The Mulberry Tree Read online



  “One night Luke had been kept awake all night by his dad and his stepmother screaming at each other, and Luke hated turmoil among his own family.”

  “Always did,” Bailey said. “Jimmie didn’t care if the world was angry at him, but if I was, he couldn’t stand it.”

  “I think Luke felt a kinship with Gus from the beginning,” Martha said. “To get away from the arguing, Luke went down the mountain and stretched out under a tree where he could see the Garden of Eden farm. When he awoke, Gus was sitting by him, offering him food. Years later, Luke told me that it was the best food he’d ever eaten in his life—which tells you everything about my cooking.”

  “And a friendship was born,” Matt said.

  “Yes,” Martha said, “a friendship of kindred souls, a bonding between a couple of outcasts. But neither Frank nor I knew the friendship had started. Not long after that Frank got a job as a night watchman, so he was gone all night and slept all day. I was busy with household chores because I had to wash and iron Vonda’s uniforms as well as Frank’s, and I didn’t have a washing machine. I was too busy to worry about where a big boy of fourteen was all day.”

  “He was with Gus?” Matt asked.

  “Yes. Gus’s wife was at work all day and fooling around with Roddy at night, so she had no idea Luke and her husband were together. I doubt if she ever saw Luke.” Martha took a breath. “As always, everything bad started with Vonda.

  “Frank was miserable at his job. It was all the way in Ridgeway, so he had no Golden Six background with them, and Gus stories didn’t make them laugh. The other men at the job called Frank ‘Slot Machine,’ as in One-Armed Bandit, and from there it became ‘Slots.’ Frank couldn’t quit, couldn’t even fight back. He was in hell. His wife was staying out later each night; they spent hours every day fighting; and the more horrible it was at home, the more time Luke spent with Gus.

  “But of course in a town like Calburn, you can’t keep secrets forever. A few deliverymen had seen Luke with Gus, and they told what they saw. And with Vonda working in the diner, she heard.

  “Then one Sunday afternoon, Frank stopped by the diner, and he was in the middle of a Gus story and making his old buddies laugh when Vonda, out of sheer spite, said, ‘Gus is more of a father to your son than you are.’ Everybody in the diner laughed even harder. At Frank. And that’s when he knew that Gus Venters had won. Frank made people laugh at Gus, but in the end, Gus had taken away what Frank loved most in the world: his son.

  “And that’s when Frank’s hatred began. All his anger at every rotten thing that had ever happened to him came out—and it was all directed at one man: Gus Venters.

  “And all the anger came to a head on one night.”

  “The thirtieth of August, 1968,” Matt said.

  “Yes,” Martha said. “The thirtieth of August, 1968.

  “It started that afternoon when Vonda told Frank she was pregnant. I was away that day. A woman I knew was sick, so I’d gone to sit with her, but years later Luke told me every word of what was said. On that day, that woman told Luke something that not even I knew. My guess is that Frank told the boys in that”—Martha had to swallow against the lump in her throat—“that Golden Six, and one of them told Vonda.”

  “Whose is it?” Frank yelled. He was drunk, as usual.

  “It’s a man’s,” Vonda shouted back at him. “Which is more than you’ll ever be.”

  “I’ll divorce you,” Frank said. “And I’ll tell the courts what you’re really like. When I get through with you—”

  Vonda laughed at him. “You take me to court? With what, old man? You have nothin’.” At that, her head came up, and she saw Luke standing silently in the bedroom doorway. “You little sneak,” she said. “You’re always listenin’, ain’t you? Ain’t it enough that you spend all day spyin’ on that poor Gus? Poor ol’ retard.”

  “He’s smarter than you’ll ever be,” Luke shot back at her. “And richer.”

  “Are you talkin’ down to me?” Vonda sneered at Luke, then her eyes began to glitter. “Hey, Frank, why don’t you tell this ugly kid the truth about his mother?”

  “Shut up, Vonda, I’m warning you. You don’t know what I can do to you.”

  “And what are you gonna do to me that ain’t already been done?” she taunted. “Hey, kid, you chicken? Go ahead. Ask him about your mother.”

  “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