There Is a River Read online

  In the hospital later, once Buddy knew that he would live, he had said he would kill Cassandra.

  “That bitch tried to blow my balls off—she’s going to wish she had blown my goddamn head off instead by the time I’m finished with her—”

  Buddy had refused to press charges, and demanded that Cassandra be released from jail, telling the police the shooting was an accident. He had made certain she would be told to stay in town, however. He wanted to know he could get to her when the time was right.

  But Walter Eason had other plans.

  He stood beside the bed now, though Buddy had still not acknowledged his presence.

  “Cassandra Price is in the hospital,” Walter said, but said nothing more.

  Buddy’s eyes came to him. Walter waited for a moment, hoping that he would speak. When he did not, Walter continued. “She did something to try to do away with the child she’s carrying.”

  Buddy spoke at last, and Walter was not surprised at his words. “Maybe she’ll bleed to death,” he said quietly, and then looked away again.

  “She’ll live. So will the child.”

  “Too bad.” And Walter was surprised to see Buddy smile. “But I’ll take care of that for her. She won’t be worrying about having any brat when I’m through.”

  “It’s your child, isn’t it?”

  Buddy shrugged, “She wanted bad enough to get laid.” He laughed, then winced as he moved the bandaged leg. “She thought I’d marry her—like I’d marry some mill village whore who—”

  In that moment, Walter hated his grandson as much as he had ever hated any man.

  He had released his walking stick, leaving it leaning against the bed as he placed the fingers of his right hand on Buddy’s wounded thigh. He pressed down, twisting with the arthritis-enlarged knuckles of his first and middle fingers. Buddy opened his mouth to scream, and Walter’s other hand covered Buddy’s mouth.

  He kept his hand in place, staring into Buddy’s pain-filled eyes. Perspiration was beading over Buddy’s forehead now and was slick over his upper lip and cheeks under Walter’s left hand. He knew that hand and arm were little better than useless, the shoulder too badly damaged when Buddy wrenched it days before, but its presence alone seemed enough to silence his grandson.

  “You will show respect for the mother of your child,” Walter said quietly, staring into gray eyes that he knew were very much like his own. There was dampness under his right fingers now, blood seeping through the bandage. “You’re going to marry that girl and be a father to her child—”

  Buddy twisted his head, freeing his mouth from Walter’s hand. “Like hell I will.”

  “—or you’ll get nothing from me, not now or after I die.”

  “Fuck you, old man—I don’t need you.”

  The words were spoken disdainfully, as if the boy—the man, Walter corrected himself, though he had never been able to think of his grandson as a man, though he could not think of Buddy as a man even now—gave no thought to what it was he was throwing away.

  “Don’t you? You have no home, no money. You’ve spent more than you’ve ever earned. Even the automobile you drive is one I bought and paid for. How far do you think you’ll make it outside Eason County?—and, if you don’t marry that girl, you will leave Eason County, and you’ll leave with nothing.”

  He thought Buddy would speak, and, when he did not, Walter continued.

  “I thought you’d see reason,” he said quietly.

  “Why would you want me to marry that whore?”

  “Because you’re just alike,” Walter said. “You deserve each other.”

  He removed his hand from Buddy’s thigh and picked up his walking stick as he started toward the door, not surprised in the least to feel the movement of air against his cheek, the passing of the issue of Life as it flew past his head.

  “That bitch tried to blow my balls off!” Buddy screamed behind him, and Walter turned back.

  “There’s always next time,” he said. “Maybe once you’re married her aim will improve.”

  2

  You think they invited Bert and old Helene to th’ weddin’?” The fixer shouted over the sound of the machinery in the card room of the Eason Cotton Mill on a Friday afternoon in December of that year. He leaned against one of the timber supports for the floor above, his eyes on Janson Sanders, but Janson did not respond. He had no interest in Buddy Eason’s wedding, though the topic had dominated conversation the mill village over since Helene Price had let slip the news of her daughter’s impending marriage to Buddy Eason.

  Janson ignored the man, coughing instead on the cotton dust in his lungs as he stared at the sliver of cotton that ran from a carding machine, until the fixer moved on. Buddy Eason had not been seen in the mill or village much in the past several months since Cassandra Price shot him—and today Buddy Eason was marrying the woman who put a bullet into his leg. If ever there was a marriage made in hell, this had to be it, Janson told himself. It was not that long ago that Janson would happily have killed Buddy Eason for the things Buddy had done and said, and even moreso for the things Janson knew Buddy was capable of doing.

  Now he wished him a long life spent with Cassandra Price at his side.

  Dying hurt only once, Janson told himself. Hell itself had to be waking up every morning knowing there was a snake in your bed.

  He looked down the row of cards to where his brother-in-law, Stan Whitley, was stripping cotton lint out of a machine. In many ways, he and Stan were far different men. His brother-in-law had more in common with the Easons than he ever would with Janson or with any other hand at work in the cotton mill. He had been born to money and luxury, as had Buddy Eason. Even now, in his faded workclothes and worn-out shoes, with the light reflecting off the round lenses of his eyeglasses from the electric fixtures high overhead, Stan looked as if he should be at work in the mill office alongside Walter Eason, and not here in the card room. Stan had never been meant for this kind of life, but, then again, neither had Stan’s sister, Elise, when she had agreed to become Janson’s wife. Time and circumstances had brought them all—including Janson—to a place they never expected.

  There was noticeable lint already collected in Stan’s red hair, though his shift had begun no more than an hour before. Janson’s own hair, black when he entered the mill that morning, would be gray with cotton dust and lint by the end of his double shift. That would be one of the few times during the day when there would seem little difference between him and most of the other hands who spent their hours here in the Eason Cotton Mill. At the end of those sixteen hours, the mixed Cherokee and white heritage that usually showed so clearly in his face and coloring would be little evident beneath the tiredness and layers of cotton dust.

  Janson drew his attention back to the machinery in the noisy card room. He knew it was not safe to let his attention wander while working—it was just that he was tired, feeling older than his thirty-two years. There would be seven hours to go before the end of this second shift of the double, and—

  There was a sound, something he was always unconsciously listening for—a scream, horror, as Janson had heard only a few times before, and he knew that someone had been caught in a card—

  Janson turned quickly, almost catching his own sleeve in the belt that ran from the machine to the drive shaft overhead, feeling it jerk at him before he yanked it free—then he saw.

  It was Stan, his arm being dragged into the card.

  No one spoke to them, or even looked in their direction. Stan had been taken from the card room to the mill office, what was left of his right arm a bloody mess, and from there he and Janson had been driven to the hospital on the other side of town. A tourniquet had been used to slow the bleeding, and now they waited for the doctor—but the wife of the First Baptist preacher, eight months along with child, had been hit by an automobile along Main Street, and Dr. Washb
urn and Dr. Thrasher were both working to save the mother and child.

  Stan lay still, his face ashen, his lips a thin line. Somewhere along the way his eyeglasses had been lost, and Janson could only think of how young he looked without them, even younger than his twenty-seven years.

  Janson stood beside the examination table, holding Stan’s good hand as he had since they had arrived at the hospital, trying to keep his eyes from the shredded mess below Stan’s right shoulder. There was nothing he could do but stand and wait, nothing but pray silently as he held that lone hand. He wished that Gran’ma had passed on to him her knowledge of stopping blood, wished that someone would come to help, or at least to lessen the pain he could see on the face of the younger man—God, don’t let him die, he prayed, his head bowed now and his eyes closed. Elise could never take it. I could never take it.

  “Janson—” The voice was a whisper. Janson opened his eyes to find Stan looking up at him, pain creasing a forehead that Janson had never before seen marked by anything other than concentration at work or reading.

  “Don’t try t’ talk. Th’ doctor’ll be here in a minute.”

  “But, I have to, in case—”

  “Nothin’s gonna happen. You’re gonna be all right—”

  “I might not.”

  Janson could not speak. He knew his brother-in-law could die today—his brother, for Stan had become no less than that.

  “I want you to know I’m glad about you and Elise—I don’t think I’ve ever said that before. I’m glad I’ve been part of your family all these years.”

  “I’m glad, too.” Janson nodded and squeezed his hand. There was sweat beading over Stan’s pale face, and the hand that Janson held was now clammy and cold.

  “Remember when I found you after you’d climbed out of the well?” Stan said, his voice so quiet now Janson could hardly hear it. “Lying there in the rain—you looked so bad. I didn’t know if you were alive—”

  Silence fell between them and Janson looked away—yes, he did remember. If not for Stan, he probably would have died that night twelve years ago. The family he and Elise had made together—Henry, the son Elise had been carrying even then, and their daughters, Catherine and Judith—Janson would never have known any of them if not for Stan. Stan had been beside them through all the hard years, had sharecropped and picked cotton and learned to plow—Janson wished there was something he could do for Stan now. There was such a presence of death in the room, death so strong that Janson could feel it. He felt a pressure on his hand and he looked down at his brother-in-law to find what he knew to be a forced smile on the younger man’s face.

  “Don’t worry, brother,” Stan said in such a light whisper Janson was not even certain that he understood the words. “I won’t give up without a fight.”

  Elise Sanders opened her door to find Walter Eason on her front porch, and a large, black car pulled up on the street before the house she and her family shared with the Shelbys. She gripped the edge of the doorframe, fear filling her—it had to be Janson. She knew how dangerous it was for the men who worked in the card room, had seen men in the mill village who had been mangled in the machines, men missing hands, fingers, arms—God, not Janson.

  The words that came both relieved and horrified her. “Mrs. Sanders, there’s been an accident in the card room. Your brother’s been taken to the hospital—”

  Walter Eason drove her across town, and she ran from the black car the moment he stopped it before the building there alongside a sign that read “No Parking.”

  “Stan Whitley—my brother—he was hurt in the mill; where is he?” she demanded of the first person she saw in white inside the building.

  The nurse pointed down a hallway and opened her mouth to speak, but Elise ran past her before the woman could bring voice to the words. She found Janson standing in the hallway just outside a closed door and she ran to him, then stood swaying on her feet as he caught her arms and held her. An awful, grim look in his eyes made her heart rise into her throat, and, for a moment, she was certain that her brother was dead.

  “Stan, is he—”

  Janson held to her arms for a moment, looking at her, and she thought she would scream if he would not speak. “He’s alive.”

  The relief came to her with such an impact that she would have collapsed to the floor if not for his hands beneath her elbows—but there was more. She could see it in his eyes, and she felt her heart rise to choke her again.

  Elise opened her mouth, but no words would come out—she did not want to know. She could see it in his eyes, but she did not want to know.

  “He lost his arm, Elise.” His supporting hands gripped her harder, as if he could feel the weakness coming into her knees that would have taken her to the floor. An awful medicine smell filled her head, making her dizzy.

  “No—that can’t be. It—” Her voice sounded lifeless, numbed. She stared up at him, swaying again, even though he held her. “Stan can’t have—”

  “He has.” His voice was gentle, a worry for her on his face, but the words cut her like a curse.

  The door behind them opened and Dr. Washburn came out. He looked at Janson, then stepped back. Elise stared past him into the room, clenching her hands against her chest, then walked toward the bed. Stan lay with his eyes closed, his face pale, a grayish cast to his skin. He looked like death, and Elise would have thought there was no life within him but for the shallow rise and fall of the thin chest beneath the sheet.

  Her eyes moved from the gray face to where his right arm should be, but there was only a stump, bandaged in white. Only a—

  Her face felt hot and flushed, her breath becoming difficult. A humming filled her ears and she could feel the weight of the hospital suddenly about her. She moved quickly from the room to stand swaying in the hallway again with one hand against the wall, her head down.

  Janson stood behind her. He seemed to know what would happen.

  When she fainted he caught her in his arms.

  3

  Cassandra Price’s wedding day began with her in tears, and it ended just the same. The white dress she had bought only weeks before was too tight now over her breasts, and through the waist as well—she was over four months pregnant now, and getting too big too fast. She would look as if stuffed into the garment, but she was going to wear it, if for no other reason than to spite Buddy Eason.

  He had laughed at her and her mother when Helene told him Cassandra would marry in white.

  “Is white the color for a knocked-up whore to marry in now?” he asked, making Cassandra strike out at him even before she thought. He blacked her eye for that, even with her mother standing there to witness.

  But Helene was no help.

  “You can’t treat Buddy like that,” her mother told her afterward. “He’s going to be your husband, and you have to treat him with respect—after all, he is Mr. Eason’s grandson.”

  Buddy’s grandfather and her parents were there to see the marriage take place, although old man Eason left as soon as the vows were exchanged—but that did not matter to the new Mrs. Buddy Eason. She and Buddy would be leaving to spend a week in Atlanta, and the thought of being in a big city with Eason money to spend was an intoxicating prospect for the former Cassandra Price. There was such excitement in Atlanta at the moment with the premiere of the Gone With The Wind movie taking place there that very day, that Cassandra could think of no other place on the earth that she would rather be.

  But her honeymoon was not what she imagined.

  The streets of Atlanta were crowded. Buddy’s car was stopped in traffic several times, sitting once for well over thirty minutes, though Buddy would not let her get out to look at the display of Gone With The Wind movie costumes she could see in a nearby store window. As soon as they arrived at the hotel, Buddy left her alone in their room. He stayed out all night, and returned well into the morning. She met
him at the door in a fury, having slept very little during the night. His clothes were rumpled, his tie missing, and his shirt untucked and unbuttoned almost all the way down the front. He was drunk and he reeked of more than one kind of cheap perfume—and Cassandra knew that he had spent the night with another woman.

  “You spent my wedding night with some whore!” she screamed at him, slamming the door as he walked past her and into the room.

  “One whore’s as good as another,” he said back over his shoulder, as if Cassandra did not matter enough to even look at when he was speaking to her.

  She tried to slap him when he turned to her at last, but he caught her wrist and slung her onto the bed.

  “You wanting it?” He started toward her, pulling off his jacket. “I’m gonna give you what you want.” Suddenly he was on her, his weight crushing her into the mattress, his mouth bruising hers, his body hurting her. She tried to twist free, biting him and trying to push him off, but he hit her, then again, and pinned her to the bed.

  He ripped her nightgown down the front, his fingers bruising her flesh—and he took her, using her, violating her in new ways. She screamed into the hand he held over her mouth and tried to get free, but there was no use. He left her hurting and filled with hatred. He was her husband and she hated him—hated him now with a passion beyond the greed for money and power that had made her plan to become pregnant in the first place.

  4

  At first Esther did not want to look at the child she had just given birth to. She lay staring at the shadows that moved over the white-painted wall beside the bed, waiting to hear what the old granny woman would say.