The Mulberry Tree

“Sometimes Luke used to write me about . . . well, about what had happened—some of it, anyway—and he said he figured Hilda married Gus so she’d get his work for free. When Hilda’s old husband died, he left her two farms—the one they’d been living on, which Gus told Luke was worn out and useless, but Hilda had also inherited the old Hanley place in Calburn, a farm that had been in his family for generations. His great-great grandmother, I believe it was, had been a Hanley.

“After the old man died, Gus didn’t want to leave the town where he’d grown up, and since he’d been offered two other jobs, he told Hilda he was quitting.”

“So she married him,” Bailey said.

“Yes. She married him, but she refused to take his last name. He was twenty-eight, and she was thirty-nine. Gus would never have scored high on an IQ test, but he was a great cook, and he could make things grow. Luke used to say that Gus could put a steel spike in the ground, and it would grow into a tree. Like you,” Martha said, smiling at Bailey. “Luke said you were as talented as Gus, but that you have the brains of a college professor.”

“For once I agree with something Manville said,” Matt said as he put his arm around Bailey’s shoulders. She was blushing.

“We were told that Hilda Turnbull was having an affair with a married man,” Bailey said. “Was it Frank?”

“Heavens, no! That was Roddy.”

“I should have guessed,” Bailey said under her breath. “He seems to be at the heart of anything bad that happens.”

“Yes, Roddy played a big part in all this, mainly because he was after Hilda’s money. It was rumored that she had many thousands of dollars hidden somewhere in her house. But in our family, it was Gus who was the problem. You see, Gus threatened to take Luke away from Frank. I don’t mean he threatened Frank in words, but by 1968, Luke was fourteen, and he was starving for companionship.”

“Always was,” Bailey said. “Never got enough of it.”

Martha shook her head. “I’m not a good storyteller. I need to backtrack some, back to 1966, back to when Frank got married. One night my son got drunk, and when he woke up, he was looking into the barrel of a shotgun, and he was horrified to see that he was naked and in bed with an equally naked high school girl. Later, he told me he didn’t remember ever having seen the girl before. But her father—who was holding the shotgun—gave Frank the choice of marrying her or having his brains blown out, so Frank married her.

“Her name was Vonda Oleksy and, from the beginning, Frank couldn’t stand her, and he knew she’d tricked him into marriage. All her silly little girlfriends couldn’t wait to tell Frank that, since Vonda was thirteen years old, she’d been saying that when she grew up, she was going to marry one of the Golden Six. It didn’t take Frank long to realize that he was some sort of prize to her, and once they were married, she had no interest in him. She was mean, lazy, and stupid, and he would have divorced her if she hadn’t had four brothers and a father who were meaner and stupider than she was. They said that if Frank divorced Vonda, he’d find Luke or me dead.”

Martha paused a moment. “The worst part of the marriage was that, because of her, Frank became an object of ridicule around Calburn. He was thirty, while Vonda was just seventeen, so everyone assumed that Frank was a dirty old man who lusted after the young virgin. And it didn’t help that Vonda told everyone her version of how they’d come to be married. Overnight, Frank went from being a respected man in town to being laughed at by everyone.

“Also, Vonda spent money faster than Frank could earn it. All day he was at work, she was shopping. He’d come home to see half a dozen new boxes piled in the living room, no dinner on the table, and last night’s dishes in the sink.

“After a whole summer of trying to live with her, Frank sent Vonda up to the cabin to live with Luke and me.”

Martha stopped for a moment, and her mouth twisted into an ugly shape. “That girl hated Luke. Frank had warned me that Vonda could be cruel, but I was trying so hard to get along with her that it took a couple of weeks for me to see the look of despair in Luke’s eyes. She used to sit outside near Luke when he was doing chores like chopping wood, and truthfully, I thought it was nice of her. But one day I hid in some bushes to listen to what she was saying to my grandson.”

Martha had to take a couple of breaths before she could go on. “She was telling Luke that his lip was from Satan, and it was proof that Luke was evil.”

“Sick woman,” Matt said.

“Yes,” Martha said, watching Bailey, who was silent. “I told Frank I wouldn’t have her there anymore, that he had to take her away. Since Frank loved Luke, he took his wife back to his house in town.

“Six weeks after he took her back, Frank showed up drunk at work, and that’s when the car slammed into him and he lost the use of his left arm. But . . . ” Martha looked away for a moment. “I saw Frank just a few hours before the accident, and he was cold sober, and he was happy. He wouldn’t tell me what he was happy about, but he said, ‘I’ve found a way to fix everything.’ I didn’t know what he meant, but I said, ‘The only way you can fix anything is to get rid of that trashy girl you married,’ and when I said that, Frank laughed harder than I’d seen him laugh in years.

“A few hours later, a car slammed into him and shattered his arm. Frank told the police he’d accidentally left the car in gear, but the police said he reeked of whiskey, so they wrote on their report that he was drunk. Later, when he was in the hospital, I told him I didn’t believe he had been drinking. I said I thought Vonda’s eldest brother had hit him with the car, and that Frank wouldn’t tell the police for fear they’d hurt Luke or me.

“But Frank stuck to his story and I don’t think he told anyone the truth.”

Martha took a moment before she went on. “My son was fired from his job and given no workmen’s comp because of the police report. After he was out of work, Frank found out that that horrible girl had either spent or given her relatives everything he’d saved over the years. He had no savings, and no income, and he had to sell his house in town to pay the debts she’d run up.

“By necessity, the two of them had to move into the mountain cabin with Luke and me. Frank swore to me that he’d keep his wife under control and that he’d take her away as soon as things got better. But things didn’t get any better. Frank tried to repair car engines with his one arm, while his wife went to work in Calburn at a diner. Frank soon learned that he couldn’t go into town because he’d hear snickers about how his young wife was on the menu.”

Martha looked down at her hands for a moment. “Things did change. Frank made them change, but—” She looked at Bailey and Matt defiantly. “Frank was my son, and I loved him, and I know that what he did wasn’t right. But I can understand why he did it. For years he’d been part of that blasted Golden Six—how I came to hate that term!—so he’d been treated like a hero. Then, suddenly, he became a joke to the same people who used to slap him on the back and be proud to be his friend. He had an unfaithful wife little more than half his age, and he’d lost the use of his arm and his job.”

“Frank didn’t feel like he was a man anymore,” Matt said softly as Martha paused before she spoke again.

“The first time it happened, it was by accident. Gus Venters was a big, blond giant of a man, slow in speech and slow in his movements, and no one paid much attention to him. One day Frank was in town, and he saw Gus take some of his canned items into the store. I don’t know what made him do it, but Frank made a derogatory remark about Gus, and the men around him laughed. It was the first time in over a year that Frank wasn’t the butt of the jokes—or worse, the recipient of their pity.

“After that, it just escalated. I’d see Frank standing over a car engine and chuckling, and I knew he was making up more Gus stories. Eventually, those jokes became Frank’s reason for going into town. ‘Got any new Gus stories?’ the men would ask him.”

Martha closed her eyes a moment to give herself the strength to g

o on. “The problem was that Frank soon found out that to be funny, the jokes had to come close to reality, but since Gus rarely went into town, Frank knew too little about the man to make fun of him.”