Chapter 12: Retribution

1866

Robert and Caroline awakened to the odor of smoke. Night lay on the town, chill and moonless, a harbinger of the coming winter. The trees stood nearly bare. Dead leaves covered the courthouse lawn and filled the gutters.

"Smell that?" Caroline asked as her husband got his feet on the floor.

"Um," he said, padding to the window. He could not see anything or anyone, but tendrils of twisting smoke rose before his eyes. "I'd better go look."

Barefoot and in his nightshirt, Robert hurried down the narrow steps. A flickering orange light glowed in the windows and the room reeked of smoke.

"Damn," he said, hurrying back up for his britches and boots. "There's a fire out front, just a small one. Get dressed."

He ran back downstairs and out the back door to the pump, filled the big wooden bucket that sat there and trotted back though the store, slopping water as he did. He sat the bucket down, unlocked the door and yanked it open, dragging some of the burning straw into the store. Robert threw water on the flickering mess, kicked the smoldering straw off the floorboards and hurried to get some more water just as Caroline appeared in her flannel robe, her feet bare.

"Get Zed's big broom," he called to her as he ran by.

Caroline nodded and looked at the scattered flames as the wind shifted to blow most of the acrid smoke into the store. She coughed, grabbed the push broom, ran to the door and shoved the pile of smoking straw out into the street. Robert was right behind her to splash a bucket of water on the sidewalk, drenching his wife's feet and the hem of her nightgown as he did.

She squealed and ran back inside on her toes. Robert took the broom and finished the job, getting the last licks of fire dampened out and then returned to stand by Caroline and put his arm about her shoulders.

She nodded. "This is getting serious. You should tell Daddy."

"I will," he said. "And the sheriff too."

"And about that man that was here yesterday." Fear rose in her throat, and she swallowed it back down.

"All right." He held her close. "Let's see if we can get some sleep."

Early the next morning as Caroline fried bacon on their small stove and watched her angry husband slop water on the scorched door frame, she was sure she was pregnant. She would not tell anyone for more than two months, but in her heart she was sure. And the idea frightened her. I am sixteen, she thought, as she watched the meat curl, and I certainly don't know how to be a mother. She smiled. I don't even know how to be a wife yet.

After the first business of the day and during the normal lull around mealtime, Robert walked about Rockville, talking to some of his fellow businessmen as well as a few courthouse workers and several lawyers or their clerks. At the sheriff's office, he made a formal report. By three o'clock, when he returned to his store, he had six names of local men who were know as "Mac" as well as several rumors of pending political actions against those who had supported the Union during the war. Two of the men he had approached had refused to speak to him.

"Just a warning, m'boy," said the man at the hotel's stage depot. "The top rail's gettin' back on top. Tain't safe to be a Republican, least not in public. Blairs're back in the fold; not that it'll do 'em any good, damn'd turncoats."

As he chewed on his corned beef sandwich without tasting anything but salt, he read the list of names to his wife. She nodded, shook her head, pursed her lips and finally said, "The only one I've heard of is our neighbor, Mr. Holmes, and I didn't know he was called "Mac." I never heard that."

"What does he do?" her husband asked, making a mark by that name.

"Shipping, I think. He took over his father's business I believe, down in the city. Daddy would know."

"Was he a secessionist, a rebel?"

She shook her head. "I don't know, probably. He's a good bit older than you. Might have been."

"Married?"

"I think his wife died sometime back. I remember hearing."

"Does he have a fancy rig and a gaited horse?"

"I've no idea, Robert, none at all." Worry, like a dense cloud lying between them, obscured the young woman's view of the future, but every thought was buried under her ever-present knowledge that she was going to have a baby. I cannot worry about this. There are more important things.

A customer came in, and Caroline went to the counter leaving Robert to finish his hurried meal and ponder what he had discovered. He decided he really did not know any more than he had before.

Despite his wife's protests, Robert Williams stayed downstairs for the next two nights, dozing in a chair near the unlocked front door with an ax handle resting between his knees. There were no disturbances, and he returned to his bed and his wife's warm arms. His sleep was dreamless. His wife's sleep was not, but she kept her dark demons to herself.

New ideas filled Caroline's mind. I have to think of the baby not just myself, my husband and the baby, my baby. I'm going to have a baby. My God, I'm going to have a baby, a real baby of my own. What a fool I am.

Before he went down to Georgetown again with his empty delivery wagon and swelling ledgers, Robert had a talk with Zedediah Snowden in the back room, first making sure the door was closed and his wife was busy.

"I been hearin' a few things," Zed said after Robert asked him to sit.

"What sort of things?"

"Well, political I guess you'd call 'em, tittle-tattle some'd say."

"They talking about ex-slaves?" Robert asked since Field's newspaper editorials had raised the question, trying to stir up fear and hatred.

"Some," said Zed. Dat bid'ness w'Doc Somers didn' help none, no sir."

Robert frowned. Dr. Somers, as everyone in town now knew, had been prosecuted for assaulting a black man, much to the horror of the Sentinel and those who believed that some of the former slaves did not seem to know their place and even wanted to share the sidewalk with white men.

"Uh huh," Zed said, nodding his head. "They's planning on 'ciding who can vote and who can't, Bouic and that Judge Peter."

Robert scratched his head and waited, by now used to the fact that Zed seldom got the whole story out at once, but instead, seemed to test parts as he went along, adding pieces to the end like a domino player.

"You done wore the wrong suit, thas' what dey say."

"You mean I was in the wrong army by their lights, the Union army?"

Zed nodded. "Keep yo' ears open, y'hear, and yo' back t'the wall."

"I'll do that," Robert said. "I wanted to talk to you before going today. I'd appreciate it if you would be extra alert, spend some time up front."

Zed nodded. "You 'spectin' trouble?"

"Nope," said Robert. "Wasn't last time either."

"I been asking m'kin about that 'Mac' name your missus done said."

"Mac, oh yes, what have you heard?" asked Robert, standing and brushing off his britches, eager to get on his way to the city.

"Cousin a'mine, he do stable work down the road a ways. He say his boss, he called 'Mr. Mac' by some a'his workers."

"Is he now; what's his name?"

"Holmes, Mister Peter Holmes, city man," Zed said. "Thas' what he tole me. Bootlegger he say, crooked as a willer tree."

"Thank you, Zed," said Robert, recalling his wife's naming of the same man. "If you see your cousin again, ask if this Holmes has a well-trained horse, one of those with various gaits, a knee-lifter. You know what I mean."

"Like a Morgan?" said Zed.

"Exactly."

Lounging in the shade near one of the omnipresent whittlers in front of the courthouse, George Lekas saw Robert nod to his wife and step up to the driver's seat of his old wagon with its bright red wheels. He heard him cluck at his tired-looking horse and flap the reins. The one-armed man put away the oiled stone and sheathed his new knife, now razor sharp. When he had told MacNeal Holmes of his short encounter at Williams' store, his drinking companion had laughed as he handed over the money he owed.

"Tarnation," Holmes crowed, "chased out by a darky were you?"

"Big buck," Lekas said, counting the greenbacks. "You'd'a lef' too."

"Think you scared the woman, the girl?"

"She looked it," the one-armed man had said. "Pale an' shaking."

"Well," said Mac Holmes, "you've done a good job then, and I thank you."

George Lekas nodded, thinking about that confrontation. Revenge was on his mind, retribution. He got to his feet, watched the wagon roll out of sight, and crossed the dusty street. The small bell tinkled as he entered the store and saw the lean young woman behind the counter. Lekas scanned the wide room and found Zedediah Snowden, weighing seed corn and making up packages of one pound each. Zed laid down his scoop as George Lekas put his hand on the counter and smiled at Caroline, showing gaps left by his two years of prison camp diet.

"Mornin', Missus," George said, looking Caroline up and down, admiring her long, clean hair, her crisply ironed shirtwaist, "Mr. Williams ain't about?"

The young woman found she could not speak and simply shook her head. She could hear herself breathing. She stared at the man's glittering eyes and then looked for Zed.

"Cat got yer tongue?" asked Lekas, well aware that the big black man was watching. He could almost smell her fear, and he smiled.

"What do you want?" Caroline managed after clearing her throat. Her mouth seemed very dry. Unconsciously, she put her hand on her stomach and in doing so remembered that she was pregnant.

"Oh, nuthin' much," the man said with a smile, "jus' like to see you Yankee scum git outa this here town, thas' all. This week'd do, sweetheart." He reached out to touch Caroline's chin, but she quickly pulled her head back and swatted at him as she would a fly.

"He bother'n you, ma'am," Zed asked, having moved down the inside of the counter to stand a yard or so from Caroline.

"No, no," she said. "He came to see Robert, Mr. Williams."

"Be a shame, y'all had a fire in here, you livin' upstairs an' all." The man looked about the store. "'Spect it'd burn awful fast."

"I think you had better leave," Caroline said.

"You think about it, sweet pea," Lekas said, turning back to face her and pushing her receipt book and some boxes of bridle pins to the floor with a swipe of his hand. "Accidents happen."

"You heard the lady," Zed growled.

"Lady," Lekas snarled, facing Zed Snowden, crouching, ready to slice him open, "this here ain' no lady. She's sleepin' upstairs wif a cowardly bluebelly. What's that make her? A whore I'd say."

"Git on out'a here," Zed said flatly. "Now!"

"You wanna make me?" asked the one-armed man with a smirk as he drew his shining knife and waved it about, holding it underhanded, the point raised toward Zed Snowden's eyes, eager for a fight he knew he would win.

The sound of the ax handle striking Lekas's skull reminded Zed of the noise his father made splitting well-seasoned wood with his old hatchet. It was a very sharp crack. The man's eyes rolled back; he dropped straight down to his knees and then fell on his face. Caroline stood with the ax handle in both hands, inhaling noisily, obviously ready to hit him again if she must.

Zed turned the man over with his boot and put his shiny knife on the counter. Then he bent and put his ear to the big man's chest. "He's ain' dead," he told the young wild-eyed woman who stood beside him, panting.

"What shall we do with him?" Caroline asked, quite willing to hit him again, anger winning out over fear, still holding the club tightly, knuckles white.

"I'll take care of it," Zed said, grabbing the man by his feet.

Caroline nodded and put the ax handle on the counter, patting it absently as one might pet a tabby cat. She tried to slow her breathing but found herself feeling a bit lightheaded. She wiped her nose and licked her lips, aware that her hands stung from the blow she had delivered.

Zed Snowden dragged George Lekas across the store and out through the storeroom to the well, not being terribly careful about bouncing his head off doorsteps. He pumped up a bucket of water and poured it slowly over the man's face and into his gaping mouth.

Lekas sputtered, opened his eyes, rolled over and pushed himself up to a sitting position on the apron of the old well. He rubbed the back of his head and looked at his fingers. "She hit me," he said, "the bitch hit me," and then he turned and gagged, heaving up what had been in his stomach.