Chapter 8 - The Road to the County Seat
The mist had turned to a thin, greasy drizzle by six in the morning when I hit the dirt road that ran along the creek toward the county seat.
I didn't have the Ford. I had my two feet, my grandmother’s cedar trunk—which I had dragged out of the smokehouse while Colton was in the parlor arguing with his mother—and a heavy linen sack containing three dry biscuits and my winter shawl.
The road was seven miles long.
Every half mile, a pasture fence ran along the ditch—grey chestnut posts wrapped in rusty barbed wire that had been put up by Harlon’s uncles when the land was still cheap.
Behind me, two miles back, I heard the dull, rhythmic thrum of a tractor engine starting up.
It wasn't the truck. Colton couldn't drive the truck with his forehead split open and his eyes swollen half-shut. It was Harlon on the old forty-two John Deere, coming down the ridge road at ten miles an hour with his shotgun slung across the iron fender.
I didn't run.
Running on dirt roads in rain-soaked leather shoes only gives you bloody heels and three miles of exhaustion before the horse or the tractor catches you.
I walked along the gravel shoulder, my eyes fixed on the white wooden spire of the Methodist church three miles ahead where the pavement started.
When the tractor pulled up beside me, the iron wheels churning two deep grey ruts into the mud, Harlon didn't turn off the engine.
He let it idle—a loud, rhythmic pop-pop-pop that made the crow on the telephone wire fly off into the mist.
He looked down at me from his high spring seat.
His hat was pulled low over his yellow lashes, his coat collar turned up against the drizzle.
"Get on the trailer," he said.
"No," I said.
"The sheriff's waiting at the bridge, Sarah," he said, his voice flat as a fence board. "I called him from the store at five. I told him you took three hundred dollars out of the tin box in the parlor."
I stopped walking. I turned my head and looked straight up into his grey, wet face.
"The tin box had three silver dollars in it, Harlon," I said. "And the lock of Colton's hair. I left the silver and I left the hair. But I have the deed in my shoe."
"That deed isn't worth the ink it was printed with," he growled, his hand tightening on the iron steering wheel.
"It's signed by the County Registrar," I said. "And my father had it witnessed by Judge Miller in town before we ever set foot in your church. If you stop me now, Harlon, I'm going to walk into the courthouse and tell Miller why Colton’s got six stitches in his head and why Darla’s got a bruise on her arm from where her own son pushed her against the stove three months ago."
Harlon stayed quiet for a long time.
The tractor popped and sputtered, a thin blue cloud of oil smoke drifting across the ditch into the wet sweetgum trees.
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"You think you're smart, don't you?" he said softly.
"No," I said. "I just think I'm finished being quiet."
