The Mulberry Tree

“Shut up,” Frank said, then went after her, but he staggered and fell, and his foot got caught between the wall and the coal stove.

Vonda looked at Luke, her upper lip curled in disgust as she looked at the boy’s misshapen mouth. “Frank here met your mother in a bar in New Orleans. He was bein’ nice to her because she had a lip just like yours. Oh, it’d been sewn together some, but it was like yours, and what’s more, she was about ten minutes away from deliverin’ a kid. You.”

Luke looked down at his father on the floor, and as he realized what the woman was telling him, Luke’s face went pale with shock.

“Luke—” Frank said softly, reaching out his hands, but he was still trapped and unable to move.

Luke stepped away from his father’s seeking hands.

“Frank McCallum isn’t your father any more than that Gus you’re so crazy about is,” Vonda said, smiling. “Or maybe ol’ Gus is your father, who knows? And you know what happened to your mother? She didn’t die right after you were born and have a pretty funeral, like Frank’s told you all these years. She took one look at you, had a screamin’ fit, and ran off. She couldn’t bear to look at your ugly face.”

Vonda’s little dark eyes gleamed maliciously. “Frank felt sorry for you, so he brought you back here to this godforsaken hole and hid you away so nobody had to look at you.” She looked down at Frank on the floor. “And after all that trouble you went to to take care of some old whore’s deformed kid, he likes some dull-witted farmer better than he likes you.”

Bailey had her hand to her mouth as she imagined what a proud man like Jimmie must have felt, hearing something like that.

“Luke left the house after that, and he didn’t come back for three days,” Martha said. “But by then, it was all over. Gus Venters was dead. Hanged.”

“In my barn,” Bailey said softly.

“Oh, no. He was hanged from that mulberry tree in your backyard.”

At that, Bailey clutched Matt’s hand. Her beautiful, beautiful mulberry tree.

“You said ‘was hanged,’ ” Matt said. “He didn’t commit suicide?”

“No,” Martha said. “They hanged him. That . . . ” She struggled over the words. “The Golden Six. All six of them were in town that summer, and Frank went to them and told them—” Martha looked away for a moment, then back. Her voice was trembling when she spoke. “My son, Frank, got them together and told them that that sweet, lovely, innocent man, Gus Venters, had . . . that he had . . . ” Martha had to pause for a moment. “Frank told them that Gus had raped Luke.”

“May God forgive them,” Bailey said.

“When I got home in the wee hours, Frank was a mess. He was curled up on the floor and crying hard. And what was worse, he had a gun in his hand. He was planning to shoot himself.

“I couldn’t understand what was wrong with him or what had happened. I kept asking if Luke was hurt or was he dead, but Frank would cry harder and say, ‘It’s worse. It’s worse.’ To my mind, if Luke was all right, it couldn’t be too bad.

“I managed to get the gun away from him, but Frank had been drinking a lot, so I went to the kitchen to make coffee. The water bucket was empty, so I went outside to the well to fill it.

“A few minutes later I heard a shot, and I realized I’d stupidly left the gun on the kitchen counter. I dropped the bucket and ran, because I knew in my mother’s heart that my only child had just been shot.”

Martha took a breath. “My son was lying on the floor, dead, and standing over him was Vonda, the gun in her hand.

“ ‘They hanged poor ol’ Gus Venters tonight,’ she said. ‘Str

ung him up from a tree. Roddy said they’d better make it look like suicide, so they moved him into the barn,’ Vonda said to me, and I can still see the light in her eyes. She’d enjoyed killing my son.

“Vonda put the gun down on the table, stepped over my son’s body like he was a sack of garbage, and picked up a metal box off the floor.

“ ‘While they was hangin’ ol’ Gus the second time, Roddy sneaked in the house and took this.’ She opened the box, and I saw that it was full of money.

“ ‘Roddy’s been sleepin’ with that ol’ hag, Hilda Turnbull, because he knew she had money hidden, and he wanted her to tell him where she kept it. It took a lot of pumpin’ to get the information out of her, but he did it. And tonight Roddy got the box, only he’—she looked down at my dead son’s body with a sneer—‘he took the box away from Roddy, said he was gonna give the money back to ol’ Hilda.’

“That girl looked up at me in triumph. ‘But now I got the money, and I’m carryin’ Roddy’s baby, and he’s waitin’ for me outside. I just got the wrong Golden Six the first time around, that’s all. But now, everything’s gonna be just fine.’

“And that’s when I picked up the gun and shot her right between the eyes.”

Epilogue

ONE YEAR LATER

Bailey looked through the heavy black veil covering her face at the people gathered at Martha’s grave site. Matt wasn’t with her, for there’d been no way to disguise his appearance. And if he were seen and identified, the journalists that stood on the periphery would find Bailey. As it was now, she stood among a dozen other women, all wearing concealing black veils, all of which had been made by Patsy. The press couldn’t identify any of the women, and besides, they were looking for James Manville’s widow, a woman a great deal heavier than any of the women who attended Martha McCallum’s funeral.