After Wilson Foster had sat down next to Will Holder, waiting for another turn with the jug, I heard Wash Anderson tell him, “My older sister saw your daughter this morning, Mr. Foster, just after sun-up. She said Laura was riding east along the road past her place, and that she stopped and spoke to her for a moment or two. I don’t reckon my sister would want me to tell you that, but it’s so. She said that Laura meant to get away from home, and she wished her well. Said she wouldn’t say anything that might help you find her and drag her back.”
Wilson Foster looked like he wanted to argue about this, and I reckon I could have told him a few home truths about his daughter, but I kept my resolve to be quiet and let people jump to their own conclusions.
Jonathan Gilbert nodded. “It is all well and good for Laura to take care of her brothers and sisters and keep house for her father, but she’s past twenty-one now, ain’t she? I reckon she’s entitled to a man of her own-if she can find one.”
There was a pause before Thomas Foster said, “Of course, she has never lacked for companionship, has she?” The way he said it, you knew he didn’t mean Sunday-school chums. You don’t have to spend too long in a group of respectable people before one of them bares poison fangs. The only difference between them and a rattlesnake is that a rattler has the decency to warn you before it strikes. People never do.
They had heard about Laura’s goings-on, all right. I wondered if any of these fellows knew firsthand about her dalliances with men, and whether they knew she had the pox, but nobody spoke up about that.
Then when the talking died down for a minute, I heard James Melton say to old Foster, “You must be worried something fierce, Mr. Foster. Even if she has gone off to see some kinfolk, these are perilous times, especially for an innocent young girl. There are still bushwhackers about, and I do not yet trust the roads. I hope nothing has happened to her on her journey.”
I was beginning to get a little irritated, listening to all this soft soap about poor Wilson Foster and his beloved missing daughter. He had spent a good half hour lapping up sympathy and making himself important over the disappearance of Laura, whom he didn’t care two pins for. I thought it time to take him down a peg or two, in front of all these mealymouthed fools.
I walked up to him, like I was going to give him another helping of sympathy, and then I said, loud enough for everybody to hear, “I know you must be worried, Uncle Wilson, seeing as how Laura may have run away with a colored man.”
He glowered at me, not at all happy to have that brick dropped in front of half the settlement, but, as he turned to leave, all he said was, “I am afraid of that, too.”
That shut everybody up for a good half minute, and then of one accord, they all turned away and began talking about ten different things at once to cover the sound of all that plain-speaking. Ann gave me a look when I said that, but she kept silent. Laura Foster might have been forgotten then and there, but I was not prepared to leave well enough alone.
The day after Laura went missing, Tom Dula came early to the Meltons’ house, wanting James to fix his fiddle and to get his shoes mended. Ann was not at home, but he did not ask after her, and it would have been no use if he had, for I didn’t know where she’d gone. Will Holder stopped by again, and they all commenced to drinking and swapping lies, same as always.
We sat up most of the night, till the fire burned low, and then we all drifted off to sleep any old how. I ended up sharing a bed with Tom Foster.
An hour or so before sun-up, Ann came dragging in. I woke up when I felt the cold air when the door opened, and I saw her standing over by the fireplace, taking off her wet shoes. The hem of her dress was wet, too, as if she had walked a ways through wet grass. She got undressed and slid into the bed alongside me.
I didn’t have long to loll abed, though, for with daybreak, my chores commenced. I had milked the cows, and gathered the eggs, and came back in to cook the breakfast, and Ann never stirred.
Later, when Tom came in with that fiddle of his, wanting James to mend the bridge for him, I said, “Well, here you are bright and early. We all figured you had run off with Laura Foster. Her daddy was here last night, trying to trace her, on account of her making off with his mare. He said he reckoned that you and her had run off and got married.”
Tom stopped in his tracks and looked at me like I was foaming at the mouth. Then he laughed, and helped himself to a dipper of milk out of the pail. “What use do you suppose I have for Laura Foster?”
I shrugged. “You’ve been sniffing around Wilson Foster’s place for weeks now, so everybody reckoned you’d gone away with her.”
He finished the milk, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Well, I’m here and she ain’t, so that settles that, doesn’t it?” He gave me a hard stare as he said it, daring me to say one more word on the subject.
I just nodded, and tried to look like I was scared of him. Maybe he didn’t know where Laura Foster had gone, but I was certain that she wasn’t coming back.
The settlement talked about Laura Foster and precious little else all the way until Sunday. After all, Laura was a young, unmarried girl, and nobody knew what had become of her. Her disappearance was a nine days’ wonder. There isn’t much to talk about in a little farming settlement, especially with the War being over. For nigh onto a year,
Now, though, human nature being what it is, people were beginning to tire of the sameness of peacetime in the backwoods. They craved a little excitement again. Not more war and death, to be sure, but just a tidbit of scandalous news to spice up the endless talk about crops and weather.
All the people I met at the store and on the way there-well, the women, anyhow; I don’t know what the men talked about-ruminated over Laura’s disappearance like so many cows chewing cud. A few of the timid old ladies would have it that she had been set upon by bushwhackers and carried away, but most of the rest, who knew about Laura’s soiled reputation, figured that she had gone off of her own accord, probably run off with some man fool enough to want her. I did more than my share of visiting the neighbors that week, but mostly I just listened to the talk, and held my peace.
There was a group of ladies at the store on Saturday, eager to swap stories about Laura’s disappearance. Mrs. Betsy Scott was chief among those who held that she had run away on purpose. Now the other Mrs. Scott was adding her pennyworth of information about seeing Laura on the morning she left-the last time anybody ever saw her. Maybe Mrs. Scott figured that enough time had passed now for Laura to get clean away from here, and over into Tennessee if that’s where she was headed. If that was so, then it wouldn’t do any harm if she told what she knew. Anyhow, she gave herself airs about it until I wanted to shake her like a terrier with a rat. When you know something for a fact, and other people act like they know it all when they are just guessing, it is hard not to shout at them. My smile felt like it was tacked on with ten-penny nails, but nobody seemed to notice.
“I know for certain that she was leaving for good,” Miz Scott said to anyone who would listen. “When I saw her on Friday morning, she had a bundle of clothes slung over the saddle, and she said she was going to meet somebody at the Bates’ place. Well, it must have been Tom Dula she was meeting. Everybody knows that Laura and Tom were… sweethearts.”
When she said that, not a one of us could look at anybody else for fear we’d bust out laughing.
I was tempted to tell her the truth just to see the look on her face, but that would have run contrary to my purposes. I bit my lip, and kept still, letting her run on.
“When I saw Laura that morning, I even asked her had Tom come to her place-for I was surprised at hearing
