A Favor for Charlie

I felt a lot better now. The cabin, set in a cleared place in the mountainside with some straggly corn growing in the rocky land around it, had been deserted. I guess the family had took a day off and gone to town in their flivver. I’d broke one of the little windows, which was barely big enough to squeeze through. I reckon it was stealing, but I helped myself to a bellyful of grub, a change of clothes — and a pistol that I stuck in the waistband of my denim pants, and a carbine that I carried in the crook of my arm. I loaded a couple pockets with live ammo. I patted the carbine barrel and decided that if they got wind I was in this neck of the hills and cornered me, they’d better come shooting.

I got out of the cabin just before nightfall. I hoped the folks that owned the place would understand, somehow. I wouldn’t have been stranded if the man I'd been traveling with hadn’t hit me in my sleep and made off with everything I had. No matter how lonesome I was, I should have knowed better than to travel with a hill renegade. I admit that I was on the renegade trail myself, but I ain’t that kind. I wouldn’t hit a man in his sleep, and I take a bath, if I have to do it in an ice-cold creek, rubbing myself down with sand.

It was pitich-black now, and I looked out over the old Smoky Mountains and they were black shadows in the night, rough, ragged shadows, reaching as far as I could see. There was no stars, and no moon, and the black, thin air was heavier than usual tonight and damp, like it was going to rain tomorrow.

I came on down the mountainside, moving through underbrush and brambles, the trees making a roof over me. It had been more than six months since I’d come down this trail. Time for a lot to happen. Time for things to cool off. I was hoping people were thinking that I’d never come back to these hills, especially Sheriff Zack Courtney. But I’d been aiming to come back the whole time, for three things. To get Lucy. To get the money. To knock my brother Charlie’s brains out.

I busted out of the timber line. The clouds parted some. Moonlight made the night a little less darker. I was at the edge of a section of low, rolling hills that stretched away in the night, sort of like a valley, with high mountains all around. I started down through a cabbage patch. Charlie and the old man had planted while I’d been gone. Just ahead of me, a rabbit went bouncing away in the night, and I heard a whippoorwill squawling off somewhere.

At the end of the cabbage rows, I squatted on my haunches and looked at the clump of trees where the house stood. I couldn’t see the house because of the night and trees, but I knew it was there. I could see a flicker of light through the trees. It gave me a terrible feeling.

I moved over the sloping land at an angle to the house. A shadow came snuffling across the yard. It was the big, red hound. He began yelping like he was glad to see me. He reared up on me, his big paws chest high, trying to lick my face. I twisted my head and cracked him on the nose. He yipped softly, jumped down, slunk a few feet, and turned to look at me. I’d hurt his feelings more than his nose, but he was quiet now. The whole night was quiet. There wasn’t any commotion at the house. After a while I went on across the hillside.

I spotted the big, rotted stump in the dark. It had once been an oak a grown man would have trouble reaching around, but lightning had hit it, and Pa had sawed it down four winters ago. Now the stump was all rotten inside, with a whole nest of ants around its dead roots. The ants didn’t bother me when I dropped on my knees and began clawing out the soft dirt and rotted wood.

I started sweating. I felt the cold of the night knifing into me. I kept digging. Before long I had scooped out a good-sized hole under the north side of the stump. I knew I was already deeper than it had been, but I didn’t find it, and kind of lost my head. I was cussing under my breath, sweat running down in my eyes, tearing at the dirt and rotted wood now like a crazy gopher.

It wasn’t there.

Then a flashlight beam pinned me to the stump. The pistol was in my waistband, the carbine laying beside me. I left my hand drift toward the carbine, easy like, and turned my head slow.

I could just make out her face over the light. It looked like she was crying, and her old, grey head was bent.

“The money ain’t there any more, Sam,” she said, so soft I could barely hear her.

I stayed on my haunches and said, “Hello, Ma.”

I listened to her holding the sobs back in her throat. Then she dropped the light and hauled me to my feet as if I was a bag of rags. She was just about chest high on me, but her arms were strong. She held me and cried for a minute, her fingernails nearly bringing blood out of my back.

“I didn’t think anybody had seen me coming to the stump,” I said.

“I heard the dog, and it came to me that it was you when nobody came to the house. I knew you’d be coming back for the money, Sam.”

I knotted my hands at my sides. “Then you knew about the money. One of you found out, saw something the last day I was here that caused you to look around — until you scratched under the stump. I thought I had hid it pretty well. I thought I was safe, and when I found out different, I didn’t have time to stick around and get the money.”

She was crying in her throat. “Sam, why has it got to be like this? Why has it got to be a trip back in the night like some hill animal? Why—”

“You know why, Ma.”

“Don’t blame Charlie, Sam.”

“What you expect me to do? I was safe. I was going to wait around until it wouldn’t look funny for me to leave. Then I was going to take my money and go. But Charlie had to get his fingers in it. He had to ask around and find I hadn’t been in town the night old man Honacker was killed. He had to keep at it until he got me in a corner. Then he stood there with his gun on me, telling me I’d killed old Ezra Honacker, asking me to turn myself in. He really preached a sermon. He was so self-righteous it made me sick. What’s he know of the way I feel? I tell you, Ma, a man has to get the things he wants one way or another. You struggle a lifetime and you see it’s all coming to nothing and you get knotted up inside with a fire burning where your brain ought to be.”

“A lifetime, Sam? What do you know of a lifetime? So young and desperate to be talking of a lifetime!”

“I had a lifetime here with you and Pa and Charlie.” It felt like I had cuckle burrs in my throat. “One lifetime with Charlie is enough! If I had been any slower slugging him that night he had me cornered, Ma, I think he’d have shot me.”

“He was thinking of your future, Sam, what it would be like if you kept running. All his life Charlie has worried about you, boy. You’ve cost him sleep. You’ve cost him money. Remember the good things he’s done for you, Sam. Like the time he rode the mule through a blizzard for a doctor for you. He was the only living thing moving in the hills that night, son. He was the only one who could have got through — and forced the doctor to come back with him.”

I swallowed a time or two. “What’d you have to come out here for, Ma? Whatever Charlie ever did for me, he undid it all when he put me on the spot for murder!”

“Murder...” her voice cracked. “It’s a harsh word for a mother to hear a son use. I’m glad Pa and Charlie went to town today. I hope they don’t come back soon.”

I was hoping that at least Charlie didn’t — but only for her sake.

She picked up the flashlight, but didn’t point it anywhere in particular, just let it make a cold, yellow spot on the ground.

“Ma, was it Charlie that found my money?”

She didn’t say anything.

“What did he do with it, Ma?”

“He gave it to Sheriff Zack Courtney, in case old Ezra Honacker had any heirs anywhere.”

“Then he really cooked me good!” The way I said it made her grab my arm quick and hard. She never spoke for a second, just stood there and held on to my arm.

Then she said, “It was the girl. She changed you, Sam. She was never any good. It must have pleased Satan the day she was born, a wild, greedy hussy. But you can’t know her, Sam. No man could. No man ever knows a woman like her. She’s all things to all men, Sam no matter what the man is — as long as he seems to be able to give her something she wants.”

“Let's leave Lucy out of this!”

“No, son.” Her voice was old and so tired it ached. She turned and started walking up the slope away from the house. The slow way she was moving along, I knew she expected me to follow her. I did. I followed her up the rise of the hill, and there at the hill top, I didn't see it at first. Then I did, straining my eyes in the night. It was the skeleton of a house somebody was building. It was in a good spot looking over the meadow, about a short quarter of a mile from where we were standing. It was in a stretch of land where a person could have a fine front yard all hemmed in with a white picket fence.

“Now you’ll go, Sam, It’ll break my heart — but go quick! The house is Charlie’s. He’s building it for Lucy.”

Ma just didn’t understand. To her, Charlie and me were still brothers. It couldn’t be any other way to her. There was nothing here for me now — so I should go.

I stood looking at the half-done house, fighting the cold sick thing that came to life in my stomach. He’d put the mark on me for murder. He’d taken my money. He'd taken my girl. Maybe Charlie’d had his eye on Lucy for a long time...

I heard Ma talking, her voice dim and far off, and I looked at her to make sure she was still standing there beside me.

“She’s rotten to the core, Sam. But Charlie’s like you, like every man she's ever met. He won’t hear anything against her. He’s blind and deaf and dumb. He's killing himself to get the house done. And that’s only the beginning. She’ll use him. She'll work him like a slave. She’ll change him if she can, the way she changed you. But Charlie won’t change. His heart will break, yes, but he won’t change — and some day when she’s got all she can out of him, he’ll come to his house and she won’t be there. She'll never be there again...”

I turned around and hurried off down the hill. I guess Ma was watching me. I guess she thought I was getting out of there for good. I wasn’t thinking. I was feeling like somebody had poured a dose of red poison down my throat. I cradled the carbine like a baby in my arm. I never had a gun feel so hungry in my hands before...

It was just after eight o’clock when I got to the Coggins place. Lamplight was flickering behind a couple or three windows in the old house. I saw the tired, stringy figure of Lucy’s ma pass a window, heard a couple of kids yelling their heads off, and the old man cussing in streaks now and then. I didn’t want any of them to see me, except Lucy, and I wondered how I was going to let her know I was out there. I waited for maybe half an hour, heard the old man bawl that the water was out, and watched the dark place where the back door opened on the hard, bare yard. There was a commotion in there; then Lucy came out, swinging a wooden bucket back and forth like she’d like to throw it away.

I could see her pretty well in the moonlight. My throat got thick and tight. She had the kind of a figure that wears a cotton print dress like an extra layer of skin. Her hair looked like honey in the moonlight, waving down to her shoulders.

I moved around the edge of the yard toward the spring house. She never knew I was there until I stepped out of the shadows and touched her.

“Sam!”

I popped my hand over her mouth before the sound got too loud. I let the carbine drop, grabbed her arm, and pulled her over in the shadows of a thicket.

For just a second she struggled. Then she didn’t, and I looked at her eyes there in the shadows and forgot everything except that she was alive and I was alive and we were standing here together.

Then I thought about Charlie. Seemed like Charlie was always around, one way or another, to spoil everything. “No noise,” I said, and took my hand from her mouth. “Seems like you didn’t waste any time when I got gone, Lucy.”

“Oh, Sam...”

“You’d better just talk. It’s a pretty nice house he’s building, ain’t it?”

“Sam, you don’t understand! Kiss me, Sam. It’s been so long...”

“The house,” I said.

She started crying, and I thought of oak leaves when the wind is strong. She’s lost her wooden bucket out there in the yard somewhere, and crying like that, she seemed so helpless and hurt it was like having a knife in my chest.

“It was Charlie, Sam. And the time you was gone — more than six whole months. I was going to wait. Sam, honest! When they told me you'd tried to rob old Ezra Honacker’s lumber mill payroll and he’d almost caught you and you’d had to kill him — when they told me that, Sam, I hoped you’d take me with you. I didn't sleep much for three weeks, watching the yard after dark for some sign of you. Then I guessed I’d never see you again, that you didn’t think enough of me to take me with you. It hurt, Sam. It made me want to hate you. But I couldn’t do that. I could just go on remembering that I’d been slighted and trying to build up hate where there wasn’t any.”

“And Charlie?”

“He said you was never coming back, Sam. He said there was another woman you’d talked about. He told me all kinds of lies, Sam, said you’d just played me for a fool. He — wanted me, Sam.”

“Keep talking, Lucy.”

“He... he started seeing me. I hated him for what he’d done to you, Sam. I wanted to hurt him. Then I thought if I could manage to get him to say he was lying about that evidence against you, you’d be safe. I’d get him to say he’d fixed up that evidence himself to get you on the run, because he wanted me. Then I’d hunt you, Sam. and get you back.”

“You’d never get Charlie to say a thing like that.”

“But I thought I could, Sam! I thought I could get him to do anything!”

“Even build a house?”

“I wouldn’t have married him, Sam! There’s never been anybody but you and never will be! I was doing it for you, Sam!”

I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe her so bad clammy sweat broke out all over my face. It was true. Everything she had said was true. But — I kept hearing Ma’s voice when we had stood on the hill top.

Lucy was so close to me I could feel her breathing against my face. She was looking right in my eyes, and her teeth started chattering. “Sam!” she said, “Sam...”

“Lucy, you’d better be telling me the truth.”

She put her arms around my neck and sort of wilted against me, like she was weak all of sudden. She had the shakes bad. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Sam!”

“Then we’ll get out of here tonight.”

“But money, Sam...”

“I can get money. I can get more money than you ever heard of.”

The shakes stopped then. But she didn’t take her arms from around my neck. She looked up at me. “I know you can. Sam. I can feel your heart beating.”

“You never mind about my heart right now. You just think what you’ve got to do. Get the water back in the house or they’re going to start wondering. Then tell them you’re sick and go to your room. Get what stuff you got to have together. Not much, we’ll have to travel light. Slip out and meet me at the willow tree beside the creek on Pa’s place. You know the spot. I’ll try to make it by nine-thirty. But you wait until I get there. I’ll be depending on you, Lucy. I love you — but if you cross me, I’ll give you the same thing I gave Honacker.”

“Kiss me, Sam.”

When I got back to Pa’s place, I knew him and Charlie had got home from town. I could see the truck parked up close to the house.

That was fine with me.

I could see a lighted window, too. It was open, and I heard voices, Ma’s and Charlie’s. I got cold up and down the middle of my back and my fingers got like thin pieces of steel. I moved up as close as I could to the window.

I saw Ma standing in there with tears running down her cheeks. Charlie was standing in front of her, his hands holding her shoulders. He had a pistol jammed in the pocket of his jacket, and he was dressed to go out. His hat lay on the center table beside him.

“...So they know he’s headed this way, Ma,” Charlie said. “Pa and I heard it in town. We got wind of it almost as soon as Sheriff Courtney.”

It hit me then what had happened. That hill tramp had done it. That same one that hit me in my sleep and took my things, spare clothes, pistol and what money I had worked and saved in Atlanta while I’d been laying low. The renegade had got to thinking, got scared I’d track him down and have his hide. He hadn’t knowed me, but he’d had a pretty good idea a man traveling the way I was on the run. So he figured he’d be safer if I was in jail and had seen to it that Sheriff Courtney had got wind that I was in this part of the hills. The tramp could have got my name easy from the things in the duffel I'd been carrying.

Ma was crying harder now. “But you can’t go, Charlie!”

“I’ve got to find him,” Charlie said.

When he said that, I brought the carbine the rest of the way to my shoulder, I was standing in the light — right in line with him. Always, Charlie had spoiled things. Pinned murder on me. Stole my money. Tried to take my girl. Now he was hell-bent on hounding me to the ends of the earth.

I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. It was like trying to swallow my tongue. I drew a fine bead on him, right in the middle of his right sideburn. My finger got tight and cold on the trigger.

“Men can be fools sometimes,” Charlie was saying. “You got to understand that, Ma. You got to understand how I love him. From the time he was a little squirt in knee britches, he wasn't like the rest of us. He was smarter, and I was proud of him, Ma.

“Then he killed old man Honacker. I knew it the minute I heard Honacker was dead and remembered the way he’d looked that night when he’d slunk home. I was more scared than I'd ever been in my life, Ma.”

My finger moved a little, went outside the trigger guard.

“I was so scared,” Charlie said, “I went up behind the barn and got sick. He’d really played hell that time, but there was still a chance. In these hills a court has never been known to sentence a man to death if he walked in and made a clean break and told the whole thing and faced them to take what was coming to him.

“So I guess I was a fool. Maybe he ain’t the smart one. Maybe he’s the vicious one. But he’s my brother and these hills are going to turn into living hell for him when Courtney gets moving. There’s nothing now but to help Sam get out. I’ve got to find him, help him.”

Ma sank down in a chair. “You’ll be making yourself a party to it, Charlie. Losing one boy is bad enough, but two...”

“I’ll handle that,” Charlie said. “As long as he wears the name, he’s still a part of the family. We’ll have to give him a fighting chance.”

My face was wet, but it wasn’t sweat now. Men can be fools, Charlie had said, and he was right. I had never understood, never understood at all. I lowered the rifle away from my shoulder.

“I’m glad you did that, son.”

I twisted around. Pa was standing off there at the edge of the light spilling from the window. He had spoke very quiet. He'd had a pistol pointed at my belly...

I heard a door slam in the house, knew that Ma and Charlie had gone in another room. He’d be out here in a few minutes now.

Pa looked little and old, with his head snow white and sort of bowed. “We’ll help you get out, Sam.”

“No,” I said. “No. There’s just one thing I want now. I want it to be right for you and Ma and Charlie. I don’t want any of you mixed up in this thing.”

“You—”

“That’s the only way I'll have it, Pa. You’ll have to stop Charlie when he comes out, understand?”

He looked at me and it made a little of the cold go out of my insides.

“All right, Sam. The way you want it. Just move, boy. Move fast!”

I left him standing there. I headed for the creek and the big willow that spread out over the cold, clear water. I knew she had lied in her teeth. Charlie hadn’t made a play for her. When I’d left, she’d started on the next man in line. It was as simple as that.

She was standing under the willow when I got there. I stood and looked at her a few seconds before she knew I was around. I could see she was excited by the way she walked up and down beside the gurgling creek.

I hated her, but I went to meet her. It was going to hurt Charlie for a while, but he’d find the right girl some day for that house he was building. And maybe he’d understand about me the way I understood now about him.

Because I was taking Lucy with me. It looked like a pretty dark road ahead, and she’d travel it every inch of the way.

It was the least favor I was in a position to do for a guy like Charlie.