The River Widow(10)
“Not sure yet, but I do know it’ll have to be nowheres near a river.” The man smiled.
Adah closed her eyes and for the first time let relief wash over her like a wave. She was free now. She could likewise leave and never look back. In Mayfield she could send word to Lester’s family about what had happened and tell them she was moving on. Or she could just disappear. The Branches could probably find her name on the refugee lists at some time in the future, but she would be long gone by then. In the midst of this chaos, she could vanish like smoke swept away by the wind. She had no money or possessions, but she had survived that way before. She could go anywhere and never make contact with the Branch family again.
Many times, as she’d lain in bed next to Lester while he snored, she’d dreamed of walking away, taking nothing but herself to go find her life again, beholden to no one, free of the land she didn’t own, the endless work it took, and the shame of being conquered.
She was sharing a seat with a young married couple. Bonnie, a petite redhead, said, “We was renting. House didn’t belong to us anyway, so we might as well make a clean break.” Bonnie wore a thin gold wedding band—a sliver of treasure.
Her husband, who said he’d worked as an usher at the movie theater, said, “Nothing’s going to be working for a while. Can’t see too many people going to see a picture show anytime soon. I got what little money we’ve saved out of the bank before the water rose, so we’ve been thinking of heading out to California.”
Bonnie addressed Adah. “What are you going to do?”
Adah gave them a brief version of her story, then said, “The first thing I have to do is find my husband.”
“Maybe he’s already in Mayfield.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.”
She was keeping up the fa?ade of a woman desperately searching for her husband, but inside, the prospect of another life, one of her own choosing, thrummed hope through her veins, until another image emerged, again. Daisy, of course. A sweet little bluebird surrounded by circling birds of prey. Would the Branch family destroy her spirit? Would they make her mean? Would they beat her? Adah suspected that Lester had been beaten as a child and therefore had been infused with an illness that drove him to treat others the same way.
No. Adah’s body jerked involuntarily.
She had to go back, even though turning around and going backward had never been a part of her being. But now she had to do it. She had to go back, for Daisy.
In Mayfield, all evacuees were directed to the Graves County Courthouse, where those who had not already done so were to receive typhoid vaccines. Adah learned that the town was already overflowing with refugees, and volunteers and city officials had no immediate plans for where to send the people still coming. Many homes were packed with as many as forty refugees, eight or nine crammed into one room, most all of them relegated to the floor.
She couldn’t take up the space that others so desperately needed, so resignedly she asked one of the workers to contact the Branch family.
The volunteer said, “We’ll send word, but you’re probably going to have to spend the night here.”
Adah was sent to a church, where she slept curled up on a mattress in a hall occupied by entire families, couples, children, and assorted loners like herself.
During the night, grief came like a fever. Lying flat on her back, searching the ceiling for answers, she balled her blanket and held it against her mouth to muffle her cries. Lester was dead. Her husband. A mean man, a tortured man, but one she had once loved and given herself to fully. She had known the contours of his body, the hair on his chest, the way he breathed as he fell asleep, and the sounds of their intimacy. At one time, she had loved his body. And now she’d ended his time on this earth. She hadn’t deserved his beatings, but he hadn’t deserved to die an unnatural death. Over and over she had to remind herself that it was done, that it could not be changed, that death was permanent.
In the morning, she received notice that Jesse Branch was waiting to pick her up.
Outside, he stood backed up to another Model A truck, this one newer than Lester’s. His arms crossed, his eyes that always seemed as if they were in a permanent squint staring hard at her, and his rigid stance like a bull about to charge. Most of the time Jesse didn’t bother to groom himself or try for a pleasing appearance. Eternally stuck to his bottom lip was a burning hand-rolled cigarette that suffused the air around him with the smell of scorched ruin. Today his hair stood out in fuzzy tufts from under his hat brim.
“Where’s my brother?” Those were his first words. Not “How are you?” or “Glad you’re alive.” He looked as if her presence were about as welcome as the flood itself.
Jesse was Lester’s older brother by five years, his parents’ favorite, set to inherit the family farm outside Lone Oak, where he still lived. Bigger and bulkier than Lester but less handsome, he was devoid of humor, rarely smiled, and had never married. Once, she’d overheard a young girl at church describe Jesse Branch as a big, bad bear .
No warmth had ever been aimed in her direction from Les’s family, as they disapproved of her previous life and occupation, once proclaiming it the work of the devil. And yet she had been expected to endure tension-charged Sunday suppers after church for three years, during which Lester and Jesse sparred in not-so-subtle ways for their father’s favor. Lester always fell short—he’d had to buy his own place and start over, whereas Jesse was all set up to inherit the much larger, more prosperous family farm on higher ground. Jesse’s future was secure—he’d won the big prize. And yet these brothers had remained in competition. Lester had managed to get two women to marry him, something that Jesse hadn’t been able to do, plus Les had produced an heir—albeit female, but still an heir—and so beneath Jesse’s slow and deliberate exterior, Adah had always read a seething envy.