back the tears. “I loved Miz Eichelberger.”

Shaw put an arm around her. “I tidied her up best I could. I found a quilt in the rubble and covered her up. She's beyond trouble now.”

“Amen. How is he?”

Shaw glanced at the man on the washtub. “He's a little better. He's making sense when he talks. He knows she's gone. He wanted to look at her, so I took him around back. He cried a mite. I think he'll do, but he'll have a hard row to hoe.”

“We'll do the best we can for him.” Alafair handed Shaw the drawstring bag containing a pair of Kurt Lukenbach's overalls and a shirt—far too big for the diminutive Mr. Eichelberger. “I took the girls back to Mary's. She's fixing dinner for them. Streeter and the boys are all still at our house. The porch is fixed. When I left they were boarding up the broken windows and salvaging what furniture they can out of the bedrooms. There are a couple of leaks in the roof that'll have to be dealt with right quick. Still, I think we can sleep in our own house tonight. Phoebe and her bunch aren't up to going anywhere, even if they had somewhere to go. So Mary and Kurt will be having company for a while yet. They'll be glad to get the rest of us out of there, even if we all have to sleep on pallets at home for a spell.”

“I think I'd better round up my helpers and set them to clearing the road from here to town. We can't leave Miz Eichelberger here in the yard. We have to get her back to town as soon as we can. If this weather keeps up, the road will be impassible tonight, even without the downed trees.”

“I surely would like to get into Boynton long enough to check on my girls and my new granddaughter.”

“We will, sugar, one way or the other.”

“What are we going to do with him in the meantime?” She nodded at Eichelberger.

He shook his head, unsure. “If the young'uns are at Mary's, then we better take him to our place for a bit.”

Alafair approved of that idea. “Maybe I can get him cleaned up and fed, let him rest a while before he has to face his plight.”

Trent stood up from Mr. Eichelberger's side as they approached. He had heard the end of their conversation. “The mud on the road is already sucking at the horses' feet,” he warned.

The previous winter had been one of the wettest of Shaw Tucker's lifetime, and the road to town had often been too boggy to travel easily. Bringing supplies home had been difficult, to say the least. He had learned a few tricks then, though he had hoped he would never have to put them into practice again. “Trent, when we get back to the farm, you and the boys get to clearing the road. Don't worry about moving every stick and branch. Just do a good enough job for us to get the buckboard through. Tell Gee Dub to bring along a couple of good saws. While you're doing that, me and Streeter will fetch Miz Eichelberger's body and load up the buckboard with sand and boards. We'll carry our dead to town this afternoon. If we can't get there by road, we'll go cross-country.”

Mary Lukenbach

After Mary Lukenbach had fed dinner to her charges, she packed an enormous basket of food for the repair crew and set out for her parents' house. She filled a little pail with biscuits and a small basket with the fresh summer squash she had managed to pick before the storm, then loaded down her littlest sister, Grace, and her newfound cousin Chase Kemp and took them with her. She left her husband, Kurt, at home to look after Phoebe, Zeltha, and John Lee. Blanche and Sophronia were competent helpers, so she left them with Kurt. But Mary wouldn't think of expecting him to handle two overstimulated little whirlwinds on top of everything. Being a former grammar school teacher as well as the second-oldest of ten had already given Mary expert child skills. She gave the children a task.

They were more than halfway to her parents' farm, walking across the middle of a muddy, branch-strewn field, when it started to rain again. Chase wasn't bothered, but Grace began to whine. Mary removed her own floppy, big-brimmed felt hat and plopped it on the little girl's head, which amused Grace for the moment. Mary took her hand and quickened the pace. The path was muddy already. More rain would turn it to glue. Mary's honey-gold hair was coming loose from its coil and plastering long, uncomfortably wet tendrils to her neck. Chase was fifty feet ahead of them by now, flitting hither and yon and swinging the basket of squash about alarmingly.

“Chase,” Mary called. “Slow down!”

As the words left her mouth, he disappeared over the top of a little hill that abutted the path, and she huffed impatiently.

“Where'd he go?” Grace wondered.

Mary picked her up, pail and all, ready to go after Chase, but he reappeared on top of the hill and waved at them.

“Chase, quit your fooling and get down here!”

“Quit your fooling!” Grace echoed.

“There's a baby doll over here,” he hollered back. “It's all muddy. The wind must have blowed it in!”

“Never you mind. It's raining and we need to get dinner to your auntie's house before we drown.”

“I want to see the baby doll,” Grace protested.

“It's crying,” Chase yelled.

Mary hesitated and her eyebrows knit. She put Grace and her picnic basket down and with a stern warning to the children to stay put, she clambered up the hill. Sure enough, leaning against a pile of branches and half buried in wet grass and muck at the bottom, she saw a round-headed little baby doll.

Mary let out a breath, relieved. Until it moved.

Her heart leaped into her throat. Without a thought she half slid down the slippery rill, unaware and unconcerned that she was covering the seat of her dress with mud. She touched the little hand, and it moved again. Mary dropped to her knees and frantically dug the baby out of the mire, then scooped a handful of black mud off of its face. It was a little girl, maybe six months old, dressed in a white cotton shift and nothing else. She was barely breathing.

Mary scrambled back up the hill with the baby in her arms. She grabbed Grace by one hand and rushed to her mother's house as fast as she could go, dragging the startled girl behind her and leaving Chase to keep up as best he could.

Alafair Tucker

Once Alafair got Mr. Eichelberger home, she managed to sponge the filth off of him and get him decently dressed. She had just ensconced him at her kitchen table with a mug of hot coffee, a bowl of warmed-over bean soup, and a piece of leftover cornbread when Mary burst through the back door with her muddy bundle and two small children in her wake.

“Mama!” Mary yelled, so loudly that Alafair leaped to her feet, knocking over her chair. “We found a baby! It must have gotten picked up by the wind and blown all the way out to your pasture.”

“My stars! Is it alive?”

“Yes, I think so.”

Alafair took over. “Grace, bring me that tub yonder. Mary, put the little'un on the cabinet while I get some rags. Chase, take this bucket and pump some water for me. Scoot, now!”

Everyone rushed to his or her task, eager to assist.

The baby's eyes were closed and her chilly limbs were limp. Alafair could feel a heartbeat, but the child's breath was undetectable. Still—she was pale, not blue. Alafair gave Mary a hopeful glance.

Mary and her mother cleaned off the baby as best they could with kitchen rags until Chase lugged in a half-full pail of cloudy water from the well pump outside the back door. Alafair would normally have warmed the water in the reservoir of her cast iron stove, but time was at a premium. Mary removed the baby's sodden shift and sat the child in the tub of cool water. The tiny body shuddered under Mary's gentle touch, and surprised blue eyes opened wide. The baby's pink bottom lip pooched out and she started to cry.

“Oh, thank you, Jesus!” Alafair exclaimed. Mary said nothing. She was weeping as well.

Grace was hovering around, worried. Alafair had her fetch a clean towel from the pantry to wrap around the infant, then sent her to stand by the stove until she dried. Since she had lost most of her clothes in the storm, Grace was clad in one of Chase's shirts, which made a perfectly adequate dress for her, tied around the middle with twine for a belt.

Mary sat down in a chair with the baby in her arms and began to croon to her, and Grace leaned on Mary's lap and joined in the familiar lullaby.

Alafair stood watching for a moment as the baby sucked eagerly on Mary's knuckle. She was sure the little girl badly needed sustenance but unsure how to provide it quickly. She was the mother of many children, but she had never before had need of a baby bottle. She decided to make a knot in a dishtowel and soak it in water so the child would at least have something to suck until she could make up some gruel. She was turning to take another towel out of a drawer in her baker's cabinet when she noticed that poor addled Mr. Eichelberger was no longer in his chair at the table.

Blast!
she thought, though she never would have uttered such a shocking epithet aloud.
What next?

She quickly assembled her wet dishtowel pacifier and handed it to Mary, then headed outside to look for Mr. Eichelberger. Surely he had gotten out the back door while they were distracted. She circled the house, but he was nowhere to be found. She stopped in the front yard, and put her hands on her hips, thinking. The boys were out clearing the road. Shaw and Streeter were in the barn preparing the buckboard to carry the dead. There was no one to spare to hunt for a befuddled old man who was probably trying to find his way to a home that no longer existed.

It was going to have to be her. She walked up the newly repaired front porch steps and into the house to tell Mary where she was going, but as she passed into the parlor, she found Eichelberger sitting demurely in one of her armchairs. Chase Kemp was standing beside him, cheerfully relating how he had discovered the living baby doll. Eichelberger looked at her when she came in. His eyes were full of sadness, but aware. He gave her a hint of a smile, and she smiled back, weak with relief.

Chase had taken charge of the old man. Alafair had not even noticed when Chase led him into the parlor and seated him in the armchair with his blanket around him and his mug of coffee on the side table. Alafair paused, touched. Chase was not generally so thoughtful. Perhaps he had never before had the opportunity to be.