Riverrun (39 page)

Judah rose unsteadily to his knees. He rocked back on his heels and opened his mouth wide. Blood streamed from his nostrils, and from a deep gash across his upper lip. He spat, and a red-tinged tooth landed in the dirt.

David walked calmly over to him and landed a fist on his jaw. Again. And again. And Judah fell forward onto his face.

“Enough, David,” Cass said.

“No,” he answered, his face flushed with victory. “Not until I teach this goddamned—”

“David, I said enough!”

He scowled at her. “Mind your tongue, woman! Who do you think you are talking to?”

“The woman who gives you a place to live, you bastard!”‘

“The woman who gives a place to live
to the man who saved her life”
he said. “Saved her life and ruined his own!”

Cass could have said more, and would have, but Judah had let out an anguished moan and David, irrational now with triumph and bloodlust, turned back to him slowly. He walked over to him and kicked him once, lightly, in the side. Then he stepped over him, one boot heavy on his spine. Judah did not move.

David laughed, a high girlish giggle, and made a low, sweeping, mocking bow to the trees as though there were an audience there applauding him.

And when he turned, Judah had the pitchfork in his hands. David gaped. Cass choked back a scream. The two men were several yards apart, and Cass could not credit what her eyes told her. Judah, his face running crimson, his lips back to show gleaming yellow-white teeth, heaved the instrument as hard as he could, bringing it up from his waist like a whaler’s harpoon. The tines flared once in the sunlight spearing through the trees. David was unable to step out of the way. There were four, rusted and curved, and the two center ones sunk themselves deep into David’s left thigh. His eyes opened wide, his mouth sputtered as his hands reached down to grasp the shaft. Blood spurted down his leg and covered his fingers like gloves, and he swayed as the initial shock began to wear off and the pain found its way to his throat. He tried to yank the tines free, but Judah had regained his feet; he walked over to David and grabbed the shaft, held it as David looked to him for help like a small boy. Then, without blinking, Judah shoved. Hard. And David fell onto his back, the tines protruding from the leg burying themselves deep into the ground. He screamed.

Judah stood over him, his hands still wrapped around the wooden handle. His chest rose and fell, his tongue leapt to his lips to lick away the blood. He sucked in his cheeks. And he spat in David’s face. David screamed again, but Judah was gone.

Chapter Twenty-Five

N
ightmare. It was the only way Cass could describe the next few hours, and the way she would remember it when the screaming was over.

Immediately after Judah, with an anguished look toward the house, sprinted down the lane toward the road, Cass snapped back from the shock that had settled over her and raced to David. His face was pale, sweat pouring from his forehead as though he were in a rainstorm. His hands were at his sides, his fingers digging like claws into the soil, and his mouth and eyes were open though neither worked.

Melody had come running from the back of the house, and Cass barked orders at her in a flurry that stopped the little black girl from breaking into a shriek when she saw the blood, and the fork protruding from David’s leg. A minute later, Rachel burst from the front door just as Amos pounded by on the roan, heading for Meridine to fetch the doctor. Cass watched him go, then turned to look down as Rachel skidded to a halt at her side.

“Lawd,” the black girl said. “Oh my—”

“Help me,” Cass said flatly. “David, can you hear me?”

David’s eyes didn’t move, kept on staring at the sunlight and sky.

“All right, then.” She grabbed the pitchfork shaft and motioned Rachel to hold onto the leg. Then, with a deep breath, she slowly worked her fingers down to the joint of metal and wood and yanked. The tines pulled free in a gush of rich blood. David uttered a short half-scream and passed into a faint.

Melody returned a moment later, as Cass grabbed Rachel’s calico dress and tore large strips from the skirt to press and tie around the open wounds in David’s leg.

“Mrs. Roe,” the girl said, “it’s—it’s—”

Cass did not look up. “What is it, girl, damn it!”

“It’s Mrs. Vessler, ma’am. She done grabbed one of the horses from the stable and run off.”

“What are you talking about? She can’t ride.”

“I don’ know nothin’ ’bout that, Mrs. Roe. But Mrs. Vessler, she done tooken a horse and is gone.”

“Later,” she said, shifting to kneel behind his head. “You two take his legs. We have to carry him to his room now.”

Rachel was ready, but Melody—her eyes white; wide and refusing to look at anything but the trees—shook her head violently.

“Damn it, girl, take hold of his leg before I switch you within an inch of your useless life!”

Bending over, and trembling as though the air had turned to deepest winter cold, Melody took hold of David’s boot, dropped it, and Rachel slapped her hard. She wept, but did as she was bidden, and after a great deal of effort, several times almost dropping him, they managed to move David up the stairs and down the hall to his room. Once they had laid him on the bed, Rachel darted away for clean rags and hot water, and Melody was told to find Alice Jordan and bring her up

Once alone, Class slumped on the edge of the mattress and held her head in her hands, not weeping, not sobbing, but trying only to banish the nightmare and return reason to her mind; waiting for something, somewhere, to manifest itself as an answer to her troubles.

David groaned. Cass sighed, turned, and began to work off his boots. And once they were off, she unbuckled his belt and carefully, wincing, pulled down his trousers. The twin wounds in the muscular thigh were irregular, the blood clotting around them. As soon as Rachel came back with a large wooden bowl of steaming water and a bunch of white rags draped over her arm, the two women set to work silently. They cleaned the punctures as best they could, and bound them after a sprinkling of sulfa powder. There was no telling what permanent damage had been done to the leg, if any, but David’s defenses were already at work. The thigh was beginning to swell and turn an ugly yellow-blue; his face, though still pale, was warm with the onset of fever, and Rachel continually bathed his forehead with cold water, clucking to herself and muttering about the stupidity of men and the ways they had to settle their equally stupid quarrels. Cass gave her no argument. And it wasn’t until almost an hour had passed that she remembered summoning Alice.

“I don’ know where she is, Mrs. Roe,” Rachel said. “She ain’t in the kitchen. Melody she be huntin’ ’round outside, but I don’ know. I don’ know, Mrs. Roe.”

David awoke then, gasping for air and clutching at his leg frantically. Rachel tried to hold down his arms, but she was far too small, far too thin to prevent him from tearing at the bandages. Cass moved to help her, but the black girl waved her away impatiently.

“Brandy,” Rachel said. “Somethin’ like that.”

Cass nodded, ran to her room, and fetched the decanter she kept in her wardrobe. It was a special liquor she had brought from Aunt Agatha’s house, to be used, she had hoped, on the day when all her debts were buried in the past. She stood over David and carefully poured several drops past his lips. He froze for a moment, his eyes still closed, the fever burning high now and keeping him from speaking. She poured more brandy until nearly the entire amount was gone and he was drugged into a deep sleep punctuated every few moments by low, lingering moans.

When Melody returned empty-handed, Cass told her to sit with him, not to move unless he awoke and tried once again to tear off his bandages. Then she and Rachel walked slowly to the kitchen. It was deserted, and the stout fire on the hearth had fallen into embers. There was a silence, then, while Rachel fussed with the logs to bring the fire back to life, set a great black kettle on the stove, and boiled water for herbal tea. As she moved smoothly around the room, Cass stared at her, her palms to her cheeks, her elbows on the table.

“Rachel, how old are you?”

“I don’ rightly know, Mrs. Roe. Never had to, I guess.”

“But you’re older than Melody.”

“A year or two, I ’spect.”

“You seem a lot older than that, you know.”

Rachel turned to look at her, puzzled. She was, like Melody, a deep, burnished brown, with features that flowed smoothly into each other without benefit of angles. Neither one could have been said to be pretty, but their constant laughter and pranks better suited to children half their age gave them a quality that more than made up for their lack of physical beauty. Cass wondered if either of the girls ever bedded with any of the workers. It would not have surprised her if they had, and did, but while it was easy to imagine Alice (even if she hadn’t seen her with Judah) taking a man into her bed, somehow the thought of Rachel or Melody doing the same was incomprehensible. They were … innocent, she thought, but realized immediately that she was wrong.

“We gots troubles, ain’t we, Mrs. Roe?” Rachel said, pouring the tea into thick mugs and setting one before her.

Cass nodded, knowing that Rachel did not mean David upstairs. “It seems,” she said, “that we either pay off all we owe by the end of October, or we lose the land, the house, everything that goes with it.”

Rachel’s eyes widened. “But Mrs. Roe, we all done thought you was rich!”

Cass smiled, and started to shake her head before, suddenly, a thought … a notion … a faint glimmer of hope began to flare in her mind.

“Damn!” she said, and she struck herself soundly on the forehead with a palm. “Damn, what is the matter with me?”

Rachel moved slowly away from the table.

Cass laughed. “No, no, Rachel, I’m all right, really. But you just gave me an idea that might save us all. By God, Rachel, what would I do without you?”

A
mos returned behind Doc Garner’s landau, and within minutes the grizzled and loudly complaining physician had shoved them all out of David’s room and slammed the door. Cass, infuriated, stalked up and down the corridor in the slowly gathering shadows that crept out of the corners. It was ridiculous, she thought, to be pushed around this way when all he had was a couple of small wounds. Though Melody had told her the fever was still with him—and, if anything, a good deal worse—she had not worried. David was young and strong, and there were certainly no vital organs that could have been destroyed. What, then, was all the fuss about?

While she paced, Amos joined her. “Ain’t seen neither o’them, Missus,” he said, scratching at his thatch of gray hair. “Gots most of the boys lookin’ ’round, but I think they’s gone.”

“Gone?” she said, almost shouting. “Where the hell could they go? Neither one of them could last ten minutes in the hills, and Mrs. Vessler doesn’t even know how to ride, for God’s sake!”

“Well, I don’ know, that’s for sure,” Amos said, bridling. “I jes doin’ what you tells me, that’s all.”

“All right, Amos, all right. Go back downstairs and see that the lamps are lighted. Get some soup on the stove for the boys when they come back. They’ll be hungry. And—” She bit down on her lip and sighed. “And see that Rachel has a pot of water boiling all the time. Just in case.”

Amos nodded and shambled away to the stairs.

He’s getting old, she thought suddenly, watching him sag as if a weight had been laid heavily across his shoulders. My God, was he that old when we first came here?

The bedroom door opened and Garner stepped out. He hadn’t shaved in several days, and his clothes were slung on rather than fitted; but he was the only doctor within forty miles, and when his temper wasn’t on a short fuse, he was also the best man she knew in an emergency like this.

Now he seemed subdued, having temporarily forgotten that Amos had rousted him from a large luncheon. He rubbed a hand hard over his face and leaned back against the wall. His hair, a few weak strands of feathery white, hung in his eyes and he brushed them away impatiently.

“Mrs. Roe, what happened to him?”

Cass hesitated. Though Gamer was one of the few who were not hounding her because of her debts (though, she realized sourly, that would stop now because of Hawkins’s move), the two had never quite gotten over an initial antagonism born primarily of the doctor’s position that a Northern woman proprietor of Riverrun was bound to lead herself and everyone else involved to spectacular disaster. And when they had survived the first year, barely, he was one of the few who had congratulated her—albeit sullenly—on the miracle. How much she should tell him she did not know. If she told him the truth, he might take it back to Garvey, and Judah would be hunted down like a wild boar; and it surprised her to realize how little rancor she held for the black giant’s actions. He was, she supposed, justified in defending himself, justified in losing his temper over David’s ill-timed and unleavened taunts. To have him sought after by a deputation of Meridine’s finest, then, would be tantamount to pronouncing his death sentence.

“Mrs. Roe, I have to know if I’m goin’ to treat him proper.”

She cleared her throat with a cough. “He … got into an argument with one of the hands. It was an accident. A pitchfork—”

“A what?” Gamer straightened and glared at her. “Mrs. Roe, this is serious business. I must know—”

“You already know what made the wound, Dr. Garner. Now tell me how I can get him back on his feet.”

“You can’t,” he said flatly, and jabbed a thumb back toward the door. “That … accident tore up the muscles in his leg. I doubt he’ll walk again without a bad gimp. If he walks again, that is.”

A descending veil of dizziness made her reach out for the wall. She shook her head when he moved to assist her. “I’m all right,” she insisted. “But what do you mean, he might not get up? He isn’t dying, is he? How could he be? Just from a … a … how could he be? That’s impossible.”

“I didn’t say he was dyin’, Mrs. Roe,” Garner said, a hand against his chest. “I only said he might not get up. See, you got a damned hole in his leg that’s been dirtied and prob’ly got rust and skit in it, and he could easily get himself a damn fine infection. He gets through that there’s no problem. He doesn’t, and he just might lose the leg, if he don’t die first.”