Wild Midnight Read online

  He kept staring. “You’re a Mennonite or something.” Then, with a touch of impatience, “Where’s your husband?”

  Rachel’s blood was pounding in her temples. She raised her hand to her shirt collar, positioning her arm across her breasts.

  “I’m a Quaker.” It was no more than a whisper.

  Rachel Goodbody Brinton was twenty-six years old, an appealingly pretty, medium tall woman with a rather old-fashioned, lushly curved figure, now only partly concealed by a muddy chambray work shirt and jeans. And with a redheaded temper she usually managed to squelch, with the aid of her firm peaceable convictions. And she was a widow, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the word. Whether she was married or not was none of this man’s business. She was still amazed that she could feel so humiliated by a mere look, and find so little to do about it.

  “We have a load of tomato plants in the truck that must be planted today or they’ll spoil.” She hated the way her voice sounded and the fact that her face was blazing. “We must get through the gate.”

  “Go back to the highway. The road’s closed.”

  By training and instinct Rachel believed in compromise and conciliation, but for the first time in her life she considered that perhaps both were going to fail her. She made a valiant effort to keep her voice steady. “We have people waiting for us, and we can’t keep them waiting much longer or they will go home. It’s impossible for us to turn back now.

  The horseman’s eyes glittered. “The damned road’s private property. Now get out.”

  She squinted against the sun. She knew he’d taken advantage of this, cleverly keeping his back to the light, just as he’d taken advantage of most everything else: materializing out of the shadows to startle Mr. Wesley and make him run the truck into a pothole, eyeing her in that insinuating way, undoubtedly waiting for them by the gate, perhaps for hours. Rachel set her rounded jaw stubbornly. She’d been told the field road had been open for years. The farmers’ cooperative, of which she was executive secretary, had been going in and out the past few weeks, and so had the gang plows and other machinery. No one had even registered a protest, until now.

  “You are misinformed,” she said in her soft, determined voice. “This road runs between the property of Beaumont Tillson and the fields we have leased. He has never closed it off.” When only silence greeted her words, she went on, “In order to keep a road private one must close it off for forty-eight hours every year, that is the state law. Otherwise it becomes a public right of way. Mr. Tillson has not—”

  “Crap,” the harsh voice said. “I’m Beaumont Tillson. And I say it’s closed.”

  Rachel’s mouth dropped open. For a moment the rude words didn’t register. Beaumont Tillson was a much older man, she was sure of it. “You can’t be,” she blurted.

  That wide, carved mouth tightened. “Lady, I know who the hell I am even if you don’t. And I’m telling you I don’t’want your damned tenant farmer trash making a four-lane highway of this woods.” He slid a long leg over the saddle and into the stirrup on the far side. He kneed the sidestepping, restless stallion into the road, reining it in tightly as it tossed its big black head. “The road belongs to me,” he said over the rattle of bridle and the sound of the black’s dancing hooves. “And I’m ordering you to get out.”

  Rachel’s lips thinned. The black horse reared, spurred by its rider, and brought its forefeet down hard in the dust of the road less than a yard from her toes. She actually felt the breeze from those slashing hooves on the front of her jeans, and flinched. But she held her ground. They matched glares, her brown eyes steady against the crystal slits of furious gold-green. The horse reared again as the man on it dug his heels into its sides. This time when it came down the distance was wider, the black’s eyes rolling wildly as it shied.

  “I am sure you know our group,” Rachel said in a voice that shook only a little. “We were formed in January of this year as the Ashepoo River Farmers Cooperative.” She hadn’t moved, knowing he was trying to bully her. Besides, she knew something about horses, and was not afraid of being run down. “A grant has been made to the co-op. It will give the small farmers in this area a chance to diversify their crops and improve their standard of living, something that will benefit the whole economy.” She felt as though she could recite the aims and purposes of the United Friends Service grant with her eyes closed, so familiar had they become. “This especially applies to the tenant farmers here who have little capital or investment in machinery and can’t make a living growing cotton anymore. It is not a new idea. As you probably know, boats from Draytonville used to go to Charleston and back for many years with loads of fresh corn, tomatoes, and other produce as well as fish and shrimp—”

  “Shut up.” He brought the sweating, protesting horse up short in front of her. “I want you to stop talking and get that truck the hell out of here.”

  Rachel was breathing hard in spite of herself. He had forced the stallion so close, the front of her clothes were layered with dust and sand. Undaunted, she met that fierce look in the hard, suntanned face with her chin raised.

  “Just let us through the gate.” A compromise, at least for the moment, would save their precious cargo of tomato plants wilting in the back of the pickup. The bad-tempered horseman who claimed to be Beaumont Tillson could argue with them about the road and the right of way later. “The tomato plants cost so much money,” she tried to tell him, “we really can’t afford to lose them. Surely you will...” Her words died away.

  For a split second she saw his eyes widen slightly, as if he couldn’t believe that she continued to resist him. “Turn that goddamned truck around.” He lifted his tanned hand to point. “Tell Wesley Faligant to get it the hell out of here—right now.”

  Rachel did not budge. “I feel that you will let us through, if only,” she added quickly, “for today.” She took a deep breath. “There is no harm in doing fellow human beings a good turn when they need it, now is there?”

  She heard what could have been a strangled growl of pure amazement. Rachel turned and walked slowly toward the cattle gate. Behind her the man on the horse sat motionless; she could feel his stare as tangibly as a knife pressing against her shoulder blades. There was no telling what he would do. When she was only a few steps from the barrier she lifted her voice to say, “I am going to open the gate and let the truck through. It is a public road, or we wouldn’t be using it.”

  Her hands lifted the chain and she fumbled with the loops that held the gate shut. There was no padlock, only knotted links that showed the haste with which the gate had been put up. She waited for some outburst, some angry command behind her. But none came.

  With aggravating slowness the chain came apart. Rachel pushed the gate inward, and trying to avoid the appearance of haste, walked it wide enough to let the truck through. She heard Mr. Wesley start the motor, and she said a quick prayer for the pickup to get out of the pothole on the first few tries. There was a grinding roar as Mr. Wesley put the pickup into gear and rocked it to get free. Rachel kept her head bent, not daring to look. As far as she knew there was no movement from the rider who sat his horse only a few feet from the truck.

  It could not have taken over a minute, but it felt like an eternity before Rachel heard the pickup rip into second gear and the engine rev up to a higher whine. With a flurry of sand and dust the truck roared the few feet toward the gate.

  For a moment it seemed as though Mr. Wesley was not going to stop, but keep going straight down the field track and out of sight. Then Rachel saw him jam on the brakes. The truck stopped, straddling a low clump of bushes.

  Rachel walked the cattle gate shut again. The silence, except for the truck’s laboring engine, was deafening; she did not dare glance at the man on horseback. Her hands were shaking so badly that she could hardly reknot the chain. She left it dangling as she turned and suddenly sprinted to where the truck stood waiting, flung open the door and jumped inside.

  Rachel collapsed agains
t the seat. It had turned out well after all, except for the undignified way she’d bolted right at the last.

  “Mr. Wes, who was that man—it wasn’t Beaumont Tillson, was it?”

  He stepped down hard on the gas pedal and the old pickup lurched ahead, hitting a rise of old furrowed earth at a bounce. Both hands gripping the steering wheel tightly, the black man let the truck plow into a hollow and rear out again.

  “Mr. Wes!” Rachel grabbed the dashboard with both hands. He was driving the way he had driven before, when he had nearly wrecked them. It had something to do, she was sure, with the man they were leaving behind. More soberly now, Rachel was realizing that she had probably set a chain of events in motion that would certainly cause trouble in the future for the co-op. And trouble was something the struggling co-op didn’t need right now. “Take it easy!” she cried as the pickup wallowed across an abandoned rice field, hell-bent for the dikes in the distance.

  Mr. Wesley’s face was grim, eyelids drooping in veiled foreboding. “Him the debbil, that’s all.” He grunted. “Look like a angel, but people knows. Very bad trouble for to mess with him.”

  Turning sidewise, her hand braced against the dash, Rachel stared at the old man.

  Debbil, she told herself. Sometimes it sounded like “dibble” in the Gullah speech. It meant devil.

  This was one time she didn’t have to ask Mr. Wesley who he meant.

  Chapter Two

  Dusk was beginning to creep over the tops of the trees when Rachel finally decided to stop. She had been riding the flatbed wagon for hours, and could feel her skin tingling from sunburn in spite of the jeans, long-sleeved shirt, and a borrowed wide-brimmed straw hat she wore. It was time to quit anyway; the light was so dim she could hardly see to aim the stream of water as it dribbled from her dipper onto the newly planted furrows.

  This was a far cry from the life Rachel Goodbody Brinton—daughter of one of Philadelphia’s most conservative Main Line families—had been living just a few short months ago. She was now a farmhand.

  The co-op’s field wasn’t finished, but they had, accomplished much more than they’d expected in one day. Rachel still couldn’t believe it. Everyone had worked like a demon, planting row upon row of the seedlings that covered the field. Even the high school students hadn’t left until late afternoon, piling into their borrowed pickup trucks with almost as much noise and energy as they’d had in the morning. The woods still seemed to echo with the ear-splitting sounds of rock music from the portable radios they’d brought with them.

  As the tractor turned and began a large circle into the last of the rows to be watered, the high school teacher, Til Coffee—who had been picking up the litter of the brown-paper wrappings from the tomato plants—stepped into the aisle between furrows, joining Rachel. The two walked slowly beside the wagon, and she smiled wearily at him.

  Til Coffee was dressed for a day’s work in the fields. He wore faded cutoffs that exposed long, muscular dark brown legs, a tattered sleeveless knit shirt straining across his big shoulders, and high-topped farm shoes. A red bandanna used as a sweatband gave his square-jawed face a rakishly piratical look. Rachel couldn’t help thinking about how different he looked from the way she usually saw him—in the dark gray or brown suit he wore to school, along with a white shirt and a tie. The integrated county high school had comparatively few black teachers, and all of them dressed much more formally than the white faculty. Til, who was all of six feet two inches, suddenly projected in these surroundings an unexpected air of raw strength and capability.

  “Good day’s work, Miz Rachel,” the tall black man said approvingly. “You pulled it off after all, in spite of Beau Tillson.” He stuffed a handful of wrappings into the plastic garbage sack he was carrying. “Although I got to say”—he grinned, his eyes traveling over her—”you do look like you, been rasslin’ alligators, with all that mud covering you.”

  Rachel looked down at her clothes. She certainly was a mess, but Til didn’t have to remind her. But then, she never knew what he was going to say. He was a great fan of black comedians Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor, and sometimes his quips were outrageous. Although Til had been born in Draytonville, he’d been raised in Chicago. Unlike the more reticent Gullah people, he didn’t hesitate to tease her about her northern background, about her manner, obviously better suited to her wealthy Quaker home on the Main Line in Philadelphia than to the flatbed of a tractor in a tomato field.

  Rachel rubbed both her hands together to rid them of mud. “Who told you about Beaumont Tillson?” she asked carefully.

  Til gave her a sharp look. “Oh, I heard where he was the minute I got here. He sent my high school kids back, made them turn around and go back to town, two truckloads of them. Then old Uncle Wesley’s been muttering something about how Beau worried you two back at the gate, wanted to keep you out.”

  Rachel didn’t look up. The memory of how deliberately unpleasant the whole incident had been still left her shaken. What could she say to Til Coffee? That the most eerily handsome man she’d ever seen had been lurking in the woods to stop them? And that he’d charged his horse at her when she refused to be intimidated by him?

  “I-I thought Beaumont Tillson was a much older man,” she stammered, uncomfortable. She still couldn’t believe that the disreputable horseman in the woods was one of the county’s largest landowners. “Why do they call him ... you know...”

  “Beau Devil?” Til Coffee dumped the plastic bag of trash on the flatbed wagon beside her. “Well, I would say people around here don’t exactly call him that to his face—not when he’s in the habit of carrying that big old army rifle he owns.”

  She looked up now, startled. “Beau Devil? Rifle?” Rachel was remembering that searing look that had all but undressed her, and the pawing horse raising clouds of dust in her face. “Good heavens,” she, blurted, “what kind of a man is he?”

  “People gave him that devil name because you might say he earned it,” Til said blandly. “And if I remember my high school French correctly, beau means beautiful. You saw him, didn’t you?”

  “But that’s ... that’s cruel. They shouldn’t call him that.” The co-op couldn’t afford a dispute with their neighbor, but the more she learned about Beau Tillson, the more cause there was to worry.

  Til shrugged. “It fits, though. How’d you like to have a face and body the whole world turns around to look at? As well as being big and mean and all-time champion DeRenne County stu—ladies man? Beaumont’s still a big name around here. A long time ago they used to own all the land this side of the Ashepoo River right on up to Hazel Gardens. Rice plantation people, high-living Confederates proud of being related to nearly everybody in Charleston and Savannah.”

  “But his name is Tillson.”

  “His daddy’s name. Lee Tillson was a redneck from upcountry. Beau’s mama, Miss Clarissa, was a Beaumont. She’s dead now, and they’re not what they used to be—the Beaumonts—but there’s still about five thousand acres along the river the King of England gave them back in the sixteen hundreds. You still haven’t told me what happened,” he reminded her softly, “when you and Uncle Wes tried to come through the gate.”

  Beneath the mud spatters Rachel’s face turned pink. “He has a very rude manner,” she said stiffly, “but the co-op can’t afford to antagonize him, Til. We will simply have to make Beaumont Tillson feel better about our using the road.”

  To her surprise the science teacher laughed. “You don’t know much about our local wild man, Miz Rachel. Beau’s been holed up there over at Belle Haven since he got back from Vietnam, and people around here consider him a mean loner. Being a Beaumont doesn’t help either. Beau’s mama was the local nut case. She and Tillson hated each other. Miss Clarissa spoiled Beau rotten and Tillson got even by beating up on Beau whenever he could catch him.”

  Rachel stared at the tall black man. “His father beat him?” she asked, appalled.

  “Pretty sad, isn’t it? Beau was harder to handle
than a wildcat when he was young, and he didn’t get any better as he got older. He was let off on a charge of armed robbery because the judge believed Beau’s story that he was passed out drunk in the back of the car and didn’t know what was going on when his buddies robbed a 7-Eleven store.” At her wordless sound of disbelief Til looked straight into her eyes. “Old aristocratic families don’t do time in the slammer down here, Miz Rachel,” he said somberly. “I used to think Beau got that devil in his name in ‘Nam, because I knew him when he got back. But it was hung on him long before that.”

  “Armed robbery?” Rachel whispered.

  “They don’t throw Beaumonts in jail around here, Miz Rachel, it just isn’t done. A tour in Vietnam was what Beau got out of it. Now he stays to himself over at Belle Haven. He doesn’t bother anybody and they don’t bother him.”

  Almost to herself Rachel murmured, “But he wants to close off our road. Good heavens, what are we going to do?” She looked at Til. “What in the world will we do when we can’t get our machinery in and out?”

  “The co-op’s got a good lawyer,” Til reminded her. “Let old Pembroke Screven handle—”

  “Now what are you telling her?” they heard someone ask in a deep voice that came from behind them.

  Rachel hadn’t even noticed that the wagon and tractor had come to a stop. Jim Claxton, who had been helping out with the driving since late afternoon, came around the tailgate.

  She saw Til Coffee’s expression go blank. “Hello, Claxton,” he said coolly. “We were discussing Beau Tillson, stopping Miz Rachel and old Uncle Wes back at the gate.”

  Claxton, the county agricultural agent, was almost as tall as the science teacher, but of a rangier build. A shock of sun-bleached hair stuck out from under his battered straw Stetson. He was deeply tanned, with a kind, strong face that was not particularly handsome. Claxton appeared to be what he was: a tenant farmer’s son who’d worked his way through the state university to gain a degree in agriculture. He pointedly looked only at Rachel as he spoke.