to Tennessee to get married, when they could have invited the whole of Elkville to a wedding if they’d a mind to wed. I’m glad she didn’t think of that, for I had no answer ready there. And she didn’t seem to think it strange that an idle fellow like Tom would leave a comfortable home where he did precious little work to go and shift for himself in a strange place. It’s hard for people to think straight when you have hit them with the thing they fear most in the world. She went right past wondering if it was true and straight into wondering how to stop it.
“Where is she meeting him, Pauline?”
“Why, at the Bates’ place around daybreak,” I said. “I think if you were to watch the road from your mama’s house, you’d likely see her go by, if you wanted to go over there and talk to her. You’d want to get her alone, though-before anybody else comes.”
I could tell by her breathing that she was mad enough to spit nails. That and the drink is likely why she didn’t ask me a sensible question, like why Tom and Laura would meet up at the Bates’ place. Laura lived five miles away, and Tom’s house was a mile east, down the Reedy Branch Road, and from the Bates’ place they’d have to backtrack to get on the road that led up the mountain to Tennessee. Why would they meet there when there were miles of woods between Laura’s house and the mountain road? Why the Bates’ place?
PAULINE FOSTER
On the last Friday night in May, old Wilson Foster was stumping all over the settlement complaining loud and long about Laura running away from home. The weather was fine that evening, and after supper, instead of staying home, people congregated up at the Meltons’ house, passing the pleasant evening with one another and enjoying the fresh air after a long winter of being cooped up in smoky little cabins. We had a houseful, and hardly enough likker to go around. Ann’s brother Thomas Foster had come over, along with Will Holder. Jonathan Gilbert, who sometimes worked for James Melton, was still there, helping him cut leather for shoe making. Washington Anderson turned up, of course, hunting Tom, but he wasn’t around, for once.
Foster hadn’t been asked to the party, but he showed up in the yard outside just as the light was fading, dressed in his usual raggedy farming clothes, and he shuffled into the cabin, looking forlorn.
“Have any of you’uns seen my Laura?” Wilson Foster asked them, after he’d downed a few swigs from the jug to take the chill off his bones.
Nobody had.
“Well, I reckon she might have took off with Tom Dula. I’ve caught them in bed together a time or two. Has he been around?’
Tom Foster spoke up. “I seen him just a while ago this evening. But he was by hisself. I never did see Laura.”
The men looked peeved to be put off their drinking by an old man bearing troubles, but at first they were polite enough, saying it was a shame that Laura had gone missing. Nobody reckoned there was much to it-maybe she had gone off visiting kinfolks up in Watauga. Will Holder said he hoped he’d find her soon, then they’d turned their backs on him and went back to what they were saying before, not giving him another thought. Well-brought-up people will be civil to anybody, but you shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking you matter to them. I wondered if old Foster had figured that out, or if he even cared.
He didn’t seem to heed their indifference, but just went on moaning about how ungrateful Laura was to have gone off and left him, and how he didn’t know what he was going to do with all those young’uns to take care of, in addition to all the extra chores. I wondered if I was the only one wondering who was looking after his children while he was out and about, visiting with all and sundry, but nobody spoke up, and I never heard that anybody in the settlement offered to do any cooking or laundry for him, either.
While he went around, asking if anybody had seen his daughter, I kept still in the doorway, watching Ann to see how she was taking this news, but her face was as blank and innocent as a barn cat’s. I wished I’d had more turns at the jug. It’s easier to put up with fools when you have a tot of likker warming up your insides to deaden the noise. Good thing I’d had a drop or two to drink before he came, but it was wearing off now, and I could have used reinforcements.
Somebody handed old Foster a gourd of whiskey, and I hoped that would shut him up, but between gulps, he went on and on about how hard it was on him with Laura gone, and then he started in again, bewailing the loss of that infernal horse, and saying that he reckoned he could do without Laura well enough, but he wanted that mare back.
“She ought to be easy to track,” he said. “She’s got a sharp pointy place on one hoof where I had started to file it down, but had to leave off afore it was done. You look for that pointed hoof print in the dirt, and you’ll find my Belle. I know which way she was a-going. I tracked her past the Scotts’ place and down the river road. Picked her up again on the Stony Fork Road, and found tracks all the way to the old Bates’ place. She went off the road then. Started through an overgrown field, and I lost the trail. Don’t reckon she can have gone far, though.” He looked around, hat in hand, eyebrows raised, waiting in certainty for someone to offer to help in the hunt.
I’d had a bellyful of hearing about that horse, and I was tired of listening to the old man whine about his young’uns, as if nobody else in the world had a hard row to hoe in life. As if nobody here ever lost somebody to the War, or got a sickness they’d never get well from, or worked every day sun-up to dark and still stayed poor and hungry. I was tired of hearing it. So I stood up, and called to him over the heads of half a dozen folks, “I’ll get your horse back for you, Uncle Wilson. Just gimme a quart of whiskey, and I’ll bring her right on back to you.”
The men had been talking and laughing amongst themselves, so loud you could hardly hear yourself think, but when I said that, it was as if I’d dropped a hornet’s nest into their midst. All the talking stopped at once, and they all stared at me and him, waiting to see what was going to happen next. I thought they’d take it as a joke, but I had misjudged, because nobody laughed. And everybody remembered.
Uncle Wilson stood there for a minute, staring at me with his mouth open, and then he just shrugged and turned away. I guess he figured I was making fun of him, which was true enough, I suppose, though I did want that whiskey awful bad. It was no secret that I was powerful fond of hard likker, and they must have thought that was all there was to it: me trying any way I could to get another jug. I didn’t say anything else after that. Maybe I had said too much already.
Thomas Foster, who had not been brought up well, and who had taken more than his share of the whiskey, must have been as tired as I was of the old man’s lamentations, and he began to make sport of his uncle. He set a twig alight in the fireplace and began to stagger around with it. He stumbled against Wilson Foster, and set the old man’s beard afire. They scotched the sparks in a moment, and Wash gave him a dipper of water to soak it in, but even then he didn’t take the hint and leave.
Finally, James Melton, who always had a kind word for everybody, if he spoke at all, patted his arm a trifle gingerly, and said, “Surely Will is right. Your Laura has gone to visit relatives. I reckon we could pray for her safe return if it would ease your mind any.”
This was too much for Foster’s temper, for he had come in search of information, not threadbare homilies. He leaned in close to James Melton, though he was too short to reach his face, and he breathed out fumes of bad breath and whiskey. “Why, man, I don’t care if I was to never see the little hussy again, but the thing is, she went and stole my mare. And I damn sure want that horse back.”
His salty language put James off almost as much as his breath did, and with a sigh of disgust, he turned away from the old man, and sat down near the fire with a bit of shoe leather he was working on. A couple of the men who overheard him just nodded, not at all surprised at his words or his attitude. Most everybody hereabouts knew that there was no love lost between Laura and her father, and horses did not come cheap. Wilson Foster didn’t even own his own land. It was a wonder he had a horse at all, and he certainly wouldn’t part with it without a fight.
I was standing in the doorway, next to Ann Melton, well away from the smoke and the fumes in the little cabin. Ann was watching the road like she was expecting Tom to turn up any minute. The men didn’t much want us in there anyhow. Nobody ever had much good to say about Ann, for her carrying on with Tom Dula was common knowledge in the settlement, and, as for me, I was just the hired help, so I counted for nothing.
