IN ADDITION TO smelling of cinnamon and cloves and ground ginger, the kitchen still smells of the lavender Grandma simmered during the night, or maybe it smells like lavender because the sun is full in the sky now, the air has warmed and everything will smell of lavender for the rest of the day. And right there, sitting in the center of the table and reminding everyone it’s Annie’s day, is the spice cake. The powdered-sugar drizzle still glistens, has not yet hardened to a chalky white. Grandma must have forgotten Annie was supposed to do the icing.
The moment Annie sees the cake, she wants to snatch it and hide it in a cupboard or on the back porch so Jacob Riddle won’t see it. It’s a reminder Annie is halfway between fifteen and sixteen, and even though fifteen and a half is altogether different than being thirteen or fourteen, it still isn’t being grown up. Not so grown up as Jacob Riddle.
Two decks of cards also sit on the table, right next to the cake, yet another sign today is a special day. Cards on the table mean company is coming for supper. Annie glances around the room, trying to decide if she can take the cake without anyone noticing, but Grandma is leaning against the counter as if she’s washing dishes in the sink except there aren’t any dishes to wash, and she’ll know, because she always knows. If Annie tries to take that cake, Grandma will turn and ask what Annie’s up to, and then everyone will see the cake for certain and Annie will turn red in the face again.
Sliding deep into the corner, where she hopes no one will pay her any mind, Annie lets her glance drift from the spice cake to the rest of the room. Daddy stands near her, just inside the door, chest still rising and falling with each heavy breath, boots still on both feet because he didn’t bother to take them off. His arms are crossed, and he’s taken on a wide stance as if he’s setting himself against the northern wind. With both thumbs hooked inside his belt, Jacob Riddle stands on the other side of Daddy. Jacob is a good head and a half taller than Daddy, probably had to duck when he walked through the door, but as tall as he is, he doesn’t look so big standing in the kitchen, not sure where to look or what to say. And sitting quietly, both hands wrapped around a coffee cup, hat hanging from the back of his chair, is Ellis Baine.
Annie recognizes Ellis from pictures she’s seen over the years. The Baine brothers are almost as much a legend as Aunt Juna. Ellis Baine especially, because he was the first one chased away by his own mama. Every five years since the year Joseph Carl Baine was hanged, newspaper people show up in town and start asking questions. While they couldn’t have known it in 1936, they know it now: Joseph Carl Baine was the last man publicly hanged in all of the United States of America, and history will always make that a fact worth revisiting. Those reporters want to meet a Baine brother, and a few have even knocked on the Baines’ door. In the early days, before the last brother was gone, those reporters who braved such a knock found themselves staring into the end of a shotgun.
In addition to tracking down Baines and visiting the crossroad where Joseph Carl is buried, those reporters come knocking on the Hollerans’ door too. Whenever a year rolls around that ends in a one or a six, Daddy will ready himself. For some reason, newspapers mark time in blocks of five years and ten years. The reporters ask after Juna Crowley, and is this the right house? Has she ever returned? Does she ever write? And is this the child? Usually Daddy has chased them off before they get a glimpse of Annie and can ask that last question.
Even now, every five years, those newspapers come, once from as far away as New York City. They write about the female sheriff and the appetite of a small town to witness a man hang. Some say the stories those reporters write are filled with lies. Folks were there. They know the truth. Doesn’t much matter what folks here might know when the folks reading those made-up stories are all the way up in New York City or Dayton, Ohio, or Washington, DC.
Those reporters still come even though the last Baine brother left years ago. The folks in town do their best to make life unpleasant for those reporters. Not a single room will be for rent in all the county. The café will close its empty tables when one of them walks through the door. And not one person will have one thing to say about the Crowleys or the Baines.
“Afternoon, John,” Ellis Baine says to Daddy.
Trailing everyone else by a full minute, the sheriff finally makes his way inside, wiping his face with that same limp kerchief as he steps into the kitchen. Jacob holds open the door for him and takes the sheriff’s hat and Daddy’s too, which the sheriff must have picked up on his way toward the house. Sweat stains have grown out from under the sheriff’s arms, and a button on his shirt has popped open or maybe popped off entirely, exposing his white undershirt.
“Didn’t waste no time, did you, Ellis?” the sheriff says, pulling out a chair and dropping down on it. “Marrying a cook as fine as my Bethany is a blessing and a curse,” he says, patting his large stomach. “Annie, you here?” He turns in his seat, his stomach sagging to his lap.
“Yes, sir,” Annie says, sliding a step to the right so the sheriff can see her standing behind Daddy.