Rush Home Road by Lori Lansens Page A

Heron nodded but he was hardly listening because he already knew the truth and hated the cagey, breathless way the boy was baiting him. He thought how simple it’d be to reach out and snap L’il Leam’s twig neck. He reckoned he could do it with one hand and not have to set down his bottle. He thought to do it now and get it over with, but L’il Leam was agitated and started pacing.
    â€œAgain, I apologize to you for my crudeness and wouldn’t say any of this if I didn’t feel I had to, but the blood on the mattress was such a quantity that it just don’t make sense it were cycle blood. Even if, like my Mama, I could believe Addy’s moon just come on early, it looked more like the blood from when a person gets cut. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mr. Heron?”
    Zach Heron nodded slowly and kept his eyes to the ground as he advanced on the boy, but L’il Leam was shaking his head now and maybe even feeling the bourbon.
    â€œI know now that I was right in my suspicion. It appears like my sister has got herself in a condition.”
    Zach Heron blinked five times and had to make himself stop. He hadn’t seen the girl since that night and didn’t know she was in a condition. He started toward L’il Leam again, but now he felt fear.
    L’il Leam went on before the big man could reach him and just in time. “I was thinking on it one day a few weeks back and it hit me like a storm. The only other person gone from the fire and hymn singing that night was Chester Monk. Addy’s in love with Chester and baked a berry pieexpressly for him. I saw them together under the willow near the graveyard. It started to make sense that Chester arranged it so Addy’d say she’s sickly and come back to the house. I know she done it willingly. And though she likely expected a little kiss or tender word, she could not have expected what he done to her. No sir.”
    L’il Leam looked up into the huge man’s wide, stunned eyes and said, “I know I shocked you here and I’m sorry for it. But if you had seen the blood on that bed, Mr. Heron, and the look of Addy the next day and all the days since, you’d have thought the devil himself drove his pecker into that poor sister of mine.”
    Zach Heron took a long slow pull on the bourbon and told L’il Leam to finish it off, which he did.
    â€œRemember the next day, how Chester never showed up at the farm and word was him and Jonas Johnson gone off to work for Teddy Bishop and that Frenchman running booze over to Michigan?”
    Zach Heron nodded and stopped himself from glancing at the broken manger behind the wheelbarrows.
    â€œI was surprised he never said nothing to me about Teddy Bishop because Chester was a good friend, or so I thought. I went around to his house that night but his Mama wouldn’t come to the door. A few weeks later, when I started having my suspicions, I went back and knocked till she come. She was bitter and told me Chester’s a bootlegger now and gone from the Lord. She didn’t even know how right she was. She said though he never had thedecency to tell her hisself, she heard he and a few like him was living in a house in Sandwich and God have mercy on his soul.”
    Zach Heron thought he better sit down and did.
    â€œThere’s a dock near Sandwich where the liquor boats come and go at night. I’m told Chester does a good deal of the rowboat work, being so big and strong as he is and able to fight the current. I don’t think it’s right that Chester Monk get away with what he done and no action whatever against him. My sister’s life is spoiled now and she’ll likely be sent down to South Carolina to live with Aunt Myrtle. First she’ll get beat though, my mother, my father, likely both.
    â€œCourse I don’t have a chance against a boy big as Chester Monk, but I didn’t want to go to the younger men for help.