Cottonwood Whispers Read online

  She slowed her steps and stared at me. I stood by waiting for her to slap me silly. Instead, she just blinked twice, bent over to grab my shoes, and tossed them at my feet. I looked down at the shoes and then back up at her.

  “You’re right,” she said. “They won’t listen to a colored girl. Guess you’re comin’ too.”

  And then she marched out the bedroom door without waiting for me to follow because she knew I would. There was never a time when one of us was about to step into trouble that the other one didn’t follow to keep watch. Most of the time it was the other way around, but today it would be me following Gemma into trouble, and I let out a long sigh as I slipped my shoes on and chased after her.

  I grabbed Gemma on the stairs and whispered, “There ain’t no way to get by Momma. She’s waitin’ on me to make that cobbler. She’ll be hollerin’ for me in minutes.”

  Gemma just continued downstairs, stopping outside the kitchen.

  Momma looked sadly over at us and said, “Gemma, you all right, honey?”

  “I need some air, is all. You mind if Jessilyn comes for a walk with me?”

  Momma tipped her head sideways and gave Gemma an understanding but sad smile. “Sure enough, honey. I’ll finish up the cobbler.”

  Gemma nodded and turned slowly away from the door, but when we were out of Momma’s sight, she hauled me outside like a cat with dynamite on its tail.

  “You lied to Momma,” I hissed when we were on the lawn.

  Gemma ignored me.

  “Gemma Teague!” I exclaimed. “I ain’t got any idea what’s put the burr under your saddle, but you just lied to my momma and you’ve got me involved, and I want to know what’s goin’ on.”

  She kept going down the road, but I could tell by her expression that she would tell me soon enough. I kept quiet and waited, but it wasn’t until a mile in that she started to speak, though she never slowed her steps or looked in my direction.

  “Mr. Poe didn’t kill Callie Colby,” she said.

  “I know that. He couldn’t have.”

  “But you only know that ’cause you know Mr. Poe. I know that ’cause I was there when Callie got hurt.”

  Her hand still clutched my arm tightly so I couldn’t stop in my tracks like I wanted to, but my feet wouldn’t work right, and I stumbled along after her in shock.

  Finally I managed to pull her to a stop and grabbed her face in both my hands. “Tell me what happened,” I pleaded. “I want to help you.”

  Gemma’s eyes were glassy and shimmering with tears, and the pain in her face made my heart hurt, but I stared at her, willing her to tell me what I knew she didn’t want to have to put into words.

  “I thought we hit a deer,” she whispered absently. “I told him to slow down. I told him to get out and see. But he’d had too much to drink, and he wouldn’t stop. He just wouldn’t stop!” Her voice reached a crescendo, and then she dropped to her knees on the side of the road and let her face fall into her hands.

  I knelt down beside her with a stomach full of knots. “Gemma, please. Please tell me who was drivin’.”

  “Joel Hadley,” she said at last.

  “Joel Hadley!”

  “He’d been drinkin’ at their party, but I let him drive me home anyways. His car broke down near Mr. Poe’s house, and he said we’d take Mr. Poe’s car instead. I told him no, but he said we had no other way but to walk and he wasn’t walkin’ all that way.” Her words came in streams like they’d been caught up in her for so long that she couldn’t keep them in any longer.

  “I told you not to trust him,” I said softly. “He ain’t no good.”

  She shook her head sadly. “He seemed to like me, Jessie. He really did. He was always actin’ sweet on me, and it . . . it made me feel good to have him pay me attention.”

  “Gemma, you ain’t got to have a no-good like Joel Hadley around to get attention. You’re worth more’n that.”

  “I ain’t been thinkin’ straight, is all. Ever since he started payin’ mind to me, I been thinkin’ all wrong.”

  I took her face in my hands again and swiped her tears away with my thumbs, but they kept coming so fast I couldn’t keep up. “Gemma,” I whispered, “calm down and tell me what happened that night.”

  She looked away from my face and stared into the distance like that night was playing itself out behind me. “He’d been drinkin’, I could tell, and I knew I’d best not go with him, but he was actin’ a gentleman. He even offered me the front seat, and I thought maybe he’d had a change of heart, so I decided to go with him. He was just fine when we started out. Then he stopped on the road near Mr. Poe’s house and he started . . . he tried to . . .”

  I grabbed her hand tight enough to squeeze the blood out of it. “Did he hurt you? . . . Gemma!” I exclaimed when she didn’t speak up. “Answer me! Did he do anythin’ to you?”

  She shook her head slowly and looked into my eyes. “I got away before he could, and he chased after me and said he was sorry. He said he was sorry and he’d just get me home . . . but we couldn’t because the car wouldn’t start back up, and he got out all mad and cursin’, and I started walkin’ down the road.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then he saw we were near Mr. Poe’s house, and he said we’d just borrow Mr. Poe’s momma’s car, and I said no. I said it was same as stealin’. But he said I was bein’ uptight, and I didn’t want him to think I was some dumb girl, worryin’ about everythin’.”

  “But he’d been drinkin’. He wasn’t fit to be drivin’ no more.”

  “I know. I know I should’ve tried to stop him or at least walked on home, but I was all mixed up.” She was pacing now, wringing her hands so tightly I thought she’d peel the skin right off. “I’m no fool of a girl, Jessie,” she told me in a near sob, as though I needed to be told some such thing.

  “I know you ain’t, Gemma,” I said as consolingly as I could. I reached out to touch her shoulder but she wouldn’t be moved to stop her pacing. I stepped back a bit and waited for her to sort out her thoughts.

  “He kept makin’ me out to be a worrywart and all, tellin’ me I was scared of every little thing, and he said he’d thought I was the sort of girl that wouldn’t go gettin’ silly over nothin’.” She turned her eyes to me with an expression full of panic. “You were right, Jessie. You warned me not to trust him, but I wanted him to like me. I don’t know why. I just wanted him to like me, and I thought he did.”

  “I don’t care none about bein’ right just now,” I told her as softly as I could though my mood was strung high as a kite. “I just want you to be okay.” I reached for her again and this time she stopped and let me take her by the shoulders. “You ain’t been okay for a while now, Gemma Teague, and I just want you back, is all. I want my Gemma back.”

  “I ain’t the old Gemma no more,” she cried in short gasps. “If I hadn’t been so worried about not makin’ Joel think me foolish, I’d have kept him from drivin’ that car. Or at least I would’ve made him stop to see what he’d hit.” She said that last word with a broken voice that mirrored her heart, and I knew she blamed herself for Callie’s death as though she’d done the killing herself.

  “Gemma, you can’t take this on yourself. It was Joel Hadley killed that girl, not you.”

  “But I could’ve stopped him from gettin’ in that car. And maybe if I hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have been so feisty and he might’ve paid more attention to where he was goin’. He was cursin’ me when he hit her, tellin’ me I’d led him down the path and then put up a fuss over nothin’. It was because of me he wasn’t payin’ much attention.”

  “Don’t you go makin’ excuses for that Hadley boy. That’s the problem with him altogether. Ain’t no one ever let him take the blame for nothin’, and now he just goes around doin’ things he should be blamed for but knowin’ he won’t.”

  Gemma couldn’t stop her tears for anything, no matter what I said, and my heart ached for her. I was losing my Gemma, all body a
nd soul of her, and I wanted to fix it all but didn’t know how. Callie Colby was dead and Mr. Poe was in jail awaiting a biased trial, and there was no way to push back time.

  “Are you sure, Gemma, that Joel hit her? Are you sure?”

  “There ain’t no way around it, Jessilyn. We had the car; we hit somethin’ right up along the bridge. . . . There ain’t no way around it. And all this time I knew what happened and let Mr. Poe go to jail instead of sayin’ the truth.” She crumpled to her knees again, weeping till I thought she’d have no tears left.

  “There ain’t no sense in wallowin’ in nothin’,” I told her with firmness. “What’s done is done, and ain’t no way to do anythin’ but move on and keep more wrongs from happenin’.”

  “But we can’t do nothin’. Nothin’! When I told Joel about Callie and what must’ve happened, he said his bank holds your daddy’s mortgage, and he threatened to take the farm away. Why do you think I ain’t come clean before today?”

  “He threatened you? He threatened my daddy?”

  “And you know he’ll do it too. Ain’t no one in this town’s goin’ to take my word against his. He’ll just tell them I’m lyin’ and then take your daddy’s farm away.” Gemma stopped wailing but her breathing came in staccato hiccups and tears still rolled liberally down her face to wet her dress. “Poor Mr. Poe,” she murmured. “I don’t know what to do, Jessie. I can’t think straight no more.”

  “You ain’t got to think straight. I’ll do the thinkin’ for us.” But despite my words, I didn’t know what to do any more than Gemma did. I craned my neck to look upward as though the clear blue sky would open up and give me an answer that would make everything right.

  There was no revelation from the heavens, but there was a determination that built in me all of a sudden. No matter what Joel Hadley had threatened, there had to be some way to outweigh him, and I was determined we’d find it.

  I marched over to Gemma and took her stoutly by the shoulders. “Mr. Poe needs our help, and we’re gonna give it to him, so you best stop your bawlin’ and get up on your two feet, Gemma Teague. We got work to do.”

  Chapter 9

  Though Gemma never stopped her quiet crying the whole way into town, she did manage to make the trip, and when we came in sight of the jail, my heart sank to find that my fears had been justified. About a dozen men stood outside of the jail talking all at once so that their words sounded like nothing but a buzzing beehive. Right up on the front steps stood my daddy, gun in hand. Behind him, Luke leaned against the doorway in a nonchalant fashion that I well knew, one that implied ease but was tensed up for battle underneath. He held his pistol in one hand, his arms crossed, his hat pulled down so that no one could see much of his eyes but he could still see theirs.

  Daddy was talking too, amid that buzzing hive of revenge seekers, but there wasn’t much anyone could do to hear one voice at a time, and I figured there wasn’t a man among them that heard a word anyone but himself was saying. Finally Daddy turned to Luke and gave him a sharp nod. Luke returned the nod and pointed his gun into the air, firing one earsplitting shot.

  I had seen it coming, so my heart only sped up a bit, but poor Gemma jumped so high I thought she’d hurt herself coming down. The rest of the people in town stopped dead, even the angry men who’d come for Mr. Poe.

  Luke tugged at the brim of his hat. “Seems we’re all talkin’ at once here,” he drawled. “So now, why don’t everyone just turn their attention to Mr. Lassiter and we can try and sort things out?” The whole time he talked, he waved his gun around like it was an extension of his hand, and I figured it was his way of showing people he’d use that gun if he had to and be quite comfortable with it.

  Eager to hear all, I grabbed Gemma’s hand and pulled her closer to the jail, though well out of sight of my daddy and Luke. There was no doubt if either saw us they’d send us packing right off.

  Daddy cleared his throat and said, “Well then, now that we got some order here, why don’t everybody just calm down and speak one at a time?”

  “We want Elmer Poe,” Delmar Custis called out, one of his grubby hands holding a rope up high. “Seems to me you got a pretty good idea what we come for.”

  “But see, that ain’t exactly a rightly excuse, Delmar,” Daddy told him in reply. “This here’s a law-abidin’ town, and our laws say a body’s got a right to be considered innocent until proven otherwise. So now, why don’t you boys head on home and wait for the trial to be over and done. I’m sure you’ll see some sense by then.”

  “Ain’t no trial necessary,” Walker Mason shouted back. “We got all the evidence we need. Ain’t nobody in this town got any doubts who done killed that girl.”

  This started all the men talking loud again, and Gemma and I used the distraction to get closer to the jailhouse. We hid behind a willow tree to the right of the stairway and tipped our heads sideways to hear better. Two squirrels scurried past us and up the tree as though fleeing the crowd. The men started to mount the steps, and I felt the hair on my arms stand up.

  Daddy raised his gun to point it straight at Delmar Custis since he was at the head of the pack, and I wondered desperately where Sheriff Clancy and his deputies were. It seemed for all the world that Luke and Daddy were the only two people guarding Mr. Poe.

  “You best back on down,” Daddy shouted over the din. “What you boys are plannin’ would be a big mistake, and I don’t aim on lettin’ you make it. Y’all just get on home to your families and let the law take its course.”

  There was no change in the men at that point. They seemed carried away by blind rage, and I realized for the first time that Nate Colby was at the center of the group. He hadn’t said a word, but he was standing there with them, his fists clenched by his sides, a look of pure hate on his face. It was then that he pushed his way past the rest of the men and mounted two steps to stand square in front of my daddy’s gun.

  “You got no right to keep me from doin’ what any daddy’s got a right to do.” Nate put one finger on the barrel of the gun and pushed it sideways a little. “What would you do if someone killed your baby girl, Harley? You tell me that. What would you do?”

  Daddy’s face wrinkled up in pain at the thought, but he shook his head slowly and said, “I know what I’d feel like doin’, Nate. But God help me if I ever got close to doin’ what I’d feel. Ain’t no healin’ from actin’ out of hate and rage. Now why don’t you head on home to Mae. I’m sure she’s needin’ you right about now.”

  “Not so much as my baby needed me,” he cried out in anguish. “Not so much as she needed me when that man in there ran her down in cold blood.”

  Daddy lowered his gun a bit and leaned forward to put a strong hand on Nate Colby’s shoulder. “Listen here, Nate. I don’t rightly know what’s goin’ on inside you, but I can tell you this. We ain’t certain sure Elmer Poe had anythin’ to do with what happened to your girl. Truth of it is, he says he had nothin’ to do with that automobile on that night. Now, we got to take time to find out the truth, hear?”

  Nate had one hand on his hip and used the other to tip his hat back so he could look into my daddy’s eyes without obstruction. “My little girl’s dead, Harley. You hear what I’m tellin’ you? My girl ain’t got no life left in her, and you want me to worry about waitin’ for facts and figures? We got all the truth we need to have, and I want that man to pay for what he done.”

  Up close, I could see the chilling looks on the men’s faces, and my heart began to pound faster and harder. There was murder in the eyes of most. I knew because I’d seen that look before in my life. I was afraid for my daddy. I was afraid for Luke. And I was afraid for Mr. Poe. To say nothing about Gemma’s broken spirit. I was just plain afraid for everything.

  Two of them men started to advance toward Daddy, and Luke cocked his pistol with a very blatant movement. I leaned forward and readied myself to pounce at any man I could get my hands on if help was needed, but my sharp movement sent the leaves of a nearby bush to r
ustling, making Luke look quickly toward our hiding place.

  Our eyes met, and Luke narrowed his at me so that he left no doubt about his feelings. He was mad as a hornet at me for coming into such a dangerous situation, and I knew I would be in for a good lecture by both him and Daddy. And Momma would no doubt put her own two cents in. But I couldn’t think about that now, and I returned Luke’s hard gaze with one of my own. The way I figured it, I was a grown woman, and I didn’t need Luke Talley telling me what I could and could not do. I stiffened my shoulders rebelliously and stood up straight, revealing myself to all of them.

  “Nate,” I said with a bit of a shake in my voice, “Mae’s awful broke up, so I hear. If you want, I’ll go back with you to help her.”

  Nate’s look of malice softened a bit at my words, but his jaw still held tight in determination. “I ain’t goin’ home right now, Jessilyn.”

  “Momma’s makin’ some good food for you, and we can stop by on the way to get it. I know you don’t feel like eatin’, but it’ll do you good.”

  “You go on home and get it yourself. Mae’s sure to like your company. Maybe you can get her to eat somethin’.”

  “I’d be happy for you to come with me, Nate.”

  He didn’t take his eyes from my daddy’s, but he said to me, “I got other things to do right now. You go on without me.”

  I left Gemma cowering beside the steps and ducked beneath the railing, climbing up to stand behind Daddy. “I can’t go on without you, Nate, ’cause it seems to me you’re threatenin’ my daddy. Just the same as you would have wanted to protect your baby girl, so I want to protect my daddy.”

  “Your daddy’s a grown man,” Daddy growled at me. “And I told you to stay behind, Jessilyn.”

  “Yes’r, but somethin’ came up to change things.”

  “What somethin’?”

  “I can’t tell you, sir.”

  Daddy knew better than to take his eyes off the man in front of him, but I could imagine the look he would have given me just then if he could have. “Jessilyn, you best tell me what’s goin’ on.”