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"River of Hope" Series: #2 Ellie's Haven

By Sharlene MacLaren

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“For thou art not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, neither shall evil dwell with thee. The foolish shall not stand in thy sight...” ~ Psalm 5: 4, 5a

February 1928
Athens, Tennessee

Nothing wakes a body faster than a barking dog competing against the heated shouts of furious men. Eleanor Booth threw off her heavy quilt and leaped out of bed, pulling her flannel collar up tight to her throat and racing across the gritty floor to the window. With her fingertips, she scratched a circle of frost off the pane and peered through it into the cold, dark morning, squinting to make out the shadowy figures facing off just feet away from the rotting front porch. An icy chill paraded up her back.
“I ain’t payin’ you one cent more, Sullivan. You done took me f’r every last penny.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Byron. Your pocket ain’t empty till I say it is, and as long as you produce hooch, the greenbacks will keep rolling in. You stop payin’ and I’ll shut you down quicker than a lizard on hot sand.”
They were at it again, Byron Pruitt, Ellie’s worthless stepfather, and Walter Sullivan, that crooked government agent. Byron’s dog, Curly, didn’t let up his fierce, frenzied barking, which ought to have deterred the dispute but instead fueled it.
“Byron, pay the man so he’ll get off ar’ property,” Ellie’s mother, Rita, said in a fidgety, pleading tone.
“Shut up, woman, and get back inside! I ain’t payin’ him another dime!”
Ellie snatched up her frayed robe from the foot of her bed, slipped into it, and rushed out of the room, toes gone numb from the arctic air wafting up through the floorboards. Tennessee winters didn’t generate much snow, but that didn’t stop the temperatures from plummeting into the single digits of a February morn.
Entering the tiny, dark living room, she found her mother, shoulders hunched in the open doorway and hands clutching the door frame, gray-brown hair mussed in every which direction, tattered, flannel nightgown hugging her narrow sides. A hasty glance at the potbelly stove in the middle of the room revealed nothing but a few glowing embers through the charred glass. More shivers stampeded up Ellie’s spine. “What’s going on?” she asked, coming up beside her mother.
At the sound of her voice, Byron gave a half-turn, and that’s when Ellie spied the sawed off shotgun in his possession. “Go back to bed, missy,” he groused. “You ain’t needed here.”
Mr. Sullivan had a gun too, a pistol, but his remained holstered, one hand hovering over it. “Byron, put that gun down before somebody gets hurt,” Ellie said.
“Yes, Pruitt, listen to your pretty little daughter.”
“Shut y’r tater trap, and get off my land, Sullivan.”
“Not till I get what’s due me.”
“I done paid you, now get!”
“’Fraid you only paid me half.”
“You keep raisin’ the rates, you dumb ox. How you ‘spect me to make any kind of living?”
Mr. Sullivan chortled. “That ain’t my concern now is it. I swear if you don’t pay up I’ll bring my men back and we’ll chop your whole operation into mincemeat by midday.” Sullivan made the mistake of taking a step toward Byron, whether to threaten or to show his authority, Ellie couldn’t say. All she knew is that it was a mistake.
Byron raised his rifle and fired off three consecutive shots, each one reaching its intended target: Walter Sullivan. For one brief moment, the man’s eyes glistened and bulged in the vanishing moonlight as they connected with Byron’s, and an expression of shock and dread washed over his bloated face. And then he dropped to the ground like a sack of wet cement.
Utter mayhem followed; Curly barking and running circles around the fallen body, Rita shrieking and wailing at Byron. “What have you done, Byron Pruitt? You’ve shot him. Is he dead? Oh, dear God, help us!” And Ellie matching her mother’s screams with howling sobs, turning away from the sight of red ooze coming from Mr. Sullivan’s mouth and nose, and clutching her stomach to keep from retching right there on the floor.
“Shut up, just shut up, both of you,” Byron roared, his eyes flaming, nostrils flaring as he started pacing and turning. They silenced themselves except for their loud, mingled breaths and hugged each other, Ellie’s stomach churning with bitter juices. “I have to think.” Byron paused and crouched over Sullivan’s body, feeling for a pulse. He cut loose a curse. “He’s dead all right.”
“Oh, mother of all things holy, Byron! What in the world have you done?”
“Shut up, I told y’, fore I shoot you too!” He raised his gun at her. On impulse, Ellie leaped in front of her and raised her hands.
“Put that gun down, you fool.” She had to tell herself to breathe.
The man’s beady eyes stared holes through her, but even so, he lowered it. She’d known Byron Pruitt had no soul, hadn’t since the day she’d met him, and she’d go to her grave wondering why her mother had married him after her father died unless she’d thought him her only hope for surviving in the hills. Some protector he’d turned out to be, operating an illegal distillery that attracted the scum of society to their door. And if he ever turned a profit, her mother never saw it, for what he didn’t gamble away he paid in bribes to keep the authorities off his back.
“I got to get rid of this body,” he muttered, sweeping four stubby fingers through his scraggly hair.
“No, we have to go to the sheriff,” Ellie corrected.
“Are you crazy?” he spat, stepping over the body and walking toward them, his eyes resembling those of a rabid dog. “We ain’t contactin’ no sheriff. I kilt a man, a government man, in cold blood. You think any court of law’s goin’ to let me off the hook?”
The women huddled close together, drawing on the other for strength.
“We won’t tell,” Rita said, speaking for both of them, her body quivering clear to her toes. “We promise, Byron.”
“Mama, how can you say that?”
Byron’s eyes glistened with madness as he climbed the rickety porch steps and entered the house. The worst kind of cold slithered past the door and tangled around Ellie’s ankles. “Because you two are in this with me, that’s how she can say it. I’ll tell the cops you both played a part, that you talked me into doing it.” He raised the gun and poked the barrel into her mother’s chin, pressing. Ellie swallowed hard and stiffened.
“Byron, don’t hurt her.” Her stepfather had always found ways to taunt and terrify them, cocking guns while in their presence, sharpening knives with one eye on the knife and the other on one of them, making cutting, searing, threatening remarks. Nothing satisfied him more than creating havoc in their little household. Byron Pruitt was a viperous lunatic, and if it weren’t for her beloved mother, she’d have left years ago.
Byron slid the gun up her mother’s face, stopping at the center of her forehead. “I’ll kill her unless you help me bury that body and then promise to keep your mouth shut about what you saw, Eleanor.”
Ellie whispered through her teeth, “You are plumb crazy, Byron.”
He cocked the rifle and chortled. “I’ll blow her head off right here, little girl.”
Rita moaned, a lone tear trickling down her cheek, eyes dancing with wild fear.
Instantly, he turned the gun down and shot at the floor, blowing a hole straight through the boards and stirring up a mountain of dust and debris. Both women screamed, Rita clutching hold of Ellie and wrapping her in a tight embrace. Outside, the chickens fussed and Curly barked. He stuck the barrel in her mother’s temple. “I’ll kill her, Eleanor, I swear it. You go to the cops and she’s as good as dead. And here’s an interestin’ little tidbit; you workin’ alongside me in that liquor still makes you my partner in crime.” He chuckled, the sound of which came off cold and deadlike. “Them headbeaters don’t look too kindly on us moonshiners, and you bein’ one of us, well, they’re likely to lock you up tighter than a pickle in a cannin’ jar. Just don’t forget that.”
She hated that he could be right. “All right, just put that stupid gun down.” To underline his point he held the gun in position for what seemed like a full minute before finally lowering it.
“That’s good. I’m glad we’re clear on that. Come on then, both of you, we got a body to bury.”
Ellie could barely believe she’d actually dug the hole that buried Walter Sullivan, albeit at gunpoint. Twice she’d emptied her stomach in the hole only to hear the gun cock and Byron tell her to hurry it up before somebody came along.
Even now, hours later, she dutifully stood at the kitchen stove helping to prepare lunch while Byron sat in his rocker next to the fire cleaning his gun, trying, Ellie knew, to rid it of any signs of telltale gun powder.
Ellie moved up beside her mother and took the wooden spoon from her hand. “You’ve been stirring this soup for 15 minutes, Mama. Why don’t you go sit down a spell? You’re plain tuckered.”
“What you two whisperin’ about in there?” Byron asked from the living room.
“Nothin’,” Rita called back. Then, with lowered voice she sputtered to Ellie, “You gotta leave today. You can’t stay here. I wouldn’t be able to bear it if anythin’ happened to you. I’d carry the weight of it till my dyin’ day.”
“I can’t leave you with that maniac, Mama. He’s insane.”
“Of course you can, and you will. I’ll be fine. The minute he heads out to the barn, I want you packin’ up a few things then racing across the field to the Meyers house, you hear? Ask Burt to drive you down the mountain. He’ll do it.”
“What are you two blabbin’ about?”
Byron’s brusque voice in the doorway had Ellie whirling on her heel. “Nothin’, just like Mama said. Go sit at the table. Your lunch is ready.”
“Humph, you ain’t better be making any escape plans,” he grumbled before shuffling off to the table, the smell of his breath and clothes wafting across the room. The stench of whiskey so saturated Ellie’s nostrils making her wonder if she herself didn’t carry the smell of it around with her. She never imbibed, of course, but she did work at the still alongside Byron and always under his rule, his shotgun never far away. His chair legs scraped against the gritty floor as he pushed close to the table, his back to them. With an icy chortle, he murmured, “You two ain’t got nowheres to go anyway.”
Three hours later, Ellie bumped along in the backseat of Burt Meyers’ Model T, Mildred sharing the front seat with her husband of 40 years. Quiet tears streamed down her face as Burt maneuvered the auto down a narrow pass, its breaks squeaking in opposition. She’d barely had more than a few minutes to throw a few select things together in a little suitcase, hug her mother goodbye, and then sprint off through the worn path across the cornfield. Rita had given her strict orders not to send word to her for at least a month and then only through the Meyers. “We can trust them,” she’d said while helping Ellie pack, Ellie crying all the while. “Don’t tell them where you’re goin’, though, and when you write to me put the letter inside an envelope small enough to tuck inside a bigger one. Put the return address only on the inside letter, never the outside one, you understand? The less information Burt and Mildred know the better off they’ll both be. They’re good people. I don’t want them gettin’ involved in this mess other than to drive you to the train station.”
She’d laid her ragged nightgown on top of the rest of her things and pulled down the lid, hand gone still while she stared down at the old marred satchel. “He’s right, Mama. If I go to the police, they’re liable to throw me in jail, too. I buried Walter Sullivan, and that makes me an accomplice.”
“You’re better off not breathin’ a word to anyone. Do you hear? Not a word.” Then she’d bit down on her lip and looked toward the kitchen. “Don’t move.” She’d left for scant seconds then returned with a small wad of bills. “Here, take this. I’ve been savin’ it up for y’r ticket out of here.”
“What?” Ellie looked at the roll of bills that must have taken her mother years to put aside. “I can’t take this. You might need it yourself.”
“No, I’ll manage fine. I made my bed when I married Byron. My place is here.”
“I’ll send for you later, Mama, and I expect you to come.”
Rita touched her daughter’s cheek and smiled. “We’ll see, darlin’, we’ll see.”
“You sure you want t’ leave your ma?” Mildred asked, turning full around to look at Ellie, her question bringing Ellie back to the present. “You seem awful broke up about goin’, honey.”
Ellie dabbed at her eyes and nodded. “I’m 21. High time I make my own way.”
“And get away from that fool stepfather of yours,” mumbled Burt. “Too bad Rita didn’t come with you.”
“Now, Burt, that ain’t none of our concern,” Mildred scolded in her typical gruff voice, “even though y’r right.” Mrs. Meyers faced front again. “We’re goin’ to miss you something fierce, Eleanor. Always did love it when you made the trip across the field to visit us.”
“And brought them scrumptious pies with you,” Burt tacked on. “Won’t be the same up on West Peak with you gone.” Burt caught a quick backward glance at her while driving, his elbows bouncing up and down with every dip in the road. “Where you plannin’ on goin’ once we leave you at the station?”
She couldn’t tell them her intended destination of Wabash, Indiana where Daddy had an elderly aunt, her only kin. “I—plan to look for a job up north, but I ain’t quite sure just where yet.” She could at least tell them that much.
Mildred swiveled her body again to see into Ellie’s damp eyes. She wrinkled her brow in confusion. “You don’t have a plan, Eleanor? Why, we cain’t just drop you off if you ain’t got no sort of arrangements.”
“Sure you can,” she said forcing brightness in her tone while wiping away the last of her tears. “I’m breakin’ out of my cocoon.”
“Darlin’, if you’re breakin’ out, why don’t you go further south? It’s so blamed cold up north.”
“Mama and Daddy have an aunt I’m plannin’ to stay with. I got her address tucked away in my satchel, but, well, I can’t disclose it to you. I—I got my reasons. I hope you understand.” She wished she hadn’t confessed that much, but it seemed they deserved at least some explanation. They’d always been so good and kind to Mama and her.
“Say no more, my dear. Long as you’ll be safe that’s enough for Mildred and me.”
“He ain’t a good sort, that Byron Pruitt,” Mildred said, seeming to assume he played into her decision to leave Athens.
“Evil personified,” Ellie lamented under her breath.
As for the rest of the sordid story, she pursed her lips shut after that. Best to keep it buried in the deepest parts of her soul.

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