Rainwater

FIVE

A week passed. Ella saw little of David Rainwater other than at breakfast and dinner. During mealtimes, he showed remarkable forbearance for the Dunne sisters’ chatter and ill-disguised curiosity.

The spinsters began “dressing” for dinner, each night coming downstairs arrayed in their Sunday best, wearing pieces of jewelry and explaining this sudden affectation by asking, rhetorically, what good was having nice things if one never used them? Ella even caught a whiff of cologne one evening and suspected Miss Pearl, who played the coquette whenever in the company of the new boarder.

Mr. Hastings returned one afternoon, barely having time to wash up before dinner. As Ella was serving the salad course, the sisters made the introductions.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Rainwater,” the salesman said. “It’ll be nice to have another man in the house. Do you play chess?”

“Not too well, I’m afraid.”

“Excellent! Maybe I can win a game for a change. Ah, Mrs. Barron, I’ve missed your cooking. Nothing like it where I’ve been.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hastings. Did you have a productive trip?”

“Nothing to boast of, sorry to say. My vendors don’t buy what they used to. In fact, nothing even close to what they used to, because they can’t sell the inventories they have. Nobody can afford notions these days. People are lucky if they can eat regularly. Despite Mr. Roosevelt’s optimistic speeches, times seem to be getting worse, not better.”

“Which should make us all the more grateful for our blessings,” Miss Violet intoned.

After dinner that night, the two men played chess in the formal parlor while the sisters listened to the radio in the informal parlor. Ella could hear strains of music as she worked in the kitchen. Occasionally she detected a male voice coming from the front room.

Mr. Hastings stayed for two days, then doggedly carried his sample cases down the stairs and out to his car. “I should be back next Tuesday,” he informed Ella. “I’ll call you if for any reason I’m delayed.”

“Have a good trip, Mr. Hastings.”

He tipped his hat to her and set off. That evening Mr. Rainwater excused himself immediately after dinner and went up to his room. He hadn’t spent any more evenings sitting on the porch, at least none that Ella knew about.

Their encounters were polite, but brief and stilted, as though each was being careful not to offend the other. As she’d requested, he no longer stood up when she entered a room or extended any other overt courtesy. It felt to her as though they had quarreled. They hadn’t. Not exactly. But she avoided being alone with him, and he made no attempt to seek her out.

Which was as it should be.

He’d been in residence for two weeks when they had their next private conversation. She’d been cleaning upstairs while Margaret was in the front parlor mending a drapery and watching Solly as he played with spools of thread, which was one of his favorite pastimes.

Ella was toting her basket of cleaning supplies down the stairs when she heard a scraping sound she couldn’t identify. She followed it through the kitchen, out the back door, and around the corner of the house.

Mr. Rainwater was applying himself to a garden hoe, using it to chop the dry soil between rows of tomato plants. With his coat and vest draped over a fence post, he was in shirtsleeves, the cuffs rolled to his elbows. Suspenders crisscrossed his back, forming an X over the spot where sweat had plastered his shirt to his skin.

“Mr. Rainwater!”

Her exclamation brought him around. “Mrs. Barron.” Resting one arm on the top of the hoe handle, he pushed back his hat and used his sleeve to wipe sweat from his forehead.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He looked down the handle of the hoe to the freshly tilled soil and uprooted weeds withering in the sun. When he raised his head, he looked at her with the barely contained amusement that was now familiar but no less perturbing. “I’m hoeing the vegetable garden.”

His calm statement of the obvious made her even angrier. The weeds he had chopped were evidence that the struggling garden needed attention, but his presumption was untenable. “I was going to weed it myself tomorrow.” She glanced up at the blistering afternoon sun. “Early. Before it got too hot.”

He chuckled. “It is hot. Almost too hot to breathe.”

“Which is my point, Mr. Rainwater. Besides doing my work for me, which you shouldn’t be, especially not before asking me first, strenuous work like hoeing a garden can’t be good for a man in your condition.”

His amusement evaporated, and his face became taut, the skin stretched tightly over the prominent bones. “I promise not to drop dead on your tomato plants.”

His tone struck her like a slap to the face. She may even have flinched, because immediately he let the hoe drop from beneath his arm and took a step toward her. “I’m sorry.” He whipped off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it back before replacing his hat. “Please forgive me. That was uncalled for.”

She was still too taken aback to speak.

“You think because I took it upon myself to hoe the garden that I’m suggesting you’re not competent to do it?” he asked. “Nothing of the sort, Mrs. Barron. I didn’t stop to think how you might misread my intentions. In fact, I didn’t stop to think at all. It was an impulsive decision, and, the thing is, I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me.”

She tilted her head up and looked into his face.

“I want and need something to do. I haven’t done anything constructive since I moved in, and I dislike the inactivity. It makes the days and nights pass very slowly.” He flashed a rueful smile. “You would think I’d welcome the slow passage of time, but I deplore being idle. I want to keep busy and active for as long as I possibly can.”

He stared at her for several beats, his aspect intense, as though he was willing her to understand. Then he released a sigh, his shoulders sagging slightly. He bent down and picked up the hoe. “I’ll replace this in the shed.”

He retrieved his coat and vest from the fence post and stepped through the rickety chicken-wire gate that sometimes, but rarely, discouraged rabbits from ravaging her garden.

As he walked past her, she said, “I didn’t mean to sound so cross.”

He stopped and faced her. She was on eye level with his exposed neck, where he’d loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar button. His skin was slick with sweat. He smelled of its saltiness, of sun and summer heat, of freshly turned loam.

It was almost too hot to breathe, she thought. In any case the breath she inhaled seemed insufficient. “My boarders shouldn’t do my chores.”

“Not even if doing a chore makes one happy?”

She raised her eyes to his.

In a soft voice, he asked, “What’s the harm in it, Mrs. Barron?”

“The harm in it is, I don’t want any upset of my routine.” Sounding desperate, almost afraid, she took a deeper breath before continuing. “If I allowed every boarder to do what he or she pleased, when he or she pleased it, the house would soon be in chaos. I can’t let—”

She was shocked into silence when he placed his hand on her shoulder. But before she could fully register that he was actually touching her, she realized his attention was no longer on her. He was looking beyond her. He dropped his things to the ground, at the same time gently, but firmly, pushing her aside and rushing past. “Brother Calvin?”

Ella turned to see the preacher sitting astride a mule. Legs dangling against the animal’s sides, Brother Calvin was slumped so far forward, his forehead was almost touching the animal’s stiff mane. As she watched in astonishment, he let go of the rope serving as reins, keeled to one side, and slid off the mule onto the ground.

When Mr. Rainwater reached him, he knelt down and gingerly turned the young preacher onto his back. Ella gasped at the sight of the preacher’s face. It was bloody and swollen. Mr. Rainwater hissed through his teeth. Ella, reacting to the emergency, did an about-face and ran to the kitchen door. She shouted through the screen for Margaret, then hurried back and dropped to her knees beside the two men.

“What happened to him?”

“Looks to me like he’s been beaten,” Mr. Rainwater replied.

Brother Calvin was bleeding from several cuts on his face and scalp. His clothing was torn. He was wearing only one shoe. He was conscious, but he was moaning, and his head lolled when Mr. Rainwater slid his arm beneath his shoulders and levered him into a sitting position.

“Help me get him inside,” he said to Ella.

The man’s size made it an effort. Mr. Rainwater draped one of the preacher’s arms across his shoulders, and Ella did the same. Each wedged a shoulder into an armpit, then they managed to heave him up as they struggled to stand. Moving slowly, they half carried, half dragged him to the back steps.

Margaret pushed open the screened door and, upon seeing her beloved minister in that condition, began to shriek.

“Stop that!” Ella ordered. “We need your help. Get his feet.”

The maid was struck silent. She clambered down the steps, tucked one of the preacher’s feet under each arm, then backed up the steps. All three staggered and stumbled beneath his weight, but they got him through the doorway.

Mr. Rainwater said, “Lower him to the floor.”

They did so as gently as possible, but Brother Calvin continued to moan, making Ella fear that his worst injuries were internal. “Get some towels and a washbasin of water,” she told Margaret. “And fetch the Mercurochrome from my bathroom. Where’s Solly?”

“Right behind you. I was sure to bring him with me when you called.”

Solly was sitting on the floor, his back braced against the pantry door, his legs at a right angle to his body. He was staring at his shoes and tapping them together, seemingly unaware of what was taking place.

Ella turned back to Brother Calvin, who groaned when Mr. Rainwater’s fingers probed a large lump on his temple. “Should I call Dr. Kincaid?” she asked.

“And the sheriff.”

“No!” Brother Calvin’s eyes sprang open. In his right one, the black iris floated in a pool of solid red. “No. No, please. No doctor. No sheriff.”

As he spoke, he shook his head emphatically, which must have caused him great pain because he squeezed his eyes closed again and groaned. Margaret brought the basin of water. As gently as she could, Ella bathed his wounds with water, then dabbed them with the antiseptic.

Eventually his groans subsided, but he never ceased thanking her for her kindness. Despite his condition, he fretted about the mule.

“What about it?” Ella asked.

“Doesn’t belong to me.” Between gasps of pain, he told them he was afraid the animal would wander off, so Mr. Rainwater went out to tie it to a fence post, then came back and reassured the preacher that the borrowed mule wasn’t going anywhere.

Brother Calvin convinced them he was capable of getting up, so they helped him into a chair at the table. “Do you hurt anywhere inside?” Ella asked him.

“Ribs. A few may be cracked.”

“Could you be bleeding internally?”

He shook his head. “No, ma’am. Nothing as bad as that.”

But it was bad enough to frighten Miss Violet. She ventured into the kitchen for something, but seeing a bleeding Negro man seated at the table brought her to a dead stop. She pressed an age-spotted hand to her bony chest and cried out, “Oh my!” then quickly backed out.

Whatever was going on, apparently the elderly woman wanted no part of it. Which was just as well with Ella.

Margaret slid a glass of tea within the preacher’s reach. He picked it up with both hands and sipped from it. Ella noted that his knuckles were scraped and bloody. He must have landed some hurtful punches of his own.

“What happened? Who did this?” Mr. Rainwater asked. His white shirt was streaked with the other man’s blood, but he seemed not to have noticed.

“They were shootin’ cows.”

“Lord have mercy,” Margaret wailed.

“Government men? From the Drought Relief Service?” Mr. Rainwater asked.

The preacher nodded.

“Whose herd was it?” Ella asked.

“Pritchett, his name is.”

She looked across at Mr. Rainwater. “George Pritchett. His family has been operating that dairy farm for at least three generations.”

The federal government program had been formulated earlier that year to protect farmers, dairymen, and cattlemen from total ruin. The worst drought in a hundred years had earned the Plains States the nickname of Dust Bowl. Land once farmed or used to graze cattle was now a vast wasteland, ravaged by wind and hordes of insects.

Responding to the worsening emergency, Congress had allocated millions of dollars with which to buy animals from dairy farmers and cattlemen whose herds were literally starving to death. Agents were authorized to pay up to twenty dollars a head, which was far below market value during normal times but better than nothing in the crisis situation.

It seemed a viable program. Livestock deemed healthy enough for consumption was shipped to the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation for slaughtering and processing. The canned meat was then distributed to transient communities, soup kitchens, and breadlines. Farmers and ranchers earned something; hungry people were fed.

But there was also a disquieting aspect to the program. The cattle that weren’t culled from herds for meatpacking were destroyed and buried in pits at the point of purchase. It might be a rancher’s whole herd or a farmer’s single milk cow. While the program had been designed to rescue families suffering the dual effects of the drought and the economic depression, seeing one’s lifework destroyed in such a brutal fashion was heart-wrenching.

Brother Calvin continued. “They picked out the fattest ones from the herd—weren’t many—and loaded them on a truck. Hauled them off. The ones left, they herded into the bottom of a hole that’d been dug, big as this house. Six of them marksmen lined up along the rim of it.

“Mr. Pritchett went inside the house with his wife and kids and closed the door. He just couldn’t bear to watch those cows get shot where they stood. Didn’t seem to matter to him that he’d been paid for them. His heart and spirit was broke down.”

In the telling of it, the preacher’s rolling voice gained strength. It bounced off the walls of the kitchen as though he was in the pulpit warning of hellfire and brimstone. “Then they opened fire. First shots spooked the cows. They’s bawling as they dropped. Cows, calves, ever’ last one.”

It made Ella ill to think of such carnage. Margaret pressed a hand to her trembling lips. Mr. Rainwater’s lean jaw was working as though he was grinding his teeth.

Ella said, “I know it’s necessary. It’s intended to help. But it just seems so cruel.”

“Especially to the man who’s toiled day and night building a herd,” Mr. Rainwater said. “Who beat you up, Brother Calvin? Why?”

The man wiped his eyes with his scratched fist. “Those folks in shantytown heard about what was going to happen out at Mr. Pritchett’s place. They came. Coloreds and whites together. Joined up on account of they’s all hungry. They came with whatever knifes and hatchets they had. Brought washtubs and cooking pots, thinking they could butcher those cows, get what meat was to be had off those skinny carcasses before it spoiled out there in the sun or was covered up with dirt. Folks that’ve been living on flour, water, and poke salad greens ain’t particular about their cuts of meat.”

His eyes began leaking again. “But soon as those government men left, some locals moved in to see that the dead cows didn’t get butchered. They’s led by a rifle-toting white man with a purple birthmark on his face.”

“Conrad.”

Mr. Rainwater looked sharply at Ella, who’d spoken the name.

“Conrad Ellis,” she said. “He has a birthmark that covers most of his face. A port-wine stain, I think they call it.”

“I say it’s the mark of Cain,” Margaret muttered.

“He’s a bully, always has been,” Ella said.

“He be meaner than sin.”

Ignoring her maid’s sneer, Ella went on. “Mr. Ellis, Conrad’s father, owns a meatpacking plant. He buys from most of the local ranchers.”

“People getting free meat would be bad for his business,” Mr. Rainwater remarked. “So he sent his son out there to make sure those folks didn’t get any.”

Ella frowned. “Conrad wouldn’t need an excuse. He enjoys beating up people. He’s always spoiling for a fight.”

“Especially since—”

“Margaret.”

Ella’s implied reprimand stopped the maid from saying more, but she looked madder than a hornet as she came to her feet, mumbling, “I’ll put some coffee on.”

Mr. Rainwater divided a curious look between Ella and Margaret, landing on Ella, who ignored his unspoken questions and returned her attention to Brother Calvin, who was saying, “That white boy was sure enough spoiling for a fight today.” He drained his glass of tea and carefully set it on the table.

“Soon as those government shooters cleared out, those shantytown people, me with them, ran down into that hole and started butchering those cows. Long as they were dead anyway, they could feed folks. Tonight. Not wait till the government got around to distributing canned meat. That was my thinking. And Mr. Pritchett’s, too, I guess, ’cause him and his wife come back outside and were passing out kitchen knives to anybody who didn’t have one.

“Then those boys roared up in a pickup truck, blaring the horn and shooting off firearms. They spilled out the back of that truck, waving baseball bats and rifles and yelling for those folks to scatter. When nobody paid them any mind but kept on hacking off pieces of those cows, they began knocking heads with the bats and the butts of their rifles. Men, kids, women, didn’t matter.”

“Where was the law?”

“The sheriff and a carload of deputies were there. Watching, but doing nothing till Mr. Pritchett took up a shotgun. He was shouting at those boys to get off his place and leave those poor shantytown folks alone, that all they wanted was meat that was gonna go to waste. Sheriff told him to put down that fool shotgun before he killed somebody.”

Here the preacher began shaking his head and weeping more copiously. “I saw this myself. That mean one with the birthmark went up on the porch and yanked a little boy straight out of Mrs. Pritchett’s arms. Couldn’t’ve been more than two or three years old. He threatened to bash that child’s skull in if Mr. Pritchett didn’t lay down his shotgun and let him and his buddies get on with the business of making sure the government program went off like it was s’pposed to.”

“Christ.”

The minister looked at Mr. Rainwater with soulful eyes. “The Lord forgives you the blasphemy, Mr. Rainwater. It was an awful sight. Dreadful in His eyes, too.” He wiped tears from his eyes again. “I don’t think Mr. Roosevelt had this in mind, do you? Anyhow, seeing his wife goin’ all hysterical, and his baby boy’s life threatened, that well-meaning Mr. Pritchett just give up.

“He dropped down on the steps of his porch and watched as those mean boys chased hungry folks back to shantytown. All he could do was sit there and cry over that bloody mess left in his pasture. He’d seen most of those cows born, probably helped pull some of them out of their mamas. To see ’em just shot like that, then wasted …” The preacher lost his will to continue.

When he stopped speaking, the only noises in the kitchen were those of the burbling percolator on the stove and Solly tapping his shoes together. Finally Ella asked, “What happens now?”

“They’ll be buried.”

Brother Calvin agreed to Mr. Rainwater’s explanation with a nod. “There were front loaders parked down the road from the farm, ready to roll, fill back up the hole they’d dug.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “I know men have gotta get whatever work they can. But I don’t know that I could ever hire on to shoot dumb cows and their calves. I don’t know that I could bury their carcasses in a pit while hungry children, within shouting distance, were crying and needing supper tonight.”

Mr. Rainwater leaned across the table toward him. “You were trying to help the shantytown people and got caught in the fray?”

“That’s right. I go down there sometimes and hold services for those folks,” he explained. “I encouraged them to be ready when those shooters went out to the Pritchett farm. I promised them meat. At least a bone for a soup pot. I didn’t count on men threatening to brain little boys with baseball bats.” His massive shoulders shook as he began to weep in earnest. “I feel responsible for ever’ blow struck.”

Ella laid a comforting hand on his forearm. “You’re not to blame, Brother Calvin. You were trying to help.” She looked across at Mr. Rainwater. “You know Dr. Kincaid better than I do. Do you think he would go to shantytown, treat those people with the worst injuries? I can’t ask him to do that, but you’re his kin.”

He stood up and began rolling down his shirtsleeves. “I’ll go now.”

“Stop back here before you leave for shantytown. Margaret and I will gather some things.”

He nodded as he left through the back door.

Ella was waiting for them when Mr. Rainwater returned a half hour later with Dr. Kincaid. “I need some help,” she called from the front porch.

The two men carried boxes of food, clothing, and household items from the house and loaded them into Mr. Rainwater’s car. “You did all this in the brief time I was gone?” he asked as he hefted a flour sack filled with clothing that Solly had outgrown.

“I’ve been collecting it for a while, waiting for the right time to give it away.”

While the men were stowing the last of the things in the car, Ella rushed back into the kitchen, asking Margaret to keep a close eye on Solly and promising to return in time to serve dinner. Then she grabbed her hat and went running out the front door. “Wait, I’m coming.”

“That isn’t necessary, Mrs. Barron,” the doctor said. He was sweating profusely.

“I know it isn’t necessary, but I can help.”

“Maybe Margaret would be better suited—”

“Margaret is a Negro, Dr. Kincaid. I don’t want to put her in danger of reprisal from a group of bigoted hoodlums. They enjoy bullying. They like it even better when their victims are colored people.”

The doctor looked toward Mr. Rainwater for reinforcement, but Mr. Rainwater took her side. “You can’t argue with that, Murdy.”

The doctor clapped his hat on his head. “Let’s go, then. Mrs. Kincaid is having a hissy fit as it is. She swore to send the law out looking for me if I wasn’t back in an hour.”

But an hour wasn’t near enough time to see everyone who had sustained an injury in the melee at the Pritchetts’ farm.

Ella and Mr. Rainwater doled out aspirin tablets and consolation to those with minor injuries, while the doctor treated the worst of them. He set the bones of grim-faced men who swigged moonshine to brace themselves against the pain. He bound bleeding wounds. He stitched what gashes he could with his limited supplies, then smeared antiseptic salves over the rest when his suturing threads ran out. He helped birth a stillborn baby from a woman who tiredly said it was a shame her child was dead but she couldn’t have fed another mouth anyhow. His little soul was better off in heaven, she said.

When all the wounded were treated, Ella and Mr. Rainwater circulated among the rickety lean-tos, patched tents, pasteboard boxes, and rusty cars serving as shelters. They passed out clothing, cast-off household items, and foodstuffs they’d brought. The eyes of the people looking back at Ella were either apathetic toward her generosity or pathetically grateful for it. She found both reactions equally disturbing.

When she’d given away everything she was carrying with her, she picked her way through the encampment back to Dr. Kincaid, who was giving instructions to the woman whose baby had been born dead.

He backed away from her bed, which was the lid of a box that she’d dragged into the shade of a pecan tree, and placed his hands in the small of his back as he straightened up. He’d left his suit jacket and hat in the car. His shirt was dirty and damp with perspiration. There was a smear of blood on his sleeve.

“We’ve done a little good, I think,” he remarked.

“Not enough.”

“No. Never enough.” He smiled at Ella grimly. “All the same, we’d better be on our way before Mrs. Kincaid sends out a posse.”

“Will there be any pain?” Ella asked him.

“Not much, no. The child was small, only seven months along. As births go, it was reasonably easy.”

But then he realized that Ella wasn’t talking about the woman who’d lost her newborn. She was looking at Mr. Rainwater, who was shaking hands with a man dressed only in grimy overalls. At each of the man’s legs was a grubby, barefoot child, clinging to the dirty denim of his daddy’s pants with hands that were even dirtier. The man was holding a third child in his arms. Ella had heard him telling Mr. Rainwater that his wife had died of tuberculosis a week ago, and that he didn’t know how he was going to look for work and take care of his children at the same time.

She was too far away to hear what the two were saying to each other now, but she imagined that Mr. Rainwater was telling him not to lose hope. He released the man’s hand, tousled the hair of one of the children, and turned to make his way back to her and the doctor.

She looked at Dr. Kincaid, her question hovering between them.

“Yes,” he said.

A shudder passed through her. She swallowed dryly. “Can you give him something for it?”

“When he asks for it, yes.”

“Will he? Ask.”

The doctor watched his kinsman winding his way around campfires and huddles of people. “Yes, Mrs. Barron,” the doctor replied bleakly. “He will.”