Kathleen Kent - The Outcasts

She was about to stand and go to him, but she felt Bedford’s hand on her shoulder and she stiffened. He bent down and whispered something unintelligible into her ear, his breath sour from drink. In a few days’ time, two whiskey bottles had been emptied.

She reached up, patted Bedford’s hand, and then slipped it from her shoulder. She stood and made her way to the opposite side of the room.

“Mr. McKenzie,” she said. It shook the one-armed man from his reverie and he blushed, then formally offered his congratulations. She thanked him and asked to refill his glass with punch. She took the glass and promptly handed it to May, instructing her to be polite and return a filled drink to the veteran standing all alone.

Bill leaned forward, looking into his own glass as though he could read the complicated swirls of the liquid inside, and, bringing his mouth closer to Lucinda’s ear, said, “What a festive wake.”

She smiled uneasily and settled her gaze on the stuffed owl on the mantelpiece, the bird with the staring amber eyes, and thought it an apt totem for the gathering in the room. All of them preserved, stiff and formal, arrayed in their downtrodden best, staring at everyone else with curiosity or with covetousness, but all with eyes seeking to root out the hidden things.

Bill set the glass on the mantelpiece next to the owl and said to her, “Make your excuses and meet me outside.”

He nodded brusquely to Sephronia Waller, who was moving through the press of bodies towards him, her weighted, hooped skirt catching and dragging on the legs of the guests around her like a fisherman’s net. But he slipped past her without speaking and walked out the door.

In a few minutes Lucinda followed Bill onto the porch and stood watching him smoking a cigar, the smoke curling into the wind away from his slender fingers, and she fought an impulse to cover his other hand resting on the railing with her own.

He stubbed out the live ashes on the railing and pitched the butt into the yard. “The trick will be getting him to point out the exact spot,” he said. “I don’t want to be digging up the entire island. Especially in the dark.”

“It’s going to take more time.”

“Sister, we don’t have more time. Tomorrow night is the night.”

“And if he won’t tell me?”

“Then he’ll have to tell me , which will not be as pleasant.” He turned, putting his back to the railing, and looked through the parlor windows.

Lucinda saw his expression change and she turned as well to face the house. May stood in the parlor looking outward, her lips parted expectantly, her eyes fixed on Bill.

“I think May should come with us.” His smile broadened.

An alarm like the ringing of the fire bell coursed through her and she turned to face the field again. “Why?”

“I think she may be of use.”

She drew a breath, and then another. “That was not the plan.”

“Plans change.”

Carefully, keeping her face turned from the windows, she walked stiffly down the stairs, her bones as brittle as a bird’s, and moved away from the house and into the fields fronting Red Bluff Road. All of the black and perilous spaces that had ever been visited upon her—the abandonment in a madhouse, the years of sinking into uncontrollable fits, the wasteland of half-remembered and loathsome couplings—stretched out before and behind and above her, like a great dark canopy.

Of course there had been other women. There would always be women, bodies used for convenience when she wasn’t around. But Bill had chosen her as a partner for her intelligence, for her ability to mold herself capably to any situation, and for her seeming lack of remorse. He had also chosen her because she fed his need to gaze into a person’s eyes and see, from a safe remove, Death knocking on the other side. He had promised that he would never leave her, would never desert her.

But now there was a threat she had not anticipated. May was also dissatisfied, restless, and physically without peer. And—Lucinda knew this with a deep, instinctive certainty—May would not hesitate to leave her former teacher behind if it served her own interests.

She felt Bill walking up behind her, and heard the striking of a match to light another cigar. She told him, “She can’t come with us.”

“Can’t? Lucy, don’t be tiresome. By tomorrow morning, if the old man hasn’t told you exactly where the gold is, you are to leave with the girl for Galveston. Once I tell him you have his daughter, he’ll be willing.”

“What makes you think she’ll come with me?”

“Because you’re going to tell her I want her to.”

“And Jane?”

“Who?”

“The other sister.”

“I’m sure she’ll be useful as well.”

She turned to look at him. “She’ll fight you if her father’s threatened.”

He ran a finger down the side of her face. “I certainly hope so.”

She followed him back to the house and into the parlor, where Jane was at the piano playing “Oh, What a Comfort Is My Home.” Lucinda went to stand next to Bedford, a strained smile on her face, accepting congratulations from the neighbors as they began spilling from the house and onto the road for home. When May left, she threw a dazzling smile at Bill, and Lucinda felt panic filling her chest.

After dark, she met Bedford at the greenhouse and led him inside. She turned her face up to his to be kissed, closing her eyes tightly to his avid, straining expression, breathing shallowly against his exhalations of whiskey vapors.

After a time, she took his hand and, after kissing each finger, placed it over one breast, whispering into his ear, “Bedford, please confide in me. Tell me where the coins are hidden. If something were to happen to you, how can I take care of your family?”

He buried his face in her neck. “I can’t,” he mumbled.

She pulled away. “I’ve told you everything about myself. My life is an open book to you. But if you would hide this discovery from me…How can I trust you with the day-to-day, if you won’t reveal to me the more important things?”

He hung his head, looking wretched and guilt-stricken. “Lucinda, I wish to tell you…I want to tell you that…”

He stammered to silence and she kissed him again until he forgot his misery and resumed running his hands over the folds of her skirt. But to every question about the coins, he remained unresponsive. Another man driven to such frenzy would simply have forced her legs open and taken her. But he stopped his groping as soon as she pushed him away.

She leaned against a wall, closing her eyes, and she realized that Bedford was not going to give her the information she sought.

He sank down to a sitting position, his head in his hands. “You don’t understand,” he said.

She straightened her hair and clothing and brushed at her skirt. “You must trust me if I am to marry you. I’ll not ask you again.”

“I can’t tell you,” he said and looked at her pleadingly, but she walked from the greenhouse without saying good-bye and returned to her room at the Wallers’.

In the morning, she rose early and crept her way quietly to the barn, where she hid her tapestry bag packed with all of her things, as well as some food and water, in the buggy.

When everyone was seated at the table for breakfast, she asked Euphrastus if she could use the buggy for the day, knowing that he wouldn’t refuse her in front of his wife.

“I need it to go to Morgan’s Point,” she explained. She looked to Sephronia and smiled. “I’m meeting the ferry bringing my wedding dress from Houston.”

Lavada laughed, delighted. “I can come with you, Miss Carter.”

Lucinda ducked her head as though embarrassed. “Lavada, dear, I would be happy to take you. But Bedford will be accompanying me.”