SEVENTEEN
“Conrad Ellis has been deputized.”
Mr. Rainwater broke that to her the moment she joined him on the porch, before she had even sat down.
“What?”
“I’m afraid you heard me right. The sheriff made him a deputy. At his request, I’m sure.”
Stunned by this news, she moved to the railing where Solly’s dominoes had been left standing in their precise row. “How do you know?”
“He arrived with the sheriff, sporting a badge, carrying a shotgun. He made certain I saw both. He had the honor of being appointed to cut down Brother Calvin.”
“From the beam on which he’d hanged him.”
“Almost certainly.”
She turned, and they stared at each other across the distance separating them. But the enormous inequity of the situation had left Ella speechless. Apparently Mr. Rainwater had nothing to say, either. He looked dispirited and tired. His face was gaunt. She noticed that, when he stood up, he was holding his side. He walked to the door, pulled open the screened door, then looked back at her.
“I don’t need to tell you what this means.”
“Conrad has been given authority to run roughshod over anyone he chooses and to get away with it.”
“You must take care.”
“And so must you.”
Mr. Rainwater nodded, then went inside.
Ella picked the dominoes off the railing one by one and stacked them neatly inside their box. Solly would appreciate her orderliness. She smiled at the thought.
But, in spite of her smile, an unheralded sob escaped her. She secured the lid on the box of dominoes and clasped it to her chest as though it were a lifeline in a sea of sorrow.
Tears formed, then flowed. She covered her mouth with one hand in an effort to suppress the sobs, but they wouldn’t be contained. She cried for Margaret, who’d had the misfortune of making that ghastly discovery. She cried for Brother Calvin, who’d been kind, generous, idealistic, and courageous. While she admired him for standing up to Conrad, and warning him of damnation, she knew he’d died because of his outspokenness. And what of his young wife? Did she know that bigotry had made her a widow?
She wept for Jimmy, who, because of this incident, would become embittered and angry, filled with hatred and a thirst for revenge. For Ollie and Lola. For the Hatchers and the Pritchetts, for all those who’d had to destroy their herds in order to hang on to the farms and ranches that were supported by that livestock. She wept over the cruel and bizarre irony of that.
She wept for poor Doralee Gerald, who would probably grow old without her unhappy situation ever changing, who would always be an object of either pity or ridicule. She even shed compassionate tears for the lawyer, Mr. Whitehead, whom she barely knew but who seemed like a decent man trapped in a moral dilemma and hopelessly sad circumstances.
Eventually her tears subsided, and she brought the sobs under control. This morning she had prided herself on being able to contain her tears. But lately, that ability had deserted her. Bouts of weeping were becoming more frequent and exponentially turbulent. She’d cried that night in Solly’s room following his fit over the spools that had interrupted the gentlemen’s chess game. She’d been reduced to tears last night when Mr. Rainwater gave her the book. Tonight’s sobbing had been the most extreme emotional outburst so far. She must reverse this trend. Starting now.
She went inside and locked the screened door, then went through the house checking the other doors and turning out lights. In her room, she undressed down to her slip and pulled on her summer-weight wrapper. Ashamed of her red, swollen eyes, she bathed them with cold water until they looked more normal, then cleaned her teeth and finally pulled the pins from her hair and uncoiled the heavy bun.
She was turning down her bed when the knock on her door came, so softly that, at first, she thought she had imagined it. But it came again, just as softly, but undeniably.
Making certain that her wrapper was securely belted, she went to the door and opened it a crack. “Mr. Rainwater.” Instantly concerned, she opened the door wider and looked him up and down, wondering if the difficulty in his side had been more than a stitch, if he was more than just winded. “Are you ill?”
“I heard you crying.”
“Oh.”
“My room is just above the porch.”
“Oh. Yes.”
“My windows were open.”
“I didn’t think. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”
“You didn’t. Not in the way you mean.” He paused a beat, then asked her why she’d been crying.
“It was silly.”
He said nothing, just stood there looking down into her face, patiently, or stubbornly, waiting for her to explain.
She made a helpless gesture. “Several reasons.”
“Like what?”
“There just seems to be …”
“What?”
“So much cruelty, and pain, and sadness in life. And I was just wondering why that is.” Of course the ultimate unfairness was his circumstance. The reminder of that brought fresh tears to her eyes, which she impatiently wiped away with the back of her hand. “Thank you for your concern, but I’m fine.”
“Are you?”
She looked into his eyes, but her nod of affirmation must not have been convincing, because he didn’t move. Nor did she. They continued to stare at each other until she began to feel the same tightness in her chest that she’d felt last night when she’d held the gift of his book in her hands, until her veins throbbed with blood suddenly gone feverish, until her eyes stung with fresh tears, and she had to clamp her teeth over her lower lip to keep it from trembling.
He took a step nearer. She saw her name, Ella, form on his lips, but she couldn’t hear it for her pulse drumming in her ears.
Slowly, he raised his hands and placed one on each side of her face, curving them to fit her cheeks. He lowered his head. Feeling his breath warm on her face, she made a weak mewling sound. He touched his lips to the corner of her mouth.
Her breath caught.
Then he kissed the other corner of her lips. She closed her eyes, squeezing out tears that felt very wet, very hot on her cheeks.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered.
The brush of his lips across hers sparked a longing deep within. It didn’t unfurl gradually, or come to life drowsily after its long repose. It erupted. So that when he kissed her mouth fully, she began making such hungry sounds, he backed her into the room and gently closed the door with his foot.
With the door at his back for support, he pulled her to him, and for the longest time, they clung to each other. She reveled in the feel of his arms around her, his breath quick against her neck. She leaned into him, feeling his hard bones and the solidness of his form in thrilling contrast to the softness of hers.
She pressed her face into the vee of his open collar and touched his throat with her lips. His skin was warm. She breathed deeply of his smell, so familiar to her now, but so very forbidden until this moment, when she didn’t deny herself indulging in it, drinking it in, taking it into herself, committing it to memory for life.
He eased her away and combed his hands through her hair, watching as the undisciplined strands celebrated their freedom by coiling themselves around his fingers. He seemed fascinated by the abundance of her hair, its texture and length, and she got the sense that he would enjoy playing with it for hours.
Then his eyes settled on hers. His remarkable eyes. Blue and pure, the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen, or would ever see again in her lifetime. She would vow to that.
“I love you, Ella.”
She closed her eyes for a brief few seconds, and when she opened them again, she whispered shakily, “I know.”
“I would never do anything to damage you.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“So if you tell me to leave, I will.”
She laid her cheek against his chest. “If you left me now, I wouldn’t survive my regret.”
He sighed her name as he tilted her face up and slanted his lips across hers.
Ella thought she might die of the pleasure that coursed through her. But then he lowered his hands from her face and untied the belt of her wrapper. When his hands were inside it, bracketing her rib cage, and she could feel the pressure of each of his long fingers, she realized that his kiss was only a prelude to the pleasure he could give her. And when he moved his hands up and down over the slippery fabric of her slip and they brushed the undersides of her breasts, she became certain of it.
She didn’t have a mirror, and it would have been too dark in the bedroom to see her reflection anyway, but she knew that, as she gazed into his face, her eyes must have been glassy with wonder. “I had no idea.”
He was equally intent on his study of her face. “What?”
“That I could feel, that anyone could feel, something that extraordinary, and live through it. How is it possible?”
“It was one of the Creator’s finest hours.”
She smiled and nuzzled his shoulder, then laid her head on it. “It was nothing like that with my husband. So unlike it I can’t even compare the two experiences. I didn’t love him. Perhaps that’s why.”
“If you didn’t love him, why did you marry him?”
“I’d already rejected Conrad. I suppose I was afraid that, if I continued turning down suitors, I soon wouldn’t have any. I didn’t want to wind up the old-maid landlady of a boardinghouse.” Pensively, she added, “Of course that’s what happened. Essentially.”
“You have Solly.”
“Yes.”
Mr. Rainwater took a strand of her hair and rubbed it between his fingers. “Your husband must not have loved you, either, Ella. If he had, he wouldn’t have left you.”
“He loved me, I think. In his way. The best way he knew how. But he just couldn’t handle what was happening to Solly. Maybe he was frustrated because he was powerless to fix it. Maybe he considered Solly a poor reflection on him. Or perhaps he looked into the future and saw what having a child like Solly would mean to our lives, and he simply had to escape. But I don’t suppose I’ll ever know for certain what drove him to leave.”
“You don’t know if he’s dead or alive?”
She shook her head, then lifted it from his shoulder and, looking down on him, smiled wanly. “It’s likely that I’m an adulteress. Willfully and gladly I’ve committed that sin tonight.” Her eyes began to fill. “Is loving you God’s way of punishing me?”
He touched her lips with his fingertips, then drew her to him, saying, “No, Ella, no. It’s His blessing.”