Whispers (7 page)

He shouted out to the others. “Lonnie, Jake, come on. Let’s git.”

“
Ain’t done,” one of them hollered back. “Not by far we ain’t. And I’m hungry. I’m going to sit me down and have some of this fine stew Mrs. Beck done cooked up for us.”

The rider muttered something and then reined his horse around.

Lonnie ... Jake ...

I flattened myself to the earth, inhaled the dark scents of dirt and worms, and tried to batten down my fear. Lonnie and Jake ... The Smith brothers. I bit hard on my lip to keep from crying out. The brothers were identical twins, just a year older than my seventeen, and they were murderers. Cold-blooded murderers. Last month my father had stood as the only witness to their thievery and murderousness and convinced a jury to hang the two men.

A movement from the opposite hillside caught my eyes. Daddy and Johnny, running toward the wagon. My daddy held his rifle in one hand, Johnny clung to the other. They’d heard the gunshots, as I had, but from their angle, they couldn’t see the men, now gathered at the fire. I wanted to stand up and shout, wave my arms and warn them, but if I did...

My daddy’s footsteps slowed as he stared at something out of my sight. What? What did he see? He stilled, Johnny at his side, and stared. Just stared.

Then slowly he pushed Johnny back, pointed at a boulder. Johnny didn’t want to do what Daddy ordered. I could see it in his posture. In the defiant tilt of his head. He was eight, but tried to act eighteen. At last he crouched down where he’d been told and Daddy cocked his rifle and advanced on the camp.

No, I breathed. No, Daddy.

One of the men, maybe Lonnie, maybe Jake, looked up, as if sensing the approach. He reached for his gun and pulled it free of the holster. In my mind I could hear the metal clear the leather. Time seemed to slow down. I felt each beat of my heart, watched paralyzed as my daddy advanced on the gang. What could I do? If I stood, they’d kill me. I knew they would. But if I didn’t, my daddy would certainly die. I tried to make my legs move. Tried to get to my feet. But I was frozen, flattened on the hillside like one of the stones beside me.

The man with the gun sidled up to the wagon and then peeked around. Daddy saw, took aim, and fired. The shot splintered into the wagon and sent wood shards flying in all directions. It made a loud boom that echoed across the open plains and hills. A yelp broke from my lips, but I clapped a hand over my mouth to mute it. The man with the gun howled and grabbed at his eye.

Fast as lightning the other men reached for their weapons and rounded the wagon. Daddy got off another shot, but that was all. The four men fired with abandon and my scream lodged in my throat as Daddy’s body danced with the impact. They riddled him full of lead, moving forward as they fired like the mindless killers they were. The sloping foothills around me sucked up the sound and threw it back in resounding echoes that seemed to pierce through me. I covered my ears and shut my eyes, but I couldn’t block out the sound or the tears squeezing through my tightly closed lids. I couldn’t erase the image of my father’s body jumping in a death jig of gunfire. Suddenly the shots stopped. I opened my eyes. Daddy lay still and broken on the ground, arms and legs askew in angles no arms or legs were ever meant to be. One of the outlaws raised his pistol and put a final shot in his head.

I prayed as hard as I could that Johnny would remain behind his rock. But even as the sobbing plea lodged in my throat, I saw Johnny emerge from his craggy hiding place, heard his scream, a tormented sound filled with more humiliation, anger, and agony than a child could ever endure.

To my horror, Johnny broke from behind the boulder and charged across the clearing. The sound he made matched the anguish trapped inside my breast. His screams reached up to the heavens and tore a hole in them. But they didn’t stop what came next. The army of four turned like soldiers and opened fire.

“
No,” I cried. Yet the word came dry and silent, a fiery whisper that burned and crackled in my throat. “No,” I tried again, but it was too late. Now both my daddy and brother lay flat on the ground in a twist of blood and gore. The same filthy killer who’d put his gun to Daddy’s head now did the same to my brother. The vibration of the shot traveled through me like a quaking of the earth. Hot tears streamed down my face, but still, I couldn’t move.

The man twirled his pistol like a gunslinger, grinned at his friends, and then joined them back at the fire. They ransacked the kitchen crates for plates and spoons, laughing as they scooped Momma’s stew onto their dishes. They sat in a circle, joking and laughing as they fed themselves, ignoring completely the crumpled, bloody bodies of Daddy and Johnny. I watched it all, shaking with disbelief and sobs as silent as my screams.

I scanned the craggy knolls around me, looking for Momma. Where was she? Hiding? Or didn’t she know? Maybe she was close to the river? There, the shots might not have been heard. How would I face her when she came back to find her husband and son murdered while I’d done nothing to help?

I begged God for forgiveness I didn’t deserve while I watched the men and tried not to think of why Grandma’s wheelchair was overturned, where Momma might be, or the poor wasted bodies of my little brother and beloved daddy. The horrible men glutted themselves on the stew for interminable minutes, and then one of them moved to the back of the wagon and urinated on Grandma’s wheelchair. This, this horrible act of disrespect finally loosened my immobile limbs. I stood without thinking, but then another man’s head whipped around, and I dropped to my belly with such force I knocked the breath from my lungs.

Excited voices came and then the sound of horses. They’d seen me.

On all fours I scrambled down the hill, trying at once to keep low and move fast. I looked behind and saw that the grass was flattened where I’d lain on it. In a full panic I stood straight, hiked up my skirts, and tore across the open grassland. Ahead were bushes and beyond a smattering of pine trees leading into the foothills. I made it to the first of them just as the men crested the hill behind me. My heart hammered against my ribs and my constricted lungs fought to bring in air. I crept back and back until I reached a tree with low branches. I crawled beneath the skirt of its boughs and then up two, three limbs. Overhead the branches grew tight as a cage. I could go no higher. I stayed as still as I could, peering through the pine needles. The wind teased through the trees, disguising my movements. The riders came down the hill, following the tracks I’d left until they reached the place where I’d stood and run. From that point they worked their way back and forth, bickering as they rode, one calling the other stupid, the other retorting in kind.

They entered the trees and circled between the pines. I stood still as time, waiting for them to see me. The man my daddy had hit with the splinters from the wagon stopped at the tree next to the one where I hid. The side of his face was puffy and bloody, the eyelid swollen nearly shut. Still, if he moved, if he looked straight on ...

My heart thudded in my chest, and the terror I’d held down threatened to swoop up and out in a never-ending scream of fear and pain. My eyes streamed with the effort to be silent, to be still. The man coughed and spat, his face coming up and around to where I huddled. I closed my eyes and silently whispered my last plea for forgiveness.

“
Jake!” one of the others shouted. “Anything?”

To my left, Jake answered, but I dared not turn my head to look. I dared not move. Another of them shouted something from beyond the trees.

“
She’s gone,” the bloodied man beside me said. “I say let’s git too. Ain’t nothing she can do out here but die.”

The truth of that added another layer to my horror.

The four of them gathered close to the trees, and I trembled with the effort to remain motionless. They conferred for a moment that lasted so long my hands felt numb and my legs weak. And then single-file they rode out. As the last man spun his horse around, I caught one clear look at him.

It was Lonnie Dean Smith all right.

I bit hard on my lip, choking back the sob. I stayed where I was until they’d left the cove, until they’d ridden up and over the ridge. Unmoving I stared at their tracks. Is that how they’d found my family? Followed our tracks from our front door? But how were they free? I’d seen the brothers taken away in handcuffs to await their execution. How were they here when they should be in jail? Locked up. Ready to hang?

My daddy had known they’d break free. He’d known that they’d come for him. That’s why he’d wanted us to leave as we had, in the dead of the night with only a wagon full of possessions. Daddy had known the Smith brothers wouldn’t hang. He’d known they’d hunt for him. He hadn’t known how fast, though, or with what determination.

The horses were on the move again, and I cowered in the pine as they passed back down the valley toward the trees where I hid. They came close enough that I could have reached out and touched them as they passed by. The last man towed Daddy’s two horses behind him. Both animals were ladened with supplies they’d pilfered.

I made myself as small as I could, waiting for the moment they would see me. The earth shook as they rode past and then quieted as they continued onward. Warily I looked after them. A dust cloud followed them up the next hill and then they disappeared down the other side.

Branches pulled at my hair and snagged my clothes as I scurried down from the tree. My hands were sticky with sap, and my arms were scratched and bleeding. I hit the ground, wiggled out from under the boughs, and then raced toward the camp, silent lest my voice carry and bring them back. Great billowing waves of black smoke rose up from the valley where we’d stopped. As I reached the hilltop, I saw our wagon ablaze and all our things burning like midnight torches. I half-ran, half-stumbled down the other side to the inferno.

“
Momma!” I shouted. My daddy and brother still lay where they’d been gunned down. I ran to them, touching their bloodied and broken bodies with shaking hands. Most of Johnny’s face had been blown away, half of Daddy’s head. There would be no miracle of survival for either.

I stood, my hands red with their blood. “Momma!” I cried again. “Grandma!”

No one answered. Holding my apron up to my face, I circled the hot flames to the place where I’d seen my grandmother’s wheelchair. Now I saw what had been hidden before, my grandmother’s wasted body, bloody with gunshots, sprawled on the ground. I dropped to my knees beside her, sobbing, my eyes streaming with tears from grief and pain and smoke. The ground near Grandma’s gray hair was wet, and I realized with sickening rage that the man I’d seen had been urinating not on Grandma’s chair, but on her body.

“
No!” I screamed at the sky.

I still hadn’t found my mother. I stood and hurried to the far end of the wagon, where the smoke was like a black wall holding me back. I saw a foot sticking out from behind the wheel. Dropping to my hands and knees I crawled under the smoke to where my mother was sprawled in the dirt. Her dress was ripped down the front, her swollen, pregnant belly sticking up to the sky, her skirts bunched to her waist, her privates exposed and legs splayed at an awful angle. She’d taken a bullet to the head and another to her stomach. Sobbing, I smoothed my mother’s clothes down to cover her nakedness. I collapsed on the ground next to her and curled myself into a tight ball of misery. I didn’t know what do. I wiped my tears with my bloody hands and cried out at the pain that burned inside me. I was covered in blood, but I was alive when everyone I loved was dead.

The wagon, weakened by fire, gave an ominous groan, lilted to the right, and then shuddered in warning. Before I understood what that meant, it collapsed on top of my mother’s body. I scrambled back just in time to avoid being crushed by burning wood.

They were all dead. Everyone but me, who’d been too cowardly to save them. I wanted to curl up and die beside them, let the fires burn away my anguish, but I was too yellow for even that. I scooted back as the flames burned hotter and higher. My eyes streamed, my lungs burned, and my heart ached. Then the wind shifted, and the flames moved to the long grasses on the outskirts. In a blink they caught like tinder and exploded into an inferno. I stood as the wind swept the fire along, realizing in moments I’d be trapped.

Instinct kicked in when the urge to survive did not. Keeping my apron to my face, I moved to the railings at the back of the wagon where my daddy kept one shotgun hidden and loaded for me and my mother. She’d probably been going for it when the Smith riders attacked. I didn’t have time to search for more bullets. From my father’s dead body, I took his heavy hunting knife. And then my feet were moving away as my mind stayed with my family.

The fire chased me, happily making sport of this run for my life. With each pounding step, I thought of my mother, my brother, my father, my grandmother. Their names alternated in my mind, keeping time with my steps. My chest felt as if it were held tight in a vise, a clamp determined to squeeze the air from my lungs and the blood from my heart. I raced to the shallow river and splashed across, the wet cold bringing me from shock into the full realization that whether I lived or died depended on what I did next.

Chapter Seven

DR. GRAEBEL gave Gracie a very detailed report. Her daughter had been in a motor vehicle accident, but seemed to have been extremely lucky to have walked away with very few injuries. She had scratches and a bump on her head they’d want to watch, but other than that she was fine. Gracie didn’t accept the doctor’s diagnosis until she’d held Analise and inspected her injuries herself. He was right, though. Analise seemed unharmed, just shaken by the experience. She kept apologizing, for being there or for something else, something worse. Gracie didn’t know. But tonight wasn’t the time to question her. Not when they were all so tired and anxious. Gracie couldn’t stop hugging her, kissing her, telling her she loved her. And for the first time in a long time, Analise let her.