Beneath Still Waters Read online

  Hick removed his hat, ran his fingers through his short light hair. He put it back on, tilted down over his eyes. The war had taken a toll. Old notions of right and wrong had been confused, shattered by the cold reality that some seemed to lay more claims to life than others. He took another drag and watched the smoke. It was fleeting, evaporating into nothingness. “I hear your point, Doc, but I also believe this person is no threat to the community. I don’t see it happening again. What would be the harm if we just let the dead rest in peace?”

  “And it doesn’t bother you?” the doctor asked. “The fact that someone could live and die and simply be forgotten?”

  Shivering in the morning’s chill, Hick answered, “It happens. There are holes all over Europe filled with the remains of people who will never be remembered. People who suffered more than that baby girl. I ain’t saying it’s right. I’m just saying it might be better to let things lie.”

  Jake smiled a little. “You remember when the Hughes boys lit that cat on fire. It took your daddy all day to get you to stop crying. He told me later it was your mother’s doing. Always said you took everything to heart because your mother protected and babied you after your brother died.” He turned and looked into Hick’s face. “Life was never held cheap in your house, Hick. Never.”

  “I’m not saying life is cheap,” he countered, turning away. “Sometimes it’s just more quickly spent.”

  The doctor paused and then said, “I’ll think about what you said. I best get home and get ready for the inquest.”

  Hick glanced down at his flannel shirt. He rarely left home without his sheriff’s uniform on. It was, without fail, meticulously pressed, the tie perfect, never a button missing, his shoes bright and polished, his face clean shaven, his hair neat.

  Turning to leave, Jake paused. “By the way, Murphy’s printed another unflattering story about you in the paper.”

  “About the infant?”

  The doctor nodded.

  “How’d he find out?”

  “The boys.”

  “Damn. Why does he hate me?”

  “If it weren’t you, it’d be someone else. He likes to drum up controversy.”

  “What’s he say?”

  “What you’d expect. That with our inept law enforcement, we’ll probably never know how some poor child ended up in the slough. Of course, it’s his job to get everyone all riled up. Helps sell papers.”

  Taking one last drag, Hick threw his cigarette into the water. “He’s probably right anyway. It would sure make my life easier if the coroner declared the death to be by natural causes. It’s entirely possible the child was dug up from a shallow grave. Dogs could have done it, or coyotes, maybe even a panther.”

  “Maybe. I suppose anything’s possible.” Jake eyed him intently. “But do you really think that’s what happened here?”

  Hick crossed his arms over his chest, staring out over the water. He didn’t know that his shoulders were slumped, that his thin frame seemed bent with anxiety. Finally, after a pause, he blurted, “Doc, this is impossible. We’ve got nothing on this baby … not even her hair or eye color.”

  “I’m sorry you’re put into such a position.”

  “You know, almost two out of every three people in this town didn’t want me to be sheriff. I think about that every day. If I had thought for a second I might win, my name would have never been on that ballot.”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  Hick shook his head. “Mule and Hoyt Smith got away with busting into the post office because I screwed up the investigation. If I had only waited for Adam or Wash to get there, they wouldn’t have.”

  “No one blames you.”

  Bitterly, Hick laughed. “Wayne Murphy blames me.”

  “Wayne Murphy would blame Jesus Christ himself if it would sell papers. Wayne has one god and one god only, and that’s the dollar bill. The truth ain’t so important to him as long as he can stir the pot and get everyone worked up about something. Hick, you didn’t do nothing wrong at that post office. It wouldn’t have mattered who got there first. Just so happened it was you that got the blame.”

  Looking at his feet, Hick absentmindedly noted his shoes could use some polish. He felt inadequate, inadequate for everything. “Doc, do you ever feel like you just can’t do it? Like you’ve been given a task and it’s just too big for you?”

  “All the time,” the doctor replied.

  “And what do you do?”

  “I do my best. Sometimes I fail. I failed with your daddy, I failed with others. I at least have the satisfaction of knowing I did everything I could.”

  Hick’s eyes turned up. His face had a boyish quality, round wide eyes and open eyebrows, a wide nose and pointed chin. He looked like a schoolboy searching for the right answer to his teacher’s question.

  Jake gave him a small, encouraging smile and then threw his cigar down on the sandy bank, grinding it out with his shoe. “I’ll see you this afternoon. We can ride together to the county seat. I’ll consider what you said before I make my recommendation, but I’m not promising anything.”

  “Thanks,” Hick called after him as the sun broke the tree line and lit up the slough.

  3

  “Hickory, you look awful,” Magdalene Benson said as she poured him a cup of coffee at the diner that morning. Maggie was the only one who still called him Hickory, testament to an ancient intimacy.

  He took a gulp and swallowed. “Just didn’t sleep well, that’s all.” Black circles ringed his eyes and his haggard appearance betrayed more than one restless night.

  Placing the pot onto the warmer, she returned to the counter and lingered in front of him in spite of the Saturday morning rush. “Want to talk about it?”

  What was there to talk about? The coroner’s inquest was just hours away and he felt cornered by Jake Prescott. “It’s just the infant,” he told her, lowering his voice. “I hoped we were all on the same page about this … that it was probably a stillborn. But I saw Doc this morning and he seems pretty convinced it was a homicide.”

  The blood drained from Maggie’s face. “A homicide?” she whispered. “Someone murdered the child?”

  Hick shrugged his shoulders and turned his eyes down toward his coffee cup.

  “Who would have done something like that?” she asked. He glanced up and her face was pale.

  “Could be the child was illegitimate and put into the slough by its mother.”

  “Her own mother?”

  Hick gulped his coffee. “There’s only so much the law can do. Personally, I’m ready to let the whole thing go and let the child rest in peace. No amount of detective work is going to bring her back.” He glanced up and saw her eyes harden, the familiar stark line of disapproval formed between her eyebrows. He shook his head. “Oh, great, not you, too.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t give me that, Mag, I know that look. Listen, what good is it going to do to track this woman down and lock her up? What’s that going to solve?”

  “A murder, for one thing.”

  “You and the doc.”

  “Well?”

  His hat lay on the counter beside the coffee cup and he picked at the lint. “I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can find the person who did this.” He focused angry eyes on her. “Are you satisfied? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Well, God almighty, I don’t know what everyone wants from me. Let’s say the baby was killed. It could be anyone in this town, or the next. The mother could be a gypsy or an itinerant worker. The only thing I can tell you, is the baby was white and female. That’s it. Period.” He put his elbow on the counter and covered his eyes. He hated this feeling of helplessness.

  Maggie leaned over the counter, and without thinking, began stroking his arm with her fingertips. “Hickory, no one expects a miracle. But you are at least going to try, aren’t you?”

  Her touch was
comforting, and, like always, flooded him with memories—their first date, their first dance, their first kiss—and he felt himself wanting to respond. He wanted to squeeze the hand that caressed him, twine his fingers with hers, but instead, he withdrew. She straightened up and stepped backward.

  Defensively, she pulled the pad out of her apron and suddenly seemed very far away. “What do you want for breakfast today?”

  He couldn’t let himself look at her. “Just coffee,” he mumbled. And then she was gone.

  After finishing another cup, he crossed the street and paused in front of the station. Each day he glanced at the sign hanging on the door that read “Sheriff A. J. Blackburn.” His friends had started calling him Hickory in grammar school when they learned that was Andrew Jackson’s nickname. It had been shortened in high school and now everyone but his mother and Magdalene called him Hick. A. J. Blackburn seemed like somebody else.

  Adam sat with his feet propped up on his desk.

  “Late night?” he asked. Adam had married Hick’s sister twelve years earlier, on Pam Blackburn’s eighteenth birthday. He was eighteen years older than Hick’s sister and had taken the role of older brother to Hick. Today, however, Hick wasn’t in the mood for any homespun advice.

  “Late and lonely.”

  Adam shook his head laughing. “Boy, you got to get out more.” Hick hated to be called “boy.” His hair still had cowlicks in it, his skin was smooth, and at times, blemished, but his eyes were stormy and tired.

  “Where’d you eat breakfast?” Adam asked him.

  “Diner.”

  Adam sat forward in his chair and looked at Hick with a knowing expression. “She ain’t gonna wait forever.”

  Hick looked away. There were times he genuinely hated living in a small town, where everything was known to everyone. This was not a conversation he was in the mood to have. He tried to go to his desk, but Adam put his legs on the trash can blocking his way.

  “What’s eating you, boy?”

  “Do you really have to ask? The baby we found in the slough. How in hell do you suppose we’re gonna find out who killed it? You got any ideas, ‘cause I’m open. I’ve got nothing.”

  “Doc didn’t come up with anyone?”

  “Not yet.”

  Adam laughed. “Well, that would have made it just a little too easy, don’t you think?”

  Hick envied Adam. With his easy manner and self-confidence he would have made the perfect sheriff. He had grown up in Cherokee Crossing, married, had children, was an upstanding citizen.

  Hick hung his hat on the coat rack and sat down at his desk, putting his head in his hands.

  “I thought we had come to the conclusion it was a stillborn and decided not to pursue it.”

  “We did,” Hick agreed. “Apparently, Doc has different ideas. I saw him earlier and he started babbling about murder and infanticide. I know what he’s going to tell the coroner, and I can pretty much guess what the coroner will rule.”

  “If they rule it a homicide, we investigate it as such,” Adam calmly reasoned.

  Hick shook his head. “And how do you suppose we do that?”

  “I’ll go back up to the slough and have a look around,” Adam replied rising from his desk and grabbing his hat. “Maybe there’s some clue we missed.”

  “Thanks, Adam.”

  Adam paused at the doorway. “You know, there’s only so much we can do. You’ve got nothing to prove.”

  Unlike Adam, Hick felt he had plenty to prove. He turned his chair to look out the window at the people of Cherokee Crossing as they conducted their daily business. He never revealed the insecurities inside, but he felt the lack of confidence in the townsfolk everywhere he went.

  The door opened and he looked up to see Dr. Prescott. Inwardly, he groaned. “Hey,” he said in a tired voice.

  “Before we head over to the inquest, I’ve got something,” the doctor told him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It might be nothing, but it could be a clue. While I was doing the postmortem on the baby, I jotted down a few notes. There was a particular anomaly … a syndactylism of the third and fourth finger on the left hand.”

  Hick looked at him. “What?”

  The doctor explained, “They were webbed. They were connected up above the first joint.”

  Hick scratched the inside of his ear and looked at the doctor with an eye closed. “I don’t get it, Doc. How does that help me?”

  “I’ve been reading up on syndactylism. Apparently, it can be genetic. It runs in families.”

  Hick’s eyes lit with understanding. “You’re telling me the baby’s mama or daddy might have webbed fingers?”

  The doctor shrugged. “At least it’s something.”

  After a momentary silence, Hick leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “Tell me. Why is this so important to you?”

  The doctor crossed the room and stood in front of Hick’s desk. “Because the minute that child drew breath, she became the youngest citizen of this town. That entitles her to protection under the law.”

  Hick looked up at the ceiling and exhaled loudly, a feeling of resignation sweeping over him. “I reckon it does,” he agreed.

  He rose from his desk and reached for his hat. He paused, once more glancing out the window. The street was lined with cars, the sidewalk crowded with shoppers. This used to be Hick’s world, a place he had known intimately before going into the army. Now, it seemed strange and foreign. He felt a continuous need to question what he saw, as if he couldn’t trust his eyes or instincts. It no longer felt like home.

  “Well, let’s get this over with.” They opened the door and went out into the June sunshine.

  4

  Dappled light shone through the leaves of the mimosa tree in Elsie Blackburn’s front yard. Hick had learned at ten years of age it was a spindly tree when the branch he stood on bowed beneath him and he tumbled to the ground, breaking his arm. When they were children, Maggie picked the mimosa blossoms and put them in her hair, pretending they were feathers. The tree offered no wind break and little shade, but as he aged, Hick learned to appreciate it simply for its familiarity. It had been there, standing sentinel in his front yard, since before his birth.

  “I’ll be right out,” Elsie called from inside. The top step cracked as Hick paused on it. He remembered with a tinge of guilt that he promised to replace it a month ago. His mother appeared at the door in her Sunday best, white gloves on each hand, a small hat sitting on top of her white hair. Age may have wrinkled her translucent skin, but it had done nothing to soften its rosiness or the brightness of the blue eyes that now looked at him worriedly. “Andrew, you look tired.”

  “Why do you still insist on calling me Andrew?” he asked opening the car door for her.

  Her hand rested on his cheek and she smiled. “Because it’s your name,” she replied stubbornly.

  Every Sunday since returning from the war, Hick took his mother to church. The old wooden Baptist Church had been part of his life as long as he could remember. Not as small and run down as the Pentecostal Church, or as large and pretentious as the brick Methodist church, the Second Baptist Church of Cherokee Crossing was a comfortable, middling place for the Blackburn family. He glanced next door at the Benson house. Maggie and her mother were already gone.

  As he returned to his seat, he noticed his mother rummaging in her purse for her handkerchief. It was a nervous habit of hers; she always held a clenched handkerchief in her hand whenever she rode in a car. He started the engine and she asked, eying him closely, “Do you sleep well at night?”

  He turned his head as they drove. “I sleep fine.”

  There was an uncomfortable pause. “I made a special dinner today,” she said abruptly changing the subject. “Adam, Pam and the kids will be over.”

  “That’s great. Diner food gets a little old.”

  “I’m sure the diner has other attractions,” she replied with false innocence.


  He glanced at her out of the sides of his eyes. “Oh, Ma. Don’t start.”

  “Why don’t you ask Maggie over for Sunday dinner? I would love to see her.”

  They pulled into the parking lot and Hick slammed the car door harder than he meant to. He moved around and opened his mother’s door. “We’ll see,” was all he would say. That was the only way he could tell his mother no.

  They climbed the concrete steps and entered the small sanctuary. Several men greeted Hick and his mother at the doorway. In Cherokee Crossing, church defined your life—those who attended were respected, and those who didn’t were not. Hick mumbled pleasantries and shook hands all the while scanning the pews. Maggie, wearing a new summer dress, was sitting in her regular place with her mother.

  “Come along, Andrew,” his mother said grabbing his sleeve and leading him up the aisle. He found himself seated directly across from Maggie, and the sidelong glances his mother cast at him indicated it was not by accident.

  Hick heard little of the sermon. His Bible was open, but his eyes were on Maggie’s arms, the skin smooth, the line of muscle and bone, graceful. They were thin, elegant, even the shape of her hands was beautiful, the fingers long and exquisite. He remembered when they were children, the first time those fingertips brushed against his mouth as she shared her grapes with him. He had snatched her hand and kissed the fingers, and he would never forget the amused smile that played upon her dark lips.

  Olive skin and deep brown eyes reflected the Cherokee blood that flowed through much of the population of that part of Arkansas. Maggie wasn’t beautiful in the traditional sense of the word, instead she reminded him of a deer, slender and brown. Natural. Elemental.

  The heat in the church was oppressive. The stuffy room offered no breeze, and the women around him pulled out their little fans. The swooshing noise was hypnotic and suddenly, he felt tired. The sleepless nights seemed to be catching up all at once, waiting for a time when he was forced to sit still so they could pounce on him. He blinked hard and held his eyes open as wide as they would go. The next thing he knew, everyone around him stood up to sing. He quickly rose, hoping no one had noticed. Glancing at Maggie, he saw her smile. Unhappily, he felt his face blush, a propensity he could never quite control.