Amy Greene - Long Man

Regardless of what Washburn wanted Ellard to believe, Harville was no better than the politicians in Washington claiming it wasn’t their place to provide relief, passing the responsibility off to charities and churches. Ellard thought the government that got them into this mess ought to get them out of it. But he’d do what he could for the Dodsons, as he had done what he could for his own kin when the banks began to take their farms. His mother was from a place called Caney Fork, right outside of Whitehall County, and he had a first cousin there named Bill Harrell. A few years ago he’d stopped to see Bill on his way back from Clinchfield and found an auction sign at the end of the road up to his place. Before supper was over Ellard had decided to stay and see what he could do to help Bill keep his fifteen acres. They’d gone to the neighboring farmers, worried they might lose their own property. It wasn’t hard to talk them into organizing. Come the day of the auction men from all over Caney Fork converged on Bill’s land. Ellard watched from the chaff-floating shade of the barn with his revolver showing on his hip and a noose hanging from a nail over his head, letting strangers know they were unwelcome. The auctioneer stood on a wagon bed pouring sweat under the morning sun. But when he called for bids and the other Caney Fork farmers piped up with their offers, his face flamed from more than the heat. Every starting bid was a penny, for tracts of hardwood timber and tools alike. The bidding commenced at one cent for the house and closed at a quarter. Bill’s neighbors refused to bid over a nickel for anything, until the auctioneer gave up in disgust. By the end of the day Bill had bought back all that he owned for five dollars. Ellard knew a child was not a farm but the principle was the same. The ones that loved her would have to be the ones to try and save her.

Ellard had vowed long ago to treat the people of Yuneetah the same as he would his first cousin. They all felt like kin to him, especially Annie Clyde Dodson, since he’d grown up with her mother and her aunt. Now driving farther into the foothills he hoped he hadn’t made things worse for her by turning Clarence Harville against him. Once he was across the steel bridge the first splatters of rain hit Ellard’s windshield. By the time he reached Yuneetah it was falling in curtains across the hood. His tires spun on the way down the slope into town, churning in the ruts made by other vehicles passing or getting stuck that way while he was gone. As he drove through the square he saw two uniformed men standing on the courthouse steps, one lighting a cigarette behind his cupped palm. Deputies from Sevier County, not state police. He nodded to them but didn’t slow down. He meant to put off dealing with any more outsiders as long as he could. Aside from them the town square was empty of lawmen and searchers. They were likely using the Walker farm as their base of operations. Ellard headed that way, listening to the distant cries of the men and women spread out through the pines bordering the fields along the road before cranking up his window against the weather. He would see about the Dodsons, but Amos was his priority. He didn’t need the state police. Ellard knew the drifter and his habits better than they did anyway.

He had almost reached the farm when he saw Silver Ledford at the side of the road. She was coming down the bank across from the cornfield, her pale ankle flashing in the chicory as she stepped across the gully. Silver was unmistakable as anybody else. She possessed her own wild beauty, like bark and quartz rocks and flowering weeds. As she hurried ahead of the car Ellard sped up to pull alongside her. She glanced his way but kept walking in her liver-colored dress. He cranked the window back down, chill droplets splashing in on him. “Silver Ledford,” he called. She tucked her chin, pretending not to hear. He blasted the siren mounted on his front fender once and she stopped where she was, glowering as if he had slapped her. He reached across the seat and pushed open the passenger door for her. “Get in. I won’t keep you long.” She looked at him for another second before climbing inside. He turned off the engine, the downpour battering the roof. He closed up the window, the cornfield and the weedy bank blurring out of focus. “Why didn’t you go to Annie Clyde last night?” he asked. “I sent somebody after you.”

Silver huddled against the door, leaning her head on the misted window. Water had already begun to spread on the upholstery under her legs. “I’m on my way to see her now.”

“What about Amos? You ain’t seen him, have you?”

She turned farther away. “I been looking for him myself.”

“I got every lawman that would come here tracking him, but I bet you’d beat them all.”

“Amos don’t leave no tracks,” Silver muttered. “Not even for me to find him.”

“Amos is a human being, Silver. He can be caught. He’s just quicker and quieter than the average individual. Except maybe for you. I thought you might know the best place to look.”

Silver hugged herself, shivering. “I don’t know him as well as you think I do, Ellard.”

“You two seem awful close to me.”

“Anyhow I’d say Amos is long gone.”

“I figure you’ve seen him, though.”

“What if he ain’t done nothing wrong?”

“He never does no wrong, according to you and Beulah Kesterson.”

“I ain’t like the rest of you,” she said. “Blaming everything on him.” Even with her expression hidden behind her hair, Ellard could see the set of her jaw. “You been looking for an excuse to hang Amos going on forty years. All you been waiting for is a good enough reason.”

“That’s your sister’s grandbaby,” Ellard said. “You ought to be handing me the rope.”

Silver whipped her head around. “Don’t talk to me about my people.”

“I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt,” he went on. “Far back as we go. But if you ain’t telling me something, I’ll throw you and Amos both in jail. See how you like him then.”

She turned back to the window. “Amos is a lot of things, but he don’t bother children.”

“How do you know that?”

She didn’t answer.

“He’s up to something, or he wouldn’t be here. He needs to be put away.”

“I wouldn’t want to keep nothing from you that might help you find Gracie,” Silver said finally. “But I wouldn’t want to get Amos hung for something he didn’t do either.”

Ellard sighed. “It’s as bad to let a guilty man go as it is to hang an innocent one.”

She bowed her face, hiding it again. “I ain’t saying I’d let him go. I’d just have to look him in the eye before I made up my mind if he did anything wrong. Yours is done made up.”

Ellard studied the blurry windshield. “Surely you wouldn’t protect him over your kin.”

Silver shut her mouth tight, no sound but rain. Then Ellard was shocked when she opened the door and sprang from the car. He lunged across the empty seat where she had been. “Hold it.”

“I’m going to see Annie Clyde,” she shouted without looking back.

“I ain’t done with you,” he called after her. “Don’t stray too far.”

Ellard knew he shouldn’t let Silver get away but his temples were throbbing. He needed to collect himself. He shut the passenger door and leaned back in the seat, her woodsy smell still in the car with him. Most of the time he was careful not to think about Silver. About that day he’d found her under the shade trees along the river without her dress on, painted from head to toe in mud, hair plastered down with it. She’d seemed like part of the bank, as if she was growing up out of it. Back then she wasn’t a liar but Amos might have turned her into one. He had some kind of hold over her. She saw some appeal to him that nobody else in Yuneetah did. When Ellard, Silver and Mary had played together as children they would turn around and find Amos spying on them from the thicket. Or they might be catching minnows and tadpoles in a coffee can when Amos would come out of nowhere and kneel on the bank beside them. He would splash his hands in the water to scare away the fish and pull the claws off the crawdads they had been baiting with worms. After a while his eyes would meet Silver’s and she would walk off into the trees with him, leaving Ellard and Mary alone. It gnawed at Ellard how they seemed to belong together, both tall and lanky with hair the color of the shadows they passed through. Ellard would have liked to bloody Amos’s nose, to fight him as he sometimes did other boys in the school yard, but Amos had never raised his fists first. It wasn’t in Ellard’s nature to start a fight, so he stood back and watched as Amos stole Silver away from him again and again.