what’s down there, don’t you, Pauline?”
I could see there was no point in lying to her, so I just nodded.
She dug her nails deeper in to my arm. “Well, if you don’t keep your mouth shut about this, you’ll be out here, too.”
I believed her, and I resolved to be more careful of her in future. I wasn’t afraid of her-just wary, same as you’d be if you saw a snake on the path in front of you. I knew she had a temper and she was too selfish ever to be trusted, but now she had told me something she ought to have kept to herself. Now she had cause to be afraid of me, and Ann always struck out at what made her fearful. So I must be watchful.
They say that once a dog has killed chickens, you might as well shoot it, for it has got the taste of blood and will never stop killing. I didn’t think it would come to that with Ann, but I reckoned it would be easier for her if she took a notion to do it again.
PAULINE FOSTER
I took to visiting the little general store in Elkville every chance I got, just to hear what people were saying about Laura Foster. Mostly, I’d just listen, but if the story looked like it was dying down, I’d blow a little on the embers to get it going again. No more than Ann talked to most of our neighbors, I didn’t figure any of it would get back to her, but she must have had her ear to the ground from worry about news of Laura, because it did.
One time I ran into Jack Adkins and Ben Ferguson there at Cowle’s store, and they were still talking about the disappearance. Ever since they went and fetched Tom Dula out of Tennessee a few weeks back, they had fancied themselves lawmen and thought it was up to them to set everything to rights-or else they were just nosier than six old ladies.
It is more than a mile from the Meltons’ place on Stony Fork Road down to Cowle’s store, and by the time I had walked it in the summer heat I was so hot and tired that I was in no mood to suffer fools gladly.
Jack hailed me as I came up the path. “Pauline-here-stop a minute. You’re a cousin of Laura Foster, ain’t ye?”
I nodded, trying to edge past him and into the store, out of the burning sunshine. “We don’t much bother about the
“We’re trying to work out what happened to her,” said Ben Ferguson. “Tom Dula’s not talking, so we’ll have to figure it out for ourselves.”
I set my face into polite blankness and heard him out. People thought that we Fosters should care more than other people about what happened to our cousin, being blood kin, but if anything, I think we cared less, for we knew her better, and she wasn’t much use to anybody.
Ben said, “She took her daddy’s horse and went off on her own, so we know she wasn’t kidnapped. And when she saw Miz Scott on the road that morning, she said that she was going off-with Tom Dula, some say. Only
It was all I could do not to laugh. The two of them looked like puppies smelling guts at a hog killing. I think Ben could read, and he must have been filling his head with pirate tales or some such folderol out of a book. Or maybe they had missed the War, and were trying to scare up a little excitement now to make up for it.
“We’re going to go on searching for her,” Jack told me. “She’s dead. We’re certain of that. And Tom done it, but we don’t know what he did with the corpse. But we reckon we’ll find it.”
I didn’t think the two of them could find their bottoms with both hands, and for all my vows to hold my peace about the matter, I could not stop myself from twisting the tails of those two fool hounds. “Why, you may be sure she is dead,” I said, just as solemn as a burying preacher. “Why, I killed her myself. Me and Tom Dula did. Can’t tell you where we put her, though. But you all keep looking. You’re sure to find her sooner or later.”
With that, I pushed my way past them and on in to the store, while they were still standing there, rooted to the ground, speechless with shock. I made it all the way inside before I fell to laughing so hard I could not speak my order, but it is dangerous to jest with fools, for they are liable to believe anything.
After I had finished passing the time of day at the store, I figured I would give the Meltons the slip a while longer, as long as I was out. I could always claim later that I had been feeling poorly. I left the store and went south along the river road to the house of Mrs. Alexander
“What are you doing out visiting when your chores ain’t done?” Ann Melton had barged in to Miz Scott’s house so soon after I got there that she must have caught sight of me on the road. She grabbed hold of my arm, and shouted right in my face. “Nobody gave you leave to go off a-visiting! The cows want milking, and there is breakfast to be got, so you can just march yourself back home with me and get started on it.”
Having a witness to this coarse treatment emboldened me. “Why must I do both, Cousin Ann? Milk the cow and cook the breakfast? I’ve not seen you do a hand’s turn in many a day.”
She slapped me hard then, and, putting one hand on my arm and winding the other one around a hank of my hair, she half dragged me out the door and down the road. Treating me like a slave afore company just made me all the more determined to give her the slip, so after I’d been to the store, I headed back to the Scotts’ to finish my visit, and maybe to cadge a biscuit and honey, for before Ann hauled me away that morning, Miz Scott had told me she would be baking.
As soon as I had knocked, Miz Scott met me at the door, pale-faced, and peeking over my shoulder to see if Ann was following along behind me. Seeing nobody else in the road, she pulled me inside, barring the door behind me. Then she sat me down at the table and she poured me a dipper of cold water into a tin cup. Before I could even take a sip, she had put the plate of new-baked biscuits on the table next to a pot of honey, and she bade me help myself. She didn’t have to tell me twice, so I reached for a biscuit, and contrived to look like I had come a-visiting for the pleasure of her company.
“I was sorry to see that unpleasant scene that passed between you and Mrs. Melton this morning,” she said, pulling up the other chair, and pouring water for herself into a chipped china teacup. “Your cousin is quite a high- strung woman.”
I nodded, taking care to look sorrowful and a little afraid. “She has the temper of a penned-up bull, does Cousin Ann. You wouldn’t want to cross her, Miz Scott. It’s as much as your life is worth to make her angry.” I said that last bit slow and soft to give her time to catch my meaning.
Miz Scott turned pale, and she clapped her hand to her mouth. After a moment she whispered, “Have you ever known anybody to make her angry?”
“Besides me, you mean?” I took a sip of water and pretended to think on it. “There wasn’t any love lost between her and our other cousin, Laura Foster over to German’s Hill. I reckon you’d know the whys of that, same as everybody else around here. Ann and Tom Dula have been lovers ever since they were young’uns and figured out what sex was, and, even though she is married herself, Ann pitched a fit when he took up with Laura Foster. I heard her threaten Laura’s life.”
Miz Scott gasped and her eyes bugged out, froglike. “What are you saying, Pauline?”
I shook my head. “You must judge for yourself, Miz Scott. I must live with the Meltons, and it’s not my place to say anything.”
“But Laura has been gone these many weeks. And you say that Ann threatened her. Can you possibly mean… that Ann?”
I shook my head. “It’s as much as my life is worth to say any more, ma’am. You’ve seen her in a temper. Can you blame me for not speaking out?”
Miz Scott opened her mouth to argue with me, but then she shut it again, and I reckon she was remembering Ann pitching a fit in her house that very morning, and she saw the sense in what I said. After that, she tried to talk
