Gus, and ya ain’t gonna get away with it. Bring me those girls. Show me my babies.” Her cries were no more important to them than the owl hooting in the backyard tree.
Grampa’s wearing brown trousers and a tan sport shirt stretched across his belly. Below the pocket is a speck of barbeque sauce, or it could be my blood. His crew cut is buzzed down to his sunburned skull, his hands are tantrum red and within reach of his double-barrel shotgun. The usual Lucky Strike cigarette is stuck in the corner of his mouth, so wisps of smoke are hanging over us.
Papa leans forward in his chair and says, “I’m only going to ask you one more time, Shenandoah. Where is Jane Woodrow?”
I can’t hardly talk because my lip is so swollen. “I already told you, sir, I… I don’t know. I wish I did.”
Bare-chested Blackie raises his hand again, but Grampa says, “Don’t mark up her face anymore. We got the festivities to think of.” He pours himself a couple of fingers out of the bottle. “What difference does it make where Janie is, anyhoo? Now that she’s admitted it’s her we saw that night in the fort even if she could talk, who’d believe her? All that flappin’ and eye blinkin’. Anybody can see the girl’s got bats in the belfry.” He downs the whiskey and wipes his lips with the back of his hand. “We can look for her later. When we find her, Shenny will help us impress upon her twin the importance of keepin’ her mouth shut, won’t ya, honey?”
“I sure will, Grampa,” I say. If they knew it was me that promised my father to keep quiet and not Woody… I can’t think what they’d do to me.
Uncle Blackie says, “Gus is right.” His sons have always called their father Gus because he doesn’t like to be called Daddy or Papa. He thinks it’s sissy. “We’ll go lookin’ for Janie later. I’ve been hankering for a game of hide-’n’-seek,” he says, giving me a playful smile.
“Speakin’ of mental cases, where’s that woman gone off to? Ruth Love, get in here.” Grampa leans back and bellows. “Bring me a piece of that pie.”
The lemon meringue is setting on the kitchen counter not a foot away from him, right below the radio, which is playing something low and bluesy. The three of them are so drunk, they’re swaying to the drumbeat and don’t even know it.
Grampa burps and says, “Time to get to the business at hand. Go ahead, Wally.” He doesn’t respect him, but he knows that my first-in-his-law-school-class father is far more skilled than a horse farrier or a land baron at posing probing questions.
Papa rolls up the sleeves of his wrinkled white shirt and says to me, “Remmy Hawkins told me that he saw you and your sister over at the Triple S the other day visiting with Sam Moody. Is that true?”
“I… I’ve been meaning to tell you about that, sir. Woody… I mean Jane Woodrow… ran over there and I went to fetch her. I know how much you don’t like Sam Moody, Your Honor. Me neither. I despise that man.”
“You’re lying,” Papa says. “I know Mother had been visiting with Moody on Tuesdays and that you girls went along with her in the rowboat. Maybe that’s why your sister ran off to the Triple S. Do you think that could be why, Shenandoah?” He asks that like he really does wonder why his wife sought comfort with another man and why his children liked spending time with him, too.
“That’s not true,” I say. “I think you got wrong information, Your Honor.”
“No, I didn’t.” Grampa and Uncle Blackie are smirking at me from across the table. Papa says, “I dropped a cuff link… I found your mother’s diary hidden beneath the bedroom floor. Did you know that she kept one?”
I lower my eyes, not able to stand the pain that I’m seeing in his. “Of course, you knew,” Papa says, so disappointed. “That’s what you were doing the other day up in my room, wasn’t it? Looking for her diary?”
“No… I…” His Honor holds up his hand in a stop, just stop, I-can’t-take-anymore-of-your-lies way. Sadness is tugging at the skin around his eyes, his mouth. He truly doesn’t understand. He bought all Mama’s clothes. Never let her out of his sight. Held her so tight.
Seeing him so dejected makes me want to brush the lock of hair that’s fallen onto his forehead back where it belongs. To kiss his tears away. How devastated Papa’s going to be when I testify at his trial. “Sam Moody did not murder my mother,” I’ll tell the court. “He couldn’t have. I was over at his place that night and he was there and not in the clearing behind our house where my mother was last seen alive. I don’t know why, but my father is lying, trying to make Sam seem guilty when he isn’t.” The family attorney, Bobby Rudd, will jump up and protest, but it’ll be too late. I will have done irreparable damage to my father. No matter what I told Curry earlier, I can feel my feet growing cold. I don’t think I can go through with it. As wrong as it would be to let Sam take the blame for something he didn’t do-I can’t betray my father. This little man, no matter what awful things he’s done, this runt of the litter is my papa.
“Pay attention.” Grampa taps the back of my head, hard. “Sam Moody’s been arrested for murderin’ your mother in the first degree.”
He was trying to catch me off guard, but I’m too practiced to let him. I feign shock and make myself say what he expects to hear. “He… he… that nigger killed Mama?”
Grampa smiles, showing teeth that are as beautiful and bright as Sam’s, and just for a moment in all that radiance, I can imagine how Beezy let herself fall in love with the richest boy in the county all those years ago.
“Shenandoah.” Papa isn’t sad sounding anymore. He talks to me in the same judgmental voice that he would a prisoner that’s just been found guilty in his courtroom. “You’ve done a bad thing. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, Your Honor, I do. And… I’m begging for mercy. I should’ve told you that Mama was going over to visit with Sam Moody at the Triple S. I realize that now.”
“You need to make things right.”
“Yes, sir. I will do anything I can.”
“When… when the sheriff questions you in this matter I want you to tell him how your mother was so kind.” Papa looks at Grampa for his approval. “And how she was going over to the gas station to help Moody out of the goodness of her heart. And… how you heard him threaten to kill her when she shunned his advances and-”
“Cuckold,” Grampa barks out.
Blackie sneers and says, “Your woman was steppin’ out with your own father’s bastard. Ya pussy.”
They will call each other names into the night. Grampa and Blackie ganging up on Papa.
When my father drops his head into his hands and starts bawling, Grampa Gus says, so repulsed, “For Chrissakes. No wonder your wife went lookin’ for some
“Go ahead and tell Shenny the good news, why don’t you,” Blackie says slyly to his little brother. “Go on, Wally.”
“I have to get remarried,” Papa says. “To… Abigail Hawkins.”
Even though I’m not supposed to ask questions in these interrogation sessions, I can’t help myself. “You
Grampa snorts out, “He damn well does. ’Bout time he made up to all of us for the years of trouble he caused marryin’ that Northern bitch.”
When he mentions Mama, I start to cry along with my father and it makes my lip bleed harder.
“Awww… let me help you with that,” my uncle says. He steps over to the freezer and removes a bag of peas. All I can think of is Woody. I hope she made it to the other side of the creek into the loving arms of E. J. and isn’t wandering around in the woods, not sure what she should do next. “Here you go.” Blackie sits back down and places the cold bag against my mouth, presses down too hard.
“We’ll be heading over to the carnival tomorrow evenin’,” Grampa says, taking a long draw and blowing the most perfect smoke ring. “I bet you’re excited, Shenny. Ya always have loved that freak show.”
I reply exactly how he expects me to. “I’m more excited than a banty rooster in a henhouse, Grampa.”
“Thatta girl,” he says, phlegmy. “Now get me a fresh bottle of bourbon from the dinin’ room cabinet and don’t forget a glass for yourself.”
Grampa and Blackie like to get Woody and me inebriated. They think that’s
“You heard your grandfather,” Blackie says, tipping my chair backwards until I have no choice but to do what he asks.
The lights that hang above the pictures of past Carmodys are the only illumination in the dining room. Hiram Carmody. Elsie Carmody. All of them. These black-and-white people dotting our walls are the ones to blame for creating a line of men so mean that they think nothing of framing an innocent man for murder or getting a kid drunk on whiskey or treating women like… I’m going to run out the front door. Make a break for it. Join up with E. J. and Woody over at the Tittles’. I take a step towards the foyer.
