When I saw they were fine, I plopped down on the bottom landing, exhausted.
Pearl stroked Pie and then buried her face into his neck. “We could’ve ended up like Dale and the others.” Her shoulders shook, and I stood up and walked over to her. Pressing fingers onto my trembling lips, I looked away, hurting for her.
In a minute, I said quietly, “Pearl, come sit beside me and rest a minute.” I hugged her shoulders and led her back over to the landing.
“It was Perry and Robbie,” she said, kicking the apple cores away.
“Maybe his sister too since Junia doesn’t warm to men easily.”
“Makes sense. Otherwise, we would’ve heard the old apostle fussing earlier.”
Pained with guilt, I dropped my gaze to my hands, studying my nails. If I hadn’t been so drunk, I would’ve heard. I coughed several times, the smoke still burning in my lungs. “Perry accused me of breaking them up with the book I’d given Guyla,” I said as I sat down beside her. “Said he would go to the law if I wasn’t careful.”
Pearl flexed tired hands and slipped them over mine. “There’s another law in Kentucky, one you won’t find in any books. A different justice that comes from our kin and the kin before us. We take care of our own.” She squeezed my hand.
I shifted and shrugged my tired body inside the folds of Mrs. Grant’s worn gown, aching for Mama’s arms.
Pearl looked up at the underside of the cab. “The smoke should be cleared up there in a few minutes, and it’ll be safe for you to dress.” Pearl wrapped her coat around me and looked straight ahead at the mounts, blowing out a haggard breath.
I pressed my knees to my chest, tucking them under my chin, rocking, looking out to the peaceful forest, the ol’ land so strong and beautiful, yet deceptively brutal and imprisoning. My mind drifted to Guyla Belle. Perry Gillis’s angry face. The more I pondered it, the more I was convinced he’d done something horribly bad and had locked Guyla Belle somewhere inside.
“Justice,” I whispered, curling my hand into a fist. “The rule of this ol’ land is hard. And it’s gonna make it a lot harder for the likes of Perry Gillis and his kind when the Devil comes calling and pushes a mud-rotted fist up from this blood-soaked earth to claim its sinner.”
Thirty-Three
Sheriff Buckner arrived with R.C. about twenty minutes later. I ran back up to the cab to get dressed as they rode their horses over to the lookout’s stairs. When I returned, Pearl was arguing with the lawman. Junia fussed at the mounts that the men had tethered to the landing.
“You’re not going to lock them up? Perry Gillis and his cousin could’ve killed us,” Pearl snapped at the sheriff.
The lawman was a foot taller than Pearl, and I didn’t know exactly how he was related to Gillis, but I saw the same bold stance and cruel eyes of Gillis and his kin as he puffed out his chest and hitched his utility belt up over a generous belly, using his harsh voice to keep a woman in her place. Long ago, I’d learned about these types of hardened men from the books I’d read, and they made me mindful to be on alert.
“Done tol’ you, Miss Grant,” the sheriff said heatedly, his jaw packed with a chaw, “that hat don’t mean a damn thing. There’s probably fifty men running around this county wearing Texaco ball caps.”
She shot out an arm to the stairs. “There’s muddy footprints up there, and unless I’ve magically doubled my shoe size overnight and grown two sets of feet, I say they’re Perry Gillis and Robbie Hardin’s.”
“It could be kids, anyone, Miss Grant. Having themselves some Saturday night fun and it got out of hand. Now I’ve tol’ ya—”
“Your words done told me that because they’re your kin, you’re not going to arrest them, Sheriff,” Pearl yelled.