Wild Midnight Page 14

  “Darla Jean,” he said carefully. “Not D’Arcy. And I told you it’s over with Darla Jean. I kicked her out.”

  “She’s unhappy,” Rachel said in a miserable voice.

  “I can’t do anything about that. D’Arcy doesn’t bother me and I don’t bother her.” His eyes glittered coldly. “Do you want to know about Darla Jean? Is that’s what’s bothering you?”

  “No.” She turned her back to him and fumbled to put a tea bag in her waiting cup.

  “Fair enough.” He used the same soft, controlled voice. “And I won’t ask about your husband.”

  Rachel whirled to him, startled. “But I don’t mind telling you.” She wasn’t trying to hide Dan Brinton from him and didn’t want him to think she was. “He was a doctor, just finishing his residency. We were going to Africa to work together, it was his dream.” Eyes unfocused, remembering, she stared at a spot above his light-streaked head. “He hated working twenty-four hour shifts on call, he said it was just to test the resident’s endurance and no good for the patients. One night he came home from the hospital and he had ... he had...” She heard her voice stumbling over the words. “He collapsed at the table just as I was putting dinner in front of him. It had been waiting for hours. Chili, Dan loved it.” She heard herself trying to laugh. “Homemade chili, and it was almost dried out. He said, ‘Ah, this looks good,’ and it didn’t, it was horrible, but he wanted me to feel better. And then he ... he fell sidewise in his chair and fell on the floor. He had a stroke. It was impossible, that’s what everyone said at the funeral. He was only twenty-eight.”

  She waited for the echo of pain that always came when she thought of how Dan had died. “He was kind and good and gentle. We went together all the time we were in high school, then in college. We always knew we would get married.”

  She stopped, seeing the look on his face.

  He slammed his empty cup down on the kitchen counter.

  He didn’t touch her but he towered over her, face stony, palpably menacing. “I didn’t ask you to tell me this, did I?”

  She didn’t really hear him. There was an odd emptiness where the pain for Dan should have been. It was not that she had forgotten her husband, it was just that the pain was gone. All that was left was a sweetness, a small hollow ache.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “Goddamn you.” His voice was full of fury. “Stop thinking about him.”

  She stared at him, busy with what she was feeling. She couldn’t bring herself to explain, she was still reeling with the shock of it. She put her cup down on the counter beside his. “It’s late,” she murmured.

  He was still staring at her. A span of time, it must have been only moments, stretched on, broken by the faint creaking of the eaves of the old house and by the dawn wind rustling through the trees.

  Finally he said with deadly softness, “You didn’t sign the agreement I gave you.”

  She thought about it a moment, faintly surprised. “No. And we have to do something about the road. But we need an agreement that doesn’t involve money.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “You agree?” she asked, startled.

  He kept watching her face. “Your crowd can have limited use of the road.” He paused, deliberately. “In return, I get what I want.”

  “What you want?” she whispered.

  The corners of his mouth turned down. “What I told you.

  What I got last night. Whenever I want it.”

  Rachel blinked. Then, like the delayed action of drops of acid slowly etching their way into her consciousness, it came to her. “You’re not serious.”

  “The same way.” He was watching her closely. “Hot and willing. Just as I told you.”

  Rachel began to redden, a deep painful color that beat in her cheeks and forehead. “That’s so crude. That’s not what you said.”

  “You get the use of the road.” The lines from his nose to the corners of his mouth were grooved deeply, harshly. “I get you when I need you, in bed.”

  Like a sleepwalker she saw him lower his hands, grip the soft flesh of her upper arms until it hurt. Then his mouth was on hers, punishing her, bruising her lips against her teeth. She was stunned by the savagery of his kiss. Her head was bent back so far that she felt her neck would break. When he let her go she staggered back against the kitchen counter, her groping hand overturning her cup of tea.

  Beau Tillson picked up his shirt from the kitchen chair. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  Chapter Ten

  The sun shone hotly as the slow turning of the low-country spring colored the brown wires of Virginia creeper with bright green buds and drew out the purplish orchidlike foliage of the swamp cabbage in the lush river bottoms. Migrating squadrons of ducks and Canada geese filled the vast salt marshes; when disturbed by a crabber or a fisherman’s boat they rose into the air with a thunderclap of thousands of wings. A fleet of trawlers from Beaufort seined the mouths of the Ashepoo River for the spring run of trout, their nets suspended from midship cranes like the folded wings of huge gray and white butterflies.

  But in the co-op’s field the muddy furrows of a week’s downpour baked out slowly in the sun, the surface hardening to form a dark crust that broke into a shower of grayish sand when rubbed between the fingers. And as far as the eye could see, the rows of tomato seedlings lay in the dirt like dying green worms.

  Rachel was stunned by the complete disaster. “You should have called me in Charleston,” was all she could say. “I did leave my telephone number.”

  “T’wouldn’t have done no good,” Billy Yonge responded stoically.

  With perpetually sad pale blue eyes the co-op’s chairman looked out from under the brim of a frayed straw western-style hat, one side held up to the crown with a piece of black electrician’s tape. His father, J. T., wore overalls and a baseball cap, his spare body bent in a slouch from years of hoeing field crops, his eyes the same faded, noncommittal shade as his son’s.

  “Can’t nobody do any good, until this here field dries out some,” Billy went on. “You go in there with a tractor, the weight of it’ll tamp down that dirt like concrete. Have to have a gang plow to turn it then.”

  His father nodded in agreement.

  One couldn’t argue with the Yonge’s years of experience. Rachel supposed she understood why Billy Yonge hadn’t called her to tell her about the ruined crop while she was in Charleston. “No use worryin’ about something till you have to,” was the tenant farmer’s philosophy.

  Not many of the cooperative’s members had showed up for the meeting in the tomato field. There were only the Yonges, Theo Turner—a tenant farmer who worked part time in a Western Auto store in Hazel Gardens—Uncle Wesley and some of his teenage grandsons, and as Rachel noticed with surprise, the elegant figure of Loretha Bulloch. The young black woman had come in a telephone company car with customer’s service representative written on the door below the familiar green bell. The beautiful woman D’Arcy Butler had described as the mother of Til Coffee’s son stood at the open door of the company automobile. She wore a beige polyester pants suit which fitted her slender, attention-getting figure perfectly, her mass of charcoal Afro curls framing an exquisite face. She was so lovely it was impossible to ignore her, but Loretha made no move to join the group. She stood watching from a distance, and even seemed impatient to leave.

  Jim Claxton hadn’t showed up, either, much to Rachel’s disappointment. Few people seemed to want to face this disaster.

  “It’s hard to get Claxton this time of year,” Billy Yonge tried to assure her when she mentioned his absence. “It’s planting season. Besides, this rain hit the whole county hard. They had washouts nearabout everywheres in the county.

  Rachel stood helplessly with the handful of farmers as they surveyed the ruined field. A few bent over to examine the limp seedlings of the nearly dead tomato crop. The last of their grant money, she couldn’t help thinking. The only thing left now, the Yonges had assur
ed her, was to replant or forget it. Replanting meant going to the bank for a loan.

  “If’n you want to go back to tomatoes,” the chairman had said. “And that might not be such a good idea, since it’s getting so late in the season.”

  Rachel tried not to look any more dismayed than she felt. As executive secretary she would be the one to approach the bank about financing. Inwardly she groaned. Her organizing skills were barely adequate, even she would admit that; her knowledge of agricultural financing was even shakier. She really needed Jim Claxton’s good advice.

  “Whatever we do, the members will have to vote on it,” she said.

  Billy Yonge shrugged. “Kinda hard to get people together for any kind of meeting when you lose a crop like this. It’s human nature to lose heart. But I guess you’re right. We better call a meeting this week. Same place?”

  Rachel nodded. The Yonges had the only decent-sized farmhouse where they could meet. Their grant money had originally called for a storefront office for the cooperative in Draytonville, but the group had never had the fund-raising events to match the seed money, and now even that was gone.

  The Yonges and Theo Turner started for their pickup trucks. After a moment’s hesitation Rachel turned toward the edge of the field where Loretha Bulloch stood by her company car, curious as to what brought this elegant young black woman to the scene of their disaster.

  She managed a smile as she approached. “I’m Rachel Brinton,” she said, sticking out her hand. “I remember you helped plant the tomatoes.” She looked around at the drowned fields, managing a small smile. “We don’t seem to have much left.”

  The other woman took her outstretched hand but did not return the smile. The startlingly liquid black eyes surrounded by long mascara’d lashes were sharp, withholding judgment, yet not exactly unfriendly. Her own clothes—running shoes and one of Dan’s old white shirts with the tail hanging out over her jeans—contrasted poorly with the other’s crisp tailored outfit. Dressed for success, Rachel couldn’t help thinking. Loretha Bulloch looked as though she had just stepped out of the pages of Mademoiselle or Harper’s.

  So this was Til Coffee’s estranged—or divorced-wife? D’Arcy hadn’t made it clear that they’d been married. But Loretha was certainly stunning. With two such magnificently handsome parents their little boy couldn’t help but be good-looking.

  “It’s a mess, all right.” That low, throaty voice didn’t seem to convey much interest in the co-op’s loss. Instead the young black woman kept her eyes fixed on Rachel’s face.

  “I always seem to get muddy,” Rachel murmured, brushing at her jeans with her hands. She was mildly uncomfortable under that unwavering gaze, and couldn’t help wondering what had brought Loretha Bulloch to the tomato field that morning.

  As if in answer to her unspoken thoughts the other woman said, “I just came out here to see what you were doing, Miz Brinton. I didn’t expect all this”—the expressive dark eyes looked around with ill-concealed disdain—”washout you all had until I got here. It’s too bad.” A pause while that cool stare continued to observe her thoughtfully. “You worked so hard, right along with everybody else.”

  Rachel flushed. She didn’t know why Loretha Bulloch would want to single her out as though it were her own setback rather than that of the whole co-op. Whatever this visit was about, it was rather curious. “Well, we have volunteers like you to thank for all the effort,” she said politely, “along with the co-op members. I guess we all share the disappointment, the way things turned out. I understand crops were washed out all over the county in that week of heavy rain.”

  And I wasn’t here for most of it, she reminded herself guiltily, I was in Charleston. But why in the world, Rachel was wondering, had this elegant young black woman volunteered to help plant tomatoes in the first place? Had Loretha come only because Til Coffee was there? But D’Arcy Butler had said they hated each other. The secrets of this little town gave Rachel a feeling of cold foreboding. These mysteries were remote, a part of the town’s tangled history ... and yet they reached out to entangle her too.

  “Well, you’re doing good work.” The conversation was definitely strained. Loretha continued to stare as though she couldn’t make up her mind about something. “People around here ought to help more than they do. I thought the AME church was going to support the project when you first came, but they never got around to voting on it.” There was another pause. “I heard you stood up to Beau Devil Tillson the other morning. About that gate.”

  It was Rachel’s turn to stare. Was that what this visit was all about? She felt a cold shiver of caution at the mention of Beaumont Tillson, especially when he was referred to by that particular name. This awful vulnerability—her sense of sudden fearful suspicion—was new too. She’d never had anything to feel guilty about before.

  “We ... we...” Rachel floundered. She was rattled enough to forget what the other woman had been saying. There was no way Loretha Bulloch could know about Beau Tillson’s visits, was there? “Yes, we had a little disagreement about getting into the tomato field. I hope we’re—he’s going to be reasonable.” There must be some way of getting off the subject; the black woman was regarding her intently. “N-now that our tomatoes are a loss,” she stammered nervously, “it doesn’t look as though the gate is all that important. Unless the co-op members vote to replant.”

  “You won’t get many people to come back to help.”

  Rachel knew she was right. She wished Loretha Bulloch would offer to help round up people to help the cooperative, but that was a faint hope. “We’ve always needed somebody to work with the black community for us and enlist their support.” She was thinking out loud. The black tenant farmers made up the largest percentage of the rural poor, needed the co-op the most and were the least represented. They hadn’t even begun to reach them.

  The tall young black woman had not taken her eyes from Rachel’s face. “People around here don’t join in things much. But they do say you’re doing good work. That’s something. For somebody so young and pretty,” she added abruptly.

  But Loretha was going back to the car. She put one slender foot inside. Then she paused. “You lost your husband, didn’t you?” Before Rachel could answer she went on, “You believe in all this, working with farmers down here and all that, you really do.”

  Rachel was even more baffled. She was standing in the hot sun, her face slightly pink from the heat, and she knew she looked grubby, not at all reassuring in her role as the cooperative’s executive secretary. She knew suddenly that Loretha Bulloch had not come to the field to see ruined tomato plants, but to see her. Why?

  The other woman suddenly smiled, red lipsticked lips widening over perfect white teeth. She pulled the graceful length of her legs inside the car and slammed the door. “Honey, I’m not interested in farmers,” she said in her smoky voice. “I just came out here to work with you all the other day planting tomatoes to help a friend.” She stuck the car key into the ignition and started the motor. “You need someone to work in the black community here for you? Yeah, well why don’t you get Til Coffee to do it? He ought to do something better than just teaching a bunch of kids to cut up chickens and frogs.”

  It was a moment before Rachel could speak. “You mean Til Coffee, the science teacher at the high school?”

  “Lordgodalmighty, is there more than one?” the other woman drawled. “Yeah, Til Coffee, that’s who I mean.”

  Rachel was dumbfounded. Why was Loretha proposing Til Coffee as a co-op liaison person with the black community? Nothing Til had ever done or said indicated he was close to the local black community.

  “Would he do it?” was all Rachel could ask.

  “Honey, I don’t know—just go ask him. Tell him I said so.

  Tell him I said to go talk to his people like he says he used to when he was in politics up in Chic-a-go.” She drawled out the word wickedly. “He might just do it.”

  She put an elegant arm at the open car window and look
ed up at Rachel with a smile curving her lovely red mouth. “And you, sugar,” she said, “you’re doing all right. You just keep it up—and don’t listen to what anybody says around here.”

  Laughing softly, she put the car in gear and drove slowly out of the field.

  The First National Bank of Draytonville, a small concrete building on Main Street, was only a block from Pembroke Screven’s magnificent offices, and next to a tiny drugstore. Rachel made her way back to the loan department with all the co-op’s records in her briefcase, not sure what she was going to say to the bank’s vice president in charge of loans.

  “I appreciate your taking the time to see me,” she said a little breathlessly as she sat down in the chair to one side of the banker’s desk. “I hope I made it clear over the telephone that the cooperative’s membership has to vote on an application for a loan, and this is just a preliminary request for information. We lost our tomato crop during last week’s heavy rain, but our lease goes through December of this year and it seems a shame not to try to use the land we’ve rented.

  The loan officer seemed more intent on studying Rachel’s legs in sheer nylons and neat calfskin pumps. His gaze wandered from time to time to the long lines in front of the tellers’ windows as though he shared some particularly amusing secret with the residents of Draytonville who were standing there. Rachel resisted the urge to look over her shoulder.

  “Truck farming’s been dead around here for thirty years.” The bank’s loan vice president was a small, middle-aged man with a skeptical smile. “Chancy business, anyway, truck crops. There’s spoilage when you harvest, market always goes down in July and August around here because most people grow their own vegetables, things like that.” He paused and almost winked to his audience in the bank lobby. “Besides, most of those folks you got in your organization would rather stay on welfare, from what I hear. Old Wesley Faligant, all that whole crowd out in Alligator Bottom don’t want to work.” Every word was accompanied by a smirk. “Except when they think they’re going to hook on to some socialist organizers that promise them a free ride.”