“Scarlett, tell me about when i was a baby.” Farrie moved the paper plates with the remains of the pizza and baked beans they’d had for dinner to the other side of the bed. “Oh, ain’t this the most beautiful room?” she breathed. “Did you hear the sheriff say it used to belong to his sister before she got married?” She suddenly jerked up in the bed, excited. “Just think about living here all the time in this old house, and sleeping in this bed with posts all around it and curtains hung over the top!”
“It’s called a tester.” Scarlett got up, collected their plates, and carried them to a safe place on the Victorian bowfront bureau. “You can buy them at K Mart.”
Farrie shook her head. “This didn’t come from K Mart. And the bathroom’s got a window where you can sit in the bathtub and look out and see trees like there wasn’t nobody else in the world to see you sitting there buck naked except for a whole tub full of good-smelling bubbles!”
“Anybody else,” Scarlett said, frowning. “We said when we left Catfish Holler we was – were – going to try to talk right, like people on television, remember? And not like a Scraggs.”
“Anybody, then.” Farrie closed her eyes, blissful. “Oh Scarlett, wouldn’t you like to be lucky enough to live in a house like this?”
Scarlett sat down on the side of the bed and studied her little sister. Farrie’s freshly shampooed hair stood out around her hair in a wiry bush. She was not a pretty girl, Scarlett always told herself, but Farrie had her own sort of looks. It was true her cheekbones stuck out and her jaw was a little crooked, but she had big, lively eyes that lit up her face. And that grin, Scarlett thought. When Farrie was happy, no one could resist that pixie grin.
Still, in the last few years Scarlett had begun to wonder if her sister would have a chance when she grew up to find someone who would see something special in her. And want to love her, and marry her. Scarlett worried a lot about it. The Scraggses didn’t have much luck that way. And Farrie had even less.
She could see Farrie’s cheeks were flushed as though she had a fever. It was due, probably, to what they’d been through, a lot for someone like Farrie, who’d been raised in a broken-down trailer on the side of a mountain in the wildest part of the Blue Ridge. From her look she was so wound up she probably wouldn’t go to sleep until after midnight.
“Yeah, it’s a nice house,” Scarlett agreed. She pulled the covers up to her sister’s neck and patted them in place. “I thought you wanted me to tell you the story about when you were a baby.”
The little girl nodded quickly, eyes shining. Scarlett had been telling this story ever since Farrie had been old enough to listen, but she never seemed to tire of it.
“Well,” Scarlett began, “I never had a doll of my own when I was your age.” She was thinking that she was so tired herself she could hardly hold her eyes open. In a minute she was going to crawl into that big, soft bed beside Farrie and get some sleep. “No, I forgot, I had a doll once.” She’d pretended not to remember; the story always went this way. And Farrie nodded as she always did. “I was about your age when the Baptists over at Toccoa sent a Sunday-school bus around the mountain hollers at Christmastime for kids who didn’t -”
She paused, waiting. Farrie said, “Didn’t have any Christmas. Like us.”
“That’s right. She was a real nice doll.” Scarlett’s voice grew wistful. “She had eyes that would open and close and real eyelashes. You never saw a doll like that one, it was so pretty. They gave me a scarf and mittens somebody had made, and a bag of candy, too. Only that year Bubba Scraggs, he was your daddy’s brother, he took my Baptist church doll almost as soon as I got home and broke it when he was stinking drunk. I hadn’t had it long at all. So when Mamma brought you back from the hospital I thought you looked like my doll. You was just about the same size.”
“I wasn’t pretty,” Farrie put in. “Not like your doll.”
Scarlett looked thoughtful, which was part of the game. “Well, no, not at first. You was just a little scrunched-up bundle in a blanket they left laying there on the bed because you were sickly. First thing you know Mamma said she couldn’t stand it no more, she was tired of the Scraggses, and she upped and went off with a guitar player from Nashville.”
“And I cried.” Farrie was smiling. “I was a puny baby.”
Scarlett patted her kneecap under the bedspread. “Yes, honey, you cried day and night, I just hated to hear it. But I didn’t give up on you.”
Never in all the years since then had Scarlett told Farrie the truth. That the reason their mother had run off was that she didn’t want the baby the doctors had said might not live. The little bundle that lay on the bed and cried for hours had skin a dark slate color and it aimlessly jerked its matchstick arms and legs in a way that even Scarlett could see wasn’t normal.
“After a while I just picked you up and washed you,” Scarlett went on, “and carried you around like a real dollbaby. Nobody said anything, I guess they were just glad you stopped crying. I cleaned out the baby bottles and fed you canned milk and corn syrup like they told Mamma to do in the hospital. And I thought you were the best little doll anybody ever had. You were my very own.”
No matter what happened Scarlett would never tell Farrie of that terrible night when Devil Anse and one of her uncles had come to take the baby, without even saying what they were going to do with it. “It won’t live much longer,” her grandpa had said. “You’re just wasting your time with it, girl.”
Farrie said, “You took care of me and you weren’t much older than me.”
“That’s right, I was about nine.” Scarlett had fought like a tiger when her grandpa and her uncle tried to take the baby away, and finally they’d let it be. “Going to die, anyway,” was what Devil Anse had said.
Thinking of it made Scarlett uneasy. “Look, it’s all well and good for the sheriff to put us up like this,” she said, “but don’t forget we gotta get out of here. Devil Anse is going to find us sooner or later.”
If her grandpa did what he said he would, Farrie would be left to fend for herself in Catfish Hollow. And Scarlett knew how long that would last. They would let Farrie get sick and die, as her grandpa had meant for her to do when she was a baby.
“He’s not going to catch us, Scarlett!” Farrie hauled herself up in bed, eyes blazing. “Listen, we don’t have to go anywheres. We just got the best Christmas present anybody ever had in the whole world, only we just didn’t see it!”
Scarlett made a warning cluck against her teeth. “Farrie, for goodness’ sake, you’re gonna be sick if you don’t slide down in that bed and close your eyes. Go to sleep – I don’t want to be up all night with you, I’m tired and need some rest myself.”
But Farrie seized the sleeve of her sweater in both hands. “Scarlett, we could live right here in this house. Right here in Nancyville. We wouldn’t have to go to a far-off place like Atlanta!”
Scarlett pried her hand away. She brushed the sticky pizza crumbs off her front and stood up. “Don’t talk like that, Farrie. We can’t stay here, this house belongs to the sheriff.”
Her sister got to her knees in the middle of the bed. “Don’t you see it, Scarlett?” she shrilled. “The sheriff’s house is the last place Devil Anse will come looking for us. And if he does – why you know that big tough sheriff won’t let him do anything. No sirree! Scarlett, this here place is safer than Atlanta!”
Scarlett leaned over and pushed her sister back down against the pillows. “Farrie, I swear, I’m getting worried. I don’t think you’ve got that much fever, but you’re talking out of your head.”
“No I’m not! We can have this house and the sheriff can live here, too. All you got to do is marry him!”
“What?”
Scarlett straightened up to stare at her.
“Yes!” Farrie jerked her head up and down violently. “Scarlett, he’s good-looking,” she pleaded, “it wouldn’t be so hard to do. Not like the ones that are always pestering you around Grandpa’s place. And he’s the sheriff, you can’t get no safer than that. Besides, I think he likes you – he’s always looking at you when he thinks you don’t know it.”
“Good Lord.” Scarlett sat down abruptly on the edge of the bed. “When did you start thinking like this?”
Farrie looked at her solemnly. “Didn’t you say if we ever wanted to live like other people we had to run away from Catfish Holler? That if we stayed up there with Devil Anse and the rest we’d end up no better than they was – were? Well, I guess it was while I was taking a bath in that bathroom where you can look out into the woods, and thinking about that big room downstairs with the Christmas tree in it that it came to me. And the way I feel now in this big beautiful bed, all warm with the curtains hanging over me, just like a princess. All of a sudden I had this idea that you’n me could live here if you was married to the sheriff, and nobody could put us out in the cold. And Devil Anse would be too scared to come here, too!”
“Farrie.” Scarlett put her hand to her sister’s forehead. The skin was hot to the touch. “You gotta stop it.”
“And I knew just then,” her little sister went on, determined, “that if dreams could come true, I knew what my dream would be. That we could be a family, Scarlett, like other folks. With a beautiful big house.”
“You’re not making sense,” Scarlett said. “I don’t care how much you dream about it, I can’t make a man like that – sheriff – marry me. That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard of.”
“It’s not any worse than what Devil Anse was going to make you do,” Farrie cried. “That was why you ran away, remember?”
Scarlett didn’t answer. She stood up, went to the dresser, and gathered up the paper plates.
“That’s what’s so good about my idea, Scarlett.” Farrie hiked her frail body up on the pillows. “This way you can marry the sheriff and get this big house, and we can stay together.”
Scarlett snorted. “Until the sheriff’s mamma comes home. She lives here, too, you know.”
“She can just go live someplace else,” Farrie insisted. “Or I’ll share with her. I don’t mind sharing a room with somebody’s mamma. Oh, Scarlett, when we left Catfish Holler you said you was – were – going to take care of me. You said you was going to give us a whole new life!”
Scarlett stood biting her lip. She’d promised all that. But at the time she hadn’t known what a slim chance they’d have getting it. A better life was a sometime thing. Especially for a Scraggs.
She’d been desperate, though, to get Farrie away from Devil Anse. That was the first step, and the hardest. Now Scarlett could see how a lot of things could go wrong. Missing the bus to Atlanta was one. Landing in jail was another. Inwardly she flinched. She never wanted that to happen again.
On the other hand Scarlett had to admit that she’d never imagined they’d end up at the sheriff’s house. She was still trying to figure it out. Now, with Farrie wanting to live in it, things were growing even more complicated.
“Just lie back down, Farrie.” Scarlett gathered the paper plates to take them downstairs. “And stop having these crazy ideas.”
She started for the door, then heard a quiet sob.
Scarlett stopped short. The problem was, Farrie knew Scarlett would do just about anything for her.
“All right,” Scarlett sighed, giving in. “If you promise to lie down in bed and get some sleep, I’ll try to think of something.”
“That’s what you always say, Scarlett,” Farrie reminded her.
That, too, was true.
The downstairs hallway was quiet, and a blue light shone from an open door. Scarlett heard voices and music from a television set.
Down here the house had the faint scent of flowers, furniture wax, and pine boughs. It was almost too warm. A faint whoosh startled Scarlett until she realized it was the furnace turning on.
The whole house was toasty hot, she thought, relishing it. People didn’t know how lucky they were to be warm all the time. In the muted darkness the crystal hall light shone over her head, and the candlesticks on the hall table glittered.
It was pretty, all right. This house could make you want things you never even knew about.
Scarlett clutched the plates and pizza crusts to her as she passed the open door. Except for the light from the television set the room was dark.
When she peeped inside she saw the sheriff stretched out on the couch, a box with the remains of the pizza on the floor, an open can of beans beside it. His arm, extended, dangled into space over a familiar black shape.
Scarlett stepped into the room.
“There you are,” she whispered. She could hardly see the dog, but she heard the thump of Demon’s tail. “What’re you doing down here?”
Demon made a friendly groaning sound. The tail wagged again, sweeping pizza crusts over the rug. Scarlett stepped closer.
The sheriff looked more like a regular-type man now, rather than the police. Farrie was right: he was young and sort of good-looking. By the flickering light of the TV set she could tell he’d showered because his hair was dried in little rattails over his forehead. He’d taken off the starchy tan uniform and wore jeans, and a plaid shirt that lay open and unbuttoned, exposing his bare chest. Where he had rolled up his sleeve his dangling forearm was solid, impressive, lightly spangled with hair. His feet, propped at the end of the couch, were bare.
Scarlett stepped over Demon to lean closer.
Itwouldn’t be so hard, Farrie had said. Scarlett was remembering the sheriff crouched in the driveway that afternoon with his pistol in both hands. Big and tough, too, her sister had pointed out. You needed that against Devil Anse.
But married?
Scarlett frowned. She supposed there were worse things. She wondered how old the sheriff was. If she had to guess she would say not much over thirty.
She bent over him. As he slept the dark fan of his eyelashes were noticeable, unexpectedly long and pretty. They were complemented by a straight sweep of nose, swollen at the tip where he’d fallen on it. His curved mouth, open, snored a little. Even unconscious he looked able to handle anything.
Scarlett felt torn. If she didn’t look after Farrie nobody else would. Worse, they’d taken away her money at the Jackson County jail; they had nothing, now, to get them to Atlanta. She yawned suddenly, convulsively. It was just too much to worry about; she was almost asleep on her feet. She quickly straightened up, feeling a little too warm, strangely dizzy. It was the house. That furnace running like it would never shut off. It had nothing to do with looking at the young sheriff asleep on the couch half naked, in his bare feet.
“Let’s go, Demon.” She reached down to take the dog by the collar but it shifted away, pressing flat on the rug. “What’s the matter with you?” Scarlett whispered. “You’re not supposed to be down here.”
Demon only hunched closer to the couch, lifting a massive head to lick the sheriff’s suspended hand.
Scarlett stood watching. Mostly Demon stuck close to Farrie. On the other hand, she knew that the dog could act strange if someone was in trouble. Once Scarlett had fallen into a gully in the woods and hurt her leg and no one could find her. Demon had hung close as a leech that morning, not letting Scarlett out of her sight. And was sitting there, waiting, when some Scraggs cousins finally took the time to find her.
Before Scarlett could haul on Demon’s collar the body on the couch stirred, and mumbled something. Demon promptly licked the sheriff’s hand.
He seemed to flinch. “Dog… out,” the sheriff muttered. “Damn… damn dog… mmph… ”
Scarlett didn’t wait for him to wake up. “Well, just stay there,” she hissed. “I’ll let Farrie take care of you in the morning.”
She tiptoed toward the door. Demon was leaning against the sheriff’s arm, staring at him adoringly. The dog had not even pricked up her ears at the mention of Farrie’s name.
Scarlett made her way back down the hallway toward the foot of the stairs. There was no need to turn on the hall ceiling light, she thought, looking at its prisms winking softly; the sheriff was bound to wake up sooner or later and close up the house. A small noise made her look toward the etched glass panels that flanked the front door. What she saw made her catch her breath.
The porch light was on and the door was locked. But the face that looked at her through the decorated glass was what you would conjure up if you wanted to be scared half out of your wits – a wild, dirty gray beard, white-rimmed, burning eyes. A mouth grimacing now with words she could not hear.
Scarlett saw a grimy hand point downward, toward the lock. Then lift to jab at her.
She stood rooted to the spot, caught by those terrible eyes that bored into hers. Unlock the door. She could not hear Devil Anse’s words, but she could see his lips move.
Never! If it had been a scream it would have burst out of her.
With her hand clamped over her mouth to keep from yelling, Scarlett turned and ran up the stairs.