Morning Glory (59 page)
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 seraph! So she'd reacted in shock. Who in tarnation wouldn't? Will Parker could no more kill
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
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
"That piss-ant Reece Goodloe come out to the house and arrested Will for killing
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 Geographic
every 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, demogogic 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'?"
"There is only one if you want to win. Robert Collins. He has a reputation for winning, and has had since the spring he was nineteen and brought in the wild turkey with the biggest spear and the longest beard taken that season. He hung them on the contest board at Haverty's drugstore beside two dozen others entered by the oldest and most experienced hunters in Whitney. As I recall, they'd given Robert short shrift, smiling out the sides of their mouths at the idea that a mere boy could outdo any one of them—big talkers, those turkey hunters, always practicing their disgusting gobbles when a girl walked by on the street, then laughing when she jumped half out of her skin. Well, Robert won that year—the prize, as I recall, being a twelve-gauge shotgun donated by the local merchants—and he's been winning ever since. At
Dartmouth
where he graduated top in his class. Two years later when he took on an unpopular case and won restitution for a young black boy who lost his legs when he was pushed into the paddlewheel of a gristmill where he worked, by the owner of the mill. The owner was white, and needless to say, an unbiased jury was hard to find. But Robert found one, and made a name for himself. After that he prosecuted a woman from Red Bud who killed her own son with a garden hoe to keep him from marrying a girl who wasn't Baptist. Of course, Robert had every Baptist in the county writing him poison pen letters declaring that he was maligning the entire religious sect. The church deacons were on his back, even his own minister—Robert is Baptist himself—because as it turned out, the murderess was a fervent churchgoer who'd almost single- handedly bulldozed the community into scraping up funds for a new stone church after a tornado blew the clapboard one down. A
do-goodah
," Miss Beasley added disparagingly. "You know the type." She paused for a brief breath and continued intoning, "In any event, Robert prosecuted her case and won, and ever since, he's been known as a man who won't knuckle under to social pressures, a defender of underdogs. An honorable man, Robert Collins."
Elly recognized him immediately. He was the one who'd come out of chambers in intense conversation with Judge Murdoch on Elly's wedding day. But she had little opportunity to nurse the memory before becoming distracted by the surprising opening exchange between the lawyer and Miss Beasley.
"Beasley, my secretary said, and I asked myself could it be Gladys Beasley?" He crossed the crowded, cluttered anteroom in an unhurried shuffle, extending a skinny hand.
"It could be and is. Hello, Robert."
Clasping her hand in both of his, he chuckled, showing yellowed teeth edged with gold in a wrinkled elf's face surrounded by springy hair the color of old cobwebs. "Forever formal, aren't you? The only girl in school who called me Robert instead of Bob. Are you still stamping books at the Carnegie Library?"
"I am. Are you still shooting turkeys on the Red Bone Ridge?"
Again he laughed, tipping back, still clasping her hand. "I am. Bagged a twenty-one-pound tom my last time out."
"With an eleven-inch beard, no doubt, and an inch-long spur, which you hung on the drugstore wall to put the old-timers in their places."
Once more his laughter punctuated their exchange. "With a memory like that you'd have made a good lawyer."
"I left that to you though, didn't I, because girls were not encouraged to take up law in those days."
"Now, Gladys, don't tell me you still hold a grudge because I was asked to give the valedictory speech?"
"Not at all. The best man won." Abruptly she grew serious. "Enough byplay, Robert. I've brought you a client, vastly in need of your expert services. I should take it as a personal favor if you'd help her, or more precisely, her husband. This is Eleanor Parker. Eleanor, meet Robert Collins."
Meeting his handshake with one of her own, Elly inquired, "You got a wife, Mr. Collins?"
"No, I don't, not anymore. She died a few years back."
"Oh. Well, then this is for you."
"For me," he repeated, pleased, accepting the quart of honey, holding it high. "And there's more where that came from, plus milk and pork and chickens and eggs for the duration of this war and without rationing coupons, to go along with whatever money you need to clear Will's name.
He laughed again, examining the honey. "Might this be construed as bribery, do you think, Gladys?"
"Construe it any way you like, but try it on a bran muffin. It's indescribable."
He turned, carrying the honey into his messy office, inviting, "Come in, both of you, and close the door so we can talk. Mizz Parker, as for my fee, we'll get to that later after I decide whether or not I can take the case."
Seated in his office, Elly quickly assured Robert Collins, "Oh, I got money, Mr. Collins, never fear. And I know where I can get more."
"From me," put in Miss Beasley.
Elly's head snapped around. "From you!" she repeated, surprised.
"We're digressing, Eleanor, on Robert's valuable time," returned Miss Beasley didactically, "We'll discuss it later. Alone."