Chapter 22

Alexander Beall rode directly into his barn after noticing that smoke was curling from his chimney and that a lamp was glowing near the back door. The rain was mixing with sleet but the wind had eased and the snow had stopped. He was relieved that everything looked very normal. Beall dismounted and led his dripping horse to her stall. As he wiped his feet and came in his back door he caught a quick glimpse of something moving beside him and heard a loud clanking sound just before he felt the blow and fell into darkness.

When he came to his senses, Alex Beall found himself tied to a chair near the fireplace in his home. His head hurt, and his back ached. He twisted in the chair trying to get more comfortable and found his legs tied as well as his arms.

"Ah, you're finally awake," James Brookes said from the rocking chair on the other side of the hearth. "You've got a damned hard head. Think I dented one of your wife's iron frying pans on it. Where is she, by the way?"

Beall thought as quickly as he could. "Don' know. Think she went over visiting her cousins this morning. Probably won't come home until this rain lets up." He wondered where his wife really was. There was no place in the small house to hide. Maybe she's out in the smokehouse, he thought, trying to get his head to clear and his eyesight to stabilize. He felt as if he might throw up and swallowed down the bile.

"You ruined everything, you damned busybody. I ought to kill you right now and get done with it. Cut you open and spill out your guts.

"What are you talking about Brookes, the business with Sparks?" Beall asked without knowing why he was doing it.

"What about Sparks, devil take him? Not fit to black my boots."

Beall shook his head and then looked at Brookes' boots. They were wet and muddy but generally fit the description he had carried away from his conversation with Gil at his small cave: well made, soft, dark brown leather, turned at the top.

"I told your daddy about Sparks. Now your father knows you lied to him and probably stole from him too."

Brookes almost leapt from his chair but then settled back down and picked up the iron poker standing at the side of the fireplace. He weighed it in his hands for a moment and then swung it quickly at his prisoner's left shin, hitting him just above his ankle.

Beall yelped and winced with pain, almost tipped his chair over trying to pull away. "What was that for, James? What is this, a game you're playing? Your father said you were headed for the Ohio Country. I suggest you get going before that constable down in Georgetown comes looking for you. I sent a note to him on my way back here. Stagecoach ought to have been down there an hour ago."

"Damn you and your meddling!" the young man cried and hit his prisoner again with the firestick, just below the knee. The chair took part of the blow, but Beall gasped.

"Why'd you kill Sparks? Are you here to explain that to me now that you've admitted you did it?"

"I not going to explain anything to you, y'bastard. I'm going to kill you, you stupid meddler. Meddler! And I want your dear wife to watch me do it so she can tell folks about how you begged and cried. Hadn't been for you, I'd be home and planning how to improve the place. Damn my father for marrying that stupid widow. He's to blame too. Now her foul brat will probably inherit Mayfield."

Beall listened to the furious man's labored breathing and waited for him to calm down a bit. He couldn't decide whether to just sit and react or to try to keep the man talking. Better to keep him interested, he concluded. Time was what he needed.

"Understand you don't like left-handed people, James. Why is that?"

"What, what? That's a lie. My mother was left handed, you damn meddler. Stroked my face, she did, did my hair with her left hand. Fed me with it. Spanked me too when I needed it. Nothing wrong with left-handed people. What made you ask that?"

"Saw Annie t'other day, didn't you?" Beall stretched the knots on his forearms and wiggled his legs, trying to find a weak place.

"Your little doxie! Ha! Come now Mr. Beall, we've had this conversation." Brookes slapped the poker repeatedly into his palm as if it were his riding crop.

"She told me all about it, Brookes. All about it." Beall took a chance and laughed. "No starch, eh? Not enough iron in your diet? Try oysters before..."

This time the poker hit Beall on his left ear and cheek bone and knocked him and the chair over as he ducked away. He felt the blood running down his face and smiled at Brookes. "Did you think she wouldn't tell me after you beat her up?" he said from the floor. Margaret's not going to like this blood on her braided rug, he thought.

"Shut up, shut up!" Brookes yelled in his face as he struggled to lift Beall and his chair upright again. One rope seemed to have slipped, the bleeding man noticed.

"Tell me about Sparks. At least he was a man and not some poor, skinny girl in a lean-to."

"All right, all right, I'll tell you. He jumped me, and before he could pull that big knife out of his boot, I cut him from here to here. He's not the only one that carries a knife." Brookes drew a line up Beall's stomach with the poker. "Opened him right up. Should have heard him scream and grab at his guts."

Beall decided that he was right; the thing to do was to keep the agitated man talking even if he did get hit now and then. Help might be on the way. His wife was out there somewhere. He stretched one leg where the rope seemed a bit looser and went back on the attack with a smile. "Then you cut his cock off, didn't you? What were you two doing that it was hanging out where you could reach it?"

"That's right, I did. Kicked it into the Potomac. He deserved it. Made fun of me, and I was paying him five pounds a week. Then I pushed him and his guts into the river and laughed at him as he thrashed about, screaming, insides streaming out."

"I told your father you were milking his account with McKendry. What was Sparks holding over you?" Beall asked, and then suddenly he was sure. "Did he know about the Clagetts?"

Brookes shifted his chair around so he faced away from Beall and into the fireplace. The poker stopped moving in his hands.

"Why'd you kill those people, James?"

"That was a mistake, an accident. Sparks and I, well you know, I visited Beth, and he, well, she, no, I..." Brookes said toward the banked fire, his head drooping, the words barely audible. Spittle dripped from his mouth.

"Did Sparks do it?" Beall asked quietly as Brookes seemed to be lost in thought, the poker quivered in his right hand. "Did he cut them with that big knife?"

"No, no, he wasn't there, not then. She told me, told me about the boy. I grabbed her hair, saw the truth in her eyes and something happened, and she was dead. Blood spraying everywhere. So I had to kill them. I stuck the knife in Lem, but he fought me, so I had to, well, and then he fell, spurting blood, got all over me. The boy ran down to the root cellar, hiding, begging. Oh, the poor boy. He was crying and crying. 'Don't, don't' he screamed."

"Why did you cut off Beth's arm?"

"Had to, it was bad. Like my mother. She shouldn't have left me. That was wrong, wrong, awful wrong. And the boy was bad too, left-handed he was. Did you know that? But he was mine, that boy, she told me, my git." Brookes stopped, and then in a different voice said, "That can't be right." The poker froze in his hands, and he turned back toward Beall, his look one of despair or confusion.

"Yours?" Beall licked away the blood on his lips.

"Yes, yes. She'd showed me what to do. I'd only done it in my own bed, and my mother had hit me and said it was bad. But Beth was gentle and showed me, and, and we did it in her bed, and she said, 'I'll show you how, ' and we did it, and then she started pushing me away, telling me to pull it out and hitting me, hitting me with her left hand, like my mother, and I spurted all over her, and she cried, yelled at me and called me names, nasty names."