Amy Greene - Long Man

“How do you reckon it got in there?”

“I would say the floods washed it in. Or the child crawled in, like I did.”

After a silence it struck her. “The little Deering boy. He’s the only one never found.”

“I guess he’s found now.”

Beulah stared down at the handkerchief crumpled in her hand, unable to look anymore at Amos’s swelling face, his bloody eye socket. “That still don’t tell me why James hurt you.”

There was a drawn-out pause. Beulah could hear rumbling voices and a flurry of movement upstairs. “He might have thought it was his daughter,” Amos said.

Beulah looked up. “Why would he think that?”

Amos touched his split eyebrow and studied his fingers without answering.

“You told him you found Gracie in that cave?”

“No,” he said. “That’s what he believed.”

Beulah felt light-headed. “Why would you do him that way?”

“I was just giving him what he wanted.”

“What in the devil does that mean?”

“He wanted to see a dead child and I showed him one.”

“That’s crazy talk. He didn’t want no such thing.”

“He wanted it over one way or another. If it was me, I wouldn’t have given up.”

“Lord, Amos. What have you done this time?”

He tried to smile. “Ellard was going to arrest me anyway.”

Beulah sighed. “You’re fixing to get yourself killed, son. You’ve nearly done it already.”

“Leave it alone,” he said, and she heard the pain in his voice.

She moved to the bars of the cell, wrapped her knotty fingers around them with the handkerchief balled in her palm. “They ought to let me clean you up. Where’s that constable?”

Amos closed his eye. “He won’t let you in here.”

“He will, too,” she said.

Amos rested against the wall and she loitered a moment more watching him. It felt like she was seeing his true face for the first time under that veil of bruises. It was something she’d needed to see before she died. She turned away from the cell with purpose, replacing the handkerchief in her pocket. She went down the hall the same way they’d come. She had started up the stairs when an echoing bang resounded down the stairwell. She paused. It sounded like the courthouse doors thrown open. Her first incoherent thought was that the wind had blown them in. Then she heard raised voices, one of them a woman’s. There was a pounding of feet overhead. Something toppled and crashed. As Beulah stood with her eyes fixed on the carpet rising out of sight around the bend leading to another flight of stairs, there was a second blast that could only have come from a gun. Annie Clyde had finally done it. Somebody was lying dead up there. Beulah should have rushed upstairs to see if she could help, but she didn’t want to know who it was. Ellard or James or some out-of-county lawman. Listening harder, she heard frantic scuffling. She looked over her shoulder toward Amos’s cell. “Don’t go up there,” he called down the hall.

“How did she find out where you are?” Beulah called back.

“Evidently word still gets around fast in Yuneetah,” he said. Then they both hushed and Beulah stood listening again. After several minutes passed the muffled voices upstairs seemed to calm somewhat. Beulah began to hope there was nobody shot. She was about to climb the stairs when she heard approaching feet and backed away from the bottom step. She kept her eyes on the bend in the staircase. It was Annie Clyde she saw first, the girl’s face wan and frail as a china cup. Her arms looked just as breakable, encircled by men’s hands. She was flanked by Ellard on one side and on the other by somebody Beulah didn’t know but whose kind she recognized. Her glance went to his wingtip shoes and back to his bewildered expression. He was surely wondering how he had gotten himself into this. He was younger than most of the caseworkers and county agents she’d seen sniffing around Yuneetah the last two years but he was one of them. His white shirt clean beside Annie Clyde’s dirtiness, his golden hair combed neat. Descending the stairs behind them was the constable, keeping an eye on James Dodson. But James didn’t need guarding. It looked to Beulah like he didn’t know where he was, still drunk with shock. She was relieved to see they all appeared unwounded as they brushed by her. None of them acknowledged Beulah as they passed. There was only the shuffle and screech of their footfalls down the dim hallway. As Beulah watched them go, it began to dawn on her what they were doing. “What’s wrong with you, letting her come down here?” she hollered after Ellard.

Ellard didn’t look back. “I should have let her shoot him, after what he done.”

“He’s in bad shape, Ellard. He ought to be in the hospital.”

“He’s right where he ought to be, and you know it,” Ellard said. “He’s got trouble on his mind one way or another. It’s the best thing for him and everybody else if he stays locked up.”

“Well, I believe you’ve lost your mind,” Beulah said, out of breath as she shoved past him and the others to stand in front of the cell. Her eyes fell on the young power company man, holding Annie Clyde’s arm. As though he had some claim on her, some authority over any of them. “What are you doing,” she demanded of him, “poking your nose where it don’t belong?”

He seemed startled to be addressed. “Mrs. Dodson needed a ride and I offered her one.”

“Get out of the way, Miss Beulah,” Ellard ordered. “I told her she could talk to him.”

“Let her talk, then,” Amos spoke up, and a quiet fell over the rest of them. They stood still, gathered close in the grayish light from the window near the ceiling. Annie Clyde stared at Amos, her breath rapid. Beulah saw the rise and fall of her chest. If she wanted free from the men they might not be able to hold her. But Beulah did as Ellard said. She got out of the way.

Annie Clyde came forward and Amos rose from the bunk. Ellard’s other hand went to the butt of his revolver. Beulah looked from one to another of them. Amos shadowed in the recess of the cell. Annie Clyde lit by the window. The men holding her away from the bars with their backs almost against the wall. James Dodson standing there with the constable like someone dreaming. “What do you want to know?” Amos asked, any trace of pain gone from his voice.

“Where’s Gracie?”

“That I can’t tell you.”

“What did you do to her?”

“Nothing.”

“You took her.”

“What makes you think so?”

“You were down at the house.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Have you got her?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t have her.”

“Did you hurt my baby?”

“I wouldn’t hurt her. She’s all that’s worth saving in this place.”

“You tell me the truth,” Annie Clyde said through her teeth.

“All right,” Amos said back. “Here’s the truth. I’m not the one you ought to be worried about.” His gaze flicked to the young power company man standing near Annie Clyde’s elbow. “That’s your enemy right there. He’s the one fooling you, acting like he’s going to help you. But he’ll be at your door with a court order in the morning.”

“Shut up,” Annie Clyde said. “You. You took Gracie.”

Amos favored her with his one swollen eye. “I didn’t take her,” he said. “You lost her.”

There was a moment of stunned silence. Then Annie Clyde moved like a blur. She yanked her arms up and brought them downward, wrenching free in an instant. It was the power company man who acted first, lurching in front of Annie Clyde as if to take a bullet for her. At almost the same time Amos’s arm shot between the bars and snaked around the man’s neck, pulling him into a choke hold. Beulah saw dully that there was something in Amos’s hand. A hunting knife. Somehow he had kept it concealed from Ellard and the other lawmen in all the uproar. But he hadn’t pulled the knife on James Dodson, even to defend himself. Beulah searched out James in the tumult and saw him snatching Annie Clyde against his chest. Amos was holding the power company man close enough to whisper in his ear, their cheeks smashed together between the bars, the knife tip dimpling the flesh under his chin. The man struggled, his wingtip shoes scuffing the floor, until Amos’s hold tightened enough to cut off his wind. Then he went limp. Ellard pulled his revolver and leveled it at Amos. “Drop what you’re holding there.”