John won’t come to the house ever again, not even to see Daddy or to ask after what chores need doing. He’ll always remember the sight of me and Ellis Baine’s fingers brushing against the tip of my breast. It’ll make him close his eyes tight, shake his head. He’ll surely have imagined the day he’d see me in that way, standing bare before him. He’ll have dreamed of that moment, thought he’d be my husband and I’d be his wife. He’s never much believed in his mama’s know-how, not like other folks, but it always made him happy to hear her say he and I were marked for a future together. He would wink at me, smile, tell his mama all in good time. But now, the sight of me and the memory of me offering myself to Ellis Baine is the thing that has made John Holleran hate for the first time in his life.
Lying there on that table, Joseph Carl looks smaller than he ever did in life. But the same happened to Dale. So quickly, he faded and withered, and now the same has become of Joseph Carl. He wears a blue flannel shirt buttoned up under his chin and at both wrists. His hair, though unwashed, is smooth as if someone drew a comb through it and flattened it down after with the palm of her hand. He wears a leather belt and dark trousers. After it was over, sometime in the middle of the night, Joseph Carl’s mama came and did this for him. She dressed him and tended his hair and probably wiped his face and dug the dirt from under his nails. I know now. This is why John Holleran had come to Ellis’s house. He wasn’t trailing after me. He had come to tell Ellis that Joseph Carl was gone, but instead he found me.
Daddy pushes me toward the body, shoves me so I stumble up next to Joseph Carl. Juna already stands there, and at her side stands Abigail. I didn’t see her set her tray aside and walk into the room. Daddy had to drag me, but Abigail must have come on her own. Her grandmother has pulled Abigail’s hair back for this occasion and tied it off with a bow and dressed the child in her best cotton dress. She’s sprouted since last summer, and now the dress is short in the arms and the hem rides a few inches too high, showing her brown boots. Dale was Abigail’s only friend. Now she’ll spend all her days with Abraham. Juna wraps one arm around Abigail’s shoulders, and her other hand hovers just above Joseph Carl’s brow. She looks as if to press her hand to his forehead in search of a fever like I used to do for Dale when he was feeling poorly.
“I wanted to see,” she says, drawing her hand over Joseph Carl’s head, smoothing his hair the same as his mama must have done. “I wanted to see a man hanged.”
She trails that same hand down along Joseph Carl’s cheek, runs a finger over the crease between his lips like I’ve seen her do to Abraham Pace. It makes Abraham groan to have that done to him. He must miss it since he doesn’t come around anymore. Taking Abigail by the hand, Juna makes the girl touch Joseph Carl on the cheek. She doesn’t want his spirit haunting the child. At first, Juna guides Abigail’s hand, but then Abigail slides another step closer and, with both hands, cradles Joseph Carl’s face. Juna smiles, lifts her eyes, and looks at me.
I let myself, made myself, believe Joseph Carl had done it. He told Sheriff Irlene where Dale could be found, and so he had to have been there, had to have seen and done those things to Dale. It was the only way I could bear the trial and the thought of what would come to pass. But I could only prop up that belief for a short while. Seeing Juna stroke this dead man’s cheek and trail her fingers over his thin, pale lips, I know the chill that works its way from my toes into my knees and on up into my stomach is the knowing that Joseph Carl didn’t do the things to Dale that led to him dying, but someone else did.
Juna has made these things happen and made people believe. Even me. This is the reason Daddy won’t look her in the eye or give her a chance to work her way into his thoughts. Juna is smarter than we are, has a way of working things out long before they’ve come to pass. I always thought, hoped, Daddy was cowardly and superstitious for all his fears of Juna. I think now Daddy is the wisest among us.
Maybe what Juna says next frightens me because those eyes of hers are black. Maybe if a person with ordinary brown eyes had said it, my breathing wouldn’t have picked up. It’s the way she speaks softly, as if to a child, as if to the baby who grows inside. It’s the way her lids close and open again slowly and with thought, her not wanting even to disturb Joseph Carl with the sound of her blinking eyes.
But Juna is the one who says it. Juna, with her black eyes who tilts her head in such an odd fashion. Juna says it, and I know she’s the reason Dale is dead. I don’t know why or what she did, but she is a woman who would see her own brother die and an innocent man hang, and I begin to fear for Ellis Baine and John Holleran and even my own daddy.
“Do you suppose,” Juna says, smiling as she cups Joseph Carl’s chin with her hands, “they might hang another?”