Brett Halliday - Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve

I’ve heard tell that moonflowers are bad omens and death comes certain sure to the house round which they’re planted. Only I can’t believe that anything so white and lovely as the moonflower could bring death. Or maybe I want death to come to this house…

If anyone had told me I’d be feeling this way about Jim Skaggs when we were first betrothed, I’d have said they were plumb daffy. I was jay proud and carried my head high as the topmost tree on Old Gauley. I’d got me a man with a fine log cabin and a room on second story!

Mom did caution me against marrying with him. “You ought to wait for Matt Parker to come back for you,” she said, gentle like always.

At that name my blood was cold in me. “He’ll not come back.”

Matt Parker was my chosen one since I’d been woman grown. We’d plighted our troth before he went off to Charleston City saying he’d come back for me before first frost was on the ground. But he’d been gone for nigh a year, and no word from him the last six months, and everyone casting pitying glances at me and saying behind my back that I was jilted sure.

“He’ll not come back,” I said again, hard of voice and hard of heart.

Mom answered soft. “Wait for Matt. Don’t marry this man who’s come a stranger to us.”

I said quick that the Lord had surely smiled on me to send such a good man and a good provider.

But mom just shook her head. “You can’t tell the worth of a man till you’ve been with him alone. You’ve got to see the look in his eyes when he’s eating and after he’s been hunting. You’ve got to note how he handles joy and how he stands up to sorrow.”

I should have hearkened to mom. I should have listened to my own knowing heart. But my folks were mountain poor, and a great family of us. I was a woman, well past my fifteenth year. And Jim Skaggs was the catch of all Martin County, West Virginia, after he bought up the old Huddleston place and cleared the rocky slopes and built his fine cabin with a room on second story.

Jim had a jolly way with folks. He made me feel then like a pretty bubble and I floated in rare air until his cabin door closed on us the night we wed.

And still away from here Jim is exactly as he used to be. He laughs and cozens up to everybody till the girls do envy me my lot… It’s only pa who looks at me queer sometimes after he’s been off talking to Jim alone. Pa’s mouth is straightened and his eyes fretted as though I might be sickening with fever.

Then I wonder what it is that Jim’s been telling him, and suspicion is like gallwood in me. For I have not changed. It’s Jim! And that’s what makes it so hard. Nobody knows what Jim is really like, except me and my dog, Ripper.

If only someone would come spying at the window when Jim comes in from working the farm, they’d see. Ripper growls low and goes over into a corner of the kitchen, never taking his yellow eyes off Jim and never a wag of his tail.

Ripper, who’s seventy pounds of muscle and strength — Ripper feels the fear of Jim that’s in me and Ripper has anger clean through him.

Jim comes in without washing up at the tin basin and sits down to the table all earth and sweat and he says, “I got the west field cleared for planting.”

I smile. “Good, Jim.” I keep busy about the stove, turning the sizzling ham in the spider, shaking the hominy grits. I dish up the food before him and fill his cup with strong coffee. His shoulders are lowered, fork already in hand, his elbows on table, head thrust forward.

“Jenny,” his voice not going up or down but all one pitch. “I got the west field cleared for planting.”

I don’t dast show him my face. I open the oven door and bring out crackling bread all light and golden.

His mouth is crammed with victuals. I see the food as he chews. He swallows and before the next loaded fork reaches his mouth he says it again.

“Yes, Jim, you’ve already told me.” And Ripper hears the worry that’s in my voice and pads softly across the wide walnut boards and stands in close to me keeping his eyes on Jim.

Jim’s face pinches and he almost snarls at Ripper, but he’s silent till he’s finished. He gets up, turning over the chair and at the kitchen door he turns.

“I’m starting on the south field this afternoon.”

When I don’t answer he says it again, all steady and too meaningful for something that has so little meaning. “Jenny, did you hear me? I said I’m starting on the south field this afternoon.”

“I heard you,” I say quiet and tight. As the door closes I say it again, and louder, “I heard you the first time,” and I almost scream it, “I always hear you!”

Jim was going to Ansted for the day to lay in seed and provisions. He asked me if there was anything I wanted.

“A piece of ribbon? Or mebbe you’d fancy a sweetmeat?”

It was so unlike Jim that I was startled.

“Well, Jenny. I’m waiting.”

“No, thank you, kindly,” I said. And in truth, the only thing I’d wanted in a long time were the moonflower vines, and I had them already planted around the house with window panes over their delicate sprouts, keeping them from the frost.

But Jim’s asking had given me pause. It made me wonder if maybe I weren’t the one at fault. Jim was good to my family. I knew he’d given my brother Henry a store-bought watch. Jim was well thought of by our neighbors. And certain sure before our marriage I was ready enough to please him.

Maybe the trouble was that I’d stopped trying to please Jim entirely!

The fire was cozy and the room cheerful after he left. Ripper slept beside my rocking chair, his powerful muscles twitching, and I smiled, knowing that in his dreams he’d just run a lynx to cover. I am the only being that Ripper loves, and it is a fine thing to be chosen god by such a creature.

Folks have many natures and a dog but one. A dog has little thought of self. When I nursed the sick shivering bundle that was Ripper back to health, using a remedy made from the barks of chestnut mixed with some lobelia seed, tending him night and day till the sickness was out of him, my greedy brother Henry saw what a fine animal Ripper was going to be and started making a great fuss over who was going to own him.

But Ripper had already made his choice and would take orders from no one but me. He had been out of Matt Parker’s best bitch, and Matt helped me teach him the ways of the wood and field and Ripper never once spooked at the sound of the gun. He never once shrank at smell of cougar. He is a born killer of wild beasts. Only he’s never liked the smell of Jim and only tolerated him on account of me, even when we were courting.

Jim and I used to talk together then, and I’d be concerned in what he told me, instead of just listening with numb patience as I do now. I used to ask him why he’d left home to move into this harsh and rocky land amongst strangers, and if he didn’t have a sweetheart waiting for him back home.

He’d answered the last question, “And iffen I have, don’t you have a sweetheart you’re waiting for, Jenny?”

“Matt Parker is gone for good,” I said sharp.

“I’m mighty pleased to hear that.” He smiled. “I’m sorta counting on him not ever coming back to claim you.”

Jim used to be so natural like. “We’ll have the rest of our lives to just sit by our fire and I’ll tell you all that happened at home and why I moved in here with strangers, Jenny.”

I must have hurt Jim so cruel the night we were wed he can no longer speak to me of what’s in his heart. But I wanted to die of shame! I who love to breathe the air of morning, I who love to see and feel the wondrous things of God’s world, I wanted to die that night. And the way I carried on must have made Jim wonder what manner of woman he’d wed!